No Such Thing As A Fish - 480: No Such Thing As President Muffler

Episode Date: May 26, 2023

Dan, James, Andrew and Phil Dunster discuss thatched theatres, fake footballers and the Oval Office. 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

Hello and welcome to a brand new episode of No Such Things, a fish. First things first, let me tell you about our very very very special guest and that is Phil Dunster, the brilliant actor who plays the character Jamie Tartt in the unbelievable TV show Ted Lasso. And on if you've watched Ted Lasso, if you haven't, it's definitely worth checking out. It's on Apple TV right now, there are about to show the final episode. And if you don't have Apple TV, I'm pretty sure you'll be able to get a free trial somewhere. It's well worth it.

There's loads of good stuff on there, but especially Ted Lasso is such a good show. Phil actually does listen to fish, so he came well prepared with loads and loads of facts. It was such a fun show to record and we all had such a great time. A few more little bits of news. We have some live shows coming up in the Soho Theatre in London. There are still tickets available for that, although some of the dates are now sold out, so you want to get in there really quick to get tickets for that. And those tickets can be found at nosuchthingsaffish.com forward slash Soho. And apart from that, join up to ClubFace.

There's loads of fun stuff happening there all the time. There's bonus episodes, there's Discord where you can chat to fellow fish fans. You'll learn about live tickets first. There's all sorts of bonuses for signing up to that, so do that. And apart from anything else, if you're listening in a place where you can follow nosichthingsaff fish, then do that. We taught some industry bots the other day and they said that it is very important that you click follow if you like us.

Anyway, enough about that. Really hope you enjoy this show with filler. I'm absolutely certain you will. And all I can say is, on with a podcast. Hello and welcome to another episode of No Such Thing as a Fish, a weekly podcast coming to you from the QI offices in Hobern. My name is Dan Schreiber, I am sitting here with James Harkin, Andrew Hunter Murray, and Thank you for your time. My fact this week is that the Shakespeare's Globe Theatre is the only building with a

fatched roof in London since the Great Fire of London in 1666. Very cool. Andy is very excited right now. That's a fat shroom, so you're kidding me? Yeah, that's brilliant. Is your thing, don't need sh- Is it a fetish? Oh no, I wouldn't say fetish.

Would you like to have sex underneath the thatstreuth? Everyone's got a bucket list. Anyway, look, the globe theatre. Sorry, what's the story? So Andrew, Hunter Murray had sex inside the globe theatre. Because it ended that through. It was fascinating. It was made, it was originally built in Shoreditch. It was called the Burbage Theatre in 1576.

And the land was owned by this bloke called Giles Allen. And when the lease on the theatre came up, he didn't want to renew it. And so the Chamberlain's men, which is Shakespeare's company of actors, they decided that they will just literally upsticks take all of the timber from that theatre and hide it in someone's shed for it. And then whilst Alan was away at Christmas, they built it a few hundred metres away from where the current globe theatre currently is, is where they built them. So that one was that, that one was that the sort of proper original self-banker.

But that will have been before the Great Fire of London, will it? That was Shakespeare's time. Yeah, it didn't hang around for very long. It was 1599, I think, was when it was built. And then it was actually burned down itself. It didn't need no Great Fire London to burn itself down. Wasn't that canon during a play? Yeah, yeah. I think it was Henry under demand. Wasn't that canon during a play? Yeah, yeah. I think it was Henry the Eighth.

Wasn't that bastard? He did. Yeah. I think it's one of the least good histories. I don't know. Well, they don't play it very often, do they? You don't go down the globe and see Henry the Eighth, I'm very happy.

I think there must be a reason for that. But last time they performed it, the whole fucking thing, but probably on the band list. So did Shakespeare do his stuff in Burbage's theater up in the East London side? Sure, it's, yeah. Oh, really? So was anything ever performed in his lifetime during... Well, yeah, Lightfield says they moved the whole thing down.

And Shakespeare went along with it. Yeah, yeah. I think they rebuilt it within his lifetime, even though it burnt down quite closely. He died in 1616 and I think it burned down not long before that but they rebuilt it and you know, he was still showing new Shakespeare plays there. That's really good to know because whenever I pass it I think, oh this is just a replica, it's not got any kind of original, you know, meet to it, you know, Shakespeare was dead by then, it's just, you know, a fate. But if he was alive while people were performing it. Well, the modern one is a new one.

Oh, completely new. It's even more new one. Yeah, so the modern one was built in, well, 80s, 19s, like that, in the 90s. Yeah, and that was by what's he called? San Juanamaker. San Juanamaker. And that's the one which has got thatch now, is that right?

That's right, yeah. Right. It's pretty much the same. It uses green oak and it has like wooden, like postings or sort of whatever, you know, dougling or whatever it is that holds it all together. They tried to make it as close to how it would have been made at the time using, you know, all of the techniques that the builders would have used, but they had to use stuff like modern scaffolding and they had to increase the amount of fire escapes and exits and all

that sort of stuff. They've got spring clothes. They've got spring clothes, yeah. I read them. I was reading the newspaper articles from the time and as late as 1988, the papers were saying that there wouldn't be thatch and it would be tiled and that was due to fire regulations.

And then sometime around 1990, they kind of changed their mind and said, yeah, we're gonna be allowed thatch after all. That's cool. It's got some cashmere in the walls. It's it. Yeah, because they made proper old fashioned plaster. It's in 17th century plaster.

Waffle and d'orbe is the name of it. And it includes cashmere goat hair, which is an ingredient of the plaster. That's cool, yeah. And the Thatch roof that they have now has a hidden set of sprinklers all the way through it. Oh yeah. You know, just kidding.

Just kidding. I found the company that made the Thatch, they're called TAS, and there was an article about them, and apparently the globe wasn't the biggest ever contract that they had. They had one bigger contract for FATCH roofs. Can you guess? Oh my gosh. I've given it away, it's multiple roofs. Multiple FATCH roofs. Did they redo a whole village or something?

