No Such Thing As A Fish - 341: No Such Thing As A May-I Sandwich

Episode Date: October 2, 2020

Dan, James, Anna and Rhys Darby discuss dog dramas, wacky walks, and killer Kiwis.  Visit nosuchthingasafish.com for news about live shows, merchandise and more episodes.

Hi everyone, welcome to this week's no such thing as a fish Andrew Hunter Murray is off on his Holly Bob's this week And so we have been joined by the absolutely brilliant hilarious Kiwi actor and comedian Reese Derby We were lucky enough to get him because he is currently in quarantine in a hotel somewhere in New Zealand And frankly didn't have a lot more to do with his time Now you might know Reese from Flight of the Concord. You might know him from Jumanji and in podcast terms You might know him from the cryptid factor which is his podcast all about the mysteries of the world Which he does with a certain Daniel Schreiber as well as another guy called Buttons who I'll be honest is

Really the genius behind the whole thing, but we've got Reese and Dan on this week. Anyway, I really hope you enjoy the show We had a whole lot of fun making it do check out the cryptid factor and for now on with the podcast Hello and welcome to another episode of no such thing as a fish a weekly podcast coming to you from four undisclosed Locations three in the UK and one in New Zealand. My name is Dan Schreiber I am sitting here with James Harkin Anna Tachinsky and Reese Derby and once again We have gathered round our microphones with our four favorite facts from the last seven days and in no particular order here We go starting with you Reese well in

1943 a spy who topped the Gestapo's most wanted list was New Zealander Nancy Wake Who once judo chopped a Nazi to death? I Didn't even think that was possible. I don't know. Is it possible? I suppose you can if you can chop a brick in half you can chop a Nazi in half. Can't you I suppose? I don't I don't think she chopped him in half. Oh, right Yeah, well, let me just check my notes. Yes in half. Wow. I mean those are strong hands guys So tell us more about her well She was the and still is I believe the most decorated

Female of any war so she's a Kiwi She became a spy now. She actually left home at the age of 16. I'm gonna do the whole bio now take me 20 minutes She left home at 16 with 200 pounds in her pocket and went to London and self taught herself journalism and then She ended up in France And she was there during all the the Nazi build-up watching Hitler's Horrific actions in the early days and decided she entered she interviewed Hitler didn't she or at least she was sent to interview him I couldn't find out if she actually got the interview. I couldn't find that maybe she didn't quite get through the crowds

Yeah, she's me. Mr. Hitler. Mr. Hitler. I word please just just just about these the whole Jew thing She's missing opportunity if she has the karate skills, you know got him early, right? It's weird because it would look like an erratic sig heil wouldn't it look like come on Just keep it firming up and she's well You can start off and the full extension of the heil and then come whacking down I mean that could be what she did, but I don't think she did in fact I think the whole judo thing might have just been a little bit of a kind of Fluff it may not have been knowing her

Not that I do but knowing the way. She was trained being ex-military myself a little bit of disclosure there Kill a man in four seconds using my bare hands. It was years ago now I was you know 18 at the time, but it's more of a breaking of the neck from behind I'm assuming that's what she did. Nice, but hey, you know judo sounds cooler But it sounds a bit like judo Have you actually been taught how to come up behind someone and kill them to death with a neck chop kill them to death? Kill them to death It's not really a thing. I always thought it was a myth that people told each other in the playground when they were 12

No, no, it's it's you learn unarmed combat. I was in the regular force cadets In the New Zealand Army, so it was kind of an elite training school And then once I was I didn't actually do the the full-on hand-to-hand combat till I was a signala Two years later, and I remember doing it in Hopsinville Air Force Base and we were doing unarmed training and it was about there There's a certain way you can kill someone and under five seconds basically I don't want to divulge too much information. No, it's a bit gross But yeah, you know, I was trained if anyone ever goes to one of Reese's gigs do not hackle in

Well, I'd be enough they don't I think the word got out Once someone did here come in I went excuse me come here come here No, please actually turn around It was never seen again She was pretty um, she was pretty badass wasn't she Nancy wake in terms of you know I feel like if it hasn't been published yet a little book of quotes would be a really enjoyable read because she did do bad stuff to people like Someone to death and she said I was not a very nice person and it didn't put me off my breakfast I just love that little extra like she was like I had to do what I had to do

Isn't it it's quite like, you know from an action movie the kind of thing someone would say yeah Exactly and and there's a sort of famous story about the fact that when she went to help out so she eventually helped out with the French resistance and There's a story involving the fact that she was married to a Frenchman She had to leave to London, but then she came back into France to help out and She parachuted back into the country and when she parachuted in she landed in a tree And that's where she was caught up and eventually her French contact found her hanging into this tree and You can guess her response then so the man who eventually finds her the Frenchman says I hope that all the trees in France bear such beautiful fruits this year

She's yeah, and she looked down at him. I've got a lovely pair She won't don't get me that French shit Again just wonderful badass. Well, this is interesting. She was she was gorgeous and This is part of her charm. So as a resistance fighter You know she used to get through the guards by actually using flirtatious behavior and saying would you like to search me? And she used her womanly charms, but also she had more balls than any man So she's an inspiration and coming from a country

That she comes from that I come from New Zealand with a strong Feminist background. We were the first to give women the vote 1893 we have a very strong female leader right now that the world is in awe of and I just feel it's kind of a this is a great person to talk about Yeah, because yeah, she's she's she's a Forced to be reckoned with and I wish she was alive today because she could she could turn a few heads I don't know. I mean she'd just be chopping people to death. I think I Quite I mean

