No Such Thing As A Fish - No Such Thing As An Ancient Persian Badger

Episode Date: September 24, 2021

Dan, Anna, Andy and special guest Craig Glenday of Guinness World Records discuss triple-decker tattoos, hidden codes, pre-Biblical air-con and extremely elderly balloons.  Visit nosuchthingasafish.com for news about live shows, merchandise and more episodes.

Hey everyone, welcome to this week's episode of Fish. Before we begin, we just want to let you know that we have a very exciting guest joining us today. It is the editor-in-chief of the Guinness World Records, Craig Glenday. He's an amazing guy. He came to the office. We sat at a nice distance and chat facts with him, and he has a new book out. You may have heard of it. It's called Guinness World Records 2022.

It is a collection of all the greatest records that have been said. You know what Guinness World Records is, like explaining the Bible. You don't need that. Anyway, it is out now. It's another fact-packed book. And Craig himself is an incredible person. It was such a pleasure having him on. So do get the book and we hope you enjoy him. That's right. And in fact, we have one other announcement to make, which is that our tour of the UK and Ireland is starting very, very soon. It's starting next week, in fact. The tour is going to be so much fun. We're going to be doing live podcasts all over the country. And there are shows coming up this next week as you're listening to this. So there are two shows in London. They're kind of work in progress shows. You'll be able to come and see our first half as we shape and mold it into the perfect form. And then after that, the first week of tour proper is the first week of October. We're going to Tumbridge Wells. We're going to Nottingham. We're going to Richmond and we're going to Redding. So do come and get a ticket by going to No Such Thing as of Fish.com. All of our dates are up there. Also, 27th of September,

our work in progress at the Soho Theatre. If you're in London, come and see that. And then on 30th, go to the Canal Cafe. We'll be doing a second run of it there. It's going to be really exciting, but most importantly of all, get Guinness World Records 2022 and enjoy Craig Glenday on No Such Things a Fish. Here we go. Yay! Hello and welcome to another episode of No Such Thing as a Fish, a weekly podcast coming to you from the QI offices in Covent Garden. My name is Dan Schreiber. I am sitting here with Andrew Hunter Murray, Anna Tishinsky, and our special guest, it is the editor-in-chief of the Guinness World Records, Craig Glenday, and once again we have gathered round 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 Craig. Right, well, my fact this week is that the world's most tattooed person finally proved that they had the Guinness World Records title by gouging out strips of their scalp and posting it to the Guinness World Records headquarters. Right. In a matchbox, no, yes. In a matchbox? It's so, Craig, it's so grim. It's slightly odd thing to do. I mean, it's not, it's not. Did you ask them to do it? No, he was driven to do it. This is the very nice, I have to stress, it's the very, very nice, lucky Diamond Rich. And he has a full-body suit of tattoos, as you'd expect. And he was convinced that he had the record.

despite the current record holder Tom Leopard you know Tom Leopard who he was a British military vet lived on the Isle of Sky Okay It's very recognisable because he was covered head to toe in this bright saffron yellow And black spotted full body tattoo

And wore gold thong Basically that's all he wore I thought like a leopard does in the wild I thought by getting you on We've been very similar worlds But I think you live a very different life to us No one else is going to go You know Tom Leopard

right? Well, you know, Tom. Yeah, I suppose. Yeah, I mean, this is our bread and butter, I guess. So Tom had the record. So Tom had the record at 99.9%. Because it was almost, you couldn't really determine, I mean, there would have been tiny bits between the fingers

or up the nostrils in the ears or whatever. So when Lucky Rich came around, everyone just, well, he's the same. He's going to be 99.9%. And Lucky Rich is like, no, I am more than 100%. And what he'd done is he had a full body suit of exotic interesting tattoos he'd collected from around the world and then at some point decided

to black them all in entirely using just a black ink gun and then didn't stop there so then started tattooing white pieces over the black and then coloured pieces over the white so it's multi-layered

I think that makes sense I think that is more than 100% Yeah so I mean one of the key rules for Guinness World Records is that if it's not breakable then it can't be a record Right so it's kind of like the thing with a, we mentioned before on the show, a pepperami is actually 108% pork because to get 100 grams of pepperami

use 108 grams of pork and you kind of desiccate it down, right? You dehydrate it. So is Diamond Lucky Rich like that? I mean, I never tasted the bits that you sent in, but I don't know. Yes, I guess. I mean, you can just indefinitely carry on

tattooing and layering and tattooing. Right. Rightly, probably angry about this. Angry about Mr. Leopard. About Mr. Leopard. and not beating him, that he turned up at the office one day, and we didn't know he was coming. So I got this weird phone call.

And I don't know you why I got it, because I was taking calls maybe foolishly from reception. And in a panics, and there's a blue man. There's a blue man in reception with white hair and metal teeth. It's like, what are you on about? The blue man group I was talking about something. I said, can you just take a note or something? And he left a package, which ended up being like a wedding album,

but not of wedding photos, but of very detailed. anatomical shots of his own body and all the body parts and that really detailed like proper you know cheeks apart type photography too much would you say too much well the other stuff I'm going to definitely have to cut in my head the package he sent you was the size of the matchbox so I'm just picturing very tiny writing as the address on it and just a very confused postman picking up this little mouse package that he delivers to you guys so was it so the so the that you could test the tattooed skin, that it had multiple layers on it?

I think that was possibly his intention. We had, I think, did a new story because we'd taken a core sample of the world's largest paint ball. So you know the guy who paints of softball every day, him and his wife give a coat of paint to this thing, and now it's a meter and a half wide. They actually did us a core sample, so you can count the number of layers in an engine,

you know, extrapolate from that. And I think maybe inspired by that, he sent us a piece of his head. And in the end, I think he just almost overruled the body editor. I said we have to accept this as a record because he's going to this great length. He's so passionate. And he is clearly more than 100% covered in ink. So eventually, he got the record.

Wow. People and their heads and you are something I feel are like really connected. I read a story that you were walking down the street one day and a man recognized you, stopped you and just started kicking himself in the head in order to, to show you that he was able to do a bunch of it in the space of a minute. And he made it into the book in the end, right? Yes, because that started off as a joke. How many times could you get 1,000 applications a week to deal with?

