Pod Insights No Such Thing As A Fish Little Fish: I've Booked Us In A Lovely Toilet About this episode Andy, James and Anna discuss YOUR facts including a road that's not a road; and lots of other places that are not where you might think. Anna discovers the true nature of God. And we name 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 Jack Chambers, Tara Dorrell, Joe Mayo and Ethan Ruparelia
Transcript 0:00 Speaker 00 ChatGPT for Teens is designed to help teens learn, think critically, and grow their skills. ChatGPT for Teens supports active learning by breaking concepts down rather than giving teens the answer. Study mode helps teens work through problems, and interactive quizzes test their knowledge and provide immediate feedback. Safety protections are on by default, and parental controls offer families additional options like setting study hours and quiet hours. Visit chatgpt.comPARENTS to learn more.
0:40 Speaker 01 Hello and welcome to another episode of Little Fish. My name is Andrew Hunter Murray, and I'm joined by James Harkin and Anna Tsajinski to present a selection of your best facts. You, the audience, you've been emailing [email protected] by gum you have been, and we've got some facts that we're going to be telling you now. Who's got a fact? Please, someone stop this introduction.
1:02 Speaker 02 I'll stop it. I've got a fact.
1:05 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:06 Speaker 02 It's from Manuel Funk, or Funk maybe, but there's not a little couple of dots.
1:10 Speaker 03 An umlaut.
1:11 Speaker 02 Huge fan, thank you, an umlaut.
1:13 Speaker 01 Could be a diuresis, depending on the word.
1:15 Speaker 02 Mmm, but diuresis is a more embarrassing word to say, isn't it?
1:19 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah, I've got diuresis. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:21 Speaker 02 He says, I'm a huge fan of the show, thank you, Manuel, and he's got a fact that sounds like it was scripted by a lazy novelist, he said, but apparently we mentioned German.
1:29 Speaker 03 Why did you not give yourself this one, Andy?
1:31 Speaker 01 Okay, that's rude.
1:35 Speaker 02 Andy's new book is out soon. The recently dismissed coach of Fortuna Dusseldorf is named Markus Anfang, which translates to beginning, and he's been replaced by Alexander Ende, and Andy, you speak German, do you know what Ende is?
1:52 Speaker 01 I think I do, yeah.
1:55 Speaker 01 End.
1:55 Speaker 02 It's end, beginning and end. So there we go. And then he said, as an added fun fact, Marcus Anfang is no stranger to strange headlines. In 2021, he was fired because he'd faked his COVID vaccine. That's just a little, is that fun?
2:08 Speaker 01 Faked a vaccine?
2:09 Speaker 02 Yeah.
2:09 Speaker 03 Well, he might have just had the little piece of paper that says you've had it and then written it down himself.
2:14 Speaker 02 Yeah, sorry. He hadn't injected.
2:15 Speaker 01 You've got to go to a lot of effort to fake a whole, like fake a vaccination centre, fake a letter star, fake a queue.
2:20 Speaker 02 He did the paper, yeah. He didn't inject himself with saline solution.
2:25 Speaker 01 Wow, okay.
2:26 Speaker 02 Good numbers of determinism. We like to collect that.
2:28 Speaker 01 Yeah.
2:29 Speaker 03 It's interesting because normally you send me the funny football names, Andy.
2:34 Speaker 01 Yeah, I think you might have one.
2:35 Speaker 03 I do. Can I read it quickly while we're on the subject? This came from Roy Monday and we'd done a fact about West Brom managers being called Ron, Don, Ronnie, Ron, Ronnie and Ronald, whatever it was.
2:48 Speaker 01 Yes.
2:49 Speaker 03 But he said in 1969, Aston Villa had three midfielders on their books, Jimmy Brown, Barry Hole and Oscar Ass. This meant their midfield was Brown Ass and Hole.
3:01 Speaker 01 Oh my God.
3:03 Speaker 03 And I would just like to say to Roy that I would pronounce his name Oscar Assay.
3:09 Speaker 02 Yeah, would you?
3:11 Speaker 03 And I'm fairly confident that that's how everyone pronounced it at the time.
3:15 Speaker 02 That's amazing though.
3:16 Speaker 01 But James, the mispronouncing for comic effect is now a long established fish tradition, I think.
3:21 Speaker 03 Yes.
3:21 Speaker 02 I thought it was your trademark.
3:22 Speaker 01 Yeah.
3:23 Speaker 03 I just wish I was a commentator in the 1960s and it's Brown Ass Hole.
3:30 Speaker 01 You'd be mobbed, you'd be lynched at the time, wouldn't you? For being that rude on air. As in, would you, would you not, you'd be in huge trouble, I guess.
3:37 Speaker 03 You're only reading people's names.
3:39 Speaker 01 Just reading their names, Your Honour.
3:40 Speaker 03 What about Uwe Fuchs, the German, well, on German, there was a famous footballer whose name is basically Fuchs.
3:47 Speaker 01 Yeah, that's true.
3:50 Speaker 03 There's been lots of funny names. What about Areola, the goalkeeper?
3:53 Speaker 02 Areola's not rude.
3:55 Speaker 01 It's a bit rude.
3:56 Speaker 02 What?
3:56 Speaker 01 Areola Grande.
3:59 Speaker 02 She's rude.
4:01 Speaker 03 There's always, whenever he messes up, because he's a goalkeeper, they always say he made a bit of a tit of himself.
