No Such Thing As A Fish - No Such Thing As Drama-Free Pringles

Episode Date: March 2, 2023

Dan, James, Andrew and Sara Pascoe discuss IVF births, WB Yeats, Mr. J Pringle, and DJ Mustard.  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 Things of Fish, the first in the post-anna apocalypse since she's gone on maternity leave. But don't worry, she'll be back before you know it. And in her stead this week, we have the amazing Sarah Pasco. Now, you don't need me to tell you who Sarah Pasco is, but you might need me to tell you where she is about to go on tour. She has a brand new show. She'll be in the UK, Ireland and Australia. And if you're in Cambridge, Dartford or Leeds, and you're listening to this when it goes out, you might be able to get tickets to see her right now this weekend.

If you're in Northampton, Brighton, Oxford, Newcastle, Hall, Manchester or Birmingham, you'll be able to see her in the next few weeks. Then in Dublin, Cork, Belfast, Aberystwyth, Cheltenham, Cardiff, Bournemouth, Colchester, Milton Keynes, Liverpool, Harrogate, Basingstoke. That'll be over the next month or so. And then, in April and May, she will be appearing in Sydney, Canberra, Brisbane, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth. Like I say, you have to go and see Sarah's show. success story. It's absolutely brilliant. Tickets are available now at Sarah on tour. That's

S-A-R-A-on-Tor.com. And you can also go to her website, which is sarahpasco.com for more details about Sarah. Anyway, once you've got those tickets, then please do enjoy this week's show. I'm absolutely certain you will. And what else is there to say, apart from 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 Dan Schreiber. I am sitting here with James Harkin, Andrew Hunter Murray, and Sarah Pascoe. 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, that is Sarah. Okay, my fact is that the man who invented Pringles

was buried in a Pringles can. He was tiny. He was very small. He'd seen. He's seen him, the guy with the moustache in the round face. He doesn't have a body. So I just slept too night in there. Did people have to carry him down there? Yeah. They employed four, but they only needed one. So they passed him like in a relay race.

The baton, yes. So I should add, he wanted to be buried in a Pringle's can because I think he was very proud. And actually, it's quite an interesting story, I think. So the backstory is for this. In 1968, Pringles went on sale, advertised as, Newfangled potato chips. That was their full name.

They're not called that anymore because of one of the five Pringles dramas. I'm going to be telling you about it. It doesn't even include being buried in a Pringles can. So, backstory. 1939, I don't know if you know, there was quite a big war. And crisps were deemed non-essential and they stopped making them. Okay. Yeah.

They brought them back after the war and they were rubbish. They were really greasy. Apparently there was loads of air in the bags and all the crisps were broken. This war sounds horrible. I know. And that was the worst thing that happens at anyone. So people really moaned about the crisps. I'm sure they had other things to also moan about,

but they were like, we're miserable. Let us have cheap, tasty snacks. And so Procter and Gamble, they started trying to invent something better. In 1956, they employed a chemist and mathematician Frederick T. Bauer to invent a new kind of potato chip that was more palatable. He spent two years inventing a saddle shape. The mathematical term is hyperbolic parabolic.

a saddle-shaped chip that would go in a tubular can, which meant there would be no air in it, and they wouldn't get broken, but they tasted rubbish. So he got moved on to... So he got moved. Why the saddle-shaped? Because you could just do a round in the same tube. You could absolutely fit that in. I wonder what it gave you.

No, they're not stronger. Are they maybe stronger? They're stronger than a flat, for sure. Okay. And if they have to be that thin... There's quite a lot of buildings made in that shape, for instance. What's it called? There's a velodrome in London.

That's one. Name ten Pringle buildings. I don't think I can name ten buildings under this kind of pressure. No, you're right, you're right, you're right. But quite often in buildings you'll have odd shapes and it will be to do with strength and support and something.

Maybe it was just aesthetically pleasing for a mathematician to sort of go, this shape will fit together. I can give you a reason why I was stronger because I just thought of one. I only want nine more. It's because they have two arches. So you know an arch is a strong shape.

Yeah. Now, a Pringle has two arches. One goes in one direction and the other one goes in the opposite direction. And so you've got two arches which are both strong and they're both fighting against each other so it makes it super strong. That's really cool. Can I ask you a question? Because you seem to know a lot about this. Is that the same with feet?

It is exactly the same with feet. So that's why feet. Oh. So there's your second Pringle shape. Our human feet. That's why feet is so delicious. Yeah. Okay, so they made one that was disgusting.

Yeah, so he made one that was disgusting, but it fitted together really neatly. So he was moved to a different snack. I couldn't find out which snack he was moved to. Right. But he was moved to somewhere else. But then a couple of years later, they came back to his idea. Bauer was granted the patent in 1971. And they came up a new recipe, which was paste of dehydrated potatoes, rice, corn and wheat.

They used a cookie cutter to make them that shape flat. And then they put them on a saddle thing that Bauer had invented to give them the shape. Oh, I didn't know there was a saddle shape that they'd. sat on to be baked to it. Yeah, that's the saddle. The Pringle is the drocky. Exactly. Riding that saddle. Yeah. Yeah. So lots and lots of work.

And he didn't just invent Pringles. He also invented freeze-dried ice cream. That other snack were always popular. He was really proud of his freeze-dried ice cream, wasn't he? Yeah, of course. We didn't get buried in one. Isn't that like astronaut ice cream? Well, it's just add milk. Yeah. And then you have ice cream.

Well, you have to freeze it as well. You have to freeze it and add milk. I'm not exactly sure what it was remaining after them. instant coffee. I think that's completely fair enough because you have to pour hot water in it. Yeah. Yeah. I like that we don't know who the original Pringle was because the original was

Pringle's newfangled potato chips and it was Pringle apostrophe S. Yes, there's a few theories. There's a few theories, but they're all really boring. Yeah, yeah. I did think, oh, maybe this will be juicy and it's like, oh, there's a guy called Mark Pringle who's named as one of the people on the patent and two people lived on Pringle Road. They were going to call them Winkles, weren't they? Were they?

