No Such Thing As 'What's My Spoon?'

11:52Andy Dawson:Oh As you're doing on stage right now Okay I'm not sure we want round two I'm not sure we've earned round two

12:05Richard Osman:I mean good luck topping that I put the strongest one first To stick one spoon I'd love it if a doctor ever said that to you Mr Hunter Murray I'm ever so sorry We did everything we could but I'm afraid your mother has stuck her spoon in the wall

12:24James Harkin:Oh my god To fill the mouth with empty spoons To fill your mouth To fill the mouth with empty spoons False promises Wasting your time Lying It's someone in the audience said it's just being hungry Weird these didn't catch on Yeah Well a spoon can also be A second rate coachman A penis, a shovel one sixteenth of an ounce of heroin or a newly qualified prison officer. Okay. Yeah.

12:55Andy Dawson:There's lots of times when you can say sticking your spoon in the wall and depending on which spoon you're talking about it could mean something very different. Very true.

13:02James Harkin:Richard, just as someone who's created some of the most defining quizzes of our time. And some of the worst, to be fair. Okay.

13:09Richard Osman:Where does Andy's What's My Spoon rank on... I would say fairly highly up when I think of some of my stuff. I mean, yeah, it feels like maybe, I'm not sure it's a runner. Like series two, I think people are going, oh, I wonder what more spoon stuff Andrew has for us this week. Yeah. It'll sort of work. But if you moved it out to other utensils, so the first one is what the spoon, second one, what the fork. Yeah. See, there's the fork. We've got ourselves something.

13:38Andy Dawson:Is that the end of your quiz, Andy? I'm afraid. Okay. I just want to quickly say a little bit more about the mass spooner. Yeah. Because this was the kind of thing, it started off as a bit of a meme. So there was this guy who was going around like restaurants and bars, and he was always wearing this outfit where it's like got a mask on, he's got a hood, you can't really see what he is. And then all the Hollywood magazines started writing about him and saying, who is the masked spooner who's going around? And actually it became a bit of a thing where people were guessing in magazines and newspapers who he was.

14:07Andy Dawson:And then the TV show was almost a spinoff. Yeah, and he got like, he was getting marriage proposals from people. And yet he never gave away the secret. And in the end, it felt like he was kind of holding on to give it away, give it away. But in the end, everyone just gave up and didn't really care anymore. Do we know who he was? We do know now, yeah. Because when he was going around to all these restaurants and the newspapers were writing about him, they heard about him from his friend called Jack Rook. And Jack Rook would say, oh, the masked Spooner is going to be in the O Bar in Soho tonight.

14:42Andy Dawson:And actually it was him.

14:43James Harkin:Yeah. Yeah. And here's the thing. Jack Rourke was big in his own right at the time. He wasn't an anonymous character that you would just, when you heard his name, it was like, Jack Rourke. It'd be like saying Richard Osmond. He was a huge force in the world of entertainment in America. He effectively created, or at least popularized to a massive scale, telephones. And I think the word itself was almost coined by Jack Rourke, telephone.

15:07Richard Osman:I think it was, yeah. The Mars Spooner invented telethons. Yeah?

15:11James Harkin:He also invented the political debate on camera, on screen. So when, was it Nixon? I think it was Nixon.

15:18Richard Osman:He did a big show with Nixon. Yeah.

15:19James Harkin:Yeah, big Nixon fan.

15:21Richard Osman:He did a telethon for Nixon and raised lots of money for his election. Can I just say a sad thing about this, though? In 1994, Jack Rourke finally stuck his spoon in the wall.

15:35Yeah.

15:36Richard Osman:It's going to catch on. Isn't it a shame?

15:38James Harkin:It's going to catch on. I don't know how else to put it. I was trying to find TV shows where everyone is in a mask, or someone is in a mask. And there was an amazing TV show that you may or may not have heard of. It was called Mr. Personality, right? 2003, American. It's a dating show. And there was one woman called Hayley Arp, who was wanting to get married, wanting to find love. And there were 20 suitors, guys. and they were trying to, you know, catch her eye and wanting to be picked by her in the show. But they were all wearing intense iron masks or sometimes like rubbery, quite gimpy masks throughout the series.

16:24And was that her thing? No, no, not at all. It wasn't their thing either. Like it was nobody's thing. And it was...

16:30Richard Osman:Apart from one of them. One of them was like... She'd go, do you know what? I might not go for number seven. he has been erect the entire series

16:43it was actually won by a man called Will Dick funny you say that and they were only allowed to remove their masks in a pitch black room and she would feel their faces and then they put the mask back on Monica Lewinsky was the host obviously no wait and frankly the second worst decision she's ever made was to host this show and it was an absolute disaster. Amazing. The men didn't even know they were going to be in masks until they turned up on the first day of shooting. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Can you pop this on for the next five weeks? Right. Disaster.