In a way something in a way Okay, Phil I'll let it out all these silences Olympic village but like an old fashioned Olympic village. That's right. Yeah, it was a 2012 Olympics Everyone lived in that houses. That's why they're all having sex all the time Was it was it for like a game of Thrones sets? Okay, not Game of Thrones, but Harry Potter. Lord of the Rings. No. Hobbit.

No, Ted Lacer. LAUGHTER Think I'm... I don't know when this. I think it was 90s, so it's a similar era. This... Zina the Warrior of Princess. Film came out. Matrix, hey.

It's a Matrix, stop it. Is a historical... I've got a lot of things to say. tricks. Okay, I made tricks stop it. Oh, is a historical Love, Shakespeare in love. No, but that would have been feels good It's gonna be a bit of a downer now that I tell you it was robbing hood Prince of the Tracks, and they had to do the entire kind of village and they put thatch on all of them And that was the most money they ever made and the globe was the second most they have Movies are expensive, man. Waterwell.

Kevin Costner, you know, for that one, Kevin Costner, his huge set. That's his wall set. Teach all those walls how to dance. You know the globe. I do. When they rebuilt it, it then shrank. Oh, I'm rid of that. Oh, okay. oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, be in the 1987 storm in the New Forest, knockdown loads of trees, but it's certainly a big storm in the late 80s,

knockdown load of trees in the New Forest and they got all of the timber from there. That's really cool. Yeah, and also the Duke Feddenbrough offered wood from one of his oaks at Windsor. Lovely. Right. Good bloke.

Good bloke. Do you want to hear another fact about the Royal Family in this, by the way? Yeah, that's great. Well, let's not say good books for this one. So they crowdfunded it quite a lot of the money for this because, you know, they need a load of money and they need to get it from somewhere. So they went to America and they had an event called UK LA 88, a celebration of British

arts. And according to the Desert Sun newspaper, the real stars will be Fergie and Prince Andrew. So Prince Andrew is partly responsible for the building of the globe. And the British consulate said, when you think of Britain, we don't want you to think about fat shortages and bobbies, but of Concord, microchips and Phil Collins. I don't love John thing is that... Concord's not even going any more. No. Microchips.

Do we make many microchips in the UK? Possibly. I don't think I'm in that. Huge center of... Phil Collins is still going strong there. That's a good point, he's... He's a one-part of a different sort of laugh. Have you played there, Phil?

I haven't played there. I've been to see quite a few productions there. I was a poor student when I went, and I was Standing I was one of the groundlings And I do I was I mean, I've got a pretty bad attention span as it is and being stood there for like three and a half hours Do you remember what you've seen? I saw mid-someone that's dream there They and they were all great productions, but this is my, listen, I'm working on it, I'm working on it. But they have another space, which is called the One to Make a Playhouse, which again is made like a playhouse would have been back in there. And it's fully lit by candles, and you can just imagine that, again, the schematics

coming along, and they're like, right, then, Globe Theatre, what do you got for us today after all the thatchesatch houses and all the stuff? Oh, a fully wooden theatre and it's only lit by candles. Right. The way you just said, dear, just then the second I go back into dear, apparently if you see Shakespeare, you won't hear it to be or not to be,

you'll hear it to bear or not to bear. Is that right? Well, this is what I read. So apparently the Globe Theatre has a tradition now these days of making sure that the accents that are spoken while Shakespeare players on is the accent of the time. And so David Crystal, who James Unheim at Eury's ago, he's a linguist, he studies all types of language

and no one really knows how people spoke back then fully. He kind of clobbed together an idea of how to speak and to be as to bear. To bear. Or not to bear. Okay. That's a quite brine butterfield. Oh, did you have any snacks when you were there? This is relevant, I promise. A beer. That's good.

The snack has more refreshment, isn't it? A beverage. It still has something from the theatre. But it was very of today. Okay, so it wasn't. Yeah, it's better to count as a snack as more of a refreshment, isn't it? A beverage. It's still a something from the theatre. But it was very of today. Okay, so it wasn't, yeah, yeah. It was there. Brood in the upper bed. A bit there. I'm not a bit there.

Exit, pursuit, I admit. Oh, I just wanted to, because they've, like archaeologists have done lots of digging around under the sites of the old theatres and they've found out what the snacks would have been. In Elizabethan times. I found really interesting. Yeah, and so what gone? Well, they're slightly limited by what remains as in what Rots and what doesn't. Of course, they have found thousands and thousands of oyster shells.

That was a huge thing. And because oysters were not the food for the posh, they were just sort of standard today. Yeah, yeah. Just got a few oysters when he went to the theatre. So that was a big thing. Yeah, that's very cool. Yeah. Just about the accent thing. There was, because it was such an amalgamation of different accents that were in London.

And they hadn't really sort of formed a London accent, yeah, I guess, at that time. It was such a hodgepodge of different accents. Like a sort of Irish, British, West country, Lancashire, Jordy sort of thing. And I could give it a bit of a go. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Nobody can tell me I got it wrong because I don't remember that. Something like two households both alike in Dignity, in favour of a Rona, where we lay our son, from ancient grouch, break to new mutiny, where civil blood lay civil hands unclean. Wow!

That's great! That's great! I did just get hit in the head before I started. Could you do the rest of the show? Yeah! There's a lot of, if you go to the globe, there's a lot of things on the floor which are the names of patrons basically. I have. they've helped to fund the new globe and so on. And so there's lots of very famous names on there

and two in particular, which are exciting to see, at John Cleese and Michael Palin, which is very cool. Yeah. Michael Ho. Michael Palin. Hey, Palin. No, Michael Palin. Oh, stop it.

Because according to the story, John Cleese only agreed to donate to the theatre on the condition that Michael Palin's name was misspelled. And so, on the floor, you can see it. It's PA-Double-L-I-E. What would you have done if we just politely glossed over the high-resignated? I was so nearly dead. I was holding on. Come on, guys, someone, someone Corvey on this.

It's a problem when you pronounce everything wrong. Yeah. The thing is that Dan's such a big fan of Michael Palin. I was thinking maybe that's how it's pronounced. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But yeah, so the globe says that this is a story. When you go on the tour guides, they say this is a story. There's no solid, you know, John Cleese needs to say it out loud.

