Little Fish: I'm from the future - here's a fart joke

Andy throws his mum under the bus with a dubious fact, while he, Anna and Dan discuss YOUR facts. This week's subjects include Tall Babies, Little John and Fatboy Slim. And the gang announce eight more Friend of the Podcast custodians. Visit nosuchthingasafish.com http://nosuchthingasafish.com for news about live shows, merchandise and more episodes. Join Club Fish for ad-free episodes and exclusive bonus content at apple.co/nosuchthingasafish http://apple.co/nosuchthingasafish or nosuchthingasafish.com/patreon http://nosuchthingasafish.com/patreon Edited by James Harkin Produced by Leying Lee Team includes Tara Dorrell, Joe Mayo and Ethan Ruparelia

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Stop the podcast.

• 0:01Speaker 01

  Stop the podcast.

• 0:02Speaker 00

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• 1:25Speaker 01

  Hi, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Little Fish. My name is Andrew Hunter-Murray, and I'm here in the QI studio with Dan Schreiber and Anna Torenski. And we're here to celebrate your facts that you've been sending in to [email protected]. So, so let's go. Let's, uh, let's have a fact. Who's got one?

• 1:47Speaker 03

  I got one. Great batch this week. This one's from Glenn Johnson, who says, "The furthest person who has been away from Earth was Canadian." This was Commander Reed Wiseman in an interview.

• 1:57Speaker 01

  The furthest person?

• 1:58Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:58Speaker 01

  Who has been away?

• 1:59Speaker 00

  I've, I've checked how it's written, and it is written correctly on the page. I just want to say in defence of this person's fact.

• 2:05Speaker 01

  What did I say?

• 2:06Speaker 00

  The furthest person.

• 2:07Speaker 01

  I thought you might mean the person who has been furthest away from Earth.

• 2:10Speaker 03

  That's what I meant.

• 2:11Speaker 01

  And I understand that. And I'm sorry for slowing things down. Go on, Canadian, you say?

• 2:15Speaker 03

  When Artemis II, the spacecraft, was at its furthest distance from Earth while going around the moon, Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen was positioned in the spacecraft furthest away from the Earth and the rest of the crew at that point, thus making him the furthest person ever out in space.

• 2:31Speaker 01

  That's great.

• 2:32Speaker 03

  It's been a few decades since anyone's got that far. It was Apollo 13 who had to fling around the moon. So they went the furthest ever at that point.

• 2:39Speaker 01

  That's so cool.

• 2:39Speaker 03

  So this is a record broken. And, um, yeah, by a Canadian. So Jeremy Hansen, he sounds amazing. He started off as a cave nought.

• 2:49Speaker 00

  Oh, nice. Didn't, um, we had some, who, who came on the show a few years ago, also astronaut who started off as a cave nought? Tim Peake started off as a cave nought. I think they, they sometimes are, aren't they? It's a lot of the same skills it entails.

• 3:01Speaker 03

  It's, it's all the training. It's like different levels of noughts that you are before you become an astronaut. Not everyone follows this system, but Cave Nought is one. It's part of the European Space Agency. Cooperative Adventure for Valuing and Exercising Human Behavior and Performance Skills. That spells caves. And they are in caves.

• 3:19Speaker 00

  Yes, okay, yes, right.

• 3:21Speaker 03

  So one of those things has done a backward job on it. Probably the name.

• 3:25Speaker 00

  No, I think they had the name and they were like, well, we'll have to do it in a cave now.

• 3:29Speaker 03

  It'd be silly if we don't now, yeah.

• 3:30Speaker 00

  Yeah, which isn't, it's not suitable at all, but.

• 3:32Speaker 03

  Yeah. So he was a cave nought, then he was an aqua nought, did a mission down underwater for seven days. And then he became an astronaut, and now gone the furthest of any human.

• 3:41Speaker 01

  What next?

• 3:42Speaker 03

  Well, good question.

• 3:43Speaker 01

  What after astronaut?

• 3:43Speaker 03

  Well, he's a retired nought now. He's a, he's a nomonaut. He's a nomonaut. He's, there's nothing more.

• 3:50Speaker 00

  He's just a nobody now, okay? That's, no, not a nobody. He's just like the rest of us now.

• 3:54Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:55Speaker 01

  Yeah. Try telling Tim Peake that he's a nobody, you know, he's always popping up doing stuff, isn't he? Because he's been an astronaut. And Tim Peake was an astronaut.

• 4:02Speaker 03

  Yes, he was.

• 4:03Speaker 01

  Went to space.

• 4:04Speaker 03

  You're still dying on that hill, are you, Andy? You're not an astronaut until you go to space.

• 4:09Speaker 01

  Do you want one from me?

• 4:10Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 4:11Speaker 03

  Of course.

• 4:11Speaker 01

  Here's one from Chris Swinton. It's about Fatboy Slim's dad.

• 4:17Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 4:17Speaker 01

  We're all familiar with Fatboy Slim?

• 4:18Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 4:19Speaker 01

  DJ?

• 4:19Speaker 00

  Norman Cook, I call him, because we're mates.

• 4:22Speaker 01

  Norman Cook. Of course, if you were really a mate of his, you'd call him Quentin, which is his birth name.

• 4:27Speaker 00

  Yes, I don't want to embarrass him.

• 4:29Speaker 01

  I think he got teased at school and changed his name from Quentin to Norman.

