No Such Thing As A Fish - No Such Thing As A Clenched Shin

Episode Date: April 4, 2024

Dan, James, Anna and Alex Bell discuss Porky, Hockey, Hippies and Nookie. Visit nosuchthingasafish.com for news about live shows, merchandise and more episodes.  Join Club Fish for ad-free episodes and exclusive bonus content at apple.co/nosuchthingasafish or nosuchthingasafish.com/patreon

Hello and welcome to another episode of No Such Thing as a Fish, a weekly podcast coming to you from the QI offices in Hobern. My name is Dan Schreiber. I'm sitting here with Anna Tashinsky, James Harkin, and Alex Bell. And once again, we have gathered around the microphones with our four favorite facts from the last seven days and in no particular order. Here we go. Starting with fact number one, and that is my fact. my fact this week is that the original voice of Porky Pig got fired for having a stutter That is so unfair It really is, isn't it? Because they carried on with the stutter

Did they then do auditions for people being like you have to stutter? Well, they didn't really need to do auditions because they had the great Mel Blank who is the finest voice of all time Who eventually took over the role but the whole vocal styling of Porky Pig was created by a guy called Joe Doherty He's a guy who died 1978 he existed in like the early 1900s because Porky Pig was one of the original Looney Tunes if not the oldest The oldest continuous one

Yeah exactly And so he did it for two years But the issue was it was really messing up recording times Because he couldn't control his stutter He'd get nervous Wait so had they decided to give Porky Pig a stutter And then deliberately chosen him Or was it like vice versa

The first one The first one They decided to give him a stutter And then said okay we'll pick a guy with a stutter So the guy who invented him was Fritz Freelig And he said that he wanted someone with a stutter because it would distinguish him from other characters. Now, have you heard the original one?

I have, yeah. It's like the new pocky pig is like a fake stutter, but the first one is just like a person with a stutter. Yeah, isn't it? Exactly. That's a very different voice. They decided they didn't like the kind of stutter. So they were going in a different direction.

It was taken too long. He just couldn't get through the words. Yeah. It just took way too long. That's really sad. Yeah, yeah. It's a bit like firing someone. of having a disability and then hiring somebody to pretend to have that disability.

Yeah. Yeah. In a way, it wouldn't happen today. Yeah. You'd hope. You would help that, yeah. So Porky first appeared in a movie, short animation called I Haven't Got a Hat. So that was 1935.

So he was there for the two years. Of course, it's easier to write cartoons back then, wasn't it? For a laugh, that sounds like, I haven't got a hat. It was kind of, he wasn't the main character. He never was meant to be a main character. He was, it was like a production, a musical production where they had a stage at school. and everyone was getting out of their seats and Porky was really nervous, so he's stuttering his way through the song. But before Mel Blank, who I said took over and is the voice that we all know and love, there was one in between guy who was called Count Kuteli and Count Kuteli.

He sounds like he is a Looney Tew's character. Did he go on to do Sesame Street? Count Teno Kuteli. This guy was known as the big noise. Like he had 2,000 sound effects to his name. He was sought after by everyone. Like that guy from Police Academy. Exactly.

Michael Winslow, yeah. And when he died, the Berlin Anthropological Institute offered $2,000 to his family to purchase his head and throat so that they could study it after death. Hang on, did they remove his head? That's what they requested. For $2,000, can you lob his head off with his neck,

which is quite a rare request, I would say. I feel like you'd probably get half the neck, usually. You go over the middle of the neck. The whole neck is quite. So would you have to cut it? it like a V-neck jumper or something. Did they accede to this request? They did not, no. They did not want to hand over the head or neck.

Just fork out for the full body. If you want it that much, just offer three grand and take the whole thing. Somebody ends up with sort of just like the shoulders, it's really weird to have a headless body. Yeah, who wants to lower half? I suppose they probably weren't giving away the rest of it. They're probably burying that bit. Yeah.

I mean, people did use to get different parts of their body buried in different places, didn't they? Yeah. It used to be relatively common thing. But still, I think the full head off, they seem to often take bits of the inside of the body off or the old finger. Like the heart or something like that, right? Einstein's brain was it bigger than a normal brain was why they wanted it, right? Yeah. Yeah.

The guy who invented head, shoulders, knees and toes, he's buried in four different places. Where his eyes is mouth and nose? Actually, he's thinking of being buried. Do you know what's on Mel Blanc's grave? Oh, it's lovely, isn't it? Yeah. That's all folks. Do the voice.

Please do the voice. That's all. I can't do it. I can't do it. He's like, leet, that's all. I can't do it either. That is good. But do you know why it's on his grave? Because he died.

Because he played porky pig and he died. That's a good guess. And that's all refers to his life span. Folks refers to the people who are reading the gravestone. Yeah. So you'll understand the meaning of the phrase. I feel like we're missing something massive though, right? Well, it was also his last words.

So actually the reason that his son decided to put it on the grave Because a lot of people say it was in his will But I believe it's actually that he was filming a commercial For Buick Automobiles And in that commercial They got him to say that's all folks, as you would If you had Mel Blank doing a commercial And they were his last words

He dropped dead right then Well he didn't drop dead He collapsed So they were his last word Did they do the music? Like da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da Yeah they did it was quite incensive actually His family sued afterwards

I don't think that counts as last words Those are... What do you mean? Well, they're pre-written. They're not... But they were the last words he ever said. I know, but yeah. It's just...

I know, that is quite... I think that counts. No, no, but it would be great if that was his final words. It would just by chance. I'm at home, you know, I'm dying on my bed. Yeah. I'm going to go out with the porky pig line. My catchphrase, yeah.

Well, I think that he probably did decide that because he actually lived for another few weeks, but he didn't say anything else. Are you kidding? If I was him, I would go, excuse me, excuse me, can I have a glass of water. That's all folks. Yeah, exactly.

Make sure you keep going in. Like, he's wasted the last few weeks of life, just not talking to anyone. Imagine how quality time you could have had with his family. All the things that were left unsaid because he didn't want to... All right, guys, quite often, people don't speak for weeks before they die, do they? Because they're in their hospital, unable to speak. But I do like to think that he was lying there faking a coma just so he could make sure. Anyway, his son was like, well, they were his last world.

