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No Such Thing As A Bassoon In A Football Stadium

July 11, 20140 comments♥ 0
00:00We run it on QI a few years ago.Yeah.Which was, there's no such thing as a fish.You know, no such thing as a fish?No, seriously.It's in the Oxford Dictionary of Underwater Life.He says it, right there, first paragraph,No Such Thing is a Fish.
00:17Hello and welcome to another episode of No Such Thing as a Fish,a weekly podcast coming to you from the QI offices in Covent Garden.My name is Dan Shriver.I'm sitting here with three other elves.We've got James Harkin.Chisinski and on fact-checking duties, Andy Murray. And we also have a special guest today. It's thecreator of QI. It's the chief gnome himself, Mr. John Lloyd. Today's episode is a special one.It is a tie-in for the final of the 2014 Brazilian World Cup, and we are going to be talking
00:47about nothing but football. Now, this is going to be quite interesting, given that none of usknow anything about football. But we've done our research, and so we've once again gatheredround our microphones and these are the best football facts that we found out from the last seven days.So in no particular order, here we go.Okay, fact number one, Anna.Yep, my fact is that the first known football chant was composed by Elgar.The first gnome football chant.In honour of me, the chief gnome, ball chant.
01:15Okay, let's clarify that Elgar wasn't a gnome.He's obviously one of our most famous composers.He wrote Land of Hope and Glory.Land of Hope and Glory is often used.as a football chant.Yes, it is.They sing,we hate Nottingham Forest,
01:30we hate Everton 2,we hate Man United,but Liverpool,we love you.And they always change the teams,but the first teamalways seems to be Nottingham Forestbecause it scans properly.
01:40Which is a bit harshon Nottingham Forest,like every team hates them.The other thing about Elgar,he's the only major composerto have mastered the bassoon.Did you know that?Really?
01:51So when other composers were writing for the bassoon,were they just making it up?No, the bassoon is for,a very important thing in all sorts of ways.Darwin used to play the bassoon to worms on his billiard table to see if they had a sense of hearing.You know that?Because I know that Elgar stopped playing the violin because he decided he wasn't good enough.So maybe he did that thing and thinking, I'm a bit crap at all the mainstream instruments.
02:11Let's go for the weirdo that no one ever plays.Was he a footballer, Elgar?No, he wasn't, but he was a big fan of wolves.And he wrote a song called He Banged the Leather in 1898,which was actually before he became particularly famous.He'd written a few pieces.And he wrote it because he went to stay with his friend, Dora Penny, whose father was a rector in Wolverhampton.And the first question he asked her when he got off the train was, so we're going to go and see a football match.
02:35And after that, they went.And he cycled 40 miles from his home regularly to go and watch Wolves play.So how did he spread the chant initially?There's not much evidence of it being some at the time.I think it was only discovered about 50 years after.Oh, okay.So it wasn't him being an embarrassing dad in the crowd, just going, come on everyone.I've played on the bassoon, you guys sing along.
02:57That's why bassoons are now band.That's like the old school of a zella.Yeah.I'm coming with their bassoons.The thing about chance that I really like is it must,that there was a referee, very famous referee called Graham Pohl.Oh yeah.And he, on a show, sort of waxed on about how depressed he was about the fact that his surname rhymed with Hull.
03:18Because he just knew that like, as soon as you join the football,you've got to look at every element of your life and just go,Where can this be turned into, oh, no, Paul, Hull, no.That's why Paul Anker never became a referee, I suppose.Yeah, exactly.But it's got an amazing history, doesn't it?I managed to find, there's the who ate all the pies.Oh, yeah.
03:38You know that famous chant.It supposedly, it gets traced back to a footballer who was a goalie called William Henry Fulk.Do you know William Henry Falk?Yeah, Fattie Fulks. Was he a goalkeeper?Fattie Fultz. He was a goalkeeper.This is the most extraordinary player.He was six foot four.when the average size was 5 foot 5, he used to bend the crossbar.
