No Such Thing As Captain Crossword

0:01Hi everyone, welcome to this week's episode of No Such Thing Is A Fish, where we were joined by the legend, the national treasure already, but definitely future national treasure, Tom Allen. That's right, Tom is absolutely fantastic As you're about to hear, he's a flanner, he's a man about town Among many other things You might not think it because he's so dapper But he's also a gardener You might not think it because he speaks so nicely But he's also a podcaster And he has a new podcast out It's called Pottering with Tom Allen And he gets a celebrity To his garden Be it Nish Kumar, be it James Acaster Be it Natalie Cassidy And they talk about gardening It's lovely, and I think they do some gardening as well actually He probably has some Natalie Cassidy begonias, some Nish Kumar asperdistras.

0:49Lovely. Can James name a third plant? Absolutely not. But if you want to hear Tom's podcast, then go to wherever you get your podcasts. It's called Pottering with Tom Allen, and it's absolutely fantastic. But Andy, we have some more news. That's right. The other thing to say is that in a week's time, we're going to be doing the first ever Clubfish quiz. Now this is for people who've joined Clubfish at the top tier, the friend of the podcast tier. We are going to be doing a quiz globally, I imagine. We suspect hundreds of thousands may be attending and you can be one of them. It's going to be on Zoom or equivalent streaming platform.

1:23We've all been writing our questions. We've been showing them to each other. We've been coming up with silly games. It's going to be so much fun. So mark your diaries or your calendars for Friday the 23rd of January, 7pm British time. But if you're around the world, we'd love to see you there as well It's going to be so much fun, we can't wait to do it But anyway, please enjoy this week's episode of No Such Things Are Fish With the incredible Tom Allen On with the podcast On with the show

2:03Hello and welcome to another episode of No Such Things Are Fish is a fish, a weekly podcast coming to you from the QI offices in Hoburn. My name is Dan Schreiber. I am sitting here with James Harkin, Andrew Hunter-Murray, and Tom Allen. And once again, we have gathered round the microphones with our four favorite facts from the last seven days. And in no particular order, here we go. Starting with fact number one, and that is Tom. In September 1945, a small booklet was discovered in the main offices of the Third Reich in Berlin, or Reich if you're from southern Germany in Berlin. It was a secret list of 2 ,820 British individuals who would be rounded up in the event of a successful invasion and Noel Cowart found his name on page 34.

2:48Okay, why were they going after him? Well firstly I think anybody in entertainment would be annoyed that they had to go so far to find their own name. There's only one thing worse than being on the Nazis' death list in the event of their invasion. And that's not being on the... I can't believe you're quoting Oscar Wilde in a Noel Coward section. Oh, yes. We'll get on to that. Well, they just kind of crossed over in a sort of Dalai Lama way. Yeah, yeah. Is that what we're saying? Very Dalai Lama way. Yeah. Have you ever looked at who died just before you were born? No, I never have. Oh, that's a fun idea.

3:28There was one of the popes, the one that was before John Paul II. Oh, yeah, yeah. So I think it was just before I was born, he died. So I'm not saying anything else, but I am Catholic. I think you could still do it as well. I can. Well, no, I've been excommunicated, as we've said. But what a comeback story that would be for you. I'm actually the Pope. I can change the rules if I'm the Pope. Yes, exactly. Let's get back to Noel Cowell. No, no, no, I like that. I was suddenly panicking about who died in 1983. Oh, yeah, lots. Mountbatten. No, that was late 70s. Yes, Mountbatten was... I went straight to aristocracy.

4:08We should quickly say who Noel Coward is. Noel Coward, very famous playwright. Yes, I didn't bother to say that. I just assumed all your listeners would know who he was. Yeah, but you know better than anyone because you're part of the Noel Coward Society. Well, I have been involved. But Noel Coward, yeah, usually seen as a playwright and a writer of songs, particularly Mad Dogs and Englishmen. He was also an actor, a musician, and an author as well. He wrote a novel. Well, he was wanted by the sinister Amstgruber V1G1. I don't know what that would be. Sounds like a music channel in German. Amstgruber V1G1.