I'll put them on his gravestone. I saw an interview with his son, and he said that the Poggy, pig voice that he did was not a stutter. He said that basically Mel Blank once went to visit a pig farm to get into character to see what porky pig would be like. And he saw the pig grunting

in kind of a stuttering way. And his porky pig voice was copying the pig's grunt. It wasn't like a human stutter. It definitely doesn't sound like any sound or stutter I've ever heard. It also doesn't sound like any pig I've ever heard. No, that's closer to the stutter

than it is the pig, I would say. things where they're like, yeah, I spent like two weeks, like studying pigs in order for my role as a cartoon. So you didn't need to do that, mate. Like, it's a stupid cartoon. No one takes it that seriously. Wow. They could take it quite seriously, didn't they?

I mean, they won Oscars, not necessarily for Porky Pig, but for these cartoons. Did you read about the famous blooper reel of Porky Pig? So this was 1938, and this was put together on purpose because you can't have bloopers in cartoons. It's like at the end of Toy Story 2. Exactly, where they do all that. Yeah, so back in 1938, they were ready to do it.

And so it's a video of Porky where he smacks his thumb with a hammer. He goes in pain and he says, oh, son of a bubba, but a son of a, son of a gun, which was the stuttering trick of Porky Pig. He would always not finish the word and put a new word in. But then he turns to the camera and says directly to the viewers, ha ha ha, you thought I was going to say since it's a son of a bitch. And he does say it. And yeah.

Scandal. Because at the end of the show, his catchphrase, he says, are the V, because he's trying to say the end. And then he says, that's all folks. instead of the end. Did not know that. I think that's what it is. Really?

I think so. Yeah, that sounds like it. Yeah. And then they made that in 1938, but it didn't get shown until the 90s, didn't they? Yeah, exactly. Because you couldn't show it in 1930s.

Well, no, you couldn't say bitch in in 1938 because, like, obviously, frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn, was 39, wasn't it? So. And it was a corporate thing. So they were doing it as a behind the scenes as a package of bloopers. They just put that in as a joke.

And then when they had the 50th anniversary of Warner Brothers, that's when it came out with a load of other bloopers. So how annoyed do you think they would have been the animators at the time when some dickhead said, look, we're going to make this blooper thing that's going to take you about two weeks of the meticulous drawing and it's not to be released ever.

Just a funny little in-joke for nobody. But I feel like around that time during that sort of golden age of animation and like during all the Disney studios things, loads of incredible workmanship went into stuff like that was just for like internal use or they would put details in the designs of stuff that no one would ever notice just because they had, frankly, the money in the time,

but also the passion and the craftsmanship and like they were really into what they did. Yeah. Yeah, which is quite nice. Do you guys know how porky pig got his name? No. It seems like it's because he was a pig and then pigs produce pork, doesn't it?

I don't like to do the old back at you. Do they produce pork? Like milk or are they pork? That is obviously part of the story. That is obviously part of the story. Was it the result of sort of six months brainstormed out of the writers and a massive? It's again,

from Fritz Freeling who created him and when he grew up there were two brothers who grew up in his neighbourhood one was called Porky and the other one was called Piggy because they were overweight children so they were kind of bullied with these names and then he took the names and used them for his character

Really? That's so weird that the most piggy name for a pig actually came from people Yeah? Yeah because I would just think if you're like Porky and Pig it's like pork and pig the two piggyest words Like Anna says it is a very obvious thing to call a piggy character. We think it's obvious now, but, you know, at the time, it's mind-blowingly imaginative.

Sorry, who is the name of the Count that you said? Count C-C-U-D-L-L-I. Yeah, that guy. C-U-T-E. It's kind of appropriate that he's Italian because the origin of Porky Pig, he was based on or inspired by a staple character from, like, traditional Italian comedy, the Comedia del Arte. Was it?

Yeah, so like, during, from between, like, the 16th to 18th century, centuries there was this traditional theatre comedy and it used all of these staple comedy characters. Like the harlequin? The harlequin was one which is the servant and yeah, Porky Pig is based on the Tar taglia which is Italian for Stutterer and it's a

far-sighted, dainty character with a stutter. Do you know who hated Porky Pig stutter? Daffy Duck. Yosembley Sam. Roadrunner. Porky pig himself.

Oh, yeah. There was an episode where he hears himself on a playback of an old tune of old McDonald had a farm, and he hates the stutter so much that he smashes both the record and the playback machine. And I read this in an academic paper, which is called The Clinical Study of Porky Pig Cartoons. And it's by Gerald F. Johnson. And basically, this was a paper that was trying to show, did it have a positive or negative influence, to have a character that had a stutter like Porky Pig? Because Porky Pig had jobs such as a farmer, a gas station attendance.

A farmer? That's a bit dark. It is. Well, maybe it was terrible. Oh, right. Okay. He was a railroad engineer, a pilot, a private in the French Foreign Legion, a newscaster. So he sort of makes the point that any kids that were watching it could see that they

could do multiple jobs. Well, this suggests me that he can't hold down a job. That's very true. That's a worrying CV. Yeah. Do you know, I was just looking up treatments for stutters throughout history. And in the 19th century, there were obviously shed loads of quacks. suggesting you kind of like cut your tongue in half or you slit that bit under the bottom of your

tongue or you shrink your tongue by having it cut to people, you know, lots of stuff which never works so you're amazed how long it lasted. But one of the leading quacks slash doctors who promoted stuttering cures was this guy who went around Europe and actually was really important in developing like welfare systems in Europe because he went to the government of places like the Netherlands and Prussia and Belgium and said, I want you to implement my stuttering cure, which he'd actually bought from a woman called Widow Lee. But anyway, his name was Mr. Malibush, which means bad mouth.

Wow. Dun dun dun. I thought that's quite cool. Amazing. Yeah. It's interesting that 80% of adults who stutter are male, way more men start from women. And apparently they've done some like studies and brain scans

and the way that your speech patterns work is just different between men and women when you start. Really? It's weird. That is interesting. I don't think it's fully understood. There was a theory in the early 20th century that eating too many vegetables

called stuttering vegetarianism. And there was a psychologist called Knight Dunlap who also founded the Journal of Psychology. So he wasn't a proper quack, but he thought that if someone stuttered, maybe you should give them a diet of meat, and that would cure them. Pork, yeah.

