No Such Thing As A Fish - 556: No Such Thing As A Ghost In Blue Jeans

Episode Date: November 7, 2024

Live from the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, Dan, James, Anna and Andy discuss failure, theatrics, fraud and a highly litigious member of the Trump family.   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

Hey Torontonians, recycling is more than a routine. It's a vital responsibility. By recycling properly, you help conserve resources, reduce energy use in greenhouse gas emissions, and protect the environment. Toronto's Blue Bin Recycling Program ensures the majority of the right items are recovered and transformed into new products. Recycling right is important and impactful. Let's work together and make a difference, because small actions lead to big change.

For more tips on recycling, visit toronto.ca slash recycle right. Hello and welcome to another episode of No Such Thing as a Fish, a weekly podcast this week coming to you live from Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. My name is Dan Schreiber. I'm sitting here with Anna Tyshinsky, Andrew Hunter Murray, and James Harkin. And once again, we have gathered around the microphones with our four favorite facts from the last seven days. And in no particular order, here we go.

Starting with fact number one, and that is Andy. My fact is that the very theater we're recording this show in, the Theatre Royal Drury Lane, was known in 1794 as the Fireproof Theatre. I think you know what's coming. In 1809, it burned down. Yeah, so that's... But then they built it again. That's the brilliant thing about theatres. And it really is fireproof this time, almost certainly.

Yeah, absolutely. And in fact, I think it's the second... It's burned down twice, so there have been four theatres on this. What are the chances it'll happen a third time? Things don't happen in threes, famously. That's the point. So it was built in 1663. Oh, no. Bad year for people who know a thing or two about big fires in London. 1663. And then 1666 came along so it wasn't a bad year No, that was yeah, unless did they do a warm-up? No, okay

Do a rehearsal fire of London three years earlier. My point is That it avoided the Great Fire of London then in 1672 it caught up with the curve and it burned down Then it was rebuilt then it was demolished, and rebuilt again more than a century later, 1794. And that was the one that was supposedly fireproof. And it did have amazing systems. I think they pioneered things like the Iron Curtain, and they had, this is so cool, hydraulics

that relied on the River Thames itself. The water flowed in from the river. It's awesome. It's absolutely fun. And Iron Curtain is where the left-wing people in the audience had to go on one side and the right people on the other side, wasn't it? Yeah.

Oh, in fact, sorry. All Iron Curtains until the 1970s were Thames Water. So they had to. Even the ones in Leeds? Oh my god. London, sorry, being London-centric. Anyway. Do we know what was it like during a production

that it burnt down? Or? I actually don't know about the 1809 fire It was usually because they had the lights were made of actual fire We're not those thing they use lots of candles and things like that I think Richard Sheridan was in charge wasn't he of drooling at the time and when it was going down He obviously left the building because it was on fire and he sat on the street with a glass of wine in his hand And said a man may surely be allowed to take a glass of wine

by his own fireside. Very droll. Yeah. Very droll. You don't believe it, Dan? No, I believe it. I just, I can't tell if that's awesome or if he's a wanker. I can't.

Your building's burning down. You're like, oh, let me warm myself out of the fire. Do you know, by the way, because there's a bunch of pubs that are around here, but there's also that giant Masonic building that's just outside of here, right? So just speaking of sitting in pubs, if you walk past the pub, maybe not tonight,

but usually on a lunchtime around Friday, you'll see a lot of men who are in black suits with briefcases sitting on the table, and they are the Masonic people going inside, and inside those briefcases, more often than not, there's a wizard's wand. What? Yeah, they still use wizard wands as part of, like, ritual. So if you opened up their briefcase, it would be like Harry Potter.

What is it? A stick. It's a wand. Yeah, not like a classic magician with the two white ends on the black stick. Oh, so it's just a stick No, it's a Also, it's that kind of shit, you know, is it a wonderous if it works and does anything it's a wand and if not It's a stick. So they're all sticks

Sheridan by the way, who was the owner who was doing the drinking outside? He once fought a duel on Henrietta Street down the road He'd eloped with a girl who'd been promised by her family to another man, and this man came back and they decided to have a duel. And the duel was so bloody that that was the time that the weapon of choice for duelists became the pistol, whereas previously it had been swords. What, because they just... They just cut each other up so much. Oh, really?

Yeah, yeah. Wow, that's so weird that in a duel you'd be like, hey, you've gone too far. We're taking your swords away. That's the point, isn't it? I mean, they often would just deliberately nick each other. They wouldn't actually try and kill each other. It'd be whoever drew blood first.

And you're not supposed to maul the person. It wasn't you're meant to tear them to shreds like a rabid dog. It was meant to be, you know be one clean shot, isn't it? Is it? Yeah, you wouldn't have gone down well in the world of dueling. He's done with his magic wand. Come on, for fuck's sake, it's not working.

Oh dear. It's a shame that in this fire, they didn't have one of their famous water-based shows. Because I think we've talked a bit before about how in the olden days, stagecraft was so much more impressive. So here tonight, for the listener, it's kind of shit. We've got two tables, a couple of tablecloths,

and a projector screen behind us. Back in the day, they would create a flood on stage. The whole stage would be transformed into a lake. Can I just say thank you to our sound and lights team, who have worked very hard today to get this working? Yeah. No. Yeah. Worked very hard today to get this working. Yeah. Yeah. But they did use to do amazing things.

