No Such Thing As A Fish - No Such Thing As A Levis Jury

Episode Date: June 5, 2025

Dan, James, Anna and Andy discuss Socrates, Stansted, short wigs and long waves. 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 Hoburn. My name is Dan Schreiber. I am sitting here with Andrew Hunter Murray, Anna Tashinsky, and James Harkin. 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 Anna My fact this week is that when Socrates Lost Feeling in his penis

He asked his friend to sacrifice a cock Wow When you say sacrifice is cock Does that mean he swaps it over For Socrates as well It's like a battery swap Yeah yeah yeah Have you rubbed it?

Have you put it in the right way around? It's like a literal organ donor This is very immature wording of a very serious story about someone who had to commit suicide. So it's 399 BC. Wow, I didn't actually read the story. He was executed by himself. Yeah.

I think that is a difference. It is so bizarre. Yeah, I don't know if we do this anymore in any countries that the state sentenced him to suicide, which I don't know if you can call it suicide when the state, but they gave him the hemlock and he took it anyway. And the effect of it, because he was so hardcore Socrates, and he was so, had his shit together.

Hemlock usually had quite violent effects on people, but according to the people who are around him, with him, it just made him go numb gradually from the feet up. It crept up his legs, and as it reached his groin, the numbness of the hemlock as he was killing himself, according to Plato, he spoke his last words, which were, we owe a rooster to Asclepius,

we owe a cock to Asclepius, don't forget to pay that debt, and then he died. And Asclepius was a god. This is not a person he had borrowed a cockle from. Sorry. And we should say we're in fourth century Athens. That's the other thing we should say. BC.

Yeah. BC. Sorry, fourth century BC Athens. Asclepius was the god of healing. Yeah. The idea is that whenever you were sick and you got better, you sacrificed a cockerel to Asclepius. Yes.

But he saw his death as a recovery from life almost. Like he wasn't scared of death was the point. It's been cured of the sickness of living. It's very cryptic. Like, and also you can't ask him, What did you mean by that exactly? Because he's literally just died. So there are a few theories of,

or maybe he's making fun of the Pythagorean's because they saw Cockrells as being sacred. Or maybe he was alluding to something else. But it seems likely that exactly he was saying, actually, life is the illness. Yes. Nice. Real chin stroker.

Well, he was a funny man, wasn't he? He was a funny guy. There's a big theory that he didn't die of Hamlock really. I mean, he died of Hamlock, but it wasn't the hemlock that made him go numb because Hemlock doesn't make you go numb. No, but as I said, he's a very special man. I think there are other theories.

The suggestion is that he had a lot of opium mixed in with it. To kind of take the edge off a little bit. Okay. Because there was a guy in the 18th century described the effects of hemlock. There was a guy called Fergus Caird, and he was living in the village of Talisca, and he mistakenly ate some hemlock roots thinking it was carrots. Oh, no.

And it said his eyes did roll about, his countenance became very pale, his sight had almost failed him. The frame of his body was all in a strange convulsion and his pudender retired so inwardly that there was no discerning whether he had been male or female. Okay, out. But it was quite a fact he would make you convulse and stuff.

Was he all right in the end? This guy actually got better. They basically gave him loads of stuff to make him vomit and make him shit himself until it all got out of his system and he just about survived. What about his pudender? Did they re-inflate? Not recounted.

Dang. Don't they run the important stuff. That's interesting about the opium because that kind of suggested it's like the equivalent of a last meal when you're on death row. It's like you're going to be drinking this. What would you like as your mixer? Yeah. What do you want in there to make it go down nicely at the end?

Can I have a hemlock and opium? Oh, we've got Pepsi. Is that okay? Opium max, unfortunately. We should say what he was sentenced to death for. Yeah. So corrupting the youth. Corrupting the youth and also impiety.

Oh. been teaching young people critical thinking, which was frowned on. And he'd also probably not been taking religion completely seriously. And Athens was a very religious society. And also, the other sort of context is, like Athens had had this really rough time. It was sort of, it was in the golden age of democracy, but they'd just been really walloped in a war by the Persians. And, you know, it was just, it was a very rough time. And there's a theory that people were willing to put up with Socrates, who famously asked provocative questions, didn't accept the established version of things like he was a provocateur

he was a thinker and there was a theory that when it was going fine for Athens people were willing to put up with that and then when Athens was really doing badly people said this is subversive now so we're going to have to you're going to have to knock it off and he was tried for that you know he was tried by jury and it was a massive

jury it's not like your classic 12 angry people it is 501 jury the Levi's jury the Levi's jury absolutely and it was The one extra is so that you don't get a tie when it comes to the voting. It'd be bad luck to get $250,000, wouldn't it?

Exactly. He ended up with a close margin, 280 voted that he was guilty versus 221. It's not that close. Well, I guess it's... In a modern democracy, that's a resounding mandate. Okay, well, he got thump. Well, what's even crazier is that he lost it,

280 to 221. That was just to find him guilty. Then there was another vote to see what the sentence should be. He said, well, I think you should give me free lunch for life. Like he was a joker, right? That pissed off the members of the jury, including jury members who said that he was innocent,

and even they voted for the death sentence because I was so pissed off by that joke that he made. Yeah. Because I think it's a weird thing to ask the newly guilty party, what do you think your punishment should be? It's a bit like asking a toddler, isn't it? Yeah. But maybe that was a little bit like twist playing your own game,

Mr Socrates. You're the one always asking us, bloody questions rather than giving us answers. Well, we'll ask you a question. Did anyone vote for the free lunches for life? To be fair, he did get free lunches for life, probably. Oh, yeah. I mean, I don't imagine he had to pay for the hemlock and opium.

Maybe it was his clever way of saying, I think I should be put to death in a couple of days, but that I should get the food in the prison in that time. Like, there was his clever way of saying, yes, put me to death. Yeah. It's got to be a clever way of saying something, because that was what he did, wasn't it? Well, actually, like, you know what?

