No Such Thing As A Fish - No Such Thing As An Unlucky Fountain

Episode Date: July 2, 2026

Jamie Morton joins Dan, Anna and Andy to discuss symmetry, lottery, and an erotic bee. Visit nosuchthingasafish.com for news about live shows, merchandise and more episodes. Join Club Fish for ad-free episodes and exclusive bonus content at apple.co/nosuchthingasafish or nosuchthingasafish.com/patreonEdited by James HarkinProduced by Leying LeeTeam includes Tara Dorrell, Joe Mayo and Ethan Ruparelia

Hi everyone, welcome to this week's episode of No Such Thing as a Fish, where I, James Harkin, was replaced by the wonderful Jamie Morton. That's right. James is away, but subbing in, is Jamie, who you may know as one of the hosts of the brilliant My Dad wrote a porno podcast. It's so funny, it was an absolute globe stradler, and it's still available to listen everywhere you get your podcast, so do give that a lesson. Bigger news, though, for us personally, because we are returning to the London podcast. Festival. We will be there on Saturday the 12th of September at King's Place in North London. And Andy, it's not just going to be one show. It's going to be two. We're doing not only a live normal episode of fish, which we're very excited about, but for the first time ever, we're going to be doing a live drop as a line. That is, it's our audience feedback show. I present it.

There are a lot of wacky format points. It's great fun. And we're going to be doing it live for the first time ever. It's going to be mayhem. It's going to be great fun for Andy and probably the audience. Not so much great fun for me, Dan and Anna. But, you know, anyway, if you could not be in London on that date, then do not worry because both of these shows will be live streamed and they will be available on catch-up. But how do people get tickets, Andy? Well, tickets are going to be on sale from the 7th of July, Tuesday, the 7th of July. You can get tickets at no such thing as a fish.com slash live. And if you are already a clubfish member, there is a 24-hour pre-sale exclusively for you and to guarantee your tickets,

all you need to do is go to patreon.com slash clubfish. Join now, get access to that presale. Absolutely. So go there to get your ticket. Go to your normal podcast provider to listen to my dad wrote a Pono. But before all that, sit back and relax and enjoy this episode of No Such Things a Fish with Jamie Martin. Okay, on with the podcast. On with the show.

Hello and welcome to another episode of No Such Things of Fish, a weekly podcast coming to you from the QI offices in Hoburn. My name is Dan Schreiber. I am sitting here with Andrew Hunter Murray, Anna Tashinsky, and Jamie Morton. And once again, we have gathered round the microphones with our four favorite facts from the last seven days. And in a particular order, here we go. Starting with fact number one, that is Jamie. My fact this week, guys, is a Titanic passenger credited swimming in the saltwater pool

the morning of the sinking with helping him survive. As then he'd already, he was used to it. Well, he thought, you know, I've already done this saltwater thing. Survived the swimming pool. I didn't realize there was a swimming pool on the Titanic. I should have guessed there would be because obviously it would so luxurious. Very luxurious. One of the first ever swimming pools to be on any kind of luxury liner.

Salt water as well. So you really did acclimatized to the sinking. Does that help? It doesn't matter if you've trained in a chlorinated pool and then you end up in the sea and you're like, well, I don't know how to swim in this one. But we'll never know. There's something quite nice about it because we know that the band kept playing for a long time. I can imagine maybe the lifeguard at the pool kept the pool safe right to the end,

you know, until the pool just got bigger and bigger and bigger. Yes. Actually, because it was a heated pool as well. So actually, if you were in the pool as it sank, you probably had a better chance of surviving the initial swim because you were still in heated water. As long as you traveled with that batch of heated water. If you're swimming in the swimming pool, are you technically sinking, though?

Because you're just really just still swimming. You could just pretend that I'm just swimming in the swimming pool even though swimming pool is like, you know. Right. The Atlantic. Yeah, yeah. Well, this guy, so he was, his name was Archibald Gracie the fourth. And he came from quite a prominent family.

His ancestors had built what is now the mayor's house in New York. So Mandami lives in this. Oh, Gracie Mansion. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Gracie Mansion. Yeah. So he came from good stock.

He was his first class passenger and said a few things about why he survived it. But he said his swim made him really hungry. So he had a really hearty breakfast. So that might have. helped him as well in the survival process later on that evening when he was in the water itself. Yeah, and he'd read a book recently as well about something to do with Rex and extreme survival. So he felt like, well, that's in my head as well. We've all had that. You come out of the cinema, having watched an action film, you think you're James Bond for about 20 minutes. Yeah. I really

helps. Yeah. Archibald Gracie IV, by the way. These are his dates 1858 to 1912. He died the same year the Titanic Sank. He was the first person to die. He was the first adult, yeah, adult survivor to die. Was he? Was it swimming related again? Did he jump into an empty swimming pool on land? And that was the tragic...

It's really, yeah. Oh, that's so sad. Diabetes. Okay, okay. Sorry. Fact about this, swimming pools are getting colder in the UK. Okay. Okay.

Why? Why do my twilight? Why do my twilight? his own scripts, keep getting rejected. Is it a mystery? Will riddle me this? It's not a mystery. Is it environmental reasons?

Very close. Is it because we think the young need to toughen up? No. Gen Z, get them used to a bit of ice cold water. Is it because it's more ocean-based pools? It's now tidal pools and so on. It's very good. No.

It's just because it's very expensive to heat up a swimming pool. A huge volume of water to 30 degrees. and all councils are broke and councils run most of the pools. But there is one place in Devon, Exmouth Ledger Centre, which for three years has had the answer. What is it?

What is it? Oh, you just keep putting the kettle on and running out of some inkblings, topping it up. Didn't we do a fact about one, you start building them next to morgues and the cremation. Yeah, yeah. There is one.

I see the Reddit or Reading, which is using a, no, this one is using the most modern of all things, A data center. Oh, very good. Tiny data center. Apparently it's only the size of a washing machine. So I don't know how much data is pumping out.

So AI is heating our pools as well as... Basically, yeah. All the computers in the data center are surrounded by oil. And that just goes through a heat exchanger, heats up the water. Lovely. Brilliant idea. Lovely. Maybe they're not so bad after all these data centers.

