No Such Thing As A Fish - No Such Thing As An Especially Attractive Barge

Episode Date: January 26, 2023

Dan, James, Anna and Andy discuss Minion mythology, pregnancy pranks and poking parishioners. Visit nosuchthingasafish.com for news about live shows, merchandise and more episodes.  Join Club Fish for ad-free episodes and exclusive bonus content at nosuchthingasafish.com/apple or nosuchthingasafish.com/patreon

Hello and welcome to another episode of No Such Thing as a Fish, a weekly podcast, coming to you from the QI offices and Covent Garden. My name is Dan Schreiber. I'm sitting here with Anna Tyshinsky, Andrew Hunter Murray, and James Harkin. And once again, we have gathered around the microphones with our four favorite facts from the last seven days. And in no particular order, here we go. Starting with fact number one, and that is my fact. My fact this week is that to combat people's sleep. sleeping during church, priests used to employ a sluggard waker who would walk around the congregation poking people awake with a very long stick.

Brilliant. Yeah. This is an amazing thing. Fancy that job, Andy? I think it sounds quite fun. Yeah. It does. You wouldn't make many friends, but you're not in the business to make friends.

Oh, no. In the business to keep people awake listening to the sermon. Exactly. I reckon you'd be great at it, yeah. Why? You've just got authority about you and we all respect you so much. Oh, when you put it like that, I suppose. Yeah, I will be a prettiest look.

You think I like correcting people for minor errors they've made. Yeah, and you really piss people off, so it sort of feels like it. You're not losing anything, you know, people. I've already got zero status in this society. Yeah, the congregation don't like you anyway. I'm disliked enough that it doesn't matter if I'm, yeah. And you always walk around with a massive stick. Prud people with it.

Actually, that's an even better reason. Yeah. How long was the stick? Do we know? Well, in some cases, they'd be 10 feet long, because you've got long pews, don't you? or very long pews. So if you got someone at the end of a pew and you need to reach them, you've got your stick needing to have that.

That's the sluggled maker saying, isn't it? I would touch him with a 10-foot pole. I read about this in a book that I was checking out called Old Church Life by a guy called William Andrews. And it's a very old book and it's full of really odd, quirky little nuggets about the church back in the day. And so these people would be paid, good money to go around. Well, money. Well, but money. Yeah.

They were paid. I think they were the wealthiest, most highest state of people in society. But yeah, they weren't. Although some of them were given a small amount of land to live on near the church. Nice. And in one case, there's a place called Yulegrave in the Midlands. And they had one who was entitled to a hat as well as the small wage. And one in Wakefield, who also got hats, shoes and hoses.

That's part of the job. They turned Sleepfield into Wakefield. Brilliant. That was what they had on their badge. It is a part-time drive. You wouldn't expect it to pay a full salary. It's only when there's a sermon on, isn't it? Absolutely, yeah.

And often they did other things, other jobs as well, and that was just a bit of it. But sometimes women got separate treatment and nicer treatment, so sometimes they'd have a stick with a knob on one end and a little brush on the other. And as a woman, you've got a little tickle. Whereas a man, you got knobs around the face. Everyday sexism.

There's a guy called Obadiah Turner, who wrote a journal. He was from Massachusetts living around 1640s. and he in particular had a fox's tail on one side of his stick. And on the other one, he had a long thorn which he used to prick people. So it wasn't just a little whack around the head. He actually stabbed you with it. And he said there was someone called Mr. Tompkins who fell asleep. And he pricked him with his long prick.

And the guy woke up and said, Bust the woodchuck. And apparently he'd been dreaming about a woodchuck biting his hand. when actually, you know when you're asleep and you kind of integrate the alarm into your dream? Yes. Well, that's what he'd done. Is he saying bastard woodchuck?

Bus the woodchuck. That's a good church. It's a good church appropriate swear. Yeah. You haven't said anything wrong. It's a minceauh, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. Do you think it was more or less annoying for the priest giving the sermon

that rather than have people falling asleep quietly, it was just a constant cacophony of, ow, fuck. Buster woodchuck. That's a good point I'm not sure it was about being annoyed so much as the people in the church are supposed to be listening

to the word of God Exactly Yeah So who's got ultimate authority over this system Is it the sluggard waker has autonomy And is allowed to basically stand at the front And see people falling asleep Or does the priest have to say

There Pew three, seat four No the priest is doing his gig Yeah You've got yeah Sluggard's there to make sure It'll go smoothly That's the skill of the job

I'm sure. It's the only skill of the job is spotting the sleeping people. If this priest has to keep telling you, then you're being fired. Here's a person who needed a bit of skill. Betty Finch, who was a sluggard waker in Warrington. She was known locally as the bobber because the way that she woke people up is she had a fishing rod. And she had a little bob like a little weight on the end of her fishing rod. And she used to swing it round and wake people up with the rod. And if you did it repeatedly, she got a hook into your cheek and just reeled you up.

she was the only I found a few names of the actual people given the job she was the only woman with the job I found so it's like a very male dominated industry

yeah and as I said they did often have other roles in the church didn't they one of them seemed to be dog whipping yeah

which is an important thing to do because in church services in times if you're talking about a long period of time sluggard wake has existed I think yeah yeah 1600s

yeah so farmers would often if they're going to church they'd be like well I'm going to use this chance to bring on my sheep sell them at market.

So they go sell the sheep at market, go to church, and they've got all their sheep dogs in church. So you've just got a bunch of sheep dogs running around. So, yeah, the Sluggard Waker also whips the dogs out of the church during services. Well, can we give the proper name of this position? The Nocnobler? The knock no. That's the person who has to chase the dogs out of church. Distracting, I would have thought.

