No Such Thing As A Fish - No Such Thing As An Arm-Wrestling Chihuahua

Episode Date: July 15, 2022

Dan, James, Anna and Andy discuss huge heads, bloated batsmen, lopsided lighthouses and 'armful arm-wrestlers.  Visit nosuchthingasafish.com for news about live shows, merchandise and more episodes.

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'm sitting here with Anna Tashinsky, Andrew Hunter Murray, and James Harkin, 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 my fact. My fact this week. is that the author George Eliot had a massive head. That's very similar to another fact that we've had a few years ago. This is sort of a sequel fact. So for fans of the show, you might have remembered in episode 265.

We delivered the jaw-breaking news that George Elliott had a secret. Jaw-slapping news. Jaw-dropping news. Yeah, but not jaw-breaking news. My facts are really aggressive. The FEMA snapping news coming to you. So what was the news we delivered then? So the jaw dropping news, no breakage, is that 50 years after she died for 50 years?

It was the fact that she had a massive hand, but that was a secret, and the family denied her having it. Anyway, so this was written in a book, which was back in the 1840s. So there was a biography that was put together of George Elliott by a writer called Matilda Blind or Mathilda Blind. I can't get the exact pronounce. Could be Blind as well. Could be what? Could be Blind. It's probably Matilda Blind.

Matild Blind. And so Matild Blind wrote a biography of her and she went round. She's South African. Matil Blund. She's a Kiwi. Sorry, she wrote an autobiography. She wrote a biography. Yeah, yeah. A biography and during the research period she went to the farm where George Elliott used to live.

And there was a couple there called the Brays. And it was Mrs. Carabray who told everyone that she had this big hand. However, when I was reading the book recently, I also discovered that her. Her husband became obsessed with George Elliott because he noticed that she also had a ginormous head. Was she just huge? Was she a giant? No, she wasn't that big. But she, I mean, I think that's why they were astounded by the size of her head.

She was taller than average, I think. Yeah. But you're not just dragging out for when you don't have a fact next time. George Elliott had a massive elbow. It's quite possible we will be back at 100 episodes tied with another feature. So Mrs. Bray wrote of her. She said she had, her head was massive. feature is powerful and rugged, her mouth large but shapely, the jaw singularly square for a woman,

unbreakable at the sound of a powerful fact, I imagine. And so Mr. Bray said, I need to get your head turned into a cast. I need to take you to London. And so we can go and we can do phrenology on it and see how... So phrenology is where you look at the shape of someone's head and you can tell their personality. Exactly. That's right. It was very popular back in those days when people started trying to work out how the brain functioned and maybe certain bits of our brain. Well, they couldn't do palm reading on her because it'd be like going through Ella and search to Tom Perdue. It sounds amazing, the report. So her head was, it was measured by a doctor called James DeVille,

and then it was analyzed by George Coombe, who was one of the leaders of the phrenological movement in the whole country. So, you know. She would have needed a very big Coombe. Oh, my gosh. And when he first saw the cast of her head, Coom, because he was doing the analysis, he was in the lab. he was in the lab. I don't think I had a lab. But anyway, he took the cast for a man's head.

That's how huge it was. You know, 22 and a quarter inches. How much bigger are men's heads than women's heads? Statistically speaking. My head is five centimetres bigger than George Eliot's. But that's good. So this is just a bit bigger than George Elliott's head. Yeah, yeah.

So if anyone sees me in the pub and you're like, oh, that's James from the podcast. Imagine my head, but five centimeters smaller. And that'll be George Eliot's. head. It's like she's there. So this is actually, now your fact has become kind of an insult to James, because what you're saying is James Harkin has a really massive head. Compared to, but then

men don't have larger heads in general than women, I think. That's true, except for Andy, apparently. I'm just looking at Andy's head. Which Anna was saying at the top of the show. Yeah, a small head. I'm not very comfortable with this line of inquiry. Have you ever, it's just listening at home, have you ever seen a match stick?

Imagine the head was a bit smaller. It actually goes in from the match after. Australians, you might know them as dickheads those matches. That's right. Yeah. And funnily, at school, a lot of the kids were Australian match fans. No, but so she was analysed by this phrenologist. And, you know, so it said that her temperament was nervous lymphatic,

which means active without endurance. And lo and behold, it turned out that she worked from 9 a.m. until 1 p.m. So she was active but didn't have endurance. And, you know, intellectual and all of this. Yeah. And she visited this guy over the years, Coom. She didn't just have her head sent to him via the casting. She actually was in his presence a few times.

Well, that's what happened. You would make the cast of the head. Yeah. And you would send it to phrenologists who were keen to sort of measure the bumps and so on. You just need to be very careful that you do specify cast before someone soles off their own head and inserts it into a package. What if, okay, here's the thing I don't get. What about your hair? So if you've got a huge hair,

that will surely obscure the lumps and bumps But you feel the bumps, you're not looking for the bumps. But this is one of the things that opponents of phrenology said, you know, this is why it's nonsense. So Oliver Wendell Holmes. Oh, yeah. He... Wait, who was he again?

I think he was a writer and a doctor, I think. He was a celebrity celebrity. I just double-checked because in my head I went, oh, Sherlock's brother. And then I realized not a real person. Definitely not, no, no. But he wrote this. He said, could you tell how much money there is in a safe

by needing its knobs with your fingers. When a man fumbles about my forehead and talks about the organs of individuality, size, etc., I trust him as much as I should, if he felt the outside of my strong box and told me there was a $5 or a $10 bill under this or that particular rivet. Okay.

Which is fair. Well, yeah. So even at the time, people did think. It was a long way of saying, this is bullshit. Yeah. Isn't it? Yeah.

Why is it keeping such small value bills in a safe box? Jesus is a point? Maybe he's on holiday. Even like then. It's just the $1,700. Yeah. That's worth a lot.