Maybe not. In the White House, there is a swimming pool in the White House. The press briefing room is now above it. And it's just an empty swimming pool and it's full of data servers. It's where they keep all of their old computers, just in the pool. But the pool's empty. The pool's empty. They should fill it up.

Well, I know, right? But no, FDR got this pool built in the White House because he had health issues, right? Pellio. Yeah, I think it helped with his, you know, whatever. But then Nixon wanted to get rid of it, but he was too afraid of the potential political backlash of demolishing FDR's pool that he just built on top of it. So the pool's actually still under there, and they just use it to keep those wires and computers in there. Yeah, I know. Has anyone been to the Skypool near Battersea Power Station?

Oh, no, I didn't think you were allowed. No, you can't be. If you be a friend a resident, you can go as like, no, I really want to. So if anyone's listening and wants to have me as a plus one, I'd love to go and swimming it. Right. That's not how you befriend people, Jamie.

Is that you don't announce on podcasts that you want to use people for their facilities. And I'm lonely. That's all I want. It's one little pal. But it's really cool. Have you seen it? It's like it's all glass.

It's made of acrylic. Oh, okay. Oh. I know, yeah, very good. And it's, but it's, it's so cool. It's like you're swimming in the sky. It's completely see-through.

Yeah, terrifying. And it's between two buildings, right? Yeah. Yeah. But it's bad because there's some social housing in that building and they aren't allowed to use it. Oh, really? Yeah.

Just terrible. Here you go. What is not allowed in French pools? Swimming pools? I know the answer. Like swimming shorts. Yes. Oh.

Yes. Because I knew there were rules for, you know, various kind of restrictions on clothes like, they sort of, they have a lot of, lots of laws about burkers and things like that. And there are burkinis and there's all sorts of stuff. But for men, just swimming shorts are completely verboten. It makes perfect sense.

Why fronts? You need to wear en slip de ban, which is the extremely small Bidot stuff. G string. It's not a G string. But they're very, very short. You can wear unboxer, but those are also extremely form hugging. And this dates back to 1903. And there are a few, just to forstall any emails,

there are a few sort of perverted holiday centres which do allow shorts. But they're extremely unfrench. And most public swimming pools in France, if you go along and try and get in there in swimming shorts, you'll have to take something from the lost property box. You're talking to someone who's dinner. Get out.

Yeah, as a small boy, as a child. Really? We were on holiday. And yeah, we didn't have Speedos. And so my parents didn't say, oh, it's all right, we'll go and buy some and, you know, come back tomorrow. They said there's a lost property bin. fish something out.

Yeah. And so I did. So I was wearing some French person's. Wow. Very, very slender. Yeah. Piece of fabric. But it's because...

What's the thinking behind it? Yeah. Because they think that the shorts are kind of unhygienic because people tend to wear them in that every day. Yeah. So it's covered in dirt. I mean, it is logical. That does make sense.

Well, no, it's not. I've literally, you guys have never turned up to the podcast wearing swimming trunks. Ever. On holiday, though, you would. You'd like maybe go for dinner with them. Went to town. Yeah. Roll around in mud and,

I know you guys holiday with, but everyone's wearing a tux on my holidays. I once got in trouble in a swimming pool in, I want to say, Romania. I was in the pool with my uncle and my nephew, my nephew really young at the time, so we were in the kids' pool. And they got out of the pool and suddenly all the children started leaving the pool and all the parents. And a man started yelling at me. Couldn't understand what he was yelling. So I was just alone in the kids pool. And you were a kid as well?

No, no. I'm like in my late 20s. Okay. And what it was was boiling hot, it was an outside pool, and I had my rashy, as you wear into the surf in Australia, rash vest. The guy thought I was a homeless man who had got into the pool and was washing myself. And so he was yelling out, you homeless man, and that's what got translated to me by one of the locals. They think you don't have a home. What's a rashie?

Oh, it's like, you know, bodied. Sofers wear it. No, no. Sorry, I'm just not understanding. It looks like a wetsuit, but a t-shirt. But it's, yeah. Oh, okay. Oh, right.

Okay. To protect from the sun's race. Yes, exactly. Yeah. What was your vibe generally back then? Was the beard a bit less? Long hair, quite beard. To be fair, I was like, I totally get where you're coming from.

And you had all your plastic bags with you as well. Yeah. Hey, listen, another thing you're not allowed to do in pools is. Fetting. Petting. Sorry. Heavy petting. Yeah.

Have a wee wee. Oh, that too. It's really frowned upon. I don't know if there's official rules that don't allow it. But it feels like a huge oversight because physiologically, we're built to pee in pools. Sorry? Our body. You really are the homeless man, actually.

We take it back. As I said to the lifeguard, I am built to pee in here. Why do you have an uncontrollable urge to urinate when you're in a pool? It's your body reacting to your surroundings, right? One of the responses is that they let more water out of the bloodstream into our kidneys, and that's converted into urine to get out of there. so that we regulate ourselves. That's so interesting.

I can't know I'd never wondered why you always need to pee in water. This is a big problem, obviously, for Olympians, who have to get into their swimsuits 20 minutes beforehand. They're locked in, they go in the water. So in most interviews, if they're asked, do you pee in the pool? They all say, yeah, of course, we all pee in the pool. And also, it can propel you forwards. If it's got a strong enough.

If you've got a good stream, yeah. Do you know what happens if you've got a swimming pool and you empty it? Let's say it's winter. You think, I don't need to use this anymore. I could use it for like a... storing all of your hard drives. Exactly. That make it easier for the police to just parcel them all up when they pop over.

So as we're establishing, there's no good reason, I guess, to empty your pool in the winter, but you might want to. But it pops out of the ground. Don't do it. Swimming pools, if you empty the water, it's actually what's keeping them in the ground. It's weighing them down. So it's a balancing act with the ground.

And swimming pools, it's called like pop-up syndrome in the swimming pool engineer world. And if people empty their pools out and not properly, then all the walls cave in and they just jump up. They just sound like a complete faf. Too much fath. Yeah. And elitist. And elitist. But if anyone does have access to that pool in London. It's true.

Swimming pools lost one of its great champions the other day. Oh no. David Hockney. Oh yeah. David Hockney, the artist, famous artist, who loved painting swimming pools. In fact, he had a painting which went for 90 million, which was to someone swimming, someone standing over it. In all the obituaries, you might have seen that exact painting.

