No Such Thing As A Fish - No Such Thing As An Accidental George

Episode Date: January 11, 2019

Anna, James, Andy and Anne discuss undercover restaurant reviewers, weightlifting cockroaches, and what to pack for a trip on the Orient Express.

Oh, and welcome to No such thing as a fish, a weekly podcast coming to you from the QI offices in Coverd Garden. My name is Anna Tysinski, not Dan Schreiber, and I am sitting here with James Harkin, Andrew Hunter Murray and Anne Miller. Once again, we've gathered around the microphones with our four favourite facts from the last seven days, and in no particular order, here we go. Starting with My Facts, which is cockroaches can carry 900 times. their own body weight on their backs. Amazing. It's impressive, isn't it?

So what is 900 ties bigger than a cockroach? 900 cockroaches. Oh, that's good. Cochroach firefighters must be very good indeed. I'll take everyone. Oh, I've just got everything from your house. Don't worry about it. I bought the whole house.

Oh, no, it's still on fire. I worked out that that would mean that I would be able to carry the biggest dinosaur that ever walked the earth, which is Argentinosaurus. So if I was a cockroach That would look really impressive If you were a cockroach

As in as a human you would be able to If I was a human-sized cockroach And the laws of physics didn't really apply to me But just this one particular fact applied to me Then I'd be able to carry that down Oh, and if dinosaurs still existed There are a lot of big ifs in there But it's still impressive

So yeah, this is, I read this in an article Which was published by the Science, the journal Science The article was actually written by someone called Elizabeth Panisi This is a report on cockroaches and how they're basically impossible to squash. And it looked into why. So they're extremely flexible and extremely hard

and really good at lifting stuff. And so they work that out, obviously, by how you'd think they did, by putting heavier and heavier stuff on cockroach's backs and seeing at what point they crushed. But we haven't said there are 4,500 species of cockroach. No, we haven't. So is this only one species of cockroach that can do the super strong stuff?

This was an American cockroach. Oh, yeah. Famously strong. Jim, yeah. Yeah, exactly. A jock. A jockroach. I already think about how we had this image of cockroaches

as sort of, you know, being very hardy and surviving everything, but it really varies. There are 64 rays can kill 93% of German cockroaches, which is 10 times more than humans can take, but like way, way, way less than a fruit fly can take. So a fruit fly can survive more radiation. Oh, radiation. Yeah.

Yeah. Because if it plays some cockroaches are really hardy and some aren't. We sort of think of cockroaches as this one. uniform thing and actually they're very different individuals. I think that's good that's good speaking up for cockroaches. They're not just horrible things. They're each very special in their own

way. Do you know what happens to elderly cockroaches? I read about this experiment and it's amazing. It's great. Well they get doddery. So scientists looked at elderly cockroaches and they found that their joint sees up and they have trouble walking up hills and they spend less time moving around. They move more slowly when they do

move around. They develop slightly racist views. About the other kinds of cockroaches. So basically they did this experiment. They tried to make them walk up slopes and things. They only found one method which could rejuvenate an elderly cockroach and make it, you know, this was testing whether a particular species could run off after being nudge. Right.

And the best way to ensure that elderly cockroaches can run off after being nudged is to decapitate them. Oh. But it's a bit of an extreme. Yeah, I'd rather be d'oddery. Yeah. So in this experiment that I got this fact from, they were mainly actually looking at how cockroaches can squeeze through such tiny spaces.

So the American cockroach, for instance, which is about nine millimeters tall, can squeeze through a slit that's three millimeters high. And so they looked at exactly how they do that. And it's really cool. They'll come across a little hole, and first of all, they inspect it with their antenna. So, you know, to feel around, feel how small it is. Then they jam their head through.

and then they squeeze their front legs through after it. So they're really pushing their body down, squeezing their front legs through, and then they sort of drag the rest of the body behind them. And their back legs are really splayed out. So when you look at it, they're completely flat. Their back legs are spayed out, but sort of still pushing them. And it takes them one second to do that.

Wow. And they're much better than any animal squeezing, except an octopus, I think, which can squeeze itself quite small as well. But see, that's terrifying. Because what they're also really good at is biting, so they can bite with five times more relative strength than humans can, which is terrifying.

and cockroaches will eat everything, including other cockroaches and humans. And the thing about some sailors... Cockroaches don't eat humans. They do. No, they don't. Not all of you, because they're only small, but if they were big enough. So sailors on ships, apparently, some sailors wear gloves, because cockroaches will sneak up in the night and eat their fingernails.

