Little Fish: Yum Yum, Plum Plum

0:12Hi everyone, welcome to the second ever episode of Little Fish. Little Fish is a show where we list your facts, things that you sent in the podcast. at qi.com inbox uh andy has sifted through them and he has found the very sweetest plums sent them over to the rest of us and we're going to go through them today and chat about them are they true are they not true do we know more about the subject have we never heard of any of these words before in our life we will see as we move on so who is going to do the first fight it can't be me because i did the intro it has to be one of you two oh go on i'll i'll throw a plum your way then Jump in, let's do it See how sweet you find it Yum yum, plum plum My fact Sorry One of these days One of these catchphrases will pay off Andy And everyone will be saying Yum yum, plum plum It'll be the new 6-7 You'll see James when I'm opening nightclubs Around the country shouting yum yum Plum plum Right this is from The unimprovably named Nathan Gallimore Strong.

1:24I think friend of this parish. I think we may have heard from him before. Oh, yeah. Okay. But he says, the windiest place in the UK is the butt of Lewis. That's it. Thanks, Nathan. There you go. And it's basically, it's on the Isle of Lewis. Lewis and Harris. Harris and Lewis. And the butt is on the very, very northern tip of Lewis. And during his trip, he also wrote his first funicular railway. So congratulations, Nathan. Oh, very good. It's a little bit contentious, this fact. I did do some follow-up I always thought it was Further north So is it Cape Wrath Or something That's in the far north Of Scotland I always thought That was the windiest place Well I think on average Shetland is windier Oh yeah So it's been The Butterflewis Has been named by The Guinness Book of Records A few years ago So they They have their Methodology I still consider Shetland to be part of Denmark Oh Because you Yeah You have Well Controversial political opinion And if you're listening Danes Is it Denmark or Norway?

2:23There was one of them where we got it as maybe a dowry or something from some Scandinavian country. But the rules were that they were allowed to buy it back at any stage. Like when we first got either Shetland or Orkney. Right. They said, yeah, you can have it. But as soon as we can get 12 marks together, we're going to buy it back. And I think it's still true that in theory they could buy it back if they want. Really? I didn't know that. Okay. Okay, well, so if you're listening, Vikings, get the money together. How windy is this? It's really windy. The thing is, how do you measure how windy something is?

3:02Is it average speed over the year? Maybe for me now, because I live by a seaside, I could judge it. If I saw where Margate lives on a list, then I think I could then judge it by personal experience. Yeah, yeah, because it's quite windy where you are. Oh, it's wild. The wind in Margate is insane. and it comes out of nowhere like we had this amazing you can't see it coming we we were sitting one time in Margate there's these things which called the steps that go onto the beach and you often say lots of beaches after dad if you've ever been to Rome they have a Margate tribute which is called the Spanish steps do they nice oh there you go see yeah it's coming up Margate yeah um so we were sitting on what felt like a normal day and we were with our neighbors um these these seagulls get coming and eating our fish and chips and chloe did this thing where she picked up the final few chips and she threw them out to the ocean and just at that moment this giant gust of wind came blew the chips to the left right onto a couple that were kissing on the steps and about 12 seagulls just darted into them she had to run after them i'm so sorry i'm so sorry and they were literally being attacked by these gulls um is that a true story yeah yeah yeah yeah it's one of my favorite moments i have in fact i have a photo well that might dan that sounds very windy yeah so that's how i'd be able to tell but the strongest gust ever recorded in the uk was at cairngorm summit in 1986 okay there's a mountain in the highlands in scotland yeah uh which was 173 miles an hour i think that's the strongest any gust any individual gust has been recorded but i think In general, it's normally Shetland that is the windiest on average, I believe.

4:46Imagine. I know, I know. You'd be lifted off into the air, wouldn't you? You'd be lifted off in the air. Oh, yeah. Don't wear your big coat. Thank you, Nathan. Yeah, great fact. Great fact. Okay, here's a fact from Josh Glendening, who says, a soldier who spent too long on the toilet because of an upset stomach caused the start of World War II. So do we know about this incident? Okay, this was called the Marco Polo Bridge Incident. It was 1937, often considered to be the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War, which then evolved into World War II. And so the story goes that in the 1930s, Japan had invaded and put in a puppet government and named it Manchuria.

