No Such Thing As A Fish - No Such Thing As Deckchair Wrestling

Episode Date: November 4, 2022

James, Anna, Andrew and special guest Angela Barnes discuss Goldfinger, the German poetry in-spectre, and a view to a kale. Visit nosuchthingasafish.com for news about live shows, merchandise and more episodes.   Join Club Fish for ad-free episodes and exclusive bonus content at nosuchthingasafish.com/apple or nosuchthingasafish.com/patreon

Hi everyone, welcome to this week's episode of No Such Thing as a Fish. Daniel Schreiber is away this week. I thought it was because his wife was having a baby, but he's just sent an email saying, tell them it's something to do with by brand new book, The Theory of Everything Else, available in all good bookshops. And I'm like, well, look, whatever reason he's away,

we have a very exciting guest that is in his stead. And that is the wonderful comedian, Angela Barnes. You will have seen her on your televisions, most notably on the TV show Mock the Week, but she does all sorts of other stuff. I appeared on her radio show a couple of years ago and immediately knew that she would be perfect for Fish. She is the most inquisitive, interested person. You're going to absolutely love her. And once you've heard the show, you are going to want to go and see her live in her upcoming tour called Hot Mess.

And tickets for that are currently available on her website, is Angela Barnescomedy.co.com.com.com.com. If you can't wait to see her live, then why not go and check out her podcast? It is called We Are History Podcasts, which she does with John O'Farrell, and it is all about history. It's really funny. It's really great. You've got to go and listen. It's available wherever you get your podcasts. Anyway, Dan will be back next week, but in the meantime, on with the podcast. Hello and welcome to another episode of No Such Thing as a Fish, a weekly podcast coming to you from the QI offices in Covent Garden. My name is Anna Tyshinsky and I am joined today by Andrew Hunter Murray, James Harkin and our very special guest, Dan Shriver Replacement, hopefully permanent Angela Barnes.

Hello! Hello! Okay, once again, we've gathered around the microphone with our four favorite facts from the last seven days. And in no particular order, here we go. Starting with you, Angela. Okay, so I've always wanted to say this. My fact this week is that in communist East Germany, in the 1950s, the state came up with a sanctioned dance for their teenagers to do.

They were a bit worried about the influence of rock and roll from the West. Elvis Presley was doing his military service in West Germany. So they were picking up all the Elvis on their radios and their TVs. he was doing his service to me. Really loudly over the wall. And so they were all the youngsters. They were worried about their hip-thusting movements. And the state felt that dancing on your own was subversive,

that you should dance in a couple. Yeah. But when you did dance in a couple, you shouldn't be gyrating like Elvis. Fair enough. And what I know about teenagers is not very much. Right. Probably that they wouldn't necessarily do what the government told them or?

Well, no. But it was. dance in question the lipsy dance the lipsy it would have to be unbelievably good for teenagers to want to do it it has to be agadu was it good and was it agadu it definitely wasn't agadu what was it was it good i haven't seen this dance so it was two choreographers um came up with the dance christa and helmet siphate and they came up the steps and it was a an east german composer called rene dubiansky who came up with the music and it was basically it was a fast waltz so it was a fast waltz so it He merged two waltz beats into a six four beat

because there's nothing that teenagers like more than waltz. A double waltz. And the idea was that they would dance together, but their hips wouldn't wiggle. So there's footage of it on YouTube. If you look, and it just at first, it looks like a normal sort of Latin-y kind of dance.

And then you realize that their hips don't move. Weird. And it just looks odd. Very, stayed. It feels like a reverse Irish dance kind of. Is that not right? Is Irish dancing just hips moving, but the rest of the first of us.

It's just like the bottom half moving. I suppose it is, yeah, yeah, yeah. But no, it's not like that. Even Irish dance doesn't move your hips around much. No. I've taken Irish dancing classes. Have you? In my time.

Yeah, I can really picture that. Can you? I really can't. It's a Michael flatly about you. Yeah, as a boy, I learned some river dance. Actually, what we never noticed, because we always record around the table, is that you're always river dancing. I am.

Whenever we record. I wonder why I kept getting bruised shins. The effort in the edit to remove the constant clackety-clack of me dancing away. I actually had a doctor say to me once. So I have something called periodic limb movement disorder, which means in my sleep, my legs flail. And I did a sleep study once at Guy's Hospital. And in the official report, he said two things.

One was that my snoring was, and I quote, heroic, which I was very proud of. And the other was that watching me sleep was like watching horizontal river dance. That's in my official. They've made it sound like compliments, both of those things. I know. That's really thoughtful. I was such a lucky man.

Do you have to sort of have a mini sleeping bag for your legs alone? Well, I don't think it contains. So whenever I have slept in a sleeping bag, I've woken up with it on the floor. You can't be contained. So I just can't be contained. The energy, if I could wire it up to the national grid in this energy crisis, we'd be all right. What are we talking about dancing? Sorry, he's talking to dancing.

I didn't realize how, what a threat Elvis was at the time. God, people went nuts over Elvis. They thought he was going to impregnate every woman on earth. Yeah. There were riots in East Germany in 1959 in about 14 East German cities and towns and they then had to be crackdowns. So Leipzig had a crackdown. Leipzig is where the Lipsie dance, the state one is from. Nipzig's from the Latin name for Leipzig.

Yeah. And they sentenced 15 demonstrators to prison sentences of between six months and four and a half years for going to pro-ohs protests. Really? Yeah. But it was everywhere. We shouldn't tar East Germany with this solitary brough. Rock and roll was sort of vilified in a way that I don't think any legitimate music ever has been. There's plenty of Americans that were frightened about the influence of this as well.

Do you know there was a state-sponsored rock and roll festival in the US? In the US? Yeah, in America, which hated rock and roll as well. But it was called Vortex 1. It sounds like the saddest thing ever, but apparently it was quite popular. Do you remember the festival of Brexit? Oh, no. This was like if that had been a success.

Yeah. this is that. It was in Oregon. And I'm surprised that the hippies agreed to go to it because it was basically because Nixon was going to visit Portland, Oregon in 1970, I believe. And this was obviously at a time of extreme anti-war protests

and extreme government crackdowns on those protests in America. And there was a fear that the hippies would start protesting, or the peace protest were start protesting. So to get rid of them, basically, the state government said, guys, do you want to we give you a festival? And they all went for it because they really wanted peace. But

more than that. They wanted a rock festival where they had license to take drug. Like the state was like, look, we'll turn a blind eye to all the drug taking and the nudity. Sorry, is it just to get them out of town when Nixon's in town? Sounds like that basically. Sounds like a sitcom. It does. Oh no, we've accidentally got them crossing paths here. And he didn't even turn up in the end.

No. So they just got a festival for nothing. That's amazing. So I've read a book recently about the Starzy Poetry Circle. Sounds fun. I know, right? Your work and leisure was really tied up in East Germany. So, you know, you would go on holiday with the people you work.