He was sentenced to death, but then his mates bribed the prison guards and said, we'll get you out of here. And he said, no, you're all right. Yeah. I'll just take my punishment. And his idea was that the law of Athens had protected him all the way through his life. And so it would be inconsistent to say, well, now I think that because the laws are against me, I shouldn't follow them anymore.

But I'm grateful. That is good. And he was 70 as well. So going on the lamb would probably, I mean, just survive. diving in ancient Greece outside Athens was probably hard. Yeah, he must have been in terrible shape. Ancient Greece age 70, 71. Tom Cruise is 63.

So let's put this in context. Socrates was only a few years old than Tom Cruise is now. Socrates's method was really good. You'd say, so what do you think? You'd just get something into a conversation. So what do you think about this matter or another? And they'd say their opinion. And then he would slowly unravel them.

Oh, yeah. Anytime they said something, he said, Hang on, you said just a moment ago that this other thing was true. So how can those both be true? And you would end up with both of you in a state of aporia, where neither of you can further define the idea that is under discussion. And there are lots of anecdotes written about Socrates getting into conversation with people who end up just saying to him, sorry, I have to go.

I have nothing more to say. I'm all my way to work. He's basically like a charity mugger outside of stage. Sorry, just one minute. What do you think of free speech? Did he get punched much? Was he ever... I imagine you're in the groceries

and you're behind Socrates and he's questioning the salo. You know. Would you punch someone for that? You'd maybe try to not engage, Dan. You should see him in the ten items off you are line.

What is an item? That's a bunch of grapes. Is that one item? Is that 12 items? He did use to cost people in the gym quite a lot when they were exercising, which maybe isn't a good idea if you want to avoid being punched.

If he was in the gym, causing ruckus and starting fights, I actually think he would have held up on his own because we do picture Socrates as this older philosopher walking around barefooted. You know how I picture him? Yeah. Exactly how he is in Bill and Ted's excellent adventure. Yes.

And I also pronounce him so great the time. So great. Yeah, exactly. We picture him as this philosopher, but actually he was a decorated military hero. He went all the way up to 48. He was still going to battles. He was still in front line. And I just didn't know that about.

him at all. I've just had this old man philosopher in my head. But it does raise some questions because, so the three main people in his life he wrote about him were Aristophanes, Xenophon and Plato. So huge amount from Xenophon. And I hadn't realized he saved Xenophon in the middle of battle. So in the Peloponnesian wars, Xenophon was dying. It's a little bit like the two little boys story. Xenophon's lying there dying. He trots up, says, do you think I'd leave you dying? Tosses Xenophon over his shoulder and carries him out of battle with one hand while fighting people with the other. I thought they both had a wooden horse or something. Yeah, that's the Trojan War you're thinking. No way. Did you just make that joke? That's incredible. What is the two little boys story?

Yes, they start off with the wooden horse, but you've obviously never made it to verse two where they go into real battle. Yeah, they grow up. They, do they grow apart? And then they come back together. One of them saves the other's life. Yeah. Yeah, it does ring a bell now. It's a tear joker. Anyway, then Zonifon wrote loads of really obsequious. shit about him for the next 50 years, but of course he did. He saved his life. And we also get a lot from Plato, because these are all his students, right? And Plato writes all the really smart things that Socrates thought. But actually, it kind of starts off like that. But then towards the end, it's just whatever Plato thinks. And he's like, oh, yeah. Yeah. Socrates thought that Tramira the best team in League two this season.

Yeah. So you just like, you never know where Socrates ends and where Plato Is it right that there's no written stuff by Socrates? There's no record of any of that. He hated writing. He was against it. He thought it would ruin people's memories. So it has proved. And the well done him.

In fact, that's the reason that a lot of historians apparently really love the Bill and Ted movie because in it you can't understand what he's saying and that is very on point with the fact that we don't know anything that he actually said. Right. So it's a perfect representation of Socrates. Okay. I haven't seen it, but I am going to counter

the claim that it's a perfect representation of Socrates nonetheless. Is that fair? No, not fair. It is most triumphant movie. Was there a Mrs. Socrates? Yes, there was. She was called Xanthippy, saying it right. Very useful for us at the moment because we're researching the X series of QI.

As is Xenophon, actually. Yes. So they had three boys, and they lived in near poverty, while Socrates went around the city asking people weird questions. Does this remind you of anyone? Dan Schreiber. Three boys. Yeah?

Near poverty. You're always just going around asking people weird questions while Fend is saying we need to sort out this or that. If Dan's the great philosopher of our time, we are really good. Just another Xanthropy thing.

This is a mystery that I got too deeply into so I'm going to drag you down. Zanthi was the original shrew. She's known throughout medieval history. She's the shrewish wife. She's mentioned in the taming of the shrew is the archetypes. And then a shrew was discovered in the late 19th century

and it was named Xanthropy's shrew by the person who discovered it. Obviously, after Xanthropy. But get this, its other name is the yellow-footed shrew. Now, as I'm sure you'll know, Xanthos in Greek is yellow, golden yellow, and po-dees, peh, is like feet. So Xanthi sort of means yellow-footed

and it's got yellow feet. But it's named after Xanthope. paid the woman. What's going on? That's amazing. I got lost halfway through. Has anyone followed? Did anyone know? So it was, they named it after Zanthippi, the woman. Yeah. Because, no, because she's a shrewish

woman. But if you twist the words a bit, it sounds like it's got yellow feet in Greek. Exactly. That's crazy. That's really good. Thank you, Andy. Are you the first person to make that link? I think I think I might be. Wow. Yeah, this is going to blow some stuff open. Yeah. Let's get in touch with our PR. Let's get that out there.

Is that? We don't have a B. Damn it. Daily Express, though, if you're listening. I have a favorite Socrates sort of thing that he did. It's the Socrates freeze. Did you read about this? It's written about, so Plato writes about it in the symposium.