4:06 Speaker 02 That's funny.
4:07 Speaker 01 Yeah.
4:07 Speaker 02 That's very good. It's a mean name to give your kid. There's no questioning that.
4:11 Speaker 03 It's, it's his surname.
4:13 Speaker 01 Yeah.
4:15 Speaker 02 That makes sense.
4:17 Speaker 01 Here's one from Laclan Harris. This is about, there's an American chain of membership warehouse stores. You know those things where you have to be a member, but you go and you get big discounts, right?
4:26 Speaker 03 Oh, I know what you mean. Yeah, yeah.
4:27 Speaker 01 Is it cash and carry?
4:28 Speaker 03 Yeah, we have them in the UK for sure.
4:30 Speaker 01 So there's a, there's a chain that started in the seventies in the USA and it's called Price Club. And that is because it was founded by Sol Price.
4:38 Speaker 02 Oh, jeez. There we go.
4:40 Speaker 01 And Price Club was later bought by Costco, but then Sol Price was forced out and he then started Price Smart. So.
4:48 Speaker 02 Which is with his friend Julie Smart.
4:51 Speaker 03 Do you think there's diminishing returns of these things, Andy? Because I think they rather diminished after the first week.
4:56 Speaker 01 That's interesting. I think like Stuart Lee, I'm going to keep going and as long as they're flooding into the inbox, and they are.
5:03 Speaker 02 Mm-hmm.
5:04 Speaker 01 It's extra, just half the inbox is now these.
5:07 Speaker 02 I, I have to say it's not diminishing returns for me because I've obviously arrived at the very tail end when everyone else is rolling their eyes.
5:14 Speaker 01 No, sorry.
5:14 Speaker 02 I'm going to kill themselves when you say it.
5:16 Speaker 01 You, you think it's the tail end.
5:18 Speaker 03 Yeah, yeah.
5:18 Speaker 01 We've got further to run.
5:19 Speaker 03 Do you know where a snake's tail begins? Because it's not right at the very end.
5:24 Speaker 02 We're just at the, the neck bit, which is also the tail.
5:26 Speaker 03 This is a very, very long tail.
5:28 Speaker 01 I'm afraid so.
5:29 Speaker 02 I can handle it.
5:30 Speaker 01 Well, let's have another fact.
5:31 Speaker 02 All right. I'll give you another fact. Actually, this is one of my favourite facts I've ever heard. So this is sent in by Sam Cornish, but he or she, Sam could be either, and you haven't specified, and you've got two daughters, but that doesn't tell me your sex.
5:43 Speaker 01 No, it doesn't.
5:45 Speaker 02 Because men can have daughters too.
5:48 Speaker 01 Wow, you're such a feminist, Hannah.
5:49 Speaker 02 I know, right?
5:50 Speaker 03 Just say they.
5:51 Speaker 02 So they, thank you. They wrote in saying, because it plays in the car when I'm driving, my two.
5:56 Speaker 03 All of them, including the daughters?
5:58 Speaker 02 Jesus, God.
6:01 Speaker 02 This one person said, because it plays in the car while I'm driving, my two daughters, Charlotte, who's 11, and Harriet, who's eight, have got into facts and jokes. I don't know where they're getting the jokes from, but they'll always request to put the podcast on and they've recently learned some facts about guinea pigs and wanted me to send this in. And this is a fact which I didn't know and is extraordinary. They poo while they're eating up to a thousand times a day, but if they aren't eating, they can't poo.
6:27 Speaker 03 That's awkward.
6:29 Speaker 02 And guinea pigs' digestion seems to work like, it's like if you shove something through a tunnel. So if you put it in your mouth, it pushes something out the bottom, but as soon as you stop putting something in the mouth-
6:37 Speaker 03 Like how electrons go through a wire.
6:38 Speaker 01 Yeah. Or how my brain works. Something go in, something go out.
6:42 Speaker 03 As Helmer Simpson said, "It's like when I went to that wine tasting event and I forgot how to drive."
6:52 Speaker 01 That's very cool. Gosh, human society would be completely different, wouldn't it? It would be completely different. Restaurants would be very different.
6:57 Speaker 03 Well, public toilets would be, right? Because you would go to a public toilet and you know when you go in and you first check if there's any toilet paper? You'd actually be first checking that there was a hot dog machine.
7:10 Speaker 01 But what's the point of a toilet? Because you don't need the loo, surely.
7:14 Speaker 02 What?
7:15 Speaker 01 You don't need the loo until you go into the toilet and eat the hot dog.
7:19 Speaker 03 Yeah, but these hapsers don't just say, "Okay, I've got the optimum amount of food and waste in my body now, so I'm just not going to eat or go to the loo."
7:26 Speaker 01 No, I guess.
7:27 Speaker 02 I don't know how they know they need the loo, though.
7:29 Speaker 01 You'd get hungry, wouldn't you?
7:30 Speaker 02 Nothing that you'd get hungry.
7:31 Speaker 01 Restaurants would have to come with porcelain under every table, under every chair.
7:35 Speaker 02 They'd be the same thing. There would be no toilets and no restaurants. They'd be the same. And the thing is, what would we focus on? Would we call them restaurants and toilets disappear? Or would toilets just be the places we went with friends in the evening?
