No Such Thing As Meat And Greet

28:11He's doing some good work. Yeah, he's doing great work. But anyway, that's a craft. Ramsgate Hero. Along with? Bagpuss. Really? Broadstairs. Bagpuss was from Broadstairs. Postgate. Again, I will have to fact check that. Oh, please. Well, see you in a few minutes. And then the podcast gets shorter. Is that the guy who created Bagpuss? A Bagpuss himself. A little postgate, right? Right. I think. Right. How do you retain all this information? This is crazy to me. Yeah. Well, the good thing is I can keep staying stuff. and if I get it wrong, I just cut it out. But I couldn't even remember that I booked acupuncture for myself the other day.

28:49It's fascinating. There, you will need to remove your chain mail for that.

29:00Okay, it's time for fact number three and that is Andy. My fact is, the scientist who won this year's Nobel Prize for Medicine didn't find out for nearly a day because he'd gone off-grid and he only found out after his wife got 200 texts. Wow. So this is about Fred Ramsdell, who's an immunologist. Yeah. And a very good one, clearly. And he and his wife, in October, they'd gone on a three-week hike in Wyoming with their dogs. And they were having a whale of a time. And they'd gone off grid. And they'd turned off their phones. And they just had not paid any attention. And on the very last day, his wife started screaming.

29:36And he thought, she's seen a bear. We're in big trouble. And it turns out she'd just got 200 text messages saying, can you please put your phone on the nobels are trying to contact you and that's why i won't ever turn my phone off in case i just win a nobel and if you turn your phone off you have no bell on it so yes brilliant brilliant um yeah they've been trying to get in touch for 20 hours and there's pretty much a new record for how long anyone's been able to stay away from the nobel committee to contact you. Right. Very amazing. I mean, quite often it becomes the viral thing when the Nobel Prizes are announced.

30:14Someone not picking up their phone. Yeah, we love it. This happened last year where a neighbour had to come over who happened to be a scientist at like two in the morning and was ringing the doorbell. Yes. Did I pick up your phone? That was 2020. That was Paul Milgram. Right. Yeah. Do you want to hear about Richard Ernst in 1991? He was on a flight from Moscow back to the USA. He was asleep. It was a night flight. And he was woken up. He said, there's a phone call for you. He said, what do you mean there's a phone call for me? It's 1991. How could there be a phone call for me? And he said, leave me alone.

30:41I'm going back to sleep. I think they did have some phones on planes, but it wasn't a common thing to receive a call. He said, no, let me sleep. And they said, no, no, no, get up, sir. Come to the cockpit. And he went to the cockpit of this plane and he put on the radio set that the pilot handed him. And it was the Nobel Committee saying, you've just won the Nobel for chemistry. And then he's dancing down the aisle. Yeah, he'd done the research on depinning MRI scanning. It was a big deal. Yeah. There was a guy, Melvin Calvin, going slightly off memory here. Sounds like a blank has been filled in.

31:14He won the science prize and they weren't able to reach him because he was away secretly at an alien conference. And it's not as weird as it sounds because it's where Carl Sagan and Frank Drake were, where the foundations of SETI were. So he was at the very first SETI meeting and they found out as SETI was being set up. He was busy being probed. And actually Frank Drake was going to send off for some champagne. And it just so happened that the person who was the chauffeur for all of them to get them to this place was called French Beverage. Tom, what are you talking about? And he thought, I can't send French Beverage to go get the champagne.

31:56That just feels too... The mushrooms that you had were they...

32:03so melvin calvin was the guy who won but was at an alien conference well not an alien conference they were setting up seti yeah sorry yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah quite good that seti runs with yeti like those are two of your big interests yes that's true didn't know that that's a good point um and spaghetti you like as well don't you i love spaghetti the whole point is that um he wasn't they couldn't reach him and they got through to his wife who then had to call right the secret base yeah in order to mention it to him that he had won a lot of people think it's spam don't they or telemarketing when people when the nobels ring up oh really uh abdur-azak garner who won their literature prize a few years ago they rank him and said you've won the nobel prize but before they could say anything he said leave me alone and just slam the phone down on them god i think kazoo ishiguro yeah same thing i bet yeah god so maybe you've already won it lou you just That's true, yeah.