• 4:32Speaker 03

  And if you were a really, really good mate of his, like I am, you'd call him Pookie, because he, uh, he likes being snuggled in the morning and, little kisses on the back of the ear, on the left ear, little kisses on the back of the left ear.

• 4:43Speaker 00

  That is so gross.

• 4:45Speaker 01

  Well, this, this fact is about Fatboy Slim's dad, Ron Cook.

• 4:53Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 4:53Speaker 01

  And the fact is.

• 4:54Speaker 03

  Sausage, yeah.

• 4:55Speaker 01

  Sorry?

• 4:56Speaker 03

  Well, that's what I call him.

• 4:57Speaker 01

  He introduced England to recycling glass. He introduced the bottle bank to England.

• 5:05Speaker 03

  Did he?

• 5:05Speaker 01

  I don't know if you call this something different overseas, international listeners, the bottle bank is where we recycle our glass.

• 5:10Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 5:10Speaker 01

  You drop it in and it smashes, it's great fun. And Ron Cook got an MBE for introducing the concept of recycling glass to the UK.

• 5:17Speaker 03

  Really? Wow.

• 5:18Speaker 01

  He would sometimes dress up as a character called Ali Jam Jar.

• 5:21Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 5:22Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 5:22Speaker 01

  A character you probably wouldn't do today, but which was absolutely fine in the 90s.

• 5:26Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 5:27Speaker 00

  Okay. Oh, that makes me want to look it up.

• 5:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's funny. It's just a, just a sort of Arabian guy who I think is sort of, is or has a jam jar on him.

• 5:36Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 5:36Speaker 03

  Probably is, right?

• 5:38Speaker 00

  Is a jam jar?

• 5:39Speaker 01

  No, he wasn't a jam, I don't think so. I looked up a picture of Ali Jam Jar. I don't think he is a jam jar.

• 5:43Speaker 00

  He's just holding a jam jar.

• 5:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's, it's probably a reference that's been lost on me. That's the thing. I'm sure there was more sense to it than that. So anyway, that's Ron Cook.

• 5:52Speaker 03

  That's cool.

• 5:53Speaker 01

  I just think that's rather marvellous.

• 5:54Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 5:54Speaker 00

  Good on him.

• 5:55Speaker 01

  And interestingly, his father, Ron Cook's father, so Fatboy Slim's grandfather, was a window cleaner. So glass, again, in the family.

• 6:03Speaker 03

  Interesting.

• 6:04Speaker 01

  Yeah. And Fatboy Slim?

• 6:06Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 6:06Speaker 01

  In 2002, hosted a gig on Brighton Beach, where 250,000 people came. What a massive gig.

• 6:13Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 6:13Speaker 01

  And afterwards, the beach was strewn with, what's that? Broken glass. So he would have got a rap on the knuckles for that, I imagine.

• 6:19Speaker 03

  From his dad?

• 6:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:20Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 6:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, he should have recycled the glass.

• 6:22Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 6:22Speaker 00

  Yeah, you can't expect Fatboy Slim, after the gig of a quarter of a million, to go round the beach himself.

• 6:28Speaker 01

  No, but he, but he's literally got the microphone, hasn't he? He could make an announcement saying there are bottle banks.

• 6:33Speaker 00

  Good point. Should have done that.

• 6:34Speaker 03

  But then he'd probably think, it sounds like nepotism, doesn't it?

• 6:38Speaker 03

  Keep his dad's business going.

• 6:39Speaker 01

  You're right.

• 6:40Speaker 00

  What a great family.

• 6:41Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 6:41Speaker 00

  Illustrious.

• 6:42Speaker 01

  High achievers.

• 6:43Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 6:43Speaker 03

  Yeah. I wonder how far the glass connection goes higher up.

• 6:47Speaker 01

  I know.

• 6:47Speaker 03

  Did Fatboy Slim be the first to break the, uh, the glass, as it were?

• 6:51Speaker 01

  Oh, lovely.

• 6:52Speaker 00

  Mmm.

• 6:53Speaker 01

  Breaking the glass floor?

• 6:54Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 6:55Speaker 00

  Yeah. Stumping it down. Here's one from me, from my batch, from Ada Campmane. And I think she might have, um, she might have made this up herself, as in it's true, a James Harkin style created.

• 7:10Speaker 03

  Yeah, yes.

• 7:10Speaker 01

  I love these.

• 7:11Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 7:12Speaker 00

  Yao Ming's longest neuron is about the same length as Peter Dinklage's height.

• 7:18Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 7:19Speaker 03

  What?

• 7:21Speaker 01

  I know that Peter Dinklage is short, because he was in Game of Thrones. He plays, is it Tyrion? The, the, one of the Lannister children.

• 7:28Speaker 03

  Does he?

• 7:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, and he's, he's a short person, so he's an actor. So I don't know who Yao Ming is.

• 7:33Speaker 00

  No, I didn't actually know who either of these people were.

• 7:35Speaker 03

  He's an NBA star.

• 7:36Speaker 00

  There we go, he's an NBA star.

• 7:38Speaker 01

  We feast it together.

• 7:42Speaker 00

  She goes on to explain, uh, the longest neuron in the human body is, uh, the motor neuron that runs from the base of the spinal cord to the toes, which is quite interesting. So from your bum to your toes.

• 7:52Speaker 01

  Ooh.

• 7:52Speaker 00

  Um, and so Yao Ming's longest neuron proportionally would be 1.35 metres. And, so I was reading up on Yao Ming. And he is the product of a project I did know about. In China, people were sort of bred to be basketball players, which I think some people wonder how definitely it did happen. I think it did.