So when was that, sorry? That was early 20th century. Okay, so during the war, you had to really get the amount of character you ate right for good eyesight, but not bad speech. Oh, yeah. That's true. And also, speaking of Mel Blank,

he never ate carrots, did he? Did he not? No. No, there's a famous thing. Like, there's a thing online that he was allergic to carrots which we think is not true, right? Yeah, it's not true.

But do you know where it comes from? The fact that people think he's allergic, it's because, and it does actually make perfect sense. So as Bugs Bunny, they experimented with lots of sound effects for how you can generate the sound of eating a carrot. And they realize the only thing that generates the sound of eating a carrot

is eating a carrot. Did they not have the big noise? The one thing he can't do is one weakness. Every time the big noise, etter carrot, it was completely silent, wasn't it? It was so weird. It just sounds like a car going past, with it. Famously sucked his carrots like a lolly.

So they couldn't use him. And so Mel Blank realized he just had to eat carrots in order to get the sound effect. But once you're swallowing carrot, then you can't say your line. So he'd have a spittoon. And he just had to chew a carrot and then spit it out in order to then say his line. And from there, develop the idea that, oh, he's allergic to carrots because he was always spitting carrots out. I would have just got a runner in to eat the carrots and next to the microphone.

I know, could they not hire a... Especially if you can't talk any carrots, yeah. That would be the most awesome job, wouldn't it? I was carrot eater for Blandlank. Okay, it is time for fact number two. That is Alex. My fact this week is that in the 1950s, you could catch a bus from London to Calcutta.

Okay. You did have to book. You couldn't just like tap in. Yeah. I don't think it's outside the oyster zone. Yeah, they didn't have an oyster zone in Calcutta. Where was the longest stretch where if you missed, you'll stop? Are you frantically pressing the bell?

So this ran, this is a bus service that ran from 1957 until 1976. You could get single tickets or return tickets, which I thought was quite weird because you could take a bus to India and then just be stuck there. Which lots of people did. Yeah, yeah, that's true. It was 85 pounds for a single, which I think is about two and a half thousand pounds today. But it's more of a package holiday, included travel and food and accommodation. and it was another £65 if you wanted to come back again.

Oh, okay, because often a return ticket these days is like two pounds more if you get a train. Yeah, no, no, this is almost double, yeah. Could you get like that thing where you split your tickets between all the different places? Ah, yeah, split there. No, no, none of the complicated. God, we've come a long way, haven't we? We really have, yeah. But we can't go to India anymore on a bus.

Right. If your bus is 15 minutes late to the next destination, can you reclaim all of the money? That would be great. So this bus was equipped with beds and a kitchen and heaters and a music system for parties apparently and also something called reading facilities which I don't know what that is like a chair. Like a library I guess like a bookshelf. Sounds like a movie Spicewell bus. It does.

It sounds like a lot of fun. This specific first service was called The Indian Man and it was run by a guy called Oswald Joseph Garrow Fisher which is I've never heard of someone who has a double-barreled first name and last name. Do you know that he was known? everyone called him Paddy. I was reading an article from the Buffalo career expressed from the time

and it said obviously again of its time it said Garrow Fisher who is better known as Paddy because he is Irish I mean it is easier to say that also Joseph Garry Fisher his name with all those hyphens

actually would look like confusingly like the destination it does yeah because on the outside it did say London Calcutta London on the bus which I think was quite cool because it is a loop trip

Yeah. And the bus went from London. It was a 10,000 mile journey on what became known as the hippie route. So it went via Belgium, what was then Yugoslavia to northwestern India. And up through places today that you couldn't go through. I guess it must have gone through, if it's gone through Yugoslavia, must have gone through Turkey. Yeah. And then like Iran.

Iran, Pakistan. It started a big phenomenon of bus journeys all around the world. And this route became quite popular, but it ended because of... It was the Iranian revolution, isn't it? Exactly, yeah, the wars. And a lot of my parents, well not a lot. A few of my parents' friends have done it. It was the gap here of its day, wasn't it?

And they do talk about how different it was then that you could go through all of these countries. And I know it was Cold War, so it was, you know, not a bed of roses. But now you would be told it was too dangerous to get bus through any of those places. And then you just went through and we met with friendly receptions in all those countries. But didn't they think they got murdered at one point? Yeah. So on the way there, he writes all about the cliffs around Mount Ararat

and like going through these crazy like hairpin, bends in Iran they had to put wooden planks under the wheels because the bus was sinking into the sand. It had to be dug out of a bog in Persia. It was sandstorms and rains and incredible heat and collapsed bridges and like a crash. Like I mean it sounds like a ridiculous journey and there are some amazing pictures you can see online as well and yeah on the return trip they were massively delayed by like I think a month because of an outbreak of Asian influenza so they had to take a massive detour and that prompted a rumor that they'd been kidnapped and murdered by bandits and I think the British Embassy in Tehran

thought that and were so relieved that they had a cocktail party for them I read that definitely they had the cocktail party I read that at the time in the newspapers but I couldn't find any evidence in the newspapers that people thought they had been I think it was a story because Gary Fisher said it and I think it was a bit of a

hey they thought we'd been killed so they were so happy to see us probably a throwaway did they think you'd been killed line or did they just have some cocktails it's an embassy they do it for every bus that comes in exactly we got invited to an embassy once just for being in town, didn't we? Oh, I thought they thought we'd been murdered.

But yeah, they were 50 days delayed back, which is, you would, I mean, oh, I feel sorry for the people waiting at the bus stop. And then three came along at once. Exactly. I can't do three minutes on a jubilee line. And they were called freaks, weren't they? They called themselves Freaks, the hippie trailers. And there's still a street called Freak Street in Kathmandu, which was sort of like famously,

the kind of centre of where all the hippies sort of ended up, hung out, built lots of communities. Yeah, so they're still freakstreet and it inspired Lonely Planet, the hippie trail. So Maureen and Tony Wheeler, they did the hippie trail, and then they thought, this is fun, we're right about it. They messed up the name. They listened to a song and thought it referred to Lonely Planet.

It was a song called Space Captain by Joe Cocker, and it actually referred to Lovely Planet, which makes more sense. They should have called Lovely Planet. Lonely Man is actually quite a sad title for our travelling book. It doesn't really inspire. It is for people who travel on their own, isn't it lonely planning?

