No Such Thing As A Fish - No Such Thing As A Litter Box In The Sahara

Episode Date: October 23, 2025

Live from the London Podcast Festival, Jamie Morton joins Dan, James and Andy to discuss onsens, letter bombs and Beerbohm. 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

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Hello and welcome to another episode of No Such Thing as a Fish, a weekly podcast. This week coming to you live from the London Podcast Festival. My name is Dan Schreiber. I am sitting here with Andrew Hunter Murray, James Harkin, and Jamie Morton. 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 Jamie. Iconic Fespian, Beerbome, had a walk on part in every single production at the Gilgood Theatre in London's West End for 20 years. and fittingly had a front-page obituary in the stage newspaper.

He was also a cat. I know. What a hag. I'm sorry. That is a thespian cat. That is. For people listening on the podcast next week or whenever it goes out, can you describe the cat to us, Jamie?

We've got a tabby cat. He's male. And he's lounging on stage at the Gilgood. Looking very happy with himself, beautifully lit. It's black and white. It's very, it sounds like a headshot, but it's a full body. Shea's long kind of look. That little, is that a foot or a tail?

He's like saying, paint me like one of your French cats. He is giving that energy, isn't it? Oh, yeah, yeah. Same opulence as well around it in terms of the architecture. Yeah, I mean, I love this cat. I'm not going to lie. I've fallen in love with him this week. Never heard him before, but now I love him.

So when you say walk on roll in all the plays, was that official? Was he written into? No. No. He was the resident Is it like Mouser? Is that like... Yeah, Mouser. Yeah, Mouser. That they caught the mice.

And he just would like randomly walk on stage during productions which being a theatre director I find chilling because you work so hard to kind of make a show good and some fucking cats just like wandering in front of everyone. And what did the actors think of it? Were they...

Well, the actors like loved this cat. Like almost uniform. I think there wasn't a single actor who didn't love Beardome because he is, as I said, a total hag. I mean, look at him. But, yeah, he was loved. And people got very attached to him. So much so that he had this obituary on the front page of the stage newspaper.

And people like Penelope Keith wrote obituaries for him. Like loads of actors kind of got involved. And the stage, I hadn't heard of the stage. Is that like the main, main thing that you can get on it? The Bible. Dan. Honestly. Come on, mate.

No, I had actually heard of it. I was just being them for a second. Them? They've heard of it too. Oh, so it is just being. It's a great newspaper, yeah. It's a great newspaper. It's behind a paywall, but it's great.

Okay, a lot of people did love Beerbomb, but Beerbomb would arrive on stage at moments that weren't necessarily good for a scene, you know. There was one play that was on, which was called the House of Bernard Alba, which had a lot of sand all over the stage. Oh, no. Which to Beerbom. Where's the ultimate pooing ground? It was...

So that was not good, right? Those moments. Not good for who. He loved it. It adds realism to the play. Oh yeah. Depends where it's set. If it's set in the pitiless desert of the Sahara,

it actually, I would say, kills the mood a bit to have a house cat. Fair enough. Some people think it's good luck for a cat to be on stage. And in America, at least, there was a superstition that if a black cat came into the theater,

that was really good luck. If it came on the first night, that was really, really good luck, and the whole show was going to be amazing. And so the Fifth Avenue Theatre in New York used to keep a black cat backstage, and then on the first show of every run, they would throw it out there so that it was on stage. And that was good luck. And the reason, you said Mouser a second ago, Jamie, the reason that cats used to be very, very important in theatre is because back in the day,

food being thrown on stage to show your displeasure or pleasure in a play was a massive thing. So at the end of every night, food was just everywhere, all over the stage, which brought in the mice, and mice were a huge, huge problem. So theaters would have sometimes up to 20 cats roaming around, catching mice if they had problems. But a lot of those cats will lie on their CVs, you know. You've put down here, you also do birds. Is that true? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, because actually, Beerbone was on the payroll, I read. He was officially listed on the Gilgood payroll, which, as a former accountant, I think, brings up a whole host of problems.

Like, who pays the national insurance on that? Yep. I wonder who his agent was. I don't know. Someone bloody good. Fifty percent of a cat. And apparently he would disappear from time to time. According to Dame Hilde Brackett, he would dash off to see a particular friend at the lyric theater.

His girlfriend? Yeah. She said, we used to hear lots of meows. This was Soho after all. I love it. Do you think all, because most West End theaters have cats, as you said. They're all mates. They just like all meet up at like

After each show They're like God you should have seen the performers I'm like shit Well they Lots of theatres did have cats So the Noel Cow Theatre had Two cats

Imagine a little cat and boy cat And I think boy cat Only ever distinguished himself once When he ate Princess Margaret's bouquet Is that a euphemism? No It's a bloody good one isn't it? Yeah apparently

He also escaped off stage during a performance of a musical five guys named Moe and he would go under the stage and he would only come out when someone tap danced over him. Right. There was a cat called Ambrose

at the Theatre Royal Jury Lane which I think you've performed at. Oh yeah. We have, yeah. And this cat got into a beef with Michael Crawford. He kept upstaging Michael Crawford and Michael Crawford had no sense of humor about this. Is Michael Crawford the original

Phantom? Yes. But was he also Frank Spencer? Yeah, Frank Spencer. Yeah, yeah, okay. Yeah, yeah. A varied career, I think we'll agree. But then, and so Michael Cawford was like kicking off about this cat, but every single person in the theatre took the cat's side. What does that say? Wow, yeah. I read about one that was at the Sadler's Wells. It was called Sadler, the cat, and Sadler in 1956 just suddenly disappeared. But unlike the other cats who would come on unprompted, Sadler actually had a role in a play. So in the stage magazine, they had an advert to audition for a new cat for the show.

