Little Fish: Four Times a Knight

Anna gives a huge spoiler to one of Andy's novels, while they and James discuss YOUR facts. This week's subjects include Google, bloopers, Kenyan elephants and Kurt Vonnegut. 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 00

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• 0:37Speaker 01

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• 0:44Speaker 01

  See store for details.

• 0:58James Harkin?

  Hello and welcome to another episode of Little Fish. My name is James Harkin. I am joined today by Andrew Hunter-Murray and Anna Tashinsky, and we are going to go through all of your facts, things that you've sent to the email podcast at qi.com. Andy has gone through them. He has picked out the very sweetest of plums, as we often say, and he's sent them to us and we will read them out and discuss them and see if they're true, see if they're not true, see if they're interesting, see if they're not interesting. Who knows what we will do, but let's get started.

• 1:31Speaker 03

  I've got a sweet plum.

• 1:32James Harkin?

  Go on then.

• 1:32Speaker 03

  Doug Steen sent this in. I feel like we've heard from Doug Steen before.

• 1:35James Harkin?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:36Speaker 03

  Haven't we?

• 1:37Speaker 04

  Frequent flyer.

• 1:37Speaker 03

  And frequent flyer Doug Steen says, "If you've not already seen it, I thought you might find this fun and as professional entertainers," that's us, "use it as..."

• 1:47James Harkin?

  That's the nicest thing anyone's ever called me, I think.

• 1:49Speaker 03

  It's very sweet, isn't it? Thanks, Doug. But he says, "Let this be a cautionary tale. Hegelocus, an ancient Greek actor, we only know about him because he really, really fluffed up his line." And then he sent a link and it is this guy who's incredibly famous throughout ancient Greece because at the premiere of Euripides' Aristides in 408 B.C., he screwed up a crucial line and literally sort of every writer for about 300 years ripped into him about it.

• 2:16James Harkin?

  Do we know the line?

• 2:17Speaker 03

  We do, yes. So, um...

• 2:20James Harkin?

  A lot of pressure here, Anna.

• 2:23Speaker 03

  If you fuck up a fucked up line, is it doing it right again? I don't know. But anyway, he was playing the part of Aristides and the line was supposed to be, "After the storm, I see once more calm." Or, "After the storm, I see calm once more."

• 2:36James Harkin?

  Okay.

• 2:37Speaker 03

  But instead, he said, "After the storm..."

• 2:39James Harkin?

  I see cum.

• 2:42Speaker 03

  It's really similar to that. If it was in English, that would have been what it was.

• 2:45James Harkin?

  Oh, wow.

• 2:46Speaker 03

  But because it was in Greek, it was, "After the storm, I see a weasel once more."

• 2:49James Harkin?

  Oh, my god.

• 2:51Speaker 03

  And this, and in ancient Greek, and I didn't know this, ancient Greek was a tonal language like Chinese, and they're really similar, the words for weasel and the words for calm, and he just accidentally changed the tone a little bit at the last minute, and the audience were absolutely killing themselves over it.

• 3:06Speaker 04

  It's weasely done. Weasely done.

• 3:09James Harkin?

  Yeah, it's totally different.

• 3:10Speaker 04

  Brilliant.

• 3:11Speaker 03

  There you go. There are the classics, there are the two classics.

• 3:14James Harkin?

  I think they were also in Aristophanes, weren't they?

• 3:17Speaker 03

  Definitely. It's so funny you mention Aristophanes.

• 3:19James Harkin?

  Oh, is this not Aristophanes?

• 3:20Speaker 03

  No, it wasn't, but it was in Euripides, but then Aristophanes wrote a play three years later where he quoted the weasel line.

• 3:27James Harkin?

  Did he?

• 3:27Speaker 03

  This is how famous it was.

• 3:28Speaker 04

  That's, I guess, because there wasn't a rich media landscape then. So you know that show The Laughter Files with Dennis? Dennis Norden?

• 3:35James Harkin?

  Dennis Norden, yeah. Where it was like he used to show like outtakes from TV shows, but they don't do that anymore, really, do they?

• 3:41Speaker 04

  They don't do it anymore, but that will hit a very specific section of the audience will suddenly have remembered Dennis Norden's The Laughter Files. But there are loads of TV shows, so there are loads of bloopers to put in the show and you can get an hour of them, whereas in ancient Greece, there's one blooper and it just is on repeat for 300 years.

• 3:55Speaker 03

  I know.

• 3:56James Harkin?

  When I was a kid, you used to get these videos of like when footballers mess up and they show like 101 fuck-ups rough up our match.

• 4:04Speaker 04

  That's what it was called, wasn't it, in the 90s?

• 4:08James Harkin?

  But it was always the same ones. Like it was always the same, like the goalkeeper throwing the ball into his own goal and stuff.

• 4:13Speaker 03

  And you'd have famous, in any kind of bloopery things, you'd have the famous ones that everyone at school would know about for a year, like you know that video when so-and-so?

• 4:19Speaker 04

  It was a better time in media, I would say.

• 4:21James Harkin?