I think one of the very few areas where women get off better than men is that in stories like this You're badass if you're a woman, but if you're a man, you're really mean. I mean she was She was vicious, right? She yeah time that she said that she wasn't she sort of had to be but apparently she didn't she had a Very bad temper and she didn't survive very well in the post-war world because her predilections were more for sort of Going around Upsetting people and killing people but when she said she wasn't put off her breakfast that was when she'd interrogated these French women and She decided that one of them was definitely a spy and so put her to death by firing squad and then was like, yeah

Didn't put me off my breakfast. Yeah, she she was badass, but I think yeah, she struggled in peacetime to I I believe that You know people are born for their time in some in some ways and when the war finished She felt lost she felt like the action had stopped and she didn't know what to do after that because her purpose was Doing what she did and she did it so well and and I think there's a lot of people that fit into that and the same bracket Yeah, she did say when you were saying that she was quite attractive I think she did she she walked Chanel lipstick everywhere I think she was never traveling without her Chanel lipstick her face cream and apparently her favorite red satin cushion Which seems like quite a cumbersome thing to carry around with you when you're supposed to be she she probably used it to asphyxiate people to death

I would say that satin cushion. That's it when the chop didn't work Apparently she once fled a car that was under fire There was that she about to explode and then she ran back in order to collect a saucepan a jar of face cream a packet of tea and Her red satin cushion after which the car immediately exploded. I mean, that's a weird behavior But she said that she never had any affairs didn't she during the war and the reason being because she was so attractive She said if I had accommodated one man the world the word would have spread around and I would have had to accommodate the whole damn lot so If she'd have started shugging she would have never got anything else done. That's what she roll reverse you roll reverse that one

It does seem surprising that there hasn't been a big sort of film made of her life Maybe there has maybe this is there's a Kiwi film out there Well, I think there's one in the making right now and of course they say the movie Charlotte Gray, which was a book as well is partly inspired by her I've got another quote here because in the end of her near the end of her days She ended up back in in London and living in the the Stafford Hotel By the way, so you guys have been there the American bar Which is which is in that hotel is where she would even in her 80s would get up in the morning and have a gin

She's always a good drinker lived to 98 by the way. So that makes me feel good about my drinking, you know, it doesn't affect you at all And now here's a quote. So she said in the end because she actually sold her middles There's all these middles she got she sold them. She says look, I'll probably go to hell anyway and that only melt Isn't that great Yeah, she this hotel that she lived in She was given a complete Everything was paid for and I it's a concept I love the idea of I think every hotel should have a resident badass or just someone with a history

Yeah, you can find at the bar and just go and get their story and they live there completely free and So glad to know that that existed for her. I think that's really wonderful Are you thinking of the major in faulty towers? Basically, she Was actually thinking when I when I found that fact out as well that I was thinking to myself and my older days I'm gonna end up in some cool hotel and I'm gonna be the guy there that gets free drinks I'm just gonna have to achieve a few more things That was a great way to end your days I don't know you can either do more impressive things or you can set your sights on a less impressive hotel

So I think that maybe that's what the major did like the major kind of didn't do quite so well in the war So we had to go to faulty towers. Maybe yeah, if you if you just go for a travel lodge, you could probably do that right now You're premier in level Whichever you want the jokes on all of you because I'm already in a hotel I'm in an isolation hotel at the Christchurch Airport, and I'm never leaving here. I get three meals a day They knock on the door. They deliver it in a bag. I don't have to do shit It's living the dream Living the dream we should say that Reese isn't in prison or anything. He's just in quarantine. It's not sort of

That's pretty nice of you But there is a small courtyard where we are allowed to do a little bit of a run-around Went out there yesterday, and there was a guy out there having a smoke going You come back from LA and Korea's not going too well So a part of what Nancy was doing was smuggling people out of France this is what a lot of people's roles was this time and to smuggle them to safety and Do you know there's so a lot of resistance fighters would smuggle children over the border to safety and they'd have to smuggle them out with Their ID cards and it became policy amongst the resistance to smuggle children's ID cards inside their sandwiches

Because apparently one resistance fighter realized that the Nazis never searched the sandwiches that had mayonnaise on them because it might dirty their uniforms Why they called it may I Back and that was called may I isn't to inspect the sandwich, and then they changed it over time to may oh Done you have had your place taken as the dubious facts Yeah The the French resistance is there's so many interesting stories of amazing characters some quite well-known names one famous Person who became famous later in life, but was part of the French resistance was the great Mime Act Marcel Marceau And

Yeah, and it's really a sweet he must have been he must have been a signal man as well. I reckon like He'd be able to get anything across what's that Marcel it's windy. Yeah, you're stuck in a box Hang on. He's pulling on a rope here. He needs a rope does he know he's already got one. What's We're doing some extravagant mine here, which you won't be able to feel the benefit of at home Only is it I was told this was a visual More of a physical comedian Um, yeah, he had been studying Marcel Marceau had been studying Mime already at that point and they snuck out a lot of children across the border and

Part of the problem is you know children kind of don't get it It's really hard to get children to understand the concept of you have to be absolutely quiet and and so on and so Marcel Used to do my max to them and using his mime and sort of entertaining them Sort of as it were trick them into going silent so that they were part of this act He rescued over 70 children and his brother over 350 children And I believe his brother was involved in doing the mayonnaise trick as well with the ID cards They used to do things where they I think it was his brother But they did stuff like they'd go near the border and they would throw a stick over and

