Little Fish: This Could Tail Off Really Quickly

0:01Hello everyone, welcome to this week's episode of Little Fish. Before we start, Andrew Hunter murray has something he'd like to say to you all just to keep his inbox from bulging quite so much so this is a little thanks james hi everybody this is a little pre-apology and correction irony small quiz in the middle of this show about the oldest ever james bonds i can't wait for you to hear it it's really fun and in it we say the two oldest james bonds i won't give away which ones now but i'm i'd just like to point out i do know that sean connery was 53 when he was in never say never again but it's not a canon bond film it's not one of the official ones which is why it's not included in the quiz i woke up sweating realizing that i had not made this clear in the show itself all will make sense soon let it never be said that we don't take these silly little quizzes extremely seriously seriously there's a quiz about carrots coming up that is honestly the most serious quiz I've ever run on this show.

1:03I'm so excited. Too many spoilers, Andy. Sorry, yes. If you would like to get more apologies, corrections, and bonus info, why not join Club Fish? This is our special secret members club. We do a fortnightly show called Droppers Align where you get this kind of sizzling behind-the-scenes hot goss about the show itself. So if you want to join that, just go to patreon.com slash no such thing as a fish. Next announcement before we start this week's show. If you heard our episode, which went out a few days ago with none other than Michael Palin. Then we got a little bit of an extra treat for you. We filmed the whole thing and we put it up on YouTube.

1:38What? I'm sorry, James. Did you not know? What? I was wearing my mankini the whole way through. Yes, I know. Michael did comment when you were out of the room. He said, what a friendly young lady that is. Yeah, so we filmed the whole thing. It's on YouTube. You can see us worshipping Michael Palin in real time. It's great fun. Just go onto YouTube and search for our names or search for... No Such Thing as a Fish. No Such Thing as a Fish and I'm sure you'll find it. But for now, enjoy this little fish. On with the podcast.

2:28Hello and welcome to Little Fish. This is our new weekly show where we read out your facts. We've had enough of our facts. Let's have some of yours. You've been sending them in to podcast at qi.com. And they are terrific And so we're going to share some of the absolute Crème de la crème with you now Who's got a fact? Who would like to kick off? Oh I'm here with Dan Schreiber and James Harkin And my name's Andrew Hunter-Murray Did I say all that? I don't think I said that last week Last week I was here with Andrew Hunter-Murray and Dan Schreiber Great And in case I forget to say it Next week I will be with Andrew Hunter-Murray and James Harkin Quet stall and give us a fact Alright Gabe Bullard said Big fan of the show I saw Dan post on Instagram that he found the book claiming to feature posthumous interviews with Elvis Presley's ghost This is true.

3:15It's written by Hans Holzer, who is the person who sort of Defined what a ghost hunter was and very much inspired Dan Aykroyd for Ghostbusters and so on He's added a fact that has nothing to do with that Says in the early 90s when the United States Postal Service proposed issuing an Elvis Presley stamp There was an effort to block it because someone must be dead in order to appear on a US postage stamp and Elvis They said was still alive That's really good That is very funny. That is a thing isn't it? You have to be dead in order to be on a stamp definitely used to be the case Yeah, I'm not sure it still is so Neil Armstrong landing on the moon was okay because you couldn't see his face So it was a generic astronauts even though it was such nonsense.

4:02Yeah, clearly just we're proud we put someone on the moon so we're going to break the stamp rule. That's what that is. They were saying, oh, it's an astronaut rather than Neil Armstrong. Yes. Well, what's the astronaut's name? Do you remember as well that that led to Buzz Aldrin's dad standing outside the White House with a placard that read, my son stood on there too. And it was him being furious there. Michael Collins' mum was there saying, Michael didn't actually stand on the moon. She was just in a car driving around the ring road of the White House.

4:36Yeah, I think as well that one person in the UK did sneak onto a stamp accidentally who is still alive and that's Roger Taylor from Queen Because they did a Freddie Mercury stamp, but in the background Taylor's drumming And so technically they have put someone on. But you are allowed the Queen on stamps. Compulsory. So a member of Queen feels fair as well. Brilliant. There we go. Surely you're allowed... Is the rule the same in the UK that you can't be on a stamp unless you're dead? Again, I think it used to be. I'm not sure if it still is now, but definitely used to be. We've lost so many of our traditions.