And 1,000 from all around the world, it's a lot to process. And you end up rejecting 95% of what you get. And one included would be most times to kick yourself in the head. I think he said most kicks to the head. So he did clarify, did you mean your head or someone else? No, it's his own head. Did you improvise on the spot? Because he definitely your own.

But this is one of James Horkin's favorite facts that he did on the past. Podcasts, the world record for most kicks to one's own head is 127 in a minute. And it's bloody hard. I mean, the physical effort involved. So it happens all the time when people, I mean, that's why we tend not to let people into the office, hence why Lucky a Rich was tund away. He looks like a smurf, but he looks like the angriest smurf in the village. Because, yeah, he's completely blue.

I wasn't expecting that. I think because everything fades to blue eventually, isn't that? That sounds like a not such thing is a... It sounds like kind of a philosophical statement. Everything fades to blue. Or an album. It's called pain or something, isn't it? He's got his ear canals done, apparently.

And I want to know how deep we're talking here. His gums, which is very weird. Has he shown you as gums, presumably post... Gums, yeah, gums, eyelid. I mean, we've seen tongues tattooed. We don't do tattooed eyeballs, so we refuse to accept that because it's just too far. and it's very, very bad for you, so medically we can't...

Does he have them? Does Lucky have them? No. Okay. The thing I was going to say, the one that you may want to not use, I mean, it's so weird, but the strangest application we've had is for someone who tattoos their own rectum. And what is bizarre is that they actually prolapse their rectum in order to tattoo it and then stick it back in. So I suspect, I don't know.

Do they tattoo their own because no one else will do it for? Yeah. steady hand. A very cool head as well. And of course, we did reject that. We don't want to be encouraging such activity. Oh, I don't know. Cover shot for next year's book.

Hey, kids. Have a go. Oh, God. Oh, my God. Wow. The Guinness line's pretty far out, but you do have a line. I found out a favorite tattoo artist, who I think is still practicing of mine. So this is a guy called Blaine Dickinson.

And he got in the news in 2007. I can't believe he got in the news for this, but he tattooed a full English breakfast on top of a man's head. And that was it? Had the man requested it, or was it unwanted? I don't think he hadn't requested it. But Blaine Dickinson had said, I want to do this and I need a volunteer, right?

And he found a volunteer, so I'm 19-year-old who said, yeah, I'll do that. That's funny. Anyway, the next thing Blaine Dickinson did, he got Anne Robinson's face tattooed onto his bottom next to the words, you are the weakest link goodbye. Because he had been on the weakest link, but he got kicked out in the first round he was on the show for about 45 seconds in total

he got out of Robin's face tattooed on him we have an ultra fan who has the owner of Guinness World Records picture tattooed on himself and I think also restraining order so you can't come near the office as well but this is what tattooed on him well it probably should be

yeah you know more women than men have tattoos I found that really surprising interesting I find that surprising yeah in almost every country So in the UK it's 40% to 36% 40% of women have tattoos Quite high, isn't it? Yeah

In, sorry, that's the average is 40% to 36% And in the UK, it's 47% to 33%. And they're also more popular among people With higher levels of education Are they? Interesting. Yeah.

Is that because they can afford it as well, I wonder. Oh, maybe. It's quite expensive, aren't there when you? Oh, you can get some cheap backstreet ones. I definitely have a couple of friends in my 17 get some 20 quid jobs. I found one tattoo, which is worth millions. You'd obviously have to remove it from the person in order to sell it at auction.

Oh, is it a line of code that is the code for Google or their algorithm? Why would that be worth that much? Because it runs Google. Oh, you mean it's like actually used? Someone's plugged in via their back. Google's keeping one person prisoner in a cellar and all of its code. I'm not saying that necessarily. but I'm just saying that that might be, yeah,

that would be a way of keeping the secret, wouldn't it? Yeah. Well, he's got it in one. Yeah, that's, that's it. No, it is, in fact, Kate Moss has two birds, two sort of flock of birds on her lower back. Wait, two or a flock? Well, I thought it was two because I've seen the picture.

But then she said we decided to do a flock of birds in the quote that I'm looking at right now. It's in the picture that I saw. It's two little birds on the back. and it was tattooed by Lucian Freud, the famous artist, and these are original drawings, and he used to tattoo when he was in the Navy, so he would tattoo sailors,

and she heard about that when they were chatting one day, and she said, I'd love to have a tattoo by you. So she thinks that probably everyone in the Navy from his period is probably passed away by now, so she's probably the only living person with a Lucian Freud original tattoo. So she said, if you cut that off her body, I'm not saying anyone should, if you're listening. She's already sent it to Craig in a matchbox.

But, you know, that skin is worth a lot. It's original art by Lucian Freud. There's another very expensive tattoo, or a very tattoo that's worth a huge amount, and that belongs to a guy called Tim Steiner. Do you know about this guy? So he has a tattoo on his back that was designed by this Belgian artist called Wim Del Voi, and it's very cool if you look it up. It covers his whole back, and there's like fish being ridden by children,

stuff like that. And it was sold to a German art collector called Rick Rheinking. And the idea is that when he dies, when Tim Steiner dies, he's agreed that his back can be removed and it'll be given to Rick Rineking and framed on his wall. And it was a good few tens of thousands of pounds you pay for that. So he's already sold it and he's got the money. He's got the money. Again, like we discussed with selling your hair in advance, that was a thing that people that they'd sell their hair and they'd get a small down payment for making the deal and then they'd go back for the rest of it when they drop the hair off, I would just run away. I would just run away. Take the money and run. Yeah. Yeah. If you were tattooed back guy. Yeah. Tattoo back guy didn't get the money though. The artist

tattooed on got the money. What the hell does tattoo back guy get? I don't know. A little bit of fame on the No Such Things of Fish podcast. But does he get anything? He must get a percentage. I think he got some payment, yeah, because he had to sign a contract. There is a roll doll short story about a guy who has a beautiful work of art by a famous artist tattooed on his back. And then, and then it ends up in a gallery. And does he get money before he dies? I can't remember the, I can't remember the details. I think he might do. Oh, wow. Plagiarized by this artist.

