No Such Thing As A Fish - 426: No Such Thing As The Man-Trap Of Walford

Episode Date: May 13, 2022

James, Anna, Andrew and special guest Lucy Porter discuss Korean aging, Chinese quizzing, Dot Wordsworth and Dot Cotton.  Visit nosuchthingasafish.com for news about live shows, merchandise and more episodes.

Hi everyone, welcome to this week's episode of no such thing as a fish Daniel Shriver is not here this week He has gone to a place that shares a name with something you might take to the beach with you And if you listen to the rest of this episode, you'll be able to work that out But anyway, the main thing is that Dan is not here this week And so we needed someone to replace him and who have we got we have the most incredible guest It is comedian Lucy Potter You will absolutely love her on this week's podcast and at the end you're definitely going to want to check out all of her

Stuff and that would include fingers on buzzers, which is a podcast She does all about quizzing with my good friend and the fixen from the TV show the chase Jenny Ryan Lucy is also got a brand new stand-up show called wake up call She's taken it to the Edinburgh Fringe this year and then she'll be touring the UK in 2023 if you want to go and see that and I definitely recommend you do that then go to Lucy Potter dot Co dot UK And you can find out more about Lucy Anyway, I'm certain you're gonna really really enjoy this podcast We had such a good time making it and what else is there to say apart from on with the podcast

Hello and welcome to another episode of no such thing as a fish a weekly podcast coming to you from the QI offices in Covent Garden My name is Andrew Hunter Murray and I'm joined this week by James Harkin Anna Tajinsky and special guest It's Lucy Porter and once again We have gathered around the microphones with our four favorite facts from the last seven days and in no particular order here We go starting with Lucy My fact is that if you were a baby born in Korea in December 2020 You could be one two or three years old Just take your pick yeah multiple choice just be when I am very keen on being able to manipulate your age

So many people in show business are and but I had never heard of this until I was watching ultimate Beastmaster Which is my favorite of the competitive obstacle course shows and Beastmaster Cassius Castle it is it's like it's some yes it's a big beast and there was a Korean contestant on that and Talking about his kid and he went oh well. He's two in Korean age and I was like what what is Korean age? And it turns out that in Korea and other parts of East Asia. There is a different numbering system for age So the Korean system, which is when you're born you're a year old

Right the minute you come out. That's your first birthday, which makes sense because your first birthday is your first birthday So so then you gain another year every new year's day So effectively what that means is everybody gets a year older on the same day Which I I like the idea of that because I think birthdays are Depressing when you wake up and you're maybe a little bit hungover certainly a bit tired after your birthday and you're another year older Whereas in Korea everybody celebrates on the same but then it'd be hard to get a table in TGI Fridays Wouldn't it if everyone had a birthday? the sole branch

Also, you've literally just had to buy everyone Christmas presents and then you have to buy an entire new raft of birthday presents Oh, yeah, well you'd get two for one wouldn't you? I mean it was I suppose you can shoot it like that Yeah, yeah, yeah, so there's one system where you get a new birthday a new year every new year's day There's another system, which is the new year birthday where you are no years old when you're born You have your first birthday after a year and then you do the thing where you add a year on new year's day Or of course, they also use the international system where you just turn one year older on your actual birthday So that means you can have three different Confusing or ages three different ages

But I was like did anyone else used to think it was so unfair that people born in a leap year like my granny I remember she was born on 29th Feb, and I thought that meant she would live four times longer than the rest of us Because we'd always say you know Gamma's only 15 years old And so interesting then I used to get so annoyed and actually she has not lived it turns out four times longer than everyone That is a shame. That is a real shame But there was a study wasn't there of three four and five year old children Asking them about you know changing your age and birthdays and stuff and Quite a large percentage of them thought that when you had a birthday that was when you got older

And so if you had like three birthday parties in a week, you would gain three years straight away terrifying For your odds Because the Queen to birthday thing I always was when I was a kid I was very jealous as you would be like why do you get two birthdays? Because my birthday is the end of January, which is a rubbish time. You should get to choose when your birthday is shouldn't you? Well, the reason apparently the Queen has her Birthday the two birthdays was it was George the second who had a November birthday and he was like well the weather's always miserable

So I'll move it to June or whenever really yeah, but the she actually has loads of because she has the official birthday the actual birthday and then New Zealand Canada Australia We've done it. We mentioned once James worked out that she's actually 79,000 years old She was definitely in the high hundreds 669 I think this is what's happened to me is that I've actually I've aged in dog years somehow We all consider you royalty

In Korea they even find this confusing don't they to the extent that they are Apparently changing it. I don't know if they they will president elect who I think might be president by the time this podcast goes out President Yoon He says he plans to abolish it and 71% of Koreans are in favor of abolishing it because they're confused And also when you have things like the retirement age sometimes There was a thing with COVID wasn't there where you were getting your injections at a certain age But they didn't say whether it was your Korean age or your international age or whatever and so people were kind of gaming the system Well, I suppose as well for things like if you're you know on the cusp of being able to drink booze or yeah

I remember when I was young and I used to I didn't like to lie because I'm very Catholic Guilty so if I was asked for my age when I was trying to buy a booze illegally I would say oh well, I am in my 18th year No, of course not because I've sounded like I was a Victorian I'm in my entrance here. You're either a time traveler or you're only a hundred and fifty Well, the other thing for Koreans that is difficult is that you? Greet people and talk to people differently depending on their age So you do actually need to know how old people are because that will affect how you talk to them

