No Such Thing As A Fish - Little Fish: Steam Exploded Donkey Bone Powder

Episode Date: November 2, 2025

Dan, James and Andy discuss YOUR facts, in a brand new weekly show. This week's subjects include hamburgers, space, staircases and Berlin.  We also meet our first four Fact Custodians (spoiler: you'...ve met them a lot in the past).

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 Hey everyone, welcome to the very first episode of Little Fish. This is the show where instead of talking about our four favorite facts from the last seven days, we have gone through the podcast at QI.com inbox and selected your best facts. We're going to be doing this every Monday. So if you want to join and be part of this extra special Monday bonus episode, just send in your best facts and we'll be reading them out each week. So let's get into it. I'm sat here with James Harkin and Andrew Hunter Murray.
Starting point is 00:00:41 Hello. And in no particular order, here we go. This is from Dav Lee. It's about an executive leaving a job at McDonald's UK after 18 months in post. Okay. And the reason it's a great fact is because her name is Zoe Hamburger. In fact, she was promoted within the McDonald's trucker. She's gone off to run McDonald's Netherlands.
Starting point is 00:01:04 She said, Hamburger has been my name my entire life. So as you can imagine, it has always made people do a bit of a double take. I've never heard of anyone else with that I know There's a comedian called Neil Hamburger Is it his real name? That feels like it's not no It's not as real name at all
Starting point is 00:01:18 It's not called Neil I found a report on this From the Metro Which I just want to read a line from it Despite her name being The Beefy Snack Item That is the best thing about journalism Isn't it?
Starting point is 00:01:33 There's a name for it I think Second mentions Second mentions Where it's like A duck Cross the Row The Waddling Waterfowl.
Starting point is 00:01:45 Despite her name being the beefy snack item, she said her favorite menu McDonald's item is the double cheeseburger. Believe it or not. I do believe it. I absolutely believe it.
Starting point is 00:01:55 Anyway. Yeah. That's really good. I know. So I guess her relatives or her ancestors came from Hamburg. Exactly.
Starting point is 00:02:03 That's what it is. And we don't really have names like it, do we? We don't have sort of like Tony Scouser. Do we? Oh, we do. Oh, we do.
Starting point is 00:02:09 Yeah. No, we absolutely do like Michael Bolton. Oh, yeah. But that's not, because his real name is Bolerton. He changed his name. What? Michael Bolton's real name is Michael Bolton. Is it?
Starting point is 00:02:21 Yeah. There's been a news bulletin. Is that it? Yeah, he changed it. But there are many people whose surnames is the name of a town. Yes. Jack London. Sydney.
Starting point is 00:02:34 Sweeney. Sweeney's not a place. No, but Sydney is. And you can put in... Yeah, but it's a first... But her relatives were in that 1970s cop show. I'm struggling to think of many UK playtime. Jack London, you're absolutely right.
Starting point is 00:02:50 The Earl of Bristol. I'm just actually struggling to think of place names at the moment. But 100% there are some surnames where you came from. Like someone English, Harris English, the golfer, for instance. Sarah Brighton. She's a person Ah, okay Isn't she?
Starting point is 00:03:11 Sarah Brightman Okay Okay Okay then Keep going Throughout the episode And maybe we'll get one Brooklyn Beckham
Starting point is 00:03:19 Oh God Oh God Anyway Just I have a little extra report on this From BM magazine Which actually stands for Business Matters And not as I thought
Starting point is 00:03:29 Boul movement Can you get that You get that on charts Hospital charts And things will say BM 3pm Or whatever It's a very regular
Starting point is 00:03:37 publication That one is isn't it? Really worrying if you haven't had an issue for two or three days of BM magazine. And you need to buy prunes, prunes, prunes quarterly. But just they found a lovely extra detail, which is just hamburger has been succeeded as UK chief restaurant officer by Patrick Gerber, who takes over responsibility for restaurant operations across the country.
Starting point is 00:04:03 It is good that Gerber has no responsibility for the operations in France, as his surname in French means to vomit. or to puke in a slang context. Interesting. How good is that? That's BM magazine delivering the goods there. That's really good. Here's another thing about Gerber.
