No Such Thing As A Fish - 594: No Such Thing As Laser Club

Episode Date: July 31, 2025

Dan, James, Anna, Andy, Ian Smith, Abby Howells, Urooj Ashfaq and Nish Kumar discuss pigs, jigs and Jimi Hendrix. Visit nosuchthingasafish.com for news about live shows, merchandise and more episodes.  Join Club Fish for ad-free episodes and exclusive bonus content at apple.co/nosuchthingasafish or nosuchthingasafish.com/patreon

Hi everyone, welcome to this, the first of two very special episodes of No Such Thing as a Fish. Now, anyone who's into comedy will know that the Edinburgh Fringe Festival has just begun up in Scotland. And we are not going there this year, but what we thought we would do is highlight some of our very favourite comedians who will be up there. So if you're travelling up to Edinburgh, you can listen to this and decide who you like and who you want to get tickets for. These are some of our very, very favourite comedians out on the circuit right now. We hand-picked ones who we think you will especially like. Fact number one will be Ian Smith. He was nominated in 2023 for Best Show at Edinburgh for his show Crushing.

And he is the co-host of the Northern News podcast with Amy Gled Hill. It's an absolutely brilliant podcast. If you're not going up to Edinburgh, then definitely check that out and find out more about him. After Ian, you will hear from Abbey Howells. Now, Abby is a New Zealand comic. You will know her from New Zealand Taskmaster and from Guy Montgomery's Guy Mount Spellingby. I know a lot of people in the UK dig around the internet

to find episodes of those, and Abby is a particular favourite of anyone who likes New Zealand comedy. She will be up in Edinburgh this year, so definitely check out her show. The third person, fact number three, will come from Arooge Ashfack. Now, Aroo, she won the best New Zealand. newcomer at Edinburgh for her show, Oh No, in 2023.

She's based in Mumbai, and in fact, she was the first India-based comedian to ever win the award. She's absolutely brilliant, absolutely lovely. I know you'll love her. And then finally, fact number four will come from Nish Kumar, who needs no introduction, I'm sure, to anyone listening to this podcast. But you'll know him from all British paddle shows, especially, of course, QI. Now, a fifth person from this podcast who will be at the Edinburgh Fringe, is a young up-and-coming startup called Dan Schreiber. He will be here with his other podcast, The Cryptid Factor,

which I know a lot of you are fans of. He'll be here with Buttons and with Restarvy, and they will be doing their crazy thing at the Gilded Balloon in the first week of the festival. So if you want to see Dan up there, you're going to have to get in there quick. Anyway, I really, really hope you enjoy this podcast. It's something a bit new for us having four different guests on,

but we really enjoy doing it and I really hope you guys will enjoy it too. If you like what you hear from Nish, Arooge, Abbey or Ian then definitely check those out. If you're not going to Edinburgh, then get on the internet, follow them all on social media, find out everything they've done on YouTube, etc.

And if you are going to Edinburgh and you see any of them, then make sure you tell them that no such thing as a fish sent you. Anyway, that's enough from me. There's not much more to say apart from On With the podcast. Hello to

Hello and welcome to another episode of no such thing as a fish, a weekly podcast coming to you from eight undisclosed locations around the world. Schreiber, I am sitting here with Anna Tashinsky, Andrew Hunter Murray, James Harkin, and four very special guests, and once again, we have gathered round the microphones with our four favourite facts from the last seven days, and in no particular order, here we go. Starting with fact number one, and that is Ian Smith. At the 2020 British Puzzle Championship, Sarah Mills solved a 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzle in 1 hour and 40 minutes. That's an average of 1.5 piece every six seconds.

That's not possible, right? Like, surely. No, I think it's easy. Isn't that? Oh, come on. Really? Six seconds. Sarah Mills listening to the podcast, Furious. I don't know. Yeah. Well, sorry, Sarah, if you are listening. Click. That was a long time, right? And at the end, like the last one, you don't have to think about

that. Okay, so we can minus the last one in the first one, right? You say six seconds. Yeah. The time is sort of really extended out by that first bit where you're just turning them all around. And that first off panic. Ian, why are you into jigsawes? Is that why you picked this? Well, not really, no. I think it started because I was in the highlands.

Me and my girlfriend, we walked past a charity shop. And we saw like a mad Ravensburger jigsaw, like a really surreal, like underwater scene that looked like it had been compiled by a kind of like Salvador Dali. artist and she was laughing at it and she said she'd really love the jigsaw but the shop was closed so just by Googling descriptions of what I saw in the jigsaw I tried to track it down and we did that but then I became very paranoid I think I have this pessimism that as the jigsaw was getting close at completion I was convinced that a piece wasn't there and um oh I thought Ian I thought

what you're going to say is that when you finished it she was going to split up with you and the jigsaw was the only thing keeping you together. I thought that. So I'm hiding pieces around the house. No, I sort of, I lost my head a little bit. And at one point, I'm not proud of this. I emptied the hoover and I looked through all the dust because I thought I'd hoovered up a jigsaw piece.

I think at one point it was pointing out to me that I'm getting the floor very dirty. But I was very happy with that because I was holding a hoover. I had all the tools to sort of clean this up again. But yeah, the piece wasn't missing The piece was resting on top of the jigsaw On a colour that it looked similar to But yeah, then I sort of entered a jigsaw speed tournament

Because I thought that'd be a fun thing To do with my girlfriend But yeah, we accidentally entered I think like a championship event And that's good The barrier to entry in the jigsaw world seems lower As in normally you can't accidentally enter like the 100 meters at the Olympics.

Yes. And like they really are strict about that. So were you a pair entry? Because this is a thing, isn't it? Like individuals do 500 pieces and then pairs normally do a thousand pieces. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, we were a couple. I'm not trying to throw a shade on the Jigsaw community,

but we felt like we were the most attractive couple at the Jigsaw event. Oh. I'm sorry, but it was an older group. And we felt like we were really young and dynamic. Like I was wearing a leather jacket and sunglasses. we felt very I was really playing up to the sort of bad boy of Jigsar

The James Dean of Jixos What everyone wants to know Ian is how you did Well I think that's why I've tried to overcompens it at the beginning by saying we were the coolest couple We did not finish We didn't finish

And we sort of snuck out Because we were there for three hours And we had not done a lot of the Jigsar and multiple people were already standing up and sort of fist pumping. So we just sort of slowly slid it back into the box and, yeah, and went home. It was quite sad. What's the vibe like, Ian? Is it like, if you make any noise, do you get tutted at and stuff?