Really? That's quite good. Yeah. Don't need to take nails. No, day one, it's your fingernails. Day three, it's your eyes. So here's something I have in common with cockroaches. They don't like mornings.

in as much as they're literally unable to form any new memories at the start of the day. So if you teach them something at the start of the day, they'll just forget it. And if you teach them in the afternoon, then they'll remember it. Is there a reason do they think behind that? They just go out really late. Yeah, we just like to stay up late. You and your cockroach friends. I'm glad you can speak on behalf of the cockroaches now, James.

But they don't like the light, do they? So I wonder if it's something to do with that. Because their name Blatodea in Latin means insect that shuns the light. And also the creepy ones might eat your fingernails, but I'm sure when I started at QI was a brilliant fact that it was a real idea of cockroaches, but they don't like the idea of us. So some of them, if they touch a human, will run away and clean themselves. That's weird because they love touching, don't they?

I think we've said this before, but that's why they like being in really tiny spaces and they're like crawling into your ears. and that's because they really like touching their edges of things and this comes in handy for a guy called Stephen Cucher who is Hollywood's bug artist so he's got this super cool job if anyone is using insects he's got a super cool job but his brother Aston's doing a lot better in Hollywood

well it depends what you mean by better but can you imagine those Christmas dinners of the Cucher household what have you been doing well Stephen gets to say I'm at the very top of my field which I don't think can be We don't need to get into the Ashton Coucher debate here But anyway, so Stephen sort of recruits bugs

For films like Spider-Man Recruits. Are you around? Are you free? Leaks his fingernails out and hopes they come to him. Yeah, it's like that. And then he trains them up And so he did this interview for NPR

Where he was talking about A film called Race the Sun And what he had to do was he had to get a cockroach to emerge from a shoe, walk onto a bag of Cheetos, turn left, and then walk through some Cheetos that had spilled out of it and then stop on a magazine.

So we had to get a cockroach to do all of this without any prompting. And he did it by folding the bag of Cheetos in a certain way. And because they really like touching things, he just folded it in a way that they'd follow the folds around and it steered it exactly. That's so clever. I would just glue a magnet to the underside of the cockroach and then move that around under the filming surface. I would do it in post.

Hollywood secrets from the No Six Things a Fish Team. Yeah. That's really cool. Yeah, you don't get that in Heat magazine, do you? In Russia, in 2008, they wanted to find some cockroaches in Moscow to send into space. They needed 54. They should have recruited my friend Stephen Cutchin. Well, it took them three months to find 54 cockroaches in Russia.

And then everyone was like, oh my God, what's happened to all our cockroaches in Russia? And there was a big worry about it. People blamed, like, cell tower radiation. or GM food or probably foreigners or, you know, like people blame, whatever they blame. And we don't really know what happened. But then around 2011, they started coming back. And then in the early 2010s, there was a huge plague of cockroaches in Moscow. So they kind of just disappeared and then they all came back.

And what it might have been is maybe they started using some pesticide, the government did. And then it killed them all. But then they got used to it. And then when they got used to it, they really. came back with a vengeance. God, wow. It's a big holiday. Big cockroach holiday.

That's because whenever I go on holiday, there's always cockroaches in the room. James, you have to start improving your accommodation on holiday. Whenever. Oh, I do find one thing I liked, which is that as female cockroaches get older, they gradually lower their standards of what they think is acceptable in a mate.

Yeah, I think we can all feel for that. But the male cockroaches. We can all hope for that. Males are completely unable to assess females' age or assess their reproductive fitness. They're just willing to mate at all times. But females start out with quite high standards. And then as time goes by, they broaden their standards. Lower and lower.

Really? Yeah, fair enough. They're all cockroaches you're dating there. They don't move on to more attractive animals like lions. That would be amazing, wouldn't it? If all animals were dating all other animals. Well, they are very sexual, aren't they? The only thing they like more than food, I think, is sex cockroaches.

And they will actually, I think it's the males are very sexual. The females actually aren't as intersex. And so if a male is starving to death and it's got a bit of food in front of him, but then you spray some female pheromone 16 feet away, it will run to the female pheromone and die of starvation. Really? Really? Sex more than food.

Yeah. Wow. Do you guys know that cockroach milk is, the most nutritious substance on earth or one of the most nutritious substances. Maybe he's running to the woman cockroach to get some milk rather than for sex. You're right, he must have read the same article that I. Yeah, so I didn't know this. They've milked the Pacific Beetle cockroach and they found that it has four times more calories than cows' milk.

And yeah, it's full of protein and fats and sugars. And this cockroach is the only cockroach that gives birth to live young. And then it sort of pumps out this special milk for its babies. And it's really cool. It looks really glittery because it's got protein crystals in it. Wow. Great. Well, I'll look for a tiny, tiny bottle of milk in the supermarket next time I'm in.

