No Such Thing As A Fish - 485: No Such Thing As Ballet On A Staircase

Episode Date: June 30, 2023

Dan, James, Andrew and Bec Hill discuss millipedes, spiders, odd dolls and terrifying interrogations.  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 everyone, welcome to this week's episode of Noted Such Things of Fish, where we are joined by the incredible Beck Hill. Now, who is Beck Hill, you ask? No, you don't, because you're already a listener to a problem squared, which is her amazing podcast that she does with mathematician and comedian Matt Parker, where they spend their time solving everybody's problems. You probably also know back through her YouTube channel, she's got all sorts of stuff on there. I think notably, you might know her for her flip chart comedy where she missed his lyrics.

There's videos about her show Makeaway Takeaway that she used to do on CITV, there's loads of stuff on there. And of course, if you're the right age, or if you have children of the right age, you will know her from her books. She has a series of books called Horror Heights. There are three in the series at the moment. The latest is called Dead Ringer and they are, of course, available in old places where you buy your books. So that's all about Beck. There will be a little thing later on towards the end of the show where we might have an object

which we will sign and give away to one of our listeners. If you want to know more about that, you will have to sign up to Club Fish. We will give more details on how to win that during our next bonus drop as a line, which we'll be out next Tuesday. Anyway, not much more to say. I mean, we do have a live show coming up, which I think the tickets might be all but sold out, but you can get streaming tickets from that. You can go to nosexthingasafish.com forward slash podfest.

Apart from that, really this is the end. It's time to say on with the podcast. Hello and welcome to another episode of No Such Thing as a Fish, a weekly podcast coming to you from the QI offices in Hobern. My name is Dan Schreiber, I am sitting here with James Harriken, Andrew Hunter Murray, and Beck Hill. 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 Beck. In 1927, a patent was filed for an upper artist designed to scare criminals into confessing their crimes by creating an optical illusion of a ghost skeleton.

That'd do it. It's pretty cool. Yeah, I mean, the painting was filed and I mean it was granted in 1930. It expired in 1947, so if anyone wants to make that now. That made Call of Duty better, wouldn't it? Whether trying to get... Line of Duty? Call of Duty. Yeah, thank you.

Is that video game? It is, yeah, yeah. I was just trying to work out how you fit there as well. I think it would work everywhere. Pop a glowing skeleton. Sorry, we'll get messages from the gamers. It won't work in Call of Duty. Why an intensely realistic war experience? Okay. It's more a kind of like, can you storm Normandy

than where were you on the night of the fourth? Which is what it's about. More games need interrogation. Exactly. The Mario interrogation. Where's Peach? It's reading about show jumping the other day, you know, in the Olympics. And in the first Olympic show jumping part of it was, just because we talk about video

games, the horse had to walk along and people would roll barrels towards them and they'd have to jump over the barrels like in Ducky Culls. Isn't that cool? That's amazing. Yeah. Imagine if that was your job. I rolled barrels at horses. Sorry, this was off-tocke.

It's got it so quickly. Yeah, skeleton. Oh yeah, so it was like, it was a light, do you know what, I couldn't find out whether it was a real skeleton or a fake one, but given the date, I'm guessing it was a real one, but it was a life-size skeleton with red glowing light bulbs in the eyes that would turn on and off to create the effect of blinking. And it was lit from the top and the bottom.

And basically the suspected criminal would sit behind this skeleton and talk through a megaphone that would sort of come out of the skeleton's mouth and the skeleton would be lit a little bit to create the effect of a ghostly outline of the skeleton glowing eyes, yeah. Yeah, and the effect, the idea was the criminal would go into a darkened room to begin with,

so this sort of thing was going on where's the police officers was happening, and then suddenly this codeon would raise, and this furious, glowing skeleton would be there, saying, you did it, didn't you, or whatever it was. Yeah, it would work so well the first time. On, I presume everyone who's committed a crime and was trying to cover it up, is in its very striking experience to have if you're the one being, you know, questioned by a skeleton. But I guess the criminal fraternity would be more, you know, would be blasé about it after a few years of the skeleton being...

Well, they'd have to know about it, wouldn't they? Yeah, they'd have to keep... They'd have to keep trekking it out and, you know, be... Different effects. ...to stop the skeleton. Yeah, he's... There's a detail in this which kind of confused me because this is the 1930s, which said that as well as having the megaphone and the glowing eyes,

it also had a camera in the head to film. Would you get sound recording as well? It was to record sound as well. And it actually included a way of recording the sound and the visuals at the same time onto this film. Yeah. That is very early. We had phone and perhaps and we had cinema and stuff like that. So I think this it was all men who did it wasn't

Helen Adelaide Shelby Yeah, I think she basically took a load of things that have been invented around that time and said oh we could do this with this Oh, we could do this with this oh flashing lights. Let's do that for the eyes Yeah, one thing I couldn't find out was her decision to turn it into an interrogation thing like that's quite a cool effect If you were like, oh, we could create this effect and put it on stage. Like, did she just read a Christmas Carol and was like, oh, I know what gets people guilty.

Yeah. But that's the thing as well. She doesn't come from that background. So it's Helena, sorry, or Helena, rather than Helen. And she was a real estate mogul. She was like, she used to bed on horses. There's nothing else in the literature about her that suggests that this came from any background

in policing or anything like that. And she kind of disappears as well. You don't really see her barren smile. I found that she did die in 1947. Right. I found in the newspapers. When it expired. Oh.

And I found that her father in law Samuel was a famous civil war veteran. His first foray in the civil war was down the Mississippi River and the entire platoon was hospitalised because they all drank swamp water. Oh. That's all I found out. She had a husband called Edgar. Let's see how they had the detail I've got.

Oh, yeah. Stop blaming us for that. I have overwhelming information about this. Yeah, it is. It's so funny. It's all she has remembered for now is mostly this. Scott doesn't think. I found out that Tom Scott, the YouTuber,

had recreated this invention in 2020. So they recreated the actual skeleton and everything and did an experiment with three other people where he left them alone with a cookie and one of them had to steal the cookie, and then he interrogated them, and they didn't know what he was doing. So he was just like, I'm trying out a new technique. So funny. And then he put some in this room, and the first two, I've scared it first, because they're in a dark room, and they have no idea what to expect. And then when the skin was to disappear, they just crack up laughing.

Yeah, really. Because you would, though, wouldn't you? I mean, I can imagine a big spooky at first, but I'd be far more scared of a dark room. Yeah. So you know the one-way mirror thing? Yeah. There's no actually, there's no such thing as a one-way mirror.

No, there is. It's actually a window. That's the dullest fact I've found at the course of research. What do you mean? What do you mean? It's all a window. That's the dullest fact I've found at the course of research. What do you mean? It's all about the lighting. Yeah, it's a window covered with highly reflective coating. It's not a mirror.

What makes the difference between a mirror? Is it just because a mirror has a steel background? I think the mirror has the, yeah, it's like a properly opaque background, whereas with the one-way window, as all the kids will be calling it, Oh, one-way window. It's just a lighting thing. The O-W-W. Because the lights are always off, aren't they?