It sounds awful. And, you know, all your leisure activities were bound up with the company that you work for and stuff. And it was the same with the Starzy. And so they would have these sort of art circles. And one of them, they had a poetry circle. But the guy who ran it, Uva Berger, I think his name was, he wasn't a member of the party, but he was one of the hundreds of thousands of, misalbiter as they call

so these unofficial collaborators and Stasi so he would get all the poetry these young Stasi officers would be writing their poetry in their poetry circle and then he'd be looking for dissidents among them and feeding it back and was he looking through the medium of the poetry? Yeah so he was looking for maybe

dissident uses of meter or half rhymes that indicated anything that basically wasn't socialist realism or showed any sort of freedom of thought how interesting yeah because they did also the infiltrated punk groups. They were very threatened by punk music

when it came in in East Germany. I feel threatened by that still. I mean, they infiltrated everybody. That's the thing about the stars. And they were the biggest administrators of any, so out of the whole of German history, from the Middle Ages to World War II, there were more written

records kept in the 40 years of the German Democratic Republic than the rest of German history put together. Really? Yeah, there were... But it's all bad poetry. It's mostly bad poetry. But there were these, so when the war came down and then in January 1990, the people stormed the Starzzi headquarters in Leipzig, a place called Rundon Eka,

the Round Corner, which is their offices. And they rescued these sacks of, I think there's 15,500 sacks of shredded documents. And there's these people that are called the Puzzlers, or they work called the Puzzlers. Who piece them back together. And they've been doing that since 1991. They're still doing it. So there were millions of shredded bits of paper, and it will take centuries to put them all back together. I just feel like, you know, you've got an old lady in, you know, in Leipzig doing her little jigsaw.

And then she gets a tap on the shoulder. Mrs. Schmidt, we have a job for you. You heard about the Schwarzer Canal. So in East Germany, they could pick up Western television because obviously it's not far away. But you could be arrested if your TV aerial was pointing west. So you had to be a bit careful. They eased off on that as time went on. But there were two East German channels.

And on one of them, there was a. program that was on every Monday night and it was called DiSvater Canal and what it was, it was 20 minutes of clips of West German TV programs with a communist commentary. Saying why they were so bad. Say why it was so bad.

I'd watch programs that had a commentary over the top explaining why they were so bad. You should get on Twitter. It's just Gogglebox, isn't it? What you've described is basically... Communist Gogglebox. It's like Gogol box. Oh, beautiful.

There had been a program in West Germany called DiRota Optique, which is the red viewpoint, so which was sort of slagging off what was happening in East Germany. So that was their sort of retort to that was the Black Channel. And also it's called the Black Channel because that was

like a plumbing slang for a sewer. Oh, that's clever. Yeah, yeah. So it was like a little pun as well. Is it the red, derota, do you do you call it? DiRota optic. The red viewpoint. Is that a joke on rose-tinted spectacles? Like, all in the east, they're all seeing, you know.

Yeah. Probably not. Do you think they came up with the titles before the concepts? I think so. You know, the BBC had studios in nuclear bunkers in the Cold War. So, I mean, I'll have to rein it in because I could go on forever about nuclear bunkers. It's my little obsession.

But in the regional seats of government nuclear bunkers, of which there were 12 in the Cold War period in Britain, they were for politicians, for offices of state and things like that. and each of them would have a BBC studio inside. So you can visit there's one at Kelverton Hatch in Essex, which is open to the public, one at Hack Green in Cheshire, which is, you can see the BBC studio in there. And they have, in Kelverden Hatch,

I think they have playing the actual BBC broadcast that would have been playing. Cool. You know, so when you kind of go to the nuclear bunker, like all your politicians go there or whatever, or your important people, would they have had to take a BBC sound engineer with them?

Because it's going to be quite echoy in those places. Yeah, yeah. So you had BBC sound engineer and presenters, like heating engineers and, you know, electrical engineers and various different specialties would need to be in this bunker to keep it maintained. So if you were selected, you'd sign the official secrets acts, you wouldn't tell anyone.

That's so funny, because obviously, I'm sure you know a lot of BBC sound engineers like I do. Well, and I just, yeah, I wonder if they all got this job thinking, well, if it all goes south, at least we can. Would they, these days, if that, happen? Do you think there'd be any room in the bunker for podcasters? I think... Well, I know, I'm not sure how much of this I'm allowed to say because I, I, so I saw, I've got told. You're on the list. Yeah. I'm not on the list. I'm not on the list.

But I do know that they still do. You were until not the week finish. I do know that they still do drills and that they still take a BBC presenter. Which BBC would you take to your nuclear bunker? BBC. It has to be BBC. Yeah. I'd probably go for Hugh Edwards. Would you? I just want stability and continuity and he provides it. That's interesting. I was thinking does Dionne Dublin do like houses under the hammer or something? He could do a great guide to the bunker, couldn't he? How to improve your bunker? Look here that's a solid wall. That's not, yeah, that's a solid wall too. Lots of solid walls in here, very few partition walls. I got one fact about Agadu just because Angela mentioned it earlier. So the singer of Agadu. Black lace.

Black lace, right? You're right. And the guy is Dean Michael. so he was sent to prison in 2016 not for the dance he was pushing pineapples wasn't he shaking trees grinding coffee it was for benefits fraud doesn't come up in the song anywhere

but he was in for 10 weeks he had claimed he had claimed he couldn't walk but then he was also doing gigs on stage where he was dancing very vigorously so they thought that's not right I know we got put away for 10 weeks and anyway he says after he came out he said that while he was in

prison, he got through the tough times by leading a giant conga of prisoners. That's how they all escaped, didn't they? That's so funny. At night, the entire wing was singing in chorus, Agadoo, do, do. I sort of miss those days when dances had really clear instructions. I'm not one of nature's dancers, so when they tell me what to do, that's Superman, that was that lace as well, wasn't it? Yeah.

I knew what to do then. That was why we all loved the macarena. Exactly. You knew what to do. There was a movie in 1984, which I'm sure you all know, called Footloose. Yeah. And it's a story of a teenager who goes to a small town where dancing has been banned by the local government. So that's why I'm talking about that.

One of the people who was in this movie was the actor Kevin Bacon. Okay. He was 24 at the time. But to get himself into the role, he, um, enrolled into a local high school pretending to be a 17 year. Oh, that's really creepy. Isn't that amazing? Wow.

Was he rumbled? He was not rumbled. How old was he at the time, sorry? He was 24, and he was pretending to be 17. The principal apparently knew about it, but no one else knew about it at all. Oh, my God. And he fell in love with Drew Barrymore at the end. Well, the amazing thing is he got really badly bullied.

