No Such Thing As Gutter Ice

25:09Really? Yeah. Because nothing makes you not want to talk to someone. I'm sitting there with a copy of the Daily Mail. And nothing saps your will to live like reading it. So it's kind of perfect. I wonder if they count that in their circulation figures. Yeah. Because isn't that the thing with newspapers is that they bulk out their circulation figures by giving a load of them to airlines and say, oh, you know, thousands of people read them, but actually they're just given away for free. Half of them were dead. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Half of them were dead. Define read. It's a bit classless of them to call it circulation, given how tasteless that is.

25:42But I think this is completely reasonable because the alternative is to have people carrying bodies through the cabin mid-flight. I don't think that's very sensible. But the article you sent, it said, we don't do that anymore. Yes, exactly. We don't do that anymore. And what really made me laugh in that article is that the trainer was saying to the students, you cannot put a dead passenger in the toilet. It's not respectful. And it's not strapped in for landing. and that there were cases of bodies getting rigor mortis and they then couldn't get them out of the toilet. Yes, okay.

26:16James Harkin:Just psychologically though, Andy, if you're sat on a plane next to someone who's just died, the last thing I want is them coming over and popping some sunglasses. Getting free Volcatonic. It's outrageous. Spend the whole trip going, sorry, are you reading that? Can I? I think it's okay. Do you? You would happily just continue your own flight sitting next to a dead person. What is my alternative? Move seats or get them. Or they move seats. Or they go in the stewardess sleeping area. This is the bumping up to first class thing. I mean, the trick, the thing you really want to do is you want to die for five minutes, get moved up to first class, recover.

26:50And then, yes. What are they going to do? Move you back. You know. They're fuckers in first class. So you try, I mean, not first class, but I remember being in business class with a baby and the looks you get with a baby. Imagine, they wouldn't accept a dead person. There is some airlines are trying to ban babies in first class now. I read this in the news this week. Right. Yeah, yeah. Right. Well, petition was read, was it? But like, for instance, if you fly EasyJet or Ryanair, which is what I would mostly fly, there is no first class, there's no business class, and all the seats are booked up.

27:22Yes. So where do you put them? That's true.

27:23James Harkin:Well, Singapore Airlines supposedly had a corpse cupboard that you would put them into. It must have been used for other things occasionally. Yeah. People's suits that need hanging up. Again, I think it's completely reasonable. Well, supposedly Virgin will clear four seats in economy and lie the person down over there. But this is a thing that, of course, happens because if you've ever been on a long-haul flight, you've probably been sharing it with someone who's died and is being repatriated. It's just a thing you have to do. But they'll be underneath. They'll be in the hold. I don't know about the hold, but they won't be in the cabin with the rest of the passengers, obviously.

27:57But there was a case only a few weeks ago. There was an 89-year-old passenger. She, with her family, you know, her younger family, boarded an easy jet flight at Malaga, but she boarded while dead. And basically the family had brought her along, put her in the seat, and then said, oh no, she's died on board. I think there's still controversy about whether she, like they're still saying that she died on board. Yes, they were still saying she was just tired, but I think a lot of people noticed that. Why did they do it? The theory is that it would be expensive to repatriate. Yes, okay. If you repatriate someone, it'll cost between£2 ,000 and£4 ,000, which is like somewhere between business and first class isn't it it's quite expensive i'm quite fascinated by the flight simulator community oh yeah there's like uh i mean it's 98 male yes i did perk up a bit too early there so six you can get your own cockpit in your lounge that is almost exact i mean it is almost indistinguishable from the real thing wow um But anyway, through that, I found there was this is this was a real pilot.

29:01His first job from flight simulating was to then flying real planes, flying dead bodies across America to where they were going to be buried. And his first flight, nobody told him that cadavers grown at altitude. Do they? Do they? Apparently so. Pressure change. Yeah. The air would be lord. Oh, yeah. Cadavers have air in their lungs when you go higher and that air comes out, which means they grow. That's astonishing. It was totally terrifying. Oh! But to be honest, I make that noise when I'm reading the Daily Mail anyway. Has there ever been, I really hope there has been a case of someone who's just been flying, who is an enthusiast who has their own flight simulator and they've had to do the announcement.

29:48Is there someone on board who can fly a plane? That's probably everyone's fantasy situation. I don't know. I did go looking for it. I couldn't find one. I found that about 27 % of the flight simulation community have or have had a pilot's license at some point. Okay. There's quite a significant amount. 73 % who don't. But there's also a gay and lesbian and trans quite active flight sim community. Okay. Simming. and they talk about really enjoying sightseeing and they'll go and all fly together like across the Masai Mara and things like that. And because there's great, great... Because you're all doing the same simulation at the same time.