It's not milk per se, is it? It's something slightly different to milk, I think. Yeah, I don't know why. Secretions. Yeah. Lovely. What I mean is when you're in the supermarket, you won't be able to call it cockroach milk. Like, these days, they're stopping people from calling things almond milk, aren't they?

If it doesn't contain lactose or something. You're saying the dairy industry might get annoyed if I start selling my cockroach milk. Well, I think you might have to call it cockroach secretion like Anne suggests. And I don't want to buy that. But I'm only one person, so. No, I do think we need to work on the branding. Okay, let's move on to our next fact. And that is Anne's Facts.

My fact is that the first British travellers aboard the Orient Express were advised to bring a revolver and a teapot with them. Wow. All the essentials. So when the Orient Express began, it wasn't quite the look. luxurious train ride we imagine. So actually it went from Paris to Constantinople, but twice the passengers had to get off and get on boats instead. So I think the idea was they wanted to bring protection in case there was a ruckus at the ports. And the teapots. Making tea.

Making tea. Of course. Pass the time. Your 14-hour boat ride. If you've recovered from a ruckus, what do you need? You need a nice cup of tea. That's true. So the Orange Express was founded by the company wagon lee, Wagons Lits in English, and that was founded by George Knackle-Mackers, who that's how you pronounce that in every language. And he is quite interesting

because he decided to do these sleeper carriages when he went to the United States of America and he went to the USA because he was encouraged to go there because while in Europe he fell in love with his cousin and his family decided that he should go to the US. say to kind of get over her.

So strange, because falling in love with your cousin was an occupational hazard in the 19th century. It must have been an unsuitable cousin. I think it was a cousin did not like him back. But Nakamaker, so he set out that first trip to Constantinople, and actually there wasn't a full rail link to cut for six years after his first Oregon Express ran. But also the Orange Express, we have this idea of it being this beautiful, long train. And that's sort of, I think the idea, because I read this fact in night trains by Andrew Martin. and he says because it went on a long journey

we sort of assumed it was long but actually that first train there were only five carriages and one of them was a wagon carrying posts which helped them recoup some of their costs which is just not quite what you imagine you think of it as being you know 15 carriages long and it's got all this stuff in it's only five characters

that's tiny yeah so many fewer suspects but also Agatha Christie used to take the own express a lot because her husband second husband wasn't archaeologist they'd take it to go to digs but she was apparently one time between Venice and Paris was attacked by bedbugs.

I shouldn't write that into the book. Oh, yeah, that's not what you want from your luxury train. No, is it? You imagine, like, you know, like really grand and lovely. Yeah. Wasn't knucklemackers? Was it Pullman Carriages that he was inspired by? Yes, he went to America and he fell in love with them, which actually...

I reminded him of his cousin. But Pullman carriages were a huge deal, so they were these, yeah, this luxury way of traveling that was pioneered in America, and they also gave rise to Pullman Porter's. And I didn't. So Pullman Porter's were the people who carried your luggage on a Pullman carriage, and George Pullman came up with the idea straight after the civil war of only employing ex-slaves as these Pullman Porter. So every single Pullman porter was black. And they ended up being really important in the civil rights movement because they formed the first union of black people, the first union that

involved black people. And that allowed them to get together and to fight for their rights and things like that. But they all, when they were working on the Pullman carriages, had to be called George. So every Pullman Porter was called George after George Pullman, which some of them objected to because most of them weren't actually called George. You'd think the majority. It did turn out to be. Most of them

had other names. And there was a society. There was a society called the Society for the Prevention of Calling Sleeper Car Porters George. And this was actually a genuinely really important society, but it wasn't the porters. I mean, cruelty to animals and cruelty to children are surely higher up the list of

prevention ofs. No, it's No? This is prevention of calling people George. This society was actually formed by other people who were called George in America. So it had 31,000 members and they were saying, George is our name. Stop just randomly giving this name to train porters. I mean, I don't think they should have been calling these potters George, but you can't stop other people from having your name.

Well, these George's, you know, they didn't want it. You can't think that your name's a bit too common. You don't want to make it more and more common. Yeah. There is a phrase in fiction or things like, saying leave it to George, which I thought was a sort of 40s phrase, or calling everyone George was a thing that happened. I think it comes from that. Yeah. But then you couldn't because eventually this society for the prevention of calling people George actually persuaded

the Pullman Company to ban it. So by 1926 there had to be a little rack installed in each carriage that said the name of your porter to ensure that you didn't call him George because the George was objected so much. If they were accidentally called George. Not accidentally. That was their actual age. It was forced to not be called George. You're all called Herbert now. And the interesting thing about Pullman, he was seen as this great entrepreneur, etc. But there was a depression in 1893. And it meant that he cut the wages of all of his staff, but they were all staying in a town that he built and he didn't reduce the rent. So it meant that workman might make $9.7 in a fortnight, but he would take $9 of it as rent, leaving them a paycheck of just $7 for everything else.

