No Such Thing As A Fish - 583: No Such Thing As A Tuna Macchiato

Episode Date: May 15, 2025

Dan, Anna, Andy and Rosie Holt discuss apes, art, anecdotes and Ancient Rome. Visit nosuchthingasafish.com for news about live shows, merchandise and more episodes.  Join Club Fish for ad-free episodes and exclusive bonus content at apple.co/nosuchthingasafish or nosuchthingasafish.com/patreon

Hi everybody, before we start the show I just wanted to let you know I'm joined by a very exciting guest right now. It is a world acclaimed author, Andrew Hunter Murray. Hello Andrew. Hello! You've written a book out here. Yes, I've written a book. It's called A Beginner's Guide to Breaking and Entering. It's out in paperback now. Yes, I've actually read it and not even just because I'm friends with him because it's such a fun read and it's actually not a guide to how to break into a

house and burglit which is obviously what I was hoping for. It's even better than that. Tell us about it. Well it's about a young guy called Al who lives in lovely empty second homes when the real life owners are away. He doesn't break things, he doesn't steal things, he just makes his way in, lives in these gorgeous places and and then gets out again. And this book is the story of when he and his friends break into the wrong home on the wrong day, someone ends up dead, not his fault, and things just get more complicated from there. It's a caper. It is a plus, a little bit of satire on the housing market, which every good book needs. And obviously he joins up with a fun motley crew of fellow breakers and enterers. it really is such a fun book to read and i believe it's available in bookshops, is that right?

it's available in all bookshops and even better if you're an audio person it's in a two-for-one deal on audible. that and one of my other books the last day are both included in the current audible deal which is lasting a few more days where you can get two books for one credit. Do it, go, listen to the book and then read the book. Do both. It really is worth it. And speaking of guests we had a fantastic guest on today we had so much fun with her in the episode that you're about to hear it was the excellent comedian Rosie Holt who I'm sure many of you are familiar with and once you've listened to this if you're in the market for some very sharp skewering of what's going on in politics today you have to check out her podcast which is

called non-censored. on the other hand if what you fancy is a very witty satire on the last government then check out her book which is called why we were right so that is non-sense of the podcast or why we were right, the book. But for now, enjoy the show. Over 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 Hoburn. My name is Dan Schreiber. I am sitting here with Anna Tyshinsky, Andrew Hunter Murray and Rosie Holt. And once again, we have gathered around the microphones with our favorite facts from the last seven days. And in no particular order, here we go.

Starting with fact number one and that is Rosie. My fact this week is all the werewolves in the film Howling 2 are actually monkeys because the wrong costumes were delivered. So, so much fun, Paki. You said Howling 2, like every listener's gonna know. Everyone knows about the famous film Howling 2. I think somewhere Howling 2 was called the worst sequel of all time. Those people clearly never saw Howling 8. And you're a fan, right, Rosie? Sort of. I'm fascinated by it. So I don't wanna spoil too much for people

who are really excited about watching Howling 2, but it leaves off where Howling 1 finishes where, spoiler alert, the female lead turns into a werewolf and she is killed. And at the beginning of Howling 2, it's her funeral. And the best line ever is where Christopher Lee pops up, because why not? And he says, he says, I'm afraid your sister was a werewolf. And the guy goes, God damn it. That's my sister you're talking about.

And he says it at the funeral. He turns up at the funeral, no one knows who he is. He's just a weird guy. He stands at the back and then says that. And you can understand, we haven't led up to, like, did you know there are more things on earth than I dreamt of? You know, like, werewolves exist. As far as I can tell, this is fresh news. It's a cold open. I must say, because I think I might be the person on the planet who's watched Howling

2 most recently. I finished one hour ago and then I came straight directly here. And it's really good watching it with the knowledge of what happened with these costumes. It was a mix up. They were Planet of the Apes TV series. Yes, that's the costume story. So basically they were sent the costumes. The costumes were like when they opened the costumes it was actually from the Planet of the Apes TV show. And then good old Christopher

Lee saved the day because he said, this is what we're going to do, Philippe. That's the director. We're going to shoot a scene where we simply explain that werewolves go through three phases, a human phase, a monkey phase, and then a werewolf phase. And that will solve everything. And it did. And it did.

Yes. That's what they do. Yeah. Pretty much. So do they look like monkeys? They look exactly like monkeys. They look exactly like monkeys from Planet of the Apes. It's really confusing.

They have shot it all in the dark and then later on, once they got a werewolf head, they splice in lots of shots of a random werewolf head crossing the screen. It's terrific. It's so good. I mean, there's so much in this film. Yes.

And there's lots of great little facts. So the other thing about the costumes was there's a threesome film. Yes, and there's lots of great little facts. So the other thing about the costumes was there's a threesome scene where they're all werewolves and they're all having sexy fun. But if you probably remember, Andrew. I remember the scene very well. Yes, it's not a terribly, I mean, vigorous threesome.

They're sort of tentatively kind of stroking each other and growling, and it's because, so they'd had to be covered in hair for the costumes and this took, I think this took like eight hours. And then they found out that when you touched each other, the hair came off. So therefore they were having to not touch each other because they realized if they actually did an orgy while at film orgy all their costumes would fall off. Cause it wasn't a costume. It was them naked for eight hours with them putting little bits of hair on them.

Oh, was it them naked? Yeah, sorry, I didn't explain that very well. It would have made more sense to put them in the monkey costumes for this, but I guess they thought because they're sort of naked, it's still going to be sexy-ish. It's not quite as sexy as the monkey costume. It's the hairiest and most chaste threesome ever committed to film. It's a rare double award. Rosie, is this one of your favorite films or something?

It's not one of my favorite films, but I do have a real soft spot for it. It's genuinely so bad it's good. It is so bad it's good. After the first 10 minutes, I thought, I can't believe we're going to cover this in case someone watches it. And now I say watch it. Yeah, do you? The weird thing about Christopher Lee is that he's a good actor who's only done shit films with a few exceptions, obviously. Lord of the Rings, Man with the Golden Gun, The Wicker Man, one of the greatest horror films ever made. So he's done some good films, but he's done a lot of really bad films. I think the only reason he did this movie was because he realised he hadn't done a

werewolf movie. So he thought, okay, this is the one howling to. This is the one. The filming of this one sounds amazing because Christopher Lee, we must have mentioned before, is an amazing character. He had this great war pass where he worked for the SOE, the Special Operations Executive in the war, which was like the secret service under Churchill.