  But you know what spoiled it? It was when media companies started owning their own bloopers and then you'd watch a movie and at the end they'd put the bloopers in or something and you're like, "You're not supposed to be laughing at this, we're supposed to be laughing at you."

• 4:34Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 4:35James Harkin?

  And then animated ones started making their own fake bloopers and that really winds me up.

• 4:40Speaker 04

  I actually love those.

• 4:40James Harkin?

  Oh, come on, that's typical.

• 4:42Speaker 04

  The Toy Story bloopers where Woody gets his line wrong? That's really funny.

• 4:46Speaker 03

  It's funny, it's funny.

• 4:47Speaker 04

  I think it's bad when it's a serious film. I wish Christopher Nolan would stop doing it at the end of all of his films, like those Interstellar bloopers that he put over the credits, they really took me out of it.

• 4:55Speaker 03

  Wait, he didn't?

• 4:56Speaker 04

  No.

• 4:57Speaker 03

  Is that a joke?

• 4:57Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's a joke.

• 4:58Speaker 03

  I just, I don't, I look, I'm not familiar enough with Nolan.

• 5:00Speaker 04

  As a professional entertainer, I was making a joke and I won't do it again.

• 5:03Speaker 03

  Just let me know afterwards.

• 5:04James Harkin?

  I think there were, you could have said at the end of Schindler's List, those bloopers were terrible.

• 5:08Speaker 04

  That would have been funnier, and that's why James is a professional professional.

• 5:11Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 5:11Speaker 04

  Can I do a fact?

• 5:12James Harkin?

  Yes, please.

• 5:13Speaker 04

  This is a bit of a drop-as-a-line-y one, but it's borderline, so it refers to something that we actually did have in the show a few weeks ago, right? But I thought this was better here. Just, I'm just showing my working before I dazzle you with the thing, okay?

• 5:25Speaker 03

  Very niche knowledge required to understand this explanation.

• 5:28Speaker 04

  Tom McClatchy, Tom McClatchy, thank you for this fact. He says, "Medium fun fact..."

• 5:35Speaker 04

  Setting the expectations. Tom's a professional emailer, I'm saying it. Mahatma Gandhi could have met Jack the Ripper.

• 5:42Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 5:42Speaker 04

  Now, this was about whether Gandhi could have seen a wind turbine in his life, which he could.

• 5:46James Harkin?

  And also whether Jack the Ripper could have seen a wind turbine.

• 5:48Speaker 04

  Exactly.

• 5:49James Harkin?

  And we worked out that both of those two people could have seen wind turbines.

• 5:51Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 5:52James Harkin?

  But what you're saying is that one of those people could have been the other person.

• 5:56Speaker 04

  I'm not saying anything, but...

• 5:59Speaker 03

  Hang on.

• 6:01Speaker 03

  That's a leap, but go on.

• 6:02Speaker 04

  What a cover. I mean, what an incredible cover to be the most famous pacifist, the most peace and love person of all time.

• 6:08James Harkin?

  It would be the person you least expect, wouldn't it?

• 6:12James Harkin?

  If you were to list all like 10 billion people who have ever lived, who was most likely to be Jack the Ripper, I think Gandhi would have been the last.

• 6:19Speaker 04

  But he'd just arrived.

• 6:20James Harkin?

  How old was he?

• 6:21Speaker 04

  Young, very young. Uh, I think he was, he was a student, maybe he was about 19 years old.

• 6:26Speaker 03

  Oh, so old enough to still do the murders?

• 6:29Speaker 04

  Very much so.

• 6:30Speaker 03

  Right, well.

• 6:31Speaker 04

  Was Gandhi's whole career an act of atonement for...

• 6:34Speaker 03

  I think so.

• 6:34Speaker 04

  A killing spree?

• 6:35Speaker 03

  A cover-up, yeah.

• 6:36Speaker 04

  There's got to be a cover-up, there we go. I think the months don't quite stack up, but if we're saying, like, he's clever enough to sort the months out, you know?

• 6:43James Harkin?

  Where did he study? Did he stay in India his whole life?

• 6:46Speaker 04

  No, no, so this was, no, he was in London.

• 6:48Speaker 03

  He was in London.

• 6:48Speaker 04

  He was in London during 1888, when the murders were happening. He was here as a student and he was...

• 6:52James Harkin?

  Was he living in his student digs in Whitechapel?

• 6:55Speaker 04

  He was, he moved around a lot, actually. But everyone said he was a great neighbor and he kept himself to himself.

• 7:02Speaker 03

  Good. For all the conspiracy theorists out there, what fun, another documentary in the making.

• 7:06Speaker 04

  Dan, if you're listening, that one's for you.

• 7:09James Harkin?

  Okay, here is one from me. Uh, actually, it's from John Gray, and I just think we can't let these shows go past without a bit of extremely oblique football knowledge, and which does seem to be a bit of a common thread. John writes that, "At the World Cup, Netherlands striker Justin Kluivert missed his penalty on the 29th of June 2026 against Morocco, hitting the left-hand post as he was looking at the goal." Don't need to tell you that, Andy.

• 7:38Speaker 04

  So it's World Cup, right?

• 7:39James Harkin?

