No Such Thing As A Fish - Little Fish: Poor Benighted Mountain Beaver

Episode Date: November 23, 2025

Dan, James and Andy discuss YOUR facts, in episode four of our brand new weekly show.  This week's subjects include unicycles, genetics, watermelons and Mr Darcy in a ball pit. We also meet eight more listeners who have become Custodians of Fish Facts.

Hello and welcome to Hello and welcome to Little Fish, where we, James, Andy and Dan step away from the facts that we've been discovering over the last seven days and instead read out your facts that you've been sending into us via podcast at QI.com. We've had so many awesome ones this week, so let's get straight into it. Who wants to begin? Well, I'll start with one. Let's do it. All right. Rosie Watson writes, found out yesterday that Jeff Bezos's biological dad is one of the two notable unicycle hockey players, according to Wikipedia.

Unicycle hockey. It's amazing. It's a sport? It's an amazing sport. Picture a hockey game? Put everyone on a unicycle. They don't slip around on the ice? they this is not ice hockey

Oh right Because when you said Picture a hockey game Sorry okay Picture a hockey game Yeah Melt all the ice Okay

Put them in a car park or whatever Street hockey Field hockey Wow I don't know It's not on grass either It's on tarmac I suppose God sorry

Anyway There was this guy Called Theodore John Jorgensen Is he the other notable one No this is him This is Jeff Bezos's Biological father So he and Bezos's mom

They split up when Jeff Bezos was a very young baby and he didn't really stay in contact and so Bezos considers his dad to be his sort of new father, his mum's new partner. But they were in a relationship. They were. The wheels fell off.

Oh dear. Well, the wheel. Just one. But he was the president of the Albuquerque Unicycle Hockey Club. Wow. Wow. World's first such club. And how many members?

You jest. There were loads. There were loads. And it turns out that unicycle hockey is a big thing in various countries. So Germany, at the latest count, has 89 teams, which is genuinely about 85 more than I thought there would be. Yeah. And that's quite big.

The real skill is the goalie. There's only 92 or 93 teams in the English football league. Exactly. Why isn't this should be the as big as the English football league? In my opinion, it should be the global sport. The goalie just has to go back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth in front of the goal. Oh, that feels cheating to me.

I feel like, you know, when a bicycle stops at a traffic light and they just have to shimmy ever so slimy. The goalie is doing that. The slight back and forth. It's doing a little bit of a... Oh, right. You know, and they're still having to defend the goal with a hockey stick. I mean, it's crazy. I love it when someone comes up to a traffic light and does that

and they can't keep it up for long enough and they have to put their foot down. Yeah. Because I feel like it's such a failure on their part. Oh, it's hard. Yeah, well, you should do it. I don't do it. I don't put your feet down like a normal person.

I fully dismount. really yeah i fully dismount and i just wait patiently just sit on a car it's bonnet having a siggy anyway it's like anyone over the age of 12 cycling with no hands it just really makes me laugh whenever i see it i just i just imagine them in their head they're thinking oh look at me i'm doing it with no hands like you did when you were 12 like i'm still impressed by no hands i've got to say I saw a kid in Edinburgh this year who was riding a bicycle on the road and everyone was looking at him

and as he passed me I was on the pedestrian side of the main princess street Oh he grabbed your phone Oh I'm sorry mate It's happened to the best of us It's even better As he went by he went Welcome to Scotland

Really loud Disappeared and then behind him on the road wearing a giant delivery box backpack Was the guy who's bike he'd just stolen Who was a deliveroo rider chasing after him down the road it was so Hollywood it was incredible it was so holy rude yeah I'm so annoyed that I flubbed that joke it was such a solid one you went to the edit yeah should I do one yeah this is from paleontologist Thomas Halliday who I briefly met at

a party oh sorry that was my briefing notes you didn't meet him in a party famous I thought I didn't recognize the name but hang on we've had a we've had a letter from Thomas Halliday in one of our duels, one of our Drop Us a Line episodes, yes. But he included such good stuff. You're just getting your mates to write in, Andy? I say this in the nicest possible way. He's not my mate.