5:31Yeah. So in July 1937, there was a Japanese private, Shimura Kikojiro, who was stationed near the bridge, and he went missing. so a few soldiers accused the chinese military of having taken him and were holding him hostage and so they started climbing over the walls to find him they started asking questions and getting a bit of an aggressive response and it's so it just kind of built up tensions meanwhile the soldier comes back after a while saying sorry my stomach was gone i had to dip into the forest and just relieve myself and in that time enough of a fight started that it went into a full-blown war war i just feel like we've missed one or two steps yeah yeah yeah i mean it's probably some political things happening there were a few political things also there's another theory that he was visiting a brothel that he hadn't gone to the toilet and a lot of and a lot of historians but this has been poo-pooed by a lot of historians is food very good very good is the idea that this was staged so he was told to go away so that they could pretend he was missing so that they could find an excuse to go in but so yeah i've heard this story before and i think it rings relatively true the basics are true i'm really i read um a couple of years ago i read sir anthony beaver's history of the second world war oh did he mention it he says this is the exclusive course does he oh yeah yeah he says every everything else would have been absolutely fine and um 18 chapters on this guy's yeah dodgy tummy that's right just a little bit and then there was a skirmish does he go into the sino-japanese or does he start 1939 oh no he goes into extraordinary detail about the about the whole the whole global nature of it yeah yeah it starts with a soldier actually page one is about this soldier who i think he was from korea or or he gets drafted into the japanese army when they invade and then japan locks horns with china and then he's taken prisoner after some fight by the russians and then he ends up he ends up serving in three or four different armies always being pressed into a different army over the course of the war it's an absolute nightmare scenario for him and it's he's used as an example of how this war affected absolutely everyone yeah yeah but his account is sort of grimly funny and then he was taken prisoner by the russians and it just goes on and on and on like that yeah yeah like the Forrest Gump of war.

7:54I suppose so. And this guy, your private, Dan, was taking a Forrest Dump. That's where you get the big bucks, Andy. Yum yum, plump plump.

8:08Okay, my first fact comes from Ian Jones, and he says, I'm a pediatric surgeon. That's not his fact. His fact is about the Fanninsteel incision. You give me a load of German, you gave me some german ones last week as well yeah and german is not my first second third or indeed 193rd language but this incision is one that this person did uh it's basically the it's the most common way of doing a cesarean uh you'd use it for some other surgery down there but it's a it's in the shape of a pan handle and it's on the bikini line and it gives you good access to the pelvis and stuff like that now the incision is called fannenstiel because fannenstiel in german means panhandle okay but the surgeon who first described it was called herman johannes fannenstiel so he invented it it has the same name as him but according to him it's named after the fact that it's the shape of a panhandle.

9:15Very clever. Now, Ian Jones's personal theory, which I agree, is that he deliberately drew the incision in the shape of a panhandle so that he could name it after himself. People do do this sometimes, don't they? Wasn't there an element of the periodic... Gallium. Gallium. And it was named after a guy who's... So he said that he named it after France. Yes, Gaul. Gaul. But actually, I think he was called Lecoq. That's it. Or something similar. which is chicken and galus galus is the Latin for chicken. That's it. That's it. So, yeah, like people do do it. And to be honest, it's such a coincidence.

9:54I've never seen the word fan and steel before. I mean, what if actually the surgery would be much better and easier to conduct if it was a completely different shape that doesn't look like a panhandle? Yes. It could be that, you know, in all these years, people who are having cesareans are having the wrong shape just because of his. Well, we should look into that. That's insane. That's a really good fact. That's very good. And great theory. I can give you more on surgeons. Yeah, go on. Jean-Casimir Félix Guillon was born in Réunion. He came up with a new way of removing bladder stones through the perineum.