So this stage was flooded quite a few times. There was an earthquake simulated here where the whole thing vibrated. But one of the best floods was actually in a show that apparently saved the Drury Lane Theatre. So this was in 1803 and it was a show called The Caravan. And after it was put on, the manager of this theatre said, you know, we were about to go under, they were really struggling, thank God for this play. And basically the reason it was so successful

was because it was the era of famous dogs. And the star of the show was a dog. So at the end of the show, there was a big flood which simulated a lake, someone's son fell into the lake of a boat and then this trained live dog, someone's son fell into the lake of a boat, and then this trained live dog every night on stage jumped into the lake on stage and rescued this boy. This dog, Carlo, became the biggest celebrity of his day.

People thought he was better than any other actor. He got louder applause than David Garrick. He actually had a spin-off biography written about him the year after called The Life of Carlo. It was great. He eventually got in trouble because his agent started demanding too much money. So there was a bit of a scuffle

over whether he was gonna perform one night and a bit of a riot. But yeah, the dog days of theater. It is an amazing, like just for us to, for a second appreciate the history of this place, the greatest clown of all time, arguably, Grimaldi used to perform on this stage. And the first ever production of The West End of My Fair Lady

with Julie Andrews and Rex Harrison, that happened right here on this stage. Monty Python recorded albums here. Dame Edna Everidge did shows here. Like, this is a... Frozen is on here. Yeah. Is it?

Yeah. Wow. Did you hear about about the the horses in 1909? This was a good show Oh, yeah, actually write down the name of the show. This was this stage if you can picture this now was over 12 horses Galloping at the audience on a special horse treadmill Yeah to do a horse race. I think they had like 12 treadmills along and Imagine how terrifying it was. They were running full bolt at you. Like an OK Go video. Yeah, exactly.

It's the original OK Go. I just think that's amazing. It's just mad. And that did malfunction, I think. I think it was called The Whip, the play. And it malfunctioned on the first night. It also featured a train crash live on stage. Oh, yeah. That's right. And they brought on a real train and sort of crashed it.

There was a real train. Yeah. Had to be a different train every night. And in the first night, so the main horse, the equine hero, was supposed to win the race. And the first night, the horse lost the race somehow. Which sounds a bit old because it has to change the whole plot. And the person in the horse box behind it, it crashed and flew up into the rafters disappeared off stage and ended up dangling from the What are they called the bits that hang down from the theater backstage?

Flies flies that I think it also Performances in this particular room have done it's done weird things to people and there's quite a few stories of the Royals that used To come so for example George the V saw an actor called Frank Benson, who was so good at Julius Caesar that right after, and this is in 1916, he had a sword taken out of the props room to knight him immediately because he was like, you were so great, I'm going to make you a sir right here. He was in his bloodied toga. Yeah, it must have been pretty upsetting for him. You see the actual king coming towards you with

a sword. And then another king, apparently, this is the 18th century, he saw a play called The Mysterious Husband, and he got so emotional that he went, it's banned. Yes? He was like, that's so amazing, that's incredible. Never again, no one can see this. That was Sarah Siddons though, who was the greatest actress ever known to man. I think, and it was George III who was mad.

But Sarah Siddons, there was a thing called Siddons fever. Audiences would go into fainting fits and shrieking and paroxysms. She was the Beatles of her day and they had to be helped out of the theater. And she was such a compelling actress that there were various occasions where the audience had to be reassured.

So at one point in a scene, her lovers strangled before her and she falls lifeless onto the stage and the audience gets so upset and thinks that she's really dead. So the manager actually had to come on stage and explain to the audience that she was just acting. She was fine. You mentioned, George III, of course,

there was an assassination attempt on him in this Ferry Theatre in 1800, and it was by a man called James Hadfield who also thought he was George III. Oh, so like there can only be one... Yeah, yeah. What's he doing here? This is not right. Exactly.

And they came over and he tried to kill him and then he got arrested. And I think he was the first person to plead insanity, I think. Wow. And to be found not guilty in fact. Insanity. That's incredible. And I think they might have changed the law to say that you can detain people even if they're found not guilty after that.

Because he was obviously a very dangerous human being. Right. God Save the King. Apparently, this was the first major performance of that song. It got a rapturous applause and And then subsequently people were like, have you heard this new track? It's amazing. And then it became the song of the nation.

Yeah, it was during war with Scotland, wasn't it? Essentially that that happened. They sort of were singing God Save the King. And actually the Scots were singing God Save the King at the same time, but they were talking about a different king. And it was why they added the extra verse, which was, May he sedition hush, and like a torrent rush, rebellious Scots to crush.

God Save the King, which is it still in there? It's still in, but it's not like, it's not a fan favorite. Can we mention the ghosts quickly? We can't not mention the ghosts, right? Well the thing is, everyone says that this is the most haunted theatre in the world. It apparently has five ghosts in here. Now I don't personally believe in ghosts. I love hearing the stories.

And we've spoken to, just with James and I, just before we came on stage. We spoke to a mysterious old lady. No, okay, so some of the famous ghosts here are Joseph Grimaldi, supposedly. Yeah, you get like, if you look in the corners, you might see some floating clown heads. Yeah, and also supposedly for acts on stage, if Grimaldi feels as if you're not doing well, you get kicked up the butt. And that has happened to a few people, according to a vet fielding on Most Haunted. But... But the most interesting thing is,

it's not about the anecdotes that you read in the papers, it's the real life story. So we were on the side of stage, and we spoke to two of the guys who work here, and they often have to go up, right up into there where the chandeliers are, and there's a big vacuous space there that they can go in and they can alter things.

