No Such Thing As A Fish - 501: No Such Thing As Republican Barbie

Episode Date: October 19, 2023

A compilation of unheard material from Dan, James, Andrew and a whole host of guests, recorded over the summer at the Soho Theatre in London. Visit nosuchthingasafish.com for news about live shows, m...erchandise and more episodes.  Join Club Fish for ad-free episodes and exclusive bonus content at apple.co/nosuchthingasafish or nosuchthingasafish.com/patreon

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 Hi everyone and welcome to episode 500 and one of no such thing as a fish. Well, what do we have for you this week? We have finished our summer live shows and we have loads of extra bits that I couldn't fit into the normal 15 minute to an hour episode of fish. Usually what we would do with those is we'd make them into a compilation and they would go for our club fish members. That's where all the compilations go these days. But seeing as they were the live shows that were coming to the end of summer and that were all sleeping off at hand gov from episode 500, we thought we would put this up on our main feed.
Starting point is 00:00:43 Now the thing is about these episodes is if you like the facts on fish, then these are some of the best episodes for you because they are super concentrated of little nuggets of information, but there's loads of fun silly stuff in there as well. I really hope you enjoy it. If you like your compilations, then you can become a member of Clubfish. You will also get ad-free episodes. You'll get other bonus contents, such as Drop As A Line,
Starting point is 00:01:07 where we go through the mailbox and meet the elves, where we meet some of our new members of staff at QI. There's also some stuff on there. It's well worth joining, and you can join there by going to notetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetetet forward slash Patreon. Anyway, I really hope you enjoy this week's show. We'll be back next week with a normal episode, but for now it's on with the podcast. Please welcome to stage our buddy, Loosander, is everybody? Please welcome to the stage, Rachel Paris, everybody?
Starting point is 00:01:52 Soakie Dukeer, everyone? Yeah! Can't have fry. We are joined by nerd royalty. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the stage Susie Dent He is of course Greg Jenna Perry ad Lloyd everybody. It's Jamie Morton everybody Sally Phillips
Starting point is 00:02:26 Ella Alshamahi, everyone! It is Richard Osman! If you heard there's a great anecdote which I've been trying to prove but it's... I don't think it's true. I was... Actually, it's not true, and it's not relevant. Let's move on. Well, he can say that a lot quicker than normal, didn't we? That was great.
Starting point is 00:02:52 Usually I waste all that time, but I'm learning. Nice one, Evan. That's one of your best stories, Dan. Thank you. That's one of the best stories we haven't told on stage. Quickly tell you guys about Alan Bombard. Oh, yeah, go on. Bombard was a French doctor, and he is very unusual
Starting point is 00:03:06 because he's one of the only people in history ever to shipwreck himself. Okay, so this is amazing. There were lots of people at the time being, you know, lots of shipwreck sailors who were dying each year, when they were in their boats were shipwrecked. And he wanted to prove that even if you had no food or water, there were ways you could survive.
Starting point is 00:03:23 So he settled from the Canaries with a sextant, a tarpaulin, a fishing rod, and a sealed box of food and water, which he was gonna try really hard not to open. The self-control he must have had. He suffered terribly. Like, since that's his fault. Yeah, he had no rain for three weeks,
Starting point is 00:03:41 and then storms snapped the mast of his dinghy. Swordfish approached his rubber dinghy, nose first. I'm terrified. I know. I know. Oh, my God. I know. That's cool. 53 days later, he bumped into a ship, and they said, oh, yeah, you're still 600 miles off course for where you're going. Right. He had just become a father as well when he did this.
Starting point is 00:04:00 Which I find. Like, well, at least he got some sleep. But they do. The length, some people will go to. So, anyway. It's amazing. But anyway, so he got on board this ship, which picked him up after 53 days. He had a small lunch of a fry dig that got back on his dinghy
Starting point is 00:04:18 and kept sailing towards Barbados. Right. And he made it there in the end. He did it eventually. But yeah, I just think what a self-experimenter to do that to yourself. Yeah, extraordinary. But why? Well, to prove that, apart from not to see your child and wife or partner, I think to prove that you're taking 18 years to get that.
Starting point is 00:04:36 Yeah. I think it was to prove what you could survive on if you could survive on fish or plankton, which you can do, you know. And you can do that without actually doing it. You could just say, oh, I can might eat fish today. LAUGHTER That's my self-control, right there. It's in a tin of food you can't open. LAUGHTER
Starting point is 00:04:54 Just, and a curiosity, have we been eating and drinking from the wrong end this whole time? Would there be certain things? LAUGHTER Well, because President Garfield was... this whole time. Would there be certain things? LAUGHTER Well, because President Garfield was fed through his... Oh, yeah. Yes, me, yeah. Famously.
Starting point is 00:05:12 Well, you've got a bit of your pipe left, don't? LAUGHTER What better time to put it into practice? LAUGHTER A tutorial, if you will. LAUGHTER I think if you have the option, the mouth is a better option. If we have no other option, then the rectum is acceptable.
Starting point is 00:05:29 Just fluids, though. So, I mean, if you're trying to absorb lots of nutrients, then you know, your stomach and your upper digestive system will do all that work. So, it is a plan B, very much so. I'll still try it. Have you... I was looking at people who died laughing. This happened in 1920, and it was reported by an Australian newspaper called The Muggy Guardian and Northwestern Representative. OK.
Starting point is 00:05:52 Do you know it? Yeah, yeah, that's my local. It's about a man called Arthur Cobcroft. And I'm reading directly, so Mr. Arthur Cobcroft died at his home in Loftus Street Saturday. He was reading this 1920. He was reading an old newspaper of a 1915 date and was comparing the prices of various commodities with those of today, when he suddenly burst into laughter
Starting point is 00:06:15 at the great deference. He appeared to be unable to control himself and eventually collapsed and died. Commodity prices. They must have been so different. It's... I'm laughing thinking about it now. Come on, you're not. Come on, you're not. Come on, you're not. Come on, you're not. Come on, you're not. Come on, you're not.
Starting point is 00:06:32 Come on, you're not. Come on, you're not. Come on, you're not. Come on, you're not. Come on, you're not. Come on, you're not. Come on, you're not. Come on, you're not. Come on, you. Yeah. I was reading about when something goes wrong on stage, and so that got me into a whole territory of
Starting point is 00:06:49 if someone is hurt as they're acting, what do you do? And I found this thing that apparently it's a huge problem for paramedics when they're called to help someone who's really injured, who's in a zombie movie, because they arrive, they have no idea who the patient is, because everyone is bleeding, everyone's got all kinds of scars. And even if they find the person who's really injured themselves,
Starting point is 00:07:13 they just can't tell where the wound is at all, because the amount of present. Well, I broke a rib being chased by a zombie once. Did you? Yeah, yeah, I was in London. Like, one of these things where you pay to be chased by zombies. Yeah, you all know. We've all got our kinks.