But we met once, and he was a really nice guy, and he sent a great email or two. Great author, yeah. Other lands he wrote. It was like a Waterstone's book of the year. It was, yeah. See, he's down by. I've never met him, but I love his stuff.

Okay, well, Tommy H says, you are genetically descended from only about half of your ancestors that were alive 250 years ago. Piss off, Thomas. What a twat. Whoa.

I'm joking. I was playing against the whole liking him as a buddy. That's funny because I'm going to cut out all the first bit. I'm just going to sound like that. That's very cool. What does Thomas mean? Well, actually, we've come across this on QI. James Ross and our good friend and colleague found this as well.

And I've literally just written it up for the X series of QI, which will be on your TVs in about 18 months. Set your calendars. Yeah. But basically what it is is your 50% DNA from each parent, right? But the DNA comes in chunks. So if you're, you get 50% from your mom. What if all of that 50% was what she got from her mom? In that case, you got nothing from her dad. Okay. And that's possible. Wow. Wow. So the way I like to look at it is imagine like playing cards, right? So your mom might have hearts and diamonds. and your dad might have spades and clubs but you might get all of the hearts from your mum and all of the clubs from your dad in which case the parent who gave them the spades

and the diamonds wouldn't give you anything and what you're saying is that's obviously possible but unlikely two generations up that is absolutely completely impossible really like it wouldn't happen because of the statistics but when you go far enough back actually it's not just possible it's certain I would say crazy

And according to Thomas, he reckons that the tipping point of 50% is 10 generations. Now, for QI, I did the maths for this as well. And I reckon after 15 generations, you're extremely likely to have at least one ancestor who's completely genetically distinct from you. So Thomas is doing like the 50% chance. I'm saying, after 15 generations, one of your ancestors will not be related to you genetically. Doesn't that mean problems with genealogy and tests? I don't think when it's that far back,

someone's going to be hearing the words, I'm sorry, but you're not the great, great, great, great, great, grandfather. It's Jeremy Kyle meets who do you think you are? Who do you think you aren't? She's not your aunt. Oh, superb. What a fact. Yeah, it's brilliant. It's really interesting.

And it really blows your mind when you start trying to do the maths stuff, but yeah, it's a great, great fact-type. So cool. Shall I jump in with one? Yeah. This is from Felicia Winterhawk. And it's sort of similar to a fact that we got sent in from the last episode about relocating an entire thing.

We were talking about how a full village was moved away. The village in Oxachia, yeah. So same thing happened this year in north of Sweden, in a town called Karuna, where they took literally the entire church, the Karuna church. And they rolled it to a new destination, three kilometers to the east. And they've done that because Karuna is like a mining town. And so this stabilization underneath them because they'd taken up so much from underneath the ground was getting a bit unsettling for a...

So it's like subsidence and stuff. I think so, yeah. And so they decided, okay, that they're going to move it. I wonder if their tourism sort of went off a cliff when Karuna virus came out in 2020. You know what, Andy, when you put your head in your hands like that It really discourages me from doing this Well, that's why I'm doing it, Chess Hey, I've got one

Yeah, go for it From Louise Drake Pleasingly, Louise Drake from Lewis Actually, this is about a place I've been to very excitingly The place called Basilden Park Which is a National Trust place And it's a lovely old house Gorgeous and grounds and all of that

And it was where the 2005 Pride and Prejudice, which is the one with Kira Knightley in, was filmed in part, right? Lovely. So when they were filming it, they filmed a ball scene there. I just didn't find it so funny. The scale of the ball scene was so large that they put some of the National Trust. Are you laughing at the phrase ball scene? In my head, because I don't live in that Jane Austen world like you do. And like, to me, ball scene, I was thinking like a ball pool, like kids.