Yeah. I think they paid an advertising company to say, what should we call this thing? And the advertising company came back and said, let's call them Winkles. Wow. And they thought, no, that sounds a bit like a Willie. Bad seller.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Can I just quickly say, Frederick Bauer was cremated and then his ashes were put in this? He wasn't buried. Yeah. Everyone listening knew that. I did. I did. I really like that it was only most of him

got into the tube. I think there was a lot of him after the cremation. So the overflow went in and urn, classic, and then most of him were one of the tube. But his son, Larry, was interviewed in Time magazine all about it after he died. When did he die? About 2008, I think. 2008, exactly.

Yeah. And he was interviewed by Time magazine because this, you know, it's important stuff. And he said, Larry Bauer said, my siblings and I briefly debated what flavour to use, but I said, look, we need to use the original. Which I think is fair. They're not the original original which tasted like shit. I've written a list of some of the fringled flavors.

And these are, a lot of them are special, so they weren't out in every country all the time. But here's some. Shout if you like it. Ketchup. Zesty lime and chili. Chili cheese dog. Pizzolicious. Buffalo wing, low fat.

Halapino, honey mustard, cheesy fries. Oh, low fat. Was that a flavor? Low fat flavor. Onion blossom, screaming deal pickle, pumpkin pie spice, soft-shelled crab, shrimp which was pink seaweed which was green blueberry hazelnut lemon sesame mushroom soup eggs Benedict and hot diggedy dog oh diggedy that's my one yeah I'll have hot diggedy dog imagine if someone comes to you at the pringles restaurant and has to go through all those

every single person's going to order hot digity dog yeah exactly well one of the smaller pringle dramas and I was so impressed by this yeah they've had two flavors recalled because of salmonella oh no it's amazing with something such a low food content there was the raw chicken flavor Yeah. Cheeseburger and taco night were both taken off the shelf. Very nice. Well, do you know that of all these flavors, quite a few of them are vegan options. Oh, they were vegan.

Yeah, so does that change now? One of the dramas. I hope you're counting at home. I've got it as drama number four. Prinkles added milk. Ah. Apparently, from the articles online, vegans were in uproar. But I know quite a few vegans.

Right. I think they just choose other snucks now. Right. Yeah, yeah. You're vegan, aren't you? Yeah. How many Pringles can you have? Can't have any.

You can't have any? Look, they added milk to it as they used to be plant-based. And something to do with the adhesion of the flavour. It's in that textured, hydroly-sized vegetable protein. I've got another controversy. What was it? What was it? Pringles?

I'm saying dramas. Pringles dramas. Yeah, because I don't want them to sue me. Okay. Because I've had too many court cases. Oh, sure. Yeah. Wait, wait, let's try and put...

I say Sarah does have this on her... Yeah, definitely. Yeah. This is, um, it's a rumor that went around. Oh. And it's about Bauer himself. It sort of relates to the fact, actually. Oh, okay.

Was the Pringles creator cremated and sold to customers? Ah, and is he vegan? I wonder it's not vegan. Every single can. Yeah. And yeah, no is the answer, I imagine. The answer is no. Yeah, yeah, Snopes did a pretty quick debunk of that one.

Right. But that did the rounds on the internet a while after he died. Okay. It would be, because you know how they always say that in every glass of water, like two of the molecules had been weed out by Julius Caesar or something? Yes. I wonder how many, if you put one of his molecules in each crisp, that still wouldn't be that many, right?

No, I would eat it if I knew that there was one molecule, which is such a small amount of the founder, and it's kind of a tribute in a way. Right. Would you? I would pay more for it. Oh, no, I wouldn't pay more for it. I'm too skin-flinty to pay bonus for the Frederick edition.

I so would. pay more for it. That's exactly the kind of thing I'd buy. It's like how I tried to buy a frisbee that had the ashes of the frisbee creator inside. Yeah, they did a range. The family did a range of frisbee infused with the ashes. And that was a guy who invented the frisbee. Yeah. Was it just as a tribute? They just put it in a load of different limited edition frisbee's. Yeah, yeah, and there was limited edition. I don't know. It's just as a fun thing. That's fun, isn't it? Making me think if I want to be buried in an interesting way, I'm going to have to invent something. Otherwise people are never going to want to eat me.

One of your DVDs maybe. Yeah, something associated like... Yeah, if I do a Netflix special and then they have to show my autopsy. Yeah. Yeah. Did you pay extra for that? Yeah. Yeah, for them on Amazon Prime.

I'll buy that. So Pringle guy. Oh, yeah. Pringle man. Fred is... Mr. Pringle. Mr. Pringle has a first name. Yes.

Well, this is drama number five. This is the final drama. And it's maybe the best drama. Do you think it's the juiciest drama. Well, you take the lead here then. I want to go through the boring dramas. Yes. And then let's come on to this one.

Okay, well, let's hold back. I don't want us to, yeah, to peak. Shall I do a drama which I'm not sure you'll have? Okay, great. This is Simon Lee 28, who was stopped by security in Asda after they mistook a bulge in his pants for a can of Pringles. Wow. This was reported in the Metro.

I'd still go to see a doctor. That's on my list of Simon Lee dramas. Not Pringles. Oh my God. What was it? What was it? It was just a fold in his pants. So Simon Lee 28 said, looking back, I could see the funny side.

It was just a cock up, no pun intended. And the spokesperson from Asda said, no colleagues at this store are aware of this incident. What? So it wasn't an official member of staff. It feels like he might have made it up and the Metro reported it. But I don't want to get sued by Simon Lee 28, so let's call it a drama.

Yeah. That's good drama. be a drama. Yeah. So here's the legal dramas. Drama number one. The US FDA, 1975, ruled that Pringles were not potato chips

because they're not from sliced potato, which is what people expect from potato chips. So they couldn't call themselves the newfangled potato chips. They could say they were potato chips made from dried potatoes. They thought that was too long and then they changed their name to crisps.

Yes. I found that really interesting. And in fact, I think we might put it on this season of QI of what do Americans call this and put some pringles on, try and get the farfeit of chips. Also, you know, you can't call them crisps. Oh, really?

Because this is the next court case. In this country, though. In this country. And also then it got overruled, so I actually don't know what you can call you about. It would be clangers going off all the time, because the next court case, in 2008, Procter & Gamble lawyers successfully argued that they're not even crisps, even though it said crisps on the bucket. They won it.