4:47A department, it was a department that evaluated intelligence material. Well, he was, it turned out, a British spy. And his cover had apparently been blown. And if the war had gone differently, well, the man known the world over for the song Don't Let's Be Beastly to the Germans could have ended his days in front of a firing squad. So, yeah. And when the list was discovered, amongst other people who the Nazis didn't like for various reasons, and the author Rebecca West sent him a telegram to say, My dear, the people you were to be seen dead with. That's very good. This song, interestingly, got him in a bit of trouble back home, didn't it?

5:26What was it called again? It was called... Don't Let's Be Beastly to the Germans Yeah, so it came out during World War II It was a satire It was banned by the BBC Exactly, because the satire didn't quite cross as well as he hoped it would They thought that he was actually genuinely saying that I was excited about it Because I think it's the only thing that Noel Coward has in common with The Prodigy And their song Smack My Bitch Up Which was also banned by the BBC Can you imagine him reading Smack My Bitch Up, Noel Coward in his accent. I think he'd have gussied up the lyrics a bit. He'd have made them cleverer.

6:02But I always wondered how he got away with being a spy because he was so flamboyant, right? It seems like as a spy, you have to hide away a little bit. Well, Radio 4 did a dramatized version of what he was like. I think a lot of it as well was propaganda work in North America, obviously the US, I think to garner support for getting on board with the war effort, which I know wasn't the case at the beginning. So I think he was seen as a sort of, what would be a special envoy, I suppose, as much as anything. I don't think he was going behind enemy lines. No, but I didn't. He'd been recruited even before the war started.

6:37I think there was someone called Sir Robin Vansittart who was running. Sounds German, actually. Yes, but he was at the Foreign Office and he was recruiting various people to go about their business in Europe, quite successful people, and then report back on the national mood, what people were saying, just kind of sort of soft intelligence, as it were. Not, you know, you need to observe this tank column and where it's going, this ball bearings factory. It was just like what you're hearing in social conversations. And I think Coward was sacked partly because he was too public in his maneuverings and also because everyone looked at him, and this is after the war started, and they just thought, well, you're just going to a load of parties in Manhattan and you're really letting the side down.

7:17And actually, he was doing the war work. He was really publicly shamed about it, I think. I think the Daily Mail covered about it and said like, I said, outrage going over there, spending all this money, public money, going to parties. The Daily Mail who supported the Nazis just before the war. Well, yeah, I mean, yeah. But I should check, I should check it was the Daily Mail that it's out there. Well, he used to get in trouble with the Daily Express. Yeah. And actually, this is another war connection. So he wrote the screenplay and starred in a movie called In Which We Serve, which was a really good movie.

7:51It often got used to get their morale up and show how the war was going. And he kind of based the character on your past life, Mountbatten. Yeah. So he consulted with him and that was largely part of it. Can we say who Mountbatten was again? Sorry. Yeah. He was, he was... Earl? Earl Mountbatten, I think. Earl Mountbatten. Lord Mountbatten, wasn't he? Oh, yeah. Yeah. And he was Prince Philip's uncle by loose connection. I haven't researched it. But by being the brother of his mother or...? Yeah, so it's kind of like loosely uncle-y to him. Is it like one of those uncles who's like just friends with your parents?