And I found the advert. It said, owing to the dramatic disappearance of Sadler, official theater cat at the Wells, the important feline role in the forthcoming production of School of Fathers falls vacant. Auditions will be held. Applicants must be fully grown and capable of maintaining dignity and poise atop a 10 foot high wall, despite the distractions of a full operatic orchestra and audience laughter and applause. the chosen artist will receive for her service one sardine and two complementary tickets per performance. Wow. And did you see who got the part? No. It was a cat called Keats. And according to the Daily Telegraph, he beat off tough composition from cats called Fantasia, Nimbus, Clot, and Mr. Woodbury Bentley.

And they had two auditions. In the second audition, he jumped off the wall that he was sitting on and then walked over to the bar and started knocking down bottles. And they decided this was a perfect cat for the theatre. You know, this is exactly what the old actors would do. Lovey. Yeah. So good. How can you cast a cat in a play? They just, they famously don't play ball.

Well, they play with balls. But you know what I mean? Yeah, I know. They're hard to direct, I would imagine. Yeah, dogs, I think, do get a look in sometimes on the West End. I was trying to find other animals that have been in West End productions. Oh, yeah. So there was a Guardian report in 2001 that there was a production of the Taming of the True,

which had an entire cast of chickens. and I cannot find out whether it was like a whole flock of chickens and a human cast or whether it was an entire cast of chickens. But weren't they all fired, I think? They were sacked, yes, apparently for being too hysterical. Again, I don't know what the... Hysterical chicken. Can't imagine how hysterical they got when they were told they were fired.

It's big in the room, guys were going to have to let you go... By the way, Beerbom, the cat, do we know... Do you guys know why it's called Beerbom? There was a famous actor called Bibba, but I don't know Yeah, he was a theatre manager, he was an actor as well. His name was Sir Herbert Beobombt Tree, and he founded Rada, the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. Yeah, and he's a pretty amazing character. He released a few records. He did Hamlets to be or not to be on vinyl. That's pretty cool, just releasing his own stuff. And also, randomly, in the play Cats, there is a reference,

which is said to Gus from Jelly Room. Is that the name of the cat in it? The line is he's acted with Irving, he's acted with tree. Cats, I'm so glad we're on cats. So thing one, when you think about it, cats is an anagram of cast. Okay. And why it just makes you think, doesn't it? Yeah. Yeah. It's also anagram of acts. Oh my God. I was so pleased with myself. Cast. Are they got to stack but without the cake? Nah. End the thought there. Oh, that's brilliant. Is that it? Is that it? it. That was the fact. That was the fact. He messaged us saying, I've got some amazing stuff on cats that I need to say on stage. I spent six hours reading about the musical cats because I knew you had a cat's fact and that was it. Well, I just wanted to introduce yours. Yeah,

go on. Okay. Well, I have quite a good one about cats, the musical. Do you? Okay. Yeah. For its Broadway run, they used over 49,000 condoms. Oh, sorry. Yeah. Can we guess why? Densch. Dents. Sadly, Densch ruptured her Achilles so couldn't perform in cats. Although she was originally cast. She was meant to be... She was originally

cast. In cast. Yeah, why do you think they use so many condoms? To stop things from getting wet, is my first thought. But what sort of things? Do you smuggle drugs for the cast? No, you're on the right lines, James. Yeah, to protect something.

Okay. Oh, is it for... So a lot of preppers will use condoms to store water because a condom like a water balloon can hold gallons of water. Absolutely not. If you ever go to dance for dinner,

he offers still sparkling or tasting of spermicide. Sorry, Andy. Cats have claws, don't they? Yes. So it's to protect the claws in transit and they had 49,000. Well, real cats have claws. This is a show with people.

All right, put us out of America. Go on. Basically, you were right, James. It was to protect their microphone packs because they were sweating so much, because it's a dance show, right? They're dancing so much they would put their mic packs in condoms. 49,000. Yeah.

After each show, they were just like tip loads of condoms in the bin outside of this. That's a good Lord. That's a sweaty show. While we're on Andrew Lloyd Weber, there's another cat connection, which is the fact that Phantom of the Opera now has a sequel. Many, many years ago, Lloyd Weber was working on that sequel. And he was writing it with Frederick Forsyth, the author. Day of the Jackal, that kind of thing.

Yeah, exactly. So they were writing it. He'd written all the music and he had it on his electric piano. And then one day he sat down to write a new song and his kitten, called Otto, stepped on the keyboard and erased the entire score. And so we never got it. The main thing about Kat Scholley is the movie, the amazing movie that came out a few years ago. Oh, yeah.

And it was really the start of the pandemic, I think. It was right at the start of the pandemic, wasn't it? It was a bad moment. I think we're claiming it caused the pandemic. I don't know. No, but it made it seem a lot longer. We knew something bad was in the air when cats came out.

