No Such Thing As Elizabeth I's Burnt Umber

Angela Barnes joins Dan, James and Andy to discuss the cars, the horses and the runs. 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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Stop the podcast.

• 0:01Speaker 01

  Stop the podcast.

• 0:02Speaker 00

  Hi, everybody. We are sponsored this week by Progressive.

• 0:05Speaker 01

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• 0:15Speaker 00

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• 0:22Speaker 01

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• 0:27Speaker 00

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• 0:32Speaker 01

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• 0:35Speaker 00

  Progressive Casualty Insurance Company affiliates and other insurers. Not available in all states. On with the show.

• 0:41Speaker 02

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• 1:15Speaker 00

  Hi, everyone. Welcome to this week's episode of Nosters Singers of Fish, where we are joined by the fantastic Angela Barnes.

• 1:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, she's absolutely amazing. She's been on Fish before. I didn't get to be on the show with her, so I was very excited to sit down with her. She's full of facts, she's full of jokes, and she's full of tour. She's on tour now.

• 1:32Speaker 00

  She's on tour twice, in fact. She is doing her own tour, which is called Angst, and she is also touring with a British iconic series.

• 1:42Speaker 01

  That's right, The Archers. Anyone who listens to Radio 4 will know that show and no other show. And Andy's The Naked Week is available as well. And she's doing a live version of that. So if you go online, put in The Archers Tour, you'll find dates for that. But go see Angst. She's a brilliant stand-up. She's on tour right now. So on the 11th of April, she's going to be in Chesham. And then there's places like Hastings, and Himmelhamstead, and Ivy Bridge, Hereford. A lot of these shows are near Nearly sold out, so get your tickets now.

• 2:12Speaker 03

  Hemel Hempstead is where all the hamsters live that used to live in Hemel Hempstead, isn't it?

• 2:16Speaker 01

  Oh, yes, that's an interesting fact. We should do that on the show, or we should pronounce places properly. Anyway, if you want to go get those tickets, go to angela barnes comedy.co.uk and go see her live now.

• 2:30Speaker 03

  One more thing, do join Clubfish. Go to patreon.com/clubfish if you want to get involved with that community. Loads of extra stuff, merch, bonus material, you know all about it. If you don't know about it, go to patreon.com/clubfish and you will find out more there.

• 2:46Speaker 01

  Okay, on with the podcast.

• 2:47Speaker 03

  On with the show.

• 3:03Speaker 01

  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 James Harkin, Andrew Hunter Murray and Angela Barnes. And once again, we have gathered round the microphones with our four favourite facts from the last seven days. And in a particular order, here we go, starting with fact number one, and that is Angela.

• 3:28Speaker 04

  Okay, so my fact is that the number four is orange and a lot kinder than number five, which has an attitude problem.

• 3:37Speaker 03

  Wow, are we talking about number blocks?

• 3:41Speaker 04

  I don't have children, so I don't know what you're talking about there, but I'm assuming that's a CBB reference.

• 3:46Speaker 01

  Four is orange and it's kind.

• 3:48Speaker 04

  And it's kind, but number five is quite aggressive and has an attitude problem.

• 3:52Speaker 03

  Okay, so what are you talking about?

• 3:53Speaker 04

  Shall I tell you what we're talking about? I'm talking about synesthesia. So you may have heard of synesthesia. I'm a synesthet, so I was diagnosed with synesthesia when I was 19 at university. And I've got several types, but the main one is graphene colour synesthesia. So that means that numbers, letters, days of the week, any abstract concepts have a colour. And I always say, it doesn't mean I see auras. I know I'm from Brighton, but I'm not that person. It's just... It's hard to explain when you are a synesthete because the reason I didn't know I had it till I was nineteen is because we all just sort of assume everyone's brain works broadly the same as ours.

• 4:29Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 4:30Speaker 04

  And so I don't know, I don't understand how you don't have colours.

• 4:33Speaker 03

  Can I ask a question?

• 4:34Speaker 04

  You may.

• 4:35Speaker 03

  You have a sheet of paper in front of you.

• 4:36Speaker 04

  I do.

• 4:37Speaker 03

  It's black and white.

• 4:38Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 4:38Speaker 03

  When you look at that, is it like they're coloured in the letters?

• 4:42Speaker 04

  No, so some people have a sort of synesthesia which is projected, they call it, so they do exactly that. It sort of changes colour when they look at it. For me, it's very internal, so it's in my mind's eye, if you like, for want of a better word.

• 4:54Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 4:55Speaker 04

  So I'm currently part of a study at Sussex University. There's Professor Julia Simner at Sussex Uni, and she specialises in perception and synesthesia. And I wrote to her a couple of years ago because when I think, every thought I have is in a physical location from the real world. So when I think about the number four, it's always in the sky.

• 5:16Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 5:16Speaker 04

  But it's orange, so it's all floating orange in the sky. And so I contacted her to say, is this a form of synesthesia? And she said, well, I've never heard of it, but let's do a study. And so they found a handful of people that seemed to experience the same thing. And so she's studying it, she's calling it conception-location synesthesia, is what she's calling it. But also, have you heard of Adam Zeeman? So he's the man who came up with the word aphantasia.

• 5:42Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 5:42Speaker 04

  For people who have no internal images.

• 5:45Speaker 03

  Like me.

• 5:45Speaker 04

  Oh, do you have aphantasia? So Julia's very interested in that as well.

• 5:49Speaker 03

  What a, what a sandwich I'm sitting in.

• 5:52Speaker 03

  In between synesthesia and aphantasia.

• 5:54Speaker 04

  That you don't have in my brain, basically.

• 5:55Speaker 03

  It feels a bit greedy, really, I'll be honest.

• 5:58Speaker 04

  Well, there was a massive coincidence. So it's about two years ago, I, I contacted Julia. And around the same time, Adam Zeeman contacted her and said, I've had someone get in touch to describe this phenomenon about location when they're thinking. And she said, oh, that must be Angela, she contacted me as well. And he said, no, it's someone else entirely. And it just happened to be within the same two weeks. So they're now both doing studies on this.

• 6:21Speaker 03

  Telekinesis.

• 6:22Speaker 04

  On telekinesis.

• 6:24Speaker 03

  It's morphic resonance, I think.

• 6:25Speaker 05

  Yeah, actually, thank you.

• 6:26Speaker 04

  He's actually calling it, he's calling it topophantasia, which makes sense.

• 6:30Speaker 03

  So there is a thing of, I mean, I don't, I'm not, I'm not synaesthematical.

• 6:36Speaker 04

  A synesthete.

• 6:38Speaker 05

  Synaesthesia article. But I don't have a phantasia, but I do have the, I'm sure lots of people have the location specific, a sensory thing triggers a spatial memory. So if I smell green chillies roasting, I'm in New Mexico and it's autumn.

• 6:53Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 6:54Speaker 05

  So that's.

• 6:55Speaker 04

  That's very linked to memory. So that's really common that when we smell something, the thing with synesthesia is there isn't a link.

• 7:02Speaker 01

  You've just described memory, Andy.

• 7:04Speaker 05

  No, no, no.

• 7:04Speaker 01

  Angela's politely saying.

• 7:05Speaker 04

  That is a really common thing. So for me, it's if I smell baked beans cooking, I'm in my school canteen. Like that's kind of.

• 7:10Speaker 05

  You're really common, Andy.

• 7:12Speaker 04

  That's not why I'm here.

• 7:13Speaker 05

  What I'm trying to say is it triggers a specific.

• 7:16Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 7:16Speaker 05

  Like a specific sensation triggers a really specific memory. Proustian. Yeah.

• 7:20Speaker 04

  So what they think is with people with synesthesia is what, one of the, there's lots of theories and they don't know exactly what causes synesthesia. They do, they have worked out that it's hereditary and then it's to do with the X chromosome. But what they think happens is that when you're a child, before you acquire language, you obviously have to interpret the world around you in a different way without words. And so you have this extra white matter, extra connections in your brain to different parts of your brain. And in most people, they sort of get pruned away as you don't need them anymore.

• 7:52Speaker 05

  Right.

• 7:53Speaker 04

  And then, but with people with synesthesia, those connections don't get pruned, they stay. And so what it means is that you get a sort of, an odd reaction to a stimulus. And by odd, I just mean one that isn't typical. So for someone with synesthesia, a part of my brain gets triggered when I see a certain letter or I hear something or whatever, that wouldn't normally be triggered in that situation.

• 8:17Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 8:17Speaker 04

  And so it's just a, it's a hyper connected brain.

• 8:20Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 8:20Speaker 04

  That's what they call it. And so there's lots of things that go with it, like misophonia, misachnesia, all these things people with synesthesia tend to have.

