No Such Thing As A Fish - No Such Thing as E.T. Part Three

Episode Date: December 23, 2016

A Christmas compilation episode in which Dan, James, Anna and Andy take facts from the audiences of Fish's spin-off topical news show No Such Thing As The News.

Hi everyone, James here at Merry Christmas. This is our Christmas special and what it is, it's a compilation of all the best bits of the first half of our live TV show. So what we did is we asked the audience to bring in their facts and we read them out and we talked about them. Hopefully you'll enjoy it. The audio is a little bit sketchy because it's made of five or six different episodes, but we hope it's really good. And if you haven't got everyone their presence yet, then why not run out to the bookshop now and buy one three, four, two, QI Facts to leave you flabbergasted, a perfect stocking filler for that one person

who you can't think of anything else to buy them. Okay, on with the show. You know what the show? Please welcome to stage. It's Anna Chisinski, James Harkin, and Andrew Hunter Murray. So you guys have sent in your facts. We have a prize, which is here, which is one of our no such thing as a fish t-shirts.

Very exciting. Is it? Yeah. And so we're going to read them out now. Do you guys want to start with one? Okay. What have I got? Oh, yeah, I like this one.

So it's about soon and now. And it's from Alex. Hello. Thank you very much, Alex. Hi, Alex. Okay, so the fact is, the word soon used to mean right now, but people would misuse it, and so it came to mean in a bit. Oh.

Because maybe people started saying soon, to mean right now, but then they were a bit delayed on their way. And so they got to the place and then someone said, oh, they must have meant in a bit. And that's how language evolves. Can I read another one here? Yeah, yeah, go ahead. I just read this and this seems, well, I actually don't believe it. So, Kieran, where are you, Kieran's favorite fact? Kieran, you better be right about this.

According to Kieran. The number plate of the car in which Franz Ferdinand was shot is the date that World War I ended. Do you know what that... how exact a date? Is it 18 or is it literally 1111, 11, 18? I've got a picture of the car. Okay. And it's... This is east Sussexworldwar 1.org.org.

And it says, did you know, the Archduke's number plate reads A-111-118? So that could be 111118. Kieran, I take it all back. That's really good. That's incredible. One thing I know about Franz Ferdinand is that they used to sew him into his clothes. Oh, yeah. Really?

And so when he was shot, they couldn't really loosen his clothes because obviously he was like sewn into them. And that was perhaps one of the reasons why he died because they couldn't get the bullet out. Mainly the shooting thing, but also... That's not lay 100% of the blame at the closed door. He was shot essentially by incredibly bad luck,

wasn't he, in the end? Because they missed him and then... I think this is true. I think they're on first-hand accounts. They missed him and then they gave up and all the people who'd plotted to assassinate him were arrested and sent away except there's one guy who went to buy a bagel

somewhere else in town. And he stepped out, and I think he was holding a sandwich in one hand as Franz Ferdinand and his wife went past the sandwich shop in the hand. No, not only went past. The car broke. down.

Oh yeah. He stood there with the bagel and the car just stopped. And he was like, oh, uh, because he thought that it was going a completely different direction. And then I'm pretty sure there might be a historian in here. He then tried to kill himself. The bullet ricocheted into France Fadden. He failed about six times because he jumped into, he fleed into a river. So he jumped over a bridge and he thought, this will kill me.

I'll drown. It didn't. And the river was only about that high. So he ended up breaking his legs and he took a cyanide pill, but it was all. So he ended up vomiting. And then before the police got there, all the locals got there and started beating him up. So he was soaked with broken legs

with vomit coming out from a fake side like getting his ass kicked by locals. It was a terrible end to a... Was that one of the other... I think that was one of the other guys, wasn't it? Oh, was it? Who tried and failed. So the main guy was Gaffrello Principe, wasn't?

Yes. I've been to that bridge, actually, and my memory is that that river was a bit deeper than... Is there any historians in who know that story? No. Okay, well, we'll go with it then. We'll believe it.