And the big thing about that is the CGI bumholes that all the cats had. Oh, what's that? Well, is it true or not? Because that is urban myth. Is it true? It's urban myth. So someone tweeted a guy called Jack Was. And I think, I mean, that sounds like an honest man,

doesn't it? Jack Wise. The thing is, James, you go to such impeccable lengths to source all of your facts. like James goes deep into newspaper archives from 200 years ago, but he will also sometimes throw in like at Jack Waz as a sort of.

At Jack Waz is the New York Times of our day. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He said that a VFX producer, friend of a friend was hired to get rid of the bumholes, right? But then the Daily Beast online magazine found a BFX person and they said it was true

and they were definitely someone who worked on the show. And they said what had happened was actually the way the visual effects worked is they had a very special way of the fur being made. And the fur would go in little holes like your hair does. You know you have walls in your hair. And so they had them on all the cats.

And it just so happened that if you got any of them from a certain angle, it looked like they had female genitalia or an anus. And they had to imply one person who basically it was their job to go through looking for the bumholes and then getting rid of them. Right. That's insane. That's such a high pressure job as well. You've got to catch every single one, you know?

It's true. Yeah. Like Pokemon. Yeah. I love it. They could catch all of the bumholes, but not Judy Denchie's wedding ring, which is on throughout the fucking thing. Oh, is it? As like an old cat.

So you got all of the rings but one and the other. So it's time for fact number two. And that is my fact. My fact this week is that at one of the oldest bath houses in Japan, visitors have the option. of soaking in hot water, cold water, electric water, or condom water. We need to call them and suggest that. No, the final one, there are many others, but the other one is radioactive water. Ooh.

Yeah. People also drink this water. So it turns out, I thought this was going to be unique to this one place in Japan, which is radium onsen, and onsen as a word. that means bath houses in Japan that use hot spring water and they take natural source water and they use that. There's something like 25,000 hot spring sources in Japan that are used. They're everywhere. Yeah. And 3,000 onsen establishments all over Japan.

So it's a real big thing there. And so like the electric water that you would sit in, that actually sends mild electric currents through the water as you're sitting in it. And people describe it as like being tickled by lightning as you're trying to relax. How relaxing. Yeah, well, they see these baths not as necessarily completely relaxing. It's all about rejuvenation. It's all about health and so on.

And so radioactive water, radium water is a thing. It's not bad for you, is it? The quantities are really, really small. The quantities are less than you would get if you were on a flight, for example. But that's... A flight? You know, we get hit by radioactive, you know, flares from space as you're on a flight. So, James, quick, jump in.

What? There is radiation that comes from space, and if the closer you are to it, the less. Space, space. It's a flight. I'm not Katie Perry, but it means... There's less of the atmosphere to block it out, but when you're further up, it's the basics. But if you're on a plane all the time, it'd be bad for you.

Like an air hostess or a pilot, for example. Yeah, yeah, and it's bad for you. They do get a bit more. What the hell are you talking about? They said that, like, it's safest way to travel. No? But if you live in Cornwall, there's radiation there too. Is there? But here's some good news.

She'll get in a lead box at the end of this. So there is radiation in Cornwall. Like Cornwall has more background radiation than anywhere else. But we all have a little bit. And a normal person would get two to three mili-severts of radiation in a year. But there's a place called Ramsa in Iran that has the highest radiation anywhere in the world. It's because they have hot springs and radiation underground than it comes up. And they get 260.

mili cverts per year, which is more than a hundred times what a normal person would get. But actually, the cancer incidence there is lower than any of their neighbors. And what people think is the people who live there, they have a higher proportion of what's called T cells. Remember in COVID, they said T cells, it's like helps your immune system. But it turns out that people there have got higher proportion of T cells, and it's a thing called Hormesis, which is the idea that very small, low doses of something that would otherwise be harmful can actually make you stronger. And it is really, I mean, I'm not saying everyone should go

out now and get as much radiation as possible, but it is genuine science. That's amazing. Yeah. That really is amazing. It's very cool. So as I was saying a second ago, these are, these are massive in Japan. And I was trying to find more information about this very specific one in Osaka. And the best place I could find out about it was a website called tattoo friendlyonson.com. And this is so interesting because in Japan, when you go to an onsen, largely it's separated. So men will go into one place. You have to be naked. You've got to be completely naked.

And the problem is in Japan, if you have tattoos, you're not allowed to go and show your tattoos in these places because of the Yakuza. So a lot of foreigners arrive. And the Yakuza are the gangsters. Yeah, the mafia, basically. Yeah, who are tattooed typically. Yeah, exactly. And so if you arrive and you've got like, you know, like, eternity, I love chariot, you know, whatever on your face. It's so revealing knowing what you would have gone for, Dan.

I don't want to talk about my actual tattoos. Okay, I will. So thug life across your tummy. They won't let you in because of the Yakuza thing. So this website basically lists all of the onsons that you can go to and that will allow you in. Do you think the pork broth onsen would be one of the, those tattoo-friendly ones. I think it might be.

