No Such Thing As A Fence Made of Sausage

Dan, James, Anna and Andy discuss Lou Bega, the black keys, and the travelling wheelbarrows. 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 Get an exclusive 15% discount on Saily data plans! Use code [fish] at checkout. Download Saily app or go to https://saily.com/fish

• 0:12Speaker 00

  Hello and welcome to another episode of No Such Thing Is A Fish, a weekly podcast coming to you from the QI offices in Hoburn. My name is Dan Schreiber, I am sitting here with Andrew Hunter Murray, Anna Tashinsky and James Harkin. And once again, we have gathered around the microphones with our four favourite facts from the last seven days, and in no particular order, here we go. Starting with fact number one, that is Andy.

• 0:37Speaker 01

  My fact is, in 1886, there was a national craze for pushing a wheelbarrow the entire length of Britain. Fun.

• 0:45Speaker 02

  Didn't have TV.

• 0:46Speaker 01

  No TV.

• 0:49Speaker 01

  A problem that can be resolved by TV.

• 0:51Speaker 00

  Craze, craze is a big word, that means a lot, a lot of people were doing it.

• 0:55Speaker 01

  The roads were jammed. The main guy was called Bob Carlyle. He did this in 1879. He pushed a wheelbarrow from Land's End, which for internationalises is the very, very far south-west corner of the UK, to John O'Groats, which is the very, very furthest north-east corner of the UK, it's in, obviously the furthest tip of Scotland. It's what, a thousand miles?

• 1:15Speaker 02

  As a crow flies, it's 603 miles.

• 1:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, so you wiggle around a bit, and depending on your route, it's sort of, it'll come to maybe 650, 700 miles.

• 1:25Speaker 02

  800.

• 1:25Speaker 01

  800, there we go. So he did this, and it was kind of funny, and it was a good stunt, it got in the papers. He did exploits and sort of fun stunts all the way through his life. And then, several years later, there was a bit of a resurgence in popularity, and lots of people started doing it, again as stunts. And reading between the lines, it seems to have been a bit of a, not a charity thing, but if you were broke and you wanted to raise lots of money for yourself, you know, this was a thing you could do. I mean, it's gruelling to do.

• 1:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, so he'd just lost his job, this Carlyle guy, right? He'd lost his job for walking a tiger without a leash.

• 2:02Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:03Speaker 02

  And Dave said, right, you're not coming back to Woolworths after that. No, he worked in a circus.

• 2:10Speaker 00

  Was without a muzzle as opposed to a lead.

• 2:12Speaker 01

  Yes, sorry.

• 2:13Speaker 02

  And he got kicked out of the circus and he thought, well, I don't have any money, but I've heard that in America, a lot of people are walking around. So maybe I'll copy what they're doing over here and become famous.

• 2:23Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:24Speaker 03

  Okay, and add a wheelbarrow.

• 2:26Speaker 02

  Well, there was also a couple of Americans who'd walked from the east coast to the west coast of America with wheelbarrows. So we probably took the idea from them.

• 2:33Speaker 00

  He was inspired by them. Yeah, he was. I mean, he had an amazing career, didn't he? He was a clown. He worked in the circus. He was a sailor. He was overseas a lot and he was a real promoter. He used to, when he was in the circus, go to towns ahead of them arriving and he would build up the enthusiasm, the ticket sales, posters, PR. And that's exactly what he did with this. He would make sure that when he was in a town and taking rest, that he would write to all the papers saying, this amazing guy is coming to your town next. Be ready, have everyone out to meet him. And he would then arrive in the town and give improvised speeches on the steps of the town hall. But not about the walk, just about, I was a clown who walked animals. I was overseas.

• 3:16Speaker 01

  I think he was talking about temperance a lot.

• 3:17Speaker 00

  Yeah, that was a big thing for him. Yeah.

• 3:19Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 3:19Speaker 00

  Big temperance guy.

• 3:20Speaker 03

  And then was it him who sort of reneged on that? Didn't he say that he was gonna do the whole walk being teetotal? And then at the end, when he was interviewed, he said, do you know what? Actually, I realised it was better for me to have a little bit to drink on route to make it a little bit more enjoyable.

• 3:34Speaker 02

  He basically said at the start, he was like, everyone shouldn't drink alcohol. And then by the end, he went, you know what? Some people should drink alcohol, like people who have walked 800 miles. Those guys could probably do with a pint.

• 3:45Speaker 03

  That's absolutely fair enough.

• 3:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. It's a bit tragic because he did this, he got some attention and a little bit of money, I think, but not a huge amount. And then when the whole craze kicked off seven years later, he was in China. He missed it.

• 3:59Speaker 03

  Did he?

• 3:59Speaker 02

  Yeah. Was he looking for new types of wheelbarrow?

• 4:02Speaker 03

  Because that's a niche callback, isn't it?

• 4:04Speaker 00

  Oh, my God. Wonderful. I think that's like episode two callback, basically.

• 4:09Speaker 02

  Was it two again?

• 4:10Speaker 00

  It's this, it's a fact that I read in a Paul Theroux book, which is he was talking to someone in China. And they said all the things they invented, paper, you know, dynamite, all this stuff, fireworks, wheelbarrows. And then he leans into Paul Theroux and says, we've even got wheelbarrows here in the east that you guys don't even know about.

• 4:27Speaker 02

  So he wasn't the first person to walk from John o' Groats to Land's End or vice versa, right? He was the first to do it with a wheelbarrow, I think. But there was a pair of brothers called Robert and John Nayler, who first did it in 1871. And they wrote a book about it. And so that became quite famous. The book was called, I don't know what the book was called.

• 4:49Speaker 01

  I've got it. It was called From John o' Groats to Land's End.

• 4:52Speaker 02

  Oh, okay. Great. But what they did, we've said it's about 800 miles, but they walked 1,372 miles because they just kept going on little detours if there's something nice around the corner.

• 5:06Speaker 03

  God, that would be so annoying. Was there one of them who was always saying, oh, go and look at this? Because I hate, don't you hate being on a walk with that person?

• 5:12Speaker 02

  No, I am that person.

• 5:15Speaker 01

  Me too. I think I could see an information board over there. Let's just, let's just pop over and read it.

• 5:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, people were doing it all over the shop after that, weren't they? It was very popular. And people did variations of it. Lots of dogs did it. People with their owners, it wasn't like a separate dog contest. There was a woman called Rosa Simmons. Did you guys read about her?

• 5:35Speaker 01

  No.

• 5:36Speaker 03

  Again, it's pre-TV and pre-women having jobs days. So she, between 1902 and 1907, she did it seven times. But she didn't do the John o' Groats to Land's End. She did because she lived in London. So she had to get to the start point and the end point. So she did London to John o' Groats to Land's End to London, seven times. Two of the years, she did it twice every summer. So, you know, she did 25 days on the hoof, doing that whole thing, and then thought, I'll do it again. And she said that it really kind of cured her, that and vegetarianism.

• 6:05Speaker 01

  Of what?

• 6:06Speaker 03

  Of being very sickly.

• 6:07Speaker 01

  Oh, okay. You hadn't mentioned that she was sickly.

• 6:11Speaker 03

  A catch-all cure.

• 6:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:13Speaker 00

  I was reading about John o' Groats. It seems to have been named after a 15th century Dutchman called Jan de Groet, or John of Groet. And he used to ply a ferry between the Scottish mainland and Orkney. So he supposedly had a house there, which has since been knocked down. There's a hotel sitting on it today. And it was him and seven other members of his family who had all their families there. And they used to have a dispute. They got together for big meals, who sat at the head of the table. So what they ended up building is an octagon building with eight doors.

• 6:46Speaker 02

  Well, and then did MMA fights to decide who would get it.

• 6:48Speaker 00

  Exactly. They had eight doors.

• 6:51Speaker 02

  Eight doors.

• 6:52Speaker 00

  To the house.

• 6:53Speaker 03

  Because I think, didn't they also have fights about who had precedence when you entered the house?

• 6:56Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 6:56Speaker 03

  Before even sitting at the table.