30:29At the same time. And when you're in the simulation, you can see the actual... See the actual animals because there's drones and things like that. I mean, I used to play a bit of flight simulator. You surprised me not at all.

30:43It's really...

30:44James Harkin:Your dad, Sally. My dad worked for British Airways. Yeah. Yeah, that's quite cool. So you had a childhood. Yeah, well, it was glamorous then. Yeah. It was glamorous then. When are we talking? Well, he started working for them in the 60s. Cool. I've not really engaged with that. I've just been very selfish and I asked my father that much about his job. But I did this morning because I said, can you tell me any stories about people dying? And he said, no, I can't. I said, what kind of stories have you got? And he has lots of stories about heroic stewardesses. So I wanted to be a stewardess because they struck me as fantastically glamorous.

31:19There was a story, I remember being told, I don't know if it's true or not, about Starbomb, a stewardess who rescued a flight because the plane took off, I can't remember where from, and the toilets have a cap on for the, anyway, this cap was not on the toilet. So when the plane took off, she went to the toilet before the lights went on for the passengers to be able to use it. Perks of the job. and it sucked her in and so she was then keeping the pressure but that blue stuff the blue bleach is very very acid and corrosive and so it tattooed a star shape on her I mean obviously they landed quite quickly afterwards but she's like the little boy with the thumb in the dike the air stewardess with the bottom in the toilet saved the plane from catastrophe What a story for that tattoo it's so often people are like why do you have that tattoo?

32:13I was just drunk in Cambodia. We have all these sort of stewardess heroine stories like Muhammad Ali on a plane. Stewardess coming up saying, Mr. Ali, you need to use your seatbelt. And him saying, Superman don't need no seatbelt. And her saying, Superman don't need no plane, Mr. Ali. Lovely. Lovely.

32:33James Harkin:God, you know, I'm quite scared of flying and I thought I was getting over it and you've now added a new fear to the idea of if that seatbelt sign goes on, I'm going to get my ass sucked down through the toilet. Can I give you another one, Dan? Yeah. This is my favourite BA flight ever. And this has recently, in fact, been featured on QI. So this is very exciting. This was the flight in 1982. I thought you weren't allowed to reuse facts. Well, I'm going to. Watch me. Wow. If I had a nickel for every time I'd heard about the poo knife, alright?

33:02One of the most exciting BA flights ever is the one where they flew into an ash cloud by mistake. They're flying over Indonesia. And the plane's sensors were fit to look for moisture in the air. If you're flying into a big storm, the plane's sensors are looking for moisture. The ash from this volcanic eruption was dry. So all the ash landed inside the engine, melted, then solidified inside. So all four engines stopped working. And the captain, Eric Moody, 41 years old at the time, made the famous, now quite famous announcement. Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. We have a small problem.

33:37All four engines have stopped. We are doing our damnedest to get them going again. I trust you are not in too much distress. incredible right do you know one of the reasons that flights was all right and everyone on board survived why he had recently been on the simulator and done a simulation of a four engine failure they they they had to restart the engines what they had to do they had to wait for the engines to cool down enough for the ash to break off and then they could restart them but it took a long time and they were on they were trying to glide to the ground uh and he had to do it the ash had smashed up the windscreen and made it impossible to see through so he had to land by being told the readings on the instruments and how close you are to the ground very cautious anyway he very sadly died in 2024 but just before that he was on qi and you can if you look up the clip of qi it's from i can't remember what letter it is slt you there we go uh he and he was on there for understatement for his lovely announcement and it's a really cool moment on the show that's incredible that is cool i bet you i bet they've got they've got the visuals for that on on microsoft off flight.

34:40Yeah. I bet they do. I bet they do now. People will be desperate for that. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Because they do ice on your windscreens when you're flying. Oh, really? On Flight Simulator? Yeah. Lovely. Yeah, depending on the temperature. They've upgraded it since our last flight. So exciting. You need to get back on. I can't wait. It's a mere six grand to update your cockpit. I'm going to have to change my lounge as well.