It's very serious. Like, everyone has a kitchen spatula. Interesting. Everyone except us. Is that for spanking their colleagues if they make a mistake? Yeah. They try and jam a piece in where it doesn't go. It's a very racy event, actually.

It's apparently to scoop the jigsaw pieces with more ease. Because it's quite hard to pick them up. So they're scooping them. The table that one had two electrolyte pouches on their table, like if you were running American, and we're like doing them for energy. If you didn't have a spatula, no wonder you took three hours and hadn't done any of it.

Yeah, we didn't have the tools. I can't see how a spatula would help, though. I struggle getting an egg out of a frying pan and not having the yolk break, let alone trying to get a single piece of jigsaw with a spatula. That's a wild skill. I think the thing is, Dan, if you've done like a cat and you've done the cat, okay, but you need to move the cat to another part of the table, then you don't want to pick it all up and move it. Beautiful. Okay, I get it now. Ian, you need to describe this better, mate.

That was, I'm sorry. I think I've only truly learned what the spatula is for right now. I thought it was just for scooping clearing the table up but as soon as you said that was like yeah that is so clearly what that was bachelor's for it's such a shamey

that you didn't because you know every year there's like oh this guy he tried to do the marathon and okay he broke his leg halfway through or he didn't do it but he kept going and three days later

everyone's cheering him over the line and that could have been you guys yeah still in the venue everyone's left It's like a function room. There's probably like another function on there. It's just like a wedding going on. I'm like, just, I'm so close now.

Where did you do it, Ian? This was in New Market. New Market, right. There was also a car and motorbike event in the same building. And it was so easily definable of like who was at which event. Well, no, they'll have seen you in and your leather jacket and thought, oh, he's probably here for the, probably here for the Harley Davidson's. Did you find that was the. end of your career and you've not been able to look at a jigsaw since? Or have you

kept your hand in a little bit? I haven't done a jigsaw since. Me and my girlfriend were between flats at the minute. We thought we were going to be moving into a flat. It got delayed by a lot of time. So we're in like Airbnbs for like a week at a time. And with the speed we do a jigsaw, that's not enough time to set it up on a table and finish it. Do you have a jig roll? A jig roll. What is that like Like a Swiss roll jigsaw combination It's sort of It's well I was just trying to gauge how professional you are

Because it's like a bolt of cloth That you do the jigsaw on So you can keep a half done puzzle on that And the pieces kind of stick to it Do you? Yeah, yeah I've never done a jigsaw in my life But I still have one

You've got to be prepared You never know You've presumably got a spatula James you're halfway there to being What's the difference between a jig roll and say your average bit of cloth? I'll hand over to my colleague James here, who's the... I've never opened it, so I'm not really sure. But I think it's like slightly more stiff than a piece of cloth.

So you kind of roll it and it kind of keeps its form a bit more. Oh, nice. So it kind of holds the integrity of the jigsaw. But I think like I bought it for my wife because one time she told me she liked jigsaws and I bought her a jigsaw and a jig roll and it turned out that she didn't like jigsaw after all. I think that happens a lot. I love the idea that James has a kind of potential hobbies chamber.

It's this massive hanger and it's full of everything he might possibly want to take up like there's a paragliding thing in there and there's like a golden backgammon set. Justin K. So 2am, someone mentions it. They're really secretive at these competitions. So Ravensburger, who are I think the, they're the big cheese of the jigsaw world, aren't they? I mean, Gibson will try and try and say they're a big cheese as well, but Ravensburger of, they put them in the ground. They've cornered the market and edged the market.

Very strong, very strong. They will generate a new puzzle for every one of these competitions and they're kept in top secret conditions in their laboratory in Bista. People are so proud of their jigsaws. For example, there's a few charity shops down in the area that I live in Margate. In every single one, I saw a giant, framed, finished jigsaw that is just now a piece of art. Yeah. Okay, Dan, that has happened too.

I think this is the largest puzzle ever made. Just two years ago in Derbyshire, it's 120,000 pieces. It's 30 centimetres tall, but it's a third of a mile long. What is the image of? Because it's quite hard to think, like, a snake would fit in that kind of aspect ratio or what? sausage. It's just a very, very long, very long sausage. Hard to do. And that's framed. Oh, no, I'm thinking of a different one that was framed, which was 33,000 pieces, give or take. And a man called Graham Andrew in Norfolk was trying to do it with a load of volunteers, like it was a real community effort.

People would drop in and help. And as they got to the end, they had the nightmare situation that Ian had, that four pieces were missing. and he had already thought of this he had bought a second version of the puzzle just in case so they sifted through 33,000 pieces to find the missing four unfortunately they didn't quite fit because it wasn't exactly the same cut and he said Mr. Andrews said I considered squishing them in but decided it had to be done properly so I asked the company to recut them

so the Jaxel company had to send out like a specially print four pieces and send them out And it's done. It's all done. It's done now. And that one has been framed and put up. Do you think the volunteers he got in, one of them thought, it is funny to take a piece. It's very cruel, but it would be really tempting to go,

I'm going to help out for two hours. I'm going to really do a decoy, but I'm pocketing two of these pieces. It actually sounds like four people had that idea. And I can imagine them all going in the pub afterwards going, you did it as well. You did it as well. There's one other cool jigsaw that you can get your hands on, which I quite like. So jigsaw puzzler people, people who do it, there's a word that describes them, which is dissectologists. So this was in the 18th century when they were first made, jigsaws. They weren't called jigsaws. They were called dissected puzzles or dissected maps. So I guess you

were putting a dissected map back together. So you became a dissectologist. And in 1985, a guy called Tom Tyler founded a club for Jigsaw Puzzle lovers and it's called the Benevolent Confraternity of Dysectologists and this is a club that's still going to this day for Jigsaw I've been a I've bought my wife membership

for that. Oh my God! So you've got the exciting, did you get the exciting membership card? Yeah. Which is a jigsaw? Oh no. You know what? I thought by my wife a jigsaw and a jigsail mat was a really bad gift but this is awful, Andy. We remain married.