Really? Oh. He went to the school and he thought, like, His character was that he'd come from the city and he was in like a small town school. And so he was wearing clothes that he imagined a 17-year-old would wear if they'd come from, you know, Philadelphia and gone into a school. But obviously he looked very different than all the other kids.

And so they just really, really bullied him quite badly until one of the kids kind of came and sort of took him under his wing. And apparently that's kind of something that happens in the movie, although I haven't seen it, so I don't know. I don't believe that Never Been Kissed was not just entirely based on this story. I mean, that is the whole plot. I don't know. It's never been kissed someone goes back into a school. Guys, Drew Barrymore, she's about 24, she's a reporter, she disguises herself a 17 year old to go back into a school where she gets badly bullied

until someone takes her under their wing. Was it made after 1984? It certainly was, yeah. 21 Jump Street, that's that as well, isn't it? Is it 21 Jump Street? Yeah, the cops go back to to school. All I know is, is that the one where there's a meme where he goes, how do you do fellow kids? Is that clearly what the people are based on? The meme must come from. that. Very weirdly, I've got something about band or official dances in the USA. Okay. So, and it relates to Hollywood as well. So 24 US states have passed laws designating square dancing the official state folk dance, right?

I thought you could say it was banned. Far from it. Far from it. There have been so many attempts to make square dancing the national folk dance. And people keep saying at the national level, look, it's not really a national thing. we don't, you know, there's lots going on. We don't care. So there are other ones. Like Hawaii has the hula, obviously. Kentucky has clogging and didn't look into very much.

Because North Carolina has the Carolina Shag. And that's the official dance. And there is a 1989 movie starring Bridget Fonda, which is simply called Shag. It's about four high school students on a road trip. I was really disappointed when I went to that movie. I was expecting a documentary about carpets and, I went as a bird lover. It culminates in a shagging contest basically.

Shag dancing contest. Is the dance anything like a shag? I mean, dance. It depends how you do it. Any dance can be, can't it? Okay, it is time for fact number two, and that is Andes. My fact is that in the 7th century, one of the most impressive things you could be buried with was a folding chair.

Okay. Wow. That was hot, hot stuff. Is that because they were from the future? It meant you had a time machine. It was not because of that, but that would have been... Usually it's like things that you're buried with is for use in the afterlife. Maybe, you know, might want a nice sit down.

Always. Well, the woman, they was found with, was in her, they think was in her 40s or 50s. And as a woman in her 40s, I can relate to carrying a chair around. Where are you going on? Yeah, this is the thing. They're normally found in women's graves. They're kind of grave goods. And about 30 medieval grave sites have been found with chair burials, as they call them.

This latest one, it's quite a recent find. It dates back to about 600 AD. And it's kind of, it might not be that they were very, very powerful, wealthy people in life. It's kind of because they're often buried with lots of humble grave goods as well. But they seem to be kind of spiritually significant. Oh, really? You know, having a folding chair. It seems, yeah.

Like a wise woman. kind of thing. Exactly. A healer or a magician or... I think I've misunderstood. So they were buried sat on the chair? No, I think the chair was just included in that... It was just included as their favourite chair. I had the image of them being lowered on a chair into the ground. There's an archaeologist called Bettina Pthaf. And she thinks that these women, it's mostly women, belong to a kind of spiritual elite. Yeah. So in life they would sit on the chair whilst reading someone's palm or something, presumably.

Maybe, yeah, or leading a ceremony or something. And they were... buried with it. Yeah. Cool. And where was this? In Europe? Across lots of Europe. Germany especially, I think, quite a lot in Germany.

Oh, really? Yeah. Yeah, big deal. So I did a series called You Can't Take It With You on Radio 4, which is about, it started off being about when my dad died, we kept, we went a bit mad putting stuff in the coffee. And to the point we thought we might have to take him out. Not enough.

It just filled it up with stuff. And so I got really into sort of reading about grave goods a bit. And one of my favorite things I found was a website where you can buy a coffin with drawers in so that you can put the goods for the person in the drawers. And my favorite line on this website, it says if you do choose to bury the deceased with some personal items, it's important to remember that these are items you will not get back. That is useful.

I always put their car keys in there. That's amazing. I didn't even think that was like a modern thing to put great bits in. The drawers at the bottom, sort of under the body? Yeah, I think it's a bit cruel because if they do go to an afterlife, have they got access to those drawers? I've got my favourite things, but I can't get them. I think he started with when my dad died, he had, his head was on this sort of lacy pillow. It just wasn't right.

My dad ran a sex shop for a living. It didn't look right. It sounds like it could fit quite right to a sex shop. His girlfriend replaced it with some inflatable breasts. Wow. That is really a lot. Imagine the archaeologists in such a few years. I love imagining that.

And they'll jump to such conclusions about our entire society. It's a sex wizard, we think. Well, actually, he was cremated. So, and that's the other thing. So I started asking people, A, about what they would want buried with them, and be what they would put in my coffin. Because I just thought, well, you don't get a say, do you? At that point, someone else is deciding what you want to take with you.

And, of course, most people I spoke to who were going to be cremated. And so everyone would say, Corn kernels. So I'm going to fill my coffin with. That's fun. That's fun. For little fireworks. Yeah. Fireworks or cannabis. Something just to make it a bit more fun. So yeah, chairs. Folding chairs. They go back a long way. Which makes sense, actually. There's a book on chairs by a guy called Rittold Ribsinski. And I always come back to this in my research. It's such a good book. But he says he thinks the oldest chairs ever will have been folding. It's a cracker. I'm telling you. I disagree with Mr. Rubbson's skill or whatever he was called.

You don't think the oldest chairs are folding. I don't really because I think the oldest chair would be literally just a box. And I think it requires something extra to... I think once you've made it into... Once you've used some human skill rather than just sitting on a flat rock and claiming it's a chair. Because it would be nomadic societies. So I think the oldest evidence of folding chairs we have might be ancient Mongolian societies

who were nomadic. So the important people would take a chair with them. and that's great and they looked exactly like those beach chairs that you get you know

that old people sitting on beaches there are eight folding stools in the British Museum wow yeah and the earliest what were just people

to sit such a good point because they have those people who sit and make sure you don't steal anything don't you and they sit on little stools also very old for those people

a lot of the time the oldest one they have is from the 18th dynasty of Egypt which is 1500 BC to 1,300 BC, so that's pretty old. And what do they look like?

How easily foldable are they? They just look like an X with pivoting where the two lines of the X meet and then a little bit of cloth on the top, although the cloth has rotted away because that's... It's... So easier than a beach deck chair, which I still can't do. No. My stripy beach deck chairs are just there to torment me.

