Little Fish: I've never been in a human pyramid

Anna gives the worst ever clue to a quiz, while she, Dan and James discuss YOUR facts . This week's subjects include Vincent Price and Graham Onions. And the gang announce eight more Friend of the Podcast custodians. Visit nosuchthingasafish.com http://nosuchthingasafish.com for news about live shows, merchandise and more episodes. Join Club Fish for ad-free episodes and exclusive bonus content at apple.co/nosuchthingasafish http://apple.co/nosuchthingasafish or nosuchthingasafish.com/patreon http://nosuchthingasafish.com/patreon Edited by James Harkin Produced by Leying Lee Team includes Tara Dorrell, Joe Mayo and Ethan Ruparelia

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:29Speaker 01

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• 1:10Anna Ptaszynski?

  Hello and welcome to another episode of Little Fish, the episode where we put down the facts that we've researched and we look at some of the facts that you have sent in. Andy has gone through the inbox, he's compiled some of the brightest and the best little nuggets that you've sent our way and we've absolutely loved reading them. My name is Anna Tachinsky and I'm here with Dan Treiber and James Harkin and who's going to kick us off with the first fact?

• 1:36Speaker 03

  I'll kick us off, that's okay. This one is from Pete Clifford and Pete is referring to some of the facts that we've had over recent weeks where we talked about sports teams with amusing combinations of player names. And he wants to tell us that between 2003 and 2016 Durham County Cricket Club regularly fielded fast bowler Graham Unions and wicket keeper Phil Mustard, meaning that the score sheets often recorded opposition batters as being caught mustard, bowled onions.

• 2:06Anna Ptaszynski?

  Brilliant.

• 2:07Speaker 03

  And Pete says, "I always felt it was a missed opportunity that they never had a charity match with Simon Mayo, Patrick Berger and Eric Pickles." It's just a nice little thing to say. But what I thought I would do is look at as many cricket players as I could and try and find a full Cricket 11 of people whose names had to do with food. So open that, Alistair Cook.

• 2:31Anna Ptaszynski?

  Okay.

• 2:32Speaker 03

  Famous England cricketer. Phil Salt. Alan Lamb in at three, often batted at three. Or we could have Emma Lamb, who plays for the England women's team as a batter. Robin Utappa, and Utappa is the name of an Indian pancake made from fermented rice and lentil batter.

• 2:49Anna Ptaszynski?

  God, and you're only on the fourth or fifth now.

• 2:51Speaker 03

  But they had to be batters, all-rounders, wicket keepers and bowlers.

• 2:55Anna Ptaszynski?

  I see, okay. It's not in order of how good these are.

• 2:58Speaker 03

  You decide. Clive Rice, Phil Mustard, we've mentioned, wicket keeper. Scott Currie, all-rounder. Josh Tong, bowler.

• 3:09Anna Ptaszynski?

  Brilliant.

• 3:10Speaker 03

  Yeah, you can eat Tong, right? Derek Pringle.

• 3:13Anna Ptaszynski?

  Amazing.

• 3:14Speaker 03

  Love it.

• 3:15Anna Ptaszynski?

  It's a weird meal, but yeah.

• 3:16Speaker 04

  Just one.

• 3:17Speaker 03

  Tasmir Rhabab.

• 3:18Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 3:19Anna Ptaszynski?

  Cool.

• 3:19Speaker 03

  Like rhubarb.

• 3:20Anna Ptaszynski?

  Yep, yep.

• 3:21Speaker 03

  And Graham Unions, of course, like they said, for our fast bowler. So I think that's a full team that I managed to find.

• 3:26Speaker 04

  That's incredible.

• 3:27Anna Ptaszynski?

  That's great. And is it a winning team?

• 3:29Speaker 03

  There's some proper, good international cricketers there, plus a few quite random ones that I found.

• 3:33Speaker 04

  I mean, I'm so interested in the journey that got you to Robin, what was his surname?

• 3:38Speaker 03

  Utappa.

• 3:39Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 3:40Speaker 03

  In fairness, some of these were, like, there have been Reddit threads where people have suggested some. Not all of them. Tasmir Rhabab, I'm glad to say, I found her myself, the Pakistani women's bowler.

• 3:51Anna Ptaszynski?

  She's obvious, though.

• 3:53Speaker 03

  But also you need a substitute.

• 3:55Speaker 04

  A 12th man.

• 3:56Speaker 03

  A 12th man. So I've gone for South African Quinton de Kock, if you go to the disgusting food museum. And I'll know that you might have a bit of Quinton de Kock.

• 4:07Speaker 04

  Nice, very nice. I met on the weekend a neighbour, as in from my local area, who is Australian as well, and her dad played for the Australian cricket team.

• 4:17Speaker 03

  Cool.

• 4:18Speaker 04

  But was the 12th man and never got called up. So was an Australian cricket player, but I don't fully understand what the 12th man role is, but...

• 4:27Speaker 03

  Well, usually when England are playing Australia, the 12th man is the best fielder in the country.

• 4:32Anna Ptaszynski?

  Don't, don't. You'll only piss him off.

• 4:35Speaker 03

  I think England did this more than the Aussies for sure. We would choose this person who was not that great at cricket but was unbelievable at fielding. And then our players would regularly, one player would accidentally get injured and have to go off and this fielder would come on and field.

• 4:48Speaker 04

  Oh, Romney.

• 4:49Anna Ptaszynski?

  It is frowned upon, to say the least, slash it's threatened my marriage on a number of occasions to an Australian. Yeah, you're not really supposed to do it, are you?

• 4:58Speaker 03

  Yeah, in fairness, compared to a lot of the stuff they did over the years.

• 5:01Anna Ptaszynski?

  Small fry.