32:52So off-grid, which is where Fred Ramsdell was. What does that mean? Well, I think it gets used wrong all the time. I certainly use it wrong. People say, I'm going off-grid. Yeah. And what they mean is, I won't have my phone on. I'm putting on my out-of-office on my email. Well, Morrison's in Margate has got no reception, so that's off-grid. Right, there we go. What it should mean is... And you do have to fend for yourself, because some of those aisles are really mixed up. But it should be, I'm not going to be using public utilities. Yes. Like I'm not going to be using public water or electricity supplies, but people don't use it to mean that anymore.

33:29Self-sustainable is what I want to be. Right. So you have your own electricity, you have your own water source. I think they're the big two. Those are the big two. Some kind of sewage system, if we're being fussy. Yes, yes, yes. Or a radiator, at least. Drying it out is half the battle. You either get rid of it or just dry it. Thank you. it's mostly water weight so are you interested in this kind of stuff? I would love to keep doing my job and keep doing what I do but then living in a few acres of land with my own water and electricity solar system all eco I'd like to sort of have a little eco village so I would like to be self-sustainable but still you know pop on QI etc you know yeah you'll have to make your own QI unfortunately no You have to have your own set built.

34:19I still want to go to cafes, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm not growing my own coffee bins. I think that's fine. I think that is off-grid. There's one good way of getting power that a YouTuber called Chris Dole has done. You know vapes. Love them. I'm coming out of your ears. So vapes, they each have a tiny battery in them. But what people do is they vape them until you can vape no more and then you chuck them away. but then that means they're chucking away this tiny battery and usually there's electricity left on it so this guy he salvaged 500 disposable vapes and turned the batteries into a working power wall which powers basically all his stuff in his house wow that's so good that's cool isn't it yeah it's not that many vapes as well i don't know how fast you get through a vape 500 well you get through about 20 a day don't you yeah yeah yeah i do i do they come with a certain number of puffs don't they and you can buy mega vapes which are illegal which have more puffs in them really yeah mega vape i've never felt more how do you do fellow kids than talking about vapes um yeah but i think and you can say to you like your um news agent whatever have you got any illegal vapes for me and he'll go under the counter and pull out like a vape the size of a toblerone you've done it of course i've not done it how do you know this andy andy toblerones come in all different sizes now.

35:39I'm so sorry. You're absolutely right. Pull out the size of an airport Toblerone. Oh, right. There we go. Okay, right. If I asked for a large Toblerone, would they have that under the counter as well? They'll actually pull out a massive Toblerone. They'll pull out an even bigger one. There's always a bigger one. There's always a bigger under the counter. No, I think they're meant to be legally, they have to be rechargeable now. But people still throw them away because they can't be bothered to recharge them. Because they're cheap. Because they're cheap. Lou, there's quite a few places that are kind of set up already for off-grid living.

36:07Would you ever consider to just incorporating yourself into a place, the groundwork having been done. Yes, but how am I going to be a cult leader if there's already... Good point. Good point. You know. Well, you'd kill the previous leader. Ah, yes. Trial by combat. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I'd want to do it with a couple of friends or something, so I don't know. I don't know, maybe. But then would you have to deal with annoying people? I don't know. Always, in life, always. Usually what happens with cults is either... So it's not actually a cult. it's just james's shorthand let's say people who live off grid in communes yeah usually what happens is someone decides let's all have sex with each other yes and then they all fall out or two groups mob and they all fall out well there'll be no sex in my commune and you know even if it's a married couple i will be enforcing a no sexual law okay yeah you'll be lying in Yeah, yeah, yeah.