They'd get the kid to chase it and the kid would go pick it up But then they'd be over the border and then they were fine and they had their ID card in their mayonnaise sandwich So they could just get on with life They were dogs. We say children we mean dogs. Yeah They were smuggling dogs out chase the stick might it was a ball come on down. It was a ball They weren't throwing sticks for children sticks balls all sorts of things But he was I think it was Marceau's maybe his cousin George Roger Maybe it was cousin his cousin and brother but his cousin George sort of led a lot of these efforts

And he died in 2018 age 108 So maybe the key to longevity is gin in the morning and just saving loads of kids lives. Yes. Well, we're halfway there Okay, it is time for fact number two and that is James Okay, my fact this week is that John Cleese's silly walk is exactly 6.7 times sillier than a normal walk Course it is Okay, so first of all for anyone who's young listening to this. This is a sketch from Monty Python And for anyone you should not have to say that come on Please I know but you're young and you and you didn't know that ask yourself a question

Why don't you know that? Wow, that's a real slam see that's the kind of comedy slam you'd get from watching the comedy grapes So there was a couple of scientists called Nathaniel Domini and Erin Butler Who happened to be married and they are both at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire? And they looked at how John Cleese's knees flex when he was walking doing his silly walk And they found that occasionally his knees bent around 110 degrees when he walked when in a normal person they would bend around 20 degrees and They kind of put in that and a whole load of other parameters and they worked out that his

Walk is exact on the show is exactly 6.7 times more variable than a normal walk Although when he did the live performance in 1980 it was only 4.7 times more variable So they thought maybe as he was getting older. He was getting a bit less silly So amazing But but it sounds to me like you're using what they are at least and you're reiterating the the scientific mathematical elements How does that adjoin to use a knee-term? with silliness per se I

Feel like Understand but I'll answer that question anyway They had to work out what silly meant and they decided that silliness was just basically Variability and they kind of put the two together and said the more variable that you are the more silly you are and in the sketch for the young people who who don't know Monty Python and John Cleese kind of sees another guy called Mr. Putie and he says that his walk is 3.3 times and sorry and they've said that his walk is 3.3 times more variable So it's not quite as silly which is what John Cleese actually says in the sketch as well

He's like oh, it's not quite as silly walk But this is actually a point that the scientists were trying to make about funding right and they're saying that often when you're Scientist you have to go through this really difficult peer review process to get your funding normally But what if you just had one person like John Cleese just assessing you when you walked in and seeing how silly you are Or how good your science is maybe that would be a better way of doing it than just this massive Complicated peer review system so they're trying to they say they're trying to make an important point when actually just looking at the silly walk Right wait, so they think you should just have one bloke read read what you've written and say yeah, it's good to go That's what they were suggesting. Yeah, so did they find a is there

Did they look at any actual walks of people being silly in real life and go do we have a measurement thing now where we can tell People have a ten times sillier walk well they you could use their system for sure But they didn't do that with other walks But there was another paper a few years ago in the proceedings of the Royal Society a Mathematical and physical engineering sciences which did a 19 page study on silly walks all the different silly walks They could think of and they analyzed them all and they worked out if there was any way of a silly walk being better than a normal walk And they said that basically there is no there is no silly walk, which is more efficient than a normal walk They all waste more calories

So there's no point having a ministry of silly walks at all They say that they should cut off all funding and there's no point in making a ministry of silly runs either because they're not better But reset I don't think you agree, but that and its fact is silly because for a start it's 19 pages long, which is just silly And And also the fact that a walk is gonna burn particularly with the silly nature more calories That's wonderful because you want to get more fit in other ways You're gonna hurt your joints and let's move on to the fact that John Hated that sketch wished he'd never done it really

Everywhere he would go because it was it's phenomenal It's an amazing piece of work and people would say every time do the silly walk do the silly walk You know and of course the older he got he couldn't he couldn't do it and he for a start didn't want to have to do that crazy walk Because it it it you know it it starts to hurt your limbs. This is also coming from me a physical comedian Who sort of you know, obviously and very very much inspired by John over my tenure of which happened to be 10 years of? It's actually small like 20, but what's what's half a career between friends I Ended up hurting my joints and at the moment

I mean the last couple years I haven't been able to do the physical comedy I once did But I never not liked it, but I don't like it now and I see why he Started to regret it. Yeah, and also he's he's had hip transplants His his knees are shot to death and people still ask him to do it and so yeah Yeah, if you look at that walk, it does seem that maybe that's the reason he's had to have a lot of Replaced I mean that's gonna crack your crack your knees like you're hard one to to emulate I don't know if anyone's tried to do it as well I mean a lot of it is the fact that he's so lanky. Yeah back in the day and he had such

great Extensions and control over those would ridiculous limbs. Yeah, I like extensions as if he had some of some robotic But he was inspired by a guy called max wall who was Musical and kind of panto entertain a guy who was big in the 20s in the 30s And he played a character called Professor Wolofsky who did this really really stupid walk It's very similar if you watch it and oh wow, it's still very funny And he played a pianist who also did this stupid walk, but he was a great character max wall so he married a woman called Marion and

He's called max and they had five children They called the first Michael and then they thought oh wow we've done the 3m thing And so they went on top of four more children and called them Melvin Martin Meredith and Maxine So they were The same thing in my family Mike and Maxine and they started calling their kids all m's as well. I Love to tell you their names, but they're cousins Yeah, they they've I should find out while you're while you guys are rambling on with the effects

I'll find out what my cousins names are back to you. I think the listeners are really on tenterhooks at the moment It's annoying though because whatever we say now all the fascinating stuff All right, are you there? What's what's your kid's name? So I'm just on a an audio podcast Yeah, no, it's yeah, it's a bit. It's a bit dull. It's all facts and figures But they I want to yeah, they need to know your kids names, right? So you got all right Matthew Mint No, I'm gonna leave it Craig. Yeah, I knew there was one with a seat Good luck on the farm

