No Such Thing As A Fish - 476: No Such Thing As Othello's Casio

Episode Date: April 28, 2023

Dan, James, Andrew and Cariad Lloyd discuss Groundhog Day, Citizen Kane, Spice World: the Movie and Groundhog Day. Visit nosuchthingasafish.com for news about live shows, merchandise and more episodes. Join Club Fish for ad-free episodes and exclusive bonus content at apple.co/nosuchthingasafish or nosuchthingasafish.com/patreon

Hi everybody, Andy here. Just before we start this week's episode of Fish, we wanted to let you know that our special guest this week is none other than Cariad Lloyd. Cariad has been on the show before, of course, you may remember her very funny previous appearances. This time she's back and she's better than ever. And the good news for those of you who are Cariad fans is that she has just written a new book. Cariad is the host of the Grief cast and the book that she's written is all about grief. It's about her grief, about other people's, about what we do when someone we love dies and it's brilliant. It's full of interesting facts for those of you who like facts and if you are listening to this

you probably do. And it's also very heartfelt, it's very personal, it's very moving, it's very funny, it's all of these things and more so do check it out, it's called You Are Not Alone. And if you'd like to see Cariad in a live setting she is also part of the brilliant Jane Austen themed improvised comedy group, Ostentatious. And they are on every Monday at the moment at the Arts Theatre just near Leicester Square in London. It's a very funny show, I can personally attest to that. Do book first. Okay, that's it, on with the show. Hello and welcome to another episode of No Such Thing as a Fish, a weekly podcast coming

to you from the relocated QI offices in Hoburn. My name is Dan Schreiber, I am sitting here with James Harkin, Andrew Hunter Murray and Cariad Lloyd and once again we have gathered around the microphones with our four favourite facts from the last seven days and in a particular order here we go. Starting with fact number one and that is Cariad. Hello, my fact is that if you are having trouble with your grief it might be Bill Murray's fault. Oh, because he kills, kills, kills again. And then he finds people who are grieving and he hits them, that's his thing. No, because

I should backtrack this and say that the reason it might be Bill Murray's fault is the very famous film Groundhog Day, which is based on the five stages of grief theory. The five stages grief theory is a very, very famous theory, began in 1969, created by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross in her book On Death and Dying and it really has been the most famous grief theory since then. It has now contested heavily, it's considered not to be that helpful or useful, but it's still the grief that most people encounter when they enter the world of grief, it's the thing that people will come up to me still and say, oh, you know, I'm trying to do the five stages, it's not really working and it makes me want to scream

because it's, I can swear, I can't know, yeah, it's bullshit. But the film Groundhog Day is based on the five stages, which I think helps to promote this idea that the five stages of grief is something that you can work through. Grief is something that will end. Can you give us the five stages? I can, man, give you the five. You wake up. You wake up. You're playing the same song as they were yesterday.

Yeah. Yes. Something about a weather report, I haven't seen this film. James, genuinely, have you not seen Groundhog Day? I'm afraid not. Oh, you know what? It is worth, it is one of those that does stand up to watching. Yeah, no. James hasn't seen any films before about 2000 and...

Something like that. Well, I've seen some. There's a few that make it through. Normally, I'm absolutely fine when you say you haven't seen a particular film and sometimes you'll say, I'm like, you want that? I'm shocked. Groundhog Day. Groundhog Day is one of these.

I don't think I've seen that on TV much. Is it on TV all the time? In my childhood, it was a classic. It was one of those ones that would be all the time. But that was in Australia. Ah. Okay. I reckon it's denial.

Oh, yeah. Acceptance. Denial of the next subject. And that is why people struggle. No, the five stages of grief are denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance or the worst boy band in all other ways, basically, yeah. And so that was Elizabeth Kubleros who defined these five stages of grief. But isn't she...

I thought that when she came up with it, first off, it was to relate to the dying as opposed to grief. Yes, yes. And then... But then secondly, she also said, this doesn't happen in any particular order. It's much like the facts on our podcast. Yes. It's...

You can have... You could have acceptance, but then later have denial. But they always start with the celebrity, don't they? Yes, sir. Yeah. So on her book on death and dying, written in 1969, written in 10 weeks, she had something like an article in Time magazine where they were like, wow, this woman's doing amazing work.

And then someone was like, you should write a book. And she wrote the book and it became the best seller that it is. Yeah. I mean, you can write a book fast. It doesn't mean it will be bad. Yeah. It's just like... It's very...

Of its moment, of its time. She was an amazing woman. She was a founder of the hospice movement. She was working with people with AIDS in the 80s before that was considered safe. She was incredible. At the time, she was working in hospitals where people were terminally ill, mainly with cancer. And this was a time when they didn't even use the C word. They were just saying malignancy.

And they would also not tell people, so for example, if a wife was sick, they would tell the husband, not the wife. So she would be being told, she'd be having like radiotherapy and she'd be told, it's to make you better. But they'd all be going to her husband, she's not going to live. So she came into this situation and was like, hmm, this isn't great. If you told people that they were dying, she observed when she did that and helped them through it, that they would go through five distinct stages and they would reach an acceptance.

And it would... I mean, that makes sense. They would deny it first of all, like, oh, no, I'm not really ill. I'm fine. I can't believe it's me. Why am I dying? Oh, God, why did you do this to me? This is the worst thing.

Actually, okay, I'm dying. I'm going to pay off my debts and apologize to all those people. So she was talking about people dying and I honestly, in my research for my book, couldn't find the moment that it became about grieving. It just became about grieving because it was like, well, it's death, it's same room. And it makes no sense for a grieving person. Like anyone who's been through any loss will tell you, like, you don't go through five distinct stages, you get them pretty much all at once all the time and it can, you know,

hit you five years later, two years later, 10 years later. So I meet so many people who are like, oh, God, I feel so bad, like I need to get to acceptance and I haven't done it and I'm always raging because I'm like, that isn't what grief looks like. But the reason it works in a film is that's how films work. They need to end and we all need to walk away thinking. I mean, not all films. Not all films.

A good film will do that. Yeah, yeah. I'm fingering a few mental suspects. What? I haven't seen that film. Hello. Although Andy McDowell is in that as well. She plays the doctor, she's really good.

We should just quickly say, because James hasn't seen Groundhog Day, so Bill Murray is a journalist. He goes to this town to do Groundhog Day. Weatherman. He's the weatherman. He wakes up in the morning and the day has begun again. He's conscious of it. No one else is. And then the day.

Yeah. So he's like a Russian doll at a TV show. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But he reacts differently. So first of all, he's like, this isn't happening, then he gets furious and he starts experimenting with his day.

Like, well, if I do this, will I be here tomorrow and it doesn't matter what he does. He tries literally everything. It's a weird moment where he starts fingering. And he's trying to woo Andy McDowell's character and eventually he learns everything about her becomes perfect and it still doesn't work. That's a bit creepy, isn't it? Yeah, it is. It's creepy.