Right. Okay. Here's an ethical dilemma for all of you. Okay. You're a doctor working in an A&E department, right? Yeah. Someone comes in, a patient, unconscious. They have the words, do not resuscitate, tattooed on their chest.

Yeah. The word not is underlined. So it's quite emphatic. Do not resuscitate. And it's signed as well, also in a tattoo. Yeah. Do you resuscitate the guy? No.

Okay. No, that's a thing, right? It's a thing where you can request. I believe... You can request it, but there's paperwork. Yeah. This is not an official. Oh, no, but yeah, I guess it's just a reminder.

Because I read about another lady who had that on her front, but on her back, just in case she was on the wrong side. It said PTO. So... No. Yeah. Wow. Oh, well, Dan has really reduced this, I would think, quite complicated ethical dilemma,

which actually happened in which the hospital called in specialists for. You just said, no, don't resuscitate. Yeah, that is really tough because I think, and I have... have not researched this, so please don't quote me on this, any actual surgeons. But I think it's like, if the patient has made their wishes clear, you're supposed to follow them. I think there are ways in which you can make wishes clear. So it is sometimes a bit of a gray area. And that does seem quite clear once you've underlined it, unless you meant to do a strike through, of course, and you slightly misaligned it. Yeah. But there was someone else who in 2012 had a DNR tattoo on his

chest. But he was conscious when he was in hospital. And the doctor said, look, what's this DNR tattoo on your chest and he said oh I got it because I lost a bet playing poker I actually would love to if ever I'm in the position I'd love to be resuscitated and he the doctor said you should really get that tattoo removed and he said I don't think anyone will take it seriously wow so it does it can you know yeah yeah yeah well DNRQistan for DNRQA stanchine you imagine it's getting a do now resuscitate Number two, and that is my fact. My fact this week is that the judge who presided over the Da Vinci Code plagiarism case

hid his own code in the actual text of the judgment. Unprofessional. Very unprofessional. Yeah, so there was this big plagiarism case. I don't know if you remember between Dan Brown, the author of the Da Vinci Code, and the authors of a book called The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail. And Holy Blood and Holy Grail was a nonfiction book where a hypothesis was put out that the Grail was in fact a bloodline lineage of Christ. And there's a lot of similarities in the book to the

point where Dan Brown actually amalgamates the author's names, Bejant and Lee, into a character within the book. So there's definitely a sort of acknowledgement of the book. Anyway, huge case, multi-million dollar case and the judge finds in favor of Dan Brown saying it is not plagiarism. And when he handed over the judgment, it went round to all sorts of, you know, different media outlets, including the Guardian, where a journalist who was also a lawyer called Dan Tensch, was reading it, and he noticed that certain words had just a random letter italicized in it for no reason at all. And he thought, that's a bit odd. What's going on there? And then this is where the bit of the story gets a bit hazy for me, because it sounds like the judge, Justice Peter

Smith, wrote to Dan Tensh to say, have you noticed anything weird about the old judgment there? Yeah, he really, really wanted it to be fair. Yeah. Like a kid with a secret. Yeah, exactly. You know, look at the opening paragraphs. See what you see. And, you know, and then he was like, yeah, I noticed these italics. You know, it's a bit odd.

So he tried to crack it. Wasn't quite sure how to do it. And then old judge got back in contact going, ooh, why don't you look at my who's who? I've had some clues in there. Middle of a manslaughter case. He's just there typing away. Also, he's British.

I don't know why I've given him some like old wild west. Golda. Well now, if you look at it. So more and more clues were given and they kept trying to crack it. And eventually, eventually it was cracked. And the answer was so dull. It's so weird. Yeah. I think it's a very interesting. Do you the answer? Yeah. I think it's not dull. I think it's absolutely bizarre. Yeah, sorry, go on, Andy. The answer is Jackie Fisher, who are you? Dreadnought. Okay. And Jackie Fisher was an admiral. in the early 20th century who's really interesting

he changed the whole Royal Navy he's incredible and Justice Peter Smith had a particular interest in Jackie Fisher so you know hid this code completely for his own amusement but Jackie Fisher's amazing

yeah he's so cool first person ever to use the abbreviation OMG to mean oh my God when he was in his 70s so very cool and down with the kids wasn't he wow when was Jackie Fisher around sorry

he was right into Winston Churchill I think just after the First World War it was in 1917 that he used that but he is incredible. Jackie Fisher, he joined the Navy at the age of 13, which is, you know, mind-blowing. He served in the Crimean War, and he revolutionized the Navy. He created the first ever all-big gun-fast battleship, which is a technical term, apparently. Just all the guns are big, is what I take from that. And he was made first seat lord. Then he lost the job. And then he was given it back again, because the guy who replaced him was Prince Louis of Battenberg, who was sort of born in Germany, had a German name.

beginning of the First World War, lots of suspicion. So he was replaced, despite the fact he'd been in the British Navy for 40 years, like unimpeachably totally British, but he was called Prince Louis of Battenberg. So he lost the job and Jackie Fisher got it again. But it's interesting that he was replaced by Battenberg, which is a cake, because Fisher was responsible for introducing bread onto submarines. I didn't know that. Maybe Pattonberg went on to bring cakes on one step further.

Fisher introduced bread onto submarines. Yeah. How would no one thought of taking bread onto a summary before? No one made the leap from biscuits to bread. I think it was because you couldn't take fresh bread because, you know, it goes pretty mouldy, slash stale. So he introduced the idea of baking their own bread,

taking the ingredients for bread, and then you become bakers, artisan bakers under the seas. Okay, Jackie Fisher is interesting. I grant you that. But I'm just saying, you know, if the code revealed something like, he's actually guilty.

You know, it's something... Like, what does it actually mean, though? What is the end result of doing all this other than, yeah, you're a smart ass, no what? Yeah, exactly. You're right, that's it. But he didn't even get it right, did he? I mean, just do it properly at least, Smitty.