Your family doesn't listen to this podcast because they're never gonna speak to you again if they do There's a place in New Zealand called John Cleese, isn't there? What yes, there is it is the tip in Palmerston North Because he famously visited Palmerston North and he said this place is a dump So they named the city dump after him Yeah, that's so funny Has he been because he's done tours of New Zealand Eric Eidel has been when John Cleese and Eric Eidel did a tour I think John Cleese stayed in the hotel and Eric Eidel went for a walk up the up the dump

That's so good Idle up the Cleese Yeah, the BBC didn't love Monty Python. Did they despite commissioning it? Yeah, what was commissioned by David Attenborough? Wasn't it? He was the original David Attenborough used to be the channel head for BBC to who's I think he was the original channel head and I Remember reading years ago and I can't find it since so this is I I want this to be true But I'm not sure that it is he didn't he wasn't on top of everything that was going out

And Python was on quite late at night and it was very cult and it started getting this following Which they didn't expect for something in that kind of late night slot and the story that I read is that Attenborough saw What this show was someone showed it to him eventually and he went this is terrible and he wanted to decommission it But they said the numbers are so high that would be a stupid thing to do So he let it go on now. That's as I say I've read that years and years ago and I can't find where I've where I read that maybe because Attenborough's try to bury that if That's true, but but he is responsible for it exists the one tarnish on his career As those and there's one tarnish on my career and if I look back

I this is a great excuse for me to do the voice that everyone literally everyone can do I've got three I've got that. Sorry. This is back on me again. Is it? Yeah, no go for it I can do him John Wayne and Frank Spencer those are the only three and you know, I took those to Hollywood with me and Of course the only one I thought I might have a better chance with was John Wayne and they said no We're not I mean, it's not bad, but we're not gonna need it. I mean, he's long gone now and yeah, you know If we do a bio pic, I don't think it's gonna be you dubs Well, I think it should I think it should be me no bio pick a Frank Spencer and they often in Hollywood is that I

Wish you would be I mean, well, wouldn't it be I was in condor man Did you know that he was in a big Disney American film Michael Crawford was he who was still with us? Thank God called condor man. I've always wanted to remake that. So if there's any listeners out there And I know there's not any visual people, but if there's any Audio wallabies, I think I think we've lost most of the listeners have dropped off at this point Remake condor man and put me in it. That's all I'm saying if there's one thing I want to get out tonight It's that and yeah, just just Try and get some visuals happening with this show

Main points Okay It is time for fact number three and that is Anna My fact is that in 1814 there were days of rioting in Dublin because a dog who was supposed to be starring in a play Failed to show up on stage Why did he not turn up on stage what was well, he was actually demanding better pay Which the dogs had a very strong union in the early 19th century The actor's union how talented was this dog could it talk?

It couldn't it what it could talk in dog. It could bark Dogs could understand it, but how's you how's you treatment rough rough rough? Wow My dad literally told me that joke when I was five and even then whether you go. We're still rocking it. I roll my eyes. Yeah I So this was a play that was very famous at the time actually it's called the Forest of Bondi and it was based on a play called the dog of Montagie she and Montagie which was written in France in 1814 and it was a Phenomenon it was so popular that it was immediately adapted into English and played around Britain and Ireland and

Yeah, though it was being put on and there was a big hoo-ha about it being put on in Dublin But the dog's owner thought that the dog was not being reimbursed adequately given his extreme talent and people turned up at the Theater and they thought they were going to see this play with a live dog in it Which they were very excited about and a different play started because they hadn't been able to secure the dog and they lost it And there was writing and so like chandeliers were broken The whole orchestra fled so all the instruments were destroyed boxes were pulled down doors were flung off their hinges and This just went on so the following night the audience returned thinking surely they'll give us the dog tonight Same thing tried to put on a different play same riot and went on for days

Hang on the whole place was destroyed and they turned up the next night going. Well, I'm sure it's reopened To me too because they did seem to be smashing the place to shreds every night Then the next night would come back and it would be miraculously They must have had they must have had like a joinery company who would come in every day and fix everything Of the next money going Dave you won't believe what's happened again. Yeah, we up again. Are we we're in okay? All right guys. We're back in there fix those instruments get those walls plastered anyway so the place kept being destroyed and then rebuilt in the night apparently and

Eventually the deputy manager of the theater came on stage to apologize But was sort of booed off and had to flee because projectiles were being thrown at him and the theater manager just resigned I was it he resigned a letter to the paper saying he was emigrating. That was that Amazing the the play itself is as you say it was it was extremely popular and It was based on a legend that was written by Julius Caesar Scaliger The idea was that it was based on a real court case. So there was a French courtier To King Charles the fifth who was murdered and so they found the murderer and the only witness to the murder was the dog of This courtier and the dog recognized this murderer

And so there was this weird thing whereby they made the dog and this murderer go into arm-to-arm combat they sort of like put them together to have a fight and The guy was given like a little club or something to fight against the dog And they had this big battle in the dog one and then the guy once he was defeated confessed to the murder and then he was himself Executed and that's the sort of the basis of the story and it took place in this town that you mentioned Anna Which was Montagie Montagie. Yeah Montagie and there's actually a statue there of the event of the dog And the man fighting which you can go and visit if you go to this place I like the way you say it's based on a myth

by Julius Caesar Hoping that people will just think Julius Caesar wrote the myth when actually it's a completely unknown author from the 1500s called Julius Caesar Scaliger wasn't it Scaliger? Yeah Scaliger Scaliger. Yeah Not Excalibur, not Julius Caesar Excalibur. It was That's not a name to live up to isn't it? It's a big one. Yeah. What's your name mate Julius Caesar Excalibur? Okay, all right. Well, I'll get you just to do the mopping up at this stage and we'll um Make sure you get Derby a drink at some point where he's uh

