No Such Thing As A Fish - No Such Thing As Captain Crossword

Episode Date: January 15, 2026

Tom Allen joins Dan, James and Andy to discuss Noel, Nudie, Greeks and Gardening.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/patreon

Hi everyone, welcome to this week's episode of No Six Things of Fish, where we were joined by The Legend. The National Treasure already, I think, but definitely future national treasure, Tom Allen. That's right. Tom is absolutely fantastic, as you're about to hear, he's a flanner, he's a man about town. Among many other things, you might not think it because he's so dapper, but he's also a gardener. You might not think it because he speaks so nicely, but he's also a podcaster. And he has a new podcast out. It's called pottering with Tom Allen. and he gets a celebrity to his garden, be it Nish Kumar, be it James A. Caster, be it Natalie Cassidy.

And they talk about gardening. It's lovely. And I think they do some gardening as well, actually. He probably has some Natalie Cassidy begonias, some Nish Kumar Asper Distras. Lovely. Can James name a third plant? Absolutely not. But if you want to hear Tom's podcast, then go to wherever you get your podcast. It's called pottering with Tom Allen, and it's absolutely fantastic.

Andy, we have some more news. That's right. The other thing to say is that in a week's time, we're going to be doing the first ever club fish quiz. Now, this is for people who've joined Clubfish at the top tier, the friend of the podcast tier. We are going to be doing a quiz globally, I imagine. We suspect hundreds of thousands may be attending, and you can be one of them. It's going to be on Zoom or equivalent streaming platform. We've all been writing our questions. We've been showing them to each other. We've been coming up with silly games. It's going to be so much fun. Mark your diaries or your calendars for Friday the 23rd of January, 7pm British time. But if you're around the world, we'd love to see you there as well.

It's going to be so much fun, we can't wait to do it. But anyway, please enjoy this week's episode of No Six Things of Fish with the Incredible Tom Allen. On with the podcast. On with the show. Hello and welcome to another episode of No Such Thing as a Fish, a weekly podcast coming to you from the QI offices in Hobern. My name is Dan Schreiber. I am sitting here with James Harkin, Andrew Hunter Murray, and Tom Allen, and once again, we have gathered round the microphones with our four favorite facts from the last seven days,

and in no particular order, here we go. Starting with fact number one, and that is Tom. In September 1945, a small booklet was discovered in the main offices of the Third Reich in Berlin, or Reich, if you're from southern Germany. In Berlin, it was a secret list of 2,820 British individuals who would be rounded up in the event of a successful invasion and Noel Coward found his name on page 34. Okay. Okay.

Why were they going after him? Well, firstly, I think anybody in entertainment would be annoyed that they had to go so far to find their own name. There's only one thing worse than being on the Nazis death list in the event of their evasion. And that's not being on that. I can't believe you're quoting Oscar Wilde in a Noel Coward section. Oh, yes. We'll get on to that. Well, they just kind of crossed over in a sort of Dalai Lama.

In a kind of Dalai Lama way. Yeah, yeah. Is that what was saying? Very Dalai Lama way. Yeah. Have you ever looked at who died just before you were born? No, I never have. Oh, that's a fun idea.

There was one of the popes, the one that was before John Paul the second. Oh, yeah. So I think it was, yeah, just before I was born, he died. So I'm not saying anything else, but I am Catholic. I think you could still do it as well. I can. You might know I've been excommunicated, as we've said, but... But what a comeback story that would be for you.

Yeah. I'm actually the Pope. I can change the rules if I'm the Pope. Yes, exactly. Yeah. Let's get back to Noel Cowher. No, no, no, I like that. I was suddenly panicking about who died in 1983? Oh, yeah, lots.

Mountbatten. No, that was 17, late 70s. Yes, Mountbatten was... I went straight to aristocracy. We should quickly say who Noel Coward is. Noel Coward, very famous playwright. I didn't bother to say that. I just assumed all your listeners would know who he was. Yeah, but you know better than anyone because you're part of the Noel Coward Society.

Well, I have been involved. But the Noel Coward, yeah, usually seen as a playwright and a writer of songs, particularly Matt Dogs and Englishman. He was also an actor, a musician and an author as well. He wrote a novel. Well, he was wanted by the sinister Amstgruber, Viann Sikwern. G1. I don't know what. I don't know what that would be in German. I'm still all for V1G1. A department, it was a department that evaluated intelligence material. Well, he was a, it turned out, a British spy and his cover had apparently been blown. And if the war had gone

differently, well, the man known the world over for the song Don't Let's BBC to the Germans, could have ended his days in front of a firing squad. Wow. So, yeah. And when the list was discovered, amongst other people who the Nazis didn't like for various reasons. And the author Rebecca West sent him a telegram to say, My dear, the people who were to be seen dead with. That's very good. This song, interestingly, got him in a bit of trouble back home, didn't it? What was it called again?

It was called... Don't Let's Be Beastly to the Germans. Yeah, so came out during World War II. It was a satire. It was banned by the BBC. Exactly, because the satire didn't quite cross as well as he hoped. Timwood. They thought that he was actually genuinely saying that. I was excited about it because I think it's the only thing that Noel Coward has in common with The Prodigy and their song Smack My Bitch Up,

which was also banned by the BBC. Can you imagine him reading Smack My Bitch Up, Noel Coward in his accent? He'd have, I think he'd have gussied up the lyrics a bit. He'd have made them cleverer. But I always wondered how he got away with being a spy because he was so flamboyant, right? It seems like as a spy you have to hide away a little bit. Well, Radio 4 did a dramatized version of what he was like. I think a lot of it as well was propaganda work in North America, obviously the US, I think, to garner support for getting on board with the war effort, which I know wasn't the case at the beginning. So I think he was seen as sort of a special envoy, I suppose, as much as anything. I don't think he was going behind enemy lines in Hamburg.