It's not worth cashing, is it? It really isn't. It's really bad. So they strike because of this. And then the soldiers came in and I think quite a few people died. And then Pullman's reputation just went from hero to absolutely nothing, which is not the same. You're right. Zero. It's the phrase. Yeah. But yeah, he became really, really hated to such an extent that when he was buried, his family covered his coffin in a large block of cement because they were worried people would abuse his corpse because he was hated so much. Must have been very difficult for the poor pallbearers. Yes. You're right. Did you know that in 1936 you could travel from England to France by train, completely by train. Still can. You still can.

But it's surprising then that you could do it. How did that happen? There was no tunnel. No, there was no tunnel, but there were ferries. So there was a thing called the night ferry which took trains on board it. So it was only if you were travelling first class. There are special trains. they went, I think, from Paddington, actually.

And if you were in first class, your train just ran straight onto the ferry. You stayed aboard it, and then it ran straight off the ferry at the other end. But if you're in economy class, you have to get off the carriage. So were there tracks leading up onto the ferry. And then at the other end, there were tracks leading off. So that meant they'd have to have the same gauge. Yeah, because they have different gauges in Europe, don't they? Or is it the...

It's like a universal plug. You know, when you go on holiday and you can... An adapt to it. The carriage might go on to another gauged... A port to that. The carriage sometimes lifts up. You've got a flatbed truck with a different gauge, and then the whole carriage is lifted up.

It's lifted up. Yeah, yeah. It'd be a weird journey, wouldn't it? Your carriage being lifted up and swung over. Waking up at the wrong point, I mean, like, where are we? That's so cool. So I've got a fact about modern trains, which is about the Queen, who, as we know, has the Royal Train. So when she's traveling on the Royal Train,

and when she's been traveling overnight, there's a special instruction that gets given out, and that is that the Queen has a bath at 7.30 in the morning. So if the train is going then, the driver is ordered to avoid any bumpy bits of track so that her bath doesn't slosh around too much. That's weird knowing when the Queen has a bath. I think you'd be freaked out as the train driver. Every morning at 7.30 you'd think, oh, she's bathing now.

Don't make any mistake. She's naked 10 yards from me. It's a weird thought. It's a big train. I don't think it's only 10 metres. She's like in the cab, in the tub. He puts the bath next to the driving seat. More coal.

Just one thing I had on suitcases. So this is about luggage and suitcases. And I was wondering what the history of luggage is. And I read that. The first wheelie suitcases were in 1153. Come on. They were used by the Knights 10 plus. They were invented in my lifetime.

Well, you're a very old man. That is certainly true. I can't believe the Knights went to the Crusades. with trunkeys, basically. A little trunkey. You don't see that, do you? You don't see them running into battle with it. With their little trolley behind them.

You would leave it behind, wouldn't you? Back at the hotel. But no, I read this. It was in a lonely planet guide and another book, actually, and I can't find any source for it. But apparently, yeah, and they would use these wheelie suitcases to carry their chain mail and their arms and their tools and stuff. And I guess a wheelie suitcase is really just a bag on wheels,

just a cart on wheels, isn't it? It would have to be wooden though, wouldn't it? wooden carriage with spokes. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know when something starts being a suitcase and starts being a carriage. Size. It's just trying to you think. Mostly size. The raceable carriage for the Knights Templar. Anyway, if anyone has an actual source for the Crusades being, people galloping into the Crusades pulling their wheelie suitcases. It just doesn't sound very true. It sure doesn't. Okay, on to our next fact. And that is James's facts. Okay, my fact this week is that the largest known prime number has 24,862,048 digits. When written in binary, it has 82,589,9333 digits,

but they are all the number one. That is unbelievable and presumably not a coincidence. It's not a coincidence. Okay, so I will quickly go through this. Take your time. Please. I'll settle then. So prime number is something that has only two two multiples, one in itself. So 12 is not prime because you can have three fours or two sixes, but 11 is because you can't divide it by anything else apart from itself. That's lulled everyone into a false sense of security thinking, yeah, I know that. Okay. And now. Binary is a number that's made of zeros and ones. Rather than writing in ones, tens and hundreds, you write in ones, two's, fours, eight, 16s, 32s, stuff like that. And so each zero or one represents a two or four

and eight, 16, etc. So the binary number one, one, one, one, is one, plus two plus four plus eight, which is 15. Anyway, so the large prime numbers that we're all finding at the moment are called Merceden primes, and they're all in the form of two times, two times, two times, two times, two times two times two times two times two times two times two times two times two times two times two, times two, et cetera, et cetera, minus one. And they keep looking for all these different two times two times two times two things and check if they're prime. And some of them are. And it also happens if you write any number that's two times, two times, two times, two times two times two times two minus one. It can be written as a string of ones in binary.