Basically, he used to get stuck with ideas in his head that he really needed to think about. And when he did, he just stopped or moved himself to a convenient out-of-the-way spot and just remain there completely still, no matter what he was on his way to. So in this, he was on his way to a dinner party. and he suddenly had an idea and he just stands on the porch and just stays silent and that's how he lived his life I have that when I walk into a room

and can't remember why I went in I do the exact same thing just stand there and look around and go what was it I came in here for right? Maybe you are the great philosopher of our time times I think we all know that's true

I think that's probably true but you're saying Socrates are standing on that porch going who the fuck's house is this yeah that's what I reckon my favorite Socrates is the I know who it's going to be

My favourite Socrates Who is, Anna, do you think? It's going to be the other famous Socrates in history, the football player? The footballer. Oh, nice. From Brazil in the 80s. He was known as the smartest player in the Brazilian football team. Question, was he known as Socrates before people thought he was smart?

Or was he called Socrates and then people said... He was known as Socrates from a very young age. People in Brazil, they'll often get a nickname. Right. But I think actually his dad was a self-taught, very poor, but self-taught guy, and he named him Socrates after the philosopher because I think his brothers were called Sophocles and some other very lesser Greek person.

Yeah, so his dad was a philosophy, like he studied philosophy, and he had lots of books. And basically it was quite sad, actually, because there was a coup d'etat in Brazil. And when the army came in, they forced everyone to burn all their books. And Socrates, as a child, the footballer, he watched his dad burning all the books in his library

and imagine how painful that was for him because that was what he lived. loved his bucks. And did that then said it on to football? He said, well, if I can't read because of this coup, I'm going to no, he was just a great footballer really because he also had a medical degree. Which he got while he was playing football. Yeah, he was

super smart. He's amazing. And then when he got towards the end of his career, he got into politics as well. And he said if this, you know, if this military dictatorship doesn't leave and if they don't allow free elections, then I'm going to leave and I'm going to go and play in Italy. And what happened? He meant to play in Italy.

Oh, right. I want to let down. I thought you were to say, and the government backed down. In fairness, they did back down eventually. He played one year in Furentina, and then the next year they did back down and he came back. But they didn't just abandon the dictatorship because to get him back into the country. No, they didn't, but he was quite instrumental.

Yeah, yeah, he was such a big campaigner for all that. He was such a great guy and he made them all wear shirts saying democracy in their big, this is when he played for the Corinthians. Right. Which is also really cool because obviously the Corinthians, great allies of Athens. Allies of Socrates, Socrates fought with them in the Philadelphia the Mediterranean Wars.

Anna, have you taken Dan's coincidence pills? This is insane. This is insane. I love it. Okay, there's time for fact number two. That is Andy. My fact is that a lot of people in the UK have their heating controlled by BBC Radio 4. That is amazing.

It seems likely, doesn't it? This is mad. This, I should say, was sent in as an audience, fact. It was sent in by Bill Welch. So thank you, Bill. Right, so you will have electricity in your hands, right? Not me with my poverty situation going on. I'm out on the streets anyway, so it doesn't matter.

So your electricity is controlled by a meter, and it might be a smart meter if you've heard it upgraded, or it might be an old-fashioned one which measures the current going into your home, and you pay for the amount you use, but you also pay maybe a different amount at different times of day. You know, at night, there's more electricity that's going unused, and there's more wind turbines going around, So there's lots of cheap electricity available.

Some old-fashioned electricity meters can switch between different tariffs, different rates they're charging you. And the way they do it, switching twice a day, is that they are set up to receive a signal embedded in the BBC Radio 4 long wave radio. It's nuts. Twice a day, Radio 4 sends out this message from Droitwich, which is in the middle of the country. It's a transmitter that can reach the whole country. And it just goes blip. and hundreds of thousands of homes across the country switch onto the new tariff

that they're paying for their electricity. And this system, it dates back, I think about 40 years. It's only meant to last another month or so. And they're meant to be shutting it down in June 2025. But still they've got hundreds of thousands of homes where they haven't switched over the meters yet. Oh, we don't know what's going to happen. No.

Because at a time of recording, they're still going to cut it off. I know. So good luck. They are trying to switch people over, but they have to accelerate pretty fast, don't they? They're switching people over at like several thousand a day or they're trying to. But it's hard.

It's hard. And there is a petition just in case anyone's listening and thinks, hang on, I don't want this to happen on change.org. Do check it out. I think it's going to happen. I think there's time. If you're listening to Radio 4

and you're listening out for this noise, you're not going to hear it. No. Because it's not a bloop. Not really. It's the signal is sent by the phase information of the wave. So you've got this radio wave sort of pulsing through the country and it's always the same frequency so that you can pick it up on your radio. But if sometimes

they put little changes in where the peaks and the troughs are in this wave and those tiny changes are the things that it picks up. Right. And your radio would normally strip away any of those differences. Any radio that you own, you would never hear this. Now in theory, you could build a radio, like a ham radio that would pick it up. But even if you did that, it would just be the tiniest little hum you would have like that's interesting. So if you are at home and your radio is off,

you've turned off radio four, that's, it can't get through the radio, right? No, like that's it. No. That's not how radio works. Then you pay loads of extra money for heating.

It's such a stupid system so you have to leave their radios on all night. Your electricity meter is a radio. It contains a tiny little rod with iron in it and that's an antennae and that can receive

198 kilohertz radio waves and any signal that comes in on that radio wave will be picked up by that little rod. And so that is kind of acting like a radio. But you can't get... You can't get Test Matus Special through your electricity viz. So if I lean up close,

I won't hear the Orch's theme tune? Okay, that's good to know. Test match special isn't played on Radio 4 anyways. No, it's all right. Isn't it? They got rid of it a few years ago. Okay. Oh, my God. I think that's the saddest part of all this stuff,

actually, that Test Match Special isn't a radio for anymore. Right. Not even long wave. Because the reason they put it, like we should say like most people listen to FM or probably now digital, right? But Longwave was because there are about 90,000 homes in the country which couldn't get FM radio and you would have to carpet the country with transmitters

to make that signal available absolutely everywhere. Right. So for those homes, they just had the long wave signal which is a difference that it get anywhere. And also if you then have a program that lasts for five days like Test Match Special, you just shove it on Longwave. So you don't have to stop all the radio for a week. But this is why the heating has had to be a stop rate.