Starting point is 00:04:16 I think, I might have to cut this because I might be wrong. But I think it's a baby food company, Gerber. Or an old one. They might not be around anymore. Right. And there was a famous thing where they issued some baby food in a country where everyone in that country, if you ever saw a picture on a packet of food, you would think that's what's inside the food.
Starting point is 00:04:39 And the baby food had a picture of a baby on it, and everyone in the country thought that this baby food was actually food made of babies. That's very good. I think. Years ago, I bought a bike for my son for Christmas, and it had a picture of a baby riding the bike on the front. And on the box, it did say baby not included. No. Yeah. It's funny.
Starting point is 00:05:00 Should we move on to our next back, James? You got something? Okay. This one is from Wayne Hoyt, H-O-I-T, it looks like, although it looks like a misspelling of Holt. No, it's Hoyt. Is it Hoyt? Is it a hoit? Is it hoight?
Starting point is 00:05:12 Wayne says, spiral staircases are not spirals. Okay. Oh, point of information. Yeah. Shorter they are. Well, he says that although they are called spiral, they are actually helical. They are helixes. A real spiral twists with an increasing or decreasing radius.
Starting point is 00:05:30 For example, a spiral on, or he doesn't say this, but for instance, on a snail shell, you know? Oh. Kind of goes out like that. But a staircase always has the same radius. Like it's not getting wider as you go up. No. It's always going to be about the same width at the bottom as it is at the top. Right.
Starting point is 00:05:50 And if a helix is basically something, a line which you draw around a cylinder. Right. And he says, I guess they're called spiral because unfortunately most people have no idea what are helixes. Well, I think people know what, like double helix. Famers. Yeah. From DNA fame. So are there any actually spiral staircases where the building gets wider and wider and wider?
Starting point is 00:06:14 Well, here's the interesting or probably not very interesting point. Some people say that a helix is a type of spiral. Other people say, no, they're completely different things. And there doesn't seem to be an international body that decides on what a spiral of a helix is. Wow. I think we have run this on QI actually, maybe in the H series. I think we might have done it under helixes. But yeah, we have discussed it before and almost come to blows in the QI office.
Starting point is 00:06:45 James, you're the mathematician. I think out of the three of us you get to make the call. I actually, you know at QI we have a much better mathematician than I am, who's Will Bowen. And I think he landed on the side of a helix and spiral being different. So I think that's why we ran with it. Nice. But the other thing that we found when we were researching that was a place called Chateau de Chameau in France. and they have a double helix staircase.
Starting point is 00:07:11 Okay, so it's two helixes, two separate staircases, and what that means is you can go up one staircase while someone else is coming down the other staircase. So you don't use up any more space because it's still on the same cylinder, but actually two people can go. And according to the people who run that house,
Starting point is 00:07:29 that stately home, it was designed by Leonardo da Vinci, although we're not quite sure if it was. Wouldn't it be great if you met the love of your life? while you were going down and she was coming up. You don't meet her. Oh, you would never... That's the point about this.
Starting point is 00:07:44 That's the whole point of the staircase is, isn't it? There's one helix going up and there are another one coming down. You'd never meet. You'd never meet. You wake up. It was all a dream. Your whole life, Dan. Your lovely wife and your family.
Starting point is 00:07:54 Oh, my God. They're not tunnels, though. You can see each other going down the steps and going up. No, you can't. You can't. You can't. There was actually one... Remember there was some Duke or something who had a lot of tunnels made in his house
Starting point is 00:08:05 so that he never saw his staff. Yes. I think he was nicknamed the Tunneling Duke, which is a good, it's a good and a bad nickname, isn't it? I've always wanted to go to Cambridge. There's a very specific pub that serves a double helix beer or ale. Oh, is it a spread eagle? Yeah, it must be. So it's because it's where the two of them came in, Watson and Crick announced that they'd found the secret to life. Imagine walking into a pub. Imagine I walk into the Bowman Arms in Bolton. And I just walk in and I go, I've discovered the secret of Life. Yeah. People would, I mean, they give me short shrift anyway in that pub, but... Also, it's pronounced bulletin, by the way. Should we move on to another fact? All right. This comes from Charlie Wakefield.