Yeah. That's true. Yeah, he made a few mistakes. Well, I think I'm on the defendant's side in this. I'm on the side of Michael Bejant and Richard Lee. I think the judge might have called it wrong. That's my final statement. Oh, M.G.

Jackie Fisher. Yeah, again, Fisher. No, solely because he doesn't. doesn't sound like a trustworthy character. Who? Ben Brown? Or Peter Smithy? No, the Peter Smithy?

Busy concocting his code. And yeah, the character of Lee Teabing, is that how we're pronouncing it? And the Dan Brown novels is those two men's names, which I find weird because Dan Brown went to the trouble of making an anagram out of Baygent's name for Teabing. And then couldn't be bothered to find an anagram for Lee. What's the anagram?

It's not much there. It's L-I-G-H, to be fair. So you've got some things to play with there. Hegel. Hegel Teabing is even for Dan Brown I think that's a bit far Dan Brown as well as writing the Da Vinci Code which has solved what

I mean something incredible tens of millions of millions of copies yeah almost as much as the Guinness World Records not quite nice try Brown it's an even more implausible stuff he is rumoured to be the author of a 1995 dating guide called 187 men to avoid a survival guide for the romantically frustrated woman.

Okay. This is a humor book and there was a story about it, I think, in the New York Times. Really recently, there's a woman called Chloe Gordon who is trying to track it down, right? Because she believes this must exist. It's by Danielle Brown. That's who it's listed as being by. Again, the master of codes conceals his identity. Whenever she tries to buy it, she gets delivered the wrong book.

This has happened to her repeatedly and lots of different wrong books. are labeled as being this book and there's been some error with the barcode there's been some mistake that means that this missing mystery book by we think by Dan Brown because his agents will not confirm

that he's written this book and he's never said anything he completely stonewalls about it but we think it's believed that he wrote it with his quite confusing his future ex-wife, Blythe Brown so she wasn't his wife yet

when they wrote it then they got married then they got divorced what if the bar code is a code. That needs to be cracked. This is all sounding amazing. He puts codes everywhere, this guy. This is what Dan Brown does.

I know, but this is such a tedious sequel that you two are attempting to write between you in imitation of Dan Brown. I'm saying that Indiana Jones, you know, that huge vault of things, just all of this book. Thousands and thousands of copies because it's just got the wrong barcode. That fits slightly into his early career as such, the idea that he would have written this book. because he was a musician. He tried to be a musician.

He had a CD that was released. There was a song on it called 976 Love. And then he followed it up with another CD called Angels and Demons, which eventually became the first of the Robert Langdon novels for... Wait, was it a song? No, no, it was an album. It was an album called Angels and Demons by Dan Brown. And it's nothing to do with his future career as an author.

Okay, so you said the CD became his first Robert Langdon book. Yeah. It's the book based on the album. What I meant. Sorry is the title. Very sort of, if you know, the Da Vinci Code series is the prequel to the Da Vinci Code. And then the sequel in the actual movie series, very much like the wife situation, sort of predating and then becoming the future X. That Angels and Demons is the prequel in the books, but the sequel in the movies.

Great. Has he got any records that you know of, Dan Brown? Because he sold so many books that I would think he must. I think at some point he did have that record. But the problem is we find it very hard Because we claim to have one of these records As the best selling And we are not even sure ourselves

So we used to always sell ourselves As the best selling copyright book Because in 1974, I think it was We overtook Dr Spock's book of child care Which was at the point And then we Because we are effectively the same book We were

Different Dr Spock everyone We were thinking of the other Dr Spock's box Yeah Show them no emotion whatsoever. Live long and prosper, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, not that Dr. Spock. That's a really famous one.

Is it Benjamin Spock who wrote? And it sort of, it was the manual. It's like 77 million copies or something. And at some point in 1974, I think it was, we overtook it. Anything else on Dan Brown? He never reads other books, which is a bit distressing. He could explain something like that. You've definitely read one, didn't he?

No, I think that's really clear. Read one book, took all of its ideas. By Michael Teabing. He said in a piece that was the New York Times on him, he said, I don't read other fiction because reading other people's work doesn't help me. It just turns me into a consumer rather than an author. Wow. It's an extraordinary.

Probably explains a lot. But he reads, I thought he reads nonfiction. I thought he just didn't read novels. Well, I think he does. I think that counts is reading. I think that counts is reading. That's like being a chef and not eating food. I think it's incredibly weird to believe that you can write genuinely good literature, but be so

arrogant about your abilities that you think you don't need to read other examples of it to draw from them alone. Not going to be a consumer. A few things on other codes hidden in places. So recently a very exciting code was cracked for the third time. Diminishing levels of excitement, surely. It's been a while since someone cracked it. This is a book that was called Cain's Jawbone, and it was a hundred-page long murder mystery puzzle.

So it was created in 1935, and the idea was a prize was given out of 15 pounds, which is about a thousand pounds in today's money. And it was a novel that was printed out of order. And the idea is that you had to reorder it in order to work out who the murderer was. So page by page, the book had to be reordered by the person reading it to work out how the story played out and who the murder. murderer was. And it's a short novel. It's only 100 pages, but the possible combinations of 100 pages are 32 million. So it's an extraordinarily hard thing to get right. Surely it's more than that. Well, yeah, maybe 32 million plus. And they're not numbered, of course. So number of the pages just. Yeah, yeah. Yes. So they're not. That's a challenge.

And it doesn't, do they have some pages where there are chapter openings? I haven't actually seen the book. So yeah, I'm not sure if it's just one long story. But it was set by an Observer's crossword compiler called Edward Pals Mather. And yeah, so it was bound out of order. And only two people back in the day managed to do it, who I think did it in collaboration. And then it was republished recently because it's been out of print for a long time by buddies of ours, John Mitchinson of QI, who has been on the podcast with his company Unbound. And it was cracked by a British comedian who some of us in this room know as well.