Rod Excalibur Yeah, so this this is a big deal this play. Yeah, it was a big deal when it was played At the court of Grand Duke Charles Augustus in the Weimar court Goethe Was like You can't put a dog on a stage like the stage is for humans for actors You can't put a dog on there and they went no, we're gonna do it anyway And he's like well if you do it then i'm gonna resign and by the way i'm goethe

So really you've got to hear what I say and they said no We're gonna put it on and so he resigned and he was dismissed from the grand duke's theater Just because he didn't want to have this dog on the stage. It's amazing. Wow But Goethe just had a thing against dogs. He did. He hates it. Because I was like Why is he making such a fuss about this play? Just let it go Goethe But sounds like I mean, obviously there's Faust where actually Metastopheles appears as a poodle at one point. Um, so that's bad, you know, he's like a demon But then in Goethe's semi-autobiographical novel

There's a play that's disrupted by irresponsible dog owners in another play There's a couple of women who bitch about how they dislike dogs so much He hates it. He had a thing against dogs Is this is this done after this him being fired has he is this revenge dog anger? He and the duke basically the duke loved dogs and Goethe hated dogs And their whole relationship was them just arguing about whether dogs are awesome or really shit It was like that's all they ever talked about Wow, because they were very close. It was like the only it was like a marriage

Where there's just one thing that wedged it's driven between you all the times, isn't it? And that was the dogs Dogs can be hard to work with and I come from experience. I have worked with a dog I've worked with a few animals over the years Uh, but on a show called wrecked where I I played an elderly man Um, I said to them look, I'm not going to play an older guy. Can I play a young handsome guy? And they they said all right, but we're going to give you a dog. So it was a payoff. Anyway, I'm not a dog person I've said this many times over the years Uh, but they like you guys didn't listen and so I got a massive dog

They gave me a great dane like it's the heaviest dog you can imagine and this is in fiji. We're shooting it and they said Oh, yeah, these are all trained dogs. They're not they're just not wild dogs. Okay, so they don't have acting dogs in fiji So when they say trained they mean, you know, they know where their bowl is and there's got their name on the bowl That's about it. So I've got this ginormous dog sitting on me and I'm supposed to he's like he's meant to be my support dog Well, anyway, we're on a plane Not a real one. It's an acting plane and this dog is on my lap And it's it's 200 pounds and I am is squashing my kahoonis And it was wanting to go away all the time

And the only reason I would be staying on me is that I had to keep feeding it tiny sausages Anyway push comes to shove which I did do by the way and episode two I said to the team look either the dog goes or I go and the guy gave me a ticket for the plane and I called my lawyers who were also my agents And the dog was out on its beautiful hind ass Really? Yeah, gone. Goss. Well, why would you rather have me or a massive dog? Don't make people answer that. Yeah

Unfortunately the dog was busy today We also worked with ducks, but that's another story Oh, yeah, are they better to work with? They don't crush your balls so badly. I guess they didn't crush my balls Uh, so we got along quite nicely actually Pierre and if you watch the movie, it's called love birds I actually fall in love with the duck it it crash lands on my roof and um Yeah, we sort of we hang out. There's also a a female I'm in love with but the duck does come between us and I've actually I don't want to spoil it, but I've got to let the duck go

Oh That's really sad, you know, you was saying about how they didn't like they didn't bring in a professional dog For your to sit on your lap and eat your tiny sausage Like that is one of the main problems that they have uh in hollywood So there's a guy called bill burlone who runs a company called theatrical animals And they have dogs uh and other animals which are specifically trained to be in movies As in they know how to work on movies how to work with the lights and the cameras and stuff And they say that 80 of the calls they get is where people have decided to put on a show and just use someone's pet

Or used like a trained animal rather than a properly trained animal and they've decided after about two days This is not going to work at all But as a huge union you have to use the The acting dogs the acting animals, you know, there's a massive industry and if you don't use them Then there'll be hell to pay. Um, I actually did just on stage dogs So dog and back to the 19th century dog drama was a really popular thing Especially between sort of the 1820s and 1860s in the uk Then they were usually short quite bad plays but people loved them because they just went to see the dogs perform

And they were well trained dogs. We're not talking any fiji and bullshit here They were so they were trained to do one particular move which was called taking the seas And this meant basically as an actor You had to have a string of sausages concealed around your neck in a scarf And at one point in the play the dog Would always the dog would always be trained to leap up to your neck and maul away at the sausages to try and get to them And then you're taken down to the ground and it looks like the dog is tearing away at your neck Oh, yeah, right. It's a very famous move. It was it was used in a very popular play at the time dog hamlet

Which Amazing the superior version of hamlet, which apparently according to the owner of the most famous dog hamlet actor Who was called devil's hoof? That was the name of the dog His owner said dog hamlet was conceived by mistake when hamlet was being played on stage And this dog was in the wings and when he saw the wrestling between Claudius and hamlet at the end The dog galloped onto stage and sort of got involved in the fighting And the audience loved it and they went well, we've got to make this a thing And so dog hamlet became a thing and the plot of dog hamlet was basically the same as the plot of hamlet