He'd been recruited even before the war started. I think there was someone called Sir Robin Van Sittart who was running... Sounds German, actually. Yes, but he was at the foreign office, and he was recruiting various people to go about their business in Europe, quite successful people, and then report back on the national mood, what people were saying, just kind of sort of soft intelligence, as it were, not, you know, you don't need to observe this tank column and where it's going. This ball bearings factory. It was just like what you're hearing in social conversations. And I think Coward was sacked partly because he was too public in his... manoeuvrings and also because everyone looked at him and this is after the war started

and they just thought we just go to a lot of parties in Manhattan and you're really you're really letting the side down and actually he was doing the war work like he was doing he was really publicly shamed about it I think yeah I think the Daily Mail covered about it and and said like it's that outrage going over there spending all this money with public money going to parties the Daily Mail who's supported the Nazis just before the war well it might yeah I mean yeah but I should check I should check it was the Daily Mail that it's out there and I'm like to get in trouble with the Daily Express. Yeah, and actually, this is another war connection.

So he wrote the screenplay and starred in a movie called In Which We Serve, which was a really good movie. It often got used to get their morale up and show how the war was going. And he kind of based the character on your past life, Mountbatten. Yeah. So he consulted with him and that was largely part of it. Can we say who Mountbatten was? Sorry. Yeah, he was, he was...

Earl, Mountbatten, I think. Mountbatten. Lord Mountbatten, wasn't he? Oh yeah. Yeah. And he was Prince Philip's uncle by loose connection. I haven't researched it. By being the brother of his mother or?

Yeah, so it's kind of like loosely uncle to him. Is it like one of those uncles who's like just friends with your parents? I have a feeling it was. Yeah, exactly. And you're shocked at some point to find out that wasn't your uncle. I remember this one. I found Uncle Joe wasn't my uncle. And I was a bit outraged.

Oh, Uncle Joe. Oh, is he a cup of coffee? Yeah, so anyway, Mount Bassett was part of this thing with Noel Coward. And the Daily Express started ridiculing the production saying that how could you have Noel Coward play a high-ranking general in the army? He was a captain, I think. A captain, right. In the Navy.

Yeah, yeah, he didn't come across. Apart from that, don't carry on. I feel like I'm going quite lost in. Sorry, no, it's unfair of me to be tripping. Well, I mean, I'm pretty sure he's a captain. I haven't watched it. I haven't seen the movie and you're a part of the system. And you're being absolutely pancaked between Tom's love of Noel Coward and my love of military ranks.

Sorry. Just bring a bit of golf into it. You're absolutely part. He seems quite out of time to me, Noel Coward. I know his name and I know he's part of the players. But I do, you mentioned Oscar Wilde before. I do place him as part of that era. But he was in things like the Italian job.

Yes. He was, you know, in the 60s. That was, I think, his last acting role. Right. He was born in 1899. And he served briefly in the First World War, which I didn't know. Because, again, I think of him as, like, he's wearing his pajamas, maybe a dressing gown, he's smoking a pipe through a longholder.

He's writing brilliant dialogue. He's writing plays, like, Blind Spirit and Hayfee, you know, like wit. But he served in this company called the artist's rifles. It just sounds awful, doesn't it? I think it was a place where maybe, I don't want to be unkind, maybe slightly less useful fighters were placed. And I think he wasn't ever put in any sort of position where he'd have to do anything too practical.

Well, he got himself out of it quite fast. And this was only, I mean, he was born in 18909. So I think he was signed up aged 18 or maybe conscripted, I'm not sure. He was discharged for neurasthenia, which was very much. a catch-all, you've got nerves. Sort of tying a piece of string around his finger. Why? I guess a sort of stress.

A stressor situation, definitely. There'd be a TikTok about it now. But I think part of the reason he got so involved in World War II as a spy or whatever is because he was a bit embarrassed by the fact that he'd like gone into World War I quite young and then had to leave quite quickly. Yeah. And his company suffered lots of casualties in the last two months of the war. I mean, hundreds, you know.

And that was after he'd been invalided out, as it were. So, yeah. Yeah. I love the main thing about him outside of his plays and his acting and his songs is the gossip. He was Mr. anecdote, basically. He's like the Charles Brandreth of his day. I'm sure Charles will be very much.

I would say, Giles Brannardth will absolutely love that. Oh, my goodness. What a Christmas present for Giles. We'll clip this out and send it to him. Yes. And so there's one great war anecdote from him, which is he said he never forgot the sight of Coco Chanel entering a Paris air raid shelter, followed by a maid who carried a gas mask on a velvet cushion. Wonderful stories.

It was a time when people did, well, I know there was strata of class, but I think if you did transcend those strata, you would just end up being at parties with these people. Yeah. I don't know, maybe it would be the same now, but, I mean, because his mother, I think, had some vague sort of connection to the aristocracy. Oh, is that really? Maybe like an uncle or something. I remember.

