No Such Thing As Imaginary Flumps

0:02Hi everyone, just like to let you know that we are joined today by the wonderful Amy Gledhill. Now, even if you're a fairly new listener to No Such Thing As A Fish, you will know Amy because it's not that long ago since she came on. But we don't have many more weeks before Anna comes back and we thought, who do we want back? Who do we want back on the show? Who do we enjoy the show so much with that we just can't wait to get them back on? And of all the people who fit that bill, Amy was the one who we wanted most. So we messaged her. She's very busy at the moment, but she said yes. Why is she so busy?

0:37Well, she has just been on Last One Laughing UK, the second series of that. It is so funny. It's one of the best TV moments of the year so far. And Amy is in that. She is also in the new series of Taskmaster. I know loads of you who listen to this show love Taskmaster. So you will see Amy on that show. but she also has her own podcast she does her podcast called northern news uh with former fish alumnus ian smith and she also does another podcast called single ladies in your area both of these podcasts are absolutely amazing i have been on the northern news one it's such fun those two are so funny oh my goodness they are so funny definitely go and check those out wherever you get your podcasts they're also on patreon just like another podcast you might have heard of called no such things as a fish yes we are on patreon i was just trying to find a new different way of announcing that if you go to patreon.com slash club fish then you can sign up there when you sign up you'll get loads of free stuff there's plenty of stuff there for anyone who doesn't want to pay but if you would like to give us a few pounds each month then there are various different tiers where you can get various different things the first one is plenty more fish where you get droppers aligned which is our audience feedback show and so much fun and also you get ad free episodes which i know for a lot of you is a big old pull so please do that but mostly if you do that you are supporting the podcast but actually you're supporting the podcast by being here and listening to this show with the incredible amazing infectiously funny amy glenhill on with the podcast

2:30James Harkin:Hello and welcome to another episode of No Such Thing as 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 Amy Gledhill. And once again, we have gathered around 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 Amy. Okay, so my fact this week is, according to science, one of the best ways to avoid laughing is to think about wallpaper. This fact comes to me slightly too late. I wish I'd have discovered this fact about a year ago, really.

3:14Okay, all right.

3:15James Harkin:Yeah, so for context, you recently starred on Last One Laughing, the TV show where you have to try and survive the entire process of the show by not laughing and you were on with people like David Mitchell and Sam Campbell. Yeah, it was hell. So question to you, if this is a scientific method, did you have your own method? I did actually, yeah. Less scientific. There was lots of snacks in the room and I thought if my mouth was always full of flumps, marshmallows, you can't laugh. But that isn't science It turns out But I think it did help If you've got a mouth full of something You're less inclined to I don't think they showed you having flumps Flumps are a funny food as well They're quite a risky food That's quite a kind editor I think Who doesn't show you a mouth full of flumps Oh they weren't imaginary flumps They were real flumps Imaginary flumps Is that what you give your kids at Easter?

4:14James Harkin:Imaginary Easter eggs are in the garden oh look at that massive one no i i thought uh because part of the wallpaper idea is a distraction tool so whatever you can do you're imagining wallpaper exactly looking at no you're really looking at wallpaper but it's a distraction tool therefore if you were imagining flumps in your mouth and fitting oh i could fit more and more in you might distract yourself it feels very cool yeah well it feels like not to criticize your technique amy but i don't know how helpful it would be are you stopping laughs getting in no you're stopping them getting out oh yeah laughter comes from within i suppose yes oh that's true so you mean once you swallowed the then the laughter is going to come out we'll just it doesn't cork it is what you're saying yeah yeah yeah i guess i just can't quite yeah so i read this study and it is distractions one of the things right uh another one is kind of controlling trying to control your facial muscles which we did see on the show yeah uh mel poor old mel she liked to do that didn't she She was gurning like it was the 90s.

5:17Yeah, so she had this like lower jaw protrusion, I guess, like an underbite. She'd give herself an underbite, but it was so effective. So she was really like pulling them muscles in her jaw, but then it turns out, and she has said this in the press, she's had to go and see a specialist for a jaw injury. That's funny. is is gurning is that a drug thing yes yes so i'm told no further questions uh and then one of the thing that they said is good for it is to reappraise the jokes in a non-funny manner which i think is a kind of david mitchley thing isn't it yeah but i think that's quite difficult because i think to reappraise a joke you have to understand why it's funny so then you're thinking gosh that's funny for these reasons.