03:59He would pull down on it to make the goal smaller because it would bend in.And he was just a furious guy.One time he disagreed with a referee about a call that made them lose a match.And so he nakedly ran through the stadium trying to find the referee.Naked, yeah. He was naked. He hit himself in a broom cupboard, this referee,because he was so petrified and he started trying to rip the doors off.And he was fat?Yeah.
04:23Was that a tactical thing?because I've always wondered if there should be a width restriction on goal leads,because if you were fat enough, you're just blocking the whole goal, right?I don't think that's possible.I don't think, although he did play cricket,and apparently people used to joke that there was an appeal against the lightwhenever he was bowling.A guy called, on Twitter called at Villaness Stato,
04:46he tweeted me about the football podcast,and he told me about this goalkeeper called Lee Roos.Oh, yeah.And his trick was quite clever.Whenever a corner would go in, he would sit on the crossbar, so he was higher than everyone else,and then he'd launch himself from the crossbar to catch the ball.Wow.That's a pretty good trick.
05:04Yeah, that's a great trick.If it works.Yeah.I don't suppose they'd do it anymore, so maybe it doesn't work.You know, Osama bin Laden has his own chant.Really?Arsenal.Yeah.
05:13It's Osama, whoa, whoa.Osama, whoa, he's hiding in Kabul.He loves the Arsenal.Is that something like...He was a huge Arsenal fan.Really?And when he lived in London, he actually went to a bunch of matches,bought a jersey, which he brought back for his son, which was, I believe, Ian Wright.
05:31His son was Ian Wright?Fascinating.And he officially got banned by Arsenal from ever attending one of their matches on their grounds post 9-11.That was Arsenal's official response to the travesties of America.From 2004 to 2005, England got its first chant laureate, Johnny Hurst.It was the board that decided who he was going to bewas chaired by Andrew Motion,who was obviously the Poet Laureate at the time,
05:59and he was paid £10,000 for a year,which is twice as much as the Poet Laureate gets for his post,to write chants.And you should look him up because they are appallingly bad.An Arsenal, actually, in 2008, I think,or I don't know, in the early 2000s,Arsenal released an official chant bookand distribute it to its players,
06:19which obviously did not catch on at all.Well, like a hymns book.Basically like a hymn is like standing up in assembly.At the first column though, we will be singing him number 369.The referee's a wanker.Okay, Andy, have you got anything to add on chance?Yes, I have.We were on Charles Darwin earlier.
06:38And Darwin shouted at his earthworms in his last book,which was called the catchy title,The Formation of Vegetable Mold Through the Action of Worms with Observations on Their Habits.He played the bassoon to them.It's got a brilliant end that book.so that's DarwinI have found aI found an article in the Guardian
07:00which says that Osama bin Laden was not a fanof Arsenalbut it's I think it's open to disputebecause he was a fan of football in his younger daysso I reckon that oneI reckon that one stacks upsomeone wrote after he wasafter he was killed someone wrote on Twitter
07:17after watching Arsenal yesterdayit was perhaps unwise for bin Laden to rush into his yardshouting outcome on the gunners.Okay, let's move on to fact number two,and that is my fact,and that is that Eric Cantona was raised in a cave.There's a good football chant about him.
07:41Is there?Isn't that?Yeah.They did sing,ooh, R. Cantanar, didn't they a lot?And Man United fans still sing about Cantanar,even though he hasn't played for them.Yeah, he even in the year that he was banned
07:52for fly-kicking a man in the head,still one player's player of the year.Perhaps I accelerated it.When you say he was raising a cave, Dan,do you mean a cave?A cave? A carve?A wine cellar.I'm sure it's a cave?