That's like the Benny Hill show down there. Yeah, no, that's the knocknobler or the dognoper. That was another one. who just has to get in there and whip the dogs and they have special tools as well so the dog the dog whipper who might also be the sluggard waker was sometimes issued with a special set of tongs

for those hard to reach dogs if the dog had hidden in a crevice or something in the church you'd have to use the tongs yeah I've seen those we have been this is really exciting we've been somewhere which has a dog whippers flat

what's a flat like an apartment oh right so we've been somewhere was it the Sydney up house. That's right. Yeah, very late with you when it was being built, they thought, that's just okay. No, it's Exeter. We went to Exeter on tour last year. Yeah. And Exeter's got a cathedral, a lovely cathedral, which I visited. Didn't see any of you guys there. No praying.

Well, we had confidence in our research. We didn't really feel like we had to go and get help from the Almighty. I was almighty, please, God, please. Just be one good fact about lasagnas. But it's not an actual apartment It's a room But it is a room It's a really nicely placed room So as you go into the cathedral

It's just above you there And it looks out onto the nave It's a viewing spot basically So you can be on 24 hour shift Looking for dogs in the cathedral And then you have to descend quickly As soon as you see a dog Yeah there's a pole

You slide down it Yeah Swing on the zip line Yeah That's cool Do you think that's where whipits come from They maybe were the worst behaved

And you needed to whip it Yeah. Oh, really? No. Definitely the origin. I think it did really used to piss priests off, by the way. I know we're saying would they go through the talk? It really did.

And there was in an American Boston in the 1600s. There was such fury from a priest over there that he suggested that a cage be made so that you would drag the sleeping person into it and cage them up like a bird and just let them have to wake up and deal with that. And that was off the back of someone being woken up. and in a rage attacking the sluggard waker or tithing man as they're often tithing man as they're often called an America are they called that interesting because a tithe is the bit of your income you give to the church a tenth of your income probably as well as doing this they collected the money yeah

they're actually very busy people the sluggard wakers yeah they also rang the curfew bell um so we had in this country a curfew bell again since early medieval times which was, I think the original aim of it was to keep people from having, like, rebellious, seditious meetings. But anyway, it was quite useful because it stopped fires, because curfew literally coming from the French, I think, to cover the fire. Cuvrafer is, like, time to cover your fires now. And it tended to be 8 o'clock. And so at 8pm every evening, then you'd have the curfew bell wrong, which is, like, cover your fires and go to bed. It's early.

Even for Andy, who's, like, famously not a night owl. You wouldn't want to have to be at 8 o'clock every day Even I normally make it to the watershed at 9pm What half an hour of rude TV Praying for your sins of watching it afterwards Have you guys heard of the role of the beggar-banger Bega-Bagger? The Bega-Banger banger

Yeah No, what's that? It's not as exciting as it sounds It's someone who was responsible for controlling the length of stay Of any unwanted strangers in the parish Okay They were known as the Bega-Banger Was that employed by the church?

Because that's not a very church-y, welcoming thing to do. As a church, you are supposed to embrace particularly beggars and paupers, aren't you? Charity has its limits, Anna. As Jesus said. Are you guys aware of Acts of the Apostles chapter 20, verse 7 to 12? Can you just start me off? Okay, so Paul was preaching. Oh, yeah.

Okay, and he was preaching, he's doing this speech. is a very long speech. And there's a guy called Uticus. And Uticus was listening, but it was a really, really boring speech. So he fell asleep in the middle of St. Paul's preaching. And as he fell asleep, he fell out of a third floor window and died.

Oh. So this is what the Bible says will happen to you if you fall asleep while someone's preaching. And that's why churches are always on the ground floor now. Yeah, you get very few on the top of skyscrapers. I'm just thinking of a third floor window. is a risky place to risk falling asleep. Well, quite.

Probably don't sit there if St. Paul's doing a sermon. Anyway, luckily, Paul went down, picked him up, brought him upstairs and said, oh, don't worry, he's fine, even though everyone could see he was dead. But then, a bit later, he did come back alive. Any more explanation on that? It's the Bible, Dan. That's the kind of thing that happens in the Bible. Yeah, zombies, very common.

I've got to read this book. Have you guys heard of pew openers as a job? No. A pew opener was someone who basically was an usher. He would collect you at the front. He would walk you to your pew and they used to have little doors. And he would open up the door and he would allow you to not have to do that on your own. And he got paid a very minimal amount for doing that.

And you could also pew rent. So you could rent the actual row that you wanted. He was a concierge kind of character. That's quite interesting because if you go to church, you'll find that the same people every week go to the same church, right? and they all tend to sit in the same places and if a new person comes into the church and sits in one of those places, there are eructions.

Do you think the pew opener would say, excuse me, I think that's actually where madam. Because certainly, I imagine he did this mostly for the wealthy families, they would have their own pews where they would sit. And he would be the one guiding them to them. Have you guys ever been to a church with a box pew system? No, that's good. So, you know, pews are in rows normally.

And some church, some Georgian and earlier churches would have box pews. So it's kind of a little pen that you sit in. So the Murrays don't have to sit with the riff-ruff. Well, you know, or any surname, any family. Yeah, yeah. Any family of good standing. No, no, no, no, no, but that was a... We once did an ostentatious photo shoot in a church which had those.

That was very interesting. That's what they were made for. Do you know someone else whose job it was to guide you to your seat, could be, would be the deaconess. and the deaconess seems to be one of the only official church jobs you could get as a woman and from like really early church time and basically so one of her jobs would be to guide you to your to your pew another job would be like you'd help distribute communion

you could take communion to people in the community who couldn't make it to church and they were basically ordained and the reason they came into being really was to stop male church officials from seeing naked women So their initial job was baptism Because Yeah Because baptism was almost always adults then

Right And it was You always get your kit off You got your kit off You went into a river And it was very improper For a male priest To be seeing accompanying a woman into the water

So that would be her job She'd undressed the woman Hold a veil up So none of the clergy could see Go into the water with her Baptise her Pop out again That's awesome

Do you guys know what a Pido Baptist is? Here we go. That's someone who baptizes children. It's very close. It's someone who believes in baptizing children. Yeah, there's a big divide in the church for Piedobaptists and Credo Baptists. Did they have John the Baptist and John the Pido Baptist? It's funny.