So if you're saying happy birthday to someone if they're your age or younger You say sang ill took her hey if they're a little bit older than you you say sang ill took her hey you and If they're much older than you you say sang ill do Yeah, yeah, I was so confident at the beginning Do you know that's a witch doctor? I Apologize to our Korean listeners, but that itself seems Absolutely ripe with the potential for offense because it's how if you're someone's older than you

Here you just get some of the very insulting card, and that's how you do Horrible card that you see in the shop racks and racks of these cards saying you old bastard I always just go for one with a dog on the front or something Well, it is women overwhelmingly by greetings cards, don't they but they buy them for men to give so apparently It's like I'm gonna make up a statistic because why not like But like 80% of greetings cards are bought by women So it's women buying really you know cards for their husbands to give to people I really don't know but not back to them to give to other other members of the family or friends or whatever

Go to a shop if you were buying something for your husband to buy for you We may have mentioned this before that women buy almost all the candles made on the planet 98% of candles And is it is it truly so that women buy horrible candles for their husbands to give people You know smelling of burning tires and stuff like that the last candle I bought smelled like Jeremy Clarkson's balls Yeah, I was like I recognize that Yeah Anyway, South Korea yeah in 2017 they became the highest life expectancy in the world So a girl who was gonna be born let's say in

2025 or 2030 would expect to live to about 91 we think Men probably around 84 Now the reason I saw in an article that they're living so long possibly kimchi is very good for you Another thing they said hypochondria Apparently only 35% of Koreans believe they're in good health And so they all go to the doctors a lot and apparently that's one reason why they live a long time But I also thought that obviously we're adding two years to their age Yeah, I mean we have no idea how old these people are let's be honest

They are the very much, you know, do you remember we did a story a couple of years ago Doris Day found out that she was two years Older than she thought yeah, she was turning 93 and So to sort of celebrate her birthday Ohio's office of vital statistics looked into her life and stuff and uncovered some cool stuff about her One of the things they uncovered was that she wasn't born in 1924. So she thought she was born in 1922 So she found out she was 95 in Busan as well, isn't it? She was Korean You can't tell how so Doris Day couldn't have told how old she was by going in a scanner or something because I was reading about this It's so hard to tell how old people are based on their bones

So there are lots of arenas where it's tested like dental scans and the other thing is wrist bones Apparently, this is a way of measuring but it's not very accurate because when do you think you get your adult wrists? I thought that I had the Time I genuinely thought I had the wrist now that I was born with James, you're not Popeye Because James got quite powerful wrists, you know, do I? Yeah, but what I thought so you're born with a wrist. I mean, yeah, I know babies are floppy Hands drop out first

Basically wrists can reach a maturity, which is where the bones are fused in a particular way As young as the age of 15 but on average it's 17.6 Years that you know, that's the average age that rests mature But it completely varies and most children do have adult wrists as it were before they are actually adults So that is a bad way of telling wait So I didn't actually realize I risked fused differently as adults to his children I assume they were just the same as the rest of us and gradually grew but do they transform into grown-up wrists? Yeah, they do they develop they develop more serious wristwatches. That's the way

The old Mickey Mouse watch falls off Timex or something grows in its place. Yeah, just like bones music like your collarbone for example that that's the last bit of your body Yeah But then also even if you can tell that they're probably over 15 or whatever you can't tell anything beyond that by the wrist Can you so everyone's either under 15 to 17 or over 15 to 17 if that's how you're aging people and also you've had to cut off their hand This is gonna make getting into nightclubs Like with fish you can tell with their ears right they have little otoliths in their ears

Yeah, and they get an extra, you know, it's like a tree ring Yeah, and you can count the rings, but we don't have that is what you're saying. That's what I'm saying You know happy birthday Yeah song because I don't know if we mentioned that it was illegal for it. It wasn't illegal for ages. It was copyrighted for ages Sorry, yeah, but people in yeah people in TV shows and films would sing Exactly Exactly, we're just sort of how it gets on anyway It was even illegal to sing it in a made-up language. I like it so much

There was an episode of Star Trek where they were going to sing a happy birthday in Klingon and they checked it out They thought no, we can't do that. Wow thousands of dollars to you know water triple who had it So they replaced it with for he's a jolly good fellow in Klingon I read something the other day on Twitter and I think it was Jason Haseley who tweeted this but it could have been Joel Morris, but they basically said that when you sing happy birthday The first note you sing is the lowest note you will ever sing Yes, and that's really useful to know because when you get to the end It's too high and you know if you started too high then you can't reach that last note

But if you know that the first one is the lowest you can start really low And by the time you get to the end you'll be able to sing it properly I did anyone else genuinely think that James went it's the lowest note you'll ever see That is the note that makes people poo themselves Scientifically proven it makes for very awkward birthday parties Okay, it's time for fact number two and that is Anna My fact this week is that in 2018 a new quiz show was launched on Chinese prime-time TV Where all the answers were about Xi Jinping

It was like an easy quiz now the quick fire round Instant buzz or if you're doing blockbusters, which X Well, he's lived a long time now. I think he's done quite a lot So there's a lot of stuff to memorize there, but yeah, it managed to last five full episodes of Xi Jinping based trivia And it wasn't it wasn't canceled what it can't have been canceled Which premier from China looks nothing like Winnie the Pooh It was quite similar to that Some people would say it was embarrassingly brazen