5:10Here is a fact. So this is from Chris Bemis. And Chris Bemis says, my fact is the largest shopping mall in the US, Mall of America, is kept warm in winter by human body heat. Oh, so is that the humans who are shopping in the mall? Or is it a separate cadre of trained humans who just go around being hot? Do you remember in the last episode, we said that you have very high body heat and so your watch runs faster than most people's. Yeah, they keep a lot of people like you in the basement. No, this is just people who are shopping. And actually, like I saw a Reddit on this and they say that really the amount of heat that's given off by the human bodies is really, really negligible.

5:51And while it does say on the website that the mall has no central heating and that it uses the body heats, they're quite cagey with what they actually say. And probably all the individual stores have their own heating systems. We also have a huge coal fire burning in the centre. So we don't have central heating, but we... So I think it's like, it's definitely claimed by the mall, but whether it's 100 % true, I'm not absolutely certain. And also they have all these skylights that the sunlight can warm it up as well. But here's a question for you. Do you know in a few recent podcasts, I've been saying, I'll ask you a question and if you get the answer right, you'll get a million quid or 10 million quid.

6:28Yes. Well, I'm going to do another one of those, but I'm a bit wary that eventually you will get one of these right. But for now, I'll give you 100 million quid if you can tell me which country the world's largest mall is, according to Wikipedia. Okay. Eritrea. No. Mexico. No, unlucky lads. That goes into the pot for the next episode. It's the Iran Mall in Tehran. The largest mall in the world. That's pretty good. It's just big, it's got hotels It's just got all sorts of stuff in there It's a big mall Big old mall Very nice From Susanna Pate of British Carrots Okay This came in a little while ago Sorry, you say plate of carrots Sorry, Pate Of?

7:20British Carrots Her name is Susanna Pate And she works for I don't need to tell you guys who British Carrots are But just You know for the international listener They're a trade body Whose main job is to get us all eating more carrots Right It's a hugely powerful organisation Shadowy I would say Yeah And she wrote because British Carrot Day was coming up It was on the 3rd of October So we have missed it by quite some way But I just I didn't want to leave her out because of us. You know, I love a carrot. Absolutely. Isn't it strange that National Carrot Day is in October when presumably all the carrots have been well farmed by then?

8:06James, I'd like to refer you to Susanna's email. Okay. Carrots are harvested 12 months of the year in the UK. Give me a break. So they're one of the freshest and most versatile vegetables we can all enjoy. That's according to Harry Strawson, who I presume grows carrots. Anyway I thought a couple of Just little quiz questions based off her facts How many carrot seeds Are sown in Britain each year? Carrot seeds all Each year How many carrot seeds each year? If I get within 10 billion Of this I'll be astonished I'm going to say 50 billion Okay Oh I'm glad you're that high because I was going high I was going to say 200 billion Well it's 22 billion So down is out by a factor of 10 James got reasonably close I mean I didn't get close In the grand scheme of things No if they did plant 50 billion we'd have an insane over capacity of carrots It's not a world I want to live in Walk along the street just wading through carrots As you go to the office every day What is the total tonnage of carrots That those 22 billion seeds between them produce So how many tons of carrots Are we talking 22 billion seeds But how many tons of carrots I hate this quiz It's a bad quiz I watched Richard Osmond's House of Games for the first ever time this week.

9:25No offence, Andy, because you were on it and I didn't watch it when you were on it. Don't worry. But they do this stuff, don't they, where you have to just make a random guess on things. Yeah. This is worse than House of Games. I'm not afraid to admit that. Okay. All right, I'll go first. You went first last time. Okay. Six. Come on. Play the game, mate. I'm going to go 100 billion. 100 billion? You think that every carrot seed produces five tons of carrot? This is why you got invited on House of Games and I didn't. Yeah, that's a good point. But this is good because now we're a tie. Yeah, I'm afraid you're both...