And I got all that, by the way, from a Ben Elton novel, so I'm not sure. Oh, God's sake. And in that, Franz Ernest, killed by a time traveler. So, okay. I've got one here from Harrison Fleming. Harrison Fleming. There we go. Australian bush rangers, bracket, outlaws,

would put their horseshoes on their horses backwards so that their tracks would appear to be going in the opposite direction. Isn't that cool? And I like that because apparently that's what Yeti's Oh, I knew you were going to say. They take their feed off and they put them on the other way around. So when you think they've gone that way,

they've busted loose that way. And that's the only reason we've never seen them, is that right? According to the park ranger at the Yeti Park, he says they can turn themselves invisible. That's the Yeti Park in Bhutan. Yes. Did you go to it? You've been to Bhutan.

I've been to Bhutan, but I didn't go to the Yeti Park. Maybe you did. Is it all the time? country? Or it has a happiness minister, doesn't it, Bhutan? Yeah. I mean, they show you round and you only see the bits that they want you to see, so it seems like a very happy country. So maybe the happiness minister is just focusing on those parts for now. We did do this on the podcast, but it got rejected, which is that according to Poland's only officially registered ghost hunter, the ghosts in Poland, are now going on strike. And the reason they're going on strike is they're

sick of our skepticism towards them. So they've said, they said to him, if you're going to have that attitude, we're not going to bother haunting you anymore. But isn't that a good... Like, oh, none of the crockery's broken. Like, that's a good thing, isn't it? Ah, I don't know. The walls aren't covered in ectoplasm? Not for the ghost under.

They'll have to start breeding them. Ghosts? Yeah. Isn't that just killing people? So I've got a fact here from Emily and Alan, a joint effort. Oh. Are those guys? Hi.

Does it just use Emily, like, on the other side of the room, if you had a fight? Good of you. And this is that. The US military bled ACDC music at General Noriegas, who was a 1980s dictator in Panama, wasn't he? At General Noriega's compound in Panama for two days continuously to remove him, and he surrendered as a result.

Is it that bad? I think that's, yeah, it depends which album. Now, you won't believe this, but Andy knows every single ACDC album, and that's all he listens to at the office. You know, I've got six. I'll tell you what, though, after the second one, they start getting pretty repetitive.

Let's do one more from your son, too. Sure. Okay, well, I have one here. It's got a really nice picture on, so that's the reason I'm reading it. By Amy Eastthorpe, Eastthorpe. Oh, hello. Front row. It is that symptoms of asthma can be treated

with a roller coaster ride, and there's a nice picture of someone on a roller coaster. Do Roller Coal Stones as well? They said this week. Oh yeah. Do they cure everything? So someone did a study where... Kidney stones maybe.

Yeah, they took fake kidneys onto roller coasters and they put stones into them and then the stones would kind of work their way out of these fake kidneys and it happened more if you were at the back of the roller coaster than at the front. But doesn't it matter how they work their way out because they haven't put a person who feels actual pain around the fake kidney? That's true. So if they're working their way out through your spinal cord, then... That isn't a viable solution to kidney stones.

That's true. Shall we carry up? Yeah, yeah, you go. This is from Anna Martinez. Oh, hello, Anna. And it's got a citation as well, which why I like it. It's from nature from May 2007, even the month.

Viagra is excellent cure for jet lag in hamsters. Did they find that out by chance? Oh, he's been at the Viagra again. He seems very perky. In spite of us flying back from Singapore. Wait, so I didn't know animals get jet lag. Oh, yeah, they do. Even plants get jet lag. Plants get jet lag.

I think they've tried it, and bacteria get jet lag. I seem to remember. Yeah. What about rocks? Yeah. Anything else? Oh, I got a good fact. It's more of a quiz question.

According to Stephen St. Spielberg, this is just talking about plants and rocks and animals. According to Steven Spielberg, what is E.T., is he, so E.T. the extraterrestrial, is he a plant, a rock or an animal? I would have said an animal. A rock. He's a plant. Is he bollocks?