Or it was originally, I think. Maybe it was originally. That's what I would have assumed. But I'm single. I buy a product for single people. Don't put the word lonely in the branding. So you go to Sainsbury's and you get a lonely meal for one. We know Wendy's meal for one.

I just like, oh, thank you. A sad cheetah. This is my die alone single bed. Some stuff on buses. Yeah. Here's a thing. Who was the first? person to ever be thrown under the bus.

Oh. You know, this is like a... If you watch the traitors and stuff these days, everyone's saying, oh, I threw them under the bus, are they going to throw me under the bus? Is it going to be like a Roman, like, thrown under the chariot? Wait, so are you...

Are there two possible answers here? One of someone was thrown under a bus physically, but then someone used the term for the first time later, or the two combined in one. Okay, so my question to you is the term to be thrown under the bus. Yeah. Who was the first person that that term was used about? About.

Not who was literally thrown under the bus. It's all metaphor. Was it connected to buses in any way, though? Was it totally detached from what they were doing? Totally detached. Is this guessable? In my experience with QI stuff, it's either going to be Stone Age or it's going to be 1800s, but never. Okay, it's neither of those things.

It's guessable because it's one of the most famous people in British history. Yeah, yeah, okay. Who was betrayed? Keep going. Who was betrayed? Come on, let's think of someone famously betrayed. Correct. That's Alex is just listing famous people.

Named conservative MPs. I hate people who played 20 questions like that. Use all your guesses on names. You're not lucky this time. So this was basically, if you wanted to get rid of a politician, you would say, what if they fell under a bus? Right. Do you know what I mean?

We can't get rid of a many. Yeah, we can't get rid of many other way. What if they fell under the bus, then maybe we'll get a new leader kind of thing. So that was a saying. But during the early 1980s, when the Falkland Island invasion happened, someone in the UK said, President Galtieri, of Argentina, pushed her, meaning Margaret Thatcher, under the bus, which the gossips had said was the only means of her removal. So it was falling under a bus was always a thing, but this was

the first time someone was metaphorically pushed under a bus. Oh, really? Wow. A lot of people threw her under the bus, didn't they? I'd never thought of Galtieri as being the main guy. Yeah. Well, she did last quite a long time after that. And actually, the vocal was, well, didn't really do her any damage at all. They almost threw her into the driving scene. to the bus. I would say so, yeah, rather the opposite. They threw into that best seat on the top deck where it looks like you're driving. Oh, yeah, yeah, that is a good seat. Yeah, but you don't have enough leg room, so swings around about it.

Okay, just me who complains about that. No mind. Do you know there's a bus route in London between West Ealing and West Rice Lip, which is about a 20, 25 minute journey? And it goes once a week on Wednesdays at 1117 in the morning. What? And no one gets it. purely for throwing politicians on them.

Those two places are relatively close to each other. Yes. And I can't think of any reason why I would ever want to go between the two of them. I think, you know, is it a ghost bus? Is it real? Is it a ghost bus? There you go. It is a ghost bus. And people of West Dealing or West Reislipp who have friends in the other,

please write to James complaining about, you know, why you might want to. Oh, yeah, I'll wave at the flood of emails to come in. I'm going to go ride it. I love riding a ghost house. Yeah, well, it's the kind of thing that people like you do ride. I think they're going to try to go with a little less contempt. I can only get singles tickets because no one has a plan. It is a ghost bus, though.

You're right. And it's related to ghost trains, which I actually don't think we've ever mentioned on this podcast, but ghost trains are train routes that are kept open even though no one gets them, because it's actually bureaucratically really expensive to shut down a specific route. So there are various routes in the UK, 30 or so,

where no one gets this train route, but the train still runs so that, you know, if you wanted to reopen it properly, then it's still open. But there's more reasons to keep a ghost train because it maintains the track and keeps everything running and keeps your train in good order

whereas a ghost bus you just use the bus somewhere else and like what's the reason for it? Well, because this used to be a train route and no one was getting it. So it's driving on the train tracks. No, it's not driving on the train tracks. If you will hear me out.

Sorry. It used to be a rail route. The rail route no longer exists. So it is a bus replacement service. So this is called a bus replacement service. A permanent bus replacement service. For a rail that doesn't exist anymore and it's because it's bureaucratically

too expensive to cancel the rail. Can I ask, why did they remove the rail routes when so many people want to go from West Ryslip to Ealing or whatever it was? All right, there's only one person, but they made that trip all the time. Do you reckon they'll continue downgrading it, and then eventually they'll just be like a skateboard so you can if you want it technically a DFL service? You're talking about a rail replacement bus service. Have you heard of a bus replacement rail service?

Bus replacement. I haven't, but I get it and it feels plausible. So in 2016, there were two villages in Scotland, one lookhead and lead hills, and they're in South Lanarkshire, and the road connection then was closed for resurfacing for a week. But this was a bit of an issue for the people who live there, a lot of elderly people, there's a doctor surgery in one and shops in the other, and then he's get from one to the other. And there was a 45 miles diversion if you want to drive around, so it wasn't really workable for all these people. So there was a small volunteer-run railway line that goes between the two, and it's just a tourist attraction. Right. So the authorities decided to turn it into an official service that you can.

actually travel between. With the two old grannies who do the heritage tickets on their old typewriter having to print out just hundreds of days. Thousands and thousands of commuters every morning are coming in. Yeah. And it's the only one of its kind that I've heard of. It's very cool. In 2015, there was a tweet that went viral for revealing that there was a bus service that

went to Woking. And do you know what number it was? What number of bus you'd get to Woking? 69. Sorry, no, I don't know. Oh, 95. Working 95. 9.

Yeah. Oh. 925. Because I went through Woking on a train once. Yeah. And I saw the word Woking and I was just thinking, oh, working 9 to 5. And then I looked at my watch and it was 855 in the morning because I was going somewhere in the morning.

So I was like working 5 to 9 close enough and tweeted it. It's not close enough. It's not close enough. It has to be exact. Working 5 to 9.9 is kind of funny. Like it's funny enough. Oh yeah. Yeah.

Okay. Did it always successful tweets? No, it did not. Right. Okay. Shocking. So yeah, there was a bus service called 925. This guy tweets.

it back in 2015, except after getting however many retweets and likes, turned out that he had photoshopped it, that it didn't exist, that it was in fact the 701. So this bus didn't exist. However, the people who ran the bus service loved it so much that a few years later, they did change it to the 925. So the joke became a real thing. But here's what's interesting.

