No Such Thing As A Fish - 427: No Such Thing As A Magnetic Skateboard

Episode Date: May 20, 2022

Dan, James, Anna and Andy discuss a cupboard full of clown heads, the robot that doesn't jump over the moon and the rock and roll side of pension planning. Visit nosuchthingasafish.com for news about live shows, merchandise and more episodes.

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 Dan Schreiber, I am sitting here with Anna Tyshinski, Andrew Hunter Murray and James Harkin and once again we have gathered round the microphones with our four favorite facts from the last seven days and in no particular order, here we go. Starting with fact number one, that is Anna. My fact this week is that scientists have invented a 30 centimeter tall robot that could jump over the Statue of Liberty if it was on the moon.

If they were both on the moon? If they were both, yes sorry, not if the Statue of Liberty was on the moon and the robot was on Earth, that would be incredible. So sorry, we've moved the Statue of Liberty to the moon. That's right, yes. Which I don't know why. So, aliens when they first come, the first thing they see is the moon right before they see the Earth, unless it's on the other side.

Depends what side they're coming from. By assuming they come from the moon side, the first thing they see is liberty and lightening the Earth. So we'll have to move it to the dark side of the moon, or rather the further side of the moon. Oh yes. So we'll never see it again because the moon and the Earth are locked aren't they? All the moon is tidally locked.

That's true. We'll just never see it. But you've seen, you know what it looks like now, don't you? We've got pictures. We've got pictures, Andy, we've got pictures. So this robot, which is an amazing robot, this jump, without leaping over the Statue of Liberty, it can leap 10 meters, right? Yeah, yeah, it can still leap quite high.

It can actually leap 30 meters, so it can leap over a 10-story building. So it could also jump over the statue of Christ the Redeemer in Brazil, I think, I'm pretty sure. And that's if it was on Earth. And that's on Earth. And we've got the Christ the Redeemer back from the moon, where we put it. Right, because he always goes with the Statue of Liberty, doesn't he, after? They're dating.

But how tall, then, is the Statue of Liberty? So the Statue of Liberty is 93 meters, I believe, and this could jump on the moon, 125 meters. So it could actually jump the Statue of Liberty's height and then about a third as high again. If she was giving Christ the Redeemer a piggyback. Yes, I think that should, yeah, yeah, yeah, that would work. It's about 30 meters, isn't it? Yeah. So the Statue, though, with the arm angles of both statues, I'm just trying to work

out how the piggyback would work architecturally. Well, he's fine, because he's up top, he's got his arms out. Yeah, he's fine. Do you know that the Angel of the North is actually giving Christ the Redeemer a hug? But they're just so far away, you never see it happen. Wow, but tectonics one day will bring them together, and eventually they'll meet. Anyway, this is a jumping robot, and the scientist is very excited because it's really the highest the robot's ever jumped, proportionally, for its size, and it's made, it's quite a basic

looking thing. It's made of rubber bands and some carbon fiber slats, because they store energy really well. And it does have a motor. Yeah. So I just wanted to say it has a motor, is that counts as a jump, if you have a motor? Oh, well, it's not using the motor to propel itself well in the air, it's using its motor, like we would use a muscle, I guess, to bounce to jump.

To wind up the rubber bands. Exactly. But maybe it counts, maybe it doesn't take it up with the researchers, I think they've cheated on a number of fronts here. First of all, they put it on the moon. But it's a robot, you're allowed to give a robot a motor, aren't you? Yeah, you are, they're showing off that it can jump way better than like anything in nature.

Showing off. They're saying that the reason is, they're saying, oh, my mind is better than everything in nature. In your face, Grasshopper. But the reason it does it is because it has these carbon fiber slats and stuff like that. But actually, I would argue that one of the reasons is that they're using a motor, but I don't know. I agree.

But I reckon they could do it with the force of just like a human pulling it, I think really, or maybe they could do it with wind up, they'd have to have some sort of force applied. But yeah, the motor is not flying through the air like an aeroplane, it's not just an aeroplane. Also, it doesn't look like, whenever I hear robot, I think it's got two legs and two arms, human, humanoid kind of, well, not even humanoid, but you know, it's C3PO. Yeah, exactly. Why do you not think R2-D2 is a robot then?

Um, yeah, good question. I... God, do you really set him a trap there? No. That was some sort of liar, wasn't it? Well, your honor, can I ask my client, actually, the other person's client, does he think that R2-D2 is a robot? If you're a lawyer, James, you absolutely would do that, you'd start cross-examining your

own witness, possibly, just so you could use some point to be made. Yeah, and I would have set him up knowing that he's going to give me the wrong answer as well. Sorry. That's fine. Damn it, I've had so much thinking time, I still haven't got an answer. Um, I don't... Yeah, it's obviously a robot, but so it's just worth saying that this one looks kind

of like a toy for a cat, right? Like it's like a... Yeah, yeah. It's a little ball that you would play with. Yeah, like it's got two wheels at cross-angles, or maybe three, I can't remember. Yeah, it's like two bike wheels have crashed into each other at right angles. Yes. Or like the skeleton of a football.