And the room where the senior cops are watching the questioning happen. The lights are always dark and that way. And if you turn it on the lights in that room, you'd see them. The thing is, you want people to think it's a mirror, right? That's a whole point. If you say, we've got our window here, then they're going to go, oh, I thought that was a mirror.

Like you have to call it a mirror in order to keep up. But everyone knows there are people behind there now. Do they? Yeah. No, the question is, you don't know whether there's someone behind there or not. I can't believe they exist actually. Do they? I've never been arrested. Yeah, I've done the...

Have you been interrogated? What did you do? I used to work in market research my first job. And there was a market research house, which was in Slaal. Yes. And I was conducting the surveys. How interesting. Like the focus group stuff.

Yeah, and it was all one-on-one stuff. It was with women between the age of 18 and 39 who had acid reflux. And they had to speak to me for an hour and a half each. And I had to ask them all the questions about their reflux. Oh, wow. And you had to watch them through one way mirror. There were people from, I'm not speaking to me for an hour and a half each, and I had to ask them all the questions about their reflexes. Oh, wow. And do you watch them through one way, Mirror? Well, there were people from, I'm not gonna say,

which farm is suitable giant for watching them through the window, the mirror, whatever. And they were in the next room, and after the interview ended, I'd pop next door and I'd say, was there anything else you wanted me to ask? And they'd say, yeah, can you just ask questions? 17 again. Okay, so this woman, middle age woman with acid reflux,

imagine I'm talking to you. I'm here. There's a big window there. I mean mirror. Does she, is she thinking all the time there's someone behind that? Or was the illusion cat the whole time? Because I reckon they wouldn't have, otherwise what's the point? I think I thought, I thought, what if I had to say there might be people? I did you. Observing, but don't, you know, don't worry about it. Just talk to me. You look into my eyes. I did you. Observing, but don't, you know, don't worry about it. Just talk to me, look into my eyes. Yeah, I love your eyes.

Yeah. Were you good interviewer or bad interviewer, like you get good cop and bad? Yeah. I was telling you about the acid. Now honestly, acid refuix is totally normal. Don't worry about it. You can tell me about it.

You're sick puppy and you're gonna burn. Yeah. Yeah. I was not a very good interviewer. Right. And the weird thing was it was just two of us working on the case, me and my boss. And after the fourth day of questioning sessions, we came down to breakfast at the sort of like, premier room, we was doing whatever, and we both had acid reflux. We talked, we talked to ourselves into having it. That's really interesting.

And then it turns out there was another window there. There's a bigger conspiracy. And then another interviewer comes in and interviews you. Yeah, and they get it. Wow. I once once in a focus group with the window. But we knew that they were people because you just know, like, oh, well, someone's got a watch.

It's just so you don't get distracted. But we had to play video games and give feedback on video games. I'm always thinking it was a little big pun. Yeah. And I said, there should be more interrogation. I was wondering what happens if you confess, but the police of you confess to as a Catholic because obviously they can't pass on what confessions that but it doesn't really. You mean if they're a priest. Yeah, I don't know.

So if you put like a priest cop you know? I don't know. But like, it's a priest cop. That's the... That's a bit of the TV series. He's a priest by day. He's a cop by night, you know? But the priest is not allowed to tell anyone what and confess, right? Right.

Because, although when I was at school and I used to go to confession, we had good priest bad priest. Yeah. The bad priest used to write on you all the time. Oh man. Yeah. Also, there's that one-way mirror in the confession booth, which technically did not have a spooky image. There's in Catholic churches. You know, the others didn't work great.

The freeze of fix from the top and the bottom. The falling red eyes. But this is the worth it. So I think the rule in confession boots. The rule is, the freeze can't disclose anything to anyone, but that's how I understand that. Yeah. But there is some leeway, I think, if there's, so like, if down, I'm the priest, right,

down comes into the booth and he says, I am going to kill James. Oh yeah. In fact, number two. It's been the next episode of Now City Singers of Fish. Right. I think I am allowed, as the priest, I think some schools have thought, say,

I am allowed to go to the police and say, you might want to check on James, check he's all right. Yeah, yeah. Might be a threat to him at some point. But I'm not allowed to say, Dan is going to kill him. On it. Yeah.

That's the same thing. That's the same thing. Psychiatry, right? When you admit, you know, planning to murder someone. Planning to murder James. That's the same thing. It took me a long time to get that out in the session.

That is a good purpose to have. Is it real breakthrough? Yeah. Just kill him, real. It was a real breakthrough. Yeah. Just kill and ruin it. That's all I have to say. What are you waiting for? But they're a lot of past on active threats, aren't they? They must be able to.

They must be vanishingly a few cases of people in confession beads or therapy sessions saying, like, this is the time and place I'm going to commit, the moida. I don't think it happens much. I like that you tried to make a lighter thing by calling it moor-y now. Well, it's gone a bit dark. Let's say moor-y now.

Fun cop. Music is often used in interrogation tactics. That's a big thing. Metal music, particularly. We've heard about that. Oh, and like, once animalist. Yeah. And John Ronson wrote about the fact that, like,

Barney music would be played, Barney the Purple Dinosaur. I love you, you love that song over and over to make people go insane. Did they ever play the blobby Christmas number one? I bet they have. I bet they have. It's Cedar's torture. But one band that gets used a lot is Metallica.

And Metallica hates it because, you know, any musician would have this opinion. It's that music and politics, music and, you know, interrogation and questionable torture shouldn't be mixed. I wouldn't say all musicians think that, but, what? Yeah, I imagine most of them. I think there is a band in the States, a Christian rock band that were like, you can use our music, demon hunters, I think.

Demon hunters. It's not, it's not Claliel. Yeah. So Metallica asked for their music not to Hunters, I think. Demon Hunters. Oh, yeah. It's not quite the L. Yeah. So Metallica asked for their music not to be used, which it wasn't. There was an interview with a guy who has claimed that he killed some of Inladen. I don't know if that ever was confirmed. The SEAL6 team.

And he said that Metallica reached out to them and said, can you not use our music? And Demon Hunter, he claimed, then got piped up and said, you can have our music. It's fine. And here's some patches. Demon Hunter came out and said, actually, that's not the case. We didn't know what it was being used for.

They just said they like playing our music. They made their own patches. So supposedly a demon patch. Like an iron on patch for you. Like an iron on patch for you, you're informed. They all eat. Yeah, military likes to wear lots of different patches. But like the scouts.

Yeah, I got my, this one I got for killing a son of a loving. You've earned your killing or son that has been larger than Bunch. Oh, fuck yeah. I want a dark, doggie for saying that. One of the most feared Nazi interrogators was a guy called Hans Schaff in the second wild war. And he was not, he wasn't a soldier, he was a Polish born, I think he was a farmer, he lived in South Africa, but he was fluent in English.