8:29I have a feeling it was. Yeah, exactly. And you're shocked at some point to find out that wasn't your uncle. I remember this when I was five. I found out Uncle Joe wasn't my uncle. And I was a bit outraged. Oh, Uncle Joe. Yeah. I want to see a cup of coffee. Yeah, so anyway, Mount Batten was part of this thing with Noel Coward. and the daily express started ridiculing the production saying that how could you have no coward play a high-ranking general in the army uh he's a captain i think a captain right he in the navy yeah yeah he didn't he didn't come across apart from that don't carry on i feel like i'm getting quite lost sorry no it's unfair of me to be tripping well i mean i'm i'm pretty sure he's a captain i haven't watched it i haven't seen the movie and you're uh you're part of the system you're being absolutely pancaked between tom's love of no coward and my love of military rank sorry just bring a bit of gulf into it you're absolutely yeah he seems quite out of time to me no coward i know his name and i know he's part of the players but i do you mentioned oscar wilde before i do place him as part of that era but he was in things like the italian job you know he was he was you know in the 60s he that was his i think his last acting role Right Who's born in 1899 And he served briefly in the First World War Which I didn't know Because again I think of him as like He's wearing his pyjamas Maybe a dressing gown He's smoking a pipe through a long holder He's writing brilliant dialogue He's writing plays like Blind Spirit and Hayfever You know Yeah Wit But he served in this company called the The Artist's Rifles Which was Just sounds awful doesn't it I think it was Yeah I think it was a place where maybe, I don't want to be unkind, maybe slightly less useful fighters were placed.

10:18And I think he wasn't ever put in any sort of position where he'd have to do anything too practical. Well, he got himself out of it quite fast. And this was only, I mean, he was born in 1899. So I think he was signed up aged 18 or maybe conscripted. I'm not sure. He was discharged for neuroasthenia, which was very much a catch-all you've got nerves. Sort of tying a piece of string around his finger. Why? I guess a sort of... Stress, anxiety. Stressful situation, definitely. There'd be a TikTok about it now. But I think part of the reason he got so involved in World War II as a spy or whatever is because he was a bit embarrassed by the fact that he'd gone into World War I quite young and then had to leave quite quickly.

10:56Yeah. And his company suffered lots of casualties in the last two months of the war. I mean, hundreds, you know. So I think, and that was after he'd been invalided out, as it were. So, yeah. Yeah. I love the main thing about him outside of his plays and his acting and his songs is the gossip he was mr. anecdote basically if he's like the giles brandreth of his day um i'm sure giles will be i was a giles brandreth will absolutely love that oh my goodness what a christmas present for giles we'll clip this out and send it to him yes um and so there's there's one great war anecdote from him which is he said he never forgot the sight of coco chanel entering a paris air raid shelter followed by a maid who carried a gas mask on a velvet cushion Wonderful stories It was a time when people did Well I know there was strata of class But I think if you did transcend those strata You would just end up being at parties with these people Yeah I don't know maybe it would be the same now Because his mother I think Had some vague sort of connection to the aristocracy Oh is that really?

11:59Maybe like an uncle or something Yeah she like Field Marshal Haig was a distant cousin of her and her sister married the nephew of Sir Henry Ponsonby, who was private secretary to Queen Victoria. So they were kind of like close to high society, but not quite in there until he became very famous and really hobnobbed with the... Yeah, because I thought they were kind of like pretty lower middle class, grew up in southwest London and very suburban, reasonably poor. But his mum was a real stage mum. Yeah, so she was the Mrs. Worthington, I think. She was the real Mrs. Worthington. She pushed it. Mrs.

12:36Worthington. Oh, is a song, Don't Put Your Daughter On Stage, Mrs. Worthington. It's kind of a song told from the position of a producer, I think, in an audition, essentially kind of saying to this very pushy stage mum, she's talentless, please stop putting your daughter on stage. But Noel Coward's career happened partly because of a medium spiritual guidance. So his mum went to a show at the Coliseum, an American celebrity medium, Anna Eva Faye, And his mum asked Should Noel, young Noel here Go back to school Or should he stay as a child actor And from beneath this big sheet That she was covered in The medium, Anna Faye, said Keep acting I didn't know that I suspect they probably would have kept him acting Even if the medium had said Go back to school I suspect the ambition was strong I haven't seen Blind Spirit But I think it's very satirical about the spiritualism movement.

