No Such Thing As A Fish - 145: No Such Thing as E.T. Part Three

Episode Date: December 24, 2016

A Christmas compilation episode in which Dan, James, Anna and Andy take facts from the audiences of Fish's spin-off topical news show No Such Thing As The News.

Hi everyone, James here at Merry Christmas. This is our Christmas special and what it is, it's a compilation of all the best bits of the first half of our live TV show. So what we did is we asked the audience to bring in their facts and we read them out and we talked about them. Hopefully you'll enjoy it and the audio is a little bit sketchy because it's made of five or six different episodes but we hope it's really good. And if you haven't got everyone their presence yet then why not run out to the bookshop now and buy one, three, four, two QI facts to leave you flabbergasted, the perfect stocking filler for that one person who you can't think of anything else to buy them. Okay on with the show.

Hello everyone. So you guys have sent in your facts. We have a prize which is here which is one of our no such thing as a fish t-shirts. Very exciting. And so we're gonna read them out now. Do you guys want to start with one? Okay what have I got? Oh yeah I like this one. So it's about soon and now and it's from Alex. Hello thank you very much Alex. Hi Alex. Okay so the fact is the word soon used to mean right now but people would misuse it and so it came to me in a bit. Because maybe some people started saying soon to mean right now but then they were a bit delayed on their way and so they got to the place and then someone said oh they must have meant in a bit. Can I read another one here? Yeah yeah go for it. I just read this

and this seems I well I actually don't believe it. So Kieran where are you? Kieran's favourite fact. Kieran you better be right about this. According to Kieran. And the number plate of the car in which Franz Ferdinand was shot is the date that World War One ended. Do you know what that how exact a date is it 18 or is it literally 11 11 18 or? I've got a picture of the car. Okay. And it's this is eastsussexworldwar1.org.uk And it says did you know the Archduke's number plate reads a 11 11 11 18. So that could be 11 11 18. Kieran I take it all back. That's really cool. One thing I know about Franz Ferdinand is that they used to sew him into his clothes. Oh really? And so when he was shot they couldn't

really loosen his clothes because obviously they he was like sewn into them and that was perhaps one of the reasons why he died because they couldn't get the bullet out. Mainly the shooting thing but also it's not there 100% to blame the clothing store. He was shot essentially by incredibly bad luck wasn't he in the end because they missed him and then I think this is true I think they're the first time I can't say they missed him and then they gave up and all the people who'd plotted to assassinate him were arrested and sent away except there's one guy who went to buy a bagel somewhere else in town and he stepped out and I think he was holding a sandwich in one hand as Franz Ferdinand and his wife went past. No not only went past the car broke down.

Oh yeah. He stood there with the bagel and the car just stopped and he was like because he thought that it was going a completely different direction and then I'm pretty sure there might be a historian in here he then tried to kill himself. The bullet ricocheted into Franz Ferdinand. Failed about six times because he jumped into a fleet into a river so he jumped over a bridge he thought this will this will kill me I'll drown it didn't and the river was only about that high so he ended up breaking his legs and he took a cyanide pill but it was old so he ended up vomiting and then before the police got there all the locals got there and started beating him up so he'd he was soaked with broken legs with vomit coming out from a fake side like getting his ass kicked by

locals. It was a terrible end to it. Was that one of the other I think that was one of the other guys wasn't it? Oh it was okay. Who tried and failed. Yeah so the main guy who just got the little princip wasn't it? Yes. I've been to that to that bridge actually and my memory is that that river was a bit deeper than is there any historians in who know that story? No? Okay well we'll go with it then. We'll believe it. I got all that by the way from a Ben Elton novel so I'm not sure. And in that, Franz Rodin has killed by a time traveller. I've got one here from Harrison Fleming. There we go. Australian bush rangers, brackets outlaws, would put their horses on their horses backwards so that their tracks would appear

to be going in the opposite direction. Isn't that cool? And I like that because apparently that's what Yeti's doing. Oh I knew you were going to say that. They take their feet off and they put them on the other way around so when you think they've gone that way they've busted loose that way. Yeah and that's the only reason we've never seen them is that right? According to the park ranger at the Yeti park he says they can turn themselves invisible. That's the Yeti park in Bhutan. Yes. Did you go to it? You've been to Bhutan. I've been to Bhutan but I didn't go to the Yeti park. Maybe you did. Is it Walt Sampia's country or has it happiness ministered isn't it? Yeah I mean they show you round and you only see the bits that they want you to see so it