Except there was also always a dog on stage accompanying hamlet the whole time And in the final in the final scene he got to pin Claudius down while hamlet killed him It sounds great. I don't know why it doesn't get uh get played at the national One of the reasons that these dog dramas were so popular is because of the licensing act of 1737 Which basically meant that whenever you wrote a play You had to give it to the lord chamberlin and they had and he had to check through it and make sure that there was nothing bad in there And it was a real Ask of a hoop to get through but luckily a dog drama didn't really have any lines apart from bark bark bark or something

You know, they were melodramas There was hardly any lines in there at all and so they were really easy for people to write and get past the lord chamberlin Nice Right, isn't it? Yes The just one last thing is I found a quite nice thing which is that animals used to In hollywood be acknowledged for their contribution to film and tv And there used to be an award ceremony that took place called the patsy

and the patsy stood for picture animal top star of the year And it ran for a number of years and the very first one was hosted by ronald reagan in 1951 And it's great. It's just nice to look through the list to sort of acknowledge all these incredible animals So in the first year animals that were acknowledged were francis the talking mule Black diamond the horse lassie the dog lassie gets its first mention there Wow But yeah the patsy and they stopped doing it and that's a shame because there are a lot of

Animals in movies that are still Given they're all That's interesting to me that they stopped that because they're held in such regard, especially in the states You know the these acting animals. So I wonder why yeah, absolutely I wonder why They stopped the award Ceremony maybe because the animals don't realize they're getting awards Yeah, I'm not sure

I mean the animals don't even realize they're acting Well, that's the big question Yeah, it is the big question. Do some of them. Do they because you look at the such the like lassie for example Or the the other famous one can't recall the name, but the dog that was in uh, frasier. Do you remember that little? Oh, yeah He definitely knew what he was doing And the owners and the trainers will tell you they'll come off and they'll They'll look at you and they'll be sort of like how do I do how'd I do and they'll want to do another

Tape as well Because they they know they've got to run on I've got to do a certain thing And they have to do it in a certain way and then they'll come back and they'll get a treat or whatever But they know um, they know that this camera is there and especially if they're doing it for years so, you know, even though I Took the mickey out of the the the dog because I've been working. I have had experience with it. Um, I do Uh, acknowledge the work that goes into it. Do you ever see those guys like the duck? Do you ever see the duck in like social settings anymore or no sadly? I have not visited the duck. Um

Is that is that because the duck's too busy or you're too busy is one of your careers really take off Look, it's an it's an ectis thing we when we leave the film we leave each other It's what you do. It doesn't matter whether you're human or animal Um, and you might see each other at the awards, you know, not so much now. What there's no animal awards, but uh, You know, the agency christmas do you might Do you get do you get occasional calls from it going Reese? I see you've been cast in jumanji Lots of lots of animal roles in that Slip a word in I peer I'd love to work with you

But as you know these days a lot of them are computer generated. Okay, so you real life animals just of you know, you're a You're a bit of maintenance aren't you? Wow, how rude Okay, it is time for our final fact of the show and that is my fact My fact this week is that while filming return of the jedi in the forests of california The actor who played Chewbacca had to be accompanied by crew members in brightly colored vests so that he wasn't shot by bigfoot hunters Wow, so amazing. Yeah, and this is um for a long time This was a sort of a legend of the behind the scenes filming that no one had properly verified

But peter mayhew who sadly passed away last year Who played Chewbacca in all of the movies right up until that's mayhew not may eyes in it So yeah, so he played Chewbacca in all the movies including the force awakens He sadly passed away and actually um, he was unable to do the one after the force awakens What was that one called the last jedi? I think it's called no one cares anymore. Wasn't it? Yeah, that might be it he um, but he's still consulted he's in the credits as Chewbacca consultant and um He was on a reddit AMA where he was asked the question and he confirmed that this was the case

They were in these forests of california, which is a big bigfoot hunting territory It is where all the most famous encounters of bigfoot happened in the californian forest bluffs creek is where the most famous footage That we know of the paterson gimlin if you picture a big foot in your head That's the footage you're thinking of that happened in a californian forest So you can see that there would be slight concern of a giant Chewbacca like character walking around that he might be hunted down. So yeah, it's uh, it's what happened Also, probably grizzly bears do they have them there like they might shoot them because they think is a grizzly bear Other than something that doesn't exist

Uh, okay, so two points there no Okay, there's no grizzlies in that territory and they do exist Clearly, okay. In fact, I've got many facts here. How long have you got? To prove to you guys that they there's an estimated number between two and six thousand of these creatures That's one bit of evidence. Yeah in north america Okay, they have extreme elusiveness. They have fear of humans. They nocturnally feed And they have nomadism. Okay, that is

Basically they in their groups. They migrate they move on the move all the time More than 10,000 people in the u.s. Have described encounters with bigfoot over the last 50 years And a third of all bigfoot sightings are recorded in the state of oregon Rhys, I do see that you're reading this but um, what word did you get these facts from? I was just wondering These are out of my 007 pad Leon Kirkbeck got me for my birthday. Okay So your source is yourself

I've written their hand written by me. These are facts written by me Last year 2019 scientists unearthed new evidence of the original bigfoot. Uh, what do you think that is? Oh the giant hominid thing is it like giant? Yeah 10 foot tall ape Gigantopithecus Which they believe is related to the modern day orangutan Um, it's interesting. That's you know, obviously, uh, there are more people who disbelieve in bigfoot than there are people who believe in it

But the people who do believe that he she might exist Uh, it's quite it's quite interesting people like david attenborough has always said he thinks that the yeti for example Could be a real thing. He's he's If you look at his career with all that monty python stuff Can he really be believed that guy? He was tarnished a long time ago. You're right. Yeah The only second tarnish that he has said he's been trying to dust under the couch for a long time Is his bigfoot belief