No, that's it. it's a very modern adaptation of the story but it's all oh no Mr Darcy's weed in the corner he dives into the ball pit and then he comes out without his shirt on it's very sexy that's incredible I had no idea so all Jane Austen is set in soft play that's right wow no so they filmed this ballroom scene the scale of the ball scene was so large writes Louise that they put some of the National Trust conservation staff in costume as supporting artists so they could keep a closer eye on things without looking

out of place on camera. So I presume that's just so they don't break any of the priceless artifacts around the edge of the room. I just find that's so funny. Yeah. So if you watch that scene, there'll be some people there who are just National Trust asks that, like, please look after this vase. I'm like, don't touch that. Yeah. That's really funny. And then I looked into this place, Basildon Park, right? Mid-18th century. Yeah. They do a fair bit of film in there. Yes, they film lots of stuff there. I think I know the one, yeah. And basically, this is a bit of gossip. from the 18th and 19th centuries

which is pretty hot gossip for us in fairness yeah it was bought by this guy called Francis Sykes right and I looked him up and he sounds like an absolute rotter astonishingly someone who built a really really big house of them had not made all of their money entirely pleasantly he was an East India company guy and lots of bribes and insider trading

and private embezzlement I mean just all sorts of dreadful practice went on basically and he made a huge amount of money who spent it on this house. But the really spicy gossip is about the third baronet Sykes. So I imagine his grandson, who inherited the estate age five, right? So, you know, turned into a giant ball pit. And he married this woman called Henrietta Vilbois, who was very wealthy. He was marrying for wealth, you know, sort of like, dynastic marriage, whatever. They both had lots of affairs. She had an affair with Benjamin Disraeli. Oh, wow. I know. What a cameo. What a cameo. Who then he wrote.

wrote a book called Henrietta Temple, which was all about having a secret affair with a married woman, which I would say is not a very good way of height. If you're putting her first name in the title of the book, okay, fine, whatever. But she had this other affair with a painter called Daniel McLeys, who was friends with Charles Dickens. And when the husband, Sykes, the rotter, found out about this. He put a notice in the newspaper saying, whereas Henrietta Sykes, the wife of me, Sir Francis Sykes, Baronet, hath committed adultery with Daniel McLeys, this is in the newspaper, he's putting this advert, with whom she was found in bed at my house, and then he gives his address, on the 4th of July 1837, this is to give

notice that hereafter I shall not be answerable for any debts she may contract or any goods which may be supplied to her. What a scoundrel. This is like the 19th century. It was Rebecca Vardy. It's exactly that. And you remember who I said MacLeis was friends with? Charles Dickens. What's the surname of this baronet? Sykes, Bill Sykes. but also Bill Sykes Bill Sykes is from Francis Sykes It's a direct takeoff

And it's so everyone knows This guy Francis Sykes is a worm Yeah that's amazing Kate Moore writes Mountain Beavers Are the most primitive rodent And also host To the world's largest flee

They also neither live in the mountains Nor are they a beaver Mountain beavers They're a type of rodent Oh the world's most primitive rodent Oh yes Yeah they are Wow that is a real

Because like rodent is not a one with good associations But to be the world's most primitive rodent Is that that's a double whammy That's bad The flea can get around 10 millimetres So about a centimetre Wow that's yeah But beavers have smaller faces than you

Like mountain beavers especially They have quite thin face and so if you had a flea that was comparatively the same size it would be it would cover your whole eye oh yuck one flea covering your own eye okay two fleas both eyes yeah poor benighted mountain beaver yeah actually it's only the um females who get that big the males are about half that size and actually you get much smaller ones this is this is like a big hefty flea I wouldn't like that at a tool I wouldn't like at all to have a flea covering my whole eye

and that's crazy out of their thought Yeah Can I do one? Yeah, please. Jesse Quick writes It seems almost too ordinary to be true Because we've all tried this once But did you know the world record for

Most Melons chopped in half on somebody's stomach With a samurai sword while they lay on a bed of nails Was set by a man named Johnny Strange He's famous, isn't he? Johnny Strange? He is. He's got multiple Guinness world records. He's quite the man.

Is there his real name, do you reckon? No, he's actually called Luke. Well, Strange isn't a surname, right? Yeah, yeah. I've heard people with that surname, but then also conceivably you would make it up. Yeah. I think Johnny Strange Sideshow.com.uk, I think it's a, it might be a stage name. It's an incredible website.

So he sliced 10 watermelons in 30 seconds on his glamorous partner's tummy, and she's on a bed of nails. And watermelon to bear skin. There's no board. There's no board. There's no board. She's the board. And then this Watermelon record is... I think she deserves the credit for that. Well, I know what you mean. Because... Bad ass-ass woman. He's broken a lot of records, and she's involved in some of them. So he's broken the record for most apples held in one's own mouth and chainsawed out of it in one minute.