OK, but it is misspelled. Yeah, misspelled. Yeah. We need to move on in a sec. I see anyone have anything before we do? I've got some stuff on Rich the Third to say that loud. Okay, but it is misspelled. Yeah, misspelled. Yeah, we need to move on in the south. Anyone have anything before we do? I've got some stuff on Rich the Third, but that's... Oh yeah, do it. Yeah, for.

So a lot of archaeologists found the old theatre buried underneath a car park not so far away. And as was Rich the Third found in a car park in the star. And obviously was one of Shakespeare's big villain protagonists. And Dr. Joe of Shakespeare's big villain protagonists. And Dr. Joe Applebee at the University of Leicester looked at the bones and saw that Richard the Third got f**ked up when he got killed. Right. That he was... They see from his bones, he had a glancing blow to his cheek, he had a wound from probably a halberd, which is like

big, stick pike with a sort of axe thing. I thought it was sort of, there was potentially the fatal blow. The back of his head or chunk was missing there. And then they think that they didn't want to do too much more to the face because Henry VII needed to parade this dead body around. Like, look, this is definitely him definitely him, not just some pulp. Yeah, and they saw what they thought would be some post mortem injuries, but it was ribbed and the two spines as well.

And then one of his bum, they reckon, there's sort of a mark. Was that actually died? Oh, this is it. This feels like a monster. Yeah. That's a different play, Dan. He's my king, then, for a question. Yeah, that's a different play done. He's my king them for a horse. My king them for a horse with a very soft saddle.

Wow, that's amazing. Poor uply. That was in battle, wasn't it? That was in battle, battle of Bosworth. He was the last king, killed at a battle. Let's see. I don't think anyone since then has been cowards. Yeah, well, I have been...

Come on, Charles. Come on. OK, it is time for fact number two, and that is Andy. My fact is that when residents of Greater Manchester were recently asked, they identified four distinctive accents in the region. Mank, Lancashire, Wigan and Posh. LAUGHTER Brilliant. Yeah, it's like a good version of the Spice Girls.

But instead of... Wigan's Bice, yeah. Mank's Bice. Wigan's Bice is eating a pie all the time. James, do you, when you see that there's these four, does that make sense to you? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. I would say my accent began as Lancashire with a bit of Wiggins, because I went to primary school in Wiggins, and now it's posh probably. Right.

I've lost a lot of my accents since I moved to London, so I think people in Greater Manchester would say I was in the posh bit. You do, I notice when either you're on family or people from the north, you do slightly slip back into it. It's like the wording like, um, tintonet. I don't like, you know, have that so well. Yeah, that's kind of awkward. But you miss out like certain words sometimes.

I don't know, purpose. I did it when Phil came in and then he opened his mouth and I'm like, oh yeah, you're not Jamie Tarr. I'm always disappointment. What's Tarot Saxon, is that from? It's, well, it's sort of new, most in sort of the way. Because the people who did this research,

one of them was called Dr. Rob Drummond. He listens to fish, I turns out, and I emailed him and sent him an example of your accent and asked him if he could place it in my thoughts. So this is an academic and he said, no, it's shit. No, he didn't. He was like, no, it was, it's really, really good. And he says, you do a great Manchester accent and it's all about the letter, vowel and the happy vowel. And apparently, when you say letter, as I would say it, if you're a Manchester, you say letter,

which Jamie Tart does. And happy, as I might say, in Manchester, they say hape. But anyway, he could take your accent, and he reckon he could pinpoint it's a pretty much central, or just north of central Manchester. Wow. It comes all kind of smedily that kind of area. Wow. That's so cool.

And academic degrees. That's a good report. A good report of three years later. I mean, it depends what series you watch. Because I think the first series I was like, I don't really know if I'm doing this right, but it was an American show. So I was like, oh, yeah.

I know. I don't care. Should we should name the project, shouldn't we? It was called Manchester Voices. And it was a three year research project at Manchester Metropolitan University. Yeah, Dr. Rob Drummond, who checked out Phil's accent. He is a listener, he listens to Fish all the time

with his daughter, Cassia, and he has a new book coming out called You Are All Talk. It's not out yet, but if you want to pre-order that, you can. They had a really cool thing, they had an accent van, which drove around. And they bundled people into the accent van and recorded how they spoke.

I think that, yeah, they were like, it was contemporary. They had hoods, they had cuffs, they, so funny. And so the specific questions that they asked were things like, oh, I'm curious, because you're often bolted in there. So if they said, I've never heard you say, instead of bottle, buckle, yeah.

Yeah, or liqueur instead of a buckle. That is a bolted thing, but I don't really speak like that now. School with two syllables. School. That's more of a wiggum thing, you would say school. So the word book, as I would say it, 10% of boltiners say boot. Boot instead of box boot.

And 71% of wiggins say that. So that's how you can tell the difference. And 30% of Bolton of say buzz instead of bus. And I actually do say buzz instead of bus. Oh, right. Did you, just with all those words, James, were saying when you were doing your accent, is it something that you studied

or is it one of those things that once you start speaking in an accent, you almost naturally find the way that they would pronounce it anyway? I guess studied, watched documentaries and whatnot. My agent, who I love very dearly, is a manquiny, and she's very sassy. And there was a lot of sass in Jamie Tarts, so I was like, that's quite a good start point. And I think generally I sort of am okay picking that up, but there's a rapper called H. And it's funny that the DipsTaps, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, he's

much cooler. And what? A Trump shirt is coming on next week. Careful. But H is really like proper man, because something is going to happen. Yeah, it's the rapper. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think that one of the things was when we were auditioning for it, they didn't

necessarily want a man CUNION, they just wanted someone who didn't sound like me, they just wanted, you know, or Italian or Spanish or whatever. And I think that it just felt right for him that sort of sense of like, it'd come from a place that you had to sort of graft to get out of. And that's why I say season one, season three, from being totally honest,

it started off with one of the Gallagher brothers, and it sort of slowly stepped towards a sort of Jesse Lingard, come sort of a far more sort of contemporary version of that. It would be like, all right, how you doing? All right, mate, how's it going? Yeah, I'll take you all up with it again there,

but it's like, do you know what I mean? Yeah, it's a lot more like sort of contemporary. And it feels a lot more like, he's just got, I feel like he's rapping all the time. Yeah, I mean. Right, right.