Yeah, this is amazing. This is... There's a place... Well, it's the pork broth hot tub. It's the Unisang Spa. And they have a massive ramen bath, basically. And it's just slightly

porky hot water. It sounds amazing. There's the noodles in there. Well, they dangle above you a huge sculpture that looks like a pair of chopsticks holding noodles. So it looks like you're about to be...

It's like you're a soft-boiled egg. It's like you're a soft-boiled egg. And if you've seen my physique that I am like a soft-boiled egg, basically. But they've got a green tea bath. They've got a sake bath, which is like very slightly sake. It's obviously not all sake because that'd be hugely expensive. They've got a coffee bath which does not look appetising. It looks really gross. It's safe if you have the runs, isn't it? Oh yes. Yeah. Yeah. That sounds amazing. I'd love

to go there. It does so cool. That sounds awesome. I have been to an onsen. A few, in fact, in Japan. Really? There's a thing in Japan called Hadaka. no sukiai, which means naked camaraderie. And the idea is everyone gets naked. You're all together in a big sort of jacuzzi with no bubbles. And it means you're all emotionally together, open, honest. That's the idea behind it. And I must admit, I went in, ran in, had a bath, came out,

and went back to my room as quickly as I could. Oh, you didn't have any... Not very communal for you then. I don't speak Japanese. But there's that there are other ways of communicating. Yeah, but they could. Chiraz at the best of times is difficult. Just to hark us back to the last fact, you know that Andrew Lloyd Webber has a 30-person hot tub.

That's disgusting. Does he? So is a 30-person hot tub meaning everyone gets a slot on the outer wall? What's the alternative? Like school bus format where it's like six by four? Like what's the... Yeah. There's an aisle down the middle.

Tickets, please. Chicken of fish. nuts. No, we don't have any. I can just can see yours. No, yeah, I don't know what, yeah. I think it must be everyone gets a bit of wall. Otherwise, you're just bobbing about in the middle, feeling like a, like a lemon. Yeah. I hate that bit. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Bobbing. There is a spa in the southern island of Japan, Kushu, and it opened up, I think, in 2017. They'd announced it with big fanfare the year before.

They said, this is going to be a, actually, it wasn't a spa. It was a spa-themed amusement park, and they had released some images of basically a roller coaster that's full of bath roller coaster. Okay. You're in a little bath and that's your... Yeah. You know you get in the carriage and it's a bath. Wow.

And you're in a spa. That sounds fun. They were not sure at the time if it could be done. Yeah. If it was like beyond the can of humanity, but they did it. So you're in a compartment that is a jacuzzi, basically. I think they didn't quite crack the full roller coaster bath.

Yeah. Because that would have been very heavy, obviously. It would spill a lot, surely. It would spill a lot. It's like an opposite log flume. The water's in. If you're really unlucky, you'll be dry at the end of it. All the people waiting on the side.

I go, oh, I go. Yeah, that's very interesting. There's another one which, I wonder if that's there as well, where you have an option of arriving and they bury you up to your neck and sand. And it's quite hot sand so that you can get whatever, you know, holistic therapy. Have you ever done any sort of, odd pampering things like this? That you're willing to admit to?

I was quite intrigued by the beer baths that you can do. You know, in Europe and like the Czech Republic, they're quite popular now. You just like bathe in like hoppy water. A bit like your ramen. Right, right, right. I wonder if you'd be interested in this. This is a thing in Japan.

It's the Nightingale Feces Facial. Now, it's not what it sounds like. It's feces from the Japanese bushwabler, which is not a true nightingale. Oh. Thank God. In Japanese, it's brilliantly called Ugoisu No Fun.

Right. For anyone around you because you stink of shit. Apparently, Victoria Beckham is a proponent of it. Oh, really? Wow. Okay. That's extreme. I read about the crying therapy rooms,

which seems really nice. The whole idea is to make you as sad as you could possibly be. So you go in and you see, sit down and there's just sad movies playing on the screen and someone sits next to you just going, oh, it's really sad, isn't it? And then they hand you tissues as you're crying. Just me. Okay. That one sounds great. What else have I got?

No, that sounds nice. So we've got, have a good cry. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I'd buy that. Just going back to Onsen, so these baths, would you eat an Onsen Tamago, which is a traditional Japanese egg which is cooked in a onsen. You put your egg in a rope net. You put it in the onsen and the water is about 70 degrees and you leave it in for 30 to 40 minutes. And then it's done. Question.

Because there are two ways of cooking eggs in water. Shell on and shell off. So are we poaching this bad boy? No, this is, I believe it's shell on, I think. Oh, then fine. Shell on. Wow. There you go.

The audience has. Spoken. Chalong. People in it, it can be in a bath. It's not just a water bath. Like Ban Marie, it's an actual answer. And also, the eggs have a unique silky custard texture. I bet they do.

Yeah? I would absolutely eat that. I'm sorry, can I just ask the person, was it a lady in the audience? He said, chel on. Have you had one of these? They're really good. They're really good. There's really good.

There you, like, a poached egg. There's that, like, bit of white that never gets cooked. And it's almost like flamed on your plate. Oh, yeah. Looks like a dementor in the water as it's boiling. I've like never seen a poachette that hasn't got it. And why do we order this? It's foul. Oh, I love a I love a poach steak.