But but so this was on Hunan TV, which is China's most popular TV channel for young people and it's called studying Xi in the new era and it was about understanding his thought and memorizing bits of his speeches and knowing interesting facts about his life and The questions were things like and they all got it right. So I think well, you would You would the ones who got it wrong we now move to sudden death I

Watched a quiz over Christmas And it was a Harry Potter quiz and it was loads of teams and they were all massive Harry Potter nerds No one got a single question wrong in the whole show Yeah, one person would get one question wrong and then that would be the end because no one else would get anything wrong Was that close to by Helen Mirren? I don't recall. Yeah, maybe there wasn't sort of the Harry Potter tournament Hogwarts because you ask young people about anything they're interested in and they know everything about it Being young and having a memory Reminds me of when Andy Osho was on mastermind the brilliant comedian Andy Osho and her specialist subject was John Humphries

Who was the host at the time? Yeah, get in his head. Is there an advantage to getting in his head? I guess so well I mean, it's a very strange place to be his head I mean, yeah, I did mastermind when he was the host and we had to you know You do like the banter and it was a very strange chat I mean we'll come back to that can I ask quickly about the Andy Osho thing with when he phrased the questions Did he ask about himself in the third person or did he say what a what a color of my pants? Anyway, so she's in ping

It's I'm sure he's very embarrassed about this program and just can't leave they made it about him They've had to do it, but it does feel a bit like a propaganda thing, but they There's some interesting facts. I learned about him from it So he knows the whole of Faustus off my heart because one of the questions was At the age of 15 president G was sent to become a farmer during that period. He walked 15 kilometers to borrow a book What was the name of the book? Faustus very strong Wasn't it Anna I was reading this this this she quiz was a follow-up to another ideology-based quiz

Which was called marks got it, right? Hmm, which had a very ambiguous take actually on Marx's legacy We could have called it like top marks or something The New York Times reported that contestants have nothing to lose but their chains, which is a very good nice That's funny. Yeah, and the winner is everyone Forever Just in terms of Chinese high-stakes quizzing The exam to be in the civil service in Imperial China Was even more gruelling than this TV game show

So you would take bedding a chamber pot in can brushes and spend three days and two nights in an exam center And if people died the walls were so high that apparently nothing could get in so that there was no possibility of cheating And also you'd write your exam paper and then it would be transcribed by someone else so that there was no chance of somebody Seeing your handwriting and recognizing it and if you died you were just bundled up in sack and tossed over the fence or tossed over the wall Is that right? Thanks for playing But

When you were at school there was always a rumor wasn't there in your GCSEs or whatever that if someone died in your year Then everyone would get an A. Do you remember that? No, we don't have a room They just told us if someone died they get tossed over the wall Yeah, that's more of an incentive, isn't it really right? That's Yeah, it was amazing that thing wasn't it it changed throughout the centuries because these exams they took place throughout all the different Chinese eras but at one stage They came up with them an exam to do the exam And then when you pass that exam you would get to do the main exam

And then everyone who did that main exam then would do one final exam So you had to do two exams to get to the final exam Uh, the emperor themselves would apparently supervise the final exam invigilate. Yeah Again, that's very scary hearing the clack clack clack He walked up and down no gum And apparently the the first exam that you would do which was the regional one It was so big and so important That all of your family and friends would kind of sit outside because they want to know how you did

And they would set up like stalls and food stalls and stuff so that they'd be able to See your body parablating towards them Is that On communism and quizzing in 1975 on university challenge You'll probably know this lucy and james about the majesty university Team which was david aronovich. I didn't know he did this journalist now Of course we're famous journalists, but he was a socialist student back then and he ended with a team It seemed to be some kind of accident because they entered intending to take down university challenge from the inside for its elitism

And answered sort of trotsky angles marks until they got told off for every question they caved. Well, yes until Bamba gas coin got really pissed off. Which of the Kardashians Yeah, no footage exists of it. Sadly. They don't wipe the tapes, but yeah, it's a legendary university challenge And it's interesting that no footage exists because it's really the fallibility of memory because According to david aronovich. He just said nonsense answers He remembers it as like he answered like yellow brick road or a fluffy hat That's what I did on university He's got really lucky didn't he it was a lovely hat challenge

I did what the the sort of the so-called celebrity one, which is much easier and yeah, everyone's like, yeah You want to do the actual university challenge? But yeah, no, I and I went to pieces completely me and rob rinder jud rinder Really sat there looking like oh, what are we doing? But lucy was yours was a protest about the elitism of university challenge Wasn't it when you fell apart it absolutely was yet one woman protests. Yeah, well stage through the medium of looking a bit confused But yeah, that's a judgmental. He was protesting about his wig, which he wanted a new wanted a week You want to be allowed to wear a wig on it? Well the um No footage exists of that

But there is footage readily available of the contestant on family fortunes the uk version of family feud Who answered the same thing? To every single question in the final round. So I'll ask you the question. Yeah, let's see So name a food that you would stuff turkey pepper Stuff peps I was thinking turkey was my first thought well turkey is your first thought and that was exactly what he answered To every single question of every question. Yeah Was the stuff one the first answer and then he's got stuck on turkey. No was the next one in a country, which