34:59James Harkin:Do you guys remember that documentary about the fire festival that went horribly wrong? Yeah, yeah, yeah. One of the characters that just adds to the chaos of it all is a pilot who takes all of them around in a flight and he'd never flown before purely on flight simulator was his thing. Do you listen to Black Box Down? No! What's that? It's a podcast about plane crashes. It's ended now sadly but every episode they did a different flight incident. What happened to it? How did it die? Both hosts fell asleep very sadly. My wife is a pilot, a helicopter pilot. No! And she's obsessed with plane crashes and I think that is, if you are a pilot you do want to read about all the crashes because it kind of helps you know about what might happen you want to read about because it always is something so tiny that you might not have noticed so you just yeah you want to get those little moments and the things that can go wrong are so strange and different because but the point of that is that flying is incredibly safe and the point about it what we're trying to say here is it's safe but that's that is true that every time something goes wrong the the airline and aviation industry is unbelievably good at absorbing the mistakes, learning from them, and implementing them for next time.

36:08It tries to be not so much like, I'm not going to tell anyone what happened because I'll get in trouble kind of thing. They have a community of like, we will try and be as open as possible to stop it from happening again.

36:18James Harkin:Can I tell you something culturally that British Airways gave us? Sure. It is thanks to British Airways that basically that we have the Beastie Boys. Beastie Boys, who you'll know. No Sleep Till Brooklyn, Fight for Your Right to Party, Intergalactic, Mike D, Ad Rock, MCA. Yeah. So basically they were struggling young hip hop artists in New York and they put out an EP and they had a song on it called Cookie Puss. And BA used it on an advert without having asked for permission. So Beastie Boys sued BA. They got$40 ,000 for it. And that's what funded an apartment for them to live in in New York and then start recording their main stuff.

36:57James Harkin:So they attribute that moment of BA doing that to their whole career. And what's it about? A Cat Called Cookie? Yeah, must be, surely. I don't know.

37:12James Harkin:Okay, it's time for our final fact of the show, and that is Andy. My fact is, Australians like you more if you use Australian slang, but only if you do so in an Australian accent. We have a lot of Australian listeners, so should we do the next 15 minutes in an Aussie accent? We love us. There you go. How is your Aussie accent? Terrible. It's always been horrific. Yeah. So we should say you grew up in Sydney for a bit. Well, yeah, I was just a couple of years. Yeah, I was too. But you had an Aussie accent? I had an Aussie accent. I was desperate to fit in, but I wasn't aware of it. I had an Aussie accent, then I couldn't ditch it.

37:50James Harkin:So what did you have before? You had, because you were born in Hong Kong. I spoke like a presenter from the World Service circa 1950. Okay. Until I went to Australia and then started speaking like an Australian and then couldn't get rid of it for ages. And then when I started acting, it was the one accent I couldn't do for a very, very long time. Oh, really? Yeah, because I couldn't hear it. That's interesting. But did you see the story that it was the most attractive accent to Americans? I can believe it. Sexiest? Yeah. Smartest? Most appealing? I guess it's the least threatening accent, isn't it?

38:21Because everything goes up at the end. Yes. And if you're throwing in sexy phrases like, fair shake of the sauce bottle. Yeah. What's that being drunk? No, that's just giving someone a fair crack at something. Kevin Rudd, who was the Prime Minister, he used the phrase fair shake of the sauce bottle so much during the 2013 election that it became a bit of a thing. He was trying to be blokey. He also said fair suck of the pineapple. You've got to give people a fair suck of the pineapple, you know. Just these wonderful phrases. Yeah. I remember flying into Perth to do a film and they had a government-sponsored billboard on the way from the airport saying, don't be a bloody idiot, don't drink and drive.

39:00This is government.

39:01James Harkin:Yeah. Yeah. Well, they're very good at that. The relaxed nature. Very good at swearing. Yeah, very good swearing. Very good at being just a bit loose, as high up as Prime Minister. Yeah. Yeah. Can I ask, Andy, the fact about they like it if you use Australian slang, is it from a study or something? It's from a study. Yeah, yeah. There was a study about what Australians like about people using their language. And it just found that using Australian slang is a pro, but only in an Aussie accent. So Australians like Australians? Yeah, it sounds that way. Australians like people who speak with an Australian accent and then they like them additionally if they are able to be a bit relaxed and use something I remember hearing one which was I'm so hungry I could eat the arse out of a low flying pigeon which was kind of great again was that a Prime Minister who said that and that's a sexy phrase that an American would find unbelievably attractive I'm as full as a stripper's dance card it's a nice one But I'm not using an Aussie accent So this doesn't endear me to any of our Aussie listeners No, it sounds like you're patronising Sounds like you're taking the piss out of your screen He is doing it, if you look at his face How very dare you Absolutely not One person who pretended to have an Australian accent Was Matthew McConaughey Did he?