Starting point is 00:07:27 That sounds a bit like it, though. I was like watching a lot of American football at the time. And the zombie was coming towards me, and I thought I'd do some amazing dodges past him. And I got nowhere near past him. And he kind of tagged me and pushed me into a wall, and I broke a rib. And we had to go to the A&E and there were
Starting point is 00:07:45 quite a lot of people who had similar problems. And it was just like, you say it was like being in mash. It's just people with arms hanging off. You didn't know what was real and what wasn't. I found out that a bungae in East Anglia has the highest number of satanists in the UK. Oh, today, now I'd like to take issue with that. Would you? I think it's bolsover in Derbyshire. LAUGHTER So, yeah.
Starting point is 00:08:11 How many has bolsover got? 17, 2017. 17, 17. 17 in Bungay. Ooh. OK, but it might be relative to population. I don't know how big Bungay is. Sounds tiny.
Starting point is 00:08:22 It does sound tiny. This bolsover thing is from the census in 2011. This was from the census, I bet it's a later census, mine? Maybe, I don't know. Is there another one, too? 2021, yeah. But in bolso, it was only 17 people who wrote Satanist as their religion. But that was the highest per person,
Starting point is 00:08:39 the highest concentration. Even Bristol only had 34 people who wrote Satanist. But Bristol's huge. So the Google article I saw said, um, Bungay and East Anglia, and then the next one was Bronzebury. Wow, sorry. London, which had 20. So there's a big B-conclusion to the alphabet. B-L-Z-Bub.
Starting point is 00:08:59 Ah, the beast. Yeah. There was a, there was a footnote that said they thought Bungae, my might be doing it, is a kind of tourist attracting thing, because they've got a big black dog. I can't remember what it's called. Like a myth of a big black, a satanic dog, apparently.
Starting point is 00:09:15 And they're trying to push that. It's worked. I mean, we're all talking about Bungae all the time. Yeah. Oh, did you know it was a pantomime horse arrest in Tesco's? Oh, really? When it was found that the Tesco's budget brand everyday value burgers contained 29% horse meat.
Starting point is 00:09:36 Oh, yeah. Yeah, pantomime horse went to protest in Tesco's. Crying, gang. Mummy, daddy. And it was led away into the staff department and it was never seen again. Here's a good quick little tip. If you meet someone who's Dutch and they say to you,
Starting point is 00:09:57 I fuck horses, they don't. LAUGHTER Not necessarily, you've been... Top tip. Oh, I can't confirm for certain, yeah. But so is that Dutch? Does it sound like... If OK means breeding, yeah, they breed horses. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:10:11 And there supposedly was a story where the Dutch foreign minister was introduced to JFK and he said, hi, how are we new? So it's all very good. What are your hobbies? I fuck horses. And... So why did he only say that one word in Dutch and the rest of it? That's where I...
Starting point is 00:10:24 That's where I also questioned the anecdotes. Yeah, but it does stand. I looked up the translation, and FOK is for breeding. So, yeah. Again, you'd never hear that in that kind, unless horses, I didn't look up horses, if they say that in Dutch. Should we move on?
Starting point is 00:10:39 LAUGHTER So one person who did slightly pioneer the idea of living underwater was Jacques Cousteau. Jacques Cousteau, you will probably know him. He had the colipso and he was one of the greatest ocean... Sorry, I don't know. You know the dance? No, I...
Starting point is 00:10:59 You know there's the ice cream. I was confusing it with a calipso. He's one of the greatest oceanographers of all time. He kind of pioneered documentary making in the field of immersive and you follow a team and the life aquatic by Wes Anderson is very much based on the story of Jacques Cousteau. But on a scientific level,
Starting point is 00:11:16 he also invented or co-invented the aquelung, which is why we were able to go diving. So that was Jacques Cousteau. And then one of the other things he did was this thing called the con shells, which are the continental shells, which were habitable zones down in the ocean. And continental shelf two was this big-looking starfish
Starting point is 00:11:32 kind of housing unit. And he lived in it with his crew for a number of days. They had a parrot that came down and lived with them as well. Because in a sort of slightly dark sense, it was like the canary in the mountain. Something was wrong with the levels of oxygen, the parrot would know first, and so they could get out of there. So he set a record for the longest anyone's been down there, and then his son, Fabian
Starting point is 00:11:54 Kastos, so he's the grandson. So he lived down there and held the record for the longest anyone's been under the ocean for quite a while, and then it got taken over by a professor and a student. But he invented a shark submarine. Have you seen this? This is incredible. It's the submarine in the shape of a shark. So the idea is that he can observe sharks while being one of them.
Starting point is 00:12:16 It's a one person submersible. He has to be in a diving suit while he's in it because water flows all the way through. He has to drive the submarine while laying down in the shark. Oh, it's stressful. And his elbows are steering it as he goes. Why is elbows? What's he doing with his hands? Sorry. He's on his elbows, steering with his hands.
Starting point is 00:12:33 Okay, thinking like it. A needless layer of complication from otherwise, fallen to death. He's on his phone, isn't he? And he's just like... I was looking at British elections. You know, there's that thing of always on election night. A general election night. There's kind of who gets their ballot counted first,
Starting point is 00:12:49 and it's which constituencies or so. Oh, so you say, like, Sunderland versus Newcastle? Sunderland and Newcastle. Oh, you mean like a race against the final result? Yeah, I was reading about Sunderland's methods for ensuring they stay at the top of their game. Yeah. And they're amazing.
Starting point is 00:13:03 So, well, it's kind of a tradition now, and they've done it, they've really gone into details. So they hire bank tellers, because they're very good at flipping through lots and lots of paper very quickly, like individual bits of paper. They use lighter paper for their ballot sheets, because it's slightly easier to count fast.
Starting point is 00:13:21 So they switch from 100 GSM to 80 GSM. Yeah, obviously they do practices, do, obviously, they do practices. Like, they do dresser rehearsals with the students who are running, holding the ballot boxes. And they say, you're going to be filmed. You're going to need to be careful. You don't want to drop those. That'll be a disaster.
Starting point is 00:13:38 And the Labour always wins in that constituency, right? I think they do. I think they always win. I guess they would, yeah. But you're not sure if they're doing it. I always watch the election night and all the results come in. And I only stay up for Sunal and the Newcastle, a 100% Labour, and then I go to bed.
Starting point is 00:13:55 LAUGHTER I'm always slightly disappointed when I wake up. I get it, yeah. You can get well in confidence these days, I believe. This is very exciting. A little price for anyone who can guess the headline that was used on the story announcing us in 2011. Take your time.
Starting point is 00:14:10 That you're allowed woolen coffins now. Yeah, there's a cool woolen coffin that's been launched. Gonna have to hurry you. No, no, no, no. No, no, no. Really? Let's all believe. Silent bits of podcast, every pop.
Starting point is 00:14:21 Anyone in the audience? This is too tough, a quiz, handy. Anyone? Kozy Barrio. a quiz, handy. Anyone? Cosy burial? Cosy burial. Cosy burial is good. Famous phrase, cosy burial. They went with... Rest in fleece.
Starting point is 00:14:33 Oh! Yes. Not mine. Very nice. But lovely. Yeah. And you can be buried in it, or it can be cremated at the same, the way it's...