The potato content is only 42%. they argued. God. And they said their shape is not found in nature. Which I love. It's so, it balls in. I love. Does no one get their feet out and say, what are you guys?

God, those are good lawyers. So they were doing this to avoid paying VAT on Crisps. But then I think it went to appeal. I think it went to the highest court in the land, which was then the appeal court. Yeah. And I think the judges there ruled that, no, that's ridiculous. They're clearly, Chris. You have to pay your tax.

And I think it cost them about 100 million quits. And they'd already paid it because they knew they were going to lose. Right. So they did that thing of like, hey, we've been paying it proactively all of this time. Because I think it's, I mean, tax dodging isn't a nice thing for a company to be very publicly doing. And we're not suggesting that Pringles did that. No, they didn't. That's what I'm saying. Oh, yes. Sorry. If they did want to send us somewhere, they're disgusting some of the little products.

Vegans can't even eat. Ash-infused, please. Yeah. It was, at the time, the appeal court, Lord Justice Jacob, I just like this thing he said. He said, there is more than enough potato content for it to be a reasonable view that it is made from potato. Wow. Yeah. That's a good old fashioned legal.

What's the other 58% then? It's flowers. So, sort of wheat, corn. Got it. It's a number of delicious other palatable ingredients that are legal. Agreed. Yeah. So I think the funnest drama.

So some people, because they weren't popular. This is, well, it's actually number two. Oh, excuse? So people trace their popularity back to an advert. in the 80s because in the originally 60s 70s they were flop

people didn't really eat them but then Brad Pitt didn't add for them was he yes Brad Pitt didn't add you can go and watch it on YouTube which I really recommend

because it's really fun it's fun but it's also it's just a young Brad Pitt is it sexy he's so sexy oh okay it's about theft so I'm gonna disagree with Andy

does he put some prickles down his pants sneak straight out of ASDA what period pit are we talking I mean proto pit as in pre-thomer and Luis

It's his first break, although apparently he was 27 in the ad. Yeah. So it took him a while to get his big break. It's very inspirational. It's not too great later. Actually, I'd argue it's Bringles. Yeah, well, I think without the Pringles ad, he probably wouldn't have got Therleman Louise.

Well, most actors at the beginning will survive off those kind of jobs. Pringles. Well, that's what the thing in the advert is. You've got these boys in a car and all of them are wearing their sort of swimmers and they're driving, but oh my God, they've all got a tube of Pringles that's empty. Like, they've run out of Pringles. But then they use the Pringles cans as, like binoculars and they see three hot chicks in their swimmers also driving in a car but they've got

like a whole sack of Pringles with them. Oh wow. So they all get out by the side of the road and they dance while eating Pringles. It's kind of Pringles orgy. Yeah. But then the girls turn around and the guys have stolen not only all of the remaining Pringles but their car. Oh wow. They just drive off in their car. Okay. Once you twuck you can't stop. So let's come back to the final drama. Here we go. The name of Mr. P. Mr. P. So it suddenly got revealed that he does have a first name. No, his name is Julius, Julius Pringle.

And people loved this, including Pringles. So Pringles tweeted it. It was on one of the American talk shows. People were really excited like, oh my God, guess what that guy's name is? It's Julius Pringle. And then... Well, it's a sort of early day Wikipedia hoax, basically. Someone went into the Pringles page on Wikipedia, edited it in.

Someone saw that. That got passed around. So there's nothing to do. So two students in Chicago, they were watching American football. ball. One of the players was called Julius. One of them asked the other, what do you think the Pringles guy is called? And he said Julius Pringle. They thought it was so funny. One of them went into Wikipedia and changed it. The other one, it was a moderator, went in and backed it up. And so all of this can be proven as well, because they've still got the same sort of

app name. So Justin Schillock, Plattipus 2-2, 2. There's records of him changing it on Wikipedia and on Twitter. There was a previous Facebook group where he was called Boris Pringle. They went in and changed it to Julius Pringle. So it was backed up everywhere. And when Pringles was sold, Kellogg's just went back to the Wikipedia. They said Procton Gamble would never have fallen for it. They knew that they hadn't called him Julius Pringle, but they just, yeah. But they acknowledged it. Yeah, they said it's, they said fine, it'll be Julius.

There's, there is a theory who Mr Pringle is. What it is is, there was some, there was one other person who was involved in the initial concept of Pringle's in the making of it. And it was a science fiction writer, a guy called Gene Wolfe, who writes pretty incredible sci-fi novels. I actually haven't heard any of the. titles before, but they seem to be really well-regarded. And he was responsible for developing the machine that cooks. I don't know if he invented the saddle. I think that must have been Bauer, but he did the machine. And if you look at a photo of Gene Wolfe, some people have noticed that he's got the parted hair, he's got the big mustache. Nobody. He's got zero body.

And he looks very pringly. So, yeah. So, but that's a tiny theory. There's, I'll admit it. It's one person's theory. I haven't seen it. Well, every theory starts with a photo. Exactly. You know, relativity started with, you know. Is that what, is that true? Is that what standing on the shoulders of giant's fingers? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Did you know that Julius Pringle? Because we might as well call him that now. He once shaved off his mustache

for November. Did he? What did he look like? Shaved it for November. Yeah, yes, the opposite, but to raise money for November. So he just had a white, round face on the Pringles tubes for a month. Because is he a potato? Oh. He shouldn't legally be, but is he? Maybe his 42%

potato. Yeah. Yeah. His dad was a potato his mom was some corn powder. Yeah. Do you want to hear a, this isn't a drama? It doesn't even merit the name drama, but I just, I read a bit of a spicy takedown of Pringles.

Oh yeah. And this was on the website, serious eats.com, so you know it's, it's pucker. The author wrote, I've creepily watched a lot of folks eat Pringles and can say with absolutely no authority

that most people pop them in their mouths oriented as an upside down saddle, right? So you're putting that. Now, this mostly makes sense because it's the way they come out of tube and you get all the flavor on your tongue. But the more enjoyable way is to eat them flipped over it so that you're working with a crispy saddle for your tongue.