It's one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one. Yeah, okay. That's almost there. That was well-examined. Yeah. Impressive. You should be a math teacher. So I saw this in Scientific American.

fact which was really good but here's a slightly more accessible maths fact from that article and that is that the word 29 if you write it in capital letters can be written with 29 straight line segments that's quite nice isn't it sorry if you write the T is a is a line and a downwards line W is four four five six and then if you add them all up let's not do it all but they count to 29 that's really cool that's how you convince the kids that you're a cool teacher stuff like that And then you make your calculator spell boobless. Then you launch into the prime number stuff.

Yeah, Mersenne Primes. So Mersen Primes, like you say, are 2 to the power something and then minus 1. But we now keep finding these as the largest prime numbers. Yes. So I think it's just because that's where people are looking. Got it. And they're kind of easier to find because we know the kind of format that they take. So we can keep looking for all the different 2 to the power of N minus 1.

We can look at the next one, the next one, the next one. eventually we'll find the prime number. Got it. The gap gets bigger, doesn't it? Because once you're up to Mersen's 74 million, the prime number theorem says only one in every 50 million numbers is prime. So you're searching in quite a big gap. So they start at

two, two is prime and three is prime. So at that stage, everything's prime. Yeah. But then you get to four and it all goes wrong. Yeah. But then you get to five and they're prime again. And then as you go up, there's fewer and fewer as you keep going. So Marin Mersen of Mersenne Prime fame was a monk. He was in the minims, he was what was called a minim monk.

And he was also known as the postbox of Europe because he was... He ate letters. He was large and read. He was a really crucial scientific figure in the 1600s. And he was called the postbox of Europe because he was unbelievably well connected. So he was like one of these society ladies who brings people together. So he was like really great mates with Galileo, with Descartes, with Pascal, with Hobbes. and he used to communicate between them all

and pass their letters to each other and that was how... He was going around. Spreading gossip. He was the postman of Europe, not the most box of Europe. So yeah, and in that way he sort of spread ideas and then they were able to make discoveries based on each other's ideas.

That's very cool. Very good. You can earn money from discovering new prime numbers, which is nice. So this thing called GIMPS, what is it, the great internet Merzen Prime search. It means that it's a little bit of software you can install on your computer

and your computer will just in the background hunt for prime numbers but the prices are really variable so currently if you find a prime number that is fewer than a hundred million digits long you only get $3,000 that's still not bad for doing literally nothing it's better than a poke in the eye

but the first person to find a prime number which had 1 million digits so that's a hundred times smaller got $50,000 oh that's a big jump isn't it? I know and when the record passed 10 million digits in 2008 the price was $100,000.

Yeah, not worth it. I think you should get a prize if your number is particularly pleasing because I found an article called The Best Prime Numbers of 2016, which I was very excited to read. And among the nominees is 314,159. Why is that special? It's 3.14. Yeah.

It's basically 100,000 times five. Isn't that beautiful? I think I'm going to propose that as best prime number of all years, not just 20. That is a very good one. I've got a rival. Mine's maybe an evil prime number. Maybe that's a good one. What's it done?

Is it 66666? It's basically that, yeah, but with some stuff around it, yeah. So this is called Belfagor's Prime, and it's a palindrobe, and it's also a very pleasing number. So it's one, followed by 13 zeros, 13, very unlucky number, followed by 666, followed by another 13 zeros, followed by one. Could you get unluckier? And that's a prime number?

That's a prime number. That's really strong. cool one, isn't it? That's very good. My favourite prime number is... That's the sense you didn't think you'd say this week. Is this going to be a spin-off podcast? My favourite prime? My favourite is the number 524,287

because that was proved to be prime by a guy called Cataldi in 1588, and then that was the largest known prime number for 200 years. Really? Yeah, until Euler came along. That's spoiled sport Euler.

Andy, what's your favorite prime number? 17. Any reason? I like it. I genuinely find it pleasing. And I've liked it for years as well, by the way, guys. I didn't just make one up for this podcast that I liked. Can I say another pie thing?

Because I really like this. So if you want to memorize pie, you can use a sentence. So this is the first few digits of pie. How I want to drink. Alcoholic, of course, after the heavy lectures involving quantum mechanics, which is 3.14159-6-5-38-79. And that's a number of letters in each word. word. I'll say it again. How do I

3.1. How I want a... How I want to drink. How I want to drink. 3.1415. Oh, clever. Alcoholic. 9. Of course. 2.6. And you can go on forever. I mean, Pagel's on a long time. And I was hoping we could... I was going to make one up for James's prime number.