7:47 Speaker 01 I've booked us in a lovely toilet. I've booked us in a really nice toilet.
7:51 Speaker 03 But I'm not hungry.
7:53 Speaker 02 Because you're a guinea pig, mate. Yeah, so thank you, Charlotte and Harriet. That's fantastic.
7:58 Speaker 01 That's a great fact.
7:59 Speaker 03 I have a fact that I've been trying to push on you guys for months and you've never gone with it. So I don't think we're ever going to do it. But there was a geneticist, his surname was Sewell, I can't remember his first name. But he did lots of work with guinea pigs and he would always carry guinea pigs with him wherever he went. And when he was lecturing, he would keep them under his armpits to keep them nice and warm. And one time he was doing a lecture and absentmindedly took one of the guinea pigs out from under his armpit and started rubbing out the chalk from the board with it.
8:30 Speaker 02 What the hell? There's too many things about that that can't be true.
8:34 Speaker 03 That's probably why we've never gone with it.
8:35 Speaker 01 I love it. I love it.
8:36 Speaker 02 They go all the time. You wouldn't be able to hear anything he said.
8:42 Speaker 01 Especially if they're being squeezed in an armpit, I guess. That's a real pressure point. You know, you'd have to have your arms quite, he must have been quite muscular to have his arms a bit further out. Because I keep my arms by my sides.
8:52 Speaker 02 He must have had an extra bit of shoulder that poked out a bit further and then his arms fell down from that and left a gap.
8:58 Speaker 03 Have you ever eaten guinea pig?
8:59 Speaker 01 No.
9:00 Speaker 02 No.
9:00 Speaker 01 But I've never been to South America.
9:02 Speaker 03 I have.
9:03 Speaker 01 You've done both?
9:04 Speaker 03 Both, yeah. One corresponded with the other.
9:08 Speaker 03 But yeah, I did eat guinea pig and only a little bit from my wife's plate because I didn't feel like I could order it myself. And it was not very nice. And that's the end of the anecdote, really.
9:19 Speaker 01 Good anecdote.
9:19 Speaker 02 Bony? That's what people always say about small animals. Too many bones.
9:22 Speaker 03 Yeah, the meat wasn't so bony, more the bones.
9:24 Speaker 02 Okay, that makes sense.
9:25 Speaker 01 Those are tiny steaks, aren't they?
9:27 Speaker 02 Yeah.
9:27 Speaker 01 You'd have it maybe in a ragout or something, but as a, on its own, it's a bit of a sad proposition, I think. Partly because they give love and happiness to so many children the world over.
9:36 Speaker 02 They're a burden. All parents wish they could be eaten by the end of the week.
9:40 Speaker 03 But in Peru, they are eaten all the time. Street food.
9:43 Speaker 01 Like crisps.
9:45 Speaker 03 Shall I do one?
9:46 Speaker 01 Let's do another.
9:46 Speaker 03 You were talking about driving with this family who go driving and listen to fish. Here is one about someone driving as well. This comes from Ferrari Dawn and they said that in August 2026, 200 metres of New Zealand State Highway 1 will be shipped to Singapore for repairs.
10:06 Speaker 01 What? That's a long way.
10:09 Speaker 02 Actually, I wonder if we should ship our potholes there, though.
10:13 Speaker 03 Well, the actual thing is that they're talking about the ferry that links the North and South Islands through the Cook Strait and legally it's considered a road and they're in disrepair at the moment, the ferries, and so they're sending them to Singapore to be fixed.
10:28 Speaker 01 Lovely.
10:29 Speaker 02 Legally, it's a road.
10:30 Speaker 03 Legally, it's a road, yeah.
10:31 Speaker 02 Wow.
10:32 Speaker 01 That's cool, isn't it?
10:33 Speaker 02 That's really cool. That feels like Sat Nav could have some real cock-ups there. If your road isn't present.
10:38 Speaker 01 Yeah.
10:39 Speaker 02 The road's moved.
10:40 Speaker 03 Yeah. Because like, a lot, most people, I think, or a lot of people would fly between the North and South Islands, but obviously if you can't do that, or if you're taking lots of, like, the person who wrote in, Ferrari Dawn is a trucker, actually wrote this email while staring at Mount Doon.
10:55 Speaker 01 Wow.
10:56 Speaker 03 Which is the big mountain in the middle of the North Island.
10:59 Speaker 02 From Lord of the Rings?
11:00 Speaker 03 Yeah. It's filmed there. And basically, you would have to go across the Cook Strait, but it is, we've been to Wellington, it's the windiest city in the world. It's a very, very dodgy place to cross.
11:13 Speaker 01 The last time we were there on tour, I went for a jog.
11:15 Speaker 03 Oh, yeah?
11:16 Speaker 01 And I, I thought it was very windy.
11:18 Speaker 03 And that is a great anecdote, Andy.
11:20 Speaker 01 Well, is it worse than the, I ate a bit of a guinea pig once?
11:24 Speaker 02 Just saying.
11:25 Speaker 03 No, no, I think it is really, because how many of the listeners do you think have ever been for a jog? And how many of them have eaten guinea pig?
11:33 Speaker 01 So what I'm hearing is that mine was relatable and yours was esoteric.
11:36 Speaker 03 Well, you can't say a relatable anecdote. Do you know what? I got up in the morning and everyone else is going, "Me too!"
11:43 Speaker 01 That story kills in a live setting, I promise.