No one really knows what he did there because he was never allowed to talk about it. But it seems like the one person he confided in was the director of this film. It was called Philippe Maurer. Yeah, he was a Nazi hunter. Yes. But apparently they landed in Czechoslovakia,

which it was at the time, where it was being filmed. And they got to the airport and there was this huge crowd of people who were all cheering and waving and giving this hero's welcome. Hang on. Yeah, go on. Quick query. Go. He's a super secret war hero and Nazi hunter. and waving and giving his heroes welcome. Wait, hang on. Yeah, go on. Quick query.

Go. He's a super secret war hero and Nazi hunter, and yet he's so globally famous as a Nazi hunter that everyone in the Czech Republic knows who he is at the airport. He must have been like James Bond where he just didn't hide. I mean, is that totally plausible? No, no, there were elements of his war past that were known at that point, because it was the 80s by then, and basically it seemed to be widely accepted that as part of his spying war history he'd been involved in the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, who was the highest ranking

Nazi ever assassinated by the West. So he landed in Prague and he got this hero's welcome and the director was like, one do that's for one, Christopher Lee was like, I'm going to stop you there. It'll be for me. For my Nazi killing. I have seen a couple of stories saying, did he exaggerate his war record at all? And I haven't had the time to properly look into them and I just hope he didn't. I didn't want to be skeptical. If he got such a hero's welcome, surely he didn't exaggerate any of it.

Yeah, but he could have been... He also also globally favoured film star at the time. They might be showing any old stuff. I don't think that's relevant. I don't think that's to do with it. Checks are above that. But because it was filmed in Czechoslovakia, Christopher Lee and Sybil Danning, was it Sybil Danning? Yeah. Yeah, they both were getting followed the whole time while they were shooting by two creepy men who would sit in the corner when they ate in the restaurant in the evening as in like Iron Curtain spies?

Yes, Iron Curtain smiles Wow, Iron Curtain smiles Yeah, they did they were like they were making phone calls back home and they could hear like In the background just like men breathing and coughing as they were listening in on the conversations There weren't great spies were they that the Soviet Union had? No wonder it fell apart. If it didn't have it's shit together to stay quiet on a phone call. I think they're using the Christopher Lee, tell you I'm a Nazi murderer process. They don't care.

The lead actress is Sybil Danning, as you just said. There is a bit of the film, a slightly sexy bit, where she rips her shirt off. It's a very charged scene, you know. But she apparently had been asked to do this in lots of films because she was very attractive and she was a bit bored of it and she said, you know what, I think I'd like to do just one topless scene or even one topless shot entirely in this film. Is that okay? And the producer said, yeah, great, great, great. Sorry, she said I want to be limited to one.

Yes, just one. Yeah, she just wants to do it once, which happened. She then turns up to the premiere of the film where the credits, the closing sequence of the credits uses that shot a further 17 times for absolutely no reason. It just has on repeat like exposing her chest. Wow. Like a sort of sexy gift. If you give them in, they will take them off.

So Maura, the director, back to him for a second, he didn't know they were gonna do that to Denning, the actress. So he actually- Yeah, cause they were friends, weren't they? They were friends and he kind of at the end of the movie, they brought in some other people to do a final edit on it. And part of that edit was throwing in 17 shots of her topless during the credit sequence.

And he was really pissed off by that. So he then goes on, he says, I want to make Howling 3 because I want to, I want to fix the reputation of what this did. Because of that credit sequence? Well, he was just pissed off. The whole film, I think. You did a lot of rehab work on your career. I don't think the credit sequence is the main problem. It's problematic, but it's, oof. Yeah. So Howling 3 sounds amazing. Howling 3, Marsupials. This then is set in Australia.

Has no reoccurring characters. Has no plot that is connected to anything else. In it, the humans that are transformed into the Howling have pouches like Marsupials. Amazing. Yeah, it sounds pretty amazing. He generally just in praise of Mora, because he's an Aussie film director and I'd never heard of him But his list of movies is extraordinary. I'm really obsessed with a movie that he directed called Pterodactyl women from Beverly Hills. Wow. I know right so listen to the plot Paleontologist Dick Chandler discovers a dinosaur egg prompting an eccentric witch doctor named Salvador Dali

To put a curse on Chandler's wife Pixie, causing her to slowly transform into a pterodactyl. After Pixie lays an egg, Dick tracks down Salvador Dali and apologizes and the curse is lifted. Now Barry Humphreys is in this movie. It's like a proper movie. I can't wait to see that. Barry Humphreys. Barry Humphreys is in it. There's a bit where Christopher Lee says in Howling 2, right, there are some sort of king werewolves and queen werewolves, they cannot

be killed with silver. There's an oh no moment, oh no, what are we going to do? Then he just says they can be killed with titanium, which although it's slightly harder metal to get hold of, was very much easily available at the time. Like, it's stunning. Is that a copyright thing with brand Stoker's people? I have no idea. I read an interview with the director and he was really so enthused, because it got so panned and he's so enthusiastic about it. And everything he got asked, he'd go,

thank you for asking. And one of the things he said, which I liked, was in the poster, there's Sybil Danning, she's wearing these sunglasses which obviously appear in the movie. And that came about because he said that she came along and she had conjunctivitis and they were like, what? What were we doing? He was like, don't worry, you're a werewolf and werewolves can wear sunglasses indoors

if they want to. And that's where very influential in the movie industry. So if you think of the Lost Boys, the vampire movies and so on, they're all wearing glasses and according to numerous people, that was a direct influence. It suddenly was cool to do it. It's hard to imagine this film had any influence. I think it might have in the 80s, you know, Christopher Lee's in it. It's, it was a proper release. It's part of a massive franchise. Yeah. Um, I was just looking at monkey costumes. Oh, yeah. And the gorilla movies used to be a really big thing in the 20s and 30s. They were cultural preoccupation. I suppose they are now actually. King Kong, anything else? It's all leading up to King Kong. Basically they started with normal size gorillas and then they worked their way up to Kong.