6:06How do we make it less funny? And I think that's a risky strategy. And there are surprise jokes are the most dangerous of all if you're trying not to laugh. As in, there is a moment in, for international listeners, Last Word Laughing UK, go and see it. It's terrific. There's a moment where Alan Carr gets out a sausage machine and it starts firing out high-speed sausage. And there's almost no way to immediately reappraise that as a serious malfunction of a sausage machine. Oh dear, maybe they haven't greased that properly. it's really hard I think on the other hand you can think oh no he's going to lose all that sausage that's how you reappraise it right you've got to be fast you've got to reappraise it

6:43James Harkin:on the opening before it gets to the punch right so okay Englishman, Irishman and Scottishman walk into a bar you think what's the likelihood that those three so you don't even listen to the rest you distract yourself with it you think this guy doesn't make sausages how the hell is Alan Korn or what's about to he's not a certified butcher there we go I'm not laughing most laughter in conversation happens after banal comments not funny ones is this your experience well last time i came on i did laugh a lot right

7:22um so what is what is it out of uh it's not to do with whether it's funny or not it's just kind of social grease yeah and also the person talking laughs more than the people they're talking to in almost every conversation oh yeah it's it's by more than about half half as much more yeah yeah and obviously it'd be different in a professional comedy scenario yeah i guess but what's what's difficult is when the the trickiest thing in that program is the conversations you know when someone's on the stage doing their joker you're you know you've got flumps in your mouth you you're ready but it's the little conversations that are really difficult because it's surprising and um i bob mortimer is lovely and i told him that i was nervous about doing it and he said the first half an hour is the hardest because when that buzzer goes off you get all this giddy energy and you're almost ready to laugh because you just told you shouldn't you're almost ready to laugh anyway so when the buzzer goes off he came over to me and he's to have like a neutral conversation to help me but because you're in this prime situation and bob mortimer is sat you know a meter away from your face and he was going he was just trying to be nice but he's so hard he said down amy are you happy with your hoover and i was like oh my god why is that the funniest thing i've ever heard you know you uh might have had a competitive

8:41James Harkin:advantage in there according to the university of buffalo because according to the history of Comedy professor there, Andrew Scott. Redheads are seen as funnier generally than most other people. Diane Morgan, is she red as well? Yeah. So you two would have had competitive advantage. This is all culturally brought on to us by circus clowns, basically. Clowns always had big red wigs. Largely, so they could be seen from any bit of the circus tent. If you're sitting at the back, you'd know it's the clown. Is it also true that people with red noses and big feet are also seen as funnier? Probably, yeah.

9:23I don't know. If that's what we're saying, that the clown is... Is this regionally... Has this been stress tested in Scotland and Ireland, which have many more people with red hair? What do clowns wear? Like the clowns come back and died again. Just nothing I got from them.

9:42James Harkin:That's true. This is Buffalo. Okay, so yeah, last one laughing US. You might have the advantage. That's a really good point. That's what my strategy would have buckled immediately as I walked in with my dyed red hair. Wow. They've found, they've looked at laughter and then fed it into a computer to see what kind of laughter there is. This is how you analyze comedy. You work out what's funny. This is at the University of Amsterdam and they found that there's two different types of laughter. So a computer can tell the difference between tickle laughter and every other kind of laughter. And all the other laughter, if you're watching a sitcom or you're watching stand-up or you're with your mates or whatever, they're all the same.

10:25But tickle laughter is completely different. And the algorithm can tell the difference. Is it more panicked? I guess so. More panty, maybe? Yeah. Panty's a funny word. Panty.

10:40That's interesting. Yeah, there is fear. When you're being tickled, there is fear. There's fear. Pure fear. Oh, yeah.

10:45James Harkin:We have a tickle truce in my house between me and my oldest son, Wilf. Tickle truce. A literal tickle truce. He can't tickle me because the pain is so great for me. And I'm not allowed to tickle him. He's doing it wrong. I just have. What's he doing it with? I find it so unbelievably painful. I actually tried. That didn't tickle me that time. James is tickling me, by the way, everyone. I think I got a splinter. But then I can't tickle Wilf because he, it happened ages ago, but I tickled him and he went, oh, daddy. And I went, what? He went, you tickled the wee out of me. And he pisses himself every time I tickle him.

11:24James Harkin:So there is a tickle truce. You once told a joke so funny that one of the children shat themselves. Didn't you? Wasn't it? Was it in the bath? I was in the bath, which is not a good place for it to happen. At least it's contained. It's contained in a big bath. that you see the size of... It's not until you try and grab it and then it breaks. It's like a cloning machine when you try and grab it. What was the joke? Can you remember? Well, don't tell it that way. Don't, please. I want to see you on Lasso laughing and just all the other comics shitting themselves. Wow. Amy, your laugh is quite infectious.