You can't even rip up your membership card in protest because you're then just creating a fun puzzle Do you know why jigsaws are called jigsaws? Is it? Because they use a jigsaw to cut them, presumably? Well, that is it. Apart from when they were invented, the jigsaw hadn't been invented yet.

Right. And now they don't use jigsaws anymore, like they use lasers and stuff. So for a very short amount of time, they did use jigsaws, and that was when they knew. named it, but for most of the start of their life and most of the end of the life, you never use jigsaw. That's so funny. The jigsaw is the one that goes up and down and up and down,

isn't it? And you push a bit of wood around in a shape and that. And it's named after the fact that it looks like the saw is doing a little jig. Right. Right. That's good. I didn't know that. Do you propose? They should change their name now to lasers. Oh yeah. I think more people would buy them. In your sunglasses with your leather jacket. Yeah. Yeah. With my laser club membership. go down to LaserQuest, then go down to the Laser Club. All right, well, we need to wrap up. Ian, you're going to be up in Edinburgh, right, with a new show? Yeah, I'm doing a show.

It's called Foot Spa Half Empty, which is partly because you've got to name the show in January before you've written any of it. But yeah, it's on at 12.30 in the afternoon at Monkey Barrel. Yeah, I feel very excited about it. It's 20 minutes too long at the minute, But I've got a bit of time to get rid of that. But yeah, I'd love it if people could come along.

Otherwise, it would be as sad if no one else comes. Stop the podcast. Stop the podcast. Hi, everybody. We wanted to let you know that this week we're sponsored by Babbel. That's right. Babel. Babel is the place to go to if you're thinking, hey, I want to learn Spanish. I want to learn French.

I want to learn Italian. I want to learn multiple languages. just one, Babel is the ultimate tool to get you to a fluent land. Yeah, it is a really fun tool to use. So I've been trying to grate my way through Polish for a while now on Babel. And it's the opposite to what you might remember about language classes in school. It simulates conversations for you to have. It tests your pronunciation. It's spaced in like real world things that might come up. It's just such a good thing to use whether you're going on holiday or whether you want to test your brain or get to know another language and people and culture. That's right. And it's

not just the sort of real formal language. This is the stuff that allows you to be able to talk with real life conversations. The system is amazing. It's got advanced speech recognition. It's got cultural insights. So it's just got everything that makes you the modern speaker, someone who is relevant to the conversation talking Taylor Swift in Spanish or Youngblood in French. You know, you are relevant. I can't even talk that in English. So get onto it now. And the exciting thing is that right now Babel is offering our listeners up to 60% off on their subscription. So go to babble.com slash fish to get that 60% off valid for a limited time only. 60% off, guys, go now.

B-A-B-B-B-B-E-L dot com slash fish. All right, on with the podcast. On with the show. Okay, it's time for fact number two, and that is Abby Howells. It is in 1386, a pig was put on trial for murders. Okay. What? Okay.

Yes. Yes. The pig was a bit naughty. It did more the child to dead, so. Oh, wow, this got that quite quickly. Yes, but I have one fun fact that will hopefully lighten it up. It was executed by hanging. But they dressed the pig in human clothes to kill it.

Good stuff. You're right, there's not enough fun in execution, is there? And that really, that sends a message that it can be done. Yeah, I mean, it's pretty grim, eh? Dressing a pig up in a waistcoat and then hanging it. Oh, come on, it's a funny image. Until they're hanging, it's a funny image. Can I make it even more grim?

So she had six piglets and they were all put on trial as accessories to murder. What? That's really unfair. And they were found guilty. They were found guilty, but they were acquitted on grounds of youth and that the mother had been a bad example to them. Okay. Did they get a better lawyer for that bit of the trial? Because clearly the first one didn't do a great job.

Yeah, the pig represented themselves and it was a miss. You're crazy, get a lawyer. No, this is fine. This is my moment. I can do this. And then all else I found about it is the actual hanging as well. they had to give the hangman a new pair of gloves. Afterwards, part of his pay was that he would get a new pair of gloves for doing the hanging.

This is crazy. Yeah, although there was an article on J-Store that said, and as they put it, the hangman in this case, it was in a place called Falais, I think, in France. The hangman is still owed both for the execution and the new gloves. Still? Oh, what? Yeah, I know. He's turning in his grave waiting to be paid for this gruesome task.

because it's not easy to dress a pig up. It wasn't easy to be a hangman, to be honest, in those days. Like, you would get your own house, and you'd get fed, and you'd get loads of stuff, but no one was allowed to come near you, no one was allowed to touch you, no one was allowed to talk to you. You'd be like a special person in their town, but you'd be completely away from everyone. Do you think that the dressing the pig up? Who was ordering that?

Was that the hangman who was like, listen, I've got an idea. a little bit crazy. I think maybe the local tailor, local tailors. Oh, a bit of advertising. Yeah, and then the local glove makers were like, I'm getting in on this as well. Yeah, because a lot of people went to watch,

so you've got a big audience there. Look how well tailored that is. I read one account that they put a human face mask on the pig as well. Oh, no. There's many accounts, so it's hard to know which one necessarily to trust. But I was reading a long article in the medievalist,

which is a site that talks about all the stuff that was happening back then. They said that in the 12th and 13th century, that the reason a lot of animals went on trial in this period, so something like 85 examples that we know of. The reason they were happening was law suddenly became a bigger thing in more places around Europe. And so there were way more lawyers than they had cases to deal with. And so they needed to get practice. And so quite often a lot of lawyers would defend a pig and try and get it off using new methods and like, oh, I tried this new thing out

to the judge didn't like it though, damn it, okay, won't do that with humans. So it's just like a testing ground. Because they did. They found cool ways of exonerating their clients, I guess. There was a 1500s French lawyer called Chattinay who built his whole legal reputation on being the council for rats

that were on trial for destroying a field of barley. And first of all, so they didn't turn up to court when they were summoned, and he found this thing in the law that said that if you could plausibly have not seen the notice, then you don't need to turn up. And he was like, these rats live in loads of different places. So then every single parish council, like within a 50-mile radius, had to put a big announcement out saying, okay, all rats need to come to court on this date. And then when they still didn't appear, the lawyer said, actually, there's a thing in the law that says, if a person sighted to appear at a court

but they can't come safely, they are allowed to refuse to obey. And of course these rats can't come safely because of the unwearied vigilance of their mortal enemies, the cats who are always waiting. I was just wondering, like, you know, in terms of practicing law techniques and stuff,

was it all that showmanship, you know, the wrestle that we see? Like, I've got a surprise witness. It's like, oh, a dog! And the dog's up there with like a cigarette, like, you'll never crack me. Everyone's going, where did he get his suit? It's stunning. That tailor is good in this town.