Mmm. Anyway, it's weird looking robot, I'll give you that. Your Honor, I have another question. The way it works, I should say, is that it's basically by releasing a really, really strong elastic force. Right. Isn't it? So it's got these rubber bands that are stretched really, really super far, and this makes the

carbon fiber bend like an archer's bow would bend, and then when you release those elastic bands, then the archer's bow bends straightens, and it shoots up into the air, and it makes the comedy noise. Yeah, they had to add that sound effect, it actually has quite a lot of weight. It's very cool. Yeah. It is very cool. Did it, was it a surprise to them how high it went the first time?

I didn't even want it to jump. It just leapt out of their hands. This is the world's best standing scale robot, oh, fucking hell. We've invented the perfect coffee table. The good things about it is that it's able to write itself when it lands, and so it sort of reinflates on the ground and then gets upright and then jumps away again. Great. So it keeps you on your toes, and it will be useful, apparently, this kind of technology

in space. You know, in space, we've got robots and asteroids already that jump over the little lumps, and it could jump over big lumps. I don't know that. More like on Mars kind of thing. Exactly. Right. There's a boulder in the way.

Exactly. I would need to jump 100 meters into the air. Could be a big boulder. Could be a big boulder. That's true. I was looking up jumping records. Yeah. I got a bit distracted thinking, when do you think the queen last jumped?

Has she ever jumped? I'm sure she did because she's been a child, you know. She would have jumped and done skipping and things like that. I've never seen her jump to my knowledge. No. Is there any footage of the queen jumping? Does anyone know? If you have, send it in, and you could win 250 pounds.

When do you need to jump in life? When you're skipping, that's exercise. When you're exercising in general. Exercise in general. If she goes on long walks, there might be a little stream that she's never seen. Like if a corgi gets in the way when you're walking for your purpose. Yes. Jump the corgi.

I think that corgi's a better train than that. Do you think that's what they say when a monarch has gone too far? Oh, she's really jumped the corgi now. I don't know, Andy. In fact, none of us knows. We're just speculating. Great question. I think she has jumped, but I don't think for a while.

Do you know the highest jump by a horse? Record. So was this Olympics? No, it wasn't. It's just the record. Although they did do the horse high jump, didn't they, in the really early Olympics. And long jump we covered as well. Yeah.

Anna, I guess you mean the horse is allowed to run up to the thing. So it's not jumping from a standing position. No, it's not jumping from a standing position. I bet horses can't even do that. I bet they can't. Jump from a standing position. Yeah. They can jump from a standing position.

They've got muscles in their legs. The queen can do it. Can she do it on a horse though? Because she rides a lot, doesn't she? Can the queen jump over a horse from a standing position? I think I've seen that happen at Badminton and stuff where they have multiple fences to go over. And they'll stop from one to the other, I think. They definitely do that.

I mean, I've seen horses do it as well. I think they're quite better at it than we are. I think you're right. I'm thinking of a horse standing with all his legs straight. But you're allowed to bend your legs before you jump. Yeah, it can't fire itself up. I don't think you can jump without a tiny bit of bending of any muscles. You think you can.

But now when you think about it, you're like, actually, I am moving my ankles a bit if I do that. If I do that pencil jump. Yeah, yeah. But it wasn't a pencil jump. Just a normal horse jump. I think it's, I remember a fact. I think it's shorter than the human high jump. It's actually not that much higher than it, but it is a bit higher.

And it beat everyone else by quite a long way, all the other horses. So it's eight foot one inch and the record was set in 1949 and it's never been broken. Wow, really? And it was set by this really, this cool horse called Hwaso. Hwaso? Hwaso. Hwaso. Oh my God, it's called Hwaso.

Well, it was a horse in Chile. I guess Hwaso was the Chilean for horse in the 40s. Oh my Hwas. My kingdom for a horse. It came from New York to Chile. Anyway, it was really bad at everything else and it was almost retired. In fact, I think it was almost put down because it failed at racing, at dressage, at show jumping. It was very hard to control.

And then an army officer was wandering by its field one day and saw it jump over a fence and thought, my God, that's high and bought the horse on the spot. And they trained it up specifically just to break the world horse high jump record. And it did it and it broke the record when it was 16 and the moment it broke it, it retired. And it was never written again. Wow. Isn't that nice? One moment of glory in its life.

Yeah. And I went to quit. It retired or it was retired? It made the decision. It signed the forms of little hoof prints. I pulled it into a field with very high fences. Some stuff on robots, maybe? Yeah.

One thing that's really hard for robots to do is handle soft fruit. But there is a... What? Because they don't need to eat fruit, I suppose. So I can't imagine it being a problem. They haven't needed to learn. Yeah. But what if you want a robot to prepare you some fruit?

That's a good point. The problem is that fruit is uneven in shape, right? So even if you have two apples, they might not be exactly the same. Two bananas might not be exactly the same. But there's a guy called Hichio Kim at the University of Tokyo and he and his colleagues have developed a machine learning robot that has learned how to peel a banana. Oh. So it took 811 minutes of data that it had to watch to learn how to do this banana.

The task was divided into nine stages. Like first of all grasping the banana, then picking it up off the table, blah, blah, blah. Okay. So they have this robot that can successfully peel a banana 57% of the time. I'm not going to stop my holiday beach bar with it. It took ages as well. Three minutes. Three minutes.