And the first guy that we spoke to, who's called Spex, he said he saw some blue legs. Just blue legs. How good is this guy's eyesight? His nickname is Spex. Is it possible he saw someone in jeans and a dark top? Can I just say thank you again to all the people who have helped make this happen tonight? And Ben was the second guy who separately saw something happen with blue legs. He was like, I saw blue legs up there.

And he was like, I saw blue legs. The denim jean has been the most popular trouser in the world for a century. What are they doing up there in the ceiling? Probably being spooky. Exactly. Panto was pretty well invented here. Modern Panto. Are we leaving ghosts? We're done with ghosts. Sorry, sorry.

No, no, it's fine. It's fine. But Modern Panto was basically invented here. Oh, no, it wasn't. Thank you. It's just for you guys. Because I gave you the feed line twice and there was nothing. And James had to step in and that's unprofessional. I had to because he would have done it three, four, five times.

You'll all feel a bit of a bump up your bum now from Joseph Cromaldi himself. Oh no they won't. There was Augustus Harris. There's a bust of him on the corner of the building. It's fantastic. He was one of the managers kind of late 19th, early 20th century. And he basically invented modern pantomime. And the shows that went on here were extraordinary.

There was one production of Alibaba and the Forty Thieves, which featured 500 people on this stage. Okay. What? There is a scene in this play where each of the Forty Thieves comes out of the cave Like right like the back of the stage each of them brings out their own band of followers It took 40 minutes for everyone to come out of this bloody cave It started at 730 p.m. And it ended at 1 in the morning the show

And that's what we'll be doing in tribute tonight I'm gonna have to move us on in a sec to our next band. We mentioned David Garrick earlier. He ran the place before Sheridan. And he had a thing where he wanted to ban young drunk men from sitting on the stage. He said, no more, we're not having it. But it took him 15 years to eventually get the last one up. And it used to be that there were lots of riots in theatres and stuff, didn't you? And it always used to happen. It would be like the pochots would be in the

stalls like you guys, and then the scum would be right up there. The greasy scumbags. As Washington Irving wrote about them saying that if they didn't like the show, they would throw stuff, but it wouldn't be able to reach the stage. So it just hit the people in the stalls. And he said, your advice was just to sit down quietly, bend your back to it and let it happen. Wow. Right.

It was even King's rioted here, right? And this is such a cool thing about this theatre, which is that it's the only theatre in the world, according to its website, which has two royal boxes, because the King had a punch-up here once. Again, this was King George III of Madness of Fame. And there were two King George IIIs? No, it was him and his son, Prince Regent.

And they were having a big old feud, because I think Prince Regent kept saying, you're really mad, Dad, let me take over. And he was like, like no I'm not and So they came to Drury Lane one night to see a show They had a massive punch-up together and so the theater said listen lads you can't be doing that from now on We're gonna make two real boxes Gonna have to make two boxes now I sat in the Prince of Wales box earlier. I think it's up here

This side is someone in there. Wait, what's that? A pair of blue legs? Oh! Hey, you know, just a very random thing, but we can't really see any of you with the lights like this. And when Barry Humphreys did the Dame Edna show here, it's got this fascinating document where it's the entire map of the audience, and there's a key, a legend at the bottom,

where anyone who, Dame Edna had a very specific joke to tell to, there would be the word that would say the type of person that was in the crowd that the joke needed to be made of. So before Barry Humphreys came on stage every night, he memorized the paper. And what would he say, like, middle-aged man here? Exactly.

So he would say that in the legend. So he'd be like, oh, you know, middle-aged men, like you, sir. And he wouldn't know where he... That was memory. He had to hope that that person was still sitting there. That was the same with me saying the scumbags were up there. Yes. Hey, Torontonians.

Recycling is more than a routine. It's a vital responsibility. By recycling properly, you help conserve resources, reduce energy use in greenhouse gas emissions, and protect the environment. Toronto's Blue Bin Recycling Program ensures the majority of the right items are recovered and transformed into new products. Recycling right is important and impactful. Let's work together and make a difference.

Because small actions lead to big change. For more tips on recycling, visit toronto.ca slash recycle right. Stop the podcast. Stop the podcast. Hi everybody, we are sponsored today by Express VPN. That's right. Hey Anna, we're off on our Australian tour as of tomorrow going to Heathrow. Can I ask your luggage, do you have a good lock on it?

I sure do Dan, an amazing lock and that is because I don't want my stuff getting nicked. And similarly if you have a VPN, which I reckon is where you're going with this, that's like having a lock on your internet activity. Yeah exactly, you don't want the weird behind the scenes fingers of the people who are in the dark web taking all your information. You want to make sure that you're nicely secured and that's what ExpressVPN can give you when you're online. Yes, it re-roots 100% of your traffic through secure encrypted servers so your internet

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My fact this week is that the president of Slovenia's previous job was to stop people naming cakes after Melania Trump. Right. To show as you can. How was this kind of on a one-on-one basis? As in, did she wait until someone had named a cake after Melania Trump and then tell them to stop, or did she just tell people, don't do that, if you were thinking about it? It was sort of the latter, really. She said, you know, to the population of Slovenia,

if you are thinking about doing this. But it was based on the fact that a lot of people already were. I think it wasn't so much people in their kitchen making a cake and going, I shall name the Melania, as companies selling cakes and going, this is a Melania cake. No, she had spies in every home, James.