They're a struggle. It's like a Brompton. Your fingers won't survive. Lots of folding chairs were big for lots of people So I mean James you mentioned the Egyptian ones Tudan Karmin had one Tudan Kambin had a couple in his tomb I think One was Ebony and Ivory

Pretty cool Bishops had a folding chair in medieval times That was a huge deal There was a thing called the cathedral Which is the bishop's official throne But if you were travelling around your diocese Or whatever it was You'd have to have a travelling

A travel throne A travelling centre pretty hard That's amazing A travelling cathedral yeah Yeah, yeah. Speaking of religion and chairs, not a folding chair as such, but is it a myth, the papal chair, the hole in the papal chair? That is a myth. Do you mean the whole, so the whole Pope Joan thing, isn't it?

Like Pope Joan, the supposed night-century lady pope who probably didn't exist. And that they then, the paper chair had a hole in it so that their genitalia could be inspected from beneath to check they weren't a woman. And then they'd shout there'd be some cry when they're like. He's got knackers in Latin and then we can continue with the Catholic Church. Thank God. Yeah, I think that definitely is a myth. It's a myth. Yeah, yeah.

But it does happen these days for real. It does. I was, there seemed to be a spate of people getting their testicles trapped in folding chair. Oh, I didn't even have them in my eyes water. I didn't read about any popes doing it. Maybe those just didn't make the news. It's so common. Well, I thought, I think I was just looking at a chair accidents.

And I came across just a 60-something-year-old man in 2018 who was sitting in his folding chair, which had a little slats before he got to the shower. And they fell through and couldn't get them out. I had to have the five-riguez come. His testicles is that, because they do hang lower in older men, don't they? Yeah. It's interesting you say that because all the stories I found, which were then, I think I found five different stories, they were all older men. The rubber perishes as time goes up. Like a worn-out slinky.

Yeah, there's more. There's more giving the system. Well, yeah, it's tough. There are some great photos if you want to look at. What are the photos of? It's mostly, like, there's a man lying on a stretcher, but he's obviously still sitting on the chair. Actually, if you go to Blackpool, you know those cutouts where you can put your head in?

There's one of those. A dangling pair of testicles stuck through a deck chair. They have to have the fire brigade on hand at all times. It's scary when the fire brigade turn up because they've got things like angle grinders and they've got all sorts of big kit, haven't they? It doesn't really call for the fire brigade, I would have thought. It calls for a delicate... Surgeon. Massaging.

Some oils. They have to cut the chairs. I think there's sometimes no level of massaging you can do, which is a bit frightening. And I have to say, I respected the fire, it was firemen, two firemen so much. In one photo I saw who had such grave looks on their faces, which I imagine took a huge amount of effort. The reason of his desk We used to call it, so I used to be a nurse

and you'd call it the nurse's mask or the, and I think Fireman had the same thing because sometimes you'd see things that were funny

or that were horrific and you can't, you know, you can't take a bandage off and go, oh my God! You know, you have to just

sort of maintain this kind of nurse's mask, they call it, yeah. And is it a sort of a creepy grin or? Yeah, amazing.

Do you know who the first person to use the word deck chair was? We're going to say invented the word deck chair, but the famous person Famous person. So it's getable.

Oh, no. I'd be astonished if you guys. When, when, when? When, when? Is it, yeah, gives a century. 1880s, uh, author of a children's book. Arthur Rannels. Lewis Carls.

No, that's not 1880. 1880s. Oh, oh, oh, uh, Kenneth Graham, who wrote The Wind and the Willows. Oh, good one, but no. British? British. Uh, British Children's old. 1880s.

Um, it's tough. Robert Louis Stevenson. You like, because you've raised. wrote the pirate books. Yeah, yeah. But think of that surname. Stevenson. I think of what else

Stevenson's are related to. That Stevenson's Rocket was the first train. Nesbit. Oh, wait. Yay, I've heard my place. Because that was good. That was stunningly good. Ian Nesbitt, who wrote the Railway Children.

Deck chair was first used in that book. Also great glue giving from Stevenson. I mean, that was a great throw and a great catch. I enjoyed that very much. It was good being part of the audience. on either side. Some other words invented by E. Nesbitt in the OED

are brecky, snarky and zooming. Wow. Zooming as in moving around quickly. My dog gets the zoomies. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Wait, what does the dog do? It's called a zoomies.

Yeah, she gets on Zoom and calls my mum. No, you know when dogs just get really hyper excited, they just run about. Oh, yeah. They call it the Zoomies. Is that what the Zoomies is? Yeah. I thought the Zoomies was a drug thing.

I might also. be that. I don't know it was drug paraphernalia, Your Honour. And, um, wow. Do they don't they ban the deck chairs on Bournemouth Beach? Um, I think it was last year. There was, so, oh, they stopped renting them out. I didn't, you got, you didn't get arrested. Okay, okay. So, wouldn't immediate climb down from a promising little hill. Yeah. Um, they stopped, it, was a government thing or a council thing. It was a council thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because they were afraid they were going to be used as weapons.

Really? What? I couldn't really find any evidence that they have been used as weapons. It feels like a pretext, doesn't it? It does, but for what, why? Why didn't they want to rent them out? It lost the council about 200 grand that year. Really?

From renting them out. Would they thinking that you'd go around and sort of snap old men's testicles? I suppose chairs as weapons is, like every time there's any sort of football violence or whatever, it's always plastic chairs being thrown around, isn't it? And in wrestling, of course, they have the steel chair, but it's very rarely the deck chair.

He's getting out of the deck chair. Oh, he's still getting it out. He wants it out. You're in trouble. You talked about Bournemouth, Anna, I think. There was an article in 2021 in the telegraph about deck chairs in Scarborough. This was a 58-year-old woman called Dawn Averson, who runs the last remaining deck chair concession in Scarborough. She's got what they described as a deep mahogany tan, and apparently locally it's known as Scarborough Rust.

That's great. Which is if you work on the beach, that's your tan that you have. And she said that last summer, former education secretary Gavin Williamson sat down on one of her deck chairs for a selfie and then left without paying. What? And now he's a minister without portfolio. So I think that just says, you know. He's a man who I genuinely don't think could put up a deck chair.

Gavin Williamson. I don't think any of them could. Can I tell him one bit of full? folding chair news. Yeah. Are you guys familiar with Sydney Joe, the 27 year old TikToker?

Of course. There you go, I knew you would be. 27 year old TikToker. I don't know anything about TikTok but that feels old. Well, she's appealing to the youth.

So she got stuck in a folding chair, which is kind of amazing. There's a picture and she's put her body through the middle of it, it's folded around her and she had to be removed

by the fire brigade. I think this was last year and they used jaws of life, which are the hydraulic things that you use to extract people from crashed cars and stuff, which sounds quite frightening. And the reason that she'd got stuck is because she has a $199 per minute channel where she gets stuck in things and then freeze herself. And it went wrong. Oh, what do you mean?

