No Such Thing As Doing A Solzhenitsyn

25:37James Harkin:exactly so it's right it's a theory it's our fault they have found the eyes but they've never seen the yeah exactly because you know attenborough has no time to go film lake malawi here's another one the uh sleeper cichlid which you get in lake malawi it does a thing called thanatosis and thanatosis is where you pretend to be dead oh yeah but they do it in a really awesome way they lie down on the bottom of the sea and they can change the color to like a blotchy very sick looking fish and so the other fish go past and go oh god he looks a bit sick like he obviously was feeling terrible before he died and then they go close to him and then it goes not dead after all and then probably bites the right i'll tell you i wasn't afraid of lake malawi But this episode Why do I swim in there There's also the Malawi squeaker That I found Which is a type of upside down catfish Another question What's an upside down Upside down catfish They swim upside down So that their mouths are at the top of the water And they can eat bugs that are on the surface I thought upside down catfish Is they actually look better Than their face

26:57And it's called the Malawi squeaker Because when you take it out of the water It goes squeak, squeak, squeak

27:03James Harkin:That's amazing So I've read that it's very clear in Lake Malawi So you've swam in it Have you seen giant fish? No, no, no You swim like when you go to the ocean You only swim in the shallow area You don't go away out there So I've swam in it But I've never been more than 50 meters out Because it's so big. Does it feel like you're in the sea? It feels like you're in the ocean, but it's not salty. Yeah. Interesting. I read that it gets waves up to six meters high. Yeah, it gets waves. Okay. But that's huge. No, it gets... Exactly what I mean. That's stormy. It felt like... If you knocked me out, I would think I'm at the ocean.

27:41Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, you have special things. It's something called the Moera winds that come every year in November, December, and January. They're made... Basically, fishermen can't go out that time either. so it's lots of people go fishing there but you can't go in those times but like at the start of november or the end of january you kind of can do a little bit but it's a bit dangerous but if you go out fishing them no one else is doing it so you can sell your fish for way more

28:10James Harkin:because those were the other names that it was given um david livingston who was one of the first people to describe it um for the west only uh he called it the lake of storms and the lake of stars because you would see all the light of the fishermen and we have an annual festival called lake of stars ah where all these musicians come and people smoke weed and it this is a fact malawi has the best weed in africa really malawi gold it's called everyone goes on about malawi has no minerals but we always say we've got malawi gold that's the intro we should say that you uh you grew up in malawi no i was a refugee so my blood is malawian but my dad had to flee malawi because of our dictator but when i was an adolescent and the dictator was gone eventually i see back to malawi so you've got family there still yes amazing right parents are there and my one brother um delisa you may not know one of the things i do in this podcast is i find any link i can to the first or second world wars no matter of what we're talking about.

29:13Okay. So there were some Malawi soldiers sent? Well, first naval engagement of the First World War, guys. Yeah. Lake Malawi. No. Really? Why? Wow. So exciting. There were at the time roughly two Western boats on Lake Malawi. Unfortunately, one was English and one was German. Right? So it was a colonial time. So there were... And the borders of Lake Malawi, it's a few different countries around it. aren't they? So basically a British steamer named HMS Gwendolyn which was named after the daughter of the Marquess of Salisbury. Lovely name for a ship. Very nice. It had one gun on it, I think. And there was a German steamer which the captains were friends.

29:57They were drinking buddies. But the English found out the war was happening slightly before the Germans. So the English just sailed up, opened fire, one shot. The German captain yells, Rhodes, are you drunk? At his friend who's just over fire on him. One shot battle, Rhodes then just confiscates the gun, Rhodes the English captain confiscates the German gun, and no more is said about it. And that was the first naval battle of the First World War. Wow. I know. No more was said about it. You've shot. This is the first time anyone else is hearing about it on this podcast.

30:27James Harkin:That's like finding out if you were just sitting in a cafe with your friend and he happened to be German and you read the news before, but you just punch him in the head. Battle over. that's amazing so what's the the name that keeps coming up as names of uh towns and so on in malawi is david livingston yes who obviously he was the missionary yeah and it sounds like a lot of place names that were colonially named have been changed but the livingston ones seem to remain because livingston is remembered positively yeah right so he came he brought bibles and stuff he was How did he bring them in? But honestly, the tales of him is education and medicine.