37:01Wholesome. Wholesome. I think I may have found out the most famous person to be living off grid. I might be wrong because I'm sure there are loads of candidates. Currently living off grid? Currently living off grid, I believe. Okay, most famous person. Winnie the Pooh.

37:18Okay, is it someone we can guess? Someone who lives in America. Very famous. Taylor Swift. Not far off. Actually, quite far off. Sabrina Carpenter. More male. More male than Sabrina Carpenter Good luck finding that person It's a very, very narrow subset we're in now Joe Rogan Okay, writer As in he's a writer or that's more correct Stephen King Even closer with Stephen King Somebody who writes famously about rural America Michael John Grisham Now we're getting closer Now we're getting closer Rural America He writes about a small time drifter Drifting into your town Solving some problems Lee Child's British Lee Child lives in Wyoming Oh Lee Child Sorry Really deadballed that answer Hit that one into the net I just didn't pick him because he's British But he lives in America He does He has experience of life in America now And he lives in this mad Huge estate in Wyoming Okay get this Lou I don't know if you'd be up for this Marrying him So I get my land Yeah His post box is 10 miles from his house.

38:30No, thank you. 10 miles to the post box. How often does he send letters? All the time. He's exclusive. He's like Jane Austen. I guess he's not on email. His nearest grocery shop, 45 miles away. No. If he needs to go and get some milk, it's a 90-mile round trip. Is he making his own milk? What are we saying? And I don't mean that's not a euphemism. At that stage, you've got... Yeah, you've got farm. Well, you know what Jack Reacher's like. Lee Child will just pick up a cow and drink. Straight from the deep. Straight from the deep. Yeah. No, I don't know if he's got a farm, but basically he's in this place in Wyoming.

39:09Wyoming is the size of the UK, but the population is the combined populations of Cambridge, Canterbury, Carlisle and Chelmsford, as he's put it. It's just very, very sparsely populated. And he has a friend who he sometimes visits for dinner who lives 105 miles away. Wow. I mean, I'm not interested in that life. It's so remote. Yeah. So, it's so far from... Well, it's 10 miles to your postbox. Yeah. For someone as well who kind of puts out a book a year and is in the press and is doing interviews and presumably doing launches. Yeah, but he's not being distracted by constant letters, is he? So he's not...

39:44But maybe... That's how you write a book a year. A lot of people want to move to these places in case there's like a nuclear war or something or a zombie outbreak or something. Does that appeal to you, Lou? Are you sort of trying to get a gauge of how much of a nutter I am? In a polite way. And will we be bottling all the piss? Will we? Well, the reason I ask is like a lot of squillianaires will buy these sort of off-grid places and we'll have them in case the whole world goes to shit and they'll have a place to live. Oh, if I had the money, I probably would. Yeah, so this guy, Peter Thiel. Oh, yeah.

40:19You know him, squillianaire. asshole um he got new zealand citizenship so that he could build a super bunker in new zealand they're all building in new zealand because they know that they're causing it like climate damage to anyway they are but there's a new book by a guy called mark linus who looks at all the countries in the world and who would survive best a nuclear winter uh situation and new zealand is one of the worst places you can be really because they're very unself-sufficient in food oh wow they import a lot of food so only 68 percent of kiwis would survive a nuclear winter along the whole world is that the bird the kiwi or is it the fruit the best places any of the best places to live oh um is it someone once told me um that it's in the uk if you go like nope in the uk 99 percent of people will die oh yeah because we're not self-sufficient with food but i want to focus on that one percent james that's that's who i've absolutely the change you want to see in the world yeah yeah i've got 50 cans of beans under my chairs you will be the one percent i reckon living in your self-sufficient um world okay i'm highly allergic to beans that's the only problem

41:35uh so someone that's self-sufficient in terms of food yeah that's really interesting is it It's somewhere in... And energy and various different things. Oh, it's like Sweden or Norway or something like that. I'll give you Iceland. Thank you. Oh, because they've got all the geothermal. Yeah. And they've got all those great isles of options. Australia, Iceland, Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay and Costa Rica and Haiti are the places which are kind of self-sufficient in themselves that they can feed their whole population. Yeah, right, right, right. Because in Australia, you said, is sort of... I think they've got so much solar power.

