No Such Thing As A Fish - 59: No Such Thing As Old Mother Bastard

Episode Date: May 1, 2015

In a special UK General Election episode, Dan, James, Anna and Andy discuss animal politicians, saunas in the Sinai desert, and the first 'thing' ever.

Hello, and welcome to another episode of No Such Thing as a Fish, a weekly podcast coming to you from the QI offices in Covent Garden. My name is Dan Schreiber, I'm sitting here with Anna Chazinski, James Harkin, and Andy Murray, and this is our UK General Election special podcast. The only UK General Election special podcast out there that makes absolutely no mention whatsoever of the UK General Election. So once again, we've gathered around the microphone with our four favourite facts from the last seven days, and in no particular order, here we go. Starting with fact number one, James Harkin. Okay, my fact this week is that the first thing was a parliament.

So the first thing called a thing. The first thing called a thing was a parliament. This is an etymology thing, an etymology... I think you mean an etymology parliament. Okay, so let me get this right. The oldest known parliament, which is still going, is the alphang, which is in Iceland. It's been going since the 10th century. And that was called alphang from the Icelandic, which they used for parliament. And then in Old English, they used this word thing to mean a parliament as well. And then they used thing to mean a place where people got together and decided on laws and stuff like that. And then a thing was something you brought to the parliament if you had a problem, like it was your...

My thing is that my neighbour is stealing my goats. And then a thing became any old thing, and then it became what it is today. Did that make sense? Yes, yes, it made total sense. The journey of this thing. So basically, I thought we'd just talk about the history of parliaments and Icelandic parliaments in particular, because Iceland, like I said, was the oldest ever parliament. It was 930. And it was basically, everyone would turn up to this particular part of Iceland. It's actually the place where the North American and the European continents are right next

to each other. You can jump from one to the other. I've been there. It's quite cool. Oh, wow. And that place is called Fingvelir. And yeah, it was going from 930 to 1799. Then it was abolished for a few years and then reinstated in 1844. And it's been continuous ever since. I like the simplicity of the Icelandic terms, like having it in Thing Field. And didn't they used to make their decisions on Law Rock, I think, which is in the middle of Thing Field when they met originally.

Really? Yeah. Oh, that's so good. I do really like Icelandic politics, mainly because of one character I've come across and looking at this. So Andy's shaking his head, Jongnar, right? Yeah. Yeah, I don't know if I'm pronouncing his surname, right? Did you read about Jongnar? No.

Jongnar is fantastic. He basically, he set up a satirical party called the best party. And yeah, the idea of the best party was that he was just going to challenge all of the things that he thought was wrong that politicians were doing. So part of his political promises was that he said that everyone would get free towels and swimming pools. Oh, that's good. Yeah. A polar bearer for Reykjavik Zoo. Okay. All kinds of things for weaklings. What do you think that means?

I don't know, but I'm voting for it. And he wanted a Disneyland there as well. But he actually got in, which is really exciting. He's like a post-punk guy as well. When it's gay pride day, he dresses up in drag. One of the problems was with the free towels. He did it just as a joke. But then when he got in, he realized that actually they had to make a lot of cuts because there had been really bad economic problems in Iceland. All right. And so he couldn't give free towels to people after all.

So he couldn't keep his mouth shut? Yeah. He actually doubled the price of towels. Exactly. He said, they asked him about it. And he said, yeah, I had to raise everything that could be raised, all service fees and no free towels. In fact, double the price. Wow. My favorite thing of all about him is that upon being elected, he said that he would not enter a coalition government with anyone who hadn't watched the series, The Wire, on

HBO. So another good thing about Icelandic politics, they had the world's first openly gay head of state. And that was Joanna Sigurdá Dottir. And she was a lesbian and she was head of government from the 1st of February, 2009, which is pretty cool. Oh, yeah. A few other things that Iceland is really good at, they've had more Nobel Prizes per capita than anywhere else, apart from there's a few very, very, very small places that have a few more.

If there's only one guy in the country, that's what I want, a country where 100% of people have a Nobel Prize. They have the most expensive Big Macs in the world. Why are they so expensive? Because you've got to get all the food over there and also it's to do with their currency being very, very strong. Yeah, everything's quite expensive in Iceland, isn't it? How much are we talking? We're talking 5, 10, 20?

Well, last time I got the figures, which was a few years ago now and they've had a few troubles since then, it was $6.67 each for a Big Mac and that was compared to the equivalent of $3.32 in the UK. Wow. Wow. So it's twice as expensive. Is that with fries? It's a Big Mac meal.