• 5:02Speaker 04

  I'm not defending, yeah. And that new, oh, the guy who clicks, that was big news.

• 5:08Speaker 03

  Oh, that was, yeah, that was in village cricket, I think, wasn't it? Or certainly not very high level, I'm not sure it was first class, but someone went to play the ball and just missed the ball, but the guy behind him clicked his finger so it sounded like it hit his bat.

• 5:23Speaker 04

  And he had an amazing, like it was thunderous clicking. Clearly he might almost have been brought on to the team not for his cricket skills but purely for the loudness of his click.

• 5:33Anna Ptaszynski?

  Maybe he just had "click it" on his CV and they misheard.

• 5:36Speaker 03

  I think they just went to the cast of West Side Story, didn't they? And just found someone from there.

• 5:43Speaker 04

  They had to kick him out, he was just dominating the stage. It was like a thunderclap every time.

• 5:48Speaker 03

  And can I just say to any Australians listening that we may well be about to plan a tour to Australia in the next year and a bit? So I do apologize for any cricket sledging that's gone on in the last 10 minutes.

• 6:00Anna Ptaszynski?

  Let's put it all behind us. Any other facts from the listeners?

• 6:03Speaker 04

  Oh yes, I got one here. This is from Mac Gallen from Sydney, who says, "Fuck you, James."

• 6:14Speaker 03

  I think that's a term of affection in Australia, isn't it?

• 6:17Speaker 04

  It is, actually, yeah. No, this is from Mac Gallen from Sydney, who says, "Longtime listener, first time fact sender. You may already have come across this, but in case you haven't, Leo Fender, the inventor of the Fender guitar, so Fender Stratocaster, these are the iconic guitars, electric guitars, did not know how to play it." Leo Fender, it turns out, didn't know how to play guitar and you would think that would be essential. And so I looked into it a bit more, and this is from the Fender official website, not only did he not know how to play the guitar, he didn't even know how to tune one.

• 6:51Anna Ptaszynski?

  Right.

• 6:52Speaker 04

  Which, again, I feel would be essential to working out whether or not you've made a good guitar or not.

• 6:56Anna Ptaszynski?

  It does feel like if you've built a table, you can fix that table, right? It's just a case of rebuilding it. Surely he's built that guitar, tuning it is just building it again.

• 7:05Speaker 03

  It's not that hard to tune a guitar as well.

• 7:07Anna Ptaszynski?

  Oh yeah, don't you just twist the knobs?

• 7:08Speaker 04

  You twist knobs, you've got to string the guitar, I wonder if he even knew how to do that.

• 7:12Speaker 03

  He must have known how to string it, if he's not selling just the body with no strings, is he?

• 7:17Speaker 04

  I think everything's off the table now with Leo Fender.

• 7:19Anna Ptaszynski?

  Wow. That's so annoying if you've ordered a guitar online and it's like small print, it's without the strings.

• 7:25Speaker 03

  No strings attached.

• 7:26Speaker 04

  Yeah, so this is, and it is an iconic guitar, this is a guitar that...

• 7:31Speaker 03

  I own one.

• 7:32Speaker 04

  Yeah, you've got a Strat, amazing. Oh, this is really cool. David Gilmour from Pink Floyd has a Stratocaster and on the back of it, it has addition 0001. What does that mean?

• 7:46Speaker 03

  Well, you would think it was the first one that was ever made.

• 7:49Speaker 04

  Yeah, you would, and it's not. The first one ever made was 0100.

• 7:53Speaker 03

  Oh, what, was it binary?

• 7:55Speaker 04

  Yeah, exactly.

• 7:56Speaker 03

  Or maybe it's the 1,000th one ever made and it was upside down, is it not that?

• 8:01Anna Ptaszynski?

  Yeah.

• 8:02Speaker 04

  That could be it.

• 8:03Speaker 03

  So why was the oldest one 010?

• 8:05Speaker 04

  Yeah, I don't know, I guess it was a prototype and then they must have changed the system, but it's not explained, it's just said, "You would think it, but it's not." But so yeah, Leo Fender played saxophone and he played a bit of piano, never learnt the guitar.

• 8:18Anna Ptaszynski?

  Not guitar. Did we talk recently about Paul McCartney's guitar being stolen?

• 8:22Speaker 04

  His bass, yeah, would have been stolen.

• 8:25Anna Ptaszynski?

  It was stolen in the 70s and it was only found a few years ago.

• 8:29Speaker 04

  Yeah, this was, I wasn't on this episode, this was the period, by the way, where I went on holiday for two weeks and you decided in concurrent episodes to do a fact on Paul McCartney and then David Bowie, my two big heroes. I had to sit and listen to those episodes screaming out my facts.

• 8:43Speaker 03

  They were good episodes, weren't they?

• 8:44Speaker 04

  They were fantastic.

• 8:45Anna Ptaszynski?

  Also, can I just, did you notice anything about the way that one of us, because there's another one who's a big fan of David Bowie on the podcast, and that's Andy, but he was saying it, "David Bowie," and I thought that was sacrilege, is it not, Dan? You're the expert.

• 9:01Speaker 03

  Who cares?

• 9:02Anna Ptaszynski?

  Okay, sorry, you're sort of this drop.

• 9:03Speaker 03

  I feel like he pronounced it different ways in different interviews.

• 9:06Anna Ptaszynski?

  Oh, did he? Oh, I thought it was "David Bowie."

• 9:08Speaker 03

  And it should be pronounced "Booey," shouldn't it?

• 9:09Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's a fake name, it's not his real name.

• 9:11Anna Ptaszynski?

  Not even his real name.

• 9:12Speaker 03

  Because I think his, was he not named after the Bowie knife? Don't write in.