31:14So there was not a hurry to rename his stuff. But like the road stuff where it's associated with us being oppressed. That's all been renamed. So a lot of the Livingston names. Because he's fondly remembered.

31:30James Harkin:Blantyre, which is known as the New York of Malawi. that's where Livingston was born in Scotland. Yes, and there's a Blantar in Scotland. Yes, exactly. Are they twinned? They're not really. I mean, on their Wikipedia, which is where I had a brief look, it said that it's twinned with many places, but not with that town. How interesting. But there is a statue in Blantar in Scotland of Livingston fending off a lion attack. And it's designed by Ray Harryhausen. No, the monster guy. Yeah. Wow. So we should say he designed the special effects for all the amazing old films like, what was it? Jason and the Archonauts.

32:08Jason and the Archonauts. The Titans.

32:10James Harkin:Yeah, those were fantastic. Apparently he was married to a descendant of Livingston. Wow. Yeah. And so he did the statue. That's amazing. There's also Livingstonia in Malawi. He's got quite a few places that are named after him. Speaking of old sci-fi films, I was reading about someone called The Terminator, who is responsible for the annulment of 3 ,500 marriages in Malawi. Oh, yeah. So this apparently is someone called Teresa Kachendamaru. Oh, this is the child marriage. Yeah. No, no, she's actually absolutely amazing. Isn't that an amazing story? Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, so essentially there's a practice of marrying very underage people.

32:50And so she campaigned against it her whole life and annulled them and rescued these women. It was amazing. And then educated people in the area about what to do in future and stuff like that. But yeah, known as the Terminator because she terminated so many of these marriages. That's great. And whenever she terminated a marriage, she'd be like, I'll be back.

33:15James Harkin:Okay, it is time for fact number three. And that is my fact. My fact this week is that the first ever British space suit designed included a cape and a walking stick. A cape? Yes. Wow. This was for floating in space. This, yes. How else are you going to fly in space? Yeah, it's fantastic. It's an extraordinary design that was showcased initially in the 40s in 1949. There's a replica that you can go and visit. I've got a picture here. Deliso, do you want to sort of describe for the listener what it looks like? It looks like a Cylon from Battlestar Galactica. It's absolutely glorious. And for younger listeners, perhaps I think it looks like Space Shredder From the Ninja Turtles Space Shredder But for listeners even younger than that, maybe Okay, the helmet looks like a knight's helmet And then the actual baggy suit It's a cross between a space suit and a washing machine Yeah, yes And there's a glorious silver cape over the shoulder It's like a, it's a sort of steampunky But also the walking stick is very short Yes, but because it's a practical walking stick.

34:26James Harkin:Now, here's the extraordinary thing. If you saw a picture of this, you would think, my God, this looks so ridiculous. What were they doing? Everything that was designed for this suit was incredibly practical. So to give the background of it very quickly, this was designed by a group called the British Interplanetary Society, the BIS. It was founded in 1933 by Philip Cleeter in Liverpool. And it is still to this day the oldest existing organization devoted to the promotion of space flight. So there's been older ones, but they're no longer around. So this is the longest lasting. But it's an amazing sounding, the British Interplanetary Society.

35:00It sounds insane because we're not used to Britain being a major part of the space race, as indeed it turns out we weren't. We may yet. We may yet. But this space suit was really fabulous. So this suit has an airlock inside the chest. So you can pick up a moon rock or whatever it might be, pop it into the airlock. Then inside your suit, kind of take an arm out of the space suit. reach in and open the airlock once it's pressurized correctly. So then you've got it, for whatever reason, inside your suit. It's just such a cool idea. It sounds a bit awkward. It was a bit awkward, probably. That did not make it to the spacesuit design.

35:37But I think some of these elements were useful. And they were established way before most other space exploration outfits. They were thinking about how we do this in a practical way.