• 6:57Speaker 00

  Exactly. It was just, it was a whole thing about, I'm the major person in this family.

• 7:01Speaker 01

  I think this family's got problems that are beyond the structural.

• 7:05Speaker 02

  Are you sure, Andy? Because I thought at the start of that sentence, you were going to say, I see a format.

• 7:11Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 7:12Speaker 00

  Now we're, now we're talking. And so what would happen is they would open the eight doors. The heads would walk in and there would be eight tables that were positioned facing each other, each of which had a head at the top. And so they could each sit at the head.

• 7:25Speaker 02

  Like an asterisk.

• 7:26Speaker 00

  Like an asterisk, exactly.

• 7:28Speaker 01

  It's not just eight people coming in.

• 7:30Speaker 00

  No, no, and they're from families.

• 7:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:31Speaker 00

  Oh, okay.

• 7:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:33Speaker 02

  I think eight doors is nuts. I'm sorry.

• 7:35Speaker 00

  Oh, I don't think I pitched that as a story of logic and why aren't we all doing that?

• 7:40Speaker 01

  I would agree, that was nuts. But yeah, John O'Grady. It was very rundown, John O'Grady's for a long time. I think it's a fair bit nicer now.

• 7:48Speaker 00

  Nice.

• 7:48Speaker 01

  It was pronounced the most dismal place in Scotland by a magazine, Scottish magazine called Urban Realm. You had to pay a tenner to have your photo taken with the sign. You know, there's a famous sign saying this far to London, this far to Land's End.

• 8:01Speaker 03

  A tenner?

• 8:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:02Speaker 02

  In those days as well, in Scotland as well.

• 8:06Speaker 01

  That was until 2013. I think there is now a free sign that you can have your picture taken at. But yeah, that was, because you know, I guess the bloke had to go and get the sign out of the shed or whatever.

• 8:14Speaker 03

  No, sure. It's just tough, tough times. Put it in the ground, mate.

• 8:18Speaker 02

  I think the sign says like, um, Land's End, 874 miles or something. Because that's, if you go by road, that's how long it takes. I think that's what it says. But that is the old version, that it was 874 miles. And now it's 814 miles. So it's actually 60 miles shorter distance than it was when people were doing it a hundred and odd years ago.

• 8:40Speaker 01

  Are we riddling me this?

• 8:42Speaker 02

  We can do.

• 8:42Speaker 01

  Okay. Coastal erosion.

• 8:46Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 8:48Speaker 02

  Each coast has been eroded by 30 miles and that part of the country's disappeared.

• 8:52Speaker 01

  Final answer, lock it in, Chris.

• 8:54Speaker 00

  Chris, when's the last time you watched Who Wants to be a Millionaire?

• 8:59Speaker 00

  That guy's been gone for like a decade.

• 9:02Speaker 01

  Well, it's got to be just highways, tunnels kind of thing.

• 9:05Speaker 02

  It's bridges. The Severn Bridge is a big one because actually if you go from Land's End to John O' Groats, you go through Wales for a little bit of it. So you go over the Severn Bridge and then you're in Wales for a tiny bit and then you go up the west coast of England. But yeah, the Severn Bridge, there's a few other bridges, the Cesset Bridge, Cromsey Bridge, the Dunlop Firth Bridge, they've all shortened the route that you have to take, whereas you used to have to go round these rivers.

• 9:29Speaker 03

  Hard to go round a river, isn't it?

• 9:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, you just have to wait until there's a ford that you can get over.

• 9:34Speaker 03

  The fords, okay.

• 9:36Speaker 01

  That's amazing that our country's got smaller on the inside due to infrastructure. I think that's really cool.

• 9:40Speaker 03

  Yeah, smaller by some measures. One thing about John O' Groats is that it's not actually the most northerly point and nor is Land's End the most southwesterly point. So none of it's true, is it? It's all rubbish. It's actually nearby Dunnet Head, near John O' Groats, which is the most northerly point, but I think it's just a bit less accessible.

• 9:58Speaker 02

  I think the guy who had that sign charged £12 for the picture.

• 10:03Speaker 03

  And the longest journey possible in the UK isn't even that route. It's Land's End to Duncan's Behead because that's another place in Scotland which is further away. And also, what's Great Britain's westernmost point?

• 10:17Speaker 01

  Well, you want us to say something Cornish because it feels like it's sticking out. But it's probably that we're at an angle, so it's somewhere in Scotland.

• 10:25Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's in Scotland. Ardnamerken Point on the west coast of Scotland, which is when you look at almost any map of Britain, obviously Cornwall sticks projects massively, but again, our maps are screwed, don't they?

• 10:35Speaker 01

  Britain's doing a wheelie, basically.

• 10:37Speaker 03

  Yes, yeah. Which is how they did the wheelbarrows as well, yeah.

• 10:41Speaker 01

  All right, here's one. Which of these has taken less time?

• 10:45Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 10:46Speaker 01

  The record for the penny farthing journey.

• 10:49Speaker 00

  So that's on a giant wheel. It's like a weird looking bicycle, old school.

• 10:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:53Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 10:54Speaker 01

  Penny farthing. Or...

• 10:56Speaker 00

  Some people might not know it.

• 10:59Speaker 02

  For overseas listeners, we actually, we all commute on those.

• 11:04Speaker 02

  You can get an app and just hire a penny farthing.

• 11:06Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 11:08Speaker 01

  So penny farthing, the fastest shed record or skipping with a skipping rope?

• 11:14Speaker 03

  The fastest shed record, going with, carrying a shed?

• 11:17Speaker 00

  No, that would be a motorised with wheels, I'm guessing, because we've done speed records for sheds before.

• 11:22Speaker 02

  For overseas listeners, those of us who can't afford to get a penny farthing app, we actually get a shed app. A few people get in those, that's why it's a bit cheaper.

• 11:31Speaker 03

  And you drill holes in the bottom, you put your legs through and then everyone just runs, don't they?

• 11:34Speaker 02

  Like the footstumps, yeah.

• 11:35Speaker 00

  Yeah. What was the third one? The shed and then?

• 11:38Speaker 01

  Skipping, skipping rope, as in, do we need to explain?

• 11:42Speaker 03

  For those in overseas country.

• 11:45Speaker 00

  It's a rope.

• 11:46Speaker 01

  We're doing overseas listeners a disservice here.

• 11:50Speaker 03

  So, sorry, penny farthing, skipping rope, shed. Well, skipping rope famously you just stay in one place, so they haven't got anywhere.

• 11:56Speaker 01

  Perfect.

• 11:57Speaker 03

  Probably shed.

• 11:58Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's gonna be shed.

• 11:59Speaker 03

  Is it motorised?

• 11:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, if it's motorised, you would think that'd be the quickest.

• 12:02Speaker 01

  It's motorised, but the penny farthing got there faster.

• 12:05Speaker 02

  What?

• 12:06Speaker 01

  So the penny farthing record is four days and 12 hours.

• 12:08Speaker 02

  Is it like a normal penny farthing or an e-penny farthing?

• 12:13Speaker 01

  That's so dangerous, those.

• 12:16Speaker 01

  Those are normal penny farthing, four days, 12 hours, which is very impressive. I mean, normally it takes cyclists about a fortnight, I think. This is a guy called Richard Thode of Matlock in Derbyshire, so congratulations. Shed record, six days. They did take a little break halfway through to try and break the world shed speed record. And I think they got it to 96.8 miles an hour, which is very impressive.

• 12:37Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 12:38Speaker 03

  And again, we're talking a shed on top of a flatbed truck.

• 12:40Speaker 01

  Uh, it's a motorised shed, it's a shed with wheels.

• 12:42Speaker 00

  No, they put wheels on them now. It's, yeah.

• 12:44Speaker 03

  A caravan?

• 12:45Speaker 01

  No, no, that's being silly.

• 12:47Speaker 00

  No, to break the speed record, they do.

• 12:48Speaker 01

  There's an engine, it's a car, is it a car or is it a shed?