10:02Well, I'll guess 700 ,000 tonnes, which is the correct answer. Oh, well done. And just out of interest, that would stretch 1.4 million miles if you put the carers end to end. Great. Okay, carry on. Next fact. Thank you, Miss Plate. Pate. Only two questions in this quiz Okay, one last question 1.9 million miles Percentage Of the carrots consumers buy in the UK Are grown in Britain 38 Okay, we're only 38 % self-sufficient in carrots Ah, interesting, you said the word only there 39 James wins It's 97 That's good I know, so there's almost no need to buy imported carrots Almost So that's, thank you Susanna Very good And if you work for like the Wool Board or whatever Podcast at qi.com The Cheese Board, they're always doing stuff aren't they Brilliant And we'll forward this up to Richard Osman You should have a new job Tony Shane writes About a bond So a financial bond You know, you buy a bond and it pays out A certain rate of interest for a certain number of years That's right.

11:16And then when the bond returns, you get all the original money you put in back. Yeah. So I pay 100 quid, I get 3 quid a year for 10 years, and then I get 100 quid back. Pretty good deal. And it's if companies or governments need to raise a lot of money initially and fund something big. A war, for instance. A war. A war. A war time bond. Well, there is a bond which was issued in 1648, which is still paying out. Oh, yeah. It was issued in the Netherlands 377 years ago. Charles I was still alive in England And it was the Water Authority They issued a bond And it's still paying You said yeah, yeah, yeah, like you knew this already I feel like we may have covered this A long time ago on the show I'm not familiar with it It's just stunning So the actual original bond is in Yale now It's passed through many hands over the centuries It's written on goatskin I mean, it's so old And the waterboard in the Netherlands Just needed to raise money for something and this isn't even the oldest bond in the world that's that's still active there is one that was issued in 1624 it had its 400th birthday last year it is still paying out and it was because and it was again dutch water utility they had this disaster where some drifting ice broke through a dike huge problem in the netherlands because it's all underwater uh they needed to raise money and this one pays about 13 euros still every year that you're the bond holder it's just so cool yeah i I think I should set one up so people can send me money and I can become a spy or something.

12:47Wait, are you issuing the Bond? Yeah, yeah, it'll be called the James Bond. Oh my god. Oh my god. I gave you a second to notice what you're walking into. Yeah, yeah. Of course. All right. Well, I actually did prepare a separate little quiz. Who was the oldest Bond? Oh. As in James Bond? James Bond, Bond James Bond. The oldest actor to play James Bond. Roger Moore. Correct. Second oldest? Daniel Craig. Daniel Craig, correct. Carry on Come on What is this quiz? Sometimes they're not all It's not all like how many carrot seeds are there In the UK every year Sometimes it's just a little confidence builder So Roger Moore was 57 when he hung up His false teeth And wig and all of that But Daniel Craig was 51 when he stopped doing it Yeah I'm not massively surprised What about Lazenby for number 3 I haven't written down any other Connery?

13:41I haven't written down any other names and ages. Should have done. You probably didn't think we were going to get the first two so quickly, I guess. I've got to say I didn't. Lazenby, George Lazenby. Someone painted my old flat years and years ago who had come. Did I have told you this before? No. Andy, this would be the best anecdote you've ever told us. I'm sure we would remember it. Wait, wait, wait. This could tail off really quickly. Lazenby's dead now isn't he? I don't think he is I better not say it then Wait let me see Listener imagine this Anecdote begins A friend of mine was painting a flat And ends with something that's libelous Against George Lazenby He's very much going strong Let's move on I told you it was going to fail off I told you we trusted you You had such a Front loaded it so well He supposedly Got the gig of Bond when he was sitting Having his hair done This is one of the stories that gets told And one of the broccolis was sitting next to him Big broccoli Gabby Broccoli the producer Or Barbara, it could have been Barbara And Lazby shot him six times through the head Didn't he?

14:59You've got what it takes kid Also, do you remember that There was going to be a Bond Of a very different nature A different kind of character, not strictly an actor and he wasn't allowed to be Bond in the end because his face looked a bit too much like a farmer's. We've spoken about this on the podcast. It might have been part of an edit. Someone's... Brian Blessed? No. You look too much like a farmer. Who looks like a farmer? Interestingly, a book of theirs is right behind me, but you're sitting in front of 500 books. Wait a minute, I know. Ann Miller.