08:05He was French.He was French, that's true.He's French. Yeah, no, it was a lookout postthat was used by occupying Nazisduring World War II,then got abandoned and his paternal grandparentsarrived from Sardinia,and they occupied the cave,
08:20and they slowly renovated it over the years.Funny, he didn't take up cricketrather than football,those bats in there.you've got the tone of the lame jokes on the podcast right down to a tea.I'm in there like a rat up a pipe, Anna.So just speaking of growing up in caves, I was thinking about people who live in bizarre homes.There's a story in the news this week about a house in Wales that's gone up for sale for $425,000,
08:46which has its own private train station where you can hail down trains.Isn't that cool?You can hail a train.Yeah.That's not uncommon.My mum's local station in Dorset, you stick your hand out and the train stop.Do not try this when a Virgin Pendolino is going past.Eric Cantaner, he sits in the pantheid of those amazing football characters
09:07that you love almost as much for their social life as you do for their life on the field,on the pitch.Like Pele.Pele is another one that I love.What did he do?There's an amazing ad where he was standing in a massive pitch,looking around, going, you know, I've played in some of the greatest stadiumsof the world. I've played amongst the greatest roaring fans that you could ever want.
09:29And then he goes into the locker rooms and he says, I've shared these locker rooms with someof the greatest players who've ever walked onto the pitch. And we spoke about everything,our lives, our families, our greatest fears. The one thing we never spoke about, though,was erectile dysfunction. And then it turned into an ad and how you need to see your doctorif you're not getting it up. And yeah, I was just like, Pele, where does this come from?And he became the ultimate advocate of erectile dysfunction.So go you.That's as exciting as your career to me.
09:57This is somewhat related.Another Brazilian footballer, Gorence, he's very famous, from the same era.He lost his virginity to a goat, according to his official biography.No.Really?Yeah, apparently.Who's on top, James?That's the thing.
10:14I think the goat for the first half.His nickname was the Wren, because the way he ran, because one of his legs was shorter.than the other. And when they wonthe World Cup, he got a bonus and hehid the money underneath his child's bedforgot about it. And then when he rememberedhe found out that his child had been wettingthe bed for three years and it was completely
10:32ruined all the money. Oh no.Talking ofnicknames, do you know whoSulphus Nielsen was?I do not. He was nicknamedKrolben or bandy legs.And he's the first man to score10 goals in a national
10:48match. Really? Yeah.Because his bandy legs made him very difficult to tacklebecause there was a huge gap between where his legs should be.1908 at the Olympics.We were talking earlier about Cantonar kicking football fans.Yeah.He's got nothing on this guy.Javier Flores.
11:06He was a Colombian midfielder.And he'd lost a game, lost a football match,and he was driving home.And as he was driving, there was a group of fans there.And they started shouting, weak, week, week.And so he shot them.and when he got brought up in front of the judge,he said that as he drove past, it wasn't his fault, he was drunk.
11:27I happen to know from having been a lawyer in my early youth,that drunkenness is not a defence to murder.No, especially not when you're driving, I don't suppose.Because crime of passion can sometimes be a defence in France, can't it?I think France is the only country where if a murder you can plead crime of passion.I read somewhere, I'm sure this is apocry, Andy will tell us,but it used to be a crime of passion to kill somebody for pinching your parking space in France.It's kind of such an offensive thing to do
11:53that would be let off.Are footballers by and largeunderprivilegedin terms of their upbringing, would you say?You would think it's a working classsport in this country, you would think?And it's funny, it didn't start out that way, did it?Because in the early days, they were all,
12:11there's an amazing guy called Lord Kinnaird,who was president of the FA for 33 years.Extraordinary player.He played in nine FA Cup finals, five times on the winning side, three times for Wanderers,which was a mixed public school boys team and twice for the Old Etonians.And he didn't just play football.He won the 350-yard race at Eaton in 1864, the international canoe race at the 1867 Paris Exhibition,two blues for tennis at Cambridge.