Only one of them's made it to the big time, hasn't you? What was the other? Credo Baptists. And they're people who believe that you should only be baptized once you have been able to come to an adult understanding of God on your own. Because Credo is Latin for I believe, right? And so the idea is that you can say yourself that you believe that as opposed to a child who doesn't really understand what it all means.

What have they done to deserve? Well, I always thought it was just about protecting them to get into heaven. Ah, that's interesting because it seems like Hannah and I are credos. Yeah. But that sounds from what you're saying. Big old pino. Interesting. I'd never heard those.

Those terms? I don't think they get bandied around actually. I don't know why. I said I'm a creedophile. Okay, it is time for fact number two, and that is Anna. My fact this week is that the Queen of France once pranked a girl at court by secretly taking in her clothes to make her think she was pregnant. Hmm.

This is this great, yeah, pretty mean. This is this great story from, the memoir of Hortense Mancini, and she was one of the Mancini sisters who were so fun. But her uncle was a guy called Cardinal Mazarin, who was the closest person to the royal family in France, really. And Cardinal Mazarin decided that he would start teasing his six-year-old niece. That's the thing. That's the thing. You hear this fact, and you think, oh, it's a clever prank to play on someone who's probably, what, 20 or maybe a T-Aid? It's not a six-year-old. That's what makes it so funny.

So there's this girl called Marianne, who's six-year-old, and she's the person who's writing the account all tense. It's her little sister. And Cardinal Mazarin says, hey, you've got an admirer, and he's got you pregnant, hasn't he? And then they would take her clothes away and secretly take them in, so they got tighter and tighter, so she thought that she was pregnant.

And the whole court got in on this gag. You know, it was just hilarity for everyone at court. It's bullion, isn't it, really? Oh, look, it's a fine line. isn't it between are you laughing with her or laughing at her? It's a fine line and I think they crossed it. Anyway, the queen, who's Anne of Austria and she was the queen mother at that time. She had been married to King Louis and then she'd been the Queen Regent,

so she's referred to as the Queen. She turned up by the six-year-old's bedside, consult her, said, gosh, yes, you are a pregnant, aren't you? And then they planted a live infant in her bed, which we think was a baby of one of the servants. This is next level. Yeah. This is Jeremy Bede. This is great.

And then what happened next? Well, the Queen offered to be the godmother, said, well done you. And then I think they probably at some point came clean. I don't think they made her raise the child. I think the person whose child it was would have objected. Well, they asked her who the father was, didn't they? And she said it could only either be the king or the Comte de Guiche. Yes.

Because they were the only ones who she'd kissed. And she was, that's quite sweet. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Although the Comte de Guiche was a known absolute playboy. So she wouldn't have known that. She's six. He just gave a little kiss on the cheek. I quite like this in the memoirs from Hortense,

who was three years older than her at the time, so she would have been nine. And she said she was very proud to know the truth of the matter, and I never tired of laughing about it just to show that I knew it, which is such a relatable thing when you're a slightly older sibling, doing that over-the-top laughing to be like, yeah, yeah, I get the joke. Yeah, I get it. Yeah, kissed.

Please don't do this kind of thing to me I feel like an idiot I was looking up pregnancy pranks There aren't many good ones It's mostly pranks that you If you're pregnant Can pull on people around you

Oh right It's not like Because you could throw a water balloon At someone in the night And then they think their waters are broken Yeah Yeah That's one

That's one If you're pregnant You could walk around With like a dull hanging Between your legs So it looks as if Right You can give them birth without

No Yeah. Yeah, these are all about the level of the ones I found. The only one I found that was any good potentially was using your pregnancy to help someone else with their pregnancy prank where you can pee on their pregnancy test. Oh, yeah. Because it will come up as a yes. Yes, right. And then she'll be able to say to whoever, you know.

That's really funny. Here's the thing that men don't really know much about pregnancy tests. So you could literally probably just take a vape and draw a line on it and say, hey, look, I'm pregnant. You can take a COVID. test. I'm not pregnant, but you do have COVID. This book is, it was published in 1675, and I guess at the time, it's sort of quite timely we're talking about it, it's sort of the Prince Harry memoir of its day to an extent, because it was very much a...

What an amazing attempt to make this book relevant to absolutely... No, but it just totally is. It just totally is. That's what it was. Yeah, four-tenths. Did she get a frostbice and penis? Well, she, no, this was the first time that, you know, this is someone who was amongst the Royals. She was almost basically a queen at one point. And it was a book that was published when women weren't really writing books either about

their personal life. And so when it came out, it was a huge bit of news. And it was scandalous. And she filled it with gossip. It would have been like Prince Harry's book going out and everyone going, oh, wow, you've actually said that. God, cool. Wow. I've never heard of her prior to reading up on this, but she wrote her autobiography, and then a couple years later, her sister wrote her autobiography as well.

And as you say, they led just an incredibly, interestingly bizarre, fun, but also quite tragic life. They were in marriages, which were very unloved and which fell apart. They had to flee the country from time to time because of being exiled as a result of their dubious affairs and so on and their husbands being furious. It's a real rollicking adventure Well let's quickly mention this husband that she had in fact Who appears to have been slightly unhinged

He believed that milkmaid shouldn't touch cows udders In case they became aroused by them Yeah there are a couple of accounts of this This is just let's give his name He was called Amon Charles de la Port de la Mierre That was his name and he was incredibly rich Wasn't he? He was like the richest man in Europe pretty much

Yeah And he, so I read that account that he was worried about milkmaids finding milking sexy. But then I read another account saying he worried that men might get aroused by the site of milkmaids doing their milkings. I actually think, Hortense didn't write about any of these things, actually. These all came from a guy called Abbe de Choisy, who was, he wrote his memoirs and they came out after he died. And they're all about the story of how he went to live in the countryside in France, pretended to be a woman and seduced a load of young girls. And he apparently was friends with Perrault who wrote a lot of fairy tales.