It's not about the heating systems changing over. It's about Radio 4 saying no one's using Longwave anymore. So also, this will be probably news to maybe five people after the country. They're stopping broadcasting over Longwave. And this is just the knock on effect where these guys are gone, hang on, that's going to stop my heating. Although it doesn't really affect that many people. For instance, if you go to Curries and try and buy a radio,

I think of all the radios they sell in the entire country, there's only one of them that will pick up Longwave. signals these days. Really? Is that true? We're shooting ourselves in the foot by turning off long wave. What about when the internet stops, when it breaks, we're going to need a good, reliable backup system, and that

can be long wave. Yeah, well that's probably there, right, for us to still use. No, it's not. This is the weird thing. The whole point of it is that they can't get these handmade glass valves. There are these big glass valves which make the long wave signal work. And the BBC bought the entire

global supply some years ago, which was 10. and you need two of them to make the transmitter work, right? How long do they last? Well, between one and ten years. So, you know, so then down to their last two now. They've got like they've got no spares in the cupboard. They're using their last two vowels.

When one of those goes, the system goes. Yeah. One interesting thing about the long wave, especially as thing in Dritewitch, is you have to send out a frequency and it has to be exactly 198 kHz, right? But how do you make sure that the frequency is always the same when you're sending this signal out? Yeah. I don't know. Well, they used to have a thing called an Essen ring, and it was made of quartz.

And if you apply voltage to quartz, it vibrates at very precise frequency. And it had to be in a perfect ring, and you had to sort of hang it up by nylon threads. It's so cool, the technology we used to have. And one of these existed inside the droid white. which thing so that you would always have the exact frequency. And now they do it with rubidium. So they get some rubidium atoms like a gas. What?

And rubidium atoms, Rubidium 87, the isotope, they always transition between two energy levels. This is quantum physics now, which are exactly 6.834-682-610 gigahertz apart. And that's basically an atomic clock. That's what that is. Okay. Yeah, because this is how we used to keep time in Paris, wasn't it,

with the courts before they came up. the bad version. That's how my Cassio works. Yes. Actually, I'm not even joking. It has a small piece of quartz in. That's how a digital watch. So yours works in the same way that the S and ring would work.

Obviously, you don't have rubidium atoms in there. I didn't spring for that. I saw it on Amazon as an option, but it was three quid more. And I thought, no, stuff that. But the atomic clock inside Drite Witch not lose more than one second every 3,000 years if it was a watch. Super. Which is pretty good. Although we're now up to with atomic clocks, ones that won't.

don't lose a second in 30 billion years. Yeah, we've got too perfectionisty, haven't we? It's like having to buy the next digit of pie. Yeah. Who cares? We've gone far enough. A second every 3,000 years is still, if you'd started that when we invented farming and came to now,

it would still be within three seconds, which I think is good. We can live with it. I just think that's good. It doesn't matter, he's frozen half a mile down the road anyway. I had to refresh my memory. memory from the old GCSE of physics of how on earth all these waves bloody work. And so in case you need it, long wave hugs the ground, which I just like the idea that that's why it can get to all of those places is that like some sort of weird cartoon character

just clings just above the ground so it can gallop over mountains and hums and everything. So if you're in a valley, you still get it? Exactly. So is it bouncing off the sky. Sometimes it is, but more important with the bouncing off the sky. and I think this is the very cool thing is shortwave reception. So shortwave relies on the ionosphere, which is the ring in our atmosphere of charged ions.

And the reason they're charged is because the sunlight bashes into atoms in the daytime in our atmosphere. And it causes them all to react with each other and lose electrons and they become ions. So it's all very electrically charged. And we use that ionosphere, shortwave, to bounce radio signal up and then back down to us. What I quite like about that is that that means that you'd get much better reception at night on the radio

just because of how the ionosphere works. So basically, in the daytime, the ionosphere has been all charged up by the sun. So it's lots of ions, like free electrons, wandering around looking for a partner. And so the radio wave goes up like someone going into a ballroom full of dancers looking for partners. The sexy stuff, yeah, yeah. Yeah. And it's harder in the daytime to get through that ballroom because the dancers keep trying to dance with you.

They're these free ions being like, hey, pair up with me, pair up with me. But in the nighttime, they all chill out, they recombine with their normal partners because the sunlight's gone away and stopped stirring them up. So the radio signal of your shortwave radio can just go straight through the dance floor without anyone, you know, assaulting them for a dance. Which is all well and good, but you can't play cricket at the night time. So the terrible irony is you can never listen to Test Mac Special with a good signal. And that is the ultimate point, is it pointless.

What good radio is on at 3 in the morning? Dwight Witch played a part in D-Day. Did it? Yes, it did. The D-D-D-Day stands for Droit Witch. It's Droit Witch Day. Yeah. The day to the landings was broadcast from the Droit Wish transmitter

because there were people in France, the resistance. They were getting signals from Britain. And how do you send a signal all the way to France? Well, it's pretty difficult unless you have a big old tower that can send long wave. And so they did. And they could pick up the BBC. French service from there and they played like a poem by Paul Vellan I think and when they heard that poem they knew that this was the time to basically what they did was they would kind of cause ruckus

with the Germans and like you know just be a pain in the arts if you're going to blow the roll always blow them up now yeah exactly yeah yeah just keep them occupied in various oh ironically you're the one who's occupied but keep them keep them occupied while we're going on to the beaches so the signal was like create a distraction yeah yeah cool You say what the line was. It's so cool. So as you say, James, it was a poem by Paul Valand who was a 19th century, quite avant-garde, gay poet. Like, he was quite... Was he the one who had an affair with Rambo, I think?

I think he did. Not Rambo, the... No, Dan's looking interested. Tell me more. Who's Rambo? Arthur Rambo was the poet as well. Yeah. They were like the romantic poets of France. Yeah, they were terrific.