But we still have loads of Kong stuff now and we're still having Planet of the Apes. So this is a permanent societal thing. But there was one guy called Charles Gamora who was known as the King of the Gorilla Men in the 20s and 30s, partly because he had his own suit. So any film that needed a gorilla, get Charles Gamora on set now. And he'd done a bit of like, he'd look, he'd seen how he was very

convincing in his suit. And he was the right sort of height. And he was, you know, he looked into the San Diego zoo and sort of observed them. And so he was, he was trying to do it properly. It was a great going method. Anyway, in 30 years, he was in 43 films, 39 of which involved him being a gorilla. Right. The others, he was in 43 films, 39 of which involved him being a gorilla. Right. The others, he played two aliens, one bear and one cannibal. Same suit with bit sewn onto it. Same suit. I don't know. It just sounds great. He's in one called the monster and the girl where a gorilla receives the brain of a man who is seeking revenge because he was wrongfully executed. Right. Yeah. The brain goes into the gorilla.

I mean, I really hope modern Hollywood is still using the, well, he's got a suit. Andy Serkis just has a great costume. That's how Danny Jr got Iron Man. Stop the podcast. Stop the podcast. Stop the podcast. Hey everyone, this week's episode of Fish is sponsored by ExpressVPN. Yes, ExpressVPN.

Dan, imagine you're a spy. Okay. You want to go incognito, but your incognito disguise is not good enough. And lots of people can tell straight away that you're a spy. Maybe you've got a hat that just says spy on it. Well, and my name that I've introduced myself as is incognito and that's a dead giveaway. Well, Dan incognito. That is a very labored metaphor to explain that if you're on incognito mode on your device, then that is not enough to hide your browsing history. All your online

activity is still 100% visible to a ton of third parties unless you use ExpressVPN. That's right. So ExpressVPN will allow you to take off that hat, get a new surname, and you will be able to browse the internet without anyone spotting that you're in the room. Absolutely. It reroutes 100% of your traffic through secure encrypted servers. So easy to use and it works on all devices, phones, laptops, tablets, all sorts of stuff. And it's rated number one by top tech reviewers like CNET and The Verge. Amazing. Okay, if you want to protect your privacy online today, you can do that by visiting

expressvpn.com slash phish. That's E-X-P-R-E-S-E-S-V-P-N dot com slash phish. And by using that, you can get yourself an extra four months for free. Absolutely. So we all use ExpressVPN because security online is very important to us And if you want to do it too, then go to express VPN comm slash fish and get an extra four months for free Okay on with the podcast Okay, it is time for fact number two and that is my fact. My fact this week is that the author Elizabeth Gaskell died in the middle of saying, when

I am dead, but only got as far as when. How do people know? This is really, this is really interesting. She we should just say very quickly before we get into it. This is Elizabeth Gaskell, Mrs. Gaskell, as she was often known. She was an English novelist. She wrote short stories. She was biographer, most famously having written a book about Charlotte Bronte. Maybe we'll get onto that. Although that's certainly not like, you know, she's most famously wrote brilliant works of fiction.

Yes, Mary Barton. Yes. She was one of our great Victorian. But at the time it was, she was the of our great Victorian. Yeah, but at the time it was she was most famous for writing. Her obituary basically said, Charlotte Bronte's biographer, dead. Yes. When? When exactly. So what happened was this is 1865.

She is 55 years old. She's at her home, which is a sort of secret home that she's purchased. Yeah, I feel like we'll go into that. I'm just leaving some little plot moments as we go along. So she's at her house, she's sitting with her daughters and suddenly she keels over and she dies, but she dies mid anecdote. And we know what happened because of a Reverend

called Reverend Hawks who recounted the story as was told to him by one of the daughters. So she was with her daughters and her son-in-law. She was telling a story and she says, the judge said when, and then that's when she passed away. Now she was telling an anecdote. Fortunately, one of the four people there had already heard this anecdote, presumably so many times that they knew exactly what was coming next.

And the line that was meant to come next was, the judge said, when I'm dead, Lady Crompton can visit Rome. A classic line. Everybody laughed. I think you can see where she was going in the conversation because a little bit of backstory is that Justice Crompton had just died. He was her son-in-law's dad and I think her son-in-law's present. So the guy she's talking about is the person who said, when I am dead. So I imagine she was going on to say, so now lucky lady Crompton can book her flight to Rome because you know, it was relevant. It's funny

because he is dead. So it's got a bit of gallows humour to it. So you've sort of solved the end of the anecdote. I think that's what's happened. Yeah, it's like Edwin Drew, it's finally been revealed. Thank God. How great though to sort of not be lost on that last word. Like we should all practice our final words with someone in confidence beforehand so that if we do go mid-sentence. I will be saying something I've already said loads of times already because I'm down to a limited stock of anecdotes now. Just people know my things. Do you think it was a bit of a letdown though, when they said, well, she started by saying, well, and then someone went, no, no, actually she's told that several times before. Bit of a bore actually, Lizzie. Always whanging about the same stuff. That's probably why

all people repeat anecdotes all the time, isn't it? Just to make sure that once they're saying their anecdote, that we know where they were going with it. Very wise. Yeah. She's, has anyone read? where they were going with it. Very wise. Yeah, that's very wise. Has anyone read this? I've read Mary Barton, thank you. I've read North and South. Thank you.

I think I've read North and South, or Mary Barton. Or have you just seen the TV series? No, I'm gonna be a little bit heretical. I don't think she's all that. She's good, they're good novels, but they're very Victorian, they're a bit, they haven't aged brilliantly. I think they really have. I think she's much more radical than people.

Yes, because also Mary Barton, it's a sort of a working class character and it's very much in that life which was, you know, not so much the dumb thing back then. I completely agree. I think like her and Dickens are two people who really engaged with people who were having a shit old time in life, more than almost any other Victorian novelist, you know, because they're all about what factory workers, the strife between bosses and laborers. Not into that though, are you Andy? I like reading about aristocrats with minor social problems. That's my thing. Because she did write about that stuff. It was really controversial, wasn't it?

And in her community as well, particularly where she was representing these characters, because I believe I actually haven't read any of her stuff. But it sounds as if the other writers of the time who were in the same field, so Bronte, a friend of hers, Austin, they would write about a period slightly gone, whereas she was writing in the present. And then that so that was a bit more controversial. And there's a few books. She had one book called Ruth, which was very controversial and they actually burnt copies in her local church. Yes. Members of her own church. Yeah. Why did they do that? Because it was about a fallen woman. Oh, yes. It has a freesome scene. That's what fallen women do.