Okay, well, I don't know. Do you know about Icelandic horses? No. No? They're very cool. Are they? Yes, and they're very lonely. It's the most isolated breed in the world, so you're not allowed to import a horse into

Iceland ever. Okay. You can leave if you're a horse, but once you leave, you can't go back. No way. Yeah, because they are worried about the Icelandic horses getting diseases or foreign horses infecting them. This is supposedly one of the oldest laws in the world. It was supposedly decreed by the Alfing in 982, which, I mean, no one's quite sure because

records are obviously quite scanned, but it's quite difficult because they lost about 70% of their horses in 1782 because of volcanic ash poisoning. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So there were slim pickings there, but they have recovered since 1782. Yeah, it's difficult with Icelandic history because it kind of morphs into the sagas quite a lot. Right.

So until 1980s, the Icelandic sagas were taught as history. Wow. Well, a lot of them are historical, though. So they found, for instance, the history of the fact that it was Icelandic people who first got to America. There's archaeological evidence which exactly backs up what was in the sagas, which said that. I think it's kind of half true and half mediopie stuff.

Yeah. It's kind of like Sweden. Have we ever mentioned the fact that Swedish kings, about eight or nine of them are fictional because they come from their legends, don't they? So Swedish King Charles the, I want to say, 16th or 17th is actually only the 11th king. Here's another old law, speaking of parliament and laws, as you were. Since 1313, it's been illegal to wear a suit of armour in the houses of parliament and it still is illegal.

Is it? So you can't do that. Yeah. Why not? Because it would have seemed like a declaration, like maybe a declaration of war, like you were going into, although weirdly, it's illegal to have a suit of armour there, but they do have still on the, in the cloakroom for the MPs and also in the lifts, they have hooks for your sword.

In the lifts? Apparently there was a guy who went to the palace of power recently in the lift for the sword. Do you remember in the 14th century, they had those lifts that people used to put their swords in? Yeah. Yeah. The invention of the lift.

Post-dates. You would have thought. By about 200 years. You don't know what's fashionable in the houses of parliament. They're still very in. And also how long is the journey of the lift? Yeah. They're like, oh, I'm just going to take the sword off for the duration of that.

Well, it's a very old lift, so they were slower in those days. How old is it? In the 14th century. No, I don't know. I think it's just must be a customary thing. Apparently quite a lot of plastic swords are hooked onto the hangers in the cloakroom. It's going in with plastic. There is the idea that, have we mentioned this before, that you're not allowed to die

or that it's illegal to die in the house of commons? Yeah, that's not true. This is not true. Is it not so you can die there? Of course you can. Who's going to stop you? Most of the, it's illegal to die. No, no, no.

But the, sorry, not illegal, but it's not recognised. It is. It is. So you can die in parliament. No one actually knows where that myth even comes from. Oh, really? Oh, you're talking about etymology, speaking of the English houses of parliament. The origin of the phrase in the bag, I think one of the best estimates of where that comes

from, is from the partition bag, which is the bag that is hung on the back of the speaker's chair. Is this not true? I don't know. You're looking at me really weird. I don't reckon it's true, because I just think it comes from there being bags. Where's that pig? It's in the bag.

I don't mean, I mean, maybe it's true. Maybe it's true. Where's that pig? I can't tell you, because there's just no phrase. Wait, so was it so, so in parliamented? I should clarify. I mean, the metaphorical meaning of in the bag to mean the thing that I wanted to happen is going to happen is from in parliament, there's a bag, a velvet bag that hangs on

the back of the speaker's chair. And it was if you wanted to lodge a petition in parliament and you were too shy to announce it out loud, then you dropped a little petition paper in the bag. It's in the bag. And you'd be like, it's in the bag. Wow. That's very cool. It's just a theory, just an etymological theory.

Where's your petition? In the bag. No, that's the pig bag. OK, time for fact number two, and that is Cheszinski. Yep, my fact is that one of the largest majorities in a Brazilian local election was won by Rhino. So Rhino got elected. Well, annoyingly, she didn't get elected. So this was a rhinoceros called Cacareco, who was a rhino at São Paulo Zoo, and this

was in 1958 at the council elections. And she just got this massive majority. So this campaign was started by a bunch of students a few days earlier who managed to get her added to the ballot paper. And 100,000 people voted for Cacareco. And the second highest vote number of votes anyone got in that election was 10,000. But she didn't get elected into office in the end. Why not?