That sounds like you've got a load of apples in your mouth. And like, let's say you have somehow got five apples in your mouth. And the only way to get them out is to chainsaw your face so that they fall out. Sorry. He's biting an apple. which is mostly sticking out of his mouth and he's getting rid of it by chainsawing across it. He chainsaws across the apple. Okay, so you need someone with a small nose. You do. That's a really good point.

I've got a small nose. Really good point. I'm out. He did eight apples out of his own mouth, but when his glamorous partner was holding the apples in her mouth, he did 12 in 60 seconds. That's hardly surprising that it's easier to do it out of someone else's mouth than your own mouth. You reckon? Yeah. Okay,

fair enough. All right. He's done heaviest weight pulled by pierced ears. He's pulled a small plane. Was it his ears or his partner's ears? It's a glamorous. No, it is it. And I love this. He's done sword swallowing

inside the globe of death. You know that cave where they ride a motorbike around the inside? I saw it with us quite recently. I saw one of it. I went to Zippo Circus recently. Did you? Yeah, yeah.

Oh, you were the guy with his trousers falling down on the ladder, weren't you? Yeah, yeah. You were the glamorous assistant. But it's so exciting when they bring out that globe of death and they cycle motorbike around the inside of it. He was standing in the middle of it,

swallowing a sword while someone was riding a market bike around his head. Right. Really cool. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, very dangerous. Interestingly, I got one. If we can jump into another here from Shona Mack, which is also a Guinness World Record, which is the world's oldest continuously operating post office

is in the small town of Sankha in southwest Scotland. The post office has been operating on that site since it was established as a staging post in 1712. Pretty good, going. Really good. That's cool. That's very good. I would have had the post office starting a bit later than that.

When was Roland Hill? I thought he was like... The 19th century, the Penny Post. Yeah. But maybe they just had a very quiet 100 years before... There's a long queue. Here is one from Richard Golt. When bored at work last week, I came across a pamphlet from about 1970 preparing the company for metrication.

So when we're going to go to the metric, the pounds and the pen. and all that kind of stuff. Anyway, it contained a fact, and that is that the SI units that we use today are based on the kilogram, the meter, and the second, and that's a bit messy, because kilogram is already a thousand of something. So, kilometer, you've got the basic thing, which is the meter, and then you add the kilo on.

But the kilogram is already a kilo. Really, it should be the gram, or we should change the name of the kilogram. And indeed, in 1970, the standardization, committee, the ISO was planning to change a kilogram and give it a different name. And one option was to rename it the Einstein

and if they'd have ended up doing that it would have meant that Einstein himself weighed about 79 Einsteins. Which is a good fact. Apart from the fact that Richard I think means mass, not weight. Because mass is in

kilograms or would have been Einstein's whereas we measure weight in newtons. And Newton's is kilograms multiplied by the gravitational pull of the earth. And Isaac Newton's weight would have been, according to my calculation, around 686 newtons. Lovely. And your basic metabolic rate, so the amount that you create energy, means that James Watt created about 100 watts of power. Humans have no charge, but we do have a lot of electrons.

and the electrons in the body of Charles Augustin de Couloglom would have been minus 9 billion couloms. And if he was wearing high heels, Blaise Pascal would have asserted 5 million pascales of pressure on the floor. And do we know whether Blaise Pascal ever did? Maybe he was going out to the Rocky Horror Show. Andy, we got one more before we got one more. Yeah.

Ari Toon Saminson writes from Norway. I really like this fact. In 2020, the number of near-complete Viking helmets doubled. From? From one. But Harry knows how to sell a fact, doesn't it? I mean, that's really good. So until 2020, only the, I'm sorry for my pronunciation here,

Giamundbu helmet was known. The Yarmelmet was found in the 1950s, admittedly, but it wasn't authenticated until 2020. So there you go. That is the doubling of the Viking helmets. And Ari adds an additional three fragments are known, largely eyebrow pieces, but none of them has horns. Okay. So, yeah.