See, is it 1800s, isn't it? I think so, yeah, yeah. Right. It was his manner. But the idea was that, you know, you could have your eyeballs almost pushed out even. And this, in fact, was the first, you know, the first instance of it. So phrenology was coined, the idea of it was coined by Franz Joseph Gaul. And he said that he came up with the idea or he realized it was the truth when he noticed that

classmates in his class could memorize these massive long bits of text. And the ones that could memorize it had quite bulging eyes. he said they had big salient eyes and he said this must mean that the organ of verbal memory is sitting right behind your eyes and if you're really going to remember himself it's pushing them out. So I don't know if your eyes just drop out of your face entirely

if you've got a really good memory. But then yeah, he's the father of it really, wasn't he? Yeah. The thing I liked about it though is he wasn't, this goal character, he wasn't onto the wrong idea really because all he got... No, that's... Wait a sec.

I think... It was definitely all bullshit. Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. But, you know, modern day brain understanding is that certain bits of the brain are compartmentalized to certain things, music and so on and emotions and right thinking, left thinking, all that. He didn't come up with that idea. So someone else had come up with that idea and he thought, oh, well, what if I took that idea and then made the bump thing a thing? Right.

I could just see that. If I was around at that time, I definitely would have believed it. It just sounds so, obviously. Yeah. I think you would have as well. Yeah, you would. It's just quite. I think I would.

It's very hard to put yourself in the world. of credulousness is tiny, actually. Phrenology is basically astrology, isn't it? Or it was sort of a version of astrology in that it seemed to tell people things that were vague enough that they could go, yeah, that sounds exactly like me. Like Bannon's statements. It mostly wasn't, the reports you got from a formalities

were very rarely, you're a wanker. It was always... Oh, you've got a nice organ of this and an organ of this. And I don't think... I don't think they've often said, you've got the organ of the killer. No, but they told everyone else. after they love you, there's up.

But it was used to suggest that other races were lower. It was used in a very racist sense. Yeah, you're genesis. To be honest, it was mostly used to whatever your belief was. It was used to kind of strengthen that. So for instance, there was a woman called Mrs. Hamilton. She was known as she was from Ayrshire, and she would go around talking about phrenology.

But she said that because the bumps on a woman's head were generally the same as the bumps on a man's head, this proved that women. had exactly the same intellectual capacity as men's. And she went around saying, yeah, well, you know, this proves feminism. See, I knew it was bullshit, but that is the nail in the coffin of phonology there, isn't it? What the hell is you're on about? Ordeban got phonologized, John James Alderman, the big bird man.

He did all the bird sketches and stuff. And actually, he was a huge. He wasn't a bird man who studied birds. He was a man who studied birds, yeah. The naturalist who was sort of the leading authority on birds that time and his books full of beautiful drawings. And he wrote in his diary, I was astounded when I had my reading because they said that I must be a strong and constant lover,

an affectionate father. I would have made a great general and that I was extraordinarily generous. I know all these to be facts, so I'm amazed that they discovered them. I'm amazed at the person who you're paying to do your phrenology said, oh, apparently it says you're very generous.

And your tips. Yeah. You guys remember Aaron Burr? Yeah. Of Burr and Hamilton Of musical fame Vice President of America Well Aaron Burr was cast

His head was cast But after his death And they found that he had lots of secretiveness And destructiveness Did he die in the jewel No No he lived he survived the duel And then ran away I think

Yeah he died on his deathbed Many many years ago He was such a mistake He should never have gone there He didn't die on a field When you're in John Lewis Don't pick the death bed Hi I'm looking for a death bed

Yeah Are you sure Some celebrity fans, just quickly. Modern Day once? No. Not Kim Kardashian or... No, Arthur Conan Doyle. Yeah, of course.

I mean, after course. Poor old, Conan Doyle. I wish I've been friends with him. The pranking you could have got done Arthur. That's been epic. Queen Victoria as well and Prince Albert. They had studies done by George Coon. Can I just say, Andy.

When you say some sort of... celebrities. I thank God you're not bucking celebrity love island. Well, I've got as Queen Victoria and Francis Gall.

You'd want to see it. You'd want to see it. Dead. Was there a deathbed in Matthew? Shit. Another deathbed. Anyway, they appointed them.

Barack Obama. Find someone living Friday. End that sentence, James. Sorry. He's into, no, no. You don't let me finish my sentence.

I'm sorry, okay. Barack Obama is a subject. of an incredibly weird book called the phrenology of Barack Obama. It's a self-published book by a guy called Benza Magos. And apparently he looked at a mysterious head scar on Obama's head that the mass media refuses to discuss. And according to him, this is evidence that Obama once had a horn. And leads ultimately to the satanic endgame revealed by the demon horn of monster.

I can't believe the Guardian isn't reporting on this. That's outrageous. It feels like he's missed the boat because he just served two terms and then left office in an orderly fashion. What's Mollock's end game here? Maybe it took a while to find a publisher. Wow. I'm definitely buying it. That sounds awesome.

Yeah, this guy, Coom, just going back to the casting of... of true celebrities. He did very famous people. He did Prince Albert's head. So George Elliott was having her head done by the guy did Prince Albert. He did William Blake as well. Or rather he studied,

it was someone else who Coom didn't do it. It was a different person, wasn't it? Yeah, James DeVille. But where are these casts? Where's George Elliot's head? This room actually is the inside of the cast. They used it to the Statue of Liberty. That's actually the actual sidehub.

For the movie, for the phrenology movie. They never knew where it was. Wip pan out to New York. Yes, yes. Mount Rushmore. Bore their hands. Gives a little thumbs up with his massive hand. Okay, it is time for fact number two, and that is Anna.

My fact this week is that the chef who cooked for Lord's cricketers on match days for 35 years was once asked to limit their meals to five courses, and she refused. So this was a woman called Nancy Doyle And she Yeah, she was the tea lady at Lord For 35 years until 1996 I think she retired And she liked to make them large

Large meals So obviously in cricket you've got meals codified And you have to take your lunch break It's in the rules It's so amazing That they're actually in the rules of cricket It says Unless the umpires and captains together

Agree to alter it Lunch shall be taken at the agreed time. It's actually in the rules that you have to have lunch. And the captains of each team decide on what time lunch is happening, how long for?