It's creepy. That doesn't really stand up to today's standards. No. But it is a great film. It's a great Italian film. Yeah, yeah. Um, Kubler Ross. Oh, yeah.

Cubs. Cubs. She has a cool phrase, she said later on, there's no such thing as any guesses? Death. Yeah, death. Oh, did she? Yeah. She said like she became.

Her podcast is great. Yeah. It's like a mixture of our podcast. Yeah, yeah. My God. Yeah. She said, she basically became so convinced that was an afterlife that she said, we don't need to worry about death.

There's no such thing as death. That's why she was great at getting people into acceptance. It's just like, don't worry about it, guys. But the weird thing is, in her original book, the 1969 one, she called the belief in life after death a form of denial. So she actually thought that life after death was complete bullshit, and then she went through a change in her life.

So she came to like spiritual death. Yeah, so she met a patient in a hospital who was called Mrs. Schwartz, and Mrs. Schwartz had been pronounced dead. And then hours later, she was found alive by a nurse. Wondering the street. So she went to interview her to say what happened. And she recounted that she said,

I remember everything that happened. I remember being above my body. I remember a joke that the doctor told in the room when I was laying there dead, all that stuff. And that is what made... Can I pray for it? Report that. So Kubla Ross basically went,

ah, this is interesting and became obsessed with it. And she even went to have, as it were, out-of-body experiences through a guy called Robert Monroe. And then as she got further into it, she believed that she had spirit guides that she was contacting, one of whom was Mrs. Schwartz, who did later die and then came back

to sort of instruct Kubla Ross about her ideas about the afterlife. And this woman is in charge of most known grief theory. Known to humanity, like Western culture, yeah. So one thing you write about in the book a bit, Karen, is the Victorian mourning rituals. And how, although they were very starchy and very formal, they did give you a kind of structure.

And then you mentioned all the different paraphernalia of mourning. Yeah, they were mad. Yeah, I mean, it was really, culture highly focused on that. I can't remember if you've read about this, mourning stationary. Yes, so yeah, that's really common.

Yeah, yeah, mourning stationary. You get a black edged card. And when you receive that, you know. Oh, that's cool. I was thinking like rulers and artists. They had, in Regent Street, Jay's of Regent Street was basically like the prime arc of grief and death.

So you went and got all your clothes from and all your hats and like gentlemen's funeral scarves at to be a certain length. There was like a book that told you like everything, like from the length of the bow around your hat to the staff, to the color of the ribbon on your door, to your mourning jellies. They kind of like made an industry of it as a Victorian.

So what is mourning jellies? The jellies that you have when you're mourning. Would they be like black? I don't know, actually. I never saw one. I just read about it in the book. But is it for serving it awake or something like that? I guess serving after a funeral, yeah.

Or maybe you have it like on a Sunday when you're feeling gloomy. Well, jelly used to be, I mean, if we're talking London, there used to be pubs where if you saw someone eating jelly, a woman, that would mean that she was available for sexual experiences. I didn't know that. Jelly houses they were called.

I need to stop eating jelly in public. Purchased sexual experiences. Yeah, yeah, it wasn't like a traffic light party. No, but if you're eating a strawberry jelly, you're not up for it. It's like handkerchief culture in the Muffin Muffling. Knocker Muffling, what was this? Say it again.

Knocker Muffling. What's Knocker Muffling? So it wouldn't be too loud to upset the people of the house. Door knocker on your house. You'd muffle it if someone's died. Yeah, and you'd have different colors as well. So it was a black crate ribbon outside. It meant adult and it was white.

It meant a child had died in this house and it would be muffled and there was, yeah, there was like, it would cost you so much money to do a proper considered funeral. Like I think they read even a middle class funeral at the time would have been like a thousand pounds. Like it was really, and they had funeral clubs where you'd all put money in every week

so that you could get like the funeral you like that person deserves. Cause if they didn't, they considered their soul would wander around forever basically. So it's like your pension, you know, you'll put in every week and then when you need the money you can take it. Like a turkey club.

Like a turkey club, but for the dead. Yeah, turkey's dead I suppose. But they don't get anything. No, you're right. But they don't pay, I suppose. Would you have like, you know, for a wedding you have like a present list. Do you, was there a similar thing

where I'd like this at my funeral? I think it was pretty set. It was a certain standard of funeral. Yeah, it was pretty set. You just go. Can I just tell you one very tangential thing about knockers, door knockers. You told me it was tangential, but here we go.

So I was reading about knocker muffling and then I just sort of went on a rabbit hole of door knockers. You know that in old Tehran, right? Yeah. Houses would have two door knockers. One was square and heavier and the other was more rounded. Can you guess why? One for the ladies.

It's one for the ladies. No. It's one for the men. The men use the big square one and women use the rounded one. And then you know who's knocking at the door and so then the woman of the house might not answer the door to a man

for kind of cultural reasons. They might also, I read this, they might disguise their voice behind the door to ask the business of who's coming around. Oh, is that like saying, oh, I've got some big men here. I could have beat you up if you come in. Is that how you do?

Is that what you do? That's what I say every time someone comes in. Just in case they might be coming into attack. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's good to let people know what's happening inside. I shout at an imaginary dog. Yeah. Don't bring us down.

That kind of thing, you know. That really works. That's when Julia Caesar's coming around. That's like great machine, quantity routine. And she didn't have a sitcom where you order too many pizzas and the pizza guy's done it with six and you go, yeah, it's here, it's here, I'll bring it in a minute. And then they're like, it's just for you.

You could make it bigger, couldn't you, Andy, and have lots of different knockers, like a knocker for your delivery guy and a knocker for a Jehovah's Witness person or whatever. Don't come in, I've got some big men in here. I don't want to know about eternal salvation. And so how long was mourning in fact? Depends.

So they had a rule for every single situation. So like rule for like your second cousin, your second cousin's child, your sister, your, but for the most common people know, it's like for a partner. So a widow would have a year in mourning where she had to wear black and then you go into half mourning and quarter mourning.

And if you in that year got married, you were allowed to like not wear black for the day and then back in your black dress the next day. So you could have a new husband and be like, sorry, babes, do you remember Alfred? He was great, wasn't he? I'm still pretty sad. Yeah.

When did we drop? It was like a moment where we dropped this for some reason. Well, that's really interesting, because I don't think we have dropped it because I think we still have an expectation that we expect people to be over things by about a year. And if it goes past a year to two years and with grief, we're a bit like, oh God, three years.

Like she's still upset. And then of course you get the black armbands, which was still going up. Like my mum wore a black armband when her granny died in the 60s. But I would say she's like the last person I've spoken to. But you still got soccer players doing that. Yeah, so soccer, I'm sorry,

my brain went football in my head. So I was really like sports people and like military stuff still wear them. But other than that, obviously you used to just wear it day to day. And that comes up on my podcast that people wish there was still a thing you could have that would mean like sort of handle with care. Because it's like you don't want to be a society

that says you have to wear a black armband. But for some people, you know, if you're going to a shop, you're on a tube. It's a bit like baby on board. It's like I'm in grief. Like just be careful with me. Like if I'm in a shop or like, you know, I did sell badges. Yeah, but I couldn't keep up with the demand.