13:32Is that right? Yeah. Is that sort of parodying? It was a big drive towards it. It was in the 20s and 30s. Where people would have... Yeah, I guess, I mean, that probably makes sense, doesn't it? But my dad even remembers his grandmother having her friends around for like a seance. Really? Which feels like they'd go into the back room or something. Yeah. And all these women would come in and try and contact the dead. Yeah. But it was kind of seen as this thing that people do quite socially. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was like a book club of its day. The book club of its day, exactly. Yeah, exactly.

14:07His writing was extraordinary, the speed at which he wrote, because there are so many Noel Coward plays. There was a story that in 1935, in the summer of that year alone, he wrote nine plays. That's how quick. He knocked out a song called I'll See You Again, which Frank Sinatra recorded while he was stuck in a taxi in a traffic jam. It's similar to, I think, Elton John in the way that he apparently writes his songs in five minutes. Tantrums and tiaras. It's something about that creativity. It's something quite useful about actually not allowing lots of time. Yes, and he also says the songs slightly come to him.

14:44He doesn't claim to have written them. Is that Elton John now? Yeah, Elton John will say that the songs sort of arrive to him. After the war, just to go back to his post-war life, he spent a lot of time with the Navy. I bet he did During the war as well He frequently would just hitch a lift On Royal Navy ships Really? Yeah How did he get on that? How did he get off? He spent a lot of his life as a tax exile Because he was so financially successful In the first half of his life That a lot of his later life Was just moving around to different Low tax jurisdictions And he once joined a ship in Bermuda Called HM Dragon Or HMS Dragon maybe And the captain said What the hell are you doing on board this ship?

15:33And Coward replied that he was Quotes Exhausted, overworked And on the verge of a nervous breakdown And had joined the ship In order to be nursed back to health and strength And waited on hand and foot And the captain not only gave him a lift to Trinidad He gave him loads more lifts later on They became friends And it was just like I suppose as well as a naval captain You might be quite pleased That if somebody so witty and famous was suddenly on board. Oh, yeah, great. That's the entertainment. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, better than the answer or whatever it's called. You say he was rich. He was so rich.

16:04He was making 50 ,000 pounds a year, the equivalent of which today that would be 15 million per year that he was making. But in the late 20s. In the late 20s. And he was really burning through it, though. So he had a lot of financial problems, hence moving to tax havens like Jamaica, where he moved right next door to Ian Fleming. Oh, yes. Did he? Yeah. The spy. Yeah, and there are stories that he turned down the role of Dr. No That that was actually offered to him for the first Bond It was just called Doctor before they offered it to him Dr. No, the coward It's the original character

16:45Stop the podcast Stop the podcast Hi everyone, I'd like to let you know that this week we're sponsored by Frive Yes, Frive is here to help busy people with meals that are healthy for those who want to have great food coming into their homes, but they don't necessarily have the time to be spending it in the kitchen to cook what they need every day. I'm a busy guy, Dan. You are. I've got so much to do in 2026. I've got to get my golf handicap down. Do you know how long it takes to play a round of golf? I do only because you keep telling us that you're on the golf course and you can't do other things.

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18:30okay it is time for fact number two and that is my fact my fact this week is that there is a marvel superhero called the gardener whose superpower is that he is insanely good at gardening So is it that he can grow things very, very fast? No, it's more that he is obsessed with gardening. And he is almost an immortal. Gardening is supposed to be good for you if you're getting older. Yeah. Like it helps you live longer, doesn't it? Exactly. Well, yeah. And potentially forever. I don't know if it's forever. You give enough time to it. So he's part of this group called the Elders of the Universe. And basically - Is there another one who's really good at bowls?

19:14There's another one who's just really good at being racist Absolutely ruins Christmas Captain Crossword, come and say Yeah, okay Each of them were the last survivors of their own race And these were races that evolved just after the Big Bang And the idea is that they have extended lifespans But not because they're immortal But because of a single-minded obsession with a hobby That's cool I back that There you go So his hobby was gardening and horticulture And the idea is that he would go from planet to planet And he would spend sort of up to a year Sort of terraforming it Making it green again That's nice Yeah It might come into his own actually In an environmentally conscious age There you go Well he should be a bigger character Because actually in the original I think I should play him In the original stories He and the other elders all had the infinity gems which is what Thanos collects as part of the main Avengers storyline in order to wipe out all of...