35:46James Harkin:Well, that's what's so exciting about this. every single part of this suit dealt with what was the hypothetical situation of what you would have on the moon on the moon yeah so it was designed by two guys harry ross and ralph smith and for example the moon has very different temperatures when it's dark and when it's light so either you design a day and night suit that you can change into oh lovely which is so british well you need something for cocktail hour exactly yeah yeah but what this suit is what they went for was the all-in-one. So the cape is not some, you know, silly British... Superhero.

36:20James Harkin:Yeah. What that was is to help with the temperature regulation. I actually think England just needs this to start being reissued because on any particular day, we have all the weather. It needs to make a comeback. That's a great idea. Yes. Yeah, exactly. So Delisa, you'll see here there's this sort of aerial that's up here. That's for radio. For radio. So that's how you could radio back to the ship when you're on the moon. Stunning. It's got like a 1.5 kilometer, I think, distance. It's brilliant. They were solving all sorts of... So they designed a lunar spaceship as well in 1938, and they proposed a crew of three, a multi-stage rocket, like lots of things that ended up happening in 1969.

37:02I think it's like a big what if, isn't it? Basically what happened is they were going to start doing experiments of rockets, but there was a thing called the Explosives Act of 1875 that meant that private individuals were not allowed to test rocket fuel. And because that was in, they weren't allowed to do their experiments. But if the government had said, okay, you can do it, there's every reason to suggest that we could have gotten into space before anyone. Well, I mean, at least they had practical plans. Zambia, which is a country next to Malawi, they had a misguided attempt to join the space race.

37:39Very bonkers guy. I'd have to find his name. But he started training astronauts by putting them in barrels and rolling them to get them used to being weightless. And it was a really hilarious event where he believed that Zambia could beat America and Russia.

37:59James Harkin:So we're talking 50s, 60s. That this would have happened. Wow. Yeah. And I should just quickly explain that the walking stick, when I said it was practical, is because if you were walking up mountainous bits of the moon, if you were needing to sit down, the suit's not very practical for it. So that is one of those... Or shooting stage. Yeah, a little seat. Arthur C. Clarke was a member of this society. Yes. You know why we have capes in comic books, like superheroes? No. Because you don't need a cape to fly, do you? It doesn't make sense at all. You need wings. Yes. Basically, the reason is a comic book is just a drawing, and you need to show movements of someone flying through the air.

38:40And what's the best way of doing that? Having something flapping? Something that flaps. That makes sense. Brilliant. It's great. The first real spacesuits that were actually used were the Soviet ones, I think. So CH-1 or CH-1, I suppose it would be. So this was used in the 1930s and it was because they were going to very, very high altitude. So they weren't going into space per se, but they were getting balloons really really high and this suit made by a guy called Chertovsky it had no hinges in the elbows or the knees and it was basically just it was almost a barrel really it was a barrel with a helmet on and you would just sort of open a door and walk inside it and you wouldn't be able to really move or do anything stole the idea from Zambia and then the first actual spacesuit so the ones that the Soviets used in space so what Gagarin might have used for instance actually this was a bit before him because it was a design it was known as the scafander kosmicesky which meant a diving suit for space and again you would just it was mostly to protect the space person it wasn't really that useful for doing stuff but one of the groups of people who were really against the spacesuit were the people who designed the spacecraft because they said that our spacecraft is so good that actually you don't need a space suit.

40:00Garen will be absolutely fine. Risky, isn't it? And for anybody who wants to find out more about what I mentioned, it was 1964. Edward Makukan Kolosa was the one who formed the Zambian space program and would train astronauts by rolling them. Okay. Gosh. Was it the Faroe Islands had a space? I think it might still have a space agency, but they expressly say, we are not trying to get into space. We're gonna maybe like try and Like talk to some satellites Or we're gonna Like they expressly say we are not trying to get to the moon We're not trying to get to Mars But it's useful to have this funding Because you never know what technology is gonna come from it And stuff like that The Smithsonian You know they're Washington based Well they're all over America They've got a lot of incredible collections Huge space museum And in Maryland they have a facility which contains a spacesuit morgue There are a hundred Failed designs Successful ones actually But just the spacesuits are not being used anymore And they have, I've read a write-up of it Which sounds so creepy It's got 150 spacesuits in there They're all lying on bunks Face up They all contain soft dummies Oh, really?