• 8:26Speaker 05

  So you hate it when people are chewing next to you?

• 8:28Speaker 04

  I hate it when people are chewing next to you. I have really strong misophonia.

• 8:30Speaker 05

  I am synaesthesia article.

• 8:34Speaker 04

  You can have misophonia and yeah, it's really.

• 8:37Speaker 05

  What about people putting their feet on the seats on the train? Is that a special power that I have to find that annoying?

• 8:43Speaker 01

  No, I think you're just an old man.

• 8:47Speaker 05

  I don't think it can be that, man, because I'm very young.

• 8:49Speaker 04

  I think you should be, everyone should be angry when people put their feet on it. I think that's perfect. But misokinesia is something that, again, I only recently, I had a meeting with Julia a couple of months ago. And just to sort of see how the study was going and stuff, because I'm hoping to write a book about it. And she told me about misokinesia, which really made me go, oh, yes, I have that. My husband is what I'd call a jiggle, one of those people who just doesn't stop moving constantly. If I can see a part of his body moving out the corner of my eye, it drives me insane. Like, if I can just see a movement, and they call it misokinesia. And she told me, which made me feel better about it, it might make you feel better about your misophonia. Is that apparently it's the salience network in your brain which is activated when you have misophonia.

• 9:31Speaker 04

  And it is the same reaction, basically, she described it to me as if a bear had walked in the room.

• 9:36Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 9:36Speaker 01

  Right.

• 9:37Speaker 04

  So it's sort of that ancient part of your brain being triggered.

• 9:39Speaker 05

  Is that right? I'm really interested, Angela. Okay, so that's the colours we talked about a little bit. But what is this about them having personality?

• 9:47Speaker 04

  So that is something which is called ordinal linguistic personification.

• 9:54Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 9:54Speaker 04

  So some letters and numbers have personalities to people with synesthesia. So most of the numbers I find quite friendly, apart from number five.

• 10:03Speaker 01

  Sorry, quick question.

• 10:04Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 10:04Speaker 01

  If there were a room of, say, 20 people who all had this particular type of synesthesia, would you all agree the colours, you've all got your own separate?

• 10:12Speaker 04

  All got our own separate. I think there are some trends, if you like, to some colours are picked more often, but they don't really know why.

• 10:20Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 10:20Speaker 04

  So for example, the days of the week have very fixed colours for me. Most people, if you ask them what colour's Monday, will say blue.

• 10:27Speaker 01

  Blue, yeah.

• 10:27Speaker 04

  Because of the blue Monday association. So you can predict quite often what people will say.

• 10:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:33Speaker 04

  But in synesthetes, they're random.

• 10:35Speaker 05

  There's another, which I find amazing. I didn't know about all these varieties.

• 10:38Speaker 04

  Oh, there's over 150 types of synesthesia that they know of now.

• 10:42Speaker 05

  So the one I love most is mirror touch synesthesia.

• 10:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's wild.

• 10:45Speaker 05

  Which is where you feel what someone else feels if you see it happening to them. And there are a couple of amazing case studies. There's a woman called Carolyn. She's a massage therapist and she remembers very clearly being three years old, seeing, I think, a dog break its leg. And she immediately felt blinding pain in, I guess, one of her rear leg, rear or front leg. I guess one of her legs, one of her legs. And she felt enormous pain. So she can't watch action movies because she just feels so much what's going on. But she's a massage therapist, so her job is terrific because it feels like she's constantly being rubbed.

• 11:22Speaker 01

  That's amazing. Really, she's massaging herself as she does the.

• 11:24Speaker 05

  It feels so nice for her.

• 11:25Speaker 04

  I hope she doesn't make the noises, that'd be off putting.

• 11:29Speaker 05

  And there's one other guy, a doctor called Joel Salinas. And he's a doctor. And this is a big problem in his line of work because if you see.

• 11:36Speaker 04

  Oh, God, he's not a surgeon.

• 11:38Speaker 05

  He saw someone having a cardiac arrest and he felt very, you know, obviously you don't feel exactly what they do, but you feel very strongly. The patient died and he did not. So clearly there is a.

• 11:47Speaker 01

  There's a, yeah.

• 11:49Speaker 04

  Sometimes they get, I know people with mirror synesthesia get like just a tingling sensation. So if they see someone hurt their arm, they'll get like a tingling in their arm or.

• 11:58Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 11:58Speaker 04

  So it's not always a complete mirror, but still in the same area.

• 12:01Speaker 03

  I think I have the opposite of that because I took my daughter to nursery this morning and she fell off a scooter and got a little scrape on her knee. And I was like, come on, it doesn't hurt.

• 12:10Speaker 04

  I think that's cool being an eighties dad.

• 12:15Speaker 01

  But we do, I think we all experience, like, if you want to picture the experience of it, if you ever see someone kicked really hard in the genitals, that involuntary whoop you do yourself. That's, that must be what it feels like for people all the time.

• 12:28Speaker 05

  More so, yeah.

• 12:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:30Speaker 04

  The only way I found out I had it is I was doing linguistics at Sussex University. And there was a lecturer, Larry Trask, who sadly no longer with us. But he did a lecture about language acquisition in children. And they were talking about this theory that, well, I'd said earlier, you know, the connections die out and then these people can. And I remember sitting in that lecture going, but everyone. Has colours, what are you talking about? And then I I came home and I told my dad first and he said, well, surely everyone has. I was like, okay, well, now I can see there's a hereditary line. And then when I told my mom, she said, oh, that explains why you used to get so angry at the magnetic letters when you were a kid. Because they were the wrong colour.

• 13:11Speaker 03

  There was a study in 2013 that looked at people in America with synesthesia and found that a lot of them associated the same colours with letters as those magnetic letters.

• 13:22Speaker 04

  Right.

• 13:23Speaker 03

  And a lot of people kind of pointed at that as saying, well, this is, it's just made up, isn't it? It's just like, the only reason you think A is red is because you had these magnets and you thought A is red. So James Wanerton, the UK Synesthesia Association is quite annoyed by it. And he says, it's really annoying that people try and explain it away. But actually, it is interesting because these colours, are they always the same? Like you say, they're different for everyone. But for you in particular, are your colours always, have they been the same your whole life? Because they do change for some people.

• 13:55Speaker 04

  So this is a really interesting point because up until recently, consistency was a way of sort of confirming whether someone had synesthesia. So what you would do, you would do the test and then six months later you'd do it again and then you'd do it again. But the main reason they did that was because there have been periods in time when being a synaesthete has been fashionable. And so because lots of people self identified as synaesthetes who weren't synaesthetes, it was very difficult to do studies on synaesthetes. So the way they did it was to use this consistency idea. But it doesn't necessarily mean that if it's not consistent, you're not a synaesthete. It just means if it is consistent, then you definitely are.

• 14:33Speaker 03

  Yeah, I read a study of a woman just known as A B who sees colours when she hears music. It's the different tones have different colours, right? But then the paper said to say she had a series of unfortunate events would be an understatement. As a teenager, she sustained several concussions, had migraines, contracted viral meningitis and was struck by lightning.

• 14:53Speaker 04

  Oh, my God. She born on a Friday the 30th?

• 14:57Speaker 03

  Bad luck, isn't it? But every time one of these things happened, like the colours changed. But by the end, they all came back. So it would like change and then it would come back and then it would change and then come back.

• 15:08Speaker 04

  So I find, I do a lot of crosswords, I love cryptic crosswords and word puzzles and things. And particularly, I don't know if you know the spelling bee on New York Times. Some days I can't do it because the letter is so arrogant in the middle that I just go, I can't do it.

• 15:22Speaker 05

  That's my excuse when I don't manage to do a crossword as well. I'm sorry, just, please don't review any of our books, Angela, just in case.

• 15:29Speaker 03

  What is the most arrogant letter? I've got three, A H M, but what is yours?

• 15:36Speaker 05

  Wow.

• 15:39Speaker 04

  It took me a minute, but I got there. No, the most arrogant letter is probably X.

• 15:44Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 15:45Speaker 04

  It's very, yeah, snobby.

• 15:46Speaker 01

  Interesting.

• 15:47Speaker 04

  You know, if you think it's special.

• 15:48Speaker 05

  Keeps himself to himself, yeah.

• 15:49Speaker 01

  Well, so you've got graphene colour, which is your type of synesthesia. So other people who supposedly had it was Richard Feynman, the great physicist, who used to see the equations in various different colours as he was writing them. Vladimir Nabokov also had that. And then there's another one, which is called chromesthesia, which is where you pair colour with sound, and a lot of musicians have this. So supposedly, I mean, you get these lists online, and so some of these might have just made it through anecdotally, but aren't necessarily true. But Stevie Wonder supposedly has it, so he sees colour when he's writing songs. Beyoncé has it, Charli XCX. Jimi Hendrix.