Yeah, she, like, field martial Hague was a distant cousin of her, and her sister married the nephew of Sir Henry Ponsonby, who was private secretary to Queen Victoria. So they were kind of, like, close to high society, but not quite in there until he became very famous and really hobnobbed with the... Yeah, because I thought they were kind of, like, pretty lower middle class. He grew up in southwest London and very suburban, reasonably poor. But his mum was a real stupid.

stage mum. Yeah, so she was the Mrs. Worthington, I think. She was the real Mrs. Worthington. She pushed it. Mrs. Worthington is... Oh, is a song, don't put your daughter on stage, Mrs. Worthington. It's kind of a song told from the position of a producer, I think, in an audition, essentially kind of saying to this very pushy stage mom, she's talentless, please stop

putting it in. But Noel Coward's career happened partly because of a medium spiritual guidance. So his mum went to a show at the Coliseum, an American celebrity medium, Eva Faye and his mum asked, should Noel, young Noel here, go back to school or should he stay as a child actor? And from beneath this big sheet that she was covered in the medium, Anna Faye said, keep acting. Oh, wow. Yeah. So that was a, I think, I suspect they probably would have kept him acting even if the medium had said, go back to school.

I suspect the ambition was strong. Still though. I haven't seen Blythe Spirit, but I think it's a very satirical about the story. spiritualism movement. Is that right? Yeah. Is that sort of parodying? It was a big drive towards it, wasn't it, in the 20s and 30s? Yeah.

Where people would have, yeah, I guess, I mean, that probably makes sense, doesn't it? But my dad even remembers his grandmother having her friends around for like a seance. Really? Like they'd go into the back room or something. Yeah. And all these women were come in and try and contact the dead. Yeah. But it was kind of seen as a thing that people do quite social.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was like a book club of its day. The book club of its day, exactly. Yeah, exactly. His writing was extraordinary, the speed at which he wrote, because there are so many Noel Coward plays. There was a story that in 1935, in the summer of that year alone, he wrote nine plays. That's how quick. He knocked out a song called I'll See You Again, which Frank Sinarcher recorded while he was stuck in a taxi in a traffic jam. It's similar to, I think, Elton John in the way that he apparently writes his song. songs in five minutes. Tandrums and tiaras. It's something about that creativity. It's something quite useful about actually not allowing lots of time. Yes.

And he also says the songs slightly come to him. He doesn't claim to have written. Is that Elton John now? Yeah. Yeah. Elton John will say that the songs sort of arrive to him. After the war, just to go back to his sort of post-war life, he spent a lot of time with the Navy.

And in fact, during the war. During the war as well, he frequently would just hitch a lift on Royal Navy ships. Really? Yeah. He would just... How did he get on that? Well, he... How did he get off?

He spent a lot of his life as a tax exile because he was so financially successful in the first half of his life that a lot of his later life was just moving around to different low tax jurisdictions. And he once joined a ship in Bermuda called HM Dragon. or HMS Dragon maybe and the captain said What the hell are you doing on board this ship And Coward replied that he was Quotes exhausted, overworked

And on the verge of a nervous breakdown And had joined the ship In order to be nursed back to health and strength And waited on hand and foot And the captain not only gave him a lift to Trinidad He gave him loads more lifts later on They became friends And it was just like

As well as a naval captain You might be quite pleased That if somebody so witty and famous Was suddenly on boarded Great. That's the entertainment. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, better than answer or whatever.

You say he was rich. He was so rich. He was making 50,000 pounds a year, the equivalent of which today, that would be 15 million per year that he was making. But in the late 20s. In the late 20s. And he was really burning through it, though. So he had a lot of financial problems. Hence moving to tax havens like Jamaica, where he moved right next door to Ian Fleming.

Oh, yes. Did he? Yeah. The spy. Yeah. And there are stories. that he turned down the role of Dr. No, that that was actually offered to him for the first bond. He was just called Doctor before they offered it to him.

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Okay, it is time for fact number two, and that is my fact. My fact this week is that there is a Marvel superhero called The Gardner, whose superpower is that he is insanely good at gardening. So is it that he can grow things very, very fast? No, it's more that he is obsessed with gardening. And he is almost an immortal. Gardening is supposed to be good for you if you're getting older. Yeah?

Like it helps you live longer, doesn't it? Exactly. Well, yeah, and potentially forever. I don't think it's forever. You give enough time to it. So he's part of this group called the elders of the universe. And basically the... So another one who's really good at Bowls.

There's another one who's just really good at being racist. Absolutely ruins Christmas. Captain Crossword, come and science game. Yeah, okay. These are each of them with the last survivors at their own race. and these were races that evolved just after the Big Bang. And the idea is that they have extended lifespans, but not because they're immortal,

but because of a single-minded obsession with a hobby. That's cool. That can be, I back that. There you go. So his hobby was gardening and horticulture. And the idea is that he would go from planet to planet and he would spend sort of up to a year, sort of terraforming it, making it green again.

That's nice. Yeah. It seems like it might come into his own, actually. in a environmentally conscious age. There you go. Well, he should be a bigger character because actually in the original... I think I should play him. In the original stories, he and the other elders all had the infinity gems,

which is what Thanos collects as part of the main Avengers storyline in order to wipe out all of... Oh, so he's one of the original holders of one of these... Yeah. And for some reason, when it came to the movie adaption, the Gardner didn't quite get... Prequel. That's what I'm thinking. All right.

Tom Holland, it's a governor. Yeah? Yeah, I'd love that. Yeah. I see him with like a big wide-brimmed hat. You know, the sort of thing that old ladies used to have. Oh, yes, yeah. Gloves on.

Obviously, floral gloves and one of those kneeling pads. I've got, I've got one. They are very useful. Yeah, yeah. The best ones are when you've got a handle at the side to push yourself up. Oh, I don't have one of those. It's like an upside down piano stool, really. It's just nice.

That's really helpful. And then you've got to just have a couple of beats to be like, oaf, with my knees. Yeah, absolutely. Okay. We're talking to a seasoned gardener here, I'm guessing. Well, it's salty, maybe. I don't know about season. You do have a garden though that you love to.