11:47 Speaker 03 I played golf when we were last in Wellington, and golf is a game where you really do not want it to be windy.
11:52 Speaker 01 Yeah.
11:53 Speaker 03 It's very, very difficult.
11:54 Speaker 01 Yeah.
11:55 Speaker 02 Still not relatable, see? And yet it works.
11:57 Speaker 01 Right, here's another one. This is from an anonymous source. I don't know why, but the fact is this, Miami University is located in Oxford.
12:09 Speaker 03 Miami University is located in Oxford.
12:12 Speaker 01 Miami is a, there's a public research university called Miami University, which is in Oxford.
12:17 Speaker 03 In the UK?
12:18 Speaker 01 No. Oxford is in Ohio.
12:21 Speaker 03 Okay, Miami is in Florida.
12:23 Speaker 01 Which Miami University is not.
12:26 Speaker 02 So. Man, the Americans, they're messed up.
12:28 Speaker 01 But it's also in Luxembourg. It has an outreach centre in Luxembourg.
12:31 Speaker 03 What?
12:31 Speaker 01 The real this Miami University.
12:34 Speaker 03 Is it the Luxembourg that's in Luxembourg? Or there is actually a larger area of Luxembourg that is in Belgium, I think?
12:40 Speaker 01 Oh, is that so?
12:41 Speaker 03 I think so.
12:42 Speaker 01 What called Luxembourg?
12:43 Speaker 03 Yeah, yeah.
12:43 Speaker 02 Really?
12:44 Speaker 01 No, this is in Luxembourg, Luxembourg. But this is Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. Miami, of course, the place Miami in Ohio is named after the Miami people who came from.
12:55 Speaker 03 Florida.
12:55 Speaker 02 Miami.
12:56 Speaker 01 Indiana, Michigan and Ohio.
12:58 Speaker 03 What?
13:00 Speaker 01 Well, they were originally also called the twat twa.
13:04 Speaker 01 So I think Miami is a better name.
13:06 Speaker 03 That was the Ayatollah's death wish against you, wasn't it?
13:14 Speaker 03 I miss you the twat twa against Andrew Hudson Murray.
13:18 Speaker 02 We all wish we could.
13:23 Speaker 04 Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.
13:37 Speaker 05 People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic. In a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.
13:48 Speaker 04 And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone.
13:53 Speaker 06 One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies.
13:59 Speaker 04 So join us and hear their stories and more, because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At the Table, the food allergy podcast on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At the Table and start listening on the free iHeart Radio app today.
14:22 Speaker 02 Okay, another one?
14:24 Speaker 01 Yes.
14:25 Speaker 02 This is from someone called Big Puna from California. First name Big, second name Puna, I can only imagine.
14:32 Speaker 01 Yep.
14:32 Speaker 02 I'm writing today about the eucalyptus trees in California, lots of them. And apparently they're just one big scam. So in California, they needed loads of timber in the 19th and 20th century. And someone started a rumor, he says the geniuses in Australia started rumors about how amazing eucalyptus trees were for building, because there are loads of eucalyptus trees in Australia.
14:55 Speaker 01 Okay.
14:56 Speaker 02 So I guess they managed to get this rumor spreading that you should buy ours, they're ready to build it. They're not, they're rubbish. I think eucalyptus is quite soft, very soft wood. So they sent the punch over.
15:05 Speaker 03 Imagine how nice your house would smell, though.
15:07 Speaker 02 That's really good point.
15:08 Speaker 03 You'd never get a cold.
15:09 Speaker 02 Well, yeah. Worth it, even if you are in a Three Little Pigs kind of fable a year later, when the wolf's blown it down. But yeah, there's eucalyptus trees now all over California. It's kind of known for them, smells of it, because they were meant for building. It turns out you can't build anything out of them, so.
15:26 Speaker 01 That's great. A lot of Antipodean stuff today, Australia, New Zealand.
15:29 Speaker 03 Oh, yes. I've got something related to Ireland.
15:33 Speaker 01 Oh, yeah?
15:34 Speaker 03 The Roman Catholic Church says gluten-free communion wafers cannot transubstantiate into the body of Christ.
15:40 Speaker 02 What?
15:42 Speaker 01 Gluten-free?
15:43 Speaker 03 Gluten-free, yeah.
15:44 Speaker 01 Is that the special ingredient?
15:45 Speaker 03 You have to have gluten in it.
15:47 Speaker 02 That's where Jesus is.
15:48 Speaker 03 He must be hiding in the gluten.
15:50 Speaker 01 Very exciting to isolate the god particle and it's gluten.
15:54 Speaker 02 Screw Higgs boson guys in Switzerland, all we need was the Pope, apparently.
15:58 Speaker 01 That's huge.
15:59 Speaker 02 You see, so celiacs can't swap it off.
16:02 Speaker 01 Head to heaven.
16:03 Speaker 03 The reason I mention Ireland is because there's a very high proportion of celiacs in Ireland, and obviously a lot of Roman Catholics as well, so this is a particular problem there. So they do sell gluten-free hosts that have got so little gluten in that you can legally call them gluten-free.
16:21 Speaker 02 Right.
16:21 Speaker 03 And even the worst celiacs, hopefully, won't be too affected by them. So if you saw them on the shelves, it would say gluten free, but they call them low gluten because if you call them gluten free, the priests will say, oh, it's gluten free, so we can't use this.