• 9:16Speaker 04

  But there's a few, there's a few stories and one is, one is that, and one was that it was a tribute to the fact that it was a knife and Mick Jagger used to get called Jagger the Dagger, so he wanted to be a knife reference as well.

• 9:28Anna Ptaszynski?

  Yeah. What I generally like in those facts is sort of messaging to me like, "Hey, we're doing this guy." He seems like a bit of a dick to me, what do you think, just getting like the multiple messages of, "Actually..."

• 9:38Speaker 04

  I actually, I'm lying when I say that, I was unhappy that I wasn't there. I was so happy I wasn't there because basically any one of my heroes gets absolutely massacred by James and Anna anytime they come up on a show.

• 9:51Speaker 04

  Anyway, so great back. Thank you very much, Mac.

• 9:54Anna Ptaszynski?

  Very strong. Okay, here's one from Emma Gower, and this is, she starts by saying, my second favourite London Underground fact.

• 10:00Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 10:01Anna Ptaszynski?

  I don't know what her favourite is. I guess that's another email that Andy's keeping from us, but her second favourite is that the only tube station with the word station in its actual name is?

• 10:11Speaker 03

  Um, King's Cross Station now, um, Station.

• 10:16Anna Ptaszynski?

  It's another type of station, station.

• 10:19Speaker 04

  What do you mean?

• 10:19Anna Ptaszynski?

  We could be here all day.

• 10:21Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 10:21Anna Ptaszynski?

  So, oh, um, B, I'll give you a clue. Riff.

• 10:25Speaker 04

  Barking Station?

• 10:26Anna Ptaszynski?

  Oh, that's a good guess, but no.

• 10:28Speaker 03

  That was a great guess, Nick. I can't think what it could possibly be.

• 10:33Speaker 04

  That's not it.

• 10:33Anna Ptaszynski?

  Yeah, that was pretty unbelievable. I just didn't think there'd be another really better answer to that clue.

• 10:40Speaker 04

  What else can that be?

• 10:41Anna Ptaszynski?

  Um, I, I'm not sure I even knew this was a tube station, if that helps.

• 10:45Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 10:46Anna Ptaszynski?

  It's where barkers might be kept.

• 10:49Speaker 03

  Kennelworth Road Station?

• 10:51Anna Ptaszynski?

  Also incredibly good fucking hell, guys. Why are there so many answers to this? It's Battersea Power Station.

• 10:57Speaker 03

  Oh, that's, oh, that's a new one, in fairness, isn't it?

• 11:00Anna Ptaszynski?

  Oh, is it?

• 11:00Speaker 03

  I think that's really new.

• 11:01Anna Ptaszynski?

  I see Battersea Power Station Station.

• 11:04Speaker 03

  Oh, that's really good.

• 11:05Anna Ptaszynski?

  But I did, I was thinking, what's the other station in London that you would think also means station? It's a station that, in a different language, means station.

• 11:14Speaker 03

  Oh, Vaxal.

• 11:15Anna Ptaszynski?

  Vaxal, there you go, Vaxal. I thought that was called Vaxal, it means station in Russia, like big station. I thought it was called that because there was a Russian delegation here once who got confused in the 19th century and thought that it was just our word for station, so they...

• 11:29Speaker 03

  That's still a story that's often told, but I think it's not true.

• 11:33Anna Ptaszynski?

  I was looking into it, and it turns out the timings don't quite match up, and it was actually that in 1838, there was a big music and entertainment pavilion that was built at the end of one of St Petersburg's big stations, and they called that Vaxal after Vaxal Pleasure Gardens, and then they came to refer to the whole station as that, and then they came to refer to stations as a whole as that.

• 11:55Speaker 03

  So it is named after the area of London called Vaxal.

• 11:58Anna Ptaszynski?

  It is.

• 11:58Speaker 03

  Vaxal.

• 11:59Anna Ptaszynski?

  Yeah. This is a real, like, agentic for only five people who know the original story. One of them's you, so there you go.

• 12:06Speaker 03

  How interesting.

• 12:07Anna Ptaszynski?

  Anyway, thank you, Emma. Enjoyed that.

• 12:09Speaker 03

  Very good. Okay, can I give you a riddle?

• 12:12Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 12:12Anna Ptaszynski?

  Yeah.

• 12:12Speaker 03

  Um, so this riddle comes from Si Finity, okay, and Si says, "Riddle me this. A sailor is found dead inside the anchor pocket." The anchor pocket is the place where an anchor's kept.

• 12:27Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 12:28Speaker 03

  "The anchor hasn't fallen on him or trapped him. He has no wounds and nobody else has entered the recess. So what killed the sailor?" Obligatory Andy woo noise here.

• 12:42Speaker 04

  Okay, um...

• 12:44Anna Ptaszynski?

  Is that where sailors sort of went to hide and have a drink, have a little bit of...

• 12:47Speaker 03

  Oh, you think he might have, um, alcohol poisoning?

• 12:50Anna Ptaszynski?

  Alcohol poisoning, yeah.

• 12:51Speaker 03

  It's not that.

• 12:52Speaker 04

  I think he was a scuba diver, and as an anchor was coming up, it latched on to him in the water. He got tangled and brought up, and he couldn't breathe once he was out of the water, obviously.

• 13:03Speaker 03

  Or he died of the bends?

• 13:04Speaker 04

  Or he died of the bends.

• 13:05Anna Ptaszynski?

  You thought he couldn't breathe because, like, when you're a scuba diver, it's like taking a fish out of water and you can't breathe in there.

• 13:11Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah. Okay.

• 13:13Speaker 03

  It's not that.

• 13:14Speaker 04

  It's not that.

• 13:14Speaker 03

  Um, so this sailor has asphyxiated.

