No Such Thing As A Fish - No Such Thing As Eurovision For Christmas Trees

Episode Date: December 22, 2017

A special Christmas episode with Dan, James, Anna and Andy, live from Up The Creek in Greenwich

Welcome to another episode of No Such Thing as a Fish, a weekly podcast. This week coming to you from Up the Creek in Greenwich, London. It's Dan Schreiber, and I am sitting here with Anna Chazinski, Andrew Hunter Murray, and James Harkin. And once again, we have gathered around the microphones, but this time with our four favorite Christmas facts, because it's our Christmas special. And in no particular order, here we go. And in no particular order, here we go. starting with my fact. My fact this week is that, as well as getting a visit from Santa Claus at Christmas, Icelanders also get a visit from the spoon-licker,

the door sniffer, and the sausage swiper. Yeah, so these, they do have Santa there, but they also have, and this is what Wikipedia says, they're called, you'll lads. You're like, lads, lads, lads, lads, lads, lads, that's, that's, yeah, lots, lots, lots, lots, yeah. Also, sausage swiper, lads, lads, that, that, that.

I think the reason Wikipedia calls them that is because that's what they are called. Yeah. Right? Oh, okay. Okay, cool. Yeah. I mean, I know you've fallen for fake Wikipedia facts a lot in the past. But this is real.

I just thought that was cool casual lingo. I was like, yeah, I'm cool with you, Wiki. So, yeah, they're called the Yule Lads. And there's 13 of them in total. Spoon liquor is one. He licks bowls. No, he licks spoons. But there is a bowl liquor.

There is actually a bowl liquor. Yeah. I misread my note there. And then covered it up like it was a joke. There's the sausage swiper who licks spoons. And then there... So does the sausage swiper he swipe sausages, does he? Yeah, so he hides in the rafters of your house.

And while you go and, you know, check for your spoons. So someone's licked the spoons. You quickly head into the kitchen. He lowers himself, I think Tom Cruise style from Mission Impossible, gets your sausages and then gets pulled back up to the roof. And then you come back in and go, ah, the spoons, now the sausages, what's going on? Wow.

So we've had three. What are the other ten like? There's a guy who he harasses sheep. No. They all have very, like, expressive names, don't they? Yeah, his one's not so. Sheep coat clod is his name. Yeah.

Yeah. There's meat hook. They were all thieves, basically, aren't they? Yeah. Just in Iceland, you just have to accept that people will come and steal all your stuff. There's pot scraper. The doorway sniffer is not someone who likes doorways. It's just someone who's smelling beyond the doorway

to try and steal your food later. But there used to be way more of them. So there used to be more than 80 yule lads. Whoa. Which is a lot to descend upon you. And the ones that were, you know, kiboshed about mid-century were Falda fakir, which is skirt sweeper. Oh.

He got the shop. And Littli Punga, which is small testicles. What did he do? He just went around flattering people. Those are bigger than mine. I've got small ones, so it's, yeah. So do these guys bring you anything? Do they just take things away?

They take things. Well, they used to take things away. And back in the day, in 1746, the stories became so scary that they actually banned them from telling them to children because they brought them into such a sort of Stephen King's, Esk territory of fear that they said this is too much. It was the Danish, wasn't it, who did that?

And not only that, they banned using any stories to scare children. Yeah. And it was because of these guys. Really? It wasn't only because of them. So, have you heard of Iceland's famous Christmas child-eating cat? Who prowls around the country eating children on Christmas Day? And the terrible thing is, so you know, if you're naughty or nice, you'll get presents,

or you get a lump of coal, the child has no control over whether it's eaten or not. The only thing that controls whether the child is eaten or not is whether the child got any new clothes for Christmas from its parents. And if your parents didn't give you some socks, you're going to be eaten. There is a slight thing with that with, if you've done all of your chores by Christmas Day,

then they're supposed to give you some clothes. But they could not. It just, I'm saying, that would be a pretty harsh bit of parenting. It's insult to injury, isn't it? A, you're not getting a new t-shirt, and B, you're about to be eaten by a giant cat. Yeah, it was a big cat, though, wasn't it?

It was like the size of a house. And it belonged to a troll, right? So it was like... Katie Hopkins. This is all still... Satire. We don't do that, James. Come on.

We welcome all people in our podcast. She... We honestly do not. She is not. not invited to anything that would, I'd like to publicly state, Katie Hopkins, fuck you. Was that satire? No, it's not satire. My satirical show is not going down wrong.

Hey, Trump, fuck you. Hey, Farage, fuck you. Catch you next week on Saturdays today. What were we talking about? Iceland, yeah. Yeah, so these you lads, their mother is called Gruela. She's been married three times, but she killed all of her husbands. because they bored her.