So we think actually a lot of it might not have been true. But he was the one who wrote all this stuff about this crazy guy. And he was basically the idea with Armalshaw was that he was incredibly pious, wasn't he? And very religious. And imposed really strict rules like that. So I thought everyone was going to be aroused all the time. Did things like he had a collection of priceless works of art that he'd inherited. and in fact from Cardinal Mazarin

and he went around knocking all their genitals off because he thought the genitals were improper he'd slashed tapestries he'd painted black bits of penis and balls and nipple on various paintings There are so many different accounts So one of the things I read is that he did that specifically Because he was worried that she, Hortense,

was going to get aroused by them To be fair she did have quite few affairs She did, she had a time, she had a time She was even around. And she almost married Charles II, when I mentioned before, that she almost became queen. So Cardinal Mazarin, who was sort of, he was their uncle and he was very much taking them around town and trying to set them up and arrange marriages. Charles I fell in love with her and thought, I've got to marry her, made the offer. And he said, no, because Charles II was in exile.

And he said, no, you've got your name, but you've got no money. You've got no title. I don't know your prospects. And so he denied it. And then only a few months later, even weeks, Charles II, suddenly is restored back as king. And so Mazarin comes running back, saying, actually, Hortense would love to take your offer.

And he says, nah, I'm afraid that's not going to happen. Such a shame. Yeah. This could have been a queen of England. Yeah, they did hang out in England. Hortens definitely fled to England and spent a lot of time at court, and she was super fun, liven the whole place up. And the thing is, they were this Italian family.

And we should say they were called the Mazarinette, and there were seven of them all together, and they were the seven nieces of the car. And they all looked quite different. They were dark skin when everyone was very pale skinned. They looked similar to each other, but different to normal other people. Different to normal noble women, yes, who were all very pale. They all seemed to have the same name.

There were two Loras, two Anne-Marie's and one Marianne, which is quite confusing. But yeah, they were fun and Hortense especially. So at one point when she ran away from Amman-Shall, she ended up in a convent, or I think she was put in a convent to try and make her behave. but she became best friends with this woman called Mademoiselle de Corsel who maybe she was in a relationship with or had a little fling with maybe they were just really close friends and they sort of played practical jokes on the nuns quite a lot

They all thought they were pregnant I promise I haven't had sex all the nuns Yeah she did things like she filled two chests with water And apparently the water leaked through onto the nun's beds But she had this really cool adventure in the convent where her husband came to try and kidnap her away when he found she was misbehaving. And her and Mademoiselle Corsel found, it's like the stuff of fantasies. They found a little hole in a grate in the parlour, which they could just squeeze through to escape.

And so they squeezed through this grate. And they climbed out the outside. And then they actually realized it was a false alarm and their friends were visiting, not her husband. This is the story of the sound of music. This is, there are baddies, you're in a convent, you're squeezing through a gate. Yep. Come on. Yep. Well, then they squeezed back in because they were like,

go, we're going to look stupid. It's just our mates. And she got stuck in this grate between two iron bars for about 20 minutes. And Mademoiselle Corsal has to like tug her out. And then they ended up covered and sit on the parlor floor, snogging. No, I've embellished some of the ending. But yeah, it sounds fun.

After she died, her husband caught up with her and had wanted actually to repatriate her for ages. It's so much easier to catch up with someone after. they die. Well, it makes the chase a lot easier. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well, he caught up with her. He got her body. Yeah. He put it in a sealed coffin. Great. Fair play. You know,

it's what you're meant to do. Yeah. And then he just, like, carried it around Europe on a sort of weird, posthumous honeymoon. Yeah. So all the places they had been together in life. Yeah.

For four months. Yeah. Long time. And then eventually he left her in a country churchyard. And then eventually when he died later, they were buried next to each other. I don't know how. she would have felt about that.

And then during the revolution, they got choked in the scent. Yeah. Yeah. So it has a... An unhappy ending. Not if you're the people. Obviously, Andy, you know, I'm a big fan of the aristocracy. I read an article that she introduced Champagne to Britain.

Because I read that. Yeah. I think popularized. Popularized. Yeah. Oh, really? She was fun. Oh, my God.

And this is the most fun thing about her. I did all this reading. And then finally, at the end, find this one article which talks about the six extraordinary saloon that she opened up in the 17th. I think salon. I think a saloon is a wild west. Yeah. Is it not a saloon?

It's a salon. All the ladies in London used to come, they had to leave their guns at the car and pass. And had those swinging doors and the piano player that would stop when when Hortense walked in. That's it. Yeah. So we're calling it Salon, so we? Let's go with Salon for the moment.

Let's call it for that. Because it was kind of French, so let's say a saloon, but with a French angle like Salon. So let's land on Salon. I mean, that's definitely That's what they're called. Salons, very popular in those days. So she ran this, let me get to the fucking fact.

17th century London, she had basically this extraordinary book club that she ran next to St. James's Palace and all the ladies who were encouraged not to do this to have intellectual conversation, to read books and discuss them with each other to share their ideas, their philosophies, would go, they would drink champagne and they would do all this stuff together.

and she was just such a, the article describes her as an influencer of the time. Definitely. The interesting thing was these salons were massive in France, weren't they? They were like a huge thing in France at the time. And all the middle class and upper class women would go to these salons and kind of learn things. But she was the one who brought it to London. Yeah. Because it didn't exist here at the time.