And if you were a pilot or a crew and you were caught, you would go to this little town near Frankfurt and you'll be put up in reasonably nice digs. And they'd just talked to you for a couple of weeks. And Hans Schaff was the one leading these efforts. And they would present you with this incredible dossier, they'd say here are all your unit members' names, here's your home base, here's the commander's dog's name,

here's the pub that you guys all drink in, and they just, they would present you tiny fragments of information that made you think, they do absolutely everything. Yeah. You were likely to talk and give away secrets of, you know, which, the weaknesses of your plans or whatever it might be, but the, the, the, the the incredibly weird things that Hans Schaff, after the Second World War,

he went to work at Disneyland. Oh! Oh! He became a mosaic artist, and he did Cinderella's castle at Disney, or Disney World, I think, in Florida. Yeah. That is, do you know what, though, if I worked in Nazi interrogation, then I want to go off and then work in a magical one-on-one engine?

Do you art? Like, you've earned that. Yeah, that's amazing. Yeah, I just imagine the interviewer, they want to find the most out-maker, they're like, well, what did you do in your previous job? Yeah, well... I would be the one who asked the question. LAUGHTER

Who would be the one who asks the question? So... LAUGHTER LAUGHTER MUSIC OK, it is time for fact number two, and that is my fact. My fact this week is that in real life, the author of Charlotte's web became the foster parent to the spider children he based Charlotte on.

OK. So, it's not a children dead. Spider dead. Yeah. By spider children, you mean the children of a spider are not half spider half. So EBY author of Charlotte's web who also penned the classics Stuart Little and quite a few bigger adult books as well. The elements of style and it's sex necessary, which he wrote with James Thurver. These were huge books back in the day. He loved animals and Charlotte of Charlotte's web is based on a real spider that he'd seen. He'd spotted it one autumn in 1949 and he came back later

and the spider was gone. And the sack of the eggs was still sitting in the web and he thought, okay, I'm gonna collect that. So he took it down and he put it into a box. And he goes to New York and he travels with this. And he has it in his office and the eggs survived. And they came out, these spiders and started crawling over his office. And they even had their webshoot up

and they saw them flying across the office. And he thought, this is great. I'm just gonna let them do what they do. And so for weeks, they just made home on his desk in his office. This is flat. I think it was his. Yeah, yeah, sorry, in New York.

And it wasn't until his cleaner came along who just went, I'm sorry, I can't clean everything, but the spiders that are infesting this room, that actually then they were murdered. What? Did she not walk around like this? I don't know, I guess. My cleaner doesn't kill my cat every time she comes around.

She could walk around the spider. You don't kill my cat every time she comes around she could work around The spider hundreds of cats the size of a tiny eyelash I don't know. I feel like she could work around the spiders. Yeah, you'd think so Yeah, she she complained he said fine. You can you can kill them and Don't look cleaner. Geez. I don't have a cleaner. That's how you'd not get your spider children Yeah, but it's quite you're repleting. Yeah. So yeah, but it's quite nice to know that he never knew the fate of Charlotte, the spider itself.

I believe the species. I would have just died. Exactly, the species once they lay eggs. Yeah. They've only lived for a year, don't they? If it's a barn spider. Yeah, is it a,

because spider called a barn spider. That's what that was, I think, was it? It's got a scientific name, I didn't see it. Oh, yeah, no, but I didn't even know there was a common name of a band spider. I've heard of the house spider, though. So the spider's called Charlotte Cavattica, yeah, and is Cavattica, maybe the scientific name.

It is so Charlotte A, Cavattica, and the A is a shortened scientific word. It's a bit of a rena, so I think. Right, a rena, I might be pronouncing that wrong. A rena, Cavattica. All right. Cool. Sorry, justus, Covets, can make that. I might be pronouncing that wrong. Uranus, Covets, can make that right. All right, cool. Sorry, just to cut you a cap of the Charlotte's web.

So there's a pick in the spider. Yeah. And the spider saves the pig's life by spinning words into the web. Yeah. Someone's gonna kill the pig. Like the farm's gonna kill the pig. Farm's gonna kill the pig right at the beginning

of the book, I think. And then, yeah, Charlotte and the pig have an unlikely friendship. It is weird that as a farmer, you would see the words written in the beginning of the book, I think. And then Charlotte and the pig have an unlikely friendship. It is weird that as a farmer, you would see the words written in the web and think, oh, this pig is incredible. Yeah, exactly. No one's like, oh, I'm pretty sure a spider's behind this.

Yeah, this pig makes such good webs. So I actually didn't write down his full first two names. E.B. Elwin Brooks. Elwin Brooks. Thank you. Yeah, so E.B. is Elwin Brooks. But actually, by the name Andy, his whole life. Did he?

Yeah. And it's a really odd reason. He went to Cornell University, and there's a tradition at Cornell, which is if you happen to have shared the surname of the person who was the co-founder and the first president of Cornell who was a guy called Andrew Dixon White, then you had to just be called Andy because he was called Andy. So they shared the surname White and so he got given that at Cornell and then the rest of his life

that's what it is. It's what is why he's called him, it's what his friends, it's what his colleagues. I wonder if that still happens at Cornell, if you had the surname White, that you get nickname Nandy. Get called E.B. Elwyn. You know, there was a real pig, as well as a real spider, isn't it? Yeah, so he, it's a lot of it, it's really drawn from life, because he lived in a main, on a lovely farm, and he just, as Dan said, he connected with nature a lot,

and he almost preferred his farm to, well, he definitely preferred his farm to City Life. But he kept a pig and in 1948, so three or four years before writing Charlotte's web, he wrote the essay Death of a Pig, which is all about a pig. He'd been planning to slaughter, which then got very ill. And the pig had Erie Cepalus, which is a skin condition. Erie Cepalus, yeah. a skin condition. Erie Cipolis, yeah.

Erie Cipolis is a skin condition down in the face. They couldn't pronounce a few years ago on this podcast. That's amazing. Wow. And it's dangerous because it can transfer to people as well. Friend of the podcast, Erie Cipolis. That's so weird. And he wrote, I discovered that once one has given a pig an anima, there is no turning

back. The pigs' lot of mine were inextricably bound now. So he had to give the pagan medical anima at one point in a minute, and it really brought them close together. Sure. I love everything I've read about UVY. I love.

He just seems such a dork. He would have been perfect, I think, on this podcast. Like, here's an example of how dorky he was. So he fell in love with this girl called Catherine Sargent, Angle, who was a fiction editor who worked at The New Yorker. And that's he was a writer for The New Yorker. And so that's the other guy. She was buried at the time.

Yeah, that's right. Yeah. And they alooped. And they had their marriage. And then he said, later on, I soon realized I'd made no mistake in my choice of wife. I was helping her pack an overnight bag one afternoon when she said, put in some tooth twine. I knew then that a girl who called dental floss tooth twine was the girl for me.

Oh, that's sweet. I quite enjoyed finding out that when someone asked him why he wrote Charlottes Webb, he said, I haven't told why I wrote the book, but I haven't told you why I sneeze either. And a book is a sneeze. That is his, yeah, he doesn't know why. Inside you and you just have to, you have a story inside you and you have to share it with the world. I guess so. It leaves your body at 17 miles an hour. And if you keep your eyes open when you're riding a bug, they will pop out. Did you see that letter that a little girl wrote to him asking him why it was nine years after Charlotte's web had come out and she said when's the next book coming out?