John Finimore. Really? John Finnamore, yeah, who John Finnamore's souvenir program on Radio 4. He's currently co-writing Good Omen's 2 with Neil Gaiman. Yeah, he managed to crack it. I imagine it's a terrible book. Sounds tedious, isn't it? I mean, they have to do it.

No wonder only two people did it. It's like, can't be bothered with it. Oh, it was like a print, no surprise. So it was his lockdown hobby, and it took him six months to do it. He used to go into a room, and he had to research everything to work out. You know, he'd be looking into where certain train stations, were and stuff like that, just constant research to make the connections and the book work and eventually got there.

Are we 100% sure it wasn't a publishing cock up that was post hoc rationalised? I'm so sorry, we've put your book in the wrong order. Why do we make this fun? It could wind up for someone, isn't it? Yeah. One of the most explosive of codes that probably rock the world. And the kindness sort of same way that the Da Vinci Code really got people obsessed with it was the Bible Code, wasn't it?

Michael Drozinen. Do you remember that? Have you met him? I feel like he said that. Before my life at Guinness World Records, I was the editor of the X Factor and not the Simon Cowell Show. But like a paranormal magazine

and we covered all sorts of paranormal and conspiracy theories, ghosts, aliens, all that sort of stuff. And we spent, we gave a lot of inches to Michael to talk about the Bible code. And is it Ripsi, Yahoo! I think who originally came up with it. I discovered this idea. and published the paper which then Michael Jocelyn went into the idea is that you have a skip

code so that every I think it was like every fifth letter what so specifically in the bible every x letter yes I think it was maybe it was in the Hebrew version of it but you would take every fifth letter and it spells Torah for example or you take every hundredth letter and it will spell Diana or you know just go through and you come up with these and it's probably no I think nonsense in that you could take any big subject, any big book, and apply a skip code to it and you will find a secret messages. In the Bible, if you take every two millionth letter, it spells out Jackie Fisher. Who are you?

Dreadnought. Exciting. Yes. I think someone did a bit of research to disprove it by taking, I think, Moby Dick and found the death of Diana coded into Moby Dick. And if you apply the code, I mean, the words, it's Diana, Dodey, Skid, Hearse, royal, Lady Diana, mortal in the jaws of death

and Henri Paul even is all within the same code if you rip apart Moby Dick and find the code. So I think you'll find anything in anything. Yeah. It's quite a convoluted way to have written that message, isn't it? Just write it like a normal sentence

if you're going to hide that code. He went on to produce this idea that somehow was aliens that were giving us this code. Did he? Yeah, that was the same. second book. So we sort of parted ways at that point. I thought he was an atheist who just didn't believe it, but just found it. Wow, that's so interesting. Atheists can believe in aliens. Yeah. No, no. Yep. Good point. Yeah. But yeah, aliens, like, gave us DNA as a sort of a code of another

kind, he thinks it's all connected. And yeah, so we, yeah, we stopped publishing him. Yeah, I think that's right. You don't want to encourage that too much. The X factor. The conspiracy magazine stopped publishing him. Just to think about the tattoos The other one that came to mind was supposedly the very first use of this steganography, I think, is the word for it when you hide codes, I think

was as the tattooing people's heads and then sending them off as a messenger and then they arrive and then they shave their head And there's just a full English break for it. Sent the wrong guy. Okay, it is time for fact number three and that is Anna. My fact this week is that an ancient

Persia, instead of sitting in front of a fireplace to warm you up, you'd sit in front of a wind place to cool you down. It's really cool. These are these really cool things called Bardgears and that spell like badgers, but with I. Yeah, I mean, you've really pronounced them unhumorously correctly that I think, and I'm really disappointed. I was waiting to say badgers and there we go.

I'm so sorry, James would be so upset if he ever hears this, not doing a wanton mispron mispronunciation. But they are on old Persian houses and old Middle Eastern houses, really. And they look like a mini Greek temple really, don't they? But like a really tall Greek temple that's acting as a sort of a chimney. And they've got these columns on them, almost like Doric columns on them. They've been around for 2,500 years at least, we think. We think perhaps they got the idea from ancient Egyptians.

But the idea is that as wind blows past them, they funnel cool wind down into the house. And as the hot air in the house rises, as hot air does, the cool air is pulled downwards and it would cool the house up and it would often be channeled into the sitting room or the general living area and a family could sit around the wind place and have their hair blown out of whack

So would it properly bring it in terms of gales of wind or would it be just sort of If it's windy, really windy it's like a Beyonce It's just Yeah Yeah So many great music videos filmed in 500 BC actually

If it was a completely still day It would be very surprising to have a Gale force wind Coming down your chimney But yeah It would be you know It would channel as much as it could It's amazing I've got a question Anna

Could these things double as fireplaces Is it just you know Could you light a fire in there and It'd get blown out instantly Wouldn't it? Yeah I just understood I've understood the room I've understood the problem

Yeah I think there's a bit of engineering side Which might screw that up for you There's sort of like various flaps and stuff They're really cleverly designed. So they'd face a very specific way. They'd face in the direction that the wind would most commonly come in that area. And they'd have little flaps that you could open and close and various ducts on them,

that depending on where the wind was coming from, you'd open and close to maximize efficiency. Wasn't there also a thing we're like, because obviously once the air is inside, the air would warm up and rise. They also had sort of like cat flaps to let the warm air out, sort of the building slightly pressurized the warm air out. So you were just bringing in kind of like an air conditioner, right? Modern surgery, they have the same thing, don't they? Because the pressures different inside so it blows everything out of the room, not in. Yeah. In the operating theatres.

Oh, really? So that when you open the door, you just, yeah, you don't get germs. Things get pulled out of the room and not into the room in hospitals, yeah. That's so interesting. It's brilliant. I was saying to Andy earlier, just was so clever as humans, the history of humans. We are great. Just to, like, to invented something like that.

They got this far to this point right now. Yeah. Like, it's just so clever. I'm saying it's like we've been deserted on an island and all we had were the elements of the earth and the universe to play with. And this is where we've got to. And when you hear stuff like this, I'm just saying, magic. The ancient Egyptians probably came up with this. And it's what a system.