It's like people pay to watch her escape from stuff. Yes. I think we're all asking, is this a sex thing? Yeah, yeah. Well, it says it's a fetish channel. That sounds like a sex. I'm not down with all the lingo, but I think that is a sex thing. God, the poor bloody fire brigade in her local area. Hello, it's me, Sid. Please you're doing again. No, a washing machine this time, yeah. Okay, it's time for fact number three, and that is my fact.

My fact this week is that most people dislike kale before they're even born. That's how long-lasting the loathing is. this is this weird thing that came out recently and it's quite a small study but it looked at ultrasound scans in 70, about 70 pregnant women in late in their third trimester and then

they got the pregnant women to take capsules of either powdered kale or powdered carrot or nothing and then they looked at what the fetuses were doing and the fetuses made the facial expressions that, well when they had the kale they made the facial expression they make when they cry and an unmistakable kind of wince of displeasure.

I mean, we're not 100% that's what a fetus means when it makes that face, but come on. It feels like ethical issues here, right? If you're making your fetus unhappy, making it cry. You're right. God, the ethical issues with feeding people kale. That's every parent who makes their kid eat vegetables.

So at what point is the baby crying? Because obviously the mother's eating the takes a capsule, so they're waiting for it to... How do they know that at that point that the baby's receiving the kale? I think it was they waited 20 minutes. I think by that point, whatever you've eaten has filtered through to the amniotic fluid, whatever it is. So the flavour, they know the chemical is in there at that point.

And they can compare it to the people who have had the carrot or the nothing and see at an exact moment when their expression changes. But it might be a benevolent thing actually, because if theoretically you eat lots of kale in pregnancy, you might then be able to stop your child hating kale in outside pregnancy. in childhood. I think that works. That does work a bit, I think. It's possible that you can

prevent fussy eating, basically, by just exposing the child to as many flavors as possible early on. It's a bit less unfamiliar later on when you're giving them whatever for the first time. Obviously, the problem being that you'll feel so ill for most of your pregnancy that you will only eat bread and biscuit.

Okay, I think my mum must have mostly eaten refined sugar, J.FRA. But they actually like the carrots, which I find quite surprising. I know carrots are sweet, everyone always says, but they're no whisper bar, are they? But if you've never had a whisper bar If all you've got to compare it to is kale

The carrots are pretty good Yeah, you're absolutely right Yeah, they did a little sort of smile A fetus equivalent of a smile When they tasted the carrot Twice as often as when they tasted nothing I wonder if that's because the carrots Help them see in the dark

And then something like, Oh, I can see where I am Oh, this is gross But yeah, it is I don't think kale's that bad I think I can't taste bitterness As much as some people It's all right

I had some in research for this podcast when you were going to be talking about kale. I went and had a salad. As in you searched out the kale. Because I don't have kale in the house anyway. So I never do. I went to a cafe. I'll have that kale salad please.

I was pleasantly surprised. I thought it was horrible and I don't mind it. You feel like kale was only invented about 10 years ago. I mean, definitely I wasn't eating kale in my childhood. I was eating cabbage. It was pretty much 2012 when kicked off, 2011, 2012. And before that, literally no one ate it.

I think kale was invented in 1976. The year I was invented. You had a twin, kale. This was... I didn't eat it in the womb. Unlike my other twin. This was New York Times food critic, Mimi Sheraton. In fact, she was the first female restaurant critic at the New York Times.

And she wrote about how great kale was. And at that time, literally no one. at kale in the United States, but she helped to make it popular. But they interviewed her a couple of years ago, and she said she really regrets now making kale popular. She says, well, she says she read through the article, and she realizes that in those days, she liked kale because it was cooked properly. And in these days, people serve it raw.

They kind of roast it. Like, I often have roasted kale, which is, you know, it does taste quite burnt and the way I cook it anyway. you like make kale crisps? I've tried so many times to do that and every time I've ended up with just burnt kale. I think that's just how it's meant to be. You've just been confused by the word crisps and the fact that. Right. I thought it's going to come out like golden wonder.

All the recipes claim it's heaven. It's kind of okay. It's kind of raw kale. But Mimi Sheraton says if you eat it like you're supposed to eat it, which is like a winter vegetable, like you might have cabbage or something like that, quite often boiled or in stews or stuff like that, then it's really delicious. But these days the way that people cook it is wrong.

And she feels quite. responsible for that. That is the one thing I think my nan might have got it right, that you do have to boil it for three days. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, well, do you know what you're supposed to do? If you don't have three days, you're supposed to massage it, which I did not know.

But this, and this completely transforms kale. A, it stops at making you fart. And B, it stops it tasting bitter. And this is if you, before you do anything to it, you just give it. If you massage it with a whisper bar. No, it's because it has a lot of sugars that, don't get broken down until they're way through your digestive system and your large intestine. So A, then that gives you lots of bad gas. And B, that means that on the way through

you're not tasting those sugars. And so it tastes bitter. But if you like massage, and I meant to try this, but I didn't do the first time research. But I'm sure people were right in. But yeah, if you squeeze it, like properly just like you're rubbing in before you cook it, then it tastes much sweeter and much nicer. So not with oil or anything, just with your fingers. I mean, I'm giving it a full on matter. Like some candles. Get the mood. Some romantic music on. I got to say, I also thought it had been invented in 2012,

and I didn't realize it was really huge in previous centuries, especially in Scotland. And I didn't know this at all. And it was because it can grow for a start in quite tough northern climates, which is a good thing. And also it grows over the January to April period, which got called the Hungry Gap, which is where lots of previous crops might be running a bit low.

And so it's a very useful. staple food and there's all this Scots dialect about kale. All these words like a kale bell is a dinner bell. Cale was used interchangeably with food, as in Cale might just mean food. And there were sayings as well. Have you heard cold kale hit again? Called Cale hit again. No, what does that mean?

Cold kale heated up again. Oh. Oh, it's that simple. I was thinking for a meaning. What does that mean as a say? Oh, I see. It means that He's washed up

Yeah, later in life You've kind of come It's a comeback almost That's nice That's much more positive Than the real meaning Which is that I've heard this story Dozens of times before

This is a cold kale Hector Oh god that's useful Start using that constantly A lot of my relations I'll give him his kale Through the reek Through the reek

What is a reek? Through the reek Old reeky is Edinburgh Edinburgh Yeah Through the It's through the nose. Okay.

Yeah, because reek means smell, right? It means what you say when someone farts. As if someone's farts in the room, you don't know who it is, and you're like, oh, give some all kill through the reek. All lovely guesses. So reek is smoke. And basically, I'll give him his kale through the reek. It means I'm going to treat someone badly.

I'm going to hand you your kale for dinner through the smoke of the fire. So it tastes gross. Oh. So it's roasted instead of massage. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. They had, the word for garden was kale yard, really, wasn't it? For a small vegetable garden was kale yard from about 14th century.