Starting point is 00:14:44 You can get cardboard coffins, wool coffins, willow coffins, banana leaf coffins, or you can now be wrapped in a shroud as we used to be. And there's a big movement, a natural burial movement, which is because there are so many horrible chemicals in a lot of funeral processes, especially if you are embalmed, it's very bad for the environment for your body to go into the ground for the chemicals. Right. So if you have a biodegradable coffin, then you can be are in bond, it's very bad for the environment for your body to go into the ground for the chemicals. So if you have a biodegradable coffin, then you can be buried in like what, in a natural burial's base here for you, that someone's agreed to have people buried in.
Starting point is 00:15:13 Can you get wicker? Yeah, wicker, yeah. And you can also get one that's made of like a mushroom fungus that will start to decompose your body faster. Oh, yes. It's amazing. And so this is really important. I've talked to... Before I'm big, talk about planning your funeral and advance care planning. It's a big thing that you should write this down now.
Starting point is 00:15:29 Why is your gonna get wrapped in that wool suit? Right. I just like to put it, because this is being recorded and we'll go out, I do not want to be eaten by mushrooms when I get... Okay. Do you want banana leaves or wicker or wool? I'll be putting a big wicker cage in bird by some... LAUGHTER And probably some people be dancing around in white in the situation.
Starting point is 00:15:48 That's going to be an amazing podcast when it comes out there. One of the suffragettes, this was Anne Hunt. She walked into the National Portrait Gallery and she stopped in front of a portrait of Thomas Carlyle, who's one of the founders, painted by Millay, and she slashed it. There's a really famous thing that she did. Miss Carlyle, who's one of the founders painted by Millay, and she slashed it. It was a really famous thing that she did. There was only one member of staff who was suspicious. I was guy called David Wilson.
Starting point is 00:16:12 And the first time she walked in, he wasn't as suspicious. He thought she was American. And apparently, he thought she was American because she was looking so closely at the pictures. Apparently, that's what Americans do. But then the second day she came back in again, and David Wilson said that she couldn't be American because no American would have paid the six-pence entrance fee twice over.
Starting point is 00:16:37 So it was like that must be someone who did up to no good. Was she coming back? Had she already slashed some of her further? No, the first time she went in was to kind of case at times. Yeah. So there were lots of sort of famous incidents like particular flashpoints where, for example, Mrs. Pancus was going to speak at an event and then the police didn't want it to happen. And so that became a course of episode. There was an event called the Battle of Glasgow.
Starting point is 00:16:59 Oh, yeah. The Mrs. Pancus was going to Glasgow to speak and the police did not want her to appear. They didn't want her to speak. There were 50 police constables in the basement of the building where she was built to appear. All the tickets have been sold. Huge presence like people checking everyone on the door.
Starting point is 00:17:15 Suddenly Mrs. Packers appears on stage out of nowhere, and it turns out she's just coming as a punter with a ticket sat by the platform, and then gets up and start speaking. So all the police start coming up from the basement, because they're activated. Um, meanwhile, 25 of the Suffragette bodyguards get their clubs out and start trying to beat the police up.
Starting point is 00:17:36 Yeah. So you've got 25 suffragettes with clubs, 50 policemen with their truncheons. One of the suffragettes shorter policemen in the chest point blank with a blank bullet, so it wasn't, it was just a kind of surprise, rather than a... LAUGHTER I hope she said that.
Starting point is 00:17:48 Surprise! I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. Are you okay? It was mindful. And then, playing close detectives tried to get onto the platform when... Mrs. Pancus is still speaking at this point. She's still delivering her speech. The playing close detectives are trying to climb onto the platform. It turns out the floral garlands all the way around the platform are barbed wire. They've been disguised.
Starting point is 00:18:06 Wow. It's amazing. They're all ladies now beating the police with their umbrellas as they're trying to fight the trunche. It just sounds like an insane scene. Who's listening to the speech at this point? LAUGHTER Weird moment today.
Starting point is 00:18:20 I was researching crisps, and I found out in Japan at the moment there's a trend that's going on, and then it turns out this is going global now to eat crisps using chopsticks so that you don't get the oil on your fingers as you are doing the other work that you're doing, right? If you're eating, so I was literally eating a bag of crisps as I was researching that fact, and my fingers absolutely were sticky on the the Mac sort of of, mouse bits. People are like, keep, oh, the keypad. Yeah, yeah.
Starting point is 00:18:48 The keypad, no, like, the, you know, the hand mouse thing that you... The keypad. Yeah, yeah. Well, the keypad's the mouse. The mouse. The mouse. During the mouse. The tracker, the trackpad. The trackpad. Gosh. It's like living in the future, isn't it?
Starting point is 00:19:02 No. I found myself reading a piece about historical novels by a writer called James Forrester. I just want to quote from this article he wrote about 10 years ago. And listen to this, he was, he reads a lot, and I think he wrote historical novels too. One highly acclaimed and commercially successful, recent historical novel had on page three
Starting point is 00:19:21 the statement that there were no priests within a three-day ride. Taking into consideration the time of year and the location of this statement, I calculated that there were between five and eight thousand priests. Wow. Within a three-day ride in that year, I could not carry on reading. LAUGHTER
Starting point is 00:19:46 Stop the podcast! Stop the podcast! Stop the podcast! Hi everyone, we'd like to let you know that this week we are sponsored by Squarespace! Yes! Squarespace is the all-in-one platform that means you can stand out, build a website, a gorgeous, successful one, it just makes it super convenient and easy and simple and fun. Yeah, absolutely. I once studied computer programming and I did it for about a year and at the end I managed to make Tic Tac Toe, but if I wanted to make an entire website using that skill, I probably would struggle and that's why something like Squarespace is so important
Starting point is 00:20:23 because it's so easy to use. If you want to be blogging on your website, if you want to do email campaigns, if you want to see your analytics, if you want to sell things using an online store, Squarespace has all of these tools that are just available with a click of a button. That's right.
Starting point is 00:20:39 And James' TikTok Toe World is actually going online soon. It's got videos of some of the great knots and crosses games in history. That's something that Squarespace provides. It's brilliant. And I'm also available on TikTok TikTok Toe. If you would like to see little videos of TikTok. Look, what am I talking about?
Starting point is 00:20:56 Squarespace is a place to go if you have an actual real life website that you would like to make. And the best way to do that is to go to squarespace.com slash fish. Because when you do that, you go to squarespace.com slash fish because when you do that you can get 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain and the way you do that is by using the code fish. That's right, you can get a free trial at squarespace.com and when you're ready to launch go to squarespace.com slash fish and you will save 10% off your first
Starting point is 00:21:22 purchase of a website or domain. You won't be left feeling like it's all been for naught and you won't be left feeling cross. Brilliant. Do it now. I'm with the podcast. I'm with the show. [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪
Starting point is 00:21:38 Children are quite weirdly good at lying. So adults are very bad at telling when children are lying. This is the thing. And the reason for that, they can only work it out about the same as guessing on it, like 54% of the time, so not much better than chance, really. And the reason for that, there are lots of experiments, and it's because adults assume that children lie like adults do, and they assume that children's faces move in the same way that adults do, but basically there have been a load of experiments which assume that children's faces move in the same way that adults do, but basically there have been a load of experiments which assumed that children are not proficient liars.