That's a disappointing movie night when I've rented that movie. Rambo first blood. Actually, total eclipse starring Leonardo DiCaprio as Rambo is a great film, Dan. Wow. Yeah, there you go. So the poem stars, Les song le long de violon d'houn,

bless my car don't longer monotone. The long sobs of autumn violins wound my heart with a monotonous languor. Very poetic. So when they broadcast the first half, that was a signal to the French resistance. Invasion's going to be within two weeks. You've got two weeks to get ready.

And then they broadcast the second half of that line, which was, got 48 hours. Like the French service broadcast all of these phrases, some of which were meaningful, like, molasses tomorrow will bring forth cognac. That just went into France. It might have been done in Morse code, but it was, and then John has a long mustache. And some of these phrases were meaningful to the resistance, and a lot of them were nonsense just to confuse the Germans, basically. And the Germans knew the significance of the Verlamp poem. There was an officer, a German intelligence officer who said,

okay, the invasion's coming within 48 hours. And he passed the message on, but it did not get through to the army who were actually in charge of Normandy and trying to man the beaches. Did he go shortwave? I didn't know. Yeah. The warning wasn't passed on. That's mad, really. It's huge.

That's a big counterfactual. Well, the amazing thing is also the Germans sent some signals from Dright Witch as well. They had someone on the inside. And so they could use the Drightwich transmitter to send their own signals to people in France. Right.

There was a German spy in Droitwich. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They don't know who it was, but they assume it was someone working at the BBC or something. That's crazy. Wow, that's cool. I like that Longwave can go through water as well, and that was, submarines would use Longwave to get their radio, their radio four. They would literally use to get it.

I think they still do. Yeah, they still do. But obviously, at the end of this month, they weren't, right? What are they going to do? I don't know. They obviously got a new thing. They're going to swap two. But that was the thing.

I'm sure we've said it, where in wartime, you would make sure, that England was still there, basically, while you were underwater, if Radio 4 was still going. They're probably gone BBC sounds now. That's true. They'd probably pre-download before they go. I do love codes in, I feel like we should do this at some point. There's a whole period of an American radio where they would put a code for the listener at the end of a radio show. So it would be like a little bit of Morse code, and you had a decoder at home as part of the fan club. So we'd give little teasers for what's happening in the episode that you were going to,

going to hear the next day or the next week. That's a really good idea because we know that you listening to this almost certainly stop listening before we say our email addresses at the end. Because we've seen the figures. We know when the drop-off comes. Hang on, are you saying we should put them in Morse code at the start of the podcast? No, I'm saying we put something special at the very end so people are forced to listen to us saying, I'm on Instagram.

Yeah. All right, we're going to do it. We can just tell people we'll put something special there. What should we put? Crossword. That's the most fun. That's the most fun, I think. What about Sudoku?

A Sudoku. So I'll do the first box. Blank. You've got to listen next week. In just 81 episodes time, you've made your own Sudoku grid. This will get people listening. Okay, this time for fact number three. And that is my fact.

My fact this week is that Andy Warhol would regularly have his wig cut by a barber and then return the following month wearing a new longer wig. Very annoying for that. Yeah, how do the barber react? Well, this is Andy Warhol we're talking about. He, as well as being an artist, was an art piece and himself. And the barber would have known and would have enjoyed what they were doing. And actually, you know, like at the moment, if you're a barber, you have to sit there waiting

for your customers to grow hair. But if they just come in and buy some hair for you to cut, it's giving you more work. Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah. Was it so that his friends would kind of slowly see his wig get longer and shorter so it looked more realistic? Yeah, well, I think as well, like this is one of the most photographed socialites in America at the time. He wanted to make sure that his look was ever-changing. It was sort of in fashion. The wig was a huge part of his life, by the way. Because his wig is a very obvious wig, Andy Warholz, isn't it? Yeah. It's silvery, isn't it? Yeah. I know you had hundreds of weeks. But iconic. So he basically started going, bold when he was in his 20s and he really didn't want this. And there's a lot of early art pieces where it clearly is playing on his mind. There's a piece that he did called bold, question mark, where he just showed someone gradually becoming bold and sketches. And so he took it very

seriously. And there's a huge collection of Andy Warhol wigs that are out there now. They were all very nicely made by a man who was called Paul Bokiccio. They were iconic wigs. Yeah. You could buy one in 2006 at auction for $10,800, at which time it was the most expensive wig ever sold. Oh, yeah. Has it been overtaken? Three times. Do you want to guess? Oh, yes. Who's big in wigs? You can get them all. Big wigs. March Simpson?

Oh, my God. Let's try some real life people. Okay. But big wigs is a good name for when I turn this into a channel 5 format. Yeah, absolutely. I'll take my usual 10% fee. Yeah, I feel like we might struggle after the first time. episode, in fact, after the first question. I'm struggling now to think of really famous. So, like, I'm thinking of people, I'm thinking of iconic weird artists like Salvador Darlie.

Think of more famous, very famous. Edna Everidge. Edna Everidge. Really good, cool. Michael Jackson. Michael Jackson, in at one, $75,000. Did he wear a wig? What's his a wig?

He did wear wigs later on, so he was in a commercial for Pepsi. Yeah. And there was a fire, or he burnt his hair basically, and he had. to wear wigs for a while after that. It was pyrotechnics that went wrong during the advert recording and his head lit up. He didn't even notice.

You can see the footage where he's still dancing and his head is just in... Oh, so that's number one. Are the famous wig wearers? So... Go for more famous people who might have happened

to have worn wigs at a certain time. Dolly Parton. Close, but no. Give us one clue that's sort of like... The most famous woman of the 20th century. Marilyn Monroe.

Marilyn Monroe and Elizabeth Taylor. Oh! Nice. Double. Yeah. You kind of spoiled the format by getting them so quickly. To fill another 24 minutes of this show. But it was Elizabeth Taylor's wig in Cleopatra, went for $16,000.

And Marilyn Monroe's wig she wore in The Misfits, which was her last film. I went for $30,000. Right. Come back next week. We'll desperately be hoping for some big news in the wig world. And he kept hundreds, didn't he, Andy Warhol in boxes? Yeah, he was a huge hoarder. He collected everything in his life.