The queue is building up at Robo's beach bar for the banana smoothies. Wow. 57% of the time. So funny. Oh. I was reading about you can get these new robot smart suitcases. Which, oh, it just looks so cool. What do they do?

It just follows you. So like let's imagine you're in the airport and you're just walking to your plane. It's just coming up next to you, beside you. Is it with a magnet or something? Because I've often thought you could get a great, like if you have the right magnet. No. No. No, it's not.

But you could like more likely radio waves coming from your phone and it just follows the waves. Exactly. That would be another way of doing it. Walking through security in the airport with a massive magnet. Yeah, I can see that working. And also everyone else has the same luggage as you, right? That's one problem.

Everyone's just attracted to your massive magnet and you're just walking around Heathrow with a hundred bags attached to you. It's not feasible, Andy. Like a beekeeper. A beard of suitcases. Yeah, there are some teething troubles. Murrow's magnet suitcase. Yeah.

But yeah, so no, it's also got facial. So it is a phone in this facial recognition and the facial recognition that does mean if someone like Andy tries to run off with your suitcase, it's got an alarm system. He says, no, no. That's clever. Does it scream? No, Mr Murray. No, please.

That's really clever. Yeah. Thank you. That's great. So sorry. How does it? I can't remember now how it works. It follows you around.

You've got it. I guess you'll have an app on your phone and facial recognition. Is this a thing? What force? Sorry. What is it using? It uses a motor. Cheating.

Cheating with a motor. It's one of the cheating robots. Cheating with a motor. So it's like remote controlled on the, instead of using a remote control, it's just following your phone. Yeah. But was there not a guy, when we were in New York and we were walking down the street, was there not a guy on a motorized, what's it called?

Skateboard. Yeah. Who fell off his skateboard. And then the skateboard was like five meters away from him. And he pressed a button on his phone and it kind of followed and came up to him. Do you remember that? Yeah, he summoned it back. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

We were walking along the street and he came up. He looked like a bit of a chump. Skateboard. But then he summoned it like a dog and it was cool. Are you sure? Because I remember the guy coming off. But I don't remember the skateboard. No, I do remember that.

That did happen. Yeah. Wow. Same technology. Or a magnet. Or a magnet. He wouldn't have fall off at all. With the magnet in place.

Okay. It is time for fact number two. And that is James. Okay. My fact this week is that the last ever speaker of the bow language of the Andaman Islands would only speak it to birds who she considered to be her ancestors. So you might remember a few weeks ago we talked about the Andaman Islands about elephants swimming among them.

I did a lot of research about the Andaman Islands themselves, but we never used it. So here we are again. This is recycling. Greta would be proud. This is the Andaman Islands. As we said before, they are between just off the coast of India. And it's an article that I read on BBC online about Professor and Vita Abbey who has written the first dictionary of this language.

And she talked about this last speaker who was called Boa Senior. And she said that, you know, I spoke to this person, got all the words, blah, blah, blah. But whenever this woman... Did she have to dress as a bird to get the words out of her? Well, she said, Professor and Vita Abbey, she said they caught this woman speaking it to the birds. And when they asked her about it, why are you speaking it to a bird? They said, well, they are ancestors and they're the only ones who understand my language besides yourself. And yeah, this is...

Wow. That's very sad. Yeah. If she dressed as a bird, she would have been a feathered bird. Yes. Oh, brilliant. That's really good. So she could have done that, but it probably wouldn't work in her language.

That was the tragedy. That is the tragedy. It is. She spent 30 years as the only person speaking it. Such a long time. It is a long time. Obviously she knew other variations of Hindi that she also spoke to. Yeah, she could talk to other people in some ways.

She was quite spry at the end. So she died in 2010. She was in her mid-80s, I think. But when the Indian Ocean tsunami came in 2004, was it, I think? Yes. She was 79 years old and she had to climb up a tree to escape it. Yeah. Maybe she asked the birds to lift her up into the branches of the tree.

It's very possible. Maybe she has a little motorised thing in her ankle and was lobbed up into the tree. It was really interesting about that because her group used really old knowledge to see that there was a tsunami coming. So it's the Angay tribe that she was part of. And they used knowledge by the type of fish that are found at different levels of seawater. So when the sea really went out, there were different fish that they could see and they could see that there was a problem.

So they went to high ground. There was another group called the Ajarawas who were in the Andaman Islands. And they saw the patterns of the waves changing. And they had this ancient knowledge that knew that there was something that was a problem coming and so they could get away. And the Andamanese, they're much more sort of integrated into Indian society now. And they were the slowest to react to this tsunami because they didn't have all of the ancient knowledge.

Yeah. But that is, it's weird you mentioned that because that's one of the things about where languages is the fear that that kind of knowledge will get lost. In rural communities, there's so much kind of knowledge that we don't know yet. I was listening to a really interesting podcast, I think, it was the Guardian Science podcast. And it was about how we're losing medicinal plant knowledge because of all these languages that are disappearing. So it was someone saying that like every botanist, even however much they know, they'll go into

the forest and immediately they'll go, shit, I only know about 1% of these plants. And yet the local people who live in the Amazon or in Guinea or whatever will know all of them and will know like what they can be used for. And this guy did a study in the Amazon, North America and New Guinea. And he made a list of 12,500 plant purpose pairings. My God, it must have taken a long time. But it was, so that's like a plant and then the purpose that it's useful. Yeah.