But yeah, 23 million digits. We said we did a prime number podcast in episode 98. I don't know if you remember that. I'm sure the list is at home will remember. This was when the last really big prime number was found. And we said that if you were to write it out, it would take three months. But I worked out that this one, if you were to write it down, would take you nine months.

But then again, that's the 24,862,000 version. If you were to write it in binary, it's 82 million digits. they're all the number one. And so I timed myself writing the number one as quickly as I could do five a second for 10 seconds. Don't want to show off. I did that quite easily. No, that's really impressive. Right, you should put that on your Tinder profile.

And so I worked out that even though it's a lot longer, it would only take me six months to write the binary version out and it would take me nine months to write the. Are you factoring in the inevitable arthritis that's going to hit you in about month three? I was thinking getting halfway through and forgetting how many ones you fretting. Oh, yeah. I can be like, 15 million. There are other good ways of doing it. So, for example, you could write with all four limbs at once.

You could put a pencil in each hand and eat each foot. Does it have to be coherently written? Or does it have to be just all over the place? I think you need to be able to tell that they're ones and not just... Okay, what you could do is you could get a pencil and you could just draw a long line, just run along a very long wall. And then someone after you goes along with a rubber just rubbing out gaps. and then turn it kind of 90 degrees.

Yes, it's horizontal, isn't it? God, have you been drawing ones the wrong way? All and these dashes are actually ones. My phone number is. My taxes are in a very bad shape. But all these methods are going to be considered cheating in this fictional and absurd game that you've created. And actually in these versions, I don't sleep in any of them either.

Right, yeah. The six months, there's no sleeping. Okay, anyone got anything else? You have some illegal prime numbers. Oh, yeah? Yeah. that you're not allowed to say? Say one, I dare you.

Rude wise. 4-8, 5, 6, 5. Actually, it's got 1,401 digits in it, so I'm not going to say them all. That's the only reason I'm not going to say them all. Not because you're afraid. No, I'm not afraid of the people who make DVDs anymore. So this is a decryption algorithm,

which could theoretically be used by a computer to circumvent a DVD's copy protection if you know what this prime number is. and people wanted to put it on t-shirts and stuff like that because they were so annoyed by the man telling them what prime numbers they have and can't say. But I suppose DVDs aren't really used that much anymore, so... Doesn't matter.

That's one of those archaic laws, you know, that you find on the books thousands of years later. Like anyone who has a black cab's allowed to urinate on their back wheel and carry a bale of hay or something. Exactly, yeah, let's strike it from the Macon Carter. Okay, let's move on to our final facts, and that is Andrew Undermerer. My fact is that to preserve their anonymity, Michelin restaurant reviewers are advised to not tell even their parents what they do for a living.

Wow. It's really secretive. Yeah, so why is it so secretive is that so the restaurants can't spot them? Basically, yeah. Must be, right? Yeah, because Michelin pride themselves on their anonymity. This comes from a huge feature that the New Yorker wrote about this about 10 years ago, actually. So a lot of Michelang Company executives have never met an inspector.

you are kind of allowed to tell your spouse, for example, but it's not really... Otherwise, they'd be a bit suspicious that you're taking them to restaurants every day. How are we affording this? You don't have a job. Yeah, you eat it. And they do eat out a lot.

They have to dine out 200 days a year. Oh, didoms. Well, they're driving in between places, and they have to fill out reports for hours and hours a day about these places. They have to eat the maximum number of courses offered. They can't skip pudding ever. They have to eat everything on their plate. What? No. Yes, true. Well, they have to judge, you know, whether the seared whatever.

You're not having pudding till you've eaten your vegetables. It's basically like being a child. Wait, but they don't have to eat all of everything, surely. What's a take? If they've had one pea, it's not like the last pee is going to be. You don't have to have all the peas? Yeah, if the peas are awful. The article says they have to eat everything on their plate. That's true, actually, because what happens if one of the peas is off? But the rest are perfect. They want to know that, don't they? But if they all. Also, if they bring you 500 P's and you think this is too many P's, you can't just have one P and say, oh yeah, the P's are great.

You should make a note. They bring too many P's. I think the reviews are normally more complex than knowing too many P's. Why do they keep sending me to little shit? We're never going to give them a star guy. Well, I like that Mr. Michelin is sort of, we think of it as sort of fine dining, but it wasn't meant to mean that. It was meant to mean one star was very good cooking.

Two was exceptional worth a detour. And three was exceptional worth a special journey. It was supposed to be how much it was worth making the trip. So it could have been out. There's a really good little chef. So two is worth a detour. So basically a one Michelin Star restaurant is not worth making a detour to go to. If you're passing.