I'm confused about which... When you eat Bringle, are you popping it on your tongue like a saddle? I see, yeah. Or are you popping it the other way out? I do it the other way because of a retainer I had as a kid and it feels like it slots into the top of your mouth quite nicely. You do have taste buds at the top of your mouth as well. That's powerful.

Not that many. Oh yeah, definitely. You don't taste any of the hot diggedy dog. It was you guys who said there were taste buds on testicles. that's how I eat They're just They're a nice little saddle For the testicles

I'm like that guy was in ASDA Yeah If you're out of a shoplift Put them in individually Delicious shoplifting Okay It is time for fact number two And that is James

Okay my fact this week Is that the world's first IVF clinic Was opened in a town called Bourne I love it Brilliant Have we never heard that I couldn't believe it

I can't believe I'd never heard it. So this was, we're talking in 1978, the first IVF baby, Louise Brown in Oldham. And just after it happened, the NHS kind of refused to support the service. So it's really controversial. You know, we might get to it later, but a lot of people did not like the idea at all. Can I quickly ask? Is it more or less controversial than Mr Pringle's first name? In drama turns.

I'm not sure how many dramas we're going to get to in IVF. But yeah, so the NHS wouldn't support. support them and they didn't know what to do. They had to find a building where they could start up their own clinic and they found this old Jacobean Manor called Bourne Hall, which I think is in Cambridgeshire and they started the Ivese centre there and you know many thousands of babies were born there and it's just fun name. So where did you say born is? I think it's in Cambridge. It is in Cambridge. There's another nice coincidence which is that the first IVF baby born was Louise Brown and Brown is with one letter different an anagram for born except of course that she was

born in Oldham which is somewhere else. And what's the opposite of old in Oldham? Young. What are babies? Oh my God. Come on it's all coming together. Yeah yeah see sometimes you go sit back and just watch the magic. Beautiful. Yeah she's yeah she's a pretty amazing character Louise Brown because she's become the spokesperson really for what a successor is and she goes all over the world basically doing conferences. So does her sister, because her sister, who is also an IVF baby, was the 40th born baby, and then the first ever person to have a baby off the back of being an IVF baby as well. Her sister had children first, did she?

Yeah. Okay. But Louise Brown did as well. Yeah. Because I think it's hard enough being sort of a middle child, let alone. Your eldest siblings, like, oh, my God, a medical miracle. Oh, and you. I had you as well, did they?

They still, one thing about born, is it called Bourne House? Or Bourne Hall, sorry, yeah, yeah. They were there, the pioneers of IVF, partly thanks to the Daily Mail. Were they? This is a very interesting thing. So, yeah, they... You're always talking about how much you'd have a daily mail. I know.

Give it a rest. I need it in again. Every episode, we edit out, an extended round about how great the Daily Mail is. But the pioneers, though, specifically two doctors called Steptoe and Edwards, and they, the editor of the Daily Mail got in touch. and promised help and help them to look for premises. And the mail originally purchased

Bourne Hall, the Jacobyan House, and they appointed architects and surveyors because it needed lots of work to turn it from a crumbling manor house into an IVF clinic. But then in 1979 they pulled out because apparently the venture was too risky. So it's not an unblemished success story

for the Daily Mail, unlike most of them. And then Stepton and Edwards raised money and bought it themselves. And Jean Purdy as well. Yeah, we've got to bring her into the story. because she has been left off. I'm not saying Andy, you're leaving her out, but you did. And I think it's time to bring Jean Purdy back into the story permanently.

She was a pretty amazing character, and by all accounts, this wouldn't have happened without her, to the point where many people see her as the nurse who was working on it. Therefore, if a plaque was ever put up about them, it would have the two names of the doctors, and then she would be linked into and all the supporting staff. And famously, Edwards, the doctor who was still alive, absolutely was refusing to have anything to do with it unless they put Purdy's name on it,

saying that I feel strongly about the inclusion of the names of the people who helped with the conception of Louise Brown. I feel especially about Gene Purdy, who traveled to Alden with me for 10 years and contributed as much as I did to the project. Indeed, I regard her as an equal contributor to Patrick Stepto and myself. And there was a point when Gene Purdy's mom got ill, and they just stopped everything because they couldn't do it without her for months. So she was so integral to this thing. Andy. Because she wasn't a doctor.

That's why people overlooked the fact that she was involved in the whole process. Yeah. She found the hall. She's the one who located. Yeah. And then she died before they gave the Nobel Prize. So she wasn't allowed to get a Nobel Prize because you can't if you're dead. And stepped her as well, right?

So it was just Edwards who ended up collecting it. Yeah. And it was controversial, wasn't it? It was sort of like everyone, particularly within the religious faction, sort of thought, are you going to give birth to a soulless baby? Well, I did IVF, and they still now, because there's two different kinds of IVF. You have IVF where you have ICSI, which is where your partner for some reason has low sperm count or substandard sperm. There's probably a better term for it than substandard.

If your parents got really weird sperms, then what they do is they pair them up rather than letting the sperm swim and choose. And when they do that, they say, obviously some people have real problems with that because it doesn't allow the accident of nature for them to choosing them. So even within IVF, there are still frontiers where people go, well that's so clinical. Wow, yeah. Yeah. They're interesting. I mean, I can't believe they're real these things, but they're, what are they?

They're micro syringes. I'm going to get them all micro needles, which they use to inject a single sperm into the centre of an egg. Yeah. It's not just introducing them anymore. Well, they do, they do both. I think they do both. How do they make a needle that's smaller enough to inject an individual sperm? Probably with microscopes.

Probably. Probably. Yeah. Actually, no, Sarah. I think it's an old craftsman called Luigi. It was a very steady hand. I think that's it. Yeah, so when she was, when she was bombed, she was called the test tube baby.

And she was made in a test tube. It's a petri dish, yeah. So test tube is the term that's the media throughout there, which we've all kind of kept going. But yeah, it's petri dishes. And she was saying that there was all that stuff. So she can have no soul. Are they making Franken babies? All that sort of stuff.