How clever. Everyone listening give yourselves a pat on the back. Yeah. Well done. Yeah, we are screwing it up now because having invented air conditioning, we've now sort of forgotten the techniques of using natural ways of cooling houses. And now air conditioning is destroying the environment. I seriously contributing to climate change.

Okay, take that pat back. And it's all these fuckers' faults, isn't it? These Persians introducing the idea. No, no, they're the ones you have the solution. They invented the electricity-free version, which is incredible. They invented the concept. Come on. The concept of being cool.

No, it is right. There are a billion air conditioning units on the planet, one for every seven people, and that is too many. It's too many by a long. And obviously, if you live somewhere really, really hot, the natural impulse is to get any kind of device. that lets you cope with the summers, but it's really wasteful, because a lot of the energy it uses gets tended to heat, so you're cooling yourself and heating the room and therefore the planet.

Yeah. Although, obviously, we can talk having just endured a three-month-long summer. Yeah, when it's hot, sometimes that's all you want, isn't it? Just like, stick it on. I'll be dead soon, just stick it on. I love freezing cold rooms. I've got to say, I'm obsessed with air conditioning. Oh, wow. There may be a thing you can do to trick yourself in this regard. This is really interesting. There was a study done. by a guy called Frederick Roles, who is a psychologist and he's a member of the American Society of Heating, Refridulating and Air Conditioning Engineers. Anyway, his study has shown that if you are shown a false thermometer displaying a high

temperature, you will feel warm, even if the room is not especially hot. So maybe if we all just draw a thermometer on the wall saying it's only 10 degrees in here, what a chilly day it is then you won't need AC Wow Interesting We'll be sacked for defacing the office

Have you guys heard of John Gory? No He could have invented air conditioning And he was someone got there first No he got there first Oh In 1851 he patented an ice machine He was a doctor in Florida

He wanted something to keep rooms cool for patients And his was a bit different Because it created ice Which would then call the room Rather than him cooling the room with ammonia or evaporation principles but he was run out of business by can you guess

big ice big a giant ice cubes pretty much there were these ice makers from the north of the USA who made their money hacking up ice and transporting dragging it across the country and they lobbied against him that's like saying Dan Brown

invented the idea for the DaVinci Code rather than taking it from somewhere else and moving it into his own property is the most legally contentious podcast for a while. No, you're absolutely right. The ice cellars then. The ice king, Frederick Tudor,

his name. Not a medieval monarch, despite the name of it. Yeah, he campaigned against him and John Gorry died penniless a few years later. His invention didn't take off, but it worked. And it would have worked. Yeah.

Oh, wow. Guthing, God. That idea of bringing ice in, there's an older example of that, which was a mountain of snow was created in the garden next to a villa, which was imported via donkeys sort of just carrying it in by where are we when are in old days it's a friend of

the podcast basie anus um aka elegabalus roman emperor roman emperor who featured on the show because he invented the whoopee cushion and his original name is bassi anus he had it's pronounced differently yeah it's spelled yeah it's definitely spelled bassi anus um but yeah so he imported this is the story. He imported a lot of snow into his villa. So he had this giant snow mountain for the summer just to keep himself warm. He built an igloo out of it and actually igloo is a very warm if you get inside them. Keep him cold, yeah. I had this idea, I've got many ideas for films as well which never get made and never get written. No one's ever done an Inca movie, like the proper Inca movie to end

all Inca movies. So I had this great idea. I went to Rassette. around Peru. There's an excuse to go on holiday really, but they have similar things, don't they? The Colcas where they would keep food to have these grain stores on mountain sides, which are designed in such a way to channel the air, probably very similar sounding. You know the Inca's were amazing in terms of architecture, but they have these grain stores which are placed about one day's march apart as well across the whole country, like a network of them on the Inca highway. And they're designed and have channels to drain the water so that if it gets wet, it doesn't spoil the food.

So that's how they were able to grow so big and cover the whole country because of these cultures. And they're amazing things, yeah. Very smart. I've heard of those. Well, that's like actually the Persians also had these things called Yakschal, which sound quite similar. They look like big igloos.

Is this what these look like? They're sort of like big huts. Well, the ink has changed the shape depending on what was stored in it. So the grain would be round and fruit would be square. So you can see from distance what you were having for dinner. Yeah, yeah. That's brilliant. And they'd also store non-food things, but it was mostly food, yeah.

But different shapes were different foods. That is incredible. What was it like a pig shape? Well, I think there was that many shapes, but yeah, there were some different. Called on the Cobb shape. Flashing hamburger. Yeah. Yeah, the Persians had these huge kind of insulated igloos, which were really similar.

And yeah, I think a few hundred of them still exist and still function many hundreds of years old. And you can shove frozen stuff in them. They can keep things below freezing, even when it's well above. freezing. Wow. Just pop there for your ice cream. When air conditioning was new, or not when it was first invented, but when it was newly being adopted across America, especially in America, that's where a lot of

AC units are because they've got cities like Washington, D.C. and New York, which are so hot in the summer. But I love this fact. This is from Prospect Magazine. They wrote about air conditioning. It was easier to get into buildings because air conditioning units were quite large at the time, right? And air conditioning in cars was very rare and special in the 1950s because, obviously, to

miniaturised the technology sort of fits into a car was really expensive. I'll take the window down. Yeah, exactly. If you're in a car, but in Texas in the 50s, it was so fashionable that some people would drive around with their windows shut tight in a hundred degree heat just to fool their neighbours into thinking that they had AC in the car.