There's a weird, massive art. I think there's an Andy Warhol museum somewhere. Maybe it's, is it in Pittsburgh, which is where he was from? Yeah. But it's got, wherever it is, it's got 50,000 of his things, or 100,000. You know, many floors of ticket stubs and old. He basically, at the end of every day, he would get a big cardboard box. And anything that he had left over, like half a sandwich or a smoke cigarette or something,

he would just pour it all into that box and it would mark it time capsule and then just put it to one side. It's a good idea. And the Andy Warhol Museum has hundreds of these and I don't think they've all been opened. No. So back in 2007, there was a journalist who was invited to see some of the boxes being opened. So they had 600 boxes of these things. I think only like 80 of them had been open at that point. And they had just no idea what you'd find in it.

So he was there as they opened it and they found an unopened Lionel Richie CD. and, you know, but then they found things like a mummified foot that he bought at a sort of sale, you know, like a garage sale and that he kept in... This is a format, James. I'm sorry, but like when the Wig Show comes to the end of its natural life after many seasons, I think Andy Warhol's big box open is a good... Yeah. It's like storage wars where you bid against each other for what's in a box and you might get a half-eaters or you might get millions of flies.

Yeah. That's a fun concept. Are any of them, like, moving or ticking or, you know, too? Are there any, like, you know. It's very much something you can get away with if you're a very famous artist. But if I did that as an ordinary human being, my friends would think I'd gone completely mad. It's unsustainable for all eight billion of us to do this with all of our things. Yes.

But also, the wig became its own thing in his life where it could act as him. So there was a whole tour in colleges, and instead of going, he sent an actor, I think, I think the guy had his own hair, but he cut it and he coloured it to exactly Andy. It was so iconic that look and he wore dark glasses. Can we say what he was called? Yeah, absolutely. He was called Alan Midget. Mijette.

I'm so sorry for mispronouncing something for comic effect. Alan Mijet. It had an E at the end, but he put that E on. It didn't have the E originally. Yeah, thank you very much. And basically, people were very annoyed with Andy Warhol when they found out that he'd sent Alan Mijette in his place to sit in sunglasses in a way. way. Did they know straight away when he came up or would they see the whole talk? Basically they screened an incredibly boring film that Andy Warhol had shot and then

Andy Warhol's shtick was that he didn't answer any questions. So you'd have a question and answer session where he'd say like two word answers. Yeah. I think people did get pretty quickly that they eventually did get it and it was a bit confusing and the people around Andy would say isn't it fascinating? Some people who'd even met Andy would then meet Paul Majet and say wow, Andy lovely to see you again and he was like if enough people around a person believe it the person, then they get confused into thinking it is. And that was the case. Andy said they got a better deal because actually Mijette gave more answers at the talks than Andy would have. He was more personable. He was more likable. Supposedly, he was caught when he ran out of silver

hairspray. Alan Mijette. And people were so annoyed about this when it was discovered that one Oregon College made Andy Warhol swear on a Bible that he was Andy Warhol before they let him do the event. Because it was to students these talks basically. And I think people had paid. But it feels better to see the double because you're seeing an Andy Warhol work of art. As Dan says, Andy Warhol made himself a work of art, definitely. It was like everything he did, you had to appreciate. And some people

didn't get it. This guy is the Socrates of the 20th century. I'm sorry, he's going around irritating people. Not answering any questions, only asking them. He was a weird guy. He did a lot of art which was about replication and uniformity. So one of his most famous things is the paintings of

Campbell's Soup, Cairns. Yeah, that's what made and famous really. Yeah, but this was 1962 and it was his first big solo show. So it was his debut to the art world. It was not a success. He sold five. Really? Yeah. In fact, I don't even know if he sold five. Like a few of the, two were sold

and a few more, someone said, yeah, keep that back from me. You know, it was a failure. Interesting. And the gallery owner then said, actually, I'm not going to sell any of these. I want to keep the series together. But I think it's interesting that Campbell's didn't know about it. Because obviously he wouldn't have worn them or anything. But then people started

wearing Campbell's Soup clothing because this work of art had become popular. And then Campbell's Soup gave him a commission to paint a can because their chairman was retiring. So they've got this weird relationship. Then they threatened to sue him later on. Then they made their own dress out of soup can labels.

If you sent them $1 and two labels, they would send you a dress that looks like Campbell's soup can label. So it was for anyway, it wasn't like high fashion. No, no, no. It was just a sort of an offer. But it was based on... That's a great value dress. And two labels. It's still a great value dress But he just sort of dragged this

Perfectly Innocent Soup Company into the world of high art And then they started engaging with it off the back of it Can I ask? You might not know this But if that was such a failure At what stage did he become not a failure Do you know what I mean? I think it was very soon after that I think it was almost the day after that

A lot of people thought all the soup thing do know And then a few critics said Actually this is great Which I'm still on the fence about Some other people who don't appreciate his art. People from his original village.

Oh. Because as you say, I think he was born in someone like Pittsburgh, but ethnically, he was Russin. Not Russian. Russin.

Which is this really tiny ethnicity from the Carpatho-Russon mountains. And it's between Poland, Slovakia and Ukraine. And that's where both his parents were born before they

emigrated to America. It actually, so he's from a place called Ruthenia, which existed as a nation for one day in 1939. What? Yeah.

It declared independence and then immediately was invaded by Hungary. Oh, that's bad luck. Was there a connection? There was a connection. Sorry. It wasn't. Then they were thinking, when shall we do it? Let's wait.

No, we'll wait. Should we do it today? No, no, let's wait. Okay, finally. Let's declare our independent. Oh, fuck. What were the chances? There was stuff happening in 1939.

I'm not sure if you're aware. But anyway, he's got all these cousins still there in the area. And they kept in touch with Andy Warhol's parents when they were in America. And the parents wrote back to their cousins in Slovakia saying he's a painter. And people were interviewed saying until the late 70s, they all thought he just painted houses. They were like, oh, those guys are kids a house painter. And then there was some good interviews.

