No Such Thing As A Fish - 481: No Such Thing As Taming A Plane

Episode Date: June 2, 2023

Dan, James, Andrew and Anne Miller discuss reckless roping, pseudo puffins, trash talk and green gables. 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, Dan and Andy here, just to let you know that our special guest on this week's fish is none other than Anne Miller. You remember Anne because she's been on loads of times before, that she hasn't been on for a little while. We are so excited to see her again. Anne is a brilliant children's author, she's written Mickey and the Animal Spies, a series of children's books all about animals, spying and codes, fabulous. And as you're about to hear, she is obviously a magnificent research and elf. So we hope you enjoyed this episode. That's right. We also just want to quickly say happy birthday publication to Andrew Hunter Murray because the sanctuary has just been released in paperback. This is such a brilliant book. It's a book that is so brilliant that waterstones have actually decided to make it

the thriller of the month. So you're going to see it everywhere in book shops. And it's a book that is so brilliant that Waterstones have actually decided to make it the thriller of the month, so you're gonna see it everywhere in bookshops. And it's a book that's been called Many Things by Many Great People. It's been called Imaginative and Intriguing. The sanctuary sucks you in and doesn't let you leave until the very last page by Anthony Horowitz. It's a brilliantly clever thriller by a brilliantly clever author, says Richard Osman. They are all telling the truth. Oh, Dan, thank you. Yeah, guys, it would mean the absolute world to me if you picked up

a copy of the sanctuary in paperback. It's a gripping twisty thriller set on a mysterious island off the coast up north where one of the world's wealthiest, most enigmatic men is building an entirely new society. It's all about that and what the young hero from the city finds when he goes and sees this new world being built. It's about billionaires, it's about mysterious islands, it's about the near future. If you're looking for a gripping summer read on the beach, I think this could be the one for you. That's right, and it's also brilliant. So do make sure you go and get a copy from our own personal Sunday Times bestselling author here on the show, Andrew Hunter Murray, as I say, available in all good bookshops both online and in the real world,

do pick it up, help our buddy out to get back in that Sunday Times chart. Alright, on with the show. On with the podcast. Hello and welcome to another episode of Not Such Thing as a Fish, a weekly podcast coming to you from the QI offices in Hobern. My name is Dan Schreiber, I'm sitting here with James Harkin, Andrew Hunter Murray, and Ann Miller, and Ann Miller. And once again, we have gathered around the microphones with our four favorite facts from the last seven days, and in a particular order, here we go.

Starting with fact number one, and that is... Ann. My fact is that Ann at Green Gables is from the same island as the world's largest potato sculpture. Welcome back, eh? is from the same island as the world's largest potato sculpture. Welcome back. Are you suggesting a link, a causal link between the two? Between great literature and great snacks. Oh, that's... Yeah, that's a large, perhaps, where great snack. I'm not coming around the else, super balls, so...

So, I don't know really who Anne of Green Gables is. So, I give you a potted Anne of Green Gables 101. So Anne of Green Gables is one of my favourite books of all time. It is set on Prince Edward Island in Canada. I was given it when I was very young and the setting is just completely beautiful. So the thing about Anne is she is an orphan. This rather insisticle, Matthew Marilla, live at a place called Green Gables and they are convinced to adopt an orphan boy to help them on the farm. But when they go to collect the boy it's and she's a chatterbox,

she's an adjective, she gets into endless grapes but they love her and she sort of builds this new life on Prince Edward Island. And when I was a little bit older my godmother sent me a postcard from Green Gables and it was as if someone had sent me a card from Narnia, I didn't understand how she'd been somewhere that was in a book and I remember being so confused and like it was, is this someone had sent me a card from Narnia? I didn't understand actually being somewhere that was in a book and I remember being so confused and like it was like, oh, nice time at Green Gables. And I was like, how did you get there? It's sort of really big potato. Did she say that as well?

She did not. She did not. I found out that more recently. But yeah, so the island, because Lizzy Mowell Montgomery who wrote the book lived there and is set there. There's lots of places in the book who's actually there there and it's a sweeping series. There are several books beyond Anna Greengables and I was planning the trip of a lifetime to go and see Prince Edward Island for summer 2020. So I didn't make it there. But while I was reading

about Prince Edward Island, I found out that they also are the home of the Canadian Potato Museum and And outside is a 4.3 meter tall potato. We've got a picture taken and I just I almost want to go there as much as I want to go through in Gables. It's got exhibitions, it's got potatoes and tiny coffins, surely different diseases they can have, it's got a potato themed gift shop, it's got a potato themed restaurant, so you can have baked potato with cider crisps, you can have potato skins, potato soup, and what do you reckon you can have a pudding?

Oh, I know that they make potato fudge there. Yeah. With mashed potato. It's a fudge. Yeah. With mashed potato. Wow. I did have a quick look at TripAdvisor for the Potato Museum.

Yeah. Pretty overwhelmingly good. Yeah. I think it's also a tribute to Canadian positivity. Nice. And politeness. But which one of you picked out there? Oh, you know. I think it's also a tribute to Canadian positivity. Nice. And politeness. Which one of you picked out there?

Obviously I was looking at for the negative reviews. A lot of actually there are very few, which is a tribute to the rest of the show. Well there's one three star review which SNFs, the big potato could have been a little more realistic. The tribute advisor review does say suggested duration one to two hours for your visit, which I think by the end of the second hour, you'll be running short of things to do. But they have, you're right, they have absolutely loads of stuff. They say it's a living testament to the humble tuba and those who have tilled the soil in its evolution. Did they have any two or one star reviews on it?

They had so few actually that I think it would be unrepresented if it would meet or read any out. And I didn't write any down because they weren't very amusing to written, but it's clearly a very popular place. The museum was started by a guy called Dr. Lloyd George Dua who was a politician and I tried to find anything interesting about him. It was really tough. I even went into like these, what they call it, the websites that tell you about your family. Oh, like, yeah, yeah, ancestry.

Yeah, like an ancestry one. And I found out that his great grandfather died at the age of 101 in the town of Dull in Pasha. No! The only interesting fact about that sound I could find. Yeah, amazing. How heavy was this sculpture potato again, by the way? Oh, I didn't say the weight.

They don't let this weigh. They don't let this weigh at all. Just the height. Fortitude is worth these. Because I found the world's heaviest potato and was just curious what the difference. Well, it's going to be a lot less heavy, I assume. Was that heaviest real potato?