12:42And he was champion of Cambridge University in both fives and swimming.It's great in those days when you could be the best at ever.everything, wasn't it? You were like the best soccer player, you were automatically going to bethe best long jumper and the best tennis player and everything. But speaking of the gentlemensports teams, Corinthians was a team of gentlemen that was so gentlemanly that if they gottackled in the penalty era, they would refuse the penalty because they thought there was no waythat anyone could possibly have done it on purpose. That's right. I've got the actual quote for thathere. Yeah, CB Fry wrote, it is a standing insult to sportsmen to have to play under a rule which
13:18assumes that the player intends to trip, hack or push their opponents and behave likecads of the most unscrupulous kidney.Cristiano Ronaldo thinks the same thing. It's just outrageous.All right, Andy, have you got anything to add? Yes, I have. We were talking aboutCantana earlier, way back in distant memory. And just a couple of extra things I found abouthim. After he retired from the game, he applied to register his name and the phrase,who are cantona as commercial trademarks.Just speaking of trademarking, I remember that when David Hasselhoff got divorced,
13:55part of his divorce settlement was that he claimed full and total use of the phrase,don't hassle the Hoff, and that his wife was not allowed in any circumstance to use thatpublicly or otherwise.That's great.We were on defences against crimes earlier.I have not found any evidence that parking spaces are justification for murder.I found someone in France who did kill someone else over a parking space, but I'm not sure it counts as a crime of passion.I thought it was, yes, unlikely, I agree.
14:24But crime of passion has been recently reinstated partially as a defence in murder cases in England.Yeah.Last year.On Gorincha, the Brazilian footballer, so four times in his career he scored from a corner.Wow.It must be the bandy legs coming in handy.And in one match against Fiorentina, he beat four defenders and the goalkeeper.and then he stopped short of the line to wait for the defenders to catch up with him
14:49and then beat them again and scored.Nice showboating.Okay, let's move on to fact number three, and that's yours, James.Okay, my fact is that in the first World Cup final in 1930,and the two teams Uruguay and Argentina couldn't agree on the size of bowl to use,and so they used Argentina's small ball in the first halfand Uruguay's big ball in the second half.and it was such a difference that Argentina were two one up at half time
15:26when they were using their small balland in the second half Uruguay with the big ball went on to win four twoso obviously made quite a big difference for the second halfso there was an official ball that was usedno there was no official size to the ball at that timeeither is nowwasn't there a thing with cricket when it startedthat nobody thought to define how wide a bat could be
15:48so you could have an enormously wide batyou know that we completely cover the wicked.That's a brilliant thing.There's an interesting thing I've found out about some.There are four Olympic sports that have goals in them,football, hockey, water polo and...Handball.Handball, yes.
16:07And there's an interesting thing called the penalty factor,which is because obviously goals are all different sizes and heightsand the balls are also different sizes,so that a football goal is twice as wide as a hockey goal,but the ball three times larger.and the penalty factor is the number that takes all these factors into accountand works out how hard it is relatively score a goal in any of those four sports.Oh, really?
16:28And surprisingly, they're all extraordinarily similar.Really?Wow.Do you think that's just trial and error that they ended up like that?I don't know, yeah.It sort of feels like it, doesn't it?Yeah.It was a really interesting little factoid, which is a football goal.
16:42You probably knew this, James.But I said, I knew nothing about football before this weekend.But the rule of QI, as you all know, better than anybody,is that everything's interestingif it's looked out long enoughand it has been absolutely fascinatingactually all these little side lights likeso a football goal
16:57is eight yards wide and eight feethigh it's a really neat little thingbut because in metric it doesn't look like anything interestingno you're rightFIFA did try andor they did talk about widening the goalsa few years ago becauseI think it was after the American World Cup
17:13and they were trying to get Americans interestedand they thought well there aren't enough goalsin soccer and so they thought aboutmaking the goals wider by 50 centimeters on each side, which would have spoiled the8 by 8, but also a lot of the goalkeepers went, well, people watch it because it's sodifficult to score goals.I mean, if it becomes easy, if you can kick it into a bit where no goalkeeper can get to it,then it just spoils the game.