  World Cup. Jesus. Do I have to go through every word in this sentence now? "Spookily, his father Patrick Kluivert, the very famous Netherlands footballer, also missed a penalty kick on the 29th of June, that was in 2000 against Italy at the European Championships, hitting exactly the same post."

• 8:00Speaker 03

  Dun, dun, dun. What, they're using the same goalpost? 26 years on?

• 8:04James Harkin?

  No, he missed it so badly it ended up in America. No, um, hitting the left-hand post, so yeah.

• 8:12Speaker 03

  Spooky with footballs for the O's is just, if you're doing an Oscar about this.

• 8:17Speaker 04

  Get this woman a job doing that Google thing of the day. Great.

• 8:22Speaker 03

  Thank you.

• 8:24James Harkin?

  How do you, how do you audition for that job?

• 8:27Speaker 04

  Well, you just have to pitch her.

• 8:29Speaker 03

  I'm here.

• 8:29Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 8:30James Harkin?

  I imagine the CVs look amazing that people send in for that job.

• 8:35Speaker 03

  Guys, have you ever done the game, by the way? You know when you can't find a webpage and it shows you that little dragon thing?

• 8:41James Harkin?

  Andy, you mentioned this the other day.

• 8:42Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 8:42James Harkin?

  On this very show.

• 8:43Speaker 04

  On this show.

• 8:44Speaker 03

  God, I am such a boring person that not only have I done it, but I've mentioned it twice.

• 8:48Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 8:48Speaker 03

  Moving on.

• 8:49James Harkin?

  Hi, Anna, we really liked your idea for the Google doodle, but we've actually done that for the last three weeks.

• 8:57Speaker 03

  Have you thought about just having each letter a different primary title?

• 9:04Speaker 03

  Okay, let's move on. And this is from Susan Partington from New Zealand. And I think I know Andy included this one. She says, I'm currently reading Andrew Hunter Murray's marvellous new book, Bad Deeds.

• 9:17Speaker 04

  Don't recall that bit of the email.

• 9:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's weird that you kept it in because it's not that relevant, actually.

• 9:22James Harkin?

  It really puts into doubt the rest of the email for me. I feel like she's probably on, what do you call those narrators? Unreliable. I think she's an unreliable narrator.

• 9:32Speaker 04

  Well, you know who else is unreliable? Alex, the protagonist of Bad Deeds, I'll tell you that much.

• 9:37Speaker 03

  Look, she says, here's the link to Andy's book. Andy's book features a character called Jack Denver. Correct. I've read it. It does. He's the, either the villain or not the villain, depending on whether you finish it.

• 9:50James Harkin?

  Spoiler very much alert. Once you've read the first 10 pages, you can say whatever happens with Jack Denver is probably going to be flipped around at the end.

• 9:58Speaker 03

  Wait. Yeah, but you don't know which way.

• 10:01Speaker 04

  That's the biggest, that's an Anna Karenina level event.

• 10:05Speaker 03

  People are gonna be sobbing at home. Their lives were building up to reading this book.

• 10:11Speaker 04

  Someone's on page 399. They say, what was the point now?

• 10:15Speaker 03

  I left it open. I did the Schrodinger's cat. Is he alive or dead?

• 10:19Speaker 04

  I can't remember now.

• 10:19Speaker 03

  Anyway, her fact is, the state capital of Colorado was named after Governor James Denver, hence the link, to curry favour with him, the governor of Colorado, as it was newly made. But he'd just resigned from office. It's just the news hadn't yet reached Colorado. So the reason Denver is called Denver was to curry favour with a bloke who was already out of the job at the time.

• 10:43James Harkin?

  That's very funny.

• 10:43Speaker 03

  Yeah, there you go.

• 10:44Speaker 04

  Ooh, I've got a choice of two American name facts. Which would you like?

• 10:48James Harkin?

  Oh, great. The good one.

• 10:49Speaker 04

  One or, oh, they're both pretty good. All right. This is from Blake Hossack. And it's sort of about sport and it's all about American names. So there is a new professional women's baseball league in the USA. I announced on the 8th of July, Independence Day plus four. And they announced the names of their first four teams on, when they announced the league. The New York Heights, the Boston Hunters, the San Francisco Firebells and the Los Angeles Queens. Of these four teams in the league, two of them are named after a person with an appropriate name, rather than a functional quality.

• 11:27Speaker 03

  Really?

• 11:28Speaker 04

  The New York Heights are named for Dorothy Height.

• 11:31James Harkin?

  Was a basketball player.

• 11:33Speaker 04

  It's baseball sadly. I know. I read it as basketball the first time. Dorothy Height was a very prominent woman in the civil rights movement.

• 11:39James Harkin?

  That's great.

• 11:40Speaker 04

  And the Boston Hunters are named after Harriet Hunt, who was the first woman to apply to Harvard Medical School.

• 11:45Speaker 03

  Fantastic.

• 11:46Speaker 04

  Lovely, lovely.

• 11:47Speaker 03

  Two in one. There you go. What a deal. What a great deal.

• 11:50Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 11:51James Harkin?