You do. Yeah. Okay. But it's just like if it's in its wrapper, I don't mind where it's been. Okay. I'd have a, I'd have a, I'd have a, if there was a banana in at the same time, pop that in the net. I don't mind. Yeah. Because it's been up a chicken's bun, hasn't it? Right.

Let's not get fussy, you know. I wish I hadn't brought it up, I'll be honest. No, it's good. But just one other weird spa thing. There was that bull seaman hair treatment, right? Did you read about this in Chelsea? No? In Chelsea?

Yeah. Okay. It was a hair mask, basically, in like 2008, 2009. A hair mask? Yeah. It was this place called Harry's Salon in Chelsea. And it offered a 45-minute Aberdeen organic hair treatment, which was Aberdeen Angus, like good quality.

Bull come. stuff, which women would like, and men I guess, would pay like a lot of money to have like lathered over their hair. Yep. And would just like sit with it for 45 minutes and apparently it was amazing. Really? And it made the hair silky and smooth.

But I have made head and shoulders two in one shampoo and condition and that makes my hair silky and smooth. Andy. Are there levels of silkiness and smoothness that I've not matched yet? You haven't lived. I can imagine one of these women from Chelsea going into the countryside afterwards and walking through a field and all the female cows are like,

Do you smell something? Well, it's funny you say that because the people that ran this salon told the Metro news paper. Sorry, these pervert fraudsters, yes. He's gone. These quacks said to the Metro that the semen is refrigerated before use and doesn't smell. I mean, it is come, but it's not, you know. It's not going to stay refrigerated. That's the problem.

The body heat is going to cause that to warm up. Yeah, but it's 45 minutes of it. You were gonna eat an egg from a buffet of people? Like, what do you mean? Like, don't get all... We do need to move on to our next fact. Oh, no. Oh.

We didn't even touch. I've got just reams of engineering stuff about how the Fukushima reactor dealt with its water after the terrible incident there. But I'll save it. I'll save it. It's fascinating. They built an underground wall of ice. Oh, he's going for it.

Fuck save. We're moving on. Okay, we do need to move on. So it is time for fact number three. And that is... Oh, it's Andy. So after the terrible incident at Fukushima, the engineers there pulled off a miracle, a miracle of preventing the radio actor. So they've got, imagine of 1.5 kilometer radius circle.

Oh, 30 meters underground filled with frozen brine. Get off your phone. Come on. Get off your phone. Al Karaz is about to start against Chokovic, two seconds. Okay. Anyway. Sorry. My fact is, the first name.

named man who sent a letter bomb only invented it to get back at people who had rejected all his other ideas for inventions. So this is... It's very funny. I love this guy. He's a very interesting historical figure. His name was Martin Eckenberg. And I was on the website of the Clapham Society, which is a great website all about Clapham, which is a part of South London where I used to live. And he was a Swedish scientist, Martin Eckenberg, born in 1870.

He was kind of... He was a gifted inventor in some ways. His ideas were decent, but the other problem that he had, personally, was that he was a liar, he was a cheat, he claimed qualifications he didn't have, he'd been kicked out of Sweden's Royal Institute

of Technology specifically for cheating. He was a badden. He was a badden. He was a badden. He was a badden. Free thinker. Outside the box kind of guy. But still, this didn't hold him back that much

because he moved to one of the nicest houses in Clapham. It was this really beautiful mansion he moved to. That's not the point of the fact. It's been replaced by flats now, so you can't go and visit it. But if you would, that's weird and you should be on a terror list.

And then in 1905, he thought, right, I'm going to get revenge on everyone who's turned down my ideas along the way, who turn me down for finance. I am going to get back at you. And he's so, he basically created, started making his own letter bombs. And there were packages sent through the post

to harm people before, but I think he's the first named sort of, you know, like, prosecuted. I think it was a bit unfair. So, like, the first person that he really sent it to was a guy called London, who ran this company. It was like an engineering company. And Eckenberg had invented something that could turn fish oil into engine oil. And he thought it was going to make his millions, but it failed. And so he thought, well, I'm going to get

this guy London. But the reason it failed is because the oil still smelled a fish. So like if people put it in their cars, the cars smelled a fish. Right. I suppose the people that Harry isn't get that scent removed, like the bull semen. and ships that was going to be used on ships, which have fish, obviously. That's true. Hence the phrase, fish and chips. But yeah, and then this guy, London, opens the packet, and it said, I read an article in the newspaper that said,

it rumbled and shook like thunder. The director felt as if he had been hit by lightning, or tickled by lightning. An intense flame burst out the box and burned his hands, arms, chest, and face terribly. And his clothes went on fire. And the next day he got a postcard saying, a former employee has decided that you're ripe for the picking. Yes. What's interesting is that it's not as if he sent it from the post in the UK,

which would be more traceable. He went by boat back to Sweden. He assembled it there, sent it there, and then went back home. So he really covered up his tracks. But then he still set a postcard with his writing identifiable on it to the person he'd just... Yeah. I mean, he was caught for various quite stupid things like that. Yeah.

Can I just rescind that I thought he was good? No, no. Here's another thing as well, Jamie, to see if you still think he's good. So when he was arrested, he claimed innocence. And then he, according to the New York Times, he lost his reason and was taken to an asylum. He died two months later after his arrest of what they said was apoplexy. But the head of the Swedish detective service said that if he'd been sent back to Sweden, he would have also been tried for murdering his two wives.