You're a pat nature What do you get if you remove the letter n from the word turn key? Yeah, well what they think happened was, you know, they have a soundproof booth and Obviously something had gone wrong with the soundproof booth and he had heard The guy who went first answered the question name a foodie stuff with chicken He sort of lost his mind And he came out and the first question was name something you take to the beach Maybe he did maybe him and that turkey had great days down Brighton beach

There's a chinese quiz show at the moment Where one of the most recent episodes one of the people in there had to spell the word toad And not only did they get it wrong. There were three judges And they couldn't decide whether or not they'd spelled it right. Well, hey, there are two ways of spelling toad. There are three ways Toad the line toad the car or there's a toad in the hole. Toad in the hole. Yeah This is obviously the chinese characters dictation competition. Oh, sorry. I was looking like we were in china Yeah, we're in china And the thing is that the word toad for the animal has 46 different individual strokes

And so if you want to do it perfectly, it's actually really really difficult And a lot of people make mistakes And it was a 14 year old contestant called you shuang And she missed out one little dot In the word toad and two of the three judges noticed and then she got kicked out of the final So it wasn't done. It's not done verbally. Is it where you have to say a straight line and then a curvy bit and then two dots underneath And then like diagonal Incredibly boring

So you write it down and then the cameras can see it But her teammates are there as well and the camera sort of pans to them And they're all kind of drawing it with their finger in the sky. Do you know what I mean? No, no, you need to do it this way and do it this way and do it this way. Oh my god Really cool. That's a really crazy format. Yes spelling bee in china Yeah, I didn't write how far bees go back generally and they I mean they evolved obviously from insects. No, not those kind of bees Bees go back over two centuries. I think in america

I was looking up the earliest mentions of them in the late 18th century There are references to things like quilting bees that seems to be the earliest kind and bee just meant a gathering of people Who were doing something that was kind of useful often for a single person So a quilting bee would be like this person needs a quilt Takes months to make a quilt. They're cold now if we get together We'll get it done in one day and you'd have a quilting bee Um, but the thing I like best is raising bees They were for when a new settler came to town and wanted to live there

And I guess it was in america where lots of new people were turning up a lot Then the raising bee was when the village would get together and build them a house Oh, really? You could just rock up and be like do you mind having a raising bee? The barn thing because the film witness with Harrison Ford where he's he's a cop and he's there's a murder An armish murder has happened and he's in this weird community that he doesn't know anything about And there's a scene where they raise a barn. Oh, really? It's confusing, isn't it? Because rays can mean either lift something up or burn it to the ground Have you got the wrong memo? Yeah

If you missed the spelling bee last week you turn up a bit late, burn the new barn to the ground Well, if you get the wrong end of the stick with spelling bee then you could be very embarrassed because you think you've just got to spell Bee which is one of the easiest words to spell I might have a drinking bee later if anyone's interested. I think let's just apply bee to anything I'm having a crying bee if anyone wants to join in When you were on mastermind Lucy, did you win mastermind? I well, I don't like to talk about it, but I have won it twice and I'm the current champion of champions But I don't like to mention it. I wish I hadn't brought that

What are your special subjects? So I did Steve Martin the first time and then Victoria Wood The second time that I did it, but I thought it'd be quite a nice thing to just sit and watch his movies for a couple of days Very good because you are a quiz but you're also a quiz I would say Because the word quiz the first use of it was someone who tells jokes So a quiz used to be a comedian in 1797 According to the Oxford English Dictionary the word quiz meant someone who does pranks or jokes or whatever And then obviously the word quiz is more more recent than that. Isn't it for like quizzing? You think it's 20th century?

Well, I for years the the legendary origin story of the word quiz was that there was the an irish theatrical impresario Who wanted to attract attention? So wrote it on Walls in Dublin and everyone said oh, what is quiz and a bit complete nonsense obviously Yeah, that guy was called Richard Daley And the anecdote the earliest I could find was from 1835 in the Manchester Times But he died in 1813. So it's quite Close to him dying that the anecdote was was used, you know quite contemporaneous or however you say that word

Yeah, it's contemporaneous I was listening to an old episode and I realized that I don't know how to say that word And I think I've said it quite often. I don't know how to actually say that. That's cool. I'm gonna leave it But Richard Daley is really interesting. He um, he went to trinity college in Dublin when he was 15 And he was a really turbulent student He used to get into fights all the time apparently fought 16 jewels in the first two years that he was And then he left Dublin to go and live in London And we're not sure why but one of the rumors was that he killed a billiard table marker

In a duel and he had to leave and go to London a billiard table marker. That's a person not a thing Well, it could be a misprint for maker But all of the sources say marker So it could be someone who draws the lights on a billiard table or the old crafter dying out, aren't they? Wow But yeah, and then he went to prison Um after he was doing a show and he got in a fight with an audience member Uh, and when he was in prison, he wrote a lurid account of an affair with one of his singers who was called elizabeth billington

and she was amazing she was um Basically of all the english singers who have ever gone to italy up to the current day She had the best reputation as the best singer from england ever in italy Okay, until she shagged this guy Well, she was you know, she was sometimes known as the poland street mantrap because she had affairs The prince of wales the duke of sussex this person Wait, and this was the woman to trace the fact who shagged the guy who apparently did actually didn't write the word quiz