And he replied, I would like to write another book for children, but I spend all my spare time just answering letters I get from children about the books they have already written. So it looks like a hopeless situation, unless you can start a movement in America called Don't Write To E.B. White until he produces another book. Wow. That's harsh, that, isn't it? Yeah, that is pretty harsh.

But that is exactly the sort of reply that I end up start doing on Twitter Like with the reply guys and stuff. I'm like, no, I'm just running under patients now reply guys. I used to really don't bother now. No, no, no, no I've never heard that term. Is that just people who reply no matter what? Well, no, it's it's quite a sex-specific thing Isn't it? Yeah, well, generally, reply guys tend to be due to reply to women to, and in my case, explain our own jokes to us, or why they might be better somehow

than addition to something often incorrect. So, do it all the time. I do it all the time. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We thought of trying harder. Yeah. But he had a really interesting process for writing, e.B. White.

So he could never listen to music because that would get his attention diverted and that's I think quite famous for any writer, anything with lyrics, get that away. But what he did used to do was sit in the bit of his house that had the most traffic in it. So his wife passing through, his kids passing through, whoever was in the house.

Yeah, not like cars and stuff. No, exactly. Like, just foot traffic from his family. I think that's crazy. I agree. I think that's really difficult to concentrate when there's so much happening. Yeah. It's not. That must be one of the most unusual writing methods that anyone's any writer's ever had. Yeah. To kind of listen to. Like, is it like, damn brown hangs upside down or something to write?

That sounds like a Dr. Zusebook. Damn brown hangs upside down. Yeah, he would do that if he had, if he just needed thinking time, he would hang upside down. I don't think he physically would. He's the pen just wouldn't work out. Exactly, we might have a space pen. Oh yeah, on a zantigravity or a pencil. You know, Stuart Little.

Yeah, man. What is he though? Oh, a best friend. Yeah, I'm on a zantigravity or a pencil. You know, Stuart Little. Yeah, man. What is he though? Oh, a mouse. Right. And was I right, I mean, wrong. Oh. He's not even a mouse.

He's not even a mouse. Is he a dar mouse? No, no, he's, so he's a child. He looks small. He looks like a mouse. What? Oh, right, really. It's very weird.

No. In the book, really? Yeah. In the book it's described as it because he's given birth to by his human parents and they say in the book says he's the size of a mouse and he has all the characteristics of a mouse but he is quite indeterminate as species of trusty. So in the book it's not illustrated as it is about or is it? I don't know if the original edition was illustrated. Because in Charlotte's web, the illustrator wanted to give the spider human woman facial features. Terrifying. Yeah, and they were like, no, she just looked like a spider.

And so it was just a spider. But in the animated film, she was given, like a reference. She's got a ladyface. Maybe that's why you hated the movie, didn't he? Did he? Yeah, he saw it. And I guess like a lot of children's authors,

like PL Trabos, seeing Mary Poppins, the movie, hate the way that their work is translated for the hated Charlotte's web. That might be the reason. But this kind of makes sense that maybe Stuart Little wasn't a mouse, because he did have a bug bear about when people made animals a bit more human-like rather than like Charlotte's web. It was a pig and it was a spider where as he can never understand

Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck is like, why are they driving a car? He's going on there. A mouse doesn't drive a car. Because I haven't read this book, his spider quite realistic. Like, bad spider, female bad spiders will stick some like silk out of the bun and then walk around and then it's got like pheromones on it and then the males will follow her around. Oh, there's a whole chapter about that. It's where the spider babies come from. Oh, really? Yeah. But he did use a lot of technical terms. He explained like the different bits of it, like that he was very, he researched spiders for ages to get all of the understanding. So when you read it, you get an understanding about like, you know, this bit of the leg

is called this, this bit of the hand, the hand. He was incredibly shy as well, he'd be white. He was very, he's very anxious guy about pretty much everything. When he worked at the New Yorker, he would sometimes go out of the fire escape if someone he didn't know turned up at the office. He'd just pop out, you know, of the window effectively. Wow. He skipped. Any time someone he didn't know at the office or someone who's just coming to talk to him. I think probably someone coming to take office, isn't it? He wouldn't have factly done. Yeah, you're right. Please skip.

To me, it just sounds like someone who's smoking and trying to... LAUGHTER Yeah, he skipped parties, he skipped his... The burial service of his wife of many decades, he skipped the presidential Medal of Freedom Awards ceremony, where JFK was trying to give him a medal. The National Medal for Literature Award, he skipped that too, he just did not want to go in. He was shy around women, wasn't he?

Was he? Yeah, he once said, I have two smaller hearts and two larger pen. And it feels like he did the get to the end of that sentence. I mean, yeah, yeah. Being ran out. Yeah, he, his wife even, when he was communicating sort of love notes and stuff, he would still even hide behind an animal persona.

I don't think he was a furry. I think he just did. I'd say, yeah, I'd say yeah, I said, I think anyone thinks. But he thought that. I think it now. Actually, he wasn't a furry. He was a human with the characteristics of a furry. Yeah.

This is all, by the way, it's a guy called Michael Sims who wrote this amazing biography on him who discovered that Charlotte was based on a real spider found out this story about the the exact, and he did an interview on NPR, where I was reading this on, and he said that when it came to the audiobook, the death scene, so spoiler alert, Charlotte dies in the book.

He found it impossible to read the death scene out loud, and according to the producer, it took him 17 takes in order to get it out finally. He said they would take the job. I was just crying the whole way through. You shouldn't put the word Erie Cepalus in. But he would go out, he would go out for walks, try and get himself together to go back in and do it. And he would say yeah he's like this is ridiculous, a grown man crying over the death of an imaginary insect, go back in and then just start crying all over. Not an insect mate.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, good point. Yeah, James is in the booth. Pressing about it. Maybe that's who he's crying. You know the fighter light is and then the insect died. Yeah. It is time for fact number three and that is Andy. My fact is that one of the world's best dance choreographers is called Mr. Millipede.

I should say this was sent in by listeners, so thank you to Maggie Mortensen who sent it in. Yeah, and Mr. Millip Peter, I think he's Benjamin. Miller Benjamin. Yes. And now, now James is looking, it's giving me a look. Miele P.A. is a Miele P.A.

It's how he would pronounce it. It's how he would pronounce it, but it's not how I'm pronouncing it. And he's not on this podcast. So no, but it's, it's Miele P. Yeah, so it translates into French as a thousand feet. Right. Yeah, there we go.

I've seen newspaper articles interviewing him, who call him the man with a thousand feet. Right? There we go. I've seen newspaper articles interviewing him who call him the man with a thousand feet. Really? Yeah, that's great. And because he dances so well, it's almost as if he has a thousand feet, maybe. Yeah, yeah. I get a lot harder to dance.

It would be hard. Yeah, if two left feet, but you've got like, what, 500 feet? And this is just a fact about someone with an amusing name in the world of dance. I wanted to have determinism. Yeah. Yeah. I went to school with a girl called Aaron Trimmer who became a hairdresser.