Starting point is 00:22:08 And in fact, the problem is that children just look guilty quite a lot at the time. Like, because, like, you talk to a young child, they might have heard their eyes, they might fidget, they might be incoherent, they look like they look like they're hiding something. And that's so adults think they're lying, when they may or will not be. So, yeah. I think that I look permanently guilty.
Starting point is 00:22:28 It makes me a bad liar. But it also makes me a really bad truth teller. That's the problem, because I look like I'm lying whatever. So any liar tell I'm going to get cortexed, I look like I'm lying. And any time until the truth, no one believes me, because I look like I'm lying. It's very difficult.
Starting point is 00:22:43 That's why I have to have the computer in front of me on point this. One of the reasons that we have X as the X-man and the X-ray and stuff like that is because Decar used X to mean an unknown in algebra, wasn't it? He decided to use X, Y and Z. And the story goes that the reason he did it is because the printer who was doing his books, and I got loads of X's, Y's and Z's left over because no words have cases in them. So I might as well use them.
Starting point is 00:23:12 But it turns out that because he's French, actually, X is quite a common, relatively common in French. And it might have been because they just had lots of X's because X is quite common. But yeah, without those, without Descartes, we might not have the X-men, we might have the A-men or the B-men or whatever. Oh, wow.
Starting point is 00:23:29 And we wouldn't have... The C-men. Tweets. LAUGHTER Probably not. So, I was looking into things that are named after people. And I was thinking, I was reasoning that there must be something which is the most famous thing that people don't know is named after a person.
Starting point is 00:23:46 Okay, that's so, so we've, we've said before like, Tratnell is named after a bloke who was called General Henry Schrapher or something. I think he said that Nachos was named after a guy called Ignacio. Exactly. And I, so we've done a few of these before. And I, the Cardigan, do people know it was named after the seventh Earl of Cardigan? Okay, that is known. Because I read an article claiming that he was wearing one
Starting point is 00:24:05 while he led the charge of the light brigade during... LAUGHTER I thought that can't be right, they would have been a uniform. Because it feels too... Yeah, maybe. Well, like pushing his merch during war. Exactly. Yeah, I mean, yeah, it is named after him, but, yeah, I think. And it was during the Battle of Balaklava.
Starting point is 00:24:25 That's the thing that we've done. Yeah. And then Kravats go back to Crowats, because Crowats were those. Yeah. And slaves were slavs. I mean, that's not quite a nickname, that's the kind of top of names, but...
Starting point is 00:24:39 And I'm really sorry to always lower the tone, but I just know that Bugga is actually a riff on Bulgarian because there were these Bulgarian sects in the 11th century. They were supposed to get up to strange sects. So that's where Bugga comes in. Wow. Yeah, that's kind of top in them, though, isn't it?
Starting point is 00:24:58 It's really not an epinion. I think. Strictly speaking. Shot. In 1996, the Swedish Navy admitted that they had found a huge amount of evidence of Russian submarines operating in their waters, right? Really serious.
Starting point is 00:25:11 Post-Cold War, threatening security environment, and there had been 6,000 incidents. A huge number reported from 1981 to 1994. It turns out that what they had been hearing was largely otters, splashing. Oh! Playful otters, splashing in the water. Wow. There were about one in a thousand claims
Starting point is 00:25:29 was likely to be a submarine, and the rest was just random. They also found out that it was farting fish, as well, didn't they? Yeah, very good. Very, very good. Farting fish. Farting, yeah, they communicate by farting. In fact, we have this fact, our QI, which is herring communicate by farting.
Starting point is 00:25:47 Yes. And we tweet it about once a year just so that everyone tweets Richard Herring to go, Oh, I didn't know you didn't communicate with her. He hates us. I can imagine. So the thing I want to mention about protests is to do with another quiz show, which is Mastermind. And the first question ever was about protests. And it was about a painting by Picasso, which was a protest about the bombing
Starting point is 00:26:06 by Spanish planes on a village. And the question was, what year, when the event took place, was the inspiration for the painting, the answer was 1937. The answer was 1937. But the question was about German planes, not Spain.
Starting point is 00:26:22 So the first ever question on mastermind was incorrect. Oh, yeah. So how shit is mastermind? I just feel like as QAI and countdown on stage together, let's shit on someone. What are you reconcudely the shit, yeah? Let's get some headlines.
Starting point is 00:26:40 That's it. Yes. Wait. LAUGHTER Oh, I don't want to diss any others. Oh yeah, that was vicious. Just on religion while we're there. There's been a few naked religions in the past. So the Adamites, they were a sect in North Africa in the second third and fourth centuries that used always while no clothes during the religious ceremonies, the IDVM being that they were going back to the Garden of Eden before we had clothes and
Starting point is 00:27:09 this was the best way to get close to God. Now it became big again in the Czech Republic and Czech year in 14th century and people who were Adamites then would go naked through the towns and villages. So they would, everyone take their clothes off and they would go through the town saying, come and join our gang, you know, we're the closest to Jesus. Konga, basically. I'm describing a naked Konga. Sure, let's call it a naked. Well, they did do a lot of naked dances. They would have a fire and they would do naked dances around it and the idea was that they rejected a lot of the things in the Catholic church and a lot of people think that they were like the precursors of their Protestant revolution. So it was like, you know, they was with the first people really to kind of go against the church and then it kind of built up and built up in central Europe.
Starting point is 00:27:50 But it carried on. A lot of it trimmed a lot of that stuff away. Didn't they, before it came up in Puritanism, yeah, sorry. And then it carried on. And in the early US, they had some Adamites there. And I was reading about one clergyman who was writing about them, and he said about these people who were in church and were naked the whole time,
Starting point is 00:28:11 if the planets of Venus reigned in their lower parts, making them swell for pride, or rather for lust, then the clerk with his long stick shall strike down the presumptuous flesh. So basically, if you... Yeah, you would. Yeah. And he said, that on one occasion,
Starting point is 00:28:32 there was a woman who made a congregation member rise in such a measurable manner that the old clerk was forced to use both hands to allow his courage, at which the prophesy so was in such pain that the whole house could not hold him and he said he would kill the clerk. And basically, this guy just started lacking his genitals with his stick.
Starting point is 00:28:54 He attacked that guy and basically, they only just stopped him from killing the clerk. But this guy said he wasn't bothered because it was in church. God would look after him and it didn't matter if he killed the clerk because it was in church. God would look after him, and it didn't matter if he killed the clap, because it was naked, it would all be fine. Ah, I feel like pants is just easier, isn't it?
Starting point is 00:29:11 Just never wear a pair of pants. So, burrowing out, they have lots of piles of poo outside the nest, and it's cow dung and bison dung and all of this. And then they just stand by the poo and wait. They just go into kind of a century position and understand that, looking very still. And what scientists reckon is that they're fishing for dung beetles. Oh, fresh is dung.
Starting point is 00:29:32 Yeah. And dung beetles are really interested, and that buttering else loves eating the dung beetles. Yeah. And so they'll just stand and wait and let the dung beetles approach. Isn't that crazy? Yeah, basically fishing.