41:17And I read about This should be the setting of some horror It's fantastic Absolutely And there's a woman who looks after them or she did certainly 10 years ago. She was called Amanda Young and says she plays mummy to them. And she says, you know, there's Neil and there's John. Like last week we had Nina Conti on the show. I don't know if you know Nina. But she told us about, or actually Dan told us, but she knew about this place where they had all their old ventriloquist dummies. Like someone has died. That's more creepy. Yeah, but I think there's definitely something where you go and visit all these different really, really creepy places.

41:52There's got to be a show for that, isn't there? Yes, you're right. They should. We're pitching it right now. Deliso Chaponda's creepy-ass places. Good. Sounds good. Okay, good. 20%. There are still developments happening in spacesuit world. Oh, yeah. So right now, something is being worked on, which is very sci-fi based. It's to solve the problem that at the moment, if you do a spacewalk, you wear what's called a maximum absorbency garment. which is a fancy word of saying a nappy. It can take two litres of urine which is a lot. How much salt's in its and can it take? It can take 12 copies of the Gulag Archipelago.

42:35But it's really uncomfortable to wear one of those especially if you're out there all day working on something on the outside of a space ship. So it can give you a rash, it can leak. Astronauts say that at a certain point they can no longer tell if it's urine or sweat in their suits. It's really unpleasant. It's so uncomfortable being out there. It's an incredibly harsh environment It's not as glamorous as you think, is it? It's not as glamorous as you think And you wee loads in space Do you? Well, the gravity difference means that The fluid moves differently in your body And it's physically very demanding And you're sweating And we...

43:07It's awful Okay Wait, though They're working on a suit now Which is going to be drinkable water from urine In practically real time Oh, okay I would argue still not that glamorous Your brain has to go around that hurdle Oh yeah it does But this is basically like they have in Dune You know in Dune they have a still suit And it keeps Sorry good point It's like in Battlestar Galactica The idea is If you make a suit Which takes every bit of water From your sweat, urine, everything And instantly Turns into something that you drink So you can walk and be in the desert for a very long time or in space.

43:50And this is, they've now got it so that half a liter of urine can become water in as little as five minutes. Do they add some, I would put a little bit of cordial in there at least. I think like, just to take the edge off. And then you're like, that's white, yellow.

44:08I'm excited.

44:09James Harkin:Yes, that sounds very good. Well, that was one of the, just to bring it back to this original suit again. It did everything. It had extra mittens that you would put on. They thought of everything. The one thing they did not think of was to add anything that dealt with feces or urine. And so there was absolutely nothing as part of the disdesign. I think in Britain, we don't need to worry about those kind of things. Yes, the Dune novels are very silent on what happens to the feces in your still suit. Are they? Well, I mean, I'm sure someone will email podcast.qr.com to correct me. No one needs that chapter.

44:42No one was reading and was like, that's what's missing. I'm just amazed they did any editing at all when I look at those bugs. The other thing about spacesuits is they often don't fit, right? Because they have to make them and they don't necessarily, or certainly in the olden days, they didn't make them for each person because you didn't know who was going to do the trip. So, you know, Neil Armstrong's spacesuit was made for someone Neil Armstrong-ish. This is why Vin Diesel never became a successful astronaut. Sure. He wanted to be one. Did he? Oh, no, I'm just saying. Oh, this is a joke. I thought this was like A little thing we didn't know.

45:18Is he particularly differently shaped? He must be quite muscly, mustn't he? Is he? Yeah, I'm thinking of the rock. I meant to say the rock. The rock would work. Vin Diesel's big as well.

45:27James Harkin:No, I'll jump in. He's a muscular type. He's no the rock, though, is he? No, he's no Dwayne Johnson. The space rock.

45:37But this is really interesting, a thing called the jaggedness principle. And basically, if you take, like, okay, I've got to work out how big my head is, right? okay it's this many inches and my nose is this long and my shoulders are this big and my little fingers this big and my big toes this big when you put all those different things together no one is average oh because everyone's unique okay i've got you yeah exactly and so they did a thing in the 1940s where they were looking at the cockpits of pilots and they took 10 body measurements from a population of 4 000 pilots and found that zero of them were in the average range for absolutely everything and so some of them would have been like oh this this seat's a little bit tight on my bum and then some of them were like oh this cockpit's a little bit low i can't really fit my thing in yeah and that's something you have to deal with all the time yeah that's interesting roald dahl writes about being a pilot of very elderly maybe biplanes i think it was gloucester the gladiator he was flying, and he was six foot four.