Gaskell wasn't allowed into her husband's library. He had to get books out for her. It's very weird. Really? Local library, not like his personal. Exactly. No, she was allowed the run of the house at home, but no, he was a member of the library. She wasn't allowed in his library like Bluebeard. What's that? You know the tale of Bluebeard where he marries this young woman and he says, you can

go in any room you like except for this one. You're talking about beauty and the beast. No, I'm not talking about Bluebeard. Are you talking about the pirate? No, everybody. No, it's a very famous tale that none of you've heard of. I know what's in the room, but you say it, you say it. What's in the room? So she finally, she, you know, cause he keeps going away. So she's wandering around all these rooms and she gets, she gets impatient. She goes, I just want to know what's in the mystery room. So she uses the skeleton key. I think it's the skeleton key. Maybe I've bellished that. And she opens it and inside it, all the dead bodies of his previous wives. Don't draw attention to it. You idiot man. But then he comes back and he goes,

oh dear, looks like I'm going to have to kill you too, because you opened another notch in the skeleton key. Yes. And the other notch in the skeleton key. Yes. It's a funny old story, isn't it? Where is it from? Is it like, is it an author we know? Is it like almost like a folk tale? It's very old. It's a very old tale. That. Okay. Yeah. That wasn't the case in Gaskell's husband's library as far as I know. Well, you don't know because no one went in there. That's true. But the thing about her, I think, which kind of annoys people, bores them, is that she actually was really normal. And the thing that's quite nice about her is that she just basically had a really happy life.

She was quite conventional in how she lived. You know, she married this vicar. Wait, or was she? Or what? Do you know the hidden history of her orgies? Her werewolves? Well, wasn't there a rumor going around when she died that she and her husband were separated and that's why she was in the separate house? Well, I do think that that's got weight. so I'm glad other people who aren't gossiped like me have said it. Because, yes.

If I'm not a gossip, I only bring the fact. You're an intellectual. So, separate house. She bought her own house. The house she dies in. Yes. Without telling her husband. And the story is that it was a surprise for her husband, like a retirement home.

Oh, we're going to move to the country, this lovely mansion, and she was in the house with all her daughters saying, isn't daddy going to be delighted. So all the children are there as well. Yes all the kids are there. Which is why slightly the story suggests that that is what was going on. But is he at home at the breakfast table at house? Why is it so quiet this morning isn't it? God they're sleeping in today. I bet they were separated. Do you reckon? Yeah I think so. Or it was a secret death house. Sorry. She thought my time is up. I like how animals like to go and, you know, die under a log or something. She thought I'm going to die in a house that's not my own. It's a huge faff

to buy a full house, isn't it? Yeah, but houses are cheaper then. I think it was probably easier to do. A few years ago, a university got a collection of letters that were written by someone who was friends with Elizabeth Gaskell and they were having correspondence and in it Gaskell predicted her death that year. She said to her, I'm not going to make it to the end of the year. So I better buy a house. Yeah, but perhaps she didn't know that she was doing so well. She could sense it. There is an argument in Gaskell's life. So the house, the secret house that she bought was in Alton in Hampshire, which is where Jane Austin lived for the last years of her life.

And Alton Towers? Is that there? No, it's in a completely different place. It's hundreds of miles away. Um, but Gaskell grew up in Stratford uponupon-Avon, home of... Shakespeare. So is this a ley line? You guys weren't quick enough.

So is this an argument for ley lines in terms of literary creativity? Probably. There's certainly something going on, isn't there? Certainly, I think. Do you know she gave us the word Squiffy to mean drunk? Really? Oh, brilliant! I know, I love that fact. I love the sound of her, I have to say. As in when you read about her social life, there is this comparison, I think with Dickens, where Dickens was partying all the time. He

was everywhere. He went around the world. That's exactly what Gaskell did in a time where it felt like that would have been much harder. She was a mother of how many children did she have in total? I think she was pregnant seven times. A couple of the children didn't live. Okay, right. Five daughters and one son, yes. Which is quite a lot. That is, yeah.

She was writing, she wrote quite a few novels, a lot of short stories, a biography. She traveled the world. She was constantly said to be dancing half the night at parties. She was a real socialite. I think she sounds really fun. I think you would have gotten along with her very well. Yeah, it feels like it. She was a real butterfly.

She even wrote one of her novels while she was staying with Florence Nightingale. Like she just touches all these little elements of the past, which I really love. She sounds like someone who deserves to have been let in the library. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know though. I know. It's a slippery slope, isn't it? I don't think she should have been allowed in that library. You let them in libraries one day, you know, just going there willy nilly. Yeah, exactly. Feeling squiffy. I have another theory about her that I think we should spread this gossip. Her brother John, do you read about him? He was about seven years older than her, so she had her

mum die when she was one and she was sent to live with an aunt who she loved and she lived in this very female dominated community. It was all women. But she did have this older brother who still lived with her dad and they wrote to each other a lot and he was really fond of her. And then he joined the Merchant Navy and they kept writing to each other and then he just vanishes and everyone says he was either abducted by pirates in India or his ship sank. But she, after writing for years, she's 17. she after writing of the year she's 17. Bluebeard. Yes kidnapped. Blackbeard brothers or friends they must know each other. They're naughty cousins. So yeah suspicious and she never mentioned it she never mentioned him to her kids except to say oh i don't

really remember him. Really? But of course you'd remember him. Too painful or? Well i don't know. What's your theory? You seem to be driving at something here Anna. I think. Is he in the library? His corpse was on the shelves. I think maybe he ran away with like an Indian lady and told only her and she could never tell anyone. and told only her and she could never tell anyone. That's a good theory. Yeah, I like that. Just on people who wrote anonymously, because Gaskell was always by a lady, would appear on her title pages. I think she was Mrs. Gaskell later in her career, but I didn't really realize how common this was.