Wow. And my wife is in the audience, and I'd just like to say that's not the right way today. And she is the mother of the Yule Lads? No, she's just my wife. And she is half ogre, half troll, and I am referring here to Grulla.

And their cat is Christmas cat. The family cat is Christmas cat. And the cat brings, oh, the Yule Lads sometimes grab to children and brought them back to be turned into stew. But this is all just to deter children from misbehaving. It's not anything worse than what we do, which is Santa won't bring your presents if you're bad.

Should we talk about Father Christmas? Yeah, sure. Because you know, he is leaking. Sorry? Wow. His bones, Father Christmas has bones. So this is St. Nicholas. And he has some relics,

and it's kind of debatable which relics are his, but it's generally accepted that he has some in Italy. And they leak. It's a clear liquid that is called sort of manner by the priests who guard the tomb, and it can sell for a... Good amount. Oh, can it.

It's surprising. Wow. But I think it's because he's in this place called Bari in Italy, which is a harbour town, so it's below sea level, in fact. So the harbour water tends to seep into where he's entombed.

And then every year they have this festival where... Oh, a holy fish has come in this place. Yeah, exactly. It's like the great story of Jesus. He makes fish out of Santa. There's a place where... I think it's South America, yeah.

It's parts of Latin America. Hang on. The models of baby Jesus are dressed up like Father Christmas. Really? Yeah, there's this weird synergy between Jesus and Father Christmas. Really? Yeah. I can't find it in my notes either.

I am panicking like crazy. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I've seen the words magic helicopter. Yeah, well. No. So basically, you get presents from the baby Jesus. You don't get them from Father Christmas. So that's why they've kind of dressed up the two traditions together.

But people ask children, how exactly does that work? How are you getting presents from this baby? And they variously explained, A, that he has a magic helicopter, or B, that he just has a... He owns all the toy shops. He's just a massive toy magnate. And he can afford to give them out to children. Do you know, the reason he exists, though,

is because it's too difficult for Jesus on his... his own to deliver all those presents. So, um, this is, so, so, so, so, so Nicholas was, uh, like, a common thing. Everyone knew about Sir Nicholas until about the 1500s. Um, and then the reformation came in and Protestantism came in and they said, Jesus is the only thing. And then it was established that there should be a festival where Jesus brings everyone presents, uh, on Christmas day, on the day of his birth. And then it was established that a tiny newborn baby can't handle all these presents and all this present giving. And so Father Christmas initially was the sidekick to Jesus. This was like, post-Reformation was the first time he became his co-deliverer of gifts because it was like,

well, he's a tiny baby. He can't actually carry all these presents. So St. Nicholas joined him. What? But a tiny baby would be, could fit down a chimney much more easily than a massive man. So that was why Father Christmas brought Jesus. It was a symbiotic relationship. But so are there actual historical stories of the two? Two of them, like Batman Robin style, just traveling. I refer you to the word historical in that sentence. All right, should we move on to our second fact? Sure.

Okay, it's time for our second fact of the show, and that is Anna. Yeah, my fact this week is that an ancient Greek form of contraception was a suppository made of frankincense, mure and blister beetles. This is a thing. And blister beetles, by the way, if you don't know what they are, they're beetles that cause blisters. No, so blister beetles are these things that secrete something called cantherridden, which I probably mispronounce, but it's this poison. And the reason they secrete it is because they give it to their, the male gives it to the female during mating as a gift,

as like a mating gift, but during sex, which is a bit weird. And then it's to cover her eggs with it, and that stops predators from, you know, getting hold of it. But it's actually very poisonous. So a tenth of a milligram can blister your skin really badly. but this was a very common medicine. So it was used as a contraception. You shoved up the bum and you don't get pregnant. That is what traditionally happens when you shove it up the bum.

That blisterbeetal stuff is called Spanish fly, I think. And it was an aphrodisiac as well. Yeah. And I think I've written down Casanova and Marquis de Sard. I can't remember which one it was, but one of them used it as an a, as an aphrodisiac. Marky Desard. And that's what he got, said to prison.

Sorry, if you're using the Bister Beetle's product or whatever as a... I'm going off memory, but I think that's right. Yeah. Yeah. And the idea was it would make you itchy, and you would put it down there, and you would itch yourself, and that would turn you on. Oh.

Yeah. Nice. Just a bit of history. And a good tip for the room. But Frankenense and Mer, come on. Let's talk about those. It's Christmas. Frankencense, a bit of a panacea.