• 16:25Speaker 03

  Very arrogant, Charli XCX.

• 16:29Speaker 01

  And Jimi Hendrix had it, and apparently there was a chord, which is known as the Hendrix chord, but it's also the purple chord, because he would see purple when he wrote it. And the song Purple Haze is the haze, and that chord is used a lot in that song.

• 16:43Speaker 05

  Very nice.

• 16:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:45Speaker 04

  This is one I find most fascinating that I don't experience. Lexical gustatory, where people hear words and taste certain tastes. So they might hear a trigger word and they suddenly can taste licorice or strawberry.

• 16:57Speaker 05

  So the guy, who was it? Was it you, James? You mentioned James Wanaton, the president of the UK Synesthesia Association. He has this, and he visited every Tube, Overground and Docklands Light Railway station to find out what they tasted like.

• 17:09Speaker 03

  Oh, nice. He sounds like one of us.

• 17:12Speaker 05

  Tottenham Court Road, sausage and egg, King's Cross, rich fruitcake. And he produced a tube mat with the flavours. It's really good. That's really good.

• 17:20Speaker 04

  That's sort of the one I wish I had. That's the cool one.

• 17:23Speaker 05

  There are sexual synesthetes.

• 17:26Speaker 04

  Well, I will say, I don't mind saying this on air, orgasms have colours. So depending on intensity or, and it's usually through the red spectrum. So it's usually red or orange. So always say, my husband knows it's been a good night. If he says, how was it for you? And I say burnt umber.

• 17:43Speaker 05

  Well, that's a very, that's very Farrow and Ball as well. Elephant's breath.

• 17:49Speaker 05

  Very boutique. Wow.

• 17:55Speaker 00

  Stop the podcast.

• 17:56Speaker 05

  Stop the podcast.

• 17:58Speaker 00

  Hi, everybody. We are sponsored this week by Progressive.

• 18:01Speaker 05

  That's right. So everyone talks about how challenging it is to raise kids. But what about protecting them? I'm talking outlet covers, kitchen cabinet locks, baby gates. Where do you even start?

• 18:11Speaker 00

  Yes, it is a nightmare. Well, protecting your home and your auto is a great place to start.

• 18:18Speaker 05

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• 18:23Speaker 00

  They're basically the outlet covers, kitchen cabinet locks and baby gates of insurance.

• 18:28Speaker 05

  Don't wait. Get your quote today at progressive.com.

• 18:31Speaker 00

  Progressive Casualty Insurance Company affiliates and other insurers. Not available in all states. On with the show.

• 18:37Speaker 02

  When intimate itch strikes, waiting it out isn't always an option. That's why there's Vagisil Maximum Strength Anti-Ich Cream. It provides fast relief from intense external feminine itching and burning. And 92% of women said Vagisil provided long lasting itch relief. Intimate itch can have more than 60 causes. From everyday things like shaving, pads, tight clothing, to yeast infection related irritation. Vagisil helps protect delicate skin from further irritation. Trusted by generations, clinically and gynecologists tested. Don't let discomfort get in the way. Visit vagisil.com to find the relief that's right for you.

• 19:11Speaker 05

  Okay, it is time for fact number two, and that is Andy. My fact is, in 1577, there was only one man in England permitted to touch the Queen.

• 19:22Speaker 03

  The King?

• 19:22Speaker 04

  Yeah. There wasn't one then.

• 19:24Speaker 05

  No King at the time, so we're on Queen Elizabeth I.

• 19:27Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 19:28Speaker 05

  Who, for international listeners, kind of a big deal.

• 19:31Speaker 04

  Virgin Queen.

• 19:31Speaker 05

  Virgin, the Virgin Queen. Did she ever see burnt humber? We don't know. We don't know.

• 19:37Speaker 04

  Her hair was quite burnt hump.

• 19:38Speaker 05

  That was, yeah, yeah. So I went to a, I went to a gallery recently, which was, it's in South London, it's Greenwich, and they have a thing called the Queen's Gallery there. It's amazing, lots of amazing artworks. And there was one portrait of a courtier from the 16th century who was called Richard Drake. And the little, you know, information panel said, this guy was the only person permitted to touch the Queen. And it's because he was the master of the Queen's horse, so helping her mount onto her horse, that kind of thing. And I think he was a cousin of Francis Drake.

• 20:10Speaker 04

  I was gonna say, was he related to Francis Drake?

• 20:11Speaker 05

  Yeah. They were quite a posh family, and they had all sorts of connections and, you know, built all sorts of industries.

• 20:16Speaker 03

  How did he, did he sort of, like, go on all fours so she could walk on his back?

• 20:20Speaker 05

  That was it. That was exactly it.

• 20:21Speaker 04

  Really?

• 20:22Speaker 05

  No, he would throw her on. It was amazing. Swing around by the arse.

• 20:25Speaker 03

  Do you do the hand thing where you stand on a hat?

• 20:28Speaker 04

  A leg up. Imagine giving the Queen a leg up.

• 20:29Speaker 05

  It must be that. It must be that. Yeah, I think that is the classic. When did we get?

• 20:32Speaker 03

  I could absolutely imagine it being him on all fours and she steps on his back.

• 20:35Speaker 05

  True, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 20:36Speaker 03

  Or piggyback.

• 20:40Speaker 05

  Shoulder ride, I think.

• 20:41Speaker 03

  Shoulder ride?

• 20:41Speaker 05

  Shoulder ride over to the horse and then, yeah. That's nice. Like, she's at a gig. Yeah.

• 20:45Speaker 04

  Is it only me who, whenever they think of Elizabeth I, only has Miranda Ritchley on her? All I can, yeah.

• 20:53Speaker 05

  Weenie, absolutely, yeah. But we've never really spoken about her before, and she was the most interesting woman and monarch, and just crazy. The last Tudor, that's interesting, you know, end of a house, because she, she died without hair, so obviously the whole royal system changes after her. And, you know, we get James I of Scotland in as, as King next, but, um... Daughter of Henry VIII. Daughter of Henry VIII. Not expected to become Queen at all because she was the daughter of Anne Boleyn. Yeah. Her dad beheaded her mum. I mean, this is...

• 21:24Speaker 04

  That's some therapy sessions there, isn't it?

• 21:26Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 21:27Speaker 04

  And also, she was never legitimised, was she, in law? Like, Henry VIII changed the succession law so that she could succeed, but he never officially changed it. He sort of declared it. So there was, I think throughout her reign, there were questions on her legitimacy.

• 21:41Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 21:42Speaker 05

  How interesting, because then, so her father, Henry VIII, obviously lots of wives, and then Anne Boleyn was the second wife, and with his third wife, Jane Seymour, he had Edward VI, who was a son, so became heir, but then Edward VI died after only a few years on the throne. Then there was some Mary, uh, Queen Mary, Catholic, all the religious stuff. But, so her childhood was crazy, because she grew up in very, very rich circumstances. And then, when her mother was executed, when she was under three years old, it all changed, and it was all taken away. And supposedly, after Anne Boleyn was beheaded, her mother, the young Elizabeth, asked her governor, "Why governor? How hap it yesterday, lady princess,

• 22:27Speaker 05

  and today but lady Elizabeth?" Supposedly, this is when she was two years and eight months. If I find a bit.

• 22:33Speaker 04

  That's like those people on Facebook, isn't it? You'll never guess what little Tommy said this morning. No, he didn't.

• 22:40Speaker 05

  Exactly.

• 22:41Speaker 03

  Interesting. I was looking at some other people in Queen Elizabeth's court. So there was, one of her favourites was a woman called Lettis Nollies. And Lettis, Lettis was in Queen Elizabeth's court for 15 to 20 years, which is 150 times longer than Liz Truss was Prime Minister. But she was like one of her absolute favourites. And then she married Robert Dudley in secret. And Robert Dudley was the bloke who Queen Elizabeth really fancied. And when she married this guy, she was out. Queen Elizabeth said, "I don't want to see you anymore."

• 23:22Speaker 05

  But he was also, I think, the master of the horse just before Richard Drake. He served a term, so he would have, I don't know if he had the same privileges of being the only man to be able to touch her.

• 23:32Speaker 03

  He must have been.

• 23:32Speaker 04

  He certainly touched her emotionally, Dan.

• 23:35Speaker 05

  Did Lettis, was she, he wasn't executed or anything?

• 23:37Speaker 03

  She wasn't executed.

• 23:38Speaker 05

  We didn't end up with the head of Lettis.