Is it a real one? It's a real potato, which was just under five kilograms. Nice. And that? Well, that, no, that's, I assume. We're saying heavy is real potato. It's a real potato, which was just under five kilograms. Nice. And that, well, that, no, that's, I know, well, this is the thing, because potatoes aren't water-bearing organisms like, yes, squashes. That's why the big squashes are kind of a ton. And the biggest potato, but it's grown by, friend of the podcast, Peter Glazebrook, who we've mentioned several times before, because he's done things like the longest bean.

Yeah. Or the biggest beam. Oh, yeah. The biggest, biggest marrow, whatever. Biggest, yeah, yeah, yeah. He's got a load of those records. He's a UK guy, yeah, yeah. He is, he's kind of, which is a champion. He's got him into the building sometime.

Shake it. Oh, I was, I was, I was, unfortunately he won't fit through the door. He's, he's not, he's been, the other way, you know. Oh, that's good point. But what about the nine foot apple? I wanted to find a bigger potato to kind of spoil this fact.

Yeah, because that's my job on this phone. Right. So I looked at all the other potato museums around the world to see if they had one. They were surprisingly quite a few. There are quite a few, but I found in the Idaho potato museum, they have the world's largest pringle. Oh, and we have perhaps a Pringles controversy with this. A further, because I knew you weren't here when Sarah Pasco was on, but she had five Pringles controversies.

But this is the world's largest pringle, but it's flat. It's not the shape of a Pringle. So do you call that a Pringle? It was made by pringles. It was made by pringles, yeah. Is it made from the material of pringle? It's made from a dehydrogenated... It's a potato starch. It's just not got the shape. That's an interesting thing. Because I make a pringle, is it the shape or is it the...

Well, you reckon it's a pringle if it's not pringle-shaped? I think it's made by pringles, it's a pringle. Do you? What about the box that's made by pringles? No. The box is also a pringle. It's this lindrical pringle. Do you, what about the box that's made by Pringles? No. The box is also a Pringle. It's this lindrical Pringle. I'm going to double down on that.

Yeah. Yeah. OK, fine. Sadly, I do agree. I think it is a Pringle. If they say it's a, I think they have name rights. So I can't call it a Pringle's controversy. Oh, well, I think we've certainly argued about it just now.

Exactly. It's controversial that you're trying to introduce it as a controversy, certainly. Yeah it just now. Exactly. It's controversial that you're trying to introduce it as a controversy, certainly. Yeah. OK, great. Well, email Sarah. I didn't find out about the, well, another non-largest potato in the world.

Yeah. And this was, you may well have seen this in your research as well, which was nearly a knockout blow to Peter Glaze Brooks, five kilo potato, which is, I think, about an eight kilo potato. Whoa. Yeah, I was found by by pair of farmers in New Zealand who the Guinness World Records people

wrote back to them when they wrote in saying we've got this. They said in fact it's a tuba of a kind of good, a DNA testing actually revealed a true Jerry Springer style. It wasn't a potato at all. It was called Doug. Doug, how they got it in. But really, yeah. Doug. Samantha Baldwin, who's a it out. But very likely. Doug. Samantha Baldwin, who's a researcher at the New Zealand Institute for Food and Plant Research

was presumably having a morning off or something. So we tried running multiple tests on samples of Doug, but he just wasn't behaving like a potato should. As he wasn't a potato. I like the idea of vegetable espionage, like posing as a potato for many, many years. I mean, it looks like a potato and the finders, they've made a little trolley to drag it around. Oh, it's quite sweet. I have a couple more contenders for giant potatoes.

Oh, I got it. So I was a little bit concerned when I was double checking that there was a giant potato in Cyprus, which was true for it taller, but sadly or luckily for me was chopped down by vandals. So what's that? That's a me did. Was it just on this week? Really, just after you set this up,

you were all looking tant. Yeah, and you look so gleeful at the moment. I mean, no jury would have quit you at the moment. I can't count if you're sad or if you're hysterical with... I'm very sad. No, so there's is my Christmas too for toilet but it's been... You're not doing a good impression of someone who hasn't chopped down a giant potato, put it that way. Well I definitely didn't chop down the one in Australia so they have the big things I'm sure. Yeah, I'm sure.

And they have the big potato but there is is lying down so it's long. Is someone not good over? But it did for a while have a face, which is so mildly terrifying. And the face has been taken away. I'm not sure if it was stolen. Wow. Any more for potatoes? No, how about Prince Edward Island?

Yeah, I mean, they do. They make about a million tons of potatoes each year. They make big, big potatoes. Yeah, yeah. A quarter of Canada's potatoes, despite it being a very small Canadian province. Yeah, one of the smallest. That was small.

A lot of the potatoes on Pritzedwood Island are grown and processed by McCain, who are the world's largest manufacturer of frozen potato products. You know them from their oven chips. Yes, yes, take that. They were founded by two brothers called Harrison and Wallace McCain,

and like it seems every single company that's founded by two brothers, they got into a massive legal dispute, and then one of the brothers had to leave and took over a thing called Maple Leaf Foods. No, rival! I thought you were going to say there's a potato equator around the world. Like the elder brothers. Yeah. But no, isn't that surprise? Isn't that surprising? It does seem this thing. Yeah.

Brothers start companies and they fall out. Was it a D-desk? Adidas. Yeah. And Puma. And Puma. Yeah, that's so good. And right away it's a left-wix.

Wow. I know it's this. I know it's this, yeah. Yeah. So it's a very big island as well. It's 175 miles long. Oh, did I just say it was a small one? It's a small, it's yeah. Yeah. So it's a very big island as well. It's 175 miles long. Did I just say it was a small one? It's small province.

It's small province, but it's a big island. You know what I mean? Yeah, it's just massive. Canada's big. I think everyone forgets how big Canada is. Just shout out for Canada there. But did you know we have a lot of listeners on Prince over the island.

Really? So I had a little look in the inbox, the fishing box podcast at qi.com. We have had so many messages from people over the years saying, I'm on Prince Edward Island and I would like you to cover it. And here is some facts. Okay. So I've got a cover for you. Ryan Barrett, who works for the PEI Potato Board.

Mm-hmm. Wow. Thank you. Big shout out there. Yeah. I mean, here at Nemo a couple of years ago, this was Erwin Anner was in charge of the inbox, Ryan I don't think you got to reply. So I'm headed right that way. Anna really hates Prince Edward Island.