It's quite famously associated with him. But I found out that not only did he love painting pools, but he loved painting pools. David Hoffney literally painted the inside of pools as well. Was that just a misunderstanding where someone hired him to do that one? It's not realising. I don't know. I'm going to paint my pool.

$90 million. Guess out. Yeah, that was a hobby of his. When he moved to his new house at one point, it had a pool, and it was empty, and he painted these waves underneath. And he used to repaint it all the time. Really? On his 80th birthday, in fact, he spent the day repainting. Oh, so he painted designs on it.

Yeah, exactly. I thought you just meant like painting a uniform color like matte all over the inside of it. No, no, exactly. It's like little waves. So, in fact, there's a pool in America called the Tropicana Pool. It's at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. hell and that still has the Hockney painting underneath of all these lines of blue. It looks really cool.

It looks amazing. I try painting underwater. I haven't, but I imagine it wouldn't work. You take the water out first. So he does empty the pool. How's he doing it? That man is a magician in so many ways. I have one last thing.

One of the great moments in recent swimming popularity is Vim Hof. The amazing ice man. He likes to swim in fountains. And so I just want to give you a little warning. about swimming in fountains because quite a few years ago he was swimming in a fountain in Amsterdam and he decided to give himself an enema on the nozzle of the jet in the fountain. Now he's done it before and he was meeting his son in that park. He was waiting for him. He decided to give himself another enema. What he didn't know is that a few weeks earlier the city had altered the jet

to be more powerful than it was. Yes. And so when he placed his anus over the jet, According to the report, the water cut through his colon and intestine. Okay. Oh my God. And he had to be rushed to hospital by his son. Now, because he's such a hard man, when he got to hospital, they thought he was fine. He was probably dying in that moment, but they were like, oh, he's totally fine. And so he just lay there for ages.

And they didn't do any proper surgery on him. Yeah, they didn't realize to what the extent of the damage was. Oh, my God. So after a few hours, he fainted, and they suddenly realized how bad it was, and they stitched him up. but it took a long time for him to recover. So do not give yourself enemas. Which never has the phrase, I have no sympathy for that. Felt more opposite.

Jesus Christ. Because it sounds like it's going to be a funny thing like he just goes flying into the air. But actually that's a very serious medical thing he went through. That's why if you're not a cartoon character, a lot of things are more dangerous. But why to meet his son? That's what I'm really...

But if you've got time to kill before an appointment and you think, oh, just give myself a quick enema, you know. Okay. Look, I sympathise. I did it on a whim. Oh, really good. Really good. Really good.

Let's end on that. Okay, it is time for fact number two, and that is Andy. My fact is, in 19th century Egypt, one of the sexiest dances imaginable involved pretending you had a bee inside your clothes. Go on, let's see. Well, I was reading a book about Cleopatra's Needles and how they came to be. There are a few of them and two of them are in London and New York, respectively. And it's not as bad a story as you might think from the century they came over in. Anyway, it just contained this side detail, this book, all about the dancers of Egypt.

And this dance, the dance of the bee, sometimes dance of the wasp, is basically this was catnip to kind of white middle-aged blocs from Europe who were enticed to the Egypt by the sound of this unbelievably alluring dance. It was the Bangkok of its time. It was the Bangkok of its time. It basically was. And, you know, the dancer will pretend there's a bee in her clothes and takes them off one by one. And you can see where that goes, basically. But does she take them off at frantic, mad speed?

Because that's what you would do, isn't it? I imagine she's doing it sort of seductively rather than just. I think she probably finds a way of spinning it out and making it a bit more fun than, you know, the sort of everyone has a friend who doesn't like bees at all and, you know, will go a bit tonto when there's a bee anywhere near them. So I think she doesn't do that. Are there connoisseurs that can tell the difference between Dance of the Bee and Dance of the Wasp? I'm sure there are.

I'm sure there are. I'm sure this led to a lot of connoisseurs making the journey down to Cairo or whatever. But there was this whole group of women called the Gawazi who lived apart, spoke a different language. They were street performers and they were quite controversial in Egypt. They were seen as immodest.

They were seen, they were described by one writer, Edward Lane, as the most abandoned courtisans of Egypt. And they were, in fact, they were so attractive. They were expelled from Cairo en masse, you know, as a social grouping. And they were exiled to Upper Egypt. which on a map is just below northern Egypt

it's below lower Egypt because that's where the Nile flows because that's the way the Nile flows yeah yeah yeah so yeah the Gawesi and they had this dance of the bee and was there any sort of a pun

was there the queen bee of the dancers that was sort of leading the the rage don't Anna you don't have to look so upset when you did I really enjoyed being pre-warned about the pun yeah it was very rare

isn't it to get that yeah yeah I wish James would do that then we can all steal ourselves Sorry, go on. I don't think there was. I don't think it was a Queen Bee. Well, you may have found differently, though.

No, no. I mean, there were a few people. But it was, you know, this is what has been bracketed as well as belly dancing. And that used to be seen as vulgar. You wouldn't think that now, but you would say, son of a belly dancer if you were insulting someone. Yeah, that's a huge insult in Egypt. I think maybe still to this day in lots of North Africa. Yeah.

It's very, very controversial belly dancing. It seems to hold this incredibly odd position in Egypt, where it is the quintessential Egyptian dance and it's huge in Egypt and makes lots of money, but Egyptian women basically kind of don't do it now. I think it's Egypt's got increasingly conservative. Obviously, it goes in waves. And now, if you're an Egyptian woman, you are really called all manner of things if you belly dance. So all the belly dances in Egypt come from mostly Eastern Europe, I think, and Russia, Ukraine, America, Britain, almost all of them. It's like if Morris dancing was unbelievably sexy. Do you not mind it? Sorry, and obviously I do find unbelievably sexy.

There is one belly dancer in Egypt called Johara, who's one of the queens of belly dancing, apparently. And she was descended on, her nightclub was descended on in 2018, by police to check that she was wearing the appropriate shorts. So I think you have to wear shorts underneath your belly dancing gear, and there was a rumour that she was wearing nothing. And she insists that she was, and the police said she wasn't, it does feel like it's not hard to check, but I'm not, it doesn't matter.