Starting point is 00:29:43 Like, are they land fishing? Yeah. No, I got it. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I tried to find a, if there was another naughty Barbie, you know, kind of like the origins of Barbie being a cool girl. And I managed to find one, which was the pole dancing Barbie. This was a one-off, because it was part of a thing in Japan called Hebokon, which was, you know, like robot wars. This was anti-robot wars.
Starting point is 00:30:06 This was a robot wars where everyone specifically... Face negotiations. No, no. Yeah. You have a... You have a summit. Robot model, you in. LAUGHTER You had to bring a very bad robot, basically. It had to be terrible.
Starting point is 00:30:21 And so, the worse it was, the better you got in the competition. OK. So there were 31 entrants and Barbie doll that was entered was a attacking through pole dancing Barbie. But the other ones that it went up and down. How did she attack you with a pole dance? I spent round and kick you in the handkerchief. I think so, because I couldn't find any photos,
Starting point is 00:30:40 because this was in 2013, and I think in the middle of the camera. Yeah. So, no, so it's, you know, it was a small thing that happened in Japan. The winner was a robot that was so sturdy that no one could knock it over. So it just stood. So the other things walked into it. Okay, that's all that.
Starting point is 00:30:57 And the best one was that the person who got a special acknowledgement was one person, a lady, who accidentally left her robot on the train and then just went for a beer instead. And they were like, that level of shitness is so great. And we want to commend you with a special honor there. That's awesome.
Starting point is 00:31:13 Yeah, Paul Dancing Barbie, the only one time in a anti-robot war Japanese competition, Hebacon. Very cool. Yeah. There is a thing called the Bubble Baba Challenge. This is the Vowoksky River in Russia, so it's near St. Petersburg. And it's a race, kind of a rafting race, but instead of a raf, you have a sex doll. It began in 2003. Anyone's allowed to enter, but you have to have a compulsory alcohol test
Starting point is 00:31:40 before you start. Oh, yeah, we don't want to make this seem tautry or unprofessional. And in 2006, there was... That guy riding a sex doll down the river's head, a shandy! Get him! The most exciting of the Bubble Baba Challenge sex doll races was in 2006. So all the races jumped into the water and there was really, really strong wind and that meant that almost all the sex dolls blew away. And so you just got all these Russian mostly guys in the water just sort of without their sex dolls. And there's only one person, the guy called Ossipov, who reached the finish line. But he was disqualified because the jury had noticed signs of recent sexual activity on the doll. Which was very much banned.
Starting point is 00:32:30 I've got another Barbie thing. Okay. Barbie is officially not part of any political party, right? So there's various reasons for that. She's been a presidential candidate every election since 1992. Much like Hillary Clinton. Not fair. various reasons for that. She's been a presidential candidate every election since 1992. Much like Hillary Clinton. Hey! Um, not fair.
Starting point is 00:32:48 Um, but she got in a, she got in a beef with Donald J. Trump. Barbe and Donald J. Trump had a beef at the last election. Okay. Because Donald J. Trump tweeted, there's a thing called Voter Barbe. And it's doing...
Starting point is 00:33:01 What do you see? What do you see? What do you see? What do you see? What do you see? What do you see? What do you see? What do you see? What do you keep saying Jay in his name? Oh, sorry, that's his junior I'm talking about. Oh. Don't show up junior. I believe. Yeah, yeah, okay.
Starting point is 00:33:09 Can't be this senior. I mean, they're both such, they're both such different. Twerk. Yes. Well, I don't know which of them said this. I think it was junior, but basically one of the Trumps tweeted, Voter Barbie must be a Democrat, because she's already wearing an I voted sticker,
Starting point is 00:33:27 and yet she's got another ballot in her hand. Oh, another. And Mattel had to reply, Barbie has never has been affiliated with a political party to an official statement, saying she's not a Democrat. Yeah, yeah. Wow.
Starting point is 00:33:41 I think she is, though, clearly. Clearly. Yeah. Can I tell you one more dueling method that happens? Yeah. So basically, you know the thing about you turn back to back and then you walk and then you... There are various different methods in different countries. What, 10 paces turn round shoot?
Starting point is 00:33:53 Sorry, yes. So the back, that's French, basically. And there is a much more fun variant, which has another French name, it's called Avalonte. You face each other. Can we do the fun duel? Well, there was... people really relished it. You know, a certain kind of person really seemed to enjoy it.
Starting point is 00:34:09 So there's a very good avalanche. Well, you face each other, right? And you start walking towards each other. You can either of you can find out whenever you like. But if you miss, you have to stand still and wait for the other... Oh! ..guy to see. Right. I know. And that feels tense.
Starting point is 00:34:25 I thought you were going to say that you're standing right in front of each other and then you walk backwards away from each other. And then you're just hoping someone's not kneeling down behind you. LAUGHTER That is amazing, really. God. You used to be in the Olympics, didn't it, Pistol Julling? Yeah. 1906. It was one of the categories.
Starting point is 00:34:44 It wasn't a medal one, but you would... Olympics, didn't it, pistol jewellery? 1906, it was one of the categories. It wasn't a medal one, but you would... So it was a thing that was done there. Because the winner would be dead. Yeah. LAUGHTER Sorry. Sorry.
Starting point is 00:34:56 Just... Take him up, I got to put a silver medal on him. But that would be the... There was like an intercalerie games, wasn't there? Yeah. 1906, it wasn't the main games. And they used wax bullets, and the idea was, you would just see who got hit first and closed.
Starting point is 00:35:09 And you had the sort of glass plate that was over your face, but it was done as a proper thing, with spectators around and everything. Yeah, it was very exciting. Have we said before that, I think, NASA found the oldest known rock, the oldest known earth rock was on the moon, and then brought back to Earth.
Starting point is 00:35:23 Yes, and then it was called Big Bertha, was the name of the rock. What's it? Yeah, they named it after a, I think, a gun from the First World War. So they brought that back, and it was the first earth meteorite ever found on another body, as in the first meteor out, if you like. You know, the first bit of earth that it hit somewhere else.
Starting point is 00:35:43 Wasn't the moon created when an asteroid hit the earth in those little splashes? So they say. So they say, yeah. No one's there. I'm not sure I buy it. Yeah. Pixler, it didn't happen.
Starting point is 00:35:53 There's actually a strong theory that it is hollow. So is this the moon cave theory? Oh, yeah. I haven't heard it called that before, but yeah. Yeah, because supposedly when you hit it, it rings like a bell. So is it artificial? Is it real? What you mean when a meteorite hits it?
Starting point is 00:36:13 No, if you just go. No, when they did drilling on the moon, they'd specifically tried to find out. Because you can do seismic tests on the moon to see what the composure is on the inside. Right. And it was completely empty apparently and so yeah I'm joking Hannah. I'm joking. I promise. I'm joking. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Have you ever been in a diamond mine in your adventures Hannah? No, I haven't. I wonder what that's like
Starting point is 00:36:39 See we've run out of facts and into speculation territory We've run out of facts and entered speculation territory. LAUGHTER Gosh. And you've mentioned Oscar the hypnodog before on the podcast. Can you remember what that was? Oscar the hypnodog was a labrador who was hypnotically trained and when, like, when missing, and there were signs put up all over the country
Starting point is 00:36:59 saying, do not look at this dog. LAUGHTER Is that it? That's it, yeah, yeah.. LAUGHTER That's it. Yeah. Basically, he's dangerous. No. We have mentioned that, but what I'd never heard before was about Puffy the Hypno Cat.