• 8:09Speaker 03

  What, like they were growing giants?

• 8:11Speaker 01

  No way.

• 8:12Speaker 03

  Because he's tall. Yao Ming is like.

• 8:14Speaker 01

  I understand he's tall.

• 8:15Speaker 03

  He's like at least five foot 11. Uh, no, no, no, he's, he's like 6'8".

• 8:20Speaker 00

  He's massive. Yeah, yeah, he's.

• 8:21Speaker 03

  6'9" something?

• 8:22Speaker 00

  No, no, he's way taller than that. He's seven foot six. So he's.

• 8:24Speaker 03

  I'm sorry, what?

• 8:26Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 8:26Speaker 03

  Seven foot six?

• 8:27Speaker 00

  Yeah. And a Chinese man in China, men are on average about three inches, two, three inches shorter than they are here. Um, and they, and the Chinese government did very, very strongly encourage slash make tall women marry tall men for a couple of generations, and then also strongly encouraged slash make them play basketball.

• 8:44Speaker 03

  Oh, so that's, sorry, so there wasn't like some machine, kind of like how, how they turn Captain America? Steve Rogers gets put in a machine and, and he turns into Captain America.

• 8:55Speaker 00

  Right, sorry, no. And actually, they were both, the, so Yao Ming's parents both also played basketball, because they were bred from very tall parents. So they were both incredibly tall. They were the tallest couple in China. And they were made to play basketball, and they were both very bad at basketball, apparently, at first. But if you just are made to play basketball enough from the age of two, then you do become an NBA star.

• 9:13Speaker 03

  Right.

• 9:13Speaker 00

  Um, which they almost did, and then Yao Ming did.

• 9:15Speaker 03

  That is fascinating. That's a great fact. And do we know if there's more Chinese basketball players who've been through the same scientific?

• 9:22Speaker 00

  I think there are. I don't know if it's, we're calling it scientific, maybe it's just encouragement. They weren't in a lab, they weren't grown in test tubes, but I think there are.

• 9:32Speaker 01

  That's extraordinary, yeah.

• 9:33Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 9:34Speaker 03

  Yeah. Um, okay, well, I've got another fact here. Shall we go? This is from Denver, from Antwerp.

• 9:41Speaker 01

  Brilliant.

• 9:42Speaker 03

  Yeah. Uh, "We have Jurassic Park to thank for K-pop." So Korea was the country whose GDP predominantly relied on manufacturing industries. And when the movie Jurassic Park came out in 1993, the Korean government noticed that it had brought in more money than Hyundai did. So this was a revelation to them, an entertainment thing, generating more money than a big manufacturing company there. What's going on?

• 10:05Speaker 00

  Oh, it had been brought in more money in Korea.

• 10:07Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 10:07Speaker 01

  Exactly. It's not a Korean film.

• 10:09Speaker 03

  No, exactly. Just in the cinemas. It just, it just raised, it was the biggest hit of its day, Jurassic Park, right? And that extended to every country. It was a number one blockbuster.

• 10:17Speaker 01

  Quick hand up, South Korea we're talking about.

• 10:19Speaker 03

  Uh, yeah, sorry, South Korea here we're talking about.

• 10:21Speaker 01

  Just checking, because we just said Korea.

• 10:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 10:23Speaker 00

  I think you can say Korea, like you say Ireland, you mean the Republic of.

• 10:26Speaker 01

  Oh, don't get into that, Anna.

• 10:29Speaker 01

  Please, don't.

• 10:31Speaker 00

  I think Korea is.

• 10:32Speaker 03

  Anyway, they invested in their entertainment world, and as a result, uh, there's a few steps, but it leads to K-pop. And now K-pop, obviously dominating the world. You've got K-pop Demon Hunters.

• 10:45Speaker 01

  They should have made it K-pop Dino Hunters. As a tribute.

• 10:47Speaker 03

  They absolutely should. In fact, you know what they should have anyway, because this is a thing that's happening right now in America, where there's a Christian metal band called Demon Hunter, who are now suing Netflix, because Netflix has taken K-pop Demon Hunters on the road. They've created a live band of it, so you can buy concert tickets and so on. And there's been a band in America that's been going since 2000 called Demon Hunter, Christian metal band. They've got massive album sales. They've done over 600,000 albums. They play big shows.

• 11:15Speaker 01

  That's a lot of albums.

• 11:16Speaker 03

  That's a lot of albums.

• 11:18Speaker 00

  That's a lot of songs to have to write.

• 11:19Speaker 01

  Pumping them out very quickly if they've released 600,000 albums.

• 11:22Speaker 03

  They've sold.

• 11:23Speaker 01

  Oasis only did two good ones.

• 11:26Speaker 03

  They have sold 600,000 copies.

• 11:30Speaker 00

  But only the first two tracks on each one were good.

• 11:32Speaker 03

  Not songs, albums. Anyway, they are having huge problems. They keep getting booked for interviews and then finding out that, oh, we thought it was the K-pop Demon Hunters. They're looking out at the crowds of their gigs. There's very confused children standing in the crowd as they do their thrash metal. And so they're suing Netflix as a result to say, you can't do this. You've ruined our 26 years of livelihood.

• 11:55Speaker 00

  That's cool, because if they're big enough, that's not just like a puny person suing Netflix. That might actually be a battle, right?