Every week she goes on about how much she hates it. I have to cut it out. He just said some cool place names they've got. They've got Nalaska, a Belfast, a New Zealand, a Toronto, a Norway, a Crapo, Which is French for Toad, I didn't know. And a Surice, which is French for Mouse Yeah, and he also has a fact about Anne of Green Gables Which is that because of Anne of Green Gables, Prince Abad island gets thousands and thousands of Japanese tourists every year And that's because the book was the first book taught in English in Japan after the second one bought. It's a big cultural influence. Yes still. Yes still to the state it's ginormous

and they have they have schools named after it though the School of Green Gables they've got the University of Prince Edward Island School of Nursing and apparently adaptations are just always on TV. Yeah. Just non-stop on TV in Japan. I've always heard that I never really understood why and I read a really cool article by Margaret Atwood Celebrate and hundreds birthday and she said she'd done an event in Japan and she'd asked the audience and they'd Her translator had written down the responses and one of the big reasons is the author who translated it in Japan was already Vribe loved so sort of had an audience there and there are many things about the book that just really resonated So Anne was an orphan and there were sadly a lot of orphans in Japan after the war. She's got a huge passion for apple blossom

and cherry blossom which is very popular in Japan and sort of her work ethic. She's not scared of hard work and she's very thoughtful but she's also quite forgetful but it's because she's day dripping and she's not lazy. She tries to do her best and she does wind up in scrapes but it's never she means well. I did read one place that said that America kind of pushed and of Green Gables after the war because they thought it would help kind of as American liberal propaganda, and they thought that this kind of book which showed that women were more free thinking might get them away from some of their old ideas.

So that was one of the supposedly one of the reasons. She sounds like a pretty cool character, the author Lucy Maldmont-Gommeri. When she was a kid she had two imaginary friends, which is really cool. So she was at her grandparents' house and they had a bookcase and it had glass reflection doors on the bookcase and she could see herself in the reflection. So the one on the left was a reflection of someone that she called Katie Maurice and the right was Lucy Gray and it was both her both her reflections but she created them as her imaginary friends. Yeah, very cool idea. And I love that her titles of her books all sound like she still workshopping the old title.

This is Emily of New Moon, Pat of Silver Bush, Kill Many of the Orchard. One more to add to that. So there's six in the An Of series. And then there are two focus on her children. And the second one is Rilla of Ingleside, which is her youngest daughter. So spoiler alert, she goes up to get married and has a bunch of children. But what I didn't read when I was younger is I followed the books through and you see her grow up. And I hadn't clocked that as she grew up,

the year would get so much closer to the war So it becomes a book about the first world war. So Rilla of Ingolstadt is about war coming to Canada Which I wasn't expecting and so to if our children end up fighting in the war I daughter Rilla ends up adopting a war baby and looking after him and it's just very odd to take a character Who you know from a beloved children's book and put them in world war one? I think this about it's a slightly different example of it, but there is an episode of Frazier where Martin Crane, Frazier's dad, has just watched the Austin Powers film, and it's very weird thinking of them in the same conceptual universe because there's a bit where Martin keeps

on saying, shagged elic baby, yeah, and it's really takes you out of yourself. All right. Yeah. It's quite amazing that she gave over the trademark basically to Anna Greengables to not only her daughters in the airs, but to Prince Edward Diole and as well. So they've got the trademark, which means that anyone who works on the island is allowed to make their own sort of products or merchandise and sell them. Yeah, with no worry of the estate coming at them because they are the estate. Which is really great. bright. Can you do anything like? It sounds like it. I mean, possibly you might have to pitch and say, you know, you could have had a green gerbils, for instance. Oh, yes.

The second mobile book. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, it is time for fact number two and that is my fact. My fact this week is in 1952, a cowboy successfully lassood a plane as it flew past his house. He's how? Yeah, so he was working at this house. He was working with his boss. I have a question, then. Yeah.

Successfully lassood. Yeah. Does that mean he got the lasso around the plane? The plane flew off with his lasso attack? He, he, he, he tamed it. He tamed it. Yeah, yeah. He ended up riding the plane. He broke it. You know, he made it. Yeah, yeah. Submissive to him. That's Andy's got it right. That's what the plane is. And the plane is going into this day. Yeah.

Now, this is, this is the basic story is that he was, was at this house He was working as a cowboy and this plane just kept flying really low over the house and kept going by you know That had no idea what was going on. It turns out what was going on was the pilot on the inside was trying to drop a Love letter to a girl who lived inside the house and flying Kai He was trying to get it to come out to see the love letter being dropped, right? But this cowboy gets pissed off. so he gets out his lasso. It's a three and a half meter long lasso. And as the guy is sleeping, it's quite a lot of work. You know, he's got to drop the letter, so it lands on a good spot.

Absolutely. So he throws the lasso at the plane. It manages to collide with the propeller, catches onto it, and snaps off, and gets tangled up in the propeller. So the pilot has no choice but to turn around and quickly land the plane. Obviously, the cowboy was knocked onto his back. It was not pleasant. Yeah, it was.

I did the guy in the plane survive. Yeah, he did. And actually, years later, when he was 78 years old, there was a photo of him with the propeller with the lasso rope still wrapped around it. And did he get the girl? I couldn't find that bit of the story. Great question.

Great question. Can I just say, everyone in the story is an idiot. That's not the girl. Yeah, why isn't she coming out of a house? How would she- Don't you come out? There's a plane flying apparently two meters above your house. Show some curiosity.

She's an idiot three on the list. An idiot two, I think, is probably the pilot who's doing this magic, like just send the card. Doesn't matter. Idiot one's the cowboy. Why? He could have killed the pilot and himself. But to go point though, I felt sorry for the pilot

because I thought he's trying to do something in secret and said he's playing his fallen out of the sky and made a big noise, presumably. But the post is pretty secret. Yeah, this is not secret. This is less secret. I would say than the post. It's not secret. He's not trying to be secret. This is romance. This is, look, you can see me. Yeah, this is not secret. This is less secret. I would say that the post. It's not secret.

He's not trying to be secret. This is romance. Look, you can see me. Hi, I've got a letter. I want to show you my love. Is it like the 80s thing of turning up outside the house with a boom box? I was just thinking.

All the love actually thing of turning up with the cards. It's exactly that. And then the propeller card. I would be going in love actually and that's it if a lassoon is coming for the same. Yeah. Or if he's going round to loop the loop with a plane. And every time he does the bottom of the loop,

it's another card. Oh yeah. Yeah, sorry for God's sake. Yeah, no, yeah, fools. It's a great story. It's a very random story. It appeared in a Time Magazine article in a language that says like, then a few years ago, some smart fellows

bought themselves a little airplane, an open of flying club, just a hood and a holler from where the ranch cowboy is a time magazine. This is how they're reporting the story. So yeah, 50s journalism. His name was Euclidys Guterres is how I'm going to pronounce that. That's the cowboy. That's the cowboy. Yeah.