10:32But he's more famous for being the probable inspiration for this song Frère Jacques. No way. Wow. My little one sings that non-stop at the moment. Do they know that it's about removing bladder stones through the perineum? No, but we never get to the third verse of the song. So what are the lines we get? Frère Jacques, Frère Jacques, dormez-vous, dormez-vous. Sonne le matin, sonne le matin, ding-dang-dong, ding-dang-dong. So is that, we've had a patient come in complaining of severe... It's the sound of the bladder stones falling into the pan. It's the ding-dang-dong. Good, good. Is the perineum the bit in between The anus The anus and the genital And the other genital opening What's the grundle?

11:19That might just be you Dan I thought that was another term for that I've never come across that Have you not? So the band that does our theme tune Emperor Yes, Ash Who wrote our song and sings the song He was originally in a band called Grundle And I'm pretty sure It was to Is Aussie slang? No, no, no, no. All right, Mr. Schreiber, let's get you up on the chair and just have a quick look at the grundle, sir. Oh, you've got a bad case of the fairies. I can see it, mate. Dan, let's have another fact. Okay, here's not so much a fact, but a great pub quiz question. All right, so this is from John Dunn.

11:55He says, my favorite pub... The metaphysical poet. He said, my favorite pub quiz question is, and here's a question now, and I'm going to ask it to you two. What are furthest north, south, east and west states of the United States? Come on, mate. Yeah, you're okay. I think I was born yesterday. All right, so let's start with south. What's the southest? Southest? Southest. I'm going to say Dakota. North Dakota. North Dakota. It's a trick question. It's a trick question. North Dakota. Okay, well for me it has to be North Carolina. Okay. No, it must be Hawaii. It is Hawaii. Oh, very good. Correct.

12:43What is the northest state? I think that has to be South Dakota.

12:55Okay, playing seriously for a second, I'll say Alaska. Correct. Okay. It is. That is correct. Okay, so one each. Yep. Westest. westest i would say alaska alaska correct it is alaska oh yeah interestingly it's got north and west uh yeah so okay that's uh two one but you probably might have said the same uh i would and also i'm gonna get the next one right okay so i'll give this one to andy uh most eastest uh i feel like it's gonna be a trick but i'll i'll say um west virginia West Virginia No I'll say one of those ones Over on the far right hand side I'll say Rhode Island Rhode Island, incorrect James I'm going to say it's Alaska again Correct, why?

13:47Because the Aleutian Islands go over the international dateline Oh for heaven's sake Isn't that amazing? South is the only one, Hawaii, that is not claimed by Alaska So North, East, West Are all Alaska What? Yeah Okay here's one Kathy Oliver from Ontario which is at least in the same hemisphere as most of Alaska she said my husband and I love your podcast and it keeps us entertained on drives to my various treatments over the last two years which leads me to a fact idea for you when you get a stem cell transplant you will stink of creamed corn for a couple of days wow okay so the stem cells are frozen using a substance called dimethyl sulfoxide dmso and it stops them from getting damaged but it has this peculiar odor that smells to most people like creamed corn dmso actually is very pungent but to such an extent that you can taste it by touching it so if i had a petri dish of dmso now and you put your finger in it you'd be able to taste it wow and that's because it directly triggers the nerves that normally react to taste that's insane yeah that's absolutely insane how many different foods does that work with this is not a food okay this is a chemical and i don't know of any food stuff i guess garlic could do it like that maybe because that seems to go through your skin but that's just i guess i mean there's a theory about that i remember you walking around with an onion in your sock to see if you could taste it that's qi research years and years ago yeah i've got two pictures for you off the back of this oh yeah so number one there should be a google for smells that should just be a google for spells how do you what do you what do you search as in what do you type you you're not typing you're not like we're typing with your nose so what do you put in that you're trying to find like i haven't worked out all the details is it like shazam instead of a phone you hold a giant nose that's the area where you are and it goes hmm baked crumpets that's exactly what it is very nice okay brilliant that's good right we've solved that one i feel like i came up with that idea really like we were all in the room three way split really great great work everyone see you for the first set of quarterly results okay so second idea off the back of that the the touch restaurant right you don't eat anything but you just go in and you put your fingers through holes in the table into various different foods that you can then taste yeah right okay but the only thing on the menu is dmso yeah so far so far maybe some garlic but you've got to wear it for a month but i think that would be good if we can find enough foods that you can taste through your fingertips yeah that'd be awesome i gotta say i'm in on the shazam nose andy i'll i'll let you develop this a bit more before committing i'm sharing it with you guys three ways no matter what including the debts okay i just want to say to everyone listening to this i'm happy to share my shazam nose with everyone who's listening to this we can all have 0.001 that's really generous but one of you listening will have to make it