Yeah. You could say that really podcasts are the salons of the present day. It wasn't. Well, we're discussing things. we allow one woman on our podcast. Yes, traditionally a male environment. Okay, it's loose. It's a discussion, isn't it?

We've all got champagne. Oh, God, yeah. I wouldn't come to this if that wasn't promised. This was how great her influence was, particularly with quite obscure texts. If she introduced a text to be read, it would get round town that this was like something that was amazing and it would boost up a big run of it with translations

because people suddenly were going, what are they reading there? And we have to be part of that. It was very much the Richard and Judy's book club of its day. Yes, exactly. That's more of a salon. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The club is, right.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're interesting about Hortense, if you Google her, the first image, the painting that comes up of her is of her looking very beautiful, and then just a little nipple hanging out from the boob. Did you see that? Yeah. And there's only a few paintings.

of her that are around, but that's one of the surviving ones. I think that might be just your history is deciding what pictures you get. Yeah, that's possible. It's interesting you'd have that painted in to an official portrait. It's not official, but a portrait of you ends up with a bit of nipple in. Yeah. It's just a general portrait that you get done to show that you're a sexy person, like Janet Jackson. Yeah, that was why she did that, wasn't it?

But the thing is, with Janet Jackson, it was a malfunction, right, where she quickly covered up. But with a painting, you'd have to sit there for about three days. little of malfunctioning out. Maybe the artist was just too embarrassing. You know when someone has green in their teeth? Yeah. You'd want to say, but you don't say it. He's like, I'll just got to paint it in, I guess.

Okay, it is time for fact number three, and that is James. Okay, my fact this week is that, according to their origin story, the minions serve the most evil person on earth. But they were conveniently. frozen in a cave and unable to serve anyone between 1933 and 1945. Is this official Minions canon? I believe it is. Yeah, where is it?

It's in the movie. It's in the second movie, yeah. So the dates, you've altered the dates there, but that's, that is part of the period when they were frozen. I gave the dates for Hitler rather than the dates for the minions. Exactly. But basically, there's this thing on the internet that people keep doing this meme where they say, are the minions, they serve the most evil person,

but what were they doing during World War II? And it's like a big joke that, ah, they haven't thought of this, but of course they have thought of it. And it is in the movie, which I haven't seen. Yeah, so we should say who the minions are,

but there's these little yellow creatures who are in the film, Dispickable Me, and then all the other sequels. And then the film Minions. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They were henchmen that got their own spin-off series, and Minions was 2015, and in the opening sequence,

it tells you the history. So it says that they saw various evil masters from the T-Rex, all the way through to... When did they get out of the cave? Sorry to interrupt you, Dan. So they go into the cave in 1812. That's when they first go in,

and they emerge in 1968, I think, to avoid being so obviously avoiding the Nazis. So 1812 would have been just after Napoleon's retreat from Moscow. Yeah, yeah. So that doesn't make sense. Well, it's very cold in when they were treating. Exactly.

There we go. All right. I'm on board with the lore. I love it. I wonder who they're serving now. Who's the most evil person on a... A few candidates, aren't there? None in this room.

Sorry, I'm looking around. The director, one of the co-directors of the films is Pierre Coffin. Peter Coffin. Peter Coffin. But his name doesn't actually, Coffin in French, doesn't mean Coffin. What does it mean? I don't think it means anything, but the word Cuffin means basket. Okay.

Which is very close. I really thought he was called Peter Coffin. And then I thought it was called Peter Basket. And actually, he isn't called either. But he does the voices of lots of the minions, right? Lots of the minions, right? All of them are. from baby one.

Yeah. Well, there's Jermaine Clement from Flight of the Comcords does one. Does he voice them? No, one. Literally one minion

and then this guy and someone else but this guy does 899 minions. Wow. So there's another director as a co-director of the film who also does some

Minium voices. The language sounds so difficult to do because every word is I think a real word from one language or another. I think there's some gibberish in there is jibberish as well. Mixed in with loads of other languages.

But they sound so funny to listen to that. I just, I love the sound of the minions language. Like it's really funny. Have you seen them all? No, I haven't seen any of them. Have you seen any of them?

Yeah, I've seen minions in bits. You know, you walk in and out while the kid's watching a movie. Sure. And then you're asked to leave the cinema because where's your kid? You know, and you're like, all right, I'm out of here. Jeez. Yeah, he's cool, Kofin. And I think that one of the reasons that the minions speak, this combination of languages is that he is very multilingual, I think.

So he's like half Indonesian, half French. grew up in Cambodia and Japan. And, yeah, invented this language. And interestingly, when it's, dubbed into other languages, it gets changed because you notice that they say English words enough. You're like, oh, they must be talking about toast now or bananas famously. But in other languages, they'll sub those words for that language. So they'll still use the Indonesian and different places.

But then whenever there was an English word, they use whatever country. Or just drop in more local words where they can. Yeah, his mum was a famous novelist, wasn't she? Was she? N.H. Dinnie Coffin's mum was called. I'd never heard of her inside of this, but she is an Indonesian novelist and feminist. Very nice.

At least two of the Minian's films have been banned or altered by censors in China. Oh, really? Who disliked various aspects of the plot. So there's, and I really like this. So the film, The Rise of Gru, which I think is one of the most recent ones, the Chinese censors added an entirely different bit of the film at the end of it, clarifying that one of the characters who previously had been involved in a heist in the film, you know, fictional film, fictional heist, everything,

was caught and served 20 years in prison for the heise. I mean, that's so good. They also say that Gru returned to his family and his biggest accomplishment was his free children. Gosh. And apparently the reason that they've done this, most people think, is to promote China's three-child policy

which they've been trying to do to increase the birth rate over the last few years. Wow. Wow. God. I'm just reading about other, animated villains of various guys. And so Scar the Lion King. Yeah. No spoilers, please. I haven't seen it.