Starting point is 00:08:49 Can I just say Wakefield in Yorkshire? Well, there we go. Great. There we go. Oh, Dan, that was right there for you and James snuck in there and got it. I am a fellow TV person who has been working in development for over a decade, so I've discovered hundreds of fishworthy facts, but there's one that has always stayed with me. Astronauts, in space still get morning wood. Sadly, I found this years and years ago in a paper by NASA, I think, but clearly I was a much better researcher back in the day because I've been unable to find it again. We all have that problem as we go.
Starting point is 00:09:24 That's NASA suppressing the truth, isn't it? Well, no, I mean, there is stuff that you can see out there. This is an interesting thing that they actually have to work on because we're planning voyages to Mars and so on, and what does it do to you? Hang on, don't astronauts go through 17 mornings a day because you're spinning around the world really fast? Isn't that? That's like a good point. Yeah, it would be a nightmare.
Starting point is 00:09:46 Yeah, so basically there's lots of things that they're looking into, for example, cosmic rays, what happens to your body in microgravity. So when you're in the ISS, from what I've been reading, it says that the blood will often travel sort of to where your chest area is. So you don't have much blood down in that area to begin with. So would you be getting a sort of random morning wood is the question. And because we don't know if anyone's had sex up there. We don't know if anyone has had a little fiddle up there. We don't know what's been going on up there.
Starting point is 00:10:17 There's a, there is a rumor that a couple went up there, isn't there? Yeah, exactly. But the thing is, like, you don't get an erection when your penis is the lowest part of your body. It's not like the blood rushes down there with no vasculatory system to push it around. Yeah. You know, it's like gravity shouldn't make that much of a difference, I see. I don't think they think it's a massive influence, but they think it has some influence. Right. Is that why your penis is so far down? Do you think as we evolve, our penis is going to get lower and lower and lower?
Starting point is 00:10:49 Definitely. Just to use the gravity to get the blood down there. Absolutely. Yeah, it'll be end up being one of our toes. So I was trying to find if there was any evidence of an astronaut having mentioned this, and I did manage to find one. astronaut Mike Mullane in 2014 in an interview with men's health said a couple of times, I would wake up from sleep periods and I had a boner that could have drilled through kryptonite. Wow. That's a NASA astronaut. Plot of Superman fire, isn't it? Very confident astronauts, aren't they? That's stunning. Yeah. So that's the one, that's the one,
Starting point is 00:11:25 maybe that's what you read, Charlie Wakefield. I think it's like basically Superman is in a cage which is made of Cryptonite. I think that even happens in the latest one that came out this year. But what you need is this guy to drill through a kryptonite cage to free him.
Starting point is 00:11:44 Yeah. Mike Mullane, the human boar. Which is better than the human bore nickname that I have. I promise you this is a coincidence, but my next one is by Lindy Hardstaff. And Lindy says, my fact is you can hear a Raphleasia flower bloom before you can smell it. So you know the Rufleasia is the big corpse flower that you get in Southeast Asia and it kind of flowers once every few years maybe?
Starting point is 00:12:21 But apparently the petals are so big and thick and leathery that each one makes an audible thwack noise as they crack open. And Lindy, Hardstaff, discovered this when doing an overnight shift monitoring a blue blue. event at the Bogor, not Bogner, I assume, Bogor, Botanic Gardens in 2012. I've never heard of Bogar. That's so cool. I was nearly, I nearly got to see one of those flowers blooming. When we were on tour in Melbourne, there was a museum and it was about a two-hour drive out of Melbourne, I think, and it had one on display, one of these amazing corpse flowers
Starting point is 00:12:57 that opens up once every 10 years or whatever it is, and it was just flowering that day. How long did you miss it by? Oh, I could have got to it. Oh, so you, okay. I comfortably could have got to it. I chose not to. Oh, wow. I was busy.
Starting point is 00:13:10 I was in Melbourne with my friend. That reminds me of the world laziness championships that I was supposed to go to this year and decided that the weather wasn't very good. So I'd go the next day. And when I got there, it had finished. Everyone was stood up by the time you got there. Yeah. Are you being serious?
Starting point is 00:13:26 I can't tell if you were. That really happened. Yeah, yeah. Who could lay down the longest? Is this Montenegro, right? It's in Montenegro. It's called the world lazy citizen. in competition and I missed the end of it because I couldn't be bothered leaving but the weather was bad.