• 23:43Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 23:43Speaker 03

  Oh, I can't believe I walked straight into that one.

• 23:46Speaker 05

  I had to really force march my way into that.

• 23:50Speaker 03

  Oh my gosh.

• 23:51Speaker 01

  We actually know a descendant of Lettuce.

• 23:54Speaker 03

  Do we?

• 23:54Speaker 01

  I think the four of us must know this descendant of Lettuce because we happen to know the 13 times great grandson.

• 24:02Speaker 03

  Lettuce?

• 24:02Speaker 01

  Of Lettuce. Do you know who it is?

• 24:03Speaker 04

  It's not Whittaker, is it?

• 24:04Speaker 01

  It's Josh Whittaker.

• 24:05Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 24:05Speaker 03

  Is it?

• 24:06Speaker 01

  Comedian Josh Whittaker.

• 24:07Speaker 03

  Was that from his?

• 24:09Speaker 01

  Who do you think you are?

• 24:10Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 24:11Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 24:12Speaker 03

  That's great.

• 24:13Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 24:13Speaker 05

  Exactly.

• 24:14Speaker 03

  We still have, you call them equerries that look after the horses in the, in the royal household. And the senior equerry to Queen Camilla is called Major Rob Treasure, which I don't think you should have them in the royal family.

• 24:32Speaker 05

  It's a bit on the nose, isn't it?

• 24:34Speaker 03

  Something's gone missing from the Tower of London. Okay, bring in Rob Treasure.

• 24:38Speaker 05

  It's either gonna be Paul Burrell or Rob Treasure.

• 24:42Speaker 01

  And it was a big, it was a big role, the master of the horses back then. You know, if you think about, oh, you're in charge of the horses these days, you're just in charge of this sort of rich bit of your life, right? But back then, that was, that's like looking after the cars. That was looking after the, the transport to war. That was looking after your main line of soldier for so many things.

• 25:02Speaker 05

  Mains? Horses have mains? Yes.

• 25:03Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 25:05Speaker 04

  He's a main man.

• 25:09Speaker 01

  That's what he should have been called.

• 25:10Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 25:11Speaker 01

  Master of the horses. Yeah. Yeah. Like, so back then, that was an incredibly important role. You were breeding, you were buying, you were purchasing. It was a type of army, wasn't it? It was a whole bit of the army.

• 25:22Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 25:23Speaker 01

  So, um, these days, less so. Now it's about maintenance, but still horses very big within the world of the royals, at least up until Queen Elizabeth II, who, you know, she used to make sure that she was at all the, all the horse races.

• 25:36Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, she used to go racing, yeah.

• 25:38Speaker 01

  She, she owned so many horses. She was obsessed with how her horses were being bred. She had.

• 25:45Speaker 03

  I feel like she won the Grand National or something. Oh, she's won some horses.

• 25:50Speaker 05

  Yeah. She, I think, didn't she have a massive horse treadmill as well?

• 25:53Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 25:55Speaker 05

  She had a treadmill where 18 horses could exercise at the same time.

• 25:58Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 25:58Speaker 05

  Something impressive like that.

• 26:00Speaker 04

  I once did an after dinner at the Guards Polo Club.

• 26:05Speaker 03

  Ooh.

• 26:06Speaker 04

  A spectacular piece of misbooking is the only way I could describe that. It was one of the worst.

• 26:12Speaker 05

  Did they book you because your name is Barnes?

• 26:14Speaker 04

  Maybe.

• 26:16Speaker 05

  Was Andrew in stable, not available?

• 26:17Speaker 04

  This is a true story. So this was 15 years ago. So I was a brand new comedian and I didn't know to say no to something like that. And, um, and I turned up and for a start, I, I went and I thought I'm not going to wear to this thing. It was black tie at Duke of Edinburgh's Polo Club.

• 26:34Speaker 03

  Right.

• 26:35Speaker 04

  And, um, so I went and bought a dress from Debenhams, which I thought was good enough. And then I got there and went, oh, this doesn't cut it at all. And, um, anyway, I did the, the gig and it was, you know, as expected, hard work. And then as I was leaving, a woman stopped me in the doorway and she literally said to me, I knew when I saw you arrive, you must be the entertainer.

• 26:58Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 26:59Speaker 04

  She went, I knew you could have been married to a polo player, not with that hair. And then walked off.

• 27:05Speaker 03

  What?

• 27:06Speaker 04

  It was awful. But, but with the money I made from that gig, I went on holiday to Cuba. So who got the last laugh?

• 27:12Speaker 01

  Very nice.

• 27:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, just one.

• 27:17Speaker 04

  What a bunch of [BLEEP]. It was funny because I also did the thing that I now know you don't do after dinners or corporates, but I was very green at the time and I sat and had dinner with them.

• 27:27Speaker 01

  When you say you were green?

• 27:29Speaker 05

  Tuesday.

• 27:33Speaker 01

  I go say like, it is an elitist thing. I slightly give the Queen a pass because it is the Queen. I feel like, okay, you know, that's part of the job, having lots of horses. And I do like what a nerd she was about it because she properly was. She, she would even have CCTV cameras installed at Sandringham Stud Farm. So that she could see the birth of horses. She'd get an alert. She was really invested in it. And also the names are so geeky. So the families of various horses that she had. So there was one called Hypotenuse, who had foals that were called Geometrist, Equalsum, Longside, Pythagorean. There was Wink of an Eye, who was the son of Momontary, and her mother was Fleeting Memory. So they had all these names.

• 28:14Speaker 01

  But anyway, they're all being sold off because I think Charles is not as into it. Um, and The Guardian has estimated that if all the horses are sold, it's going to be roughly 27 million that they'll make off the back of it.

• 28:24Speaker 03

  Wow. Yeah, he still keeps horses, like ceremonial horses, doesn't he? But he just doesn't do the horse racing stuff. He, in 2024, he appointed Captain Kat Anderson as the first female equerry to a sovereign in history.

• 28:38Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 28:38Speaker 05

  Progress.

• 28:41Speaker 05

  Progress.

• 28:42Speaker 03

  One step at a time, that's one step.

• 28:46Speaker 03

  Something about not touching royals.

• 28:48Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 28:49Speaker 03

  I read a newspaper article from the early 20th century. And it said that in 1894, there was a footman of the King of Spain, who was in the palace. And young Prince Alfonso was walking across and then fell down some stairs. And this footman caught him and was immediately fired for touching a member of the royal family.

• 29:13Speaker 05

  Oh, really?

• 29:14Speaker 04

  Let them die. That's the moral. Just let them go.

• 29:18Speaker 03

  Apparently, the Queen Mother then rewarded him with the generous private pension, but he didn't get his job back because the rules were you're just not allowed to touch them.

• 29:26Speaker 05

  How many, how many royals have you guys touched? Not one.

• 29:29Speaker 04

  I've met one, but I've not.

• 29:30Speaker 05

  You didn't touch?

• 29:31Speaker 04

  I didn't touch her, but I met the Queen.

• 29:33Speaker 05

  Oh.

• 29:35Speaker 04

  Well, I say I met the Queen. I was a student nurse and I was working at the Hometon Hospital in Hackney. And she came to open a new bit of the, it was a stroke rehab unit I worked on.

• 29:44Speaker 03

  Right.

• 29:45Speaker 04

  And she, it was mad because that day Hackney got tidied up. I've never seen anything like it. There were street sweepers out.

• 29:53Speaker 05

  That's a job and a half, isn't it? That's like.

• 29:56Speaker 04

  Right? Or just the roof that she was going, not all of Hackney, obviously.

• 30:00Speaker 03

  All these buildings are orange.

• 30:04Speaker 05

  Murder and love's looking very pretty this morning.

• 30:07Speaker 04

  All this artwork appeared in the hospital the day before and all went again the day after.

• 30:12Speaker 05

  Oh, really?

• 30:13Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 30:14Speaker 05

  Wherever, wherever she went, that art went.

• 30:16Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 30:16Speaker 05

  It's weird. Everywhere I go has the same paintings.

• 30:19Speaker 03

  It was like, was it Catherine the Great who had the Potemkin villages that she thought wherever she went, the villages of Russia were so beautiful and stuff because wherever she went, they just built them.

• 30:31Speaker 05

  That was a sort of courtier called Potemkin, right? His name was Potemkin and he built these like.

• 30:35Speaker 03

  But I wonder if the Queen thought that as well and the King thinks that it's just like, oh, London's lovely. East London is gorgeous.

• 30:44Speaker 05

  The old joke is that everywhere she goes smells of fresh paint. So she thinks that was what the world's.

• 30:48Speaker 01

  Yes, exactly.