I think one other theory is that if you were a landowner and let's say someone at all your barley, some rats did, then you would want some money back for it. But you couldn't do that unless there had been some legal process and someone had been found guilty. And so that's why these rats were put on trial. so that the owners would get something. Right. Abby, is this a personal interest of yours? Do you study animal law at uni? Well, kind of.

No. Well, I do, okay, here's, you know, here we go. I have a PhD. And my PhD is on women in prison and the way they're portrayed in television, film, and theatre. Wow. It's not a good PhD. I don't treat anyone to find it.

It's ideally scraped in. Like, when I handed it in there, like, you're serious? And I was like, please. I'm big. And they're like, it's embarrassing for us if you don't pass. But basically a big chunk of my thesis was on public executions

and like the spectacle of them because they were like, you know, that was the entertainment. Like you'd be like, oh, Friday night, what are we going to do? Should we pop down see a lovely execution? Someone's been treasonous. Well, and if it's an animal being. Like, that's even better. That's more of a pull, isn't it?

Because it's still a bit more rare. And you can all have a barbecue afterwards. Yeah, I did wonder about that. Did they eat it? It feels like in those days, you wouldn't want to waste a pig, even a naughty one. Yeah, and one dress so dashingly. Yeah. And one of the theory as to why they did all this stuff is because it just showed that the authorities were doing something.

Right. So all bad stuff's happening. People have been, you know, lost their barley or their animals have killed people. and they're like okay well we have to show that we're not just sitting back and letting this happen so we're going to put something on trial and quite often like if your barley got eaten or whatever it would be like all the mice are in trouble but they would just pick one mouse and then put like a show trial on for that one mouse that's a fiddly job for the tailor isn't it? The mouse one that's a challenging one and probably a carpenter presumably has to build a tiny dock

for it to go into. What a gig. Yeah. And I think people think Maybe it didn't happen in England and Scotland and Wales. It was just Western Europe, like Switzerland, France, Italy, because we had jury trials. This is what a BBC documentary said. We had jury trials and it would be harder to, with a straight face, present a full jury with these cases. Your jury is supposed to be 12 equals, right?

So you'd have to get, yeah, 12 pigs. That's a chaotic courtroom, isn't it? I'd love to know more about The Hangman, who as was being mentioned before is so isolated from the rest of the community that they presumably are just told you've got a job today, you've got to kill someone and they just keep rocking up

and he's like, what the fuck is this? It's a mouse. Yeah, we've sort of expanded your brief recently. Jesus, how am I going to get the noose around? No one prepared me for this. There's actually this hangman in New Zealand. We had a murderer called Minnie Dean and she's one of our most famous murderers that we have here in New Zealand

and she murdered children and put them in hatboxes. When was this? I think maybe I want to say like late 1800s, early 1900s. Oh, it was a long time ago. Long time ago, yeah, yes. And she was found guilty and sentenced to execution. And they could find no one to hang her. No one wanted to do it.

But they had this guy that basically had hung up his noose, a long time ago and then he'd gone to live in the bush and they were like we gotta get this guy he's the only one and then they found him

and he's like I'll do it but with one condition I want to spend 30 minutes with her in the room and so he went and like

spend 30 minutes with her and then he was like I'll do it so she must have been a punishing hang what happened in that 30 minutes

no one knows what they talked about that's a film yeah yeah Yeah, I'm sure some very mediocre play scripts have been read about their moment. I hope so. Pigs are still getting in trouble these days.

Are they? Lots of naughty pigs around. Well, I just remember that great story of how Pepper Pig had an episode banned in Australia because she makes friends with a spider and they couldn't play that over there because it taught young kids to go and walk up to... Because didn't she say like spiders are our friends and they can't harm us or something Yeah, yeah. But I don't think Pepper's met a funnel web. So it's sort of a big, big problem over an odds. And I think in Korea, she was banned for, it was like gangster related

stuff. What? I haven't, I haven't seen that episode. I know. I've just pulled that from somewhere in my head. Is it because she has a different number of digits? Yes. Who was that? That was banned. Was that Postman Pat or someone like that who got banned because they were like the yakuza with four fingers. I know there's one episode of Bluey you can't watch in America. Oh, yeah. Why?

Can you guess why, in fact? Okay, so... So we all know Bluey is the amazing kids show and it's about two dog parents and two dog kids. Yeah. Anti-gun. Bluey wants a gun and they say

no, Bluey, nutty, no guns. It's close in fairness. Oh, what's the Americans do? The death penalty. The death penalty one where they execute... Yeah, Bandit was executed. Yeah. No, it's not that.

What it is, is there's an episode where Bandit, who's the dad, gives birth, or it looks like he's giving birth to a baby. Oh, yeah. And it's not really happening, but it's... He kind of finds himself in this position where he's laid down in a paddling pool and it looks like he's giving birth. And I think in America, they thought that this wasn't evidence of like a typical... family because the man was giving birth. But he wasn't giving birth. No, he wasn't, but like

it's not always... You can't be lost in the plot of Blutie. I guess when people complain about these things, they're not always completely using excellent logic. Their brains. Putting in their head. So animals are still... Aguan, Abby.