If you only go to a one Michelin Star restaurant if you're walking past them. Yeah. So you're staying next door. That's really funny. I was reading about restaurant reviewers in newspapers, which is a similar kind of thing, isn't it? There's a famous one whose name is Frank Bruni, who I really like. because his name is the plural of Frank Bruno. And he says that he always wears a wig and fake mustaches,

but the problem was that one of his books, his early books, had his face on the cover, and then the dust jacket got put on the internet. But you think you wouldn't put your face on the cover of your own book? No, you can't complain about your book cover appearing on the internet. Maybe he didn't know that he was going to be an anonymous restaurant reviewer. Maybe it's a different book. So the UK doesn't have many anonymous reviewers.

there's Marina O'Loughlin who writes for the Sunday Times and she always covers her face with a plate. Not when she dines at the rest of it. Oh, your peas are in your lap, Marina. And she says it's a real struggle because obviously it's quite a small, you know, cuisine food scene. And she also, she's done interviews saying,

my husband is incapable of going out for dinner with me without bellowing Marina at the top of his voice. But I have read about people who, when they're dining by themselves, like to take a notebook that just sort of freaks people out as if you go in and sit there with your notepad and a pen. Excellent. Everyone's like, well, so Michelin reviewers aren't allowed, are they? They're not allowed to take notes

because, yeah, it gives the game away. You're great bluff to pretend that you're not a Michelin. Well, that's what I always do. I go to Michelin-Star restaurants and I don't take a notepad. And I just think as soon as they see that, they think I'm a review. They're sent into a panic at every single customer. It's like being a really low-stakes spy, isn't it? It's like if you're a coward but you want to be a spy, you should be one of these people.

It's so stressful. There's one I really like Ruth Reichel. I think that's how you say her name. And she goes to enormous lengths. So she was a reviewer for the New York Times as well. And she started wearing disguises because she realized that restaurants were offering rewards of up to $1,500 for people who could spot her so that they would know if she was going. And so she created all these alter egos. And she really lives the part. So she said, her first alter ego was a mousy woman called Molly Hollis. She was a woman who had 30 years and 40 pounds on the real me. I said Rachel, so she probably dressed it up.

And then she turned into Chloe, a brazen blonde who flirted with waiters. And then sweet, earthy, red-headed Brenda. And then after a time, she was followed by frumpy old Betty. Wow. But I think the thing about being spies is really interesting. So they're obviously spies aren't allowed to tell people what they do for a living. And there was a former CIA agent called Douglas Lang, who did an AMA on Reddit.

And he said he told his family he was a low-level salesman because he doesn't tend to invite more questions. But when he got sent to Afghanistan, he told his family he was going to Hawaii. He thought it's far enough away. But they kept trying to visit him. And he was like, yeah, we can't do that. Because that's the same thing as the restaurant guy. It's like, why are we going to these casinos every night?

Yeah, but the best bit I read about the spies thing is that there's not really a way of testing who's, psychologically sort of good to be a spy and what sort of effect keeping the secrets has on you because there are enough spies who've come out about being a spy who will volunteer for your survey. And there was a paper in the journal of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers, which I would love to read, about, yeah, this problem that you can't study the spies because it's all secret. So we don't really know what, in fact, parading a false identity has for the spies and presumably for the restaurant critics as well.

I read the, what I think is the first restaurant review of all time from 1859. What the hell was that? experience. It was like having a meal at home, but I was in someone else's building. Yes. No, it was better than that, actually. If you can believe it, it was written in 1859. It's really long.

And actually, it's a review of lots of restaurants. They went to about 10 different restaurants. A lot of it is taken up by the first full page of the paper is taken up with the person saying how bizarre it is that the editor sent them on this mission in the first place. It's a stupid idea that we'll never catch on. Is it English? Or is it French or is it? It's New York Times American in New York.

And it's so good, actually. It really, it starts the tradition from the start of the AA Gill style. Great reviewing. So it describes one of the restaurants he goes into. He says, you walk in, there's a pervading atmosphere of gravy, of which you become more sensible. Is he had a little chef? He said, a pervading atmosphere of gravy,

of which you become more sensible as you penetrate further into the crowded room, a guest has no sooner seated himself than a plate is flung at him by an irritated and perspiring waiter. That's good. It's so good. I want to go to this restaurant. You like a perspiring waiter. The jerking of the plate at customers is closely followed up by a similar performance with the knife and fork.

He's very strong on waiter's outfits. That seems to be the thing that this reviewer most cares about. He says, I prefer the man who is so good as to bring me what I'm about to eat should not appear in soiled garments. I think that's clear enough, isn't it? Where were the standards? That too is my bare minimum. Another waiter's shat himself.