• 30:49Speaker 04

  There was a man came round from the palace like the week before she came to teach us how to curtsey. If we wanted to curtsey, we didn't have to, but if you wanted to, you could. And to teach us that it was man rhyme with ham, not ma'am. But none of us were allowed to take annual leave that day. So we all had to sort of line up and she did the classic. She stopped in front of, there's me in my uniform and a physiotherapist next to me. And she stopped and looked at me and did the, what do you do? It's like, I'm a nurse.

• 31:17Speaker 03

  Not with that hair.

• 31:20Speaker 01

  Oh, the entertainments are out.

• 31:23Speaker 03

  Dan, you wouldn't have asked the question if you hadn't touched a member of our family.

• 31:26Speaker 01

  I was counting in my head, I'm on four. I'm on four.

• 31:29Speaker 04

  You've touched four royals?

• 31:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:31Speaker 03

  It was when you were on that island, wasn't it?

• 31:35Speaker 01

  Sorry, I've been touched by four.

• 31:42Speaker 01

  Let me point to the bits they touched. The, no, the Queen, I've touched the Queen. I touched the Queen.

• 31:48Speaker 05

  What? No, you're not allowed, you're not allowed to touch the Queen.

• 31:51Speaker 03

  He used to be Royal Equally.

• 31:54Speaker 01

  We shook hands. That's touching.

• 31:56Speaker 04

  I did shake her hand.

• 31:57Speaker 05

  That's very rare. That's very rare.

• 32:01Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 32:01Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 32:02Speaker 01

  Okay. Well, that's, I mean.

• 32:03Speaker 04

  She must have liked you.

• 32:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, she must have taken to it.

• 32:06Speaker 03

  She only usually does fist bumps, doesn't she?

• 32:09Speaker 04

  Since Covid, it's been ever.

• 32:12Speaker 01

  So I shook hands with the Queen, gave Philip a high five. I had a thumb war with Edward. And the old full body with Prince Andrew.

• 32:28Speaker 03

  How much of that is true, any of it?

• 32:29Speaker 01

  Well, no, I shook the Queen's hand, I shook Philip's hand, I shook Edward's hand. And then I shook the former Princess of Denmark's hand. But when I was a kid, she was weirdly our neighbour in Hong Kong before, before she was changed.

• 32:41Speaker 04

  We come from very different backgrounds.

• 32:43Speaker 01

  Truth or lie?

• 32:50Speaker 01

  Okay, it is time for fact number three, and that is my fact. My fact this week is that the 10th best Formula One driver in the world can't drive.

• 33:01Speaker 01

  When I say drive, I mean regular cars. He can't drive regular cars. Now, this was Arvid Lindblad, and he is a very young Formula One driver. He's 18, and he was talking to Max Verstappen, who also started very young. In fact, will be forever the youngest Formula One driver because rules have changed. And you have to now be 18 and older. And he was 17 when he was driving. And they were having a chat, and he said something about you driving. He said, "No, I don't have a licence." And so he can sit behind the wheel of a Formula One car, but he can't drive on a regular road.

• 33:36Speaker 03

  So do you get a different licence for Formula One?

• 33:39Speaker 04

  Super licence. Yeah, so the FIA.

• 33:41Speaker 01

  Really?

• 33:42Speaker 04

  The Fédération Internationale d'Automobile, the FIA, as to... They issue super licences for Formula One racing. And so Arvid Lindblad and Kimi Antonelli, who drives for Mercedes, he was issued an early super licence as well in 2024.

• 34:00Speaker 01

  What's the point? No one's stopping you in the middle of a race and saying, "Excuse me, sir."

• 34:06Speaker 01

  Do you know how fast you were going back there?

• 34:08Speaker 04

  But you can get points on your super licence. And you can have a...

• 34:11Speaker 01

  Can you?

• 34:11Speaker 04

  Absolutely. So it's a rolling 12 months. So there was a point where, oh, who was it? There was a driver who almost got... Because you get a race ban. It might have been Max Verstappen, actually, who had almost 12 points within a 12-month period. And if you get that, you get a race ban.

• 34:28Speaker 03

  And what is it for?

• 34:29Speaker 04

  So it can be if you do something really dangerous, essentially. So if it's something where... Because there's normal penalties during racing. You've got stop-go penalties. You've got like 5-second penalties, 10-second penalties,

• 34:42Speaker 04

  starting grid place penalties. So you start the next race five grid places back from where you qualify and things like that. But if you do something really bad, you get points on your licence.

• 34:51Speaker 03

  Interesting.

• 34:51Speaker 01

  You also get fined for swearing.

• 34:53Speaker 04

  You get, you do get fined for swearing.

• 34:54Speaker 01

  Even in the car.

• 34:55Speaker 05

  There's so many weird.

• 34:56Speaker 01

  Inside the car.

• 34:57Speaker 04

  On the radio, because the radio messages are all broadcast. So they're really, and it's been because of Mohammed bin Sulayman, who's the head of the, of the F1. He is a, you know, from a Muslim country, et cetera. So he's been really hot on, and the drivers really had a backlash about against it. They're like, well, you try crashing at, you know, 200 miles an hour and not swear.

• 35:21Speaker 03

  It feels like, it feels like swearing is one thing, but if you're going.

• 35:24Speaker 04

  Ah. I think you turn a blind eye to that.

• 35:29Speaker 01

  I think you mean flip.

• 35:34Speaker 01

  But they, they, um.

• 35:35Speaker 05

  So they brought, sorry, they broadcast these things.

• 35:37Speaker 01

  You can hear them talking to their.

• 35:39Speaker 04

  Radio, and they actually now have a show you can watch after the broadcast where they play all the.

• 35:45Speaker 05

  Oh, just best of.

• 35:46Speaker 04

  Like the best of the radio messages.

• 35:47Speaker 01

  Something even drier than Formula One.

• 35:50Speaker 04

  It's not dry, it's great. A Formula One isn't dry, but the radio messages are so funny sometimes.

• 35:56Speaker 01

  But they're fighting back. So the, they have like a drivers association and the driver association are saying, you know, if we swear, but it's to make a point as opposed to insulting someone, then that should be fine. So Max Verstappen, who we've mentioned, he was fined for saying his car was fucked during a press conference.

• 36:10Speaker 04

  His car was fucked, but.

• 36:12Speaker 01

  There you go.

• 36:13Speaker 05

  During a press conference, come on.

• 36:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:16Speaker 03

  One thing I like about this super licence is that you have to do a theory test to get it as well. Just like a normal licence. So yeah, there's a knowledge test, uh, which is on the international sporting code and F1 sporting regulations. And then on top of that, the team has to show that you've driven at a certain speed for a certain number of kilometres in a one seater car.

• 36:37Speaker 01

  Right.

• 36:38Speaker 03

  In order for you to get that. And you need to, quite often you need to have done well in other races that are not Formula One.

• 36:44Speaker 01

  I see. I mean, it all makes sense, doesn't it? Is that, would, I guess, would there be a hazard perception test?

• 36:50Speaker 05

  There's an elderly lady crossing the road five miles ahead of you, but you're going to be on her in three seconds. So what are you going to do?

• 36:59Speaker 05

  So this is an interesting thing about the age. So this guy is very young that we're talking about.

• 37:02Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 37:03Speaker 05

  The first guy. So there, but there are also, there are very young and there are very old drivers at the moment. Is that right? Somewhere in their 40s.

• 37:08Speaker 04

  Fernando Alonso, he's 45, I think.

• 37:11Speaker 05

  Absolutely, absolutely.

• 37:12Speaker 04

  Lewis Hamilton's 41 now, I think.

• 37:14Speaker 05

  Yeah, but that's, it's a really big range within the sport. And I think the oldest ever Formula One champion was Juan Manuel Fangio of Argentina. And so he was ages ago, he was racing, it was in the 50s.

• 37:28Speaker 04

  1950s, yeah.

• 37:29Speaker 05

  And he did his last one in 1957, aged 46 years old was, I think, his last victory. And when he started, I just love, I mean, because obviously Formula One is so technical, it's amazingly complicated. There are incredibly clever teams working on, you know, how to make the cars more aerodynamic and all of this. When he was doing his racing, helmets were made of cloth until 1952.

• 37:53Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 37:53Speaker 05

  And helmets were made compulsory that year and they were, they were made of papier-mâché, I read.

• 37:59Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 38:00Speaker 05

  I know, the pie shaped helmets. You would get covered in soot inside your car because the cars are much more basic and you weren't protected. And of course people died by the dozen every single year.

• 38:10Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 38:10Speaker 04

  I love looking at the photographs from like 1950s race, because 1950, so it's 75 years of Formula One last year. And there was a great exhibition I went to and you look at the photos of the drivers from the 50s and they're fat. Like, and since, you know, in modern Formula One cars with the monocoque chassis and things, they're, they're tiny drivers. You don't get big F1 drivers, they're like jockeys.

• 38:33Speaker 05

  Are they?

• 38:34Speaker 04

  Because it's a tiny space they have to sit in and you want them light because obviously you don't want them to weigh down the car. You've got a weight limit for the car. And it's just these fat blokes with beer bellies and fags. And I was just like, you just don't see that in Formula One now. It's brilliant. We look at those old pictures.

• 38:50Speaker 03

  I found a list of all the people who have ever raced in Formula One. Paddy Driver.

• 38:56Speaker 05

  Brilliant.

• 38:57Speaker 03

  Participated in two races, scoring no points. Scott Speed was the first American driver to race in Formula One since Michael Andretti. That was in 2006. Hans Stuck.

• 39:11Speaker 03

  A German guy. He was really interesting because he was friends with Hitler. Uh, and then after the war, if you were German, you weren't allowed to be in Formula One. And that's because you needed to be a member of a society. And after the war, you weren't allowed new clubs in Germany. No one was allowed to join a club. And Formula One club, which you would use to join your international authority. You weren't allowed to have them. So he then went to Austria and they said, oh no, I'm Austrian. So I'm for them instead.

• 39:44Speaker 05

  That's very interesting.

• 39:46Speaker 01

  One thing I was reading about, because I, I do find it quite exciting to watch Formula One. But one thing I think I'd be more excited to watch is the preseason testing of Formula One. Because this is where the cars are making, in some cases, their debut with new mechanics and new things. But they try and hide what that is before the actual start of the Formula One.

• 40:08Speaker 04

  Sandbagging.

• 40:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:09Speaker 04

  They call it, yeah.

• 40:10Speaker 01

  And so there's all these different methods that they use. So for example, you remember those ships that were supposedly um black and white and all those weird. The dazzle ships. They do that with Formula One cars so that you can't quite spot where they might have rearranged certain positions. Or they'll change all the stickers. So you think the exhaust is in one spot, but actually it's in another. Um, they try as much as they can to disguise it, just so you don't get what they've done to their new cars. But on top of that, if they've signed a new rookie, or if someone's trying to make a comeback. What they'll often do is they'll have one of their existing drivers lend their helmet. And so they'll walk out.

• 40:45Speaker 05

  Say, oh, I thought you were gonna say Mission Impossible style rubber masks.

• 40:50Speaker 01

  Well, they might be wearing full.

• 40:51Speaker 04

  It might be under the helmet, but a bit pointless.

• 40:53Speaker 01

  Just in case. No, but they'll go out in the helmet of another driver so that they think, oh, it's just him doing his test, but actually it's someone new.

• 41:00Speaker 05

  Lewis Hamilton's six inches shorter this year. That's weird. Clever. Wonder what he's done by.

• 41:04Speaker 03

  You would have to find someone whose head was the same size though, right?

• 41:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:07Speaker 04

  I don't know. Once you're in a monocoque though, uh, like I suppose, or they just do the design. That's the sort of what you're sat in. The bit around you. But the preseason testing was really interesting this year because there's been a big rule change in Formula One this year. So from 2022 up till 2025, they had a ground effect cars. So with really high downforce, low floors. And there's been a complete rule change now. So basically, the reason engine manufacturers put lots of money into Formula One is because it is a way of sort of testing things to for road cars and to advertise their road cars and everything in the future. So there's always, Formula One car development has to sort of mirror in some ways what's happening on the road.

• 41:50Speaker 03

  Right.

• 41:50Speaker 04

  And like proper Formula One fans don't really want that because we want big old stinking V8 engines that, you know, make that lovely noise that make your ears pop.

• 41:58Speaker 03

  You don't want the cars to have to plug in every 45.

• 42:01Speaker 04

  Exactly. Right. That's, I mean, I don't know if you've watched Formula E, but it's really tedious. And so, so, but this year's rule change. Andy, calm down. Calm down, Andy.

• 42:13Speaker 05

  Some of us enjoy watching fast chargers doing their thing, okay?

• 42:18Speaker 04

  So the cars this now have this sort of energy recovery system. So it's all about, they can harvest energy when they're braking and, and then employ it on straight.

• 42:30Speaker 05

  They've all got battery, they've all got batteries as well.

• 42:31Speaker 04

  They've all got batteries. So they've been, the hybrid era, era's been since 2014 or so. So they had before that from 2009, you had the CURS system, which was a kinetic energy recovery system. And then that sort of evolved because the thing is, if you make the car too efficient, you don't get overtakes and that's boring.

• 42:48Speaker 03

  I see.

• 42:49Speaker 04

  Overtakes are the things you want. So they're constantly changing the rules to try and get more overtakes. There is a button now that they can press called the overtake button, which just means they can use that energy they've harvested to boost an overtake. So when they use that function.

• 43:02Speaker 03

  Like a nitro button.

• 43:04Speaker 04

  Basically, yeah, like it's like Mario Kart. Like your bullet in Mario Kart, you just boom, boom, boom. And it, and it looks like that. It just, when they press it and it just overtakes, it looks like they're completely different formulas. Like they're just, oh, okay.

• 43:15Speaker 03

  Have they considered adding like shells and bananas?

• 43:18Speaker 04

  More people would watch. I think even Andy would watch.

• 43:21Speaker 03

  The CURS thing that you mentioned, obviously that or not, obviously, but that's now in all electric cars, basically. So the reason, one of the reasons you get so far on your, in your electric car without charging is because it can regain energy from the braking system and that began in Formula One.

• 43:37Speaker 05

  Yes. The Formula One drivers, they do all the, you know, they do lots of training, obviously, because it's much more physical than it used to be. I didn't know this. What's the most important thing for a Formula One driver to practise?

• 43:48Speaker 04

  Their neck muscles.

• 43:49Speaker 05

  It's neck day. So when you're driving this car and you're going around the corners and you're whizzing along and all of that, supposedly your head weighs five times what it normally does. Partly the helmet and partly the gravitational forces acting on you.

• 44:02Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 44:02Speaker 05

  And so often they can't buy normal clothes because they've got this whacking great neck, basically.

• 44:08Speaker 04

  The real look to Formula, like, who looks at Formula One drivers? They're small with these massive necks.

• 44:13Speaker 05

  They're all neck. And headbangers, people who love metal music. Headbangers would make great Formula One drivers because they're doing all this training. So, and the images of them training their necks are so funny because they'll release shots sometimes of them wearing this mad brace, you sort of big, like, like one of those helmets you'd wear for a psychiatric experiment, you know, with sort of, with that, but like with a thick rubber cord coming off it. And at the other end of the rubber cord is a trainer who is just hauling their neck over in one direction and they're trying to resist it.

• 44:38Speaker 04

  That I get mirror touch synaesthesia. When I look at that, that makes my neck hurt.

• 44:42Speaker 05

  It's really sad.

• 44:44Speaker 04

  Yeah, they're so strong and fit now, like, and they sweat so much, they lose so much weight during a race. And particularly in the really, like, Singapore or places where they're, it's really hot. And they're, so they have water to drink in the car, they have a water system, but what I think people don't realise is the water is right by the engine. And so it's, after a couple of laps, it's basically like tea. It's like hot water they have to drink. Damon Hill did once have tea in his, famously. And another great Damon Hill fact, if you want it. Played a guitar solo on a Def Leppard track.

• 45:20Speaker 01

  What?

• 45:20Speaker 04

  Same, so I grew up at Brown's Hatch, basically. I was there every week. Both my parents worked there and that's why I love motorsport, particularly Formula One. And I can remember going, the Kentigan is the name of the pub at Brown's Hatch. So it's a Pentagon and it's in Kent. So what a double.

• 45:37Speaker 05

  Brilliant, that's so good.

• 45:38Speaker 04

  And I remember after races going in there and him and his band playing.

• 45:42Speaker 05

  Really?

• 45:42Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 45:43Speaker 01

  What's Def Leppard again?

• 45:44Speaker 04

  A band.

• 45:44Speaker 01

  No, no, as in what genre, they?

• 45:47Speaker 04

  Oh, like sort of hair rock, really.

• 45:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, probably some good head banging.

• 45:50Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, maybe that's why, yeah. And there's also, I'm quite interested in female Formula One drivers.

• 45:58Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 45:58Speaker 04

  There have been female drivers in Formula One. There's only ever been one female driver score points in a Formula One race, and that was Lele Lombardi. She was an Italian driver and it was in 1975 and she scored half a point.

• 46:14Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 46:14Speaker 04

  And that was because if a race is less than 60% complete, you only get half a point.