16:35 Speaker 02 This is insane.
16:36 Speaker 01 I'm sorry, I would have thought the one way for, for most people would not cause an issue.
16:40 Speaker 03 If you're celiac.
16:41 Speaker 01 If you're celiac, is it really, is it really that?
16:42 Speaker 03 So my dad is celiac and like, it's just, it's poison to him, basically. Yeah.
16:46 Speaker 02 But there must be moments when you're debating things as the Catholic Church, when you're like writing down, and how much exact gluten should there be in the way, where you go, this must be a bit bullshit now. What are we doing?
16:56 Speaker 03 Well, I've got good news. There is a loophole. Uh, and that is that you can take the body of Christ just as the blood of Christ and it's all the same. So you can just have the wine.
17:06 Speaker 02 Lovely stuff.
17:08 Speaker 03 But you have to make sure, like usually during transubstantiation, they break some bread and put it in the wine. Like when they're doing all the rigmarole.
17:15 Speaker 01 Okay.
17:16 Speaker 03 So you have to make sure that hasn't happened. And also that there's no contamination with other people. So you kind of need your own pip flask.
17:21 Speaker 02 God, it must be so annoying when the celiac guy rocks up to church. Oh, he's here again.
17:26 Speaker 01 But if you're an alcoholic and a celiac and you're.
17:28 Speaker 03 Or a child as well.
17:29 Speaker 01 Or a child. So what, what happens with the wine there? Is it, is there alcohol free communion wine?
17:35 Speaker 03 It's not allowed to be alcohol free either.
17:37 Speaker 01 So it's alcohol and gluten. I feel really like we've made progress with the whole thing today.
17:41 Speaker 02 Jesus lives in the alcohol and the gluten.
17:43 Speaker 01 Yeah.
17:44 Speaker 02 Cool. Well, no, it makes complete sense now, actually.
17:47 Speaker 01 You think for omnipresence, you'd also be in the non-gluten. I didn't really know what the non-gluten bit is of a wafer.
17:53 Speaker 03 Well, gluten is just the protein that holds it together.
17:55 Speaker 01 I didn't know what gluten was either. I'm glad I lured you into explaining what gluten is.
17:58 Speaker 03 You could have just asked.
18:00 Speaker 01 I didn't. No, no, no, no, no. I thought.
18:02 Speaker 03 I hate the way you do this, Andy. Instead of asking people questions and like when you're lost and you're driving, you're like, oh, I just, um, is, I just wonder if there's a place nearby called Stockton. Uh, and then someone goes there, oh yeah, it's just down the road there and third on the left. Ah, tricked you.
18:19 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
18:20 Speaker 02 Yeah, they feel like idiots.
18:21 Speaker 01 While we're driving, can I give you one more fact?
18:23 Speaker 03 Yeah, last one.
18:25 Speaker 01 Last one. Ari Toons Sammanson writes, during the Second World War, Citroen, big French car manufacturer.
18:34 Speaker 02 Another umlaut?
18:36 Speaker 01 Yes, Citroen was forced to manufacture T45 trucks for the German military, right? You seized the factory or whatever, but sabotaged them in an unbelievably ingenious way. How?
18:49 Speaker 03 Um, they put the R and the number five on the gearbox in the wrong place.
18:55 Speaker 01 Oh my god.
18:56 Speaker 03 So every time you think you're going into the top gear, you're actually going to reverse.
18:59 Speaker 01 And then the engine just jumps out of the bonnet and you fall. Yeah, yeah, that's, do you know what? That's a really good idea.
19:04 Speaker 03 They painted fake tunnels on the side of cliffs.
19:07 Speaker 01 That's it.
19:10 Speaker 03 Um, they.
19:12 Speaker 02 No seatbelts.
19:13 Speaker 03 Oh, that's good.
19:14 Speaker 01 A trick.
19:15 Speaker 02 People.
19:16 Speaker 01 Is that a trick?
19:16 Speaker 02 Yeah, people were like, we can't drive these.
19:19 Speaker 03 They swapped all the umlauts on the Citroen for diarrhea.
19:23 Speaker 01 Yep, that's it.
19:26 Speaker 01 Um, it's, your first one, James, was actually extremely close.
19:29 Speaker 03 Oh.
19:30 Speaker 01 What was the first one you said?
19:30 Speaker 03 Something about reverse.
19:31 Speaker 01 Oh yeah, just a little thing of the design that actually makes it really hard to drive. So this is what they did. They, they have dipsticks, right? Showing how low the level of oil is in the engine. They simply moved the notch that marked full several points down. So you'd fill it up to the point where it looks like it's full, but the dipstick has been altered. And actually, there's not nearly enough oil in the engine and then it breaks down.
19:56 Speaker 02 That would work, but I mean, I've literally never checked my oil and I haven't broken down yet. So they can go for a few years, can't they?
20:02 Speaker 03 My first car, I never checked the oil and it did break down. And actually, it cost me a thousand pounds to get a new engine. And when I got the new engine, they said, yeah, you should have checked your oil.
20:11 Speaker 02 Okay, so some people would be scuppered by it.
20:13 Speaker 03 I was a Nazi though. In Bichy, France, so.
20:17 Speaker 01 Yeah.
20:18 Speaker 02 I think co-drivers must be changing the oil for me, actually, come to think of it. Also, I've got an electric car.