It doesn't matter, guys. But she was delighted that she was arrested and put in jail because... Publicity. For such good publicity, yeah. She was invited by the policeman who arrested her and put her in jail. She's now done belly dancing at loads of his weddings. Loads of his weddings. Wow.

He's a lethario. Weddings of his friends and family. Yeah, right. Andy, when you were talking about them being kicked out, that was in 1834. But more recently, in the 1960s, the government put an actual clause into their rules. Oriental dance is not permitted to show the following. lying on the back, lying on the ground in a vulgar fashion, or making rapid movements in such a way as to cause excitement.

The thighs are not to be fully open while on the ground. There are to be no wobbling up and down movements. And it goes on. And you don't always have control over whether there are wobbling up and down movements, I find, increasingly. Sumo wrestlers were also banned under these rules. Wow. Yeah, the rule who banned them in 1834 was Muhammad Ali.

He was just called Mohamed Ali. Sting like a bee. Stings like a bee. Sexy dancing, pole dancing. I don't know if any of you are. I'm grade three. I've got my blue bag. Yeah, yeah.

Keep practicing because people are now lobbying for it to become an Olympic sport. Because it's just a bit like the parallel bars. It's just like a purple bar. They've got the poles left over from the pole vault thing. They're not being used 98% of the time. Yeah, just use them. Yeah. Because it is very technically.

I mean, it's sexy obviously. But it's just very technical, isn't it? You know, strength. It's sport. Yes. Wow. Yeah. But if you say to a lot of people, John, I come for a night seeing the parallel bars with me,

then you don't get as much interest in my experience. And it's very, very hard stuffing a tenor into a pole vault as jock strap right from the top of them. You mock, guys, but when it is an Olympic sport, you're all going to go. Do you think it will be? I think it will. A lot of people now do it just as a recreational sport. Yeah, yeah. Men, women, it's not just a women thing.

Everyone uses it because it's very good for your... Kundalini. You went towards your crotch now, but is it good for your crotch? I don't know. I thought there's my condolini. Excuse me, it is good for your crotch. Oh, sorry. This is.

This is a thing about belly dance in particular. Right. Which is that it's... So different. Back to that. You're back to that. So sorry. That is good at preventing urinary incontinence in the cohorts of dancers who tried it.

But not if they're in a swimming pool. I don't think if you're in a swimming pool. Then you are just putting yourself. It's not. Yeah. Yeah, it improves your pelvic strength a lot, basically. That makes a huge amount of sense. If you do the belly dancing motion, which I'm trying to on my seat now,

it does feel like you're doing a pelvic floor exercise, isn't it? Oh, yes, so it does. There you go. There was a rumour that's repeated to this day, almost everywhere, that it was also used in North Africa in the 19th century and 20th century to help women in labour. And everyone repeats this thing where its origin was sort of women would flood to the woman who was giving birth and belly dance around her.

as a way of saying, you know, do these motions to ease labour, which having, I think, the only person who's been through labour around this table, I don't imagine that doing a belly dance would have made it that much easier. And I don't think there's that much evidence for it. There's a couple of mid-20th century accounts. But I do like academics who really dig into this. So there's an academic who wrote a whole massive thesis on, is belly dance a birth dance, sort of debunking it and saying,

this just wouldn't help. Very annoying. just to say no. But she did describe something else. She was like, it's possible that, you know, this one account we have in the 20th century was left over of something

that was really common in the 19th century, much like other dancers that seemed to have disappeared. And then she described another example of this. And I just love this. She said, Arabic scholar John Lewis Burkhardt described a marriage custom in which a man wrapped head to toe in white wearing a massive male organ made out of cotton

cavorted in the wedding possession of a bride. And this interesting custom seems to have faded out as well. That's a shame. It is a shame, isn't it? And she doesn't say where he's wearing the organ. And bizarrely, I imagined on his head, but having read that out again, he's just wearing it on his crotch. I don't think it's clear.

I think it's definitive. Not clear. There is a thing which persists, I think, even to this day, where the Goazi women were seen as immodest and they were taboo and they were banned, all sorts. There were cowals who were men who did the women's dance. They dressed as women. They, I think, acted and walked and spoke as women. And I think even today, Morocco has a few cowals.

I suppose it's sort of analogous to drag in a way. But it's centuries old, it's tolerated. And it was a way of, I think, maybe getting around the exclusion of gay men and allowing self-expression in that sense. Because belly dancing and singing in public were both seen as so immodest and so almost akin to prostitution that actually we should just let the fellas get on with this. And that's, you know, they're trusted to do it in a non-totally immodest way. That's fascinating, I think.

That is. You know, when we started our podcast in 24. It was still the case that you would need a permit if you wanted to do any of this kind of dancing out on the streets of Egypt And they have a sort of morality police that goes around and so show me your papers, you know, if you're doing it out of the street And my papers are just in here Oh no, hang on, oh no They're in here We should say that belly dance is a completely Western phrase is a translation of the French

Dance Duventre Dancing of the stomach So it's not an Egyptian phrase at all I think in Egypt people get quite annoyed with it being called belly dance basically I was looking into other dances that had a sort of an animal element to it. Oh, crumbs. Yeah, you had a bee that was running around in there that you need to take your clothes off. I found the Tarantella.

Oh. My pronunciation. This was a dance. It's a folk dance that became so popular that classical musicians like Chopin and Liszt wrote songs for it for tarantula dances. And its origins go back to the 15th and 17th century and it's connected to a thing called Tarantism. And people thought, if you were bitten by a venomous, tarantula that you could frenzy the dance and get it off. And it's from Taranto in Italy,

which is also where the Tarantula got its name as well. Is it from there? Yeah. I thought it was South American things. Well, it's really interesting because it's a wolf spider, which it's often called a tarantula. So it's not in your head of a classic tarantula. It's more a wolf spider. Interesting. Yeah. Cool. Because also I came across another animal-related dance, which I don't know if it was real, but it was claimed to be real by late 19. century anthropologist from the West, who were always reliable. And he was in Senegal, and he said there is a dance called the Bambula, which is a dance of the Walloff people. And he said that it imitated the mating of ducks. But what I was impressed

by in what is otherwise quite an objectionable text is that he did specify that the Drake has a member of a corkscrew shape. Which is absolutely correct. Ducks do have their corkscrew willies, and good on this old bloke for knowing that. And he said, a peculiar movement is required to introduce it into the whole of the duck. And so that is the movement. Let's say the whole of the duck.