seems like a very happy country but um. So maybe the happiness minister is just focusing on those parts for now. We did do this on the podcast but it got rejected which is that according to Poland's only officially registered ghost hunter the ghosts in Poland are now going on strike and the reason they're going on strike is they're sick of our skepticism towards them so they've said they said to him if you're going to have that attitude we're not going to bother haunting you anymore. But isn't that a good like oh none of the crockery's broken like that's a good thing isn't it? The walls aren't covered in ectoplasm. Not for the ghost hunter they'll have to start breeding them. Ghosts. Yeah. Isn't that just killing people? So I've got a fact here from Emily

and Alan a joint effort. Hello there guys. Hi. Is it just you Emily like on the other side of the room if you had a fight. And this is that the US military bled AC DC music at General Noriega's who was a 1980s dictator in Panama's knee. At General Noriega's compound in Panama for two days continuously to remove him and he surrendered as a result. Is it that bad? I think that's yeah it depends which album. You won't believe this but Andy knows every single AC DC album and that's all he listens to at the office. You know I've got six. I'll tell you what though after the second one they start getting pretty repetitive. Let's do one more from your side. Sure okay well I have one here it's got a really nice picture on so that's the reason I'm reading it by Amy

East Thorpe East Thorpe. Oh hello. It is that symptoms of asthma can be treated with a roller coaster ride and there's a nice picture of someone on a roller coaster. Do roller coasters not cure gallstones as well they said this week. Do they cure everything? So someone did a study where kidney stones maybe. Yeah they took fake kidneys onto roller coasters and they put stones into them and then the stones would kind of work their way out of these fake kidneys and it happened more if you were at the back of the roller coaster than at the front. But doesn't it matter how they work their way out because they haven't put a person who feels actual pain around the fake kidney. That's true. So if they're working their way out through your spinal cord then presumably

that is a viable solution to kidney stones. That's true. Shall we carry on? Yeah yeah you go. This is from Anna Martinez. Oh hello Anna and it's got a citation as well which is why I like it. It's from nature from May 2007 even the month. Viagra is excellent cure for jet lag in hamsters. Did they find that out by chance? Oh he's been at the Viagra again. He seems very perky. In spite of us flying back from Singapore. Wait so I didn't know animals get jet lag. Oh yeah they do even plants get jet lag. Plants get jet lag. I think they've tried it in bacteria get jet lag. I'm seeing to remember. What about rocks? Yeah. Anything else? Oh I got a good fact. It's more of a quiz question. According to Steven Spielberg

this is just talking about plants and rocks and animals. According to Steven Spielberg what is ET? So ET the extraterrestrial. Is he a plant a rock or an animal? I would just say an animal. A rock. He's a plant. Is he bollocks? He's a plant. He's a plant. He comes from a plant planet and his job is a biologist. Yeah yeah because I read the sequel to ET which is the I didn't okay I didn't read the actual book. I read the review on Amazon which says right at the end it's written by William Cosnical and William Cosnical wrote the original novel of the of the movie so that like the screen adapted novel and the review ends by saying I hope there's a future sequel in the trilogy of what should be a trilogy of ET

because there are so many unanswered questions left at the end of this second book. For example what happens to the turnip ship when it goes into the multi-dimensional wormhole. So spoiler alert for the end of the novel ET part two. Okay Anna do you got one? Yeah so this is another one this one's about Sean Connery. Sean Connery was once pulled over and fined by a British officer for does that say speeding? Yeah. It looks like speeding but I assume speeding. What are the odds it would be the word speeding? Could be how Sean Connery pronounces spitting or something I don't know right? The officer's name was Sergeant James Bond. No. That didn't have a citation actually so. All right I got another one which is that um so I'll read the fact and we can find out who it is

who sent in afterwards. Wolfsburg football club's longest serving manager was slash is called Wolfgang Wolf. That's incredible. So good. Who was that? What's your name? James. James. I know some of the funny football names. Yeah yeah. There was one guy who played for Chelsea called Naughty Naughty which I was like and do you remember that guy um he was the goalkeeper for Australia when England beat Australia 8-1 or something I think it was and he was called Norman Conquest. I've got a I've got a football fact here which is about a Swiss football team I don't want to give it away. Who's it from? Michael. So this is the fact that Swiss football team Young Boys play at Wankdorf Stadium. Very good fact. I've got another one here this is from Katie Clark.