Starting point is 00:37:14 Amazing. Puffy the Hypno Cat was in the 1940s in America. There was a guy who owned a bar and he said that Puffy was sitting on the end of a nightclub bar and a couple of girls came up to him, and I didn't really pay attention what happened, but suddenly a girl was simply out on her feet. She simply wasn't from drinking.
Starting point is 00:37:32 I'm something of a hypnotist myself, and I realized she was a hypnotic trance. And it turned out that this cat had been hypnotizing people in this guy's bar, and he started then training the cats to stare at people really, really fixately to try and hypnotize them. And Puffy became really, really famous. And in 1945, the American FeeLine Society
Starting point is 00:37:56 called her the King of All Cats, because she was bringing in money for war buns. So you would go into the bar, and you would pay some money to be hypnotised by the cat, and then, you know, they'd get the money for the war. And by the end of her life, she was credited with hypnotising over 300 people, always for benign purposes. Oh, just, well, I spent all my money on Tinder. So weird.
Starting point is 00:38:21 Just left it open around the place. Probably, probably nothing. And you, Hannah, you're such a skeptic. You probably don't even believe that story's true. Actually, that one, I'm really behind. One of us, on this panel, might be slightly harder to hypnotise than the other three. Oh, okay, can we guess it?
Starting point is 00:38:44 Oh. Oh. Um, is it done? Because have there's dubious questioning techniques? Not done, because there's dubious questioning techniques. Oh. I feel like this is not dubious. I feel like this is not dubious. I feel like this is not dubious.
Starting point is 00:38:58 I feel like this is not dubious. I feel like this is not dubious. I feel like this is not dubious. I feel like this is not dubious. I feel like this is not dubious. I feel like this is not dubious. I feel like this is not dubious. I feel like this is not dubious.
Starting point is 00:39:06 I feel like this is not dubious. I feel like this is not dubious. I feel like this is not dubious. I feel like this is not dubious. I feel like this is not dubious. I feel like this is not dubious. Is it happy with his lack of ability to talk to people at parties? It's not me with my lack of ability to talk to people at parties. James are being so fucking judgmental about the other three people on the panel. It's James, but not for that reason. Not for that reason.
Starting point is 00:39:18 So James, you have a Fantasia, right? Oh, right. OK. So James, what, you said what it is? I just can't pitch the things in my head. Can't pitch the things in your head. Yeah. And that might make it harder to hypnotise you. It's not right.
Starting point is 00:39:30 Well, this is from the UK Hypnosis Convention, which sounds amazing. Last year's events included recreational erotic hypnosis. And A Fantasia, what is it? And why should we even care? Like a... Slightly barbed. Subject for a talk, but...
Starting point is 00:39:48 I didn't have much time. I got very deep in the weeds on people who want to be heroes and do bad stuff. Oh, yeah, yeah, go for it. You heard of the hero complex? No. No. So it's not quite a psychological disorder. It's not in the diagnostic manuals, but it's like talked about by psychologist. It's a thing where sometimes known as a vanity crime where people are desperate to be the hero, so they'll do something bad so they can then rescue people.
Starting point is 00:40:11 I like how I'd mug you, but then beat myself up. Yeah, exactly. Exactly that. And hand yourself in, I guess, as the idea. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I'd rough myself up a bit first. So I get one a well, I've been able to lifetime. But like there's quite a lot of case studies.
Starting point is 00:40:28 The really famous one's 1984, an LAPD police officer called Jimmy Wade Pearson, heroically discovered and diffused a pipe bomb on an airport bus carrying the Turkish Olympic team in L.A. And people saw him running down like the airport, holding a pipe bomb, dismantling him and throwing over his shoulder and shouting, get out! You know, like proper Bruce Willis stuff. It turned out he had planted it there. Because he wanted to be the hero, because he wanted to transfer into a different department and his boss hated him. And he thought the only way I'm getting out is if I get a commendation. And he failed the polygraph, and he ended up with 1500 hours of community service, and it became a bit of a thing
Starting point is 00:41:05 But everyone was like all right, well no one was hurt fair enough But then there's some really bad ones So there's a thing called firefighter arson, which is a serious problem. Oh, yeah There are a hundred firefighters every year arrested for arson in America alone There's a million firefighters, so it's a tiny statistic, But a hundred people, most of the young men aged 16 to 30, I read a whole report issued in 2003 by the US government's National Fire Administration. I got very deep. There are six primary motives. Excitement, vandalism, revenge, profit, political terrorism, hiding evidence for crime.
Starting point is 00:41:39 And it's a really big problem for a small subset. And there's a guy who's a Tennessee fire chief. He's set fire to his own fire station. Oh! Wow. He caused the three quarters of a million dollars of damage, and when released, he then set fire to a card English ship. And he did it for the sexual thrill. This is why we need pawn hub.
Starting point is 00:41:59 It's sexual. Sexual thrill. He gave it off on the... The worst one's John Orr. He was from Glendale Fire Service in California. He, night and night, one was found to have planned eight arson attacks on shops and was suspected many more. He killed four people in these fires. It was really, really horrible.
Starting point is 00:42:14 Right. His main job at the Glendale Service... Chief Arson investigator. Wow. What a comfort story. And so they tailed him for months. And every time there was a fire investigating conference, there would be fires in the local area. And he was possibly a legend of set 2000 fires, making the most prolific American arsonist unrecorded. But one of the clues that they detected about him
Starting point is 00:42:37 is that he had written a novel about a fireman who sets fires. LAUGHTER It's like a serious thing. And I'm so sorry to get stuck on it, but I then watched fireman Sam with my four-year-old daughter. Oh, it's like a serious thing. And I'm so sorry to get stuck on it, but I then watched Fiam and Sam with my four-year-old daughter. Oh, yeah. And I went, does he do that? Hang on a second.
Starting point is 00:42:51 For sexual thrills? No. LAUGHTER I work for C-babies, I don't want to get cancelled. But I got to realise Fiam and Sam, he's in charge of a tiny, tiny village called Pontipandy, but he's got a fire truck, a rescue tender, a four-wheel drive SUV with inbuilt animal rescuing crane, a quad bike, an amphibious vehicle, a hovercraft,
Starting point is 00:43:11 two helicopters, and a mobile command centre. Wow. This guy is playing the game like he's clearly saying fires to get a huge budget. Can I just say one thing about George Bernard Short? Very quickly. Yeah, go for it. I'm saying it wrong, am I?
Starting point is 00:43:27 No. But Bernard is a winner. It's gay orc. Yeah, yeah. New York. New York. Just don't have never heard of it. But like George Bernard, yeah.