And then it morphed into kale yard fiction, which I was not familiar with. But this is, well, can you guess what kale yard fiction is? It makes you cry, makes you cry. It makes you cry. It makes you grimace. Yeah. It's sob stories. It makes you do all of those things.

Yeah, written since 2012. It makes you fart. I don't know if it does. any of those things. It's just a derogatory turn for sort of a really bucolic, overly sentimentalised, rural, rustic fiction, because, you know, it's like old-fashioned kale yards in Scotland. And J.M. Barry was accused of being a kale yard writer.

Oh, see. For his books like old lich idylls. I read an article on Atlas of Sjura about Halloween in Scotland. I don't know if you saw this, about how kale was quite popular in that time. because it was kind of the growing season of kale like you said it was more of a winter vegetable but apparently youths would blindfold each other

pull stalks of kale from the ground and then analyse their length and girth and the amount of dirt caked onto them and it would tell them what kind of partner they'll marry why do they have to be blindfolded because then you can see oh I think I'll marry that tall girthy non-soiled no one wants a soiled part

I guess that's what you would do then you'd go around the bars looking for a soiled girfy woman The first one you said kale used in Halloween I thought it was gonna be the world's most disappointing trick or treat Have you never bobbed for kale When I was a young girl in the 80s

Like we didn't trick or treat wasn't a thing really And when it started to come in My mum There's a ring at the drawbell And these two kids said trick or treat and my mum didn't know what it meant at a tournament just hadn't been a thing here

and so my mum went oh treat two of this week to shot the dog off. I thought that's the choice she was big. That's great. I was really disappointed to read that kale is very high in vitamins K, A and E but not L.

Well, is there's no is there a vitamin L? Well, there isn't. There's a guy called Dr. W. Nakahara who in the 1930s discovered something that he called vitamin L, but it turned out to be a couple of chemicals which are not vitamins at all

and which aren't in kale. But he called it vitamin L because he thought it was good for lactation in rats in particular, but it turns out that, yeah, not only is it not a vitamin, it's not particularly good for lactation either. But, you know, it is a thing, vitamin L. It's vitamin L, but the L stands for lie.

Yes, exactly. But 130 grams of kale. contains 1,000% of your daily vitamin K nutrition. Wow. What does it? What's vitamin K do you get stiff bones? Really? Stiff bones?

Do you make sure to try and get your bones as stiff as you possibly can. I just hear vitamin K. It just feels like a euphemism for ketamine. Yes. How much kale was that? 130 grams, not much. I was about to say the opposite. It's a decent serving.

Yeah. That's quite light, isn't it, kale? Yeah. It's light, I suppose. It's like, truth is, it's a thousand percent. So you only need 13 grams. Yeah, that's manageable. But people who take blood thinners should be careful with kale,

because if you have too much vitamin K, it can be a problem with your clotting of your blood. Ooh. And also if you have iodine deficiency and you eat an enormous amount of kale, you can get hyperthyroidism where you make too much of your thyroid hormone. You can get a nice goiter on your neck, an 88-year-old woman. got severe hyperthyroidism and went into a coma after eating.

But she was eating between one and 1.5 kilograms a day of raw. This is actually bok choy, which has a similar property, raw boc choy for several months. But that's more than 10,000 percent of her daily vitamin kale. So she was overdoing it. And how can you physically eat that much bocchote? It's really light. Yeah. Yeah.

She can't have been doing much else with her days. I suppose that 88. It's like a panda. just saw her with bamboo just all day just showing on bok chai but her hipster panda is it sits her on the box chai okay it is time for our final fact of the week and that is James's fact

okay my fact this week is that Goldfinger was such a difficult boss that he once fired someone who didn't even work for him you don't want a fictional gold thing Goldfinger I know I deliberately missed out the start of this fact, which is brutalist architect, Erno Goldfinger, did all this stuff. We knew Angela was coming on the show and we know you like a bit of brutalism architecture.

And so I dug out my book, Concretopia, which was written by our good friend John Grindrodd, all about Brutelist architecture. And I thought I'd find some facts about Erno Goldfinger. And he was a very angry man, apparently. Maybe he was stuck in his lecture? Yes. He'd have to be a big dexter. He was a big dexter. He was a very big dexter. He was a very a big man. Was he? Yeah. He used to show his strength to the people in his office by using a hole punch to punch through stacks of card that no one else was strong enough to do.

And that was how, that was his way of going, don't mess with me. Look how many bits of card. I can punch a hole through your torso. I mean, it's weird that in World Strongest Man, they don't have this event. You know, right? They're missing a trick. It would be great because like an office base, World Strongest Man would be very funny. Yeah. And fun. So, Enar Goldfinger, people, especially who live in London, will know some of his buildings. Trellick Tower, I think, is his most famous one, which is only because I used to live near. But, yeah, he did a lot of these concrete buildings, very popular for about three years, but they're all still here. And John Grindrodd, who wrote this book, Concretopia, he spoke to James Dunett, who worked with Erno Goldfinger, and then Dunnett sort of related this story that he was a very fiery.

character and whenever you came to work for Goldfinger, a lot of people only lasted less than a day and they'd be fired at lunchtime and apparently one day Goldfinger was in one of his rages, you know, probably he didn't get his whole punch working properly and he stormed through a reception and there was a guy just waiting in reception and he just went, you're fired! And the guy had to leave and he didn't even work for them. He's just visiting. He apparently, between 1954 and 1955 in that year, he lost 26 employees in a small office either through sacking them

or they left because of stress. That was just in one year. Yeah. And you know, obviously, the actual Ian Fleming Goldfinger connection with Goldfinger.

No, go on. So Ian Fleming named the character Goldfinger after Erno Goldfinger. So Erno Goldfinger, the architect, was married to Isabel Brackwell from,

yeah, from Cross and Blackwell family. And her cousin played golf with Ian Fleming. And the family or hated Erno Goldfinger because he was so mean and nasty and and Ian Fleming didn't like him because he'd demolished some houses in Hampstead to build the Willow Avenue is it, Willow Road to Willow Road. To Willow Road. Yeah, his house.

Yeah, in Hampstead. And so Ian Fleming was angry that he'd demolished these cottages that had been there before. And so that's why he called him Goldfinger. And Erno Goldfinger sort of got his lawyers involved to sort of try and stop it. and Ian Fleming suggested that what he would be prepared to do was put a slip in every copy of the book that said actually his name is gold prick but in the end they settled and it was fine

didn't they settle because Ian said okay I'll use Alrick Goldfinger as in his first name in every mention of him in the book to clarify the full name is yeah he did do that it's nothing to do with you it's a complete coincidence it was the story doesn't reflect very well on Ian Fleming I think Because between the destruction of these cottages in Hampstead and the writing of the book, I think it was about 20 years. I think it's a long grudge that was held.