That's why we're talking about her Well, I'm delighted to have heard of her. I want to hear her version of happy birthday I think she probably would have done that the poland street mantrap. Yeah, I'm gonna go and hang around poland street now It's not far and try and co-op that the poland street man repellent. That's That's what I want to be Okay Okay, it's time for fact number three and that is my fact my fact is that in 1804 William Wordsworth and his sister dorothy built a hut lined with moss

Lucy you're familiar with andy's moss obsession that we're trying to Tramp down, right? The moss man cometh I should say this was sent this was sent in Um to me by a guy called nick hodder on twitter. So thank you nick Um for the moss fact. He can now send me moss content every week. It's great. Um, so He and dorothy his sister they visited scotlanded in the year before 1803 and they saw This hut a wooden hut lined with fog, which is what they called moss at the time So they were very taken with it and when they got home to the lake district. They built their own hut

Lined it with moss Covered it with henna on the outside and it was destroyed very sadly This important bit of english literary heritage By the later owner thomas de quincey Opium fan and fellow Word celeb thomas de quincey. He probably smoked it. Can you smoke? And anyway, so the the good news is that in 2020 200 years after this absolute travesty A new version has been built. Isn't it interesting that the word fog in scotland means moss? Yes, it is weird. It's weird that isn't it?

apparently It used to be a word for grass like long grass and then it became moss because it's like uncamped ground And they both come from an old scandinavian word meaning wind blown So you kind of get fog blowing over the hills and you would also get the wind blown grass And it comes from an old norwegian word fucker Which meant sea mist or light drizzle If you trace any etymology back far enough eventually you can find a swear word So wordsworth and dorothy they were tight, weren't they? They were super tight

Um, the brother and sister obviously, but they didn't grow up together Or they grew up grew up in the first bit of their childhood together and then both of their parents died very sadly and they were separated and William went to school and dorothy was sent elsewhere and they reunited in adulthood and they seemed to have been full on soulmates And there are even things like the night before wordsworth's wedding to mary who was his childhood sweetheart Oh, I actually think it was a friend of dorothy's the night before his wedding You're not you're not flying anything

Sorry, sir he married mary he married mary the night before his wedding dorothy his sister wore The wedding ring in bed that he was going to give to mary and then in the morning William and dorothy did this ritual where wordsworth sort of knelt Beside her and took the ring off her finger and replaced it onto her finger again So it was a sort of ceremonial marriage to her sister and then went and married mary Blimey wows us and she didn't go to the wedding dorothy his sister. She just no no she didn't attend It was it was a what do we know why was it a wasn't invited venue not big enough kind of thing You have to draw a line somewhere

I think she just was grieving terribly that this was happening and that this big, you know Emotional change was happening in her life. Oh, who knows but she did have a diary which he read by the way Another aspect of their relationship, but when she heard the wedding had happened There were people coming up the driveway to inform her. Oh, yes, they're married now She wrote I could stand it no longer and threw myself on the bed neither hearing nor seeing anything She lived with them for the rest of Their lives she outlived William then she died then eventually mary his So when william died with the two women living together, yeah, there's a sick

I can have the ring back now Maggie smith in that sick. Oh, yeah It would be like remember death becomes her that movie With the golden horn kind of gradually disintegrating. Yeah, there's like two people who live together, but they're immortal Yeah, and they hate each other and they start trying to beat each other up because they're immortal They just all their bones break and their wrists get all floppy On the subject of the diary and stuff though, but they sort of Had joint journals didn't they and they collaborated and I did not know

That the I wandered lonely as a cloud the inspirational walk for that was one that dorothy and william took together Around oleswater in 1802 I mean How annoying would it be if you're on a walk with someone it inspires a poem and it's called I wandered lonely as a cloud I'm here. I was there My sister had stopped to tie her laces And it was her because she wrote wrote up the daffodils encounter

Yes, they did see a load of daffodils on the walk and then And she was right she used some very evocative language about them. They were you know bouncing around and flopping about or whatever It wasn't that it wasn't that but you know the the waving Dancing host and all of that that was some of that language made its way into the poem. So, you know co-writer credit Well, I think they were co-writers of lyrical ballads. Basically. There was this amazing kind of threesome They had essentially so it was dorothy and william and coderidge They all lived together in dorset for a while and some summer set and they like you said Lucy they wrote in each other's notebooks and they sort of finish each other's sentences and dorothy would write up this journal of

their walks and the flowers and the clouds and shit So I think it was a collaboration lyrical ballads, but Wordsworth wouldn't let anyone else have the copyright of it So I think even though it's got a bunch of coleridge in there. It's got five or six coleridge perms in there Isn't ancient marina including ancient marina, which is one of you'd want to own that really wouldn't you? It's the biggie. Um, but like words was such a genius poet and coleridge was all like words with you're the better one You know, I you're the genius you take this So it was well you first met the coleridge said he was so excited that he leapt over a fence

to get Wordsworth. It's like a sweet. It's like a real sort of fanboy. It really is I mean and I had only recently got to know anything about wordsworth And I had thought always the daffodils and it's all very prissy and and um, what a life What a life he had illegitimate children revolutionary france He he was in revolutionary france fathered a child and then

Buggered off and couldn't get back to the child for like 10 years or something Couldn't although yeah So sorry if the revolution still haven't sorry I just look so aristocratic that it's a bit of a risk. Yeah, I can't even send any money Soz He did send money by the way in case his family are listening. Yeah, he did send money But yeah, he didn't invite them out of revolutionary france and they were royalists So there was probably some tension for interesting which is very bizarre because he was a revolutionary