20:22 Speaker 01 Right, yeah, yeah, yeah. Don't check the oil. I don't know what you're checking. Checking something. Um, yeah. Anyway, I just thought that was an ingenious, really good trick.
20:30 Speaker 02 Yeah, whatever.
20:31 Speaker 01 And that brings us to the end of your facts. But now we're going to dish out some facts to you, because if you join Clubfish, patreon.com/clubfish, at friend of the podcast level, you will become the sponsor, the owner, the curator of one of our headline facts in perpetuity. And we're going to dish out a bunch of those right now. So let's get into it. Uh, who's got a fact they want to give out to a curatee?
20:57 Speaker 03 I have got one. Uh, this is now under the curatorship of Joseph Levin. Uh, any relation to the character from Anna Karenina? We don't know.
21:06 Speaker 01 Hmm.
21:07 Speaker 02 I fancy your brother, Joseph. Um, can I just say a curatee, I think, is the fact?
21:12 Speaker 01 Yep.
21:13 Speaker 02 Cool. Just checking.
21:14 Speaker 03 And I'm sure Tolstoy would find that very attractive as well. Uh, and actually, it's a literary fact. It is that J R R Tolkien and C S Lewis once went to a party dressed as polar bears. It was not a fancy dress party.
21:29 Speaker 01 Brilliant.
21:30 Speaker 02 I can't remember the story behind that.
21:33 Speaker 03 I think they were just pranksters, weren't they?
21:35 Speaker 02 Yeah.
21:36 Speaker 03 They just liked doing stuff like that.
21:37 Speaker 01 They were always chasing each other around, having a funny, funny old time.
21:39 Speaker 03 Yeah.
21:40 Speaker 02 Um, this fact is to go under the guardianship of Katie, with a Y. And it's about Agatha Christie, another literary. Agatha Christie thought Hercule Poirot was a detestable, bombastic, tiresome, egocentric little creep.
21:53 Speaker 03 Yep. Um, I have a question. The word bombastic, is that a negative thing? Because Shaggy was Mr. Bombastic, and that was a positive thing for him.
22:02 Speaker 01 That's a really good point.
22:03 Speaker 02 Weird, isn't it?
22:04 Speaker 01 It's a bit context dependent, isn't it?
22:05 Speaker 02 I would say it's only context dependent. And in that song, he's made it positive. But I've never heard it be positive outside of it.
22:11 Speaker 01 I just never hear it. I don't ever say, oh, you're being so bombastic. I just don't ever hear that these days.
22:16 Speaker 03 Do you think maybe Shaggy was being like self-deprecating?
22:18 Speaker 02 Yeah, definitely. That's his style, isn't it?
22:20 Speaker 03 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
22:21 Speaker 01 It means inflated, apparently, given extra importance that it doesn't deserve.
22:25 Speaker 03 Yeah.
22:26 Speaker 01 Okay, so that's Poirot. I didn't know that.
22:28 Speaker 02 Oh, right.
22:29 Speaker 01 I wouldn't have, you know, with a gun to my head, I wouldn't have been able to tell you what bombastic meant.
22:33 Speaker 02 Oh, wow. I'm so, I'm sorry. You're dead now. Yeah, bombastic is always a negative thing. He's very bombastic. Well, I've never heard it be used.
22:39 Speaker 01 Right? Okay. Well.
22:40 Speaker 02 It's interpreted that way as well.
22:41 Speaker 01 I think that's fair enough about Poirot. I think he was those things.
22:45 Speaker 03 Okay.
22:46 Speaker 01 I'm not, I don't, they're great books. I just don't like Poirot. Poirot's a bit, bit annoying, isn't he?
22:51 Speaker 02 Yeah.
22:52 Speaker 03 Yeah.
22:53 Speaker 01 He's meant to be annoying in the books.
22:54 Speaker 03 Yeah, he is.
22:54 Speaker 03 She's done the good job.
22:55 Speaker 01 She wrote him.
22:55 Speaker 02 No, she doesn't like him, it's okay.
22:56 Speaker 01 Well, make him likeable in your books in future.
22:59 Speaker 03 I don't think he would have been as good a character if he was likeable.
23:02 Speaker 01 I think if he was tall and non-detectable and, you know, fascinating and brilliant and humble, he'd be Jack Reacher. And the books would have been all the better for it.
23:12 Speaker 02 Is that what Jack Reacher's like?
23:13 Speaker 03 Is he humble?
23:14 Speaker 01 Ah, no, he's pretty proud of himself. Yeah, he's pretty pleased with himself.
23:17 Speaker 03 I think if Poirot was more like Shaggy,
23:21 Speaker 03 they would have been much better books. Mr. Lover Lover coming in solving all the crimes.
23:25 Speaker 01 Don't a lot of people say to Poirot, "It wasn't me."
23:31 Speaker 03 Very good.
23:32 Speaker 01 All right, this one goes out to Fabian Taylor, and it's the fact that before he invented the television, John Logie Baird invented a pair of socks to wear under your socks.
23:42 Speaker 02 Oh, yeah.
23:43 Speaker 01 This is the Baird under sock.
23:44 Speaker 03 Yeah.
23:45 Speaker 01 And it was...
23:46 Speaker 03 To stop you getting trench foot?