But there was a lot of love as well. And a lot of people were writing anonymous letters in, just sending them support. When she returned to her home. town after coming out of hospital, the streets were blocked and lined with people from her town and 100 reporters on the streets and they all stood out there. Like it was like the queen coming, you know, it was a huge showing. And one of the people who was standing in the crowd was a young boy called Wesley Mullender who would go on to become a bouncer and then one day Louise Brown's husband. So, wow. I'm not going to say he wouldn't let a ring soon exactly.

Sorry, you need a soul if you're coming here. I'm sorry. It'd be so great to be like, uh, Louise Brown. six and a half, I believe, if I remember exactly when we had that parade. But yeah, he was seven years old at the time watching his future wife be brought home. That was strange. Well, the birth was completely mad. There were police officers lining the corridor in hospital

where Louise Brown's mom got birth because it was so controversial. And the birth had to be filmed to show there was actual documentary evidence that this baby belongs to this mother and is real. The baby, Louise herself, when she was a new woman, You know, they normally have, what do they do? About five tests when a newborn baby

just to make sure you know. Oh, the ear is the eyes. Yeah, the colour of the skin. Yeah, Louise Brown had to have 60 tests before her mum could hold her. Wow. It was really just testing absolutely every aspect to make sure this is a completely healthy baby.

But for the first time, you would be a bit like, oh my God, this can't just be, it can't just flippin made a human, have we? Yes. Yeah, part of you would be like, double check that everything's there. And it is an incredible thing. People who don't go through IVF,

I know they think of it. about it is very medicalised, but when you have your embryo transfer, you watch it on an ultrasound. So you see the little globule of water that contains the embryo sort of being inserted inside you and your partner can be there and they give you an ultrasound picture. So like with our son Theodore, we've known him since he was five days old. Wow. Wow. Yeah.

So actually I feel really romantic about it as well. As well as like that, oh my God, it's so incredible they can help you. Also, it's really smooth running now. Yeah. And when you, sorry, when you have the process you've described, is the old Italian craftsman, is he in the room? Well, it has to be. Yeah, yeah, sorry. Where's that needle?

Only he has the dexterous fingers that can pick the needle. It will be sad when he dies. And he wants to be buried in a tiny needle. Steptoe was in a shipwreck. Was he? Really? Yeah. But a proper, full-off shipwreck.

So he was born in 1913 and he was a naval surge. during the Second World War. Uh-oh, he was the right age for that. And his ship was off Crete, and the Germans captured it, well, they sunk it, captured it, and he became a prisoner of war. Right. And then he helped other prisoners escape

while he was in a German prisoner of war camp in Crete. Cool. And then he was put in solitary confinement for that. Oh, okay. What a life. Sounds great. Yeah. Some of our things on Conception in general. Yeah.

So Elizabeth Christine was a wife of Holy Roman Emperor Charles the 6th, and they wanted him. male air and they decided to do that they prescribed her a gluttonous diet large amounts of alcohol and to spend all day looking at erotic paintings of men oh she was like all right if you think it'll work people say a thing now which i don't think is based on that much evidence but about um the gender of the sperm making a difference at how fast they swim so like early in your ovulation if you want a boy and late in the ovulation if you want a girl. Oh, right.

Yeah. What does female sperm are slower swimmers? Or they live longer or something. There's something to do with the weight. I don't think it's based on that much evidence. It's like one of those old wives' tales when people like you. So it's point to get down here, when people like you, just be clear.

And also the old thing about wearing boxes are briefs. Oh, yeah. That thing. There was a recent study, and they found there was no appreciable difference in scrotal temperature. in men who wear briefs and boxes, although the NHS kind of says, even though it doesn't seem to affect sperm quantity,

you may want to wear loose-fitting underwear. So the NHS kind of, you know, hedge their bets a little bit, but according to the studies, it doesn't make any difference. But they say the thing about hot baths and showers. Yeah, well, that would... Like a hot bath would change the temperature.

It would change a core body temperature. I guess the thing is that Tesels are really clever at removing themselves from the body when they need to cool down a little bit. And I think they thought, with pants it would mean they couldn't do that because they'd be stuck there but with a bath being so much hotter yeah I mean they can't jump out we need what you need is what you need is one of those bath rest you know the things that go across the bath for reading the buck on

yeah or put a tray of food there'll be someone in the bath right now listening to this podcast just tie across a little net and put the nuts in that yeah that helps yeah I don't know I because because these guys know this but I when we were trying for our third child um my my wife went to an acupuncturist because she thought we weren't, we weren't conceiving. And she said, does your husband take hot baths? And she said, yeah, because I love hot baths. She said, well, that's the problem. It's his fault.

It's all his fault. And then she booked me a sperm test, the acupuncturist, just booked it for me. And Fenella was like, well, you've got to go. So I went and I did the thing. And I was furious that I was going to do this thing off the back of the acupunctrists. Then I wrote to them and said, where are my results? And they said, well, we sent it to the acupuncturist. So she then had my results.

And she's been telling it. I know. She didn't open them. She did. She did. This is why alternative medicine doesn't have a kind of practice. And she's been giving Fenella crap for weeks, like saying your husband is your husband's fault. This is all your husband's fault.

And Fenella is getting angry at me. You and your buddy bars were been trying for ages. So she opens it up. Fenella calls her up and says, can we get the results? And she says, I've been doing this for 20 years. In all my time, I've never seen such strong sperm results in my... life. He is a super sperm holder. It's just so inappropriate, though. Even though that's a compliment. I couldn't believe it. Anyway. You know, having a high sperm count can be bad for conceiving as well.

Yeah. And that's because you're more likely to get two sperms that go in the egg at the same time. And obviously, I think that can, wow. Twins, but it can also cause problems. Too many people at a cocktail party, no one enjoys it. Just are talking over each other. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You need just the right number. But it's never happened at any of my parties. I'll tell you that much. I'm lucky to get four. Okay, it is time for fact number three, and that is Andy. My fact is that there is only one guy in Dijon who makes mustard.

And he's busy. Any girls? Who did it? I don't know. And did you find this out from the Daily Mail? Sorry, I got all my facts on the Daily Mail. No, actually, I found this out from Atlas Obscura, and it's about a man. His name is Nicholas Chavie, and since 2009, he's been the only mutardier in

in Dijon. Yeah. And he wasn't even born to it. You know, he's made himself a mustard maker. Has anyone born into mustard? There must have been some mustard dynasties. You know, the Coleman family, maybe. I don't know.