He's a plant. He comes from a plant planet and his job is a biologist. Yeah. Because I read the sequel to E.T., which is the science book. I didn't, okay, I didn't read the actual book. the review on Amazon, which says right at the end, it's written by William Cosnacle. And William Cosnacle wrote the original novel

of the movie, so like the screen-adapted novel. And the review ends by saying, I hope there's a future sequel in the trilogy of what should be a trilogy of E.T. Because there were so many unanswered questions left at the end of this second book. For example, what happens to the turnip ship when it goes into the multi-dimensional wormhole?

So spoiler alert for the end of the novel E.T. Part two. Okay, Anna, do you got one? Yeah, so this is another one. This one's about Sean Connery. Sean Connery was once pulled over and fined by a British officer for... Does that say speeding? Yeah. It looks like speeding, but I assume speeding.

What are the odds? It would be the word speeting. It could be how Sean Connery pronounces spitting or something, I don't it, right? Oh, spitting. The officer's name was Sergeant James Bond. No. That didn't have a citation actually. All right, I got another one, which is that. So I'll read the fact that and we can find out who it is

who sent in it in afterwards. Wolfburg Football Club's longest serving manager was slash is called Wolfgang Wolf. That's incredible. Very good. Who is that? What's your name? James. I know some of the funny football names.

There was one guy who played for Chelsea called Norty Norty. And do you remember that guy He was the goalkeeper for Australia When England beat Australia 8-1 or something I think it was and he was called Norman Conquest I've got a football fact here Which is about a Swiss football team I don't want to give it away

Who's it from? Michael So this is the fact That Swiss football team young boys Play at Wankdorf Stadium Very good fact I've got another one here. This is from Katie Clark. Where are you, Katie? Okay. Hello.

Okay, so the flag that flies over Big Ben, over the Houses of Parliament, is the same size as Wimbledon's Centre Court. That's flag. That is huge. You're not thinking table tennis? No, no, no, no. I was walking past it the other day and I did think, what an unusually large flag. I genuinely did. And I was walking past Wimbledon thinking, what a small tennis club.

This is from Mark, is it Mark? It's a drawing. No fact, just a nice picture of you all. Anyway, Mark's thought outside the box. It's an interesting choice for the fact to read out. It's not that readout friendly. There's one person in a tie, which is Dan. There's one with big hair, which is James.

There's one who's got the woman's hair, which is you. There's one completely neutral stickman. It's a really good likeness. I got a fact here. The reason that scuba divers roll out of the boat backwards is that if they rolled forwards, they would fall into the boat. And that was sent in by two people. Exact wording.

Check the handwriting. Yeah. Sam Barton. and Ellen Crane. Are you two together? Oh, okay. You cheeky ones. All right. Shall I read out an actual fact? Yeah. Okay, this is from Ben,

and it is that Major League Baseball umpires are required to wear black underwear in case they tear their trousers. Ah. My favorite fact about baseball is about Clarence Bledhen. Do you remember that one? He was sliding into fourth base once in 1920, and he bit himself on his own ass.

And he had to be taken out of the game. I think you're going to have to explain that. He was very flexed. No, he was. He had false teeth and they fell out. I really like there was Lou Gehrig, very famous baseball player, more famous now. For Lou Gehrig's disease. So I was reading a Stephen Hawking biography,

and at the top they mentioned Lou Gehrig's disease. And then there's a little footnote that says recent research has shown that Lou Gehrig didn't, in fact, die. from Lou Gehrig's disease. He died from something very similar to Lou Gehrig's disease. So he's got a disease named after him that wasn't what he had. Just one more baseball? Yeah, yeah.

See, the Cubs have got to the major league to the finals this time. Oh, yeah, that's a big deal, isn't it? 75 years or something. But when I was reading about that, I heard about a guy called Joe Sprints. And in 1939, he tried to break the record for the highest that anyone had dropped to baseball that he could catch it. And so he got a blimp to go up 800 feet. And they dropped a baseball down.