Oh. Brilliant. Shout out to Aaron Trimmer. So Mr. Millipede is quite notable in the world of Hollywood. He has choreographed a lot of movies. He's done June, the first June movie. He did the choreograph for the giant worm dance. The giant mellow piece.

Yeah, the very griller piece. That goes out. There's a dance in there, I believe. I haven't seen the movie myself. Oh, yes, there's a dance. There's a cool shifting dance over the sand. We sashay to avoid attracting the attention of the big old worms that are in the desert

because they feel the vibrations of your feet They sense movement for it. They're incredibly sensitive to it But if you walk in a particular way, then they won't spot you. Is it a dance or is it just someone walking? Well, it's a gate. You know, a gate. I see, when I'm not seeing Jim, but I imagined that it was like a bit in the movie where they're like And now we do the world Everybody joins in and they're like, and now we do the work. And everybody joins in and they're like, it's just a step to the left.

Yeah, basically, I'm imagining... Yeah, Mr. Miller Pee comes running out in Leotard's, like a James Bond video. Yeah, but he also did Black Swan, which was the ballet movie, and it was on that movie that he met his future wife, Natalie Portman. So, yeah, Mr. Miller Pede is married to Natalie Portman. Just some hot goss.

Great. Yeah. Yeah. They split up because he's got together with one of the worms from you. It's very similar to that. Yeah. But no, just Ballet.

Unless anyone's got anything more on Benny Mill. Well, Mr. Millipede has got a tattoo on his abdomen of a Bauhaus symbol, which I think is quite cool. You know, the German architecture thing. It's like a profile of a face designed by a painter called Oscar Schlemer. And Oscar Schlemer is really cool. He was, he had five of his artworks in the Nazi organized degenerative art exhibition in Munich. Do you know about that? So they piled up a load of art.

Well, basically, the Nazis decided, and Hitler especially, because he was, he thought of himself as an artist, they got a load of like German artworks that showed the greatness of Germany and put them all in an amazing museum. And then down the road, they got all the stuff that they really hated and said, this is all degenerate, this, you know.

And I mean, which one would you rather see? Yeah. I would say so much better. I would say tragic, tragic, but front to another Hitler watercolor. Exactly. But yeah, Schlemmer had a load of stuff there and then they had loads of rooms. A lot of them were quite anti-Semitic, the names of the rooms and stuff, but they had some that was like an insult to German womanhood and then they have a load of paintings that

were insulting German women. And then madness becomes method and nature as seen by sick minds. Wow. Oh yeah, these do sound quite like quite cool. They sound amazing. Yeah, I don't know. Very nice. Anyway, that's just to think about Bauhaus. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The movie Black Swan just very quickly, while we're still on Millipede, there's a lot of controversy about the movie when Natalie Portman won the Oscar for it,

because well, there's a lot of scenes which is to do with really intensive, amazing ballet dancing, and there was a stunt double. Lee Portman was good at ballet, but she'd only done it for a year. She wasn't at the level that you needed to be in order to pull those moves. But the person who played the stunt double didn't get any of the credit. And there's a lot of questions about

whether or not best actors should be going to someone who is not necessarily acting a lot of the, I mean, there's a lot of emotional scenes in there. And so there's a lot of acting that goes on, so it's justified. So there should be a joint thing. Like, if you win Best Actor for a particular role, then anyone else in the film that had to play, whether it's a stunt double or a stand-in or something,

they should all get on stage, they share it. But if it's someone doing the back of your head for a day where you were busy shooting a different sequence, they can come on stage, but they have to show only the back of their head. The rascal statue is only the back of the oscar's head. And they all have to dress in whatever the actor is wearing. They're all wearing the same outfit. So we change it from the nominations being the actor's names to the character name of the movie.

Therefore, you can have multiple people. The character is a really good category. I really like that. Yeah. And then it's not as problematic when people eventually do something that makes you go, oh, I don't like them anymore. But I still like that character. Yeah, I love it.

Interestingly, last thing on Black Swan, Black Swan was made by Darren Aronowski, the director, and he also made the wrestler with Mickey Rourke. And initially, Black Swan and the wrestler were meant to be one movie where a ballet dancer fell in love with the wrestler, and that was the initial movie. It was meant to be one cinematic universe combination, and then you just split it into two movies. It's brilliant. What?

I would have loved to watch it. Would Mr. Millipede also carry ground the wrestler? Yeah, the wrestling was. Pro ballet is fake. Yeah, yeah. There's a thing called beat deafness. Have you heard of this? is. Probella is fake. Yeah, yeah. There's a thing called beat deafness. Have you heard of this? No.

It's like, I've got it. Yeah, do you think? No, I'm sure you don't. It's like tone deafness. Only you can't dance. It's quite rare. Dancing well as objective, isn't it? Very.

Yeah, it is. It is. And more talking about being in rhythm. So they've watched strictly come dancing, for example, and be like, wow, why are they not in time to the band? It's that way. Yeah, well, it would be completely alien to them. It wouldn't think they're out of time or they're in time. They would just be like, well, I don't know what's going on here.

He's just moving his arms and there's music playing, but I can't put the two together. Right. What if anyone famous has that? Hmm. I mean, I definitely can't keep to time. I found that out by trying to learn the drums. Oh, yeah. After many lessons and a very patient teacher I realized I just can't keep to time. I always get faster.

Always. Always. And the thing is I love dancing and stuff. I did dance in high school. I saw a video and I am clearly half a beat behind everyone else. Like, it's yeah, yeah. I've just had to... What kind of dancing was it? I did interpretive because it's a lot harder to prove wrong.

That's the best. There are some dances that it's clear if you're a beat behind it. If you do the Yonky-Kokey and Yoram's in, whenever one of your dances out, that's really obvious. You'd have to do like group ones as well and that was more like modern dance. If you do the Yonky-Koke and Yoram's in, whenever one of us is out, that's really Yonky-San. You'd have to do like group ones as well and that was more like modern dance. Right. So that one was one that was always out. Yeah.

I'd love to see just videos of that with someone who doesn't know. Hi, yeah. So we're actually on knees, not shoulders. Yeah. Did you do a bit of dance? Me? Yeah, you. Where? I'm thinking of your school because you went to a very interesting school? Me? Yeah, you. Where?

I'm thinking of your school, because you went to a very interesting school. Oh, yeah, yeah. When we did off-starring school, we did URTHME, which is a dance invented by Riddle Steiner. Yeah. So you used to go, it was, you know, it's very kind to call it a dance. What it is is you just get given a poll and you have to walk forwards and backwards, just moving the poll from vertical to horizontal. A metal poll.

Yeah, a bit disappointed if you go to see a and backwards just moving the pole from vertical to horizontal. A metal pole. Yeah, and it would be disappointed if you go to see a pole dancer and that's it. LAUGHTER Dan telling you about the yeti, while he walks back and forwards. Ballet moves. Oh, yeah. Did you know one of the most iconic sports logos of all time

is a ballet move? OK, we're going to go. Yeah, try and get it. Oh, I can kind of, yeah. There we go. Yeah. Michael Jordan, the famous... Can we keep guessing?