Sorry, my story was less good, but at least it was true. Well, no, this is, this guy made a joke, which then got totally. true, which is pretty incredible. He lied. Okay. Wow. Can I quickly do one more thing about going to India? Yeah. So there's a book called Husband Hunting in the Raj by Anda Korsi, and she's writing about how lots of women in the late 19th century would go to India to look for a husband. And that's because the Indian civil service insisted that all its male staff remained bachelor's until the age of 30. and in those days if you're a woman and you were not married by the time you were in your mid to late 20s a lonely woman you were a lonely woman yeah exactly and so apparently there was this sort of big

influx of British women who every year would just all go to India to find the husband snap up those single civil servants and there was loads of like pamphlets and books that people would write to tell you what to do if you're a woman going to India there was One, a few words of advice on travelling to ladies by a guy called HMLS. We don't know who it was. Who said, choose a simple dress of soft, warm tweed of dark grey colour. It is also a good plan to use very old underclothing, such as can be thrown away when soiled. Excuse me?

That is a good... Is that about the curries? It doesn't... There's no no information. I reckon that's about the curries. No laundry. So they're like, don't waste your good stuff because you're going to have to chuck it. This isn't a bus to say.

this would be on a steam liner or something. Oh, okay, right. I mean, it's all very long journey. These poor men, all these women turning up being like, I'm not wearing anything under this tweet. I was when we set up. It's in this plastic bag. I'm just going to tie it to this tree.

This poor town halfway to India, they just got piles of dirty women's laundry. Things flight tip to that. Okay, it is time for fact number three, and that is James. Okay, my fact this week is that hockey masks. were invented thanks to chronic sinusitis. Well, they originally won't pewge tissue just around the nose.

Exactly. No, this is something that strikes home for me because I am a very keen hockey player. No, I suffer from sinusitis quite a lot. So I'm really glad that some good has come out of it. And this is the hockey mask. And when I say hockey mask, one, I'm talking about ice hockey. Two, I'm talking about the mask that a gold tender would wear. Yeah.

So, you know, it's not the helmet. It's the Halloween film. Yeah, Jason. Jason Voorhe's one. Yeah, exactly. You suffer chronic suffer of sinusitis. Yes. Which is why he was so angry.

So he never said anything. So he never said anything. So this was a guy called Jacques Plant or Jacques Plant or Jacques Planté. Enchanté. I'm appell Jacques Planté. And he had terrible sinusitis and he had an operation. And after he had the operation, he had to keep his nose intact. But he still wanted to play hockey.

And so he wore a mask to stop the puck from hitting him in the face. His coach, who is called Toe Blake. His first name was Toll. As in the bit at the end of your foot. He wasn't very happy about it. But he said, okay, well, you know, I need you on the team, whatever. As long as you take it off when your sinusitis gets better. better, then it's fine.

And when this was the 50s? Oh, yes, I should say this was the late 50s. And then later on, he was hit in the face with a puck, and he went off and came back with the mask again. Midgame. Midgame. And then they went on a massive winning streak. And so the manager said, okay, fine.

Like, this is obviously working. And then all the other gold tenders saw this is a good idea, and it just became everywhere. And he really defied Toe Blake's wishes, because Toe was like, Yeah, he was a dick about it. You get that mask out of here and he was like, no, either I'm going on with the mask or I'm not going on at all. Yeah. It's entirely fair, like with a broken nose. Like, I'd be in the face with the puck.

Yeah, and it's not the first time anyone's ever gone on with a mask. No. It happened, you know, sporadically throughout the years because people had had their face busted up. But plant, planty, he is the one who said, no, I'm wearing it and I'm going to wear it again and again and then slowly changed the culture of ice hockey. Yeah. Game by game. He gave the finger to toe. He sure did.

I haven't said anything for three minutes. Do you know why Toe Blake was called Toe Blake? Well, because both of his parents were also called Blake. Yes. And by tradition, you keep the same name. He's bang on, guys. Was it a family name? But they have five, five other, four other toes.

Did he have one enormous toe? No. It was a toe. I'll like, like inspire kids. He was. He wanted to, yeah, they wanted to donate. his toe to science afterwards. It was so prominent. A clue, Buzz Aldrin. Oh, he left his toe on the moon. He gave his toe to Boswell. One small toe for man. Okay, so Buzz Aldrin got his name because

his sister said his, yes. Called him Buzz. So his real name is Hector, but his little sister, hec, Hector, toe, toe. To is where it stuck. But what he was known as within the ice hockey world was Head, shoulders, knees, out there. Who would have thought you get two, head, shoulders, knees and toes, he did one book up.

No, he was known as the old lamplider. Oh, really? And he's amazing. So why? He's been listed as one of the hundred greatest NHL players in history,

the old lamplider because he's so good at scoring goals that a light goes on when you score a goal to let you know. It's the old lamplider. That's good. That's very nice.

So the first actual example of anyone wearing a mask that we know of, was a woman called Elizabeth Graham of Queen's University who in 1927 wore a fencing mask. And according to her son, she had done it because she'd recently had dental work and she wanted to protect her teeth. There was, there does seem to be a vanity element to the original masks. There's her who didn't want to damage more of her teeth and get more dental bills. So it just goes a little bit beyond vanity. So I don't want my teeth smashed up. Yeah, that's fair enough. It's a horrible. It's a horrible. It's a

puck being smashed at your face. They travel up 160 kilometres an hour. I don't think it's like, oh, you're absolutely worse. You want a mask in your face. I just think they're so mean back in the day. No, but it was the, I think she specifically said that she was trying to save her dad, the dental bills. But that's probably because she was too afraid to just say, I'm really scared of being white in face with a puck. But also, there was a guy called Jack Crawford, who was one of the first people to wear a helmet in ice hockey.

And that was in the 1930s. And he wore it, apparently, because he was bald. And he just wanted to conceal his bold patch. That's so funny. That's so great. That's protecting your vanity. Yeah, yeah, that's more a vanity thing. You're absolutely right.