Well, with public executions, like, kind of they were initially done to sort of demonstrate like the power of the crown, right? Like, they would have... They were quite theatrical like quite dramatic like um they would do stuff like you know someone receiving a pardon at the 11th hour and people would brought in a carriage like all extremely performative and one of the reasons that public executions was phased out there were many of them but um because people were

given the ability to say last words um people started really liking the criminals so like they'd either be like oh oh no i'm so sorry and they'd be like and they'd be like oh bloody hell this this seems bad i wouldn't want to be executed or they'd be sort of cavalier and be like i did it and i'd do it again and then they sort of became like um folk heroes so um well and it just leads me to think like was the pig given an opportunity to give some last words i'm trying to think what noise a pig could make to make the crowd go oh hang on that's all folks presumably you're right so animals are still getting arrested all around the world

in Mumbai last year there was a pigeon who was arrested because they had some Chinese words written on their body and they thought it must be a spy what were the words was it just

cook this side up or something no it was more like sort of belonging to Taiwan pigeon racing society but the people who captured it couldn't read it so they assumed it was what kind of planes were making

in India or something like that. Google Translate, guys. Just take a photo. Google Translate. Just make sure. Here's another one. A few years ago, there were 14 squirrels arrested in Iran who were accused of espionage for the United States. Oh, yeah. And apparently what was said was that they've had little sort of electronic devices on them. Perhaps they were listening in or something like that.

And then we never really heard anything else about it. A few journalists asked the head of police and he said, oh, I don't know anything. about that and basically experts have said that it would be a pretty stupid idea to use squirrels as spies because they're extremely unreliable and they tend to just run off wherever they want that is one of the many many problems with using them as spies I would say yeah they have terrible memories don't they don't they bury their nuts and forget where they've buried them and that's how trees grow basically that's how we have trees on our planet is just because squirrels don't know where dinner has been buried come on they bury a lot of nuts if you buried a thousand nuts would

remember every single one's location, Dan? I'd probably pick one location to put all my nuts in. Well, that's your problem, Dan, isn't it? That's like the Dan Shriver Squirrel would have died out because it just takes one person to find that cache of nuts and you have no nuts left. Or they wouldn't find it and I would have a mega tree. The biggest tree ever.

All my nuts combined. Hey, I read just while I was reading up on pigs and seeing the trouble they get into and so on I came across something I've never heard of before, which is the pig toilet. You guys heard of a pig toilet? Don't know if I want to know, but go on. I'll tell you, you don't, but I'm going to say it anyway.

This is done in farms in China and other bits of Asia where pigs basically eat everything, including human feces. And so what it is is it's a toilet whereby a tube is attached where the feces goes down and it lands in a big bowl for the pigs to eat. It's their food bowl, basically, is the end of a human. toilet. It's a real thing. The pig toilet. If that was me, I would mull a child to death.

Yeah. That's what I'm saying. If I was the defense lawyer, I'd open with that. Maybe stop shooting in its food bowl. Maybe that's the start of the problem. Who's the real animals here? Yeah. We need to wrap up. Abby, tell us about your Edinburgh show. Where are you going to be? Hello. I guess I'm coming to Edinburgh all away from New Zealand. what the heck, and I'm doing a show called Welcome to My Dream

and I'm at Assembly in Studio 4 at 640 every single day and my show is about mainly, honestly, my enemies and people that have crossed me and I'm really brave and don't confront them to their face but talk about it in a comedy show. On the other side of the world. Yes, my enemies include a local improv troupe in a museum of optical illusions

that I'm in a public feud with. Okay, it's time for fact number three, and that is Uruguish Ashfak. Hi, my fact is that emotional tears have more protein in them, so they fall slower, and it's by design, so that our tribe can see us, cry and comfort us.

Very clever. I didn't know. I'm vaguely aware that there are different kinds of tears, but I didn't think they were made of different things. So there are three different types of tears. There is basil, which is just the oily layer that we have on our eyelids to keep it from drying out. There's reflex, which is when we're like cutting onions or there's some dust in our eyes. So those fall really quickly to like flush away any irritants. And then there are emotional tears. And they have the highest amount of protein levels. So they fall slower and they look more dramatic instead. So good. I think it's amazing.

And when you know this, you can see it, I think. Like if you see someone and there are tears coming down their face, the difference between, oh, I've got something in my eye and, oh, I'm really upset and I need to be comforted. You can actually see them going slower down the face. They seem more viscous. I'm really going to look out for that. Yeah. So actually, we shouldn't say when people are upset the tears were streaming down his face.

we just say the tears were crawling slowly down his face. Although I think with onions, I kind of want sympathy when I'm cutting onions. You know, I could do with some slow tears to draw more attention to it. It doesn't say anywhere that you have to pick one. You could just fly them all at the same time. All three. I was looking at the sort of, you know, the origins of why we cry due to emotion. And there's a theory, and I love this so much, it's by a Dutch psychologist.

He's called Advingerhutz, and he spent 20 years working on tears. So he does, he sort of knows his onions. Sorry. Okay. What he thinks is that it's an accident, I'm sorry. He thinks it's an accident that we associate tears with emotion, right? So when infants are wailing, because infants do naturally wail if they're in distress, they will squeeze the muscles around their eyes as part of the wailing.

And that puts pressure on the eyeball. So tears happened originally as a kind of. reflex and then that became a signal of neediness by children and we don't really control those muscles which is why it's relatively hard to fake crying and then it evolved naturally because it turned out it was useful evolutionarily because people can see you cry and they comfort you and then that's it okay that's interesting wouldn't it be nice if babies cried in like harmonies but they always cry in this really annoying discordant sound

and of course that is also an evolutionary thing because if they made a nice tune when they cried no one would ever come to their help but the interesting thing is that this sound that they make is actually very similar to loads of different animals and loads of different animals make very similar crying sounds

it's why when the foxes are having sex in my back garden I think that my baby's upset well she doesn't like see that sort of thing and you do make her sleep in the garden So it's probably exposed all the time. The really interesting thing is if you get the sound of a baby seal crying, for instance, and you play that to a mother deer,

then the deer will react as if it's one of her children who's sick. I wonder what would happen if you played me crying to a baby seal or a mother deer. I think it's the same because it's a very similar sound. So they would think, and there's one theory that actually the reason that all, everyone evolved the same way is because then animals can help each other. But I don't, I think that might. What, who did that study? Disney.