  Here's one from Skjallg Nemo. Let's say that I absolutely nailed that. Because Skjallg's not here to say that I didn't. But it is about Norway and Skjallg says that the Order of the Norwegian Lion was a Norwegian Order of Knighthood, established by King Oscar the Second in 1904. Despite being a Norwegian order, not a single Norwegian ever received it.

• 12:14Speaker 04

  Love it.

• 12:15James Harkin?

  And that's basically because Norway and Sweden were kind of a joint country around that time. And all the people who received it were actually Swedes.

• 12:25Speaker 04

  Not one Norwegian got it. That feels like very bad odds.

• 12:28James Harkin?

  Yeah, the new king of Norway, Harkin, Harkin, Harkin, the seventh, became Grand Master of the Order, but he was actually born in Denmark.

• 12:38Speaker 03

  Oh dear. And what was, were Norway just quite crap at things for a time?

• 12:43Speaker 04

  Do write in.

• 12:47Speaker 03

  Or was there some kind of prejudice? Probably some kind of inbuilt prejudice.

• 12:50James Harkin?

  I think it was the fact that the Swedes were more of the, the upper, upper ilk in those days. Because when you look on the Wikipedia of all the people who had it, they all have this weird sort of flag, which is neither Sweden nor Norway. And it's kind of the, the Sweden Norway joint country flag. And then you have to go and check every single one of them to make sure they were born in Sweden, if you're doing your due diligence on this fact.

• 13:15Speaker 03

  How many were there?

• 13:16James Harkin?

  Oh, only about a dozen.

• 13:18Speaker 03

  Okay, not too bad. Didn't take up your week.

• 13:20James Harkin?

  The Queen, the true Queen of England.

• 13:22Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah, yeah. QI too.

• 13:24James Harkin?

  Yeah. She was the Knight of the Elephant in Denmark, the Knight of the Golden Fleece in Spain, the Knight of the White Eagle in Poland, and the Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Netherlands Lion in Netherlands.

• 13:37Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 13:38James Harkin?

  They're pretty solid names, aren't they?

• 13:40Speaker 04

  Four times a knight. That was her nickname, of course.

• 13:48James Harkin?

  Can you still go to the Tower of London, even though she's not here anymore?

• 13:51Speaker 04

  Probably.

• 13:54Speaker 03

  You never see her wearing the knight's gear, ever?

• 13:57Speaker 04

  Well, you don't know because she's in the, you don't know that it's her. If you see a knight, if you see a knight in full armour but carrying a corgi, that will have been the Queen.

• 14:05Speaker 03

  I see. Okay, so visor down. I suppose you don't. Yeah, never took a visor up if she.

• 14:09James Harkin?

  Because I went to Warwick Castle a little while ago, where they have lots of stuff about Zog the Dragon. And they had someone dressed as a knight there. I don't know that wasn't the Queen.

• 14:18Speaker 03

  No, you don't. You can suspect it wasn't, but.

• 14:22James Harkin?

  It was before she died. Otherwise that would be, you know, the zombie queen.

• 14:29Speaker 04

  I told you, didn't I, about my visit to Walmer Castle in Kent?

• 14:32James Harkin?

  I'm sure you did, Andy.

• 14:33Speaker 04

  Which is one of the, it's where the Warden of the Sink Ports used to have their traditional place. Sink, not sank. It looks like sank for the five ports.

• 14:41Speaker 03

  Is that how you say it?

• 14:42Speaker 04

  But it said sink. Anyway, they had a Queen Mum impersonator there. Queen Mum died, I would say 25 years before my visit to Walmer Castle last year. And they had, it was so weird because she was not very good.

• 14:57James Harkin?

  Oh, really?

• 14:57Speaker 04

  She was just a slightly elderly lady in a floral dress.

• 15:00James Harkin?

  Do you think the job becomes easier as people forget what the Queen Mother was like? Because it's been quite a while since she died.

• 15:06Speaker 04

  Probably does.

• 15:07Speaker 03

  Does seem like it would, yeah.

• 15:08Speaker 04

  She had a kind of consort with her, a big guy who was, who was not meant to be, I think, a king. I don't think so. It was just a guy in a suit. But I made some joke about the, oh, the Queen Mum, you'll have started on the gins, won't you? And she did not laugh. Because the Queen Mum did like a drink.

• 15:23Speaker 03

  And she liked to laugh.

• 15:24Speaker 04

  Well, this one.

• 15:25Speaker 03

  So she would have laughed.

• 15:25Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 15:26Speaker 03

  So it wasn't the real one. You know that.

• 15:28Speaker 04

  It wasn't the real one.

• 15:30Speaker 03

  I suspect the real Queen Mum wasn't at your castle and the real Queen wasn't at yours, actually.

• 15:33James Harkin?

  I'm starting to think the same.

• 15:35Speaker 03

  Don't you think it's weird that they've changed the pronunciation of that word to sink? When, if in a port, one of the last things you want, of course.

• 15:43Speaker 04

  Very good point.

• 15:43Speaker 03

  So they should change it back.

• 15:44James Harkin?

  Is it just because they don't want it to sound French, I assume?

• 15:47Speaker 04

  It might have been, yeah. Because it's a Henry VIII era innovation, the sink ports. You know, it's, it's Walmer and it's deal and sandwich, which were anti-French defence places. So that was the deal.