20:17Oh, so he's one of the original holders of one of these? Yeah. And for some reason, when it came to the movie adaption, the Gardner didn't quite get... Prequel. That's what I'm thinking. All right. Tom Holland, it's the Gardner. Yeah? Yeah, I'd love that. Yeah. I've seen him with like a big wide-brimmed hat. You know, the sort of thing that old ladies used to wear. Oh, yes. Yeah. Gloves on. Obviously, floral gloves and one of those kneeling pads. I've got one. They are very useful. Yeah, yeah. The best ones are when you've got a handle at the side to push yourself up. Oh, I've heard of one of those.

20:46It's like an upside down piano stool, really. It's just nice. That's really helpful. And then you've got to just have a couple of beats to be like, oof, with my knees. Yeah, absolutely. Okay, we're talking to a seasoned gardener here, I'm guessing. Well, it's salty maybe, but I don't know about seasoned. You do have a garden, though, that you love to tend to. I've gotten into gardening. I like to use the past tense of got. And I've gotten into gardening in the last sort of four years since having my own place For a long time I lived with my parents and I didn't have my own space then And so now I do and it's quite nice just to, well, just mess around really I'm a proud novice with it but I find it very interesting So on famous gardeners, who's the most famous gardener in the UK?

21:29Alan Titchmarsh Correct What has Alan Titchmarsh got in common with Elvis Presley? Ooh, okay Both from Memphis, that's obvious. Both sex gods. Okay, I'll give you that. It's slightly related to that. Poets? He writes poetry, Titchmarsh. It's not that. Both been to jail. Well, Elvis had a song about it. Titchmarsh was done up for years, wasn't he? For years, yeah. That's why he has all those tattoos. Covers them up for the show, of course.

22:05One for every man he killed in prison It's how he got into gardening Was burying the bodies The answer is That their lower halves Have been censored on television Really? So Elvis obviously when he became big They would only show him from the waist up So that people didn't get too excited But Alan Tickmarsh has been They only show him from the waist down Yeah

22:34They have censored his trousers Because he wears jeans And in North Korea They don't like jeans being shown Because it's a symbol of America So they show his programs But they blur out his trousers Wow But that means he's free to broadcast Winnie the Pooh style Yeah When he gets his shows For the North Korean networks He's there He'd have to paint his legs blue I've seen Titchmarsh do karaoke Have you? In person? In person Wow I don't mean to clang What did he sing? Something Green Green Grass? It was Oh what's the one I Killed a Man in Reno

23:18Gangster's Paradise Yeah I don't remember the song But it was Yeah Wow that's very cool Well there's other reasons that Alan Titchmarch is a sex god, by the way, which is that as well as writing over something like 70 gardening books, he's written a series of novels. Yes. They are a race scene. In fact, I don't know if you remember, but we had Lou Sanders read Morrissey's contribution to the world of sex scenes. Tom, do you mind? I've got a little extract here. Here we go. I think I have met Alan a few times, and he's always very charming, as you'd imagine. And he did say to me Because I was talking to him about audiobooks And he did say he was very aware of his more intimate scenes When he had to sit in a booth And read them out to an engineer So as an example of what he might have been reading There is a little bit here She planted moist hot kisses all over his body Beads of sweat began to appear on Guy's forehead as he became more entangled in the lissom limbs of this human boa constrictor.

24:32For fully 15 minutes, their mutual passion heightened with groans, sighs, and liquid noises. Oh, my God. Wow. Wow, I get it now. Can I just say, when you're describing limbs, why go for the one animal that doesn't have any limbs? Oh, lissom. Lissom limb. I don't know what lissom means. I've never heard that word before. Lissom is kind of young and firm and strong, isn't it? Is it? Is it? Yeah, yeah. I love that Titchmosh is too highbrow for us. We don't know the vocabulary. I know. I bet he'll be like that. He's a very educated man. I like the way it begins with, she planted kisses. Like, because obviously he's a gardener.