Is that the Snow White Institute? Arouge, are you familiar with sad bait? I was reading about the specifically Indian phenomenon of crying videos where lots of influences will lip sync and cry along to audio from movies. And in about 2017, this was a huge deal. I think you know more than me at this point. But I think it's like an acting show reel almost, right? Is it a sad scene or is it like, you know, the song Prince Ali in a Latin?

No, it's sad. It's sad. It's sopping their way through it. Okay, it's like Bambi's mum dying. But people get, people get, people got famous. I mean, there was a kid called Saga Goswami who set up a TikTok in 2017. And basically became wealthy and famous off the back of crying along two images. Yeah, until the government banned it.

Yes. They banned TikTok. Did they ban it because of the crying videos? They just thought this is a real downer. This is bumming the whole country out. Are you thinking this could be something where you could make your fortune, Andy? Well, I'm always on the lookout for content. You know me.

I'm content, content, content. And I cry a lot. So let's marry these. One of the problems with studying, crying and its effect and tears in their effect, is that it's quite hard to make study participants cry on demand. So do you guys think you could cry on demand? I could. Could you?

Really? What would it take? If they showed you a sad film, you'd be up for it. Yes. Or just let me be by myself for a bit. I think I could get into it. Usually always on the verge of Dio is anyway. Not that she makes me quite tense here now.

Have you ever done any acting, Garouge, where you have to cry? In my stand-up bits, I have a whole bit about crying, actually. So I almost pretend to cry on stage. And everyone was like, oh, my God, is she really going to cry? And I said, no, this is just years and years of practice. I'm just saying that's what is your trick it's like you think of a sad thing yes if I have to really make myself cry

I think of a sad thing but otherwise I just make my crying face which I have a lot of practice because I'll be honest when you cry as much as I do you do end up looking in the mirror every once in a while you're like what am I looking like right now

have you ever done that looks in the mirror and cried James is a blabber James does James let's on that he's one of the strong and silent types actually, he's incredibly in touch with his feelings. I am. As soon as this seem goes off, I'm going to be in the garden. The foxes won't know what's going on.

I am interested by how people make other people cry, though, because there was quite a famous study about how female tears make men less aggressive, which is quite interesting. And they got 25 men to smell vials of tears that women had cried out. And they found that they were 44% less aggressive in video games afterwards, whatever they were playing, Golden Eye or Diddy Kong Racing or whatever.

And they got a hundred women to come and donate tears and only six of them could produce the necessary amount. Really? Yeah. So, you know, you could volunteer yourself for science, Arooge. That would be great. And I'm always crying because of men anyway. So it's like a full circle.

I was looking into what makes Americans cry and the circumstances under which they cry. Have you ever cried at home, at a funeral? your car, that kind of stuff. I mean, all of it, in every single category, women say they cry more than men, or have cried more than men in that circumstance. But the top five reasons that Americans say would make them cry would be the death of a loved one, the death of a pet, feeling extremely sad, saying goodbye to a loved one before a long separation, and chopping onions.

And that chopping onions came before speaking about an emotional subject, watching a sad movie, and witnessing injustice or cruelty. It could be that they just really like onions. What about sporting events? That's the only time when I feel emotional, really. Oh, yeah, actually the Wimbledon Women's Tennis Final. I was almost crying along in sympathy this year. That was tough watch.

I read that in 17th century America, if the bride didn't cry, like furiously cry, when she was getting married, they would accuse her of being a witch. because they believe that a witch could only shed three tears at a time through her left eye. Oh, wow.

So not only do you have to cry, you've got to make sure that right eye cries. Yes. I mean, a wedding is a happy occasion. Should you be sobbing your heart out? Tears of happiness, Anna. Tears of happiness. Yeah, I think to be safe,

you'd have to make sure you married an absolute bastard so you could guarantee crying on your wedding day. Have you guys heard of tear catches? These are really cool. No. No. So they're a little bit of glass that you put underneath your eyes.

They first made an ancient Persia. But they've had them, the Romans had them as well. And the idea was, let's say I went away on a trip we were touring Australia or something. I would give my wife one of these, and she would keep it underneath her eyes. And then when I came back, I'd be able to see how many tears she'd made

because she was so upset that I was on tour. Come on, how many wives desperately filling it up with a tap? that was a real thing and even the Victorians had them so you know we're quite unusual that we don't have them so I was looking at like you know crying behaviours

around the world in different cultures and the Bo people of the Andaman Islands who I think do not exist anymore but they used to until the early 20th century in the late 1800s if you were separated

from your beau friend or family member for a long time when you were reunited the way that you celebrate that is you sat apart and completely ignored each other for like a full day hours and hours a full day and then as soon as dusk fell you turned around and you flung your arms around each other and you cried for an hour wow interesting yeah very very um choreographed reunion it's a bit like coming home to a dog though isn't it which you've not seen for a while they will pretend for a while they hate

Anna, can I ask if after about 56 minutes of you crying, is it a faux par to be checking your watch? I think. Yeah, I think you're in serious trouble. I think you're kicked off the island. Do you know that tears are like fingerprints

so everyone has completely different tears? But that's very rarely useful in a burglary investigation. That's why I always leave Bambi on when I leave the house. I just make sure that any burglar's had a bit of a week. But, yeah, because they all have different organic substances, different molecular makeup. You could just plant evidence then. You just make somebody cry, collect their tears,

and then leave it at the scene of the crime. Really good idea. Yeah. I think we'll edit this so I can actually use it in real life and they can't trace them back to me. Mouse tears are erotic. Oh, yeah. Always said it.

Yeah. Look, we all knew it. It's two other mice. But it is quite cool. It's male mouse tears. So they cry and they lubricate their eyebrows. Her eyebrows? Their eyeballs.

Everyone loves a wet eyebrow. And then they spread their tears around their body and they groom themselves with them. And they found out that if a male mouse is crying and spreading its tears around its body and the female mouse comes into contact with it, she will engage in laudosis, which has always been one of my favorite words, which is where female mouse or animal raises their rump up to say, do come in. So that's... You have that on a little mat outside your front door, don't you, Anna?