At least at the start like all cool trendy people of the day Obviously went to france thought these whole ideas of equality and fraternity and liberty. I love it sounds great met loads of other fellow revolutionary reformists and then got a bit put off by all the sort of mass murder that happened Yeah, and I think he was very good friends with someone who I think he saw get executed I think that will put you off sometimes Well, it was basically his gap year. He was 22 years old when he went And with I mean the thing about words about that he lived a very long he lived 80 years at the time 1770 to 1850

So there's a long old life and I think the imagination is of him was quite an old man because he was for You know a while When you define older starting Do you know one thing Wordsworth couldn't do? Um ride a motorbike Yep What couldn't he do it is actually the daffodils He would not have been able. Oh, I know to smell them. Yeah, no sense of smell. It's an osmic early covid

And he had no sense of taste as I think we can tell from the prelude. That's a joke about his big long pair Um, yeah, his nephew Christopher wrote his first ever biography in 1851 So the year after he died and he wrote with regard to fragrance Mr. Wordsworth spoke from the testimony of others. He himself had no sense of smell God, that's awful as someone who's so infatuated with the countryside and nature and all of that How dreadful although daffodils don't really smell. Do they? Yeah, do they? Yeah, I don't like the smell of daffodils Actually, oh, they smell a bit like weed. Yeah, I didn't like to say but yes big old smell. Yeah, you're right Sorry, they smell very strongly of urine. So I've tried to like

That's probably why he wrote that he wrote this amazing poem about daffodils and everyone else. Just like, are they not the ones that smell of weed? You say you love to be very old, um, but a lot of people would say should have died younger Should have copped it earlier because he got quite crap later on in life according to I suppose most literary critics And even he when he was asked to be poet laureate when he was 73 Said look, I don't think I'm good enough. I haven't written anything decent for years And he never published anything as poet laureate, did he? Well, but when he was asked to be poet laureate, he said no at the start But then Robert Peel said well, the queen really wants you to be poet laureate and you don't have to do any work

So would you like reconsider him? All right fine, but he was really famous at that time, wasn't he? And there's a bit where his wife was writing about when he was 77 years old She's writing a letter to someone and in the letter she says I'm looking up and a group of young tourists are standing before the window So they're just people looking in his window and just going oh look there he is Uh, and apparently he was reading the newspaper and every time he lifted his head from the newspaper all the tourists would bow to him Oh I think that would put you off your work. That's why I

But he also always wore um shades as well when he got older Seriously, yeah, um because he had um very inflamed eyes And so he wore dark glasses to stop the light from getting in Blimey couldn't smell and then couldn't see anything because of his shades Eventually would have been an entirely tactile based poet Yeah, he got quite reactionary as well. He did the old classic. This is why better to die young He went from being cool revolutionary Uh reformist and thinking things like uh, he was sort of part

He was um, essential to the founding of the national trust because he really believed in Land being shared by everyone everyone should have access and should get outside and experience nature the working classes should be You know, it should be brought up to the Lake District and show how lovely the rivers are or whatever Um, how come I went to um a national trust property the other day and it was four o'clock on a sunday and he said sorry we're closed Yes, sorry about that. They're not a second true to the spirit of Wordsworth But well, he went off the idea anyway in his later life because he a became very pro the death penalty wrote poems in favor of the death penalty Just to make sure people knew where he stood. There must be so few poems in favor of the death penalty It feels like a weird crossover, doesn't it? Yeah, a death penalty fan and a poet. You don't you don't see them often in one person

What was it called? Do you know? Uh, yes, it was called Noose on the loose It was called sonnets upon the punishment of death Wow Um and he didn't like it Actually, it turned out when the trains got up and running and people did start getting the train up to the Lake District from sort of Manchester and stuff and disturbing his peace and quietude Turn into a miserable old goat

really I suppose if people were standing outside your window, you'd be like, well, I don't want more of them coming up to stand and look at me while I read the paper and fair enough I think the death penalty for people who stare You drop a guillotine from your window God, Porter's Britain is going to be a pretty intense place. He thought Pretty Patel was helpful, I tell you Are you looking at me?

There'll be quiz shows about me on television. That's the main thing that I'm looking for Okay, it's time for our final fact of the show and that is James Okay, my fact this week is that we know of five people who have died in the Queen Vic in EastEnders Although one of them was murdered 120 years before the TV show began That's a prequel, isn't it? Wasn't it they were they were stabbed to death full staring at Lucy has been in EastEnders, right? I have Yes

Didn't get murdered in the Queen Vic. So I had a very small part as a woman called Rita who was the love interest of a character called Mitch So for our overseas listeners EastEnders is a beloved soap opera and if you get a part in EastEnders, it is absolutely mandatory for everyone, you know To then talk at you in a cockney accent All right, you in EastEnders, or you're not my mother And uh, it's my name above the door Frank So, um, yeah, but I didn't get to go inside the Queen Vic. So maybe I was lucky given that it's obviously

We're all of your um all of your scenes outdoors. No, I was in the Lawn Drecked, which is another Absolutely iconic location But I don't know if I've been killed off because they don't tell you obviously when you go into EastEnders They're not allowed to tell you anything about what's going on And especially when I was in it, there was a big murder storyline which has now been resolved But they bumped up their murder count because there was a man called Gray who was murdering loads of people And so I got the script and they were like, well, you can't tell anyone what happens because not my bit was like the little comic relief Nonsense, but this big storyline was being resolved. And in fact when I got onto the set