I've gotten into gardening. I like to use the past tense of got. I've gotten into gardening in the last sort of four years since having my own place. For a long time I live with my parents and I didn't have my own space then. And so now I do. And it's quite nice just to, well, just mess around really. I'm a proud novice with it. But I find it very interesting.

So on famous gardeners, who's the most famous gardener in the UK? Alan Titchmarsh. Correct. What has Alan Titchmarsh got in common with Elvis Presley? Ooh. Okay. Both from Memphis. That's obvious.

Both sex gods. Okay, I'll give you that. It's slightly related to that. Poets? He writes poetry, Tichmarsh. It's not that. Okay. Both been to jail.

Well, Elvis had a song about it. Titchmarsh was done up for years, wasn't he? For years, yeah. That's why he has on those tattoos. Yeah. covers them up for the show, of course. One for every man he killed in prison. It's how he got into gardening,

was burying the bodies. The answer is that their lower halves have been censored on television. Really? So Elvis, obviously, when he became big, they would only show him from the waist up so that people didn't get too excited. But Alan Tickmarsh has been... They're going to show from the waist down.

They have censored his trousers because he wears jeans. And in North Korea, they don't like jeans being shown because it's a symbol of America. So they show his programs, but they blur out his trousers. But that means he's free to broadcast Winnie the Pooh style. Yeah. Shows for the North Korea networks. He's there. You have to paint his legs blue.

I've seen Titchmarsh do karaoke. Have you? In person? In person. Wow. I don't mean to clang. What did he sing? Something green green grass?

It was, oh, what's the one? I killed the man in Reno. Gangsters paradise. Yeah, I don't remember the song. But it was, yeah. Wow, that's very cool. Well, there's other reasons that Alan Titchmarch is a sex god, by the way, which is that, as well as writing over something like 70 gardening books, he's written a series of novels. Yes, they are a race scene.

Yeah, in fact, I don't know if you remember, but we had Lou Sanders read Morrissey's contribution to the world of sex scenes. Tom, do you mind? I have a little extract here. Oh, God, here we go. I think I have met Alan a few times, and he's always very charming, as you imagine. And he did say to me, because I was talking to him about audiobooks, and he did say he was very aware of his more intimate scenes when he had to sit in a booth and read them out to an engineer. So as an example of what he might have been reading, there is a little bit here. She planted moist, hot kisses all over his body.

Beads of sweat began to appear on guy's forehead, as he became more entangled. in the Lissom limbs of this human boa constrictor. For fully 15 minutes, their mutual passion heightened with groans, size, and liquid noises. Oh, my God. Wow. Can I just say, when you're describing limbs, why'd go for the one animal that doesn't have any limbs?

Oh, Lissom. Lissom limb. I don't know what Lissom means. I've never heard that word before. Lissom is kind of... young and firm and strong, isn't it? Is it? Yeah, yeah.

I love that Titchmarsh is too highbrow for us that we don't know the vocabulary. I know, I bet he'll learn. He's a very educated man. I like the way it begins with she planted kisses. Like, because obviously he's a gardener. Absolutely. Oh, every, every choice. So he was runner up in the 1998 literary review Bad Sex Awards.

And you're right. He felt very uncomfortable reading them. He said particularly with the, a sheet of glass between you and a very large bearded man twiddling knobs, as you say the words. Gosh. He found it uncomfortable. I think it's a bit unfair that bad sex thing because they go for celebs, don't they? There must be loads of like not famous people who are writing worse sex scenes.

Well, to be fair, the winner that year was Sebastian Forks. I was going to say, Birdsong has got lots of that sort of, that's very interesting. Birdsong's got some very fruity stuff, isn't it? Very fruity. I remember reading that when I was about 17 and thinking, oh gosh, that seems like a lot of effort. Can I ask you about a couple of things you might or might not use in your garden, Tom? Oh yeah, absolutely. Should we give it a go?

Right. Do you ever use worm poo tea bags? No, I think I have heard of this sort of thing. Worms are very important, aren't they? Worms are vital. And obviously they eat soil, they poo it out, they help. They do. They do all sorts of stuff.

You can get tea bags with worm castings, i.e, worm poo, where you literally make a cup of tea out of it. of it for your plant. And it really helps your plant. Really? Yeah. Lion urine? Well, that's the thing, isn't it? Because people say to keep away foxes or other animals if you want them out of your garden. Even apex predator. You need an apex. You can't, the people say, oh, just go and we in the garden. And then they need men to we in the garden. It's male urine they respond to. And apparently that's not, that's and won't do it. Apparently you need to go to the zoo and ask and get a lion to we into a cup. Or you could get the piss off plant. Have you heard of that?

What's that? Piss-off plant is a plant that's native to southern and eastern Africa, and it is a plant that supposedly repels dogs and cats from coming near it because of the aroma that it emits. So if you had that in your garden, most likely they would smell it and never come back again. Oh, I'll get one of those. That's pretty good. That's a great idea. Do you have an ornamental hermit in your garden?

No, I don't have anything like that. That was like a sort of little house, wasn't it? Where a little... Well, back in the 18th century, this was a real... life human that you would bring into your garden. Yeah. They would dress like a druid and they would just be sat and they would have a contract to live there and negotiations, ferocious negotiations every autumn as the approach.

Well, look, I'm not going to do this for another year unless you revise my terms. No, yeah. It's been in 1797, there was a thing written up that said the hermit is never to leave the place or hold conversation with anyone for seven years during which he is neither to wash himself or cleanse himself in any way whatsoever. Yeah, my agent's got a problem with his claws, I'm afraid. The agent lives a bit further down the garden in another little folly. Do we know why people did that? Well, I think it's a kind of... It would be like landed gentry would have this person. You wouldn't have it in your garden

in Hackney. What would you? I think, no, exactly. I think what it is is, the hermit is a symbol of a wild and ancient way of living and it's kind of they are reflecting on history and on humanity and on progress and the countryside and, you know, the wilderness. And I think that's why it's cool to have a hermit because they kind of hark back to that. Yeah. Okay. This has been that kind of sentimentality, isn't there?