Yeah. Pairings. And he said 75% of them were specific to one language. So they're not shared by any other language. And most of those languages are endangered languages. Yeah. So all of that knowledge would go. Do they work?

Sorry, do these 12,000 bits work? Well, he didn't specify that. He gave examples. Like Doc leaves on a nettle stick. The only one I know and it doesn't work. But you know aspirin, that comes from that. Yeah. I know how to go into a shop and ask for cow poll, you know.

Yeah. Most importantly, it feels like we need to teach people how to do that. But... There's an explorer called Wade Davis who's been pushing this for many, many years. We've mentioned him on the podcast before. He's one who claimed that a poo knife was made by... Yeah. A frosty poo knife.

A frosty poo knife. Yeah. But he... So Wade Davis... Frosty the poo knife. A less good Christmas creation. A slightly older children. So Wade Davis says that, and he says this in his talks, that he thinks that what our

sort of period of time is going to be known for is... It's going to be obviously the destruction of the environment. But he thinks the ethnosphere is the biggest thing that we've not noticed, that we've decimated. All the languages of the world are becoming extinct because we keep spreading out. We keep saying English is a great language. Why don't you learn that? Or French? Yeah.

We lose their languages and all the knowledge goes with it. And in the world, 2,000 are endangered, as in less than 1,000 people speak them, I think. It's sad. And they're going extinct every day, aren't they? A couple of recent ones. If you search on Google News for extinct last speaker of, there's loads in the last couple of years alone. Really?

Yeah. This year, we lost the Yaggan language, the Yaghan language, the Jaggan language, the Yakan language, the Yamana language, Hausi kuta, Yaggan kuta, Tekwinitza, and Yapu languages. All on the same day, because they're all different words for the same language. Yeah. This was in Chile. This is a woman called Christina Calderon. She was the last speaker of what we would mostly know as Yaggan.

And Yaggan language is most famous among people like us who do this kind of research for a word, which is Mami Lapinatapai, which got the Guinness World Record in 1993 for being the world's most succinct word. Oh. And it means the unspoken but meaningful glance shared between two people during a private moment where both individuals know the other understands what is being expressed. And say again what it is. Mami Lapinatapai.

Okay. It's quite succinct. Yep. I could create a shorter word. Could you? We all know what you mean. I read a really interesting piece about this Aussie island. It's called South Gulburn Island.

Never heard of it before. It's off the coast because it's an island, obviously. Which coast? The Australian coast. It's only one, Dan. Yeah. It goes all the way around. Sorry.

My bad. My bad. Bloody hell. Ask a stupid question, mate. There are 500 people there. This was a piece in the Atlantic, by the way. Confusively. It's not a relevant ocean, yes.

But there are 500 people there. They live in a settlement called Waruwi Community. And between these 500 people, they speak nine languages, right? Now, the really weird thing is that they haven't developed a mutual pigeon, you know, kind of language where everyone knows that one. And they don't speak each other's languages. But there are only 500 of them. You know, you can't only speak to people who know your language.

So the way they get along with each other is they all speak their own languages. And everyone else just understands enough of the language the other guy is speaking. No way. So effectively, they are like British people on holiday who just use their own language and trust that it will be understood. Yes. Oh, wow. Did they shout really loudly?

Yes. Did they say it really slowly and in a slightly racist accent? They want two beers. That's what they want. And they have multi-lingual conversations. So you walk past two people having a chat about something. One will say something in their own language, the other will reply in a completely different language.

Wow. That's unbelievably confusing. Yeah. God. Well, hey, here's a cool species from the Andaman Islands. It's called Acidabularia jala kenyakai. Oh, yeah. And it's 10 centimeters tall.

It's an algae and it's made of one cell. Wow. One cell. Cool. Because we've done the largest single-celled creature and I feel like it's not that much bigger than that. That's amazing. No, I don't think it is.

It's got one nucleus. And it's really weird. It looks quite complicated. It's got roots and a stalk and a cap and all this stuff and it's just one cell. I find those so weird. And how high can it jump? Same as the queen. Yeah, exactly.

It doesn't. Can I tell you about one more language which died this year? Yeah. So, this was a Gallic in the Braze of Lacaba. It's a vernacular from this area of Scotland and it was due to the death of Ronnie the Crofter who died age 90 this year. He was well-known in the Crofting community and the Drowing community. Do you remember we talked about those?

He was a bit of a drover. And his mother came from a family of farmers called the McDonald's. Like the McDonald's? Not the McDonald's. Well, the McDonald's. Then the Scottish McDonald's. The Scottish McDonald's. Not the chain McDonald's.

No, and not from the old McDonald's had a farm story. No, farming dynasty. From the Scottish McDonald's and his father was a Campbell. Okay, so the Campbell's and the McDonald's, bit of a tough time since the massacre of Glencoe between those two families. And so he had to find an explanation for his family and he found an ancestor who had been a piper for both the Campbell's and the McDonald's who was one of his ancestors. And so actually he could say, well, you know, we were together back then and we're together

again now. That's very nice. And apparently, and this was in the article in the BBC, they said that the piper's in those days were so important in the clan system that a really good one would transfer between clans like a modern footballer would transfer between football teams. Amazing. Isn't that incredible? So cool.