It's south again so little detail about the story. It's the South Brazilian cattle ranchers. So I don't even think this is an American cowboy. Oh, I see. We're talking, I don't know. I thought we were in the USA. That's what I initially thought. I thought we were in Brazil, and ancient Greece,

from his name. Oh, yes. Just on Lesus, and Lesueng, things. I did find someone who lasu'd cats. This was a cat lasso artist from the second of my wall. She was called Miss Iris Davis. It's a really nice story actually. So lots of buildings being bombed in the second of a wall, lots of rubble, lots of ruins of things, also lots of cats, lots of people keeping cats. And she was a volunteer worker for something called the dumb friend

League, which is the friends of cats. Yeah, exactly. Dumb is in, I think, their own speak, rather than... Yeah. ...stupid cats. But she went from... She went from Bomb Towns to Bomb Towns with a cat lasso, which is very long pole with the lasso at the end, rescuing cats from the wreckage. Can I ask, Andy, you know?

Oh, lots of planes flying very low there, dropping the bombsy soft. Do you think a curious person would get out of the house and lock up the wreckage? Oh, get out of the house? Idiots. No, no, no, sorry. She claimed in 1940, November 1940, so I guess the blitz had been going on for a while. She claimed she had rescued 600 cats from bomber buildings. Now the cats, it was probably the same one. Someone who's an unexpected cowboy, Osama Bin Laden, turns out he used to walk around with a stetson on.

His favorite shows were Bonanza and things like Fury. He had his own horse and he absolutely loved the world of cowboys. Wow. Yeah. There was lots of stories because the biography came out where they said you would see Osama Bin Laden walking around with his stetson on, acting all cowboy. It's amazing it took that long to find and catch him given that he was. There can't be that many people in the Tara Bara camps with a massive stetson on. Wow, I don't know what to make of that. I know it's

odd isn't it but there's a lot of so like Stalin for example if we're talking like bad people generally massive cowboy fan as well. He used to love watching Westerns, love John Wayne movies, but also hated John Wayne because of his anti-communism stance. And so actually plotted to have him murdered. He ordered KGB assassins to go and try and kill John Wayne. And Chairman Mao did that as well. Chairman Mao hated John Wayne.

The stories of assassination plot from, yeah, from Chairman that as well, Chairman Mao hated John Wayne, the stories of a assassination plot from yeah, from Chairboard Mao as well. Oh, these all put out by John Wayne's PR. I'm not sure. It feels like it, right? Come in, it's dictators hate him. Find this one weird trick. No, there's a really good, there's a Hollywood writer called Michael Munn.

I've read a couple of his books. It's one that he did on John Wayne. He found that the FBI had discovered that there were assassins that were sent to Hollywood to try and kill John Wayne. Amazing. Gosh. Do you know how many people you can fit inside a lacer?

Oh. Surely. Do you have enough rope? Well, the guillotine is called record for someone who's done it. So it has to be spinning. Oh, yeah. That's good. Yeah, yeah.

So it's like, it's spinning and he's like getting it. I would say actually it's smaller than you think. I'm going to say 20 people gathered in a tight, as in that'll be very hard, I think, to let's do 20 people standing together. I'm gonna say just going with my imagination here. I'm gonna say 200 and I'm gonna say that the person was standing on top of a first floor building,

like the top of a school, massive lasso and just managed to get the throne. A school, specifically a school. Then no other building said hold the one story. It's been known. Yeah. What I'm thinking maybe is maybe around 240 to 300. And they're all on the same plane.

And it gets lasso. Yeah. Very nice. Well, yeah, you're right. The first time, it's 13 or 14, including the guy handling it. Oh, my gosh. You're so fast. So he counts. It sort 14, including the guy handling it. Oh, you're so close. So he counts.

It sort of does he count. They grab the right three. He jumped in. He's the taking heavy mess. Oh, wait, if he's in the literally counts. Yeah, that absolutely counts. He's in the centre and he's a lussoing around. And other people are gathering around him as he lussoing.

Yeah, I love that. Does that count as lassuing? Because you don't usually stand, say, next to the world horse, and lasso yourself into it as well. They do tricks, then they lasso you artists. And I think this is kind of part of that. As in, they like a skipping rope, you'll kind of lasso you around,

and then you'll do jump, and you're gonna get less from the cowboys and the skipping people. How dare you decide to go up with those hacks? I'll tell you, I have someone flies very close to the top of my house, then I'll look outside Malbra man One of those famous cowboys

Smoking Malbra man. Yeah Bob Norris was the original Malbra man who never smoked cigarettes in his life He actively was anti it but he was found because he was in a photo with John Wayne Who used to smoke seven packs a day and they saw him in that shot and went, hey, that guy looks like he'd be good for our smoking. Weirdly, he'd actually been hired by Stalin to kill Wayne. And then the film people got to him in time, the cigarette people. I was looking at other big animals that you can lawsuit. So you know how many, unless it takes to get a crocodile safely.

I would have said one. I would have said one. I'm going to say three. Three, four, five, four. get a crocodile safely. I would have said one. I would have said one. Round the mouth. I'm going to say three. Three, two, one. You get points down the driver. So apparently, the way they do it is they let's do the top bit of the mouth. Then they do it again with a second whistle.

I guess that's the most scary part. And then they do one round the whole mouth. And then they take the mouth to be so, so, so sure. And then the advice was if it all goes perished, run. I was going to say that's a lot of detail to get right three times round. Like, we get the clippers sometimes to go to our gigs at Up the Creek, and whenever the boat comes in,

they always have to lasso the boat to the end. And I always have a bet with whoever I'm standing with. Are they gonna get on the first go? Sometimes at the third go, but the thing is, the docks not gonna eat you. Where is a crocodile? Yeah, that's fine. That's one of the first QI facts I ever learned.

Was that a crocodile can What is it? It can bite you with the force of a truck falling off a cliff, but once his mouth is closed It presents no threat at all because you can hold its mouth shut with your hand And so a rubber band even just exactly I think the scariest job is the person who takes the tape off at the end of the procedure I think that's the real hero. Yeah mean that point is quite annoyed, probably. Exactly. Have you ever held a crocodile? No.

No, neither. But my wife has. My wife has. So the brink of an amazing Jane story, never. No, it's not. Yeah, yeah, we went to the Everglades, and there was a baby crocodile that you could hold. Cold snappy.

Of course. And Paulina held it and I didn't have the guts to help out. How big was snappy? Yeah, I would say about a foot and a half. Okay. Something like that. Wow. That's amazing.