Like he's got a cousin, I think a first cousin called Julia Varsh Oliver, who's from there still lives there. And she said, semi-recently, in America, you don't really need to be good at something. You just need to be different. Warhol was just really different, wasn't he? So he's called Warholah. It was an A originally. But I think it's in Slovakia that they have the second largest collection of Andy Warhol art now and memorabilia.

So there's an actual museum there that's outside of Pittsburgh. But how are you going to compete with 600 boxes of mummified feet, right? You're not going to come first. But yeah, so they've obviously embraced it now. Well, a little bit. The person who set up the museum embraced it, but he did go around trying to tell everyone to get into him. And a lot of his family and people there were like, we don't get it, we don't like it. Right. Whatever.

And then he was shot. And then he was shot. By Valerie Solanus, who he put in a few movies. She thought she should have been in more of his movies. He shot me and then I shot him? Yes, I guess so. I think she had a few issues. But basically, yeah, she was a member of a feminist organization.

called the Society for Cutting Up Men or Scum. She walked into his factory because the place where he worked was called the factory. And she just walked in, shot him and walked out again. And then a few hours later, she kind of went to a policeman saying, I think the police are looking for me. I am a flower child, harassed me immediately. Yeah. And they arrested her.

And he survived. Just because if you don't know story, that sounds like he died. But, yeah. Oh, yeah. It was 1968. Yeah. This all happened. I thought that the real.

reason she shot him was because he had lost the script of a play that she had written called Up Your Ass, which, and apparently... Or is that where he lost it? But she, I mean, she went to Jad either way. Yeah, for a few years. Yeah, she was declared. She was declared. But the episode of his shooting is insane. It's the kind of shooting you'd imagine in Andy Warhol's mad life. Two friends there. His friend Mario Amaya was also shot on the bullet went all the way through from back to front, didn't get any organs, but then they called an ambulance and it took half an hour to arrive. And in that time, more mates turned up, found this blood-soaked scene. Mario was running around going, is there a bullet in my back? Is there a bullet in my back?

And then Andy Warhol was lying dead. And he was literally declared dead in one of those, you hear that as a fact and you think, no, surely not. But he was taken to hospital. He had no signs of life and there was a vascular surgeon in the room who said hang on i quite like the soup cans thing i'm going to really try and sew this guy up not true the doctor didn't know who it was they thought he was a random tramp oh i thought they thought he was a tramp at first and then they were told he was warhol when they were operating although i'm not saying he wouldn't have operated on the random tramp no joseppe rossi was the name of the surgeon what a guy uh-huh this is an artist okay what he did i'm serious warhol's been shot i think twice okay and really badly like

He's in very, very bad nick. He's dead. He's dead. But Rossi opens Andy Warhol's chest, massaged his heart, took out his spleen, and he puts in an order for 12 pints of blood. Right. He's like, we can do this. And he did it.

Yeah. And Andrew Warhol thanked him by giving him ten posters of Campbell's soup. Well, hang on, that's going to be worth so much. Yes, they were sold after Rossi eventually died. I think his widow then sold. I imagine they kept them for life. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If I gave a doctor 10 posters, that's an insult.

What would you pick? Posters of what? Fish tall posters. This is Pinella's dream. We've got to give away 10 of our posters. Brilliant. I've got them ready, Dan. Poor surgeons at home after a very hard day's work.

There's a life-size model of Groucho Marx. That's outside. Okay, it is time for our final fact of the show, and that is James. Okay, my fact this week. is that when Stansted Airport was being planned, locals campaigning to maintain the area's natural beauty often met in a village called Ugly. Lovely.

So initially this was a fact that I found about the Ugly Women's Institute. We were going to do an Ugly Women's Institute fact, but that's kind of on the internet a fair bit. And when I was researching that, I found this campaign about Stansted, and they were deciding where to put London's third airport, and it turns out that quite a few of the meetings to stop the airport from going around there

took place in Ugly Church Hall because Ugly is a village in Essex. Yeah. And we should say Stansted is an airport. It's an airport for international listeners who've not been. It is not a great place to spend time. It's not a beautiful place. But it's one of the big three. Gatwick Heathrow Stanston.

But yeah, they had lots of meetings at this ugly church hall. Some of the ugly residents were pro. So the ugly youth club wrote a letter to the preservation society saying that it will bring some life into the area that according to them had little around but farming and they said that a lot of young people were moving out of the area and if you brought in this big airport with all the jobs it created

then maybe it will keep the ugly youth around and Councillor J. Lukies responded saying it's a feeling that the youth has that they're being brought up among squares Oh So yeah So it was You know

It wasn't everyone was against it But it is quite a beautiful part of the world Actually around Stansted It is It is really nice I've been looking at photos It's fit It's lovely

As they are They will tell you Understandably They'll get defensive It's very few For ugly Ugly Church is not ugly Yeah

Ugly Green Ugly Village Hall There's an ugly Farmer's market That happens every now I went on to company's house There's an ugly coach house And until 2023

There was a company called The Ugly Indian and it was based in Ugly. And I can't find out what it was. I assume it's a restaurant. Yeah. It's not going to be a single person, right? But there's a group called the Ugly Indians in India that kind of clean up pot holes and stuff. Really?

But it's not that. Oh, that's cool. No, that would be a terrible base from which to clean up bottles in India. I really like the very first mention that we have of Ugly written down is in 1041. And it had a different name. It wasn't called Ugly then. Oh, yeah. It was called Ugly.

Are you spelling that? U-D-G-E-L-E. Ugly. And actually the locals there, the locals there don't call it ugly. The posh ones who are living there, they like to call it ujli. I, no, I bet there's not a single.

This was told to a reporter called Laura Fiddler who was down there trying to find out all the most interesting things about ugly. Laura Fiddler has misunderstood the jokes on her. It's five kilometres north of Stansted Airport. So Stanssted is named after a town called Stansted Mount Fitchit, which is just outside where the airport is. So it's not inconceivable they could have called it ugly airport.