So between 1750 and 1790, 80% of all novels did not list an author on the title page. Male and female writers, you know, it just wasn't a thing for women. It was because it was, you know, it was a bit risky to be writing a novel. It was too similar to prostitution, which I mean, that's genuinely the theory I read. But by a lady was a good phrase to use because it showed that the, the author was someone of a decent class, you know, so Jane Austen was by a lady and then later on by the same lady who brought you know, so Jane Austen was by a lady and then

later on by the same lady who brought you sense and sensibility. That was genuinely that. And she never saw her own name on the title page, Jane Austen, which is kind of tragic. Yeah, it's sad. Do you think other books at the time were written by a different lady? Not that lady. I can't believe it's not a lady. Yeah. Um, but all of it, like Tristan Shandy, Byron stuff, Jonathan Swift, it's all anonymous. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So the novel was quite new then, wasn't it? Maybe it was still a bit like, Oh, this might

not go down very well in history. It was risque. Definitely. And it was, it was quite fun as well. So Jonathan Swift, he sent his stuff to a publisher via someone else. So there was no way of tracing it back to him. Oh, really? Yeah to him. And then when the printer said, look, who is the author of Gulliver's Travels? Swift and his friend Alexander Pope, they pretended, I don't know who wrote this. They would even write letters to each other privately saying, who wrote this Gulliver's Travels book? Between themselves.

It's so funny. It was a bit of a game. But was there a royalty thing that they would still have in place? Yeah, I guess you could be paid anonymously quite easily at the time. There's just one person who's called like Anna Lady who's just funneling all the money accidentally sent her. Gaskell obviously gave all her money to her husband at first, in fact I think it went to him automatically because married women weren't allowed to earn money. You really don't approve of this husband, I tell you. He went into his library.

Apparently it was very affectionate. I was listening to a... And that's why she bought a secret house. I think it was a little joke. He was the one who suggested she write to get over the death of her one year old son who very sadly died. And he said, as to help you with grieving, write a novel, probably not suspecting she was gonna become a world famous novelist. And yes, when she got paid, it went straight to him

and he sort of jokily pocketed it saying, well, you know, women shouldn't be earning or in control of the purse strings, should they? I'll give you some pocket money. But I think it was all meant- What's he saying there? All meant in jest. It was all meant in jest.

It was a different time. It's so hard to know when it's written, isn't it? You didn't know the tone. Yeah, it's really... They needed more emojis, I think. How much of history would be different if emojis existed? I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat. Winky vixen. Okay, it is time for fact number three and that is Anna. My fact this week is that one of Ovid's tips for seducing a woman you fancied was to pretend you'd seen dust on her cleavage and then go to brush it off. It's a great line isn't it? Oh you've got a very dusty cleavage. It's what every woman wants to hear. And when you say go to brush it off, follow through and actually brush it off?

Follow through, yes. So these were his exact words. Go to and then complete the brush. Complete. Do you think it's like an updated thing of the, no sorry, a down-dated thing? Because now it's if you've got an eyelash, oh you've got an eyelash on your cheek, isn't it? And then the man like removes the eyelash. You know this man, come on. I have a pocket full of eyelashes that I try and subtly sprinkle onto people's cheeks.

Yeah, it's true. Absolute classic. Absolute classic. Has that tried on you? Does it work? Oh, you've got an eyelash on your... And then they lift it off your face. What harm is that eyelash doing there?

And then they go and make a wish. So maybe it's the same. It was like you've got some dust on your cleavage. And then they hold it and go and make a wish. Blow on it like a dandelion. I think this book of obvious might contain a lot of things that you guys could try out and I'd love to hear the results. So this is a book called Ours Amatoria and Ovid was a Roman writer. He wrote this in year two AD. And that's got in early.

Box fresh. Got in early. So a couple of millennia ago, his exact words were, as often happens, if per chance a little dust should fall on the bosom of the fair it must be brushed off with your fingers and if there should be no dust still brush off that none. It would work for me. I'd like it. He has so much good stuff in there. Oh he also said let it be your object to please the husband of the fair one that you fancy. I suppose we're assuming.

Oh, this is naughty. Because once made a friend, he will be more serviceable for your designs. So I think, you know, you'll get invitations to the house a little bit more. Not like come in and have a hairy threesome. No, he didn't specify that. He doesn't specify no bad gorilla costumes and no threesomes. I mean he was a very risque writer at the time. He was, what's the word, he was not evicted, he was deported.

Yeah. He was banned, exiled. Exiled, yeah. Exiled to the worst place in the world at the time, he claimed. It seems to have been a completely normal city in modern day Romania, but compared with Rome, I guess it was rubbish. And for the last 10 years of his life, he spent there writing the Tristii, which were basically sad letters saying,

please can I come back to Rome, to everyone he knew in Rome, including the emperor. But I think he was evicted because he was quite a libidinous, quite a licentious writer, lots of sexy stuff in the Ars Amatoria, lots of love poetry, but it's quite mysterious why he was actually kicked out. Yeah, we don't know. No one knows for sure. There might've been a scandal involving the daughter

of the emperor, Augustus. Yeah, Julia. I think maybe it was this grand show. It might've been a general back to basics campaign that Augustus was running, because Rome was getting a little bit seedy and Augustus didn't't really like that and he was trying to raise public morals a bit and an Ovid was still out there saying Get Dustin, you know, so it's really unclear why So there were there were three volumes of this book right the art. First one, which teaches the reader how to seduce a woman.

The second one then is, okay, okay, you've got her. Now, how do you continue to seduce her? Which is very interesting. And then the third one is how for women, so there must've been feedback going, hey, this is all very man-based. Can we get the opposite version? So he wrote how a woman can seduce a man.

But the fourth volume, which is a separate book But the fourth volume, which is a separate book, is the most exciting one. The marsupials. Yeah. Love it. Develop a pouch in your front. Remedia amoris. This is the book of how, if it's unrequited love, do you stop loving a person? What a great idea for a book. It's a terrific sequel.

It's fantastic. The publishers must have been absolutely chuffed. It's got great advice in it as well, the remedial. There's join the army, become a lawyer, become a farmer, get a hobby. How is this supposed to get you out of unrequited love? I think it's when you're heartbroken, it's how to get over it. It's distraction. It's not like my dad gave me some advice once when I was a teenager and I was very heartbroken over a boy who did not love me back. And my dad said, just picture him on the loo. Oh wow.

Really? I can see that going in there. Well, there is a similar-ish thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, did it work? No, and I said to dad, because he said I was in love with Sarah, I can't said, I, he said, I was in love with Sarah. I can't remember her name, this girl he was in love with when he was a teenager. What a shame we can't give her a shout out.