Shall I say why she wanted to do this? Absolutely, yeah. Otherwise, it's very confusing, but she was a lawyer and it's a woman called Natasha Peirce Mussar and before she became president, she did a PhD in law and immediately founded her own law firm in 2016, which was Peirce Mussar and Partners and Melania Trump immediately hired her

because this is around about the time, I don't know if you remember, when Donald Trump was becoming President of America, Melania was getting a lot more attention and the people of Slovenia, the bakers of Slovenia, were capitalizing on it and naming all sorts of stuff after her. And so Melania said to Pitts Moussa,

look, can you send a press release out to all these cake makers saying stop naming the cakes? There was a lot of stuff. There was honey from Melania's home garden. There was the Melania breakfast pudding. Sounds amazing, a breakfast pudding. There was a local salami named First Lady after her. Right.

My favorite one was a pancake maker who created a Melania Trump themed pancake. And when he was asked by reporters if he was worried about copyright infringement, he said, no, I'm not worried about copyright infringement. I don't really know what copyright infringement. He said, no, I'm not worried about copyright infringement. I don't really know what copyright infringement is. So I shall not worry about it. That's very funny. Yeah, there was an underwear line, some high-heeled shoes. But also, Ljubljana named the Christmas tree Melania.

And the journalists asked if they're going to make them change that name, and they said, no, we have nothing against the Christmas tree named Melania because this has nothing to do with commercial purposes. So they're just trying to stop people from making money off the back of her, which I think is fair enough. Yeah, not criticising. Absolutely fair enough. She did a good job.

You'll not find a single thing in Slovenia named after Melania Trump anymore. But yeah, it was interesting. And she's an interesting woman. She had lots of jobs. She was a TV presenter Pits Mozart Oh, yeah, and came a lawyer and she was also the lawyer who when everyone was saying that Melania had been an escort before she met Trump. She was one who shut all those down as well All right. Okay, right. Yeah, I found something just I know we'll come back to Slovenian politics in a moment, but please There is this is interesting an orchid named after Melania Trump

Made by a guy in America called Arthur Chadwick. Okay, I'd never heard of him before he's an orchid breeder And you can kind of experiment with orchids you can make your own new variants and you know There's there's a lot of kind of craft and science behind it and every single election Arthur Chadwick makes two new orchids and he names them after the two potential first ladies. Wow. So there is a Michelle Obama orchid. Is there a Bill Clinton one? Yes, because he keeps a reject orchid pile.

Oh, he doesn't just stomp them down when they lose. No, he doesn't, no. And because some of them are beautiful. Yeah, so if Hillary Clinton had won that election, then Bill Clinton would have, that orchid would have been sort of made public. But as it is, it's just sort of festering in his greenhouse. And he's really sad about that because he says,

the Anne Romney is a real stunner in a definitely not creepy tone of voice like that. Yeah, so there is just this huge pile of orchids that are either the winners or the others. That's interesting. Why does he not just release them all if he's invented a new plant? I don't know. That's pretty incredible. Yeah. But yeah, weird things that you can trademark. Cakes do get trademarked, I wouldn't say all the time, but relatively often, I would say. There was in 2012 a local baker called Mary's Cakes and Pastries in Alabama received a cease and desist letter from the University of Alabama for using their A. And turns out the university

trademarked the letter A. What? What was it? Was it a particular style of letter A? It was a style of A, yes. As in like a font or? It was a font that they'd created, yeah. Wow.

But I think her argument was they get eaten really quickly if they're good enough cakes. So that A is not going to be sitting there for ages. That doesn't work. If I make a Mars bar and I say, well, it's really tasty, so people will eat it straight away. Yeah. So it doesn't matter. See, this is why I'm not a lawyer.

You're absolutely right. It doesn't work as a defense at all, does it? Have you heard about the illegal bakeries of Florence? No. These are great. These are sort of underground late night bakeries in Florence because it's not allowed to sell pastries directly to the public if you're a baker. What?

I know, I know. But the city has a kind of pastry underworld. Can you, I just feel like we need to revisit. Do we know why? Is this just a Florentine mystery? You can't... It must be that the people who own the shops have their own unions and stuff, right? There's probably some complicated reason which I didn't bother researching but you're absolutely right. I'm sorry But just if we take that as red Yeah, yeah, I'm likely sounding thing that if you're a baking you're not allowed to sell bread to the public whatever

But at night you knock on a door you go down an alley you do it in the reverse order you Come and find me! You go down the alley, you knock on the door, you get a coin, you get a euro out, and you pass it through the window into the wizened hand of the knight Florentine Baker, and you take whatever you're given, right? So they'll give you something. Oh, really? Yeah.

A mini cake, a piece of bread, probably one of those things. And if you're loud or drunk, they serve nobody. They ban the whole queue. They just say, right, go away. I'm not interested. They shell out shop for half an hour. That was like when one person in class at school was a dick in class and you all got detention. That's it. That's what happens in the late night Florence bakeries.

I love Andy. I've got to say, I love this new method of you making a fact even more interesting. By entering Mr. Zuzin into it, you put a coin through a door that's just by bread. Just buying something, Andy, isn't it? That's Tesco. No. No, no. It's not far off.

You put the coin in a slit and it gives you a trolley. And you take the trolley, uns and shackle it from its prison. Free it. Free the wobbly beast. And that's disgusting that I just say free the wobbly beast. You get kicked out of Tesco if you do that. No, I'll tell them. I've been getting away with that for about four months and now you've rubbed me completely. We're going to have to find facts now. Anyway, sorry. This actually is so similar to something I was researching for the Drury Lane fact.

