No Such Thing As A Fish - No Such Thing As Enough Money For Comic Relief

Episode Date: March 17, 2021

In addition to your regularly scheduled weekly episode, here is a clip from last week's No Such Thing As A Fish 20-hour podcast, streamed live from last Friday for Comic Relief! 

hi everyone welcome to a very special mini little episode of no such thing as a fish now if you remember last week we said we were about to do a 20 hour podcast with 35 incredible guests and guess what we did it thank you so much to those people who joined us the crazy people who stayed up for the whole 20 hours I don't know what you think you were doing but anyone who came to any of those sections and especially anyone who donated thank you so so much so far we have made over a hundred and fifty thousand pounds for comic relief some of the best causes around the world but we want to do better and the way that we

can do that is by you guys catching up with all 35 sections because we are putting them on YouTube this episode that you're about to hear is a little taster of our conversation with Richard Osman the host of pointless house of games best-selling author really help you enjoy it if you want to hear the full thing you can hear that on our YouTube page where over the next two weeks we will be putting up all of the sections maybe three a day something like that and that will be chats with people like Michael Palin with people like Steven Frye, Sandy Toxvig, Shappie Kors Sandy, Carrie Mulligan who you might have

heard has just been nominated for a little bit of an Oscar this week, Richard Curtis there was an amazing bit where Tim Minchin did a song for us honestly each one of those sections is so much fun in its own way and the way that you can watch any one of those will be to go to qi.com slash comic relief if you're thinking well I don't want to listen to those incredibly talented and funny people I just want to give money to comic relief well you can do that as well and to do that you go to comicrelief.com slash fish that will take you to our just giving page and honestly if you can spare as little as five pounds it will

make such a massive difference to people all around the world especially in a year when charities have really really been struggling due to coronavirus anyway I really hope you enjoy this little chat with Richard and I suppose on with the podcast welcome back everyone it is time to move on to our next guest and boy do we have an exciting one we have someone who is I guess the biggest quizzing personality on TV you'll know him from House of Games you'll know him from Pointless but just as a sort of side project he's also become the best-selling fictional

author to have a debut book out in the history of books that's his kind of side plate of things that he does you'll know it as the Thursday murder club we're so excited to have him here for fact number eight it is Mr Richard Osmond how are you we are good how is it going so far great really we've raised 45,000 pounds since since going which is very exciting we had a target of 35,000 so we've exceeded that and yeah if all your all your fans watching now can contribute as well we would be hugely grateful we'd be on 45,150 well let's get into it we understand you brought a fact so it's time for fact

number eight and that is Richard Osmond I have brought a fact that it's it's who wants to be a millionaire related for reasons we will get on to but my fact is the man who wrote the theme tune to who wants to be a millionaire also wrote mistletoe and wine a gentleman called Keith Strachan he's been around for years and years he's a musician and musical director all sorts of things like that wrote mistletoe and wine for a musical funnily enough Cliff took hold of it so he won the live and the ballet for it but for years also wrote theme music for

Celador so we do lots of ill remembered shows like talking telephone numbers and then you know one day gets the call saying that we're doing this pilot in a couple of days time it's this thing called who wants to be a millionaire we're not happy with the song we've got which was written by Pete Waterman stock eighth in the water and said we're not happy with it is there anything you can do he sat down with his son put something together lots of sort of strings and stuff like that a couple of days later the pilot goes out that song was probably made in tens of

millions or theme tune in the history of television did they use the same theme tune around the world yeah oh really millionaire and weakest link one of those shows that was always done as a kit of parts i.e. you buy you buy the look you buy the set you buy the graphics you buy the music which isn't always the case so yeah every time it's played in america every time it's played in apocon Keith Stratton is like the millionaire theme it's not melodic is it well that's the thing you couldn't whistle it right

no exactly yeah i've heard that you are meant to be able to sing along to it and i can just about get the who wants to be wants to be a millionaire and i don't know if i'm singing the right bit to the right i don't think you are with us but what i think is you've just made Keith Stratton seven and a half pence that part of it is based on the musical song who wants to be a millionaire isn't it i think it's the other part that he who's saying that i don't i kind of know that song when you say you know it's a real oldie yeah it's like from the era i thought it's from fiddle on the roof or

something but someone in the chat will know what it's from i'm sure yeah let's click on your live oh yeah all right now normally we have sandy toxin tell us these things this was the podcast you'd have anna saying exactly where that came from yeah you don't know we shut down our computers i have to ring up my mum and ask her the answer to the question yeah that pilot of who wants to be a millionaire it or actually the first episode that went out i think the pilot was broadcast um it got 46 percent of the total tv

audience at the time and uh i mean it was it was so huge chris taren said the day after the first episode went out someone shouted at him from a passing lorry phone a friend and he said that happened every day for the next 15 years oh my god i wish so host you barely go through three shows without someone looking nervous if they don't know an answer and saying can i phone a friend it's the go really like when you sit in the makeup chair uh as well so if you're if you're a new contestant you sit in the makeup chair