17:36There used to be as well.The crossbar was not there initially.It was just like rugby, just two poles in the air.And they decided eventually to add the crossbar because people just kept lobbying.it way over the height that any human could get and would estimate whether or not it had in factgone between the two bars. The net was actually invented by an Everton fan who was so annoyedbecause not only was it a trick of the eye whether or not the ball had gone past the poston the inside or outside of the goal, but fans used to line up right back by the goal line
18:09and so they would just hit it with their hand or with their leg. So when a goal went in, it justwent right back out again and no one knew if it actually had made it through. There was a famousthing that happened that a few years ago,it must be 10 years ago now, and I'm going to sayit was Bristol City, but I might be wrong.And what they had, they had the net,but they had the advertising hoardings tooclose to the back of the net. So someone hit
18:30a shot, it went in. Instead ofmaking the net bulge, it hit the advertisinghoardings, came back out and they didn't give thegoal because they didn't realize it had gone in.Oh, really? Yeah. Is Bristol Cityany good as a team? No.Yeah, I wondered why, because there was a famous linein not the 9 o'clock news, and Mel Smith
18:46as a news reader reading outthe headline, it says, Lord Lucan has been found.He's been playing centre forward for Bristol City.I like it.Sorry to any Bristol City fans listening.I'm a Tremere Rovers fan.They always beat us, but they are not a very good team, no.I remember I went to Bristol one time, and we were driving down.
19:07We were trying to get to Ashton Gate, which is the Bristol City ground.And we stopped, and we asked a guy, excuse me, can you tell us where Bristol City's footballground is and he said, oh no, we don't play football around here.He was a captain of their team.Maybe it's Lord Lucan.Any other interesting rules, James?There used to be no loitering allowed in football.The rules were, yeah, no loitering near the opponent's goal, which basically then later
19:36became the offside rule.I really like in the early days of football how things just went as people decided on thespur of the moment.So there was a match in 1894and Sunderland versus Darby Countyand basically the match was ready to startexcept that the referee hadn't arrivedbecause he'd missed his connecting train
19:54and so they decideddecided to go for it anywaythey brought a guy in who knew how to referee as wellhe came into the match and they played 45 minutesand there was a 3-0 lead to Sunderland by half timethe referee arrived said what'd you do?Start the match without me?No, no, no. Made it void.
20:12Started the match again.up playing a three-halfmatch. Wow. Do we knowwhat the final score was? Yeah. It was5-0. So Sunderlandstill won, but really it should have been 8-0.When the goalkeeper, who had lost the match8-0 was asked why they'd lost,
20:27he didn't blame the big defeat onthe fact that the referee had messedthem about by not showing up and then canceling thepoints. And then so he blamed it becausehe said it was a failure of his to findany rice pudding in Sunderlandbefore the match. And his mottofamously was no pudding, no points.
20:43He ate a bowl of rice pudding before every matchSo yeahThat was his excuseFootball of course evolved from like a village sportWhere two villages would get a pig's bladderAnd they would try and get it from one village to the otherThere's a game in 1280 at OldhamIn Northumberland
21:01Where a player was killed as a result of runningAgainst an opposing player's daggerWhich sounds rather like he's getting blamed forYeahNot my poll, he ran into my judgeDagger.It's like that line in Chicago.He ran into my knife.
21:17He ran into my knife ten times.What?Also, it's interesting to see, again, how the game evolves and how these, how all the rulescome into play.Like, for example, the whistle.The whistle was quite a late introduction into football.And what they used to do was referees just used to wave a hanky.Any time they needed to get the attention of the other players.
21:36And so it used to get passed down.And I'm like, oh, mate, hankies, hankies being waived.Also, folk, apparently this guy, Faddy.Folk, who I mentioned earlier, supposedly the reason of ball boys being invented for the sport was a resultof him, because what they used to do was behind the goal to accentuate his size, 6'4, everyone else, roughly 5 foot 5,they used to place two little boys behind the goal just to make him look way larger and more intimidating.And then any time the ball went past, the boys just naturally went and grabbed the balls.And that supposedly was how ball boys came about.