• 13:19Anna Ptaszynski?

  Oh, okay. Close to the bends.

• 13:21Speaker 04

  Having an ankywank?

• 13:23Anna Ptaszynski?

  Is it?

• 13:27Speaker 03

  Not that, Dan, no, not that, not that. He was down at the bottom of the sea masturbating, and the anchor caught him and pulled him off.

• 13:37Anna Ptaszynski?

  Um, uh, sorry, he's asphyxiated. Okay, so has the ship sunk?

• 13:42Speaker 03

  No. What does asphyxiate mean? What's not getting to your brain?

• 13:46Anna Ptaszynski?

  Oxygen.

• 13:47Speaker 04

  Oxygen.

• 13:47Speaker 03

  Okay, so why is there no oxygen when he's next to this anchor?

• 13:51Anna Ptaszynski?

  Has he been underwater? Is it from drowning?

• 13:53Speaker 03

  No.

• 13:53Anna Ptaszynski?

  Okay.

• 13:55Speaker 03

  What could have happened to oxygen that it's all disappeared and he can't breathe oxygen anymore?

• 14:00Anna Ptaszynski?

  It's oxidized? It's rusted?

• 14:03Speaker 03

  It's rusted.

• 14:04Speaker 04

  The anchor was his mum.

• 14:08Speaker 03

  The chain is rusty, it oxidizes, and it eats up all of the oxygen nearby, which gives him not enough oxygen to get into his body, and he dies of asphyxiation.

• 14:18Anna Ptaszynski?

  Wait, surely you can't be so close to something rusting that it's using up all the oxygen?

• 14:22Speaker 03

  Well, according to Si, this is a well-known maritime hazard.

• 14:25Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 14:25Anna Ptaszynski?

  What?

• 14:26Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 14:27Anna Ptaszynski?

  That's extraordinary, if so.

• 14:30Speaker 03

  If you're in a pocket, I guess there's not much air there to start off with.

• 14:33Anna Ptaszynski?

  Yeah, okay, yeah, he is in the pocket. Phew, wow.

• 14:36Speaker 04

  That is wild, yeah. Oh, thank you very much.

• 14:38Speaker 03

  Although, actually, oh, sorry, Si does say, um, you can have half a point for ankywank.

• 14:46Speaker 04

  Thank you, Si.

• 14:53Speaker 04

  Okay, I got one here. This is from Daniel Bird, who says Vincent Price was once offered either $20,000 or a percentage of Michael Jackson's Thriller album proceeds for recording his iconic narration. So do you remember?

• 15:07Speaker 03

  So Vincent Price is like an old actor who did lots of horror films?

• 15:10Speaker 04

  Correct, yeah. He was, you know, mates with people like Bela Lugosi and, and Chris Reilly, he was part of that.

• 15:16Speaker 03

  And Michael Jackson was a singer.

• 15:18Speaker 04

  Michael Jackson was a singer, and, um, in Thriller, there's a voice who says, "Oh..."

• 15:23Anna Ptaszynski?

  I didn't know that was Vincent Price, actually.

• 15:24Speaker 04

  That's Vincent Price, yeah. And so he took the $20,000 as opposed to accepting a percentage, or maybe even necessarily fighting for a percentage, and Thriller went on to be the highest-selling album of all time. Over 100 million copies sold, uh, made millions of dollars, and the narration, uh, took two takes, less than 30 minutes in the studio, but he would have had amazing funds off the back of it.

• 15:46Anna Ptaszynski?

  Depends what percentage he got. If he had agreed to 0.00000001%, then he probably still wouldn't even have 20 grand.

• 15:54Speaker 03

  Wasn't much of a business, was he?

• 15:55Anna Ptaszynski?

  No, no.

• 15:57Speaker 04

  Anyway, I looked into it, apparently it really ground him down, the fact that he missed out on this.

• 16:02Anna Ptaszynski?

  It did?

• 16:02Speaker 04

  Oh, it pissed him off so bad. His daughter wrote a memoir where she goes into it, because he first met the Jackson Five in the 60s, um, and so he was, he was old sort of acquaintances with them. So when he did it, he thought, okay, I wouldn't be screwed out of anything, surely. But when it was discovered that he was furious, Michael Jackson sent over three of his entourage, who came over with a giant picture of Michael Jackson to say sorry.

• 16:26Anna Ptaszynski?

  Wow.

• 16:26Speaker 04

  It had a golden disc and it had a silver disc, and it was framed, and he'd signed the bottom of it saying, "Thank you." And, uh, his daughter said there were a few things that totally displeased him, but one item of memorabilia around the house really did, and it was that, the framed picture.

• 16:42Anna Ptaszynski?

  Why didn't I imagine the reason they gave it to him was so that he could just throw darts at it or something, you know, or set fire to it? Don't keep that.

• 16:49Speaker 04

  No, he was absolutely furious.

• 16:52Speaker 03

  Do you know what the, is the UK number one single that's been number one for the longest amount of time?

• 16:57Speaker 04

  The longest?

• 16:58Anna Ptaszynski?

  Mariah Carey, "All I Want For Christmas"?

• 17:00Speaker 04

  No, but it's got a, oh, yeah, it can be an American.

• 17:02Speaker 03

  There was number one. So Mariah Carey only became number one for the first time like two years ago.

• 17:06Anna Ptaszynski?

  Oh, did it?

• 17:06Speaker 03

  And it's only number one on Christmas week, and then it...

• 17:09Anna Ptaszynski?

  Look, I don't know music.

• 17:10Speaker 03

  No, no, fair enough, but I just thought you might have a vague idea of the trivia.

• 17:14Speaker 04

  Is it, um, uh, "Lovers All Around"?