17:15Richard Osman:They all would have said yes so they'd go, yeah, okay. That's the thing where people come on telly especially in 2003 anyone would have done anything. Yeah. Yeah. We pretended to send people to space in a show called Space Cadets. Were you part of that? What was your show? I mean, I wasn't but was I part of it? It's a good question. What's your view on it? No, I With the two of us, we're going, what's the biggest practical joke you could ever pull? And we said, I wonder if you could convince people they'd ever been to space And any time when we pitched it, they said, yeah, but you're not floating And you go, yeah, you don't float in space because of the vacuum seal And they went, okay And like two weeks later, they go, is that true?

17:52Richard Osman:You go, no, but you believed it

17:59James Harkin:Okay, it is time for fact number one two, and that is Andy. My fact is, in 1990, most of the red kite birds in England had arrived here by British Airways. So this is about the red kite. This is a beautiful bird, and they're kind of all over the place these days. In the 90s, they were absolutely not. At the worst, I think they got down to like five breeding pairs in Wales, and you had to go to central Wales to have even a sniff of a red kite. And they had this project, Mike Piankovsky was a guy from the Joint Nature Conservation Committee and his colleague Colin Golbraith and lots of colleagues.

18:35They knew this bird was declining a bit across Europe but in England there hadn't been any for about 400 years. So it was about to put its spoon bin in the wall. Oh my god. Oh my god. Andy, lean into it. He's going to get you a TV show at the end of this. You're right. And they thought, well maybe we could restore them in England and they imported maybe a dozen from Navarra in Spain and they arrived on British Airways. Amazingly, they were flown in the main cabin with paying customers. So as you got on, there was a load of boxes on the seats strapped in. Now that's a film. That's a film.

19:10James Harkin:What? Boxed red kites on a plane? I think something happens, right? No, my film is about the conservation effort. It's like nothing happens. And basically, the population has grown two and a half thousand percent since 1995. And it's a massive Now they're reaching seagull status in parts of the country. I read that they're getting to the point where schools aren't allowing the kids to eat lunch outside because they're swooping down and trying to steal their lunch.

19:39Richard Osman:Is that right?

19:40James Harkin:Yeah.

19:40Richard Osman:I read that when they did come over, they spread initially along the M40 corridor because there were so many dead animals by the side of the road, and that's what they love to eat. Yeah, they're scavengers, aren't they? That's a lovely thought, isn't it?

19:54Andy Dawson:And the reason that there weren't so many of them is because they were all killed, basically, right? So they like to eat dead things, but if a farmer sees them eating like a dead lamb or something like that, they haven't killed the lamb, but the farmer thinks that they might have done. And so during the Tudor times, there was a thing called the Vermin Act of 1566, and that said that if you killed a red kite and you could prove it, you'd get some cash. And so people basically went out and killed as many of them as they could. And the idea was to help the farmers, but of course we now know that it didn't really help them at all.

20:27Andy Dawson:Also, if you killed a hedgehog, you could get up to four pence, which doesn't sound a lot, but that could buy you 20 pints of beer in Elizabethan prices for one hedgehog.

20:37James Harkin:Really? Wow. Getting you a certain number of pints means nothing to me recently since I discovered Wetherspoons, because up until recently, you could get a pint of Ruddles for 99p. 99p. I could go to the bar with a 20 pound note and come back with 20 pints or one hedgehog Danny have you taken another advertising gig on the side no but Ruddell's is a fine fine beer and affordable it's actually gone up controversially to like a pound 49 now or something like that me and the other guys at 9am in the Wetherspoons are furious anyway back to Red Kites yeah sure

21:19Richard Osman:Yeah. That's the most animated I've seen Dan in any episode I've ever seen. Finally discover what he's interested in. Do you know one other thing red guys do? Now, there's been a big vogue for wild swimming, as I'm sure you know. And a lot of people like to swim au naturel. Where's this going? We know they can kill lambs. They sometimes will steal your clothes if you're wild swimming in a river. they would nick your clothes to line their nest and then some red kite chick has a lovely pair of Y-fronts.

21:55Andy Dawson:I've heard this they found nests with a teddy bear's head in it, a tea towel in it and in 2006 they found a nest with a St. George's flag in it it might have been painted in by a local I'm not sure but it was discovered less than an hour before England's World Cup match against Paraguay and so it hit the newspapers that this was a very patriotic red kite. Did we win that match? Against Paraguay? I think we did, yeah.

22:23James Harkin:Do you know what their Latin name is? Red kite? Yeah. Milvis Milvis. Do you know what Milvis means? No. Bird. They're called Bird Bird. Linnaeus called them Falco Milvis but then Milvis became its own genus and so then it got renamed and Milvis was put in front of it. So they're milvis milvis. That's very funny. Yeah, bird bird. Very good. It is a problem, we should say. It's a great story of reintroduction of a really precarious species, but they are eating people's lunch, and that is a problem. Article this spring from the Henley Standard. Red kite stole my hummus. Jeff Hay, 72 years old, was having some nice hummus in his garden and got swooped on, predated, and scratched.

23:13snatched and it was the third time in five years that a red kite has snatched food from him while

23:19James Harkin:while he was eating outside he sounds careless i i got some stuff on things that have been on airplanes that feel quite out of place um i'm a big comedy fan and tony hancock you must have

23:31Richard Osman:loved tony hancock growing up i mean i'm literally i'm not 70 but uh move on when did he die when did he die i can't actually remember i think i mean it was it certainly was before i was 10

23:42James Harkin:Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry, I'm not suggesting that you saw it live.