So yeah, and just, yeah. So anyway, it's sort of, it's shifted from a sort of 90s version of it. I've read quite a few things about actors who, so Austin Butler who just played Elvis in the biopic, the Bazelome and Biopic. There's videos of him prior to doing the role to how he speaks now and he's been unable to shift the Elvis voice, the Elvis talk. So when he received his award at either the Emmys of the Golden Globe, he's well thank you everybody for this incredible award. He can't get rid of it and he

actively talks about it because he's questioned about it. They're like you don't talk like this and he's like oh no I can't get rid of it. And so he's trying to lose the Elvis accent. That's so random. Yeah well know what happens with quite a lot of actors. That's how it's going to say. Did you ever have anything at home suddenly found yourself not being able to shift the accent? Was it not long enough a gig to...

Oh, I think there was probably a couple of words I just enjoyed saying, like, Pupa. I just really enjoyed it. You got a Pupa. It just feels right. A lot of the Eps words at the end, it's just quite fun. But you can track what film Tom Hardy was doing by interviews at the time, because he's got a real sort of chameleon accent. Remember Steve McLaren when he went to work in

the Netherlands, and he just started talking with a Dutch accent. He was a former England football manager, and he became a manager of a current member who was Iax or someone they wasn't Iax but a Dutch team. And then he would do interviews in England. And he just had this really strong Dutch accent and he's been there for like only a few months. And he was actually an ingratient himself in the college. I think it's so gorgeous though, isn't it when people do that? You're talking to people who, let's say you go to America or Australia or somewhere, you naturally will, what will some people do and some people don't? It's really interesting.

Well, you do naturally, you imitate someone's accent, don't you? Because it makes them like you better. That's the idea. But also, they've decided this is a good idea and they've got this AI software, where if you phone up, you know,, what do you call it, like a chat like, not chat like. Calls enter a call center. Yeah, one of those call centers, yeah. My back card isn't working. If you've heard of a call center and, yeah, they've worked out this AI which can hear your accent and then imitate your accent

And so they come back in a slightly similar way to your talk and immediately trust them are so weird And it's mostly basically because of where call centers are around the world It's mostly to make people in places like the Philippines sound like they're from Boston or whatever and so but this is the plot of a film It's a film called sorry to bother you and it's about a young black guy who gets a job in a call center Oh, yeah, and then he someone tells him use you, like an older guy in the center, says use your white voice. Oh, and he starts getting lots and lots of business because he's sounding preppy and whiteer. And so they've literally turned this. It is a horror film. To a technology. Oh, I'm weird. James, what is, this is a little bottom quiz.

Oh, I don't know why I'm a weird. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Give it to us, okay. All right. P-Wet. Damn. Oh, I know what that is. P-Wet.

P-Wet. P-Wet. Oh, okay. P-Wet. P-Wet. P-Wet is a type of bird. Absolutely, is that helpful? Maybe not.

P-Wet. P-Wet. Because it goes P-Wet. P-Wet. Well, James, we're trying to help you in this quiz. Because it goes, be with, be with. With James, we're trying to help you in this quiz, maybe. Yeah, is he a friend? I mean, no. Distractor. Is it a P-Wat?

P-Wat, you've, you've what yourself would be. I didn't even think of that. Yeah. Yeah, good. If you ever come to Bolton. Yeah. That's what you have to say. You've got to chip shop, and they say, you want P-Wat?

No, of course not. I don't know if I do. I don't need your help for it, thank you very much. James was helping you with that P-Wet is the mushy P-Water. Yeah, so you can get them to put, if you have chips with P-Wet, then you don't have to pay for the P-Wet, you get the chips and they'll just pour a bit of the wet, the mushy P's. Oh, the water runoff from the mushy peas.

Yeah. Oh, sorry. No, great. That's not what I thought. I thought it was just mushy peas, but that's a step towards insanity. Why do you want that? You'd have wet chips.

You'd have wet chips of two dry. Oh, so kind of like a vinegar. Put vinegar on, don't you? Wow. It's very exciting. Shake's here in English. Yeah, it is. I want to try another one, don't.

Cracking the flags. Bought to flags. Cracking flags. Cracking flags. Cracking flags. Is it rude? She's got a pair of cracking flags. No, I don't know.

Do you know what it is, Phil? I don't know what this is. Really? What if I tell you the flags relate to flag stones as in pavement?, cracking the flags? It's like walking as a pedestrian. Cumbled streets. This is so funny because these are words that I thought

everyone knew. And I've never heard this until. That's the end result. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It means it's really hot. It's cracking flags out there. That's in the cell hall that the pavement's breaking. Yeah, yeah, nice.

Wow, I'm really failing as my pertinent. Thank you, you're here. I'm here. But the Mancunion accent was, sorry, just took a close. Mancunion accent was voted, and I found this in the Daily Mail, and the researchers provided by best casinos. So it's falling. Yeah, come on, I'm going to go.

I know that you love your watertight facts checking here. After they asked 2,500 people, they found that the Manchester accent was the sexiest accent in that sentence. And that's from best casinos. Is that recent? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think it was last year. I think that's interesting.

Because I reckon that change, you see those things quite often, don't you, and they say, oh, they, yeah, I think it was last year. I think that's interesting because like I reckon that change you see those things quite often Don't you and they say oh the Irish accents most sexy or the Yorkshire is up never the Birmingham weirdly But they you know they do say that and I wonder if it's like fashion like they've seen people like yourself doing the Mancacs and on TV and they associated with the Gallagher's having effect I think they did yeah, yeah The most aggressive. That's why I'm thinking. Yeah, I mean, so I read a thing that in America there was once a vote on what was the most sexy accent from the UK.

Oh, the UK. Yeah, and Glasgow won it. Right. And I wonder, because Billy Conley is so big in America, whether or not there was just something kind of like, I know he's not seen as like a sex symbol, but he's seen a really charismatic, really funny, everything that's like likable. Stillki guy.