Starting point is 00:13:39 Yeah. That's so good. In a weird way, I feel like you should have won the competition. I feel like I'm going to write to the organizers and ask for a special award. Yeah. Yeah. That's a good idea. Someone traveled all the way over from the UK only to miss it out of laziness. Well, I'm quite annoyed because I did email them saying, can I come along? And they said yes. And I told them what day I'd come and they didn't email me to say it had finished. What were you expecting, James? What were you expecting from the world laziness people? It was a four hour drive. into the mountains.
Starting point is 00:14:07 Couldn't be bothered to reply. That's all. Didn't you also go to a church once that you drove out of your way? Forced Polina to come with you too. I went. There are two rugby union themed churches in France. And I'd been to one of them. And the other one was only a three and a half an hour drive away.
Starting point is 00:14:25 And when we got there, it was closed. Yeah. Unbelievable. A question. A rugby union themed church. What's that? It's a small chap. where people who are rugby union fans can go and they put like some of their shirts there and pray for their team to do well.
Starting point is 00:14:41 Oh, okay. And also actually one of the stained glass windows is themed on rugby union as well. And the priest throws the communion wafer backwards into your mouth. Very good. Yep. And when you go and get the wafer, everyone puts their head in between the person in front slags. And you haven't been back, presumably. No, I can't imagine I ever will. It's such a shame. I had that same experience. I went to. down to Yoval Junction train station to go see a haunted buffet. Supposedly the sausages levitate and so on. I did and I went on a Sunday. It was my only chance and I had to explain to Fenella and the
Starting point is 00:15:16 kids like Daddy's got to go off. I've got to do this thing. It's a long journey. I was in London. Got there. London to Yoval? Did you know where Yovil was at the time? Oh, I did have a brief look at it. Yeah. Yeah. It's a distance. It's a distance. Anyway, cafe was shut. Couldn't get in. Look through the windows. Couldn't see anything. You imagine if you'd look through the windows only to see a levitating sausage You couldn't get any further towards it Yeah maybe that would have been worse yeah no Saucsages weren't even out too levitate
Starting point is 00:15:44 Okay um Andy okay here's one from David Morgan from Sydney This is about Sir Henry Parks Premier of New South Wales in the 19th century Australia's father of federation who got the ball rolling on the six British colonies in Australia Joining together to form a country So he campaigned for this Anyway, that's sort of personal That's the business end of his life
Starting point is 00:16:08 But David Morgan is writing to tell us That he was also in the Australian parlance A mad keen router Oh no He was married three times Fothering 12 children with the first lady parks And after a 22 year gap Five more with the second lady parks
Starting point is 00:16:25 Wow 17 children 17 The first three were born out of wedlock While the first lady parks was still alive she had been his housemaid. At dinner in the 1890s, when Parks was nearly 80, the editor of the Sydney Morning Herald innocently remarked,
Starting point is 00:16:38 these oysters are good. Parks replied, I don't need these adventitious aids. Lady Parks and I, until quite recently, have been in the habit of having connections 17 or 18 times every night, and we now have connection 10 or 11 times. Parks and recreation.
Starting point is 00:16:54 Super. Kernan was very quiet, the editor, for the rest of the dinner. Parks later made a splendid speech full of elevated thought and moving language. There you go. I've got to say all cultures around the world. I completely appreciate
Starting point is 00:17:09 and I think people should be able to do whatever they want, wherever they're from, and I would never take the piss out of anyone or say that anyone around the world is wrong in any way for what they do. But the word root to mean have sex does not sit well with me. Oh, really? Interesting.
Starting point is 00:17:25 Well, maybe you'd like what Parks did as his first job because I did a little bit of extra digging on him. He was born in Warwickshire, actually, in England. And his first job was as a bone turner. Witches? Kind of someone who, I think, shizzles and chips and shapes bone and ivory. Oh.
Starting point is 00:17:42 I think it's that. Right. Did you use root in UK to mean sex? No, that would not mean that. It would not mean it here. Okay, so... A router is something you used to connect to the internet. Yes.
Starting point is 00:17:53 Yeah. Or Joe roots, the English cricketer. Right. Absolutely. Okay. Okay. So who has never scored a century in Australia at time of recording. He's busy, isn't he?
Starting point is 00:18:04 Probably so many misunderstandings whenever he says his name anywhere. Yeah. James, when we're good to you? James, yes, that's the name of the person who wrote in. They didn't put their surname, just James. And they wrote long-time listener, first-time caller. Hopefully you haven't heard this fact before. The last piece of Nazi architecture in Berlin is a 12,650-ton concrete.