46:40And you were meant to be about five foot ten to fly these things. And he was just like an accordion folded up in the cockpit. He just writes about being so uncomfortable.

46:48James Harkin:What do you say about you, Andy? Is it a long torso? No, I keep my height in my legs. You keep your height in your legs. I tell these guys every week to Lisa and they never listen, they never remember. This is what you have in common with The Rock. He's too muscly for airplanes. And you keep the height. I keep my height in my legs For some reason he's not written back about my double act Buddy comedy idea yet Muscley and legs One guy's really strong, one guy's got big legs Not big legs, just long legs really What a crime fighting team we would make Dwayne if you are listening Please do get in touch I need to lift up this car from this baby on the floor Oh well I need to step over that gate

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48:54James Harkin:The sun is out, the birds are chirping, and the open road is calling. Bring on the spring. At the Honda Spring Event and take that road trip you've been dreaming of. Now's the time to check out the Honda Civic and HRV. From Honda, the 2025 Kelley Blue Book's KBB.com Best Value Brand. For great deals, visit your local Chicagoland and Northwest Indiana Honda dealer today. Based on 2025 Consumer Choice Awards from Kelley Blue Book, visit KBB.com for more information. Okay, it is time for our final fact of the show, and that is James. Okay, my fact this week is that the last Queen album released while Freddie Mercury was alive was named after his favorite words to play at Scrabble.

49:39Amazing. Fantastic. Bohemian Rhapsody. No, that wasn't an album, was it? Probably. So I was looking for Scrabble facts because, Deliso, I read an interview where you say that you rarely lose at Scrabble. I'm very good at Scrabble. I'm a Scrabble maniac. I always play Scrabble. And even I was mentioning earlier that like when I did Brilliance Got Talent, they were like, oh, you're African. We should have a big African background for you. You know what I mean? Like, and we'll design like, I was like, no, no, no, that's nothing to do with my personality. Scrabble. So I literally have a Scrabble board with my name on it as my background because that's, I'm such a Scrabble.

50:20And also in Scrabble, there's only one letter X, so you can't get the three X's. Oh, very smart. Thank you. It's so rarely said on this podcast So thank you So I was looking for Scrabble facts And I found that Queen liked to play it Or liked to play it when they were on tour And also that the games used to get quite heated They're not quite as rock and roll As you imagined Backstage activity Playing Scrabble even heated Is very like But you've got to do something after the cocaine wears off And after the orgy has wound down You know You've got to buy the time yeah it's true yeah once the orgies have wound down um so i was reading a biography of freddie mercury called a kind of magic by mark blake uh and in that he said that innuendo was one of freddie's favorite words to use presumably because it has lots of vowels in it yeah uh and that was what i can't imagine it comes up a lot innuendo as it were well you know what actually deliso before we came on air we were talking about our different Scrabble techniques, but you said that you have a special rule for your scrabble.

51:27Oh, yes. When I play with my close friends, if you put in a dirty word, any sexual word or any word that can be used in a dirty context, you get double points. Right. Okay. But do you have a dictionary of dirty words? No, no, no. You just have to explain to the other person that it's dirty, because most of them are buts and stuff like that. But if you put in a word which is debatable whether it's dirty you have to use it in a sentence to explain why it's actually very good do you guys

51:58James Harkin:know um as your scrabble heads what you would get numbers wise points wise with innuendo if you didn't land on any triples just those points i feel like it'd be quite low scoring yeah i think the d must be worth two is it it is one two three four five six seven eight nine nine is correct now innuendo isn't the only scrabble word that is a queen album that you can use oh because There's two other Queen albums. There's Queen, their self-titled first album. That would be a lot of points. That is a lot of points. 14? 15? 14? 14. But the one that's going to get you most is their album Jazz. Yes. Very nice.