• 17:16Speaker 03

  "Lovers All Around" is a really good guess. Uh, everything I do, I'll do it for you, wouldn't you guess?

• 17:22Speaker 04

  Very nice.

• 17:22Speaker 03

  Um, but the answer is "Rain Me In" by Sam Fender and Olivia Dean.

• 17:27Speaker 04

  Wow, what?

• 17:29Speaker 03

  I know.

• 17:29Speaker 04

  This is, these are like new people.

• 17:30Anna Ptaszynski?

  When was that? Oh.

• 17:32Speaker 03

  It's not Sam, he's no relation to the Fender who doesn't know how to play guitar.

• 17:37Speaker 03

  Uh, it was this year. I just, I noticed it.

• 17:39Anna Ptaszynski?

  Are you serious?

• 17:40Speaker 03

  Yeah, 2026.

• 17:41Anna Ptaszynski?

  Oh, my God. Should we know it? Have you heard it? Is it good?

• 17:44Speaker 03

  It just sounds to me like, sounds like a pop song, but it's 23 weeks it's had at number one.

• 17:49Anna Ptaszynski?

  Jesus.

• 17:50Speaker 03

  Yeah. It's just those things, like, when you do quizzes and stuff, you have to keep on top of these kind of things.

• 17:55Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 17:56Speaker 03

  Because these records, they change all the time.

• 17:58Anna Ptaszynski?

  Yeah, that's wild.

• 17:59Speaker 04

  Bob Hope questions rarely come up in the quizzes, and that's why I'm rarely invited anymore to join any teams.

• 18:05Anna Ptaszynski?

  Okay, another fact?

• 18:06Speaker 03

  Yes, please.

• 18:08Anna Ptaszynski?

  I, I really like this one, actually. This is from Mike Peel from Armes in Iowa. Um, and this he heard on Behind the Bastards podcast, which actually I recently discovered.

• 18:17Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah, yeah, I've, um, I've listened to a few episodes.

• 18:20Anna Ptaszynski?

  It's pretty good.

• 18:20Speaker 04

  I listened to about Rudolph Steiner. They did like a two-parter. They've really, absolutely murdered him.

• 18:24Anna Ptaszynski?

  I saw that they had done one on him, and I wondered how you'd feel about that. I listened for Salazar, who, again, Rudolph Steiner, Salazar, he's not your bastard, Salazar wasn't mine, but for many people, they are bastards.

• 18:35Speaker 03

  Oh, great show, though. Have they done David Bowie and Paul McCartney?

• 18:39Speaker 04

  They will.

• 18:41Anna Ptaszynski?

  Anyway, his fact is just about a guy called Alfred Krupp, who I didn't know about, but who sounds fascinating. Alfred Krupp, one of the largest arms suppliers of the 1800s, nicknamed the Canon King, built the study in his mansion directly over the stables so the smell of horse manure could waft up through vents in the floor and lubricate his imagination.

• 19:01Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 19:01Anna Ptaszynski?

  And he loved the smell of horse manure, like, really loved it.

• 19:04Speaker 03

  Was it Schiller who used to keep rotten fruit in his, um, in his desk?

• 19:10Anna Ptaszynski?

  I do not know.

• 19:10Speaker 03

  And he thought the rotten fruit would help him as well.

• 19:12Anna Ptaszynski?

  Really?

• 19:13Speaker 03

  I think it was Schiller. I might be wrong. Might have to look that up.

• 19:15Anna Ptaszynski?

  Weird and gross, as this man sounded. He sounds like a character.

• 19:19Speaker 03

  There is something quite sweet about horse manure sometimes, isn't there?

• 19:22Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 19:22Anna Ptaszynski?

  Yes.

• 19:23Speaker 03

  There are some aromatics in horse manure that are not awful.

• 19:27Anna Ptaszynski?

  I would say it's not terrible. It's not as bad as any carnivore poo. It's not a dog poo or a human poo.

• 19:31Speaker 03

  Or a fox poo, fuck me.

• 19:32Anna Ptaszynski?

  Oh, they're bad. No, no, you wouldn't channel fox poo up, but still, it's not the, I'd probably choose a perfume or some sort of flowery scent over horse manure.

• 19:40Speaker 04

  Yeah, but there, there were also, I think, a, a childhood smell that, I didn't grow up around farms, but I always remember that smell, and it throws me back to a place whenever I...

• 19:49Speaker 03

  What does it throw you back to?

• 19:50Speaker 04

  Um, to a pile of shit.

• 19:54Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think my friends are cruel. Um, so maybe it's a nostalgic thing as well.

• 19:58Anna Ptaszynski?

  Could have been. He was quite weird. I was reading up on him a bit, and he was one of these, he was a little bit like Howard Hughes, very paranoid, like, wouldn't have any windows open in his house. He had a weighing chair, and he made all of his guests sit on it and weighed them when they came.

• 20:11Speaker 03

  There's a thing about, there's a mayor, I can't remember which, someone I met, but I can't remember which town. I think it was in Kent, maybe? Do we, when we went to the University of Kent, was there a mayor there? Can't remember. Anyway, there's a mayor where you get weighed when you come in as the mayor, and you get weighed when you come out.

• 20:27Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 20:28Speaker 03

  And the idea is that if you've been corrupt and siphoning lots of stuff, then you've eaten too much. So you shouldn't put on too much weight while you're mayor, I think.

• 20:37Anna Ptaszynski?

  Right, right.

• 20:39Speaker 04

  Those Zempics probably really changed the game there, hasn't it?

• 20:42Anna Ptaszynski?

  Helped them out.

• 20:42Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 20:45Speaker 03

  But yeah, that's really cool.

• 20:46Anna Ptaszynski?

  Really cool. Yeah.