• 12:52Speaker 03

  It sounds like a lorry.

• 12:54Speaker 01

  It's not, it's more than that, it's a shed.

• 12:55Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 12:56Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 12:56Speaker 02

  I don't understand what difference between a shed and just a car.

• 13:01Speaker 00

  A car with planks on it.

• 13:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:02Speaker 00

  Um, yeah, if we're being really finicky, it's sort of a car with planks on it.

• 13:08Speaker 03

  Planks arranged in a certain way, though.

• 13:10Speaker 00

  Who would have thought when you were mocking me for describing the penny farthing, that here you'd be sitting moments later explaining a shed?

• 13:17Speaker 02

  You know the penny farthing guy? If you have a big enough difference between your big wheel and your little wheel, you only have to turn the wheel around a few times and you'll go really, really fast.

• 13:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, that's a good point.

• 13:29Speaker 02

  You have to have very strong legs.

• 13:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:30Speaker 03

  And you're very high up, aren't you, sitting on top of that wheel? I mean, if you fall off, you're in serious trouble.

• 13:34Speaker 02

  You'll be able to see if there's a traffic jam in front of you.

• 13:36Speaker 03

  Really good point.

• 13:38Speaker 02

  I didn't answer because I know the skipping rope one because this guy's from Bolton, right?

• 13:43Speaker 01

  I think he's planning to do it.

• 13:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, he's not done it yet.

• 13:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, he's doing it about a month after we record this. Very exciting. There's a guy called Krish Patel. He does a lot of charitable things and spreads the word and brings people together.

• 13:52Speaker 02

  I think they kind of pick someone every week who's in poverty or something and then improve their lives.

• 13:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:58Speaker 03

  Oh, cool.

• 13:58Speaker 01

  And that's like this. So he's planning to do it in 35 days.

• 14:01Speaker 03

  Nice.

• 14:02Speaker 01

  Nice. A month longer than it would take in a shed.

• 14:04Speaker 02

  Anything to get out of Bolton for a month.

• 14:13Speaker 00

  Okay, it is time for fact number two, and that is my fact. My fact this week is that 300 years ago, the black keys on a piano were white and the white keys were black.

• 14:23Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 14:24Speaker 00

  Yeah. So the piano was invented, as we know it now, in the 1700s. We don't know the exact day, but the beginning of the 1700s. And it was by a guy called Bartolomio Cristofori, Italian, brilliant man. And at the time, the keys were white and then the little in-between notes were black. Then, at some point, it swaps over and everyone starts playing with black keys that were white and white keys were black. But then they swap back to white keys that were white and black keys that are black. And Mozart would have composed on a piano where all the keys were mostly black. And yeah, there's many reasons why they changed it. But one was it's actually quite hard to see the keys when they're all black.

• 15:05Speaker 02

  Oh, right.

• 15:06Speaker 00

  It's much easier on the eye to have white keys as your main set with the black breaking them up. And so.

• 15:13Speaker 03

  Because the space in-between is also black, isn't it? Because space is black.

• 15:17Speaker 00

  Space is black.

• 15:18Speaker 03

  There you go.

• 15:19Speaker 00

  There you go.

• 15:19Speaker 03

  The contrast.

• 15:20Speaker 00

  Yes, absolutely.

• 15:21Speaker 02

  I think also one thing was like Italian pianos tended to be as we know them today. And the rest of Europe had the black keys. What I find amazing is that they were invented around 1700 and the organ had been around for 2,000 years.

• 15:39Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 15:40Speaker 02

  Isn't that amazing?

• 15:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:41Speaker 02

  Like, we had organs for 2,000 years and then people thought, oh, let's do a piano. Because you kind of think of it the other way around, that it feels like the piano is a simpler instrument.

• 15:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 15:50Speaker 01

  Keys and everything.

• 15:51Speaker 02

  Organs with keys, they were often done with water pressure. Or sometimes with like a leather bag that you would blow air through.

• 16:00Speaker 01

  Really?

• 16:00Speaker 02

  A bit like a bagpipe kind of thing. But yeah, a engineer called Ptesibus of Alexandra invented something called the hydraulis, the 3rd century B.C. And that was the first organ.

• 16:12Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 16:13Speaker 03

  Yeah. No, it definitely is one of those things that looks basic and isn't. If you thought that you could build a piano yourself at home using logic, which I've always thought.

• 16:21Speaker 01

  Have you? Yeah.

• 16:22Speaker 03

  Then you actually probably can't when you read about it.

• 16:24Speaker 01

  I don't think I could.

• 16:25Speaker 03

  No, I think that's fair enough.

• 16:27Speaker 01

  I didn't know the main differences. So there were lots of proto pianos, weren't there?

• 16:31Speaker 00

  Harpsichord.

• 16:32Speaker 01

  The harpsichord, the virginal, the spinet, the spinetoni.

• 16:38Speaker 03

  But that was a kind of pasta, actually.

• 16:40Speaker 01

  That was kind of pasta, which is very nice. But they couldn't vary the tone of an individual note. And the brilliant thing about a piano is that the amount, the strength with which you press the key is how soft or loud, how forte or how piano, the note is. And that was the amazing innovation.

• 16:59Speaker 03

  Yeah. Although I'd always thought that, for instance, Bach wouldn't have had dynamics. Because, you know, and all those old composers until about Beethoven wouldn't have had dynamics because they were all not. Dynamics is loud and soft.

• 17:09Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 17:10Speaker 03

  Because they're composing on harpsichords. So we all imagined like Bach, and that's why he didn't really include much forte in piano because it didn't exist. But I learned that there actually was the clavichord, and this did have dynamics. And you could make it louder and softer. And this was Bach's preferred instrument. He preferred it to the harpsichord. But the thing with the clavichord was that, so it worked in the same way as a piano, which is that it bangs the strings rather than plucking them. So you can get dynamics. But because the technology for the piano hadn't been invented yet, it was only very, very, very quiet. So it was either very, very quiet or very, very, very, very quiet. It was, it was softer than human conversation. So you could have little recitals where everyone would have to have their ears just. Leaning right in towards the keyboard while Bach played his latest piece.

• 17:52Speaker 03

  But he did prefer it because it was more expressive, so you could introduce some loud and soft.

• 17:56Speaker 02

  Is that Johann Sebastian Bach that you're talking about?

• 17:58Speaker 03

  Sorry, Johann Sebastian, yes.

• 17:59Speaker 02

  Because there's quite a few Bachs.

• 18:00Speaker 03

  Yeah, and the other one was much more famous back then, yes.

• 18:03Speaker 02

  Well, there's a few, so C P Bach.

• 18:05Speaker 03

  C P Bach was the most famous thing.

• 18:06Speaker 02

  Johann Sebastian Bach, and there's also Johann Christian Bach, who was one of the first people to play an actual piano and actually made them really popular.

• 18:14Speaker 01

  Right.

• 18:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, so when it was invented in around 1700, people didn't really care about it because the harpsichord kind of did the job anyway. They didn't really need a piano. But then this guy called Johannes Zumpa came to London, started making pianos. And this guy Johann Christian Bach started playing Zumpa instruments. And Queen Charlotte really liked it, so that's why it became popular. And, you're one of your favourite things, Andy, the burgeoning middle class.

• 18:43Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 18:44Speaker 02

  Decided they might need a status symbol, and so they brought in pianos to their...

• 18:48Speaker 01

  Friend of the podcast. Get them on the t-shirt.

• 18:52Speaker 00

  Plucking is always uniform, right? You can't pluck with modulation.

• 18:56Speaker 02

  We should say, and a piano, you banged the strings.

• 18:58Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 18:58Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 18:58Speaker 00

  And this is the thing, what is a piano? And I didn't know this debate that's been raging for 300 years.

• 19:03Speaker 02

  If you put wheels on it, is it a car?

• 19:07Speaker 00

  But is it a string instrument? Because it's all strings on the inside of that? Or is it a percussion instrument? Because you're banging the strings with a little hammer?

• 19:18Speaker 02

  I was always taught it was percussion.