I mean, I can't look at it yet. Oh, no, no, sorry. The Nike swoosh. Sorry, go for it. I was thinking the Olympic rings. Yeah, no clothes. Close. Do you want to...

No, no. Okay. Yeah, so James is actually, as I said earlier, correct. The very iconic Michael Jordan looking like he's going for a dunk. So his arms around, he's got a ball in his hand, legs are wide. It's not going for a dunk. Going for a dunk? Yeah, you're going for a dunk.

He's dunking. Okay, okay. Tom is going for a dunk. He's going for a dunk. I'm not going to put it next. Give me a few minutes. I'm just going for a dunk. I'm not going to be a few minutes. I'm just going to be for a dunk. Has it bounced off the backboard?

That's everyone assumes that that's him dunking. It's not. He's in the photo shoot that he was doing with a guy called Peter Moore. He did a ballet leap, and that was caught in the photo. And they thought that just looks so perfect as stands for this logo. Did he know it was a ballet leap? Yeah I believe so. Yeah there's not there's not too much information on it it's just from this guy

Peter Moore who pointed out that when the photos were taken that's what was happening so we know that it was specifically that. So yeah ballet in Michael Jordan and I think I might be wrong about it. No, I'm right about this when my parents used to ask me What I wanted to be when I grow up until I was about seven or eight. I said I wanted to be a ballet dancer Wow legend And then I discovered football you get to go win list of Famous people calling you famous and famous people who started off as Ballerinas or I wouldn't say I started off as a ballerina

Other people on the list? Tupac. The rapper Tupac. I did it with him. There you go. You guys called him Bolson. Yeah, Tupac was, he was the mouse king in the school play, the nutcracker, but he actually studied.

Interesting fact about the mouse king. Yeah. Not a mouse. Yeah. Just as the dimensions of a mouse. Also on the list, the Daleks from Doctor Who? Bit of a stretch. No, not really.

They, the... So Terraination, when he was designing the Daleks, he, who's inspired by the Soviet dance troupe, the Georgian State Ballet, when they were performing in London, and believe that that would be a perfect, like you've got, looked at him, went, wow, the way they glided,

he thought a Dalek would be a perfect way of doing that. And so not only was that the inspiration, but the very first people who sat inside the Dalek's were dancers to help with the movement because they understood how to yeah, use their feet better than that. And that's why you never see ballet dancers going up spirits. Exactly, incapable of going upstairs. I think Louis, who's a sun king? Louis the four-tooled. He was into ballet and that's how he got called to sun king. It's named after a character in a ballet, I don't know which one. Yeah, he was massive into it. He used to try and do the dances himself, like dinners and stuff.

Yeah, yeah. So what were they called? Because I was reading that ballerina is the word that you would use for a female ballet person. You're a ballet and wouldn't it? So what's the word? We don't have an English word for a male ballerino. Ballerino. That's a good one. Ballerino. Ballerino's.

Yeah, yeah. Ballerino. I thought I'd take us down a different, like, no looking at ballet today. And this was quite recent, the director of a leading German Ballet company had to be investigated by police because he smeared a critic's face with feces, with dog feces.

Wow. Because she said too many bad things about his Ballet. Yes, this is a terrible story. Yeah, it's a bit... A bit. It was a, it. Yeah, it's a bit... It was a... let's just drive by... Is it driving? No, no, no, no, no. It takes some skill, just going for a dunk.

But it's... Like, so very high-passion. It was a critic. The critic had written very hostile reviews of the particular ballets by a company. It was a previous show, I think, yeah. In the Dutch mountains, it was called, which had been performed earlier, furious with the review that was given, and they were putting on this new performance.

What's interesting is, I don't think he knew that she was going to be there on that night. It just happened to have the dog poo in his mouth. Which makes it more interesting if that's the case. Come on, no, it can't be true. You know, if you always have a dog with them, maybe, like, and... Well, it was his dog's poo, so I wonder if maybe he'd happen to have his dog with him at the time. God, cranky. Yeah. I won't lie, there's some, there's some reviewers who I think will probably...

Wow. Well... This is your same name as well, bleak them out. No, no, it's a confessional space, you can say what you want. Wow. This is same name as well, bleak them out. No, it's a confessional space, you can say what you want. But if I think there is a risk to them, I will have to. Yeah. So big, I mean, there's a huge, I guess you'd say,

sort of soft power thing for lots of, I mean, lots of very big Eastern European ballet companies, especially Russian. So the Bolshoye ballet is very, very, very famous Russian ballet. This is interesting. Again, it's people who you wouldn't think would were ballerinas, but were. So have you seen diehard? Yes. Oh, yes, I know about this. Yeah. This is one of the henchmen in diehard. It's Carl. Okay, the big blonde guy. It gets shot.

No, it's his brother that gets shot. Exactly, exactly. He won best character in 1980. I can't believe you don't remember that. 16 people except for the English. Carl, Carl, the huge blonde henchman, who's extremely tough. He was a former principal lead dancer in the Bolfroy Ballet. Okay.

Well, I, because I've been to see a ball show in Moscow and the guys who do it, they're quite slim but they're strong. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It has to be so strong. It has a lot of strength, yeah, yeah. And it also takes a lot of strength to defect, which is what... Is that what he did? Alexander got an update.

Yeah, he was on tour in the USA. Big things, baltoy defections. Nuri, Zaryov, Nuriak. Yeah, Rudeoff Nuriak defected at the Nuri, I wish Nikof was the other guy. Rudeoff Nuri had defected at the airport. He was about to go back to the Soviet Union. He had his handlers from the KGB with him, and he fled to the French police,

who were there at the airport. Wow. But he didn't do it, like, I don't think he did a cool move. Like, I wish he had a Jordan leap. LAUGHTER MUSIC Stop the podcast! Have a Jordan leap. which things are fish in your life. It's a place where you get bonus episodes. We do shows where we chat about our mailbox. We do meet the elf where you'll meet some young members of the QI team who will try to stomp us

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on there. For instance, this week you will hear in the next 10 minutes we're going to give away an object and it will be given to a clubfish member. If you want to join club fish, then the place is to go are nosuchthingsaffish.com slash apple and nosuchthingsaffish.com forward slash patreon. I know for a fact if you join up through apple, you do get a short amount of time for free. So you could theoretically maybe see if you like it or you could just binge all of our bonus content and then unsubscribe.

We wouldn't think any less of you for doing it. Anyway, that's enough Pushing Club Fish. We know that a lot of you are here just for the free stuff and that is absolutely fine too. So we have one fight left. It is MY FACT. Hope you enjoy it. On with the podcast! Okay, it is time for our final fact of the show.

That is James. Okay, my fact this week is that in 1997, Mattel recalled one of its cabbage patch dolls because it's had started eating children. I remember this. See? Yeah. Oh my god. Yeah, because I was a bit I was really into Cabbage Patch kids and

And I remember that that was going that particular toy was going to be released in Australia and then When they got recalled in the states they never made it to Australia. Oh, interesting I'd never heard of it before for yeah, I mean, it's incredible and when I say eating children It was only bits of children. It was eating. Yeah, couldn't manage a whole one It was a toy which had a It was eating. Couldn't manage a whole one. It was a toy which had a mouth which you could feed food into and it had a rucksack at the back. And then you would feed them a cookie or something and it would go through the body and then it would mysteriously arrive in the rucksack and that would be the game.