Where are you Katie? Okay. Okay so the flag that flies over Big Ben over the houses of parliament is the same size as Wimbledon's centre court. That's a big ass flag. That is huge. You're not thinking table tennis? I don't know. I was walking past it the other day and I did think what an unusually large flag it was. I genuinely did. And I was walking past Wimbledon thinking what a small tennis court. It's from Mark. Is it Mark? It's a drawing. No fact, just a nice picture of you all. Anyway, Mark's thought outside the box. It's an interesting choice for the fact to read out. It's not that read out friendly. There's one person in a tie which is Dan. There's one with big hair which is James. There's one who's got the woman's hair which is you. There's one completely

neutral stick man. It's a really good likeness though. I got a fact here. This is the reason that scuba divers roll out of the boat backwards is that if they rolled forwards they would fall into the boat. And that was that was sent in by two people. Exact wording. Sam Barton and Ellen Crane. Are you two together? Okay, two cheeky ones. Shall I read out an actual fact? Okay, this is from Ben and it is that major league baseball umpires are required to wear black underwear in case they tear their trousers. My favourite fact about baseball is about Clarence Blethen. Do you remember that one? He was sliding into fourth base once in 1920 and he bit himself on his own arse. He had to be taken out of the gate.

You're going to have to explain that. He was very flexed with that. He had false teeth and they fell out. I really like there was um Lou Gehrig, very famous baseball player, more famous now so for Lou Gehrig's disease. So I was reading a Stephen Hawking biography and at the top they mentioned Lou Gehrig's disease and then there's a little footnote that says recent research has shown that Lou Gehrig didn't in fact die from Lou Gehrig's disease. He died from something very similar to Lou Gehrig's disease. So he's got a disease named after him that wasn't what he had. Just one more baseball. Yeah, yeah. See the Cubs have got to the major league to the um to the finals this time the first time in like 75 years or something. But when I was reading about that I heard about

a guy called Joe Sprintz and in 1939 he tried to break the record for the highest that anyone had dropped a baseball that he could catch it and so he got a blimp to go up 800 feet and they dropped a baseball down. He had a glove and it came down and it caught him in the glove, hit him in the face and it broke his nose and he lost five teeth. And worse still he dropped the ball. So this is from David. It's about a rocking chair. Oh hi. So this is that when the world's largest rocking chair was built it was immediately welded to the ground because the sight of it rocking in the wind terrified the locals. Very good. That's amazing. Sorry next one. I've got one. Yep. It's about Adam and who's that from? What's your name? I'm Stephen. Stephen, hello.

So it's about Adam and we all know Adam and don't we? Music person. Yeah, famed 80s music person Adamand. Adamand used to walk Paul McCartney's dog because Adamand's mum was his cleaner and he helped with the dog walking. I got one here which is that the Kakapo parrot is an endangered species of parrot. It evolved out of being able to fly so can't fly anymore. However they have forgotten that they can't fly and that's true. They know that they can fly but they don't try it on the ground. They climb up trees. They go to the end of branches and go I'll have my fly now and they plummet to the ground and it's killing them. Yeah they're endangered now so they're trying to stop them. They're trying to

go you can't fly. And on top of that that's not on here but they also have this thing where and this was in there's a very famous Douglas Adams book called Last Chance to See and he talks about how Kakapo parrots have a mating call that when they when they do their mating call it's really deep so deep it's kind of like the base of a stereo system so it's just this kind of noise. Now the problem with the base of a stereo system is the point is if you put it in your room no matter where it's playing from you can't find the source that's meant to be the the idea of it it surrounds them so their mating call gets them nowhere because the female parrot is like where are and so she can never find the Kakapo. Wow that reminds me a bit of um do you remember that

story about lesbian sheep? So what's that great bedtime story? No so um there are lesbian sheep and the thing is if you're a female sheep and you want to mate what you do is you stand perfectly still and wait for the male to come and mount you and so when you've got two lesbians sheep um they both stand perfectly still and so they're both kind of stood there looking at each other Are you gonna go or am I? That's amazing. So that bird fact did anyone see the um documentary this week which showed that kind of seabird and I can't remember what it is it's like a little puffin that lives at the top of a cliff and it rears they rear one young one youth every year and then as soon as the youth is ready they push it off the cliff really really high