Starting point is 00:18:27 cylinder. Nice. Okay, so this is the Schwurblastung Schorpe, meaning heavy load-exerting body, and it was used to test whether the ground would be strong enough for all the amazing projects that they wanted to build in Berlin. So they wanted to do like a big arch, like to celebrate their glorious victory in World War II. And they thought we can only do this arch if we have strong enough ground. So they built this big cylinder that was really, really heavy to see if it would the ground was strong enough to hold it. And it turns out that Berlin
Starting point is 00:19:04 is a massive swamp. And really, you couldn't put a big arch there. But then they also couldn't move it because it was too big. So it's still there. I mean, that's bad planning in two ways. Firstly, you should know that you're on a swamp. And secondly, you should not put anything in without having a plan to take it out again.
Starting point is 00:19:21 I think nobody accuses the Nazis of being a 100% in their plans. They've had one or two flubs in their time. Yeah, true. Yeah. Attack in Russia. But yeah.
Starting point is 00:19:35 And the thing is that they've never been able to get rid of it because it's so big, but it's also next to a lot of train tracks and apartment buildings, so they can't blow it up. Oh, wow. So it's kind of just stuck there as a memory. 12,000 tonne cylinder. 12,650 tons concrete cylinder. That feels big. I think it's empty on the inside because I think you can't.
Starting point is 00:19:55 can go and visit it and have a look inside. We should do a podcast there. Do you think the acoustics will be... That's going to be Echo E. I think... Yes, that's the reason why we shouldn't go and do a podcast in the last piece of Nazi architecture.
Starting point is 00:20:11 Obviously, reasons of taste. Obviously reasons of taste. Do you remember the last time we played, well, the only time we played Berlin was in that big hall and it was used as a rock and roll hall and they hadn't, hadn't had anyone do a speaking gig in there. So all the chairs were set up and I was talking to the guy and saying, so. Sound guy or something.
Starting point is 00:20:33 Yeah. So you don't do what this? Like we're a new concept here as a speaking thing as opposed to a gig. And he went, yeah. And I said, so when's the last time you had someone do a talk here? And he went, Gerbils. I remember that. We followed Gerbils.
Starting point is 00:20:49 Yeah, I love that. Why is it so silent? I don't love that. Sorry. I love that. Gosh, I've got one last one. Okay, go. This is from Josh Smith, who, I don't know why I picked this as my last fact to read out, because it's quite abstruse.
Starting point is 00:21:06 It's about steam exploded donkey bone powder. Oh. This is just a mad thing that you can make donkeys into. Basically, donkey bone is about a tenth of the donkey, but most people don't use it for anything, right? Okay. A tenth of a donkey is bone. Really? Yeah.
Starting point is 00:21:22 That's a pretty amazing fact, and it's right. It's about 15% if they're in space and it's not. How much of us are bone? Oh, probably about 10%. Really? Well, I don't know. Amazing. I don't know.
Starting point is 00:21:33 You're right. Yeah, yeah. But I mean, maybe they've got thick, thick bones. I feel like mine's less than 10%. No. Do you? Bone. I do think that, yeah.
Starting point is 00:21:41 Maybe a bit less. I think, let's round up my weight to 100 kilos. I don't weigh 100 kilos, but let's round it up. If I take all my bones out, are they going to be too heavy to take as hand luggage on Ryanair? Oh. That is a very... Let's test it out. Don't write in, I don't know what, the level of Ryanair.
Starting point is 00:22:00 Welcome to Mythbusters. We are going, we haven't checked stuff, James has taken out almost all his bones. And now we're at Gatwick. James's will reading is going to be amazing. And my bones, I leave two, along with two tickets to Lanzarotti. To visit the other Rugby Union
Starting point is 00:22:22 based chapel in France so ends the will of the human bore so basically anyway yeah 10% of donkey is bone and it's good stuff there's a lot of good stuff in there nutritious but it's very hard to get to because it's very dense very strong
Starting point is 00:22:37 there's a donkey around there's all sorts of reasons this is why you were fired as a taskmaster challenge rider deep bone this donkey and you've got 30 minutes to do it But basically to use it, you know, if you are going to kill an animal, you may as well use absolutely everything in it. Oh, yeah. You know, it's an important thing to do.