40:15Yeah, the actor? Yeah When he was acting or just pretended to be Australian on a train Well, he lived in Australia for a little while And then when he came back to America He decided to keep the accent because all Americans find the Australian accent sexy. Oh, my God. And the only real reason I bring it up is because Matthew McConaughey has a brother called Rooster who has two children. One of them is called Margarita, and the other one is called Miller Lite. Okay. Miller Lite. Miller Lite McConaughey. Is that a beer? It's a beer. And his brother got a lifetime supply of Miller Lite when he named his child Miller Light McConaughey.

40:59Wow. Isn't that amazing? That is amazing. Soft topic, but I love it. A lot of these Australian phrases sound rude, and I find this very interesting, but not all of them are. So one of the following phrases I'm going to read out is rude, okay? To point the bone at someone. To bore it up someone. On the vag. To arsehole. Dogging. Stiffen the Lizards Golden Donut And to come the raw prawn Okay Only one of those is rude Which one But which one The golden donut I'm going to go for Okay Let's go for the golden donut Surely dogging means the same As it does here Could do Could not Oh the raw prawn What's that one To come the raw prawn It's not You're not in a good place If you're coming the raw prawn No James is right Is that The golden donut The golden donut It's like for the vagina To come the raw prawn is simply to put something over on someone To fool someone Don't come the raw prawn with me And you said dogging Sally Just dingo hunting To point the bone at someone is to put a jinx on them To bore it up someone is just to give them a walloping On the vag means According to the provisions of the vagrancy act

42:17To arsehole Is to dismiss someone preemptorially And stiffen the lizards is an exclamation Of surprise stone the crows and stiffen the lizards yeah right you know the Aussie salute what's that it's not rude it's just waving away flies oh yeah

42:34James Harkin:well that's the there's an old theory I think we've covered this on fish where that's how the modern Aussie accent developed because there were so many flies that the way you would talk to each other was with your teeth closed so that you wouldn't get any in your mouth and that's where the Aussie accent came from Yeah, that's interesting. And actually where it came from is a load of people came over from Britain in 200 years ago. And it's quite similar to the Cockney accent around that time. But also loads of people went to Australia at the same time. Most of them were Cockneys, but there were people from other places.

43:10And then over the years, like the kids would hang out together and they had to sort of understand what each other was saying. Because actually accents were quite intelligible back in those days. and eventually after one or two generations it's called leveling all the kids start talking the same way and then all the adults well they grow up and then their kids do yeah right kind of evolution isn't it yeah kind of but it's like a forced evolution and it's quite a quick evolution with um it's not to do with australia but with with gendered speech patterns i remember reading this study i mean a long again a long time ago but it's probably been more complex thought about it since but that um male children and female children had the same speech patterns until they went to nursery and then they started declaring themselves with their speech patterns yeah which kind of interesting and so women like me ape male speech patterns to seem intelligent which is sort of wrong isn't it and i didn't realize i did this until i read the study but you know i have a slightly lower voice and i'm sort of aping male speech patterns really and it has been found that men and women if you make your voice lower you are more successful on average in life really but it's and that's what they did to margaret thatcher isn't it good to know there are there is no such thing as society there are individual men and women and there are families yeah that's she didn't speak like that before it's higher in that was her podcast wasn't it no society society we have children who are three and a bit older um have your kids started talking like bluey the cartoon character from australia oh and there is a lot of every now and then you see articles in the newspapers of saying all our kids have started talking like bluey now similarly about 10 years ago everyone's kids were talking like pingu or like the telly tubbies or pepper pig Or Peppa Pig, yeah.

45:05Yes, I mean, no. No. But what people are finding that their kids are using Aussie slang, especially in America, so they'll say rubbish instead of garbage or whatever. Are you on the veg? It's the golden donut for me. But actually, according to linguists, kids very early, like certainly by the time they're three years old, can tell the difference between the way that a character is speaking and the way that their family and friends speak. So if they are talking a little bit like Bluey or Pingu or Teletubbies or Peppa Pig, they're doing it knowing that that's a character. As in it's a register rather than the way they're speaking forever now.

45:46Because otherwise just all British children would speak in American. As in there's so much American media consumed that you would just... Well, that's why there's such a push to have homegrown children's programming. Right. It's a political thing.

46:00James Harkin:Yeah. Yeah. In all different countries. I think the idea of this kind of turn of phrase from Australia, the international grab onto it, really comes down to, in my opinion, one generation of Aussies that moved over here. And that's Barry Humphreys. That's Jermaine Greer. It's Clive James. And then I'm going to add Paul Hogan into that as well. Because I think Paul Hogan, more than anyone, really turned Australia into a tourist destination through the advert campaign with put a shrimp on the barbie, which is a phrase that's still used to this day, even though in Australia it's called prawns, right?