The whole duck or the whole of the duck? Because they're about 45 centimetre as long, it does go into the whole of the duck. The whole duck. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Another dance that's quite sexy is your classic Irish dancing, river dance style. In which I am trained?

Of course you are. No, you're not. I am. Why are you trained in river dance? I just did it for a while when I was younger. What do you mean you just did it for a while? That isn't a thing. I just had some river dance.

Why being so core, you mentioned it? Come on. Yeah, I shouldn't have mentioned that. Did you perform on stage? Of course. Have you met the flat? Across Europe. I taught flatly everything he knows.

No, I did do a bit of it. How old? What age? I'm not telling you that. Okay. Let's just say, I had to stop to do my degree. Yeah. Yeah.

And you hold your hands by your sides in Irish dancing, right? Did you do the classic Michael Flatley, hands by your sides, legs flailing out everywhere. That's right. Very straight. Yeah, yeah. Well, nobody knows why that is how you do Irish dancing. So there are just lots of theories that are claimed confidently by various Irish dancing societies. And I just like one of the theories, which is that it is so that you can not touch members of the opposite sex.

So it's because it's too sexier dance and you've got to keep your hands by your side. Otherwise, you'll end up groping your partner in the Irish dance. But I also just really like this theory, which is. another potential reason why. It's that when the British were trying to dominate Irish culture basically kind of flatten it out in the 19th century, then they wanted to get rid of all aspects of Irish identity, including their dancing, but the Irish wanted to keep their songs and dances. So, compromise halfway up and down the body. Is that what we're saying? Is it like Ireland and Northern Ireland? This is what I think you're going to say. This is the most exciting thing.

well, it's that the British would be patrolling outside pubs at night. No way. And so they would look through the windows and everyone would be standing still, just holding a pint of Guinness and their hand chatting. But underneath that window, the legs were rot do do. They were going for it. This is like, they could do it behind hedges, behind bars, wherever you like. This is weirdly more offensive than everything I imagined you would say.

It's clever It's very clever Okay It is time for fact number three And that is Anna My fact this week is that according to ancient Hindu astrology If you have matching testicles You will be a king

Yes This is in one of the many hundreds Thousands of Hindu texts there are It's such a fun religion Because there are so many fun texts you can draw on And this is in one called the Burhat Samhita which is a 6th century Sanskrit text and there's a chapter called

On the Features of Men and it's sort of like palm reading or something you know, predicting your outcomes depending on your body qualities and one of the bit says if both a man's testicles be alike he will be king if the testicles be not alike

he will be fond of sexual intercourse a person with a single testicle will suffer death by drowning Is that because of a lack of buoyancy aids? Yeah, you're just always tipping onto your side I think we can assume Archie Bold Grace the fore He was a double-balled man If they be raised up

A person will not live long And if they hang down He will live to the age of 100 So where do you guys fall as it were On this What's confusing is you've read out some there And it sounds like that's a lot There is so much more to do with the penis

That means I don't even know where you would begin It starts contradicting itself So much Here's another set of ways you can tell If you'll be rich or poor If the penis be small The person will be rich Oh, congratulations, Dan.

Come on. This is the 1980s. That's great. If large, he will have no sons. Oh. If it be... So that's okay. So now we've gone size.

Okay. So you've got three sons. Cool. If it be... But he is poor. It's so confusing. If it be inclined on the left side, he will be poor. Oh, there we go.

If not straight, he will be without sons and without money. Check this one out. If covered with muscles... He will have very few sons. And I now have, on my Google search, can you have a musly penis? And no, you can't. It's a muscle-free zone. So what's going on here that mushy penises existed back in the day?

Did evolution get rid of it? Yes, that's what happened. In the 12,000 years, evolution has just a very speedy evolution. Well, I guess it's covered with muscles, you'll have very few sons. They've died out. Right now. The muscle-penest humans are. gone.

Look at this one, because this one is also an answerable one. If the urine fall in a line and twisted, the person will get very beautiful sons. If the urine fall in two, three or four lines and twisting from left to right, the person will be a king. It's that interesting. King predictors. Yeah, yeah. Two, three or four lines does imply that you've got some sort of hole punch.

Yeah, there's some sort of problem there. I'd say get it checked out. But it's interesting how many things are predictors of being a king, as in there can't have been that many kings to go around. So is it all of these things are quite rare? As in because the testicle is symmetrical. Also, if your feet are dry, you'll be a king. But you have to have soft souls, close toes, beautiful red nails and invisible ankle raised like a turtle. So actually, that's very specific.

And that presumably narrows down the number of people who are claiming kingship. Because I don't know if what you can do. Who do you report who would say, excuse me, I'm a king. But maybe it's like colloquial, like, she's a queen. he's a king how disappointing very possible very possible

all of this is to do with astrology isn't it it's to do with divination and you know this is a very lengthy text written in the oh what century it was AD wasn't it sixth century okay

and the subjects are unbelievable because the number of things from which you can predict an omen according to this system enormous so there are omens from slits of garments you know particular well if you've got a slit in your garment

just literally a slit in your clothing you know where it hangs how it falls if it's large, small, left, right, all of that. That has particular divination. Omen's number eight, the intention of horses. Omen nine, the attitude of elephants. It's just all sorts in there. Wait, so what a slit in your garment could tell you

what the intention of horses was? No, that's a completely separate chapter. It says a chapter on the omens that result from slits and garments, and there's a chapter from the intentions of horses. It is extraordinarily detailed. It seems to have come from some fevered minds. Well, it comes from someone, this particular text, I'm a very specific person who lived so long ago that we don't know the proper dates of,

but it was someone called Vahara Mehira, ancient Indian mathematician astrologer slash astronomer. He lived about 500, the year 500, roughly. We're not 100% sure. But this was his text, wasn't it? Yeah. And this is what is so interesting about Hinduism. So there are all these texts. So a lot of Hinduism is based in the Vedas.