42:09they're just going to give everyone three hours of free electricity. And they've got very low population as well. Right, right. So Australia is a good place to go. Yeah, and also they have lots of different sort of climates there. So you could grow lots of stuff in the north that you can't grow in the south and stuff in the south that you can't grow in the north. So if you need all the different vitamins. But if everyone was wiped out in England, I'd just sort of go along as well. I'm not that interested in living underground for five years on some tins. But you live near the Ramsgate tunnels, which are perfectly, perfectly set.

42:38They're already set up. they've got the bunk beds left over from the war in there oh fenella and i will fit in nicely i'll be running my cult no touching it

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44:22Okay, it's time for our final fact of the show, and that is my fact. My fact this week is that at Morrissey gigs, security have been known to pat down fans to search them for meat. Wow. The idea of a big security is kind of going off. You just see the shape of a pork chop in someone's pocket. Or a sausage. Or a sausage, yeah. I do the same at my gigs, actually. Do you? Yeah, yeah. But I'm sort of wanting to find the meat. Are you doing the pat downs yourself? Yeah, I am, yeah. I'm doing the pat downs, yeah. A meet and greet with Lou Sanders has a very different meaning. I pay you. I pay you to meet and greet.

45:02So this is Morrissey, singer from the band The Smiths, who's had a very long solo career after their breakup. And he is a committed vegetarian and vegan. And he hates meat to the point that if it is even in the air, if he can even smell it at a gig, he will be known to walk off stage. so he always says that if he's going to play a venue you're not allowed to sell meat in the venue for that specific gig so if he was playing let's say the o2 in london that would be one of the conditions that he would have and in 2011 fans were reporting that as they were coming through the security barriers men and women were patting them down searching for meat i think it's fair enough yeah it's his gig like i think the searching is a bit i think the searching is because once or twice he's had sausages thrown at him on stuff yeah which i don't think is on i do think that's i do think that's poor form yeah do you need to search everyone for meat just the people who look suspicious they look like they might be packing a suspicious sausage but you can anyone in tie-dye come straight through but you can meat is i would say quite easy to smuggle yeah because you're made of meat so there's no way they could do like a x-ray thing because your whole body's meat.

46:18It's only if there's an extra bone. You would spot that if someone's smuggling in a... A teabung steak. A teabung steak. But yeah, I agree. I think it's a bit much. It's a bit much. He said he doesn't identify with the term vegan. He's managed to find an even smaller subset of... What does he identify with then? He just says, I refuse to eat anything that had a mother. He says he's never had a curry or coffee or garlic. Coffee got a mother? I don't think that's the... But he said his diet consists of bread, potatoes, pasta and nuts. So it feels more like a sort of Channel 4 documentary about a fussy eater.

46:58This is interesting, though, his influence, despite him being this character that people find quite difficult. People get annoyed with vegans. And my theory is that because they know that they shouldn't really be eating, something in them feels a bit icky about eating animals. they feel embarrassed about themselves. That's possible. Yeah. Coachella, the big festival, really tried hard to get a Smith's reunion. And there's been so much fallout between the members, Johnny Marr and Morrissey don't particularly... They do not get on. They do not get on. And so Coachella said, we want you to get back.

47:36We're going to pay you a lot of money and we will make Coachella a vegetarian experience. And he said, I would rather eat my own testicles, which is not very vegan. But he, because this is how much the band do not like each other, I'm afraid. Oh dear, this will be us in 30 years. I think maybe last year they almost got together and Morrissey wanted them to get together because they got offered an insane amount of money, but Johnny Marr said no. Oh wow, he could have given it to the animal charities. Morrissey has cancelled a gig in Iceland over there, meet policy. At the supermarket. Yeah, they do a lot of prawn rings, don't they?