Starting point is 00:23:01 You need to crush it to a powder. And one thing you can do is do steam explosion, where you basically use high pressure steam to kind of reduce it to a powder. You sort of blast it. This is a Chinese study because China gets through a lot of donkeys, as I think we did in a podcast a few months ago, didn't we? Yeah, they're running out. Right, they're running out. In fact, they're using up everyone else's donkeys and they're running out of them. This is a problem.
Starting point is 00:23:21 Wow. Not helped by the use of steam exploded donkey bone powder. But it turns out that when you bake cookies using steam exploded donkey bone powder instead of flour, they're rated very highly by participants. Like people tasting these cookies, which are one third donkey bone powder instead of flour, say, ah, that's delicious. Really? Yeah.
Starting point is 00:23:42 And does it maybe contain like bone marrow stuff? So it might be okay for you. It might. I mean, it sounds like in terms of flavor, odor and overall acceptability. This was a Chinese study, so it might be culturally specific. But turns out that might be what you're missing in your next bake is a little bit of the old steam exploded donkey bone powder. Give that a miss, I think. Thanks, though.
Starting point is 00:24:05 Yeah. Okay. Before we wrap up this first episode of Little Fish, we are now going to do something that is going to be appearing at the end of every single episode, which is, if you were part of the friend of the podcast here on Club Fish, as part of your membership, you are going to become, the custodian of one of the facts, one of the headline facts from the 600 plus episodes of no such thing as a fish. And we will give you a shout out to let you know what your fact is. And we'll also be sending you a digital certificate to acknowledge it in writing forever on. You can put it on the wall. You can do whatever you want. And this is an honour that cannot be stripped away, right? This
Starting point is 00:24:45 isn't like a... I don't know. I think if you do something really bad, like really, really bad, if you're a knight of the realm and you do something really awful they can take it off you okay this digital certificate is now your moral compass you need to behave like a person with a digital certificate would
Starting point is 00:25:04 which is a good person a good human I don't want the police like knocking down someone's door because they've done some terrible deed and the first thing the police see on the wall is a custodian of episode 453 of no six things of fish
Starting point is 00:25:17 that's the last thing we need because then they'll ask us questions And they'll see how does this go all the way to the top of no such thing as a fish? Yeah, yeah. I think we should say as well a little bit of the theory behind it, which is that these facts, they're endangered, some of them, they need support, many of them are true. Some of them.
Starting point is 00:25:37 All of Dan's, James and Anna's are true. And mine are occasionally like the largest kettle in Hamburg is called Caroline, which turns out not to be a kettle. Imagine if the police are trying to arrest a murderer, they bang down the door, they open the door, they look on the wall, they go, oh, did you know that the largest finicular railway in Swaziland is called Derek? And then while they're doing that, someone's run away. Okay, so use us as a decoy.
Starting point is 00:26:06 Do what you want with it. It's a lovely certificate. And so, yeah, why don't we, because we haven't actually launched the tiers yet, why not give ourselves an honorary fact each that we will be the custodians of? and we should say please join Clubfish at the Friend of the Podcast tier because if nobody has joined Friend of the Podcasts we're going to have to do that again
Starting point is 00:26:25 and we're going to look really stupid okay so the way we're going to do it is we're going to be allocating members in sequence in a very particular order so the first fact is now going to be allocated to Mr James Harkin Thank you James please read us your fact
Starting point is 00:26:42 Sorry first I'd like to say a few words I have an alibi for that night of the third. Okay, so I am a custodian of fact number one in episode number one of no such things a fish, which was that the large Hadron Collider had to be turned off because a bird dropped a bit of baguette into it. Stunning. And what did I eat just before we came on air today?
Starting point is 00:27:07 Baguette. A bird. Large Hadron. So yeah, I'm really honored to be the. custodian of that. I promise to look after it well. How does it feel? It feels good because it's a fact that can't be proven wrong because it's a historical fact. It's happened unless someone goes back in time, of course. But you would need some sort of enormous physical laboratory to go back in time. It's impossible. Okay, so that's James. Congratulations, James. That's a very exciting fact. And your digital
Starting point is 00:27:41 certificate is on its way. All right. So Anna's not with us today, but obviously, Anna is getting her own fact and the second fact of the show was her fact. So for Anna, we will be allocating what is almost the classic fact of no such thing as a fish. Weird that it's the second one that we think is a classic, almost like the first one was a bit rubbish. It's like the Star Wars films in that respect. Yeah. Carry on. Yeah, we wouldn't want to be custodian of that first fact.