25:13Absolutely. Oh, every choice is wonderful. So he was runner-up in the 1998 Literary Review Bad Sex Awards. And you're right. He felt very uncomfortable reading them He said particularly With a sheet of glass between you and a very large bearded man Twiddling knobs As you say the words He found it uncomfortable I think it's a bit unfair that bad sex thing Because they go for celebs don't they There must be loads of not famous people Who are writing worse sex scenes To be fair the winner that year was Sebastian Falks I was going to say Birdsong Has got lots of that Birdsong's got some very fruity stuff in it Very fruity I remember reading that when I was about 17 and thinking, oh gosh, that seems like a lot of effort.

25:58Can I ask you about a couple of things you might or might not use in your garden, Tom? Oh, yeah, absolutely. Should we give it a go? Right. Do you ever use worm poo tea bags? No, I think I have heard of this sort of thing. Worms are very important, aren't they? Worms are vital. And obviously they eat soil. They poo it out. They help circulate things. They aerate. They do all sorts of stuff. You can get tea bags with worm castings Where you literally make a cup of tea out of it For your plant And it really helps your plant Lion urine That's the thing isn't it Because people say to keep away foxes Or other animals if you want them out of your garden You need an apex predator People say just go and wee in the garden No they need men to wee in the garden It's male urine they respond to And apparently that won't do it Apparently you need to go to the zoo and ask And get a lion to wee into a cup Or you could get the piss off plant.

26:53Have you heard of that? What's that? Piss off plant is a plant that's native to southern and eastern Africa. And it is a plant that supposedly repels dogs and cats from coming near it because of the aroma that it emits. So if you had that in your garden, most likely they would smell it and never come back again. Oh, I'll get one of those. That's pretty good. That's a great idea. Do you have an ornamental hermit in your garden? No, I don't have anything like that. That was like a sort of little house, wasn't it? Well, back in the 18th century, this was a real life human that you would bring into your garden.

27:26Yeah, they would dress like a druid and they would just be sat and they would have a contract to live there and negotiations, ferocious negotiations every autumn. Yes. Well, look, I'm not going to do this for another year unless you revise my terms. Oh yeah, it's been in 1797 there was a thing written up that said the hermit is never to leave the place or hold Conversation with anyone for seven years during which he is neither to wash himself or cleanse himself in any way whatsoever Yeah, my agents got a problem with his claws I'm afraid A bit further down the garden in another little folly Do we know why people did that?

28:05Well, I think it I think it's a kind of it would be like landed gentry would have this person you would know had it in your garden in Hackney. I think, no, exactly. I think what it is, is the hermit is a symbol of a wild and ancient way of living. And it's kind of, they are reflecting on history and on humanity and on progress and the countryside and, you know, the wilderness. And I think that's why it's cool to have a hermit because they kind of hark back to that. Yeah. Okay. There's always been that kind of sentimentality, isn't there, around that kind of pastoral idol. There was one place which had a hermit which turned out to be a mechanical hermit.

28:40genuinely i think it was an 18th century aristocrat quite clearly it was like a very very very crude model robo hermit that they had in there with their thing here's another famous gardener so this is a king called era imiti who was in ancient sumer and what would happen in ancient sumer is you would get people who would tell the future and if they saw a bad omen like maybe the king's going to die you would put someone else on the throne for 100 days and then you take over again so this guy uh era amiti decided to put his gardener on the throne for 100 days because there'd been a bad omen and then he died after eating some hot porridge and his gardener then reigned ancient sumer for 24 years wow wow just because he didn't blow on it yeah i guess so You've got a lovely porridge That's incredible I know I guess wasn't a successor in place Well he's the king now So what are you going to do?