11:58James Harkin:Oh, thanks. It's nice. In a positive way. If you're laughing, people only want to laugh, you know. Because I once caught a bad laugh from someone. And I had it for years. It wasn't Jimmy, was it? No. No, it wasn't. It's someone you two know very well. Was it Dan's son? No.

12:16If shit's coming out every time, it's a bad laugh. Who is it? Shouldn't have done those jacuzzi sessions. I mean, that was a really tricky night. Are you allowed to say? Yeah, of course. Yeah, yeah. It was John Lloyd. Okay. Founder of QI. Yeah. So he has a very distinctive laugh, which... Ha, ha, ha.

12:31James Harkin:Yes. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. And he has a bigger laugh as well for really, really funny stuff. He's got a big laugh, yeah. But even when he's like, and that's him genuinely, he's genuinely laughing. And for about five years once, I could only laugh like that. But I don't know how I got it. Really? Because it is like a contagious thing and it is a social thing. I think if you're copying people's laughs, that shows respect, personally. I respect John. It's exactly that. Probably exactly that. So do you think people in different cultures have different laughs? Like, would you be able to tell just from a laugh if someone was like, oh, that person's Italian or, oh, that person.

13:06That's interesting. Well, French. And we're getting close to the end of the socially acceptable ones to do, but that's cracking up. Wow. But do you know what I mean? Do you think you would be able to tell? I think you would. Yeah, maybe. You could definitely tell the difference between modern humans and old humans. Because can you guess how old humans would laugh? It wasn't a ha, ha, ha, because they couldn't make those sounds. They couldn't make those sounds? No, humans managed to say a ha sound quite late in our development. Wow. So before that That still has an H in it Oh okay Was it like the Count from Sesame Street Ah He is a primitive human Well obviously we don't know But it appears to have been more panty And that's because If you look at apes today for instance They have more of a panting laugh Oh wow

14:00James Harkin:Yeah yeah yeah That was very good You've done that before we have enough oh wait wait wait wallpaper do you want to do a wallpaper thing on that no it's fine it's just i've read so much about wallpaper i've got pages here of wallpaper stuff i've got a little bit of wallpaper stuff okay okay so with the wallpaper thing i tried to find out what's the least funny wallpaper to add to the thing if in case i ever need to not laugh again And the least funny thing I could find about wallpaper was the Victorian wallpaper was often bright green, but it had arsenic in it. So it actually was quite fatal. Oh, no.

14:40So that's got to be the least funny. That's not funny. It's not funny.

14:45James Harkin:Unless you're driven to hysteria as part of the poisoning, which sometimes happens, right? That would happen with like mercury poisoning. Yes. I'm not sure about arsenic. it's more death just pure death that's not fun at all no no no I joined the I've joined the wallpaper history society as part of research for this fact sure let's pretend you weren't already a member it's a good price I pegged it to my previous membership and it's exactly the same price as the association of lighthouse keepers which I'm also a member of When you meet another member of the Wallpaper Association, do you say, how's it hanging?

15:29Yeah. Yeah. Strip poker is a much more tame affair at the Wallpaper Society. No, it's good. You get a copy of the Wallpaper History Review. Okay. Packed with over 100 pages of wallpaper and wall covering related information. That's good. You get priority booking on some Wallpaper History Society events. Priority booking. How many times have we got to the front? Sorry, sir. 25 quid. For the year? That's not bad, is it? It's not bad. It's not bad. You could spend it on worse. Yeah. I can't think of anything.

16:07James Harkin:Okay, it is time for fact number two, and that is my fact. My fact this week is that until 1960, American cinemagoers watched movies in no particular order. So this is... Like Memento? that's actually in a particular order it's just backwards isn't it? any Christopher Nolan film there's something going on there with time Tenet is in both particular orders exactly the most radical thing Christopher Nolan could do now would just be to release a film that starts at the beginning gets through the middle, gets to the end we've got a grudge going but me and him Amy we don't need to get into it I get it, I thought Tenet was one of the only films I nearly walked out of the cinema Really?

16:50Yeah, I think I got really obsessed because they just kept saying the word algorithm for no reason and being really smug about it. They just had algorithms so much that it started becoming funny. And I was like, I've got to go. I've got to leave. I can't be laughing at the word algorithm. I've got to go.