But he used to work in IT. And then he has a tiny boutique. It's not a lot of Dijon mustard that gets made in Dijon. But are you allowed to call it Dijon if it's not made in Dijon. You are allowed to call it Dijon if it's not made in Dijon. It's just sparkling horse radish. It's just sparkling horse radish. In fact, there are no rules about whether you can call something Dijon.

Is that right? Yeah, it's a wild west for Dijon mustard. Wow. You can't say anything is, we can't say anything as Dijon mustard. You can call any mustard Dijon. So it's a recipe rather than some local projects. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Interesting.

Yeah, so there's Gray Poupon, which you might have heard of. What? What? That's a famous Dijon mustard, and that's based in the USA. Yeah. It's the 1940s. What did you call it? Gray Poupon.

Gray Poupon. to rhyme with coupon. Have you not heard of Great Poupon? I'm afraid of it happened. It's one of the most famous musters in the world, but only because from about, well, no, there's no, it's basically because it's in so many rap songs. There's a real thing where lots of rappers, like from about the early noughties, they started mentioning. I'm going to go all Pringle buildings here. I want ten rappers.

Lil Poupon. Biggie grapes, yeah. The Wutan clan, Kanya West Ghostface Killer Buster Rhymes Kendrick Lamar I could go on that way

There's a brilliant Vox piece where it was noted by a writer called Estelle Caswell and I think she writes for Vox or she was writing a Vox at the time and she basically made a supercut of Grey Poupon references in rap songs It seems to be the thing

that you mentioned if you want to say I think it's just a mustard It's just a slightly more expensive than normal mustard Yeah who knows so Not rap but have you heard of DJ Mustard No DJ mustard big big

DJ record producer. Yeah, yeah. He's worked with a lot of famous people. Is it a joke about Dijon? Well, why do you think he's called D.J. Mustard? Because Dijon contains DJ. Oh, no. He's as keen as mustard.

That's a great work ethic. But is it about cutting the mustard? Isn't there? There's lots of stuff, yeah, going on. Get in the mustard. Mustard must have other slang. Yeah, well, it's not that. It is that his name is Dijon.

His first name. Oh, yeah, yeah. That's an unusual name. And it's a name. Mustard. Dijon mustard. Dijon mustard. Yeah.

Are they mispronancing Dion? I don't know how he's pronouncing it, but possibly. Can we talk about mustard? Yeah. The Romans were the first to eat it, but the Greeks had it, and they would use it medically. They would rub it on the chest for bronchitis. If your baby had sore teeth, they might rub it on the teeth.

And Pythagoras took it against scorpion stings. Yeah, my friend, I was talking to my friend Ed about mustard the other day, and he said that his dad used to put it on his horse. his legs. Salvation towards a back. As a condiment or... No. He said race horse when they've got leg muscle inflammation.

And this was during the 70s and 80s, I guess, is when he was doing it. Yeah, you'd mix it with lind seed, with confrhy, with water. You'd make a paste. Then you would put it on and you'd bandage up. And the poor horse is like, are you basting me? Pope John the 12th appointed his nephew as the grand mustardier to the Pope. Oh, what a name. He was the Pope's mustard maker.

and the Pope's mustard maker became a word for someone who was quite pompous and they had a pointless role in society. Oh, that's great. I was supposed like someone who would give your car a ticket, like a traffic ward and you would call them a Pope's mustard maker. Oh, okay. I'm going to stick out for traffic. I think they've got an important role in this.

Oh, no, I do agree. But I'm thinking that you might say it because you're upset with them. But that's the third missing mustard phrase. We've got cutting the mustard, Keene's mustard. And you're the Pope's mustard maker. Yeah? And it's a tragedy that that one dropped out of circulation. I think it's because it sounds too much like a euphemism.

Yeah. Yeah, you're right. And you said it's a nephew who made his mustard maker. So it's nepotism, basically. Wasn't the Pope's nephew thing? It was often their illegitimate sons who they... That's a good point. They would call them nephews.

Yes, I don't know if this is that in this case. Because they're not supposed to use their mustard maker. Oh, my God. That's now the fourth phrase. The guy in Astor thought it was my mustard maker, but it was actually a kind of prigalus. Oh, that's horrible. France had a huge mustard crisis last year.

Okay. Yeah, they ran out of mustard. They ran out almost completely of mustard. Oh, really? That's not. French people eat a kilo of mustard each, I read somewhere. Okay, right. Per year.

Yeah, sorry. Which is, that's a lot, though. That's a good few jars per person per year. You've got to be shifting it to get through that. But basically, 80% of the seeds used in French mustard are from Canada. Yeah. And they had a terrible summer of weather failures and crops all suffered. And France uses 35,000 tons of mustard seeds every year to make its mustard.

It's a mad amount. The other thing was that a lot of the yellow mustard seeds come from Ukraine and Russia. And so that meant there was a shortage in yellow mustard for people like the Germans and the British. And so the Germans and the British started eating Dijon. and that meant that the French didn't have any dijon. Exactly. Okay, I knew they were going to blame it on us somehow. In the 14th century, the Duke of Burgundy held a gala where the guests ate 85 gallons of mustard in a single sitting.

With what? Did they say with what? It must have been like a fondue where they just took little breads in there and stuff. But how much of that was left on the side of the plates after they finished their actual meals? It was a single sentence in. the book gastro-obscura, which is made by the same people who do at the subsubstura. Didn't say any more and I couldn't find anything about it, but that's a lot. It didn't even say how many guests there were, so.

Well, yeah, it's one of Andy's parties. Yeah. That's a lot per guest. Okay, it is time for our final fact of the show, and that is my fact. My fact this week is that the poet W.B. Yates once had a vasectomy to cure his writer's block. So, there wouldn't have been much of a second coming for him. Is that one of his books? It's his most famous poem.

And, you know, if that stays in, and it's a big if, really at this stage, there'll be a few people who really like that. Yeah, yeah. Actually, you can still orgasm if you've had a sexist. I really love the reference to the poem, though. Podcast at QI.com. Do you want to make that point? I was thinking to...