Oh. Oh. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, no. How you feel? Sorry about that.

Let's get a live reaction from Jamie Morden sitting right here. Sounds fine. Yeah. Not too shabby. So apparently what appears to have happened is he poisoned his first two wives, and then he bribed the prison guards to get him the same poison, which he then took himself. Yeah.

Yeah. Unique thinker. And interestingly, today, if you go to the police museum in Stockholm, there's a giant waxwork, like a replica, human-sized wax replica of him standing there, and not only, that they have a bunch of things that were to do with the case so one of the bombings which was sent to the swedish export society was opened up by a man called john hammer and john hammer's thumb was blown off as part of opening the sink and if you go to the police museum in stockholm you can see the wax

work of martin eckenberg and then you can see the actual thumb of john hammer thumbs up or thumbs down is the yeah he wasn't happy it's a definite thumbs down yeah yeah so it's very very grim guy um but he was he was an innovator of sorts. And as I say, people had been sending devices designed to hurt other people through the post for ages, you know. So the very first one was a thing called the bandbox plot. People were very worried about the weak party in the, I think, 18th century, and supposedly that party were involved in some attempts to assassinate people. Get this, the very first ever thing sent through the post designed to harm someone, this bandbox plot, was a box full of, I think there was three pistols that when you open it, they all go off at you. Wow. I know.

And it was, this is the story that it was thwarted by Jonathan Swift. What, the author? Of Gulliver's Travels. Yeah. Because he was a political figure as well, and he supposedly noticed a thread on the box and cut it before opening it. So he's the first red wire, blue wire, cut moment that we've ever had for a bomb. Yeah. Pretty cool.

And we talk about his books instead. Yeah. But Eckenberg was the first of a kind of new wave where gunpowder had been invented, a post had improved, things like, that and so there were and there were anarchists people were very very worried about anarchists with their kind of cartoon style bombs that they'd be throwing so yeah yeah and he also invented a way to freeze dry milk which is kind of similar to what we have today so like um you know instant custard we wouldn't have it without him really Eckenberg yeah wow Jamie you want to change your because you've gone off him but I

know you don't I know you don't mind custard you know I'm 50-50 yeah I'll tell you why I think he's not a complete villain um yeah so interesting it's so interesting which which hills people choose to die on i find that really I just kind of love the fact that like through revenge he invented something that was actually

I mean not a good thing but was um like was like a thing this silver lining is slimming down all the time I gotta say so it was for revenge but he did event something really bad well they made this is how my mind work Because I mean, I got quite heavily into revenge during my researching of this. So I was like, what else has revenge kind of created?

And the rotary telephone is one thing that is created. Yeah. Because there was a guy called Alman Stroudger. And he was an undertaker in the late 19th century in Kansas City. They were all manual switchboards at that point, obviously. And he thought that the switchboard operators were deliberately fiddling with his connection. because... Wait, so you would call up and say,

patch me through to this person, right? And he was convinced that this was being meddled with because the other undertakers across the town, I think their wife worked at the phone company. So like if someone dies, you put them through to... Right. To the rival.

And yeah, exactly. So they were getting all the work. He was like, you know, what's going on here? And so he invented the rotary telephone to cut out the... The one where you dial it yourself. That is amazing. Isn't that amazing?

Revenge, not all bad. It's like those spite houses. You know, spite houses. And it's just so cool that something that you build to like screw someone over ends up being worth more than the house that you're. Yeah, exactly. I just love stuff like that. Just jumping back to Letterbonds for a second,

I've discovered that the former prime minister, well, a very long former Prime Minister, Anthony Eden, so Prime Minister of England, he was almost killed by a letter bomb. Yeah, and this was prior to him being prime minister. It was when he was foreign secretary, and someone had hand delivered a letter bomb. He took it, but he thought,

this looks a bit boring. So he put it in his briefcase, and he had it for 24 hours. He went home, he didn't open it. He just had a whole day of not opening it. And then Scotland looked boring. Yeah, he thought it looked like a circular. Like it looked like something that might have been dropped off.

And it was a generic thing. Oh, right. Yeah, and so then Scotland Yard got in contact and said, we're worried that something might have been sent to you that is a bomb. And he still didn't look at it. And it was his secretary who eventually went, that might be a bomb. And then, and it was.

And so it was just purely his absolute boredom towards this letter that... Because that's the interesting letter he ever received, actually. Yeah. Well, that's the thing is, like, they're designed to go off when you open them, aren't they? So you can carry them around. Yeah. And it's fine. So, like, for instance, you're told that if you were,

work in like a government office and they might happen. A lot of people when they get a letter that they're not sure about, they put it in water because they think that's what you're supposed to do with a bomb, but you're absolutely not supposed to put it in water because some of the explosives will explode if you put them in a big... Is that so? Yeah. Also renders the letter completely illegible. Exactly. That's what a stupid idea? There are some tips. There are some useful tips, actually. So warning signs include excess postage. Like, why someone's spending so much? much money on their parcel.

Because you don't want to risk it getting returned to you. Right. No return address. So the really clever bombers will leave the return address off. I think I would put the return address as my number two nemesis. Yeah. Such a good idea. Number two.