What other sport has a conversation like that when you're about to flick the coin for who bats first or whatever? By the way, what time are we having? What are we having to roast today? Oh, okay, so that's probably needed to know. So Mrs. Doyle.

Mrs. Doyle, she, well, her typical menu seem to be for lunch you'd have soup, then a starter. then... Well, you've got to... Because you've got to moisten your... Absolutely. I suppose.

Then it's started. Then roast meat and potatoes. And she also served chips and vegetables. It's quite hard to know. This is just on an example list that I think Mike Brearley gave of what she'd serve up. Chips and vegetables.

Then a dessert. Then a cheese board. Then you get back onto play. But of course, in cricket, every two hours. Because although they decide when you have meals, it's pretty much every two hours is the general rules, roughly,

for when you eat. So two hours later, you get back on. and she's made you a huge cake. And there you go. So there was this moment where Mike Brewery said in the 70s. Mike Brewery was... Mike Brewery was the England captain at the time.

He said to her, do you know what? I don't know if it's good for the game. The guys can't stand up after lunch. And she replied... He was like, could we possibly make the meals a bit lighter? And she said, but in an Irish accent, tell you what, Michael, I won't tell you how to feck and bat and you don't tell me how to feck and cook.

Okay? Amazing. Wow. And that was it. she was apparently terrifying. Someone called her a small yet volcanic, so I think he didn't ask again. She also couldn't cook. No.

There's no snob on her whatsoever, but she said she'd never read a cookbook. She didn't use weighing scales, and she didn't follow recipes. But that shows having a natural affinity to cooking. Her organ of cooking was absolutely massive. She was taught by nuns, wasn't she? Like, she did get taught, yeah.

She just didn't. I think being able to cook without a recipe is... No, that is the mark of quality. I found a bit of a scandal researching this fact I thought tea in cricket was the most English thing Right It's not English

It's Australian It was introduced by Australia It was imported Australia started doing us in about the 1880s And then a captain called Joe Darling Brought it over Tea Darling The Tea Darling

In 1890 but even then It was brought onto the field So they would bring you a cup of tea where you stood. And there are photos of England players just standing around with waitresses, you know, just bringing them a tea trolley, basically. And it wasn't standard until about 1905

that players went off and had their teeth. So it was an Aussie thing. Very cool. You were saying about how Nancy can't cook, Andy. She can't cook curries. That is one thing. She can't cook anything anymore because she is dead. She couldn't cook. Dead dead dead.

It was a, what kind of dad? It was a deathbed thing, yeah. Another cause of death. No, she couldn't cook curries, I should have said. Because during tests, when England's playing people like India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, they want to have food which they had at home. And so they want to have curries. And she couldn't cook them.

And so she brought her daughter, Jeanette in. Jeanette, who was a nurse, was apparently a brilliant curry maker. So she would come in and make the curries. I love that. Just get professional cooks, guys. No. No. She was a nurse.

Get a nurse. Get a nurse. who might have left some really ill people to die. I'm just going to leave these deathbeds. I'll be fine. Curries have been a problem in the past for English cricketers. So back, you know, when they do big tours of India and Pakistan, and in the 70s and 80s when curry was less common here

and people weren't used to eating it, a lot of the players found it quite difficult. And Alex Stewart, in fact, who was a player in the 80s, said that he basically, before they were doing a tour of India, him and Jack Russell, who I hadn't heard of Jack Russell, but they couldn't hack the Indian food. And so before they'd fly out to Pakistan, they said they'd do a trip to Tesco,

and they'd just buy, Alex would buy 43 chicken breasts, 43 days worth of mashed potatoes, and 43 days worth of broccoli. And every day he'd just make himself chicken breast, broccoli, mashed potatoes. Did he say going to India? Quite a hot country. Are these chicken breasts refrigerators or are they just loose in his case?

That is horrible. Just went into the separating chicken case. Look, I think they probably had some kind of refrigeration technology. I don't know if we ever mentioned this on the podcast, that when the Beatles went to India to see the Maharaja, not the Maharaja, the guru, wasn't it? They went to see their guru who was going to teach them transcendental meditation and how to free their minds and all of this.

And Ringo Starr took a suitcase of baked beans. Did we say that? Yeah, yeah, yeah, great, great. Well, that's because he had digestion problems from childhood when he was hospitalized and nearly died in hospital. Wow. Just getting the facts in. Whereas Alex Stewart was just being a bit of a bore,

which in fact, Atherton wrote in his autobiography, and I feel like this might cause some tension with your teammate. So Atherton was in Captain, played with Stuart, said, Alex Stewart has a narrow focus on sport and life. I do wonder, and he said this of his meal choices in India, I do wonder whether he'll look back with regret at some of the missed opportunities that touring life offers. But you can say the same about me when we go on tour,

and I'm sure you all three do. I don't hear you, though, because it's after an IPM, and I'm in bed. You do have a lot of courses on your breakfast every morning. Oh, my God. Yes, you do. That's true, but I have brought them all from home, and I've stolen in the suitcase. I've just brought 350 waffles. I went to a cricket match once, and it was sponsored by soaring maltloaf.

Oh, lovely. Yeah, delicious. And so there was a guy there, and he was handing out three bits of maltloaf to everyone. But no one really likes maltloaf, and everyone likes beer in watching Lancashire cricket. And so everyone just started throwing maltloaf at him. My God. And he refused to give any more Maltloaf to anyone and everyone got really upset

because they wouldn't give him any Maltloaf. But hell, they only wanted it to throw at the guy who's handing it up. If he removes himself, the loop closes. Well, he did exactly the right thing as far as I'm concerned. But the 20,000 people in Old Trafford did not see it the same way. I love Maltloaf. I'd have been grubbing around

picking it up with my big net standing near him. What is it? I don't think you've had it. It's absolutely delicious. We're not sponsored this week by Mollove. I do. Sorry, if you're listening. It's a kind of fruity bread, basically.