I also did once played mini golf in a place that had crocodiles sort of roaming around. Oh, yeah. There's that one golf course where the lake literally has giant snappy crocodiles, which is amazing. You just have to stay away from them basically. Yeah. Okay, we're in London now. We are. Right. Yeah. No crocodiles. No crocodiles. But some cowboys quite near here, there is a secret cowboy town in the middle of relief. Yeah, it's called Laredo. It's founded in 1971. What?

And they've got a blacksmith, they've got an undertaker, a tobacco-nist. Like a working, these are early models. It's life-size and it's kind of functional. So it's founded by a bloke called John Trudeau who was a pig farmer and he just loved the Wild West. And he just wanted to recreate the Wild West in his corner of Kent, his members only.

And they go there at weekends and they recreate life in the Old West. Cool. Yeah, you can get a half an hour train from London and arrive in Laredo. And they won't let you in. They won't let you in. No, no.

There's like a random Wild West in Morningside in Edinburgh. Like it's just you go like, you go through an archway and it's just a Wild West like behind a bank of the bus. Yeah, it's just there. No, I read about it. It was created by a furniture shop. For some reason, it's called the Great American Indoor's, the shop. Yeah, but they made their own...

Yeah, it's not advertised. Then when they've seen the world-west, you'd be like, no, we're in Scotland. And they'd say, oh, it's just up for there. And you go and look. That's so weird. And that one you can just walk into. It's just like behind some flats, yeah. So is the piano player always stop when it's in the room? No, there's always planes coming down with room. Sorry, sorry.

Okay, it is time for fact number three and that is James. Okay, my fact this week is that one of the best ways to trick puffins to a new nesting ground is with mirrors because they like to be in groups and can't tell the difference between a puff and the reflection of a puff. So they fail the mirror test, they don't know that they are? Yeah, the mirror test is a thing with animals that some animals, if you show them a reflection of themselves and put a little mark on the head, they'll realize that it's them and they'll try and wipe it off. Whereas most animals won't do that, they won't see, they'll see a mirror image of themselves and think it's another animal. And in fact humans,

my daughter only did it a few weeks ago and she's 40 months. So it's until that age is the first time you get to do that, so babies don't know it either. But this is all about a guy called Stephen Cress, and he was working about trying to get puffins into a new area. In fact, they've been in that area before, but he wanted to get them back into that area on the East Coast of America, and one of the ways that he did that was by making these decoys. You can make actual decoys of little puffins, but one good way of doing it is mirrors because you can get multiple. Oh yeah, whole of mirrors, like kaleidoscope stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Unfortunately, they saw someone that were really tall, someone that were... Yeah, yeah, yeah. This mission he was on, because Stephen Craig, it sounds like a great guy. He's been working on this for about 30 years, 40 years. It's 1969. It's a long career in puffinology. And he, so he and his colleagues, they went to a breeding colony which was healthy in Newfoundland, just Canada.

And they basically had to kidnap loads of baby puffins. Yeah, the start of the story is a bit dodgy, isn't it? It's a real villain to hero arc. I think he and his colleagues went on because they start off as puffin kidnapers. And the start, people are just like, what are you doing? Yeah, they're just killing others, puffing. They shoved them in soup cans, which I like, to transport them all the way to their new home.

But then, then, then, then, then, the twist, the character twist, where he and his colleagues became puffing nannies, looking after them, breeding them up on this new island in Maine, and they put them in these fake burrow, which they had dug. Right. They fed them, they left fish in there, and he constructs with these decoy puffins, and then the thing is that the puffins go to sea, eventually when they become kind of teenagers,

they gain their independence, they go off, and then he waited for years, hoping they would come back to the island. Because the question is, would they go back to Newfoundland, where they're kind of jeans say that they should be living, or will they remember where they lived as babies, then come back to that place and in the end. In the end they came back, but I think only in the third year it was a few years before they did and he was getting really worried and then eventually he built loads of decoys

and that kind of leered them back. Right, that's very good. I was reading my puffins, Ministry of Silly walks, so when they want to show that they're not any, because they live quite close together, they live in burrows. And so if you want to cross across, you'll probably cross lots of other territories. And if you don't want to start a fight, they do this like, hey, don't mind me walk where they it's like they lower their head and they sort of walk quite quickly and try not to get noticed. But if they're on guard duty, they'll stand outside

their bar and ice and tool and they'll sort of stamp their feet like an exaggerated like guard doing a march. Wow. That's really that easy of like I want patrol and don't worry me, just over here. That's great. That's really funny. And they take over rabbit burrows as well. I love that they don't even need to just dig their own burrows. They just, yeah, they can make their own burrows if they want to. And actually sometimes rabbits take their burrows.

There's a whole little ecosystem going on there. That's pretty good. I went to the Isle of May a few years ago, which is off the East Coast of Scotland. And they've got tons and tons of sea birds, loads of puffins. And there's certain bits of it like you cannot stray off the path because the island is just covered in puffin borrows. So you've got to walk on the bit of the big and earth safe. It's really cool.

It's a Stephen Cress very quickly. He had a big problem with goals. Seagulls would attack the puffins because Seagulls had been living in this area long before the puffins came back. So he tried a few different things. He attracted turns, which are like bigger puffins, but smaller than Gulls, and they'll kind of attack the Gulls to stop them from coming in there. And he also had a thing called a death sandwich, which is where his

arc of being the evil puffin thief and then the nice puffin nurse. Then at the end he becomes the goal killer because he puts these death sandwiches which is some bread with something called starless side and starless side is a chemical which is really toxic to Starlings and Seagulls, but not toxic to any other animals. He would put those out which would kill the Seagulls. Oh my god, where's his arc sitting now? I think it's good. If we were doing a fact about goals, it's not good. Exactly, but we're not. We're doing a fact about puffins.

I'm sorry, my fact this week is that people, God killer, Stephen Cress. No, he, and there are still, I think we're still puffiniers as the Colombs are. People go to the island to keep it healthy for the puffins and prevent the girls from taking route there. And they have to smash up their nests and they also, I love this, they have a robot mannequin which is dressed in a yellow coat and an Arnold Schwarzenegger mask. And they inflate that. I know, it sounds terrifying and they inflate that. I know, it sounds terrifying. And they inflate that to try and scare off the girls.

This is scarecrow, basically. But the only problem is that the girls will eventually realize this is a motionless, it's not an effective scary thing because it just sits there, doesn't do anything. So sometimes what the puffing is, we'll have to do it, is they will have to dress up, they have to put on the yellow coat and the mask and then go around shooting girls

on the island to prove that it's a dangerous thing. So the girls realize what they're doing. I just can't help thinking, what if I don't watch some of the go books and I'm just relaxing, make some comments? The most. Islands off the coast of Maine, lovely. I know.