What did they say? They said, please be kind. I'm grieving. And it had two little hands. And then one said, um, DDC member was in Dead Dad Club with DMC. And there was a little amazing artist called Camille Bacini who designed them and it was like a little purple ghost with a hat with a flower DMC. Oh, dead mom's club.

No, I was thinking Ron DMC. That can't be. I thought you. They're dead. They're dead. It's like that. And that's the way it is. So, yeah, it's a shame in a way that we don't have. Yeah, I agree. Because you never know what anyone's going through at any time.

Yeah, yeah. Although I can see why you don't like the Victorians were very strict, obviously, like you had to do it. And if a woman couldn't, you would know where you'd be allowed to walk around in like, you know, a bright yellow dress the next day. I think we'd have to draw a line on where, what kind of badges you'd have because I definitely would have like, be gentle, lost an eBay purchase.

Like, you know, I feel a small badge, isn't it? I've only got facts about groundhogs. Let's talk about groundhogs. Oh, groundhogs. You don't mind? No. Groundhog Day is about groundhogs, is it? Because there's a special groundhog who comes up and if he can see his shadow,

it's going to snow for a month or so. You've seen the film Groundhog Day, all this stuff. They get him out of his little nest. Punctutani film, isn't it? But there are loads of groundhogs. That's an interesting thing. I mean, all over, lots of places have a groundhog celebration. I was just wondering if punctutani is the most difficult word

that everyone knows how to pronounce. Yes, from the film Groundhog Day. But it's basically, they get him out and if he turns around and sees his shadow, then there'll be another six weeks of winter and if he doesn't, then the spring will come. How do they know if he sees it? Well, what I read was in real Punctutani,

there are two scrolls and if Phil picks the scroll that says he sees a shadow, that's how they know he's seen a shadow. So there's these secret scrolls. Do they look up the long range weather forecast and lace one of them with groundhog food or whatever? They're nasty. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It takes place on Gobler's Knob. I read it. Do you know where the name Gobler's Knob comes from? There's two theories. If you get either of them, you can have a point. Goblin's Knob. No, no, no, no, no, okay. Was it somebody was gobbling a man's knob

and they said, we should call this Gobler's Knob because she's always there, she's always doing that. Yeah, Jelly Sue, yeah, Jelly Sue. And Jelly Sue didn't stick with me. That's not one of the two theories that I have. Okay, sure, fine. You stick with your theories, I'll stick with mine. Is it where people ate on mountains?

Yeah, like a knob is just like a hill at the break. Well, that's why I thought Goblin's Knob because it looks like a goblin's. No, no, no, your theory was not bad. Oh, he's gonna get it. So it's where the old shoe mender used to play his trade, Gobler's Knob, and slowly it became Goblin's Knob. Why, why did they start going?

He gave a lot of blowchups. Yeah, yeah, I'm gonna call it Goblin. It's an offer to sell shoes. Is that like a happy ending for massages but in the shoe cleaning trade? You know when he comes down to measure your feet? He's sending down his shoes. Well, I'm down here.

No, it's because a group of turkeys might have lived there. And then another theory is like Dan said, maybe there were hunters and then that's where they would eat their food after the hunt. So they would gobble up the food. But I think the turkeys are the most likely ones. Yeah, that is good.

I didn't know groundhogs. The groundhogs are amazing. Yeah, sure. No, they really are. So I didn't know they were the same as a woodchuck. And it's the largest member of the squirrel family. What? Oh, no.

And they're brilliant diggers. So they dig, they'll dig several feet down in a row, right, they live in burrows. Several feet down, then a few feet up, and then they level out and go along, right? And then off the side of that main tunnel, they'll dig several different rooms, one of which is the toilet room,

and they only go to the loo in there. And then when it's full, they just seal it up and they dig a new toilet elsewhere. They're very clean. Yeah, I was going to say, the first thing that you said, they got down and up, is that so they don't drown, or like to trade in? They just avoid flooding.

Yeah, they just avoid flooding. What do they do if they go to dig another room and they're like, oh no, that's three years ago's toilet. Quick, close up, close up, close up. You have to hit it eventually. There's how many rooms, how long is, I guess you keep moving the tunnel down. You really have to hide that when selling it,

wouldn't you, to the next ground up family? What's that? Oh, don't, don't. What's behind these walls? Yeah, yeah, yeah. We want to extend. No, you can't. You can't extend them.

Okay, it's time for fact number one, and that is Carriette. Boom. Brilliant. It's actually time for fact number two, and that is James. Okay, my fact this week is that there's a bus tar in Hong Kong, which is specifically run for people

to sleep all the way through. Lovely. Lovely, lovely idea. Sounds great, doesn't it? Is it because people are tired in Hong Kong? That's part of the reason. What do you think, Andy? Otherwise, it'd be a terrible place to do this.

You just get people out and they're all like, no, I'm wide awake. We're not sleeping in Hong Kong. Why can't they get a normal bus? I love sleeping on the bus, so I can't think of a bus. Yeah, so, well, they could. It's a stops, doesn't it?

And so, they might wake you up and kick you off the bus. Oh, I see, yeah. The idea came from this guy, Kenneth Kong, he worked for a bus tar organiser, and he was chatting to one of his friends, and his friend said he was really stressed, you know, he's got a really busy job, couldn't sleep at night, but whenever he travelled to work on a bus,

he would always kind of fall asleep. And Kenneth Kong thought, this is amazing, this is such a good idea. I'm gonna do a bus tar where people are just encouraged to sleep, and unlike a normal bus ride, we're gonna give you a goodie bag with an eye mask, some ear plugs,

maybe we'll get a very soporific tar guide or something. That's a good idea. But actually, the first time they did it, they had the upper deck for people who wanted to sleep, and the lower deck was for people who wanted to have a tar guide chat into them, which feels like the wrong way around, because if you want to see the sights,

you would be on the top. Exactly, really good point. But anyway, they noticed that a lot of people found that more difficult and didn't sleep, so now they're making two separate bus tars, one for sleepers and one for not sleepers. I also read as well that, I don't know if they do this every single time,

but they might start with a huge two-hour-long lunch. So, that's a very good idea. You go into a food coma as you're getting on the bus. Oh, nice. You could do this for lots of things, because there are lots of activities where you're put in a, like the cinema, for example, or theatre, or an opera. Are you suggesting that you go to sleep in a...

I'm saying that it's very easy to fall asleep, especially if the thing is not good. I once went to a Bach concert, which is, you know... It's really sort of deep and sort of quite long notes and stuff, and about halfway through, I looked around and literally half. The men, mostly, I must say, but they were mostly asleep. Yeah, yeah. It was really...