He had a glove and it came down and it caught him in the glove, hit him in the face, and it broke his nose and he lost five teeth. And worse still, he dropped the ball. Oh, no. So this is from David to fact about a rocking chair. Oh, hi. So this is that when the world's largest rocking chair was built, it was immediately welded to the ground because the sight of it rocking in the wind

terrified the locals. Very good. That's amazing. Sorry, next fact. I've got one. It's about Adam Ant. Who's that from? What's your name?

I'm Stephen. Stephen, hello. So it's about Adamant. We all know Adamant, don't we? Oh, a music person. Yeah. Famed 80s music person, Adamant. Adamant used to walk Paul McCartney's dog.

Because Adamant's mum was his cleaner and he helped with the dog walking. the dog walking. Really? Yeah. I got one here, which is that the Cacapopo parrots is an endangered species of parrot. It evolved out of being able to fly, so can't fly anymore. However, they have forgotten that they can't fly. And that's true.

They know that they can fly, but they don't try it on the ground. They climb up trees. They go to the end of branches and go, I'll have my fly now, and they plummet to the ground, and it's killing them. Yeah, they're endangered now, so they're trying to stop them. They're trying to go, you can't fly. And on top of that, that's not on here, but they also have this thing where, and this was in, there's a very famous Douglas Adams book called Last Chance to See, and he talks about how

Kakapo parrots have a mating call that when they do their mating call, it's really deep, so deep it's kind of like the base of a stereo system, so it's just this um-un-un kind of noise. Now, the problem with the base of a stereo system is the point is if you put it in your room, no matter where it's playing from, you can't find the source. That's meant to be the idea of it. It's surround sound. So their mating call gets them nowhere because the female parrot is like, where are, and so she can never find the cacopo.

That reminds me a bit of, do you remember that story about lesbian sheep? Yeah. It's that great bedtime story. No, so there are lesbian sheep, and the thing is, if you're a female sheep and you want to mate, what you do is you stand perfectly still and wait for the male to come and mount you. And so when you've got two lesbians sheep, they both stand perfectly still.

And so they're both kind of stood there, looking at each other. Are you going to go or am I? That's amazing. So that bird fact, did anyone see the documentary this week which showed that kind of sea bird, and I can't remember what it is, it's like a little puffin, that lives at the top of a cliff,

and they rear one young, one youth every year. And then as soon as the youth is ready, they push it off the cliff really, really high, and it has to stick its wings out and try to hit the sea, but the sea isn't directly below it. The sea is about 150 metres away from the cliff. 150 meters. And it's unbelievably far, they're unbelievably high,

and there are loads of wolves waiting to eat them. They don't, most of them just, they go, they don't quite, and they do slow motion filming, are they going to make it? And most of them don't. They hit the ground, they tumble over, and then their wolves come up. Imagine being that wolf, though. That is pretty good, isn't it? Just looking up with your mouth.

Anna, have you got another one? Yeah, sure. This is that. Which one do I like here? Okay, I don't know who submitted this. I don't know anything about it. But when the ancient Romans deployed lions against Germanic tribes, the tribesmen simply assumed they were large dogs.

I don't believe that. It feels like really an instinctive fear when you see a lion. I can imagine even if I'd never seen one going, yeah, it just looks like a spring spaniel. It feels like... You probably would get scared of it the first time it turned you into a goat. you probably would. Andy, have you any? I do like this one.

John Le Carrey's father once seduced a woman on a night train by claiming to be John Le Carrey. That's hilarious. How do you pretend to be him, though? Well, he would have known all the relevant stuff about his childhood, I suppose. Yeah, but you could just make that. No one knows John LeCarray well enough,

that they'd be like, oh yeah, I knew about his butterfly. about his butterfly obsession when he's like no one knows anything he's a spy the guy's a spy that's true here's another one in 1996 two neighbors in devon spent a year hooting at owls unaware they were actually hooting at each other i was weirdly reading a story yesterday about this is from like 10 years ago in iceland there was a lady who um who was with this big party and she got changed she just went off and got changed and when she got changed no one recognized and thought that the woman that she was before in the other clothing had gone missing. So they sent out a huge day-long search party in order to look for this lady.