• 12:00Speaker 03

  It could be a battle. If it's trademarks, if it's all that, you know, they've got their stuff on their side.

• 12:04Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 12:05Speaker 03

  Let's see.

• 12:05Speaker 01

  Exciting.

• 12:06Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 12:06Speaker 01

  I can't wait. Here's one that came in from Robin.

• 12:10Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 12:11Speaker 01

  Robin writes, "Universal Studios spent three years developing a roller coaster that barely makes a sound so as not to disturb local residents."

• 12:22Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 12:23Speaker 01

  "But they didn't account for how much people tend to scream when they're on the roller coasters."

• 12:28Speaker 03

  This is so good. This is one of their resorts and it's basically, and they've done, they did all this work building a new roller coaster, which is quite near some homes.

• 12:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:36Speaker 03

  And so, for example, "It has a 940-foot-long sound wall lined with airport-grade insulation." Airports are famously noisy places. I don't quite understand that, but sure. "The tracks are lined with a particular kind of gravel to mute the vibrations."

• 12:51Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 12:52Speaker 03

  Unfortunately, local residents say, "We don't hear the roller coaster, but we do hear the screams."

• 12:56Speaker 01

  So they still...

• 12:57Speaker 03

  Every 30 seconds, all day, you just hear, "Scream!" For 10 hours, you don't hear the roller coaster magic. You just hear screaming.

• 13:07Speaker 00

  Can they just put a sign up saying, "Don't scream," do you think?

• 13:10Speaker 03

  That's a good idea.

• 13:11Speaker 00

  Why don't they just do that? Because really, on roller coasters, I would scream. You don't need to, do you? You just know that's the done thing on a roller coaster.

• 13:18Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 13:18Speaker 00

  You just know you're meant to.

• 13:19Speaker 03

  Or helmets, like a full-face helmet.

• 13:22Speaker 01

  Really good idea.

• 13:22Speaker 00

  Oh, like a soundproof helmet?

• 13:23Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 13:24Speaker 00

  Right.

• 13:25Speaker 03

  Isn't there a fashion for taping your mouth shut while you sleep? Have you heard of this?

• 13:31Speaker 01

  Why?

• 13:31Speaker 03

  You're looking at me like I'm a weirdo. It's something to do with helping your quality of your sleep or something to do with breathing through your nose. You're still breathing, but through your nose. There is a thing of mouth taping while you're asleep.

• 13:42Speaker 00

  It sounds like, I mean, there's a thing for everything, isn't there?

• 13:44Speaker 03

  I know there's a thing for everything.

• 13:45Speaker 00

  Sounds very silly, but...

• 13:46Speaker 01

  But you're saying...

• 13:47Speaker 03

  I'm saying, "Do this on a roller coaster."

• 13:50Speaker 01

  Right.

• 13:54Speaker 03

  And that makes it scarier.

• 13:55Speaker 01

  Every child...

• 13:57Speaker 03

  We're actually just going to leave that on for the rest of the day, if that's cool.

• 14:02Speaker 00

  Well, that's an excellent fact. Here's another good fact. This is from Ellen Cliff. This is a confusing opening sentence. She says, "One of my favorite facts that genuinely depressed me before I went to live in the UK was this. It is that 1.75 square miles of Black Mountain Reserve in the centre of Canberra, Australia, has more species of ant than the whole British Isles. In fact, more than twice as many."

• 14:29Speaker 03

  That was depressing?

• 14:30Speaker 00

  She's an entomology nerd.

• 14:32Speaker 03

  Yeah, right.

• 14:32Speaker 00

  I know. I think there's a lot to get depressed about in the world and, you know, on that front, I would say...

• 14:36Speaker 03

  Pick your battles.

• 14:37Speaker 00

  Cheer up, yeah.

• 14:38Speaker 03

  So, sorry, there's an area of this Australian, you say Black Mountain Reserve?

• 14:42Speaker 00

  Yeah, in the middle of Canberra, apparently, and it has more, it has over 100 species of ant. In Britain, we only have 41, according to her. Although I had a look and it now looks like we have between 50 and 60. So, it's climbing.

• 14:54Speaker 03

  Great news.

• 14:55Speaker 00

  Huge news. You can feel a bit happier about life, Ellen.

• 14:59Speaker 01

  I didn't know we had more than one species of ant.

• 15:02Speaker 03

  Of ant? You thought there was just ant?

• 15:04Speaker 01

  Well, you just see the ants, the common or garden ants, don't you?

• 15:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 15:07Speaker 00

  What about red ants?

• 15:08Speaker 03

  Yep, good point. Yeah, yep. I haven't developed enough thought to it.

• 15:11Speaker 00

  No, loads more. I guess they all look quite similar, probably, don't they?

• 15:14Speaker 03

  I think that's true. I think a lot of ants look very similar. I think that's a really uncontroversial point.

• 15:20Speaker 00

  Why would we be careful, though?

• 15:21Speaker 03

  As though it is controversial.

• 15:24Speaker 01

  Because Anna did her thing about Ireland earlier, so I think we're all probably slightly on edge.

• 15:27Speaker 03

  I think we're a bit on edge.

• 15:28Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. We don't want to alienate the ants. We don't have any ant listeners we have.

• 15:34Speaker 03

  Probably safer that we tape your mouth over for the rest of the episode, Anna.

• 15:41Speaker 00

  Stop the podcast.

• 15:42Speaker 03

  Stop the podcast.