I used to go to lunchtime concerts at Wigmore Hall, and I thought, oh, this is an exciting London thing to do, but it was full of people like head nodding, just like, oh, this is so nice, I'm on my lunch break. It's very hard to... Yeah, you could get like 15 minutes, couldn't you? That's headbangers, you know, at metal concerts. They're actually just about to fall asleep.

Kind of wake it up. Wake up, Gary, it's just about to stop. I once went to Brian Blessed's house, and I was hanging out with him, and he tells stories that go on and on, and it was just me and him sitting in his adventurer's shed that he has, and I was so tired, and he was telling me stories, and I fell asleep,

and I remember waking up with that sudden start, and I looked up, and he was still talking at me. Amazing. He just didn't... And we would definitely way further away than where the story was when I fell asleep. We could hire Brian Blessed to go around to people's houses. Oh, yeah, well, he must have some audiobooks you can listen to.

Oh, I was looking up good bus tours. Yeah. Oh, OK. There was a tour bus for dogs in 2017 in London. But it was a bit of a... Well, OK, it was the Rootmaster canine. Ah-ha-ha. And there was a live commentary of dog trivia from around London. OK. Fine.

And the route was between places where you could go for walkies. But wait, so the owners were the dogs? Yeah, that's the thing. There are dogs in Moscow who get on the tube, who live kind of down on the tube and sort of jump on between stops. Wow. Like the pigeons do. They don't believe the pigeons.

I've seen them. I've seen them. I've seen them. OK. I've seen them. OK, guys, pipe down. I've done research on this. I didn't get to read out a few weeks ago on the podcast.

It was all about, can pigeons get the tube? And do they know they're doing it? And I literally saw the pigeon do it, though. No, no, we didn't, because he read a research thing. We didn't see it. A pigeon can be on the tube, but it does not have a conception of the map. Oh, OK. But I've seen a pigeon on the tube.

No, but listen, there's the tube bit that's overground, so then it's getting on at one stop and going two stops and literally walking on, waiting by the door and then walking up. That's what I saw as well. Yeah, so it's like it's not doing underground tube. It's like, oh, if I get on at East Finchley. I'd be more impressed to see a pigeon on the underground tube than on the overground. Yeah, that would be dangerous and upsetting for the pigeon and distressing. It'll be fine.

It sort of slides down the escalator. Well, we've seen as much from no one. More platform, pigeon gets on, rides and stops, gets on. For me, it's so normal. It's banal. It's actually come round to banal. I can't even accept it. I wonder what you think, Andy, now that you've read this research, are you trusting your

own research or are you believing the eyewitness reports? I've literally seen it. I just want to close up. I believe what you've both seen, that you've both seen a pigeon hop onto a train, the train girl stop or two, the pigeon hop off. Wait by the doors. Wait by the doors. No distress, no panic.

Minded the gap. Pressing the button. When it's the open button, that's what makes it clear that the pigeon's stupid. The doors operate anyway. Not on the overground. Not on the overground. I didn't see over. I saw underground.

Underground chain. What's going on? I don't think, I think they might be hopping on looking for food or something. I don't think they're... But it didn't do any food. They're not commuting home. Andy, this is what I saw. It just waited by the door.

It was playing Candy Crush. It literally got on, stood and faced the doors like a commuter. Everyone was like, oh my God, pigeon. Doors closed and then it went two stops so they didn't have to do... The two is more convincing. Yeah, no, it did two. It did East Finchley to Finchley Central, to West Finchley, so it went out to North London and it got out.

Mine had a baby on board back then. If it's the several days in a row within the same half an hour period, I will believe you've got a commuting pigeon. Okay. What were we talking about? Basses. Basses. Oh, basses.

Oh, doggs. Oh, doggs. Oh, doggs. Oh, doggs. Oh, doggs. Oh, doggs. They were actually a way for dog walkers to get from one walkie's area to another one and they gave them stuff in the meantime.

I think so. I think it was around for a few days as a kind of to promote the firm. Are your Russian dogs commuting though? Just living there. I think that's the idea is that they do go from one place to another where they know they can get food from different places but I can't really quite remember. Yeah, I believe that. You believe that.

Oh, that's fine. James has never seen it. But that's... When I went to Moscow, I've been a few times, but whenever I've gone, I've tried to look on the underground for these dogs and I've never seen them. Well, Andy still believes you, so... I was reading about the bus drivers of history. One significant and I mean, very controversial bus driver was a guy called James Blake, you

know him? Oh, yeah, of course. Rosa Parks. He was the Rosa Parks bus driver. Here's the thing I didn't know. So he was called James Blake. It was 1955, this happened, the most famous incident, but she and Blake had beef already. Oh, I had read this somewhere because she was like a known activist, wasn't she?

Like that was the big thing. Yeah, but 12 years earlier, in 1943, she got on a bus, paid, but she'd got on the front entrance and Blake was the driver and he said, no, you've got to get off and get on the sort of back doors of the bus because that was the rules, segregated buses. And she got off to, God's sake, all right, she got off to get on the other entrance and he drove off, which was a thing they would do sometimes as a kind of prank. So she avoided his buses for years, you know, when she saw he was a driver and then that day she didn't notice that he was the driver, she was tired, she was preoccupied.

And so that's, that's why it happened. He was a bus driver for 19 more years. 19 more years. Yeah. Wow. Because it was quite, she, her story was one that sort of hit the right moment at the right time, there were quite a lot of stories of, of people who were refusing to step up from their seats and go to the back.

I think even Rosa Parks' story slightly distorted. Yeah, I was going to say, she wasn't tight. She knew it was all planned and they used her because she looked quite mild-mannered and they thought that it would be like, you know, a way for it to, to get on the bus and look like she wasn't going to cause trouble, but they absolutely, she was a super intelligent, brilliant part of the organization and it was very, very well, they knew like they were going to do this incident. And lastly, the King was part of that group.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And we actually only know that because of a Doctor Who episode from the Jodie Whitaker period. So that probably needs a fact check, but I think they would have got that right. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. A lot of, a lot of seminal moments have happened on buses. So George Harrison joined the Beatles on a bus.

Did he? Yeah. So he was sitting on top, top deck of a bus. Not on top of Paul McCartney's head. He was giving him a shoulder's ride. Paul already knew him and that's where he introduced properly to John Lennon and John said, can you play a song that was a very difficult song to play on guitar? He played it, nailed it.

And that's when they said, you're in the band. So that's important. George Michael wrote Careless Whisper on a bus. I'm never gonna dance again. Guilty feet have got no N17. No, let's see what you know. I was a tour bus guide. Tour bus guide?

Sounded wrong. No. I was, that's the right. You were a tour guide who was on a bus. Thank you. Thank you. I was like, tour bus guide is the right. Here's another tour bus.

Yes. If you look over there, another tour bus. This is going past. So many tour buses. I was a tour guide on an open top bus for some time in London and I got in trouble a lot. Yes. For what? Making stuff up?