23:47Andy Dawson:I think Hancock's Half Hour was on TV when I was a kid.

23:50Richard Osman:Yeah, I think a lot of us grew up on Hancock's Half Hour. Yes, I don't think I grew up watching Hancock's Half Hour. Okay. Sorry to...

23:56James Harkin:No, good lesson to just say the fact and not accuse you of a childhood memory you don't have. So basically, Tony Hancock, for anyone who doesn't know him... Oh, Tony Hancock. I thought you meant Nick Hancock. I'm so sorry.

24:10Andy Dawson:Tony Hancock was one of the great British comedians. He was the one who said in the blood donor, he said, you know, a pint, that's nearly an armful or something. Yes.

24:19Richard Osman:He was the one who had an affair, wasn't he, with the wife of the guy here around, Oliver Bonas, during COVID. Have I got it right now? Is that the right Hancock?

24:29James Harkin:That's the right Hancock. I think What's My Hancock could be the next game show. Yes. And it's called Hancock's Half Hour. It's a half hour format. Oh, my God. Roll it. Roll it. So, he was what? This had better be spectacular.

24:49Richard Osman:Given the investment we've all made. Yeah. If this was just Tony Hancock was once on a plane, it is going to be very disappointing.

24:57James Harkin:Tony Hancock was coming back from Australia. He was sitting next to Willie Rushton, who's another, you must have grown up on Willie Rushton, Richard. See, he, I did. He, I did? And so they were sat on a plane, and one of the stewards came over, and said, Mr. Hancock, you belong in first class. And so Hancock went to first class, but Willie Rushton stayed in economy. And the interesting thing about that is Hancock was dead at the time. So he had sadly passed away in Australia. He took his own life. He was quite a depressed character. And Willie Rushton happened to be in Australia and he was cremated.

25:34James Harkin:He was put in an urn and they bought him a seat in economy. And an air steward came over and said, someone would like to move seats to sit there. And they said, you can't. this is Tony Hancock and she said what the hell is he doing in economy he needs to be in first class so she took him in an urn off to first class while Willie Rushton just had to sit to a random person so he went to pick up Tony Hancock at the end of the flight and there was a red rose and a little note saying thank you for all the laughs on the seat next to it

26:01Richard Osman:yeah that was quite good that's annoying isn't it that was alright the same thing happened to Eric Morecambe didn't it Eric and Erne were on a flight together

26:13Richard Osman:Come on, guys. He's a guest. Thank you, James. Do you know what the world record is for the number of yaks on a Boeing 747? Wow. Eight? Oh, it must be more. Nine? Even higher. Higher than a nine? Fourteen? It's triple figures. No. 116 yaks on a Boeing. No. Yeah, not for fun. It was for a relocation program, but it was yeah that was last year So it feels like it's a beatable record like it feels like it's yeah innovation in the space right now What's the fun version of that number of yaks on a plane? Well, I'm scripting something I don't want to talk about it, but I did they go in the seats Yep Or did they go in the hold I guess I think they always have to go in in crates and custom-made crates and things when you're moving like megafauna, you have to do that.

27:12Richard Osman:Yeah, when you're moving megafauna, James. Do you know what? James is such an idiot. I am. My God. Have I ever met a man who knows less about moving megafauna than James? Can I tell you

27:24Andy Dawson:something, just to change the subject, about moving megafauna? So there's a company called Cargo Lux. It's a Luxembourg Guas company. And they have the tagline, you name it, we fly it. And they fly, If you need a big animal moving from one place to another, these are the guys you go to. And a couple of years ago, they moved a beluga whale from China to Iceland. Okay. For fun?

27:56Andy Dawson:No, it was very serious. It was in a sanctuary, like an ocean sanctuary. They wanted to move it to Iceland where it could live in the wild. and to cut a long story short they just put it in a big hammock and keep pouring water on it. Yeah, okay. But they did, they kept it in very, very cold water for a couple of months beforehand so its blubber would get thicker for the journey because... Because it's cold on a plane? Yeah, well you have to keep your, you have to regulate your temperature and that's how they do it. Yeah. And I guess it would be moving to colder waters as well if it's going to, did you say...

28:28To Iceland, yeah, yeah, yeah.

28:30Andy Dawson:It's just a thing that happened but... And when they arrived in Keflavik The locals gave them a salute of water, like they got hose pipes so that the plane could go through them, which sounds dangerous. Especially in Iceland. Yeah, true. Just on reintroducing things. Oh, yeah. Would you guys like to see animals introduced to the UK? Show of cheers. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Which animals? And now we come to the meat. Okay. So animals that have gone extinct that used to live in England but have gone out of business here. Okay. Beavers. That always gets a cheer. I know. And beavers against? Boo. Boo. Okay.

29:14No beavers. Who would like moose back? Did we ever have moose? We had moose. Did we? Yeah, we did. So lots of people want beavers and birds. 37 % of people want moose back. 37 % want wild boar. Can I have a cheer for wolves? I think that's more than beavers or moose.