Having listened to enough bagpipes in my time, I think they were thrusting them on each other. You take it, honestly. Was he called Ronnie the Crofter? Ronnie the Crofter, yeah. We're saying it was called Ronald McDonald. Did he raise cows? It doesn't say what his actual surname was, but perhaps he was a Campbell. Oh my God.

But he had two uncles who were archbishops of Glasgow. His grandmother was a close relation to St. Murray McKillip, who was the first Australian saint. He was a shinty champion. He was a champion she-ra. He never married, but he said those who were desirable were not available and those who were available were not desirable. E-I-E-I-O.

OK, it is time for fact number three, and that is Andy. My fact is that The Rolling Stones' latest tour was sponsored by a retirement planning organisation. They're so, so old now. Surely the main audience of The Rolling Stones is, I'm sorry to say, too late to be planning their retirement. You're right. God, that's a good point.

You know, when you watch daytime TV and all the adverts are like, don't forget your will, guys. Or, you know, this donkey sanctuary would really be helped if you left it some money. It's basically like a big version of that, but in Wembley Stadium or wherever it is. So this is their most recent tour. So there's a group called the Alliance for Lifetime Income. It basically is a non-profit. It's formed to raise awareness about the need to, you know, protect your income in retirement

by getting an annuity. Rock and roll. Yeah, and they actually, I really like this detail. So they, you know, sponsored the whole thing because The Rolling Stones audience had lots of fans who were up to the edge of 75, many who were over, but they thought this is perfect to spread their message and they sent along a bus to the events where you could get your retirement income security evaluation showing how well you'd be covered in retirement at the gig.

That's great. I mean, I love it. Yeah. So this was the No Filter tour. That's right. It's called, and it's pretty amazing to see how much money The Stones are still generating. There's a big list of like most successful tours of all time, and this tour is in the top 10.

Really? This late in their career is in the top 10. So they don't need to worry too much really about their own retirement savings, given that they're all about 95 and they're still working. Multi-hundred millionaires, yeah. And who haven't paid any tax on any of their earnings for the last 30 years? They moved to France for a very good reason. In the 70s, rates were very high.

The Stones have always done this sort of corporate sponsorship commercial stuff like way ahead of other bands and things like this. So in 2003, they were sponsored by T-Mobile. In 1981, they were sponsored by Joven Musk, which was a fragrance firm. And like way, like way, way back. Well, didn't they start out doing a jingle for Rice Krispies as well? They didn't start out doing that, but they did it very early on. Very early on there.

It was like 1964. So the first gig was in 1962. Right. So yeah. Because Mick Jagger went to London School of Economics, didn't he? Yeah. So yeah, he was quite... And did finance and accounting, I think.

Something did a module in it and did pretty badly and didn't do any work. Clearly picked up something. Yeah. His tutor said in the first year, he got straight Cs in all of his subjects because he wasn't really paying that much attention. But the next year, he did come back and do his resets and like went to the library and properly studied and stuff like that. Because it was only when they got the first contract to record a first single that he

completely gave it up. He still kind of thought he might go into finance at that stage. That's interesting. So he kind of moved from class C to class A is what you're saying, which mirrors the other journey they went on as well. There was quite a nice interview with the guy who was their accountant back then, guy called Lawrence Myers. And he said he remembered talking to Mick Jagger when they were in their 20s.

And Mick Jagger being really worried then about getting a pension and saying, you know, I need to start saving for my retirement because who knows where I'll be. And he said he remembers a phrase Mick Jagger saying, I'm not exactly going to be playing rock and roll in my 60s. Am I? And then finding it the most hilarious idea that he would be. And the man is now 78. Yeah.

So old. They're so, I mean, the three surviving key ones, I think they're about 200 between them. No, more than that. Really? Are they? Right. But who's the new boy?

Because he's only been in the band for 40 years. He's never quite fit in. Basically. Yeah. I mean, they have this combination of being obviously quite cool, greatest rock and roll band in the world, blah, blah, blah. And powerfully naff. Yes.

There are so many incredibly boring things about them. So for example, Charlie Watts, their drummer who died a year ago, he was incredibly dull in multiple different ways. He made a study of it. He wasn't really interested in rock and roll music for one thing. He liked jazz and he had his own jazz band and, you know, not necessarily dull if you like jazz. Very good point.

Very good point. Sorry. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay. All right. That's just a warmer.

That's the start of the time. When they went on tour, what's the classic thing a rock band will do to their hotel room on tour? Like throw TVs out of the window. Absolutely. Yeah. He would draw his room on tour. He would produce an accurate drawing of every single room he stayed on on tour for

about 50 years. I think it was specifically the beds. He was obsessed with the beds of every hotel room that he stayed in and he said that basically up until his death, he's had like 15 journals worth of, you know, they did like 2,000 gigs. He did every single bed and he felt like if he didn't draw the bed, something was a skew in his life and it just, it was out of whack. Once you've seen one bed, I feel like you've seen them all. Well, he would agree because he said, I have all these hotel rooms recorded.

He did all the hotel rooms, but he definitely did the bed every time, but he would often do the whole lodgings. We said, you've got Washington in 67 and then you got Washington from a couple of years ago and they're kind of the same. I was reading a piece about it and it said the 15 notebooks full of drawings of beds by Charlie Watts and the person who was writing the article said, I mean, are there any publishers reading this? We've got to get these printed.