Oh, because she's a rhino. Some little detail of bureaucracy, which bans Rhino. So the person who came second got in. Yeah. Doesn't Cacareco mean rubbish as well? Yeah, it means like pile of rubbish. And that's because she was a really formless baby when she was born, which does seem kind of harsh.

Apparently she was really ugly, though. The zookeeper was really harsh about her, in fact. So the idea was that we're voting something so hideous and ugly and stupid. And yet it's probably going to be better at this job than a politician. Well, I hope she had a very scathing acceptance speech. To everyone who doubted me along the way, I'm coming for you. So on animals being elected to things, I can highly recommend the Wikipedia page, list of non-human electoral candidates, which is very strong.

Can we hear some examples, please? Well, there's, and I'm quoting directly here, there's New Zealand's McGillicuddy Sirius Party, is the name of the party, that entered a goat in a local election. And then it says, but their attempt to have a hedgehog stand for parliament was unsuccessful. Also, in 2001, a Daxon called Sausice, or Sausage, was a candidate. Thanks for that, by the way. Mosse, in the municipal elections there. And he got 4% of the votes, which is a lot more than quite a lot of fringe candidates.

And then a few years later, he went on the recruitment of Big Brother, which is called Secret Story. Oh, I remember that, yeah. And because the point is that when you enter, you have to have a secret. And his secret was that he was a candidate in an election. He had to enter under an assumed name. So he ended the house with the nickname, Secret. That was his nickname? But if the whole house was about every single candidate having a secret, didn't they all have the nickname Secret?

Exactly. What else was on that list? I've got one, if you want. There was a sock puppet called Ed the Sock, who attempted to run for the Fed-Up Party during the Canadian federal election of 2011. How did he fare? He attempted to run, so I don't think they allowed him to. It's a shame. Actually, one of the people who's running against Ed Miliband in this election for the official monster-raving loony party is called Nick the Flying Brick.

But he's not a brick, he's a human. Oh, OK. Imagine the disappointment when you thought he was a brick. You voted for him, and then it turns out to be a human. Or maybe it's a pleasant surprise. It was like, I voted for a brick because it was the lesser of two evils. He turned out to be a person. It was great news.

I only voted for you because of the housing crisis. Since you mentioned the monster-raving loony party, so going back to the Kakareko rhino fact, Canada's equivalent of the monster-raving loony party was called the rhinoceros party. Canada's equivalent of the... Is that just a coincidence? No, it's not. It was named after Kakareko, so they had some quite funny policies. In the 80s and 90s, they determined to repeal the law of gravity to provide higher... Yep, didn't succeed, as far as I know.

Although we are doing this on the ceiling, which maybe... They said they'd provide higher education by building taller schools. They said they'd count the Thousand Islands to make sure America didn't steal any. And then they had this platform, this election platform in 1984, the rhino party of Canada, where they declared war on Belgium. They said they declared war on Belgium because in an episode of Tintin, a rhino had been blown up. That rhino was Cornelius the rhino's grandmother, and Cornelius the rhino was the nominal leader of the rhino party of Canada. So this fictional rhino was the... Cornelius the rhino, sorry, was a real rhino.

But his grandmother was a fictional rhino. Yeah, I don't know how that happens. So yeah, they said they'd declare war, and then the ambassador to Canada from Belgium decided... So he made an announcement saying, I saw I had a crisis on my hands. And they declared war saying the only way they wouldn't actually go to war with Belgium was if Belgium handed over a case of muscles and a case of Belgium beer to the rhinoceros. Delivered to the rhinoceros' hind quarters, as they said. And the Belgian ambassador to Canada actually made an announcement saying, I will hand this over. I don't want to create an international crisis.

And they turned up in Montreal, and they all met. And they had a really great day eating muscles and drinking beer. And, you know, war was averted. Wow. Yeah, thanks a lot. So we should really declare war on anyone who we want free beer from. Everyone, the Champagne region. Yeah.

They've been pissing me off for a while. Just about Brazil, which is where the rhino was elected, and funny people getting themselves elected. I find this so extraordinary that recently, I think this year, last year, the highest number of votes ever recorded in a congressional election in Brazil has been recorded and won. And this was won by a clown called Tiririca. And so he's just been elected to Congress for Sao Paulo. And yeah, he's got the highest number of votes ever received by anyone in Sao Paulo. His election platforms included all his slogans included things like, if it can't get any worse, vote Tiririca. What does a federal congressman do?

I really don't know, but vote for me and I'll let you know. If elected, I promise I'll help all Brazilian families, especially mine. And he's just a complete joke and got more votes than anyone else in Sao Paulo has ever. Sounds amazing. Yeah, they really like jibbing at the proper election candidates, don't they? Yeah. Yeah. I'm presumably quite hard canvassing as a clown because you're constantly saying to people, check my hand.