How many are you got? It's a long old list. Bad spelling. Oh. Because a lot of people sending these things are not the, maybe, I'm going to slag off letter bombs but they're not the brightest buttons. Really?

Yeah, bad spelling. Because they've just constructed a bomb. It feels like you've got a basic intelligence. What are you doing? They might have studied the sciences and not the humanities. Yes, that's the point. There are so many kinds of intelligence. Addressed personal, confidential, or do not x-ray.

spelled wrong and the final one just for any of that have slipped through those many holes in the Swiss trees ticking sounds protruding wires

okay or aluminium foil or if it says acme bum on the front if it's dropped off by a coyote who looks pleased with himself

that's another another one I did I did read there was a what's the name of the journalist Slavel Rizzek Slavajek yeah so he wrote

this piece and the opening anecdote of the piece said the top winner in the contest for the greatest blunder of 1998 was a Latin American patriotic terrorist who sent a letter bomb to a U.S. consulate in order to protest against America interfering local politics. As a conscientious citizen, he wrote his return address on the envelope. However, he did not put enough stamps on it. So that post was returned to him, forgetting he'd put it in, he opened it and blew himself up. He literally did what James said. Now, who knows if that's apocryphal, but it's Jesus.

Are the fingerprints of Jack Waz anywhere near this? I'll tell you what, that's the first time Jack was and Slovoz-Zizze could be mentioned in the same sentence together. It is time for our final fact of the show, and that is James. Okay, my fact this week is that there is currently a scandal in Thailand after at least a dozen supposedly celibate monks admitted to having sex with a woman called Mrs. Golf. James, you're a keen golfer. that's how I found this. I was Googling. No, no.

No, this, I just read this in the news and I thought it's very amusing. It is a lot of senior monks. I mean, not amusing if you're a monk, because obviously a lot of them have lost their livelihoods, including some as high ranking as Frat-Dep, which means angelic level. So this goes to the very, very top. And it turns out they've been having relationships with this woman

who's called Mrs. Golf and they've been transferring money to her and they've found this lady and they found over 80,000 photos of naked monks on her phone. How do they know their monks? Sorry to quibble. I reckon there's a way.

You reckon there's a way? Yeah, it's probably a way, is there? I reckon there's a way. Probably it's the hairstyle down there. It's like a tonsure. 80,000's a lot. Not necessarily all different mugs. they could have been 80.

Still, I don't even know if I have that amount of storage on my phone for 80,000. Yes, what was her data plan like? This is really interesting. Is she in the cloud? She's using the cloud. So yeah, and the reason she's called Mrs. Golf is because this is quite common in Thailand

for people to have little short nicknames and you're kind of given them as a child by your parents and they don't really mean anything. Like it might be that this person's parents love golf but more likely they just take like a Western word that kind of sounds fun or trendy or whatever and they just called that. The most famous Thai person in the world

probably is Lisa from Black Pink and her nickname is Pock. So they're just mostly just sounds or they might be little words from other languages but it's just like a little nickname but people go by it in real life like as adults you might still be known as that nickname. Yeah right. So this is

an unbelievably fascinating story. This one woman went around so many of these different monasteries and managed to talk in what were effectively, I'm assuming, celibate monks into engaging not only in sex, but also having photos taken. And the top monks, some of them have fled the country. We don't know quite where they are,

and they haven't said why they've done that. They're now investigating 300,000 other Buddhist monks in Thailand off the back of this to see whether or not they're involved. And she got a lot of money off the back of this. Was her a extortion, sort of, I'll release the photos. So the photos would be shown back to them, and then they would have to pay money. And a lot of the monks have been acquitted

where the police have decided that actually you just gave her money because she was pleading for the money and didn't engage in sexual activity. But do you know how much money? Allegedly, she is netted the equivalent of $11.9 million from this. There's a lot of money in munking, isn't there?

Isn't there? Yeah, that's a bigger career than I thought. Yeah? Like, no, my career's advisor did not say, have you considered becoming a monk? And I think it's like quite a big deal in Thailand because if you're a Buddhist, you think that if someone becomes a monk, then they kind of automatically sort of develop this strong resistance to temptation and that kind of thing. And so to find out that they haven't was quite a big deal for a lot of people. Yeah.

I think this is very interesting because I started reading about, by the way, James, there's a very hard fact to Google, like naughty monks. And naughty nuns is actually even worse. It's an even harder, legit Google. But basically, there was a lot of this in the 16th century in England because monks and nuns and monasteries and nunneries were seen as hotbeds of sin. And the idea was they're all on the take. They're all selling, pardoning for sins, that kind of thing.

And they're all shacking up. And there were some institutions. Hence a reformation like that. Right. But I think we've all been conned into thinking that monks and nuns are inherently sort of normal. multi-figures because they're absolutely not. And I think we've fallen for Henry the Eighth era

propaganda. And I'm blowing the lid off this. Not enough people talk about it, but I'm not afraid to. I'd just like to reference the paper by Christian Knudson. Sodomitic monks and other dissolution myths. The late medieval monastic decline narrative revisited. And it is a belting read. It's really good. And it's... Can you tell us

more about the Fukushima disaster? But like, Henry the 8th wanted to dissolve the monasteries. Because they owned a huge proportion of English land, right? That was so wealthy. And Henry the 8th thought, I'm going to discredit ecclesiastical institutions any way I can. And every monastery in England in 1535 and 6 got a visit from bureaucrats who were trying to record every dubious incidents of behavior by a monk or a none they could.