23:47 Speaker 01 It was to stop you getting trench foot, and it was sprinkled with a chemical that soaked up the moisture. So it was for the first one more soldier, obviously.
23:53 Speaker 02 There were more than one.
23:54 Speaker 01 Yeah.
23:56 Speaker 03 The one guy who was fighting against him. Why you keep hitting yourself?
24:01 Speaker 01 Yeah, and they were a terrible failure. So he was forced to go off an event TV instead.
24:05 Speaker 02 Damn.
24:05 Speaker 01 Which was a big success.
24:06 Speaker 02 Imagine if all we'd had, if we just sat in front of an old sock every evening for two hours with our partners staring at it blankly.
24:14 Speaker 01 Do you want to go out to the restaurant toilet? No, not really.
24:17 Speaker 03 Let's say in the look at the old sock.
24:21 Speaker 03 Okay, here is another fact. This one is under the custodianship of Kenneth Vandenberg. Kenneth, your fact might be shorter than your name because the fact is bananas emit antimatter.
24:34 Speaker 01 Oh, what a fact.
24:36 Speaker 03 Yeah.
24:36 Speaker 02 I think that was one of your facts, wasn't it, James?
24:38 Speaker 03 It was one of my facts, yeah.
24:39 Speaker 01 They're radioactive?
24:40 Speaker 03 They're radioactive, yeah.
24:41 Speaker 02 Bananas get such a bad rep, yeah, they're radioactive. Everyone always thinks they're going to overdose on potassium if they have more than two. They're the shape of a penis. You slip on their skins. Poor old bananas.
24:52 Speaker 03 I've never... Heard anyone slagging off bananas.
24:57 Speaker 02 I'm defending bananas.
24:59 Speaker 03 I think it was a backhanded compliment, really.
25:04 Speaker 03 Why does everyone give you such a bad name? You're a bombastic.
25:09 Speaker 03 They're radioactive and as part of that radioactivity, they give off antimatter.
25:13 Speaker 02 Which is good because really antimatter is what stops the whole universe from imploding. Is it one of those?
25:17 Speaker 03 It is.
25:18 Speaker 02 We've got the same amount of matter on antimatter and if we had one more banana, the whole universe would implode.
25:23 Speaker 03 That's correct.
25:23 Speaker 01 That's exactly right.
25:24 Speaker 03 Again, I think you're giving them a bad name.
25:28 Speaker 02 I've got a fact here for Sasha Goldberg. This is that Slovenia's largest lake, Lake Korknica disappears every year. There you go, Sasha.
25:38 Speaker 03 I think, was this one of your facts?
25:39 Speaker 02 Yes.
25:39 Speaker 03 Is this after you'd just been to Slovenia?
25:41 Speaker 02 Well, remember, James. Wow. Yes, which I love, by the way, highly recommend as a holiday destination. But Lake Korknica, yes, it vanishes and then reappears, doesn't it? And I think it's got a special name, that kind of lake. But it sinks through.
25:56 Speaker 03 Temporary.
25:57 Speaker 01 Yeah.
25:59 Speaker 02 It sinks through spongy things.
26:00 Speaker 01 It's on Swiss cheese rock, basically. And it just, so did you get to see it or not see it?
26:05 Speaker 02 No, I didn't. I got to not see it.
26:09 Speaker 01 Did you go to the place where it wasn't?
26:10 Speaker 02 I didn't go to the place, but maybe I wouldn't have known.
26:12 Speaker 01 You didn't even go to the place where it wasn't. So you didn't even get to not see it?
26:15 Speaker 02 No, here's what I did. I went to Slovenia, had a lovely holiday and then in the airport on the way home, I thought, oh shit, I better find a fact about Slovenia for next week. And I Googled it.
26:21 Speaker 01 Perfect.
26:22 Speaker 02 Yeah, it's good, isn't it?
26:23 Speaker 03 That's really good. Was this the one that were, because I know they have olms in those caves in Slovenia.
26:27 Speaker 02 Oh, yes.
26:28 Speaker 03 Was this the one where you brought a, an olm to the table?
26:31 Speaker 01 I bought a cuddly olm. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
26:33 Speaker 02 Was that that long ago?
26:34 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That, they're brilliant little, blind little cave worms, lizard things. And.
26:41 Speaker 02 They prefer lizards.
26:41 Speaker 01 They're a bit endangered and they're lovely. And the caves of Slovenia are fantastic. Which is not a slight on the above ground experiences you can have in Slovenia. It's just that the caves are really good. Here's another fact. This one goes out to Kalobi and it's that in 2015, half the world's saigers suddenly died and nobody knew why. Now, what's a saiger, here you ask, is a kind of antelope. And there was this disaster in Kazakhstan where half of them died and no one knew, no one knew what. But I'm pleased to report that the populations have been improving a great deal since the last assessment.
27:16 Speaker 02 I've sometimes checked on the saigers actually and I've always thought, God, that is terrible, but they are somehow coming back.
27:21 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah.
27:22 Speaker 02 Great.
27:22 Speaker 01 Which is great news.
27:23 Speaker 03 Quite an international episode this, isn't it? With the Slovenian lakes and the Kazakh antelopes.
27:31 Speaker 01 Which exotic bit of the world are we going to go to next with our fact?
27:33 Speaker 03 Well, we'll see.
27:34 Speaker 01 Oh, I can't wait.