You don't want to be holding babies too much. I was really surprised by the fact that as someone who I've read tons of comedy biographies, comedians are largely my heroes. And so many comedians go into politics. There's a lot of them in America at the moment. Al Franken, he was a Saturday Night Live writer. He's now a politician. Eddie Izzard has said that he wants to run Russell Brand. Al Murray currently in the election we're not talking about.

He's doing stuff. I was surprised though. There's an old comedian in America called Gracie Allen. Gracie Allen was one of the top comedians of her day in America, household name. And she ran. She went on a 34 city tour. She was running for president. She ran as a candidate of the surprise party.

She had Gangaroo as her mascot. I love that the surprise party. I also know the way you delivered that really dead panel. That's just a normal party name. You could have other ones. Couldn't you like the sex party? No. Why was that the first thing that came to mind?

The fancy dress party. The house party. Which is actually about housing. Very important. But this is what my favorite thing. Just relevant to a conversation we had earlier. So she had a kangaroo as a mascot. And her slogan was, it's in the bag.

Isn't that great? So speaking of famous people becoming going into politics. Of course, Ronald Reagan was a famous actor before he became president. But when he was running, the TV stations couldn't show his films. Because if they did, they would have to allow equal time to the other candidates. So if he has a movie, which is like 90 minutes long or 100 minutes long. The other guy has the whole 100 minute party election broadcast. I think they should force one of the other guys to make a film.

To be in a Western or Southern. That's a great idea. Ronald Reagan's secretary of state was called Donald Reagan, wasn't he? Yes. It's so weird. Okay, one similar thing, which is some animals vote in their own elections. So they're not getting votes in our elections. They're doing their own things.

So monkeys have police. No, they don't. Well, they have their equivalent, let's say. So they have peacemakers who, when there's trouble, will kind of come in and sort it out. Well, it sounds like they're more like UN peacekeepers. Yeah, they are a bit like that. But unlike the UN peacekeepers, they're democratically elected. And inferior monkeys bear their teeth to a more dominant member of the group to get elected.

Wow. And once you're elected, they have responsibilities such as breaking up fights. And if you remove the peacekeeper from the group, then all sorts of nonsense happens. That's crazy. That's amazing. Another animal who votes sometimes is buffalo. So if you have a load of buffalo in an area and they need to decide which way to go, they'll all kind of stand up in turn and like do a little stretch thing,

and then they'll sit down and then put their head in a certain direction. And then once everyone's done that, whichever direction is the most common, the most democratically chosen, is the direction they'll go. Wow. How can they see? They can see, yeah, they have that. How do they see, however, in us as voting? Because normally you have someone looking over.

Yeah, you're right. I don't know if they have like a person like collating the votes. Yeah. Can you spoil your ballot by shoving your head in the ground or something? Yeah. Okay. Has anyone got anything else before we move on? Just speaking about political animals, like, you know, non-humans.

So I was, I got really into reading about David Cameron and George Osborne's pets and their relationships with each other. And there's, they really do have a fascinating relationship. So basically there's the official Mauser, isn't there traditionally, who is the Prime Minister's cat, who's supposed to keep the mouse out of Downing Street. So that was Cameron's cat, who is called Larry. It was reported last year that David Cameron has rebuffed calls for Larry to resign

because he's too lazy. There was a Prime Ministerial dinner recently and a mouse appeared at it. So Larry's obviously not doing his job. There were photographs taken of Larry who was just lying asleep in the corner for the entire duration of that dinner. So Larry. Fat cats in government. But George Osborne's cat Freya was astray and is an awesome Mauser.

So ended up sort of taking over from Larry and Larry and Freya became joint Mausers. And Larry was sort of, you know, the face of the cabinet mousing. But Freya was doing all the hard work and catching all the mice. And Freya used to appear all over London and used to have to be taken... Hang on. Why did Freya used to appear all over London? She just liked to wander. She used to be astray. Oh right. So I think you meant election events and things like that. It does kind of sound like the Cheshire cat as well.

There's just a period. It also sounds like, you know, when a President or a Prime Minister is visiting your house, the sort of secret service come and do a swoop at the house. Freya comes and does a mouse hunt before. That's good Cameron. Good to go mate. No, it's here. Larry uselessly sleeping in the boot of the car again. Yep. Classic Larry.