17:03James Harkin:Note to anyone for series three, if Amy returns. Imagine Bob Martimer walks in, so Amy, what's your favorite algorithm? Plops, plops, plops, plops, plops, plops, plops. Wallpaper, wallpaper, wallpaper. um this is this is an amazing little detail about american cinema which is prior to 1960 movies in the cinema were just on a loop and so you might arrive at the end of the movie you might arrive in the middle of the movie and you would often if you enjoyed the end of it you would stay and watch the beginning of the movie yeah and they used to know if a movie was going to be hit if people got to the bit they'd already seen and wanted to watch it again yeah because they enjoyed it so much like if you go to a like an art gallery and they show movies they're like that yes exactly yeah and they would have double bills too so you'd have one film then you have another whole film then you have the first half of the world cartoon or something news some newsreels as well but it was on a loop and so this was the culture of movie going in america and it was really frustrating for a lot of filmmakers they desperately tried to say get there at the start because it has a plot that works really nicely when you see it in the order we've made it yeah exactly so what changed this all was in 1960 alfred hitchcock released psycho he made it his big campaign you have to see psycho at this starting time and watch it till the end and there were posters everywhere there were adverts in movie cinemas there were sort of cardboard cutouts all saying the same thing um basically said if you don't turn up on time you're not coming in yeah like going to the data i guess yes exactly one of the posters is him and he's just pointing at his watch and you think oh that looks like a fun night that's like if you come here one minute late he gets his watch out yeah i'm the visionary auteur of i guess that's what james is trying to say i think what was happening is it was kind of a shift that was happening right yeah so especially if you were in a big city if you're in new york or something they would show one-off films like Gone with the Wind was often shown as a one-off film I think Ben-Hur was as well because longer and epic yeah and so you go as an event but especially in the smaller towns and also just more generally it was exactly as you suggest but then Psycho was like it was like a moment where they were like okay they're all going to be like this now yeah but I think lots of other people had tried it and it hadn't taken off so various people had attempted it before Hitchcock like there was a one film exhibitor in 1937 said there should be a nationwide go to the show on time campaign.

19:41Didn't do any good. There was a 1945 film. I love this called Mildred Pierce, right? And they ran an early campaign, which said, I'm quoting here, due to the sensational surprise twist in the ending of Mildred Pierce, positively no patron will be seated in the theatre during the last eight minutes of this picture. Wow. It's like 110 minutes long. So you can get it at any point in the first hour and ten or whatever. It's not like the Americans to turn up late in the 1940s, is it? Brilliant. Brilliant. A little bit of satire there. You told them.

20:17James Harkin:Yeah, so this was completely altered by Psycho, a movie which already altered cinema in so many ways. The soundtrack was a big moment in that movie, that kind of stabbing. That's, you know, that's Jaws. It's like Jimmy Carr laughing again. Quick cutting. There were so many innovative bits of that, but what's often not said is basically Americans go to see the movie on time now because of it. That's incredible. What number film of Hitchcock's was Psycho? It's not his first film, is it? No, not his first. I don't know. So he's had films in the cinemas and people are just going, oh, it's a lot of birds.

20:54Oh yeah, he had a really long career. He started in black and white. and then made the shift to colour. And 1960, I guess, was a bit more of a marginal case because there were plenty of colour films by then. And all of his later ones, obviously, are colour. Interesting. And then the difference being in Britain. We still had this as well, where you would do the shorts and the news and stuff and you could come in at any time. But it was much less common. And in British cinemas, you would often have an usher and you would turn up and the usher would take you to your seat in time because it was based on the old theatres.

21:25Right. That is nice. Would you still like that? I wouldn't mind it. I went to the cinema recently, and it's basically become now a food and drink venue, where there's a film on as well. So there's a lot of people coming and going. Oh, like where you can get pizzas and stuff. It was a posh cinema. My life was quite a posh cinema, so they'll bring things to your seat. Oh, yeah. I had a cheese board at Elizabeth Flower Moon. You've changed, Amy. Cheese board. I had a cheese board. I thought this shouldn't be allowed. You just scan the thing and then you press what you want. People bring cocktails and burgers.

22:05Hitchcock wouldn't have liked it.