The picture of me, just bending over my bum out. That's so refreshing because men have the opposite reaction to my dears. They leave. They're like, bye, this is weird. No, that's them showing you their bottom. You've just misinterpreted. They're saying. All right, we should wrap up. But before you go, Arooge, I believe you're going to be in Edinburgh

and not just hanging out there, doing a show, correct? Yes, I'm doing my solo show. It's called How to Be a Baddie. From 30th July to 24th August, 6.25 p.m. at the monkey barrel. I will be a bad girl at the fringe, this. August. Thank you so much for coming on. Great to talk crying. We're all sobbing now, obviously. Okay, it's time for our final fact of the show, and that is Nish Kumar. In 1967, for eight dates, Jimmy Hendrix supported the monkeys on tour in the United States of America.

What a privilege for him. I was trying to come up with an analogy of who it's like supporting whom these days. Is it like Leonard Cohen supporting Sabrina Carpenter or something? Like is it... Well, maybe it's like Kendrick Lamar opening for the Wiggles or something. Maybe we're being a tad unkind to the monkeys who did, you know, in spite of the fact that they were sort of a confected band for a television show, definitely had sort of some musical talent,

not that I'm denigrating the musicianship of the Wiggles. Thank you. I was biting my tongue there, but yeah. Hendrick and the Wiggles. Are you kidding me? That's my dream gig. So who is this Jimmy Hendrix guy? I think we should get into that.

Who the hell is this Jimmy Hendrix, man? Yes. And actually he wasn't the biggest thing in the world then, was he? No. He was it 67? Yeah, he did this famous performance at the Monterey Festival of Pop because he is American, had been in America for years and years. Then in 66, he's performing on his own after having spent a couple of

a couple of years as a kind of side man playing in clubs across the south. He's then in Greenwich Village performing kind of with backup musicians, but on his own at the cafe while in New York, Chas Chandler, the recently ex-basist of the animals, sees Hendricks and things, right, I'm taking this guy to England, I'm going to find two British musicians to back him up in London and then we're going to put together a band. That happens. And then from total obscurity, he becomes the hottest thing in London, McCartney recommends him to the Monterey Festival of Pop. He then goes to Montreau Festival of Pop and sort of gives one of the kind of seminal performances in the development of popular music because he, you know, his fusion of psychedelic rock and a lot of that was

accelerated by new guitar pedal effects that were coming through that he was often the first person to actually have access to. But he creates this kind of sound that fuses psychedelic rock with some very, very traditional orthodox blues music and he's dressed in a way that no rock star is dressed and then at the end of this performance he does a cover of

Wild Thing by the Trugs and then he sets fire to and destroys his guitar on stage. Oh, is that moment. The performance is extraordinary because also it's a hippie crowd. They sort of, when he sings he's got a very beautiful, delicate song

called The Wind Cries Mary and the hippie crowd is very enchanted. And then people are just very quickly horrified as he, let's not be around the bush, simulate sex with his guitar for an uncomfortably long amount of time. And then sets it on fire and smashes it on the stage. And the monkeys are watching and they think we have been, this is the support act we've been looking for

for when we played last train to Clarksville. Well, Mickey DeLence, who's in the monkeys, that was the second time he saw him. So he actually saw Hendricks in America, Greenwich Village, I think. And he saw him playing with his teeth and he was like, this guy's amazing, but he didn't get his name. So when they were at the gig, they were like, he was like, that's the teeth guy. We've got to get him.

And to be fair to the monkeys, they knew their place in rock music and they knew what his emerging place might be. They thought, wouldn't it be awesome to get to watch Jimmy Hendrix every night on tour? That's what they wanted. You said it was the seven or eight nights. So presumably this was not one of the great marriages of rock history. No. So it sort of became quite quickly apparent that this was a mismatch. Even though, as you say, Dan, the monkeys were real Hendricks fans. And so would often sneak into the audience just so that they could watch him perform to an audience of monkeys fans who were increasingly frustrated.

Well, apparently, one of the things that is said about the concert is that when he tried to get them to sing Foxy Lady, they would yell back Foxy Davy after Davy Jones, one of the members of the monkeys. Yeah, it was not a solid artistic match. But also, Hendricks had some experience of doing this kind of thing because he had opened for Englebert Humperding in England the year before. Because, you know, I guess like, I guess at various points, you're sort of, you know, especially at that time where the kind of touring circuit was just starting, there just weren't that many musicians that fit into the category of popular music.

We hadn't yet managed to silo everything. off by Jombra, but I think the issue is almost that the monkey's audience was children and their parents. And I think that, that is the thing that kind of, that's the thing that creates the issue. And he wasn't a big fan. Apparently, he referred to their music as Dishwater. So it's not the best compliment, if true. So he's looking down, he disdains this audience so much who disdain him in return. And then they basically shout each other off the stage, don't they? He just eventually said, sod this. These guys hate me.

I hate them. Really? Yeah. Listen, I'll say this from personal experience. I know what it's like to have a bad gig. I've had a few bad gigs in my time. And I know what it looks like when an audience turns on a performer. And let me tell you, it's not pretty when it's 30 people.

But I imagine when it's 10,000 people. Yeah. Those Wiggles crowds are tough, man. They are hard to win over. you know you mentioned the wing cries Mary which I agree is a really lovely song I didn't realise what that was about and it's just about lumpy mashed potato

Is it? Stop it! Yeah it's just about He had a fight with his girlfriend Kathy Mary etching him Apparently they had fights a lot And again you always picture someone like Jimmy Hendrix They've got to be having these really passionate fights about huge issues

No the thing they always thought about Was her shit cooking And in the 167 he had a big bitch about her lumpy mashed potatoes. She stormed out, smashed some plates. And The Wing Cries Mary is the song he wrote that night. It has the lyric about picking up broken pieces on the floor, him sweeping up the bits of plate.

There we go. That's all it is. That's great. Nish, I'm taking it you're a mega fan, right? From everything you've said so far. Yeah, I'm a big Jimmy Hendricks fan. So the first album I ever bought was a Jimmy Hendrix album, which was great. That's a great first album to have bought.