And the lady herself was in the search party, going, what did she look like again? Yeah, I'll help out. And then they worked out it with her with some different clothing. Since you mentioned birds, my favorite thing about birds this week that came out is that they've just found out that Swifts can stay in the air without touching the ground or a tree for 10 full months. without touching down one single time. Isn't that incredible?

And we don't know how they're sleeping or eating. But they're mating and eating in the air, aren't they? They are eating in the air. Are they mating? I thought it was pre-breeding season. And then maybe they do a little bit. Oh, I think they do a bit. They might do recreation.

Yeah. Yeah, we think they've seen that they gain altitude at dusk at bedtime. And we think maybe they do this so that then they can go to sleep and then they just gradually descend. And by morning, when they wake up, they just wake up in time and to hit the ground. They may be sleep like on a cloud because that's quite fluffy. Yeah, that's what they do.

Okay, this is about a place in Canada called Churchill. Who is that from? Oh, hello, what's your name? Clint. I'm going to call you Clint. Was it Klim? Klim. K-L-I-M, like that. Okay, well, actually, I've just noticed your name is on this.

So this is from Clint. people in Church Hill Canada leave their car doors unlocked in case neighbours need to make a quick escape from polar bears. What? Yeah, that's good there, isn't it? I thought because people always say

that people can't leave their house doors unlocked because they're so friendly. They're not friendly. They're not terrified. Another thing you don't get there is door knobs, right? Oh, yeah. You still kind of do have some door knobs, but if you make a new building in Vancouver,

you're not supposed to put door knobs on it. And that's so that all people who've got arthritis will be able to use levers instead of knobs. Yeah. Or also polar bears will be able to use the knob. Okay, this is a fact from Alex about oxymorons. It's that oxy is Greek for sharp, moron is Greek for dull.

OxyMoron is an oxymoron. So good. That's pretty good. Can't really want to know that. We got just on words. We got sent in, because we asked people on Twitter as well to send in some facts, and I really like this. This is from someone called At Stray Jim,

and he said, during the 1914 Christmas truce, Germans put up a sign facing the British troops, saying, Gott mituns, effectively God with us. The British responded by erecting a sign facing the Germans saying, We got mituns too. I think it across a slightly offensive German accent in sign form. We got a fact here about Fiji and their Declaration of Independence. Who was that?

Yeah, what's your name? Joe. So, this is Joe's fact. In 2010, Fiji lost their Declaration of Independence and had to ask Britain for a photocopy. Let's do a few more. Yeah, so this is about pistachios. Is that your name? Or are you just a fan of pistachios?

Lucy, so this is from Lucy about pistachios, and this is the fact that, if too many pistachios are shipped in the same container, they will self-heat and spontaneously combust. Wow. Is that true? Yeah. Is it? Have you tried it?

Yeah. Do you remember ages ago, I said this on the podcast, and then everyone was like, it can't be true, and I was like, it's definitely true, and then we found out it definitely wasn't true. But I was told it by Ash, who's up there in the corner. Ash is the singer and composer of our theme tune. This is Emperor Yes.

wasps, Ash, and he told me, and I used it on the show, I was like, that's amazing, that when you're bringing sparkling water overseas from somewhere, before you take the sparkling water into a boat, you have to remove all the bubbles because it'll explode on the other side, or it will go unfizzy. So what they do is they take out all the bubbles, and then they ship the water out, and then, on the other side, they put the same bubbles back in.

It's the same, is the fact that it's the same bubbles that makes it impossible. Got to be the same ones. We've got bubbles. Yeah. And then I told Ash, I was like, after we found out that it wasn't real, which, like, there's no even way to Google that because it's not, it's not even the thing. I was like, Ash, it's like, that wasn't real. And he was like, yeah, I know.