• 15:59Speaker 03

  You could, you could use the word five, couldn't you? And that would solve all your sink, sank problems.

• 16:04Speaker 04

  The five ports. Don't like it.

• 16:06Speaker 03

  Not the same ring. No. Okay, fair enough.

• 16:13Speaker 03

  I think this is the best fact I've read this week from a listener, and this is from Leon Miller Out. And it's about Kenyan cave elephants, which I can't believe I didn't know about. But he says, I just learned about Kenyan cave elephants, which seem so incredibly improbable. I'm very amused by their existence. And they indeed, oh, they're amazing. Do you guys know about these?

• 16:33Speaker 04

  Cave elephants?

• 16:34Speaker 03

  You almost certainly do, you QI veterans.

• 16:37James Harkin?

  Not sure.

• 16:38Speaker 03

  But they, basically, they exist kind of on the border of Kenya and Uganda. I think there are only a few hundred left. And they excavate caves for themselves to find the salt inside the caves. So they get their tusks into the ground. They'll find a little hole, make it bigger and bigger. They usually access a big lava flow, where there's like a big tunnel. And there's not live lava in it. They're not sailing down hot lava. And they, and there are photos of elephants deep down inside the bowels of the earth. And they go there to lick the salt out of the caves. And it's because there's too much rainfall there, which sweeps all the salts off the foliage, off the ground on the surface. So they need to find salt somewhere. So they dig out their own caves.

• 17:17Speaker 04

  It sounds crazy. It does sound a Dan Schreiber style, did you know in Kenya, on the Ugandan border with Kenya, there are these cave elephants? But it sounds too crazy to be true.

• 17:26James Harkin?

  And who fought against salt in post-colonial India?

• 17:30Speaker 04

  Jack the Ripper.

• 17:33Speaker 03

  I'm just trying to put all of the facts together like Dan would do.

• 17:38Speaker 04

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 17:38Speaker 03

  Tied up beautifully. And it's almost time we tied this up, actually.

• 17:41Speaker 04

  Oh, is it? Can I give you a nice, brief one from Randy Banderob?

• 17:45James Harkin?

  Oh, yes.

• 17:46Speaker 03

  Always.

• 17:46Speaker 04

  Excellent. Randy writes, my fact is, the author Kurt Vonnegut. You know, a huge deal in sci-fi.

• 17:52James Harkin?

  Sank.

• 17:53Speaker 04

  Slaughterhouse Sank. It's actually sink.

• 17:57Speaker 04

  Kurt Vonnegut opened up one of the first Saab dealerships in North America. But it went bankrupt within its first year. So Saab, the Swedish car brand?

• 18:08Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 18:09Speaker 04

  Just to bring it back to Scandinavia. We had a Saab when I was young.

• 18:13Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 18:14James Harkin?

  Is that the end of that anecdote?

• 18:15Speaker 04

  Certainly is. But we didn't buy it from Kurt Vonnegut.

• 18:18James Harkin?

  No.

• 18:19Speaker 04

  Because we didn't live in West Barnstable.

• 18:20James Harkin?

  It sounds like very few people bought it from Kurt Vonnegut.

• 18:23Speaker 04

  Oh, well, Saab have stopped making cars now. They've gone out of the car business. So they're now in the business of supersonic uncrewed aircraft, submarines and anti-tank weapons. They pivoted very hard towards like high-end military. Yeah.

• 18:35Speaker 03

  We had one of those when I was young.

• 18:39Speaker 03

  Same.

• 18:40James Harkin?

  That's amazing. I didn't know that about Saab.

• 18:42Speaker 04

  Yeah, they're really like they're properly high end tech now. But at the time, they were not very cool when Kurt Vonnegut was trying to sell them in America. And part of the reason was, I just love this. It was a two-stroke and not a four-stroke engine, which is boring. But the point is, every time you filled your tank with petrol, you had to pour in a separate, like, can full of oil as well.

• 19:02James Harkin?

  Oh, really?

• 19:02Speaker 04

  So that it mixed and stayed the right suspension. And obviously, nobody wanted to do this because it was a complete pain in the bum to do.

• 19:09James Harkin?

  Yeah.

• 19:09Speaker 04

  So nobody wanted a Saab and they went bust.

• 19:12Speaker 03

  I can imagine that being a selling point, like those crisps where you used to have the little sachet of salt that came along with them.

• 19:17Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 19:17Speaker 03

  That was quite fun.

• 19:18Speaker 04

  Yeah, true.

• 19:18Speaker 03

  I can imagine it being a fun element.

• 19:20James Harkin?

  I disagree. Like, I, my car has been telling me to put washer fluid into it for about 18 months now. And I keep thinking, whatever, because it's an electric car, so I don't really go to petrol stations very often, which is where I would buy washer liquid from.

• 19:35Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 19:35James Harkin?

  I just keep thinking, oh, I should buy some washer liquid. And I can imagine the same happening in this.

• 19:40Speaker 04

  And you get your wife a lot fewer flowers now, don't you? Now you're not going to petrol stations anymore. Yeah, yeah. You've just triggered a memory in me. I went to, I went to an electric car event day recently.