• 15:43Speaker 00

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• 15:46Speaker 03

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• 17:25Speaker 03

  This is from Anders Callan. He's just sent a bunch of facts, just bullet point facts. Burt Bacharach's dad was Burt Bacharach, but Burt Bacharach, who we know is spelt B-U-R-T.

• 17:39Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 17:39Speaker 03

  But his dad is spelt B-E-R-T.

• 17:42Speaker 00

  Love it. Love it. Because it's arrogant to call your son the exact same name.

• 17:45Speaker 03

  Exactly. And then how are you going to distinguish when you're saying, "Burt?" "Burt, brrr."

• 17:53Speaker 01

  That is my husband, Bert, my son, brrr.

• 17:57Speaker 03

  We've all been saying Burt Bacharach's name wrong.

• 18:01Speaker 03

  One more, by the way, just from Anders. The actor Alan Hale, who played Little John in three Robin Hood movies, invented the sliding theatre chair.

• 18:11Speaker 01

  We all know the sliding theatre chair.

• 18:14Speaker 03

  Sorry.

• 18:15Speaker 01

  On first presentation, that's an insanely dull fact.

• 18:20Speaker 01

  And there's no link between the Robin Hood thing and the theatre thing.

• 18:22Speaker 03

  Well, no, the link is that if you need to think, who's Alan Hale? Oh, yeah, he's the guy in Robin Hood. You know, that's...

• 18:28Speaker 01

  So Little John is the big guy in Robin Hood, right?

• 18:30Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 18:31Speaker 01

  And the sliding theatre chair? I'm not, what's that?

• 18:33Speaker 03

  Thank you, Anders, because I hadn't heard of it either. Now, immediately, I sort of thought the flippable chair, you know, in theatres that flip up.

• 18:40Speaker 00

  But they don't slide.

• 18:41Speaker 03

  They don't slide.

• 18:42Speaker 00

  It would be awful if they slid.

• 18:43Speaker 03

  They don't slide.

• 18:44Speaker 00

  It would be very disruptive.

• 18:45Speaker 03

  This is what he invented. He invented a chair so that when people need to get past you in a row, you slide it back. You don't stand up. You physically move the entire chair back so they can walk in front of you. And then you sort of bring yourself back forward again.

• 18:58Speaker 00

  But that, but when you say, to have invented something, it has to have actually been used.

• 19:02Speaker 03

  Good point.

• 19:03Speaker 00

  And I have never seen one of those. It would ram into the knees of the person behind, which I imagine is why it hasn't had huge uptake in the West End.

• 19:09Speaker 01

  Well, no, but they can just move their seat back. Come on, Anna.

• 19:11Speaker 00

  So it's like, everyone move back, please?

• 19:13Speaker 03

  Everyone moves back.

• 19:15Speaker 00

  No, this is a better way of doing it than standing. Yeah. So in the back row move, sorry to interrupt, if you just...

• 19:23Speaker 01

  People in the back row, tragically, those are the only ones that can't move back on the one. So they, anytime someone is on row B, walking to their seat, they get slammed into.

• 19:33Speaker 03

  But they could see it coming. They've got more time to make their escape. They actually back row need to evacuate altogether. So you're hoping it's row B. You're on row X, you're dead.

• 19:47Speaker 00

  Yeah, what the hell are these used anywhere?

• 19:50Speaker 03

  I couldn't, I couldn't see that they were. The point is, is that he was an amazing inventor. You know, sometimes people come up with ideas. They don't necessarily get used day to day. Apparently, he modified the folding chair in theatres as well, so invented a little...

• 20:02Speaker 01

  There's quite a little problem for these things that he did to that.

• 20:05Speaker 00

  You're out into the somersault.

• 20:08Speaker 03

  He also supposedly invented a formula for greaseless potato chips. So this is a big deal, Mr. Hale.

• 20:16Speaker 00

  Oh, a huge deal, yeah.

• 20:17Speaker 03

  Anyway, there's more from Anders, but maybe we'll save it for another.

• 20:19Speaker 01

  Oh, that's terrific. That's so good.

• 20:21Speaker 00

  Now, here's one from Stuart Laidler, which I didn't know, which is that at the time of writing, there are nine living ex-prime ministers of the UK. I knew that. This is the most that there have ever been. The previous high was a tie of five under Major. I mean, that can't have been the previous high. The previous high must have just been when there were eight grand and came in.

• 20:41Speaker 03

  Yes, true.

• 20:42Speaker 00

  Anyway, we're only two ex-prime ministers away from being able to field a football team in the International Ex-Prime Ministers' First 11 World Championships, which is cool. And I looked it up because I thought there is a lot of ex-prime ministers to have, and we're second in the world. Isn't that cool?

• 20:59Speaker 01

  After Switzerland, I'm guessing? Because they have that funny thing where it's every year or every six months they have a new one. And it's not quite as we do it.

• 21:06Speaker 00

  I didn't count Switzerland, so I think it's cheating.

• 21:09Speaker 01

  Ooh, so where else has the most living?

• 21:11Speaker 00

  Well, we're tied with the ties. We've got a tie tie.

• 21:15Speaker 03

  Very pleasing.

• 21:15Speaker 01

  Very nice.

• 21:16Speaker 00

  And Italy beats us with 10 former PMs, which is weird because actually Giorgia Maloney is the longest-serving leader of Italy since the Second World War. And yes, she is, but they just don't serve very long. She's only been in since 2022.