What's the one thing you associate with Drury Lane? The muffin man. The muffin man. The muffin man. And I was looking it up because I just suddenly thought, what the fuck is a muffin man? And in the early 1800s, and he was disappearing by the 1830s because people could afford to make their own muffins,

he was someone who walked down the street ringing a bell, and everyone knew the Muffin Man's bell, and children flocked to the door, begged their parents to be let out, just like an ice cream van. So you knew the Muffin Man's bell when he came. I have to tell you a moment that happened at home the other day. Oh, God. I was at home with my son Ted, he's four,

and out of nowhere, I was just sitting on the couch, and I went, do you know the Muffin Man? And he went, you know the Muffin Man? And I was like, yeah. And he meant the song. He had no idea that I knew the song. And I was like, I do know the Muffin Man. And he went, the Muffin Man? And it was like a fucking comedy sketch,

but it was the sweetest thing I've ever experienced. You know the Muffin Man? Beautiful. Dan, you know those quite annoying podcasts where parents wang on about their kids that no one cares about? You mean the most successful podcast in the UK parenting? Hell yeah, I do. Maybe start one of those. I'm just trying to bring in that crowd.

Let's bring things back to edible underwear. Oh, okay. Do you know... Any underwear is edible if you are determined and patient? They were invented by David Sanderson and Lee Brady who were drunk and stoned and discussing the phrase eat my shorts And they thought let's make some edible underwear which they made with licorice And they tried to get a trademark. The trademark was candy pants. But the US Patent Office wouldn't give them a trademark

with the explanation that the words candy and pants were mutually exclusive. Oh, wow. They were saying, look, we proved it wrong. Yeah, but they were saying there is no way you can have candy pants, so we're not going to let you trademark it. That's amazing.

They're not still made of licorice, are they? No, they're not. Those ones got hot and sweaty and fell apart Which is quite sexy, I suppose But they guys know you want something sensible and durable for those long nights Sensible durable and edible. I'll have mine made of thick thick pastry, please That will be one year made of thick, thick pastry, please. That'll be one euro. If you name your child after a copyrighted character, you can get in trouble over it.

So who's a copyrighted character? Like Dennis the Menace, say. Perfect. Hamburglar. These are names that you wouldn't necessarily give to your children I guess exactly and there was a there was a problem recently very recently the home office in the UK normally a benevolent and understanding organization They Denied a seven-year-old boy a passport when his family applied for it on his behalf because he was named Loki

Skywalker Mowbray and they said Skywalker is copyrighted. That's interesting. I know and this happened again They just gave a fucking passport to Paddington bear. I know I know Yeah, but he is This happened again there was a child with the name Khaleesi, who's a Game of Thrones character, and they were also turned down. They were told, no, you're going to need a letter

from Warner Brothers to get your child a passport. Really? The fact is that Warner Brothers have trademarked the name Khaleesi for goods and services, not for people. So it is an error. They will then turn 18 and set up the Khaleesi edible underwear company, and then they say, well, it's my name. I'm allowed to do it.

I don't know if the Home Office thinks in that kind of strategic manner. I think it was just a flub. I think you are allowed to call your child Skywalker. James, you mentioned the US Patent Office, and I discovered in the course of this research that the US Patent Office hadn't trademarked itself until three years ago. No! Yeah, it's been around since 1802, office hadn't trademarked itself until three years ago. No. Yeah.

It's been around since 1802. And it was having a serious problem, because scammers kept on pretending to be the US patent office. And they'd call you up, and they'd say, hey, you need to trademark this. Pay us 100 quid, and we'll do it for you. And the US patent office was like, oh, what are we going to do?

And a spokesperson said, we tried all sorts of things to try to protect people and eventually we stumbled upon The good idea of registering ourselves with a US patent office It is tricky because I think there are cases where it's clearly, you know You don't want someone if you're Melania Trump You don't someone print literally putting your face on a cake that they've made and then flogging money Okay, just see what you think of this example. This is a guy in 1990. He filed a trademark for stealth condoms. Okay? Stealth condoms?

And the catch line was? Oh, hang on. Surprise her. No. They'll never see you coming. Right? That's good. Okay.

Jesus. Good. Now, Northrop, who made the stealth bomber, plain, That's good. Okay now Jesus good Now Northrop who made the stealth bomber plane yeah claimed this is damaging to our trademark And it infringes our rights now. Okay. So whose side are you on at the moment? I am on the condom side. Okay, I think what if they came in packages shaped like the stealth bomber plane Now I think I'm on the Bomber's side. Yeah, and his business voicemail said howdy This is John me and the rest of the stealth test pilots are out right now Yeah, there are good people on both sides It's tricky. Yeah, it's very tricky speaking of good people on both sides Cafe press which makes t-shirts or sells t-shirts,

they took down a t-shirt that someone had designed that called Donald Trump a Cheeto-faced shit-gibbon. And they said that they took it down because it violates Frito-Lay's trademark of Cheeto. And they suggested maybe instead you could call him a cheese puff-faced chicken. Wow. It is time for fact number three, and that is James. Okay, my fact this week is that Tower Hamlets in London has by far the most 105-year-olds in the country. And by far the few 105 year olds in the country.

And by far the fewest 90 year olds. Riddle me that. How is that possible? Well, this is from a recent study by Saul Justin Newman at Oxford University and it's called, Super Centenarian and Remarkable Age Records exhibit patterns indicative of clerical errors and pension fraud.