27:35 Speaker 03 Neil Merrick, exotic or not, your fact is Barbra Streisand has a shopping mall built for her sole use under her house.
27:44 Speaker 01 Lovely.
27:45 Speaker 02 By a process of elimination, you can work out whose fact this was anyway.
27:51 Speaker 03 And when I was in Chongqing, I went about, I think it was about a two mile walk, but it was raining. And I did it by going from one shopping mall to the next shopping mall, to the next shopping mall, to the next shopping mall, because there's so many of them and they're so big and they go across so many different streets.
28:10 Speaker 02 That's a dystopian vision you've just created.
28:13 Speaker 03 It was crazy. And then you go to another, like you cross over and then you'd be in another mall that was all themed for Garfield. And then you go in another one and it's like, ah, now it's just a load of Chinese street food. It was just the weirdest thing ever.
28:26 Speaker 01 Okay, I'm hearing action film that go is all in a mall. In fact, that's the title of the film.
28:31 Speaker 03 Mall Cop.
28:33 Speaker 01 Okay, I'm hearing that it's been done.
28:40 Speaker 03 I mean, there is a movie called Mall Cop, right?
28:43 Speaker 01 Mall Cop, I think it might be a couple in the Mall Cop oeuvre.
28:46 Speaker 03 It's called Paul something.
28:47 Speaker 01 Paul Blart, Mall Cop. And in fact, there's a podcast where two guys watch it every week for a year and slowly go insane.
28:54 Speaker 01 Okay, well.
28:55 Speaker 02 You've lost me on a lot of this subject matter.
28:57 Speaker 03 You know those, you know those podcasts where two blokes watch a terrible movie?
29:01 Speaker 01 Yeah.
29:01 Speaker 03 And slowly go insane?
29:03 Speaker 01 Yeah.
29:03 Speaker 03 There's a few of them around, right? Do you think that you making all these cop shows in the future might be seeding that industry even more?
29:12 Speaker 01 I hope so. I like to think I'm giving something back when people are settling down for their 98th viewing of Tiberius Cop. I think they'll be grateful for the creative genius who was behind all this stuff.
29:24 Speaker 01 Anyways, Tricent, lovely.
29:26 Speaker 03 Yeah, one more.
29:27 Speaker 02 One more. Got a fact here for Richard Hodgson. Richard, take this fact home with you. Look after it well. This fact is that fish who work as cleaners can cheat their bosses and their bosses can punish them. The cleaner, the wrass, wrass fish, isn't it?
29:43 Speaker 01 Yeah.
29:44 Speaker 02 Cleaner fish who go, who like sit on other fish and clear up the dirt and filth on them.
29:48 Speaker 01 Clean their teeth, do they, or their skins?
29:50 Speaker 02 Yeah, sit on their teeth.
29:50 Speaker 01 They go into their mouths. It's so cool. Fish cleaning stations. It's like a service station.
29:55 Speaker 03 I think, is this the episode where Anna told us the anecdote, as when she put her grotty feet inside one of those places where fish nibble your feet? And I can't remember what happened, but I feel like it was like, you know, when a volcano goes off and all the fish sort of float to the top. Imagine it was like that.
30:12 Speaker 02 They're not grotty feet, they're delicious feet, according to the cleaner fish that were in the tank and that refused to dine on anyone else's feet. And had me asked to remove my feet so that other people could have a turn. So what was it? They can cheat their bosses and their bosses can tell them off?
30:26 Speaker 01 They, they actually sometimes dosse off a bit and they eat, instead of eating the parasites they should be eating, they just eat some mucus off the face of the fish they're meant to be cleaning.
30:35 Speaker 02 And the fish wants to keep the mucus?
30:37 Speaker 01 I think so, yeah, yeah. So that's actually, they're getting one over on their boss by eating mucus.
30:41 Speaker 02 Yeah.
30:41 Speaker 01 It doesn't sound like a great job, but there we go. All right, that's it. That's all of your new friend of the podcast, Fat Custodian Facts. Thanks once again to the new curators of these facts. And that is Richard, Neil, Kalobi, Sasha, Kenneth, Fabian, Katie and Joseph. That's it for this episode of Little Fish. We'll be back in a few days with another big No Such Thing As A Fish. See you then.
31:15 Speaker 00 ChatGPT for teens is designed to help teens learn, think critically and grow their skills. ChatGPT for teens supports active learning by breaking concepts down rather than giving teens the answer. Study mode helps teens work through problems and interactive quizzes test their knowledge and provide immediate feedback. Safety protections are on by default and parental controls offer families additional options like setting study hours and quiet hours. Visit chatgpt.com slash parents to learn more.
31:43 Speaker 07 This is Danielle Fishel from Pod Meets World. When my skin is feeling dry, I want a moisturizer that I can actually feel working. But I don't want to feel it sitting on my face all day. That's what I love about Clinique Moisture Surge 100-Hour Moisturizer. It's this lightweight gel cream that absorbs so quickly and my skin just feels instantly refreshed, plump, and hydrated, never greasy or heavy. And somehow, that hydration lasts for up to 100 hours. It's oil-free, fragrance-free, allergy-tested, and safe for sensitive skin. Try Clinique Moisture Surge 100-Hour today at Clinique.com. Feels like moisture surge.
Previous No Such Thing As Poddyversity Challenge Next No Such Thing As The Metal Bloke Page updated October 30, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated