Pod Insights No Such Thing As A Fish No Such Thing As Imaginary Flumps About this episode Amy Gledhill joins Dan, James and Andy to discuss the First Earl of Bristol, the Last One Laughing, and the Psycho that put movies in the right order.
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Transcript 11,208 words · 7 speakers
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0:27 Speaker 01 Hi everyone, just like to let you know that we are joined today by the wonderful Amy Gledhill. Now, even if you're a fairly new listener to No Such Things Are Fish, you will know Amy because it's not that long ago since she came on. But we don't have many more weeks before Anna comes back, and we thought, who do we want back? Who do we want back on the show? Who do we enjoy the show so much with that we just can't wait to get them back on? And of all the people who fit that bill, Amy was the one who we wanted most. So, we messaged her. She's very busy at the moment, but she said yes. Why is she so busy? Well, she has just been on Last One Laughing UK, the second series of that. It is so funny.
1:11 Speaker 01 It's one of the best TV moments of the year so far, and Amy is in that. She is also in the new series of Taskmaster. I know loads of you who listen to this show love Taskmaster, so you will see Amy on that show. But she also has her own podcast. She does a podcast called Northern News with former Fish alumnus Ian Smith, and she also does another podcast called Single Ladies in Your Area. Both of these podcasts are absolutely amazing. I have been on the Northern News one, it's such fun. Those two are so funny, oh my goodness, they are so funny. Definitely go and check those out wherever you get your podcasts. They're also on Patreon, just like another podcast you might have heard of called No Such Things Are Fish. Yes, we are on Patreon.
1:54 Speaker 01 I was just trying to find a new, different way of announcing that. If you go to patreon.com/clubfish, then you can sign up there. When you sign up, you'll get loads of free stuff. There's plenty of stuff there for anyone who doesn't want to pay, but if you would like... To give us a few pounds each month, then there are various different tiers where you can get various different things. The first one is Plenty More Fish, where you get Dropper's Align, which is our audience feedback show and so much fun. And also you get ad-free episodes, which I know for a lot of you is a big old poll, so please do that. But mostly, if you do that, you are supporting the podcast. But actually, you're supporting the podcast by being here and listening to this show with the incredible,
2:36 Speaker 01 amazing, infectiously funny Amy Gladhill. Up with the podcast.
2:57 Speaker 02 Hello and welcome to another episode of No Such Thing as a Fish, a weekly podcast coming to you from the QI offices in Holborn. My name is Dan Schreiber. I am sitting here with James Harkin, Andrew Hunter Murray, and Amy Gledhill. 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 Amy.
3:22 Speaker 03 Okay, so my fact this week is, according to science, one of the best ways to avoid laughing is to think about wallpaper. This fact comes to me slightly too late.
3:37 Speaker 03 I wish I'd have discovered this fact. About a year ago, really.
3:42 Speaker 02 Okay, all right. Yeah. So for context, you recently starred on Last One Laughing, the TV show where you have to try and survive the entire process of the show by not laughing. And you were on with people like David Mitchell and Sam Campbell.
3:55 Speaker 03 Yeah, it was hell.
3:58 Speaker 01 So question to you, if this is a scientific method, did you have your own method?
4:02 Speaker 03 I did, actually, yeah. Less scientific. There was lots of snacks in the room. And I thought if my mouth was always full of flumps, marshmallows, you can't laugh. But that isn't science, it turns out. Yeah. But I think it is. I think it did help. If you've got a mouthful of something, you're less inclined to. I don't think I showed you.
4:24 Speaker 04 Having flumps. Flumps are a funny food as well. They're quite a risky food.
4:29 Speaker 01 That's quite a kind editor, I think, who doesn't show you the mouth of flumps.
4:32 Speaker 02 Oh, they weren't imaginary flumps. They were real flumps.
4:35 Speaker 03 Real flumps.
4:36 Speaker 02 Imaginary flumps.
4:38 Speaker 01 Is that what you give your kids?
4:39 Speaker 02 Coming to Easter.
4:41 Speaker 02 Imaginary Easter eggs are in the garden. Oh, look at that massive one. No, I thought, because part of the wallpaper idea is a distraction tool. So whatever you can do.
4:51 Speaker 04 Are you imagining wallpaper?
4:52 Speaker 02 Exactly.
4:52 Speaker 04 Are you really looking at it?
4:52 Speaker 02 No, you're really looking at wallpaper, but it's a distraction tool. Therefore, if you were imagining flumps in your mouth and fitting, oh, I could fit more and more in, you might distract yourself.
5:01 Speaker 04 It feels very difficult. Yeah.
5:03 Speaker 02 Well.
5:04 Speaker 04 It feels like, not to criticize your technique, Amy, but I don't know how helpful it would be. Are you stopping laughs getting in? No, you're stopping them getting out.
5:11 Speaker 01 Oh, yeah.
5:12 Speaker 04 Your laughter comes from within, I suppose.
5:13 Speaker 03 Yes. Oh, that's true.
5:14 Speaker 01 So you mean, once you've swallowed the flump, then the laughter's gonna come out?
5:18 Speaker 04 Well, just.
5:19 Speaker 02 It doesn't cork it, is what you're saying.
5:21 Speaker 04 Yeah, it's, yeah, I guess, I just can't quite, yeah.
5:24 Speaker 01 So I read this study and it is distractions, one of the things, right? Another one is kind of controlling, trying to control your facial muscles, which we did see on the show.
5:34 Speaker 03 Yeah.
5:35 Speaker 01 Mel.
5:35 Speaker 03 Poor old Mel.
5:36 Speaker 01 She liked to do that, didn't she?
5:38 Speaker 03 She was gurning like it was the 90s.
5:44 Speaker 03 She, yeah, so she, she had this like, like lower jaw protrusion, I guess, like an underbite. She'd give herself an underbite, but it was so effective.
5:54 Speaker 04 Yeah.
5:54 Speaker 03 So she was really like pulling them muscles in her jaw, but then it turns out, and she, she has said this in the press, she's had to go and see a specialist for a jaw injury.
6:06 Speaker 04 That's funny. Is gurning, is that a drug thing?
6:09 Speaker 01 Yes.
6:10 Speaker 03 Yes.
6:12 Speaker 03 So I'm told.
6:13 Speaker 04 No further questions.
6:15 Speaker 01 And then one other thing that they said is good for it is to reappraise the jokes in a non funny manner, which I think is a kind of David Mitchell thing, isn't it?
6:24 Speaker 03 Yeah, but I think that's quite difficult because I think to reappraise a joke, you have to understand why it's funny. So then you're thinking, God, that's funny for these reasons. How do we make it less? That's funny. And I, I think that's, that's a risky strategy.
6:38 Speaker 04 And there is like surprise jokes are the most dangerous of all, if you're trying not to laugh.
6:42 Speaker 03 Yes.
6:43 Speaker 04 There is a moment in, for international listeners, Last Word Laughing UK, go and see it, it's terrific. There's a moment where Alan Carr gets out a sausage machine and it starts firing out high speed sausage. And there's almost no way to immediately reappraise that as a serious malfunction of a sausage machine. You think, oh dear, maybe they haven't greased that properly. It's really hard.
7:02 Speaker 01 On the other hand, you can think, oh no, he's gonna lose all that sausage.
7:05 Speaker 04 Yeah.
7:06 Speaker 01 Like, that's how you reappraise it, right?
7:08 Speaker 04 You've gotta be fast.
7:09 Speaker 02 No, you've gotta reappraise it on the opening before it gets to the punch, right? So, okay, Englishman, Irishman, Scottishman walk into a bar. You think, oh, what's the likelihood that those three were, so you don't even listen to the rest. You distract yourself with that. You think, this guy doesn't make sausages? How the hell is Alan Carr know what's about to, is it safe?
7:26 Speaker 03 He's not a certified butcher.
7:28 Speaker 04 There we go. I'm not laughing.
7:32 Speaker 04 Most laughter in conversation happens after banal comments, not funny ones.
7:38 Speaker 01 Is this your experience, Andy, or?
7:40 Speaker 04 My experience, yeah.
7:41 Speaker 03 Well, last time I came on, I did laugh a lot.
7:43 Speaker 04 Right.
7:50 Speaker 03 So what is, what is it out of?
7:53 Speaker 04 It's not to do with whether it's funny or not. It's just kind of social grease.
7:56 Speaker 01 Yeah.
7:57 Speaker 04 And also, the person talking laughs more than the people they're talking to in almost every conversation.
8:01 Speaker 03 Oh, yeah.
8:02 Speaker 04 It's, it's by more than about half, or half as much more. Yeah, yeah. And obviously, this would be different in a professional comedy scenario, I guess.
8:11 Speaker 03 But what's, what's difficult is when, the, the trickiest thing in that programme is the conversations. You know, when someone's on the stage doing their Joker, you're, you know, you've got flumps in your mouth, you, you're ready.
8:22 Speaker 04 Oh, yeah.
8:23 Speaker 03 But it's the little conversations that are really difficult because it's surprising.
8:27 Speaker 04 Yeah.
8:27 Speaker 03 And then I, Bob Mortimer is lovely, and I told him that I was nervous about doing it. And he said, the first half an hour is the hardest, because when that buzzer goes off, you get all this giddy energy. And you're almost ready to laugh, because you just told you shouldn't. You're almost ready to laugh anyway. So when the buzzer goes off, he came over to me to, and he's, to have like a neutral conversation to help me. But because you're in this prime situation, and Bob Mortimer is sat, you know, a metre away from your face, and he was going, he was just trying to be nice, but it was so hard, he said, Amy. Are you happy with your Hoover? And I was like, oh my god.
9:04 Speaker 03 Why is that the funniest thing I've ever heard?
9:07 Speaker 02 You know, you might have had a competitive advantage in there, according to the University of Buffalo. Because, according to the history comedy professor there, Andrew Scott, redheads are seen as funnier generally.
9:22 Speaker 01 Oh.
9:22 Speaker 02 Than most other people.
9:23 Speaker 01 Interesting.
9:24 Speaker 02 Diane Morgan, is she red as well? Yeah, so you two would have had competitive advantage. This is all culturally brought on to us by circus clowns, basically.
9:33 Speaker 01 Okay.
9:34 Speaker 02 Clowns always had big red wigs, largely so they could be seen from any bit of the circus tent. If you're sitting at the back, you'd know it's the clown.
9:43 Speaker 01 Is it also true that people with red noses and big feet are also seen as funnier?
9:50 Speaker 02 Probably, yeah.
9:51 Speaker 01 I don't know. If that's what we're saying, that the clown is...
9:54 Speaker 03 Yeah.
9:55 Speaker 02 Yes. Is this culturally, is this regionally, has this been stress tested in Scotland and Ireland? Which have many more people with red hair. Like, what do clowns wear? Like, the clowns come back and died again.
10:08 Speaker 02 Nothing I got from them. That's true. This is Buffalo. Okay, so, uh, yeah. Last one laughing, US, you might have the advantage. That's a really good point. That's what my strategy would have buckled immediately as I walked in with my dyed red hair.
10:25 Speaker 03 Wow.
10:26 Speaker 01 They've found, they've looked at laughter and then fed it into a computer to see what kind of laughter there is. This is how you analyse comedy, you work out what's funny. This is at the University of Amsterdam and they found that there's two different types of laughter. So a computer can tell the difference between tickle laughter and every other kind of laughter. And all the other laughter, if you're watching a sitcom or you're watching stand up or you're with your mates or whatever, they're all the same, but tickle laughter is completely different. And the algorithm can tell the difference.
10:57 Speaker 03 Is it more panicked?
10:58 Speaker 01 I guess so, more panty, maybe?
11:00 Speaker 03 Yeah.
11:00 Speaker 01 Panties are funny worse.
11:07 Speaker 04 That's interesting, because there is, yeah, there is fear. When you're being tickled, there is fear.
11:11 Speaker 03 There's fear, pure fear.
11:12 Speaker 02 Oh yeah, we have a tickle truce in my house between me and my older son, Wilf.
11:15 Speaker 04 Tickle truce?
11:16 Speaker 02 A literal tickle truce. He can't tickle me because the pain is so great for me and I'm not allowed to tickle him.
11:23 Speaker 04 I just have...
11:23 Speaker 02 What's he doing it with? I find it... I find it so unbelievably painful.
11:30 Speaker 02 Well, actually, try. That didn't tickle me that time. James is tickling me, by the way, everyone.
11:35 Speaker 01 I think I got a splinter.
11:39 Speaker 02 But then I can't tickle Wilf because he, it happened ages ago, but I tickled him and he went, "Oh, daddy." And I went, "What?" He went, "You tickled the wee out of me." And, and he, and he pisses himself every time I tickle him, so there is a tickle truce.
11:53 Speaker 04 You once told a joke so funny that one of the children shat themselves. Didn't you?
11:58 Speaker 01 Wasn't it, was it in the bath?
12:00 Speaker 04 It was in the bath, which is not a good place for it to happen.
12:03 Speaker 01 At least it's contained.
12:04 Speaker 04 It's contained in a big bath, but you see the size of...
12:07 Speaker 02 It's not until you try and grab it and then it breaks and it's like a, it's like a cloning machine when you try and grab it.
12:13 Speaker 01 What was the joke? Can you remember?
12:14 Speaker 02 Well, don't tell it now.
12:16 Speaker 01 I want to see you on last one laughing at just all the other comics shitting themselves.
12:24 Speaker 04 Amy, your laugh, your laugh is quite infectious.
12:26 Speaker 03 Oh, thanks.
12:26 Speaker 04 It's nice, in a positive way. If you're laughing, people around you want to laugh, you know? Because I once caught a bad laugh from someone. And I had it for years.
12:35 Speaker 01 It wasn't Jimmy, was it?
12:35 Speaker 03 No.
12:37 Speaker 04 It's someone you two know very well.
12:39 Speaker 01 Was it Dan's son?
12:43 Speaker 02 If shit's coming out every time, it's a bad laugh.
12:46 Speaker 01 And who is it?
12:46 Speaker 04 Shouldn't have done those jacuzzi sessions, Jimmy. That was a really tricky night.
12:51 Speaker 01 Are you allowed to say it?
12:51 Speaker 04 Yeah, of course. Yeah, yeah. It was John Lloyd.
12:53 Speaker 01 Oh, okay.
12:54 Speaker 04 Founder of QI.
12:55 Speaker 01 Yeah.
12:55 Speaker 04 So he has a very distinctive laugh, which...
12:57 Speaker 01 Ha, ha, ha.
12:58 Speaker 04 Yes.
13:01 Speaker 04 And it's, he has a bigger laugh as well for really, really funny stuff.
13:04 Speaker 02 He's got a big laugh.
13:05 Speaker 04 But even when he's like, and that's him genuinely, he's genuinely laughing. And for about five years once, I could only laugh like that. And I don't know how I got it.
13:13 Speaker 01 Really?
13:15 Speaker 01 Because it is like a contagious thing and it is a social thing.
13:18 Speaker 03 Yeah.
13:19 Speaker 01 I think if you're copying people's laughs, that shows respect personally.
13:22 Speaker 04 I respect John. It's exactly that. Probably exactly that.
13:25 Speaker 03 So do you think people in different cultures have different laughs? Like, would you be able to tell just from a laugh if someone was like, oh, that person's Italian? Or, oh, that person.
13:33 Speaker 01 That's interesting.
13:34 Speaker 04 Well, French, ha, ha, ha.
13:37 Speaker 04 And we're getting close to the end of the socially acceptable ones to do, but let's crack on.
13:44 Speaker 01 Wow.
13:44 Speaker 03 But do you know what I mean? Do you think you would be able to tell?
13:46 Speaker 01 You would. I think you would. Yeah, maybe. You could definitely tell the difference between modern humans and old humans. Because can you guess how old humans would laugh? It wasn't a ha, ha, ha, because they couldn't make those sounds.
13:58 Speaker 04 They couldn't make those sounds.
13:59 Speaker 01 No, humans managed to say a huh sound quite late in our development.
14:02 Speaker 04 Wow.
14:03 Speaker 01 So before that.
14:04 Speaker 04 He, he.
14:05 Speaker 01 That still has an H in it.
14:07 Speaker 04 Oh, okay.
14:08 Speaker 03 Was it like the Count from Sesame Street?
14:13 Speaker 04 He is a primitive human.
14:14 Speaker 01 Yeah. Well, obviously we don't know, but it appears to have been more panty.
14:21 Speaker 01 And that's because like, if you look at apes today, for instance, they have more of a panting laugh when they.
14:26 Speaker 03 Oh, wow.
14:28 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
14:29 Speaker 03 That was very good. You've done that before.
14:33 Speaker 01 We have enough.
14:33 Speaker 04 Oh, wait, wait, wait. Wallpaper.
14:35 Speaker 01 Do you want to do a wallpaper thing on that?
14:37 Speaker 04 No, it's fine. It's just, I've read so much about wallpaper. I've read, I've got pages here of wallpaper stuff.
14:43 Speaker 03 I've got a little bit of wallpaper stuff.
14:45 Speaker 04 Oh, yeah.
14:46 Speaker 03 Okay, so with the wallpaper thing, I tried to find out what's the least funny wallpaper. To add to the thing, in case I ever need to not laugh again. And the least funny thing I could find about wallpaper was the Victorian wallpaper was often bright green, but it had arsenic in it. So a lot of, it actually was quite fatal.
15:07 Speaker 04 Oh, no.
15:07 Speaker 01 Yes.
15:08 Speaker 03 So that's, that's gotta be the least funny.
15:11 Speaker 04 That's not funny.
15:11 Speaker 03 It's not funny.
15:12 Speaker 04 No. Unless you're driven to hysteria as part of the poisoning, which sometimes happens, right?
15:19 Speaker 01 That would happen with like mercury poisoning, doesn't it? I'm not sure about arsenic. It's more death.
15:25 Speaker 04 Just peel down.
15:26 Speaker 03 More just pure death, that one.
15:27 Speaker 04 That's not fun at all.
15:28 Speaker 01 No, no, no, no.
15:30 Speaker 04 I joined the
15:32 Speaker 01 Oh no.
15:34 Speaker 04 I've joined the Wallpaper History Society as part of research for this fact.
15:38 Speaker 02 Sure, let's pretend you weren't already a member.
15:42 Speaker 04 It's a good price. I pegged it to my previous membership and it's exactly the same price as the Association of Lighthouse Keepers, which I'm also a member of.
15:51 Speaker 01 When you meet another member of the Wallpaper Association, do you say, "How's it hanging?"
15:56 Speaker 04 Yeah, yeah. Strip poker is a much more tame affair at the Wallpaper Society. No, it's good. You get a copy of the Wallpaper History Review.
16:05 Speaker 01 Okay.
16:05 Speaker 04 Packed with over 100 pages of wallpaper and wall covering related information.
16:10 Speaker 01 Yep.
16:10 Speaker 04 That's good. You get priority booking on some Wallpaper History Society events. Priority booking. How many times have we got to the front?
16:18 Speaker 03 Yeah.
16:18 Speaker 04 Sorry, sir. 25 quid.
16:21 Speaker 03 For the year? That's not bad, is it?
16:23 Speaker 04 It's not bad.
16:24 Speaker 03 It's not bad, you could spend it on worse.
16:26 Speaker 04 Yeah.
16:26 Speaker 03 I can't think of anything.
16:33 Speaker 05 Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel. People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic, in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood. And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone.
17:04 Speaker 06 One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies.
17:10 Speaker 05 So join us and hear their stories and more, because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat, it's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At the Table, the food allergy podcast, on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At the Table and start listening on the free iHeart Radio app today.
17:32 Speaker 02 Okay, it is time for fact number two, and that is my fact. My fact this week is that until 1960, American cinema goers watched movies in no particular order. So this is-
17:44 Speaker 01 Like Memento? That's in no particular order. Well, that's actually in a particular order. It's just backwards, isn't it?
17:49 Speaker 02 It's just backwards.
17:50 Speaker 04 Any Christopher Nolan film.
17:51 Speaker 02 Yeah.
17:51 Speaker 01 Yeah.
17:52 Speaker 04 There's something going on there with time.
17:56 Speaker 01 Tenet is in both particular orders.
17:58 Speaker 04 Exactly. The most radical thing Christopher Nolan could do now would be just to release a film that starts at the beginning, gets through the middle, gets to the end. We've got a grudge going, but me and him, Amy, we don't need to get into it.
18:09 Speaker 03 No, I get it. I get, I thought Tenet was one of the only films I nearly walked out of the cinema.
18:14 Speaker 02 Really?
18:15 Speaker 03 Yeah. I think I got really obsessed because they just kept saying the word "algorithm", for no reason, and being really smug about it. They just had algorithms so much that it started becoming funny, and I was like, "I've gotta go, I've gotta leave. I can't be laughing at the word "algorithm", I've gotta go."
18:28 Speaker 02 Note to anyone for series three, if Amy returns.
18:33 Speaker 01 I can imagine Bob Martin walks in, "So Amy, what's your favorite algorithm?"
18:39 Speaker 02 Flops, flops, flops, flops, flops, flops.
18:42 Speaker 03 Wallpaper, wallpaper, wallpaper.
18:46 Speaker 02 This is, this is an amazing little detail about American cinema, which is prior to 1960, movies in the cinema were just on a loop. And so you might arrive at the end of the movie, you might arrive at the middle of the movie, and you would often, if you enjoyed the end of it, you would stay and watch the beginning of the movie.
19:02 Speaker 04 Yeah.
19:02 Speaker 02 And they used to know if a movie was going to be hit, if people got to the bit they'd already seen and wanted to watch it again.
19:09 Speaker 04 Yeah.
19:09 Speaker 02 Because they enjoyed it so much.
19:10 Speaker 01 Like if you go to a, like an art gallery and they show movies, they're like that, aren't they?
19:15 Speaker 02 Yes, exactly, yeah.
19:17 Speaker 04 And they, they would have double bills too.
19:18 Speaker 02 They'd have double bills.
19:19 Speaker 04 Film, then you have another whole film, then you have the first half of the film that you-
19:22 Speaker 01 Or cartoon or something.
19:24 Speaker 04 Cartoon, some news.
19:25 Speaker 02 Some newsreels as well, but it was on a loop, and so this was the culture of movie going in America. And it was really frustrating for a lot of filmmakers. They desperately tried to say, "Get there at the start", because it has a plot that works really nicely when you see it in the order we've made it.
19:41 Speaker 04 It's a twist, yeah.
19:42 Speaker 02 Exactly.
19:42 Speaker 04 So what changed this all was in 1960, Alfred Hitchcock released Psycho. He made it his big campaign. You have to see Psycho at this starting time and watch it till the end. And there were posters everywhere. There were adverts in movie cinemas. There were sort of cardboard cutouts, all saying the same thing.
20:01 Speaker 01 He basically said, if you don't turn up on time, you're not coming in.
20:04 Speaker 04 Yeah.
20:04 Speaker 01 Like going to the theatre, I guess.
20:06 Speaker 04 Yes, exactly.
20:07 Speaker 03 And one of the posters is him and he's just pointing at his watch and he thinks, oh, that looks like a fun night.
20:13 Speaker 01 That's like handy if you come here one minute late. He's got his watch out.
20:18 Speaker 04 Yeah. I'm the visionary auteur of those things. I guess, is that James is trying to say?
20:24 Speaker 01 I think what was happening is it was kind of a shift that was happening, right?
20:28 Speaker 04 Yeah.
20:28 Speaker 01 So especially if you were in a big city, if you're in New York or something, they would show one-off films. Like Gone with the Wind was often shown as a one-off film. Then Ben Hur was as well.
20:37 Speaker 04 Because longer and epic.
20:38 Speaker 01 Yeah. And so you go as an event, but especially in the smaller towns. And also just more generally, it was exactly as you suggest. But then Psycho was like, it was like a moment where they were like, okay, they're all going to be like this now.
20:51 Speaker 04 Yeah, but I think lots of other people had tried it and it hadn't taken off. So various people had attempted it before Hitchcock. Like there was a, one film exhibitor in 1937 said, there should be a nationwide go to the show on time campaign. Didn't do any good. There was a 1945 film, I love this, called Mildred Pierce, right? And they ran an early campaign, which said, I'm quoting here, "Due to this sensational surprise twist in the ending of Mildred Pierce, positively no patron will be seated in the theatre during the last eight minutes of this picture." It's like 110 minutes long, so you can get it at any point in the first, like hour, hour and 10 or whatever.
21:29 Speaker 01 It's not like the Americans to turn up late in the 1940s, is it?
21:32 Speaker 04 Brilliant, brilliant.
21:34 Speaker 01 Little bit of satire there.
21:37 Speaker 03 You told them.
21:42 Speaker 04 Yeah. So this was, this was completely altered by Psycho, a movie which already altered cinema in so many ways. The soundtrack was a big moment in that movie, that whee whee kind of stabbing, that's, you know, that's Jaws.
21:55 Speaker 01 It's like Jimmy Carlaffing again.
21:59 Speaker 02 Quick cutting, there were so many innovative bits of that, but what's often not said is basically Americans go to see the movie on time now because of it.
22:07 Speaker 03 That's incredible. What number film of Hitchcock's was Psycho? It's not his first film, is it?
22:11 Speaker 04 No, not his first.
22:12 Speaker 01 Not, I don't know.
22:13 Speaker 03 So he's had films in the cinemas and people are just going, oh, it's a lot of birds.
22:18 Speaker 04 Oh yeah, he had a really long career. He started in black and white and then made the shift to colour. And 1960, I guess, was a bit more of a marginal case because there were plenty of colour films by then. And all of his later ones, obviously, are colour, but.
22:31 Speaker 01 Interesting. And then the difference being in Britain, like we still had this as well, where you would do the kind of the shorts and the news and stuff and you could come in at any time. But it was much less common and in British cinemas, you would often have an usher and you would turn up and the usher would take you to your seat in time because it was based on the old theatres.
22:50 Speaker 03 Right, that is nice.
22:52 Speaker 01 Would you still like that?
22:53 Speaker 04 I wouldn't mind it. I went to the cinema recently and it's basically become now a food and drink venue, where there's a film on as well. So there's a lot of people coming and going and.
23:03 Speaker 01 Oh, like where you can get pizzas and stuff.
23:05 Speaker 04 It was a posh, my mum had bought a posh cinema, so they'll do, you know, they'll do, bring things to your seat.
23:11 Speaker 03 Oh yeah. I had a cheese board at Killers of the Flower Moon.
23:14 Speaker 04 You've changed, Amy.
23:18 Speaker 01 Cheese board.
23:19 Speaker 03 I had a cheese board. I thought this shouldn't be allowed.
23:21 Speaker 01 That's amazing.
23:22 Speaker 03 You just, you know, you scan the thing and then you press what you want. People bring you cocktails and burgers and.
23:28 Speaker 04 Yeah.
23:29 Speaker 01 Yeah.
23:29 Speaker 04 It's a nice quiet.
23:30 Speaker 03 Hitchcock wouldn't have liked it.
23:31 Speaker 04 It's quiet food though, relatively quiet, a cheese board.
23:34 Speaker 03 Yes, yes.
23:35 Speaker 02 Psycho also basically came out largely because Hitchcock was inspired by another low budget horror film, which was called House on Haunted Hill, made by a guy called William Castle. And Castle was brilliant at creating gimmicks. So really what Alfred Hitchcock was doing was a big old gimmick. He was turning it into an event. He was making press off the back of this point that he was pushing. And William Castle was sort of the king of doing it. He used to do things like saying this movie might scare you to death. So he took out mock insurance policies and he would put newspaper ads showing them, they'd even have repli- Because of the policies, sort of poster size outside of the venues and they would have hearsees waiting outside so that you really got a sense of what was going on.
24:17 Speaker 01 At the, um, the house on haunted hill you were talking about?
24:20 Speaker 02 Yeah.
24:21 Speaker 01 Um, he would have a fright break in the middle of it. And at that stage, anyone was allowed to go into the lobby and sit in a place called coward's corner until they were ready to come back.
24:33 Speaker 02 That's true. Yeah. And he also had, it was very expensive, it would seem in all these local theatres. He had a thing installed that was called the percepto, which was for his movie, The Tingler. It was a little buzzer that was added to all the chairs that electrified it slightly. So at various moments during the movie, at a scary moment, you'd feel a literal vuh in your chair. Um, and he would have skeletons that would fly out at certain moments. It was all very creative stuff.
25:00 Speaker 01 He always wanted to be a proper filmmaker. I mean, he was a proper filmmaker, like horror movies are a proper genre, but he wanted to make more respectable films. He produced Rosemary's Baby, um, and he wanted to direct it, but then Polanski did it instead. Uh, and his daughter later on said that when they had dinner every night, instead of saying grace, he would practise his Oscars acceptance speech.
25:22 Speaker 03 Oh my goodness.
25:29 Speaker 02 Well, no one else does that. Come on, we'll do it. Every night, same time.
25:34 Speaker 01 Let us know, Harvey Weinstein.
25:39 Speaker 04 I practise my speech to the annual dinner of the wallpaper history society.
25:45 Speaker 02 You know, the, um, the point you were making about William Castle not directing Rosemary's Baby?
25:49 Speaker 01 Oh, yeah.
25:49 Speaker 02 It's because he was directing these kind of slasher B movies and they thought no one's going to take it seriously. And that happens quite a few times when it comes to making movies. So for example, um, Mel Brooks was the producer of The Elephant Man, but they took his name off the credits. He asked to because he was like, everyone will be laughing when they see that I'm associated with it.
26:10 Speaker 03 Do you know what that's like when Steve Coogan came out to play Jimmy Savile? And initially I was like, oh, come on, you can't, he did impressions of him. That, no one's going to take that seriously. But it was fantastic.
26:21 Speaker 01 Yeah.
26:22 Speaker 04 Really?
26:22 Speaker 03 Yeah. Did you not see it?
26:24 Speaker 04 I didn't.
26:24 Speaker 01 No, I didn't see it.
26:26 Speaker 03 I've not just made that up, have I?
26:27 Speaker 01 No, no, no, no.
26:32 Speaker 01 Oh my god.
26:33 Speaker 02 Well, we've had Weinstein, we've had Saville.
26:35 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah.
26:36 Speaker 02 Who else is gonna make it into this chat?
26:37 Speaker 01 Blabski.
26:38 Speaker 02 Blabski.
26:41 Speaker 04 Um, Hull's Cecil Theatre, you're from Hull?
26:45 Speaker 03 I'm from Hull, yeah.
26:46 Speaker 04 Do you know the Cecil Theatre?
26:47 Speaker 03 I think it's a bingo hole now.
26:49 Speaker 04 Ah, well, it used to be a cinema.
26:51 Speaker 03 Wow.
26:51 Speaker 04 But it used to come with a noted orchestra.
26:55 Speaker 01 Oh, yeah.
26:55 Speaker 03 Oh, wow.
26:56 Speaker 04 Of seven, but still.
26:58 Speaker 03 That's not bad.
26:59 Speaker 04 Instruments and vocalists. And you used to get, just cinema used to be such a fancier experience in lots of ways. And you, you know, you see, you see sometimes cinemas now, which have incredible architecture. And you think, gosh, this was really.
27:09 Speaker 03 Yeah.
27:10 Speaker 04 It's really fancy.
27:11 Speaker 03 Yeah, there's a, there's a Wetherspoons on Holloway Road that used to be a cinema. And it's this beautiful, absolutely stunning building. And you go inside and it's gorgeous, but now it's just, you know, WKD Blues, which I love.
27:24 Speaker 04 Yeah.
27:24 Speaker 02 Out of curiosity, how far was it to the toilets from your table?
27:29 Speaker 03 Oh, yeah, it's like a sponsored walk.
27:32 Speaker 01 I told you that we've mentioned this before, the toilets are always miles away in Wetherspoons.
27:36 Speaker 02 Yeah.
27:37 Speaker 01 Uh, you know what? That would be useful. Did you, any of you watch the, uh, Long Walk film from last year?
27:42 Speaker 02 Stephen King adapted, right?
27:44 Speaker 01 Yeah.
27:45 Speaker 02 No.
27:45 Speaker 01 So it's about these guys who, it's like a dystopian American, if you can imagine such a thing. And they, you get one or two people from each state and they have to walk and they have to keep their speed above four miles an hour. And if they drop, then they get shot.
28:00 Speaker 02 What?
28:01 Speaker 03 Oh, gosh.
28:01 Speaker 04 Is there someone with, near them with a gun?
28:03 Speaker 01 The US Army, um, people are doing it.
28:06 Speaker 04 Why are they doing it?
28:07 Speaker 01 Uh, I can't, it's a bit of a Hunger Games-y thing, I think.
28:10 Speaker 02 Yeah.
28:11 Speaker 01 Uh, I can't really remember.
28:12 Speaker 04 But it's just walking at four miles an hour?
28:14 Speaker 01 Yeah, but like eventually you're gonna run out of energy.
28:16 Speaker 04 Yeah, definitely. But I'm just, sorry, I'm, I'm sorry, I'm just trying to work out the like, the, is it fun for people to watch this?
28:22 Speaker 01 It's good. It's a good film. I liked it anyway.
28:24 Speaker 04 No, I mean, the entertainment, sorry, in the world of the film, are people watching this for entertainment?
28:28 Speaker 01 People like stand on the side of the streets like it's the Tour de France.
28:31 Speaker 02 Yeah.
28:32 Speaker 03 Wow.
28:32 Speaker 04 Are they all walking at the same, they're all together? Sorry, you said one person from each state. I was imagining this is happening in 57 locations everywhere.
28:39 Speaker 01 No, sorry. Yeah, they all come to one place to do it.
28:42 Speaker 04 I understand, I understand. Okay, okay, okay.
28:44 Speaker 01 Anyway, there is a real one that happens in Sweden.
28:49 Speaker 01 And it's been going since 2009 and they don't get shot in this one, you're just out. But you have to keep your walk above four miles an hour and it's based on the Stephen King book.
29:00 Speaker 04 Oh, four miles an hour is a bit of a trod.
29:03 Speaker 01 It's not too bad, like it's, it's a, it's a fair pace, but it's not, you definitely wouldn't have to run it.
29:09 Speaker 04 Okay.
29:10 Speaker 03 And how long are people lasting?
29:11 Speaker 01 Well, the first one in 2009, it lasted only 10 hours, but people have suddenly got really good at it. And the last one, or the, the longest one in the last couple of years was 87 hours and 48 minutes.
29:23 Speaker 04 Wow, wow, wow, wow. What are you do, what are you, what are you doing for the facilities during that time?
29:29 Speaker 01 You have to go. In the movie, you just have to go.
29:31 Speaker 04 Why are you walking?
29:32 Speaker 01 Yeah, you get like yellow cards and stuff, like a bit like last one, last one, you get yellow cards.
29:37 Speaker 04 You do.
29:38 Speaker 01 But yeah, you have to go and like.
29:40 Speaker 04 What?
29:41 Speaker 01 I think you're allowed to sort of slow down, but then you have to make it back up. So you could quickly get down and do it and then sort of run slightly and then you'll catch up.
29:50 Speaker 04 Well, we're washing your hands.
29:52 Speaker 01 Maybe wet wipes.
29:54 Speaker 02 When it's, when it's sporting, you just go in your pants. That's, that's what it is. I saw, weirdly, I saw an interview with Alex.
30:00 Speaker 04 Sorry, we'll come back to that, carry on.
30:03 Speaker 01 I want to know where this got, weirdly, he saw an interview with Alex Ferguson.
30:08 Speaker 02 Alex Honnold.
30:09 Speaker 01 Oh, yeah.
30:09 Speaker 04 Oh, yeah, yeah.
30:10 Speaker 02 The, the guy who free soloed, who we spoke about.
30:13 Speaker 04 Amazing, amazing climber.
30:14 Speaker 02 Yeah. And he said, and he was asked that question, what do you do if you need a piss or have a shit? And he said, you just do it.
30:19 Speaker 04 Yeah, well, he's a thousand metres up from the consequences, isn't he? They cut that out of the movie, didn't they?
30:25 Speaker 01 Did he climb up the building quite recently or something?
30:27 Speaker 02 Yes, Taipei, um, the Taiwan Tower.
30:30 Speaker 01 Yeah.
30:30 Speaker 02 Hundred floors.
30:31 Speaker 01 Stood at the bottom of that tower.
30:33 Speaker 02 No.
30:36 Speaker 02 How interesting. I've not made the connection before, but Stephen King wrote The Long Walk.
30:40 Speaker 01 Yep.
30:41 Speaker 02 Made into the movie and he also wrote The Running Man.
30:43 Speaker 03 The Running Man, yeah.
30:43 Speaker 02 Which was made into a movie recently as well. So he's doing all, all levels of.
30:47 Speaker 01 I mean, he does write a lot of old rubbish, doesn't he?
30:51 Speaker 01 I do like some of his stuff, but it's like, oh, let's make a horror film about a cup.
30:55 Speaker 03 Yeah.
30:56 Speaker 01 That's haunted and then.
30:58 Speaker 03 The jogging lad.
31:02 Speaker 02 I think he wrote The Running Man in three days after a 90s gurning binge.
31:06 Speaker 01 Oh, did he?
31:08 Speaker 02 Yeah. He's written whole novels where he doesn't remember writing them because of the drugs he was doing. Yeah.
31:13 Speaker 01 And then Long Walk was a short story as well.
31:15 Speaker 02 It was, it was a novel, but it was short, like novella. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
31:20 Speaker 02 Is that funny?
31:20 Speaker 04 Well, it's long but it's short.
31:22 Speaker 02 It's funny.
31:24 Speaker 04 Carry on.
31:26 Speaker 01 Tell me about these laughs that come after banal comments again.
31:37 Speaker 02 Okay, it is time for fact number three, and that is Andy.
31:41 Speaker 04 My fact is, the first Earl of Bristol spent seventeen thousand pounds a year on hot chocolate.
31:48 Speaker 03 Wow.
31:49 Speaker 02 Is that modern money?
31:50 Speaker 04 Yeah.
31:51 Speaker 02 Okay.
31:51 Speaker 01 I hope he got marshmallows and whipped cream as well.
31:55 Speaker 04 But now I start to think about it, I think, you know, what if you go to a cafe every day? It adds up, doesn't it?
32:00 Speaker 01 How much would you spend per day? Three hundred and sixty-five, so let's say, so three thousand seventeen threes, fifty quid.
32:08 Speaker 04 A day?
32:08 Speaker 01 Yeah.
32:09 Speaker 04 Okay, that's a bit more than that. That's a bit more than that. Yeah, yeah. Well, I think he might have had to spend it on his own chocolatier.
32:16 Speaker 01 Ah.
32:16 Speaker 04 And it might have included staffing costs as well as...
32:20 Speaker 01 Okay. In that case, that's not even minimum wage.
32:22 Speaker 04 No, minimum wage is a more recent innovation. The first Earl of Bristol a while ago, and he, yeah, he was probably making back on the service, what he's, what he spent on the chocolate. Um, I, I recently went to a place called the Iquworth Rotunda, which is a great place. Uh, it's, uh, is it National Trust?
32:39 Speaker 02 It is, I've been there.
32:40 Speaker 04 Yeah, it's great.
32:42 Speaker 01 What's, what's a rotunda?
32:43 Speaker 04 Just a round, big old round building, and, um, it's got a couple of wings coming off the side of it. And it's, anyway, it's a lovely place, and, uh, it's, it was the sort of family home of the Earls of Bristol. Uh, and it was actually built for the fourth Earl, but there was an information display about the family's history. And they have, uh, the...
33:02 Speaker 01 Were you looking at the wallpaper and the displays like, someone get rid of this? It's getting in the way of the wallpaper.
33:10 Speaker 04 And they have facts about the sort of the family, and they have a few of the artifacts, and they have the chocolate pot of the first Earl of Bristol. This is how I spend my free time, Amy. And basically, it's all about, you know, we, we said, I think, before that hot chocolate was basically an aristocrats' thing. It was so difficult to get hold of, you know, growing cocoa, refining it, making it actually pleasant to drink. And so the really wealthy people would have their own chocolatier, uh, mostly royals. Hampton Court Palace has its own chocolate kitchen.
33:37 Speaker 03 Wow.
33:38 Speaker 04 Yeah.
33:39 Speaker 02 And when that happened, fashionable Londoners started getting their own chocolate kitchens installed. Like, that was the home improvement to have in the 18th century.
33:47 Speaker 01 That's like the air fryer of its day.
33:48 Speaker 02 It basically was, yeah. And you'd have to have a servant in there whose job was just to prepare the chocolates.
33:53 Speaker 01 That's really cool.
33:54 Speaker 02 Because it was such a process. You needed to get the beans, roast the beans, prepare the cake, as it were, of pressed bean paste, and then shave it in the right way, and then like stir it constantly. It was such a production to make it. And so obviously it was the wealthy who were having it.
34:09 Speaker 01 Yes.
34:09 Speaker 02 Yeah. That's very cool. This, I'm just having a memory of Iqworth now, which is the family who had it, the Ola Bristol's descendants, basically lost it from bad investments and so on. The Hervys, the like Lady Victoria Hervy.
34:25 Speaker 01 All that lot.
34:26 Speaker 02 Yeah. And on the walls there, in front of that delicious wallpaper, is the story of basically of how they squandered all of their good fortune.
34:35 Speaker 01 It's a display of like, these people screwed it up.
34:37 Speaker 02 Yeah.
34:37 Speaker 03 Was it they do gambling or?
34:39 Speaker 02 It was gambling, it was drinking, it was massive parties where everyone got like six bottles of champagne. It was just like, it's incredible seeing that. Like, and you're like, this person was born to the, a huge amount of money and died skinned. And just like, it just, time after time, these people are doing it.
34:53 Speaker 01 That's actually, to me, that's really nice to hear.
34:58 Speaker 01 You know what? I was reading a while ago about these card games became really popular, didn't they? Like Faro and stuff. And all of these really wealthy people lost their entire family fortunes. And then the people who got it were like the rough and ready people who were like a bit smart and a bit, I just, I love those stories.
35:17 Speaker 02 Yeah. I think they were a bit out of touch. Lady Victoria Hervy, in 2003, she was quoted in The Guardian as a roundup for 2003's greatest sayings, as saying, "It's so bad being homeless in winter. They should go somewhere warm, like the Caribbean, where they can eat fresh fish all day."
35:36 Speaker 01 Good God.
35:36 Speaker 03 Wow.
35:37 Speaker 01 That can't be.
35:38 Speaker 02 It was in The Guardian, yeah. So don't sue if it's, if it's not Lady Victoria. She's very busy at the moment defending Prince Andrew on TV at the moment, so she's, yeah, she's too busy to listen to podcasts.
35:47 Speaker 01 He goes to the Caribbean a lot, doesn't he?
35:49 Speaker 02 Oh, God.
35:49 Speaker 01 I heard.
35:52 Speaker 03 Can I tell you?
35:53 Speaker 02 Weinstein, Savile, Polanski, Leest. It's like, it's like Pino Pokemon we're playing today. Not good.
36:00 Speaker 01 I wish they would fucking catch them all.
36:06 Speaker 04 Lovely.
36:07 Speaker 03 Um, can I tell you about the most expensive hot chocolate in the world?
36:11 Speaker 04 Yeah.
36:12 Speaker 03 Do you wanna guess how much it costs for one cup?
36:14 Speaker 02 One cup, current, like-
36:16 Speaker 03 And this is currently, it's in New York.
36:17 Speaker 02 It's in New York?
36:18 Speaker 01 Thirty quid. Fifty dollars.
36:20 Speaker 04 I'll say, I'll say two hundred dollars.
36:22 Speaker 03 Okay.
36:22 Speaker 02 Two hundred dollars, okay.
36:24 Speaker 03 Yeah.
36:24 Speaker 02 So we've got quid and dollars, I'm gonna go for, uh, three hundred Australian.
36:29 Speaker 03 How many yen is that?
36:31 Speaker 04 Is that sixty quid?
36:33 Speaker 02 Ah, with the exchange rates.
36:34 Speaker 04 I don't know, I can't write the Australian rate with Ozzy.
36:36 Speaker 03 Well, you're all way, way off.
36:38 Speaker 02 No, you're not.
36:38 Speaker 03 Yeah. Twenty-five thousand US dollars.
36:42 Speaker 02 Impossible.
36:43 Speaker 03 No, it's true.
36:44 Speaker 02 What?
36:45 Speaker 03 So this is a restaurant in New York called Serendipity Three, and it features twenty-eight rare cocos, five grams of twenty-four carat edible gold, edible diamonds, and is served in a gold-encrusted goblet with a diamond-studded spoon, which you get to keep afterwards.
37:02 Speaker 02 Oh.
37:02 Speaker 03 But if you want to order it, you have to give them, like, two weeks' notice.
37:06 Speaker 02 Oh, yeah.
37:07 Speaker 03 For them to source all of the ingredients and everything. Twenty-five thousand dollars.
37:12 Speaker 01 Like, Beef Wellington's often like that, isn't it? You have to book it and head back.
37:15 Speaker 03 That's exactly the same, yeah. I think that's exactly the same.
37:21 Speaker 04 Are you on the cloud to your local cavalry?
37:24 Speaker 02 The, the diamonds are edible, aren't they?
37:29 Speaker 02 So, is that, sorry, edible diamond?
37:31 Speaker 04 Yeah, what is that?
37:32 Speaker 02 Like-
37:33 Speaker 03 Yeah.
37:33 Speaker 02 What, what the hell? Are you collecting it at home on the other side?
37:37 Speaker 03 Oh.
37:37 Speaker 02 What do you mean? Well, you don't, you're eating the precious stuff, right?
37:41 Speaker 03 Yeah.
37:41 Speaker 02 So are you, are you passing it on the other side and-
37:43 Speaker 03 In the bath.
37:47 Speaker 01 But edible diamond?
37:49 Speaker 03 Edible diamond.
37:49 Speaker 01 Yeah, amazing.
37:50 Speaker 03 Yeah. Do you think they crunch? Do you think you, like, crunch the diamonds and swallow? Or do you think it's literally like, um, you just swallow a diamond? Is anything edible if you can swallow it?
38:00 Speaker 02 Good, good, great question. Great question. Is anything edible if you can swallow it? Well, if it doesn't poison you, technically, it wouldn't be edible.
38:08 Speaker 04 Well, poison's edible, it's a bad view.
38:10 Speaker 02 But I guess, I guess we're saying-
38:12 Speaker 04 I'm on Amy's side here.
38:12 Speaker 02 I guess we're saying you wanna survive the process, right?
38:16 Speaker 04 I didn't have the twenty-five thousand dollars to begin with. I'm gonna need, I'm gonna need to die before the bill is presented.
38:25 Speaker 04 You said, Amy, just before we started recording.
38:27 Speaker 03 Yeah.
38:27 Speaker 04 You said you don't drink any hot drinks, but you do drink hot chocolates.
38:34 Speaker 03 Yeah.
38:34 Speaker 04 What's going on there?
38:36 Speaker 03 I'm a freak.
38:38 Speaker 02 Dan, some things are said off mic that should stay off mic.
38:43 Speaker 04 We'll get in the press, guys.
38:46 Speaker 04 Shortal's gonna be all over this.
38:47 Speaker 03 This is a scoop of hot chocolate.
38:51 Speaker 03 Yeah, I don't like the smell of coffee or tea, I don't like the taste of it, but hot chocolate, I mean, I defy anyone to not like hot chocolate. It's chocolate and it's hot.
39:02 Speaker 04 That's a good point. It's also very good for you if you believe Captain James Wadsworth.
39:07 Speaker 03 I do, yeah.
39:09 Speaker 04 So 1652, so this is really nearly first contact for Britain. I think it had arrived at about 1640. But anyway, it was accessible from one place initially in London, a bookseller in Hoban, not far from here.
39:23 Speaker 02 Oh, yeah.
39:23 Speaker 04 Called John Dakins, and there's an early example of an advert for it in the press, and it's just text saying, you know, "This cures fluxes, consumptions, coughs of the lungs, sundry other desperate diseases. It also causes conception, or helps to cause conception, hastens and facilitates birth. It's a good thing if you're in labour.
39:45 Speaker 02 That is good.
39:45 Speaker 04 And beauty gained and continued."
39:48 Speaker 02 Very nice. Good. I've read another way in which it's good for saving your life, as well as good health, is there was a story in America of a lady called Patricia Bohes, who survived an explosion in a chocolate factory in Pennsylvania because as it exploded.
40:09 Speaker 04 You okay, Andy?
40:10 Speaker 02 Yeah, it's just.
40:11 Speaker 04 Laughing like a primitive human.
40:13 Speaker 02 Very panty.
40:16 Speaker 04 It's really funny. I'm sorry to hear about this lady being in an explosion in a chocolate factory. But she must have done something to piss off Willy Wonka.
40:30 Speaker 02 Well, she was in this factory and there was a big explosion and her arm caught fire and she was running away from, yeah, and she was burning up. But as she was running, the floor collapsed and she fell through the floor into a giant vat of hot chocolate. And so the hot chocolate put her arm out and it also allowed for her, when she went under, to avoid the big explosion that happened. And firefighters eventually found her and she survived.
40:56 Speaker 01 Was she, because when you come out of that hot chocolate, it's going to solidify into a perfect shape of a, that's like a perfect Easter egg, isn't it?
41:05 Speaker 02 Yes, they wrapped her in foil, as you do, which in flames. So, yeah, no, she survived. There were sadly casualties, but she was one of the survivors of it. Yeah, so it can save your life.
41:19 Speaker 04 Um, hot chocolate, as in you sexy thing?
41:23 Speaker 02 Oh, the band, yeah.
41:25 Speaker 04 So Errol Brown? Yeah. Lead singer, great guy, heck of a voice.
41:31 Speaker 01 Oh, yeah.
41:31 Speaker 04 Sadly dead now. Um, when he left the band in 1985, thereabouts, his band replaced him with an Errol Brown impersonator.
41:41 Speaker 01 Oh.
41:41 Speaker 03 No way.
41:42 Speaker 02 Really?
41:43 Speaker 04 Yeah, who had been on Stars in Their Eyes doing Errol Brown.
41:46 Speaker 03 No way.
41:48 Speaker 04 Yeah.
41:49 Speaker 02 Imagine getting that call after doing that show. You're not going to believe this.
41:54 Speaker 04 Yeah, we're promoting you to be Errol Brown.
41:57 Speaker 01 God, I just imagine Errol Brown watching Stars in Their Eyes the first time when this guy comes out and goes, oh, fuck, he's good. I am in serious trouble here.
42:06 Speaker 03 Wow.
42:09 Speaker 04 Wow. But there's a lovely coda to this.
42:11 Speaker 02 Yeah.
42:12 Speaker 04 Errol Brown himself was born in Jamaica. And where did hot chocolate initially come to Britain from? Jamaica.
42:20 Speaker 03 Wow.
42:21 Speaker 01 Oh, as in the drink came from Jamaica?
42:22 Speaker 04 Sorry, yeah. The confusing thing is the band of the drink are called hot chocolate. Yeah. Sorry. Chocolate, like cocoa, started in, it was when Britain basically seized Jamaica from the Spanish. That's what they gained the cocoa plantations. And as a result, that's why hot chocolate came to Britain, because previously it had been a European thing.
42:40 Speaker 01 Okay.
42:41 Speaker 04 So that's just that little circle closed.
42:43 Speaker 01 Yeah.
42:44 Speaker 03 Do you think Errol Brown knew that and that's why they called it hot chocolate?
42:47 Speaker 04 Can't have not done.
42:48 Speaker 03 Sure. Wow.
42:52 Speaker 04 No, I've no idea. I've no idea why they called that.
42:54 Speaker 01 Well, I think.
42:58 Speaker 01 I think it's because he's a sexy man and his skin colour.
43:02 Speaker 02 Oh, right.
43:03 Speaker 03 Maybe.
43:03 Speaker 01 I'm pretty sure that's right.
43:10 Speaker 02 It was because it was in tribute to the shipping route of where in the 1500s.
43:21 Speaker 03 Well, but there is that song, Where Did You Come From, You Sexy Queen.
43:24 Speaker 01 Oh, yeah.
43:25 Speaker 03 By the shipping route.
43:29 Speaker 02 Oh, dear.
43:34 Speaker 05 Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.
43:48 Speaker 02 People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.
43:59 Speaker 05 And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone.
44:04 Speaker 06 One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies.
44:10 Speaker 05 So join us and hear their stories and more, because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At the Table, the food allergy podcast on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At the Table and start listening on the free iHeart Radio app today.
44:32 Speaker 02 Okay, it is time for our final fact of the show, and that is James.
44:36 Speaker 01 Okay, my fact this week is that in 1811, halfway through a big UK tour, the biggest cow in England was lost in a cockfighting bat and turned into meat.
44:49 Speaker 02 Bad gig, bad gig.
44:52 Speaker 02 But also halfway through the tour.
44:53 Speaker 01 Yeah.
44:54 Speaker 02 Like, yeah.
44:56 Speaker 04 With all the future venues have to be told.
44:58 Speaker 02 Sadly, due to the act being eaten.
45:03 Speaker 04 We've got a terrifically angry cockerel. If you want to see that.
45:09 Speaker 01 Okay, so this is the Craven Heifer. And the Craven Heifer is quite familiar to me because I learnt to play pool in a pub called the Craven Heifer in Bolton. Wow. And actually, there's quite a few pubs in the North England called the Craven Heifer. And I didn't know what it was, but apparently it was a real cow. And it was well known as the biggest cow in the whole of England. It was 11 feet and 4 inches from nose to rump. Wow. It was 5'4 at the shoulder and weighed 312 stone. And it went on tour around the country as this enormous cow. And so people would pay like a shilling to see this massive cow. It was from Yorkshire, it's from Bolton Abbey, which is near, like, Skipton, Keighley Way.
45:53 Speaker 01 And then they brought it all the way down to Haymarket and then took it back up. It was bought by this guy called John Watkinson, who decided, well, this is going really well. I'm going to buy this now, I'm going to tour it in even bigger venues. And then he managed to lose it at a cop fight. And it got turned into meat and he never made his money. It cost him 200 quid, which was probably a lot of money in those days.
46:16 Speaker 04 Oh, in those days, yeah.
46:17 Speaker 01 Yeah. And the Herald-
46:20 Speaker 04 That could keep the Earl of Bristol in hot chocolate for like a week.
46:24 Speaker 01 It was reported in the Herald as an ignominious end for the beast that once grazed within the precincts of Bolton Abbey.
46:31 Speaker 02 It's so bad because that's the, the guy who lost the bet is basically the agent of this cow, right? Can you imagine him coming back after that? And the cow's like, man, the tour is going great. Selling it out.
46:43 Speaker 01 This is awesome. I've got a few changes for this. I just think-
46:48 Speaker 02 Listen, I've got a bit of bad news. I lost you tonight, what?
46:54 Speaker 04 I think the tour wasn't going well, apparently.
46:56 Speaker 01 Oh, really? He was, I think Watkinson was having troubles.
47:01 Speaker 04 Yeah, absolutely.
47:02 Speaker 01 A lot of money for this cow, like, people had already seen it.
47:04 Speaker 04 Yeah.
47:04 Speaker 01 It was just a big cow.
47:07 Speaker 02 It's hard to ship tickets these days, you know, the prices and everything.
47:10 Speaker 04 It had done a tour, did you say this, to London?
47:13 Speaker 01 Yeah, it's kind of done a tour around the north, then gone all the way to London, come all the way back and then was on like a second run, which is why I say it was like halfway through the tour.
47:21 Speaker 04 Yeah. They say you only play Leeds there twice, once all the way up, once just before you're killed and eaten. Nice to be back.
47:31 Speaker 04 The first tour, I just find this really interesting, I love the Craven Heffer, it's amazing story. The first tour ended at Smithfield Meat Market in London.
47:39 Speaker 01 Which is a pretty dicey place to play if you're a cow.
47:42 Speaker 02 If I was a famously, famously big meaty cow, I would be looking at that tour route saying, so what, uh, so we're ending there, are we?
47:51 Speaker 01 No more shows after that? No? That's, that's literally the last show of the tour, right, okay.
47:57 Speaker 02 The agent's going, listen, if I was a bedding man, and I am sadly, I'd say we'll sell out.
48:04 Speaker 03 How would a cow, sorry, how would a cow be transported around?
48:07 Speaker 01 Ooh, uh. I think it walked, some other way, I think so.
48:12 Speaker 04 Carriages would be too, it was not.
48:15 Speaker 03 You couldn't get in a carriage if it's eleven foot.
48:17 Speaker 01 You could put it on like a flat thing which the carriage would pull.
48:21 Speaker 04 Oh, like a sort of a trailer.
48:23 Speaker 01 Eighteen eleven was the trains?
48:25 Speaker 04 No, trains weren't, trains weren't in business by then, no.
48:28 Speaker 01 Good question, actually, I don't know.
48:30 Speaker 02 Yeah. So many good questions.
48:31 Speaker 04 Yeah.
48:33 Speaker 03 How do you get a cow round country? Yeah, very good question, Amy.
48:41 Speaker 01 Next week, question time will be at home.
48:53 Speaker 02 This is, uh, I feel like, um, the research road that I've gone down is Northern News, which is your brilliant podcast with Ian, and, um, I was looking into other stories from early days. So, um, Fowridge in Lancashire, have you heard of Fowridge?
49:09 Speaker 03 No.
49:10 Speaker 02 Okay, so.
49:11 Speaker 01 I'm from Lancashire, never heard of Fowridge.
49:13 Speaker 02 Okay, well, there's a, there's a.
49:15 Speaker 04 Fowridge?
49:15 Speaker 02 Yeah, well, this is in 1912, there's a place there which is called the Mile Tunnel, which is more than a mile in length, some say it's just under, so I guess they've.
49:26 Speaker 04 Some say, some say.
49:29 Speaker 02 There'll be rumours.
49:30 Speaker 04 They do say.
49:33 Speaker 04 It'll be just under a mile, just under a mile.
49:37 Speaker 04 But they're mad.
49:39 Speaker 03 And that is how they're speaking Lancashire.
49:42 Speaker 02 I think we nailed it.
49:43 Speaker 03 Yeah, well done, guys.
49:45 Speaker 04 I'm doing my foreign exchange from somewhere.
49:50 Speaker 02 Well, anyway, in 1912, the Burnley Express reported with the headline, "Extraordinary event at Falridge", and it said-
49:58 Speaker 04 We've measured the tunnel and it's just over a mile.
50:04 Speaker 02 Anyway, no one had ever swam it. No one had ever swam it until 1912, until a cow did. Yeah.
50:12 Speaker 01 Good twist.
50:12 Speaker 02 And this was a very valuable cow, according to the paper called Buttercup, jumped into a-
50:20 Speaker 01 Funny name for a paper, go on.
50:26 Speaker 02 They jumped into the river.
50:28 Speaker 01 Uh, it was-
50:28 Speaker 02 Cows swim. Yeah, the cow- yeah, cows can swim. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Cows can- like, sometimes they get- like, I remember Ash, he used to be- he did the theme tune for our podcast. He was going between islands once on a small dinghy. And just in the middle between these two islands, there was just a pig swimming. They just passed a pig.
50:48 Speaker 01 If Faddis hadn't even asked if pigs could swim.
50:50 Speaker 02 Yeah. Yeah, but I would just say animals generally can swim. I took the bigger question.
50:58 Speaker 01 If you've ever seen a cow swim, that's still if you have some photographs, podcast at qi.com.
51:02 Speaker 04 Absolutely.
51:03 Speaker 02 Yeah.
51:03 Speaker 03 Oh, that'd be cool.
51:04 Speaker 01 Because we got a lot of people sending us evidence that chickens could fly the other day.
51:09 Speaker 02 That's true.
51:09 Speaker 04 Couple of weeks ago, I foolishly queried it and boy, was I wrong.
51:13 Speaker 01 So any more about this swimming cow?
51:15 Speaker 02 Well, they've been swimming since at least 1912, according to the Burnley Express, because it was startled by some boys and it swam this whole tunnel and it made it to the outside. A boat even went past it and didn't notice that it was in there. And yeah, that's just some-
51:28 Speaker 01 That's really interesting. I just looked up where it is. It's right next to Pendle Hill, which is where the witches were from.
51:33 Speaker 02 Oh, yes, yes. So maybe it was a witch's cow.
51:36 Speaker 01 The famous witches of Lancashire were from Pendle Hill.
51:39 Speaker 04 I don't know about them.
51:40 Speaker 01 There's not much to say about them apart from they were old ladies who lived there who were persecuted for allegedly being witches.
51:52 Speaker 04 Amy, on northern news-
51:54 Speaker 03 Yeah.
51:54 Speaker 04 Is there a northern news- Story that sticks out to you as especially good or bad, but memorable.
52:01 Speaker 03 Well, the first thing that popped into my head is, um, the papers were, went around to someone's house because he'd reported someone just kept shouting the word porridge through his letterbox.
52:12 Speaker 01 Is it Ronnie Barker?
52:16 Speaker 03 Um, and it was just doing his head in and he just was like, what, who's shouting porridge through my letterbox? And then, then it, um, moved on to somebody shouting, it's porridge time, Papa Bear.
52:29 Speaker 03 And it was a mystery. They never got to the bottom of it.
52:31 Speaker 04 They never got to the bottom.
52:32 Speaker 03 Yeah.
52:32 Speaker 04 Is this a recent mystery?
52:34 Speaker 03 I would say in the last, like, couple of years.
52:36 Speaker 04 Cause it feels like we've got doorbell cameras, like that you must be able to.
52:39 Speaker 01 CCTV.
52:40 Speaker 04 You've got to be able to set a trap for.
52:41 Speaker 03 You must be able to.
52:43 Speaker 04 Yeah. I'm now invested in finding out who that was. That's crazy.
52:46 Speaker 03 And what a strange thing, cause you know, the, the paper was saying, have you got any link to porridge or do you eat a lot of porridge? Nothing. There was nothing, but every day someone was shouting.
52:56 Speaker 04 Every day.
52:57 Speaker 03 Or at least most days people were just shouting, it's porridge time, Papa Bear.
53:03 Speaker 04 That's really.
53:06 Speaker 04 As pranks go, that's kind of perfect.
53:07 Speaker 03 Yeah.
53:08 Speaker 04 It's like how they say the perfect murderer is, you should just kill a stranger on a train and, and you've got no connection with them. There's nothing to link you to the crime.
53:15 Speaker 01 You've got a ticket that you've bought.
53:16 Speaker 04 Okay. Um, cancel, cancel the train.
53:23 Speaker 04 But you know, the perfect crime is just a completely random one.
53:25 Speaker 01 Yeah, I see what you mean.
53:26 Speaker 04 You can never be caught for it. And maybe it's just a random person decided, I'm going to shout porridge. It's porridge time, Papa Bear, through the door of this house every day.
53:33 Speaker 01 Yeah.
53:33 Speaker 03 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
53:34 Speaker 04 That's the perfect crime for me.
53:35 Speaker 03 That's great.
53:35 Speaker 04 Yeah, that's a great northern.
53:37 Speaker 01 Can I tell you another mystery that I found from some northern news? This is from Newcastle upon Tyne in 1975 in the newspapers. Actually, this, and if I say some more, they all came through a place called weirduniverse.com where they go through like all newspaper cuttings.
53:52 Speaker 04 Oh, cool.
53:53 Speaker 01 Anyway, this was, um, a lady, uh, in Durham marketplace who was trying to park in a parking spot, but found that impregnable force field prevented her.
54:05 Speaker 02 Yeah.
54:05 Speaker 01 Renting this parking spot. But the really interesting thing is then other drivers had the same problem and they couldn't because of this force field, they couldn't get into the car parking spot.
54:17 Speaker 02 Oh.
54:18 Speaker 01 What? Apparently no one seems to have any problem walking into the space, but they just couldn't park.
54:24 Speaker 02 Cars.
54:25 Speaker 04 James, what are you talking about?
54:27 Speaker 02 I think he's talking about Stephen King's Under the Dome, which is.
54:31 Speaker 04 The parking woman?
54:32 Speaker 02 I love that book.
54:36 Speaker 01 This was in the newspaper and then council officials later investigated and were able to pull into the space with no trouble.
54:43 Speaker 02 Oh, amazing.
54:44 Speaker 01 Wow.
54:46 Speaker 02 Yeah, but that always happens when you bring science into it.
54:49 Speaker 04 Yeah.
54:52 Speaker 04 Do you know what the most northern place in the UK is?
54:55 Speaker 02 In the UK?
54:56 Speaker 04 Sorry, the most northern point in England.
54:59 Speaker 01 Oh, in England?
54:59 Speaker 04 Like the most northern.
55:01 Speaker 02 In England?
55:02 Speaker 04 I'm not, I'm saying the most northern.
55:05 Speaker 01 Oh, I see. Fortunately.
55:08 Speaker 01 I would still say it would be somewhere like, I don't know, Berwick because that's quite south Scotland, isn't it? Yeah. I'd say like Newcastle or something.
55:16 Speaker 04 Well, it's a village called Langton Matravas, which is just near Swanage in Dorset.
55:21 Speaker 01 Come on. What?
55:22 Speaker 04 Some qualifications here.
55:26 Speaker 01 I feel like this is going to be offensive to two members of the team. Carry on.
55:30 Speaker 04 In 2022, Langton Matravas became the first place in the UK ever where True North, Magnetic North and Grid North all met at the same point. Because you know how Magnetic North is moving? It's moving across.
55:47 Speaker 01 Right.
55:48 Speaker 04 And there's Grid North and then there's True North. So and they're all slightly different things, depending on which way you cut it, basically. But that is the first bit where they all met.
55:57 Speaker 01 I don't think I really understand it, but that's cool.
56:00 Speaker 04 No, fair point. Yeah, fair, yeah.
56:03 Speaker 01 I don't know why anywhere else wouldn't have the same. Yeah.
56:07 Speaker 04 Because, so Grid North is the line that runs up to the North Pole.
56:10 Speaker 01 Yeah.
56:10 Speaker 04 On an ordnance survey map.
56:11 Speaker 01 Oh, as in like the Greenwich Meridian kind of?
56:14 Speaker 04 Kind of, yeah. And True North is something very similar to do with longitude lines. And then Magnetic North is the actual line to the Magnetic North Pole.
56:21 Speaker 01 Okay, yeah.
56:21 Speaker 04 And it was the first time they ever met, but it was in Dorset. So it wasn't in the north, it was just there.
56:25 Speaker 01 That's nice.
56:26 Speaker 04 Yeah, and it's moved since then, because it's moving.
56:30 Speaker 03 It's moved back to Yorkshire, where it belongs.
56:37 Speaker 01 In 1966, in June, 12-year-old Beatles superfan Carol Dryden of Sunderland decided to post herself to the Beatles.
56:46 Speaker 02 Yes.
56:48 Speaker 01 Yes. So she got into a big old box, paid the $8.47, because it was an American newspaper, which this was in, the Rochester Democrat Chronicle. So I rounded £10 in postage.
57:01 Speaker 02 Okay.
57:02 Speaker 01 And posted herself to the Beatles, care of their fan club, London. And apparently, she got as far as the railway station before a clerk noticed that the box was wobbling back and forth. She kind of got too hot because she hadn't put any air holes in the box and she was trying to take her sweater off. And then noticed it was moving.
57:22 Speaker 01 And yeah, they sent her home and refunded her postage.
57:27 Speaker 03 That's kind.
57:28 Speaker 04 That's very kind.
57:28 Speaker 02 That is kind.
57:29 Speaker 01 That's nice.
57:30 Speaker 03 Royal Mail wouldn't do that. They'd deliver you somewhere else, out of spite.
57:36 Speaker 03 They'd deliver you to the Rolling Stones.
57:39 Speaker 01 Send your daughter home, but she's behind the bins.
57:48 Speaker 02 Okay, that is it. That is all of our facts. Thank you so much for listening. If you would like to get in contact with any of us about the things that we've said over the course of this podcast, we can all be found online. I'm on at Shriverland on Instagram. James?
58:00 Speaker 01 My Instagram is @nosestingusjamesharkin.
58:02 Speaker 02 Andy?
58:02 Speaker 04 At Andrew Hunter.
58:03 Speaker 02 And Amy?
58:04 Speaker 03 At that Amy Gledhill.
58:06 Speaker 02 Yes, and there is so much Amy to be watching and listening to at the moment. There's Northern News, your podcast, Single Ladies in your area.
58:13 Speaker 03 Yeah.
58:14 Speaker 02 There's also Last One Laughing. You on Taskmaster?
58:17 Speaker 03 Yeah.
58:17 Speaker 02 My goodness.
58:18 Speaker 03 I'm sorry, it's too much, isn't it?
58:20 Speaker 02 That's brilliant. Where's the best place? Is it just, is it your Instagram?
58:23 Speaker 03 Instagram, yes, please.
58:24 Speaker 02 So do find Amy there. If you want to talk to us about the things that we've said over the course of this show, podcast at qi.com is the bigger place to go, because if you send us an email, you can send Your facts, which we will take and put on our bonus Monday show, which is called Little Fish. So send them there. Or if you've got feedback about things that we've said on our show or experiences that you've had about things we've spoken about, please send them in to drop us a line.
58:49 Speaker 01 Seen any good wallpaper recently?
58:50 Speaker 02 Yeah.
58:51 Speaker 01 Shat yourself.
58:52 Speaker 02 There were so many things that you could have done. And if you send them to andy@podcast@q i.com, he will pick them out for Jewel, which is drop us a line, which is our special mailbag episode. Now that's a sort of secret episode. It's part of our Patreon Club Fish. So if you want to become a member of that to hear that, go to patreon.com/clubfish. And there's multiple tiers of various different fun things that you can get when you're a member of our club. Otherwise, just come back next week because we'll be back here with another episode. And thank you as ever to the Fishbusters team. That's Liang Li, Ethan Ruparelia, and also the wider fish guys here in the building in Holborn. And we will see you again next week. Goodbye.
59:42 Speaker 05 She's been thinking about the sleepover all week, but I think about her food allergies all the time. Fortunately, her doctor prescribed Zolair, omalizumab. It's proven to significantly reduce allergic reactions if a food allergy accident happens.
59:55 Speaker 04 Zolair 150mg is a prescription medication used to treat food allergy in people one year of age and older to reduce allergic reactions due to accidental exposure to one of more foods. While taking Zolair, you should continue to avoid all foods to which you are allergic. Don't use if you are allergic to Zolair. Zolair may cause a severe, life-threatening allergic reaction called anaphylaxis. Tell your doctor if you ever had anaphylaxis. Get help right away if you have trouble breathing or if you have swelling of your throat or tongue. Zolair should not be used for the emergency treatment of allergic reactions, including anaphylaxis. Zolair is for maintenance use to reduce allergic reactions, including anaphylaxis, while avoiding food allergens. Serious side effects such as cancer, fever, muscle aches and rash, parasitic infection, or hardened circulation problems have been reported. Please see zolair.com for full prescribing information. Ask and tell.
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