I think I can avoid spoilers. Great. Who is sexier? Scar or Mufasa? According to just us or... According to you. Are they both lions? Yep. Equal.

Mufasa. Okay. It says equal. I find them both equally attractive. The idea that lions could be more or less sexy than each other, apparently completely impossible for James to compete. I thought it was a subjective question. Do you find all...

you must think there are some animals which are sexier than animals in the same species. How about that buff kangaroo? I'm not sure that that is true. Do you think of all humans as being equally sexy? Absolutely. I don't see sexiness. Apart from my wife, of course, you're slightly less sexy than ever. Wait, doesn't your cat have a modelling contract, though?

No, she doesn't. She has appeared. She has appeared in some adverts. So you must think she's sexy. You don't have to be sexy to be in an advert. But that's not what they are always cast to. But the difference here is, is that... Captain birds...

I'm a terrible example. The sexiest man on theory. He's so hot, yeah. Can I just say I don't find my cat sexy? Yeah, you're allowed to say this. It can be a model and not sexy. It's the person... It's the human personality,

which is adding to the sexiness of these characters as well. Well, they've got voices, haven't they? Yeah. The human voices and I'm speaking in English, yeah, yeah. For me, I would say that physically, Mufus are definitely sexier. But in terms of personality, And voice.

Scar, of course, is more sexy. Okay. Well. Scar's like old and manky looks. No, but I know. That's why I said. No, I know. No, no.

And he, personality-wise is evil. Okay, well, can I say one of these right and wrong? Mufasa is less sexy than Scar. Scar is the sexier one. I'm sure. Physically. And would be in the real world as well. In fact, specifically in the real world.

So this is a study about what makes a lion sexy or unsexy. And for years, they've been thinking about... Come on. You're talking from a lion's perspective. That was the whole point. This is about main darkness. Right, yeah. Because some lions have really, really light mains

and some have a really, really dark ones. You know, scientists have been trying to work out for years. What does this have any effect at all? And they just introduced these fake lines. Yeah. And they could sort the mains around. And you could attach them with Velcro, so you could whip off a mane and then reattach it.

And the dark mains were very much preferred by the lady lions. Lionesses, as they're also known. But interestingly, dark maimed lions, have more abnormal sperm because they have heat stress because their mains are so dark that they keep absorbing sunlight and they have to eat smaller meals as well

because they get more heat stress and if they eat a massive great meal you know it warms you up yeah yeah sometimes you have a huge meal oh no my sperm are deformed would you like a dessert no they're deformed enough already that's why I make my husband

dye his hair peroxide blonde before every meal I've got to watch out I'm sure that peroxide's good for him Lex Luther Do you know what made him evil He's the villain in the Superman

Universe I don't No I don't have a handle on what he Where he came from What is he? He's just like a rich guy He's a rich guy But he was a scientist

And it was basically Superman made him bold And that is why Bold Bold Yeah As in no hair So he used to have

A huge amount of ginger hair On his head And there was an incident between Superman and Lex Luthor where they were in a science lab. Lex Luthor was trying to make something really good. Superman had to blow it out because something went a bit wrong. And in the big Superman blow that he did,

it just pushed these chemicals onto Lex Luthor's head, made him bold, he was so furious, he became a super villain. Wow. That's an overreaction. He's got temper issues with us. What's amazing is this is a retroactive story to explain why he suddenly goes bold, because, you know, part of like,

comic book artistry they would hand it to sort of as it was ghost artists who would come in and do the sort of comic strips and help them um one of the guys who was in charge of it one week mistaken lex luther for one of the bold henchman and accidentally drew lex luther as a boldheaded man and so it was a total mistake and it ran for a couple of weeks it went out and then another one went out and that just had to be it so he had no hair so the only reason he's bold is an artistic mistake who that has proofreading this that's like releasing a few scenes from the lion king where a hyena plays Scar and no one notices

and then what? Lex Luthor would buck the trend of most supervillains because villains in fiction and particularly depictions of villains are generally more pointy than heroes. Yeah. There's the sense of, you know, you can

draw Mickey Mouse with three circles. But if he was bad it would be triangles. Well, yeah. So I was reading an explanation about this about the graphology of films and so you know, Darth Vader literally has a triangle on the front of his face. Oh yeah. more scary.

But more sexy very often. I mean, they genuinely are made to be a bit attractive. Sorry, Darth Vader. He's got a dark main Darth Vader, actually. So he is more attractive to female Vedas. Yeah, he was king of the prize. More like, more the women, actually. Is he not sexy?

Is he not sexy, Darth Vader? He's got a sexy voice, hasn't he? Have you seen under the helmet? I haven't seen any of the... Okay, no. Don't look under the helmet. Don't look under the helmet. Keep that helmet on.

If you're making out with Darth Vader, just keep that helmet on. Yeah. I think in Disney films, the female villains are acknowledged as sexy. In fact, there's a book called The Enchanted Screen, the Unknown History of Ferry Tale Films. Who are you thinking of? Which says... That woman in The Little Mermaid? The Big Octopus.

Ursula. Pick the one example of that she doesn't form. Although she's got some nice lipstick on. There's arguments about whether or not she's an octopus, because she's only got six arms. But then... Human arms or octopus... Well, here's the thing. She's got tentacles, hasn't she?

Right. She has tentacles. The argument is she does have two human arms, which makes it eight. Which, yeah. Hang on, isn't there a QI fact that octopuses have six legs and two arms? Two like pedipal. Yeah, because they use their legs to walk and they use their arms to grab things. So actually, she's a perfect octopus.