So Freya was once found wandering the streets of Vauxhall by a woman at about five in the morning who was working for a homeless charity who was trying to help out homeless people who were sleeping rough. So she found Freya and she called up the number on Freya's little collar. I was like, oh, it's the chance of the exchequer. Come and pick up your cat please. And she was quoted as saying, I did find it slightly ironic that I've been up at 5am trying to help 24 people who've been sleeping rough in Newham and we couldn't find anywhere to send them and then this cat gets chauffeur driven home. And she did use it for some strong political satire as well.

She tweeted, found on the streets of Vauxhall, not everyone is as lucky as Freya. George, please stop cutting homeless services. So if you want to make a hard-hitting political point, I think find an MP's cat. Also, it sounds like Freya needs a Twitter account to rebuttal and say, oh what, so I'm not worth going back into her house? Because she kind of sounds like she's pissed off at Freya. You're right, she's taking out on Freya who's really the victim. So Freya's written up and sent away to the countryside because they got a dog. I think that means Freya's dead.

That's another euphemism, isn't it? Oh my god, I bet that's true. All the news reports say that she's been sent away and looked after really carefully by a member of staff and the countryside because the family got a dog. Oh no, they've got a cute relation with the classic lie. That is terrible. OK, time to move on to fact number three and that's my fact. My fact this week is Finland's parliament sometimes makes decisions in their sauna. Oh, political decisions?

Political decisions. Well, just decisions like, should we get out now? No, they love saunas. They love saunas. So they have a sauna in the parliament. Yeah, they do. Their parliament has a sauna. They just absolutely love saunas. I found this amazing speech by a guy called Mr. Perti Tostilla. He's a secretary of state and he gave this speech at the International Sauna Congress, which they have and this was in 2010

and it was actually in Tokyo that he gave this. I'm just going to read you a bit of his speech. OK. Ladies and gentlemen, there are about three million saunas in Finland, more than one for every two of the 5.3 million Finns. And did you know that Finland is a country where there are more saunas than cars? Practically all the houses in the rural areas have saunas of their own. It's hard to imagine a Finnish summer cottage by a lake without a sauna. And he goes on into talking about how Nokia has built saunas for their employees in their company's gyms.

He said, Finns carry their saunas with them wherever they go. All the 98 Finnish diplomatic and consular missions in different parts of the world have their own saunas. OK, so that's what's leading. Our representatives here in Tokyo take pride in their two saunas. The embassy sauna in Tokyo was the first Finnish sauna built in Japan, but certainly not the last one. I'm sure there are many Finnish saunas in today's Japan and the Japanese guests and friends keep queuing to them. They love saunas. Although apparently this was a statement made by Oli Rain,

who's a Finnish politician who's serving as a European commissioner for financial affairs. And he said that with increased emphasis on gender equality, it's becoming harder and harder to have political discussions and meetings in saunas because they are naked saunas. So Finns don't gender mix their saunas, men or saunas, and a different sauna to women. I guess there is something nice about doing a debate with all your clothes off, because it's like you're naked, you're kind of letting yourself be shown as you don't have anything else around you. There's a story about... I mean, I don't want to see it in the British power in particular.

Yeah, let's not introduce it as a podcast or anything. What do you mean? There's a story about Caesar doing that in the Roman Senate, I think it was. He said he's got a knife in Crocodile Dundee, and he lifted up his toga to show his thigh where you would apparently keep a knife, and there was no knife there, so that was the point. But that's pretty saucy. He could have done with the knife, considering what happened later, to be honest.

Christian! That is, you know, ancient Roman satire just doesn't cut it. What were you going to say? I was going to say that during the Cold War, Khrushchev visited Finland for the president of Finland's 60th birthday, and the two of them stayed in a sauna until five in the morning, and they came out and they'd resolved a whole bunch of international issues. So, Khrushchev came out and expressed his preparedness to support Finland's desire to integrate and cooperate with the West,

which was obviously quite a radical thing for Finland to want to do at that stage. So, yeah, stay up until five a.m. in a sauna with a Soviet, and they will give you concessions. That's a long time to be in a sauna. I mean, they might have gone at 4.30 a.m. I actually don't know the start time. So, that prime minister would have been Erho Kekkonen, right? Yes. So, the good thing about Kekkonen is, in the 78 elections, he won, obviously, and they had a thing where they read out the vote count on the radio,

as in they read out who everyone in the country voted for, and they did it in groups of five, and so there's like this long-standing kind of joke in Finland, which is like, Kekkonen, Kekkonen, Kekkonen, Kekkonen, Kekkonen, Kekkonen, Kekkonen, Kekkonen, Kekkonen, Kekkonen, Kekkonen. Can you imagine that? That must have been the best radio. Well, not the best, but, you know... That is mental. Did they just not have any creative programming ideas for a few weeks? I think it was to show, like, show that there wasn't any dubiousness or anything.