Yeah, it's very delicious. Although I think any beer drinker worth his salt, if he loves beer that much, can turn a malt loaf into a beer. It's got malt in it. Surely. You blend that. And a cricket match over five days.

Eventually it's going to ferment. Exactly. Just on a sort of eating and drinking in cricket, and drinking specifically, there's a cricket called Gary Sobers, and I want you to remember that. Oh, I see how we're going here. I'm trying to work out which road you were going to go down now.

Almost a sentence person. You need up to be here. Yeah, if he married a double barrel with Helen Up. Yeah. Anyway, Gary Sobers, he batted his last century while drunk. And not even just a bit tipsy. This sounds like a mad experience. So he was playing at Lords.

He played for the West Indies. And he'd been out clubbing until nine in the morning. And he was batting that day. And he was going to. straight into bat so he got in at nine he's completely hammered and he's solidly drinking for you know 12 hours straight he batted amazingly well he hit 132 extraordinary but then begged to be taken off because he said suddenly he sort of started to sober up the come down soles to look up to his name and the come down and the

sobering up and the hangover so he was taken off with a stomach complaint after about 132 and then he was brought off but felt quite bad about it and so ended up being apparently according to him revived with a couple of large poor and brandies. Oh my God. I didn't know. Port and brandy. I've not heard of that as a drink.

It's like a very old-fashioned Yeagerbomb, basically. I think that was what it was. Yeah. Can you come back on to cricket? I thought once you've got... That's sick. Oh, okay. I didn't know that.

Yeah. So he returned. He returned, hit 150, not out, and then the England retired. Wow. I wonder if that's still, the drinking still goes. W.G. Grace, for example. So he was around in the 18,

late 18, his choice of drink during matches was if he was coming off he would drink champagne you know during the match all the way through and at lunch he would have whiskey as his choice of drink so he was you know bladdered the whole time that he was playing or you know comfortably merry as opposed to drunk yeah I wonder if that still happens of course it doesn't and this I think this is one of the great tragedies of all sports because of course it doesn't because they've all changed in the last 30 years so dramatically like anything you watch tennis football cricket One of them are pissed.

It's ridiculous. Stone calls over and they're eating these crazy diets. I think there should be a rule that says no professional sports people are allowed to eat anything outside of what they would normally eat or drink. And then you just have to play like that, which is basically how they did it until the 70s or 80s, isn't it? Agassi won quite a seminal match in his career

with a giant hangover from the night before. And he played so well with the hangover that he did think, am I going to have to do this for every match? This is so good. And it's kind of like, what's the chops? Usain Bolt

who at the Beijing Olympics I think 2008 he pretty much only had chicken nuggets and broke about three world rats trusted the local cuisine that was the thing he brought them all

he bought 43 days work and they were pretty off by the end there are two cricketers for India called Rishab Pant and Ishan Kishan and when they get together

they just eat any old crap and apparently their favorite thing is they get a bun they put some chocolate ice cream on the bread and then they put nando sauce on top of that and then they put a piece of chicken on top of that and they eat it and they reckon if you eat that it guarantees you're going to score runs the next day right wow as anyone put it to a scientific testing rigorous testing process these are great cricketers you know okay yeah it's two of the best in the world yeah actually they're doing what they're doing what you want anna they're

just combining all the unhealthy foods into one meal like i'm very hard to please Good on them But the Sri Lankan cricketers have been banned from eating biscuits This is a few years ago actually But they were losing games And the government decided to get involved And the Sri Lankan government

Gave them an ultimatum and said Start winning matches Are we're going to get rid of your biscuits And they didn't They didn't win matches And they lost their biscuits No And Lassif Malinga

Who's a really famous bowler He talked about the comments Of the sports minister and said What does a monkey know about a parrot's nesting hollow. What an amazing burn. That's a sick bit of sledging. I just love the idea of one of them going into a shop,

trying to buy some biscuits. And the shopkeeper looking under the counter where the entire squad's photos are up. To be honest, if his lastiff malinger is very clear what he looks like, he's... Okay, he's a distinctive looking. Very distinctive. There's no way he got a biscuit in the whole country.

Oh, man. Him loitering outside a shop asking him of 10-year-olds all that way. Couldn't get me some garibaldies, could you please? Okay, it is time for fact number three, and that is Andy. My fact is that Northern Ireland contains the world's only upside-down lighthouse. So was that an architectural cock-up? Or maybe to scare moles away from the... Exactly.

They've got a massive mole problem. Aquatic moles. And no, it is so weird, because genuinely, it's not just a low... So it's got a tower, but the tower is above the light. But it's just for anyone who's picturing in their head a lighthouse that's been flipped upside to have. It's unfortunately not an all like that. It is in no way that.

I'm sorry, it is exactly that. Andy, explaining exactly what it is. Thank you. We'll see if it's exactly what Dan thinks it is. It's on an island called Rathlin, which is off the coast of Northern Ireland. Okay. And the lighthouse was built into the cliff face at the island's edge. Right.

And they wanted a lighthouse because they wanted to warn shipping about, you know, the island and its presence. but the problem is the island is often covered in fog. Right. It's covered in fog. So if you were to have the lighthouse installed on the cliffs at the bottom of the cliffs and the light up at the top of the cliffs, the light will be lost in the fog. So they built the tower, which is where all the supplies are kept in the stores and the spare lenses for the light bulb and all of this stuff.

But the actual light itself is at the bottom of the cliffs, and that's the thing that means it can be seen more. So it's like they've sliced the top off a lighthouse and then put it down in front of the rest of the lighthouse. Exactly. Or have they put it all in reverse order? No. You have to climb down the stairs upside down together. Yeah. So it's sort of a little, it's sitting in front of the tower. It's not directly underneath the table.

It's a lighthouse and the bulb is at the bottom, not at the top. It's an upside down lighthouse. So it's not like in the daytime. It makes a dark area. That's an inside out. Yeah, that's okay. Sorry. I always get a mixed up.