Starting point is 00:43:36 Oh, George Bernard Short. Yeah, yeah. Oh, okay, George. I'm cool, whatever. Hey, it's all cool here. It's late night at the Soho. Yeah. I'm picking each other up on production.
Starting point is 00:43:44 I'm not going to go home going, oh, there was this mad fucking fight about how to pronounce Bernard. Oh, man, you've got to see Fish Live. Sorry. I'm sorry. No, so he used to have a writing shed, which was amazing. He lived in Heritfordshire, and he had a writing shed, which was basically on a lazy Susan.
Starting point is 00:44:02 He liked to chase the sun. So he would get in, the sun would be beaming right in, which was a big thing for him, because he had specific glass, which was in the shed windows, that kind of beamed concentrated light in a way that it was meant to be healthy. It was thought to be a healthy thing.
Starting point is 00:44:15 It was always on fire, wasn't it? It was. Brilliant. Burnhard, that's it. LAUGHTER Tell you a bit about milk floats? Yeah, yeah, yeah. For one thing, milk doesn't float. Oh.
Starting point is 00:44:29 LAUGHTER Oh, that's... Yeah, if it's food for the organisers in it. Yeah, left on water, it will sink. So, um... No, but if you mix it... Oh, if you mix it, if you mix it, open it that's not, that wasn't the terms I was, anyway, like, milkflowers.org.uk has an FAQ page,
Starting point is 00:44:51 and it's one of the, like, it's a very, it's a gorgeous website, milkflowers.org.uk, I cannot recommend it enough, and the FAQ page begins, all right, maybe they are not exactly frequently asked, but... LAUGHTER They might be the kind of questions people might ask, All right, maybe they are not exactly frequently asked, but... LAUGHTER They might be the kind of questions people might ask, given the opportunity. LAUGHTER It's so nice! It's so good.
Starting point is 00:45:15 Yeah. You want to do a quick game of, is it bigger in Europe or America? Oh, yes! What else I do! OK. What year? Oh! 2023. Oh, wow, yes. What else I do? OK. What year? Oh, 2023. Oh, wow, OK. So where would you find the world's biggest dump truck?
Starting point is 00:45:31 Dump truck. USA, America. That's a mark of pride. I'm afraid not. It's embellarus in Europe. Really? Yeah. The Bellas 757-10, which can move the equivalent of 1,000 whale testicles in one go.
Starting point is 00:45:50 That's my comparison. That's not the other size. That's how you measure trucks. I think we all know that. The world's largest log job. So that's when you have a load of logs in a river and they get stuck. And so where is it? You're a poor America. Oh America. Well, I was tricked last time,
Starting point is 00:46:08 so I'll say you're at this time. Well, you've been tricked again, Andy. It's in None of us in Canada. And the interesting thing about that is that it's about 20 square miles of log jam and it goes deep as well. And the log store, enough carbon to run 2.5 million cars for a year. Wow.
Starting point is 00:46:28 That's interesting. Sorry, is that a genuine question? Is that logs that have been cut by humans? No, it's they usually are knocked down by wind and stuff like that. And they fall into the river and they go down the river and then there's like a little sort of point where they can't get out and then they just jam and jam and jam and jam. And it's a really good way of hiding carbon. And then finally, the world's biggest barometer, Europe or America.
Starting point is 00:46:48 You're a... I think I own... I think I have that in my own. You've got a massive barometer, Andy. Yeah. Don't boast. It's a famous barometer. Is it? Yeah. It's one you see every day on TV. On TV? Every day. It's a barometer connected to Big Ben somehow? It's good. If there is, I don't know.
Starting point is 00:47:08 It's a secret also. Oh, wow. But it is in Europe. It is in Europe. It is on Shepherd's bus roundabout. It's... Oh, yes. Sorry, we all tune in every morning for five minutes.
Starting point is 00:47:21 Just watch the live feed and shabby the roundabout. I don't know if we can get on with our day, don't we? There's chat while the press is like. What? No, it's a huge barometer. It was built as a barometer. It no longer works as a barometer. It's currently covering up a big pipe by London Water.
Starting point is 00:47:40 But that building was what inspired the score column in the TV show Pointless. Oh! Inspired by the world's biggest barometer! Oh! God, these are easy, I'm surprised. Do any of these? Yeah, yeah.
Starting point is 00:47:54 To Baromases, do they go up or down? I can't remember now. Pens, which way you hold them? Yeah, okay, but they can go up, right? And what the weather's doing, yeah, yeah. It's just week, because when you said Big Ben, I suddenly had this image of the mercury going up in a barometer, right? And it's Sunday, because I was at a fair the just week, because when you said Big Ben, I suddenly had this image of the mercury going up in a barometer, right? And it's suddenly, because I was at a fair the other week.
Starting point is 00:48:09 And my son did that strong man thing, where you hit it, has to hit the bell. Do you think there's anyone strong enough in the world that if that thing had to hit the bell a big Ben, that they could hit it hard enough? No. So let's move on. Yes.
Starting point is 00:48:21 Yes. Move on. One thing I do know about E.T. is that there's a lot of Reese's stuff in there, right? A Reese's Pieces. Reese's Pieces, which is like an American candy, but it was huge for them. So the sales went up like 65% the next week just after it had been in this movie. And the interesting thing about that is that they weren't the first choice. If you look at the original scripts, all of the bits where it says Reese's Pieces, it was originally going to be Eminem's, but apparently Mars turned it down because they didn't want to be associated with aliens.
Starting point is 00:49:00 They're called Mars. Really? I've got some stuff on dropping things from parachutes. Okay. This is about a place called Franz Star Ranch and Brothel in Nevada. I'm in. They had an idea of an advertising campaign where they were put a mattress in the middle of an airfield and if anyone could parachute a land on the mattress then they would have a chance to spend the evening with any of the women in the brothel.
Starting point is 00:49:37 It didn't go very well. The problem was that all the women would stand near to the place where people had to land. And the guy flying the airplane, not that high, could see everything that was happening and got completely distracted. There was also some side winds and long story short, he crashed the plane. Oh, no. Everyone was fine. Oh, no one died.
Starting point is 00:50:01 And the great moral of the story in the end is the crash plane was so good for business That they decided to leave it there and it's still there in Nevada if you ever see that crash plane Becks to the problem Is the map boy looking at me? I've never been to Nevada Well now I think you have Wow isn't that an amazing idea for advertising? Yeah.
Starting point is 00:50:28 Yeah, it's an amazing idea. Sorry, how low was the plane when he got distracted? It was quite low but high enough the parachutes were working. Yeah, so that's quite high for a pilot to be like, Cool. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's just like a little stick woman on the ground. Yeah, exactly.
Starting point is 00:50:43 Just happy. Check out the, I think, arms? On maybe arms? No, it's just like a little stick woman on the ground. Yeah, it's happening. Check out the, I think, arms. On maybe arms? No, it's a tree. That's a tree. OK. Yeah, that's OK. Do you know that John Major and Tina Turner were born on the same day? Well, they.
Starting point is 00:50:57 Yeah. Really? That's cool. Yeah. If my memory is, I didn't actually write that down for this memory. That's off memory, yeah. Wow. I once you hear that, you're going to forget that, Marie. I think you know everyone who was born on the same day as John Major. Classic Andy.