No. I never made stuff up. I made a joke about the Royal Family and someone wrote and complained and said I should be ashamed of myself and I disgraced my country. Wow. It was about Prince Andrew. It wasn't. At the time, that sort of thing wasn't known.

It was about Prince Harry taking drugs, which was absolutely known and it was a really big crap joke that every tour guide did on St. James's, so the shops have royal warrants. So that's where they have a crest in the window. That means the Royal Family shop there and the hold of St. James's. There's like, Berry Brothers, Lob and Coases, there's all the boot makers, the hat makers and there's also a pharmacy on St. James's and you say that's where the Royal Family get their drugs. Although, I think Prince Harry probably gets his from somewhere else.

It's a terrible joke. It's fine. Have you got your first comedy review? Two stars. I said, this is Buckingham Palace and a couple marched up to me and they said, we're getting off. I said, oh, okay. They said, we don't want to.

I said, oh, what's happening? And said, it's you. We're getting off because of you. And I was like, oh, what? I said, what you just said about the Royal Family was so disgraceful. And then when the letter, they said I had disgraced Prince William. So they hadn't even been listening to my joke. You wouldn't make that joke about Prince William.

That's the most annoying. It was so annoying, but I got in quite big trouble. Did you apologize? No, they'd gone. They're long gone. But what do you mean? Unrepentant. I'm glad you weren't my boss, Andy.

You know London Bus? Just a London bus. Yeah. The double-decker red. Big red bus. You know how long they are in terms of how many London buses they are? They're one London bus. No, they're 1.2 times the length of a London bus.

Okay. And that's because they're new rootmasters. And if you ever look at, like, whatever anyone says, this is so stupid, but whatever anyone says, this is like 10 times the length of a London bus, they're talking about the old London bus. Oh, rootmasters. Yeah. But they've got the new one, such a 1.2 times the length.

Brilliant. I genuinely interested in that. Do you know, I loved, I'm the age of remembering rootmasters, and they were great when you could jump on the back of the bus, obviously, it wasn't safe, but it was brilliant. You never had to worry about missing a bus, you just ran. You could still jump on. No, because they closed them all, because it wasn't safe. Do you remember the old ones?

Like, had no door. Totally open. Yeah, yeah. No, sorry. It was open. Yeah. Wow. Andy, you were so lucky.

You jumped on the bus and it was open. You didn't just run head first into glass. I was sneaking off one bus and onto another one. It was after a party. Yeah. Anyway, I don't want to go into my show of his life. You know, we're familiar with the Spice Bus. Yeah.

Spice Bus. Spice World the movie. Oh, yeah. You can rent it. No. I can't. You can stay on it overnight. Is this a hint for your next birthday?

No, no, no, no. Is it still so... It's on the other one. It's tedious. I haven't seen this movie. But is it like, I think it's like Union Jackets. That's not missable. You have to watch Spice Bus.

It is. Right, yeah. Meatloaf is the driver. Does it still look the same as it did in the show? Yes, it's still... The exterior looks the same, but the interior, unfortunately, obviously, in the film, the interior was this huge three-story potential. Yeah, it couldn't have been what it was, yeah.

No, and it's just a bastard. Was it like bigger on the inside kind of thing? Yeah, exactly. Well, they never, I don't think they made a kind of space-time definition about helping it work. It just kept showing you different rooms in it. Like a groundhog's nest, basically. Exactly.

Exactly on the inside. Yeah. There's one more... There's one more full of shit from the Spice Girls than if you tap through it. Oh, God. We spoke about the Dave Matthews band a few months ago. Oh, yeah. You know the Dave Matthews band?

I know Dave Matthews band. In 2004, where they dumped 800 pounds of raw untreated sewage into a river, the Chicago River, while they were crossing the bridge on that tour bus, on that tour bus, and they were, unfortunately, they were crossing a slatted bridge, and there was an open-top tour boat passing by beneath the bridge. Can I just say it was the driver rather than the band? Yeah, three hours, like the band were there, like, now. So, anyway, that was a huge thing, led to a lot of, I think that's, I think there were

apology letters. Oh, yeah. Yeah, they apologized. But I was reading about what happens how you release what they call the Blackwater, you know, the sewage from the thing. And you know, buses have changed a bit since then. I think they've been altered a bit, but I was reading an interview with a bus driver from 2016 about how you release it, and there is a switch that says Dump, which they keep.

Supposedly, they keep it by the driver's left elbow, which feels risky, thanks to the indicators. But these days, like a nuclear button, there is a plastic cap over the switch, so you have to make a conscious decision to lift the cap before you. I mean, we all need that in our lives. Make a conscious decision to drop your shit. They should put the key for it inside a person. So, yeah, this is a callback to something the other day. Okay.

Yeah, the idea of a nuclear button, you put the key inside a person so they had to kill the person to get to the nuclear button. And the president had to do it himself. Yes, an initial. But how's he going to keep that inside him, without shitting it out? I'll be under his skin. Oh, okay. I thought you meant, like, swallow it and then go through the shit, get the key.

In this case, sir, the missile's going to be in two minutes, the president is sieving a poo. It's like, I'll find it. I'll find it. The key's covered in sweet card. Are you sure you want to look at the plastic cover? Not yet, not yet. Oh, God, sorry.

Okay, it is time for fact number one, okay, I'm sorry. They say our love won't pay the rent. Okay, it is time for fact number three, and that is Andy. My fact is that for many years, the secret of the British Army's balloons was known by a single family of Alsatians, by which I mean people from Alsatians. Were they all on a bus together? This is a thing where, so the ballooning took off. Oh, my God.

If only the people at home could have seen the way that you built up to my life. I know. The face. Do you like, you lifted up the plastic button and you dumped. You pressed dump on your joke. It took off? I thought, I can't, I could do it, I could go for it, couldn't I? They'll all laugh and we'll just move on and it won't be made a big thing off.

The British Army, they were experimenting, they were making hydrogen balloons, and this is in the 1880s, so it's 100 years or so after the Montgolfier brothers and so on. And hydrogen balloons are great in lots of ways, but there's a problem. Hydrogen molecules are so tiny that they escape from almost any bag that you keep them in. Oh my, I'll put them in the same bag. Exactly. And so they were looking for a way to improve the balloons. And there was this family, the Weinling family, they were a family of orthodox Jews that came

from Alsace in France and they had their own effectively secret proprietary method of making these balloons. And they'd made some for a scientific toy shop in the east end of London, which is cool, called Mr. Herons, and the commander of the first royal balloon factory, it was called Major Templar. He hired the Weinling family, he bought their secret effectively. And then for a few decades, Britain had this big advantage in balloon technology because the Weinlings were on board and they were kind of supervising the first balloon factory.