• 21:27Speaker 03

  Sounds like a footballer as well, doesn't she?

• 21:29Speaker 00

  Giorgia Maloney.

• 21:30Speaker 03

  Giorgia Maloney taken to the field.

• 21:32Speaker 00

  I reckon she could kick some ass.

• 21:33Speaker 01

  So sorry, but Berlusconi did long stints, didn't he? Was he in the same position?

• 21:37Speaker 00

  Uh, you're right, he did, but and yet there have been a lot in between, I suppose.

• 21:41Speaker 01

  Right.

• 21:43Speaker 00

  Although he lived to be really old.

• 21:45Speaker 01

  Can we name all nine? Gun to our head.

• 21:46Speaker 03

  John Major.

• 21:47Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 21:48Speaker 03

  Winston Churchill.

• 21:50Speaker 01

  No problem.

• 21:51Speaker 03

  John Major, Gordon Brown, Tony Blair, Andy Burnham, Theresa May.

• 21:55Speaker 01

  Andy Burnham's not former.

• 21:57Speaker 03

  Oh, we're doing former's only, not current. Oh, right.

• 21:59Speaker 01

  Major, Blair Brown, Cameron May, Johnson, Russ Sunak, Starmer.

• 22:07Speaker 00

  I think there's no points. It's no points for naming the prime ministers that you've just lived through.

• 22:12Speaker 01

  It was pretty boring, even as I was saying it. Here's another one. This I quite like. It's from John Ankeny. Upon the occasion of Dolly Parton's passing, sad times for all, my wife and I rewatched the wonderful 1989 film Steel Magnolias, which I think she was in. In the course of that viewing, we learned that the playwright Robert Harling based his play on the real life of his sister Susan Harling Robinson, Julia Roberts plays her, who died of type 1 diabetes. When the film was made, such care was made for authenticity that the actor who disconnects Julia Roberts's life support was played by a real nurse.

• 22:52Speaker 01

  In fact, the same nurse who disconnected the life support of Susan Harling Robertson herself.

• 22:58Speaker 00

  No.

• 22:58Speaker 01

  In the film.

• 23:00Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 23:00Speaker 01

  Isn't that peculiar?

• 23:01Speaker 03

  Cast specifically?

• 23:03Speaker 01

  I think it can't have been an accident.

• 23:05Speaker 00

  What are... They only realised, didn't they, halfway through filming?

• 23:09Speaker 01

  He only found out at the premiere. Oh, right. Oh, yeah, the nurses changed jobs. Yeah, yeah.

• 23:13Speaker 00

  That's amazing. I like the claim it's for authenticity. Like, otherwise people might not believe the story.

• 23:19Speaker 01

  That's true.

• 23:20Speaker 00

  Unless we get the actual nurse.

• 23:22Speaker 03

  Well, all nurses and doctors in movies are played by real doctors and nurses. That's a classic fact.

• 23:27Speaker 01

  That's why there's such a crisis in healthcare at the moment.

• 23:29Speaker 03

  Oh, it's a disaster when George Clooney defected after E I to become a full-time actor.

• 23:36Speaker 03

  It was terrible. He was their best.

• 23:38Speaker 00

  Fortunately, actors are filling in for doctors all over the NHS, so we're fine. Very good. Well, shall we do some fact distributions?

• 23:47Speaker 01

  You're not hosting the show, but sure.

• 23:51Speaker 01

  She can't have the time. But I would like to.

• 23:54Speaker 03

  Get the tape, Andy. Get the tape.

• 23:54Speaker 01

  I would like to second Anna's suggestion that we dish out some custodian chips.

• 23:59Speaker 00

  It's a good idea, Andy.

• 24:00Speaker 03

  Thank you, Anna.

• 24:01Speaker 01

  Do it. So if you join Club Fish, our members' club, at the top tier friend of the podcast, then you will get one of our facts dedicated to you in perpetuity in our Hall of Fame. You get a fantastic-looking certificate, which you can print and put on your wall, and you get one of our facts just for you. So let's now bestow a few more of those. Who would like to go first?

• 24:24Speaker 00

  This one is a fact for Sandy Cronin. Sandy, take good care of this one. This is the fact that Iceland imports ice.

• 24:32Speaker 01

  Lovely.

• 24:32Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 24:33Speaker 01

  Lovely fact.

• 24:34Speaker 03

  I wonder if it's still the case. I think it must be, right? It's an industry. It's not they're not importing ice for their glaciers. This is like drinking ice and so on.

• 24:41Speaker 01

  Drinking ice.

• 24:43Speaker 03

  Ice for your drinks, rather.

• 24:46Speaker 03

  I'm going to dish one out now to Gem Pie. And this is the fact that the most dangerous invasive species in Britain is a poo-eating mussel from Transylvania. That's very nice.

• 24:58Speaker 01

  A poo-eating mussel? Doesn't sound dangerous.

• 25:03Speaker 00

  No.

• 25:03Speaker 01

  Sounds beneficial or anything.

• 25:04Speaker 00

  It's because we play it fast on news with the word dangerous. Dangerous to whom? Well, it feels like it's not killing people left, right and centre.

• 25:10Speaker 01

  Well, James said that one female can produce a billion babies a year.

• 25:15Speaker 00

  And...

• 25:15Speaker 01

  And this was about 10 years ago, so we're probably, I mean, we're wading through them day in, day out now, aren't we?