Hey. Killer title. And he basically says that while most people say that longevity is due to eating lots of vegetables and your genetics and stuff like that, in actual fact, it tends to be people pretending they're old. It's so good, this. It's so good. It's amazing. There's all this stuff about blue zones. Has anyone heard of that? There's weird bits around the world

where there's an island off the coast of Japan, there's a bit of Italy, there are just various zones where people seem to live to incredible ages. For decades people have been studying the diets of these places and the social customs and everything. And it turns out what they all have in common is People's birth certificates have gone missing at some point Apparently the state introduction of birth certificates is associated with a 69% fall in the number of people over 100

It's amazing the Japanese government review in 2010 found that 82% of Japanese people over the age of 100 were dead just There and then this guy Hamlets is it? Oh, yeah, I'm a bleat. It's well a I am confused about how it can be not many 90 year olds But presumably I think there's a correlation between How wealthy or not an area is and this right the incentive for the incentive for pension fraud is bigger. It is that, and it's also, there's lots of different things basically, but it's the 90 year olds,

a lot of them have taken over the lives of people from the previous generation. So maybe your parents die and they're about to get their pension and you decide, well, I'm going to pretend that I'm 65 years old and I'm going to get the pension instead, that kind of thing. We should quickly say for overseas listeners,

so Tower Hamlets, Bit of London, which is kind of a multiple number of names that you might recognise. So if you've ever been to the Tower of London, that will be in Tower Hamlets. Bo is in Tower Hamlets. Bethnal Green. Wow, okay. How old are you guys? It's so creepy when you ask that to fans, Dan.

These days, after what's happened in the BBC, you have to ask. How old are you guys? It's so creepy when you ask that to fans, Dan. These days, after what's happened in the BBC, you have to ask. Yeah, it's like Tower Hamlets, the name comes from... It was like the little villages that were around the Tower of London. Like Brick Lane is in Tower Hamlets, Whitechapel is, all that kind of stuff. Can I give you guys a bit of the maths about how this... Yeah. How people who are fibbing or wrong tend to dominate the stats? Okay, just okay Let's say right now. I gave myself ten years. Okay, I declared I was in my late 40s rather than in my late 30s

Okay, I am likely to have a better lifestyle What I feel like they didn't believe you and that's really insulting. Yeah I'm 37. I'm practically in my early 30s. But if I did that, I would have a better lifespan, right? Literally because I'm younger than my declared age. So over time, the people who have aged themselves up, like I have, they are a bigger proportion of that population. And by the time I'm 90, but I'm claiming I'm 100,

it's mostly people like me. So one in a thousand people who live to 100 then live to 110. And if only one in a thousand people are committing fraud, they will be more common than real super centenarians. Yeah. So even if the fraud is very, very unusual, it just becomes more obvious

because there's less people around. Right. So if you meet a 110-year-old, it's likely they're a liar. Really? Basically. I believe so. This guy, this person, Saul Justin Newman, he basically said, if it turned out that 70% of the galaxies that we thought existed didn't exist, or 70% of the people in the UK that

we said existed didn't exist, there'd be a massive scandal. But the thing is, we all kind of want to believe that people live to old age, and actually what's the damage? Do you know what I mean? Well, the damage is that we've all force fed ourselves olive oil and nuts for the last 10 years. And made friends with each other, yeah.

Or that's the thing. So my grandmother, sorry, my great-grandmother, she lived to 103. Bullshit. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

She was 65, my great-grandmother. I had a conversation with her before she passed away, and after. That's the kind of guy I am. Love a séance. So I said to her, what's the secret to your long life? And she said, milk. And that was her answer. And then she said, and happiness.

And it was a nice thing. And I just did a random Google of claims they live to this age because of, and the things that come up. So one person said, being single is why they live to their age. Another said, regularly drinking is why they live to their age. Another said, regularly drinking the beer Cors Light, which is an American drink.

Someone else said, luck and fish and chips. Adding that in. One person said, giving up cigarettes. That was a 117-year-old who decided to quit at that age and ended up living to 122. So there's something in that. And then the oldest Briton in history, Henry Allingham, said, a bunch of stuff, but mainly the wild, wild women. That was his thing.

So there's no consensus. It's almost like when you've got a sample size of one, you can't draw a reliable conclusion, isn't it? I think the luck is quite a good one. It's quite a likely one, really. Everyone says it's like genetics or this or whatever. There's a guy called Professor David Gems at University College London, and he

looks after nematode worms. And these nematode worms are all genetically identical to each other. They all live in exactly the same place. They all should be living exactly the same amount of time. But some of them die of old age at about 10 days, and some of them die at old age about 30 days. Wow.

And it's just like, you can't tell which one it's going to be. It's just kind of lucky. Yes. It's strange. Well, but they do say making friends. Do some of them club together and befriend each other? The worms? Yeah.

Sure. I feel like that's the only variable you can change under those conditions. The friends, they all go outside and smoke together. So that's nice. There's something to do They do say that their friendship thing is true There was a there was a town called Rosetto in Pennsylvania wasn't there where everyone there was very they were kind of closely related There were just a few families. They had a lot of social cohesion, and they had a very, very high lifespan. But then as soon as basically they let the foreigners in

from other towns and other cities, suddenly they regressed to the national average. So that's a good reason to be xenophobic. Yeah, nice. With that kind of book-cast. Yeah, exactly. You know where Jeanne Calment? Oh yeah, so she's the French woman, right?

The oldest person ever. We spoke about woman, right? The oldest person ever? We spoke about her, right? The claim is a bit dodgy. She's, I think, the only person who's ever lived to 122, supposedly. So there was a piece about her in The New Scientist, or rather it was about human skin, which is an interesting thing. And the piece began, on her 120th birthday,

Jeanne Calment, generally regarded as the oldest person ever to have lived, proved she still had her wits about her. I've only got one wrinkle she wisecracked, and I'm sitting on it. Funny. Wait, wait, wait. Funny, but untrue. The French woman was by then extremely wrinkly, with deep wrinkles and discolored skin.