But the food was delicious. You can't judge by the shitting himself level of the weight. I'll put you off a bit. One of the first professional restaurant critics was Grimo de la Rennier, who was French. He was surprises. He became a... Gormonde because something that happened in an early age, his parents were away and his father returned from wherever they were to find a pig dressed up and presiding at his dinner table.

And the story made the rounds in Paris, became quite famous. And so the family disinherited him and sent him to an abbey close to Nancy, where he became friends with the abbot and the abbot taught him the art of good eating. and then eventually he became a restaurant critic. And did he learn that the art of good eating does not involve dressing up for pews eating it, didn't say. But you're a guy who came about the waiters' outfits would love this. There was a pig in the most immaculate of dress. He did not the shit himself.

I read about him and he was really cool, de la Rineer, and he created this jury. So the first restaurant critic was there was 17 of him because it was him and 16 buddies. Prime number. Right, my fave. And they met every week to taste food But obviously you couldn't have 17 people Going to the same restaurant as a critic Because it would definitely be pretty obvious

But they met So it's so hard to book a table for that many people Yeah, it's true But they met every week at the same place And the restaurants sent their food to them No Yeah That's such a good idea

It's weird, isn't it? Yeah Although I would have thought the food quality Might degrade in transit You're right Isn't it? It just turns up in box And he also gave his own funeral to see who would come.

Really? Before he was dead. Before he was dead. Yeah, yeah. And then he rose from the dead halfway through. Oh, brilliant. He sounds amazing. He's a dramatic guy.

Really fun. I looked a bit more into the history of Michelin. So when they started doing the guides, there were only 3,000 cars in France. So it's a bit more of a wasn't thing everybody had. And so I didn't realize that the Michelin Man, you're the guy made out of tires, was really posh when he first came out to appeal to these, like, upper classes. So he had a monocle, a cigar, cuff links, and a signet room. And then as cars became more for everyone,

they had to like tone him down a bit. That's really funny. That's really good. Well, this is, because I don't think people know the reason that the Michelin Stars came about, really, the reason the Michelin guy came about was because they made tyres and they wanted to encourage people to use their tyres

by driving to lots of restaurants. So they wore them out so that they would have to buy new tyres, which does seem like a convoluted way of selling more tyres. Should we just call tyres of tyres? No. Oh, but that must be why he's made of white tyres. Because we've said before. Tires used to be white.

Tires used to be white. They actually coloured him black for a brief period when tires became black with asphalt. But because it was bound for printing, it didn't really work, so they made him white again. But do you know what he's called? He has name, which is Bibendum. And his name means,

now is the time for drinking, or there's drinking to be done. But not driving. Well, no, that's not exactly. And he was always, he was initially known as the road drunkard. That was his name. Genuinely. And basically the posters for him originally showed him, as Anne says with a monocle and with champagne and everything.

But he was drinking a big glass and the glass was full of nails and broken glass and all this horrible stuff. And the idea behind the poster is that Michelin Tires drink up obstacles without puncturing. So he can soak up all this broken glass and all these nails and he won't deflate, he'll be fine. That's not an easy message to get from that image. No, I think it's a weird. It's a weird image. Also, it's strange for something that, you know, is associated with high quality food and drink to sort of be recommending a glass filled with crap.

And that does show that they didn't really adapt the original logo because it was originally designed for a beer company, wasn't it? And I think it was rejected. The guy who drew the Michelinamand Bibendam, that's why he was called that and why he was drinking. But what was he made of tires? They did adjust it to make him made of tires. He's a portly man.

They thought, oh, we'll add some tires in. You could see why the beer company rejects. He connected it, couldn't you? Any reason why he is made of tyres? Just thought it would work. Distinctive. He used to do live gigs, the Michelin Man. So, in 1898, he had his first ever live gig, which is Andre Michelin, one of the brothers

behind the company. He hired a stall at a Paris cycle show. He set up a big cardboard cutout of the Michelin Man. And then he hired a cabaret comedian to crouch behind it and provide banter with the audience. That's brilliant. And he was apparently so good and drew such a massive crowd. rival storeholders started pushing and shoving and getting angry because he was taking all their custom and they had to call the police.

Wow. Yeah. He was a comedian. Yeah. A big, hard drinking comedian. Nails swilling, cuff link wearing. You two had a lot in common. We would get along.

Okay, that's all of our facts for this week. Thanks so much for listening. If you would like to get in touch with any of us, you can find these guys on their Twitter feed. So, Anne is on at Miller underscore Anne. And he's on. Andrew Hunter M. James is on. At James Harkin.

And you can email me on podcast at QI.com or you can listen to any of our old episodes or get tickets for our tour if you go to no such thing as a fish.com. That is all from us this week. We'll be back again next week with another episode. Goodbye. Goodbye.

Goodbye. Can't say goodbye. I really nailed at that third time.