But then there are all these auxiliary texts, and this comes from that, which are about Hindu astrology. It's called Geotisha, I think. And this is one of those texts. But yeah, hundreds of them. So you can kind of pick and choose. And they are fun. They are more fun than the bits of the Bible that I've read, which granted it aren't that many. Well, it's funny. Like my sister is married to my brother-in-law's Indian. And they had an Indian wedding. And the astrologer dictated what time the ceremony had to be. And it was at 3.30 a.m. on Boxing Day. And we were like, okay.

Well, I guess that's what we're doing them. Had they done to annoy him? Which country? This is in India, yeah. You didn't, you didn't, you didn't, it's 3.30 a.m. somewhere. You didn't do that. It isn't like a beer, no. Right.

Yeah, so it was like everyone's had to get up at two in the morning, get ready. Wow. And it was amazing. But it was because of the astrology, yeah. Did you go back to bed afterwards? Or did you stay up and do the whole? Yeah, yeah. Oh, there was a dry wedding.

Really? Yeah. Okay. That's an astonishing because any overseas wedding in its own right is annoying when you sent the invitation. I'm flying where to go to this wedding? To then see wedding starts 2.30 a.m. I think is pushing it. And there's no alcohol.

Yeah. We were like, cool. Lots of people get married on certain days, don't they? So I think when it's... Saturdays is very common. Saturdays is common. But if it's auspicious, then the number of weddings rockets are cool. And obviously there are a few different astrology systems, but for the very big ones,

so for example, there was a day in 2003 where 12,000 couples got married on that one day because it was auspicious. I know there are more than a billion people in India, so I don't know whether that's, it feels like that is reasonably high, but, you know. And there is now a trend once you've been married a little while, you might be expecting a baby, and there is a huge trend for pregnant women to book Caesareans for auspicious days. What if it's three months in?

There was a woman who asked to have her four weeks early to avoid any astrological problems. And I think the doctors... It would create some more problems, I feel. Well, I think doctors don't like it for obvious reasons, which is that, you know, they're trying to just do what is best for the health and, you know, the health of mother and baby. And, you know, women are being asked to be induced, to have their labor induced in particular hours to guarantee the right star sign and things like it.

Yes. I mean, the planning goes into the conception. In a lot of cultures, I know that the Chinese birth chart is often, you know, used if people want to have a boy, for example. That's a vet. You don't try for a kid until the chart tells you. You just put a rubber band around one testicle, and that sort of solves it. You might drown then.

You might confuse your body into thinking, you've only got one ball. Maybe the biggest geopolitical thing that's ever happened as a result of Hindu astrology, Indian independence, the transfer of power, 15th of August, 1947. Now, that happened a day earlier for Pakistan, which was the... the other huge area of British territory. Pakistan went a day earlier, 14th of August, and India waited a day for an inauspicious period to end. Really? Yeah, yeah. And various astrologers have claimed that actually Pakistan paid the price for that because in 1971 it split off into Bangladesh, which I don't need to say it was for other reasons as well as astrologity that

complicated politics happened. I would say if I'd live through the partition of India, which did not go very well for many people, I'd be asking for a refund from that. astrologer. Yeah. Are you sure the inauspicious period had fully ended? Yeah, yeah. Hinduism, polytheistic or monotheistic? I would say poly.

You'd think, wouldn't you? Only 7% of Hindus say that there are multiple gods. Ah, really? Yes. So, 61% of Hindus say that there is just one god who has many manifestations, which I really didn't realize that that was the conception of God for most people. And then the other 30% just say, there's only one God. Interesting.

Yeah. Okay. Do you want to talk about testicles, Andy? I do. I feel like you have been this whole time anyway. Okay. Jamie, have you ever heard of balls maxing? Balls maxing?

I haven't, but I feel like I should. Well, I'm about to. Well, it's the pursuit of bigger balls, that's all. That's all it is. Yeah, yeah. So it looks maxing, but for you bollets. Right. So, yes.

Okay. How do you do it? Injection of saline solution. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I know. As ever, with all of these trends, is it a trend or is it actually a few weirdos on one Reddit thread? Podcast at QI.com, if you're a keen balls, Maxer, do write in.

Please, no photos. Yeah, yeah. There's also bought ironing or scrotox, which is a thing. And all of the, I mean, this is mostly mad stuff. But basically, when studied, scrotums are just not attractive. And this has been studied scientifically. Why? Just ask any human

Exactly Why is that even logged in the scientific study Why is that a thing The aesthetics of the study There was a specific study I think it's because more men And again the numbers are small But it's rising

I was sort of worried about their personal appearance You know in that region Beneath the Below the Irish pub window And it was just to see whether any of this makes any difference at all So it was a small sample size but a range of women were asked to rank eight unique scrotai

on the the Lyca scale, which measures how much people like something, although it's named after someone called Lyca, never mind that. But of the eight scrotums that they were asked to rate, not one of them got a positive ranking. So it's plus three to minus three was the scoring system. All of them scored below zero.

And the researchers concluded, I just love the phrase they used, it was barely possible to identify a quote's beautiful scrotum, we must instead speak of the least ugly. So I just think there's no point in doing any of this stuff, you know, if you're balls maxing. But we don't know if someone who was balls maxing or ironing their balls was part of this study. That might have absolutely skewed the results.

Oh, were they not part of the study? I thought some people had balls maxed and some people had it. Anyway, all this is let's keep funding academia. Okay, this is time for our final fact of the show, and that is my fact. My fact this week is that in 1980, a woman called Maureen Wilcox chose the winning numbers for both the Massachusetts and Rhode Island lotteries. Unfortunately, the numbers she chose for the Rhode Island lottery were the winning numbers for the Massachusetts lottery and vice versa.

Crushing. God, that's worse, isn't it? It's so much worse than not winning. Yeah. Do we know how much it was worth? Well, it was about a pound each, who cares. No, no, these would have been big sums. The main source that we have for this is one newspaper as far as I could find.

It's been repeated multiple times in books about improbability and luck and so on. But it was first published, as far as I could tell, on May 16th, 1980 in the Morning Union. It was a little piece. My birthday. Oh, my goodness. Not the year, I'm not that old. Jesus. Oh, yeah, okay.