I was in the Lawn Drecked and this murderer Came in and it was his last day and I was like, oh because he was the most hated man in Britain And he came in and it was his last day. So he did this lovely speech about how wonderful it is and I've had such a wonderful time And it was like seeing I don't know Fred West or Ted Bungley Well, it's all been a marvelous luck Wow, that was amazing. Was that in the last four or five years then? That was in the last year So because yeah, because I know EastEnders wasn't very murdery for a while. It was always Coronation Street. I think was the most murdery

And then Hollyoaks Hollyoaks took over was the hot bit of murder I've got friend who's in Hollyoaks and during covid She had to do some kissing scenes But she couldn't do it because obviously you weren't allowed to go near And so her partner had to come on and be her love interest But you only kind of saw his shoulder the whole time. He's a singer in a band He's got long hair very skinny guy and her partner was this kind of hunky asian bloke

That was an amazing bit of camera work to make What a needle to thread They've both got shoulders haven't they? She just kisses him once on the shoulder. That should be fine Well, even when I was filming it was like you couldn't you had to stand and shout across The laundrette at each other, but that's fine because you shout all the time in EastEnders anyway And in laundrets. It's a noisy working environment. So, um Did you have to do the tennis ball on a stick thing?

What's that any senders during covid they had I watched a sort of little documentary on all the tricks they had to do And one of them was whenever you see anyone in a close-up scene with someone else in EastEnders during covid They were talking to an empty space, but they would put a little tennis ball at the top of a pole Which was where you were supposed to look to see their eyes So if they're sobbing or lunging or chassing, it's always engaging with the tennis ball For those two person shots where you see their face, but the other person's back of their head The reverse or they did it in plates. So they did it. Um, they'd filmed one person a bit like how they did the parent trap I mean they could have used it to make someone their own twin for a while if you're gonna do it

They could have done like is it eddie murphy in that movie not he prefers to do the clump. Yeah. Yeah Or in kind hearts and coronets would probably be a better Everyone's film itchill film itch they should have had a completely film itchill episode in EastEnders Where he played all the roles I haven't really explained the fact have I no, sorry very very quickly. So, um, they Um, in night in February 2020 one character called Sharon Mitchell decided to tell a story Sorry, the tennis with which you said one of the seminal EastEnders characters names. Is that sorry? She's one of the five biggest characters in it

I'm so sorry. I mean, she's brilliant. Oh, is it? Yeah, well by my accent, you could probably tell I'm a coronation street guy Uh, anyway, so Sharon Mitchell talked about mr And mrs bag stock who were the original landlord and landlady of the queen vic And apparently back in the 1860s when the fictional queen vic was first built And these this landlord killed his landlady by drowning her in the bath Uh, and maybe that's why they've had so much bad luck in elvis square It's a haunted pub effectively. Yeah, I tried to see if there was a such person as mr bag stock

In london, uh, but bag stock doesn't appear to even be a name It's in dombean suns, but I think it's just a made up dickens name Oh, that's quite it. That's a nice literary pedigree though for this random bit of queen vic trivia. Yeah, that's great Um, so one thing that the the east enders hasn't come on with william wordsworth. Oh, yeah They can't smell Nobody can smell. Yeah, it's a death penalty Yeah They daffodils

Oh, so there are some daffodils in albert square, but wordsworth wouldn't have been able to smell these ones for a very good reason Which is that they're fake And the reason that they're fake daffodils. I'm probably Good filming reasons for that, but also they film is it about six weeks in advance? You film the episodes about six weeks later. So they they make it look like springs Even though it's still winter, right? So that's that's their way of doing it. It's basically a time portal and then at the other end of the year They obviously they have to shave the trees

Oh, that's I'm joking. That's that's not real because I was thinking the very first lines of the first episode of east enders Was dirty dan walks in and he goes sticks in here. Oh, yeah So it might have been sticks of weed here from all those daffodils Definitely real Why didn't he get killed by someone was holding a bunch of flowers the first time he wasn't actually dead But someone was holding a bunch of daffodils and they shot them shot him through it. So come on. I love it It's all tying together. My god David Lynch isn't it?

We've broken east enders wide open Um, so the person behind east enders was julia woman called julia smith who when she was Advertising for jobs said only east enders need apply So it was all real people from the east end of london at first who were on it And they weren't actually calling it east enders at the time They were calling it east eight and she wrote that they called it east state referred to it Is east state when they were working on the show before it came out? And then she realized a bunch of her friends were saying what's this estate program?