48:11You know? Sorry. no geothermally powered country iceland um but the the venue just refused to stop selling meat for one day and he said i love iceland and have waited a long time to return but i shall leave the harpa concert hall to their cannibalistic flesh-eating bloodlust yeah he's not afraid to put together a pithy quote for a press release i'll say that i think it's crazy that the venue couldn't stop selling meat for a day because it's so bad for the planet as well you think you know just don't sell meat for a day people will cope i think the thing is with iceland though they have like a history of eating lots of meat because they've not been able to grow plants for many hundreds of years especially in the winter so they really do have a very big culture of eating whales yeah puffins fish i think you're right i think the vegan thing is really interesting because i think he's he's been very provocative in the way he presents it like his tour gigs videos of slaughterhouses slaughterhouses are provocative absolutely absolutely and i think probably he sort of deliberately does it in an abrasive way maybe because he's trying to shock people into it.

49:15And no one's listening. Well I think it works on only a small percentage of people. I think people are likely to shut it out if something is so upsetting. I think it's like the veganism movement has had a bit of a stumble in recent years. It's a bit less popular than it was about five years ago. And just a lot of people have sort of thought oh the world is quite difficult now. I can't quite be bothered to cut out everything. And you know like vegetarians sometimes get stick for not being vegans and like that kind of thing. So I think it's tricky how you sort of softly softly people into it yeah um do you guys remember that morrissey wrote a novel and it became quite well known for the fact that it contained possibly the worst sex scene of the year included in the book did it win there's an award for worst sex it did it won the 2015 worst sex scene uh so his book was called list of the lost could you read it in a sexy voice yeah well do you want to do you want to okay here we go eliza and ezra rolled together in the one giggling snowball of full-figured copulation screaming and shouting as they playfully bit and pulled each other in a dangerous and cool i think it's good so far yeah sorry how's everyone else doing in a clamorous roller coaster coil of sexually violent rotation with eliza's breasts barrel rolled across ezra's howling mouth and painted and the pained frenzy of his bulbous salutation

50:40extenuating his excitement as it whacked and smacked its way into every muscle of Eliza's body except for the otherwise central zone this is a Tuesday night in my house this is just Tuesdays that's mad I do think sexy novels are a bit less sexy when you have to ask people can you tell me what this word says but that is insane he's never had sex I'm sorry, I think that's good. There are so many mixed metaphors in there. They're like a snowball and they're like a roller coaster. It's a glamorous roller coaster coil, yeah. And it's quite aggressive, not at all. Sexually violent rotation is a bit...

51:19I mean, if your breasts are doing barrel rolls... That's the least... Imagine, like... That's RAF stuff, isn't it? That's the red arrows, you know? And your bulbous salutation is a bit... That's mad. Bulbas salutations feels like they might support the Swiss. On Morrissey's books, he has been a bit controversial because he wrote an autobiography, a memoir, and it was published by Penguin Classics. Oh, yeah. So same list as Ovid, Homer's Odyssey. And he basically said, I'll do a book, but only if it goes in straight as a Penguin Classic. Oh, wow. A Penguin Classic. Sorry, I didn't really take a note of that.

52:01So it didn't come out in hardback, which would be your traditional release. It was straight into a paperback with the classic look of it. So, you know, Plato. They're on the same list. I think it's bold. And I think it got him a lot of publicity, didn't it? Mostly negative. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But he's got a long history of writing. So before he was a pop star, he wrote unsolicited scripts for Coronation Street. Did they go with it or not? He sent them a script where the Rovers return in stores a jukebox, and they did not go with it. It's basically fan fiction, isn't it? It's basically fan fiction, yeah.

52:34I found one other example, just while we're still on Morrissey slash musicians, of people who are very strict vegan slash vegetarians, to the point where it almost seems a bit awkward. KD Lang. Oh, yeah? KD Lang once refused to meet the singer Meatloaf. Because of his name. Because of his name. That's so amazing. Come on. Stop it. It was an interview from Meatloaf where he said, I was a vegetarian for 10 years and I was sitting next to Jon Bon Jovi at an awards thing. And I said, oh man, I'd love to meet Katie Lang. I'd really love to meet her. They went to find out if that's okay. She said, no, his name is Meatloaf.