Around that kind of pastoral. Yeah. There was one place which had a hermit which turned out to be a mechanical hermit. Genuinely, I think it was an 18th century aristocrat. Quite clearly it was just a robot. It was like a very, very, very crude model robo hermit

that they had in their with that thing. Here's another famous gardener. So this is a king called Ere Emiti, who was in ancient Sumer. And what would happen in ancient Sumer is you would get people who would tell the future. And if they saw a bad omen, like maybe the king's going to die, you would put someone else on the throne for 100 days and then you take over again. So this guy, Ere Amiti, decided to put his gardener on the throne for 100 days because they've been a bad omen. and then he died after eating some hot porridge

and his gardener then reigned ancient Sumer for 24 years. Wow. Just because he didn't blow on it. Yeah, I guess so. You got up on your porridge. Yeah. That's incredible. I know.

I guess wasn't a successor in place who would naturally take over. Well, he's the king now, right? Yeah, you're right. So what are you going to do? That's so funny. That's so funny. Okay. Okay, it is time for fact number three, and that is Andy.

My fact is, in 1920, the King of Greece died after trying to break up a fight between a dog and a monkey. This is the only royal death I've found, which involved a monkey at all, actually. Let's learn the fight between a dog and a monkey. This was King Alexander of Greece, and he had a dog. He had a German shepherd. And one day, he was having a walk in the, I think, the palace grounds. and I think a Barbary ape Quite an aggressive

Yeah, not a tiddler of a monkey Oh no, this isn't like bubbles No, no no, this is proper They're very naughty Barbary apes Yeah, I can say They all, yeah Were you naughty? They'll kill your dog

Slaughtering your dog in front of you Or your king They have them on Chabraltar, don't they? And I went up there with a push chair With my daughter who is very young And basically they will just steal everything. Everything that's not held down, they'll steal it. You got her back there?

No. She still lives there. She's the ape queen now. That's why I voted for Brexit. I don't want it to be Spanish. Yeah, so anyway, this ape and this dog were in a fight, he was trying to separate them, at which point the ape's wife turned up and sunk her fangs into King Alexander's leg. Oh, no. And I think some days later he died, he'd become ill, and they, They had swithered over what to do the doctors, and so he died.

And this produced huge geopolitical consequences. Winston Churchill later wrote, it is perhaps no exaggeration to remark that a quarter of a million persons died of this monkey's bite. Really? Wow. Because they've spent the Greek Civil War. Well, it all led to a lot of unhappiness and conflict inside Greece. They got back the previous king.

Because what had happened, the previous king was very pro-German. And his son was pro-German, his eldest son. And so Britain and Russia and probably France got rid of those guys And brought in this guy who wasn't expecting to be king Like he was just thought he was going to spend his days Gardening or just having fun Having a lovely life Yeah and then suddenly he's king

And then you know Okay well now we've got our puppet who's in charge But then he dies and then they bring the old people back And it all goes to shit That's basically what happened Yeah he fought this war against the Turks Which went disastrously wrong Hundreds of thousands of deaths

the royalists were kicked out. And then the European great powers just started picking the Greek royal family. And then eventually things got a bit more democratic. And the Greeks in 1862 had this vote for a new king, a kind of national referendum. And they almost universally, they chose Prince Alfred of England, who I believe was one of Victoria's sons. He won 95% of the votes cast. He said no, no, thank you. I don't want to do it.

He was on the throne of Greece. Yeah, but imagine he'd probably have a nice house somewhere, wouldn't he? I'm sure he's already got a nice... You're right. What year was that? That was 1862. So this is... A lot happening in the 1860s, wasn't there?

Oh, going on. Was that unification of Germany around then? Yeah. And then formation of Italy. Yes. Also, my house was built. Really? So some major events.

Major, major things. So your garden was laid out from the first time. Yeah. By Prince Alfred. And actually, around the corner from me, and Napoleon the third came to live. Is that so? Really. Wow.

So we vacillated. 1860. Huge, big decade. But basically, Alfred was pressured into saying no, because Britain, France, and Russian had all decreed, nobody's going to accept this throne. Nobody wants it. Get over it. And every candidate said no until they got to Prince Wilhelm of Denmark of the Glucksburg

House and he had received six votes from the entire population of Greece and he was then chosen to be the king. That is unfortunate. I know. I think he was 18th highest voted person in that list. He came 18th. But various people had just written a Russian. King, please, or whatever.

They just selected it. So he came almost dead last. And yet, he then was king for 50 years. King even a king face was who they really wanted. Yeah. And then he lasted until 1930. He lasted 50 years. 1930. 13.

And then he was assassinated by either a socialist or a lunatic. And it's not clear which, apparently. Not necessarily. Not to get political. A lot of assassinations happening around that sort of area, weren't there at that time? Yes. They loved it. A vexed.

A vexed period. Vex period in the southeast of Europe. Yeah. I found another monkey bite death. Oh, did you? Didn't expect to find one, but I tried hard and I got there. You know the character Grizzly Adams? Grizzly Adams.

I'm not making a bear pun about that. No, no. So Grizzly Adams, in America, I think he's quite a well-known historical character. So he was a Californian mountain man. He was a trainer of grizzly bears. and he used to just do acts, you know, kind of like a P.T. Barnum kind of thing. So he made pets with quite a few of these bears that he thought were friendly. I can't see this going. Yeah. I can't see where this is going to go.