15:36It is Ranulph Fiennes. Oh, yeah. Remember, Randall Fiennes went to auditions. He was in the running. Yeah. I think it was either his hands looked like a farmer or his face. One of the two.

15:51I've got one. Andrew Price. I'm a long-term listener living in North Carolina, USA, where I work as a nurse. I'm sending you an article I found in the New York Times about a type of seabird, the streaked sheer water. And the article is headlined, these majestic seabirds never stop pooping. and basically scientists did an experiment on the street sheer water uh where they put cameras on the bottoms of the birds pointing backwards and i think they were trying to work out something about their flight or their flight dynamics or something but basically what they found is oh these birds are constantly poeing it's it's it's extraordinary it's it's five percent of their mass every hour.

16:32I know. And Andrew writes, to put this into perspective, this would be like me pooping out an 11-pound poop, I don't like the word poop, every hour about the same weight as a normal house cat or 132 pounds, the weight of two Dalmatians in the course of a 12-hour workday. Wow. 50 and a half days and you have 101 Dalmatians.

17:02that's amazing that's very upsetting what a what a bird what a bird what a bird thank you andrew great fact yeah that's brilliant one more dan yeah i got actually another poo one uh to read out here this was sent in by liz may and she says that uh this is an article she spotted a woman in australia has now been in a years-long remission from severe bipolar disorder after receiving homemade fecal transplant enemas from her husband. Her case is one of the first in the world that may lead to improved treatments for bipolar disorder. I don't think it will. So sorry, homemade I don't even know how you would think of homemaking a fecal transplant enema.

17:44Yeah. Do you know what I mean? It just wouldn't occur to me to do. Which bit? Homemaking, I suppose? Like if I went to the doctor and he said look with it sounds crazy but actually we think your microbiome might be maladjusted and we think maybe we can get it back into equilibrium yeah by doing this procedure um but i don't think they would then say can you just go home and ask your but would you rather have someone else's poo up there or would you rather have someone you know i think someone else's oh really yes very trusting yeah but that's because i have to keep if it's if it's your close person if it's someone close to you like a partner you have to look at them i think it would i think it takes a little of the spark out of a marriage.

18:27I'm wondering the circumstances in which you raise your idea, you know. Oh, you've got to build up to it. That's baby steps. You can't just go straight in and say I think we should do this. You've got to be like, I wonder... I heard the Joneses at number 14 are doing quite an interesting thing. I'm not saying we should do it, I just it's something that kind of interests me a little bit. Yeah. I guess we could try We could try it For your birthday maybe

19:04Great fact Well great that it worked as well Miranda Coates writes According to the Royal Shakespeare Company 50 % of the world's children study Shakespeare Wow That's nice isn't it That's great It's good for Britain because it gives us soft power around the world And the plays are bloody good They are, they're really good Shakespeare's one of those writers Who everyone says he's good and then you read him And actually he's really good Tell us more about this Shakespeare guy, Angie Shut up The guy who decorated my Flat Had a really interesting story about Bill Shakespeare He is dead, I can say that much Oh well he said he was a wanker So this was a study done in 2014 okay and it also named Shakespeare as the most popular person associated with UK art and culture in the world can you name any other people who are on that list and I have a list of 13 other people Charles Dickens no these are just of any kind any anyone in the world associates them with UK art and culture George Orwell no John Lennon uh the Beatles the Beatles I'll give you uh Jane Austen No Oh my god Dan's way more likely to get these Okay David Bowie No But good guess Edmund Hillary No Brian Blessed Edmund Hillary's from New Zealand Oh yeah Okay Dan's way more likely to get this So we're thinking obscure John Cleese John Cleese no Freddie Mercury No I genuinely thought you'd get a few more of these The Queen The Queen yeah UK culture Well culture She's not horse racing I'm sorry to be snobby But she just didn't Do you mean the old queen?