• 19:51James Harkin?

  Oh, yeah.

• 19:51Speaker 04

  And I met a bloke, I met a bloke who made his own petrol at home.

• 19:55James Harkin?

  What? Was it like out of fish and chip oil? Because people do that, don't they?

• 19:59Speaker 04

  Oh, maybe it was. He, I mean, he had a recipe.

• 20:02James Harkin?

  It is illegal. No, it's not illegal, but you have to pay the equivalent amount of fuel tax that you would have done if you'd have bought it from the petrol pump.

• 20:09Speaker 04

  No.

• 20:09James Harkin?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 20:10Speaker 04

  I mean, how many people are doing that?

• 20:12James Harkin?

  I imagine all of them.

• 20:15James Harkin?

  People are going to the effort for getting old chip oil and putting it into their cars.

• 20:21Speaker 04

  Yeah, but you have to sell out this whole mad thing in your garage or whatever and make your own petrol.

• 20:26Speaker 03

  What a cool guy.

• 20:27Speaker 04

  You know, I mean, yeah, it's nice to have a hobby.

• 20:30Speaker 03

  And he's at the electric, so that's useful.

• 20:32Speaker 04

  That was in the old days. He used to do this when he was, you know.

• 20:34Speaker 03

  I see, because you are using something, you're sort of upcycling something, I suppose, but then you've still got emissions.

• 20:39James Harkin?

  He now makes his own batteries out of battered sausages.

• 20:45Speaker 03

  Okay, on that, on that lie, shall we move on to?

• 20:50James Harkin?

  I'd prefer to call it a joke, but, you know. I just can imagine that as at the front row of the comedy store. Lie!

• 20:57Speaker 03

  Not true, not true. Fake news.

• 21:00Speaker 04

  That's very funny.

• 21:01Speaker 03

  Sorry, I forgot that I wasn't hosting this even, so.

• 21:03James Harkin?

  Oh, yes.

• 21:03Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 21:04James Harkin?

  On that note of a brilliant joke, we should move on to the, my favourite part of the show, I would say, which is where we hand out some of our facts to people on the top tier of our Patreon. If you want to get your own fact, then go to patreon.com/no such things are fish, join on the top tier, and we will make you a custodian. So who has got a fact to hand out?

• 21:29Speaker 03

  I've got one here, and this is to go into the care of Hannah Dival, with two As, a bit like Saab. So there you go. Just a coincidence.

• 21:39Speaker 04

  Just binding James's hands for the edit process there?

• 21:43Speaker 04

  Lashing into the mast of the Kurt Vonnegut fact. Great.

• 21:47James Harkin?

  I kind of say to anyone listening, we very rarely cut facts from this because we record quite sharp. Well, you might have noticed as a listener, but the quality has steeply declined.

• 21:59Speaker 03

  So this is the fact, this is one of my favourite facts I've ever found, actually, is that houses in Bali are built in proportion to the owner's body. Do you remember this? And this is why?

• 22:08Speaker 04

  Did we all make the incredibly obvious joke?

• 22:11Speaker 03

  I suspect so, yes. Do you want to make the obvious joke again?

• 22:15Speaker 04

  Really long drainpipe or something? Really short, really short drainpipe. Some sort of penis-y joke.

• 22:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, a huge dining room or, yeah. And this was that you get measured before you get a house made, don't you? So if you want to build an extension, I think you also have to extend your own body in proportion, maybe. That's my.

• 22:33Speaker 04

  But if you want to remove the conservatory, you have to have yourself decapitated.

• 22:39Speaker 03

  So it's a big decision.

• 22:40James Harkin?

  That is amazing, really.

• 22:41Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 22:42James Harkin?

  You would be able to know, like, you could walk into a town to visit your friend, and you'd be able to know which house was theirs immediately, I guess.

• 22:50Speaker 04

  Or if you're, or if you're a cop looking for a very tall suspect.

• 22:53Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 22:53Speaker 04

  You know, you go to the long house.

• 22:55Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 22:55James Harkin?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 22:56Speaker 03

  Anyway, that's a great one. Enjoy that, Hannah Dival.

• 22:57Speaker 04

  Lovely. Here's one that goes out to Millie. Millie, congratulations to you because your fact is, according to Isaac Newton, the world is going to end in 2060. So you've got 34, 33 years to enjoy that fact, Millie. Sure you will. And basically, Isaac Newton came up with a load of old cobblers, as well as the laws of physics. Just funny, isn't it?

• 23:20James Harkin?

  There was a lot of old cobblers going around in those days, wasn't there, in fairness?

• 23:24Speaker 04

  Very true. Yeah, yeah.

• 23:26James Harkin?

  Here is one that is now going out to Abigail Harris-Jones. And Abigail, your fact is that there is only a one in 800,000 chance that nobody will cough during this podcast recording.

• 23:40Speaker 03

  Even lower if I'm in it, according to James when he does the edit.

• 23:43James Harkin?

  Well, quite, yeah.

• 23:46Speaker 03

  Sorry, that's the noise I make, isn't it?

• 23:47James Harkin?

  That's the noise that you make probably every two and a half minutes, usually over someone's punchline in a joke.