Two years. But children started putting their fingers into the mouth or the hair or whatever and there was really no way to stop it. I don't think kids were deliberately putting their hair in them. I think the hair was getting caught. The hair was getting caught. Imagine the thing is in deliberately someone with a one-year-old child that you know that might happen. But anyway once you put any part of your body into this mouth you couldn't get it out. Because behind the lips of the doll, these two metal rollers, yeah, and they only rolled one way,

exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they had about 100 incidents reported in this Christmas time. It started off just a few. And then suddenly, more and more and more people started saying, yeah, my kids are being eaten by this doll. Just legally, I did find a claim by Mattel

that these are all isolated incidents, but that really raised a question of how many incidents do they have to be stopped being isolated? They're about 100 isolated incidents. Exactly, yeah. I mean, they did sell many, many, and probably at least hundreds of thousands of them. They sold a lot of them, and so it's a very low percentage

of children who've got eaten by dolls. One is too many, isn't it? It who got each of those dolls. Oh, one is two. It rather feels that way. Oh dear. But yeah, cabbage patch kits. They're incredible. With these dolls, there's an extraordinary thing that I never appreciated about cabbage patch dolls, which is basically

the handmade to be in each one is very different from, like, if not even the model, there's obviously different models. But within the models, each one has differences in it because they are basically They're also supposed to kind of unique. Yeah, like for instance I got what? Yes, oh It's doing the box. Well, I only bought it yesterday This is not one that eats children. This is just a normal cabbage patch doll

Wow And as you can see mine is called Leona Jade. Oh, you've got, is it a ballerina? Yeah, it has, she has like a little birth certificate and adoption papers. And the idea is that they're all unique pretty much. And that was different as well, wasn't it? That you didn't buy it, you didn't buy a doll,

you adopted a doll. Exactly. You got the birth certificate. Oh, I've got them. I've got the birth certificates and everything. Yeah, yeah. I had one called Alice, who came with hair like products, so you could style the hair.

It came with a little thing of hair spray, so you could do its hair. And I wasn't a doll kid. Like, I didn't like Barbies or anything like that. I was more into trolls. But the cabbage patch kid, there was just something about it. Did you know about the cute schema? No. Schema of cuteness. So there was a study done by a university in Japan, of course, they would study cuteness. And it was to look at the things

that we respond to as humans to decide that something is cute. So the Farad is normally quite large, big eyes, the eyes usually quite low on the Farad, and sort of chunky short limbs and things. And they believe that the reason that Cabbage Patch Dolls became so popular and became like, because they didn't do anything, not like, you know, before all of these, the original ones didn't, they didn't do anything, not like, you know, before all of these, the original ones didn't do anything, they didn't eat children. They think that the reason they went so big

is because it violates the cute schema. So if you look at a cabbage patch doll, you'll notice that the eyes are actually quite small, quite close together. And so there's elements about them that are considered grotesque, but not enough. I don't, I don't, I don't, I found a bit creepy. And that's why because it divides people and people either think they're cute or creepy.

And so people would talk about them because people go, oh they're so cute and other people go, no, no, no, they're really creepy. And as we know from just the media today, if you can cause a divide in public opinion, people will talk and debate and argue. And it just, yeah. My wife won't let me take this home. I bought it. It really doesn't like it.

Is this new? Is it like an eBay service? It's brand new. No, I bought it. So this was in a shop, right? Yeah, yeah. So does anyone want one? Yeah, I don't know.

Oh, sure. I thought what we could give it away to one of our listeners. I'm sorry, is it? Should we give it away to someone on ClubFish? I'm not sure I just claimed it, but yeah. No, of course, of course. So let's take it on this door. Yeah, you can always give away adopted children as a slice.

It's just be a double adoption. Yeah, let's do that. OK, I will work out a competition. The thing about the sort of the look of the freakish look and so on, that led to one of the great myths about cabbage patch kids that circulated in the 80s, which, reading this kind of makes me miss being a kid again and falling for these amazing legends. Stan, you still fall for these things, yeah, that's true. But the story was the reason they looked like that was because President of America at the time,

Ronald Reagan gave a directive to the makers of it to show what we would look like following the survival of a nuclear holocaust. And to get us used to the idea that we're going to look quite freakish, and it would be normalized by the time it happened, we would sort of accept it as normal humans being like that. And that went around for a bit.

Yeah, it's such a great story, but it's obviously not true, but that's, not really. Not really, it's not true. That's so funny. I find everything about a bit rum. Yeah. Well, did you guys read about the Babyland General Hospital? Yeah.

Well, actually, it's mentioned on this box. It says that there was a young boy called Xavier Roberts who discovered a magical cabbage patch and he built Babyland General Hospital where his children now live and play until someone takes them home to care for them and love them. Right. And that sounds like just a bit of corporate guff. Yeah.

Actually, it's a real place. So he kind of, well, I'm sure we're going with the history of how they were originated. But in 1978, I think he opened up, and I think it was a former medical facility. He opened up Babyland General Hospital, and you could go there as a punter, and they held live births at the hospital, and there was a write-up on slate. Okay, every half hour or so,

an employee dressed as a doctor on nurse gets on the PA and announces there is a code green. That means that mother cabbage is in labor, and it's time to head to the magical crystal tree to watch a baby being born. The birthing process lasts under three minutes. Not realistic. A nurse in scrubs and latex gloves stands among the cabbages and tells the crowd that Mother Cabbage has dilated the full ten leaves apart. That's such a gag for the parents. I really do. I have no idea the parents are going to the parents. I really do have no idea.

The parents are going to be like, I see what they're saying. As the crystal, well, they're more of them very specific parent gags. As the crystals at the base of the tree begin to glow, the nurse gives the cabbage a shot of imagisillin and announces she will be performing an easy othomy, a PC othomy gag there, as opposed to a C section which stands for cabbage section. The nurse gently spreads the cabbage leaves reaches in her glove-tans and slowly pulls out a naked doll Kids in the crowd murmurs gas from applaud. Wow people say that's creepy With the whole story was one of the reasons of the other reasons they became so popular because it Rather than just being a doll,

it was this whole, you were buying it to the meathouse. Yeah, like you're actually adopting a thing, you know, the parents would be like, oh, that's a really cute idea and oh, oh, my kid can adopt a doll and stuff. And so yeah, it didn't work. That's amazing, really did work because they were absolutely massive.

They were. When they first went out, when was that gonna be in like the 80s? 80s, early 80s, yeah. And there was riots when people were trying to get them in shops. And I was reading some newspaper articles from the time about these riots that were happening in the States. The Citizens of Voice newspaper, this is in Pennsylvania. One pregnant woman bit another patron and knocks his hat off.