And he was killed by a monkey. That's like, yeah. Oh, yeah. So, okay, don't take your eyes off the threat of the monkeys. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So he got attacked by a grizzly in Sierra Nevada. Oh, but the monkey was the one who set the grizzly on him. No, monkey comes in later. So his scalp was dislodged in this attack and it left the silver dollar size impression in his skull just above his forehead. Then he had all these other grizzlies that he made friends with.

Anyway, he was re-injured several times in the head and it opened up the wound, which meant bits of brain tissue were exposed. And then... Is he still going with the bear's shtick? He's still going with the bear's schick. And then Grizzly Adams is on tour with a circus when a monkey that was a monkey that is still going that he was trying to train, jumped up and bit him in the brain. Not in the head, in the brain.

You don't have any nerves in your brain, so you wouldn't even feel it. Yep. So anyway. You know it was happening, I think. If he came from behind. It's possible. And so he died, October 25th, 1860. 1860.

1860. There was another big thing. Yeah, it was another big thing. How extraordinary, Dad. If you hadn't said it was a monkey, I wouldn't have seen that. that coming at all. I know, right? It's a real plot twist at the end. It really is. Wow, horrifying end. Here's some people. William the third of England, Alexander the third of Scotland, Prince Alfonso, Portugal, Frederick Augustus II of Saxony,

Duke Geoffrey of Brittany, Isabella of Aragon, Leopold the 5th of Austria, Louis the 4th of France, and William the Conqueror. They all died the same way. Monkeys? Not monkeys. At what point do we start suspecting the monkeys that erupted something big? This is something that does away with lots of royalties. And it's very guessable. Oh, is it gout or something along with us? Yeah, Gout.

Living is high on the hog? Yeah. Is it sort of explosion or some sort of... Oh, because William the Conqueror did explode. But that was after his death. Yeah. He got rather abyss, I think, didn't he? Right.

They couldn't bury him straight away. And so when the monks came to bury him in his concrete tomb, they sort of shoved him in it. And then he exploded. Wow. Conquer. I'm pretty sure, yeah William Concrete Yeah, he definitely exploded

In the... Wait, concrete Oh, wouldn't be concrete No stone, sorry That's a bit of the story You wanted to pick up on The Romans had concrete Abney

I know the Romans had concrete But I wasn't aware that The Normans had It wasn't a brutalist Coffin I just want to go With something really simple Anyway, the answer is

Falling off a horse Oh That is a big old wave That is Alexander the third probably was riding along a high treacherous coastal path having drank a lot of bordeaux wine and just went straight off it right what and fell off the hill just jumped straight off it yeah you would think the horse would stop but yeah problem is that quite often when

these people die there's a big sort of something happens afterwards like happened with this Greek guy so when Alexander the third died that started the first war of Scottish independence essentially. So you know, it's quite a big deal when these kings die, even though they're just people. At what point is anyone suggesting a helmet for horse riding? As in, I just, you don't see that, I mean, apart from knights, you don't see people with like cycle helmets in the past, do you? Yeah, but knights do have protection. You just think, like, how many regal deaths do they have to have before they say, I think we should say, if you're the king or queen, you have to wear a helmet on your horse. Yeah. Or how about seatbelts?

horse seat belt is that safer you're not going to fall if you're really tied tight if your horse falls over though and your seatbelted on I just wonder I feel like there might be a reason why the horse seatbelt hasn't been invented or maybe it has

stirrups is effectively the horse seatbelt because it really helps you hold yourself in place when you're in the stirrups look at you you've been riding a horse recently I've rid them one half you're wearing in as Mr. Equestrian all I'm going to say is they go off Penny cliffs, so, you know,

despite how much Bordeaux wine you. Yeah. That's true, isn't it? How do people, maybe this is a very graphic question, but how do people die when they fall off a horse? Do they get trampled in the legs? I think it's bang on my head. Bang on their head. Yeah, because actually

you're quite, someone who's rid of a horse. Of course. You would know, that's why I asked. You're quite high up. Oh, yeah. Like, and they do, like, my horse at one station, saw a lady horse and so started galloping towards her. And I almost

went to an angle. What embarrassing first horse ride if it mounted the feet of horse and you just have to sit there like a war statue. That's amazing. You're riding two horses at once. That's incredible. Okay, it's time for a final fact of the show

and that is James. Okay, my fact this week is that one of the most popular celebrity tailors of 1950s was ironically called nudie. This guy's a character. I reckon quite a few people might have heard of him, but I'd never heard of him before. He was the first person to spot rhinestones on clothing. So if you've ever seen one of those sort of rhinestone cowboy suits that they wore in America

in the, what, the 50, 60, 70s, he will have made it. So he made suits for Elvis. He made them for shit. How in Titchmarsh? Elton John, who he mentioned before, Hank Williams, John Lennon. It's the who's who of pop music. It's everybody.

Yeah. Liberace, I imagine. Yeah. Inevitable. It was sort of everyone. In fact, I was thinking, because I, you know, the term rhinestone cowboy. Glenn Campbell. Glenn Campbell.

That was originally written by a man called Larry Weiss. And it was in tribute to nudie. Really? Yeah. Because that was a thing that all of these country music stars kept asking for. They were like, nudie, more rhinestone, more rhinestone when they were asking for their suits to be tailored. So that song is a- Strange they didn't put it in more of a sentence, though.

They just went, more rhinestone. More rhinestone. Oh, these sons are you know, they're like, my rhinestone, nootie. That was, it was a guy called lefty frizzle who asked for more rhinestone. Put a few more rhinestone, nudie. Put more rhinestone. Rhinestones are stones from the Rhine, by the way, just in case you didn't know what a rhinestone was.