Six legs, two arms. Yeah, I guess so, except that she's a mur something, right? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I don't know. do you count the human part in with the octopus part? I don't know. I don't know. Anna,

I think you were saying something about... I don't know. I don't know. I was just saying that in Snow White, that Queen in Snow White is acknowledged, according to this book, it says, as is well known, animators all preferred drawing her

when they were making Snow White because she was very complex as a woman and much more erotic than Snow White. Oh. And she isn't if you think of Corella DeVille, she is. And in the same thing of Corella DeVille, she is. And in the same. sort of

They're kind of glamorous, yeah. They're glamorous, certainly, yeah. Maybe it's glam. I think it's glam. Yeah, they're glamorous, they're powerful, they're independent, they know what they want, they want skin dogs to make a coat, I like a woman with ambitions. And be sold?

Yeah. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. One thing that they do often have villains, I think this is more men than women actually, but they often have terrible skin. And dermatologists are not happy about this

because they say it may foster a tendency towards prejudice in society. Because all the bad guys in movies have bad skin, if you see someone with bad skin, you're going to think they're bad. And really, there's quite a lot of people who are saying that really you shouldn't do this. We should stop having scars. We should stop having... I'm trying to think he has bad skin.

Well, for example, almost all James Bond villains. I'm thinking Christoph Waltz in anything he's in. Yeah. As like, third scars, doesn't he? But the most recent Bond movie has two villains, both of whom have facial disfigurements. Javier Bardem has one in a previous film. And it's like Baddie Roger Rabbit

There is a lot of it When you start looking I thought you just meant acne Because I think I mean scars are kind of cool But being covered in acne I can see that that would like be Like insulting

No no no But it's like It's lots of people who suffered facial scarring For whatever For whatever reason And then you see like film after film After film after film The baddie is a baddie

Because they've suffered some facial scars Two face The Joker Yeah Yeah It's full of it as well When you start You do realise

Yeah this is mad Yeah, that's true. Just another backstory and another World War II related backstory. Oh, yeah. Donald Duck, there's a theory about him that I quite like. So basically... Is there anything to do with his cock screw-shaped penis? Like the old ducks are.

I think you can probably make it to do with that. I believe in you. But before World War II, Donald Duck existed. Obviously, it's part of the Disney franchise, lots of shorts with him. But he was quite a light-hearted, fun-loving duck. Can I just quickly say? Lots of shorts, but no trousers. Very good.

Thank you. Thank you for that. So as we know now, Donald Duck, bad temper, right? That's what he's famous for. He's always shouting at his nephews. That's uncanny, James. That's a good impression. Really good.

Yeah. I didn't know you could do that. It's not a good tempered noise. It's not a happy noise. So he changed. And the theory is that he, it was the war that changed him because he is the only character. in the Disney franchise who actually saw active service. Stop her!

He was on the beaches at Normandy. He only wanted a piece of bread. What do you really saw active service? He said all those cartoons. You know all the propaganda cartoons at Disney released during the war, loads and those of propaganda cartoons. So all the characters featured in these, but they didn't go actually into battle except Donald Duck, who did.

In which theatre? What do you mean? In which theatre of the war did he fight? The Pacific. Sorry, I do. I actually think it might have been the Pacific. Well, he is a duck. He would make sense for him to be in water.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. He should be Navy. If he's in any of the services, yeah, yeah, yeah. But I can't remember, to be fair, but he's seen serving, shown serving in the US military and won the propaganda films fighting an air battle against the Nazis.

Oh, an air battle? Well, he is a duck, after all. Makes sense that he should be in the airbox. He's the perfect weapon. Doesn't even need a plane. No. Wow. And you're saying that he's got PTSD.

Well, straight after the World War II, his temper got worse, he became very sensitive to loud noises. You know, if his nephews make a racket, he gets upset. And that's the idea. And actually, in a recent duck tales, he had to have anger management courses. Wow. So that's the theory. He's got PTSD from the war, and all the evidence is there, I think. Whenever anyone was shooting, they would go, duck.

Okay, it's time for our final fact of the show, and that is Andy. My fact is that every barge firm, on the river Thames used to have its own signature whistle. Oh my God. That's very cool. Yeah. This fact, Andy, I reckon, if you put all of your facts into an AI, this is what they might come up with.

London whistling and a means of transport. This is not very popular anymore. Yeah. Seemingly dull. But really interesting when you get into it. Well, let's find out. Yeah, exactly. You be the judge at home.

So anyway, this was on a British library, blog post about the decline of whistling, which is absolutely meat and drink to me, obviously. And it's about Lighterman. Lighterman were the men, almost exclusively, who steered barges to their destinations and barges. Basically, flat-bottom boats that were used to transport lots of cargo. So you might dock your ship in the river, because there isn't a proper dock. You just drop it in the middle of the river, and then you have to unload it, and the barges are the things that go back and forth, you know, emptying them out or loading them up. And there were different barge firms, and every barge firm had its own whistle. And it was so you could.

identify yourself at night. There we go. Whose was that? Yeah, that's the sexiest of all the barge firms. James obviously doesn't see any difference between sexiness and barge. To me, barges are all the same. Yeah. So barges.

Barges are great. The apprenticeship used to be five years long just for the Thames. Yeah. Anna's been on a barge. You've looked after a barge, haven't you? Yeah. Well, a canal boat. So not one of the big Thames barges, which you had to sail.

Oh, Marrow. No. James, please. We're going to get deeply into the difference between a narrow boat, a barge, all of it. But the apprenticeships lasted for so long, didn't they? So they were introduced, I think, in 1555. And that was when Parliament established the company of Waterman and Lighterman, because, you know, they needed to regulate the industry.