Oh my God. No, you don't. Come on. They'd say like wildfire. Here's what I want to know though and I couldn't find this out. He passed away in hospital. Yeah. In a bed.

I'll stop. I just want to know, did he draw the final bed? Do we have the final Charlie Watts bed? I hope somebody did if he didn't. With him finally in it, Charlie Watts finally lying in his bed. I like to think, I hope he did trash the rooms afterwards because I like to think he'd trash the room completely. And then as he's checking out, he went, I've trashed the room, but here's exactly what

it looked like. So another thing of Charlie Watts is that he used to have all these amazing cars. It was a hobby. He'd collect all these cars, really expensive, but he didn't have a driver's license. So they just used to sit in his garage, but what he used to do is he would commission a suit that matched the car. What? Yeah, in its color.

And he would just go sit in his garage, in his suit, in the car, and just like, yes, go broom and just play with it for a bit. Yeah. And that's what you do with all your tax-avoided money, isn't it? Why is there a car you can't drive? He didn't like the drums even, or he didn't like practicing the drums, and in fact just didn't do it. There's quite a charming interview with him where he was asked if he ever practiced himself

on the drums, and he was like, God, no, I'd never practiced the drums. Playing the drums is so bloody boring. And he's really dull playing the drums. He's scared of the drums. He thinks they're too loud. He's scared of the drums. His life reads like a tragedy, really. You know, you become incredibly famous and successful doing something you fear and hate.

Yeah. Imagine that every time he was like, boom. Yeah. He started life as a banjo player. Shadee. Yeah. Well, he was given a banjo to play. Has anyone tried to play a banjo?

By the way, it was really, really hard to play banjo, and he found it also hard. He couldn't work out the fingerings, and so he kind of broke up his banjo, and with his broken banjo and a Meccano set, he made his first drum kit, which is how he learned the drums. Oh, wow. That's quite cool, because on quite a few of the big Stones tracks, he plays a kid's drum instead of using actual drums. I can't remember which.

Yeah, the massive tracks. I can't remember the names of them. That was fun, because he said the only way he ever did practice was playing with heavy sticks just on his legs. So maybe he loved playing drums that aren't real drums. Sorry, he beat himself on the legs. Yeah. He can't walk now, actually.

Don't do it. He's so scared of drums. He definitely can't walk now. He can't walk now. God. My landlord used to be Mick Jagger's old flatmate, and it's just there is a bit of a celeb connection, which is that my landlord is Tim Henman's dad. So Tim Henman's dad and Mick Jagger used to live with each other in Richmond, I think

it was. The stories they must have had to say to each other. Yeah. Tim Henman, I guess, wasn't born at the time. No. No. But I bet they still found a lot to talk about. Absolutely.

Yeah. It's not the most... Dad, that is very... What? Your old landlord. Your old landlord. Was Tim Henman's dad as well? Was Tim Henman's dad?

I can't believe I didn't know that. Yeah. I think you've told us that before. I think I have. I must have found it too exciting and deliberately forgotten it, because I wouldn't have been able to look it down the same way again. I'm actually shaking a bit, seeing all the same room as a guy who once paid rent to the father of former British number one, Tim Henman.

I'm shaking a bit, but the bit that's shaking is my head. That's a true story. There used to be a very huge thing in bands about eating on stage. So during the Rolling Stones' first ever gig, Ian Stewart is kind of the sixth member of the Rolling Stones, but he's never been one of the front line-up, but he played with them decades and decades. At their first gig in 1962, which was in a club on Oxford Street, he was playing the piano with one hand and eating a pork pie with the other.

It's not a very complex piano part, is it, if you can do the pork pie with the other hand? You know, when you play chopsticks and two of you can play at the same time. Oh, you think he had someone else's hand? Someone else was eating a prawn sandwich whilst playing the left hand. Interesting. Actually, there is quite a lot of do-do-do-do-do-do-do. Single-handed piano going on.

Well, there you go. Must be the pork pie in the other. But the Beatles used to eat jam sandwiches on stage. And then their manager, Brian Epstein, told them, you have to stop eating jam sandwiches on stage. Was that in Berlin? Sorry, in Hamburg. That's pre-that.

This looked quite unprofessional, boys. But that was the same way as Bob Marley had his sandwiches, wasn't it? Oh, my God. Lovely. We're jamming. Yes. Yeah, yeah. Amazing.

Oh, my God. Just for the dads, for the dads for listening. Actually, speaking of Bob Marley, I was looking into people who were connected. They were connected as staff of the Rolling Stones off the back of the fact that they had such a good financial package set up for them. And just to see if any of them had gone on to anything interesting. And I found this guy who used to work as private security for the Rolling Stones in the 60s. Never permanently, he just had worked for them time to time.

Like an investigator? No, as in like a bouncer kind of thing. And his name was Judge Dredd, and obviously not his real name, Alexander Minto Hughes is his real name. He went under the name Judge Dredd, which was his later career, which was he was an English reggae and ska musician, and he was the first ever white guy to have a hit for reggae in Jamaica, first guy ever. And he was massive there and he went over to tour and they had no idea that he was white

when he got there. So they were like, my God, who's this, who's this incredible guy? He had more band songs on the BBC than anyone else ever before. So he was, he was the bouncer for the Stones and he went on to that after. That's good. My formal ad-law was Tim Hedlund's. I lived in Tim Hedlund's childhood room. That was my room.