And it's just a, it's just, just a very cool thing. And it had, um, it's been, it was built in about 1912, I think, so it's, uh, what, 110 years old now. And also, I've read this about Rathlin Island. I can't, I don't know if it's true. That it's the island where Robert the Bruce went after a battle. And it's where he saw the useless spider. That is true.

Well, the fact that, whether that happened or not, it's definitely said to have happened on Rathlin. Yeah. It's said to have happened in a cave underneath the lighthouse, uh, but not that lighthouse. Oh, wow. There's an east lighthouse and a west lighthouse. house and the rob of the Bruce one is the other one.

Okay, okay. So the story is, isn't it? He was in a Scottish guy. He's gone away from where the battles are. He sat down. He's worried. There's a spider there. The spider keeps trying to make a web, keeps trying to jump over, keeps failing and eventually he makes it and he thinks, if at first you don't succeed,

try, try again. And he goes back and gets dashed on the rocks because of this useless lighthouse. The lights at the bottom. They also have fog bells sometimes lighthouses Because it is a problem A lot that you can't see a lighthouse If it's obscured by fog

And it sounds like they haven't really cracked it So they have bells which A is a lighthouse keeper I suppose you had to in the olden days Before everything was automated You had to just ring them kind of constantly So I think you'd ring them about Two rings every 15 seconds in fog To let ships know that you were there

And it only travelled about 100 metres So I think the light from whitehouses can travel many, many kilometres, can't it? It's like, nine, more than that, kilometres. But it couldn't travel that far. And you could wind them up, the bells,

so you'd wind them up really, really, really far. And then it could, as it unwound, like a clock, it could do 10,000 strikes. Wow. Cool. Yeah. The Rathland Island fog signal can be heard 20 miles away. So they've got an audio signal as well.

Yeah, yeah, they have a fog signal too. Yeah, yeah. It's pretty cool. They're very cool places, lighthouses. You know the beautiful lighthouse lens that you see, which looks almost like a shanknowing like a chandelier. It's got loads of cut faces and sides and edges and it's incredibly complicated. It looks, you know, it's not just a big lamp. That is the creation of a guy called Augustin Jean

Frenel, who was, by the way, the one who realized that light is a transverse wave. Big deal guy. Or is it, though? Oh. Okay. I don't think we got time to get into that. Yeah, you know, you're right. But basically, the lenses would have been incredibly heavy if you just made a single lens. So he created this clever lens, which can be much thinner, but it has, dozens of prisms and they all focus the light. So you do get a beam using much less glass. But the really cool thing about those heavy great lenses at the top is they were created to float.

Mercury? Mercury. They float in this mercury bath. And it's so cool because mercury is so dense. It's 14 times dense of the mortar. And if you drop a lump of solid steel into mercury, it will float. And really float really high up in it. Right.

And so the whole lighthouse top was just floating on this. She's quite dangerous. So dangerous. Yeah. Don't call it a bath. If you're in that house with kids, they'll try and bath in that at that point. What do you think the US Coast Guard's only lighthouse keeper has in common

with the English female cricketer who has the highest ever score in a test match? Long arms. Yeah? So she could change the light bulb. How many lighthousekeepers does it take without going up? And obviously as a cricketer, it's good to have more than us. You need your grabs, don't you? Yeah, yeah. It's not that. I think.

What are they having caught? Okay, what are they haven't caught? Wait, wait. The US only lighthouse keeper on the book. The US Coast Cards only lighthouse keeper. I would guess you're not going to guess that. If it's the answer, I think, I reckon you're not going to guess it. Unless you know, one of both of them.

So this could be one of those long games like the other day. What was it the other day we had? Which artist? Bloody stained glass. This is going to last. It's way longer than that, by the way. She doesn't live in a lighthouse. She does.

Red and white. She lives in a lighthouse. Actually, we don't know that, do you know where she goes? Hang on, hang on, I do know this. Okay, cricketers wear white, don't they? Oh, yeah. And the ball is red. Yeah.

Now, what are the typical colours of a lighthouse? They're red and white. Okay, so take that knowledge. Yeah. And forget about it. I try to think of something else. Okay. The Coast Guard surname is Lighthouse, and her surname is Coast Guard.

You're so close. They have very similar surname. Okay. Think of something that's white. Something else that's white. You know the answer? Cocaine. They're both called cocaine.

They're both called cocaine. Yeah. The U.S. Coast Guard's only lighthouse keeper is called Sally Snowman. And the highest score ever by an English female cricketer in a test match was by Betty Snowball. Oh my God. So it's not even something they've got in common. Is this something quite similar? We've got the word snow.

Oh, my God. I'd count that. That's a real fair question. a million dollar question on who ought to be a millionaire that's like who would know that James what can my phone a friend be James I'm there going option B please red and white is the thing that links them she's how to retire Sally Snowman has she yeah last year I think which one she the lighthouse keeper right yeah yeah no more walking in the air for her um because when you're at the top of the lighthouse it must

feel like you're floating in the moonlit sky yeah that's good I wonder she blasted that out in times of fog you could hear walking in the air and abducted boys at night, yes. And now all that's left in that lighthouse is a solitary carrot. Did you know that I am a member of the Association of Lighthousekeepers? Are you? Yeah. Did you join it just for this episode?

I joined it yesterday. Really? And I got to say. The ALK. You an alcoholic. I am. And it's fun. Have you got a posting yet?

Do we have to do a podcast from Lighthouses from here? Right. But you don't have to be a lighthouse keeper to join. That's the wonderful thing. Evidently, a few joined. Unless you've also got a job as a lighthouse keeper just to join. Those are news guys. No, but it's really good. Just to say, quick shout out to them.

It's very reasonable price for a year's membership. And I think you might get a sticker for your car. Anything else you get for it? You get their quarterly journal, Lamp. Right. And I've read a bit of it. I've read a sample online. It's really good.