• 23:55Speaker 03

  It's because I want to cover up the lies that are propagated by this show.

• 24:00James Harkin?

  But yeah, I think one of the ideas is that people cough more in theatres than they would in the rest of life because you're kind of suppressing it and you're holding it in. And then eventually it just gets worse and worse and you have to let it out.

• 24:11Speaker 04

  I understand that. I went to a classical concert the other day, and there are these weird cough breaks in between movements where you're not meant to clap, but you are meant to cough. And it's just, it's a bit of free time for everyone to just have a bit of a rummage around.

• 24:24Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 24:26James Harkin?

  Would you not, I think I would cough during the big crescendo.

• 24:30Speaker 04

  That's another very good way of doing it.

• 24:31James Harkin?

  Or I'd go da, da, da, da, da, da, da. Like that, just so people didn't notice it because there was another bit at the same time.

• 24:39Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's great. That's a great idea. That is really good. Yeah.

• 24:42Speaker 03

  You've got to do memorise the piece beforehand so that you know how to sing along and insert your cough in the right spot.

• 24:46James Harkin?

  I do. Do you know that, there's an app you can find where it's always the best time to go to the toilet in movies?

• 24:52Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 24:52James Harkin?

  I have that app, but for operas and when's the best time to cough?

• 24:56Speaker 04

  That is genuinely a good idea.

• 24:58Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 24:59Speaker 04

  Well, I mean, not a good idea, but it's, I can see it being useful. I can. I love it.

• 25:03Speaker 03

  It's funny, that classical music thing, yeah, because everyone does always cough and it's like they've all been saving it up.

• 25:07James Harkin?

  It's the same when you go and watch Snooker.

• 25:09Speaker 03

  Is it?

• 25:10James Harkin?

  Yeah. Because you can't cough when someone's about to play their shot, but you know that some people, in a crowd of 500 people, let's say, someone wants to cough when they're playing their shot. And so as soon as there's a little break and they're just sort of, the referee's picking up the balls and putting it where it's supposed to go, you do hear people go.

• 25:27Speaker 03

  Just getting them all out at once.

• 25:29James Harkin?

  And also, the world championships is in the middle of spring when everyone just seems to get a cold in Sheffield. I don't know why, but my, my memory is that that was the one time of year when everyone got colds.

• 25:39Speaker 04

  Maybe it's a pollen thing. Maybe it's hay fever.

• 25:44Speaker 03

  Here's another one. This is the fact that the Colosseum has recently banned centurions. And this fact is to go to Rhea Carna.

• 25:53James Harkin?

  I think in the fact, as we've sent it to Rhea, we probably should have removed the word recently, given that it was about 10 years ago.

• 26:01Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 26:02James Harkin?

  I guess it's recent in the context of ancient Rome.

• 26:05Speaker 03

  Exactly, yeah.

• 26:06Speaker 04

  Still recent, yeah.

• 26:07Speaker 03

  They're not in their heyday, let's face it. And they're not real ones, right?

• 26:10Speaker 04

  This is bad, fake tourist centurions who try and strong-arm literally tourists into taking photos for money and stuff like that.

• 26:19Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 26:19Speaker 04

  Or state fights and things like that.

• 26:20James Harkin?

  What they should have done, instead of like banning them and getting the police to get rid of them, they should have got lions.

• 26:27James Harkin?

  To chase them.

• 26:28Speaker 04

  Such a good idea.

• 26:31Speaker 04

  Oh, that's a really funny one. Here's one that goes out to Darren John. Congratulations, Darren, because your fact is, from 1978 to 1991, tens of thousands of chicken heads were dropped from helicopters over Switzerland. One of those facts, you cannot see which way it's going, you know? Tens of thousands of chicken heads and then helicopters and then Switzerland. Just a lovely, a real rollercoaster ride. These were vaccinated chicken heads, which were, which were full of the vaccine against rabies. It was the hope that the foxes would eat the chicken heads and become immune to rabies.

• 27:08James Harkin?

  Okay, my next one is that in 2015, a 10-year study concluded that punching glass is very dangerous. Now, that fact goes out to you, Sarah Williams. And you can keep it on your wall behind a pane of glass, maybe.

• 27:27Speaker 04

  Really nice.

• 27:28James Harkin?

  Which no one will ever punch because they'll read the fact and know, aha, I shouldn't do that.

• 27:32Speaker 03

  Yeah, smart. Do you think, so do you think everything that's framed on a wall should be that fact? Because otherwise you're in danger of punching it.

• 27:38James Harkin?

  I feel like I will now scribble that fact on every painting in the National Gallery.

• 27:45James Harkin?

  Everyone behind glass anyway, just so that people know.

• 27:47Speaker 03

  Good idea, yeah. Here's another one, and this one is for Helga Thorrensdottir. And this is that the oldest turkey in the UK is called dinner. Pretty mean fact, although it's survived.

• 28:01Speaker 04

  Well, I don't know if the turkey is still with us.

• 28:04James Harkin?

  It can't be.

• 28:05Speaker 04

  Because this was about 2017, we did this.

• 28:07James Harkin?

  How long do turkeys live for?

• 28:09Speaker 04

  About eight months normally, I guess.