22:09So it's a very naturally evolving sport.Just going back to the first World Cup with the two bowls,the winning goal was scored by a guy called Hector Castro,which is quite impressive.First winning goal in the first World Cup final.What's even more impressive is he only had one arm.And when he was 13 years old,he accidentally amputated his right forearm while using an electric saw,
22:33and his teammates nicknamed him El Manko.Andy, do you have anything to add?Yes, as well as variations in the size of the ball.There were variations in early matches between the kind of football code that you would use.So there were the Sheffield rules and the Nottingham rules.And some matches took different sets of rules even for the first and second halves of the game.And in the early days as well, they turned up with different numbers of players.So teams were between 9 and 18 players, basically.
23:08John, earlier you mentioned the massive cricket bat.that someone used.This is officially known as the monster bat incident of 1771.So it was just one guy came up with a massive bat and covered the whole wicket.Yeah, basically.That's ingenious.They suddenly produced some eight-foot stumps that they nailed in behind him.And a huge like Indiana Jones ball.
23:36Yeah.Stone, made of stone.Okay.Time for our final fact.to the show and that is you, Mr. John Lloyd.Okay, myfact is that FIFA,the Federation
23:54International de Football Association,has moremembers than the UN.Right. Which I think issurprising counterintuitive. Quite a lotmore members, actually. It's got 17more members than the UN.Most of these
24:11members are tiny littlecolonies like AmericanSamoa, Anguilla, Aruba, Bermuda,British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Cook Islands, Curacao, Faroe Islands, Guam, Hong Kong as a member of FIFA,Macau, Montserrat, New Caledonia, Palestine as a member of FIFA, but not of the UN.And, of course, Scotland, Northern Ireland, England and Wales.And the upshot of this is that it is the reason, ultimately, why Britain doesn't have a football team in the Olympics.Probably the only national side, as far as I know, the only country in the world never enters.
24:47three Olympics a British football team was in 6468 and1972 they didn't even qualify they didn't even get in three yearsbefore that they're knocked out in the first round so this thing of Britain not beingvery good at football is actually really old it goes right back toit's it's right back to 1920s and in 2012 the host countrydoesn't have to qualify so you just have a team by rightso initially the Scots the Northern Irish and the Welsh allrefused to take part as official FAs I don't know if that
25:16would change laterI think it did change.I think we did get a team in the end and fail miserably like we do in every tournament.And it was controversial and they're not going to do it again, I think.So the UK isn't a part of FIFA?Yeah.Wow.The good thing about not being part of FIFA is that you're not bound by their rules.
25:33So there's a story, you know, how Louis Suarez has been banned from all football for biting some guy.Well, there's a story that he might be able to go and train in Kosovo because they're not members of FIFA.Really?Which is a nice little loophole for him.Yeah.I like as well that there's one of the teams that isn't a part of FIFA is Palau. Palau, yeah.Whereas most of the other teams have a sort of quite legit reason, like the UK, for not joining.Their one is actually just a slight admin era.
26:02They've been inactive since 1998 because their membership expired.But they've confirmed an intention to apply for membership again.So they are going to join eventually.Yeah.Well, so they just failed to fill in the forms, basically.Who was in charge of filling the forms?It was 28 pages.Yeah.
26:19Come on.So the Netherlands are now through to the semifinals in the World Cup.Well, they might be through to the finals by the time it goes out.They might be through to the finals.They only booked their hotel in Brazil up until the 7th of July.And FIFA have organized for all of its sponsors and visiting dignitariesthat were going to come just for the semifinals and finals to move in.So they've had to kick out the Dutch team.