Oh, God. Did they preserve it exactly the way it had been? Yes. You wouldn't have to take the posters down. It was a drawing by Charlie Watts of what it used to look like. It was trash by the time I got there. OK, it's time for the final fact of the show, and that leaves me. My fact this week is that clowns can spot amateur clowns by the amount of makeup that

they put around their mouths. Oh, too much or too little. Too much is the problem. An amateur clown will do up the top lip with white, with red, with black, they'll do the whole mouth. And the professional clowns, they refer to this as a busted asshole. That's an incredibly upsetting phrase, and I wish it was the first time it had even been on this podcast, but it's not.

Is it? What? Because, you know, you've got to check the archive of what we've said before on this podcast. Yeah, so that we don't repeat anything. Well, exactly. Well, fortunately, we're not repeating this fact, but it's just the second use of the phrase because... Oh, God, do we guess?

When have we said busted asshole before? I remember it now. I'm trying to remember what it was. It's not the ladies with the rectum that was... No, it's not the ox rectum. That was the name. I think it was someone said. It was like a quote from someone.

Oh, yes. It's a phrase. That's right. It's a phrase. It's as much use as a hatful of busted assholes. Oh, yeah. Who was that by? I can't remember.

Oh, okay. Were they referring to a fake clown man? So I got this fact from a book called God Know by Penn Gillette, Penn of Penn and Teller. So it's all about his life as a magician, how he got to be, who he was, and one of the things that he did when he was coming up... His name is Penn. He must have been able to think of a better name for his memoir. I like God Know.

From the Penn of Penn, like, for instance. You're right. Is that Gillette? Gillette, the best a man can get. Yes. It's another one. Yeah. So he failed title-wise, but the content is quite good.

He went as a teenager or late teen. He went into the Ringling Brothers in Barnum and Bailey Greater Show on Earth Clown College. And that was in Florida. And he started doing classes in trapeze and all that stuff. And he really sucked at physical comedy. He didn't like it at all. He learned how to be a clown. And in the process of being taught how to be a clown, you learn that there's certain

things that you should and shouldn't do if you want to really get it right. And one of the things that they do say is that if you put makeup on the top of your lip, you're effectively closing off emotion in a really interesting... Oh, that's interesting. Yeah. So by leaving that empty, you can get more out of a clown's face. Whereas an amateur clown just thinks, I've just got to cake the whole thing. And is that...

Because Ronald McDonald, I think, does it wrong then in my memory? He's just died. The poor guy. The poor crofter. No, I think, doesn't he have a busted ass, or Ronald McDonald? He does. Oh, my God. Absolutely.

Well, the legal letters will be flooding their way in. All houses. Well, the area of clown IP is quite interesting because it's sort of mostly egg-based. It seems the way that clown makeup is registered is on eggs. And this was a thing that was started in 1946 by a guy called Stan Bolt, who wasn't a clown. He missed, oddly. And he started, you know, when he blow eggs, so I suppose that's sort of adjacent to chemistry.

You mean blowing the insides out of the eggs? Yep. We're hollowing out, blowing out the inside of an egg. And then he started painting faces of prominent clowns on these eggs as kind of a hobby. And then he developed this huge file of clown faces. And all of their makeup is completely different. I always thought standard clown, they all look the same. I'm embarrassing now that I thought that because if you look at the egg collection, they all

look completely different. And actually, there's a suitcase of hollowed-out egg faces that he painted that still exists, which is quite impressive. Well, it still exists in London, doesn't it? And exactly, the collection still exists in London. It does exist in London, but it used to be held in a, it was in a museum, wasn't it? And I think it was only like once a month it would open because of the costs of keeping it going.

But now it's not even there anymore, there was a flood in the museum and the clown faces, the eggs are kept in the basement of this guy in Clarkinwell, who was the archivist of the museum. Are you serious? There's been a terrible flood. So as a result, we've moved them to a basement. Put them in the attic? Yeah, really good point.

He probably lives in the ground four flat, I don't know. But yeah, apparently during lockdown, he kind of got through it by going checking all of his archives from the Clown Museum. That's how he got through in lockdown. On seeing a cupboard with a thousand creepy painted eggs. Well, it gets worse. He also has 47 clown costumes and 20 pairs of clown shoes, which you would go and look at from time to time.

But he said in an interview, the only reason you get clown shoes in a museum is because the clown who wore them has died. Ernest Hemingway was once asked to write the saddest poem you could with six words and it was, for sale, clown shoes too big. Have any of you guys been to Clown School? No, but you have. Just in case one of you guys had also been present and I hadn't noticed, it was a horrible experience.

Is it? Yeah. Why? It's not clowns as in, you know, like big shoes and tiny cars, it's a different type of Clown School. No, it's the sort of upsetting Gaudier Le Coq, the master will break you down and then rebuild you. Like learning to fall over and stuff and no, no, no, none of that.

No, no. It's just you get you get you get horribly insulted by the instructor. They're trying to work out who your comedy character is. Is that right? A little bit. Yeah. And while arriving a tiny car. That's the airport pickup.