• 20:48Speaker 03

  Um, here is one more from me. Um, not particularly deep or obscure, says Matt Bradley, but Turkmenistan's third largest city is called Mary.

• 20:59Speaker 04

  That's a lovely name.

• 21:00Anna Ptaszynski?

  Weirdly, I know that because I'm reading a book on the Stans right now.

• 21:04Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 21:04Anna Ptaszynski?

  Turkmenistan is got some mad stuff going on, but that's one of them, that it's called a city Mary.

• 21:10Speaker 03

  That's amazing. Apparently it comes from the word marg, meaning greenfield or grassland.

• 21:15Anna Ptaszynski?

  Does it?

• 21:16Speaker 03

  Um, so maybe for Andy's second book, it's like things that sound like they're named after a person, but are actually named after something else.

• 21:22Anna Ptaszynski?

  Lovely stuff.

• 21:23Speaker 04

  Second book.

• 21:23Speaker 03

  Um, the 17th city, 17th biggest city in Turkmenistan is called Kaka, and the 19th biggest is called Saras.

• 21:31Anna Ptaszynski?

  Okay.

• 21:32Speaker 03

  With an H as well, so not like...

• 21:34Anna Ptaszynski?

  Really? And is Kaka after horsemaneau?

• 21:37Speaker 03

  No, after the Brazilian footballer. Um, and actually, this is interesting. Turkmenistan has a new city, as a city called Anu, uh, which has been inhabited since 5,500 B.C.

• 21:51Anna Ptaszynski?

  Very good. Very good.

• 21:54Speaker 03

  Very nice.

• 21:55Anna Ptaszynski?

  It has, in a couple of Turkmenistan, it has the highest amount of marble anywhere in the world. All the buildings are made of white marble, which is mad because it's incredibly poor and there's no one there.

• 22:06Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 22:06Anna Ptaszynski?

  Um, but it was one of those like huge vanity projects of the leader. Sounds like a wild place. Um, okay. Shall we have one more, Dan?

• 22:14Speaker 04

  Yeah, I've got one more here. This is from Jeff Partika from the Detroit chapter. My fact is the first photo op presentation of someone receiving an oversized novelty cheque was of Joseph Goebbels in 1936.

• 22:31Speaker 03

  What a brilliant thing. That is amazing.

• 22:34Speaker 04

  I've tried to see if there's earlier and I can't find one, and I've seen the photo and, um...

• 22:39Speaker 03

  That is a stunning fact, if that's true.

• 22:41Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 22:41Anna Ptaszynski?

  What's he getting? Did he win a competition?

• 22:43Speaker 04

  The picture shows Goebbels unabashedly receiving a cheque for 200,000 Reichsmarks from Julius Lippert, a Nazi-appointed state commissar, for what is essentially a bribe mast as a party publicity stunt. So, yeah.

• 22:57Anna Ptaszynski?

  Amazing.

• 22:58Speaker 04

  It's...

• 23:00Anna Ptaszynski?

  Goebbels, he knew PR. No one ever denied it.

• 23:02Speaker 03

  That's true. Yeah.

• 23:04Anna Ptaszynski?

  There you go. He invented the novelty cheque.

• 23:06Speaker 04

  Yeah, and that's, um, that's, that is something that I can't find an earlier example of, and is often cited as being the first. But if anyone else can find an earlier example, please send it in.

• 23:16Speaker 03

  Oh, don't send it in because that's now arguably one of my top 10 facts of all time. And if that's not true, I'll be really upset.

• 23:23Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 23:24Anna Ptaszynski?

  Okay, that's enough of that. Let's get back to our facts that we're going to give you. Yes, we are going to bestow on eight lucky listeners, some of our headline facts from over the years. We're going to make you guys custodians of these facts. And so, in no particular order, who wants to give a fact away?

• 23:44Speaker 03

  Dan, why don't you go first?

• 23:45Speaker 04

  Absolutely. This is a fact for Simon Hunter. Your fact is now, you can surf on mushrooms.

• 23:52Anna Ptaszynski?

  Oh, yeah.

• 23:52Speaker 03

  That's good.

• 23:53Anna Ptaszynski?

  I think I remember I picked this just to piss off James because it was when your mushroom phobia was really at its height in our comms.

• 24:00Speaker 03

  I still have it.

• 24:01Anna Ptaszynski?

  Yeah? Well, there you go. Think about that. Surfing on a mushroom.

• 24:04Speaker 03

  I like how it has two different meanings, like on mushrooms. But also, I think the idea is that the surfboards are made out of mushrooms.

• 24:12Anna Ptaszynski?

  They're made of mushrooms, yes. I'd like to say I'd thought of that double meaning at the time.

• 24:16Speaker 04

  That's quite nice. So you can lick your surfboard while you're surfing and just raise up your hallucinogenic experience. That would be amazing.

• 24:23Anna Ptaszynski?

  Is surfing on mushrooms on mushrooms a good idea, I wonder?

• 24:26Speaker 03

  I don't think so. I think like being in large bodies of water while you're not in control of your mental ability is not a good idea.

• 24:34Anna Ptaszynski?

  Not something we'd recommend officially as a podcast.

• 24:36Speaker 03

  Certainly not on this show.

• 24:37Anna Ptaszynski?

  Yeah. Okay.

• 24:38Speaker 03

  I've heard those guys at Big Bastards or whatever they're called. They love that kind of stuff.

• 24:45Anna Ptaszynski?

  What are they called?

• 24:46Speaker 04

  Behind the, what is it called?

• 24:47Anna Ptaszynski?

  Behind the bastards. Behind the big old...

• 24:50Speaker 03

  Big bastards.

• 24:53Speaker 03

  Okay, this fact is now under the custodianship of Frederick Dahlbaum. Frederick, your fact is that if you are allergic to cats, you're also allergic to lions.