26:39So that's today that when we're recording this podcast, they've just been kicked out.So I'm not sure where they're going to stay.Well, they could probably have the English camp.There you go.I think that struck me forciblylooking at the Olympic historyis that on average todayone football match in four
26:55anywhere in the world is a drawbecause if you look at the early scoresin the 1908 Olympicswhich is won by Britain2-0 against Denmark in the finaland the Danish team includedpure mathematician Harold Bohrwho's brother of the physicist Niels Bohr
27:12who's as you knowyou probably know an accomplished goalkeeper himselfand Harold Boar scored twice in Denmark's opening gameand in the quarterfinalsBritain beat Sweden 12-1and Denmark beat France B-team 9-1in the semis, Denmark beat France 17-1I think in the first World Cup
27:31both semi-finals were like 7-1 or 8-1or something like thatbut just going back to Neil's ballbeing a goalkeeper he's once saidthat he let in an outrageously long shotdue to being distracted by a mathematical problemIt's another nice thingIn the 1920 Olympics and Twerp
27:50In the final between Belgium and Czech SlovakiaFor the only time in football historyThe competition couldn't be completedBecause the Czechs walked off the pitchComplaining of bias by the officials to All EnglishFor sending one of their players offAnd intimidation by Belgian soldiers in the crowdSo that they just walked off
28:08And that was the end of itYou mentioned the FAThey were responsible for banning women'sfootball for 50 years, which isn't unusual and was banned in a lot of countries.But the women's football around just post the First World War and up until 1921 when it wasbanned was more popular than men's football.And women's matches would draw bigger crowds.The biggest ladies team was the ladies team from Preston called Dick Kerr's.
28:32But their match was played in 1920 at Goodison Park in Liverpool and it drew a crowd of 53,000people with another 10 to 15,000 reportedly turned away.and the justification for the FAA banning women from playing on any FAA approved grounds,which was effectively the same,was that women were too frail to play football and they'd be too easily injured,and it was basically seemed to be that it was drawing attention and crowds away from men's football.It was always the most popular in America for the last 20 years,women's football has been much more popular than men's football,
29:05especially in schools.I have a match, a ladies' match from May 1881,and it was an England versus Scotland match, played in Scotland.And this is the review of it from Bell's Life newspaper.So it has come at last.What next?The event that has had the paper so agitated was a woman's football match.Several years ago there was a rage for silly displays of certain kinds of athletics by women,
29:31but we thought the time had passed.To give the arrangement any semblance of an international event,the girls had the cheat to designate the farce English.England versus Scotland.So not a good review for the opening international match.Not a great analysis of the football played.Oscar Wilde said,football is all very well as a game for rough girls,
29:53but it is hardly suitable for delicate boys.That's good.I read about the North Korean female football team,which has a fantastic history.And it's another thing.I love that North Korea is a part of FIFA.Well, they're in the last World Cup.Yeah, yeah, they're in the last World Cup.
30:10I think it is in that way a force for good is that for a moment, as it were, violent nationalities forgotten in favour of friendly competition.Exactly.I mean, there was conditions apparently in North Korea whereby you could only watch a match if they'd already watched it and saw that North Korea had won, which meant they didn't watch any matches.I don't know if I've said this before, I might have done.In the last World Cup, they'd played, I think, Brazil in the first game, and they'd lost like three, two or four to, but it'd been a really good game.and everyone thought, wow, this North Korea team is actually quite good.They've got a good chance.And so they didn't show the first game in North Korea, but they showed the highlights afterwards.
30:48And they thought, well, actually, we're doing pretty well.So we will show the next game live.And they played Portugal, and they lost 7-1 or 7-0 or something like that.They got absolutely battered.They also in 2011 in the World Cup in Germany, North Korea lost 2-0 to America.And their coach said that the team played such a bad way on that match,because a few days ago, five of their players were struck by lightning.That's very good.
31:13I was unfortunate for them.And also the coach claimed that he was being coached by Kim Jong-il via an invisible mobile phonethat the dear leader had invented himself.So he was getting coaching tips on that.The team then eventually got busted for having steroids, for using steroids.The reason they were using the steroids supposedly was to help them recover from the lightning strike.But they also, this is really nice.In 1999 at the Women's World Cup, which was held in America, the North Korean players arrived.