and it has to stick its wings out and try to hit the sea but the sea isn't directly below it the sea is about 150 meters away from the cliff 150 meters and it's unbelievably far they're unbelievably high and there are loads of wolves waiting to eat them and you just most of them just they go they don't quite and they do slow motion filming are they gonna make it and most of them don't they hit the ground they tumble over and then their wolves come up imagine being that wolf though that was pretty good so far just looking up with your mouth exactly uh Anna have you got another one yeah sure um this is that which one do I like it okay I don't know who's admitted this I don't know anything about it but when the ancient Romans deployed lions against

Germanic tribes the tribesmen simply assumed they were large dogs I don't believe that I always it feels like really an instinctive fear when you see it I can imagine even if I'd never seen one going out it just looks like a strange panel it feels like you probably would get scared of it the first time it turned you into a ghost you probably uh Andy do you want any um I do like this one uh John Le Carré's father once seduced a woman on a night train by claiming to be John Le Carré uh that's hilarious how do you pretend to be him though he would have known all the relevant stuff about his childhood I suppose yeah but you could you could just make that no one knows John Le Carré well enough that they'd be like oh yeah I knew about his butterfly obsession when

like no one knows anything he's a spy the guy's a spy that's all that's true here's another one in 1996 two neighbors in Devon spent a year hooting at owls on a where they were actually hooting at each other I was weirdly reading a story uh yesterday about uh this is from like 10 years ago in Iceland there was a lady who um who was with this big party and she got changed she just went off and got changed and when she got changed no one recognized her and thought that the woman that was she was before in the other clothing had gone missing so they sent out a huge day long search party in order to look for this lady and the lady herself was in the search party going what did she look like again yeah I'll help out and then they worked out it was her just in different clothing since you

mentioned birds my favorite thing about birds this week that came out is that they've just found out that swifts can stay in the air without touching the ground or a tree for 10 full months without touching down one single time yeah it's not incredible and we don't know how they're sleeping or eating but they're mating and eating in the air aren't they they are eating in the air are they mating I thought it was pre-breeding season and then maybe they do a little bit oh I think they do a bit yeah they might do recreation yeah we think that they've seen that they they gain altitude at dusk at bedtime um and we think maybe they do this so that then they can go to sleep and then they just gradually descend and by morning when they wake up they just wake up in time

onto the ground they may be sleep like on a cloud because that's quite fluffy okay this is about a place in Canada called church hill who is this that from oh hello what's your name Clint I'm gonna call you Clint was it clim clim k l i m like that okay well uh oh actually I've just noticed your name is on this so this is from Clint um uh people in church hill Canada leave their car doors unlocked in case neighbors need to make a quick escape from polar bears what that's good isn't it I thought because people always say that people think how to leave their house doors unlocked because they're so friendly they're not friendly that is terrified another thing you don't get there is door knobs right oh yeah you still kind

of do have some door knobs but if you make a new building in vancubi you're not supposed to put door knobs on it and that's so that old people who've got arthritis will be able to use levers instead of knobs yeah that's or also polar bears will be able to use okay this is a fact from Alex about oxymorons it's that oxy is greek for sharp moron is greek for dull oxymoron is an oxymoron so good that's pretty good can't believe I didn't know that um we got just on on words uh we got sent in because we asked people on twitter as well to send in some facts and I really like this uh this is from someone called at stray gym and you said during the 1914 christmas truce germans put up a sign facing the british troops saying

got mit uns effectively got with us the british responded by erecting a sign facing the german saying we got mit uns too that's going nice how do they get across the slightly offensive german accent in sign form we got we got a fact here about fiji and their declaration of independence who was that yeah what's your name joe so uh this is joe's fact in 2010 fiji lost their declaration of independence and had to ask britain for a photocopy um let's do a few more uh yeah so this is about pistachios uh is that your name already you are just a fan of lucy so this is from lucy about pistachios and this is the fact that if too many pistachios are shipped in the same container they will self eat and spontaneously combust wow is that true yeah is it could be tried it yeah