To cure his writer's block, they bored his writer's cock. Spoonerism. It's not technically in the penis. I really like this podcast. Have you run out of facts or something? Is it just you in the inbox? It's uncanny. So I got this fact from someone called Georgia Granger.

She's got a PhD in the history of Vesept. You can find her on Twitter at at SNIPHist, which is so she does a lot of vasectomy facts on there. And yeah, she was, I asked her, what's the most interesting thing that you know about vasectomies? And she said about Yates and how he did this. And this used to be a thing. Were you Googling vasectomestan, Stan? The super spam. I've got to stop it somehow. There is no vasectomy strong enough.

We don't understand. These tubes appear to have been unnotted from the inside. The acupuncture is shaking in. In the 20 years. Yeah, so this used to be a thing that it was believed. These were sort of, I guess, partial vasectomies. And the idea was that there was rejuvenation. And it was written about in the 1920s.

And the idea was by sort of taking the tubes and tying them up, we'd do something to the production of the male hormone. And that would be increased. And that would go back into the body and sort of revitalize it. It was kind of like Doctor Who getting another regeneration. It was kind of like a whole new life, basically. And he was quite old Yates when he had this. He was 68 slash 69 years old when he had it.

And he called it his second puberty because it kind of really did work for him, particularly on the creative side. His wife said his writing was just extraordinary from that point on. It just whether or not that's a placebo or whatever. Psychosomatic. Yeah, but it did the job. Having an operation, when your body recovers from pain, you quite often do feel rejuvenated.

So it could just be having a sort of minor procedure, even that in itself. Wow, so for all riders' block, just have like... No, I'm not going to recommend it. Because I think that whole thing, like men losing their life force through ejaculation kind of goes around and around. Does it really? Yeah. So similar kind of time when they were sewing monkeys' testicles onto people. Yes, this is the same time.

Yes, to give them extra, again, the same theory, extra sort of male life force. That's interesting. The going behind this procedure, Austrian doctor, Eugène Steinachian. That's the procedure that's called being Steinecht. He made extraordinary claims for his procedure. Obviously, so many of these doctors did. So just to quote from one piece about this,

he claimed his patients, changed from feeble, parched, dribbling drones to men of vigorous bloom who threw away their glasses, shaved twice a day, dragged loads up to 220 pounds, and even indulged in such youthful follies as buying land in Florida.

That's the most very most, virile thing you can do. That's what young people do by land in Florida, because that's not why I've heard. How interested. But the other side of this, so Sigmund Freud, again, the similar kind of time was doing the same to women with clitorectomy's. Yes. That same thing of. I was moving them, wasn't it? It was... Moving them in terms of orgasms, but also lots of people had them removed from that same

sort of argument. Well, Freud is one of the people who, when Yates was looking into it, was amongst the list of notables who had had the vasectomy done in order to help him. And he did it for, he had jaw cancer, which they thought that that would help with that as well as other things of the, yeah. I mean, he kept smoking, unfortunately.

Did he? Yeah, which was probably the reason he had jaw cancer in the earthquake. I wonder if they knew, they wouldn't have known that at the time, right, I guess. No, I don't think it would have been conclusively proven. Yeah.

Wow. Yates did loads of sort of spooky spiritual stuff, didn't he? He's awesome. Yeah. That's why we're talking about it. That's why we're talking about it, really. Yeah, I mean, he was, he was, He was someone who was very closely associated with the world of Alistair Crowley and all that sort of stuff.

And he was very much part of a movement, which was, was it Blavatsky? Was he part of the Theosophical Society? Yeah. Which is, she was this extraordinary character, Madame Blavatsky, who was an occult leader, and she just took under her wing all of these big thinkers at the time. And she had theories about Atlantis and our origin stories and so on. And her sort of disciples were everyone from Crowley through to Rudolph Steiner, you know, the schooling education I had was as a result of Blabatsky, basically,

and what Steiner took from that and built in it. And Yates was someone else who very much believed in it. Yeah, she claimed to have gone to Tibet and had these llamas who she'd met, and they could send her ideas through astral projection. They can move from one place to another, but they can also send her thoughts into her head so that she could kind of speak to the dead or tell what the future is going to be, tell all sorts of stuff like that. And there was lots of things like seances where letters,

would fly around and all that kind of stuff. And Yates was involved with the... Yeah, he loved it. But even when he turned up, she'd already been theoretically discredited at that time. So one of her acolytes had gone to the papers and given them all the tricks of what she used to do to make things fly around the room.

And it was in... It might have even been the Daily Mail, but it was... You don't know about it then, then. Yeah, it was in one of them. He wouldn't write it down because it involved a woman. Oh, my God. Oh, my God.

But yeah, I think... at that stage it's the kind of thing where you double down even when things have been debunked if it's what you believe in you kind of like well they would say that they're trying to stop us from doing it yeah um yeah I don't always approve of the thing of looking at thinkers and writers exclusively through their

romantic lives you know yeah as in that can be a bit reductive but yay's sex life was extraordinary yeah I mean strange really weird he proposed to an Irish woman she was a politician she was called Maud Gond and she was later a really big Irish independence movement leader.

He proposed to her and he'd been in love with her for about 20 years at this point. She said absolutely not. Then he proposed immediately like three weeks later to her daughter. Second rejection. Then said, fine, never mind that. And then immediately proposed to someone else who said yes, Georgie Hydeleys. And they got married, I think, within a few weeks of that. Well, part of the reason was that this, I think it was Blavatsky or someone like that

had told him that the best. time for him to get married or in fact he would get married that year and so he's like well okay well let's go through the list that's what they say about marriage don't they it's not about the person it's about it's about the date it's about it's about the spiritualist who's told you it's this year you've got a suit you've booked the guests but the relationship with mord gone was really interesting and more oh my god more one character um she had a second life in paris which is why she turned him down all these times but they did get married in 1898 but they got married to They had a shared vision where they kind of together imagined getting married on the astral plane.

Amazing. Yates and gone? Yeah, yeah. Well, it's cheaper, isn't it, on the astral plane? You know, the rooms are bigger. Yeah, you can have more guests. It was a good idea. Yeah.