29:38Andy Dawson:That's a lot of people who don't live in houses made of straw. But 31 % of people would be up for wild wolves in the UK. Which I think I'm up for. Okay, what about bears? And again, these are people who are not living with the consequences. What about wasps? You see?

30:01Richard Osman:You know what I mean? they'd rather have bears than wasps. Honestly, I think a bear would ruin your picnic quicker than a wasp would, I think.

30:12Andy Dawson:Okay, it is time for fact number three, and that is James. Okay, my fact this week is that this year at Poundland, if you had one pound, you could buy a tin of pilchards, a water pistol, or all 825 UK Poundland stores. That's, yeah. So, yeah. I mean, you wouldn't be able to go in with your quid and say, can I have them? There has to be some lawyers involved and stuff. But the fact is that Poundland was sold this year for one pound. Wow. Plus 10p for the bag.

30:48Andy Dawson:And this is the thing. Like, it's a thing in UK law. If you want to buy a company, and let's say they have loads and loads of debts, so they're not really worth very much, but you want to buy the brand or whatever. In theory, you'd think you could just pay nothing for that because you're taking on debt. But in actual fact, you have to swap something between you in order for it to make a contract. And usually when they do that, they do one pound. And there's been lots of things that have been bought and sold for one pound. Ken Bates bought Chelsea Football Club for one pound in 1982 and then sold it to Roman Abramovich for 140 million pounds.

31:22Richard Osman:Oh.

31:24Andy Dawson:About 20 years later. That's a good investment.

31:27Richard Osman:You could buy half a defender with that,

31:29Andy Dawson:couldn't you? Portsmouth, Swansea City, Hull City, Bolton Wanderers and Notts County have all been bought for one pound in their history. Notts County, the oldest football team as well. Oh, yes.

31:40Richard Osman:Aston Villa, they were bought for a pound. Were they? Yeah. But if you buy a tin of Pilchards, no one says that does come with 200 million pounds worth of debt. Exactly. Right. That is the difference. Yeah.

31:49Andy Dawson:So, yeah, they were sold by a Polish firm called Pepco to a US investment firm called Gordon Brothers.

31:56James Harkin:Do you know what's really sad about this is that I could buy 825 UK Poundland stores with my pound, yet I wouldn't be able to buy a single pint of Ruddles anymore because of this mad inflation that's gone on. This just pisses me off more. That's devastating, yeah. Poundland is very interesting. The idea of setting up a shop where everything was a pound, and it did have to buckle because things did go up, so obviously things were more than a pound, but just the very idea of setting up a shop and going everything is a pound is a pretty remarkable thing.

32:29Richard Osman:Yeah. Because a lot of things are a pound. Right. That's the clever thing about it. Yeah. You're going, well, my God, everything's a pound. You go, yeah, but I mean, they cost a pound. Yeah, you're not selling iPads for a pound. Yeah, exactly.

32:40Andy Dawson:But there at Panland was a bit of a Nepo store because they were founded with a 50K loan from a guy called Stephen Smith's father who had, he had a cash and carry business and he gave his son a loan so that they could sell this new company. A loan of one pound. but in fairness the whole family had come from a market stall background and the business idea for poundland came because on their market stall they had a box where everything was 10p and people would just go in and grab something and put their 10p in the thing they thought we could we could make this a big thing and actually i think in the uk there's quite a lot of companies especially supermarkets that began in the in the markets yeah didn't they tesco's morrisons and Marks and Spencers were all originally market stalls.

33:26Richard Osman:Right. There's a Poundland Museum. No. There's a Poundland Museum. And even better than that, you can buy it if you want. You can buy it for 4.25 million. So Keith Smith, who set up Poundland with his son, he went off to the Algarve after Steve Smith was building this thing. And he and his wife came back to England and bought a house. I've got the name of it. Ludstone Hall. Ludstone Hall. And in Ludstone Hall, it has the Poundland Museum in one of the barns there. and it's on right move right now. If you look at Claverley in Shropshire, you can take a look at Luddstone Hall. Wow, that sounds awesome.

34:00Richard Osman:There isn't actually a shot of the Poundland Museum.

34:02James Harkin:But I feel like they're tricking the buyer because it's not only a Poundland Museum, it's also a Luddstone Hall Museum. So you've got all these amazing bits of archaeology that they've dug up sitting next to Poundland items, right? Right. But they say you get the house, which is unbelievably beautiful, but they're going to take all of the stuff in the Poundland Museum and bring it to headquarters. so you actually don't get the Poundland Museum.

34:24Richard Osman:I bet if I made them an offer and I'd say that I'm buying it but I want the Poundland Museum, they'd go, yeah, fine. Because it's still for sale. It's been sold a long time. Yeah, they've had to half the price. So if I'm saying to them, full asking price. Is it you and me on Zoopla just constantly looking at this house? One other person interested, it says. Because it started at about 9.5 million. Then it was down to 7.75. Not that I'm obsessed with Rightmove. Now, as you say, it's about 4.5 million. and it's a really nice house. It's got one of those swimming pools where you can put a dance floor over the top of it.