• 19:19Speaker 00

  Yeah, it is a percussion in terms of what you'd read in a book, but I agree, it's a raging debate.

• 19:24Speaker 01

  It feels like the debate's been shut down on this show pretty quickly by Big Hammer.

• 19:30Speaker 00

  But yeah, it's pretty amazing, this guy Christopher Fordy, the inventor of the piano. We have three of his original pianos still in museums. And I find that just fascinating. I don't think there's many instruments where we could say, here are basically the inventor of a whole instrument. Here is what he built with his hands.

• 19:47Speaker 01

  Because by the time it took off, he'd been dead for 40 years. It wasn't a huge success in his lifetime, for sure. If he was asked on his deathbed, he probably wouldn't have said they were his big invention.

• 19:55Speaker 03

  What do you think, what else did he invent? Socks that work both ways out?

• 19:59Speaker 01

  Idea for a shed that moves.

• 20:02Speaker 02

  He wouldn't have said that the piano was his favourite invention because he didn't call it a piano.

• 20:06Speaker 01

  What did he call it?

• 20:07Speaker 02

  He called it an appesembalo.

• 20:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:11Speaker 02

  Which literally apparently means harp harpsichord.

• 20:14Speaker 03

  Oh, because Simbala was harpsichord. How was that harpsichord, wasn't it?

• 20:17Speaker 02

  And it was, he used this term to describe his new invention. And because that term was not very common in his day, we think probably that's what he wanted it to be called.

• 20:27Speaker 01

  Inventors are so bad at names quite a lot of the time. Like, do you remember the guy who invented tennis wanted to call it sviaristika?

• 20:34Speaker 03

  I like that.

• 20:35Speaker 01

  And everyone said maybe tennis would be a better name.

• 20:37Speaker 00

  What does that word mean?

• 20:39Speaker 01

  I think it's a Greek word.

• 20:41Speaker 00

  Right.

• 20:41Speaker 01

  I can't remember the etymology.

• 20:43Speaker 02

  But I think like, we only like tennis more because we're used to it.

• 20:46Speaker 03

  Yeah, I'd happily say sviaristika if that was the accepted common way to say it. And I think piano is a bad term because until you actually read into it, you do spend a lot of time when you learn it thinking, why is this instrument named after the dynamic which instructs you to be quiet? Before you realise it's short for piano forte and it was named after the fact that it can be piano quiet and forte loud. Why is this called quiet?

• 21:08Speaker 02

  I think in a lot of other languages it's still called piano forte. In Russia it's called piano forte.

• 21:12Speaker 03

  We're busy, we're busy in England, aren't we? We've got a lot to say.

• 21:15Speaker 01

  Yeah. One of these other instruments, the virginal.

• 21:17Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 21:18Speaker 01

  It was a kind of proto piano keyboardy instrument. Why is it called a virginal?

• 21:24Speaker 02

  Invented by Richard Branson.

• 21:27Speaker 00

  I actually know the answer to this.

• 21:29Speaker 01

  Go on.

• 21:29Speaker 00

  They wanted to create an instrument that was presented as if it was for maidens to play and not seem rock and roll. It was like playing a cello. You would play a cello in between your legs, right? And women weren't allowed to do that because that was seen as quietly sexualised. So they invented a sidesaddle cello position that you would play. The virginal piano similarly was a piano that protected their virginity, as it were.

• 21:52Speaker 01

  Interesting. That is one of the, there are a couple of other theories as well. So one is, as you say, played by young women. One is that it's named after the Virgin Mary. A common move back in the day. Or it's named after the Latin verga, meaning rod.

• 22:07Speaker 03

  Okay, sort of the opposite of Virgin Mary in a way.

• 22:10Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 22:10Speaker 03

  Okay, why, why would it be rod? It's not very rod-like, is it?

• 22:14Speaker 01

  It involves rods, I think, at some point.

• 22:16Speaker 03

  Okay, cool, rods in it. Let's not overthink it.

• 22:20Speaker 01

  Oh, I don't know, virginal works.

• 22:25Speaker 03

  That's no excuse.

• 22:27Speaker 00

  I was reading a book about music by Dudley Moore, who was a fantastic piano player. And he was.

• 22:36Speaker 03

  No, it's just so amazing. Every fact we have, you find a way of linking it to one of your rotation of 10 favourite people.

• 22:43Speaker 00

  Well, anyway, it's called Musical Bumps, and he says-

• 22:46Speaker 01

  We're not going to explain for international listeners who the quite long-dead comedian Dudley Moore is. That's fine.

• 22:51Speaker 00

  That's a very good point. Yeah, he was in Arthur, he was in the movie Ten with Bo Derek, he was in Beyond the Fringe, which was a landmark moment in satire within this country. Yeah, okay. Sure?

• 23:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 23:03Speaker 00

  Okay, I was having fun. He says that a lot of great piano players don't have white and black keys. They have yellow and black. And it's because the heaviness of which they play it and slam their keys, it discolors it, and so the white keys go yellow.

• 23:21Speaker 02

  Is it sweat, or do they all smoke, or?

• 23:23Speaker 00

  I think it has to just be a mixture of what they've eaten, what they've liked. It's wear and tear, basically.

• 23:29Speaker 02

  They all eat what's it, don't they?

• 23:34Speaker 00

  But yeah, he said to the point where any time he saw the colour yellow, he associated it with loudness, because it was usually on a piano player who would slam the keys that you would see yellow. And when he died, at his funeral, he had a bouquet that was made into a big piano, and it was black and yellow. And I think that was in reference to-

• 23:50Speaker 02

  Oh, very nice.

• 23:51Speaker 01

  Most remote piano in the world?

• 23:52Speaker 02

  Antarctica.

• 23:54Speaker 03

  Mars. Oh, in the world?

• 23:57Speaker 00

  No, no answer. I refuse to play your silly questions anymore.

• 24:00Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 24:00Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 24:01Speaker 02

  Gosh, I remember they did take one to Antarctica.

• 24:03Speaker 01

  They did. Antarctica. That is correct.

• 24:06Speaker 02

  And that's a player piano, right, I think?

• 24:08Speaker 01

  It was. No, I think it was just a standard upright. But Captain Scott took one to the Antarctic. Yeah. And this is the very sad trip where they all died. But this is not the fault of the piano, which they did not take all the way to the South Pole. They left it at their base camp, which was sensible. And it was-

• 24:30Speaker 03

  Some of them were still questioning whether they should have brought it in the first place.

• 24:34Speaker 01

  But it's really interesting why they brought it in the first place, which was just that music was so important for morale.

• 24:40Speaker 00

  Morale, yeah.

• 24:40Speaker 01

  When you're there in the dark polar night and it's just, it's so bloody cold and you can't go outside and you need morale. And so they, one of them said, we should have gone mad in the long winter nights if they hadn't had the piano with them. So it was used a lot. They would all stand around singing and they practically had a full choir going around it. They would sing a lot together in the evenings. And it's still there to this day. Is it? Yeah. Playable? Is anyone? I think a tuner would probably manage to improve it a little bit. Yeah.

• 25:09Speaker 02

  The white and black notes are made of?

• 25:12Speaker 01

  Ivory.

• 25:13Speaker 03

  Ebony and ivory.

• 25:14Speaker 02

  Ebony and ivory.

• 25:15Speaker 01

  And ebony.

• 25:18Speaker 02

  But you can't sell ivory anymore. So they don't make them.

• 25:22Speaker 01

  Because of, because of woke.

• 25:24Speaker 02

  Because of dead elephants.

• 25:25Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 25:27Speaker 02

  Or woke, whichever way you want to put it.

• 25:29Speaker 01

  That's what I call it. Yeah.

• 25:31Speaker 02

  But also, did you know ebony is also endangered?

• 25:34Speaker 01

  The wood?

• 25:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, the ebony wood. So it grows really, really slowly. It takes about 200 years to get dense enough that you can turn it into piano keys. And so to save the trees, there's real strict controls on the ebony trade.