Is it? Yeah. What are they, like, is it largely just the latest in Lighthouse News? Shining a light on Lighthouse? Yeah, exactly, yeah. They don't do exposees or anything like that. It's just lots of news from the lighthouse community and, you know. You've been quite cagey about how much it was, but what is a reasonable price to pay?

Also, can I ask, what is the sticker? Is it like my other car is a lifel? My other headlamp is a Fresnel lens. How much was it? I don't want to seem flash, but it was 18 pounds for a year. 18 quid? For one joke and we might cut out. They'll almost certainly will get that.

I know. I'm worried that this is going to take over your life gradually and when you quit the podcast in five years this is the moment we should have known. Wow, you think I've got to last five more years on the show. I'm incredibly blessed it. I just have one weird lighthouse, one of my favorite lighthouses,

is I think basically an unnecessary lighthouse is the lighthouse in Machias Seal Island. So this is... Machinace Seal. Machias, M-A-A-S. Where's that? It's a tiny little island. just between the US and Canada.

And it's positioning it's crucial because... It's a land border most of that, isn't it? Yeah. Famously. But it's on like if you sort of continue the border, basically. It's in the Atlantic Ocean. Got it. A sort of...

Between Maine and... You know... Exactly, between Maine and New Brunswick. And so it's disputed because both countries want ownership of this tiny, uninhabited island. I think because you can claim fishing rights around a certain circumference of it if you do claim it.

So it's... been argued over since 1832 and Canada to stake its own claim for the last 25 years has just kept a lighthouse keeper in a lighthouse on there to stamp its identity on the island and it's this guy called Ralph Eldred. Same guy? It's been the same guy for 25 years. It's actually two guys and they alternate one month on one month off. But they're fun guys. I read an interview with Ralph a couple of years ago where the interviewer said, because it's just him,

the interviewer said, are you a lonely person, Ralph? And he said, Lonely's the wrong word. Independent is better. Let's say, I like me, best of all. And then the interviewer just goes, divorced, Ralph?

Yes. There was a bit of Lighthouse News this year. So you might be seeing it in Lamp later on. Great. In your quarter of the six months' time to be here. What time was right?

And that was, there was a film festival which took place in a lighthouse this year. It was a Swedish film festival, the Gotterburg Film Festival, and 60 movies were played in total at this festival, and they were played entirely to one human. Did they use the light from the lighthouse? As a projector. Did you have to keep walking around the top?

There were 19 shipwrecks next morning. Sailors were so entranced, watching Back to the Future Three. That's so cool So was it a particular kind of film As in was there a genre No no I mean It was that film recently with Robert Pattinson Was I aware of a lighthouse

And they played two lighthousekeepers Were going mad Yeah yeah No no it's a collection of independent film making Yeah I just thought it sounds like a horror film festival You know we're going to trap you in the lighthouse And show you 60 films

Well no it was a it was a COVID thing that happened And so they couldn't put the festival on as they wanted to And actually sorry I slightly got it wrong so it might have already been in an issue of lamp. This was 2021, so you might have missed out on the story just. I'm sure that you can get back issues. Yeah. So, yeah, well, the idea was they were going to have to go online

and just stream it online for the entire sort of board. That was literally the opposite of playing it to one person. It was playing it to everyone with internet access in the world. For one thing they wanted to do was make it special. And so they did a competition. 12,000 people applied for it. And this one person, Lisa Enthroff, won it. And so she got sent by boat to this island.

they took away all of her electronics. She had just a little iPad. It sounds like a horror film. It does sound like a horror film. There was one person on the island who was checking on her once a day just to make sure that she was okay. The murderer, as he's otherwise known, yes.

And she was there for a week watching these 60 films. So she had to watch about nine films a day, which is presumably about 18 hours. She's underslap. She doesn't really be better to me. No, it's true. Did she have to watch them?

Did she get tested on afterwards? The creepy caretaker of the island will do a little film quiz after every single way. And who played the butler? What does the cricketer get to snowball? I'm in common. Okay, it's time for our final fact of the show, and that is James.

Okay, my fact this week is that in 2007, a Japanese arm wrestling arcade machine was recalled when it broke three players' arms. See, I am amazed it wasn't recalled after breaking one player's arm. No, they thought, let's let it break a few more. No, I think they happened, all the breaks happened in a short enough time that they couldn't recall it before they... What an afternoon at the arcade, that must have been, you know, ringing the third ambulance. Yeah, amazingly, actually, we are going to contact the manufacturers now, yes. Possibly three kids who were holding it at the same time trying to be the big boss. That's a good idea.

Three snaps. They were all in the same trench coat standing on each other's shoulders. I'm afraid you've lost the arm, but we have replaced it with one of these claw grubbers. with which you won't be able to grab anything at all. Just try and have your breakfast every morning. You just grab the spoon and then just drop it before it gets your mouth. No, so this is a company called Atlas and the game was called Arm Spirit. And what they said, this was an article from the BBC,

is that probably the players got a bit over-excited and maybe they twisted their arms in a slightly weird way because the game was, it was like a fake arm. and then you would grab hold of a fake arm and you would play an arm wrestling game against it and they were like 10 levels and it went from the easiest level which was a French maid famously weak

a lot of lugging to do when you're a French maid some of those dusters are extremely heavy with all the feathers look at George Elliot that's where she got her hand from milking all them cows I don't French maid is not the same as like a cow maid milkmaids

French milk maids don't wear the little lace outfit. They're quite different. If you go to Anne Summers and Asper a milkmaid outfit, do you mean Frenchmaid? No, no. It makes sense. Complete with others. After the Frenchmaid, you might fight against a drunken martial arts master, a Chihuahua dog, and the final is against a professional arm wrestler.