34:56Richard Osman:And they actually,

34:56James Harkin:they reduced the price over a Christmas period for a while thinking that that would be... What is going on, Dan?

35:02Richard Osman:I didn't know you were so into this. But if you said, I want all the Poundland stuff, they're not going to say no. It's really important to us that that goes to our head office.

35:11James Harkin:Listen, if you want to go halves, I am... Yeah, right. If you want to go... Let's readdress that balance. Yeah, let's do it. Richard, would you give a TV show to the concept of Poundland? Would I give a TV show? Would you think that's a good TV show to make?

35:30Andy Dawson:Sorry, what are you talking about? I've got a format called Pound Shop Wars, which is all about rivalry between different kinds of Pound Shop.

35:39Richard Osman:Okay, that's different to what you said when you walked in the room, which was, would you like a game show? And it's about Poundland. Sorry, because there was a real TV show called Pound Shop Wars. Wow. Okay. And it sounds quite fun. So I'm just going to give you a few episode pictures and see what you think of them, Richard. So someone's already made this? Yeah. So I might not buy it from you, but go on. When Poundland reduces its prices, Pound World retaliates by launching the one pound bra. Is that a weight thing or a price thing? It's a weight. It's a price. Rival stores compete for the crown of Best Halloween Pound Shop in South Wales No I genuinely would I would watch that If I watched the first two minutes of that Was it on Channel 5?

36:24Richard Osman:I think I even saw it Oh I'm not sure Almost certainly with John Thompson doing the voiceover It does sound good

36:31Andy Dawson:Do they have any stuff about the 99p stars? No absolutely not No really I love it

36:37Richard Osman:Everything you ever need to know about economics You do not need to go to university You need to know that whenever a 99p store opens next to a pound store, it takes a lot of their business.

36:48Andy Dawson:Panland even bought the 99p stores for£55 million in 2015. But then there was also when the 99p stores came out, then you started getting 97p stores. And embarking in Essex, there was the 99p store. And then on the same street opened a 97p store, which had an introductory 95p sale.

37:14James Harkin:That is good. That is really good. Economics 101. Do you know who was the father, kind of the father of all of this stuff? So this is a guy called Frank Woolworth of Woolworths. Oh, okay. So he was the father of discount stores, basically. Where was he from? Because you get that in multiple countries now. Yes, he was American. Woolworths was a big brand in Britain as well until it went bust, but he grew up in the States and there were already some budget stores in big cities and they were called nickel and dimes because everything was either a nickel or a dime. And he opened a thing called Woolworth's Great Five Cent Store in Pennsylvania.

37:47And it became unbelievably successful. As in he had about a thousand branches. No more, probably a couple of thousand all across the state. Went international. And he took the opportunity to go absolutely bananas with the money. So he paid for the biggest building in New York to be built. The tallest building in the world at that time was the Woolworth building in New York. And he paid cash for it. He didn't muck around with mortgages or anything. He just said, I'm building, I'm commissioning this. And then he became obsessed with Napoleon Bonaparte. That was his thing. So his private office, sort of 50 floors up here, was an exact replica of Napoleon's private office from his castle in France.

38:28He would walk around his private estate in an old Napoleon uniform, like a legitimate old Napoleon uniform. The gate of the estate is based on the Arc de Triomphe. He bought Napoleon's old bed. There was an old sleigh bed that Napoleon had had And there were rumours that he believed he was Napoleon Towards the end And you were saying he wasn't I'm saying he

38:48Richard Osman:What evidence do you have that he wasn't? Just out of interest Do you know what? He was also interested in time travel So there's a very good chance he was And he's here today That's amazing Frank Woolworth, just one of the most eccentric Effectively pound shop owners

39:03Andy Dawson:Do you know what is the biggest Supermarket, fastest growing let's say grocery chain in the US today. It's one you've heard of.

39:13James Harkin:Target? Is that one in America?

39:14Andy Dawson:It's not Target. It's one that's bigger in the UK and Europe, I should say. I was going to say. Lidl's very close. Aldi? Aldi is correct. And so they're starting to learn about the Isle of Shame now. Oh, sorry. I thought that was Britain.

39:36Andy Dawson:for anyone who doesn't know the isle of shame this is the middle aisle of aldi where they just put some absolutely crazy things in there basically they do something called overstock where if a company has a lot of ironing boards that they're trying to get rid of then aldi will buy them all for really cheap and then sell them in their shops and so america is starting to find this and so if you go on the internet, you get lots of people asking what's the weirdest thing you've ever found in the Isle of Shane. So things include bucket hats for dogs, a light for the inside of your toilet bowl. Okay, hang on.

40:12Andy Dawson:Let's pause on that.

40:14James Harkin:Yeah, so what's going on there?

40:16Richard Osman:I would give you£400 ,000 for 20 % of this company.

40:22Andy Dawson:If you want to go to the toilet in the night. I think that's a brilliant idea. You might need something to aim at. Like runway lights. In an airplane. Exactly. The team of the Airbus used to have those.