17:03uh who's next do you want to do another one andy or dan do you want to jump in yeah i've got one here um so this is from edward malloy who says uh this is their favorite fact norwich is the only city in history to be excommunicated in 1274 after a riot in the cathedral pope gregory x excommunicated the entire city until they repented and repaired the damage done to church property clearly it has had a lasting effect as norwich is now the least religious city in england per the 2011 census is that right kind of right i looked into it it's almost right i looked i didn't fully um get an answer to the excommunication but norwich is very much not a religious city anymore it's interesting because there's a saying about norwich which is that it has a church for every week of the year and a pub for every day um so a lot of churches that must be norfolk right there's no way there's 352 churches in norwich maybe there is maybe maybe yeah yeah absolutely i take that back it's just a saying i don't think there's exactly 365 pubs either but it's the it is It's the LA of Norfolk, I would say, Norwich.

18:15Right. You know what I mean? Why do you say so? It's the mega city of Norfolk, isn't it? Of Norfolk? Oh, yeah. Well, there's Kings Lynn, of course. Oh, yeah, of course. No, no, fair. That's fair. There's Kings Lynn. Well, a census was done in 2021, and it showed that those who said that they don't have any religion, don't believe in any religion, was 53.5%. Wow, isn't it? So it's 76 ,973 people. And that's a jump from a decade ago when it was 42.5. And that's 56 ,000 people. So it's the second least religious city in the UK. Oh, so there's a town or city. Yeah. Isn't it somewhere called Satanford or something?

18:59That's the least religious. That's not a city though. No, it's not a city. It's a parish, isn't it? No. Do you know what I mean? I think it's got an amusingly apt name The least religious place in the UK But I can't remember what the name is I would have Without knowing that little clue I would have said most likely It would be somewhere like Brighton or Bristol Like somewhere where lots of cool young people live So yeah Sort of strongly secular Do you want to have another guess Andy? James has it right But do you want to have another guess? No I'm going to stick with Satanford I think Okay Brighton and Hove Wow Yeah Had 55.2 % of people declaring no religion gosh yeah alistair crowley uh had his funeral there in brighton yeah might have something to do with that was he from there no but i think he i think he passed away in hastings and i think his body ended up in brighton for some reason he was cremated there um so far is it no it's on the coast very windy is it don't want to release those ashes they're a couple making out here's one from me i already have a bone to pick with andrew hunter murray it's episode two and I already have a bone to pick because you sent us these facts.

20:09And listener, think back to audience facts one. When I said, here's one from Wayne Hoyt. Or is it Holt? Because it looks like it should be Holt. Well, this week I have one from Wayne Holt. H-O-L-T. I assume it's the same person and I assume one of them is a misspelling. I've got to track. Although I did have a eyesight check yesterday and I need reading glasses. So maybe you need to check. Can you check? Is that a Hoyt and a Holt? Yeah, it's a Hoyt and a Holt. Right. Yeah, definitely. Wayne does write in a few times. He writes in frequently. We have a few frequent flies in the fishing box. Does he change his surname every time he writes in?

20:50I've got to check. You've got to work on your pseudonyms, Wayne. What's the fact, James? Well, actually, the fact is to do with spelling. Oh, no. Oh, no. The fact is that in concert, the band Devo sometimes performed as their own opening act pretending to be a Christian soft rock band called Dove, the Band of Love, which is an anagram of Devo. Very nice. That's really good. I'm really sorry, James. They're both from Wayne Hoyt. Wayne Holt doesn't exist. That's not a real person. I've mistyped his name. There will be a Wayne Holt out there. If you're listening, Wayne. How's Wayne going to solve this situation?