• 25:47Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 25:47Speaker 02

  And also, the ebony trees, the fruit is eaten by elephants who poo out the fruit to get more trees. So actually ebony and ivory come together in perfect harmony.

• 26:02Speaker 02

  So that they all grow.

• 26:03Speaker 01

  Incredible.

• 26:09Speaker 00

  Okay, it is time for fact number three, and that is Anna.

• 26:13Speaker 03

  My fact this week is that until the mid 19th century, the official language of Hungary was Latin. And this is amazing. This was just much longer than any other country continued to use Latin. So a lot of other European countries used it as a sort of legal and sometimes administrative language until the Reformation, Enlightenment period. But Hungary just kept it on and it continued to be used, first of all, in official circumstances like the- Law, state administration and things like that, but also everyday chat. And foreign travellers would go at the start of the 19th century to Hungary and say, this is absolutely bizarre. I just went into a pub and the innkeeper was chatting in Latin to me.

• 26:53Speaker 01

  It's crazy. Imagine, imagine that today. It's almost like going to one of these old times places. We talked about that big French, you know, the big French. Puis de feu, that's it. You know, the sort of, you're back in time.

• 27:03Speaker 03

  Yeah, Hungary was one big puis de feu. So bizarre. There was a record written actually by Casanova of sex fame, who did write about other things.

• 27:13Speaker 02

  He would be delighted with that, a super pay.

• 27:16Speaker 00

  So, Jimmy Casanova, the librarian?

• 27:20Speaker 03

  He met a Hungarian traveller at one point who said he'd been incredibly disappointed when he visited Rome. Because naturally he thought it was Hungarian who was speaking Latin every day to his kids. He thought he'd go to Rome and obviously they'd all be speaking it in decent society. And he said, I was greatly mistaken. Nobody can speak it, not even the priests who only pretend to write it.

• 27:38Speaker 02

  That's so funny.

• 27:39Speaker 01

  Well, is it, is it because Hungarian is so hard to learn?

• 27:42Speaker 03

  There's various reasons, I think. I mean, it was a ruler called Maria Theresa, who sort of stamped this in stone in the 1700s when people were thinking, shall we give up this whole dead language thing?

• 27:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, she was the Habsburg, right?

• 27:54Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 27:55Speaker 02

  And then there was the War of Austrian Succession where someone had died. She was in charge and all the other princes around Europe, because the Habsburg Empire was absolutely huge. All these princes decided, oh, well, we've got a chance here. We can set up our own countries. And so she decided to fight them and sort of knock them all down. And when she won that war, she decided to kind of bring a new enlightened state and get rid of Latin from all these countries. But in Hungary, she couldn't really do it because it was so diverse. It was the aristocrats spoke French, the gentry spoke Magyar, the peasants were kind of Germanic. So everyone spoke different languages, but if we keep it in Latin, then everyone can kind of stick together.

• 28:35Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 28:36Speaker 01

  Right.

• 28:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:37Speaker 00

  She, she had a lot of kids, by the way.

• 28:39Speaker 03

  Did she?

• 28:39Speaker 00

  Very interesting lady. She had, I believe it was 16 kids. And the 15th kid during labour, she had a tooth taken out while she was having her 15th kid. Because she was, she hated time waste. And she thought, okay, if I'm gonna be in pain anyway, let's do this.

• 28:52Speaker 02

  That's a really good idea.

• 28:54Speaker 03

  Really smart, yeah.

• 28:55Speaker 00

  Yeah, do do those things in the lead up to birth during labor while you're in agony as it is. Seems like an interesting thought.

• 29:02Speaker 02

  I think that's a good new business for a dentist, isn't it?

• 29:05Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 29:05Speaker 03

  During labor?

• 29:07Speaker 02

  Just turn up and go, would you like me to do anything while this is going on?

• 29:10Speaker 00

  Exactly. But she gave birth and she gave birth to a daughter called Antonia and Antonia went on to become Marie Antoinette.

• 29:17Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 29:17Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 29:18Speaker 00

  Plot twist.

• 29:19Speaker 02

  Really?

• 29:19Speaker 00

  Plot twist, yeah.

• 29:21Speaker 03

  She also had fifty, I think it was fifty two grandchildren, fifty six, a lot of grandchildren. That, I mean, that's a hell of a lot of grandchildren because her kids, a couple of her kids went on to have sixteen or seventeen or eighteen kids.

• 29:31Speaker 00

  And if all, if all the parents want you to do one day a week.

• 29:34Speaker 03

  Imagine.

• 29:35Speaker 00

  Children, that's a nightmare.

• 29:37Speaker 02

  Nightmare. One more thing is that the Habsburg realm had a lot of Latin going on. Which means that actually Croatia also had Latin as its main language until eighteen forty seven.

• 29:51Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 29:51Speaker 02

  Again, because it was an old Habsburg.

• 29:53Speaker 03

  Yeah, and it was, it was part of the Hungarian Empire at this time, which is one of the reasons they didn't go Hungarian, because they didn't speak Hungarian. Another thing about Maria Theresa, she couldn't be crowned, properly crowned, because she was a woman and that was against the Hungarian rules at the start. But then she did impress the nobles by, you know, trampling all over them in her first year. So then they did say, all right, we can do it. We will crown you.

• 30:15Speaker 00

  Empress, queen?

• 30:17Speaker 03

  No, not queen, because they didn't have a concept of it.

• 30:21Speaker 00

  King?

• 30:21Speaker 03

  So she was crowned king.

• 30:22Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 30:23Speaker 03

  She was King Maria Theresa.

• 30:24Speaker 02

  Girl boss.

• 30:26Speaker 00

  Absolute girl boss.

• 30:27Speaker 03

  Rex hungarii, yeah.

• 30:29Speaker 02

  Very cool.

• 30:29Speaker 03

  Just couldn't come up with the feminine.

• 30:31Speaker 02

  Do you think Latin's gonna come back?

• 30:33Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 30:33Speaker 02

  Yeah. There's a group called Via Nova who wants to revive Latin in Europe, like in the EU, for instance. At the moment, everyone kind of speaks English or French or their own languages. But they think maybe if we bring Latin back, then there'll be no like cultural baggage that comes with saying, oh, we have to do this bit in Serbo-Croat. And we have to do this bit in Italian and we have to do this bit.

• 30:56Speaker 03

  How many people are asking for this?

• 30:58Speaker 02

  Well, there's a, there's a small group. But anyway, there's a linguistic scholar called Jennifer Jenkins, who says, as far as I understand it, the EU doesn't have any problem using English at the moment. Especially now that Britain isn't in there anymore. Oh, thank you, Jennifer. And also there is no way that the Chinese are gonna learn Latin. That's a fair point. Which I think is a good point.

• 31:19Speaker 00

  Hey, I've got a quiz for you guys. What do you think this term means in Hungary? His mouth is walking like the ass of a duck.

• 31:27Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 31:28Speaker 02

  His mouth is walking like the ass of a duck. So an ass of a duck is wobbling, like, um, so maybe you're going.

• 31:38Speaker 03

  Do they do that enough in Hungary to have a phrase for it?

• 31:43Speaker 03

  Is he just talking bollocks?

• 31:44Speaker 00

  He talks a lot, is basically, is what they say for somebody who's talking about. Uh, here's another one. Why are you giving drinks to the mice?

• 31:51Speaker 02

  That's just literal. It's just like, if someone gives drinks to mice, that's a perfectly normal thing to say. Cause it's a ridiculous thing to do.

• 31:59Speaker 03

  Well, is it a waste?

• 32:00Speaker 01

  Giving drinks to the mice.

• 32:01Speaker 03

  You're wasting them. They won't enjoy them.

• 32:03Speaker 00

  It's why are you crying? Why are you giving drinks to the mice?

• 32:07Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 32:08Speaker 01

  Presumably the film Terminator 2, I think, includes that line. Where Arnold Schwarzenegger says, why do you cry to a little boy?

• 32:16Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 32:16Speaker 02

  So when they translate it into Hungarian.

• 32:18Speaker 01

  Presumably he said, why do you give drinks to the mice?