And there were some cases, absolutely, there were some cases where monks have been playing the field or whatever it is. but they also had to come up with new crimes, so they found dozens of instances recorded of voluntary pollution, which is just sort of playing with yourself. But it's not, in one priory Westacre, 76% of the monks were labeled incontinent, by which they mean romantically incontinent. But 10 of those 13 were for just enjoying some sort of cow billiards.

And so it's not, sorry, not cow, the cow goes on your head, doesn't it? You know what I mean? Hardly ever. I just think it's really interesting and I think we shouldn't fall for it. Okay, well, we won't. But also, like, I'm a Catholic. I mean, you know, lapsed Catholic, but like, you can do anything if you say sorry. That's like the point.

Yes. But actually, the penance was quite severe, or it could be. So Richard Gray, one man called Richard Gray in medieval England, he was found guilty of having sex with a nun, and he was sentenced to being flogged while walking around Stanford Church on four Sundays in a row, carrying a candle while dressed only in linen garments. And then he had to make a barefoot pilgrimage

to Lincoln Cathedral. From where? Wherever he lived. Well, that's a movable feast of a punishment, isn't it? What if he thought, right, I'm going to get a flat just outside Lincoln. Yeah, that was quite a miss for me to not say where he actually lived in my notes. But then he, and then after that, he didn't do. what he was supposed to do and they excommunicated him.

But in those days, being excommunicated was a big old deal. Right. Because it means you can't go to heaven, but it also means you can't be baptized. It means you can't get married. You can't do all sorts of different things. Yeah. Yeah. And actually, quite often the women were punished more than the men.

So two that happened quite close to each other, a guy called Nicholas Plymouth, was a monk who was committed adultery with a Tanner's wife, and he was ordered to remain silent for one week. And at the around the same time, someone called Alice Lung Spray was sentenced to a year of strict confinement after an affair with a priest. That is double standards. So it is double standards, yeah.

James, you've spent time in Bhutan. I have. Did you ever hear of the thunderbolt of flaming wisdom while you're out there? That's what they still called me that. I wonder when the thunderbolt of flaming wisdom is going to return.

Sir, It's referring to a monk's penis, but, so I'd question who your real friends were out there, but... It was strange that they yelled at me in the streets. Is that right? There was this guy, Druckper Cunley, and he was in the 1400s. Yeah, I've been to his church. You've been to his church, God. So he was, he was interesting because he was known as the saint of 5,000 women.

He was a fertility saint. The idea was he thought sex should be incorporated. into reaching enlightenment. And so, yeah, so classic. Oh, yeah. Yeah, you would meet the thunderbolt of flaming wisdom as part of your hello to him, basically. But he was liked, but mad as fuck.

Like, people genuinely thought he was. It's known as like the Holy Madman or something like that, right. And he introduced this idea, which still goes on in various bits of Bhutan today, which is that if you're setting up a new house and you need it to be blessed, you would basically graffiti fallists, you put dig pics all over, like,

like draw a penis all over the walls. Did you see any while you were there? They're on every house, has them in this particular town where he was from. And also if you go into his church, a priest comes up to you with a giant phallus and sort of touches you as if you're being knighted by the queen. Right.

Did you have that? Yeah. Wow. Cool. Arise. If it's on every house, Can you put it on a semi? Sorry.

Go on. Do you want to know something cool about the first century St. Thetla? Yes, please. This was sent in by a listener, actually. Listen to Kat Brinker, so thanks Kat for this. This is the first century Saint Thetla. She is the unofficial patron saint of computers and the internet.

Can you work out why? It's going to be sex-connected, presumably. Nope. But you said it was to do with the internet. No, I know, I know, I know. What could a first century monk have to do with computers and the internet? She like cats. That's a really good one.

That's very close. She was very racist all the time. No. It's because her name, Thetla, sounds like the Spanish word for a key on a keyboard. Thetla. Okay. Thetla.

You've not just wasted their time. Unbelievable. Would you like to know some anagrams of the word tecla? I've got loads. That is it. That is all of our facts. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you for everyone who has joined us around the world on the live stream.

We are all found on our online accounts. You can get us on Instagram. I'm there. I'm on at Shreiberland. James. I'm on TikTok. No such thing as James Harkin. Andy?

Instagram at Mrs. Golf. 80,000 photos on his grid. It's insane. It's too much, mate. It's too much. And Jamie? Uncle Igor. It's weird.

worry. Okay. And if you want to send us any of your facts, you can do that as well by going to podcast at QI.com. So send us facts. Send us anything that you heard in this episode that you want to talk about. We take it all and we bring it to our special secret room, which is part of clubfish. We got any clubfish members here?

Six. Okay. Everybody. But we will read them out there as part of our mailbag special. So do do that. Go online. find out if we're coming to a town new you with more live shows but otherwise come back here next week for more of our actual show it's all free come and do that thank you so much everyone for being here

tonight london podcast festival that was awesome we will see you again goodbye