this is just if anyone ever goes on a quiz every single man nervous of course sits down and says short back and sides please every single one and there's poor makeup artists happening up so many people watching who would have been one of those people richard sort of crying into there but i would do it as well you know you're nervous and so yeah yeah richard do you get like people shouting things are you in the street like central african republic or or what are the things but people always just shout the point is to me the

street i'm aware that other people walking past you might not know who i am i've just seen someone out of the window of a van if i get most off the point this honestly what it used to in these days it's it's it's the book in its house against but the thing i think i used to get more as much as point is people saying oh countdown you're like oh really we this aren't xander and i you know who are they so rich who do they think they think you're susie dent or what's it like me i think the

i know i don't think they really can come and count down i think you have been on countdown a couple of times so maybe they just really like that episode maybe i'm so got hundreds of millions of viewers around the world we want zander wants to literally introduce the show i'm Alexander Armstrong and welcome to countdown those are so exciting but the reason he did it is because the audition for countdown and we were genuinely thinking because you know he was obviously a brilliant comment actor and was doing

a vital use for you all the time and we thought oh you'll never do a daytime show and then we got some info that he was doing an audition for countdown and we thought well if he's up for doing that then perhaps he'd be up for doing our show and so literally off the back of that we thought let's get him in and he came in and then then we had our hopes so we have count down thanks for that yeah if he'll do a countdown he will do any daytime show what's your favorite and theme tune richard you must have one

favorite thing tune is superstars i would think from the uh from the 17th oh the sports thing it's you know it absolutely i'm quite but you know if they play like theme tunes if you're watching university challenge or something and there's you recognize all of them but you can i always think they're from kickstart but superstars is the one yeah absolutely it's so brilliant if you if you haven't heard it have a little there go and listen to it best show ever and best theme tune ever i learned the other day that actually this was a few months ago but that

the inspector gadget theme tune and the mysterious cities of gold theme tune and the he-man theme tune and jason the wheel warriors and ulysses for people of a certain age were all written by the same guy called shuki levy and he also wrote the israeli 1981 eurovision song contest entry which i haven't heard but must be amazing right because they are absolutely everyone is an absolute well though it's great to gadget is just a big old plagiarism the same as sonic the hedgehog it's it's in fact to gadget goes

yeah that's hall of the mountain king same as sonic the hedgehog he's just slightly changed the timing that's just hall of the mountain king wasn't he wants to be a winner based on holster planets yeah there's a particular like stab of branch or stab of horns or something that yeah he worked from I think a cool thing about the holster's planets the other day I think it was for Neptune they had the choir that's in the song fade out but they weren't able to fade it out properly at the time and so what they did was they had the choir in a different room and they slowly closed the door and then once it was shut yeah again if we were editing this this might not end up in

the final show possibly not true do you know my favorite um theme tune because of a fact is the Seinfeld theme tune now I've always I've always loved it because I love Seinfeld and the stand-up moment at the beginning so for anyone that doesn't remember it it's like boom boom boom boom baseline uh but it was done on a synth what I didn't realize was that for the first I think it must have been eight series that theme tune was rerecorded for every single episode because and it makes total sense Seinfeld is doing stand-up there are different beats to where his joke is going to land each time so this guy used to get sent the footage of the latest stand-up bit going at the front of Seinfeld and he would live jam the theme tune for every

single episode to put all those moments in when he could see Seinfeld coming to a beat in the joke it's something like 200 episodes that he've rewrote it for every single time he must have got tired of that tune could you tell at the end it was losing some of its vigour that's like when the circus when you used to see dancing horses dancing to the music you think how do they get the horses to dance to the music they don't they play the music to match whatever the hell the horses are doing that Seinfeld is the horse in that scenario yeah Andy I can't believe you've just ruined that magic for children in the 1950s you went to the circus but still my favourite scene tune is also the most well-known piece of music in the UK apparently according to a 2000 I think it was 2008 poll

actually standards correct must be standards and that beat god save the queen into number two but I didn't realize very needy standards fact it has a spin-off called Julia's theme written by one of the EastEnders creators and that's when you know when you get an ending which is a bit more poignant and it doesn't really suit the boom boom boom but a boom and then Julia's theme comes in and it comes in about once a year oh really if you get a Julia's theme that must be a big moment as an EastEnders act of course Elita Dobson had a big hit they put lyrics to the EastEnders theme tune anyone can fall in love and Elita Dobson who's Angie but had a pit with it on top of the pops and all sorts of things back in those days you had A size and B size and I wonder what the B size of

that must have been yeah I used to um if you used to watch bullseye back in the day at the very end they would throw the darts and try and win the big prize and if they won the prize they would have the theme tune and if they lost the prize they would have the same theme tune but in a minor key so sometimes they release the the themes and they they chart um can you think of the highest charting tv teams you never it's gonna be a kids show right it's gonna be like Barney or Builder or I've got two for you right here I bet theme from match was number one suicide is painless and another number one but I leveled so I think was found a book so there's a couple for you right there okay I've got an answer for you all anyway um and it's going to divide the opinion it's going

to divide the room because you've named a lot of songs that went to number one so it's clearly a dead tie but a million people uh in 1997 bought the Teddy Tubby's theme tune I believe that's in the UK so I was one of them really were you yeah I on that see I was a student at the time and that's that was a demographic for the show so um but Bob the Builder was which Dan I think Dan mentioned yeah I said Bob the Builder Bob the Builder not only had a huge number one hit I think second only to Teddy Tubby's um but Bob the Builder released a version of Manvo number five which also sold 400,000 copies so sorry Bob the Builder rewrote Manvo number five yeah and changed the lyrics because it's so non-child friendly the lyrics are the same it's all about women Bob the