And it gets harder and harder each time, so in the end. That's not the order I would put that in. You're saying a Chihuahua dog is better at arm wrestling than a drunken martial arts master. Doesn't seem that way, does it? How drunken, yeah. Yeah. If he's unconscious, then possibly. I can see, though, how an arm breakage might happen based on a video that I watched. On YouTube, there's lots of videos where you can see people playing not this game, not arm spirit,

but there's another game called Over the Top. And very similar. I think it's exactly the same game, basically. I think that's a... Also, sorry, just for legal reasons, probably not exactly the same. Yes, probably there's no Chihuahua, for example, over the top. And so you've got the big bulky hand there. And I watched a video of a super strong guy.

take on the final boss and he was holding it and my God he was like really going for it and someone leans over next to him and says when I tried to beat the big box I totally cheated I lent in I got my arms underneath it I went so I can imagine by manipulation of your body in weird ways to try and beat it a snap might occur when you buckle

I can see that yeah yeah isn't over the top as a move isn't it in arm wrestling it's where you kind of twist your wrist a little bit of it's where you put your fingers over the top of their hand but they're probably meant to be anyway if they're holding your whole hand in their hand. Yeah. You're not going to do very well.

Okay. Yeah. But I, so can I just check with... There are moves. There are proper moves in armrest. There are sort of, I think, a couple of dozen different techniques. As in, you know, if you're watching with an expert of the game, they'll say, ah, he's trying the French defense now or whatever. So I got to be.

But he's wearing a French maid outfit. What were you going to say, Anna? I was just going to establish it was the kid's fault. Is that what? That seems to be where we're landing on this. The company said, They were playing it in a weird way. Who do we think is likely it to sue?

I think is the question we need to answer. I think there was no, as far as I could see, I could see any later news stories that explained whether anyone had sued anyone. I feel like some parents got some real large quantities of cash behind the scenes for that. I don't know what happened on that. But I wouldn't like to comment. But on breakage does happen in arm wrestling. Yeah, yeah.

Notatively regularly. Apparently, this is according to John Bzeng, who is the Guinness Board of records, the greatest arm wrestler of all time. He says that the people who break their arms tend to be beginners because you get incredibly strong when you're starting out arm wrestling, but you haven't actually built up kind of the bone and tendon resilience. So you don't know your own strength. You break your own arm.

You literally push so, so, so hard that your bone just snaps. And it's really horrible. There was a match in Cumbria in 2018. It was like a farmer's event. and there were various kind of fun things like a little fairground ride or a little, you know, shoot the tail off the donkey or whatever. They do at those things.

Is that what they do? Not really. Welcome to Anna's Fair. Okay, look. This was nothing like my fantasy fair. This was just a normal fair. There was an armressing contest. A 20-year-old girl broke her arm incredibly badly.

It sounds like she was resting another girl. It was in a huge amount of pain. Her opponent fainted, which I can really imagine doing if you're armressing someone, you know when you see one of those snappages that were at a right angle to the arm. So her opponent fainted.

And then they interviewed, I think this is on the BBC, they interviewed the paramedic, Andrew Dickinson, who said, this is what happened, the opponent fainted, but he also added, the rest of the day was absolutely fantastic.

It ended in a dance where 600 people attended and we were on site until 1.30 in the morning. Is that good paramedicing? I guess if you're the on-site paramedic, if you were summoned to take her to hospital, it's very bad paramedic.

It's not clear They're starting the dance now Would you mind if we just kept the engine running A little bit longer So I always wondered Because I'm not actually a professional Unwrestle of myself No, no no

I'm a member of the association You got a magazine Slam Impossible to pick it up But I I thought that the rule was That you couldn't hold the table Right

Actually in the professional game They install pegs in the table For you to hang on to So it's all about the rest of your body as well. Cheating. I can believe it. Yeah, I thought it was just about your arm. Am I right? I've got an old memory of you, James, of you and me hanging out,

and you saying to me, I have an unbeatable technique. And then we did it, and you almost broke my arm, basically, in my attempt to. So you know how to not be able to face. I do, but I have to really, you know, I have to trick you into position, basically. So I was upside down. Okay. There's a way, basically, if I would. was to arm wrestle you and we kept the table on my right hand side and your left hand side

and we arm wrestled on that table, then I would be pulling with my arm and you'd be pushing with your arm and the pulling muscle is way stronger than the pushing muscle so you can beat anyone and it's like a pub trick where you can win a pint of something, that kind of thing. But if you've got any brains on you, you insist, surely you do it over a table, right? Yeah, but if you're in a bar, you might be a bar, right? That's why it works in a pub. Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah.

Yeah. Anyway, I have injuries now that means I can't do arm wrestling. I have something called tenosinovitis of the first compartment of the wrist. He's a very common thing that arm wrestlers get. And yeah, it's like arm wrestler's thumb, it's called. Did you get it from arm wrestling? No, I got the version, which is also known as Mum's Thumb. I got it from carrying my baby too much.

But you can get the same injury from carrying. a baby in the wrong way as you can get from arm wrestling in the wrong way. Well, it's better than getting the one they call Wanker's Colleg. So you mentioned John Brzeenk there, Anna, the great arm wrestling champion. Yeah. So he is the guy who the main bit of culture about arm wrestling ever to exist in the world is based on. Oh, what's that? It's the movie over the top, which is a Sylvester Stallone film, which we have briefly mentioned fleetingly.

in passing in the past. Basically, he plays a character called Lincoln Hawke, whose character's name changes about twice as the film continues. It's that level of attention to detail. And, you know, he has to arm wrestle his way to winning a big prize and to a relationship with his son. But it's based on John Brazank. And this is the really nice thing.

John Brazank worked for decades as a mechanic at Delta Airlines so that he could arm wrestle because he wanted to travel. His main expenditure was plane tickets, two arm wrestling competitions, whereas if he worked as a mechanic at Delta Airlines, free transport. Does that also mean that if you're in, let's say the world championships in Reykivik or something,

and you want to go home, but there's a problem with the plane and he's in the middle of an arm wrestling championship, you have to wait. Everyone has to wait, yeah, yeah. That's true. Or if he sees a competitor heading towards the championship, he can mess up a piece on the plane.

Oh, that's cool. What? He's not saying to a crash, just so it doesn't take off. Yeah, just throw something small into the engine, you know, anyway. But, God, you know, You wouldn't want to share an armrest with him, would you? Depends which sign are.