That would have been terrific. Other nearby villages include Little London, Mole Hill, Maggots End and Hope End. So Hope End Airport would have been a good one, wouldn't it? There is a nearby village called Nasty, which is 12 miles away. It's a long running. I think it's just. Just a joke.

Reputedly, there was a newspaper headline once. Nasty Man Marry's Ugly Woman. I suspect it never happened. Sadly. Quite near to another little village called Matching Thai, which is a great name. It's such a good name. It's T.Y.

Have you guys, have Dan or Andy heard of matching tie? No. No. I'm really surprised you haven't because Rick Mayle lived there until he was three years old. That is a real gap in our knowledge, Dan. Yeah, we're going to fix that. sending our badge on our gun back to quick mail so I think they shouldn't let us have a gun

I thought you had a badge in a big frying pan more Essex place names just as we're on those there's shallow bowels shallow not shallow shallow really shallow bowels Wiggly Bush Lane

Burnt Dick Hill Dancing Dick's Lane and the best of all fingering ho Fing ho come on Fing ring ho Fingingho

Yeah you've said it three times down We've heard it. I think we understand why it's funny. That's great. Speaking of Dix, Dick's related names, there is an ugly women's institute. And there was,

well, it was certainly reported in the late 50s that they decided to change to women's institute brackets ugly, but then by the 80s, they were back to being the ugly women's institute. And their president in the late 70s was Mrs. Dix. Mrs. Dix was president of the ugly women's institute.

Yes. You know the most famous? person to visit ugly ever, I think. Oh, just like passing visit. Yeah. Daphne and Celeste. No. Think more German. Daphne and Celeste.

To more German. Well, A-hitz. Adolf Hitler. You know what? Right period. Right cabinet, in fact. Dering. Okay. Hitler. Can we just pause on the fact that James has a nickname for Hitler?

They go way back. A hits You're just reading it off his tattoo, that? I couldn't fit the full name on my penis. Oh my God. Wow. Oh dear. It was Joachim von Ribbentrop.

Oh, is it? Yeah. Try fitting that on your penis. Of Pact fame. Of Pact fame. The moment's on Ribontrop. was Russia and German? Yeah, he was the foreign minister.

I think this was before his time as German foreign minister. He visited Orford House, which is just outside ugly, I think, but it's still in the sort of parish boundaries. And of course, later he was the first man hanged for war crimes after the Nuremberg trials. He was, yeah. I think he might have been the only person who's been too ugly who was hanged as part of the Nuremberg trials. I believe.

I believe. And what was that? Like, why was he staying at a hotel the night before a flight from Stanston? It was a beautiful house that I think was owned by a local Toff who invited him over. And he loved England. I think it was Ribbentrop who kept on trying to get Hitler to invade England because he thought all that was so beautiful, loved Cornwall. Right. So, yeah, probably loved ugly.

So there was a big argument about Stansted Airport when it came in. So we had two airports in London. We had Gatwick and Heathrow. And they thought we're definitely going to have to build a third one. and the decision that we were going to need one starting about the 50s and 60s and they didn't actually build Stansted Airport until the 80s

I think it finished in 85 something like that because actually Stansted in the end was they just did up an old airfield rather than building like a whole big massive new airport like is what they were planning they kind of rolled back on that idea a little bit and went for the smaller version

which was what Stansted was but everyone obviously got really upset about it. People don't like airports near them, do they? Understandably. And it wasn't even, like, during the war, during the Second World War, it was the ninth largest American air base in East Anglia.

Like, it might not have been the obvious choice, actually. They were bigger ones. After the war, it was used as a base for German prisoners of war, who were going to be sent back to Germany. And actually, if you get a standstill now, they've really preserved that sense of what it must have been like, yeah. They nearly built the third airport in a place

called Wing in Buckinghamshire. Yeah. There was locals there weren't happy about it either informed the Wing Airport Resistance Association. But that was going to be a really big airport and it was after the oil crisis in the 70s. They decided that actually we should do a smaller one and that's when they went to Stansted. So we could have had a wing airport and actually where the airport was going to be there's now they put some trees there and you can go and visit that sort of patch of forest of where there should have been an airport. Is that a big tourist spot in Buckinghambe? Just Nimbieism in general.

Oh, yeah. You know, there's NIMBY, not in my backyard. This is what people say when they don't want a thing. Yeah. The alternatives are the banana people. And that is build absolutely nothing anywhere near anything. Which is good. That's brilliant.

And there's an idea in, I think it's more of an American thing, when it's cave, which is citizens against virtually everything, which is another good. Nice. That's really good. But maybe the paradigm example, of this. This was something that happened in Medway in Kent, so not far from Essex,

three years ago. Medway Council, they really wanted to add solar panels to their headquarters. It's kind of a post-war, like, modern-ish block. It's not sort of, it's not incredibly exciting to look at. They thought, let's stick some solar panels on there. So the Medway Council put in an application to Medway Council

to put solar panels on their own headquarters, and they were shocked when Medway Council turned down the request by Medway Council, saying, no, this is not appropriate at all. The weird thing is it already had sort of panels on it. They were just saying, can we put some more on? Oh, really?

Okay, that is 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've said over the course of this podcast, we can all be found on our social media accounts. I'm on at Shreiberland on Instagram, Andy. I've joined Instagram. Ooh, I'm at Andrew Hunter M.

James. Well, I might leave Instagram then if Andy's there. I'll go for TikTok. Knows his thing is James Harkin. Yep. And Anna, if they want to say, to get us as a group. We're on Instagram on at No Such Thing as a Fish

or at No Such Thing on Twitter or you can email podcast at QI.com. Yep, or you can go to our website. No Such Thingasafish.com. All of the previous episodes are up there, so do check them out. There's also links to our upcoming live shows. We got one in Belgium in a couple of weeks

and then we're going to be in Sheffield. It's part of the Crossed Wires Festival. We've also got a link to Clubfish, our secret club where there are bonus episodes and lots of fun things going on. So check that out. or you can just come back next week because we'll be back with another episode. We'll see you then.

Goodbye.