20:52Queen Elizabeth II Yeah, the true queen Yeah, yeah, go on Okay, so we had the queen We had Shakespeare We've had the Beatles I'll give you McCartney as well Because you said the Beatles Twiggy No Sting 2014 No such thing as a fish

21:12They've got Anna Tosinski So I'll give you that No, not that 24, that's a clue, 2014 similar, on the right track Dapper Laughs more famous than Lily Allen for sure and dubs Bernard Manning Adele is what I was saying before there Adele an author Philip Pullman, Terry Pratchett come on guys, the most famous British author JK Rowling a soccer player Beckham, correct an actor Alan Rickman no Ray Fiennes no Simon Callow Benedict Cumberbatch oh okay yeah yeah yeah and a puppet dog that sells car insurance Winston Churchill it just says Churchill I assume it's that it's not called Winston good quiz guys great quiz well done wow how the hell did Churchill make it onto the dog the dog over over the politician it will be Winston Churchill I'm sure oh okay it's just I was just doing a funny Let's go compare meerkats Anyway join us next week Join us next week For my quiz pulling teeth Only on channel 5 Okay well I think we Oh it's not I'm not even hosting this Who's hosting this one?

22:32Andy Yeah Don't you think we should maybe end And maybe do some curatorship No I want to do 20 more minutes Of the UK culture and art figures. Yes, you're right, James. We should wrap this up. Thank you so much for sending your facts in. Just a reminder, podcast at qi.com if you'd like to have your fact read out. Oh, I don't think I did that last week. So just to say that also last week, if you want to send a fact last week, then it's podcast at qi.com. That explains the dearth of facts we've had in the inbox since last week. No, thank you so much for listening to this bit. And now, let's have some fact custodian award ceremonies.

23:10Ta-da-da! This is a thing we're doing where if you join Club Fish on Patreon at the friend of the podcast tier, if you join those exalted heights, you get a fact, a headline fact that we've done on the show in the past to be yours, your fact in perpetuity forever and ever. Amen. It is your fact. So we're going to be dishing out a few of those now to a few friends of the podcast who've joined. So let's start with one. Anyone want to kick off? I'll do one Lovely Because this was originally my fact from episode 9 And it is that it was fashionable in New York At the end of the 19th century For women to wear bird of paradise feathers And that fact is now under the custodianship of Drumroll please David Addis Congratulations David Well done David I actually have no memory of that fact whatsoever You need to go back and listen to episode 9 I'm going to do This is exciting for all of us To revisit old episodes And that was the thing That kicked off Bird protection wasn't it?

24:18As in people were just Wearing these bird feathers Willy nilly And then people thought These birds There aren't as many Birds of paradise As they used to be A lot of lovely hats Being made Interesting Yeah I think that is what happened It was the Audubon Society Wasn't it? I think If memory serves Yeah Don't write in if it wasn't There was a thing called The Plumage League Yeah Which is just a flat out Good name for a society That's a great name yeah Yeah Very nice But yeah, congratulations to you, David. Lovely stuff. Should I read one out? Yeah. This was my fact from episode nine. Alan Turing lost his buried treasure when he couldn't crack his own code.

24:52What an idiot. Oh, what a story. This is now under the custodianship of Martin Hill. Congratulations, Martin. And this was Alan Turing in the lead up to World War II, worried that all of his valuables were going to be stolen. So I think he traded it in for a couple of silver bars or gold bars. Oh, yeah. And he buried them and he made a code of where he buried them. And he made a code of a code and then possibly even a code of a code of a code. And then after the war, he loved his codes. He's big on codes. It's one thing that we will say about Alan Turing is he loved the code. We love to crack a code.

25:26And unfortunately, in this case, when he went back after the war to crack it, the landscape had changed. He couldn't quite understand his actual code itself. And so he never found it. It's it might still be out there. I think the bit of England where he was meant to have buried it is now sort of council estate. So I think they would have dug it up. Is it near Bletchley? I can't remember, to be honest. But yeah. I thought it was. If you live anywhere in the Midlands, why not dig up your garden? Absolutely. Yeah. It's good for you anyway. Oh, yeah. Gardening. Yeah. There you go. Well, congrats, Marnin Hill.

25:57That's yours. Here's one. This is going out to Aaron Hung. And it's the fact that, in 2011, the largest sperm bank in the world stopped accepting sperm from redheads. Sorry, Aaron, you got a bit of a rude one. It's a blue fact, there's no doubt about that. And I think it was... Classic Anna, really. It's an Anna fact, yeah. It's an Anna fact, of course it was. I think it was a lack of demand. I think it was classic anti-redhead prejudice. That is prejudice. Yeah. There's an interesting thing in history, I read a paper about this, that people have typically thought that people with red hair are very sort of sexually active and they've had that reputation throughout history.