That's fun. But that's what it takes to get puffins up and running again. I'm all for it. I think there's a lot of gray areas I'm looking after puffins, because I was reading about there's numbers of declining very sadly. And there's some concerns that perhaps it's the food they're eating and they're not getting the right fish, the fish are getting smaller.

And there's one study where to do this, they would put a massive net to catch a puff and then take all its fish off them to examine the fish. I'm just gonna say whether they gave the fish back. Oh right, yeah, yeah. Their fishing is amazing because often they will have sort of depleted the area that's closest to an island where they're fishing and so they have to go on these huge journeys in order to get the fish to bring back for their starving kids who eat like four or five

times a day. And I watched this footage, it's amazing, It was a David Attenborough planet earth. They fly 50 kilometers out to sea. 50 kilometers, it's a whole group of them that just go in one go. They dive down into the ocean and they have an amazing swimming ability. They can swim for up to a minute,

holding their breath, and they use their wings like we would use our arms if we were doing front crawl. As they make their way, they can go 40 meters deep, they come back up when they've caught a fish. It's just one fish, in most cases, in this footage. They fly them back 50 kilometers again. And then when they get there, very similar to the gulps. Oh, the kids don't wanna wait there.

No, they're gonna be so sick. No, I have 50 hours today. They're gonna be sick. There are birds which are called optic scoers, who are waiting for them as they come back knackered and they swoop down and they steal the fish off them. It's amazing shot in this planet Earth documentary because suddenly one of them gets back because a guy wearing an Arnold Schwarzenegger mask is suddenly shooting. No, that doesn't happen, but you're 100 kilometer round trip and then the skewers come for one fish. Are the skewers there sort of famously pirate birds, aren't they?

Exactly. I think I might be making this up. They squeeze other birds to make them vomit up whatever they've just eaten. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,, skewers, skewers. The buffins can carry more than one fish because they have skewers on their tongue, don't they? They have spiky bits on their tongue that they can attach one fish onto each spike and then go down for another one. But if they get attacked, that's a skewers crisis, you know?

Brilliant. I love you. Thank you. The part of the reason they're so good at swimming is their bones are dense and other birds. They find it easy to swim, but they can find it harder to fly. So do you read about these puffing patrols're so good at swimming is their bones are dense and other birds. They find it easy to swim, but they can find it harder to fly. So, do you read about these puffing patrols? They have a nice one.

These are definitely good guys, not a gray area for these ones. So, basically when the little pufflings, the baby ones, they use the Moon to navigate, but the street lights come through them off, so they sort of crash land in the town. And so, the whole town is basically united to save these pufflings. They go out on patrol, they try to find them, and if you find a puffling, you have to look after it, so they'll take them to the cliff. And then they either will pop it down so it can truffle and catch the breeze, or you just lob it into the air.

And hope it takes flight. And lob it into the air. Yeah, to get it to get, because they need to get the momentum to get up. I'll be your catching it if it doesn't, right? I know, it's going off a cliff. What if it's sprained as wing? Hopefully you checked that on the way in.

I don't know. I don't think these guys sound like an uncomplicatedly benevolent force. Why don't they turn their street lights off? That's what a real good guy would do. I feel like the terminal velocity of a puppet with a green bus enough that they would die. I think they might be all right.

Because they're quite small, aren't they? They're really tiny. If it's the babies as well, then they're a really low terminal velocity. Maybe. You can survive, like, didn't Gordon Ramsay fall off a cliff when he was looking for lovers?

The thing about Gordon Ramsay is his terminal velocity, his famously low. Is it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. 85 feet, I think it was. He fell like a foot. I imagine when he falls, he's got like lots of flapping skin on his body and that kind of, yeah.

Turns into one of those gliding parachuters. Like Fox. Yeah. Sorry, why do Gordon Ramsay fall over Cliff? He's looking for puffins. I do know what this is a story to send back on my head. I'm going to connect it to Puffins. He was doing a documentary and he was looking at Varys Island.

He was on the side of a cliff and they were filming him. And he fell, and he disappeared. Yeah, and he fell down and he survived. Yeah. I don't believe that. It's true. Is it? Yeah. I think Don Ramsey is an honorable guy.

I don't see why he would like. Pregimly some film. I think they never released the film. Oh, they accidentally turned off the film before he fell. ATV, 55. 85. 85.

85. What's that? 25 meters. It must have been a big patch of Heather. He landed on, or whatever it was. It's a big pile of other TV chefs. Previously falling down there.

Bounced off a Whirl Thompson, fortunately for him. There's a thing which a lot of people say about puffins, which is that they're monogamous. You know, they have the same partner every year. I've seen that render. That's very nice. Well, it turns out, I think it is actually true. Because at load of birds, it's not true. And they study EPCs, extra pair copulations.

That's the, I think we've mentioned this once or twice before. But they did study Atlantic puffins, looking at extra pair of peritage. Because now we've got DNA tests, we can actually sample species. And they are basically monogamous. They are... I've got for them. I know. So, and they are basically monogamous. They are... I'm good for them.

I know. No gray areas there. It's a nice, not very springy room. No gray areas there. Every DNA test comes back. Yep, it's all fine. You are far there. Great news.

My current favourite puffing fact is that there is scientists creating sunglasses for puffins. Oh, why? Because I don't know how this happened, but they had a puffin and they realized that it'd beek lit up under UV light. Okay. But the puffin was no longer alive. So they're not completely sure if it's some sort of the way to decompose as a weather all puffins do this.

I see. So to test it, they need to get some alive puffins and try UV on them. But that could hurt their eyes. They've got the design little sunglasses to use themselves. They've made them aviators. Okay, cool. What did they find? I believe still pending. We'll find a puff in, give it the sunglasses, shine the light and then report back. Because their beaks do change a lot, right? There's an outer beak that falls off the color changes

at different seasons. Yeah, the big falls off the winter. And listen with what I found described in Monatical as a drab grey pecker. My old tender profile. That's amazing. I know young puffins are just completely grey. Yeah. They sound so boring. Yeah. Just grey all the way through. Grey be grey, grey everything.

I always thought that was your favourite factor of all time. One of my very very first facts I've ever felt for a QI, which one? That a baby puffin is called a puffling. Yeah. But now, puffins, I don't know if you noticed, they are on everything. Puffins are everywhere now. So many is called a puffling. Yeah. But now, puffins, I don't know if you noticed, they're on everything.

Puffins are everywhere now. So many kids books about pufflings. And someone I know who works in publishing used to keep a list of which animals were on trend. So you will have noticed it without realizing so for a while it was sloths, they were on everything. It was flamingos for a while. And llamas, these stuff of phase, they were on everything.