But they were all butt cracks all over her body. This is the theory that wrinkle, it's not aging that makes you wrinkled, it's wrinkles that make you age. So does that mean if you have Botox you can live forever? Potentially. Wow. And our new sponsor, sorry I should have said this in the break, no it's, there's a theory that as skin ages it releases chemicals around your body that could kind of drive and accelerate

the aging of other organs. So you know, kind of inflammatory proteins. So you know, that's the theory. It's not. On Madame Calmont, just very quickly on her, there's a book by Nicolai, Zach and Philip Gibbs, which goes through all of the things that her friends and family have said and debunks everything that they've said according to them. The final line says that she's called Madame Kalmont. And in French, the phrase Madame Kael-Mont means Madame, she is lying.

So if that's not evidence, I don't know what is. Yeah. Wow. That's huge. Um, there was a, I just want to say it. Not all of these people are deliberate liars. One of the things that Saul Newman pointed out, and I think he's won an Ig Nobel Prize for his research.

He is amazing that he's done this. He's kind of exploding this myth. And he pointed out that a lot of people just don't remember their age. And I suppose that felt a tiny bit true. So in polling, he was saying that in big polling samples, when you ask people their age and then you cross-check it with what you know is their age, often it's wrong. And I actually ended up on Mumsnet, one of my favorite sources, and the woman at the

top said, I regularly have to Google how old am I and put in my date of birth to work it out. Apparently I'm 50. And then this woman said, I remember loads of phone numbers, postcodes, national insurance numbers for my entire family, all my car details, my government gateway number, all login codes ever, including random number strings, but I can't remember how old my children, husband or myself are.

And then loads of people agreed with her. That's so funny. Which I think is quite odd. Because I think all of those other numbers always stay the same. Like your government gateway number is always the same, your NI number's always the same, but your bloody age keeps going bloody up.

I lose my bank card every six months, so it actually changes more often than my age. If you get to be lucky enough to get very old, one of the things that you need to defeat is falling. That's the big thing, right? So there's a lot of technology at the moment where it's kind of like in Avatar, when they get into those machines and they walk around it keeps balance like an exoskeleton Like an exoskeleton and make sure that you don't fall out. We're going this way Someone else is going the other way and there's a system that they're trying to wait with

destabilizing babies There's a guy those little guys that I fall over often enough for my liking there's a guy... Those little guys, they don't fall over often enough for my liking. There's a guy called Clive Pie. He brings people in and the idea is to make you understand how tripping can happen quite easily. I'm going to just shove you. And the idea is that if you can understand how balance works, rather than needing a giant exoskeleton, then maybe we could all be living till 150. Are they looking for volunteers to do the shoving and pushing?

Because I'm so available. You want to shove old people? In a controlled environment? I sound bad when you say it like that, but yeah, I think I do. So it's a tough job, but someone has to do it, Anna. Yes, exactly. Someone has to do it. OK.

The idea is that if they can write themselves, then when they're at home, they're ready for the moment when they trip on a carpet. What if they write themselves and then Anna pushes them even harder? Did you guys hear of John Taylor? John Taylor, no. He's buried in Scotland. He was born in 1633 and he lived to the age of 137.

He was a miner. At the start of this line. Oh. He worked in mines, lead mines and gold mines, only until the age of 117 when he found he was slowing down a bit and retired. Anyway, I just found a very good report on him on the Gerontology website,

which says, it says on his gravestone that he lived until the age of 137. People are now quite sure that he was, in fact, actually 133. Hey Torontonians. Recycling is more than a routine, it's a vital responsibility. By recycling properly, you help conserve resources, reduce energy use and greenhouse gas emissions, and protect the environment.

Toronto's Blue Bin Recycling Program ensures the majority of the right items are recovered and transformed into new products. Recycling right is important and impactful. Let's work together and make a difference, because small actions lead to big change. For more tips on recycling, visit toronto.ca slash recycle right. Stop the podcast. Stop the podcast! Hey everyone, this week's episode of Fish is sponsored by Squarespace. Yes.

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to squarespace.com slash nstaaf. That stands for no such thing as a fish. To save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Okay, on with the podcast. On with the show. Okay, it is time for our final fact of the show. And that is my fact. My fact this week is that in 1979, the not terribly good club of Great Britain, which celebrated failure, had to depose its president for being

too successful at the job. So it was formed in 1977, and Stephen Pyle was the president, he was the founder, and basically it was a collection of people who really were incompetent at things and wanted to celebrate that fact. And so after a lot of meetings they put together this book, the book of heroic failures. Unfortunately the book became a best seller which meant that the president was a success and so he had to leave his role as the company head. It got even worse because at the back of the book was an application form that meant you could join the club itself.

And over 20,000 people applied, which was far too many, meaning the club was way too successful so they had to shut the club down entirely as well. It's so good. I have a little exciting thing to say. Actually, earlier today, I rang Stephen Pyle, this guy, author of one of the funniest books ever written. This is huge. This is like speaking to God in QI circles. He's amazing.