They're saying, right, here are all the votes. We're going to count them all. All right, yeah, because you can't lie and add an extra Kekkonen on the radio. It must have been very hard to read out as well, because presumably, if you lost count halfway through... Yeah. Oh, my God, imagine being asked, I'm sorry we're going to have to start again. Or if they said... This time, definitely, definitely. You know what they say, ninth time's the charm.

Kekkonen, Kekkonen, Kekkonen. So, this is true about them taking them overseas. When Finnish troops have peacekeeping jobs overseas, they take a sauna with them, even if the country they're going to is boiling hot. So, when they got to the Sinai Desert in the 1950s, they built 35 saunas, including one which had wheels. And in the Golan Heights, they made sure that both the Israeli and Syrian ambassadors had access to a sauna.

Maybe, though, you could use it if you're in the desert. You could kind of go in there to cool down. Maybe. It's like a waste of water, doesn't it, in the desert. You're piling water into your sauna. No, I just think it's kind of like the fact that people in the North Pole use refrigerators to keep things warm, to stop things from freezing. That's amazing.

So, it's kind of like that, isn't it? Yeah, that is very cool. There's actually a hot tub in the South Pole, a natural one. A natural one? Yeah, basically, there's a volcanic area on one of the islands of the South Pole and the water is naturally heated. And so, people actually go, people who are stationed there, go and actually sit in this natural hot tub.

And the Italians over there bring their own jacuzzi anyway, because it's like, well, we'd rather have our own one. The jacuzzi brothers used to make planes and propellers. That was their original line of work. I guess it's jacuzzi, really, isn't it? Yeah, exactly. And then one of them had a son who was very ill and needed, I think, the massage qualities that a jacuzzi would have.

And so, they rigged up a very, very basic jacuzzi, just kind of a length of pipe bubbling through some water to help his son. And it kind of took off. Unlike their planes. So in Austria, there's a town called Linds in Austria, and there's a health and fitness centre there that has had to deploy undercover naked security guards to infiltrate its saunas.

Not under much cover, are they? They've got to stop, like, hanky-panky going on in the saunas, so they're employed to sit their naked in the saunas, and then people start fondling each other. They have to be like, I don't know where they keep their badge, or their identity. Oh, they're gone. Women traditionally gave birth in saunas.

Did they? Yeah. Can you stop saying, I know it's the way we're supposed to say it? No, I can't. I never will. I never will. It makes me feel sick. Sauna? Sauna? Women traditionally gave birth in them, because the walls of a traditional smoke sauna were lined with soot, and that had kind of bacteria-resisted properties, supposedly,

which made them a bit more hygienic than... Could just line the walls of a room that's a comfortable temperature with soot. So, in Moscow, earlier on this year, a man got his testicles stolen while he was in the sauna. Yeah. Wow. He was... You put him down, you put him in the little lockers, and you think he's going to be safe.

You've got to put your pound in the locker. It's a false economy, not to put the pound in the locker. Was it an innocent mistake? Did someone else leave their testicles? And he just picked up the wrong pair? Later on, walking down the street... These aren't mine. I at least feel a bit...

Should I hand them in? It might have been... Can you describe them any better? Oh, they're testicles. So, look, it actually sounds like a really horrible night with this guy. He started out in a bar, and this woman approached him as I was talking to him, and he explained to the news station that was interviewing him. We drank a beer together, and then she suggested we go to a sauna.

They went to a sauna, and the next thing he remembers is waking up early in the next morning. At first, the only items he noticed were missing were... Were his towel. Seriously. At first, the only items he noticed were missing were his cell phone, tablet, computer and some money. It was only later when he undressed at home that he noticed... Oh, my God. ...the incision in his groin.

Oh, my God. Do you ever get the feeling you're missing something? I've got my phone. I've got my keys. I've got my wallet. Oh, my God. I know. That's a terrible story. It is really terrible.

The news station did report, though. Do remember that he had chosen to go into a sauna with this woman. He'd been in a bar, and the news station reported this. That's not a crime! Oh, God, I do feel bad for making jokes about that now. Poor man. I know. I really hope he's not listening. I think he's laughing.