Yeah. All whether the person doing the research was Glass-Weijen and they felt intimidated. Yeah. Yeah. I get, one of my favorite things about doing this show is I quite often, haven't actually had it in the last sort of 12 months, but I used to get it a bunch of linguists would write to me saying I take samples of your accent and my accent and I play it to other people who are linguists and the challenges

work out where he's from and Every time they say no one can work out the big they say like Canada or like New Zealand Israel like they get elements of No one needs to collect on tour and we sort of do like signings afterwards And people would come sometimes come up and say where are you from to Dan and then you'd ask them to guess and I used to collect on tour, and we'd sort of do like signings afterwards and people would come sometimes come up and say, where are you from to Dan? And then you'd ask them to guess, and I used to keep a list on my phone

of everywhere people I guess. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it was, I mean, the whole world. Because I think you just have an international accent, like from as if you went to international school, like my wife's got similar. Yeah, and of course, slightly North American, weird accent.

Yeah, but I guess if then that becomes the challenge for the linguists, what are the influences on this accent? We were saying before that when people who are from a certain place go back to that place or speak to other people from that place, that accent starts to come out of it. Do you have that with one of your... If I go to Australia, I definitely lean into Aussie a bit. I should have a British accent by now because I've been here long enough, but I don't.

And the Hong Kong accent was very American, where I grew up. But where do you go to sound more like you are now? Not just more Aussie, you know? Because you don't really sound very Aussie. No. Do you want to travel internationally? It's actually only in departure lounges. It sounds like most like himself.

Whenever you're buying a Tobler on it's like, I don't know. Oh no. a binatobler on his life. Oh no. Okay, it is time for fact number three, and that's my fact. My fact this week is that of the few people who have top secret clearance at the White House, one of them is the person who writes all of the party invitations. I'm very sorry.

It's such a good plot for something, isn't it? It is, isn't it? You know the calligrapher. And it's the person who's party invitation writer is missing. Yes. Oh, yes. Because you'll know. As the invitation writer who's coming to the summits, who's, you know, who's...

Yes, everyone's so stressed. He's got Brezhnev's address. Yeah. Brezhnev! Yeah. He's thinking of a key global player. Brezhnev, when did Brezhnev's address, he's got... Brezhnev! Yeah. He came of a key global player. And you know what I mean? Brezhnev, when did Brezhnev stop running the Soviet Union?

I was thinking of Vyder's a Cold War thriller. I don't know. Imagine how beautiful his ransom letters would be. Oh. That would be perfect. So this is a thing where this kind of came up in the news when it was during Trump's administration that Jared Kushner, his son-in-law,

had been downgraded from top secret clearance because they sort of just tried to stop making everyone have it. And people noted that, because he had too many links to the Saudis, but yeah, sure. Yeah, yeah, so. It's nice not recording on the BBC, is it? Yeah. So we got downgraded and someone was pointing out that actually he's now got less clearance than the calligrapher has on the in-house.

And the reason the calligrapher has it is because they have to know everything about the president's appointments, what's coming up, who they have to, and they're near dignitaries all the time, and so they need to be on top of everything that they need to write, because they write so many invitations, they have a unit. There's a calligraphy unit. There's a whole office that does this. There's not many people. There's only like three or four people.

But, you know, a lot. It's a lot. In fact, one of them said that in one December period alone, they believe that they did 19,000 envelopes. And those are hand-writz. So yeah, and they're paid very, very handsomely, and they've been going for a very long time, like they're like long-term posts that they can run for. But they did ask one of the, I think he was by this point, the former calligrapher,

when the story broke, and Rick Paulus, who had run the office, he said that it was just because of the schedule and the proximity to early leaders. He said he never, ever dealt with intelligence matters, which you would hope he would not. As in, that's something gone wrong. It has to solve the crisis. I wonder who's the best RSV peer? Oh, like the timeliest.

Yeah, yeah. For all the world leaders. Yes. That's interesting. I feel like Trudeau is waiting by the post office store. Yeah, yeah. They'll apply it nice and sweat. They did a thing, I guess, with the royal wedding.

There was a kind of witch royal wedding it was with William Kate or Harry and Meghan, but they ran a thing of so-and-so's replied very quickly, saying the best. Oh, really? Really? Do you remember the, in fact, the Meghan Markle, her former job when she was an actor as a side job,

she was a calligraphist for invitations. So that's what she did. That's what she did. Robin Thickey. Oh, of Bloodlines. Robin Thickey. Yes. Yeah, of Bloodlines, babe.

He did, his wedding, the invites were written by Megan Markle. You know Robin Thicc. Yeah. Who's that? The Bloodlines guide. Do you know his dad was really famous. He wrote the theme tune to different strokes, the TV show.

Ooh, is that also a problematic song? LAUGHTER Sounds it. It's not the sexy song, it's the... Like a show, it means something very different. LAUGHTER Wow. That's the best... I mean, no offense by this James.

Trivia fact. I better... LAUGHTER Like, that's good. That's a fact. I've ever had that. Ah! Like, that's good. That's a good... It's just something that happened to know that sort of... Rick Polis, by the way, so this guy was the head of Calligraphy. Have you seen his website, Rick Polis Calligraphy? Yes. Not com.

Wonderful. He's quite annoyed because the kind of digital age where computers started recording all the examples of all the invites that they write over the years and now being archived. He kind of digital age where computers started recording all the examples of all the invites that they write over the years and now being archived. He kind of just missed that. So a lot of his work is an online for you to see. So he presents on his website, my favorite invites and my favorite bits of calligraphy that I did for the White House. Yes, you can see menu for the president of Ireland. That's a nice, cool one, isn't it? He did a load of convoluted Celtic style design.

That's right. All of those meals, the president pays for, doesn't he? Yeah, is that weird? Is that right? Because it's when I went to the White House. Clang. Clang. Clang. Guys, are we talking about the White House? So, where did you go?