I think she was just trying to eat a cookie, baby. Got caught. Another woman was punched in the face by a female shopper. One woman chased a man through a parking lot calling him an SOB. The Sime Valley staff from California said one woman was swinging a baseball back wildly at other women to get

one of these dolls and it wasn't even the last doll in the shop that she was gay. Apparently, because all these dolls are slightly different from each other, she'd seen one that she particularly wanted as she just didn't want anyone else to go near them so she was swinging the baseball bats and in 2008, four kids' entertainment ink who at the time on the license for these, they released a special edition of the dolls to commemorate the riots. Oh, wow, that amazing. That's what I saw.

Did it come with riots? No, it was just like riot gear. Yeah. Because they have that. They've become slightly different over the years. Like, this is the one that I've got here. It's a bit more finally and a bit more toy-like from the originals, the ones that they did to commemorate,

they were more close to the originals, basically. You can see, I mean, it's, you know, since becoming apparent and understanding the Christmas rush to get toys, you can understand why movies like Jingle All the Way are so, you know, Arnold Schwarzenegger's most relatable movie, that was all about a toy. I've been not seeing it. It's's most relatable movie. That was all about a toy. I've been on a scene now.

In my most relatable movie. Absolutely. Now I never think of a more than code in the barbarian. Yeah, yeah, even more than kind of in the modern year. Even more than Terminator, yeah. It's more than... Can be gotten called? Terminator 3 rises at the machines.

No, not that one. No, no, that's not. Quite relatable. So Xavier Roberts, the person who invented, he's mentioned on the side of the box and correct in your con James. Translations. Highly controversial. 21-year-old art student when he first notices that there is a German technique of needle

molding and he sees a lady called Martha Nelson who is making these doll babies and he goes, oh that looks really interesting, she has adoption papers for the babies, she has original names for the babies, he goes off, changes the technique ever so slightly, but it was very much lifted from what this woman was doing and then he kind of went off and ran with it and got all the credit for creating this new style of doll. Yeah, because basically she made this doll, right? She was selling them to him because he owned a gift shop and then he wanted to up the price. She refused and so refused to give him any more dolls.

So he said, well, I'm just going to make them myself then. Basically, that's what happened. And did he want to mass produce them a bit more? He did, yeah. And then the official website says that he was into Needle Molding and that he learned quilting skills from his mother and all that kind of stuff. But it seems very much so.

It does, you know. Yeah. So what we're saying is that the side of the box here where it says that the bunny bees, we're saying they're not involved at all. No, I think one really weird thing about this doll. I mean, there's a lot of weird things about this doll. But supposedly, there's a guy called Xavier,

and he runs a hospital that looks after these cabbage babies until they're adopted. But that's the guy we're talking about, Xavier. But if you look at any of these things, he's signed all the buttons. James is just showing us the doll's butt. If you look at the bum of the doll, his signature is on the bum. And I think that's kind of a weird thing for someone running a hospital to do to their babies. Well, it's like those surgeons, isn't it?

You know, they're certain sometimes they get in trouble because they're a few surgeons. They've got a trouble for burning their initials on a patient's liver, you know, mid operation. And then it turns out you've just, you know, and it's kind of, I guess it's a fun joke. But that's effectively what Xavier appears to have done on all these ties. Well, maybe he signed them with Penn and they went off and got it tattooed afterwards.

Oh, yeah, yeah. Kind of been their own decision, yeah, right? In 2020, bringing in trolls, my favorites. Yeah. There was one, it was called the Poppy and Sing doll, I think. And basically she had a little button on her tummy that you would press it and she'd be like, Ray, let's do a song or something. But she also had a button underneath her so that when she sat down, she would say other

things. But that happened to be right, right in the crotch, like right, right in the gusset. It was where that button was located. And most of the sounds that she made when you press right in the crotch, right in the gusset, was where that button was located. And most of the sounds that she made when you pressed that were gasping. And her going, and the whee, yeah. Like it's just sound effects. So there was a petition to recall it

by a lot of furious parents who said it would be grooming children. Yeah. We've got room on this doll for two buttons. Okay, well, tell me one, great, belly button, brilliant. of furious parents who said it would be grooming children. Wow. We've got room on this doll for two buttons. OK, we want the tummy one. Great, belly button. Brilliant. Can anyone think of where we should put the other button?

You know, the hand. This is also a play dough. How do they play dough, mountain cake? Cake mountain, sorry, the play set that came out recently for Christmas, but the extruder, you know, it looks like a syringe that you would put the play dough in to do the icing on the cake. It's incredibly phallic, like, like, if phallic enough that it definitely wasn't a mistake. Children won't understand, but, you know.

Is there like the equivalent of beat deafness where you're just yeah Like in sexual in your window you end up blindness. Yeah, just to buy us in a rested development Wait, I don't understand all this in your window. Yeah, yeah, I Hosted a make way takeaway on CITV, which obviously went so well. They decided to close channel and But that was an arts and craft show. It was really, really fun, but the amount of times they had to stop filming because they'd go, look at a bit felt like anything that you would make. Like anything, because anything you make, there's usually a moment where you have to make something that sort of like sausage gets. It feels like that might be your problem. To me. It's like, yeah, it's not good to mention it.

She's doing it again. I'm like, let me go and close the channels. Close the channels. Close the channels to the third kind with mashed potatoes. I'm just kidding. Yeah. That's it.

That's it. That's it. That is all of our facts. Thank you so much for listening. If you'd like to get in contact with any of us about the things that we have said over the course of this podcast, we can be found on our Twitter accounts. I'm on at Shriverland. James.

Ah, James Harkin. Andy. At Andrew Hunter M. And Beck. At Beck Hill comedian. Or Be Chill comedian if you spell it wrong. I actually know you spell it the same, but you just pronounce it differently. Yeah, or you can go to our group account, which is at no such thing. Or why not email us on podcast at qi.com. You can also find all of our previous episodes up on our website. No such thing as a fish dot com, but why bother listening to our podcast when there's a faster period one out there called the problem squared by our guest with us today, back hill.

And also one of our very close buddies, mathematician, Matt Parker, amazing guy. Back, give us a quick rundown of the podcast. And also one of our very close buddies, Math Matishin, Matt Parker, amazing guy. Back, give us a quick rundown of the podcast. Listen to us send us problems and we solve them. Matt solves them and I help. Are they maths problems or personal problems? Most of the ones that answers maths ones are the ones that I solve usually personal or creative.

Like how big a burger can you fit into your mouse? Nice. Cool. And how's it going? It's doing well. It's doing well. But we have set our sights on. We're trying to surpass you guys in terms of positive reviews.

So we're on 2005 star reviews on Spotify at the moment. You guys are on 11,000. Wow. We've set our sights on trying to beat you. We've told people not to then give you less than five stars. Okay. We've just told them to not to feel at all. Give us five stars.

Okay. Cool. That's a lot of backhanded compliment. I've got a problem. I'm going to be writing into your show with that. All right. We'll do check it out. Also, back's brilliant kids, books, horror heights. They're amazing.

The third one's coming out very, very soon. Let's just come out. Yeah. Dead Ringer. Dead Ringer. Check that out as well. And come back next week for another episode of the Two-Star Reviewed. I hope you think it's a fish. We'll see you then. Goodbye. you