I wouldn't put the vanity on the only woman that we have in this question. I'm allowed to do whatever I like with the only one in the question, Alex. Do you know that when actually speaking of women in hockey, when international women's hockey first became a big thing, and this was in the 1980s, a lot of the leagues required breast protectors. So you had to wear something solid over your breasts so that they don't get hit by the puck. But one of the problems that they had in, I think it was in Sweden,

is that one of the referees refused to check if the players were wearing them so they couldn't enforce the law because it was a male referee and he wouldn't go in and just prod and go... Are they just very hard-breast? Are you wearing a protector? That's a weird job, isn't it?

Like, what do you do? I started as the carrot eater from Elbowar. While we're on referees, has anyone heard of Frederick Charles Albert Waghorn, aka the old wag. He had a tail?

No, he's quite innovative hockey referee. He set a lot of rules. One of the biggest things that he did was referees didn't used to have a whistle. Instead of a whistle, do you know what they had? At a cowbell. That makes sense. Because it's like an alpine, I don't know, like mountainous cold.

Because you have cowbells in snow sometimes? Yeah, I know. I'm not really going anywhere with that. The problem was is that people kept turning up. with their own cowbells. So you had people making it so that plays couldn't happen. So what they did is they used something that no one else could possibly get hold of, a whistle. Exactly.

Now, this is what's so amazing. The audience was just cows. But this is what's amazing about the old wags decision is that there wasn't at the time of you having a whistle. Whistles weren't. We're living in a time where whistles weren't that commercial. You're right, because at the start of the 20th century, everyone used to carry a cowbell around.

Exactly. And the cowbells were big. There was not more farming going on. Maybe that was more accessible. Yeah, no one really had them. So you were more likely to have a cowbell come to a hockey match than you were a whistle. This is true. And so he introduced the whistle.

He introduced professional referees in amateur hockey games. The practice of dropping the puck from a few feet high when you're going at the start. He did that. And he also said, you can't count it as a goal if the puck breaks in half. half the puck goes inside the net. You need the full puck going inside the net. I guess maybe back in the day the materials were different and it did happen. But here's the thing about the whistle.

He took it from being, not only introduced it, but took it from being a steel whistle to a plastic whistle because referees kept getting their lips stuck around in the ice cold. They can't stop whistling. What's wrong? That's so funny. Something else that hockey masks have given. us. The world record for the farthest eyeball pop, i.e., um... Oh.

Yeah, exactly. Like in the cartoon, exactly. Some people can pop their eyeballs sort of out quite far out of their sockets. Yeah, so deliberately as opposed to an accidental pop. Well, yes, I guess so. So this is the world record for the farthest eyeball pop by a woman, and it's 12mm, which is quite a lot, obviously. It's by a woman called Kim Goodman. She discovered the talent when she was hit on the head by a hockey mask and her eyeballs popped out. What was the context for a hockey mask kidding her on the head? I actually don't have it because what happened was that her eyes went

out of her head and she was like oh my god and then she discovered she could do this and then now she holds the world record for the furthest pop. How bizarre. So this is just for women though because obviously all men have that whenever Jessica Rabbit wants. Exactly yeah. And they think a woo gun noise. Yeah.

It is funny how much pushback there always is to protective equipment in sports because it kind of degrades the sport. I mean, people had the piss taken out of them a lot, didn't they? The first people to wear hockey masks, the first people who were wearing helmets and people used to have extraordinary injuries. They still do, actually, really awful injuries sometimes, but like eyeballs being

slashed and stuff like that. Brian Berard, I think, had, he lost an eye and then continued to play with 20 over 400 vision. The old winker. He had 20 over what?

400 vision. He had numerous operations on his eye to help try and restore his sight until it was eventually at the legal limit, which is 20 over 400. As in we have 20, 20, 20 feet. But that means that what I can see at 400 feet, you as 20 over 400 can't see

until you're 20 feet away. What did that mean? And then, he was still quite good at hockey, actually. But not as good as he would have been. Are you guys familiar with the most popular genre of sports romance in the world. Okay.

Well, it must be hockey related. Yeah, there is a clue in the fact that I've inserted it into this fact. But hockey romance is extremely popular. As in literature, you mean? Yeah. Hockey romance novels. So Amazon has a list of the top sports novels, sports romance novels. She gave me a zambona.

Want a puck? That one I get. Oh, right. What was the first one? A zamboni is that little machine that drives around to make the eye. nice smooth. Oh, I didn't know that. James is actually much better because the puck one is used in almost every time.

Oh, so I'm the commercial one. I'm the one keeping this industry afloat. Apologies. I'm the one who's doing some esoteric poetry. James, your calf grass. You'll be discovered after your time. Exactly. There's all Dan Brown over here.

It's amazing, though. They sell so many all the top ten books in Amazon's list of sports. romance are all hockey romance. I wonder what their demographic is. Do you? Canadians? I think I can tell you.

All right. I'm sorry. I'm just wondering. What is it? I think it's Canadian women. Okay. So they sell up to 2 million, estimated 2 million for the most popular,

which I can tell you as people who sell books is more than we've sold in many of our books. I'm a bunch of about 100. And yeah, they all have titles like puck me and pucking around and hot as puck. It doesn't sound like romance. It sounds more like erotic pornography. I think they are traversing that line quite a lot, yes. Yeah. And do you think that I wonder if it's less about Canadian women just like it

and more about you're going to write a sporting erotica book and it's the easiest pun to make it. You can be right. We were talking about ghost bus stops earlier. Last fact. I don't you just realize how much like ghost busters they are. There's a company in London. There's a company in London that does bus tours of like ghost tours.

of London and they're called ghost bus tours and I think that's Oh yes that's lovely that's really good See there goes down again with a commercial pun So do you know what a ghost keeper is? Ghostkeeper so it's presumably about hockey Is it a goalkeeper that lets all the goals in? He's actually straight through him He's actually a real person

Oh okay yeah he's called Jim Bob ghostkeeper And uh your ghost keeper He's a Canadian hockey goalkeeper and he um the reason he's notable is that in 2018 he won name of the year. You know there's those competitions. So that's his real name is it? It must be. I think that's part of the, or certainly it must be his depold name. Yeah. Just because I do love a hockey nickname. So goalies have great nicknames. There's John William Bauer who was known as the China Wall couldn't get past him. The China wall. Do you mean the great wall of China? Yeah, exactly. A you can get through that and B, a wall made of China would be very smashful by a

park traveling out of 60 kilometers an hour. That's true. Yeah. Maybe he's visible from space. Yeah, that's what it is. Something I thought was really interesting that I didn't know about hockey, and I'm sure people who watch it a lot will, is that, so 10% of ordinary people left-handed. In hockey, the majority play left-handed.