I never knew what I was. I don't know. It's now just a piece of coloured glass, basically. But they were kind of proper rock crystals. Apparently, you just get these little colorful pebbles on the banks of the Rhine and people used to put them on stuff for decoration. And these days, you melt them on to clothes with heat. Do you?

So you have a little glue layer. And then you just heat them up and you just shove them on. But yeah, Nudie. He was born Nuta Kovlienko in Kiev in 1902. and he moved to America, but he was really into his tailoring. And then when he was processed, supposedly according to the story, when he was processed through Ellis Island, they changed his name to Nudy,

which I'm not sure how often that actually happened. And usually it was people just changing the name to sell more American themselves. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then he came to America, opened an underwear shop, selling G-strings and pasties to strippers. Very broadening of West Cornwall, was it? Yeah, yeah. They're not called pasties.

They are called pastis. They are called pasties. Oh, okay. I just thought, okay. You can get hungry and they are quite handy. The whole meal running through them. If you've got one hand on the pole. And then you just hold onto the cross.

I think the strippers in Bolton do put pasties on their nipples. So then he... I feel they're all the more popular for it as well. People love pasties. They love pies. He then had surgery when he was in his 40s and lost all of his money because he had to pay for the surgery in America. And then he thought, what am I going to do?

I'm going to make suits for celebrities. And he got in touch with a guy called Tex Williams. Tex Williams auctioned off his horse and used the money to buy new deer sewing machine. And they went into business together. Well, you would have got on with Tex. Yeah. Why? Both love horses.

I'm going to start coming in a rhinestone suit. But yeah, I'd never heard this guy. Me neither. Yeah. Yeah, it sounds like... Big deal. Quite the guy. Apparently in the early stage

when he was selling the pasties to strippers, he sold also tailor-made G-strings. You don't want them to not fit. You're right. Earth, have you got round your knees? Oh, well, does it happen again? I was just eating a pasty. Oh, dear.

And the name Nudy became sort of synonymous with these amazing suits and actually the Nudy name is still alive. thanks to his granddaughter, Jamie Nudy, who seems to have taken his first name as her surname. Now, I'm not quite sure how. So now they do still exist, but they mostly make t-shirts and coffee mugs with the name Nudy on it. They don't really make so many clothes anymore. His cars were absolutely bananas. And I only say this, because I've seen one of them, I think in the flesh.

No. In the Nashville Country Music Hall of Fame. Oh, wow. And it's... When did you know you've been there? I mean, so 15 years ago. I thought I'd heard every one of your anecdotes.

No, no, no, no. Why do you keep telling us the same three then? I feel like we're getting distracted from my fourth anecdote. Oh, these facts get annoying. Yeah, go on. You saw that that? It's an insane car. It's got 18 pistols distributed around it.

They're kind of built into the doors and things like that on the inside. It's got 1,200. Silver dollars glued on at various points on over it. My memory might be tricking me. I feel like it's got a bison's horns on the front. Oh, wow. Where you'd have the Mercedes sign or whatever. It's got one of those.

I mean, it's an absolutely loopy. Well, you would plug in your electric vehicle. That's right. Yeah, yeah. Yes. Yeah. He was very obsessed with fashion, as a lot of celebrities are. Tom, you are one of the best-dressed comedians.

Well, that's very generous to say fashion. I've always liked suiting and tailoring. I think because it makes me feel a certain way, sort of stand in a certain way. And I guess that's part of what tailoring has always done for people. But yes, I do like to wear a suit. Yeah. I used to wear ties a lot. And I've stopped in recent years and I feel less good as a human as a result.

So I think I might get back into it. Well, they're a flash of colour, really, I suppose, or a bit of variation in the... Well, you always wore a black one, didn't you? Just black. Yeah. With a white shirt. With a white shirt. Yes, I remember those days.

Yes. Very Mormon. It saves time, doesn't it? So you don't have to change your clothes at the end of the gig. You can just get out and fly out the audience on the way out there. Pop the old badge on. Good to go. Hand out those books.

I did. Whoa. What's interesting is I read a study recently is apparently when you wear a tie, it stops your blood flow by 7.5%. Well, that gets me high, so I like that. That's what I'm missing. That's what I don't know. To your brain. Yeah.

So you've been operating with constricted blood flow to your brain for some years. They did MRI scans on 15 men who were wearing ties and 15 men who weren't. Imagine them going to the MRI machine. Very smart clothes. Should I pop my umbrella and put a head in? Yeah. Yeah. And that's what they concluded.

So it is letting less and it will give you headaches and dizziness and nausea if you wear a tie more. I'll all those things. To me. Right. Yeah. I find now it's evolved into the workwear of men going to work is, rather than suits, it is some skinny chino's, a quarter-zip jumper. Oh, yeah.

With a shirt underneath, open neck, and then a lanyard instead of a tie. So if people don't wear a tie, so they just wear lanyards. Which I think will evolve maybe one day into something else. But we've all become quite utilitarian, I think, in our clothing. I think we've all become quite practical. I think for a long time there was an air of flamboyance about a lot of men's clothing. which isn't afforded so much now. I think if you went out, even me wearing a tie,

people are like, oh, all right. We're off somewhere. I don't know we're having a wedding today. I'm literally just wearing the same things. My dad might have worn. You know, it's not, but it can seem like. Yeah. I was looking into tight clothes or snug clothes and clothing innovations.

Yeah. Because it's really fun. If you look in someone like new scientist for all the clothing inventions, it's all like, this is the clothing of tomorrow. And so in 2007, Phillips, the electronics people, they invented auto snug clothing, right? Which is where it's a clothes with muscle wires woven through the fabric.