22:07James Harkin:It's quiet food, though. Relatively quiet a cheese board. Psycho also basically came out largely because Hitchcock was inspired by another low-budget horror film, which was called House on Haunted Hill, made by a guy called William Castle. And Castle was brilliant at creating gimmicks. so really what what Alfred Hitchcock was doing was a big old gimmick he was turning it into an event he was making press off the back of this point that he was pushing and William Castle was sort of the king of doing it he used to do things like saying this movie might scare you to death so he took out mock insurance policies and he would put newspaper ads showing them they'd even have replicas of the policies sort of a poster size outside of the venues and they would have hearses waiting outside so that you really got a sense of what was going on at the um the house on haunted hill you were talking about yeah um he would have a a fright break in the middle of it and at that stage anyone was allowed to go into the lobby and sit in a place called coward's corner until they were ready to come back yeah and he also had it was very expensive it would seem in all these local theaters he had a thing installed that was called the percepto which was a for his movie the tingler it was a little buzzer that was added to all the chairs that electrified it slightly so at various moments during the movie at a scary moment you'd feel a literal in your chair um and he would have skeletons that would fly out at certain moments it was all very creative stuff he always wanted to be a proper filmmaker i mean he was a proper filmmaker like horror movies are a proper genre but he wanted to make more respectable films uh he produced rosemary's baby um and he wanted to direct it but then polanski did it instead uh and his daughter later on said that when they had dinner every night instead of saying grace he would practice his oscars acceptance speech oh my goodness

24:03James Harkin:that's wonderful what no one else does that come on we all do it every night same time let's just like harvey wines i practice my speech to the annual dinner of the wallpaper history you know the um the point you were making about william castle not directing rosemary's baby oh because he was directing these kind of slasher b movies and they thought no one's going to take it seriously that happens quite a few times when it comes to making movies so for example um mel brooks was the producer of the elephant man but they took his name off the credits he asked to because he was like everyone will be laughing when they see that i'm associated with it do you know what that's like when steve coogan came out to play jimmy savile and initially i was oh come on you can't he did impressions of him no one's going to take that seriously but it was fantastic yeah really yeah did you not see it?

25:00I didn't I didn't see it I've not just made that up have I? no no no no no no no no no oh my god

25:08James Harkin:well we've had Weinstein we've had Savile yeah yeah who else is going to make it into this chat? Blansky um Hull's Cecil Theatre you're from Hull I'm from Hull Oh, yeah. Do you know the Cecil Theatre? I think it's a bingo hall now. Ah. Well, it used to be a cinema. Wow. But it used to come with a noted orchestra. Oh, yeah. Oh, wow. Of seven. But still. That's not bad. Instruments and vocalists. And you used to get just cinema used to be such a fancier experience in lots of ways. And, you know, you see sometimes cinemas now which have incredible architecture. And you think, gosh, this was really.

25:45Yeah. This was really fancy. Yeah. There's a Wetherspins on Holloway Road that used to be a cinema. It's this beautiful, absolutely stunning building. And you go inside and it's gorgeous. But now it's just, you know, WKD Blues, which I love.

26:00James Harkin:Yeah. Out of curiosity, how far was it to the toilets from your table? Oh, yeah. It's like a sponsored walk. I told you that we've mentioned this before. The toilets are always miles away in Wetherspoon. You know where that would be useful? Did any of you watch the Long Walk film from last year? Stephen King adapted, right? Yeah. So it's about these guys who It's like a dystopian American If you can imagine such a thing You get one or two people from each state And they have to walk And they have to keep their speed above 4 miles an hour And if they drop Then they get shot Is there someone near them with a gun?

26:38It's the US Army people Why are they doing it? It's a bit of a Hunger Games-y thing I think I can't really remember But it's just walking at 4 miles an hour? Yeah, but eventually you're going to run out of energy Yeah, definitely, but I'm just Sorry, I'm just trying to work out Is it fun for people to watch this? It's good, it's a good film, I liked it anyway No, I mean the entertainment, sorry, in the world of the film Are people watching this for entertainment? People stand on the side of the streets Like it's the Tour de France Are they all walking at the same, they're all together? Sorry, you said one person from each state I was imagining this is happening in 50 separate locations everywhere No, sorry, yeah, they all come to one place to do it I understand, I understand okay anyway there is a real one that happens in sweden and it's been going since 2009 and they don't get shot in this one you're just out but you have to keep your walk above four miles an hour and it's based on the stephen king book four miles an hour is a bit of a trot it's not too bad like it's it's a it's a fair pace but it's not you definitely wouldn't have to run it okay and how long are people lasting well the first one in 2009 um it lasted only 10 hours uh but people have suddenly got really good at it and the last one or the longest one in the last couple of years was 87 hours and 48 minutes wow wow what are you doing what are you what are you doing for the facilities during that time you have to go in the movie you just have to go while you're walking yeah you get like yellow cards and stuff like a bit like last one you get yellow cards you do but yeah you have to go and like what i think you're allowed to sort of slow down but then you have to make it back up so you could quickly get down and do it and then sort of run slightly and then you'll catch up washing your hands maybe wet wipes when it's when it's sporting