• 32:22Speaker 00

  Oh, we gotta watch that version then. Your dad was not a glass maker.

• 32:26Speaker 01

  Oh, um, your dad was not a glass maker. So glass makers, they're very, they work in hot conditions, don't they? Uh, in Venice.

• 32:35Speaker 03

  He was clumsy. He's really clumsy. Your dad's really clumsy.

• 32:38Speaker 00

  It's, you're blocking my view. Hey, your dad is not a glass maker. You are not made of glass.

• 32:42Speaker 02

  You make a better doll than a window.

• 32:43Speaker 01

  Yes. That's a proper way of saying it.

• 32:46Speaker 00

  Yeah. And the last one, the fence is not made of sausage.

• 32:50Speaker 01

  The fence is not made of sausage.

• 32:52Speaker 02

  So stop chewing on it.

• 32:53Speaker 03

  So cows, pigs make sausages and they need fences to keep them in.

• 32:57Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 32:57Speaker 03

  So you wouldn't make the fence out of the stuff that the pigs are gonna be turned into.

• 33:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's like poetry turn gamekeeper stuff.

• 33:04Speaker 00

  No, it's, it's as, not as good as you think, is what they would say for if they were saying, it's not as good as you think. The fence is not made of sausage.

• 33:10Speaker 01

  I mean, it would be good, wouldn't it?

• 33:11Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 33:11Speaker 01

  Imagine coming home every day to your fence made of sausage.

• 33:14Speaker 03

  I can see that it's your fantasy, Andy.

• 33:17Speaker 03

  For a farmer, I don't know. The mad thing about Hungarian, aside from these bizarre phrases that they have, when they did decide to go with Hungarian as the official language, it was quite out of date, they decided, and it didn't have words for things like, you know,

• 33:31Speaker 02

  Microwave.

• 33:32Speaker 03

  Lath, or, I'm thinking more like mid 19th century, a plow.

• 33:37Speaker 01

  Train?

• 33:38Speaker 03

  A motorcar, a train, yes.

• 33:39Speaker 01

  Motorcar, no.

• 33:42Speaker 02

  And a lathe, I would have said, they probably had those for about two, three centuries.

• 33:47Speaker 03

  A piano.

• 33:48Speaker 02

  Oh, good.

• 33:48Speaker 01

  Well, they were invented a century ago, so Hungarian's probably got above them.

• 33:51Speaker 03

  Can we just have a give or take here? So, they had lots of stuff they didn't have words for.

• 33:56Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 33:56Speaker 03

  And Charles Dickens, they didn't have a word for Charles Dickens.

• 33:58Speaker 01

  The telegraph.

• 33:59Speaker 03

  Very good. So, they had to invent some new words. A guy called Ferenc Kozinski was the leader of this, an academic. This is a lot like what Attila did in Turkey, right? When he was redoing Turkish. But guess how many words they invented? And if I tell you that in ordinary day-to-day language, the number of words that you probably know from your native language is between 15,000 and 20,000. And that's word families, so run, running, runs, that would all be one word.

• 34:27Speaker 01

  Okay. So, how many new words were created for the Hungarian language?

• 34:31Speaker 03

  A thousand.

• 34:31Speaker 01

  With family words as well?

• 34:34Speaker 03

  I think it is, yeah. Well, this is the claim, I haven't heard, and this is said in all like books about it, histories of Hungary.

• 34:39Speaker 01

  Is it gonna be a lot or a few? I think James has shot himself in the foot with guessing a thousand, because that's quite a reasonable guess.

• 34:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, but the way that this works is, the first person to say something gives a reasonable guess, then the next two spoil the game. That's how this always works.

• 34:52Speaker 01

  And it is not fun for anyone, uh, six.

• 34:55Speaker 03

  Love that, thank you, Andy, and what do you want, a billion?

• 34:57Speaker 01

  Two billion, yeah.

• 34:59Speaker 03

  Andy's closest. It was 10,000 words. 10, sorry, why did I say okay? That's two-thirds of the total number of words that you would know in a native language. This is the language everyone's been speaking for thousands of years, and some bloke comes along and says, "I've added 10,000 words, here's your vocab list, memorize it by next week."

• 35:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's, yeah, yeah.

• 35:21Speaker 03

  Unbelievable.

• 35:22Speaker 02

  I know one word in Hungarian, egyszergete, which means cheers. Which tells you a lot what I did when I was in Hungary.

• 35:33Speaker 02

  But do you know how, we talked a bit about space earlier. Do you know how there's this idea of like, if there are aliens, where are they? The Fermi paradox. Well, Leo Slizzard, who was a physicist, said that the answer to the Fermi paradox is that the aliens are among us, but they call themselves Hungarians.

• 35:57Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 35:57Speaker 02

  There was this kind of group of really genius Hungarians that came across at the start of the 20th century that were just like transforming all of science and everything. And they were known as the Martians because they were just like so far ahead of everyone else in the world.

• 36:12Speaker 03

  Really?

• 36:13Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 36:13Speaker 03

  I wonder what that was about. Maybe it was because they learned Latin for so long.

• 36:16Speaker 02

  Well, Hungary was a very big country, like a very big, important country for so long. And then they lost a lot of, they kind of slightly got on the wrong side during the war. And then when the war finished, they lost all of their land.

• 36:29Speaker 01

  Which war? First war?

• 36:30Speaker 02

  Both, actually.

• 36:31Speaker 01

  Because as we've ascertained recently, there was no wrong side to be on in the first world war.

• 36:35Speaker 02

  What I mean by the wrong side is the losing side.

• 36:38Speaker 01

  Ah.

• 36:39Speaker 02

  So their GDP would have been the same as Britain, if not more. And then suddenly it just all went wrong.

• 36:45Speaker 03

  I think in 1946, after World War Two, if you went to a restaurant in Hungary, which very few people could do, but if you went to a restaurant in Hungary, it was better to order your meal and then pay for it at the start of a meal. Because by the end of the meal, inflation was so high, it would have gone up.

• 36:58Speaker 02

  I think their, um, their, yeah, it was mad. Their currency was like the pengo or something, wasn't it?

• 37:04Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 37:04Speaker 02

  And you could like get five billion pengo notes.

• 37:08Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 37:08Speaker 02

  It was like, it was basically when you went to pay for a meal, it was like they were spoiling one of our guessing games. How much is this burger? Oh, is it two billion pengos? Yes, it is.

• 37:19Speaker 01

  I can't believe we're sitting in the fact where we literally could have had the quiz question that did that.

• 37:28Speaker 01

  Okay, it is time for our final fact of the show, and that is James.

• 37:32Speaker 02

  Okay, my fact this week is that Stephen King's wife threatened to divorce him for playing Mambo number five so often.

• 37:42Speaker 01

  Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

• 37:45Speaker 03

  How, do we know how often?

• 37:46Speaker 01

  I once is enough, I think.

• 37:50Speaker 01

  No judge would, you'd be granted all the assets.

• 37:57Speaker 02

  So this was an interview that the horror author Stephen King did with Rolling Stone. And he said, "My wife threatened to divorce me. I played that a lot. I had the dance mix. I loved those extended play things and I played both sides of it and one of them was just a total instrumental and I played that thing until my wife just said, 'One more time and I'm gonna have to fucking leave you.'"

• 38:20Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 38:21Speaker 02

  So it just seemed that he really liked it. And I don't think, I don't know, because this is all the information I have in it, but I don't think it's the Lou Bega version. Because this is quite an old Mambo song, right? Not that old, but it's a 20th, mid 20th century Mambo song.

• 38:38Speaker 03

  Was Stephen King listening after the Lou Bega version was?

• 38:41Speaker 01

  He was.

• 38:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure.

• 38:42Speaker 01

  He was working on a book, he thinks he was working on a book called 112263, which was a time travel novel in which someone goes back to try and prevent the assassination of JFK.

• 38:51Speaker 02

  Of Lou Bega.

• 38:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, so who knows? You could be right, James. It could be a dance mix.

• 38:58Speaker 02

  Surely. I think so.