You put it up to the power and it adjusts until your trousers are the exact right size for you. That's good. And then you know exactly what trousers you need from now on. Yeah, I think that's great. I can imagine it going wrong well. Oh, absolutely, yeah. Like hundreds of people were electrocuted very badly scorched during this. But it's also, we have a tape measure.

We have the technology to find. know what size trousers someone needs. It's not like until 2007 people wearing like trousers in the size of a house. The other thing is it's different in different countries, right? So I bought a pair of large underpants in America and a pair in Japan. And I can tell you, one of those, way too big for me.

And the other one I can't even squeeze into. This is why James has his G-strings tailored. Yeah. Speaking of putting metal inside clothes, that's what Lame is. I didn't know this. So Nudy in 1957 made Elvis Presley a $10,000 gold Lame suit. And Lame is where you get your fabric, but then you put metallic fibres into it. Oh.

I didn't know what that was. Okay. Where else is Lame used in the sporting world? so gold being woven through or any metal woven through fabric not horse riding aerodynamic

nope I've got a wild theory is it tennis rackets I thought you're going to get it but no Formula one no it's not that it's used in fencing

because you need to when someone stabs you with the sod they need to connect it and so it's the threads inside so all fences use Lame suits in the same

that Elvis did. That suit of Elvis's is amazing. Did you see that in your... Well, I can't remember if I saw it. Because they've got a pair of the blue suede shoes. You know, they've got a load of costumes and outfits. But that is, if you're listening to this and you want to know what that gold limo suit is,

it's on the front cover of an album which gets referred to as 50 million Elvis fans can't be wrong. It's a very, very funny album title. And it's this mad gold suit. It's very loose. It doesn't fit him at all well by a modern standard. But it's a way to say, yeah.

I think I might, I can't remember if I saw it there. Be in a nightmare if there was a lightning storm, wouldn't it? Oh, yeah. I mean you'd be like an absolute conductor, wouldn't you? Absolutely. I found a comedy play from 1805 called The Taylor's, which was shown at Covent Garden. And it was kind of taking the piss out of young dandies at the time.

And they were so annoyed with it that they all turned up and started booing the actors and stuff and not only that they decided to throw not rotten tomatoes but scissors and cutting shears at the actors throughout their opening night well grizzly adams is on stage doing it to him a terrible night isn't that mad that's crazy that is but gosh but how interesting to think of a group of people one associates with sort of foppishness and not being particularly uh agitated. Yeah, but young dandies is like, you know, Mauds rockers, that kind of thing.

Yeah, isn't it? Yeah. I know it's an obvious thing to say, but one realizes that the things we see today have all happened before. They're kind of protests or those kind of groups of people being. Yeah. Or, you know, people being outrageous in their dress sense as a protest or as an expression.

Yeah. Interesting. I've got a riddle for you guys. Oh, right. Give it. Okay. Carol Spencer was a fashion designer. She spent 30 years working.

working for the same client designing clothes but her clothes have never been worn by a human rid of me it is it was like for lassie

or something it wasn't for lassie it wasn't a horse saddle it wasn't a horse related James would have got it I think I've got it I think I've got it

I know my hit rate with the tennis racket is not backing that up I think it's a living Madame to Swords wax work and with the fashion changing of the person You change the fashion all the time.

They keep the wax work, but they don't. And they change the point. You're so close. You're so close. It's a model of a person, but it's not Madame Tussauds. Oh, is it the, it's not the, um, is it Lenin who's kept in the cabinet? It's not. Lenin's fashion show.

Yeah. It's a big of the first of February revolution. It's Lenin again. The fashion show, when they're all wheeled out. Sherman Mal Summer look Isn't the mannequin piece? It's not the mannequin piece. Right, shall I tell you all?

Oh, I feel like we are close. I'm very close. I'll tell you this. One more clue. Okay. The client was only 11.5 inches high. Oh. She's fashionable.

She's got a lot of outfit changes. Bobby. It's Bobby. Oh. I didn't get there. Wonderful. You're probably itching to tell us. No, no, no.

I want to play the game a bit longer. I'm so sorry for truncating it brutally like that. No, no, I'm sure. We've all got homes to go too. All the people listening, we're like, it's obviously barbic. Is it Lenin? 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've said over the course of this podcast, we can all be found online. I'm on Instagram on at Schreiberland. James. Come find me on TikTok. No such thing as James Harkin. Andy. Instagram at Andrew Hunter. Tom, where can we find you?

My Instagram handle is at Tom Indeed. So do feel free to follow me there or I have just started a visualised podcast. I don't know if you're familiar with this idea. And that is available from all podcast providers. And also on YouTube at Tom Allen is the handle. It's called pottering and it's about gardening and being in the garden with my friends. Oh, great. So you're in the garden.

You've got your guests sitting there in the distance. We see a hermit just sort of wandering around. Yeah, just don't talk, don't acknowledge him. He's got another six years left. Well, yeah, if you want to get to us as a group, go to podcast at QI.com. You can send us some facts. You can send us some extra things that you want us to know about that we were talking about. Whatever you send, Andy goes through these emails.

He cherry picks the best of them. And they make their way to our bonus show called Drop Us a Line. Now, this is part of a secret club called Clubfish, which you can find on Patreon. If you go to patreon.com slash no such thing as a fish, you can find all the details there. And you can also send us your most interesting facts because we have a bonus show that goes out on this main feed called Little Fish every Monday. And we will be reading out the best of your facts on that show. Otherwise, just come back here next week. We're going to be back again with another wonderful guest.

We'll see you then. Goodbye.