53:13But he was a vegetarian at the time? Possibly he'd lapsed at that point. But he had been a vegetarian at some point for 10 years. I think that's a bit strict of Katie there. Yeah. Just while we're on sort of pop stars and stuff, before we go into veganism, I had a look at some of the riders that people have. So Kanye West, apparently, when he played later with Jules Holland, that he must have his dressing room carpet ironed. Wow. Eminem, apparently when he played at a festival in Northern Ireland, insisted on a koi carp pond. Okay. And according to TMZ, there's a rapper called DMX, who I'm not massively familiar with.

53:51He's a biggie, though. Yeah, he is big. for every rider he wants a bottle of Hennessy and three boxes of condoms three boxes which boxes three boxes well sometimes the boxes are fewer even if there was three in a box do you reckon you can get through nine before a gig not before not before the gig when I'm at the Bill Murray it's a similar story it's a similar story it seats 90

54:19I'm optimistic no that's mad I was wondering if he might be using them to carry water because they're quite good for that. We've had to say that they're good for water. I heard that Drake puts, when he finishes off in a condom, because he doesn't want kids with some stranger that he's sleeping with, he puts chili flakes in the remnants or something so they can't shove it up them. Oh. That's what I heard. So people might take the condom. and then half and chilli flakes is going to stop them. I mean, if you're mental enough to want to do the first part of that, do you think the chilli flakes would stop you?

55:00Condoms are naturally spermicide covered, aren't they? The spermicide's on the outside of a condom. So it's spice. I just thought it was all, put it out on bag to front. How many kids have you got? Inside out, not bag to front.

55:16Yeah. Well, is that true? That's what I've heard. If it is any of it true, because the rumors of the the the riders you could just make that up couldn't you yeah absolutely and i wouldn't be 100 certain that any of the things i said are true well you've toured lou you recently toured i did the only thing i asked for was not a plastic bottle of water so either like a jug a filter jug a condom full yeah or like cans i guess of water yeah that's because I don't know all the plastic bottles yeah fair enough I guess I'm a good person I guess I'm just what I'm saying here subtly is like I'm a good guy you're more a sea of comedy yeah yeah but better but better but better joke alert does Eminem ask on his rider to have all the Van Halen's removed from his dressing room I love it very good only the brown ones yeah

56:13okay that's it that is all of our facts Max, 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 podcast, we're all online. You can get us on Instagram. That's where I am, on at Schreiberland. James? My Instagram is no such thing as James Harkin. Andy? Mine is at Andrew Hunter M. Yeah, and Lou? You just search Lou Santers and it will come up. And I've just done a sub-stack note and it's got two likes, so join in. Oh, I think that's the first sub-stack we've got. Be that third like. Be that third, yeah. Yeah, well, cults, they start small.

56:47Well, it's worse because I've got over 4 ,000 subscribers, but they're not into what I'm doing, I suppose. Anyway. Yeah. Or if you want to get to us as a group, you can message us on podcast at qi.com. Send us an email there with anything you want to chat about, any extra facts that you have. We often go through the inbox and Andy will cherry pick out the best of those to bring to our mailbag episodes that we do called Drop Us a Line, which can be found in a very secret place. Lou, it's called Clubfish. It's a secret exclusive members club. It's a cult. It's a cult. No sex. There's not a flicker of sex going on there.

57:24I'm not be joining. No bulbous salutations, I'm afraid. And yeah, we will read out the best of those emails on there. So check out Clubfish. You can check that out by going to no such thing as a fish.com. We've also got other stuff up there like merchandise that you can buy. We've got all of our previous episodes. But if not, just come back again next week because we will be here with another episode. We will see you then. Goodbye.