• 38:59Speaker 03

  No, because if he was listening to the words and then the instrumental, maybe he was doing Lou Bega and then the...

• 39:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, maybe. I see what you mean by that. But I went on Spotify and looked for all the different versions of Mambo number five I could find. And most of the instrumental versions would not be the Lou Bega version.

• 39:14Speaker 01

  That's interesting. So, correct me if I'm wrong, this was an old Mambo song by a guy called Perez.

• 39:20Speaker 02

  Perez, Perez, Prado.

• 39:21Speaker 01

  Perez Prado. But that didn't have words?

• 39:24Speaker 02

  No, it's just like the background Mambo song.

• 39:27Speaker 01

  Yes. Well, it's the version I know and love is the one with "a little bit of..."

• 39:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 39:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, okay, okay, okay. So he sounds like he was listening to both versions, maybe?

• 39:37Speaker 03

  I think he must have been listening to both.

• 39:39Speaker 01

  If he was listening to a word version, then that can only be Lou Bega.

• 39:42Speaker 02

  I do see that, yeah, yeah.

• 39:42Speaker 03

  It's Stephen King, he's lowbrow, let's face it. He's gone Lou Bega. No offence.

• 39:46Speaker 01

  Would you like me to hold your coat?

• 39:50Speaker 00

  I think that's right. I think, and you know, I don't know if you guys have done it. I certainly do. If I'm writing something, when I wrote my books and Andy, when you write your books, you don't want lyrics and you want something on repeat going over and over. And it might be a horrible song, but if it's chosen you, as it were, to help your creativity.

• 40:07Speaker 02

  I would never listen to something on repeat. I listen to J-pop because I can't understand the words.

• 40:10Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 40:11Speaker 02

  I wouldn't listen to anything on repeat, no way.

• 40:13Speaker 00

  Interesting. I wrote my school's dissertation to the Corr's live version of Only When I Sleep over and over. I think I did it like a thousand times.

• 40:20Speaker 01

  Interesting.

• 40:21Speaker 00

  And that has lyrics, but I think once it's just going, you forget.

• 40:25Speaker 02

  Interesting. But yeah.

• 40:26Speaker 01

  Let's get, let's get into Mambo Number Five.

• 40:28Speaker 03

  Yeah. And also, let's just say when Dan says, if it's a terrible song, this is not a terrible song. This is a brilliant song.

• 40:33Speaker 02

  It's definitely one of my favourite mambo's.

• 40:37Speaker 00

  Those are my five top mambo's, yeah.

• 40:40Speaker 02

  So Lou Bega, named after his own surname because he was called David Lou Bega.

• 40:47Speaker 01

  I think middle name maybe. David Lou Bega Balamezi?

• 40:49Speaker 02

  Yeah. David Lou Bega is what he goes by now. So he's, he's recently written an autobiography called Mambo Number One, which is under his name, David Lou Bega.

• 41:00Speaker 03

  Who is reading how many copies of that autobiography being sold?

• 41:03Speaker 02

  Well, one to Monica, one to Rita.

• 41:08Speaker 02

  And yeah, he, he was, I think he was German, wasn't he?

• 41:12Speaker 00

  He is German. Yeah.

• 41:13Speaker 01

  Born in West Germany. I don't think of Lou Bega and the Cold War in the same space. But one of the first times this was ever played was, very, very sadly, his father died a few weeks before the song came out, but Lou Bega visited him in hospital with an early version of the song. And I think this was on his father's deathbed was he played him Mambo Number Five.

• 41:38Speaker 02

  Fantastic.

• 41:39Speaker 01

  His father apparently said, this will open doors and kind of gave his blessing to the song and said, you've done a great, great thing there. Cause I think he hadn't had a huge commercial success before that. This was definitely his biggest hit, you know? But I just find the idea of having to go into the bedside and then put, put on the desk.

• 41:54Speaker 00

  That is, it's not what we did expect. I wonder if he got confused at the line, a little bit of Sandra in the sun, because Lou Bega's sister is called Sandra.

• 42:02Speaker 02

  No.

• 42:03Speaker 00

  And that might have, might have sounded a bit odd to the dad on his deathbed.

• 42:08Speaker 03

  There are so many other women's names.

• 42:09Speaker 01

  Two syllables. Oh, name one.

• 42:15Speaker 02

  You will never think of another one.

• 42:19Speaker 01

  Oh, wow. Yeah.

• 42:20Speaker 00

  I was trying to see if there was anything deeper to the fact that Stephen King really latched on to this song. Um, so Mambo number five was the debut song for Lou Bega.

• 42:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:31Speaker 00

  Back in 1974, Carrie was the debut for Stephen King. And so I had a look through Carrie and remarkably in the song, you've got Monica, Erica, Rita, Tina, Sandra, Mary and Jessica. Rita, Tina, Sandra, Mary and Jessica are all characters in Carrie. And then Erica appears in Carrie, the movie, and then Monica in the sequel to the Carrie movie, which came out many years later. So all of them appear as part of.

• 42:58Speaker 02

  Do you think maybe Lou Bega was reading Carrie when he was writing this?

• 43:03Speaker 00

  It's.

• 43:03Speaker 02

  It's possible.

• 43:04Speaker 00

  It's possible. I mean, I think it goes deeper as well because Stephen King.

• 43:11Speaker 01

  This goes all the way to the top, I think, Dan.

• 43:14Speaker 00

  Stephen King released Carrie in 1974 as a hardback, sold modestly, but didn't do as well to make him who he is today. It was 1975 when the paperback came out, exploded, sold millions. That's why Stephen King is who he is today. That was released in April, 1975, the same month and year that Lou Bega was born. So something is cooking.

• 43:35Speaker 01

  Something's cooking.

• 43:36Speaker 00

  Something is cooking underneath that.

• 43:37Speaker 02

  I mean, if Stephen King isn't turning this into a tedious novel right now, then I'm very surprised.

• 43:43Speaker 00

  Here's another slightly interesting thing.

• 43:47Speaker 01

  Lovely.

• 43:48Speaker 02

  Don't oversell it.

• 43:51Speaker 00

  Mambo, what does mambo mean?

• 43:53Speaker 02

  It's a, it's a, it's a female priestess in the, um, in what, what did they do in Haiti?

• 44:00Speaker 00

  Yeah, voodoo.

• 44:00Speaker 02

  Voodoo. In the voodoo religion.

• 44:02Speaker 01

  Isn't it?

• 44:03Speaker 03

  I think, wasn't it named after a thing that meant kind of conversation, chat, chat, chat in Swahili? Although I always thought of it as meaning kind of shocking.

• 44:10Speaker 00

  Well, it is also a word that, uh, the Bantu languages use and, uh, it translates as king.

• 44:18Speaker 01

  Stephen King, Stephen Mambo.

• 44:21Speaker 03

  How many languages did you have to go deep into to find that?

• 44:24Speaker 01

  Well, what's more interesting is that there were- Even more interesting. There were six major Shona languages that use Mambo as the title "King", one of which, one of the language dialects, is Monica. It's called Monica. M-A-N-Y-I-K-A. I would love to see your string corkballed at home, where you have been plotting this out. I'm just shocked I'm not getting a standing ovation right now.

• 44:54Speaker 03

  This is wild.

• 44:55Speaker 01

  That's so good. It's "I'm Wild" by The Work. It's just interesting. Here is a fun mathematical thing about Mambo number five. I found a really nice essay by a writer called Damien Pack, which is based on these names. So we've got Angela, Pamela, Sandra, Rita, Monica, Erica, Tina, Mary, Jessica. Here I am. A little bit of you makes me a man. Well, can you predict the song's date of release based on the names of the women?