The first singer was bewitched, so I sort of, wow, it's a mixed grill, my taste. Monkeys kind of influence that. Yeah, yeah. But the thing I love and the thing I never knew, and I find this really interesting because it's on my other area of interest, is that he was a paratrooper. He was signed into the US Army, the 101st Airborne Division of the US Army. It's because there was a minor misdemeanor, and the judge said, well, you've got to join the Army if you want to avoid prison. So theoretically, if the TV series, Band of Brothers, had been set not in 1944 but in the early 60s, Jimmy Hendricks could have been a character in that series.

A fantasy world, you can both inhabit it. You know the plot line to that would then involve the truth, which is that he then pretends to be gay to get out of it. Yes, he was dishonorably discharged, yeah. Yeah, but there's room for a comic subplot in Band of Brothers, which gets a bit heavier. times, I would say. Here's a thing that I was surprised about with Jimmy Hendricks. He's obviously the epitome of cool, of psychedelia of that whole period. But when you read into him, actually quite sort of a mundane, boring character.

He loved playing Risk. Graham Nash of Crosby Stills and Nash said that he was amazing at risk, particularly when he was on LSD. That's his military experience coming in. It is. No, I wouldn't go that way. Yeah. Straight of Far ahead of five with you.

But he was also a massive fan of coronation. Street, like a huge fan. Really? Yeah. So, according to his girlfriend, who you mentioned, Anna, Kathy. Kathy, yeah. Yeah. She says that he just absolutely binge Coronation Street.

And there's a theory that the theme tune found its way into one of his songs. And if you listen, and I've had a listen just before we came on, on Axis Boulder's love, there is a song called Third Stone from the Sun. Yeah. Have a listen. 42 seconds into it. There's a little riff and no question it is Corey. It is Coronation Street.

That's amazing. Fantastic. All of these amazing artists, like they do have the reputation for the drink. There was lots of sex and drugs and rock and roll in Hendrix's life. But also they just have to work incredibly hard for years. Like Hendricks just did hundreds of hours of recordings, all of this. You know, like he worked so hard all the way through.

And also they were, he was living in England in the kind of era of, what, was it been two television channels or three television channels? I was like, he was not spoiled for choice. So he's like, well, I guess Corrie's on. I've got another Corrie link, I think, because I read that he didn't like anyone seeing him with his hair curlers in when his hair was being got ready. No, that's a Corrie thing, isn't it?

They've always got their curlers in. It's a tenuous link, but we'll accept it. I think he was a bit paranoid about his coolness status because I read, and I think I've verified this, maybe you'll know Nish, but in the song if six was nine, there's a bit where he plays the recorder. And he bought it apparently off a street vendor as kind of a joke. And he plays the recorder at the end.

It's a weird sound. There's often chat online saying, what's that weird instrument at the end? But it's listed on the original album. As a flute. It's credited as a flute. Yeah, it is. Apparently he was embarrassed.

He didn't want to go down with that. The problem with it is that as soon as you hear it, you go, that's a fucking recorder. By that, like, it doesn't even vaguely sound like a flute. Oh, Jimmy. What's he playing? Is it London's Burning that comes in? Okay, Nish, have you heard the Morgan Freeman thing?

What? No. It's a theory that Hendricks didn't die in 1970. He faked his own death, and since then he's been living as Morgan Freeman. What? It's a big theory online, yeah. Okay. Freeman owns a blues bar in Mississippi.

He loves the music of the blues. Spooky. They don't look completely dissimilar. And no one's ever seen Morgan Freeman young. Well, Morgan Freeman's first film credit was in 1964, which is six years before Hendricks. died. But if Hendricks had been doing the groundwork, he could have created the character and just been slowly starring in movies throughout the 60s. I mean, it's a pretty, maybe Morgan Freeman is, you know, when Bowie became Ziggy Stardust, sort of exclusively in real life for a period? Maybe

Morgan Freeman is his Ziggy, but he just hasn't broken out of character yet. He's just become too immersed. Hey, here's a cool thing that connects Jimmy to the world of British comedy. The cover of Axis Boulders Love, you might remember it. It's a very, it has Hindu gods in the background and very colourful. That was designed by Roger Law, who created spitting image and all the parts of spitting image. Yeah. That's great. Oh, my God, that's so good.

Are you guys familiar with Cynthia Plastercaster? Oh, yes. No. How familiar? Be honest. Can you explain what he did? Well, I believe Cynthia Plastercaster used to, make plaster casts of the genitals of famous people in the 60s?

That is correct, except the thing is, everyone always says that. When you look up the list of people she made them for, I think most famous people said, I'd rather you didn't make a plaster cast of my penis. One of the only people who did say. Someone making a plaster cast of your penis. Well, yes, but Jimmy didn't. He's got the whole plaster cast.

Isn't that an amazing thing to do? Just say to this random weird lady, kind of groupy. Yeah, I'll shove my erect penis into a plaster. No one wants flaccid plaster cast. You're right, you're right. And there's no details on how it was made erect, whether it was a little bit like when you'd give a sperm donation. I don't know if they send you into a room with a bunch of magazines.

There was a heavy inference that she was part of the, there was no magazine in the waiting room. She was the magazine. She was the magazine. She was the, yes. Where is this plaster cast now? It's in the Iceland phallological museum actually Is it really?

Yeah Yeah I think so Have you seen anish? I have not I've been over Not that bigger fan then My Hendrix fandom has not extended To go visit the plaster cast of his penis

Listen if I'm in the area Of course I'm taking a look at it Of course I'm taking a look at it Have I seen it on Google Images yet But that's not, let's move on. Move on. Is it my phone wallpaper? Yes.

Move on. All right, look, we need to wrap up. Nish, you're going to be in Edinburgh, right? Yes, I'm going to be at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and I am very excited about it. And this is not me stalling for time whilst I Google what time my show is. My show, which I know the time and location of, is at 10 past 5 in the afternoon.

at the Assembly Theatre in George Square do come along. I will be there. I cannot deliver performance dynamics on a level of Jimmy Hendricks. But what I can promise is I will be there on time. What a cell. Okay, that's it. That is all of our guest facts. Come back again next week because we got another show with four more comedians

who are all going to be going up to the Edinburgh Fringe this year. So we'll see you then. Goodbye. You know what I'm going to be.