I went, the start of this year, the cast of Ted Lasso were inexplicably invited for an audience with the president and the first lady, insane, yeah. Six of the cast members sort of spoke to the president and the first lady about mental health and the effect that the show has and sort of impact that is needed over there. But we also, we know we're having a tour

and we sort of had learnt some things about, a things about a thing or two about the White House. And one is that the president, because a lot of it is, um, uh, state funded, uh, sort of funded by taxpayers, they can't be seen to be handing out big, big, backwits for everybody that comes. It is just, uh, like, is his gaff, isn't it? Yeah, exactly. And hopefully one day we'll be able to say, huh, gaff guys, right? Where am I right, guys? That's 2023, as did you get an invite? And in the time we'll fill them.

We just looked like a handwritten one. No, I did not. We got an email and obviously we all thought it was fake that we'd be doing. So I was wondering if it hit the same guy type the email type. It hit the same guy. Incredibly.

He has a little wand, he uses the tapete letter. Did you have lunch with Biden or did you just say hi? Because I saw a photo you were in the overloft. We were we took over the office. Yeah, my god. It was the energy you walk in the room. You're like, oh, some scandals sort of. But no, we were kept in the mapperum, where we ate, which is where they planned the D-Day landings in the mapperums just to be sitting there eating. You're there with 25 secret service all knocking them out. Who were so cool, really nice. And also, you ask them any question and you can see them go through the roller dex of,

what can I say, what can't I say? Yeah. And the weird thing was, I don't know if you had it, you call someone by a title. It suddenly feels very strange in these people that you've been knocking about with the cast members I've been with, hearing them call someone a title. It feels very contrived the whole thing.

That's the president. Mr. President. Ha. Yeah, yeah. And you're so you're just thinking about that the whole time when you're meeting him. What's the time for the first lady? Dr. Biden I think. Dr. Biden's already in the office.

And obviously the whole time you're thinking it's like in taxi driver when the mirror is going, you're talking to me, you're talking to me. It was like, before I turn I was like Mr. President. Mr. President. Hello Mr. President. And of course it's just don't say Trump. Don't say Trump. Don't say Trump.

But it was funny when we were saying goodbye, the guy plays Isaac McAdoo, Colin McKinney. I was stood next to him, he was shaking our hands, the president was shaking our hand. It's going around the circle and turns to Connor. He goes, thank you for coming along, son. And he goes, yeah, yeah, cheers. And he turns to me and he into, I just said cheers to

the present. I'm so good. I wonder how often people call the president dad by mistake. You know, like calling the teacher mum exactly. Yeah, yeah, it must happen to him on a sort of daily basis. It's such a shame you didn't have lunch with him because I've heard great stories about his lunch hunt. Well, when he sits with Kamala Harris and they have their lunch, he likes to eat with a slideshow going. So they just eat their meal while they're watching a slideshow of all the recent adventures they've had

just so that they can sort of remember and reflect on. Well, just the photos of... Yeah, it's just a slideshow, both of them. Yeah, I think, yeah. Is it a slideshow of his stuff or both of them? Both of them of yeah yeah it's just a slight not going I think yeah is it a slight job his stuff or both of their both of them I think it's yeah I can't hand yeah I was told you know I'm but yeah can I tell you one last click everything oh yeah and did you hear of Rick muffler no what a guy So Rick muffler used to be a calligrapher.

Maybe the chief one, and he was controversial because he was the only left-handed calligrapher in the office. Oh. That means you're going to smudge everyone else's calligraphers. Exactly. He was a nightmare. But he's cool, particularly because it's kind of a family thing for him. So his grandfather was a chauffeur for President Warren G. Harding. Wow. And then his dad, John muffler, was an electrician who wound the clocks in the

whole White House. He worked there for 50 years. He arrived in the late second world war. And he was there for Bill Clinton. That's all that time he was in the White House. And so mufflers, the third, is that who we're talking about? Rick Muffler was the third Muffler. I don't know if there's a new... I would like to dream that I won't be here to see it, but in my 500 years, there'll be a Muffler president. I mean, like they'll have a Muffler the White House. To the top, that would be good, wouldn't they? Big grey.

There was some sort of ares and graces that the Trump family didn't really follow. There were traditions that the first lady, when the president leaves office for the last time, the first lady would sit for a portrait. And Melania refused to do that, or was it? Has he had to have sat for it? No. And there's this corridor where all of these paintings are put, and Michelle Obama is still placed

at the end of the corridor, which is traditionally where the previous incumbent was. So I'm just impressed with that. To be fair, I feel like both Donald and Melania probably have a painting in the attic somewhere. So yeah. Very good reference. Thank you. I was really about top secret clearance, just because these

click-a-feet people have top secret clearance. Oh yeah. It's a very weird thing, top secret clearance, because it appears to so many people have numbers of mad. Okay, so this like secret confidential men top secret or something like that, the top secret is the highest. But top secret clearance, even back in 2015, it was 1.3 million Americans. Yeah. That's like one in every 300 people in America.

Well, yeah. And if you broaden it to confidential, maybe that's the bottom run. It's about 1% of all Americans have secret status. None of the children will have it. So that's even, you know. God, you're right. Yeah. It's really common. If you're American listening to this and you don't have topsy prick clearance. Yeah, shame on you. Give you a head of warble. So when I said at the top of the few people who have topsy prick clearance, but I wonder

if it's slightly different than White House topsy prick compared to this is like civil service topsy prick. Yeah, is that our CIA and there's a lot? There are different gradations within topsy prick where not everyone can look at the plans of where we're going to invade. Yeah, it's called whatever. Who's going to invade. But that became evident when during the recent leaks during the Ukraine war, that was one of the things that people were so surprised about was that there's so many people who had this clearance that was the guy who had a 21 year old. Yeah, very peculiar.

Yeah. I was reading about some other parties, or some parties at the White House, because this is a party invitation guy. Yeah. I found that it seems to be quite a common thing of riots in inauguration parties when people go to get their coats at the end of the night.

This is really weird. It happened in President Reagan's ball in 1985. Like everyone went to get their coats at the end and they got all mixed up. Because the inauguration takes place in winter, right? Takes place in January. So everyone's got loads of coats and they're never prepared for it.