• 28:11Speaker 03

  It just feels like the oldest anything, when it's almost 10 years later, is no longer going to be a thing, is it? But yeah.

• 28:17Speaker 04

  One more?

• 28:18James Harkin?

  Yeah, go on.

• 28:19Speaker 04

  All right, last one. This goes out to Beth. Beth, your fact is that Cary Grant and Clark Gable used to meet once a year at Christmas to exchange unwanted monogrammed gifts they had received.

• 28:34Speaker 03

  Of this fact, of course.

• 28:35Speaker 04

  Classic fact, Anna Tertenski fact.

• 28:37Speaker 03

  This was a Christmas show, wasn't it? Of course, that's why there's a turkey fact. Then I remember we did this show at, either up the, I, I think it was up the creek. And this is a fact that was sent in by someone who went on to an employer's researcher, in fact.

• 28:50Speaker 04

  Really?

• 28:50Speaker 03

  Yeah, it was by Lauren.

• 28:52James Harkin?

  Was it?

• 28:52Speaker 03

  Shout out to Lauren Gilbert.

• 28:53Speaker 04

  Oh, sorry. I thought you meant Beth, who was receiving the fact, was.

• 28:57Speaker 03

  Yeah, she doesn't know it yet.

• 28:58Speaker 04

  That was her fact, and it came from her, and now it's back to her and she's become a friend of the podcast. I got very confused. Yeah, yeah.

• 29:03Speaker 03

  Yeah, I don't know why you thought that.

• 29:05Speaker 04

  Because I wasn't listening.

• 29:06Speaker 03

  Beth, don't quit your job. You're listening now and you've already sent your resignation letter.

• 29:11Speaker 04

  Beth, we'll see you next Monday, sharp, 9am at the QI offices. Welcome aboard.

• 29:16James Harkin?

  Who would you swap your monogrammed gifts with?

• 29:19Speaker 04

  AM?

• 29:20James Harkin?

  AM rather than AHM. I think AHM would be too difficult.

• 29:23Speaker 04

  Andy Murray?

• 29:24James Harkin?

  Yeah, well, you could then swap not just monograms, but like personalised.

• 29:29Speaker 04

  Yeah, the whole thing. And where do you get your, what, I suppose just school clothes with your name stitched in? We'll swap school pullovers. That'd be great.

• 29:36James Harkin?

  Yeah.

• 29:38Speaker 04

  No, AM. Oh, I don't know.

• 29:41Speaker 03

  Andrew Mountbatten.

• 29:42Speaker 04

  Andrew Mountbatten. Oh, great. I think I'll put those on a hot wash if we're swapping anything. Oh, dear.

• 29:52James Harkin?

  Oh, dear.

• 29:53Speaker 03

  James?

• 29:54James Harkin?

  I couldn't think of anyone myself, which was why I asked you to. JH.

• 29:59Speaker 03

  The only person I can think of is Joanne Harris. Did she write chocolat?

• 30:02Speaker 04

  She did write chocolat, yeah.

• 30:04James Harkin?

  I'll take that. Joanne Harris. She probably gets lots of nice gifts. Is she still alive?

• 30:08Speaker 04

  Oh, yes, very much so, yeah, yeah.

• 30:09Speaker 03

  She'll get loads of chocolate, actually. She's not a bad, although, can you monogram chocolate? Yeah.

• 30:14James Harkin?

  Oh, yeah. Like an Easter egg with JH written on it.

• 30:17Speaker 03

  Brilliant.

• 30:18James Harkin?

  Perfect.

• 30:19Speaker 03

  Oh, I'm jealous.

• 30:19James Harkin?

  And she can get my monogrammed golf balls.

• 30:23Speaker 03

  It's not a great swap, Joanne.

• 30:25James Harkin?

  And then AP could be.

• 30:27Speaker 04

  Comedian Andy Parsons.

• 30:29James Harkin?

  Yes.

• 30:30Speaker 03

  Lovely. What kind of stuff do we think Andy Parsons gets?

• 30:32Speaker 04

  So, no, he's got a goatee, hasn't he?

• 30:34Speaker 03

  So like a goatee comb?

• 30:36Speaker 04

  A goatee comb, yeah.

• 30:37Speaker 03

  Maybe some jokes. Maybe you get some joke suggestions. I could do with them.

• 30:41Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 30:42James Harkin?

  Yeah.

• 30:42Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 30:43James Harkin?

  Okay.

• 30:45James Harkin?

  That is the end of the show. Thank you so much, everyone, for writing in with your facts to podcast at QI dot com. And thank you very much indeed to Beth, Helga, Sarah, Darren, Rhea, Abigail, Millie and Hannah. Thank you so much for becoming friends of the podcast. And like I say, if you go to patreon.com/no such things are fish, you too can get your own fact. That is it for today. Thank you very much to Andrew Hunter-Murray.

• 31:13Speaker 04

  Thank you.

• 31:14James Harkin?

  Thank you, Anna. Would you like to do a quick cough?

• 31:17Speaker 03

  Yeah, okay. Thank you.

• 31:20James Harkin?

  And it's also goodbye from me. Goodbye.