Did everyone get horribly insulted by the instructor or were you just not very good? There was one guy who was a bit of a teacher's pet who didn't get horribly instructed, but the rest of the rest of us all got. It was only a four day course as well. So they had time to kind of break us down very badly, but not really time to build us back up again. So it was four of the worst days of my life. They water barred you with confetti, didn't they?

I had to smell so many flowers. Have you guys heard of Lady Avetta who was in 1895 called the only lady clown? Oh, no, probably wasn't the only lady clown at the time, but she was very famous clown and one of her favorite tricks was she would sit in the audience and next to some unsuspecting bloke and then she would claim that that was actually her fiance and heckle the ringmaster saying, you looking at my fiance, that kind of thing. But what I really like about her is that there's a quote from her in the New York Times and she said, all my people laughed at me when I told them I was going into the ring as a

clown, but they do not laugh now. Oh my God. Isn't it? Bob Monk. Yes. But actually it's from 1895. Really? Actually, Bob Monk was so old that he was the husband.

That's amazing. Yeah, isn't that cool? Another female clown, Annie Fratellini, she founded the first circus school in Europe in 1975 and she did the full kind of Auguste clown, so you've got white face, you've got the red lips and all that kind of stuff and when she was asked whether she was portraying a male or a female, she insisted that clowns have no gender. She founded the first circus school, so I think she is the authority on that. So if you see a clown, you think it's a man or a woman, it's not.

It's just a clown. And her grandfather was Paul Fratellini, Paul Francois and Albert. They were famous clowns, all three of them, really, really famous clowns and their father, so her great-grandfather was Gustavo Fratellini and he was an Italian patriot who along with Giuseppe Garibaldi took part in the unification of Italy. Wow. Imagine like unifying Italy and then all of your kids are clowns, isn't that a weird sort of...

What was it all for? That's amazing. Just on the clown sex thing, clowns don't have a sex, it does kind of make sense because otherwise you're implying the existence of clown genitalia. And that would be what sacrilege to a clown? Where does that ha ha sound come from if not from... It's not them squeezing their balls a bit. Or vaginas.

But they can do amazing balloon tricks, actually. That's the really clever thing. Henry IV of France had his life saved by a clown, by his own clown in 1594. An assassin got into his bedroom and was going to assassinate him and he was in there with his clown. Yeah. Oh yeah. Is it true?

Would they say the clowns have no genitals? Maybe we could test the theory. Do you know what they say about men with big feet? There was nothing untoward going on, the clown was still in... How about a busted asshole? Oh, God. Oh, wow. No assholes were busted in the making of this.

Escapade. This was actually a female clown as well. She was called Maturine de Valois and she arrested the assassin and stopped the assassin leaving the room and saved his life. I don't know how she did it. I don't know if it was confetti to the face, but yeah. That's incredible. And then his hand was burned with molten sulphur and lead.

Whose hand? The assassin's. As a punishment. As a punishment. Because it was the hand that... Wow, that's great. Because it was the hand that touched the king and then he was executed. Oh, I thought that was...

We'll let you off on this occasion, but we'll mess up your hand. No, no, it was we'll mess up your hand and then we'll kill you. Oh, dear. And then we'll chop you into loads of pieces. That was a different time. That was okay then. You know they don't say break a leg in Clownland? Do they not?

What do they say? Bumpernose. Group of clowns together? No, as in like the collective now. A collective now and a clowns. A collective clown? A hawk of clowns? A clowns?

The listener, James Hand, did go under the table now. That's a giggle. Like a gaggle of geese. And a giggle of clowns. Can I tell you one clown trick? I was on the website of clown historian Bruce Charlie Johnson, which is an unbelievably good clowning site. So it's one of those old websites,

which you know made about 15 years ago. So it looks very old, but it's just full of great information. And there was a clown who told the world called Adolf Proper decades and decades ago. But one of his tricks was this. I think it's very important that we know exactly how many decades ago Adolf Proper was storing.

Was it seven decades ago? Or was it nine decades ago? Early 20th century. As far as I'm concerned. Basically they had this musical comedy act, the clowning act. And he could produce large numbers of items from his coat. That was the thing. It's kind of a Mary Poppins bag.

Okay. Get what he produced. 300 bananas. 57% of which could be peeled. Three watermelons. Six pineapples. Four oranges. 24 neckties.

A broom, an oboe. 12 mandolins. A cigar box. And other items. It was what he got out of one coat. And the way he did it was they were all collapsible. They were made from papier-mache. So good. And they were filled with intricate springs. So they all expanded whenever they were produced.

That's really clever. Although I really thought, because you started with a list of fruit, and then you said 24 neckties. And I thought you thought that was the plural of nectarine. What? What if I've been wearing this around my neck all this time then? 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 all be found on our Twitter accounts. I'm on at Shriverland. Andy. At Andrew Hunter M. James.

At James Harkin. And Anna. You can either podcast at qi.com. Yep. Or you can go to our group account, which is at no such thing or go to our website. No such thing as a fish.com. That's all of our previous episodes. They're up there. Check out our upcoming tour dates in September.

We're going back on the road for a few shows. Do come along. And do come back as well next week, because we'll be here with another episode. We'll see you then. Goodbye.