Sorry to interrupt, but it felt worth saying. Yes, happy birthday. So this is what the article said. The odds were won in 2,400, and this was calculated by a University of Rhode Island mathematics professor. And this lady, Mrs. Wilcox, beat those odds. So she said it's like buying a new suit with two pairs of pants, getting ready to go out to a special place and getting a huge gravy stain on the jacket. What a laboured and unnecessary It might have took a while for me to get it

Yeah Hang on down The odds surely are much Much longer than one in two and a half thousand That's what I thought as well That seems very short doesn't it But this is the original source And it's often used this story

As one of those examples of The opposite of luck How to be unlucky The kind of person who sits on a fountain To give themselves an enema Thinking it is at the same jet Propulsion No that's not unlucky

that's not, oh God, how was I possibly to know that that could have in any way backfired, as an idea? Because also, you'd surely see that the water was blasting out with an unnatural force before you decided to lower yourself onto it. Yeah. I guess sometimes the fountains take a break, don't they? So he might have positioned himself over ready for the next round. I assume that. Because he can't have pulled himself on while it was going.

Yeah, it was that heaviest dream. You'd notice. Yeah, yeah. Maybe it's got one of those little senses. You have to wave your hand in front of it. of it like or a button like a jacuzzi or you're yeah yeah yeah a dyson fountain yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah back to this so i do like stories like this and i also like this is bad but i like stories when lots of people think they've won the lottery and then it turns out they haven't oh yeah

there are many of those they happen often enough so there was a story quite recently in the guardian it was about um 47 000 norwegians all of whom got told they'd won big amounts of money on the lottery and the terrible thing was it had been got wrong by the lottery company so they had made a mistake converting euros to Norwegian Crohner which have very different values so people were told

for example one guy got told he'd won the equivalent of 86,000 pounds he'd actually won nine pounds and I think when that happens the lottery company should have to honour it I think they should have to pay 47,000 people 100 grand each I would like that

Oh, I wonder how extensive his plans had got before he realised. I know, I know. I got quite obsessed with the lottery curse. Ooh. You know, people who kind of win a lot of money and then their lives just kind of disintegrate. Yeah. And have you read about some of called Vivian Nicholson? No.

So she won £152,000 in 1961, which is worth millions today, I think. Yeah. On the pools, the football pools with a husband, Keith. Lovely couple. And she was interviewed when they won this money. And they said, what are you going to do with it? She said, spend, spend, spend. Oh, that's a famous quote.

It is a famous quote, yes. And she bought fur coats and sports cars and holidays. And she just went mad and lost it all within a few years. Yeah, yeah, it was pretty quickly. Keith died in the car crash. Oh, wow. Yeah. With a very nice posh car that he bought.

Yeah. And then she went through four more husbands. And they all died. Interesting. Did they all die? Well, a few of them did. That's, you wouldn't become the sixth husband at that stage, would you? Right, quite.

And it became a stage musical. What was it called? Spend, spend, spend. Do you know who produced that stage musical? No. Your dad? My dad. No.

And I'm here to tell you it was not successful. But he did spend, spend, spend a lot on it. And got nothing back. I thought it was great. Lovely soundtrack, some cracking songs. Was it successful in any way? in any way? Critically?

It was critically successful and no one went to see it to the extent that I think his company bought him a big poster which we still have somewhere which says spend, spent skint. It's good though,

Bill Nicholson and he worked with her on the end. Right, was she involved? Yeah, she was. Her photograph is on the cover of the Smith song Heaven knows I'm miserable now. Oh, really?

That's her. There's a picture of that old lady or not old lady, but lovely lady. That's her. That's her. Yeah, so sad. So do you think winning the lottery makes you more or less happy in life?

More. Oh, do you? I think it makes you a bit more. To begin with. Well, the vast majority of people say that it makes you less happy because there's such a conception now, because people have claimed there are all these studies about the lottery curse. There's such conception. So when people are asked, is it destructive to people?

They mostly say, yes, it is. And I'm afraid for any lottery losers out there, it's not true. Winning the lottery does indeed make you happier. And there's all this stuff that it's more like it's. to make you bankrupt. It's not particularly. Although I will say that the only two studies that have confirmed that it does make you happier were in Germany and Sweden, which I thought might be about their national mentality. So maybe they're more sensible people who kind of invest it and think probably about what to do with the money. And I reckon lottery winners in Britain are

probably still idiots who spend it all. Not necessarily though, because I think they've identified that. So I was in a cab the other day and the cab driver was telling me that his best mate had won the National Lottery. And so I said, oh, well, you know about this crazy curse thing where people spend it? How's he doing? And he said, the National Lottery paired him immediately up with a bank manager or a investment consultant. And they put all the money into various different places. He bought a horse for the races, which won its first race, apparently. That's how the horses get you in, though. That's how all the horses are great. Oh, like, Jimmy's got a new owner. So we'll impress him today. You're right.

Get him really on the hook. You'll buy five more horses. Heat that funding going. Hors racing is a scam by horses. What are they getting? Nose bags full of wheat. And a rosette. Of course.

All the carrots you can eat. That's very interesting. So this is another thing that happens when you win the lottery. This might be the Swedish study. Anna, you mentioned, different things happen depending on your sex. So men who win the lottery, again, in this Swedish study, study were more likely either to get married or stay married. Doesn't make put women in the best light.

No, it doesn't. And I think I can predict the fact that's coming next. You do have more children either way. That's by the by. If you're a married woman and you win a lot of money on the lottery, the odds of you getting divorced double. Yeah. So I think clearly what that is, it's actually not, it doesn't say a lot of good

stuff about many that James, we're so unbearable. Humans are awful. Our wives want to divorce us, but they just don't have the count. capital together yet. Right. I think that's it. But would you any of you guys, if you won the lottery, would you admit to it? No.

Because this big thing of like if you, because immediately, great. Jesus Christ. No, because people come out of the woodwork. You live you want 20 quid. I'm not bloody letting those other guys get their hands on this. I don't even like confessing that I did Irish dancing lessons when I was young. You think I'm going to tell you guys about winning the lottery? It's not going to happen.

Because in some countries you, and some states have been, you, you know, and some states have America, actually, you have to legally say that you've done. So people go to extraordinary length to try and disguise themselves because they have to be press conferences. And in some countries, people dress up. So in Jamaica, in 2019, there was a guy called A. Campbell, who won 158 million Jamaican dollars. And he arrived at his press conference.