Imagine. He's the driver of that car sweating profusely. But he's got a little thermometer, drawn on the side says it's only five degrees. I think at the beginning of mobile phones in cars that the Koreans I think everyone who was getting pulled over about 70% had just black wooden bricks who were driving around to make it look like they had mobile phones. It's probably as dangerous but you know do you think you can get arrested for that can the police find you when they stop you and it turns like you were just holding a bricks here on the phone. Brilliant get around

Always carry a brick in the car Just in case you get stopped How is that a guess around Because you can't actually talk on the phone If it's a brick No, I know But you can be on the phone And then quickly

On a brick cover for your phone Just flip it around Oh yes I mean just don't be on the phone When you're driving obviously Oh sorry, yeah that's the most important thing But if you have to be Get that brick

All right Why do you think Aircon Was initially taken up Widely Cool people then incorrect oh yes what this is a publishing fact isn't it it is not a publishing fact although i think i maybe know what you're talking about i must so it was used in publishing but then it was widely taken up to actually warm places up and it was taken up by factories this is in the early 20th century and so the

idea with aircon is really the technology behind it just allows you to manipulate the temperature and the humidity in whichever way you like and the take-up was by factories and the particularly textile factories where it wasn't humid enough and cotton threads were breaking. And so they mass bought these new aircon units to make it warmer and more humid. I'm so annoying. Yeah, the humidity thing, yeah. Yeah, I walked right into it. But that's why it's important in printing because I obviously, not to bring it back to the book again,

but I do spend a lot of time in printing factories, printing the Guinness World Records book, this is just out. Controlling humidity is a huge thing, yeah. I was reading very early on that was introduced because the Parenthood. pepper gets kinky because the humidity changes and the paper warps and then you can't print particularly for colour work on it because you can't get registration. So then does it change how the ink sits because the paper scrunches up and stretch it out and stuff? So yeah, so you want it to register perfectly on top of each other.

But if the paper is slightly kinks and then it doesn't line up. So you get these weird halos, colored halos around. I'm hoping when you said it gets kinky that all the material suddenly just turns a bit sexy. Fish nets. Yeah. It's like one of those mugs. If it gets too hot, everything is. naked ruined.

Okay, it is time for our final fact of the show, and that is Andy. My fact is that the world's oldest balloon has been blown up for nearly 30 years. Someone's been continuously blowing it up. Very big, I know. And he's exhausted. I'm wary of saying this in front of the records master, but there are a few different claims about the world's oldest balloon. I don't know if any have actually come across your desk and been verified.

this was a recent story, a young man called Ryan Harrison. He was interviewed by the Sun newspaper, and he was given a foil balloon when he was born in 1992, and his parents taped it up in a box, and he incest that it's still completely blown up. So that's one good claimant. There's one guy called Jordan Lyman, who lives in Birmingham, and in 2018, he'd have one for 26 years,

so that might be 29 years old by now, so about the same age. It's only the size of a tennis ball, but he claims it was only the size of a tennis ball when he got it. All a sound berth. Horrible. Sad balloon. Well, he was small at the time as well. He was born and he was small, so it probably looked like a normal balloon.

Yeah. If you put it next to him. I don't know why Dan's accepting that. You know, get balloons in proportion to your own size. The younger the birthday, the bigger the balloons. I really went with that, Anna, and I would have got away with it if it wasn't for you. Always has to be the same size as your head. Yeah.

That would work. You don't get any bigger. These are the tinfoil balloons. So if you're picturing the balloon right now, it's not your classic rubber balloon. This one was a tin foil one. almost is it myelar yeah so not yeah not actually tin foil obviously because that would make a balloon but yeah mylar what's my life it's like a plastic pet thing that's been covered in metal yeah tin foil well like tin foil but not yeah yeah but i just can't believe this i think they're lying

i'm not come out and say it and i know i'm nivu by dan brown already but you know we've all had those balloons and they deflated by the end of the day practically they're kind of floppy and flaccid and sad it's absolutely incredible yeah i do get I say I mean the company gets probably once every couple of months a claim in from mylar slash foil balloons until you mentioned this was going to come up I thought you know we reject it as a claim interestingly or we have done at least but they all seem to be roughly the same age and I'm just wondering if there is a manufacturing period when these mylar balloons were made to a certain spec that was maybe too high and all the so it's the balloon on

stick, isn't it the same one? It's a boy and it's a girl. The golden age of making these when they accidentally make them indestructible. So I went through, rather than go to bed last night, I went through, well I stopped at 101 claims to plot who at least claiming, but we haven't seen

the balloons, but I've plotted them all. I mean, I had a few from the UK. There's a guy called Craig Wood. He's got an It's a boy. That's 28 years and 10 months. Anne-Marie Ormshaw She's got a Nitzigal And that's 33 years old

Then I emailed them And two came back actually No way So I've got pictures of these balloons And it's the same type of balloon Ah The tinfoil classic And it is the Mila

I'd only say Mila Because the Guinnesswood Records books Traditionally Were those shiny ones If you remember It was made on the same material So again Weirdly I had to

Become an expert in tin foil in myel-hour. You don't have to say tinfoil just as a soft today. I don't know here. We get it. But we have a pet foil cover, and we don't know because we want the book to be recyclable, so we've got rid of that because the sheets themselves can't be recycled

because it's plastic. This is huge. This is amazing. So I think we need to reactivate this as a record. Yes. Because it's obviously a thing in our job at Guinness of Records is to reflect what's happening. So if people are storing these balloons,

and which they do seem to be, I don't know, why I don't know, Do you keep balloons, Dan, have you? Do you keep everything, like toenail clippings? I do, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I keep a lot of random things. Oh, you've been to Dance House, I see. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But not balloons, but, yeah, I do have a cabinet of super old things that I keep.

What, like, I'll go through and see. Super old things. Well, like, like, too nail tipping. No, like, it's mainly like the toys that I had as a child and stuff like that. But I'm doing it from my kids. I'm keeping stuff. Like, I've got the pillow that my wife was sleeping on. Oldest excuse.

It'll be the oldest pillow in the world. No, nothing special like that. Like a balloon. You think your kids are going to appreciate receiving the pillow that your wife was on when you gave first? They've conceived. I've got my, you know, the blue scrubs. I've kept that that my second son I was wearing when he was born to give it to him for a Halloween in when he turns 18. Just get them a proper 18th birthday present.