Very cool. Yeah, you do get horned helmets, but they're pre-viking. So, yeah, you get, like, from Scandinavia, you definitely get horned helmets. But by the time the Vikings came in, they didn't have horns anymore. and our thought of the horned helmets comes from Wagner, basically. I had no idea. I thought there were never any horned helmets. No, they do exist for sure, yeah.

I think one day we'll find some Viking ones. I genuinely do, but... What year will that be? On current evidence, be ages away. Well, no, if it doubled this year, then next year they'll be four, the year after they'll be eight. Okay, well, that's it for all of your facts.

Before we wrap up, though, we have something very important to do, which is to announce the latest custodians from the Fish Archive. Each person who joins the friend of the podcast here in Clubfish gets to become the champion, the effective owner of a fact from our 600 episodes. And so today we are going to be handing some out. Andy, why don't we begin with you?

Yeah, all right. Here's a fact that is now under the stewardship of Hollis. It's this. Some rats were once the size of hippos and weighed two tons. I would say a vintage A vintage fish fact It is It's about animals being an amusing size

Yeah I remember we talked about Whether they made a weird noise As they got bigger and smaller Going Ooh Yeah Which is the same as the weird noise

That a hippo makes When it retracts its testicles Into its body Yeah Yeah It's all flooding back It's all flooding back Yeah

That's very good That's great fact Yep This is a fact And then that goes to Matt this was one of my facts, which was during his 27-year rule, Pope John Paul II took over 100 skiing and mountain climbing holidays. A funny image.

Yeah. Seeing the Pope-Mobile on those slopes? Well, yeah, yeah. Not quite, but yeah. What he used to do, though, was sneak out of the Vatican. I seem to remember we spoke about it in a sort of like almost the beginning of like a Beatles movie where they have to wear false mustaches and hide behind newspapers would cut out holes for their eyes to look through. Like he was smuggled out of the Vatican.

so that he could get privacy and that he could go on these skiing holidays. Surely it's incredibly easy if you're the Pope to be spongered out of the Vatican. You just take off the papal regalia, which is what most people are looking at. Did we say this at the time? Like, just go out as an old Italian man. Yes. Like, no one will bat an eyelid. It's absolutely true.

Do you not reckon if there were 10 elderly Italian men in this room, is he Italian the new one? I think the new one's American. He's American. Yeah. So 10 elderly Italian-American men in the... his room, standing in a line, do you reckon you'd be able to pick out the Pope? No, shoot me now. I just couldn't do it. Do you not think he has some kind of glow, like a halo?

Oh, I forgot about the glow. Do you not think he emanates holiness? Yes, you're right. Yeah, yeah. So you'd have to have a heavy, heavy coat to cover his papal aura. Yeah. No, I just, I honestly, I would not recognize the Pope in a non-papal setting. Very interesting.

Yeah. I could be standing next to one of your idol and just not know that it was the Pope. But do you not think his penis has like an ethereal blow? I think, James, you've been excommunicated once. What are you doing? Okay. This is the next fact. This one will be forever loved, petted and fed by Rebecca Lovett.

And her fact is that in 1900, a quarter of the residents of New York City would move house every May the first at 9 a.m. Brilliant fact. Another vintage one, I'd say. It was one of yours, James. It was one of mine, yeah. Can't remember the details. What was the reasoning for it?

It's a long fact that all the details are in the fact. But why were they moving? It was just that everyone's rent would run out on that date. And that's just, to be honest, the answer was really that it was just so. That was the way they did it. And they didn't really know any different. And it was a mayhem, wasn't it? You couldn't get a moving removal firm for love or money because they're all booked.

It's really low-co. It must have been tough to be a removal firm because the rest of the year, you just twiddling your thumbs, don't you? But maybe that's where you make all your money and then you just hang out for the rest of the year. That's nice. Like Santa. Yeah. Exactly.

Like Santa. Andy, let's go on from you. Okay. This fact is now going to be stuffed, mounted and put on the wall of Stefan Locamp. It's one of my facts, actually, is that nobody knows why we kiss. Is that still true, 11 years later? I think people do it because it's nice. But I think no one knows that for sure scientifically.