40:31James Harkin:Then I can get rid of the guy with the ping pong bats in my toilet. But hang on, you don't want to turn on your main bathroom light? What if the main bathroom is right next to the bedroom and you don't want to wake up your partner or whatever? As in you don't have a door. Sorry, we don't all have doors, Dan, all right?

40:48Andy Dawson:If you go to the toilet in the night, do you turn all the lights on? I just feel my way to the bathroom. That's really selfish if you're doing that. Hang on, no, I'm sorry.

40:58James Harkin:I don't turn on the main light.

40:59Andy Dawson:I bet you flush as well, don't you?

41:01James Harkin:I do. What I do is I get out of bed, I go right up to my wife's ear and I go, where's the toilet again? No, you would go into the toilet it's a separate room. You turn the light on. I'm so sorry,

41:13Richard Osman:what on earth are you using your iPhone light for? That's a very personal question. You don't turn the light on at night.

41:21James Harkin:You guys are nuts. What are you talking about? It's in a different room altogether

41:26Richard Osman:Oh well Someone's doing alright for himself I'm just going to the west wing To have a wee Fucking hell Some of us are still on the old trusty Ceramic bowl under the bed It's honestly like sitting next to Prince Andrew

41:49Andy Dawson:Alright what else is there

41:50Richard Osman:So that's a good

41:51Andy Dawson:I think that's not an insane idea. No, no, none of these. People bought these things. Dessert hummus. Dessert hummus? Dessert hummus. It's made of chickpeas, but it's sweet. Okay. Do the red kites get pissed off when they taste the difference? And then one person on Reddit, when they asked what's the weirdest thing you found in the Isle of Shame, said, I work at Aldi, so my take is a bit different than the shopper, but the weirdest thing I have found in the Isle of Shame is a turd lying on the ground.

42:21Richard Osman:And that's what happens when you don't turn the light on. I take it back.

42:32James Harkin:It is time for our final fact of the show, and that is my fact. My fact this week is that not long after he released his song All By Myself, the musician Eric Carman was taken to court because, as it turned out, he did not write it all by himself. We all know the song. It was in Bridget Jones's diary. Celine Dion covered it. It's a massive tune. And Eric Carman put it on his debut album. And he decided to incorporate the second movement of a piece by Rachmaninoff. And he thought, because in America it was out of copyright, that that would be the case globally. But it wasn't. And so he had to give over 12 % of the royalties forever on.

43:14James Harkin:And so Rachmaninoff has a co-write credit on All By Myself. Crazy. Yeah.

43:19Andy Dawson:I mean, it is, in fairness, it is identical, isn't it?

43:22James Harkin:Yeah, and he wasn't trying to steal it. It wasn't a plagiarism thing. He thought it was out of copyright.

43:27Andy Dawson:He was a massive Rep Manonoff fan, I think. And when they asked him about it, he said, I thought it's a crime that there are some spectacular melodies in classical music that the general public doesn't get exposed to. But it turned out that the actual crime was plagiarism.

43:46Richard Osman:The irony of the title, that all by myself, and he didn't write it all by himself. Reminds me of the absolute classic case of Gary Portnoy. I grew up with him, yes. Who's that? I know the name. You know Gary Portnoy? You know Gary Portnoy? He's the man who wrote When Everybody Knows Your Name.

44:05Andy Dawson:Oh. The theme tune for Tears.

44:07Richard Osman:Yeah, which one of the most famous songs in our culture, but no one knows who wrote it. It was Gary Portnoy. Yes. That's great. There you go. That's really good. James did know his name.

44:16Andy Dawson:I'd heard the name before because I've watched every episode about 20 times and it comes up doesn't it Gary Portnoy does this work when you're on quizzes if you just say oh I did know it yeah if you're

44:26Richard Osman:like honest yeah

44:27James Harkin:there should be benefit of the doubt points at the end of every round

44:31Richard Osman:oh I was going to say that well if you were going to say it then I'm going to give you the points I'm taking notes for what's my spoon don't worry guys so this is a really big thing in lots of songs songwriters who will get sued later on because some similarity has been found. So one of the most famous recent cases of that was the song Blurred Lines, if anyone remembers that. Friend of the podcast. Right. T.I. Pharrell Williams and... Robin Thickey. Robin Thickey. They had to pay... They had to pay$5 million of the proceeds of Blurred Lines, which I'm naive about how much an individual's hit earns you, clearly.

45:09They had to pay$5 million to Marvin Gaye's estate, not because of a particular melody or anything it was because of the basically the feel of the song the vibe the vibe like they had borrowed the vibe to be fair when you listen to it you can kind of see where they're coming

45:26Andy Dawson:from because it's like a kind of funky bass and some cowbells and yeah but i mean that feels really harsh because they were going for a kind of old school funky i think that one did feel like

45:36James Harkin:that's come on yeah that's an odd one because there's very obvious ones where it absolutely is the case completely there was one that i read about which was i don't know if you all remember but Louise Redknapp had a song a long time ago called Naked. The lyrics are, I can feel your eyes all over my body. I can read the signs. They're sexual. I can read your mind. I can see you want me. And basically, someone effectively ripped the entire melody and the bounce of the tempo of the song, and they sued them. And so the co-writers of Naked by Louise Redknapp are now the co-writers of Pepper's Party Time from Peppa Pig, who sang a song about jumping in muddy puddles.