No, if you save this stuff up, it's worth way more. Oh my God. How can you live in London? You must have a very big property. I don't understand. How can you for of this? Okay, so you're going to... I mean, it sounds like unless these are legit,

that unfortunately for 29-year-old Ryan, he's not got the record. It's very excited. I think this might be a record for the first time we've ever had a fact pretty much comprehensively debunked while we're recording it. We normally wait until the recording sessions. I don't know before discovering it's wrong.

Also, these people must be so excited, because did you say you were looking this up at 2 o'clock in the morning and they've replied already presumably. They've been waiting. Well, because I think if you have Guinness Road records on your email address, people tend to get quite excited. And also the people who've written in and then we've rejected and then I've written back saying, actually, this might be a record.

So they're very, very excited about it. Wow. And sending pictures of these balloons and the story and, you know. That's amazing that like even though it was rejected, she's held onto it going one day, one day. They'll understand. I'm going to keep it anyway. Did the reply go, well, well, well.

Back so soon. Look who's back. He comes floating back to my balloon. Oh my God. How do people beat it if we tried to set a record? So if we hold a record. The stuff to do better than you. But do they record a video or do you have to be present?

No, we can't. We get about a thousand applications through so we can't go to everything. Yeah. So we do have some guidelines for filming it, getting an independent witness. you have to get photographs and all the stuff of the space you're doing it in send all that to us with the video and one take video as well yeah because we don't want any cuts or even two videos if you can't fit one into the frame you know

and then yeah send it in so go to guinnesswell records.com and register your application we send you the rules because every record has a set of rules that you must follow if you do that then you can attempt to it. If you set the record, then the next person who applies gets given your figure to beat. So they'll know that they have to do better than... And what qualifies as an independent observer? Does that just mean you can't be holding a gun to their head at the time?

Like, not your mum. We've had that before. We actually got reported to the queen because someone, I can't say who it is, but someone who was very famous. There's a famous organist. I'll leave it that. That narrows the feeling.

They're not that many. Anyway, he did have, I think, his mum. as a witness to the longest organ marathon in like 25 hours of playing the organ. But we then rejected it saying, well, you can't have your mum say you did it because that's nothing. So he wrote to the Queen and said, this is disgusting, because it wasn't British,

narrows it down again, wrote to the Queen to say, this is outrageous. One of your subjects has refused me, my recognition. So the Queen has to react to things. If you send her a letter, she has to do something about it. She never asked to any of mine. So then she sent it to the Department of Training Industry.

who then got in touch to say what happened with the organ it's like why what what oh my god and they understood in the end that there were guidelines and they didn't follow the guidelines so that is amazing extraordinary okay a foreign

organist I can't believe they called the queen on you who's apparently mega famous in the organ world longest organ played means very different thing obviously in other record breaking you wouldn't get your mum to witness that not again

weirdly the queen has several records I've been looking her up on Guinness World Records does she she's got a lot yeah yeah but they're all they're all things to the head

yeah they're all really like oldest current monarch longest reigning queen Charles it has to be your own head yeah yeah she came to the office once actually

I imagine during organ gate. Yes, just to sort it out herself. Yeah, no, she came because we'd won some award. Did you let her ring? Because you were saying often you don't like her. No, we did the full paint the office. I'd love it if the queen's sitting in reception next to Lucky Diamond Ridge.

We had Peter Dowd as well turned up to the office one day. Peter Dowd as well, quite famous in that world. Glutton. He has like fastest three-course meal. And he has this thing. when he swallows hot dogs whole. And that is one of the rows he can't bite them. So he is from Essex, I think.

And he weirdly opened a can, a can of hot dogs at his home and then took it on the train into London, open still, and full of brine. And turned up at the office and said, I'm Peter the Dareswell. And I knew who he was,

because it was just one of the names that I just had dealt with over the years. Oh yeah, Peter, hello. He said, I want to eat these, sausages, it's like, well, okay. I can't stop you. So this is... Have you met the queen?

Well, this is why we stop people coming to the office now because he ate of these sausages back to back. So you put it in your mouth and you push one down with the other so you have this chain. What a nightmare. How do you stop? Right.

No, you can't get any more in literally because it's like, you know, it's gone as far as it can go. Oh, wow. So do you need a ninth sausage to push in the one and then you withdraw you retract. Oh, you can get your fingers in there. Okay, sorry, cool to you. Anyway, he did it, you got the record, great. And then he said, I can also

drink milk hanging upside down. And it's like, I don't know how we, we haven't got a frame or anything, but we had two very tall boys in the office. So we got the two boys to hold him by his ankles upside down in the reception area and he drank two pints of milk. But what you have to do with this record, you have to get up very quickly,

otherwise the milk and gravity, you know. and he was trying to communicate this after the fact when he had a gallop full of milk and then sausages and he couldn't get it out so he ended up vomiting all the sausages and all the milk all over our office reception do you then have to take the record away from him we didn't get the milk one there no

he got the sausages because that's okay they stayed in long enough so the office manager's like that is it we're not having any more people come to the office manager Oh my God. The scenes outside your office are making up on their noses. How many cleaners have quit after one day? That's the main image I'm going to be left with

after this week's podcast though is the guy on the train with the open tin of sausages. Why did he open the tin before? He probably had one tin left. He opened it and he thought, oh no. Well his wife was saying, I need the tin opener here for dinner. So you're not taking that with you. Okay, that's it.

that is all of our facts. Thank you so much for listening. If you'd like to get in contact with any of us about the things that we have said over the course of this podcast, we can all be found on our Twitter accounts. I'm on at Schreiberland, Andy, at Andrew Hunter, M. Craig. At Craig, Glendey and at GWR. And Anna. You can email podcast at qI.com. Yep, or you can go to our group account, which is at no such thing, or you can go to our website. No Such Thing is a Fish.com. Do check out all of our previous episodes. You'll find them up there. You'll also find a link to our upcoming tour, which begins this. this October. And of course, do go to all online bookshops and physical bookshops to get the

latest Guinness World Records 2022. It is out now. Craig is the writer and editor of that book, along with your buddies in the office at Guinness World Records. It's an amazing book. Every year, it's amazing. So do get this one. And yeah, we'll be back again next week with another episode. We'll see you all then. Goodbye.