And I think it only stopped maybe 500 years later. I think it was 2007, the government suggested. Maybe we don't need to spend five years learning. So more than 500 years. I mean it is tough but come on also there are no working barges on the Thames anymore so it does seem quite weird I think it's a good thing that we stopped

people learning how to barge and like getting them to do maths instead these days well you can now do it takes just two years of training now and six months of local knowledge training but then are people just trashing barges into each other and yeah it's wonderfully inadequate it's ridiculous you've seen the Thames here

so you're saying there's no barges these days but they're clearly well there are barges for other purposes so it's not really for freight anymore it's for tourism or for taking like restaurant barges

or I don't think there are any that are having iron deposited from Europe and carrying them there were two right you had you had the lighter men which is carrying all those goods back and forth but then you had the watermen

who were the people that carried people across which was massively important thing back in the day because getting across from the south side of London to the north was an incredibly hard thing sometimes.

Or the other way. Or the other way, even if you, why would you go south? Good fight. I live south. The, yeah, so people like Peeps wrote about it saying, you know, it was the quickest way to get across because often the clogging on the bridges would be so great. You say bridges. Was bridge, wasn't it?

Bridge, London Bridge, was the only one east of Kingston, which is a lot of river with one bridge across it. So they were massively important. And get this, I love this. So loads of their. trade came from transporting people to the theatre. So that was why you would go to the South Bank, because it was where all the theatres were.

So that was a huge bit of trade for the Waterman. And then when Covent Garden set up, where we're recording this podcast, their trade suffered massively because there were suddenly theatres north of the river. No one had to cross the river anymore to go and see a show. But you could still get carried down the river, couldn't you, if you lived in Chelsea and you had to get to Covent Garden. That's true, although there were other means of getting from Chelsea to Covent Garden. So they were so angry about the loss of their trade

And they campaigned so much to Charles I was king That in 1635 He banned taxi cabs in the city Unless they were travelling three miles out of the city No way to keep the barges in business Keep the barges happy I try to find any notable lighter men So the closest I found

Well Danny Dyer who's a quite famous character His family he came from a long line of lightermen Really? Is that right? That seems classic. But one that I thought was a bit relevant to us was I found that a comedian came from a long line of Leiderman. And it was a comedian who was called Malcolm Hardy. And during the boom of alternative comedy in London particularly, he was a great voice. And he used to open clubs and they were known as dangerous clubs because you would have heckles from the audience.

He would heckle the act coming. I don't know about the next act. They might be a bit shit. I think they are. Please welcome to the stage. you know, and then bring you a damn show. Cheers, Malcolm, thank you. So he was an amazing character, and he wasn't a lightsman himself, but he did live on the Thames.

He had a boat that he lived on, and sadly, quite a few years ago, he fell into the Thames and died. But what is interesting about Malcolm Hardy is he's very relevant to us and even the listeners of this show, because he opened up a club in Greenwich called Up the Creek, which is where we do all of our live shows often in London. and that is the Malcolm Hardy Club. Have you heard of the Trojan barge? No. So this was during the 80 years war and the Anglo-Spanish War

because they kind of coincided with each other and it was the city of Braida and the Dutch and the English were trying to capture it and the way they did it was with a Trojan barge. There was a canal or a small, like a shallow river that went into the city and they had a barge with a load of peat in it, a load of moss. Nice.

One for you. And they all hid underneath the peat and they got into the city and then jumped out and then took the city. That's brilliant. And it was kind of like one of the turning points of that war. Really? Yeah. So wait, when you say that barge with a load of peat, they didn't put Pete on top of the

barge and disguised it. They did. They hid underneath the, no, no, the barge. Everyone knew it was a barge. Everyone knew it was a barge full of peat. But what they didn't know is that there were soldiers. in between the barge and the peat. That's incredible.

And the soldiers used the peat to kind of hide themselves even once they got off the barge. So the people of Braido will be being attacked by moss men. This is like the moving forest in Macbeth basically. You're being attacked by a bunch of peas. That's unbelievable. That is so cool.

As in, did they have to snorkel through the peat? Because Pete, I think of as being very heavy, very dark. If you're lying with Pete basically buried under Pete, that's not good for you. Probably the amount of peat above them wasn't so much that they all suffocated. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I see that. Yeah, I'm just imagining like a little flat hat you're kind of wearing.

Yeah, but you can't have too little peat because otherwise they see, right, isn't there something under that Pete? There was probably a Goldilocks amount of peat that they used. And that was the amount that they used, I think. Brilliant. Well, that's military planning for you. That's majestic. They actually did do a previous run with another peat badge. Did they? Yeah, they did it with just like one or two soldiers to see if it was going to work, and it did

work and then the next time they did it properly. That's so funny. What do those soldiers then do once they're in the city, but they're only two of them? Pete! Get your Pete! Anyone want some Pete? Fellow braider people? I don't have any frame of reference of the 80 years war.

No, and nor do I in this short paragraph that I've written. But yeah, it was basically the, I think it was just, I'm going to be wrong, but I think it was just before the glorious revolution. So I think it's whenever that was. 1688. Yeah. It's one of those, one of those mid-year. European mid-century wars.

Yeah. They all merge. The 80 years war, the 100 years war, the 27 years war. They weren't very creative with the names, were they? I've got one more barge anecdote for you. This is actually sent in by a listener. This is sent in by Hannah Watson a while ago. In 2004, there was a sightseeing bar trip happening in Texas, right, on a lake called Lake

Travis. There were 60 people on board. Unfortunately, the barge then passed a place called Hippie Hollow, which contains what was certainly then the only public nude beach in Texas. Texas, every single person on the barge moved to one side of the boat in the hope of seeing somebody naked and it capsized and it tits them all in the water. Beautiful. 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 be found on our Twitter accounts. I'm on at Shriverland, James. At James Harkin. Andy. At Andrew Hunter M. And Anna. You can email a podcast at QI.com. That's right. We can go to our group account, which is. at no such thing or our website

no such thing as fish.com. It's got all of our previous episodes up there. It's also got a link to Clubfish, our secret members club where you can hear all sorts of bonus content. Do that now. Otherwise, come back here next week. We've got another episode waiting for you.

We'll see you then. Goodbye.