• 25:20Speaker 00

  I can't believe we're not nipple-high in these guys.

• 25:24Speaker 01

  Right, I'll dish one out. This one goes to Aislinn Smith. Aislinn, I really hope I'm saying your name right, because sometimes it's Ashling. I have a relative whose name is Aislinn and pronounces it like that. But your surname is Smith, and I'm absolutely dead certain on that one. But your fact, Aislinn, is until about 4,000 years ago, most humans didn't notice the colour blue.

• 25:49Speaker 00

  I'd forgotten. I'd forgotten I ran with this.

• 25:51Speaker 01

  An ancient theory. I think this was a euphact, Anna.

• 25:54Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 25:55Speaker 01

  Just people didn't notice. You know, the sky's there and the sea's there and you can't, you know.

• 25:58Speaker 00

  Yeah, we thought people weren't really distinguishing between blue and green, I think. And, you know, date it back to lots of Herodotus and other ancient Greek quotes.

• 26:07Speaker 03

  Well, there is a rule of fashion, fashionable dressing, that says blue and green should never be seen. That blue and green don't go together.

• 26:12Speaker 00

  Because they're the same.

• 26:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, because you can't see them.

• 26:16Speaker 03

  People think you're naked. Yeah, yeah. It's interesting. I'm trying to think if there's any iconic superhero or anything that has blue and green together.

• 26:22Speaker 01

  Please don't write in, because honestly, I think they do go perfectly well together. But my mum always said that to me, and it just has stuck, okay? I'm sure someone has worked out how to make blue and green go together. If they have, let's let Andy's mum know.

• 26:34Speaker 03

  Oh, no, don't please.

• 26:35Speaker 01

  The podcast at QI.com.

• 26:37Speaker 03

  I'll give you her email address.

• 26:40Speaker 00

  There is a thing.

• 26:41Speaker 03

  [email protected].

• 26:43Speaker 01

  I asked her not to pick that. I said it's confusing.

• 26:48Speaker 01

  Okay, let's get another one. This one is for Kim. Belgian fishermen go fishing on horseback. Lovely. I remember this. This is very exciting coastal fishermen who are on the coast on horseback, and they have nets and they drag them up and down.

• 27:04Speaker 00

  And are they catching electric fish sometimes? Well, that might be...

• 27:07Speaker 03

  Electric fish?

• 27:08Speaker 00

  Something else, something else. You used to go into the water to catch electric eels, because sometimes they used to electrify the horse's legs.

• 27:14Speaker 03

  They would get the horse's legs as well.

• 27:16Speaker 01

  I don't think that was a method of fishing them, though. I think that was just something that happened to you when you were in South America and your horse got bitten by an eel, yeah.

• 27:22Speaker 00

  No, you're sorry, you're right.

• 27:23Speaker 01

  Coming out of the horse. Yeah, yeah.

• 27:24Speaker 00

  Don't do that. I've got this one for Ian Butterick. This is the fact that in 1921, the News of the World offered a free tea tray to any mother on the birth of her 10th child.

• 27:38Speaker 01

  I think if you had eight children, that's maybe a tempting offer, depending on how long the offer lasts, you know.

• 27:44Speaker 00

  Do you think you would, if you had eight, do you think you'd go for the extra two for the tea tray?

• 27:48Speaker 03

  You'd probably think you'd be in the paper as a result, holding the tea tray, maybe, because not many people are going to take that up. So suddenly you've got a famous story on your hands.

• 27:57Speaker 01

  I don't think we have stats on how many they ended up giving out. I would be very interested. That's probably buried in some archive.

• 28:04Speaker 03

  It would be good to know.

• 28:05Speaker 00

  It does feel a bit stingy. I do think that other countries sort of have offered large amounts of money to people to incentivise them to have children.

• 28:12Speaker 01

  It's not the country, this was the News of the World newspaper. It was not...

• 28:16Speaker 00

  It's the News of the World, you know?

• 28:19Speaker 01

  What are you going to give them? A massive house? Like, you can't... This is a crazy...

• 28:23Speaker 00

  They need one.

• 28:24Speaker 03

  That makes more sense. Actually, the Daily Mail always used to give away cottages in the 2010s, 2020s.

• 28:29Speaker 01

  Did they, right?

• 28:30Speaker 03

  Always a thing on the sort of masthead on the top saying, win a cottage.

• 28:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:34Speaker 00

  Yes, you're right.

• 28:35Speaker 03

  I wonder what you got in China for having a tall basketball child.

• 28:38Speaker 01

  Well, they wouldn't know initially, would they? They'd say this baby's small.

• 28:41Speaker 03

  Useless.

• 28:42Speaker 01

  This, you've got it all wrong.

• 28:46Speaker 01

  All right, here's another one. This goes out to Kong. And it's that 68% of mountains don't have pointy peaks.

• 28:55Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah, this is a classic Dan.

• 28:57Speaker 01

  Now, I love this one, partly because it's so stupid.

• 29:03Speaker 01

  And also because there was a famous mountain range called the Mountains of Kong.

• 29:06Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 29:06Speaker 01

  Remember the fictional range that was on maps for hundreds of years?

• 29:09Speaker 03

  The Mountains of Kong.

• 29:10Speaker 01

  And this fact goes out to Kong and it's about mountains. That's why I like it.

• 29:12Speaker 03

  And we've also had another person being given a fact today called Kim.