And here I can't believe i'm saying it but bigfoot is real Um on Chewbacca Okay, there is a star wars comic from 2004 an official star wars comic Called into the great unknown that says that millennium falcon crashed London into the earth in the in the pacific northwest before the area was colonized by people And that Chewbacca survives. He kind of is immortal or something and he became the mythical bigfoot So maybe Chewbacca is bigfoot. Hmm. I love this theory. Um, it's also a comic. I believe but Because it makes total sense

And you know now he would have to have mated But then a population can grow and also it counts For the uh spaceship situation ancient astronauts for example, so therefore Um extraterrestrials have landed here, which you know, we all know is true as well So it does tie in with the bigfoot and ufo Factor, which which I find fascinating And that's why star wars is such a popular documentary Exactly. Well, everything's based on fact and that is that is a derby quote

It's in the book it's in the double i7 book it's in here. I wrote it. It's on page four everything Have you guys uh recent down ever been to willow creek or are you familiar with willow creek? Which I think is sort of the home of bigfoot isn't it in california It's one of them. Uh familiar with it. Yes. Have not been no Because it's kind of amazing how well they do like the the willow creek museum apparently rakes in $500 a day Which for a microscopic museum in a microscopic place in the middle of nowhere Is a lot of money a lot of people seem to go to this place. The entry fee is $500 Right

It's amazing and it's you every day, isn't it? There's another museum. There's a sasquatch museum in georgia in cherry log georgia And they it's called expedition bigfoot and one of their main things they have is a buttocks imprint of the sasquatch So apparently the sasquatch. I know about that one. Oh, do you okay? Well, I don't I mean, it's a it's a plaster cast, isn't it? Yeah, so it it they left an apple out and the sasquatch came in the middle of the night and it because they're nocturnal and It went to grab the apple but it didn't go right up to it because it so it's sort of actually lent down and on its On its buttocks on the on the on the unfortunately

I think it was muddy ground and reached over and got it and Took off and left an imprint. Yeah, and they've got that whole cast and they did the cast Yeah, it's a famous one and according to jeff muldrim professor of anthropology at the university of idaho It has obviously prominent buttocks that are well muscled and the hair streams downwards and inwards towards the natal cleft If anyone wants to know what a big foot butt looks like. Yeah, and I've got a tattoo of a natal cleft On my right shoulder blade. So delighted. This isn't a visual medium Underneath that it says everything's based on fact So this this podcast is obviously broken now

The very famous footage that I was mentioning before that we all know the paterson gimlin footage Um, yeah, those guys those guys are very interesting. So bob gimlin is the surviving one of the two he's in his 80s and I've met him And you've met himries, which is so interesting because he wasn't a bigfoot hunter. He was uh, he was basically A daredevil to an extent. He used to ride stuntman Yeah, he was a stuntman and he used to write carts through the canyons He was courted by evil keneval to be part of his daredeviline team

And that was going to be his whole career and then he was filming this thing with paterson where they were actually Filming a movie about someone else's account about these eight men in california When they suddenly found bigfoot and took this footage and for 35 odd years afterwards gimlin's life was effectively ruined because no one believed them What they were saying his wife used to get teased at her workplace and constantly people would be revving up to their house Saying let's go bigfoot, you know drunk people and then I think it was in the early 2000s He decided to show up to a conference where suddenly he was met as if he were a god And it was only then that his life turned around and it's interesting that just in those 35 years He didn't break him down the sort of the what it did to his life that he sort of admitted it to a being a hoax

He's always stuck by his guns. Yeah. Oh, that's nice. He found his people Yeah, exactly because when when they got the footage Paterson was a bit of a showman and took it around everywhere But gimlin didn't really want to have anything to do with that He just wanted to look after his horses and stuff and so paterson hired someone to pretend he was bob gimlin Yeah, really and they massively fell out. I mean, this is what I read. I don't reese might know this but like Yeah, they massively fell out and it was only towards the end of paterson's life that they kind of made up In fact, when paterson went around with this cousin

I think who's called the atley they were making so much money that they did the classic thing of at the end of each night They would go back to the hotel room and have money fights where they threw money at each other because they were making so much from this Yeah, the flip side to that is while paterson is having these money parties throwing them around the room Gimlin sold the rights to the footage to a fellow bigfoot researcher for 10 american dollars. Wow That's yeah, that's all he made for you. You've got to get that in tiny denominations to make a good money I was reading about what scientists thought of this film There's a guy called john napier who's like a big bigfoot Scientist and I think kind of a kind of fair on both sides as far as I was reading it anyway

And he thought that he was quite struck by the way that the bigfoot walks in a really exaggerated way And he says why ruin a good hoax by ordering an actor to walk in such an artificial way Sorry, how how many times more silly is the bigfoot walk that? Yeah, there's an there was an anthropologist called daniel schmitt who said on this He said either this is a person trying to walk funny or bigfoot walks in a manner that is more or less identical to a person walking funny And let's not forget it has breasts Let's not forget that Yeah, because yeah, why would you put a put?

Breasts on a on a fake bigfoot suit. You know give you that extra Moment of difficulty to to get that accurate in terms of its movement and you know go to those troubles There's there's you know, I'm not here to to scientifically prove and argue this case But you know, there's if you do want to dive into it listeners Please cross over live now My podcast the cryptid factor which You'll absolutely enjoy. It's also it's visual. It's not just audio. Although we're not we haven't got the visuals up yet

But uh, it's like this is less facts I can't believe our podcast has been one long advert for the cryptid factor We're not putting this out. We need listeners Can I ask and I can't even believe I'm going down this road. What am I doing? I hate myself But if that presumably there are male big feet as well Because if it's just female, how are they breeding or did the males also have breasts? How is that working?