They had to be persuaded to tell other people how to make the balloons because they originally, it seems like they wanted to make the balloons themselves, we'll do it all, we'll do it all. We just don't want to tell anyone. I can understand that. Yeah, that makes sense. It's pretty amazing as well. So it was a guy called Henry Coxwell who was walking through this scientific toy shop

and saw this thing. Can you imagine, like during the war effort, you're looking for ways and suddenly here's just a toy for kids that is going to give you the great advantage of the war. And what did the toy do? It was like a little hot air balloon and it worked basically, wow. And the method that they used was a thing called gold beater skin. So it's used, it's made from the lower intestine of a cow. And what they would do is they would stretch out the lower intestine and because as you

were saying Andy, the nothing could escape molecules can escape is what they found. What's amazing is that when they were, when they make the balloon itself, you wouldn't sew it together. So sewing might be a problem because there's micro holes that if you miss whatever something can escape. But with this intestine skin, all you had to do was make it a bit wet, a bit damp, and then it would just stick. And that would be strong enough to make it, it's so cool, it's overlapping.

And it just, how, how did the Wylings find this out? Like I'm sorry. How did this one family be like, oh, you know that cow intestine we've got hanging around? Let's stretch it out, dry it and put like, what was going on in that family? It's Mikey's birthday. We got balloons. Sorry, that's what made me laugh so much because it's amazing. It's like really amazing what they did and discovered, but what was going on in, in

Alsace? Well, they were already using this stuff for gold beating, which is why it's called gold beater skin, right? Yeah. But what are they using it in gold beating? So you would put your gold in between two pieces of intestine or paper or whatever, and then you would whack it, whack it, whack it to make it really, really, really, really thin.

And so then you would have gold leaf instead of a gold bar. Oh, that's why it still comes in as two bits of paper, the gold leaf. Like it does. Yeah, yeah. What do you buy gold leaf? You can buy it like for decorating. People use it for like, if you want to do like a gold effect on tables or on food or I've had biscuits covered in silver.

That's the blue. Silver. Silver what? They're Indian. Oh, it's silver leaf. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Silver leaf. They're really, they're popular.

It's not, sorry. I thought it was like an emperor there. He's doing well with his silver biscuits and two knockers. But the amazing thing is about this gold beating, right? So you're making gold leaf out of a piece of gold and you could get a sheet of gold that was two millimeters thick and then knock it down, make it thinner, thinner, thinner. So there was a hundred nanometers, right? And it's hard to say what that is, but it's basically, it's like if I was squashed into

a flat sheet, which is the thickness of a human hair. We're not going to do that, James. They're just going to do that to you. Are they? Well, you know, they get hit by a bus. But yeah, that's how much they reduce the thickness of a sheet of gold by 99.996%. And they do it using this paper, this ox, you know, this gold beater's paper. But that's the second process.

To get it down to two millimeters, you need to put it through a different two piece of paper and that's called Montgolfier paper. And that was the same paper as the Montgolfiers used to make their balloons, isn't that amazing? So the first section of gold beating was Montgolfier paper and the second stuff was this gold beater's paper because the Montgolfiers, they came from a family of paper makers and that's how they got into hot air ballooning because they had all of this amazing paper to use and they turned them into balloons. So cool.

It's so weird how one invention leads to another. Yeah. And it was the reason I knew about this is because we talked a while ago about jobs in the UK that don't exist anymore. And the last gold beater, I think, went out in the UK maybe in the last 10 to 20 years. It feels like a very labor intensive job. It is. Gold beating.

Yeah, it is. Also for the size of the balloons that they were making during the war, you needed a lot. So one kind of classic zeppelin would require 250,000 intestines in order to make the size balloon that they needed in order to do it. Again, how did they first get the idea? And it was mostly women, right? Yeah. It was women doing this work.

Yeah, the Weiling family was... It couldn't have been just them, right? They must have taught it to... But it was women that were doing all the work, I think. Yeah. Women did the skin simulation and skin treating and that factory was staffed by women. I think it was one Fred Weiling, there were a couple of sons, but there was Mrs. Weiling and two daughters who were the chief balloon makers for the army.

Wow. And it was such a secret as well that when it eventually got seen that it was being used by the countries, that was seen as treason. And this guy, Major Templar, who was the one, he actually got charged with betraying military secrets because they thought this was so secret, no one could have known it. He was acquitted because I think they worked out that he didn't do it, but that's how important this was to the war effort. But it kind of didn't matter for a few countries because what you needed was cow and testin.

So they were being farmed in America and they were being imported to here. But like Germany couldn't get them because they stopped... Oh, they have cows in Germany. I don't think they had enough at the time. I think we've mentioned once before that Germany had to choose in the war between airships and sausages. That's a hard choice to make. You're in total war.

Your society needs to survive, but... It is the worst choice to make. In fact, they still use balloons in war right now, don't they? For instance, while we saw in the news with the so-called spy balloons, they're coming back in. It's a new fashion trend. In the Ukraine war, I think both sides use balloons. They kind of put them up there so that the other side kind of uses a ammunition trying

to shoot them. They're just distractions, really, but they are still used. There are barrage balloons in the Second World War, you saw images of London at war, there are all these balloons floating over and it's to make bombers have to fly higher to fly over them and they have steel cables hanging down from them so you can't fly around under them. They're a good air defense and those were largely staffed by women. There was the Women's Auxiliary Air Force, they were on the ground.

They would operate the winches, basically, because there's no one actually up there in a barrage balloon or hanging beneath it. Balloon command was set up in 1938. Yes, please. Even at D-Day. Good morning, balloon command. What colour? Rebel?

Yes, many of those. How old is he? Seven? Oh, let's see what we can do. D-Day had the barrage balloon battalion who were specifically bringing to the Normandy beaches the balloons. Wow. Yeah.

They were pre-inflated in the UK and then sailed over to defend the men of beaches. I think that's good because if you're in opposing territory, you don't want to be like, stretch it, stretch it out a bit. You're absolutely right. They didn't show that in the beginning of Saving Private Ryan, did they? I'm asthmatic, sir, I can't do this. Speaking of women in war, the UK's first official police woman was Mrs. Edith Smith of Grantham and she became a sworn officer in 1915 and the home officers were very happy.

Happy about it because they said that women were not proper persons, that's what they said. It's something we have to live with. I know. But this is amazing. Quite a lot of the stuff they made her do was spy on women on behalf of their husbands who were away at war. Wow.

Wow. The power of the patriarchy, you can work for us if you take down your own people. I was always curious about having affairs. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Have we ever mentioned the Hello Ladies? Hello. Have you heard of them before? Hello Ladies.

Hello Ladies. They were a group of women, they were in the battlefields of France. They were basically the operators who connect phone calls. The telephone operating ladies, yeah. Exactly. But they were doing it on the front lines and so while being bombed, just connecting these phone lines to make sure that these crucial calls could be made back. And at the height of it, the Hello Girls were connecting 150,000 calls a day.

And there was a total, there was 223 in total that were doing. That's a ton. That's a lot. Yeah, it's crazy. There were calls being made to a policewoman in Grantham, so, okay, what's she doing now? Well, did they look like they were friends or did they look like it was more serious? But yeah, and they, annoyingly, after the war, they weren't considered for veteran status and benefits because they weren't seen as part of the military.