Starting point is 00:51:14 In February 2020, there was a poll by the centre of public opinion, this is in the United States. It was ahead of the primary in New Hampshire, and they asked a load of voters what they would rather and they found that 64% of Democrats would rather see a giant meteor strike the earth extinguishing all human life than see President Trump re-elected. Do you know there's been a sequel to Phantom of the Opera, Andrew Lloyd Webber's Phantom of the Opera?
Starting point is 00:51:42 Okay. Yeah, it was it was run by Ben Alton and it was music by Andrew Lloyd Webber's fan to the opera. Yeah, it was written by Ben Alton, and it was music by Andrew Lloyd Webber, but it was delayed for months in the writing process because of cats. The musical cats. No. No.
Starting point is 00:51:57 His real life cat, he had a kitten who stood on his digital piano and wiped out all the music that he had done in the writing of it. Oh my god. Which feels... God bless that kitten. LAUGHTER There was a group of secret operatives from Britain called the choir boys, and they came up with
Starting point is 00:52:18 a plan during World War II to drive Hitler mad by air-dropping huge amounts of pornography into his compound. Oh, wow. In the end, they kind of slightly, you know, they came up with the idea, they started going for it and they found, you know, this is just stupid. And so they called off the whole idea, but not before, and I quote, the group had a mask and enormous collection of receivable material. Oh, I made an invention once.
Starting point is 00:52:43 It's talking of cars and weighing. Wow, that is a hell of a vendetta, I don't think. No, it's... It's a... It's a... I forgot the name, it's a really good name. But basically, you can piss and drive. Oh, okay.
Starting point is 00:53:00 It was all in the name, which I can't remember. Like, wait and then... Oh. What's wrong in the bench. Oh. What's wrong with the piss and drive? It's not as romantic. No, let's see. So it's the idea that you just, you don't have to stop after. Yeah, if you can't, I can't stop my car a lot of the time.
Starting point is 00:53:18 So it's annoying having to stop. It's brand new as well. It's an electrical fault, I think. Anyway, so I don't want to stop in case I can't start it again. So... Many people would get the electrical fault mended. But I prefer what you've done. And there's this to where you never... I can't believe this.
Starting point is 00:53:35 Does the urine get utilised? I'm thinking, screenwashed? Yeah, yeah. That would work. Well, what? It's just what? Yeah. Mostly what, actually. I'm wondering if it's you pissing all over your electric so there's stopping the car from functioning to begin with. I'm wondering that.
Starting point is 00:53:51 In Norway, if you are a fish factory and you're kind of getting the whole of the fillets out, what you'll do is you get the rest of the fish and you'll throw it away into a little area with all the heads and stuff like that. In that area, children are allowed to go in, and they cut out the little tongs of the cots. No. And they sell them for extra pocket money.
Starting point is 00:54:11 No, no, no. And this is a really common thing in a place called Lougherton. And from about six years until 17, you'll get loads of kids who'll just go in, grab the fish, and they'll cut out this little tong in the back, and apparently it's the tastiest part. And do you think they turn out to be psychopaths? Like serial killers and psychopaths?
Starting point is 00:54:29 Yeah, unfortunately in that area there is a lot of death, no there isn't. Do you want to know some other things that people are scared of, singers? Yeah, sure, yeah. I wrote some down so I thought I'd do some work after you told me I was getting paid. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I forgot to tell you that until quite late in the day. But thank you for bringing your one sheet of... It was very much I'm getting paid, so it's just a fitting.
Starting point is 00:55:01 Wait till you hear them. Adele is scared of seagulls. This is a fitting. Wait till you hear them. Adele is scared of seagulls. Who would have thought? Oh no. Yeah, yeah. And there's more. Rihanna's scared of fish. Okay.
Starting point is 00:55:22 And Kylie Minogue is scared of coat hangers. She's scared of coat hangers. Yeah, Kylie Minogue is scared of coat hangers. She's scared of coat hangers. Yeah, Kylie Minogue. And I'm scared of commitment. So we're all different, aren't we? How many different types of wrestling do you think there are in Iceland? One type of wrestling. And lucky, there are two types of wrestling.
Starting point is 00:55:38 But they do have the same name, so I can see why you got that. That's what I was thinking. It's called Glimma. And basically, there's two types, and they're quite similar, but one of them is a type of wrestling that you would do as a Viking. If you came home after a long day doing whatever Vikings do, and you wanted to warm yourself up,
Starting point is 00:55:56 they would just do some wrestling. Nice. Who with? With another Viking. Right. It sounds like good. It's wholesome, right? Yeah. There was another one which was the dueling version, and it was quite similar, but it would take place
Starting point is 00:56:11 in a field with a large flat stone known as the slaying slab. And that one, you would try and slam your opponent onto the slab and break the back. Wow. And the amazing thing about this is they were going to have it in the 1912 Stockholm Olympics. OK. I think probably the first version, break the back. Wow. And the amazing thing about this is they were going to have it in the 1912 Stockholm Olympics. I think probably the first version, not the second one. And then the war happened, and so the Olympics got postponed.
Starting point is 00:56:35 And in 1920, they were going to do it anyway. They've decided, OK, we'll keep all the same spots. But Iceland decided that it only had a certain number of wrestlers, and it needed them to impress the King of Denmark who was visiting at the same time as the Olympic Games. And so they decided we're not going to do this wrestling after all, we just want to impress the King of Denmark so it never became a worldwide sport that it might have done otherwise. Right, right.
Starting point is 00:56:58 And then in the end, the King never came. Oh, no! That's disgusting. There was a shanty, not a shanty, but a C song when you were getting your grog. So you would get your, the amount of alcohol you were allowed each day. They would give it you and they would sing while they were doing it. And it was a song called Nancy Dawson. And it's the tune that we now know is here we go around the Mulberry Bush. But it was all about Nancy Dawson who was a stage sort stage performer, a actress, possibly a prostitute,
Starting point is 00:57:27 and I'm not going to say what the words are to the Navy song about her, but they are very rude. I think they say sex work and out. Oh! They're meant to be quite easy, weren't they? Because you couldn't... Like, not a sex worker. Sorry, sorry. no, no.
Starting point is 00:57:47 No. It depends how good you are, as... No, no, no. I meant the songs to sing. Because, like, some people can't sing. Names of registered competitive roller derby players include skate bush, Venus thigh trap, and Weird Al Spanker bitch.
Starting point is 00:58:06 LAUGHTER I sort of thought, what's like the rudest name that you can get to? So I looked up the CU and T word, and I was heading down that way, but on the way, I discovered the CLIT word, and I didn't. Do you know how to say that? LAUGHTER Go on, thank't give us one. Clite.
Starting point is 00:58:26 OK, well, in the CLIT, you've got Clitastrophe. Oh, yeah. Please welcome to the ring. Clitosaurus Rex. Oh, that's so good. Clitler is about 10 to the ring. Oh! And who's this?
Starting point is 00:58:40 Kevin Otherick. Clitty, Clitty Bang Bang. LAUGHTER That's really good.

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.