Starting point is 00:28:11 So this was Anna's fact. For the last month of his life, U.S. President James Garfield ate everything. through his anus. What a fact. Congratulations, Anna. What a fact. Your digital certificate will be on its way. Dan, what about you?
Starting point is 00:28:26 Are you going to get a fact from this? I am going to get a fact, but if we're going to go sequential, we should assign each of our own facts, I think, for this first episode to each other. So, Andy, you're next. And your fact comes from James Horican. Yeah. Didn't manage to get a fact into the episode one of No Such Thing as a Fish. Try my best.
Starting point is 00:28:47 You're welcome. James just had two good facts. I think it's because it was a Franken show, right? It wasn't deliberate. It wasn't deliberate, right? Hard to say. So yeah, so it's a good point. We made a few shows and then in the edit, we edited, again, it was a pilot.
Starting point is 00:29:08 That episode was never meant to go out. I'll happily take one of James' facts. All right, so what is it? It's that. In 2013, six people in the USA named their child Mushroom. Very nice. Good fact. I wouldn't want to be associated with that fact anymore.
Starting point is 00:29:19 Exactly. Actually. Yeah. Did you hate mushrooms as much then as you did as you do now? It's been a whole life thing. Right. Wow. From as young as I remember being, I did not like mushrooms.
Starting point is 00:29:30 Maybe if you'd been named mushroom, you wouldn't now have that phobia. I probably would hate it more because I can imagine the bullying I would have had a number of people saying you're a fun guy. Which you are. Yeah, but I feel like I would have become less and less fun over the years as people made that joke to me. That's true. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's understandable.
Starting point is 00:29:48 Yeah, okay. Well, those six people in the USA who are named Mushroom will now be 12. Oh, yeah. Years old. I mean, they won't have doubled in size. They may reproduce with sports, we don't know. That's actually the age that a lot of people who come to our shows who are like kids. That's when they start listening usually around 12, isn't it?
Starting point is 00:30:10 Yeah. Well, if you're in the USA and you are named Mushroom and you were born in 2013, do write in to podcast at QI.com. I wonder if it's gone up, you know, over the years. It'll be a popular name by now. You think so? Yeah, yeah. It's a nice popular name in the States.
Starting point is 00:30:25 Yeah, soon. Okay, well, there you go, Andy. Thank you very much. You official custodian. I love it. The mushroom fact. Probably in a few years, there will be lots of people named mushroom after the cloud. Oh, God.
Starting point is 00:30:38 All right, should we assign mine? So my fact, this was the fourth fact of the very first episode, is that, Philippa Langley, who found Richard the 3rd's bones, was an amateur, but nonetheless saw him at a car park beneath a huge R, and the bones were beneath there. Could have done with an edit? Yeah. Apologies for anyone who is custodian of Dan's facts, because we won't be able to fit them on the certificate. I think at the time when I was typing up these episodes, I hadn't yet found my scrupulous methodology of writing the headline facts up in a really concise. I don't think I would have said it like that.
Starting point is 00:31:17 I think you might have said it like that. Well, okay, well, that's how it goes. We're going to be doing this every week. So join Friend of the podcast. You will become the official custodian of one of our facts. And as of next week, we'll be going from episode two onwards. Yes. So if you want to find out how to do that and how to claim your fact, then just go to
Starting point is 00:31:40 patreon.com slash no such thing as a fish. And even if you don't join it, the friend of the podcast, there are two other tiers available. All of them contain all sorts of goodies, whether that's ad-free stuff or merch or extra content every fortnight or little videos of us doing very, very stupid stuff. It's all so much fun and we're very excited to be making it. Just go to patreon.com slash no such thing as a fish and check it out. And of course, if you want to get your fact on Little Fish, our new show here, thank you so much for listening. Podcast at QI.com. And he goes through all the emails. He's going to be cherry picking the best of them and we're going to bring more of them
Starting point is 00:32:11 next Monday. Until then, goodbye.

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.