You've got when it's not coming out and it's just is the word estate But it could have been called other working titles square dance Yeah around the houses, which isn't another show That's quite a good title round the houses. It sounds like a much more huggable. I think there are fewer murders in round Yeah, that's the loveable 76 com. Yes. That's that's the terry and june style Oh, red joe cox is fine. He was just pretending to prank Um on the subject of the script security Because you know it said wallford, right? So this was the fictional play save created

so when my husband was in east enders a few years ago and the It was christmas day episode which again, you know, they don't want anything to get out about the christmas day episode So they have this ridiculous procedure where they send you a script But they won't send the password to unlock that script to the same email that they've sent the script to because obviously that might get hacked So what they do then is they Phone you and then they give you another special code which sort of unlocks something else. Anyway, it's it's like a seven stage You'd be easier to get the nuclear code

To get into an east ender script, but what really made me laugh when my husband did it was They went through all of this and he was he had to be by the phone at a certain time take the phone call And he answered the phone went uh-huh, uh-huh and then started typing it in and the password was wallford And then I did it recently and they have changed it because I told everyone I knew about that but the a was a four wasn't it so Yeah impenetrable Walford probably named after walford road, which is in dolston because one of the other co-creator with Julia smith Julia smith was tony holland

And he lived in dolston or nearby and he probably saw walford road and gave it that name He based albert square on a place called facet square in dolston Which I went to yesterday had a cycle round Very nice and the nearest pub to facet square is called the victoria Which i'm fairly certain must be where he got the idea for the queen vic name at least Because it's got its license in 1848. So it's a very very old pub. Anyway, I went there last night and You murdered some You discovered you were your own father

The whole place burned down. I was so hoping for that kind of thing. But basically it's the Hipsteriest place you can possibly imagine instead of like light fixtures It has upside down plant pots with trees coming out of it and it sells four different types of kombucha But it's Kind of IPA and and read my book dot cop would have approved of all of this I mean everybody does complain about the fact that east enders is now set in an area of london where nobody who's in it Could afford to live, you know, it would all be merchant bankers and hedge fund managers or podcasters Yeah

Your podcast is doing well. Trust me. Not most podcasters. But yeah the um, but off-com I was reading all the off-com complaints about east enders and uh one complaint was people saying that People spend too much time in the cafe Someone had calculated how much the characters would spend if they were buying the amount of drinks and snacks Because of course, they're always eating and drinking. Yeah, but have you seen how many times Peggy Mitchell said it's on the ass It's on the ass. That's true. That's hub would have gone under, isn't it? Yeah, very good. They're almost all free-drink I was reading some of the other complaints actually And there was one saying that people were throwing the cigarette butts on the ground and if they did that

Why did they not get a fixed penalty notice for doing it? You can be yeah, you can be having an affair with your brother's sister's cat But the unrealistic thing is Something else realistic is um, Barbara Windsor's life It was thought that her life was quite true to the what seems like a very unrealistic east enders life So she was she was quite In the gang world really. Yeah in the 70s 80s. She went out with Ronnie Cray. Hold on. Who was the not-mad one?

She went out with Reggie Cray. Ronnie was the really mad one, wasn't he? I mean, it's like it's like the williams sisters They're both good at tennis She went out with the equivalent of Venus Williams, I suppose okay in Cray brothers And she was married She was married to another guy called Ronnie Knight who was another gangster really the venus williams of the underworld That's amazing. He'd have been so flattered. I think they'd both be flattered by that No, ladies and gentlemen, please give your applause to the Ronnie Cray of tennis So she married a Ronnie Ronnie Knight

Who was another kind of gangster and Ronnie Knight's brother? I ended up reading his Wikipedia page basically his brother His brother's killer and the man who killed his brother's killer were all murdered. That's a trait. That's a trailer four murders Sorry, so sorry. So Ronnie Knight, Barbara Windsor's husband was His brother was murdered Okay, and then his brother's killer was murdered And then his brother's killer's killer was murdered It's an endless trail of murder and I'm still picturing it in the world of tennis and it's becoming

I mean in the word of gangsters, it's not as implausible This is we're still in the group stages And did Barbara Windsor kill all of those Turns out yes Well, actually her husband Ronnie Knight probably did kill his brother's killer because he admitted to it in his autobiography later But he'd already been tried for it and exonerated so under double jeopardy. They couldn't get him in your face There is a thing about so Lucy you said about The murder stats way higher in east enders

I think so in east enders, it's about 100. You're about 100 times as likely to be murdered in east enders as you are in Britain But there is good there's a concomitant bit of good news, which is that Residents of walford are much more romantically faithful than real people. Oh really? Yeah Both of these things are only good news and bad news if you live in the world of east enders It's not in the real world. It's bad news for all of us except me. So I just need to be in full time So on the show 2% of female and 1.7% of male characters have an affair each year. Is that right? I always thought they were all having affairs in east enders me too. I would have thought

So this is a study from 2003. So maybe they've sexed it up since then But that's way lower than the stats from 2003 for men and women in the uk having affairs Also, this was the other finding the men of albert square are also less likely to visit a prostitute Just Just 0.18 of them Are knocking on that door. Good on them. Yeah, can you see I should I should be suggesting this to the story line As I should say I could I mean become a sex worker make the show more realistic I could be the mantrap of wolf

Okay, that's it that's all of our facts Thank you so much for listening If you would like to get in touch with any of us about the things that we've said on the course of this show We can all be found on our twitter accounts. I'm on at andrew hunter m james at james harkin lucy lucy porter comic And anna you can email podcast at qi.com or you can go to our group account Which is at no such thing If you want to go to our website, which is no such thing as official.com We have all of our previous episodes there and lots of merch live shows. We're coming to scotland and wales quite soon

There's all sorts of other stuff there So go and check it out if you like and you should also check out lucy's podcast It's fingers on buzzers. She hosts it with previous fish guest jenny ryan. So you're getting two fish graduates For the price of none fingers on buzzers check it out wherever you get your podcasts from and we will be back again Next week with another episode of the podcast. We'll see you then. Goodbye You