Wherever he is, he's going to be at every dinner party. Jeff, tell your ball story. Go on. No, it's so boring. No, no. These guys haven't heard it. Come on. How did he not notice? They said that it had been done by a medical expert. The doctor said that it had been done very professionally.

Wow. You can get apps that tell you how to do that, anyway, these days. So, can we whoever stole this phone? This is why... They were about to just leave with the phone in the wallet, and then they were like, Oh, wow. You couldn't...

This is why those ads always tell you to check your testicles every few months. OK, time for our final fact of the show, and that is Andrew Hunter Murray. My fact is that in British electoral history, eight candidates have been awarded no votes at all in a general election competition. Competition? And the whistles blown.

The gains are up. So this fact comes from a book which I don't know if you guys have heard of. It's called The Book of Heroic Failures by Stephen Pyle. And it's such a classic comedy book. It's the official handbook of the not terribly good Club of Great Britain. And when it was first published, it contained an application form to join the club, and you had to give your main area of incompetence

and then a subsidiary area of incompetence. And the club was shut down after it received 30,000 applications for membership and was therefore too successful to exist. And before that, Stephen Pyle, the author of the book, was himself expelled from the club for publishing a best-selling book. So the first hero to achieve this was a guy called Lord Gava, and he was standing as a Liberal candidate in Righit in 1832. And turnout was about 66%,

which was about 151 people in that constituency at the time. And of the 101 people who voted, everyone voted for the other guy. But there's a note in the electoral records, because I look this up and it says, Lord Gava was proposed without his knowledge. I haven't been able to find any more. So he didn't really have a chance to campaign if he didn't know that he was a candidate.

In Ghana in 1992, there were candidates who got zero votes, quite a few of them, even though they'd voted for themselves. And so they didn't know how obviously it was the allegations were of electoral fraud, but yeah. So they actually went up and said, I've got zero votes, and yet I voted for myself as possible. Yeah, you were allowed. Supposedly in old American elections in the 19th century,

you weren't actually allowed to enter the polling building. Does that ring a bell with anyone? Did you just have to make a paper airplane out of your thing? You had to pass it through the bars into the building, and there'll be all kinds of crowds gathered outside. Isn't that bizarre? That is bizarre. I need to check it.

You say bars, and that's just reminding me of, you do have pubs that are polling booths, don't you? In the UK. Because anything can kind of be a polling booth. Normally it's schools or churches. Did you say there was a bedroom? Yeah, there's one person who, there's a polling booth in their son's bedroom,

and they take the bed out and take all the furniture out, and they just like a local, because they don't have a local pub or whatever. I think it's amazing. It's kind of selfish, isn't it? If you're going to do that, put it in your own bedroom. Are you going to bother voting? Nah.

My six-year-olds really got energised about this election, though. That reminds me of the fact that the division bell still rings in a couple of pubs in the red lion and another pub near Westminster, doesn't it? We should say what the division bell is. Yeah, so the division bell, which in the House of the Parliament calls MPs to the House to vote. So that still traditionally rings and still does ring

in pubs near the House of the Parliament, so that MPs who are drinking pints can be like, oh, whoopsie daisy's got to be in the House of Commons and cast my vote in five minutes. Apparently, when the division bell rings in the pubs, tourists in the pubs think that it's fire alarms and frequently evacuate the building. Which is another advantage of going to those pubs.

Yeah, that's a great way to get a seat. This is quite a weird thing. So if there's a dead heat in an election, then it gets in a general election in a constituency, then it gets decided by either the toss of a coin or drawing straws, I think, or cutting a deck of cards. So twice running in 1988 and 1992, the local councillors have been decided

by cutting a deck of cards. How weird is that? That's so cool. I really hope it was the same person who lost both times. This time I'm going to do it. Oh, too long. Someone's rigged this deck. That's like Hong Kong.

I have feelings, as James has fact, from our squire database, political candidates in Hong Kong, if they finish in a dead heat, the election is decided by luck of the draw from a bag of numbered ping-pong balls. I think they have ping-pong balls in... Where do they have that? I think in Florida.

Bad news, you've lost the election. Good news, you're a millionaire. I think they have it in Florida. In either Texas or New Mexico, there's one place where they do it from Hand of Poker. It must be Texas. Yeah, Texas hold them, yeah. But that's a game with skill in it.

It's they deal one hand and it's... New Mexico. New Mexico, is it? Yeah, because you couldn't have... It would be good if you could have games of skill, like whoever's best at boggle. Probably should be an MP, actually. It's grip chess. Plastic sword fight.