26:38But the researchers found out that the reason that they had that reputation is because people just generally found them more attractive. And so they were having more sex, but it's just because everyone fancied them. Yeah, right. That's the most counter-narrative to all the anti-ginger prejudice. Absolutely. Good. Wesley Vetter You are now the proud custodian Of this fact The English language has more words Burrowed from Hawaiian Than from Welsh Really? Yes Wesley that one is now yours This was an Andrew Murray original Yeah and it's I can't remember any words that are borrowed from Hawaiian now Aloha Wiki Hula As in hula hoop Hula dancing yes but also i think the thing is that in hawaii they had lots of new plants that needed names and so we took them from hawaiian right whereas when we went into wales they had the same plants as we had just slightly like maybe leak no we already had leaks daffs daffs yeah they still existed so you know there was no need to give welsh names to these things you're right and also let's not forget the anti-welsh prejudice of course but one interesting thing is that everyone found the welsh extremely attractive yes oh yeah let's do another one yeah this we had a guest on in this episode uh episode 10 and that guest was eric lamper i haven't seen him for years well do you know what you can see him currently in a movie so there's a new that's why i haven't seen him because he's way more successful than me so there's a movie out at the moment called grief is the thing with feathers based on a Max Porter book and it's Benedict Cumberbatch and there's a big black bird that appears in it.

28:26Is he playing the bird? He's inside the bird. Wow. Wow. So you don't see Eric but he's on stilts and he's he's uh he is the bird in that film. Very cool. We love Eric. Yeah. What was his fact? His fact was in 1923 jockey Frank Hayes won a race in Belmont Park in New York despite being dead. Wow. Yeah, amazing fact. That's for Emma Govan. And congratulations. This is now your fact. This was, he died on the final leg, didn't he? I think he had a heart attack while on the horse. Right. But the horse just kept running and won the race. Right. Yeah. Gosh, that's amazing. Have we got time for any more, Andy?

29:04I think we've got time for three more. Three more. Okay, well, I'll do one. This one was a Dan Schreiber fight from episode 10 of no such thing as a fish. And Dan said, some Buddhist monks run marathons to achieve enlightenment. And that fact now belongs to Mr. Dan Turner. So Dan, congratulations. Yeah, that was one of my favorite earliest facts on the podcast. It's just this extraordinary thing that they run these insanely long marathons. And the idea is that after however many days of doing it, they would achieve enlightenment. So rather than meditating your way to it, you can actually bolt.

29:45But the thing is about meditating is you can just sit there. Right. I think I would prefer to do that method of enlightenment than having to get your gym gear on.

29:57Rub your nipples with Vaseline. I mean, I'll be doing that even if I'm just sitting down. So that's a wash for me. That's sort of, yeah, accidentally achieving enlightenment. Absolutely, yeah, yeah. Runners do that, don't they? Yes, they do. Oh, they do, do they? Yeah. I thought we were just getting an insight into your life, Andy. Okay. Otherwise, you get jogger's nipple. Yeah. Which can be very painful, actually. Oh, it sounds bad. I've never run far enough to get jogger's nipple. I've had it. Have you? Have you? Did you butter them, or? No, I just suffered for the next couple of days. Sensitive.

30:28Yeah. We should move on. More facts. All right, let's have a couple more. This one goes out to Ben Caligari. Congratulations, Ben, because you're getting an absolute slammer. is that the Slovakian and Slovenian embassies in Washington meet once a month to exchange wrongly addressed mail. Brilliant. Yep. Again, an early classic. I feel like that was one of the post effects in our early days. It was. Slovakia, Slovenia. Yeah. They're not very close. They're close in a global sense, but they're not... Not in a European sense. No. Yeah, not in a European sense. They're not very close. They're probably close in an embassy sense.

31:03Oh, yeah. Maybe. They're all in alphabetical order, those embassies in Washington. It's awful when the guy from Afghanistan Has to go and visit the guy from Zimbabwe