• 25:06Anna Ptaszynski?

  Something to be afraid of when a lion's running towards you.

• 25:09Speaker 03

  This is Andy's fact, and what he's basically saying is lions are cats.

• 25:15Anna Ptaszynski?

  Classic Andy fact.

• 25:16Speaker 04

  How do you get that past us? That's very clever. Anything, he should be praised.

• 25:20Anna Ptaszynski?

  Yeah. Lions have the same sort of dandruff as cats do, unsurprisingly, you might say.

• 25:25Speaker 03

  I think it comes out of their spit, doesn't it?

• 25:27Anna Ptaszynski?

  Yeah, we do. I think it's, I, I think it was dander at the time, but I think it's all the same.

• 25:31Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 25:31Anna Ptaszynski?

  Protein or whatever. But yeah, exactly. It's on their spit. All right, here's one for John Michael Collins. This is the fact that it's illegal in Japan to make a human pyramid higher than five tiers.

• 25:43Speaker 03

  Really good.

• 25:44Anna Ptaszynski?

  Yeah, nice.

• 25:45Speaker 04

  I've never been in a human pyramid, just thinking about it, you know?

• 25:48Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 25:48Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 25:49Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 25:49Anna Ptaszynski?

  Amazing facts about Dan. Number one.

• 25:52Speaker 04

  They used to happen at school all the time and I was never in them.

• 25:55Anna Ptaszynski?

  Did they?

• 25:55Speaker 04

  Yeah, you would just have, it would just be like a three-tiered one, you know? Like, uh, you'd have person on the ground, next level, and then someone stands up on the top.

• 26:01Anna Ptaszynski?

  Right, okay. This is bizarre, and I think this must be because you were raised in Asia and that's quite close to Japan. So, because the human pyramids in Japan are a school thing. It happens at school sports days that they do them.

• 26:12Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 26:12Anna Ptaszynski?

  Because we do not do human pyramids as standard at school here. Yeah. Yeah. So quite funny.

• 26:17Speaker 03

  Did they have people who generally, like the same people went on the bottom layer and then the very nimble like people went on the top layer or?

• 26:25Speaker 04

  I think the, uh, the basic idea was boys on the lower tier, girls on the next tier, and then...

• 26:32Anna Ptaszynski?

  Cat.

• 26:32Speaker 04

  A cat.

• 26:35Anna Ptaszynski?

  Sitting on top.

• 26:37Speaker 03

  Uh-oh, George on the bottom layers is allergic to them.

• 26:42Anna Ptaszynski?

  It's all right, we've got a lion instead. Oh shit, really? That won't work either.

• 26:46Speaker 04

  Uh, all right, here's another one. This is for Paul Lowbridge. Your fact is in Utah, it is illegal to wear a hat in your driving licence photo, but you can wear a colander.

• 26:56Speaker 03

  I remember that one.

• 26:57Speaker 04

  Yes, this is the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Yes.

• 27:02Speaker 03

  Pastafarianism.

• 27:03Anna Ptaszynski?

  Yes.

• 27:04Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 27:04Speaker 04

  That's right.

• 27:05Speaker 03

  But I think it's like a parody of religion and they're saying, well, you know, if you're allowed to wear this religious thing in the driving licence, then you should be able to wear anything, whatever you believe in. And so that is, I think it is, it's a spoof religion, isn't it?

• 27:20Speaker 04

  Definitely. Yeah. It's used by a lot of, uh, scientists, particularly when there was that big moment of the atheists, uh, like Richard Dawkins and Hitchens and Daniel Dennett.

• 27:30Anna Ptaszynski?

  Mm-hmm.

• 27:30Speaker 04

  That was very much part of their world, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, yeah.

• 27:34Anna Ptaszynski?

  But then did it have to be registered kind of as it like, as a religion? So you can now wear it in your driving licence?

• 27:39Speaker 04

  Uh, yeah, yeah. They did all the stuff to make it, they wanted to be as real as you could show a religion could get.

• 27:44Anna Ptaszynski?

  Yeah, nice. Very good stuff. This is a fact for Isabel. This is a fact that there was a Victorian job that consisted solely of pushing people into the sea.

• 27:54Speaker 04

  Oh. For swimming.

• 27:57Anna Ptaszynski?

  And James is smiling because it is another Andy fact.

• 28:00Speaker 04

  It's another Andy.

• 28:03Anna Ptaszynski?

  There are bathing machines.

• 28:06Speaker 03

  Bathing machines exist.

• 28:07Anna Ptaszynski?

  Though, yeah.

• 28:07Speaker 03

  I mean, that's quite a good fact in itself because they're kind of unusual, bathing machines.

• 28:12Anna Ptaszynski?

  Yep. And a lady would, would stand in a machine and be wheeled into the sea.

• 28:16Speaker 03

  But yeah, classic Andy. It sounds like someone's actually physically shoving you into the sea.

• 28:21Anna Ptaszynski?

  Yeah.

• 28:21Speaker 03

  Actually...

• 28:22Speaker 04

  Which it's not. No.

• 28:23Speaker 03

  Okay, here is a fact that is now under the custodianship of eh. It's just the letter E, but it's lowercase.

• 28:31Anna Ptaszynski?

  Is it long E? We don't know.

• 28:32Speaker 03

  We don't know. It could be E. Cummings, maybe. Because uh, E. Cummings styled his name with two lowercase Es, didn't he?

• 28:39Speaker 04

  E.

• 28:39Anna Ptaszynski?

  Yeah. Yeah. Have you never seen that written down?

• 28:42Speaker 04

  Uh, weirdly, no.

• 28:43Anna Ptaszynski?

  No.