And it took until 1977, the petitioning presidents constantly to get them any kind of compensation, but they finally did it. But they were essential to the war of the Hello Girls. Yeah, you were there. You know, yeah, you were at the front line. You weren't there, though. Yeah, exactly. Oh, my God.

That's awful. I've just got one more fact about balloons. Yeah, go on. There has only ever been one balloon hit and run accident in the UK. Okay, amazing. 2004. Yeah. Are we talking hot air balloons?

Yeah. Wow. Okam, Cumbria. Retired couple sitting in their cottage having a nice time, suddenly, bang, hot air balloon. People are still the chimneys, smash it into their chimney and their roof and then flies off. Oh, my God. I know.

It was blue, yellow and red. I'm going to say, in defense of whoever this was, if you're flying over and you're out of control enough that you hit a chimney, you're probably out of control enough that you can't stop. To leave you details. Yeah. It's quite dangerous because around there, they have quite a lot of Ministry of Defense flights.

They practice around there. Yeah. Wow. It's the only known, known, hot air balloon hit and run. They never found. They still never. I didn't find a follow up to the story. Maybe they did.

So that's interesting because only a couple of days ago, I watched a video on Instagram of a hot air balloon coming in close to it. There's a whole group of people picnicking on the side of, in this grassy bit of a hill. And they're all, they all turn around and look at it, everyone gets up and they're filming it and it just keeps descending and keeps descending and it suddenly hits the ground and mows through all of them. They're all diving out of the way, all their chairs go through. No one's hit.

Everyone's okay. Okay. And it takes off again and disappears off into the distance. And I don't know if they got their details later, so that might not count as a hit and run. But could you claim a picnic over a chimney? My picnic was ruined. If they put everything back together, they noticed there was one sausage roll missing.

Just grab it on the way out. Just left a sausage skin. Make your own balloon. Okay, it's time for our final fact of the show and that is my fact. My fact this week is that Orson Welles' nose rarely made appearances in his movies. Wow. Can you give me some of his movies? Yeah.

Citizen Kane is perhaps. I've seen Citizen Kane. I have. But I don't remember any noseless men in that. Well, he was never noseless. Oh. I mean, people would talk about Citizen Kane in a different way. There was no nose on his face.

Like he spends his whole time lusting over. What was it? Rosebud. Rosebud. Memorialising Rosebud. He'd be memorialising his nose. Closebud. No.

Thank you. I nearly started watching Citizen Kane last night. Have you not seen it? No, I got quite tired. It's incredible. It's incredible. Why do you only want to hear who hasn't? Yeah.

Oh, the worm turns and builds his little nest out. Sorry. I'll keep going with that. If he doesn't nest down, then realises this is full of shit from a groundhog. Carries on. Actually absorbs it because that's his deal. Have you caught what Citizen Kane is? It's classic.

I've seen a couple of his. What have you seen? The Magnificent Ambersons. Oh, I haven't seen that. Very much a B-side. Oh, okay. Yeah. It is great.

The third man, which he did directly, just is in. Yeah. Oh, sorry. But he was such a director. Yeah. That's okay. Awesome Wells. Citizen Kane is often regarded as one of the greatest movies ever made.

I actually was surprised I went on to IMDb. I expected to see it behind Shawshank Redemption. It was actually 95 on the top 100 list. But I think, you know, there's three Avengers movies in that top 100 ahead of it. So I think that's been answered. Yeah. You went on to IMDb. I think you check like Guardians Top Films.

Yeah. Exactly. It was the Paddington 2 of its day. Yeah. It really was. It absolutely was. Awesome Wells was, as Andy says, he was a director. He was a writer.

He was an actor. He did a job of running the radio to stage, to film, doing iconic things in every single place. He supposedly created a national terror when he did World of the Worlds on radio. That's been mythologized to be a lot worse than it actually was people, you know, claiming they thought aliens were really invading. With really kind of newspapers, just bumping that up. But one thing about him is that for someone who was so confident and he was known to be

so balshy and people would talk about his rage and his passion. One thing he was absolutely insecure about was the size of his nose, which he thought hadn't really grown since childhood And so every single movie that he did except basically for one movie as far as I can tell which was the third man He always had prosthetics on his nose and sometimes applying it himself There's an account by a guy called Lewis Gilbert who was a director and he did a movie with him in 1959 called fairy to Hong Kong And he said that basically he would do his own nose And the problem was is that his nose would be quite different shot-to-shot. Yeah, they said it's like wonky or green Yeah, sometimes it was tilting upwards. Sometimes it was tilting downwards occasionally. It just went sideways

It was not a consistent nose for the entire movie. Yeah, I read one quote saying he said his nose had not grown one millimeter since infancy Which I don't believe it There's no way he had an actual baby's nose Because when when you do look at so I was like what? No, he doesn't and then I saw a picture of him without it And I was like, I guess it's small I think it doesn't fit his personality because he was known for being this like huge rack hunter character like absolute Almost I guess Brian blessed style like fill the room Yeah, it doesn't you expect him to have a much bigger features and the rest of his features are quite big

Not there's anything wrong with having a small nose. He allegedly kept you kept a very fake nose Yeah, and he had a glass case for each one and he also gave them all names. That's quite common in Prosthetic and wig world on TV. They sometimes give them names. Really? Yeah, I don't know why I guess because often you have to look After a wig. Yes, so you have to kind of like wash it and preen it and stuff. I'll set it so you would give it It's not uncommon to give it a name. Kerry, you've done a lot of sketch comedy on TV Yeah, sort of shows where you're a comedy character playing a celebrity like murder and success. Oh, yeah Yeah, have you ever worn a prosthetic nose? Uh, yeah, I have I'm trying to think now. I had to for loads for murder successful

But I can't remember which one I think for Cheryl Cole. I had to a prosthetic nose I think we called it Cheryl to be fair He didn't call them the actual names. I did it very weird except he was in a film called touch of evil. Oh, yes One of his classics nose from that was called Sandra. Oh They always women's names one the king one of the King Lear one was called Sloan, Jr Yeah, so I don't know if there's a character called Sandra in touch of evil, but there's no character called Sloan, Jr. In King Lear. No, it's gone of all's gone of all's brother And actually when he was making that film

I think they lost his nose halfway through production and it had been posted and it hadn't got come through And they basically halted production on this big Hollywood film while they searched every post office in hong kong for finders nose I'm also was his father. It was called dickhead. His name was Richard head wells Wow And he he's pretty cool Was my father he was a kind of inventor and an engineer. He invented a glider get this Which was attached to a steam engine on the ground Okay, so it's a plane whose engine is on the ground and the plane flies up there and then you know what it feels like