60 to 70% of NHL players shoot left-handed. And it seems to be that basically in hockey, it's really important to be quite ambidextrous because you're having to eat both hands a lot, flip it around. And so I think a lot of coaches think the way to get super high level and the more high level you get, the more left-handed players you get, the way to get a super high level is to breed ambidexterity. So they're just taught from a young age, shoot with your off-hand.

So isn't that weird? You want to come up with a whole new thing, like learn to play it, holding it with your mouth or something, so you can both hands, like, come up with something that's really crazy. What are you going to do with your hands while you're... I don't know. The only thing you can do with your hands in a game of hockey is to hold the stick. You can write hockey romance novels with your hands whilst playing your mouth.

You can imagine. People are wearing the breath protectors on it. I can imagine what the romance is if you've got a hockey stick in your mouth. Where's the puck, though? That's really interesting because ice hockey came from another sport called shinny. Oh, that sounds painful. Yeah, I think that is probably where it got its name that people would be wrapped on the shins. Because there's lots of different rules of this.

Basically, it's hitting a ball into a goal quite often on ice in the winter. But one rule that seems to be common, no matter how the game is, game was played is that you had to play it right-handed all the time. But if you hit a shot with your left hand, the nearest opponent to you had to shout, shinny on your own side, and then was allowed to hit you in the shins with their stick. That was, yeah. I guess you're getting the warning, though. Yeah. I mean, you can sort of like plench yourself. You can't clench your shins. You can't. There's nothing you can do. I feel like you can. Plenched your shin muscles. You can psychologically prepare for it, but you can't physically...

I tell you what. You could run away. I'm clenching my shin right now. No, you're not. You're clenching your calf, I reckon. Yeah, but it's pulling back the muscle. It's pulling back the skin. That's the point.

There's nothing in between your shin, but there's a few layers of skin and the tiny... You're right. If anything, you want to unclench. You want to have a paunch to your shin, so it doesn't hit the bones. He walked into the room. He had incredibly musly thighs,

but a porch on his shin. It was clear. a hockey player. Okay, it is time for our final fact of the show, and that is Anna. My fact this week is that the Lesu people of Papua New Guinea all avoid having sex during the pig farrowing season. That's my excuse. The lonely Lesu people.

Every season is pig farrowing season in the Alex Bell World. Now, what's pig farrowing? Yes, it's when pigs are giving birth. And I find it quite interesting that it's specifically for pigs. Only pigs pharaoh, which is nice that they've got that special word when they're all getting piglets. And I actually read about this when I was researching last week's fact. And we were talking about pregnancy stuff. And I was reading about Kuvaad, which is the practice, which happens in various cultures around the world,

where men sort of take on pregnancy symptoms or enact pregnancy symptoms or sometimes experience them. They'll take to their beds. They'll perform certain rituals. Anyway, I was reading about this in Britannica, and it was talking about the Lesu men of Papua New Guinea. And it said they avoid certain things before the birth of children in that mimicking pregnancy way. But this also applies to non-human propagation, as they put it.

So the whole community avoids intercourse while pig farrowing is happening. Important question is how long is the pig farrowing season? Yeah, good question. Season's a big word. Yeah, it's not the pig farrowing afternoon. I don't know, but I mean, I think it's a few weeks, but I like to think that the pigs really drag it out watching these sex-starved Melanesian men.

Yeah, it was interesting. And Lesu is just a little village in Papua New Guinea, so it's a small portion of people. But yeah, what I mean by it being related to Kuvaad is it's about, like, things giving birth to other things and the taboos that you have around that to make sure that it's good luck. So they avoid sex in the hope that the pigs will pharaoh nicely. I think they had some Kuvaud's perhaps.

is in ancient Egypt, where when a child was born, the man would sort of play out the ritual of labour, so they'd go into their bed and like... Compley. Basically, exactly. It kind of sounds kind of mocking, to be honest. The dress and the mother's clothing. Very helpful.

It could be a little bit more useful, I was thinking, yeah. It was like pretending. It's funny, when I, when my wife gave birth, I was in the room when it happened, and she had a caesarian, and what they said to me was, Okay, your job is here is a Bluetooth speaker. Put on some nice music that your wife would like.

Okay. And what I think is obviously attaching your Bluetooth speaker to your phone is one of the most annoying sort of time-consuming thing. Exactly. But it's just a thing that they're like at least making the man useful, giving him something which is difficult enough. He feels like he's done something, but easy enough that it's not going to affect anything.

Five hours in, you're sweating, you're screaming, I can't do it. I'm too difficult. I fucking hate you. Which type of fish did you play? It was one you weren't in. So I was reading a very old book called The Golden Bough by Sir James George Fraser. And this is like the Bible of Anthropology, which was written well over 100 years ago.

Nowadays, if you look at it through today's lens, a lot of the things that he came up with are probably not true and a bit dodgy but he did look at lots of different cultures and see what they did and he found that there was quite a lot of cultures where when there was something happening in the farm like the pigs are giving birth or

laying the seeds for some plants or stuff there were quite a lot of people not having sex. Right. Because they were just so busy? No, well it could have been that that was the reason his theory again we don't really adhere to his theories much is that basically you're taking up

too much of the world's energy you know and you don't want to use up all the energy because you want to let the crops grow and if you have too much sex then the the chi or whatever isn't going into the plants and they won't grow as well this is what I told myself when I shared a flat

and my flat mates were all of having loads of sex and I was sitting in front of the TV or my pyjamas listening to them thinking this is fine this is fine I shouldn't be having to them you should put the pole you on the TV you're not what I mean there's a lot of

thin walls, you can hear stuff from the left and the right and you can't hear your YouTube video about bosses. But yeah, according to him in other parts of Melanesia men wouldn't sleep with their wives when they were training their vines. These are all excruciatingly slow things. Yeah.

Nicaraguan wouldn't have sex between planting the maze and reaping the maze. Wow. And the Cateish people of Australia wouldn't have sex after laying the grass seed until the first bits of grass popped up. So it's almost like It's just a season of... Yeah, abstinence.