• 46:20Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 46:20Speaker 04

  And she, during the race, there were fatalities, unfortunately. There was a German driver who crashed into a spectator pit and there was a fireman and a couple of journalists and a spectator were killed. So it was pretty, but she scored half a point, so, you know.

• 46:36Speaker 01

  Right.

• 46:36Speaker 04

  So she's the only person to ever score points. But yeah, there's loads of really, there's a little shout out to Alicia Pomoski at the moment, who's a Red Bull driver. She's got her first pole last week in the F1 Academy. So there's lots of women drivers coming through now, so hopefully in the next 10 years we'll see another.

• 46:55Speaker 01

  Very exciting.

• 46:56Speaker 03

  Because also you think like smaller in general, average. So like you get lots of female jockeys, for instance.

• 47:02Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 47:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:03Speaker 04

  I think part of the problem is, which is always part of the problem with Formula One is money, because you have different type, you know, some people get their seats in Formula One on merit purely, and some get their seats in Formula One because they also bring money. So Lance Stroll, for example, who drives for Aston Martin, a pretty terrible Formula One driver, and there's lots of people much more deserving of that seat, but his dad owns the team.

• 47:25Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 47:26Speaker 04

  What are you gonna do? He basically bought the team for his son to have a seat in Formula One.

• 47:29Speaker 05

  The thing is, you want a nice egalitarian sport like polo. That's what you really need to be.

• 47:38Speaker 03

  Stop the podcast.

• 47:39Speaker 05

  Stop the podcast.

• 47:41Speaker 03

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• 48:54Speaker 05

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

• 48:58Speaker 03

  Okay, my fact this week is that in 16th century London, there was a chain of pubs that sold laxatives on tap.

• 49:11Speaker 03

  Any questions?

• 49:12Speaker 05

  Ah, so many. 16th century, so this is, Queen Elizabeth could have gone to one of these pubs.

• 49:17Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah. Well, in fact, this person who made them, Dr. William Butler, he was a physician to James I.

• 49:24Speaker 05

  Oh, really?

• 49:25Speaker 03

  So, only just after her, in fact. And he was definitely around at that time. I'm not sure how often Queen Elizabeth went to the pub.

• 49:33Speaker 05

  Probably not much.

• 49:34Speaker 03

  Not that much. But he was a physician, and he became famous for various reasons we might go into. But one of the things he did was make this thing called purging ale, which had aniseed, caraway, licorice, and beer. And if you went to quite a lot of pubs in London, you would be able to get it on tap. And it was good for you because you would purge your body. It was... Medicinal, let's say.

• 50:00Speaker 04

  So was it in a beer? It was.

• 50:02Speaker 03

  It was, it was like beer, but with all this extra stuff in it.

• 50:05Speaker 04

  But with all the stuff in it to make you shit yourself.

• 50:06Speaker 03

  Imagine a nice cask pale ale that you would get today. But with a few, what's the opposite of Imodium?

• 50:15Speaker 01

  He's like a, he's like a original hipster brewery.

• 50:17Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 50:18Speaker 01

  Character, isn't he?

• 50:19Speaker 03

  Um, now.

• 50:20Speaker 04

  I'd rather that than syrup or figs. I think it sounds quite nice.

• 50:23Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. Uh, and actually there's still a pub in London called Old Dr Butler's Head in Morgate, uh, which claims to be associated with him and that he sold his beer in that pub.

• 50:35Speaker 01

  Right.

• 50:36Speaker 03

  Now, the actual truth is, we're not even certain if he made the beer himself. It was definitely named after him and he was definitely a physician. But it could be that he was just so famous that they called it his beer.

• 50:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:47Speaker 03

  So we're not sure about that.

• 50:48Speaker 01

  Some pubs had his portrait hung up, but again, it might've been just associated with a famous doctor.

• 50:53Speaker 04

  To sort of licence his name.

• 50:55Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 50:56Speaker 01

  Kind of, yeah, yeah.

• 50:57Speaker 03

  He's a really interesting chap, this guy. So he went to Clare College, Cambridge and did a, an arts degree. And then for some reason managed to get a physician's licence. And it's not. It's not certain how he got it. They seem to have just given it to him. And he just worked at a pottery shop for ages in Cambridge. And then one day, a local clergyman had fallen into an opium induced coma.

• 51:25Speaker 03

  And been given up for dead. And Butler killed a cow, put the priest inside the cow. And the priest was cured. And from that moment, he became famous.

• 51:37Speaker 04

  It's gonna wake you up being put in a cow, isn't it? I think.

• 51:39Speaker 01

  Or it's gonna make the, the opium induced trip even wilder. What's a cut the cow open?

• 51:46Speaker 03

  He cut a cow open and like, is it the Revenant where he kind of lives inside a bear?

• 51:51Speaker 04

  Bear, yeah.

• 51:52Speaker 01

  Yes, he does.

• 51:53Speaker 03

  It's a bit like that.

• 51:54Speaker 04

  My dog on the beach once, she was running towards something. She's a little cocker P. I'm like, what's she running? And she climbed inside a seal carcass. The smell, I can still smell it now when I think.

• 52:06Speaker 01

  That's a bath.

• 52:07Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, absolutely. She was so proud of herself, you know?

• 52:11Speaker 03

  That's amazing.

• 52:12Speaker 01

  A real career defining moment, I think, the placing a patient inside a cow.

• 52:17Speaker 03

  He was 68 at that stage and we see basically nothing of him throughout the whole of history from his birth until this moment. And then suddenly at the age of 68, he becomes nationally famous and so much so that King James I had a hunting injury and he said, get me the cow guy.

• 52:37Speaker 01

  Because if, if the clergyman had died, I don't think you can recover from that going,

• 52:42Speaker 05

  but what's he got to lose? It sounds like he's not made a big success of his career so far.

• 52:47Speaker 03

  He's doing fine.

• 52:48Speaker 05

  Yeah, but yeah, okay.

• 52:49Speaker 04

  If he died, wouldn't you just take him out the cow and pretend you never did it?

• 52:51Speaker 01

  I think you'd have to.

• 52:54Speaker 03

  It was like that when I got here.

• 52:58Speaker 04

  I read somewhere, they, they called him an empiric physician.

• 53:00Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 53:01Speaker 04

  Which meant he based his treatments not on any theory, but purely on reasoning and experience. That's not what you want from a doctor, is it? You want them to have read some books.

• 53:09Speaker 03

  I guess so, yeah. He had a few weird things. If someone came to him with epilepsy, he would shoot a couple of firearms close to their heads to scare the condition out of them.

• 53:19Speaker 01

  Yep. It's like getting rid of the hiccups, isn't it?

• 53:24Speaker 03

  If someone had ague, which I guess is, what is ague? It's like malaria kind of thing?

• 53:30Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 53:31Speaker 03

  But he would push them into the Thames. It was like cold water therapy. I mean, you still do cold water therapy today.

• 53:37Speaker 04

  Wim Hof method, he was a pioneer.

• 53:40Speaker 01

  Butler was there before them all.

• 53:42Speaker 05

  I did read, I read one thing he did where there was a patient who had catar, severe catar.

• 53:47Speaker 01

  What's that?

• 53:48Speaker 04

  Black nose.

• 53:50Speaker 05

  Heavy, heavy sort of matter on the lungs, that kind of thing.

• 53:53Speaker 01

  A sniffle.

• 53:54Speaker 05

  No, it's, it's more, it's sort of a heavy, heavy, chesty, a really chesty thing, condition, right? And Butler said, right, you've got to smoke an ounce of tobacco, which is a lot. And it took the patient 25 pipes of tobacco, one after the other. Very much like you're a parent catching you smoking one cigarette and making you... But apparently that completely cured the patient. I mean, some, some citation needed, I think. Didn't come back for 17 years, didn't it?

• 54:17Speaker 04

  I mean, he died of lung disease, but didn't have a cold anymore. That was the most important thing.

• 54:22Speaker 01

  This is the 1500s. I mean, we are, it's probably in line with what a lot of, yeah, doctors were practicing or trying or testing at the time. I've got this new, new method with the cow. Oh, great.

• 54:34Speaker 05

  Well, he was a, he was a spicy fellow when you disagreed with him. He was quite something, Butler. So he got involved in. A gold clipping affair. So that is where, you know, coins are made of gold and if you clip off a little bit of the edge, you've suddenly got this, you've still got the coin, but you've got the gold as well. Fantastic, you know?

• 54:49Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 54:50Speaker 05

  If you do that, you can, you can make it big.

• 54:51Speaker 03

  And that's why we have the edges on a pound coin.

• 54:54Speaker 05

  Exactly.