Yeah, it's this male and this female and this youth and people have seen all three Okay, so it's not just females that people know it just so happens in this footage The big foot in this footage is actually called patty just a little nugget there Patty the big foot is the name that's given to her The big foot research organization Go out and they do expeditions every year Maybe four times a year and you can sign up if you go on the bfro website You can be part of an expedition to

Try and find these things and quite often almost every time they will at least hear the howls in the forest and You know, it's it's it's well worth your time Well, I mean that's an amount of repellent Look you can either do that or go and watch dogs on stage. It's up to you Can I just I know it seems totally unrelated, but can I say something about the yesi which I found really amazing It's very related. Yeah. Well, you know, I don't know if the big foot Fans hate yesis or whatever, but so the yesi is obviously this of nepali's equivalent of bigfoot So it's yesi an abominable snowman are himalayas bigfoot sasquatch. They're north america and

A yesi finger Was once smuggled out of napal by my personal favorite actor jimmy stewart. That's right It's an insane story. Where did he smuggle it? What part where did he put it? Why did he put this finger? No, he's not like did he cover it in mayonnaise first is what I'm asking Absolutely um Now see that would have worked so much better if you guys had video because can I just say I put a finger right up We we used to have our own tv show and every time you say this would work well in video. It's a dagger to our hearts

Oh, I'm so sorry And also if there are any bbz commissioners listening, they're going thank god. We definitely did the right thing Yeah, you're here next week. Okay. You've you guys you've got the visual show, but you're gonna have to have ristabi That's that's That's gonna be about bigfoot. No, we got decommissioned by attenborough. Interestingly. Yeah, he came back just for one off decommission Again I can't believe that guy. I know so many cock-ups in that career Anna, can I ask what happened with um, did you say jimmy stewart? What happened with his um with his yeti finger?

Where is it now and the finger? Well, thank you for asking james So this basically started when there was a yeti hand apparently that was in a nepali's monastery in the 1950s and Basically, there was a guy who had a great name at this huge oil magnate called tom slick Very cool name for someone who's made both heat from oil and he organized this expedition of scientists to go and basically get the yeti hand And so this guy was sent out to get it. He was called peter burn He was an explorer and a british scientist had given him a human finger to swap with the yeti finger With one of the yeti fingers on this hand. So he got into this monastery

It's a bit up in the air whether he got permission from the monks or whether he just stole it But essentially he hacked off the yeti finger replaced it with this human finger. Wow Stole we're falling on the side of stolen But then it happened that he was mates with james stewart and james stewart's wife gloria who happened to be in the area And so he said i'm so sorry guys, which you might heard you're going to the uk Would you mind taking this yeti finger back with you? And they did and they they smuggled it out in gloria jimmy stewart's wife's lingerie case Which i actually didn't even know that was a thing

But apparently no one searches lingerie cases. In fact, they asked at customs at the other end in britain You know, did what did you open the lingerie case and the customers official said no, of course not We'd never open a lady's lingerie case So i should say that they have done analysis on this finger which was kept in the hunt area museum They've done some analysis recently and it is in fact just a human finger turns out According to swapped it back. He swapped it back That's always there's always a response, isn't that that's the good thing about this kind of thing because yes, because now

jimmy stewart or tom slick has the actual yeti hand and of course if you've got that that finger You're not going to divulge that information. That's up in your in your glass cabinet up on the third floor near the landing By your big foot books It's in the notebook guys. It's in the notebook. I love her respectful. James and Anna are big to you, Reese If I said this i'd get fucking murdered. Oh, yeah, but don't forget who edits this thing I'd like to get a copy of all the things that I said that don't end up in the show I'll throw them on my show. Okay. That's just that's going to be all the things. Yeah, i'm sorry

There's a limit. There's a limit on the size of fire. I could send Okay, that's it that is all of our facts Thank you so much for listening If you'd like to get in contact with any of us about the things that we have said over the course of this podcast We can be found on our twitter accounts. I'm on at schreiberland. James. James harkin. Reese. Uh, please don't contact me It gives me anxiety At jizzynski. I thought that should have been your line Wish I thought of that phrase five years ago

You can email podcast at qi.com That's right Or you can go to our twitter account at no such thing or a website No such thing as a fish.com all of our previous episodes are up there You can check them out. We also have little bits of merchandise that you can find the links to Do check out Reese's fantastic podcast the cryptid factor It's it's really do you do that on your own resize? So uh predominantly on my own now and again I have a couple of guests, uh, but yeah, it's all fun facts and uh

Foybles from my from my notebooks. Yep. I've heard the gas chance to bring it down. You're thinking of putting them out, aren't you? All right, everyone. We'll see you again next week with an oh, yeah Can I just I would also just say it's it's been an honor being on this show I'm a big fan of the podcast and I'd like to do a special shout out to my son Finn who's also an avid fan Um, hi, I did it Finn we should have got you on for god's sake. Oh, yeah, he's more sensible It's very it's very up so that you would end the show with just Finn, isn't it? Yeah Yes, and also I got to say Theo my my younger son

He'll be like why didn't you mention me and my wife Rosie and Michael and Maxine? um moosh minky Mud and of course my favorite may I? Oh All right, see you again next week guys. Bye. Bye I just want to look you in the eye really quickly and check because it's very hard to tell with you Do you believe that big foot is the real thing?

Are you talking to me? I am yeah Yes, yes, absolutely. Isn't it fun? Isn't it fun to think that? Yeah, and I'm all about fun. Yeah