31:43But FIFA got really concerned about one of the players' dental care, because they hadn't had proper dental care.Their teeth were looking really bad.So they gave her free treatment.It was paid by FIFA, free treatment.And then all the other players on the team faked sort of phantom teeth illnesses, so they could all get their teeth done as well.So they didn't win any matches, but they all went back to North Korea with fantastic teeth.They were like, why are they smiling so much?They've lost all their games.
32:08Does anyone have anything to throw in before we go to Andy?I do, actually.I want to tell you this fantastic story about the island of Grenada against Barbadosand the Shell Caribbean Cup of 1994.Do you know this story?No, no, it sounds great.It's one of the weirdest football matches you've ever heard of.So it was the last of the group stage.
32:27Okay, so Barbados had to beat Grenada by two goals to go through to the next round on goal difference.And if they failed, then Grenada would go through.So at that time, the organisers had introduced a new rule.for golden goals. Okay.And they said, a golden goal, if it scored, will count for two goals,because a golden goal by definition ends the match.It's not fair on people who win matches by golden goals.Yeah.
32:50So a golden goal counted for two, okay?So Barbados took an early two-nill lead, and they were doing really well.They held that all the way through the first half.They were playing great in the second half,and looked like they were going to coast through that two-nill lead into the knockout stages.When Grenada suddenly scored and made it 2-1,and it was seven minutes from the end of the match,So the Barbagians, the Bayjans said, right, the chance of scoring a third goal in seven minutes are very small.
33:14So they turned round and shot into their own goal, making it a draw, which meant, as it was a draw, when the match was over,they would have to go to extra time.Yeah.And they had a chance of a two-nil lead with the new golden goal rule.Right.That's brilliant.Yeah.So then they've turned round, score an old goal, so it's two all.
33:33And it's three minutes to go.So Grenada now has to be really intelligent.And they think, right.It doesn't matter which end we score at.As long as it's not a draw,it will be only a one goal difference and we'll go through.So first of all, they rush up to the Barbasian.No, wait a minute.
33:49Let's go the other way.Go back to their own goal.Meanwhile, the Bayesian team realized,we've got to defend the Grenad and goal.So the whole team go around and like a penalty wall block the grenade and goal,which they successfully do.Full-time is called at 2-all,and they go to extra time,
34:07and Barbados wins a golden goal in five minutes.Oh, wow.Brilliant.That sounds brilliant.Okay, Andy, any final facts that are in here?Well, you got everything just about correct there, I think.I couldn't find any mistakes.There's a cup rather nicely called the Elf Cup.
34:24Oh.Yeah, which took place in 2006 between Crimea, Greenland, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Tibet, northern Cyprus and Zanzibar.I bet no other Cyprus won that, because they're like a really good team, aren't they?They hosted it, and they won it.and one of the early women's football teams was called the honeyballerswhich is just rather nice and the team captain was a lady called Mary Hudsonbut she played under a pseudonym because of the banand the FA have since apologized for the ban
34:53I do know that amusingly in Germany when they allowed women to play footballthen they were only allowed to play it in warm weatherokay that's it's the end of our podcast that's all of our factsthanks for listening if you want to get in contact withany of us about the stuff that we've said on today's show.You can get us all on our Twitter handles.I'm on at Shriverland, James.At Egg-shaped.
35:20Andy.At Andrew Hunter M.Anna.You can get me on podcast at QI.com.Email me there.And John.John, you don't have a Twitter.No, I'm taken over at Quicopedia.
35:32Yeah.Well, you can reach them on 0779.If you want to find out any more about the things that we've been talking abouton this week's episode, you can head over to QI.com slash podcast.where we're going to have videos, we're going to have links,and you can also find all of our previous episodes for this series,including our International Factball series,which was a football podcast, which made no mention of football whatsoever.
35:53That's it for us this week.We're going to be back again next week, and tune in again.Thanks so much. Goodbye.