I found it wasn't real ages ago. Yeah. That was the same episode when you said that if you have water, which you can't drink, you can feed it to a camel when it vomited out and then it'll be completely drinkable. And I still stand behind that. I'm pretty sure an explorer wrote into us and said, I do you, mock it. I wrote to you.

Oh, you wrote into me. I am an explorer of source. Yeah, I found in a book. It was like a 19th century explorer's book, and he said, a good way to treat dehydration is to drink the vomit of a camel. So, I mean, it was obviously nonsense at the time, but I think people have believed it for a while.

I definitely remember reading a reference. But that's for dehydration and not for poison. No, sorry, it was about, sorry, it was for poison. It was the toxins thing. Yeah. So the jury's out on whether if you're dehydrated, you should drink, camera vomit. It's got liquid content.

Why are we being so squeamish about this? That fact actually reminds me of bees. I think bees air-conditioned themselves by spitting inside of their hives, don't they? So that it creates like a nice bit of condensation which cools them down in summer. And they spit on each other's faces to call each other down. So why you've been doing that to me in the other?

No. Okay. Turkey vultures, we down their own legs to cool themselves down. Which is why I've been doing that in the audience. This is actually, sorry, but you mentioned vultures. This is one of my favorite facts I found on this series of QI we just researched, which is that the reason that vultures have bare necks, they don't have fur on their necks,

is because it's quite hard for them to scavenge, actually, because it's quite hard to get into the body of a dead animal. So if there's not an open wound, then they find the easiest orifice to enter through, And so they either go in through the eyeballs of, you know, your dead deer, or they just go straight up the ass. And the reason that they have that little bear bit is so that they don't pull their heads out covered in feces

from the animal that they've been scavenging inside. They do, and they'll cover it in feces. But it doesn't kind of stick there because they don't have all the feathers. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. It's easier to remove. Just to clarify that. Wait, so that's literally why they've evolved like that,

so they don't get the rest of their body. covered in shit, but their head is... Well, they don't usually need to crawl up entirely inside the animal. Usually just the neck is enough. I know, but it's just odd that they haven't worked out how to eat something else that they've just thought, well, let's just lose all the feathers here, and then we can keep getting shit all over our heads. This is about German international development agencies. Ah, who is that?

Joe, hi Joe. Okay, I pretty much already read all of it. The German International Development Agency is called Jizz. It's called G-I-Z and then open brackets, jizz. Is G-I-Z, is that an acronym? Yeah, but you do call it J-Z. Great. Andy, have you got one?

Yes. Mine is also about German and about squirrels. Anybody? Hello. What's your name? Ed? Hello.

Ed's fact is, the German word for squirrel literally means oak croissant. Eichonchen. Yeah? Can we get some verification from the back?

None. They've left. Ooh. Citation needed, I think, Ed. This one's about kangaroos, and it's got a drawing on it. Is that ring a bell with anybody? Hello.

Oh, right at the back. What's your name? Clint. Lewis. It's facts from Lewis, and I'm going to read it out verbatim. My fact is rubbish, but I didn't Google it. Brackets, for shame on you Googlers. Then we get to the meat of the matter.

A kangaroo licks its arms to say, stay cool and then there's a drawing of a kangaroo licking its arms which is really good that's quite good that's great don't they um pose with their biceps when they're trying to pick up

lady kangaroos? Yeah there's all these photos where kangaroos are like oohsh do you want me to get that for you like genuinely bicep sort of bodybuilding kangaroos they also very famously have three vaginas don't they? Yes very famously within the QI office I'm not sure

it's not in the Australian national anthem is Speaking of things which have three vaginas No, wait a minute. Now, are you going to say what I think you're going to say? I think I have. She doesn't have three vaginas. No. But do you want is that you told me?

So a kangaroo has three vaginas, which means it has two wounds. Because it has two extra kind of bits that go out to a womb. And does anyone know somebody else who has two wombs? James found this out just today and he can stop talking about. I wanted to use it for the show, but they wouldn't let me. and Mary Berry Mary Berry has two wounds and three vaginas

and three vaginas. That's no way to speak about Mel and Sue and Paul Hollywood.