Builder he's a sexy man everyone's got to build a fantasy you know okay so on Manvo number five that was the theme tune to something else um which I always love this fact that was a theme tune to one of Bill Clinton's democratic conventions in the early 90s do you and it was it was set to be like the proper walk-in walk-out music until someone pointed out at the last minute that it did contain the line a little bit of moniker in my life wow that's an oversight isn't it from you know Lou Vega yeah yeah did you know where he's from yeah I do oh Dan he's German yeah I mean I just didn't know he was did you did any all right can we count Richard out for a second did you guys know he was German I don't fully know who he is well he's the singer of Manvo number

five which sounds like a very Latin song it doesn't sound like a you know a Calvinist rhythm Manvo number fifth though a lot of those names what I've never thought about a lot of those names are quite Germanic there's moniker angela you know they're quite unusual names but Helga yeah I think I know the oldest theme tune in the world comes down it's almost a thousand years old the arches um that's I mean it's correct he's won the money what does what prizes you get a tea towel or something it's the arches oh really I would say the arches is a very old show and it was a weird question because the joke answer is the same as the real answer in this case this is something that was spotted by Howard Goodall in the story of music and he pointed out

that there's a 12th century piece which is a Gregorian chant it was written we think about 1198 it's a Vida Rant Omnes or Vida Rant Omnes and he is right if you listen to it it is very similar to it's a little bit more but it's there isn't that exciting and then it's sort of stuck around as a theme in various tunes through the centuries and rocked up in Prokofiev at the start of the 20th century and then sort into the arches do any of you I know one of you knows this who wrote the theme tune for eight out of ten cats oh rich though it was one of the cats wasn't it it was someone from one of my favorite bands oh oh steps so no a band not as good as slips yeah next best it was rich it's

brother Matt Osman from Swade your brothers in sweat why didn't we get him on that was cool isn't it yeah he did that and uh with with a guy called Alex Lee who was in strange love in swede now is in Florence and the machine uh and yeah they put that together with it it's fascinating because he still makes money out of it today obviously and cats does countdown which by and large is the countdown theme music but then continues with the drums cats but because it continues with that he still gets money from it's nice isn't it yeah the guy who does weakest link makes millions millions upon millions upon millions we all know everyone knows that's the key is to write a jingle that's used as a theme tune

and no one can ever do it it doesn't always work though so for example in 1973 I love this fact the theme tune to last of the summer wine was released as a as a pop single pop well certainly on it was released into the singles chart and I say into the chart it did not chart um yeah that's adorable um Ronnie Hazelhurst Richard I imagine you know his name he he came up with so many theme tunes it was the BBC light entertainment music director um so I'll just list a few are you being served uh Reggie Perrin yes minister some others do have them the two Ronnie's blankety generation game you could spend a whole evening watching BBC output and he would have done pretty much the whole thing but uh after oh and he conducted the British and Euro the British

Eurovision entry seven times in a row you know great great figure of musical composition but after he died several of his obituaries mentioned this amazing fact which is that he also wrote s club seven's reach well no hang on he didn't he absolutely didn't of course remember it was just it had just been banged up onto his wikipedia page and you know the times the independent the guardian all these papers just sloshed it right into their obituary that's he did not write reach of course they wrote all the wrong stuff didn't they s club seven Alan Hawkshaw did countdown too and he it's really nice whenever you listen to countdown the theme tune is the sound of students being given grants because the royalties from it

goes to underprivileged students that leads college of music if you listen to cats just count down you know that 50 percent of the money is going to underprivileged students 50 percent is going into my brother's pocket what we do need to wrap up thank you so much Richard we've been dying to talk to you as a four some uh for a long time so this is this is a big moment for us and can I can I just say from everybody what you're doing it sounds like oh no it's just a laugh isn't it 35 minutes 35 people um to do what you're doing is incredibly difficult you know just you know and I know you're doing it all through the night and stuff like that you know you're brilliant we all know that and week after week you turn out this incredible podcast and to

do 35 interviews of 35 minutes each I doth my cap to you everybody I please please please donate because this is for incredible people doing an incredible thing couldn't be more of a pleasure to be uh invited thank you and honor as well and this is good luck I should be I should be watching not the whole thing so thank you so much for having me on well thank you thank you for those kind words uh Richard Bosman everyone and we will be back in just a few minutes time with our next guest for fact number nine it is Sue Perkins stay tuned okay that's it I hope you enjoyed that like Dan and Richard said there is a very quick way that you can give money right now to Comet Relief and that is to go to comicrelief.com slash fish and that will take you to our just giving page

and if you want to watch all of the sections that we did with all of the amazing people those videos can be watched three a day at qi.com slash comic relief we'll be back again on Friday with a normal show