And I think puffins. Is it like children's books? You do. And llamas, these stuff of phase, they want everything. And I think Puppets. It's in like children's books, do you? Yeah, they're kind of... Like in paper chase or like on clothing, if you just notice it, it's like... Mirror cans were macs. Yeah, so some animals seem to like have their moment. And I'm not sure why or how, but they do.

But it's never the disgusting toad worm, is it? No, they're like... He could be spring 2024 and they have a lot of them. The penis worm, is it? Yeah. And do you feel slightly responsible for that? Because I know, because I think you're partly responsible for disseminating the adorable puffling facts.

Because that fact has come out of various different QI iterations. I do put it in a lot of things. Exactly. Yeah, no, I've brought the tons of pufflings up. They're super cute, so. Yeah. You used to get enormous flocks of puffins, didn't you?

In the UK as well. So the island of St. Kilda, this was two people called Herter and Done in 1897. And they said that the puffins were in such numbers that clouds of birds, sweet pastures, and make a sound like a whirlwind. Cool. And another one said that it was, it made a great cloud

that perceptively interfered with the light of day. And that parasites fell off the birds as they swarmed over us much to our discomfort and annoyance. So you can imagine there's like millions of these birds just blocking out the sun and flying over you and dropping the ticks on you and stuff. Yeah, yeah. It's been incredible. Very cool. In St. Kilda, there was one man who caught 620 puffins in a single day using, yeah using a noose. I have no other rod. No way. Sorry to jump in on you there. No, no. I was expecting to say that. Yeah, pretty much elasty. That's what they used to use, like these sort of light fishing rods but with a bit of a pumpy end. That's what this cat lady was using in the second mobile. Oh yeah. Yeah, wow. That's amazing.

There are some places where the puffins are eaten, aren't they? Iceland. Yeah, Ferro Islands. Yeah. Am I allowed to say a bit in them in Iceland? Have you. Have you. Have you.

It was a long time ago. Oh, it was the 80s. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. About like a girl. What did it taste like? Just, to me, I thought it just tasted fish like fishy oily, not chicken, but like um, well that fished on like me. Quaily kind of stuff.

Like, gamey, fishy, chicken. It's a grey area. Why is that grey area? No, I guess everything we're saying about the puffers is sort of like, you know, you're like, kill them to save them. I was there being, I think the multiple endanger than they used to be. Yeah, yeah. Back in the day, certainly back in the day when I was eating puffin that one time, there were all over the, you were on some kill though, weren't you? Yeah, you were actually doing the well the favourite, yeah, yeah. I was so hoping that when you were grasping for what they tasted like, you're going to

be like, no, a bit like panda, like it's not like a catapult taste to them. Yeah. But that's, I mean, lots of places eat, people eat meat, and people eat the meats that are close to them. But if a particular meat is endangered, then you change to the... Exactly. There was a whale on the menu,

which I didn't eat. Wow. Does that help my arc at all? Exaggerated, isn't it? Yeah. Okay, it is time for our final fact of the show and that is Andy. My fact is that trash talk works better on dance players than shot putters. Can't let a fact. It begins.

I should have known what a fake is fact. Idiot. That's brilliant. Yeah, it's just a study of trash. Why would that be true? should have known what I think is fact idiot. That's brilliant. So study a trash talk. Why would that be true? Well, this comes from a piece in the economist, and it's all about sledgeing,

and which is cricket-based trash talk. And you know, sporting insults, basically. You dish out to people you're in a competition against. And it found that there have been studies conducted, which have found that trash talk is especially effective at distracting players if you're in a sport that needs fine motor skills or creativity rather than brute strength exhibitions.

So sports where you need to concentrate are much more vulnerable, which is why maybe cricket is vulnerable to lots of trash talk. Chess, you don't see a lot of smack talk in chess. Yeah, but you get loads and, I mean, it's weird because lots of sports have different tolerances on it. So, Griffith has loads of it. Boxing has loads of it, although it shouldn't need

to do any trash talk because you'll try to hit someone hard anyway. No, it's psychological. The whole thing is a psychological warfare, right? And it's very skillful spot boxing, I would say. Is it? Yeah. Just thought you'd better the other bloke, don't you? Well, that's one way of doing it. But if you're a really good boxer, it's all about...

Is this why my boxing career didn't go... Saw like a puffer. The fathered like a giant potato. Oh no. Yeah, no, that's a really good part. In chess, I guess, there is a lot of psychological stuff goes on but it's not necessarily Shots shit. You suck. Yeah, you're shit. In basketball it's a big thing and I grew up watching basketball so you would always see it happening

It's amazing when you see it happening trash talking between the sort of top players in the league So are they better at it? No, there's sort of it's just interesting watching them because they're all on Mike, right? Basically, no, no, you can hear it. Like you can hear through the mics of the studio. It comes through, you know, you know, like, oh, yeah, exactly you hear things. So like, yeah, well, Shaquille, Shaquille O'Neal was up against. So Shaquille O'Neal, one of the all-time greats of basketball against Kobe Bryant, who was also one of the other. And he was overheard saying, Kobe, tell me how my ass tastes as he was about to dunk on him. Right? Like they say, what does that mean? He dunk on him.

It's disgusting. Dunkin is when you put your, when you bring the ball into the ring and you hold the ring, kind of thing. Why is he tasting his ass when he does that? Because he's going so high that the face of the crazy with me, yeah, for on then. And then there's this thing in basketball where then you make someone

taste your ass after every've got a school appointment. Every day's a school day. In off the rim. Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry. Oh, my God. A one thing they did with this research you're talking about is they sat people at computers and you had to move a slider to a particular spot

and see how many you could do in two minutes. And as you did it, a little message would come up on your screen, supposedly from one of the other people doing the experiment. And it would either say, I'm smarter and faster than you, or let's see what happens. Hi, friend. And they found actually that people who got the negative messages perform better overall him that one. I think this is could spur you on. You think I'm gonna lose while I'll just show you. Yeah, exactly.

That's what seemed to have happened in that one. But then they tried it in a task which was slightly more skill creative based and they found that people did worse and they were more likely to cheat. Oh yeah. It turns it dirty, so you're like well. Yeah, exactly. I think one of them might have been the study by Karen McDermott, who was looking into this from the University of Connecticut, and that involved people playing Mario Kart.