46:34James Harkin:So it was Americanifying the term that we would use in Australia. But I was reading about Paul Hogan because I didn't really know his story. So Paul Hogan is Crocodile Dundee, for those who don't know his real name. He used to work on the Sydney Harbour Bridge. He was a rigger on the Sydney Harbour Bridge while it was being constructed. And the reason he became famous is there was a show in Australia called New Faces and he decided he was going to enter so he did as a tap dancing knife thrower now he neither knew how to tap dance or throw knives were they poo knives or because I would watch that and Brent has got talent someone throwing poo knives at Sam Callow he basically he's got a knife that's not a knife, give me one second

47:30James Harkin:yeah he faked it he did the audition and they said let us see the act and he said oh it's a pretty dangerous act i'll have to do it on the night but roughly this is what i'll be doing and they went that sounds great come on and so he made it to main tv which was live at the time and that was his first break that's how he got no he didn't know what happened he threw the knives at the ground he made fun of the judges and this Aussie witch came out of him because he became a big comedian in Australia at his own tv show were you there then do you remember that no no no that was before you must be much younger I don't think I was even born at that point yeah just one more thing about slang in general so we mentioned earlier that people don't like sometimes being in the dictionary so there was a survey in 2014 and more than half of people said it wasn't appropriate for words like YOLO to be in the dictionary right but in I just love this This was, I think, a YouGov thing.

48:20In order to survey people's knowledge of slang terms, they had to ask them, do you know what this slang term means? And they had to come up with alternatives of what these words might mean. So YOLO, 9 % of people surveyed thought it was a yogurt made with caramel and chocolate.

48:39Cray, 15 % thought it was having a strong or unpleasant smell of fish. Brilliant. Cray fish.

48:44James Harkin:And it's crazy. We should say for anyone who doesn't know that. Mansplain. as Dan just did, about the meaning of pray. 28 % thought that was a man who is especially plain. Man's plain, still describes me. And finally, I love this one. 3 % of people thought the Bank of Mum and Dad is a place where semen is kept in cold storage for use in artificial insemination. But this was multi-guess, right? They gave them options. They gave them two options. So 97 % got the Bank of Mum and Dad right, but 3 % thought it was the old sperm freezer. But it's the witty people who wrote the thing. Yeah, I know. Just lovely.

49:24Isn't that great? Do you know what the slang term to swallow a dick means? Not anymore. This was 18th century. 19th century. Is it Aussie or just general? It's British actually. You've asked us this before. It relates to something else we've said today. Be dead on a plane. The other one. The other linguistic. Merriam-Webster, the dictionary. Swallow a dictionary. Swallow your words. Yeah, oh, right. It's someone who knows lots of long words or uses lots of long words. They've swallowed a dick. Very annoying.

49:54James Harkin:Do you have a favourite Aussie-ism? Australian actors, they say, happy to be here, easy to work with. So when things get really bad, you say, happy to be here, easy to work with. You don't complain about anything. Yeah, too easy, mate. I think the mentality is completely fantastic. And that's what I was thinking last year when I was there. I was thinking this is actually the best place. you know when when the whole world is looks like it's going tits up and there's so much sort of fear and threat of war australia is such a positive place like it's having such a moment fashion and film and it's just a nice safe i would say that generally speaking is true but you want to try mispronouncing some of their place names on the popular podcast they suddenly that easygoing attitude just disappears

50:43James Harkin:Okay that is 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 have said Over the course of this show We can all be found On our online accounts I'm on At Schreiberland On Instagram James My Instagram is No6FingersJamesHarkin Andy Mine is At AndrewHunterM And Sally You're on Instagram right I think I'm Sally Smack Yes Because I was once in a show They had the word smack in the title rather than because I take smack. Or like being smacked. Should I change that? No, never change. Well, listen, if you want to get through to us about any of the things that we've said, we're also available on podcast at QI.com.

51:29James Harkin:You can send us all of your Australian pronunciation complaints to Andy there. We'll bring them up most likely in an episode of Drop Us A Line. That's our secret show that you can only get access to if you are a member of Club Fish. This is a very exciting group of people who love our show so much that they are willing to go behind a paywall to experience extra goodies. And we've got so much great stuff there from bonus episodes all the way through to a quarterly quiz. So if you want to be part of that, just go to patreon.com slash no such thing as a fish. Check it out. Otherwise, just come back here next week because we're going to be back with another episode.

52:03James Harkin:We will see you then. Goodbye. Thank you.