Well, the thing is with Fleming is, so Pierce Fletcher, who's the producer of QI, he says he knows someone called Scaramanga. And this guy called Scaramanga, his father went to school with Ian Fleming, right? And I've man, I don't know if you've met Blofeld, the cricket, Henry Felt, the cricket commentator. Surely that character is not based on the cricket commentator Blofeld. I can't see any similarities. It's based on his father, apparently. And according to Blowers, he says that they went to the same club, and Fleming saw the name in the club list and stuff like that.

We're not quite sure. But basically, I mean, Ian Fleming just knew so many people with amazing names. Yeah. It's incredible. Because I looked at all my Facebook friends yesterday to see if any of my friends had good enough names to be Bond villains. And none of them do. Like, literally, I don't have a single thing. who has a funny surname.

But the settlement they came to was that the publisher would pay Goldfingers, I think, some of his legal costs, and they would also provide six copies of the book. That's all right then, as long as I've got six copies

of the book slagging me off, I don't mind. But I think it probably didn't pay off for Goldfinger in the end because for years afterwards, or for years after the movie came out, the James Bond film, people would ring him up

and do a Sean Connery voice and say, Goldfinger, this is double all seven. Oh, yeah. Well, you shouldn't have made you address so public with this famous house you build. That's true. Yeah.

He was a lifelong Marxist as well. And he used to sell, he had like art sales for, because him and his wife used to hold these art sales to raise money for the Red Army. Oh, did they? Wow. Yeah. And we're friends with, I think Barbara Hepworth used to sell stuff with him. And yeah.

I guess his kind of architecture, brutalist architecture, gets associated with left-wing ideology. And I think the anti-brutalism movement of saying, we really hate these buildings. They're so ugly. Can we get some more clangest, Haskell Roman stuff up, please. It's more associated with conservative

hype. It's very eastern block. The concrete exposed. It puts the block in eastern block, let's face. Very strong. It's a function over form, isn't it? The whole idea of modernist showing you're working. Yeah.

Sort of, which I think's beautiful. I have a concrete wedding ring. And a concrete engagement ring. I'm showing you there. So that's my concrete engagement ring, which I'm showing you. It's like a square of concrete. And that is my concrete wedding ring.

My husband has one the same. and the aggregate is pebbles from Brighton Beach because we live in Brighton. And so, yeah, I'm a little obsessed with concrete as a medium. It's the most attractive I've ever seen concrete be, actually. Well, I've got a little theory about that. I wrote an article about this in The Independent

a little while ago about this idea of, you know, like I was going to say Prince Charles, King Charles, or as Dara O'Brien keeps calling him, the week, King Prince Charles, which I think is. He obviously spoke out against Brutusususus architecture quite a lot. He described the National Theatre as a something like a clever way of disguising a nuclear power station in the centre of London or something like that, and the monstrous carbuncles and all of that. But my theory is that we're sort of triggered by nostalgia human beings, you know,

about things that make us think about home. And if you grew up in Buckingham Palace, then yes, the National Theatre is going to look quite ugly. But if you grew up like I did on an estate, you know, where there's lots of concrete about concrete, subways, concrete, then those buildings make me feel nostalgic and warm. And, you know, so it's all relative. Yeah. Like, for example, Welbeck Street car park was a famous brutish structure in Soho and that got demolished a few years ago. That beautiful sort of, I was going to say, oh yeah, I go past it all the time.

I clearly don't. Yeah, yeah. Sort of looks like they poured concrete into a beehive, that kind of sort of tessellated, beautiful structure and they knocked it down. But I just think, well, where's the difference there? Like, people will preserve, say, old coaching ins. Yeah. Because Charles I first stayed there once or whatever.

We go, well, who parked their car in that car park? I bet a load of really famous people did. because of where it is in Soho. You've got to get the blue packs down. This idea that things that seem modern to us and ugly, well, in the future we'll have historic value. Stop knocking them down. Yeah, I agree.

I would love a car park plaque scheme. You know, if you found out Gary Lennaker parked here in 1996, that would change the way I felt about that in space. Because basically every Indian restaurant in the country has a picture of Gary Linnaker. Does that make you feel different about those? He must have parked somewhere. He must have gone to start. So many Indian restaurants around the country

because they are, it's effort. There's one right near here, right near where we're recording this now. And it's, I just can't imagine how he had the time as a top class footballer to be ploughing through that many curries. I can't imagine what it's like to share a bathroom with him. Slightly related.

I saw Gary Linneka once in a service station. I can't remember which one, like a proper sort of motorway service station. And I was with the comedian John Robbins. We were now waiting for gig somewhere. And he suddenly like, nice of me, went, Gary Linneker, ahead of us in the queue.

And the thing that just, just amazed us most was he'd obviously been travelling from somewhere to somewhere and was wearing the most crisp white shirt without a crease in it. So you've obviously got out of a car, how are you looking so amazing? That's interesting. Yeah, there you guys. Well done Gary. Was he absolutely going to town on a cormer or something? Not in Starbucks, no. He was signing a cup for them though, so I guess they were putting that, they were going to put that under work. What's he? Yeah. All celebrities get around a lot. Gary's the only one who comes with his own marker pen.

Yeah. But yeah, you're right. Going back to this architecture, which we're talking about, I think. There is this assumption that it's bad for a community, people get very depressed, it has a negative impact on mental health. There was lots of chat in the 80s,

which in Thatcher's era, there was this big pushback against all this brutalist architecture and people saying, like Thatcher's favourite housing expert, who was a woman called Alice Coleman, saying it's increasing levels of crime and antisocial behaviour in all these areas, partly because I think there's less surveillance.

If you've got those big tower blocks, you can't really, you can get away with a lot, she said. And people do assume that. And I couldn't really find any evidence of any studies that say people's mental health is affected. And also I think what happened, so post-war, when there was a housing shortage, you know, after the blitz and everything,

you had to build quickly. And there was this fashion in Europe for building up these modernist architects. So LeCourbousier, who built Unite d'A bittacion, all these grounds. ideas but what we tried to do here is do it cheaply because you had when Churchill's government came back in in 51 and you then had I think the housing minister then was McMillan and the idea was to build quickly and cheaply and so there was the disaster that happened at Ronan Point which was a tower

block in Newham and it was built 16 stories higher than it should have been so the designs were for it to be 16 stories lower that's a lot that's a lot to add and they used what it's called it's called an lPS system which is a large panel system. So it's pre-cast concrete panels that are then slotted together in situ. And what happened? Apparently that in this particular building, some of the gaps between the panels

was so big you could put a coin through them and they just stuffed them with newspaper. And then a gas explosion happened and one corner, sort of the pictures were all over the papers, this corner blown off of this thing. But of course it spread really quickly because of the gaps in the panel system