do you remember uh ages ago I I said this on the podcast and then uh everyone was like it can't be true and I was like it's definitely true and then we found out it definitely wasn't true um but I was I was told it by ash who's up there in the corner ash is the uh singer and composer of our theme tune this is empiresse wasps ash and he told me and I used it on the show I was like that's amazing that when you're bringing sparkling water overseas from somewhere uh before you take the sparkling water into a boat you have to remove all the bubbles because it'll explode on the other side or it will go on fizzy so what they do is they take out all the bubbles and then they ship the water out and then on the other side they put the same bubbles back in it's the same is the fact

that it's the same bubbles that makes it impossible gotta be the same ones we've got bubbles yeah and then and then I told I told ash I was like after we found out that it wasn't real which like there's no even way to google that because it's not so everything I was like ash it's like that wasn't real and he was like yeah I know I found it wasn't real ages ago yeah like that was the same episode when you said that um if you have water which you can't drink you can feed it to a camel when it vomited out and then it'll be completely drinkable and I still stand behind that fact I'm pretty sure an explorer wrote into us and said how do you mock it you wrote into me I am an explorer of sorts yeah I found in a book it was like a 19th century explorer's book and he

said a good way to treat dehydration is to drink the vomit of a camel so I mean it was obviously nonsense at the time but I think people have believed it for a while I definitely remember reading a reference but that's for dehydration and not for poison I'm sorry it was about sorry it was for poison it was the toxins thing yeah so the jury's out on whether if you're dehydrated you should drink a camel vomit it's got liquid content why are we all being so squeamish about this that fact actually reminds me of bees I think bees air-condition themselves by spitting inside of their hives don't they so that it creates like a nice bit of condensation which cools them down in summer like that and they spit on each other's faces to call each other

okay turkey vultures um we down their own legs to cool themselves down this is actually sorry but you mentioned vultures this is one of my favorite facts I found on this series of qi we just researched which is that um the reason that vultures have bare necks they don't have fur on their necks is because it's quite hard for them to scavenge actually because it's quite hard to get into the body of a dead animal so if there's not an open wound then they find the easiest orifice to enter through and so they either go in through the eyeballs of you know your dead deer all they just go straight up the arse and the reason that they they have that little bare bit is so that they don't pull their heads out covered in feces from the animal that they've been scavenging

inside they do and they'll cover them feces but it doesn't kind of stick there because they don't have all the feathers yeah yeah yeah it's easier to remove just to clarify that wait so that's literally why they've evolved like that so they don't get the rest of their body covered in shit but their head is well they don't usually need to crawl up entirely inside the animal usually just the neck is enough I know it's just odd that they haven't worked out how to eat something else that they've just thought well let's let's just lose all the feathers here and then we can keep getting shit all over our heads this is about German international development agencies ah who is that Joe hi Joe um okay I pretty much already read all of it um the German

international development agency is called jizz it's called giz and then open brackets jizz is giz is that an acronym yeah but you you do call it jizz great Andy have you have you got one yes mine is also about German and about squirrels anybody hello what's your name Ed hello Ed's fact is the German word for squirrel literally means oak croissant eichhornchen yeah can we get some verification from the back they've left citation needed I think Ed

this one's about kangaroos uh and it's got a drawing on it is that ring a ring a bell with anybody hello oh right at the back what's your name clint Lewis uh this fact's from Lewis and it's it's I'm gonna read it out verbatim my fact is rubbish but I didn't google it brackets for shame on you googlers then we get to the meat of the matter a kangaroo licks its arms to stay cool and then there's a drawing of a kangaroo licking its arms which is really good that's quite good that's great don't they um pose with their biceps when they're trying to pick up lady kangaroos they do yeah yeah there's all these photos of kangaroos are like oh do you want me to get that for you like genuinely bicep sort of body

building kangaroos they also very famously have three vaginas don't they yes very famously within the qi office yeah it's not in the australian national anthem is it speaking of things which have three vaginas no wait a minute no are you gonna say what I think you're gonna say I think I know she doesn't have three vaginas no but do you want us at utopia so a kangaroo has three vaginas which means it has two wombs because it has two um extra kind of bits that go out to a womb and does anyone know some body else who has two wombs james found this out just today and he can't stop talking about I wanted to use it for the show but they wouldn't let me and mary berry mary berry has two wombs has two wombs and three vaginas so

that's no way to speak about melonsu and paul hollywood you you