What? You would have angular momentum on it if you just try to go forward you'd end up going in a circle like those fairground rides Yeah, maybe But it did not work Well, maybe it worked, but it didn't It didn't take off Dan you mentioned the war of the wells thing. Yeah, he came a bit depressed afterwards because he said that He had two lots of friends one lot of friends had heard the recording

And one lot hadn't and anyone who'd heard it would want to tell him everything what they thought about it And anyone who hadn't heard it would tell him tediously why they hadn't They were near a wireless on the day so that everyone he spoke to all wanted to speak to him about that Is that like how you guys feel like people just come up to you with facts or they go, I've never done any not only into podcasts A lot more of the latter than the former I read an interview with him from 1939 and he said that no one has said anything original about that broadcast for at least nine months Wow There's a weird coincidence which is that hg wells was in america and he was driving around and he got lost

And so he pulls over and he goes excuse me. So can you help me to find where I'm going and it's awesome wells And they make the established they established that each other each other and this was not long after awesome wells had done War of the worlds, but of course he wasn't a big face back then awesome wells. He was a radio guy. No, that's for sure You know he couldn't have gone like oh, I'm gonna pretend. I don't know who awesome wells is I wonder if hg wells was recognizable Quite possibly from the back of books were people just less recognizable back in the day You didn't have more you didn't have author jacket photos in the same way that you do these days And as we know all the jacket photos are not representative of what someone looks like in real life. Excuse me

Holding up my book yours is thank you. Thank you. I also read some newspaper articles from the day after the The recording went out. Yeah to see, you know, did it happen or you know was this kind of craziness? Did it exist? And the journal Times I read they collected articles from all over America about what had happened And they said that senator Clyde Herring of Iowa had called for more regulation of the press As a result of everyone thinking that the Martians had attacked which is pretty typical Apparently in new york one person had called the police and said I want a gas mask. I'm a taxpayer And the police had just said that that definitely happened and there was a town of concrete

Which is in washington state and apparently there was a power cut just at the moment the Martians put their death rays Into action and this is reported the day after it went out. So I think it did happen But the thing was like they did advertise that it was Fiction they said right at the top Awesome wells comes on at the start and says this is fictional and then they had four times in the middle They said just to remind you all this is fictional and then at the end he comes on and says by the way That was a play you just listened to so there was a good radio four documentary about what happened and how true I mean there were people who obviously did

Lose their mind but it's a tempting myth. Yeah. Yeah, exactly like the five stages guys Like it's nice to believe that that would be true. Yeah, it's just kind of it's nice to believe that sort of people back in the day Were so stupid. They didn't understand radio. You think oh, we've come along some way. We understand radio now, you know, yeah, well wells So Dan you mentioned his most famous film appearance, maybe and certainly maybe the one he's most famous for these days is in the third man Yeah, where he it's in vienna. It's after the second world war. It's and it's an amazing Mate that is unmissable

So good and there's a big scene there's a scene in the sewers of vienna where they're chasing. He's playing this mysterious um, sort of black market dealer and and and you know crook and he's he's very very dodgy But they did the filming in the sewers of vienna and they you know, they all went down there They were actually very clean in lots of places and the director had his coffee brought down to him on a silver tray by a waiter From one of the old viennese cafes, you know the only person who refused to go down into the sewers awesome wells. Yeah, and they had to build a fake sewer in sheperton Wow, is that the famous shot of him though in that really like the really white circle and it's him Yeah, it's either a body double or it's sheperton and everyone else had filmed their bits in vienna. Yeah, I know

But he wouldn't have been able to smell it anyway with this tiny nose I mean he was it like I can't remember what film it was but it was filmed in the deep south and that actress was quoted as saying like It was so hot and sweaty that his nose was like falling off My nose is running but like he was if he was a woman he'd be called a diva Like the things he would refuse to do. He was a diva. Yeah diva. Yeah, and the guy I think is the guy who plays yago or Casio wrote a whole book about the experience of filming a fellow of like how Insane and awful it was like that was his kind of made his money on this. Yeah called casio

Yeah, the one that loves doesn't mind and starts off all the trouble. He has that great line beep. Yeah Yes, Andrew Yes fellow english literature scholar. Yes. Oh apparently when he was directing a fellow Um, was that a film the film? Yeah. Yeah, it's a great film. It's really interesting I think he might have also staged a stage version of a fellow because apparently when he was directing that He would push the actors around the stage with a 20 foot pole Shouting to hell with the method. This is the world's way. Act you sons of bitches amazing Do you know where orson wells is buried? No. No

This is he's buried. Can we guess? Yeah, have a guess. Have a guess. Perlishez This is the most famous cemetery ever. That's in paris. Okay. Let me let me No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, you're like hi gay. You're like this. I'm gonna rephrase the question Because this is actually the wrong angle. Okay. Remember a few weeks ago when we had serapasco on we talked about the guy Who invented pringles being buried in a pringles? Yes tube tube Okay, so where is orson wells buried? In a film canister, a film canister in the hollywood hills. Very good. Um, he's in the hollywood sign. They poured him in Into the hollywood hill. Oh, yeah, yeah, all the three guys. Um, in a well. Orson wells is in a well. Oh

James got it. James got it. No way. He's buried. He was this is years after his death His daughter brought the ashes of him to malaga in spain to a place called ronda Where he's now on the property of a retired bullfighter Uh, who he really liked quite recently. Have you? Yeah, that's the end of the anecdote Orson wells is in a well. Wow in malaga. Yeah lovely city malaga It's surprising because you think like you you associated with package holidays It's incredibly the cathedral is called

La manchita I think which means the woman with one arm Oh, and it's because it's got two towers the cathedral, but only one of them was completed So one of them is shorter than the other. Um, simon callow the actor. Yes. He is a Maybe one of the biggest wells experts on the planet because he's currently writing a biography of orson wells He was he started working on it in 1989 When orson wells have been dead a few years. He thought I'll do two volumes take about three years 1992 be done great Book one was published in 1995. Okay. Took a bit longer fine

The very benefit but book one fine, right book two volume two was in 2006 volume three came out in 2015 And he's now working on volume four. It's so it's such a huge project. He's done other stuff in between Four weddings and a few roles in there except he's a busy man pop idol Who among us doesn't make that mistake I always make a mistake when they go to him at the judges chair He's surrounded by books on wells and he's conducting interviews Okay, that's it. That's 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 we've said over the course of this podcast We can be found on our twitter accounts I'm on at shribeland andy at andrew hunter m james at james harkin and cariad That lady cariad because I did it a long time ago and I because of your dayhood and because of my dayhood or at cariad Lloyd on instagram small rare Right, and yep You can also get us on at no such thing or go to our website No such thing as a fish calm and check out all of our previous episodes

But most important of all get yourself to an online bookshop or a real bookshop to pick up You are not alone carriads book all about grief and it's tied in with her podcast grief cast so give that a listen as well I'm sure you have already but get back to it this week and Has anyone died get back in there guys Yeah, but that's it for us for now. We'll be back again next week with another episode. We'll see you then. Goodbye