• 54:54Speaker 03

  Isaac Newton supposedly put those on.

• 54:56Speaker 05

  Exactly. Yeah, yeah.

• 54:57Speaker 03

  Likes to stop people from clipping them.

• 54:59Speaker 05

  Exactly. So someone from, he was in Cambridge, he was practising in Cambridge, wasn't he? And someone from Trinity College, Cambridge, a senior called Paul Thompson was sentenced to death for this crime because it was incredibly serious at the time, interfering with the currency, big no-no. Butler wrote to him, I just love this. Okay, this is the quote he sent to him. He just wrote to him, saying, oh, you've been sentenced to death and you've been caught doing this. Well, I've got a letter from Butler, maybe that'll cheer me up. Butler wrote, "Your giddy-headed, fantastic, fiddling fingers and scribbling pen, directed by the motion of your quicksilver brain, without penitency, pretending piety, practising policy, will bring you to a violent end. As you have always lived a conceited wizard, so now you will die, a ninnahammer fool."

• 55:44Speaker 01

  Oh, wow.

• 55:45Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 55:46Speaker 01

  It's the next Hamilton.

• 55:47Speaker 04

  Burn.

• 55:48Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 55:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:49Speaker 05

  A ninnahammer fool.

• 55:51Speaker 01

  Nimmie.

• 55:52Speaker 05

  Ninnahammer.

• 55:52Speaker 04

  I love that. There was lots of plausives at the top there as well. That was very good to touch on your mic, that.

• 55:58Speaker 05

  Absolutely.

• 56:01Speaker 01

  It's quite nice that there's a pub still named after him because the connection, it seems, is that you could buy this laxative on tap there, but actually, he was known to basically be in the pub all the time, getting pissed. And he had an assistant called Nell, and Nell did a few things, but Nell's chief job was to go and collect him at the end of the night, drunk from the pub, and sort of wheel him home in a wheelbarrow or carry him or whatever method he needed.

• 56:27Speaker 05

  How many pints of laxative ale have you had?

• 56:29Speaker 01

  Not many.

• 56:30Speaker 05

  Well, haven't you?

• 56:31Speaker 04

  The trousers tell a different story.

• 56:36Speaker 03

  Oh, dear.

• 56:38Speaker 04

  This, I've got about, because I was really fascinated by the fact it was laxative ale.

• 56:43Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah.

• 56:43Speaker 04

  And the, the whole sort of brewing, because you know, it was women who first brewed beer, so you had your ale wives would... And there's something called groaning ale. I don't know if you've heard of this. No, what's that? Groaning ale, so when a woman was pregnant, a local ale wife, so one of these local brewing women, would brew a batch of really strong ale for when she went into labour. And when she went into labour, both her and the midwife would drink the really strong ale Oh wow. to help the whole process. Wow. I think that's something they should bring. Yeah, really.

• 57:14Speaker 03

  Yeah. Not the midwife though, I'm not sure about that.

• 57:17Speaker 04

  That's true.

• 57:19Speaker 05

  Um, well, this was the thing, so beer in, at the time, and we're talking like ages ago now, I mean, sort of medieval,

• 57:26Speaker 04

  Mm.

• 57:26Speaker 05

  was homebrewed and you might put a pole above your door just saying you've got ale and.

• 57:33Speaker 03

  I like that, you've got ale.

• 57:35Speaker 05

  Ale, oh my god, that's it.

• 57:37Speaker 03

  That's a rom-com we need to make.

• 57:39Speaker 05

  Really good, really good.

• 57:42Speaker 03

  Angela Barnes stars in You've Got Ale.

• 57:45Speaker 04

  I'm game, please, somebody write that up.

• 57:47Speaker 05

  And so that, there were, there were bride ales as well as the groaning ales, you know, and ale was almost an event as well as a, an actual drink itself. And then the Black Death happened and a third of the population died. I mean, just absolutely devastating for everybody. But it led to this big labour shortage. Peasants got, suddenly got much better paid because they were so much scarcer, you know, they were in demand.

• 58:10Speaker 03

  You needed someone to work on your farm, but everyone was dead, so you could like.

• 58:14Speaker 05

  Yeah. So in, in union terms and labour terms, it was a brilliant thing, the Black Death. Um, but it. But, you know, standards of living went up and that led to more permanent ale houses because there was a bit more surplus, supply as it were. And that led to kind of better food and better drink and more leisure. And that was kind of the beginning of pub culture.

• 58:34Speaker 04

  Yeah. Right. It's really, um, this idea of, um, the whole binge Britain thing I find quite interesting because we've always been known as a nation. Of drinkers.

• 58:44Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 58:45Speaker 04

  Um, so from the, in the eighth century, St Boniface, the missionary from Devon, travelled Europe and he wrote to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Cuthbert, and he says, "In your diocese, the vice of drunkenness is too frequent. This is an evil peculiar to pagans and to our race. Neither the Franks, nor the Gauls, nor the Lombards, nor the Romans, nor the Greeks commit it." So we've always been-

• 59:08Speaker 05

  Come on, the Greeks-

• 59:09Speaker 04

  Right? We're more pissant than the Greeks. I love it. And, and I read some really good, like, in, I can't remember when this was now, I should have written it down, but it was St Bartholomew's Hospital. Their records show that at one point, sick children averaged three pints of beer a day.

• 59:27Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 59:28Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 59:28Speaker 04

  For the sick children.

• 59:30Speaker 01

  How similar is beer now as it was then?

• 59:32Speaker 05

  So it was weaker at the time, right?

• 59:34Speaker 01

  It would have been weaker, so-

• 59:35Speaker 04

  And it changed when hops came along.

• 59:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:37Speaker 04

  So that was a bit later.

• 59:38Speaker 05

  And it, I think it was the idea that it had been through a brewing process and it was safer.

• 59:42Speaker 03

  Safer than just drinking it straight out of the river, yeah.

• 59:44Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 59:45Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 59:45Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 59:46Speaker 03

  That's the idea, yeah.

• 59:47Speaker 05

  So it is, there's a good reason behind it, basically.

• 59:49Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 59:49Speaker 03

  Small beer, they call it, don't they?

• 59:51Speaker 05

  Small beer, that's it, yeah.

• 59:53Speaker 03

  In 2020, Pennsylvania designated beer distributors as a life-sustaining service.

• 59:59Speaker 04

  I could care.

• 1:00:02Speaker 03

  Uh, and their idea is that because the people who take the beer around also often provide water, soda and some food slash snacks. So in some areas of the state, according to Communications Director Casey Smith, in some areas of the state, there might be the only place where you can move water around is by moving beer at the same time.

• 1:00:24Speaker 05

  Pork scratchings are actually one of the four food groups. It's very important.

• 1:00:30Speaker 04

  Does anyone else really want a beer? Really, anyone want a beer now?

• 1:00:33Speaker 01

  Let's do, well, let's wrap up and grab a beer.

• 1:00:39Speaker 01

  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 @shriverland on Instagram. James? My Instagram is nosuchthingasjamesharkins. Andy? At AndrewHunterM. Angela, where can you find you?

• 1:00:56Speaker 04

  At Angela underscore Barnsy on Instagram.

• 1:00:58Speaker 01

  Nice. And you're on tour now, not with one show, but two.

• 1:01:02Speaker 04

  Two shows. So I'm finishing off my tour Angst, which finishes at the end of May, and then from June to the end of the year, I'm hosting The Archers Live at 75, which I'm so excited about. I'm such an Archers nerd.

• 1:01:14Speaker 01

  That's a radio show in the UK for international listeners, and it's brilliant. Yeah, if you want to get through to us as a group, podcast at qi.com, send all of your emails there. If you want to send us your favorite facts, Andy will go through the inbox, cherry pick the best, and bring them to our bonus episode, which goes out every Monday called Little Fish. So send them in there. But if you've got general feedback that you want us to know about, also send that, because Andy picks the best of those for our behind the scenes mailbag episode, which is called Drop Us A Line, and that's part of Club Fish, which is our private members' club. You'll find it on Patreon, so just head to patreon.com/clubfish, and there's multiple tiers there of things that you can do. So you can join the Drop Us A Line as an audio. There's also a higher tier where you can get it as a video. And

• 1:01:59Speaker 01

  then at the highest tier, you become custodian of one of our headline facts from the last 12 years of Fish. So much stuff there. Check it all out. We've also got a quiz coming up. That's April the 14th, and if you become a member of the highest tier of Club Fish, you can get access to that, too. And just a reminder, that's patreon.com/clubfish. Otherwise, hey, come back next week, because we're going to be back with another episode, and we will see you then. Goodbye.

• 1:02:34Speaker 06

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