But yeah, they did do that. So they had done it, but not, I mean, not legally binding. No. But she, oh my God, Maud gone. I mean, there's one story, and I'm sure you guys have read this, or possibly not. So she was part of, as we now know, the astral plane. part of this mysticism stuff. She had a son, a little boy who sadly passed away when he was very young. He was two years old. And she decided that she was going to force reincarnation him back

into existence. And the way of doing that is she went to, she had a sort of a place built for his son, a mausoleum. And she went inside with the partner who she had George with. And they went down and by the coffin of her little son, they had sex. Because the idea was to conceive while being next to the coffin would force the spirit and soul into the new child. This is that like early IVF actually. So incredibly, she did conceive. Like nine months later, the baby was born. So they assume from stories that this was the point that this happened.

And the daughter's name was Isolt. They had a terrible relationship with each other, I guess because of a slightly fracturous beginning, where she sort of was treating her as if she was the reincarnated son. And it became quite clear that she wasn't. Well, the other thing is that Islt was the daughter who Yates proposed to. Proposed to? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So Yates, we haven't said properly who, if anyone doesn't know, outside of that poem that Andy referenced right at the top. that. Everyone got it from that,

yeah, yeah. But he was an amazing writer, he's a poet. He got the Nobel Prize in literature in 1923. He was a sort of Oxford University honoured guy. He was an amazing character who still held up. And then there's all this sort of Irish, of course. Irish, of course. And he came from an amazing

family. And his brother was an Olympian. He got an Olympic silver medal, the first that Ireland ever got, for swimming. Which is amazing. That's cool. And it's not swimming the event. It was a painting that he painted called swimming because this was back when you could win Olympic medals for paintings.

That's so funny. Yeah. And so it's... I'm an Olympic swimmer. You don't look like a Olympic swimmer. Why are you drowning? Just clinging onto his painting. And they were a very creative family.

You had two sisters who were also, they were very artistic. They're sort of getting a second, you know, kind of like Purdy from IVF fame or lack of fame. getting their moment now because they were very influential on Ireland being a new its own state and yeah and yates kind of half was and half wasn't as well wasn't they i think he was influenced by mod gone and really wanted to be involved with nationalism when he was with her but i think also when he wasn't with her anymore he wasn't that fussed about it yeah and she i think she drifted in a very radical direction yeah i think by the time that he ended up proposing to her in this realm she was really, you know, very hardline and very radical.

And she was also apparently a chloroform addict. Oh, really? Much for him. So when he proposed to Maud, to the mother, he added quite detailed conditions, which basically ensured he would get a no from her. Yeah. Oh, that's interesting. Close out the chloroform.

But he felt, yeah, yeah, but he felt he had to propose because I think she had been with another partner who, and then they were not together anymore. And he sort of felt it was incumbent on him to propose. Oh, interesting. Just on the marriage that, that Yates ended up having with Georgie, or George, as he called her. They were also involved in the spiritual stuff

because their honeymoon was going incredibly badly. I mean, really badly. If he's proposed to two other women in the previous month, it's not incredibly surprising that honeymoon's going to go quite poorly. Side note, it was in the 100 acre wood, which is cool. Oh, is it? Yeah. Or the wood that ashdown forest it's cool, which was led to the 100 acre wood of AIML. How could you have a bad honeymoon there?

I know. Two sticks every day. He stole all their honey on the first morning. It was a nightmare. And basically, even on honeymoon, he was writing letters to Isseld. So this is not a good sign for the prose of honeymoon. And I know, it was like four days in. It's almost like you shouldn't listen to psychics. Yeah, yeah.

Psychics, acupuncture. I mean, careful, you get your advice from, basically. And then, but then she turned it round. She said, let's try some automatic writing, you know, where the spirits will guide my hand. I'll just see what comes out. And she said a bit later on that it had been fake, her word, and then she repented and recanted using that word. But basically it turned the corner for the entire marriage

and it turned what was a very unpromising marriage, obviously four days in. Together they wrote 4,000 pages in the first three years of marriage. And the spirits seemed to be really interested in him getting over, Maud. And they suggested diet tips for him. They suggested ways to spice up their sex life. This is such a clever tactic. There's a spirit that they told them when George was ovulating,

so they would have better odds of conceiving. I mean, their spirits were unbelievably useful. Yeah, apparently there was a bit that was stressing the husband's duty to give his wife sexual satisfaction was one of the things. She's a genius. She's an absolute genius. Which someone pointed out that these messengers must have been reading a book that was actually published at the time by Mary Stopes,

which called Married Love, which had that exact thing about sexual satisfaction. It's so funny. So just on writer's block, as this was what Yates was trying to do with in the first place, I found the person who I think may have had the worst writer's block in history, a writer for the New Yorker. Very successful, well-known writer who was called Joseph Mitchell. And for 32 years he didn't write a single article.

He turned up every day to work at the New Yorker. And he didn't write anything. He was working on a memoir, but he couldn't get past chapter three. Oh, no. I think you just skip onto chapter four and come back to it. Yeah, yeah, I think that's fair. But there's a theory that he stopped because of someone being nice about him.

Someone wrote that he was the greatest living master of the English declarative sentence. Wow. And that just clamped him up. Oh, no. I know. He just couldn't get He should have checked his app messages. Read your tweets. Read the comments under your articles. Okay, that's it. That is all of our facts.

Thank you so much for listening. if you'd like to get in contact with any of us about the things that we have said over the course of this podcast we can all be found on our Twitter accounts. I'm on at Shreiberland, James, at James, at James, At James Harkham, Andy, at Andrew Hunter M, and Sarah. At Sarah Pascoe. Yeah, and you can also go to our group account, which is at No Such Thing or our website, no such thing as a fish.com. All of our previous episodes are up there, but don't bother going to our website this week. There's way more important websites to go to, sarahontor.com or sarahpasco.com. You'll find links to all of the upcoming legs of tours in the UK that Sarah is doing

and she's also going to Australia very soon so if you're living over there make sure to check it out and go see her show and anything else Sarah to mention I don't have an H on Sarah. There's no H on Sarah at Sarah S8.R.A. Pascow for the Twitter and then apply that to the relevant

internet domains. Okay, we'll be back again next week. We'll see you then. Goodbye.