21:34Wayne's only going to confuse matters If you happen to be listening to Fish And you're called Wayne Holt Write in, let us know you exist Simple Shall I do one? This is from Jessica Ringgaison From Texas And she writes that Napoleon and Lord Wellington Are kind of related And it's America's fault This is Admittedly quite tenuous but the story is is that napoleon had a younger brother called jerome who visited the u.s when he was in his late teens and he eloped with a lady called elizabeth patterson then napoleon wanted jerome to come back and marry a european princess because it was part of his plan to consolidate power while he was conquesting territories right so he brought brought jerome back elizabeth stays but then elizabeth hops on a boat and napoleon bans it from landing so she has no choice but to go uh and port in london so that's where she lands jerome remarries and basically they never see each other again wow now the tenuous link that we've been given here from jessica is that uh while she was in london she was living with a lady called marianne marianne was her sister-in-law marianne's husband dies and she remarries richard wellesley who's the elder brother of arthur wellesley who defeated napoleon at waterloo good lord yeah small world isn't it I'm starting to think it's a slightly bigger world Than I was imagining Okay, I mean, I was lost so long ago Yeah, it's just about clung on till the end I'll tell you what though I did recently visit the room where Wellington died Did you?

23:13Yeah I went down to Walmer Castle in Kent Oh, it's a good day out It's really good It's a proper castle It's 400 years old It's not one of these sort of plastic castles That you get these days You know, sort of like fake castles Which is just a stately home with a few turrets That's Disneyland you're talking about disneyland it's not disneyland it's no it's proper and they had um there's a thing called being the warden of the sink ports it looks like it's sank french or five but it's not it's warden of the sink ports that's how it does mean five right there were five parts it does mean five and it's spelt like the french or five but it is i swear to god they pronounce it warden of the sink ports okay i swear like i went in and i said to the lady nice to be visiting the sank ports she said sink ports anyway she probably said that a hundred times a day for 20 years um you don't want to be calling your pot sink anyway you're absolutely right it's a crazy choice but there is this honorary position called warden of the sink ports and uh wellington was that so was the queen mum uh the old the old queen mum and actually when i visited they had a queen mum lookalike there for the day did they yeah along with a kind of that kind of work must be drying up a bit well i made a sort of casual joke about jen and she looked so disapproving because you know the queen mum she liked to drink my god Andy this was a tough day for you first of all you walk in a mispronounced sink pot and then you make a perfectly harmless joke about gin so the queen mother look alike and then I find out Wellington's dead it was awful it was terrible but no it's a really evocative room because they've got this tiny bed it's this camp bed it's a military camp bed that is still there from the day he died and he must have died in about what 1850 but he He took his bed with him wherever he went.

24:51When he went up to London to be the Prime Minister, that military camp bed went with him. How interesting. He slept in that bed in Downing Street, and then when he became warden of the sink ports, he brought the bed back to Warmer Castle, and that's the bed where he died. I went to the place where Napoleon surrendered, which is in France somewhere. Is it Ile-de-Raye or somewhere? I can't remember. Or Ile-de-France, Ile-de-Raye, something like that. And I might be misremembering this, but I seem to remember that he had quite a non-ornate bed as well. Really? Yeah, I remember being there and thinking, oh, wow, for someone who's so important in history, what a shit bed.

25:29These military guys. Yeah, I think it's the military, like they're used to the campaigning lifestyle, you know. I saw the bed that Abraham Lincoln died in. Really? Yeah, it's when we were in DC, and we had a bit of time off, because he was shot in the Ford Theatre, but then he was taken to a house not too far away a little nap

25:51no they brought him to a house and so he died in a bed that was his legs were hanging off the edge basically he was super tall and the bed was quite small and um you can visit his bed you can visit this yeah okay okay hear me out okay bed company and we sell replica beds of like the great beds of history. Oh. And we're going to clean up on the finance bros who want to think that they're living like Napoleon or Wellington or Lincoln. I mean, those are three perfect examples of like beds of the greats, right? Yes. Like you too can conquer Europe with our 9 ,000 pound bed. Yeah. Yeah. And we'll just sell them a military camp bed.