Depends what it's hard. But he... I think his both arms are probably strong. I was looking at pictures of all armrests, desperately hoping to find like one puny, flaccid little stringy arm and one huge one. There is a difference, though. There is a difference in size,

and it's roughly the difference between George Elliott's head and James Harkin's head. It's the... Yeah, five centimeters. Right. That's interesting. Because you get some, some of them are experts with just the right hand,

and some of them are experts with just a left hand and I think the women's champion last year won both right hand and left hand. Yeah. I forgot her name. So are there are there people who just never play each other? Yeah, of course. Because if you're right-handed and there's a champion who's a left-handed, how are you ever going to meet them?

Yeah. You can't both sit on the same side of the table. Wow. What if you're good at backhand arm wrestling as such? What do you mean? So if I went that way... Well, like I told you, it's really hard to pull things that in that direction compared to pushing with your other muscles. Hang on.

But it makes sense of Andy's. We're sitting next to each other and I'm pushing this way and you're pushing this way. I don't think we've been better at a new spot. No, hang on. I think we may have. Arm pulling. Isn't that? You have exactly the same position as arm wrestling, but you have to pull.

You have to sit next to each other. Well, you just have to pull. You have to pull. So you slam your own arm down. I mean, I think we've mentored a sport that's even less excited to watch an armrest. But are you saying they have the right-handed championships and they say, and now we're going to have the left-handed championship. Yeah.

It's different categories. It's like different weights in boxing, but you've just got different arms. Is there any other sport that does that? Yeah, in boxing, you can only punch with your right hand, and then some people are really good at only punch him with the left hand. I don't believe you. No, because I'm not telling the tree.

Can I just quickly mention with Over the Top this movie and with John Brzeenck? Basically, when Over the Top was going into production, they did a thing for part of the promotion where they actually set up this massive arm wrestling championship that was called Over the Top. once the movie was green-lit so they went, let's actually do this. And so they did it as this,

both it was a sort of national thing in America, but then they had international qualifying rounds that would happen in places like Japan, and they had a final in Las Vegas. And the final, when all of these competitors from all around the country came together, that was the footage that makes it into the final of the film. And so, yeah, and so you see real arm wrestlers

who were part of this big tournament. Well, you would have to have real arm wrestlers, otherwise you have normal actors with, presumably like fake arms. The problem was that they wanted to use real arm wrestlers to fight or to do the arm wrestle with Stallone in the final of the movie, but they were all too big. It was unrealistic.

So they did get an... I thought they weren't big enough because it's more about technique. They've got more normal arm lookings than the huge weightlifting muscles. Some of them are massive arms. I don't know. Cleve Dean, who was the main arm wrestler at the time, was ginorous. And they said this is so impractical that you would win this. Like, for instance, Garth, all arms, Carlson.

Well, he does sound like he's got big arms Or tiny the rest of him It's such a weird name, isn't it? All right. It does imply he's got some nine arms Yeah Yeah, yeah Terry big man Barton is another one

They're all big men I've seen videos They're very WD-40 nicknames Aren't they? They're not No one's called The Smokescreen or The Diplomat The next one I could find was

Vern, the one-armed bandit, Martel And I don't know why you're laughing Because he lost his arm In a motorcycle accident Did he? Yeah, one of them. I said he was actually one arm?

Oh my goodness. It actually did have one arm. Oh, my God. But yeah, he started going back into tournaments again after his accident. Right. Which did he lose his good arm? No, he lost his less good arm. That's incredible.

Because you can't hold on to the peg. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So he became the best in the world in the non-able body class, but he also came forth in the regular able body class once, which is pretty amazing. Yeah. Yeah. Some arcade game stuff.

Yeah. You know those penny pushers where you put like 2P in and there's like some shells. I've sent more money than I'm comfortable with on those. I love them. Well, they're invented by a company called Comptons in 1964 and they were so sure that it was just going to be a one year thing that they didn't even put a patent on it. They thought this will just be fun for one year. Everyone will forget about it so we're not going to do that. And then that's why you get them in all the arcades now because they weren't patented.

But why do they? Do they steal my money so effectively? Well, it's really interesting that. So there's a hole where all the money goes down. So it seems that when you put 2P in, it's bound to come out, right? Eventually it'll come out. So every 2P that goes in. Should equal one 2P out.

Yeah. Now, the way to make money is for some of those 2Ps to fall into the machine. But surely you'd notice. Yeah. You used to be able to notice. There used to be a big hole in the middle and you see the 2Ps go down. And that would be where, you know, obviously they made, the money but now they hide the holes.

So there are holes on the side that the two peas go into and so not all of the two peas that go in come out and that's how they make the money. That's a swizz. It's an absolute swizz. That genuinely is something that's been blown wide open. I can't believe that. So do they have to muffle the noise of the two peas sliding down the holes? They must do I guess.

Because that's a noisy thing when you put you to do the two pee at the top. I sometimes, you know, will resort to just banging in a fiver. Just thinking, that'll help. I put you the fiver into the slot. I have to pipe it down with the lot. a long pipe cleaner thing. I think that'll get me a few two-piece.

Okay, that's it. That's all of our facts. Thank you so much for listening. If you'd like to get in contact with any of us about the things that we've said over the course of this podcast, we can be found on our Twitter accounts. I'm on at Shreiberland, Andy, at Andrewhunter M, James, at James Harkin. And Anna.

You can emailpodcast.uI.com. Yep, or you can go to our group account, which is at no such thing, or our website, no such thing as a fish.com. All of our previous episodes are up there, so do check them out. And also go and check out the links to the upcoming tour dates that we're going to be playing in September. It's the final leg of nerd immunity. It's an awesome night.

We're going to do a live podcast in the second half and a whole show that you've never seen before in the first half. It's stand-up, it's facts, it's everything you want. Come and see it. If I sell it, I hope so. All right, we'll be back again next week with another episode. We'll see you then. Goodbye.