and all of this. So it was all. kind of set up to fail in this country because there are tower blocks in Europe that work perfectly well and obviously what happened as well is that when right to buy came in people would buy their council homes and then they'd move up the property ladder move out and then private landlords would let them so you end up with this situation where it's the poorest people in society all packed together in places without a concierge without any proper management and with nooks and crannies where drug dealers or whatever could so they were set up to fail yeah from the off really so it's not

the buildings for. No, poor, poor. It's the funding and the government, you know, of the time. These big ideas cost money. And of course, the architects that came up with these big ideas never had to live in them. Yeah. Although, old Goldfinger did. Oh, he did live in Balfron Tower,

didn't he? He did, I mean, only for a couple of months. He did say of Balfrontal, which was like the first big thing that he built, it's in London, and he said, everything I did, as if it was done for me. And to show that he went and moved in with his wife. And he used to host champagne receptions for

all the residents where they would come and tell him what they thought of the building and what they liked and didn't like about it. Although if you do, after two months, just move to your swanky pad in North London and then go back to house. Is it where to say about the word brutalism? Yeah, definitely. Because brutalism, I think people think, is because it looks brutal, but it's actually from Beton Brut, which is the French for raw concrete.

Okay. So that's where, and the term brutalism came from, there's a couple called Alison and Peter Smithson who were sort of pioneers of new brutalism. They were the kind of radical young architect. in the 50s and they wrote an essay where they

mentioned new brutalism as this new form over function sorry function over form aesthetic which we should say because it's confused me for a long time

researching that you'll definitely know it new brutalism was just brutalism there was no old brutalism no they just started but it started in I think Sweden or so

it was called nai brutalism was the sort of original in the late 40s I think and then they sort of picked up that and ran with it

and then there was an architectural journalist Rayna Bannam, Peter Rayna Bannam, who then wrote about it in the Architectural Review, and they described it as an ethic, not an aesthetic. So this idea that buildings should be for functional purposes for people to live in rather than to just look pretty. So it was Rainer Bannam who kind of brought brutalism as a word, right?

It was kind of, they talked about new brutalism, and then he was the one who kind of made a joke about the brute concrete in France. Is that right? Yeah, I think so, yeah. Because I wrote to John Grindraud, and he sent me some. facts and he said that the brute in brutalism, because it comes from the same root as Breton brute, it's the same brute as you get in champagne. Really?

So yeah, brute champagne means dry. It also means raw, I think, in French. Concrete. Would you like a glass of concrete to celebrate? That's what we had at our wedding. Although we did have, actually, the tables at our wedding were named after either whiskeys, because my husband was a big whiskey fan, or brutally. buildings. So we had a

Welbeck Street Car park table. We had a number one Croydon table. We had my favourite structures, one of them is the Pennine Tower at Lancaster Services. I love that structure so much. We had a table named after that. I used to live

that. I used to live near there. And I moved to a town. It's called Silverdale. And just to try and get in with the locals, I did a pub quiz there. And they had a It was a round where they gave you 10 clues. And if you got the right answer, if you got in the first clue, you get 10 points and it go all the way down.

The first question was, this building was designed by whoever it was. Oh, God. No, you could have a TP something. Yeah. Yes. Every other team in the quiz ran to him saying, we've got the answer. We've got the answer. Me and my partner at the time were sat in the corner.

No. Okay. Next clue. Next clue. Next clue. No. They got all the way down to the answer. last clue which was like it can be seen on the M6 just outside Silverdale and we guessed that it must be

that service station and yeah that was a typical kind of quiz in that town where all the locals knew all the answers but if you weren't local you had no chance so funny it's a beautiful structure it's sort of space age a kind of like a flying saucer on a pole fort and tower you would have got on i think quite well with Thomas Edison who was also do you know about his concrete obsession I don't think I do, no. Oh, God, I think you might have married him in a different life. He was obsessed with it.

He set up Edison, Portland Cement Company, and he wanted to make houses and all of their interiors entirely out of concrete. And he actually, I think it was because he had lots of sand left over from other stuff he was trying. I don't know why. He was making sand castles. And he imagined houses made entirely of concrete, but then inside they would have concrete tables and chairs

and bath tiles made of concrete, fridges made of concrete pianos and he built I think he built a little version little concrete cottage and it does look like someone's taken a normal house and then they've poured concrete over all the items in it

I think that was kind of his idea right he would just get this kind of shape of a house and all you'd have to do is pour concrete in and eventually it was set you'd take off the mould and you'd have a house and it would have all the tables in and everything but I think that's does that still exist that building? There might be one might be one

might still exist yeah probably have tried to get rid of it, but found it impossible to destroy it. It's a place called Hermits Castle, which is in Scotland somewhere, and I can't remember exactly where. But it was an early sort of, I think in the early 50s maybe, this architect, David's someone, I can't remember his name. This is just full of me trying to remember people's names. But he built like this little out of concrete, this little castle. And the idea was that anyone walking could then just sleep in it and people do. But he did exactly that.

like the beds all moulded into it and the sort of like little shelves and things it's all moulded into because they use like concrete it's called shuttering so that's the you use wooden panels or wooden moulds to pour the concrete into you sort of line them with resin and then put them and then you move them away and you've got so that's why concrete is so exciting because you can make any shape out that you can yeah it's like plastic I guess yeah yeah not comfortable though to sleep on if you've you know you wish that someone have made a bouncy castle a house made of two is. Angela, have you seen the film Locke?

It's Tom Hardy. Oh, in the car. Yes, yes, yes, I have. I forgot. It was called that about the big concrete pool. Exactly. Yeah. I did when I was, so I did British brutalist architecture for mastermind a few months ago.

Oh, cool. And I just found myself down this YouTube rabbit hole at about four in the morning. I was watching videos of concrete paws going, I don't, this isn't, what am I doing? It's not going to come up. This is not going to come up. You should start a fetish site on TikTok. Okay, that is it. That is all of our facts. Thank you so much for listening. If you would like to get in touch with any of us, we can be found on our Twitter account. And is on. At Andrew Hunter M. James is on. At James Harkin. And Angela, I don't actually know if you have a Twitter account. I do. It's at Angela Barnes. An easy one to remember. And you can contact me by emailing podcast at cuai.com. Or you can go to our website, no such thing as a fish.com, where you can find all of our previous episodes and lots of other fun stuff, as well as a link. to join Clubfish, which is our super secret, exclusive,

not that secret because we announce it every week, Members Club, where you can get ad-free episodes if you just hate those adverts, and you can also get extra special bonus content as we release it. But more importantly, Angela, where can people get tickets to your tour? Oh yes, I'll be going on tour in February, 2023 throughout the spring, and they can get tickets for my website, which is angela Barnescomedy.com.com. Yeah, do that. Don't join Clubfish.

Okay, thanks everyone very much for listening And we'll be back again next week We'll see you then, goodbye