And before the game, some of the people were insulted with various things like grab a straw because you suck. Really? So yeah, I think she had a pick quite carefully because a lot of insults might be the, you know, home of home vehicle, racist or sexist or what is the shipping, a carefully delineated selection of insults which were cruel enough to sting. Grab a straw because you suck being one of them. And the insults of players perform worse. Right. And they also rated themselves higher as having experienced anger and shame

Yeah, what were they playing Rainbow Road? If you're playing Rainbow Road you always experience deep deep shame and frustration and rage Yeah, yeah, yeah, so yeah, but does it make you play better or worse? There seem to be slightly conflicting studies on whether Not yeah, I'm not similar to what you were saying I also read just thought was a lovely point, that in a university study, you've got a university ethics code, so what you can sledge someone with is kind of very different to what you can have,

like, a whole stadium chanting it, you and a basketball game. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I also like the weird social side of trash talking, as well, within professional sports, which is, let's say, a younger player trying to trash talk and create a a relationship of conflict which would then be on the cameras and it's a way of social climbing. So like Michael Jordan, for example, would never trash talk whenever he was having it talk

to him by like a rookie from a new team. Cause he thinks I'll let my game do the talking. And I don't want I will make you famous by trash talking with you. So let's not get that. It's not what I think it's worth us saying off-menu a shit. Yeah. Oh, Chris and Rosie Ramsey.

Oh, white person. Yeah, yeah, yeah. How fuck you. Yeah, yeah. There's no point saying, you know, John's podcast about nothing. John's podcast about nothing is good, James. I stand by. I've been listening to John, I get all my facts from John's podcast about nothing.

Shout out to Jon. Hello Jon. My, one of my favourite sledge that I read was not so much a sledge, but as an AFL player, I called Stevie Baker. And probably during a game, he leaned over to someone and said, have you got a sausage dog? So, and they spent the next 20 minutes just being like, what? I can make it play. It's the worst insult they've heard.

I'm sorry. I turned down the baker has a sausage dog. He was just like, it's just making chat. Yeah. This guy was like, he couldn't focus on the game. He's like, what's he saying? What? Yeah, I mean, I, I mean, will it be for me?

Like, I've heard the phrase sausage dog before. I know that it's, but because it was a sporting match, I was thinking of a hot dog. And well, like what's a sausage dog? A hot dog is a sausage. What do you talk about? This is where I should swoop in and outfact you, but I... Yeah, sure.

So all of our distraction, isn't it? A family really. That's it. It just reminds me, this isn't a fact, but do you ever watch the episode of Cheers when there was like a basketball player and he couldn't miss and he was amazing and he was winning the whole season? And then he went to the bar and started talking about trivia with two of the bar flies Norman and whoever else it was and they asked him how many rivets the were in the basketball stadium and

He just all he could think about the rest of his career was counting these rivets And all he would do was walk around counting and he just couldn't play any markers he was so distracted. That happened to be in the exam ones. Almost got, I was in the exam and people would always write on, he's like, Rikitil Des, you always tell them at exam time and they would say like, you know, I heart so and so all that matters rubbish. I was thinking about it. Did you were just going in the, an episode of the B-Lo didn't you?

I grew up in Dundee, yeah. episode of the B-no, didn't you? I grew up in Dundee, yeah. I grew up in Dundee. So, but I was sitting in my seat in my exam, and on my desk someone had written, there were 32 black lines on the ceiling. And so I looked up, and there are black lines really close together, never seen them before. So of course I had to count them, and I lost count, so I'd start again. Wow, yeah.

Did you think that might have been written by a crafty teacher trying to smoke out easily, just trying to do it? I think it was one person in your class wrote it and all the other deaths apart from their own. I mean, they would be tougher than the car. Yeah, I was waiting. I'd forgotten that until now. I can, you remember trying to count them. How did you exam?

You'll have still passed, I guess. I very badly. I don't remember. That's so funny. I was looking because you were talked about darts and shot putting some trash talking in those spots. And of course, we can't not talk about Gary Anderson and Wesley Harms. Of course we can't. The amazing match when Harms, who lost 10 to did an interview and said there was a fragrant smell that came from his opponent

and he said it'll take me two nights to lose the smell from my nose. And he claimed that Gary Anderson had been farting throughout the match to put him off. And then obviously they interviewed the loser first and then they interviewed the winner and they interviewed Gary Anderson and he said, why are you farting the the whole time and he said there was definitely a smell but it was one thousand and ten percent not me it was definitely the other guy and Anderson said you can put your finger up my ass there'll be no smell there what what is it with this sportsman yeah okay I mean I believe the first guy because that's a very high percentage so Okay, I mean I believe the first guy because that's a very high percentage so

Do we have trash talk at QI? No, what do you mean? What do you mean? So there was a study of Fortune 500 companies and like can you remember people being slagged off in that kind of gamesmanship way in the office? 61% of employees found they could remember trash talk within the last few months. Yeah, I don't think we do is legend here really I've got nine years worth of Yeah, I don't think we do sledge in here really. I've got nine years worth of You guys it's on record Yeah, this is podcast the whole that H ad exercise One day you guys are gonna be called into an office. Yeah

One place where you get smack talk famously is wrestling Yeah And I was reading a book. It's called Everything to Play for, The QI Book of Spot by James Harkin and Anna Toshinsky. Oh my goodness. Sounds like a sound. Well, I don't know, it doesn't come out until October, so I don't know if it's rubbish or not, but I suspect the big names I suspect it will be quite good to be here. But they argue in that book that the earliest depictions of wrestling that we have which are in the Egyptian tombs, they're quite similar to today's pro wrestling. So there's an argument that it could be that

all the games were fixed because they were often shown as being one person from Egypt, clearly, and one person from a place that isn't Egypt, clearly, and the Egyptian one always won. And perhaps it was that they were fixed fights so that the Pharaoh would know that his people were the greatest in the whole world. Who's being interested in Egyptian pro-Retling is fake? That's what I'm saying. Sorry no, that's what James Harkin and Alan Tijinski are saying in their book everything to play for the QI book of Sparta, I'll tell that. But the other thing is that there's a really early one and there is some writing next wet and it's an Egyptian who defeated a Nubian opponent and he says,

well to you, a Nubian enemy, I will make you take a hopeless fall in the presence of the Pharaoh. And so that's basically smacked off from 3,200 years ago. Tell me the flavor that you find in my ass. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha our Twitter accounts. I'm on at Shriberland James, James Harkin, Andy, Andrew Honda M and Ann at Miller underscore Ann. Yeah, where you can go to our group count, which is at no such thing. And you can also get in contact with us via our via email podcast at qi.com. And also go to our website, check out all of the previous episodes there up there. No such thing as a fish dot com. And otherwise come back next week. We're going to have another guest. Thanks for coming back. And so good to see you again. And we'll see you then. Goodbye. you