But then he also said that, let's say this theory of the energy is true. Some people thought, well, by having sex, we'll increase the energy in the area and it will be better for the plants. Yeah, so some seeds while you're selling some seeds. Exactly. And so he said that in Ukraine, all the young married people would go into a field and roll around in it after you've planted some seeds. Having sex with each other? It just said rolling around. Right. It's like when you roll down a hill.

Yeah, I think they might have been naked, so that's bringing some energy in there. Okay. He said in Russia, it would be similar, but it would be a priest who would be rolled around by all the women in the village. That sounds really fun. That's like when you got the bumps on your birthday.

So it's just one priest and all the women. And then he said, the Pepilles of Central America have an older and ruder custom designed to impart fertility into the fields. and because it was an old book, whenever it was something really rude, he wouldn't say what it was. Oh, okay.

So we, you know, it's some kind of extreme. But you would put in a teaser, like a little taster. For me, it's either having literal sex in the field or masturbating into the field. Yeah. Oh, yeah. It's got to be that one. Yeah, yeah.

In Tudor Times in England, according to historian Lauren Johnson, you weren't supposed to have sex anytime in Lent, any time in Advent, anytime in Pentecost, when a woman was menstruating, when a woman was pregnant for a month after giving birth, when a woman was breastfeeding during any of the holy days, during any of the days when you were taking communion, all the days leading up to taking communion. You're not supposed to have sex in any of those days.

But on the 7th of March... What do you mean you've got a headache? On the 7th of March, assuming that isn't a holy day, but not in the daytime. Right. Okay. So it has to be in the night. And also, especially in the middle ages, you could only really have sex to produce a child.

But presumably people did, right? Yeah, they would. It's just taboo. It's just to be just not talking about it. That's undoubtedly true. But if you wanted to get away with it, you didn't have to go to a church to get married. Basically, it was just an exchange of vows in front of a witness.

That meant you were married. That witness was usually me. The witness couldn't be downstairs watching a bus video. They had to meet. So, for instance, there was one 15th century couple who got married in Yorkshire while milking a cow. Okay, that's nice. That's one of those hipster quirky weddings, isn't it? Oh, we did ours on the top of the Empire State Building.

Oh, we did ours while milking a cow. Where did you get married? Yeah, on the side of our seat next to a tiny ruin chapel. What's your point? Pig sex. Okay. As in, should we talk about it? Yeah, go on.

You weren't suggesting it. Yeah, let's talk about it. When pigs are pregnant, they're pregnant for three months, three weeks and three days. Are they? Are they? Is that right? Yeah, yeah. Isn't that weird?

Three weeks and three days. Yeah, I mean, not exactly, presumably, but their due date is saying when they go to the doctor. Yeah, exactly. Obviously, it varies, but like that's the official period, yeah. Nice. Also, pig sex smells like truffles, and that's why we use peggs for truffles, because female pigs, they think they're looking for sexy male pigs. That's what they're smelling and looking for.

Really? And they think sexy male pigs live underground? No, they'll see. they're just horny as fuck and looking for anything that smells like a sexy pig there. There is a building in China

that contains 300,000 pigs. Real pigs? China pigs. Real pigs. The great pigs of China. What floor? They're on all the floors. The entire building is a pig farm.

So it's like probably 20 stories high about as long as it is high and it's just full of pigs everywhere. Wow. And they have the past... I'm imagining like a pig office sorry now, like where they're wearing ties. You know what?

It is like. The building looks like a really sort of dystopian office building. It's very nondescript. It just looks like a big old building. They have temperature control, ventilation control. The animals are fed automatically. Just one person in a central control clicks a button. And then each pig gets a little bit of food.

And the idea is that if you farm pigs in this way, then you can get lots of meat, which they need in China. but also they don't mix with the domestic pigs so there might be less transfer of diseases and stuff like that. Where of course everyone else says, well, on the other hand, you've got 300,000 pigs next to each other, so if one of them gets sick, probably they all get sick. Yeah.

And it's also just sounds a bit sad. I mean, I know we do it with people and everyone goes into the office every day, but it's not quite the same minute. It's not the same thing. Imagine if you're late for a meeting and you've got the address wrong by one bill. I was just looking up to some other sex-related taboos, like things that you do for luck or things that you can't do, and came across the Banyang Koli people,

they're in Uganda and southwest Uganda, and the aunt in those communities has a really interesting position, so it's her responsibility to make sure when her niece gets married that the groom is potent and able to, you know, perform. And that they're sexually... Stop looking so... You tell me his my eyes when you talk about this. You know that plant over there that?

Matt Parker really liked. It's still doing now, isn't it? It's really, yeah. It's really fun. Who jizzed into it. Sorry. So they, and this is actually another example of how a lot of people still have the anthropological approach that is very old-fashioned offensive.

There's so much online about how the aunts have sex with their nieces grooms, not helped by I think people from that community who say, yeah, yeah, we do that, but I'm pretty sure they're joking. but what the aunt does do is she watches the first time the couple has sex so she comes into the room to make sure that everything's functioning how interesting yeah is that still practice are you saying yeah it is sometimes I believe if that's what you do it's not weird I mean that's the whole thing about sexual practice it's just it's just humans we just try new things don't we yeah and there's all this

whole thing like taboo all the taboos around the stuff that's the most basic thing we can do as creatures like sex and like going to the toilet and stuff like that we don't talk about it and it's all private but it is the only things that nearly all of us have in common so like why i mean pretty much all we talk about is sex and going to the loo to be honest no that's true certainly have this podcast yeah obviously we've really we're advanced as a society we've broken down this to do this okay that's it that is all of our facts thank you so much for listening if you'd like to get in contact with any of us about the things that we have said over the course of this podcast we can all be found on various places on social media i'm on

Instagram. I'm on at Schreiberland, James. My Instagram is No Such Thing as James Harkin. Alex. My Instagram is Alex Hbell. And Anna, how can they get to us as a group? You can email podcast at QI.com or you can go to at No Such Thing on Twitter or No Such Thing as a Fish on Instagram. That's right. Or you can go to our website, no such thing as a fish.com. All of the previous episodes are up there. There's also a link, the gateway to Clubfish, our secret members club where we put a lot of bonus material up on. There's also a Discord that you get access to so you can chat to all the other fish listeners. Otherwise, just come back here next week. We'll be back with another episode and we'll see you then. Goodbye.