Cleveland, Sarah Cleveland. Oh, thank God. Great. Now we're legally secure. Yep. So I was in love with Sarah Cleveland and I would picture her on the loo to get me over her. And I said, did it work? And he went, no. If anything, I developed a weird fetish that has daunted my life ever since. Well, okay. Well, Ovid wrote, maybe this would have worked alternatively. And this is about if you're a man and you've had your heart broken by a woman, go and see her unannounced

right early in the morning. When she hasn't got her makeup on. When she hasn't got her makeup on. And you'll be reminded. And she's got too much dust on her cleavage. I need a broom to get that off, love. Yeah, he would also, the classic kind of like teenage movie techniques burn all the items

that are associated with them. So sit with a fire and throw the letters in, the love letters. No way. And the bits of clothing or whatever's been left over in your house do that and what a great book what a forward thinking book. Yes there are some ropey bits of it maybe it doesn't stand up to a lot of feminism but he was very pro makeup actually he wrote a whole separate book on why women should wear makeup because there was a lot of pushback in society at the time about how women were

overdressing their faces with makeup. Augustus back to basics. Let's take off that thick slap. I just have natural beauty. Exactly. And he was like, no, natural beauty. Yeah. Have you seen their natural faces underneath?

And that's also a good read. Lots of slap dusty bosoms. He gets quoted a lot as a kind of proto pickup artist. Yeah. And there was a brief trend when that Neil Strauss, the game, sort of grim thing of pick up us three was doing a thing. A lot of a lot of like proto bros were saying, you can read of it in much the same way that they were all saying, you've got to read Sun Tzu's

The Art of War. Are you reading that? Are you really? Are you actually reading Marcus Aurelius' meditations? Are you? It did actually really remind me of that. I didn't realize people are connected to those. It reminded me of that game mentality. A lot of his advice is quite sort of modern, like when he says how you should befriend the ladies maid. Yes. That's how to get in there. Yes, very clever. That's how to get in there. Yeah. It's very clever. So it is a bit like that. Yeah.

I mean, he's, he also does that. How ordinary is that, befriending a ladies maid? What kind of life do you lead, Rosie? That is what you do. One of the people who's written loads about this is a woman called Donna Zuckerberg, who is a classicist and she's written a book called Classics Beyond the Manosphere, all about this. And she is an interesting person. She's the only Zuckerberg sibling, not to have become a tech titan. Yeah. She's sister of Mark and there are four, I think four Zuckerbergs. And yeah.

And yeah, so she wrote a book as well as the one that you were talking about called Not All Dead White Men. And the idea was she was talking about how the sort of alt-right of America have really harnessed all the, you know, Roman ideas and so on. And of it is very much connected to the Neil Strauss, the game pickup artist movement that's going on. And she wants to keep showing the connection between those two things. And it's so interesting that she is Mark Zuckerberg's sister because the very first thing that he did was a site called FaceMash, where you got students who went to Harvard University, both women, their pictures, which he hacked off a system and you ranked who you thought was hotter. That was the original Facebook basically. And so she must have been horrified by that and decided to dedicate her life to showing what a misogynistic move that was by her brother.

Yeah, sounds like they have parted ways. Well, so she's saying Ovid was a misogynist and so are these guys? Not necessarily. She's sort of saying that, as Andy was saying before, it's that thing of using an old historical idea to give legitimacy to why you're... I see, yeah. We can't all blame the fact that men keep befriending my maid. A lot of it does obviously read quite sleazy, but a lot of it doesn't. You know, he says, send very eloquent love notes. Cry in front of your loved one. I don't recall seeing Andrew Tate saying, you've got to be able to cry in front of her. You know, that's not, it's, it is a bit different. But what's also different in which Donna Zuckerberg writes about in her book is that it was actually, it was quite a lot more dangerous in the times the advice that he was giving because

when he was saying things like befriend the husband of the person you're fancying there was death penalties back in the day for things like if you were having a child out of wedlock if you were well it was dangerous it was there would be certain things that you weren't allowed to do that in this day and age you'd get away as sort of just, it's bad manners. But, uh, is that how you think the affair is going to go down then? Yeah. No, but yeah. So she points out that the risk level was much higher back then, if you were employing these tactics and they worked on certain women in society.

Yeah. And he suffered the pay the price because he suffered relegatio. He did. That was the official term for the exile that he was put through. And he died out in died out there. Religatio was the mildest form of exile. What I want to know is when he died, um, was he with somebody? Was he, did he find love? Uh, did he die in exile alone? His last word was when? and sadly we don't know the answer. No, he died very unhappy. The last 10 years he was writing these Tristii letters and it was, you know, his book had been banned from libraries and he said, look, it's completely awful out here in modern day

Romania. He said, you know, the wine freezes in the jars and the ice is so thick on the Black Sea, the dolphins can't even jump through the water, you know, really horrible. Poor guy. But he was constantly writing poems to his friends and to the emperor and to his wife, probably in that order, to defend his call, say, I'm really sorry about all the licentious stuff. I can change and I will change and create pity for himself. And it did not work. That's so sad. And it reminds me a bit of of, you know how John Donne used to write lots of sexy poems and then in his later life he did lots of like, no, all his poems were like, no,

God, God, ah, they were all, that was the kind of vibe. Right. I didn't know he got more like that. I feel like I've read more of the sexy stuff. Yeah, his only ones are all sexy and then the later ones are all more self-hating, a God forgive me, my sexy past. God we all turn into such bores, don't we? It's like Tolstoy. No one ever stays the fun playboy slash playgirl.

Yeah, it's very sad. Bit of a good update on Ovid. I do have a bit of good news about the last of his career. Is this breaking news? Has this just come in? It's recent because Ovid's exile was eventually revoked in 2017 when Rome's city council, who were not what they once were, I suspect, voted to repair the serious wrong that he had suffered and say his exile was now officially ended.

Was he like the knight in Indiana Jones 3? Was he allowed to? He came back, he came back. You decided wisely. Okay, it is time for our final fact of the show and that is Andy. My fact is that the largest collection of contemporary South African art in the world is in Nando's. Which branch?

Every branch. No, I'm joking. The Manchester Salford Keys one. It's nice. Yeah, and it's big. So there was a terrific piece in the Guardian recently about Nando's collection of modern South African art. Nando's is a chicken restaurant for anyone who doesn't know. I don't know. We have American listeners. Do you have Nando's collection of modern South African art. Nando's is a chicken restaurant. For anyone who doesn't know, I don't know, we have American listeners. Do you have Nando's?