I can say because the X series of QI will be filmed in the spring and will go out in about 18 months. But I'm writing it right now. And we have a question on kisses because of XOXO kind of thing. And according to my research, we still don't definitively know where kissing came from. Yeah, as a cultural practice. Is it from sort of mothers chewing up food in their mouth and feeding it to their babies?

Which is one main theory, isn't it? And so you evolved to feel that smashing your lips against someone else's lips is nice. Yeah. No one likes thinking about that as the origin of kissing because it's a bit weird. Yeah. Thinking that that's what causes this very... The first human, whoever kissed another human, was kissing their own mum on the lips. Yeah, absolutely.

So we don't like that theory. No. Yeah. But it's... I think it's true. Yeah. I mean, Dan, your mum's sexy. This is a callback to Dan saying his own mum was sorry

Not a great kisser though weirdly Oh my god Oh no I mean it's fine, it's not But like, come on Why the only one with the tongue? Like what's going on? James

Honestly, I thought I'd got too far with the Pope at the urinal But Okay, here's a fact Some years ago, a Belgian man had surgery to make himself look more like Michael Jackson. Okay. Wow. Okay. Interesting.

I wonder what Michael Jackson's status was when we did that fact. 20, I think, I think it's still pretty bad. Yeah. What, that was his latest album? That fact is now under the custodianship of Nick with no C, N-I-K. Nick, you will have to look after that fact. As if it was a member of your own family. That was from Mark Abrams, by the way.

Oh, yeah. The founder of the Ig Nobel Prize. You and I saw very recently. We did indeed. He came into this very room. Yeah, he was in town. And this is interesting because this is an episode where, once again, there were only two members of fish on it,

which is something we really rarely do. But in the early days we did, I was away, and so was Anna. So in our place was Mark Abrams. And then, also in our place, was Molly Oldfield. one of the original QI elves and her fact was the longest Viking longship ever found was discovered during renovations

of Longship Museum so that basically found the Viking ship underneath the Viking ship museum as they were just getting ready to expand it That's brilliant That fact is going to now belong to Simon Matlian Congratulations

Yeah be proud It's a great fact Where do you put that though You've got to build another museum now nightmare yeah exactly then you just keep discovering more and more geological treasures uh where do you stop don't know all right when we get another fact uh let's go to you andy i'll do one uh this fact is for michael boulter and it's that the tobacco hornworm uses very bad halitosis to stop predators eating it

well so you just got really dreadful breath and predators smell that and i think no that's interesting so previous episode of little fish at the end your fact that you gave out was to do also with a small insect that was being eaten. The spiders, the grass spiders. Yeah, I think I'm using animals. That was your thing in the early days. Stock in trade. Yeah.

Yeah. We used to say it wasn't a proper episode of it without an animal fact. Yeah. And I think we've outgrown it. And we did all the animals. We've done 400 episodes, do the maths. I'll be about 400 animals. But honestly, with a gun to your head, how many could you name?

I think 400 is topy. You know, that's very ambitious. Attenborough's really stretched that career out, hasn't he? Once you do, oh, giraffes, again. But once you do the big mammals and then the small mammals, and then, I mean, how many insects can we name? Cricket, locust, grasshopper, and. Crickets are the same animal.

What? 399. Okay, let's do one more before we wrap up. So this fact is you could have fallen asleep up to five times during this podcast and not known it. this was about the fact that everyone does little micro-sleeps during the day and that fact now belongs to Matthew Renner so Matthew I really hope you enjoy that fact being part of your life

sweet dreams and we've ascertained like since 11 years ago now it turns out almost half our audience are using us as a sleep aid imagine if Matthew accidentally took his micro nap as you read out his fans and his name and he's going to be listening for all these episodes going forward going oh god surely I'll be on this week's episode come on yeah

Where's my fact? Oh, well. Hey, listen, we do need to wrap up. If you want to be a custodian of one of our facts from the archive, all you need to do is join Clubfish at our top tier level, which is friend of the podcast. We're going to be reading out more and more of these as the weeks go on with this new Little Fish show. We hope you're enjoying it. Come back again next week. Stay tuned for our Friday episode. And of course, if you are a clubfish member, you're going to get dual. Drop us a line. We're going to be reading out more and more emails. So send some in there. Podcast at QI.com. We'll see you next week. Goodbye.