52:35But you'd have to use a blank for that because there's only one Z. Oh, is there? Interesting. But J is 8, is it? Oh, yeah. That would be 19. 19? Yeah. Pretty good.

52:44James Harkin:And it would be 29 if you can't, as you say, use a second one. Now, interestingly as well. Also, actually, jazz mags have sexy people in them, so it's double points. Double points? I don't know if that would work. Jizz would work, but jazz, it wouldn't be double points. Yeah, okay. It's very big. Here's another thing. Here's another thing for a band that loves Scrabble. Now, if the four of us were playing Scrabble right now, not a single one of us has a name that is a Scrabble word. However, three of the four Queen members were Scrabble words. Were they? Freddie Mercury. Mercury? Mercury is a word.

53:23James Harkin:You've got Brian May. May. May works. And then the bass player Deacon. Oh, yes. A Deacon in church. Dan is a word. D-A-N. It's a belt in martial arts. Is that an English word? What is a Japanese word? I think it's in our dictionary. That's the other thing about Scrabble is actually in the official rules, it says before you start, you have to decide what dictionary you're using. So you can use any dictionary you want. If you want, you could use Green's dictionary of slang and just have rude words. Yes. Yeah, Mike Schreiber would be in a German game of Scrabble would be applicable. Hunter in a British context.

54:01Yes, if we used your middle name.

54:03James Harkin:Yeah, that's right. Yeah. So anyway, Mercury is 14. You've got Deacon at nine and then you've got May at eight. And then unfortunately, Taylor, who is Roger Taylor, doesn't apply because it's not spelt. It's spelled with a Y instead of an I. Unless you accept place names. In which case there is an American town called Taylor. And then that could apply. But again, it depends on your rules. There is an extra Queen album that you haven't mentioned, Dan. Oh, yeah. Freddie Mercury's stamp album, which was another of his hobbies. Oh, he collected stamps? He collected stamps. It was bought by the British Postal Museum in 1993.

54:37Really? Yeah, he was a big stamp collector, as was John Lennon. Wait a minute. Isn't there a fact about them being on a stamp? Yes, there is. Brian May was the only living person.

54:47James Harkin:It's Roger Taylor, the drummer, is the only living person to appear on a stamp because you have to be dead in order to be on a stamp. So Freddie is in the front of it. And there's... No, no, no. But when the Queen was alive, wasn't she on the stamp? Sorry, other than a royal. Oh, other than a royal. Yes. Sorry, yeah. Sorry, I've been pedantic. But yes, I see a point. So in a very vague, misty way, you can see Roger Taylor in the back. And so he's the only living person to make an ultimate stamp. They've loosened it a bit, haven't they? They do special things. Oh, probably now, yeah. nothing's like it used to be I read an interview with Mark Nyman who was the first British player to ever win the World Scrabble Championships he was speaking to the Observer and he said that every week he hears about some other celebrity who plays Scrabble so Robbie Williams, Sting, Christina Aguilera, Avril Lavigne and Mark Nyman said there should be a celebrity Scrabble so I'm thinking Deliso Chaponda's celebrity Scrabble I'm in I'm in But I'd want to play I'll tell you This is the problem You get invited on all these shows And you think you're there to play And they just want you to do silly stuff And I'm like I want to play I was invited on the countdown And I was ready I spent the whole week Training myself And getting better Like no no no We just want you on library corner And I was like No Let me play Wow That's a shame Nerdy rock stars Alright yeah Once you get very famous Let's say if you're a rock star Yeah You have a lot of money You often have a lot of space You have a lot of time because you're on You do on stage at 8 And also, because you've spent your childhood In your bedroom on your own learning how to play guitar You're often quite nerdy, I think Like quite a lot of the musicians That I know, for instance, are kind of on the nerdy side Absolutely Well, Bruce Dickinson of Iron Maiden Who you're familiar with, James You know, Fences I know he does And that's Fences in the terms of Fences isn't necessarily nerdy, it's a weapon No, and also Bruce likes to fence with a lightsaber.