In 1989, President Bush had a ball which got known as the Bastille Day Coat Check riot Because what people are yelling and screaming and some people never to the day haven't got their coats back There was one coach at person for three thousand And people like obviously these are all like really high up People who think well, you know, I'm the most important person in this room. I should get to the front and get my coat first. And people are shouting, bushing, all that kind of stuff.

But it even goes back to 1849 at Zachary Taylor's inauguration ball, Abraham Lincoln lost his hat. And for Eulice's S. Grants inauguration, all the workers who are working in the close place roll a litter and no one got their coats there, either. So it just seems to be a thing. That'd be dangerous for Lincoln because Lincoln used to keep secret documents in the top of his head didn't he? Yeah, exactly. He's got that secrets. Oh good.

So just so much. Shame the beautiful calligraphy would have been wasted on those people who could Okay, it is time for our final fact of the show and that is James. Okay, my fact this week is that in 1999, the Times newspaper reported that Liverpool FC were about to buy a footballer called Didier Baptiste. The Times got the story from Liverpool's premium line news service. They got it from the news of the world. They got it from a sports agency and they just found it on a random Arsenal fans website. In actual fact, Baptiste was a fictional player in a soap opera. What role did Bess Cassino play in there? Yeah, so this is an amazing thing that happened. It was in the papers in 99. Liverpool were going to buy this guy Didier Baptiste, but he was actually a character from the show Dream Team on Sky.

So funny. And yeah, just people haven't checked it properly. The time said he was a promising left back for Monaco and a proud member of the French under 21 National Side. Surely a steal for £3.5 million. Amazing. Wow. The news of the world said, we think Diddy A. Baptiste will be an ideal addition to Liverpool's back for. He's a really attractive player.

You'll be seeing a lot more of him and then use the world from now on. Oh, obviously. Yeah. It was just completely made up again. Line again. Is this like a... It's like a transfer season rumours thing.

Because lots of football stories seem to be about, you know yeah of course like you know clubs gonna buy a new player you often have never heard of them right especially if they're coming from a different country and it fees an under 21 players quite young it wouldn't be that surprising that you might not have heard of them but you possibly would expect the newspapers would do a bit more research I mean you think of today's age it that would be absolutely absurd then, but it's now, now obviously you'd be able to sort of, you know, be on FIFA or you could find them somehow.

That's true. Yeah. It would be more difficult to do today for sure. When was this, it was in the 90s? It was in 1999. 1999. Yeah, yeah. Okay.

Because it was so much harder to find these foreign players on database or whatever. Do you hear about Ali Deer? Not Ali Dyer. In 1996 Graham Suness, who was the manager of South Hampton, at the time, he got a call from George Weir, who was a ball on door winner, player of the year. Future president of Liberia. Yes, yes, that's...

Oh, there you go. And he's interested. He's really muffled his way up there. LAUGHTER Oh, there you go. And he's interesting. He's really muffled his way up, though. LAUGHTER He called Graham Sunes saying that he should give his cousin, Ali Dyer, a trial, because he'd been playing as a Paris Saint-Germain. He'd been playing for Liberia, and he'd been doing pretty well.

And so Sunes was like, that's amazing. I mean, playing at Paris Saint-Germain, that's incredible. And so, Suness was like, that's amazing. I mean, you know, playing at Parastange Mountain, that's incredible. And so, they gave him a sort of trial contract. They gave him three and a half grand signing on bonus. And he turned up to training. And Matt Latissio, who was sort of the star player, is quite a saying, what's this bloke doing here? I honestly thought he won a competition. But it was the reserve team that Ali Dyer had been put onto to play for that weekend. Their match was cancelled. So Salamton first team needed a sub. And so he went there and subbed on when Latissier was injured. He played for 43 minutes before being subbed off again. He was just a made up guy. Was it even was the judge way I think? Was it actually

judge way who called him? No, so they don't know to this day who really who it was, but people believe it might have been his friend or it might have been his, you know, just a bloke. I love these stories. Yeah, I love the husband's part. Yeah. Did you guys hear about Carl Power? Carl Power, okay. Carl Power was, he wasn't, he wasn't never a sports player, but he was a serial trickster. And his thing was tricking his way into sporting environments that he wasn't meant to be in, right? And he started, like, when he was a teenager, he would turn up at boxing matches with

a towel and a gym bag, and he would get him for free, because they assumed he was part of the fight, right? And that's some risky one, though, isn't it? Because they think you're an actual, so you're in trouble. He built on it and he built his career. And so one of his greatest moments was when he got into a Manchester United team photo just before they played a big Champions League match.

And you can see a shot is got Ryan Giggs, Andy Cole, Gary Neville, and Carl, just this guy. And Neville was the only one who rumbled him. Like, they were all lined up for the photo I never pointed it and said who are you and he said shut it Gary you gross You can see that video you can see Roy Key right at the end clocks it and Roy Key is a pretty feisty footballer And you see him look across and it's daggers He spent his whole career doing this.

He didn't get paid much for it, but he played on Sender Court. He just played a match like a little warm-up with someone like Tim Henman. He got into the podium at the Grand Prix, the British Grand Prix. He came out to bat for England at a test night. He didn't actually hit any balls. He just walked towards and then they realised it was the wrong person and then he took them out. But I just, I had mine so much. That's performance art.

That's not. Just got a dagger. That's pure form. That's brilliant. Is he still going, call power? I don't think he's still trading as a work. Okay. I think he's still around.

Yeah. Once you get to an age, you can't pretend to be a mother anymore. Yeah. You can pretend to be a manager, I guess. Or like a bowl's player or something. I found a, this is a real footballer, but had a fictional element to them, so sort of like mostly real person.

But I was reading about Maradona, and Maradona. So he used to do a lot of drugs. I think that's very well known to do. I do. I do. I do. Yeah, yeah, Andy. He was big on the old cocaine. So he had, he was all real except he had a fake penis.