Don't write in. How would they do have Nando's? Don't they in America? Should we have a Nando's everywhere? I think Nando's is global, yeah. Yeah. But it's the biggest here, I think it's, you know, I think it's worth explaining. I've only been to one. Here is the highest ever peri-peri penetration on the planet, I think, in this country. You've only ever been to one Nando's.

With you guys, in fact, yeah. Oh, on tour? Which one was it? Was it the one at Salford? It was the one at Salford, yeah. And I only went for the art. Would you like anything, madam? Just a tour of your 70s pieces, please. Yeah. Seriously, you've only been to Nando's once in your life? Yeah, I don't really like dry chicken.

Wow, it is quite dry chicken. It's dry. But he says there are more than 20 countries Nando's. I actually thought it'd be more than that, you know. Yeah. It's not that much, isn't it really in the grand scheme of countries? Yeah, if you're only in Tuvalu, Vanuatu. Yeah, then you're doing something wrong in your marketing, I think. Yeah. So I don't know if they're in the USA, but they, yeah, they've got about 1200 restaurants and across those restaurants, they own 32,000 odd pieces of art and they buy another couple

of thousand every year. And it's the main seems to be the main thing keeping the South African contemporary art market going. It's really nice. They really support artists. Yeah. They have a thing called the creative block program where they basically hand out wooden blocks for it to be drawn on. So it's, it's original commissions as well. And they have programs where they look after artists. It's, I don't know what the rest of the business is like. They like send wooden blocks to South Africans and say, draw something on this and send it

back to us. Well, two artists who are on the scheme, like they run all these schemes for, for young artists and they run a thing where, thing where it's an apprenticeship program where they take disadvantaged young people who don't have skills and they train them up over three years to become mosaicists or ceramicists. Oh wow. It's quite cool. Yeah. Obviously you get skills. So yeah. So Nando's are doing something quite good. I don't know many other restaurants that... No. Any other restaurants that do this. Does pizza express have a...

But we didn't know this about Nando's, you know, Pizza Express might have the largest collection of statues in the world. We don't know. They also do a mentorship scheme, which is basically for furniture, lighting designers. They have a lot of this stuff. Um, the only one that I can think of that does a similar kind of scheme is whole foods globally in every whole foods. They hire someone who is the artist in store so when you go into Whole Foods you might see a lot of different art you might see a lot of different like paper mache sculptures around the mushrooms, a lot of a big mushroom that's one person who's doing it bespoke for the Whole

Foods as part of the payroll. And they're always sculptures of the food? No no like whatever it is whatever they decide to do as the resident artist of Whole Foods. Okay sorry I thought you meant it was like, you know, in Japan when they show sushi, they have sushi models outside restaurants. It's not like that, you're like, you've got carrots and you've got a carrot model. No, no, no, it'll be signs, it will be posters, it will be whatever they want to do, but that's their job, they're the Whole Foods artist. That's really cool. Yeah. I was quite slow on the uptake on that. I was thinking, what, what, are they working behind the counter? It's like, well, let's take an artist and get them giving out fish.

Give them a proper career. Something that'll earn them some money. I just like, we're buying this salmon, this broccoli, and I'd like a sketch of me, please, while you ring it up. Domino's Pizza. Do they have corporate art? Well, they have a really close link to Frank Lloyd Wright. Like, probably the most famous architects, 20th century American architects, one of them and like you know had all these utopian visions of what he wanted to do with

his architecture and the founder of Domino's Pizza is this chap called Thomas Monaghan and he bloody loved Frank Lloyd Wright. It was in the 60s when he founded him and he was responsible in the 80s for Frank Lloyd Wright's works like like his furnishings and his decorative art, going up in price single-handedly because he just spent millions. Did Frank design the little table that goes inside the pizza box? I don't understand. What was Frank doing to the pizzas? It was a side job just to fund the architecture. I don't think Frank gave a shit about pizzas, but I think he was dead by this point. So this is getting more tenuous by the moment.

No, no, no, because the whole of Domino's Pizza is like based around Frank Lloyd Wright architecture. So its center of operations is a place called Domino's Farms, it's World HQ, and the whole building is meant to imitate Frank Lloyd Wright's Prairie style buildings Because the founder of Domino's is so obsessed with him and there's a whole section in it Which is a gallery an exhibition of Frank Lloyd Wright artworks, which he's bought up He spent more on Frank Lloyd Wright artwork than anyone else

Rosie do you collect art? Have you got any pieces in your house? No, not yet. Okay, I might from this Frank man Again, I don't know if he's still available to buy from. Are you an Andes fan? So like you, I find the chicken a bit dry. Also, is it free range? I don't know if the chickens free range is it? It's really good. And I get, if I have battery chicken, I get chicken guilt. Okay. Yeah. But it is an interesting place in general because, well, it started in 1987, as did I. That is interesting.

Yeah. So, you know, we, I feel an affinity with them, but there is this big thing of the Nando's black card and I know I'm looking at three people who've all got one Which means you have free Nando's anytime anyplace Forever and ever. Yeah, my buddy Tom Davis had it. Do you know Big Tom? Yeah Yeah, Tom. Yeah when I Tom and I used to go almost every day with his black card in Kentish town You've got to use one of the black cards many times Why was he given one because the the person I know who had one was a radio host who was cool at the time. It's just for being famous. Tom wasn't famous at the

time. How did he get one then? Tom called up Nando's and he said I'm interested in the black card and then he got called up to the chicken council and he had to present his case for why he wanted it. Who sits on the chicken council? That's a... we don't know. That's like the library. We don't know what's going on. Are they in chicken suits? Well, they wanted chicken suits, but they only had gorilla suits at the time. Do you know anyone who has the Dishoom dice?

You had about the Dishoom dice? So, Ishan Akbar has the Dishoom dice? You heard about the Dishoom dice? So Ishan Akbar has the Dishoom dice and what it is, is at the end you throw the dice and if it lands, if you get two sixes, then you get to get the whole meal for free. Really? No way! And what do you have to do to get the Dishoom dice? I don't know. Yes, because that feels like a relatively low risk financial investment for them. Send a couple of plastic dice out to some influencers and they have a one in 36 chance of getting brand meal for free.