56:42Okay, that's nerdy. That is really... You're going to get hurt. Now she's pointing the nerdy. Now she's going to get hurt. It's not real. When it was an epé, that's not real. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So there's four official swords that you can use in modern fencing. And it's the epé, the saber... Foil. The foil and the lightsaber. The lightsaber's now official? It's official, yeah. And Bruce got one of the... I need to start watching this. Bruce got one of the first like official lightsabers that you use in competition I watched, this is a total aside, but I watched combat juggling If you ever have a chance to see this, see this It's two jugglers facing off They have to constantly juggle But they can knock each other's batons out with another batons That's very clever And they can distract It was amazing And it's a whole big sport It was in like a little, it was like in a high school arena kind of thing And I was just like, they're sports you didn't even know existed Okay, what am I talking about here?

57:34Rod Stewart's is enormous Neil Young has a special name for his Pete Waterman has Displayed his in Chester Cathedral And Jules

57:45James Harkin:And Jules Holland stretches From London to Berlin Does it? I think I know because very famously Yeah they have enormous penises Yeah I know the first one I got it as well Model Railway Yes Wait but how can you have a model railway Which stretches from one place to another Well the model is a model of the journey But Pete Waterman Who's the producer behind Kylie Minogue And Rick Astley Steps Yeah the biggies Recently built a 20 metre model railway For Chester Cathedral He spends hours making fake trees He has a massive model of Leamington Railway Station Which is where he train spotted as a boy I just think it's so charming I love it Speaking of Pete Waterman you just mentioned.

58:34James Harkin:Do you know who is an absolute Scrabble fiend? Kylie Minogue. Really? Yes. And this is according to Salman Rushdie. I would love to see this game. That's actually on page 16. Salman versus Kylie. On page 16 of Titanic Versus, he goes into a game of Scrabble with Kylie. Fantastic. Apparently, he plays Scrabble with her, or certainly did for a while. He tweeted about it. She wrote rematch as a reply to his tweet. He used to hang with her, apparently There were rumours that Salman Rushdie used to play Twister with Kylie and Danny Minogue But he said, I never played it, I would just watch as they played it He said, I should be so lucky That is amazing Good grief Sorry, what?

59:20James Harkin:So Kylie's obsessed with Scrabble She plays Scrabble a lot No, we were thinking of the other thing Right Yeah, Twister I suppose you've got a while away the long hours in hiding, haven't you? I think it was in that period as well During the Fat War I believe it was I hadn't What a way to assassinate Salmon Rushdie That would have been Also that's what He should have told them The people who had The Fat War on him This is what I'm doing Right now Yeah yeah No But like We've got to work out Where Salmon Rushdie is Because we want to Assassinate him For the satanic verses What's the least Possible likely thing Imaginable He could be doing Well he could be Playing Twister With Kylie and Daddy Minogue No no no

1:00:07James Harkin:Okay, that's it. That is all of our facts. Thank you so much for listening. If you'd like to get in contact with any of us about the things that we've said over the course of this podcast, we can all be found online. I'm on at Schreiberland on Instagram. James? My Instagram is no such thing as James Harkin. Andy? At Andrew Hunter M. Yep. Deliso, are you online? Yes, I'm on everything. I'm AfricanComedian.com and Deliso Chaponda on everything else. And you're on tour right now. I'm on tour. I'm doing a show called Topical Storm. The show changes every week because it's updated with the headline.

1:00:37James Harkin:Fantastic. And so, yeah. So go to your website, go to your Instagram and so on. They'll be able to find the dates. It's all across the UK. So go check it out now. You can also write in to us as a group, podcast at qi.com. Send us all of your favorite facts that you've discovered because we will cherry pick the best of those and bring them to our Monday show, Little Fish, where we get to read them all out. Or if you send us just general feedback, about the show, interesting experiences you've had and so on, those will be taken to our behind the scenes show, Drop Us a Line, which is part of Club Fish.

1:01:10James Harkin:Club Fish is a Patreon place where you can do multiple different tiers. There are lots of different rewards. We have a quiz coming up for the highest tier, Friend of the Podcast, April 14th. So join if you want to be part of that and just check it out generally. Otherwise, just come back here next week because we are going to be back with another episode. Thank you as ever to our team, Leang Lee and Ethan Ruperalia, as well as the bigger Fishbuster crew. And we'll see you again next week. Goodbye.

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