46:13Andy Dawson:yeah and again it does sound if you listen to them both it is it's pretty much for much lyrically as well yeah i was i was listening to one viva la vida by coldplay which i love that's

46:25Richard Osman:a roman cavalry choirs are singing all that kind of stuff there's a song by joe cetriani called if i could fly and i was listening to the first minute of that i thought this is nothing like it and then it gets to a bit you go oh that is exactly like that song so but that's called if i could fly can i do a very brief sidebar yeah because i instead of putting in if i could fly i I wish I could fly, which is the Keith Harrison Orville song, if anyone remembers that, which is I wish I could fly right up to the sky, but I can't. Keith says, you can. It's called Orville's Song. And so I googled Orville's Song.

46:52I originally wrote Orville's dong, but fortunately it said,

46:59Richard Osman:do you mean Orville's Song? So a lot of people know the first verse of Orville's Song. The second verse I think might be the bleakest thing ever written in any medium ever. So the first verse is, you know, you sort of roughly know where you're going. I wish I could fly right up to the sky, but I can't. Keith, you can. Orville, I can't. I wish I could see what folks see in me, but I can't. Keith, you can. Orville, I can't. Second verse. So Orville, I wish that I had a mum and a dad, but I don't. Keith, you don't. Orville, I don't. And here we go. Back to Orville. I'd like to pretend my sadness will end, but it won't.

47:51Richard Osman:Keith, it will. Orville, it won't. And that was number four. That was like a big hit. Wow. I mean, that's quite something, isn't it? That's quite something. Yeah, I'd like to pretend that my sadness will end. I mean, that's like Iris Murdoch. Good Lord. They're the only people who've ever been allowed to confer on Pointless Celebrities, Keith Harris and Orville. Very nice. They came on together. We were like, yeah, this is fine. None of us saw a problem with that. How did they do? They did great, actually, because they were up against Tommy Cannon and Bobby Ball, who scored 600 points in the first round, which to this day is a Pointless Celebrities record.

48:34Wow. Taylor Swift. Oh, yeah. Singer. So she has a song called Look What You Made Me Do, which is a great song. It's an absolute banger. But it has a single cadence, which was pretty much the same as one used in Right Said Fred's I'm Too Sexy, which was a really bad hit. Like, it was great, but it was sexy. I'm too sexy.

48:56Andy Dawson:Come on, mate. Okay, all right. I mean, it's no deeply dippy, but it's not bad. but basically the writers of Right Said Fred or Right Said Fred themselves I suppose have now got a credit on Look What You Made Me Do because their cadence ended up in it and this is a really common thing like if a big star has a hit coming up or a song coming up for release like they'll have people check over it and they'll say it's quite similar to this existing thing do you want to change a few notes so people actively make the songs arguably worse because they'll say I'll just change these songs so it's not like I don't know yesterday or whatever it is you know Because there's only so many notes.

49:32I feel like it's all fine. I feel like it's all fine to do. Do you? Thank you, Your Honor. Yeah.

49:39James Harkin:No, but it's an interesting point because the line that often gets said from the old generation of rock stars, John Lennon period, they would say steal from the best. And they did sometimes get busted. But if you look at the modern crop... And busted are the best. Yeah. And the modern crop, you've got Olivia Rodrigo who was sued multiple times for her debut album by various people. but the old crop, Elvis Costello said, no, go for it, this is great The Strokes, with their biggest hit that was a Tom Petty song almost literally ripped straight out of the night Last Night by The Strokes Yeah, exactly, did Petty I don't think he ended up

50:14Richard Osman:I think they came to an arrangement but he was quite cool about it That's nice, he wasn't Petty Phil Manzanero who was there in Roxy Music every now and again like he'd be sent a royalty check for like 1.5 million pound and every time he'd have to go sorry this is Ray Manzarac from the Doors this happens every now and again so he sends it back then then he gets a royalty check for 1.5 million dollars because sorry this is Ray Manzarac they said oh no someone took a riff he did from a 1970s album and it's on the new Kanye and Jay-Z album and so it was it was his money and he had no it just one of their kind of scouts found an old record thought this is an amazing riff found out who'd done it sent him the money

50:54James Harkin:wow yeah it's worth having isn't it yeah that's great i found a really weird um moment in pop history so blame it on the boogie was written by michael jackson a very different michael jackson who was also a singer who would trade under the name mick jackson but then it got taken to america via his people and it was played to a bunch of different people one of the people who heard it was the jackson five they recorded their own version and they released it in america meanwhile Mick Jackson is getting to release his own version in England and no one knows who is who because it's the same name BBC Radio 1 would only play the Jackson 5 version Whereas Capital Radio would only play the Mick Jackson version and they were battling it out in the charts with people being confused about who is who That's cool.

51:42James Harkin:It's just the most random name connection. Yeah, that you could get and he so happened to be an artist in his own, right? Very cool. All my stuff's about rap man enough.