But I went and he rolled and we'd ordered so much food and he got it all for free and they were so... He got two 60s. No way. I think they were really upset because they looked like they didn't even know about the Dishoom dice. Oh my god. I mean, yeah. Because you can get them weighted. You can get those. I bet Dishumbe Dice. I mean yeah because you can get them weighted you can get those I bet that's what I would do I would go off and have them weighted so that no matter what they land on

sex. Maybe you can't do that because they're special Dishumbe Dice. They must be designed to look like Dishumbe but if you pay just a few thousand pounds to a Dice crafter he'll be able to make you two double six every time but then that'll go on the spreadsheet at Dishume HQ. Well you tell your mate I know the world leading dice he makes the weighted dices he does them for people like get out. Dan I thought you were just bullshitting then when you were saying with such authority you know you can get any dice you like weighted. I had drinks with him with the world leading. You're giving away secrets. Are you supposed to tell us? We can redact that in the... Yeah. He's very good friends with my friend

who's the Loch Ness Monster Hunter. And we had drinks on Loch Ness and he told us all about the dice and showed us. Anyway, that's an incredible fact about Dishoom. Yeah, that's terrific. That's an incredible fact of yours about Tom because Nando's insist that the only rule is they never give their black card

to anyone who asks for it. They say it's just for your fame. But how wonderful. Before this, I didn't even know there was a chicken committee. So you think what are the chicken committee doing the rest of the year? Yeah, it's wall to wall. They're pecking, they're walking. I was looking at some logo stuff, corporate art logos. Do you guys know slash remember? I don't know if any of you are old enough. Rosie, don't know how old you are.

You could be 60. I am 60. If so, you might remember the time when the Starbucks logo was naked. Oh. So you know she has hair over her breast now. She used to have tits out. Stop it. Did she?

Are you going to have to Google this right now? Yeah, because she's a mermaid, right? Is she? Yeah, yeah, she's a mermaid. Although she has two tails, so it's quite an unconventional mermaid. Oh, there she is. She's actually quite unattractive and frumpy.

She's very unattractive. I don't want to judge her. I'll judge her. Oh, Andy. This is a 15th century drawing of a siren though, and that was the Starbucks logo. She looks like your drunk uncle at a wedding. Wow. Yeah. She does look drunk because She looks like your drunk uncle at a wedding. Wow.

Yeah. She does look drunk, because she looks like she's saying, I've caught these two fish, and doesn't realize she's holding her own lower body. Oh, that's classic. Yeah. Wow. So for two women who are very positive about Mrs. Gaskell,

it's not universal sisterhood. This is not what a feminist looks like. I don't know. They're both in agreement, though. At least there's consistency. You've just got to go with us. That's what a feminist looks like. I don't know, they're both in agreement though. At least there's consistency. You've just got to go with us. That's what true feminism looks like. So that was the Starbucks logo, weird 15th century.

Why did they change it? Well, it is just an upgrade, isn't it? Yeah, it's a Nordic woodcut. She is, yeah, boobs out and bits of tail in each hand. She looks more like she's holding fish now because you can't see the bottom of her tail. So if you look at the Starbucks logo, it looks like she's just holding two dead fish.

Which is weird, because I don't think they sell anything with fish in it. They don't sell anything fish related. No, they do, they do the tuna macchiato. It's lovely. It's really nice. That's right. So, oh, was it controversial

because she agreed to the one woodcut, but then they put her on all of the cups and all of the... Yes. Yeah, right. Just to tie together this with the Howling. I didn't spot any artworks on display in Howling 2. Right. But it's really hard to use original art in films.

The world of image rights has tightened up a lot lately. You can't just, if you want to show the Mona Lisa or Girl with the Power of the Earring or whatever, you can't just stick a print in a frame and pretend in the film. Because artistic estates get a bit funny about that, and rightful owners and all of this. So, lots of times when they make a film which features art, or they want it to include really famous art, they take weeks and weeks making replicas, and then the estate of the artist insists that the artwork is destroyed, that the filmmakers record and film the destruction of the artist insists that the artwork is destroyed, that the filmmakers

record and film the destruction of the artwork and then send them the evidence of the fake artwork being destroyed. That's so interesting because you would think that would go on a memorabilia market as opposed to being passed off as a... I don't know what they're worried about. It might be passing off. Yeah. There was a film about Basquiat in 1996 and the estate asked for so much money to use Basquiat images that they said, well, we can't make the film. So instead they just knocked up a load of Basquiat style artwork. But then they had to have a lawyer look at all of the artworks and say, that's fine. That's fine. That's too close to actual Basquiat. Can't use that. So all of that sort of artist approved.

Has any film producer ever experimented when they get that initial rejection with saying, okay, well instead we'll draw a load of badly sketched cock and balls, claim that's Basquiat and see what the estate has to say about that? I think that was a strong position. You'd be a great film producer. You'd be like really ballsy. That doesn't work for the movie. If in the Da Vinci Code... It's a bluff. In the Da Vinci Code, if the Mona Lisa looked like...

Like a cock and balls. You've got to hope that they blink first. Otherwise you're stuck with the wind film. Who's going to look more stupid? I don't know. I don't know. Okay, that's it. That is all of our facts. Thank you so much for listening. If you'd like to get in contact with any of us about the things that we have said over the course of this podcast, we can be found on our various social media accounts. I'm on at Shriverland

on Instagram. Andy? I'm at Andrew Hunter M on Blitzkai. Are you on social media? Oh yes I am. At Rosie is a Holt on Instagram and various others. It sounds rude but it's not. It's not rude. It's just the way I delivered it. And Anna if they want to get to us as a group? You can get us on Instagram at no such thingThingAsAFish or Twitter at NoSuchThing or podcast at qi.com is the email address. Yeah and Rosie if they want to find out anything else about what you're up to is there anywhere else they should be checking out? Check out my podcast Nonsensored which is very funny. Well do check that out.

You can also go to our website NoSuchThingAsAFish.com. All of our previous episodes are up there. There's also links to a live show that we're doing later this year in Sheffield as part of the Crossed Wires Festival. That's gonna be really exciting. There's also bits of merchandise and there is a link to our secret club, Club Fish, where we have bonus episodes that go up all the time.

Do check that out. Otherwise, just come back next week. We will be back with another episode. We will see you then. Goodbye. Just come back next week. We will be back with another episode. We will see you then. Goodbye