• 28:45Speaker 03

  Look, while you were reading E. Cummings at school, Dan was not participating in human pyramids.

• 28:52Speaker 03

  Uh, anyway, eh or e, your fact is that desperate Dan stopped eating cow pie because of mad cow disease.

• 29:01Speaker 04

  That's what I was reading. Bino and the dandy.

• 29:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, desperate Dan from the dandy comic. He famously ate cow pies, uh, but then he had to stop.

• 29:10Anna Ptaszynski?

  He did. And it would have been particularly important for him to stop because he did, used to eat them from top to tail, didn't he? He really ate the whole cow. That was his thing, right? Like he shoved the horns and the...

• 29:20Speaker 03

  The pie had horns coming out of it, right?

• 29:22Anna Ptaszynski?

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 29:24Speaker 03

  But that's quite an early example of woke, don't you think? Gone mad?

• 29:28Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 29:28Anna Ptaszynski?

  Yes. Yeah, he went veggie. God. I bet he's back to meat eating now, in America at least. Otherwise, he'd be banned by the government.

• 29:35Speaker 04

  Is he still going? I know that the dandy stopped, I believe. I'm sure that they kind of retired him.

• 29:41Anna Ptaszynski?

  Well, I don't know where he lives, if not in the dandy. What's he, you think that he's...

• 29:44Speaker 04

  He might have migrated to Bino.

• 29:45Anna Ptaszynski?

  That's ouch. Making him migrate to the Bino next to Dennis the Menace, his archrival.

• 29:50Speaker 03

  Well, it's either that or just have nowhere to live.

• 29:53Anna Ptaszynski?

  Yeah. Oh, it's tough, isn't it?

• 29:55Speaker 03

  Maybe on people's sofas.

• 29:57Anna Ptaszynski?

  Yeah.

• 29:57Speaker 04

  Knocking on the front page of other comic books. Can I, can I come in?

• 30:02Anna Ptaszynski?

  Superman, any, any space for me and your gang?

• 30:04Speaker 03

  Dan, you're just being desperate now.

• 30:08Anna Ptaszynski?

  It sounds like a lot of the conversations we've had here.

• 30:10Speaker 04

  Also my nickname at school. Oh, desperate Dan's trying to get on the pyramid again.

• 30:16Speaker 04

  It is time for HD to get a fact. Congrats, HD. Your fact is the oldest sperm is worm sperm.

• 30:24Anna Ptaszynski?

  Get that in HD.

• 30:27Anna Ptaszynski?

  Yeah, this is very cool.

• 30:28Speaker 03

  Uh, yeah, I liked it. Scientists had found the oldest sperm, but I just liked it how it kind of rhymed.

• 30:34Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 30:35Anna Ptaszynski?

  You're a simple man, aren't you, at heart, really?

• 30:37Speaker 03

  I am. Like in the same way that if Andy can find a fact and disingenuously turn it around so it doesn't really mean what you think it means, if I find a fact that it rhymes, I'm gonna go for it.

• 30:47Anna Ptaszynski?

  It can rhyme. It's a worm sperm. And it was really old. It was like 50 million years old. It wasn't just been in a fridge for too long.

• 30:54Speaker 03

  Honestly, any time that sperm has been in the fridge is too long for me.

• 30:59Anna Ptaszynski?

  Do you think?

• 31:00Speaker 03

  I really do, yeah.

• 31:00Anna Ptaszynski?

  I drink it within five days of opening.

• 31:03Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 31:04Anna Ptaszynski?

  Personally, yeah, but I'm loose with those things. Waitrose doesn't even put use by dates on them anymore, you know?

• 31:10Speaker 03

  Do they not? You're just supposed to smell it?

• 31:11Anna Ptaszynski?

  Yeah, exactly. You can tell. You can tell.

• 31:16Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 31:17Anna Ptaszynski?

  Well, enjoy that, HD. I think, James, we've got one more?

• 31:21Speaker 03

  Yes, we have. Uh, the last one for the day is now under the custodianship of my, uh, my, your fact is that for just one penny, you can rent a bee for a month.

• 31:35Anna Ptaszynski?

  Just to check you like it, and then you can keep it forever.

• 31:39Speaker 03

  Yes, it's very good. I think what it means is, I think, you have to get multiple bees, right?

• 31:45Anna Ptaszynski?

  Yeah.

• 31:46Speaker 03

  And if you do the maths, it works out at one penny per month per bee.

• 31:51Anna Ptaszynski?

  It's for farmers, right? To pollinate their crops. So you'd have to be a very small holder, a really tiny holder farmer, if you were getting one bee.

• 31:59Speaker 03

  I think it's almonds.

• 32:00Anna Ptaszynski?

  Almonds, was it?

• 32:01Speaker 03

  And I think they're on flatbed trucks and they drive them around America and they give them to farmers to, to pollinate their almonds, I think.

• 32:09Speaker 04

  Yeah. These are amazing guesses, but it is an Andy fact. So to be honest, it could literally mean anything.

• 32:19Anna Ptaszynski?

  All right. Well, thank you so much, everyone. Please do enjoy those facts. Take good care of them. Feed and water them. And thank you for joining our top tier. So that you get a fact, you'll get your certificate in the post. So thanks to my HD, E, Isabel, Paul Lowbridge, John Michael Collins, Frederick Dahlbaum, and Simon Hunter. Please enjoy those. And if you guys would like to receive one of our facts to guard forever, then you can just join our top tier of Club Fish. So you can go to patreon.com/clubfish to join that. And if you want your fact read out, email [email protected]. That's your fast track to getting on Little Fish. If it's good enough, Andy will pick it out and make us say it out

• 33:02Anna Ptaszynski?

  loud. But for now, it's goodbye from us. Have a nice day. Farewell.