51:50Andy Dawson:Oh, oh He. Who did he rip off? Doido. His first symphony, he played it to Rimsky-Korsakov. He went to the rehearsals. And Rimsky-Korsakov said, I do not find this music at all agreeable. I was going to translate it. This is shit. But it was basically that's what he said. Rabmaninov suddenly thought, oh, my God, this isn't very good. But he couldn't call it off. So he spent the whole of the first symphony hiding in a staircase backstage. Was it a success? Oh no. No, no, no. It happened once. The one reviewer wrote that if the devil had written a symphony based on the 10 plagues of Egypt and it was like Mr.

52:37Andy Dawson:Rachmaninoff's, then he would have fulfilled his task brilliantly and would delight the inhabitants of hell. Three stars. And Rachmaninoff refused to let anyone perform it again in his lifetime. And when he left Russia, because he fled Russia and went to America afterwards, and when he did that, he left his manuscript behind. He just didn't want anything to do with it. Right. Boy. Yeah. Was that the one that was used in All By Myself? No, different one. No, no, no. The one that All By Myself is his second symphony, which is an absolute classic and which is regularly voted on Classic FM, you know, our favorite symphony.

53:13Andy Dawson:But is that because most people listening are going,

53:15James Harkin:oh, that's the Celine Dion song. Generally, it is. I think it is, yeah. Rachmaninoff, massive hands. Is that so? Yes. He can go 12 notes or something.

53:25Andy Dawson:He could do 12 notes, but he could play a five-note chord. So it's not just reaching. He could also play the five-note chord. Yeah. He could play the first one, and then the second one is 12 notes away, and he could also play the three in between. So that means your hand has to be even longer than the... But surely he's impossible to play then for normal pianists with normal fingers. Actually, I think that is a problem that people with smaller hands find it difficult to play right man enough, and also female pianists find it difficult to play right man enough because they, on average, have smaller hands.

53:53Andy Dawson:Right. Yeah.

53:54James Harkin:It's weird because this is, Richard, you don't know the full history of our show, but this is probably the third... I know the full history of your show. Okay, okay. Then, as you will very well be aware of, this is the third historical figure I found who has massive hands. George Eliot, the author.

54:11Richard Osman:Yep.

54:11James Harkin:Stonewall Jackson, the Confederate general. He was convinced he had one giant arm, so he used to go into battle on horse with his arm in the air so he could distribute all the blood that that was hogging to the rest of his body. This is now the third. Rachmaninoff is in big hand territory. Big hand or not, the quiz. Richard.

54:29Richard Osman:They said that about Vladimir Putin. Vladimir Putin, when he walks, you see, he swings his left arm and he doesn't swing his right arm, so his right arm stays absolutely by his side. And for ages, people said that he's had a stroke. Something has happened with Vladimir Putin. but you talk to anyone with any kind of knowledge of spying, they go, no, that's KGB because that's where your gun is. So you wouldn't be kind of doing that. You'd always have your hand. No, fake arm. Fake arm. No, no, it's real. No, shush. Right hand is like holding the pistol and then you've got the fake arm. That happens.

55:02I'm with Andy. You see this all the time.

55:03Richard Osman:There's photos. But I don't think Putin has a fake arm. That's what I'm saying. Well, agree to disagree. I know he listens, so perhaps he can let us know. Guys, I was listening to the show. I won't do the voice. That would be offensive, yeah. I think he's all right. Oh, I don't want to offend Putin. Oh, my goodness. After all the good things he's done. No. We do need to wrap up.

55:30James Harkin:You see photos now where all the security detail that are walking around major prominent politicians and leaders have their hands just stuck in a position and it's because they're wearing, underneath their jacket, fake arms. while they hold a little gun. This is genuinely true.

55:46Richard Osman:And it brings us back to Keith Harris. With Orville. Of course he did, because he's got one hand that's up Orville's. You know Orville wasn't real, right? Right. You know it was Keith who wasn't able to pretend that his sadness was going to end. You know that, don't you?

56:01James Harkin:Are you saying that he was holding a gun inside Orville? At all times. Was Orville working under duress? Yeah, I'll go on pointless with you, absolutely.

56:10Richard Osman:Yeah, I wish I could fly right up to the sky You fucking will in a minute, mate

56:24James Harkin: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've said over the course of this podcast We can all be found on our online accounts I'm on Instagram, I'm at Schreiberland My Instagram is no such thing as James Harkin Andy, mine is Andrew Hunter M and Richard you're on you're online I don't know what I am Mr. Osman Mr. Osman on Instagram and September 25th the latest book is out it is The Impossible Fortune yeah and what could that be

56:51Richard Osman:an impossible fortune huh you'll have to read it to find out and listen if you want to ask us any

56:58James Harkin:questions about the things that we've said over the course of this podcast podcast at qi.com give us an email Andy reads literally every single one of those emails and if he finds them worthy to bring to our special club they will appear on jewel drop us a line which is our secret hidden members club episode that we like to do so do send it to us there otherwise thank you london podcast festival thank you everyone who has been with us here tonight thank you everyone who's been watching us overseas on the live stream we're going to be back again next week we'll see you with another episode then goodbye

57:38Thank you.