26:30What do you think? I love it. Okay. All right. Well, if you're listening to this, you can have 0.001%. 1%. Okay, so I think that's enough facts for the day that we've been sent in, but we still have one more thing to do, and that is to name some custodians of the archive so anyone who is in our top tier on Patreon becomes a custodian of a fact from No Switch Things A Fish. It's very exciting. I'm a custodian myself, if you remember listening back to episode one of this little fish. But there will be more custodians Named today We will tell you your name Which you might already know And then we'll tell you the fact that you're the custodian of So Andrew Who is going to be our first Non-fish member who is a custodian Of a fish fact I just want to say that was incredibly slick James And the concept of the shout out is clearly very well embedded In your head First up today for a shout out is Rachel Knott And her fact is The first ever sandwich that we know about Contained wine Congratulations Rachel That is now your fact forever Bilal the Elder Is that who it was?

27:43Bilal, Bilal, yeah something It was more of a wrap It was more of a wrap It had like currants in or something It sounds delicious I think we said this at the time 11 years ago Anyway, yeah Rachel, that's your fact And we went into sandwiches in the Elder Sandwich who we just covered again a week or two ago in recording. Yes, we did, of course. We're on a big wheel, aren't we? We are. Dan, have you got one? Yeah, this is a fact that is now going to belong to Silas Gill, and that is in 2003, three people in Mexico died of acne. Oh. If you'd put a gun to my head and said, you've got a thousand guesses as to the Christian name of the second ever person to become a friend of the podcast, Silas would have not been one of my thousand guesses No It's just a terrific name Because I think, are these in order of the people who signed up?

28:36Yes they are So literally, I think Rachel and Silas had to have had their hand hovering over the Patreon button As the time struck midnight Yeah, and we should say Silas is an especially fish-friendly name Silas Marner By friend of the podcast Samuel Taylor Coleridge George Eliot, that's right

28:57okay so the third custodian this week this is a dan schreiber fact and the fact is that amongst the other scientists called einstein there are me einstein who came up with a formula for predicting the composition of a pork carcass and rosemary einstein who co-investigated the use of cannabis alcohol and tobacco on 300 young persons at her university could have done with an edit dan we're gonna need a bigger certificate but drum roll that fact now is under the custodianship of helen cosgrove davis very nice that was a great episode that was a fact i took from a mark abrams book of the ignoble prizes who james and i are going to be seeing tomorrow he's in london we're on a big wheel along with case mollica who did the paper about the first case of homosexual necrophilia in the mallard duck yep and who raised awareness for pubic lice because they might be going extinct it's gonna be a it's gonna be a spicy lunch tomorrow oh as long as he's not cooking i don't really mind um oh congratulations helen that's a that's the longest fact that's become custodian so far until the next dan fact um shall i round us off with one one more yeah Alright, this is a fact That is now under the stewardship of Darcy Mr Darcy We can only assume Fitzwilliam, if you're listening, congratulations And it's one of my facts Is that the first contact lenses cost as much As a car Yes, you went to the museum, didn't you, to see Yeah, the British Optical Association Museum Those were the days when we used to do proper research Episode 2 Quickly ended that Although, we're on a big wheel I went back there recently No For a party Yeah For a party Yeah They were finishing their refurbishment of the museum It's really good It's in the basement of the headquarters of the British Optical Association And they invited some celebs along And they all said no So they invited me Who were the other big celebs who were at the party?

31:01I can't name names I'm sorry It's very much an eyes wide shut situation Everyone was in masks Ironically considering they're optometrists Brilliant does everyone wear masks and eyes wide shut they do okay good in in certain scenes not the whole way through but it was that was very much a reach of a reference for me you know when you try and do do a reference to something you mean like when you say samuel taylor coleridge wrote silas marna silas marna yep exactly exactly because the thing is normally in a podcast i would say that and then i'd cut it out because i knew i got it wrong because i check it later but i've referenced it twice now so it's gonna have to stay in you've really shot yourself in the foot okay well they are the next four custodians of facts in the no such thing as a fish archive read the names again andy it's rachel not it's silas gill helen cosgrove davis and darcy for absolute legends the first four people to sign up for our friend of the podcast here on patreon and you too can get your name mentioned on this show if you sign up to that tier but for now it is time for us to say goodbye so bye Dan it's goodbye from me and it's goodbye from him bye you