Sorry, Maradona. Maradona, he had a real penis. But he also had a special fake penis made a plastic so that when he had to do drug tests he would pull the fake penis out and he would allow the urine to come through it. And it's so hard to get to the bottom of this story. Supposedly the penis was put on display

in a museum in Buenos Aires. And then went on tour, I read this in the Guardian, written on tour, and then someone stole the penis somewhere on tour. So this missing relic of Maradona's is out in the world somewhere. But yeah, that'll be on some billionaire's metal piece. You know, they've paid big, big money to a cabal

or something to sauce. What's called the knob of God? The knob of God. Yeah. Someone's got the knob of God. You have a big bladder too, I guess. It's called a wizzinator I think. I've heard of these things before. And yeah, you use them for, like, drug tests. You hook it up to, you hook it up to a fake bladder. Or does the penis contain the, the fake urine? It's not, it's not an actual human bladder. It's just a bit of plastic, but yeah, about. So you've got the bag and the wizziness, the fake penis. And it's everything's in your trousers, right?

Everything's, well, everything's about your person for sure. But then there was a person who did that, and it turned out that they were pregnant, even though it was a male-spawn person, yeah, he'd taken some female urine. And they were pregnant even though it was a male-spawn person. Yeah, he'd taken some female urine and they were like, good news. You didn't take any drugs. I'd use your pregnant and a horse. Before you said anything about explaining the drug test thing, I thought you were going

to say it was because people would try and grope him at clubs and then he could kind of make a getaway. You know, like a lizard losing its tail. Oh, right. Yeah, great idea. Yeah. I mean, I don't imagine he played with it, did he? Did he play? I don't think you're asked for urine surf, those midgain. Yeah.

Yeah. To me, a non-fan, that would lie when things up. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you've seen when Gary Linnikka put himself on pitch, aren't you? Oh, you've seen it. I haven't seen that clip. Yeah, that's it.

Well, because there's a mistook, we wrote about this in our book of the year, a fish book that Gary Linnaker still to this day, some 20 odd years after he did that, gets sent a single piece of toilet paper that's got a little poo on it in the post. He's just constantly, he doesn't know who's doing it. Oh, he's just constantly trying to find out who's poo that is. Well, he just takes it. Yeah, yeah. No, but if someone, if the person sending it is,

please, they're not only DNA registers. I think him with, because Gary Linnaker has been in a bit of problem with the government, hasn't he? This year, I wonder if anyone's checks a well-appup- Not saying it's her, but it's just worth checking everyone, isn't it? Really? All of his enemies. God bless him.

What were you talking about? Fake of live footballers. Yeah, looking at you Phil. Yeah. What, I mean, our whole performance is on Ted, it's so edited that, you know, it's basically choreography on Ted Lasso, rather than it being sort of pretending we're playing football, I see it in one's choreography. But it's so hard to do.

Because the thing, one of the things I really found, I really tried to like, when have you seen like close up of players, that was me breathing, but like, if there was ever shots in the middle of a game, I wanted it to feel like, I'm probably panicking. Yeah, and I feel like so many sports films you watch

that that doesn't happen and it's really frustrating But there were certain things that the production had to take into their hands Which was some of the particularly difficult choreography that we had to do like someone shoots it hits off a post hits someone's face It's CGI the ball is CGI to running around the pitch sort of pretending to kick a ball Yeah, which is very... I don't know if it feels hard. Because you've got to think of what the weight is of the ball and what the half-finals are. To be honest, in some CGI they'll just have an orange instead of whatever. Like, you're fighting a dragon, but there's an orange also.

So... It's a guy in green. Yeah. His head is the ball. And the wonderful best actor goes to the ball. Tom Hanks is Wilson. Furious. Never made it to nominate. I've got one fact. It's less about sort of fake football but more. There is, do you know about Will still the manager at Reem or Ram FC? It's a league-art team and every single time the team plays, they are fined 22,000 euros.

What are they doing out there? Well, it's not so much them, it's the manager himself. He is the youngest manager in European football, he's 30 years old. He's an English Belgian I think and it's incredible. He's like this sort of real hot shot manager but because he's so young he hasn't really had time to go and get his certifications which you need in order to be a manager in Liga and so he's just sort of like he learned off football manager is really so. And he went to university, you got degree, but it's really, yeah. But yeah, so. So they find because he just hasn't got the certification yet. Yeah, so they say it's one of the rulings that.

What a fine. How big are they forward that? Yeah, they can. But he's done so well. And he's incredible. If you watch a video of him, you hear him speaking as one normally would in a training session in English. And then like without missing a beat

goes into perfect French. And it's incredible you watch him. It's just, yeah, he's a really interesting guy. As to shame, I always thought that we could just become a football manager. Whenever Tramminga was the manager, like Tramminga lost, I'm a Tramminga fan. So we lost our manager a few weeks ago, and I always think,

I swear for try, isn't it? You know, just for try becoming a football manager. But no, I know I have to get actual qualifications. This feels like a French bureaucracy thing. Do you think ever since Karl Power turned up at one of Paris, I'm German. I try to coach the team. Do you think it'll be okay?

I think it'll be fine. I think you'd be fine, James. What I don't know about football isn't worth knowing, right? So I say go for it. I can, friends and park with a new that's through. Yeah. I'll be there.

I'll be there, right? I'll go to season ticket. 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've said over the course of this podcast, we can be found on our Twitter accounts. I'm on at Shriveland, James. At James Harkin. Andy.

At Andrew Hunter M. And Phil. At Phil Downsdorf. Yep, where you can go to our group account, which is at no such thing, or you can message us on our email podcast at qi.com. Otherwise, go to our website, no such thing as a fish.com. All of our previous episodes are up there. Phil, do you want to mention anything coming up? Ted Lasso is currently, I think, it's just about to air its final episode or may have just

aired, so go and watch that. And I love you. That's nice. That's a great way to end our show. Damned are we having the live shows coming up for you. We certainly do. James, you want to tell the... I'll never remember. There you go.

There you go. It's happening between the 17th of July and late August at the Soho Theatre. So we're doing 11 shows, sometimes two a night. So there are some tickets left, actually. I think about half the tickets have already gone, but there are some left. So, hurry now

Great okay, oh and go to no such thing as a fish comm slash so hope to book your tickets there you go do come tickets are going really fast So do get in quick and we've got a new guest each night. It's gonna be really really fun So that's it Phil we love you too. Thank you for doing the show and we'll be back again next week with another guest We'll see you then, goodbye!