That's how we do it. Okay, so just on some bad candidates in elections. Oh yes, please. Have you heard of Bill Bokes? No. He was a Lieutenant Commander in the Navy and he was also the worst election candidate ever. He campaigned in 28 elections

and got 7,700 votes in total. Wow. Which is not very many. He lost his deposit all 28 times. In 1951 he tried to stand against the Prime Minister, Clement Attlee, who accidentally stood in Walthamstow East, instead of Walthamstow West. His party was called the Land, Sea, Air, Road and Public Safety,

Democratic Monarchist, White Resident and Women's Party. Oh yeah. It was quite racist, unfortunately. But he campaigned mostly against traffic accidents and in favour of road safety. And he bought an old voxel which he painted black and white to make it a mobile zebra crossing. A mobile zebra.

That's how people would climb over the top of his car to cross the road. So yeah. And in 1952 his election campaign involved fitting his car with a mast and a mainsail, at which point he was arrested and fined for using a vehicle for advertising purposes in the centre of town, which you weren't allowed to do then. Oh.

Yeah. And he said, once I am nominated, I don't go back to the constituency. For one thing, I can't afford to. He sounds great. He's, I mean, brilliant. You know, very funny. There's a great story I really like about a guy called John Wilkes.

He was running, he stood for parliament in Berwick-upon-Tweed. But a bunch of people who heard this and they were the opposition, they were like, no way are we going to allow this guy to get in. So they sailed up the east coast to scupper his plans. They basically chartered a boat, got into it and headed up to ruin his chances.

So they were going to vote against him? Yeah, they were going to vote against him. But he found out about this and he bribed the captain of the ship. So instead, the ship took them to Norway. But he's still lost anyway. He lost anyway. Yeah, despite that tactical genius that he showed.

So, here's something else from the Book of Heroic Failures. Would you like to hear about Matt Jack Mitton? Oh, yes, let's hear about him. You don't want to hear the other option? No, no. All right. So, John Mitton was a 19th century aristocrat and he was extremely eccentric in a lot of ways.

But one of the things that he wanted to do, everyone in his family got elected MP for Shrewsbury. I was just thinking, it's just the thing he did. If you were in that family. How many MPs does Shrewsbury have? Loads, loads. So, his father had done it, his grandfather had done it. I see.

So, his campaigning seems to have mostly consisted of him walking around his constituency with ten pound notes stuck on his hat. And people could just come up and pick them off. And someone else would replace, you know, he had an assistant to replace any notes that were taken off. He spent ten thousand pounds doing that, which was a fortune back in the day.

An absolute fortune. He won the seat by 384 votes to 287. All these people are going cheapskate. And then on the first day he attended Parliament, it was hot and he found it boring. So, he left and he never went back. Not nearly as interesting as walking about town covered in ten pound notes. That's a weird job, isn't it, for his assistant.

What do you do? I'm the ten pound note replacer on my boss's hat. We don't really have any vacancies for that at the moment. That's literally the only thing I can do. So, another 19th century MP who I like is, well, he was from 1784 to 1830, the MP for Devon was a Tory called John Bastard, who was then followed as an MP for Devon by his nephew, Edmund Bastard.

But what I like about John Bastard is that... His name? I hadn't thought about that. It is quite a funny name. Edmund Bastard, sorry, inspired the nursery rhyme Old Mother Hubbard. Why did they call it Hubbard? Because you can't teach children the song Old Mother Bastard. How did he inspire it?

His sister-in-law was someone called Sarah Catherine Martin, who he instructed to run away and write one of your stupid little rhymes when she was behaving badly in the town or something. She was going out for a landing with a man she shouldn't have been. So he told her to go away, write stupid little rhymes. She wrote Old Mother Hubbard, and that was that. Is that inspiring someone to write something? He was her muse.

Who's the mysterious other person on your list? That's the fifth Earl of Leicester, who was a member of the House of Lords. He didn't say anything for 22 years. He was going to speak about capital punishment, and then he changed his mind. That's all we have. He turned it into a yawn at the last minute. OK, that's it. That's all of our facts. Thank you so much for listening.

If you want to get in contact with us about the things we've said over the course of this episode, you can get me on at Tribe Land. James. At H8. Andy. At Andrew Hunter M. Anna. You can email podcast at qi.com.

And you can also send just general stuff to atqipodcast. Those are all on Twitter. We've got lots of episodes for you to listen to. If you head to knowsuchthingasafish.com, you've got all the backlog there. Also, if you want to sign up to our newsletter, you can go to qi.com slash fishmail. We are going to be back again next week with another episode.

We'll see you then. Goodbye. Bye.