So initially, I didn't get through, because he'd sent me the wrong phone number. Yes! And after several hours of trying to get through to him I eventually got the right phone number and we spoke but I mean so good but he said he He never said he never this was his way of having parties He said I never held parties because I was never confident They would be a success of any sort so this club was a way of legislating for the fact everyone else had parties and I never

did and They had these meetings and they would have... They had a salon des incompetent, where people would turn up and show off their particular area of failure. This is who they had at one of their first salons. I love this. They had, um, a not terribly good parachutist, an extremely petite girl, outlines some of the problems caused by being so light that when she jumps in breezy conditions, she invariably goes up

But by the time she lands the pilot has usually finished his tea and gone home That's like dozens of those so good and this so Andy's got sitting next to him on the table the hardback original Edition of it. It was reprinted in America, and when they did that, they forgot to include half of the introduction of the book. So the next edition they published in America had a literal physical paper that was an erratum that was longer than the introduction itself sitting inside the book.

Anything that went wrong was a positive. You said that he had these parties. When his book came out, I was looking at newspaper archives of the interviews and he said he was going to book the Royal Albert Hall for a festival of incompetence. But as far as I can see, it never happened. Apart from anything else, he tried to book it from a payphone, which kept eating his coins and cutting him off. But it was supposed to have the UK's only tone deaf rock group

and the worst animal trainer in the country with his elephant, Sheba. I mean, who doesn't want to see that? But yeah, the book is amazing. I mean, you could just literally sit here for 50 minutes and read bits. My favorite one is the guy, Roger Morse, in 1993 who was mugged. The mugger took $20 out of his wallet, but as the mugger went to go away, Morse yelled, give me my wallet back! And the mugger was so confused, he gave him his wallet back, but he accidentally gave

him his own wallet, which contained $250. So good. The opening example in the original book is the least successful explorer. And it's a guy called Thomas Nuttall, 1786 to 1859, a pioneer botanist, who, as an explorer, his work was characterized by the fact that he was almost permanently lost. During his expedition in 1812, his colleagues frequently had to light beacons in the evening to help him find his way back to camp. One night, he completely failed to return and the search party was sent out.

As it approached him in the darkness, Nuttall assumed that it was aggressive locals and had to escape. They pursued him for three days through bush and river until he accidentally wandered back into camp. That's the kind of stuff. It's a real variety, right? It's great historic stories. And the woman who called the fire brigade to rescue her cat, which they did, but then immediately ran it over.

It's stuff like that. But one of the things that I got obsessed with, and I have to recommend everyone downloads it, it's a book called English as Shears Spoke. It's by a guy called Pedro Carolino. He, it was published in 1883 and it's an English to Portuguese phrase book. But Pedro Carolino did not speak English, nor did he have an English to Portuguese dictionary.

What he had was a French to Portuguese dictionary and a French to English dictionary. So he took Portuguese phrases, sent them through these two filters, and you have to read it. Every page is comedy gold. So it will have, you know, common things that you might say in conversation. The ears are too length. For to visit a sick, you might say, live me see your tongue. Have you pain to the heart? And then in response, you might say,

I felt some pain everywhere, body. Are you altered? Yes, I have thirsty often. And the whole book is like that. That's incredible. It's such a good book. So he does take it seriously. As in, he said that he thinks that the art of failure is a noble one, and it's much more interesting than success,

like way more interesting. And he also updates his own records. So he used to keep a record for the smallest live show audience, which was a pantomime which one person turned up to. Oh, no, he didn't! No, he's just kidding. The single audience member had to do both halves of that. He had to say both halves.

That's so funny. But then the record was broken by an Australian folk singer called Jean Melou, who hired Capital Theatre in Canberra to give a concert of his folk songs, which he did in front of an audience of zero. The show overran by 20 minutes due to on-course. That's super. So failure in general. You might say choking in sport.

You know, you're doing very well and then suddenly you choke and you end up losing. And choking is what happens when you overthink something. The best solution apparently is wine. That is reading the work of Dr. Jerry Wine, who came up with distraction theory. And in distraction theory, you kind of mutter to yourself or whistle to yourself or just do some kind of music in your head. And that will stop you overthinking. I'll just let you get on with the muscle memory. It's not like distraction if someone's running the hundred meters. You say, oh, what's that over there? And they run off course.

I think the hundred meters is not classically a place where you run 80 meters and forget how to run. Start crawling, run backwards. Are there sports where you get, is it called the Ips? The Ips, golf, the Ips for sure. We don't even like to say that word. Really? Is it like Macbeth?

Wow. Wow. Wow. We're all doomed. Hope you've had a nice life. Dune! Wow! Wow. Wow. We're all doomed. Hope you had a nice life. I found a great failure recently, which is there was a TV show in the Netherlands called Netherlands Worst Driver, and the winner was decided after one of the drivers ran over

the host of the show. And I've seen the footage, and it's intense. They just, it's all jokey, you get an inside of the car camera and then he just loses the plot, he crashes into the wall and you literally see a person fly. And they go over and see him like, you're okay. And then the rest of the show is the host doing his VTs from a hospital bed.

Going, my spine's okay, luckily. I think we found a winner. We do need to wrap up the show. Here's a failure from 2023. In Uganda, politicians tried to ban a festival that they described as an orgy of homosexuality, nudity and drugs akin to devil worship. They failed to ban it, and the description caused a huge increase in sales, including 5,000 foreigners who traveled to Uganda specifically for the event.

LAUGHTER Lovely. That is it. That is all of our facts. Thank you so much for listening. Drury Lane, you were awesome. That is it. That is all of our facts. Thank you so much for listening. Drury Lane, you were awesome. Thank you for having us. Thank you to the ghosts for having us.

And we will be back again next week with another episode. We'll see you then. Goodbye!