He was legally obligated to go to dressed with a ghost face mask from Scream. And he's just sat there. Do they make it compulsory so that it's good publicity for the lottery, basically? Like, that's a condition of winning. My research didn't go that deep. Someone else came as a giant yellow winking emoji.

I think that's kind of ingenious. I don't know. I feel like if you want a lot of money, you suddenly realize life's going to be a lot classier. You're going to have the best of life. If I then have to get into a big, I don't know, yogi bear costume to go to a conference, that would be humbling.

Yeah, that's true. But no one would know it's you. Yes. So it's fine. That's true. Yeah. No, well, I just think it'll wreck your life, if all your friends know. Well, it's not even that.

It's that people, you get all of these sob stories, people coming up to you constantly. Because how could you not, you know, give money to people that are in need? I mean, that's so you should do it. Then give it to them. Yeah. Oh, exactly. Yeah. That would be my answer to anyone who's won the lottery and is pissed off about the people asking them for money if they need the money.

Help out. There's just. This is similar to Dan's facts. I wouldn't do it, I wouldn't do it, Jane. No, I would, I'd immediately, you'd never see me again, in fact. I'd immediately go into hiding.

Anna doesn't even take a salary from QI. She's such a good person. I give it to Andy, actually. He made me sign this thing years ago. Just give it to him. Okay, cool. To me, that's how I have a rip over my head now. My homeless days are gone.

And yet he still has the beard. I've bought him razor after razor. Okay, do you have sympathy for this person? In 2007, there was a headline. Court rules women who didn't enter lottery, not entitled to money from the lottery. This was a woman who'd entered a postcode lottery. So, sorry, this is a woman who hadn't entered a postcode lottery, crucially. So the postcode is where if you're in a certain postcode, then you win a certain amount of money.

It can be a huge amount of money. Now, I think everyone else, or seven other people with her exact same postcode, did decide to opt into the postcode lottery. she decided to opt out. They won 13.9 million euros each. Each. 15 million each. That 13.9 actually. So if we're rounding.

But after taxes. But even so it's locked. No, good point. It's tax free, I think. Most lottery wins. National lottery wins are tax free. Are they? Yeah.

They're tax free. They're not in America, but they are here. I said you know that, Andy. I'm not going to say, I'm not going to be on this podcast again without my lawyers. My BL team. Okay. I'm a horse.

So she sued the postcode lottery. Wow. For emotional distress. She said it had been so upsetting for her. She said one winner ostentatiously displayed his new Porsche in her very sight line, which is hard not to do if you bought a new Porsche. Yeah, the same postcode. It's like literally lives opposite to you.

So interesting choice of word, isn't it, Andy? Ostentatious. Hmm. Who is this? She said that it was really difficult because every time she had to write her own postcode, it was just another reminder of what she'd lost. I mean, it is a shitter. Like, you would feel so stupid.

But, like, surely there were other people in their postcode that didn't win as well. I'm not sure. I think she might have been the only one if it's the exact postcode. I mean, all seven of them will probably have moved house quite soon. So that'll be, that'll make things a bit easier. We'll see that Porsche again, was she? Yeah, yeah. What if you find a lottery ticket which wins?

On the street? Yeah. Your pocket. What can you do about it? So this has actually happened. Yeah. Happened in 2009. A couple in Swindon.

We found a lottery ticket. It won. Not a huge amount, but 30,000 pounds. Not bad. A huge amount. What's going on here? You definitely have won the lottery. No, but compared with millions, you know, it was just...

30,000 pounds. Very, very welcome, right? But it was not theirs. It had been dropped by a woman called Dorothy, who was the right fellow, and she had bought it. it. The couple spent half the money, 15,000 pounds, clearing their debts. Because they had some debts. But then she took them to court over this. She was able to prove that she had bought it because she kept the receipt. And they had to pay back the other

half. But they paid it back, I think, I'm not sure whether they paid it back to her or to the lottery. Either way, Dorothy only got half the $30,000 winnings. And Camelot said, well look, if you didn't write your name and address on the back of the ticket, as we advise everybody to do, then we can't prove that is yours. Like, she lost it, sorry. Yeah. Find its keepers. And also, how is the couple supposed to know

who it belongs to? What do you do? Yeah. You go to Camelot and you'd say we found this. Right. Please can we have it. Yeah, well, I don't know. Does the lottery receipt show, do the lottery receipt show what the numbers were on your lottery ticket to prove it? Like, how does the receipt there might be a serial number that's on the

Yeah. Oh, yeah. That's a transaction number. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Hey, do you know that the Sydney Opera House only was able to be built because of a lottery? Really? Yeah, so it needed funding badly. It went so far over budget. So they did a national lottery.

And I know this because my grandfather, who was just over from Australia, he's 94, he bought into the lottery multiple weeks. Wow. And they raised $102 million in total. And that's what built the Opera House. And my grandfather never went to it until we, as no such thing as a festival, fish played there. It's the first time he sat in it. And apparently he said to everyone he spoke to, I paid for this.

Okay, that is 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're all online. I'm on Instagram at at Shriverland, Andy. At Andrew Hunter M. Jamie. At Uncle Eagle. I know. Should change that. And if you want to get to us as a group, Anna. You can email podcast at QI.com or on Instagram at No Such Thing. Yes. Or if you want to contribute yourself to our shows. We have a bonus show every Monday called Little Fish where we read out your facts. We put ours down and we pick out the best that you have sent in to that email,

podcast at QI.com. Andy goes through them all. He brings them to that show. But also, if you have general feedback, he cherry picks the best of those and he brings them to our club fish episode, which is called Drop Us a Live. Clubfish, our members club, it exists on Patreon. Go to patreon.com slash clubfish. We've got so many fun things there.

There is bonus episodes. There's video episodes of Drop Us a Line. And also, if you want to find out about live shows and so on, no such thing as a fish.com. That's our actual website. But come back next week because we're going to be here with another episode. Thanks as ever to Lean Lee, Ethan Ruperalia, as well as the larger Fish Buster team.

And we'll be back again next week with another episode. See you then. Goodbye. I don't know.