• 29:16Speaker 00

  We've had Kim Kong.

• 29:18Speaker 03

  This is great.

• 29:19Speaker 00

  Let's get them together.

• 29:20Speaker 03

  But this is if you ask a child to draw a mountain, or even an adult to draw a mountain, usually they do it as a pointy peak. That's how we do it. And it turns out that that's a minority in the mountain world.

• 29:30Speaker 00

  Who would have thought that eight-year-olds' drawings are not a realistic depiction sometimes?

• 29:36Speaker 01

  You're going to tell me my house doesn't have four windows and a chimney next?

• 29:41Speaker 03

  Okay, let's do another one. This one goes to Hannah Lauer. And your fact is the oldest ya-mum joke appears on a 3,500-year-old Babylonian tablet.

• 29:52Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 29:53Speaker 03

  It's very good, isn't it?

• 29:54Speaker 01

  Yeah. And the joke is, I've just looked at the archive, it's... ...dot-dot-dot of your mother is by the one who has sex with her. Who is it?

• 30:03Speaker 00

  So it's exciting to kind of fill in your own, fill in the gaps, like a news for you challenge.

• 30:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:09Speaker 00

  Dot-dot-dot of your mother is by the one who has sex with her.

• 30:13Speaker 01

  Who is it? Yeah.

• 30:15Speaker 03

  Very good.

• 30:15Speaker 01

  I suppose implying that she's been, you know, getting around a bit.

• 30:19Speaker 00

  That's the joke, I see.

• 30:20Speaker 01

  I think that's the joke.

• 30:22Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's good.

• 30:22Speaker 01

  Might not be. We don't know.

• 30:23Speaker 03

  Get her a tea tray. She's probably...

• 30:29Speaker 03

  I didn't connect, that's the dot, dot, dot that I didn't connect to that joke.

• 30:32Speaker 00

  It is amazing always when you look at old jokes, how it's all been the same. Every ancient joke is about farts, as far as I can tell. Whenever you come across another one that's Babylonian tablet, it's another bloody fart joke. Sometimes a penis.

• 30:43Speaker 01

  It's good though, but that's if you were then thrown back in time and you were looking for the best way to communicate with someone from the past, fart jokes.

• 30:51Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 30:51Speaker 01

  You'd have the best, you'd have ones they hadn't thought of because we'd advanced them.

• 30:54Speaker 00

  But wait, you can't speak their language, so you can't do fart jokes. All you can do is fart.

• 30:57Speaker 01

  Let's say, let's say you've learnt their language, but there's nothing that relates you to them. You're gonna win them over with a fart joke.

• 31:03Speaker 00

  I think the joy is that you don't need a language, you can just go.

• 31:07Speaker 01

  You're saying if you've learnt their language, that's the best way of connecting.

• 31:10Speaker 00

  Yeah, because I think if you've learnt their language, then you've got a connection.

• 31:14Speaker 01

  You're fine.

• 31:14Speaker 00

  You're okay.

• 31:15Speaker 01

  You can speak their language, you can tell them, I'm from the future, I'm from a place called Hoban. What a weird thing to say to someone when you first meet them. I'm from the future, are you talking to them, Andy? Or are you sending them on their way?

• 31:25Speaker 00

  I still think it's weird to go up to someone and tell them a fart joke out of the blue. I would say.

• 31:30Speaker 01

  You've got to start. Well, let's test it. Let's test it. Let's go, we'll go to the local tube station. Andy, you walk up to a random and say, I'm from the future. I'm here to communicate with your language. And I'll walk up. Tell them a fart joke. Yeah.

• 31:45Speaker 00

  Why is Andy talking in the robot voice?

• 31:48Speaker 01

  I will be doing that.

• 31:51Speaker 01

  You think I'm gonna pass up an opportunity to use the robot voice in public?

• 31:56Speaker 00

  You're right, it's such a gift. You're gonna use it when you can.

• 32:00Speaker 01

  Ah, well, one more, let's have one more.

• 32:03Speaker 00

  Yeah, here's one, here's one for Sarah, and this is the fact that in the 1920s, scientists concluded that menstruating women wilted flowers. This is a classic Sarah Pascoe, isn't it?

• 32:14Speaker 01

  Of course it was, yes.

• 32:15Speaker 00

  Yeah, and we talked about all those evil other things that menstruating women can do. Another thing since the dawn of time, if you can't think of the fart joke, this is another thing that you've got, you can bitch about how menstruating women ruin everything.

• 32:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Say they've destroyed the crop or something.

• 32:31Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 32:32Speaker 01

  And that will, that will get them rolling at the aisles. Well, those are your facts. Thank you so much for becoming friends of the podcast to our new custodians. That is Sarah, Hannah Lauer, Kong, Kim, Ian, Butterick, Aisling Smith, Jempi and Sandy Cronin. Thank you to all of you who've joined as members. Thank you to everyone who's joined Clubfish in general. There's so much stuff on there, there are longer versions of our weekly episode, there are bonus episodes, there is our audience feedback show, drop us a line, there is all sorts of stuff there. If you go to patreon.com/clubfish, you can join for very reasonable rates or buy one for the fish fan in your life. Christmas after all is coming. That's it for this episode of Little Fish.

• 33:13Speaker 01

  We'll be back again in a week with another one of these and we'll see you in between now and then with another episode of the main show, which is called No Such Thing As A Fish. Thanks, Dan and Anna, bye for now.

• 33:35Speaker 04

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