• 45:26Speaker 02

  Oh, I see. When were they most popular for children? And then presumably they're in their twenties when he's dating them and you-

• 45:34Speaker 01

  Bingo. So this is, is it Bayesian reasoning or the Bayes formula? Yeah, and it's, you're measuring the distribution of the names and their popularity. And you combine, you've got several different probabilities, right? Because you've got all these different names, so you can combine them and come up with a kind of, I'm sure, I'm sure I'm absolutely butchering this explanation, but, you know, some names like Jessica only really came in in the sixties and seventies. Whereas if Pamela was popular a century before, it's probably not that one, because you're combining it with a Jessica. As the writer said, Mambo number five was released in 1999, but the popular baby girl names of 1999 would not automatically tell us the song was released that year. Lou Baker wasn't meeting newborn infants that was, was most flirting with adult women.

• 46:16Speaker 01

  So we need to look at the popularity of names from the sixties and seventies and eighties, you know?

• 46:20Speaker 03

  I'm sure he's relieved we've clarified that.

• 46:22Speaker 00

  And lo and behold, this formula comes up with 1999 as the date of release.

• 46:27Speaker 02

  Is that right?

• 46:28Speaker 00

  When you combine the names and you do the reasoning.

• 46:30Speaker 02

  Do you think that they, because they knew what answer they were aiming for, didn't they?

• 46:34Speaker 00

  I'm not mathematically qualified enough to say.

• 46:37Speaker 03

  James, are you saying the kind of academics who would write a paper like this might be not being the most rigorous they possibly could be statistically?

• 46:44Speaker 02

  I'm absolutely not getting on the Anna Tashinsky, let's attack on academics bandwagon.

• 46:49Speaker 03

  I forgot I did that. I thought you were gonna say that here's a mathematical thing about Mambo Number Five. Isn't it weird that there's a song Mambo Number Five and then that same original artist wrote a song Mambo Number Eight, but there aren't any others?

• 47:00Speaker 00

  Well, I think there were. I think there were.

• 47:02Speaker 03

  I couldn't find any. I could find Mambo Number Seven, but by a different artist. But I couldn't find one to four.

• 47:06Speaker 00

  This is Perez Prado that we're talking about, who was the original writer of Mambo Number Five, but he wrote so many songs with the name Mambo in it, he didn't necessarily record all of them. So it's quite possible that he had live versions Mambo One, Two, Three, Four, Five made it big.

• 47:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, Perez Prado, I have, I, as a child, had one of his records in my record collection because he did the theme for a Guinness advert, where there's like a guy dancing around a pint of Guinness and that song became absolutely massive. But he also wrote quite a few other songs that you'd recognize. So one of them is called Patricia, which is the first number one track in America that has an organ as the lead instrument. And it's in loads of Tarantino movies, so you would definitely know it. And he originally did cha-cha-cha music, but then went on to Mambo and then went on

• 48:03Speaker 02

  to loads of other stuff. So he wrote a four movement tone poem that combined jazz and Afro-Cuban themes. And then in 1967, Che Guevara died and in Cuba, they announced the, they did the newscast, but at the start of the newscast, they played one of his songs, which was called The Exotic Suite of the Americas. And then whenever they had any commemoration of Che Guevara's death, they always played a...

• 48:33Speaker 00

  I almost said a Lou Baker song.

• 48:35Speaker 02

  A Perez Prado song.

• 48:37Speaker 03

  Oh, really?

• 48:40Speaker 01

  A little bit of shade in Bolivia.

• 48:43Speaker 00

  There's no lyrics in his original Mambo number five, but he did do a lot of different mambo's, Mambo number eight and so on. But apparently, there's a really good way. Let's say you're sitting in a cafe and you hear what sounds like a Perez Prado song coming on over the speakers. How do you tell that it's him and not just a random mambo song? There is apparently a little way, a little trick.

• 49:04Speaker 02

  Ooh.

• 49:05Speaker 01

  Sort of an audio signature.

• 49:07Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly. And you did it earlier when you were saying the lyrics to the song.

• 49:11Speaker 03

  When Andy went, "Rah!"

• 49:13Speaker 01

  "Rah!"

• 49:14Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 49:14Speaker 00

  In all his songs, there's just a little, "Rah!"

• 49:17Speaker 03

  Wait, but no, but Lou Bega does that.

• 49:19Speaker 00

  Or does he? Probably Lou Bega does do that.

• 49:22Speaker 01

  We're back to the scoreboard.

• 49:25Speaker 00

  Lou Bega probably does do that, but he's doing it in tribute to Prado.

• 49:28Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 49:29Speaker 00

  Because that's what Prado did all the way in every song.

• 49:31Speaker 03

  No, but it definitely is him who does it. It's not the ghost of Prado suddenly comes on over the radio.

• 49:36Speaker 02

  Anna knows this song so well. "Rah!" Yeah, he was known as Seal Face Perez Prado because of this thing that he did whenever he was playing. He'd go, "Wah!" And it would make him look a bit like a seal.

• 49:48Speaker 03

  Ah, yeah, I can see that.

• 49:51Speaker 01

  It's good. I think we should fold in some kind of audio signature like that to our show.

• 49:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, okay.

• 49:56Speaker 03

  Any suggestions?

• 49:58Speaker 01

  Oh, just a suggestion to get us off the blocks.

• 50:01Speaker 02

  So everyone knows that it's us. When you're just in a cafe and a random podcast comes on and you hear, "Ooh!", they're like, "Oh, I know this one."

• 50:10Speaker 03

  You notice it. This mambo came from Danzone, which is Cuba's national dance.

• 50:17Speaker 01

  I'm sorry, the Danzone?

• 50:18Speaker 03

  The Dan... Oh, God.

• 50:20Speaker 01

  And we're just supposed to believe this means nothing?

• 50:25Speaker 03

  With the cork board.

• 50:26Speaker 02

  That was the worst part of the crystal maze, wasn't it? When you went to the Danzone?

• 50:32Speaker 02

  I'll go for another mystery game, fine.

• 50:34Speaker 01

  No, no, no, you're in the Danzone now, and he's explaining to you about the time that Peter Sellers met the aunt of Barry Humphries.

• 50:44Speaker 02

  Fuck it, I don't want the money.

• 50:49Speaker 03

  I'm afraid Danzone is Cuba's national dance, Danzone. And so that is what Mambo grew out of. It was like building off that Mambo just added an improvised section to the end. But Danzone is very interesting because it's a dance and it's split into two sections, the music, one section, one type of section you dance to, the other you don't dance to. And so there are these long sections of no dancing. And the way to spot a novice who's in their first dance is that they don't know when the non-dance sections come. So there are subtle hints in the music which mean stop dancing.

• 51:23Speaker 02

  Can I just say, what you're describing is musical statues. So is it halfway through a Danzone, like, everyone stops and if someone moves, they're out?

• 51:33Speaker 03

  It's exactly that. Yes, they invented, the Cubans invented musical statues.

• 51:42Speaker 00

  Okay, that's it. That is all of our facts. Thank you so much for listening. If you'd like to get in contact with any of us about the things that we've said over the course of this podcast, we can all be found online. I'm on at Shreiberland on Instagram. Andy? At Andrew Hunter M. James?

• 51:56Speaker 02

  No Such Thing is James Harkin.

• 51:57Speaker 00

  And Anna, if they want to get us as a group?

• 52:00Speaker 03

  You can go to Instagram at Nosuchthing or email podcast at qi.com.

• 52:04Speaker 00

  Yep, podcast at qi.com. That's the most important one of all because Andy receives all your emails and he cherry picks the best to bring to two new shows that we've been making over the last few months. There is Little Fish, our bonus Monday show, where we put down our facts and we just say your best facts from the last seven days. So send them in there. Or if you do have things that you want to say about the stuff that we've mentioned, that all gets cherry picked and taken to our extra bonus hidden show, which is sitting in Club Fish called Drop Us A Line. Now, Club Fish is on Patreon, patreon.com/clubfish. We have lots of rewards for different tiers. You can get videos of some of the shows that we make. There is extra long versions of the shows that you hear. There's a bunch of stuff there. Check it out. Otherwise, just come back here next week because we're

• 52:48Speaker 00

  going to be back. Thank you as ever to Leing Lee, Ethan Ruporelia, as well as the larger Fishbuster team for all their work. And we'll see you again next week. Goodbye.