People thought it kind of cured loads of different things. In Oman, it still is a little bit. It's been variously used as a stomach soother, a cough remover, a blood thinner, cold medicine, wound cleaner, and fly repellent. And it was really, really popular. In Oman, it was basically made them one of the most kind of rich countries in the world. But not anymore because the Roman Catholic Church buys the cheap stuff from Somalia these days.

What is frankincense? It's incense. With the word Frank at the front. Is that really what it is? Yeah. And Frank kind of means honest or whatever. It just means really good. Really good incense. Don't listen.

It's true. I swear to God that's true. That is true. Was the incense bit true? All of it's true. The Frank bit as well? Yeah. Andy? Dan, the reason I asked was because I had dramatically under-researched on this fact.

But it is. The word frank to mean sort of really good and honest came from Franks meaning French people as well from the Roman times. And in fact, in Roman times it was so important, frankincense, that Augustus Caesar sent 10,000 troops to invade the area where Franken saints came from because he thought it was so important. Wow. It's so weird. It was so important, frankincense.

And so it was medicinally thought to be so important. And it was an incense. And it's from tree sat, basically, isn't it? Which is like mur. They're both basically from Treesap and they're turned into incense. But between 1,000 BC and 400 AD, frankincense was the most lucrative trade in the world. It was the most valuable thing in the world to be traded for like 1,500 years.

It's amazing. And in Oman, it's still a really big deal to the extent that they have, I think roundabouts in Oman are quite famous, so they're quite well decorated with giant versions of stuff. And in quite a lot of roundabouts in Oman, then they have giant frankincolns. dispensers, like properly huge, the size of a building, a frankincense dispenser, in the centre of a roundabout?

I did a little bit on gift giving. Okay. So, because these blister beetles, they give a present to their mates during sex. And so I looked up... And also gold frankincense and maher were gifts given to the baby Jesus. There are so many links to the... But you've heard of these spiders that give gifts to the females. They're called paratricalea ornata.

and they give silk-wrapped parcels full of prey. And it's really interesting because 70% of them give rubbish gifts, which are worthless. Their leftovers. It's like basically giving someone an empty... Selection box. Selection box, exactly. Because...

Like just the bounty bar left in. Exactly. It is exactly like that. But basically, the male spiders, they can't help themselves from eating most of the present before they give it to the fever. Better just wrap this nice... Oh, God, it's so...

Oh, wow. But the spiders, it's really sensible for the spiders to give a rubbish present to the female. Because the females don't judge on what's inside the parcel. By the time they open the package, they've already pressed the button to go ahead or not go ahead with the mating. And what they judge on is how the male looks, his physical condition. So the main thing is good body condition. So the males who ate their gifts were cleverer because it's better to turn up looking well fed and in good shape, but with nothing in the box,

than it is to turn up with an actual meal in the box, but you look hungry. And you do know that's not going to fly in your own life, too? I think the main thing, darling, is that I look good. I read something really interesting today. Have you guys heard the Jesus as an alien theory? No. Oh, Jesus.

No, no, hang in there. This one's really interesting. So the idea is, is that a lot of people think that Jesus is an alien. And so, because they describe in the Bible that the star, they say, lo, the star, which they saw in the east, went before them till it came and stood over where the young child was. And everyone's like, how can a star move like that?

That's insane. Maybe it wasn't a star. Maybe it was a UFO. Now, UFO comes guiding these three wise men, three kings from very separate places who all of a sudden are hanging out. How's that happened? like a king conference?

Like how, one was from Persia, one was from India. They were all over the shop. There weren't three of them. That's not in the Bible. I'm telling a story here. Then you go, okay, the Immaculate Conception. How did she have the child inside of her? Well, that's very consistent, my friends, with an abduction where they bring you up

and they play something inside you. Not my theory. Are you saying the Virgin Mary was anally probed? And that's the one time where the bum contracept. would not work, Andy. Because look what she had, a Jesus. So...

I cannot believe you've done this to our show. What do you mean? Can I tell you something about Jesus? Well, can I ask you something about Jesus? Where was he born? Bethlehem. Incorrect. Not Bethlehem.

He was born in Bethlehem. So... What? It's a different Bethlehem. There's a Bethlehem. in Israel where everyone goes and they're like this is the birthplace of Jesus, but Israel has two Bethlehems. And it turns out that the one that is much closer to Nazareth, where Jesus was born, is a totally different Bethlehem. And archaeologists now are saying that actually we've got the wrong one.

So the place that everyone goes to celebrate the birth of Jesus is completely wrong. It's somewhere that... Yeah, they should be going to area 51. Yeah. No, I'm trying to raise the turn, but whatever. So, do you know what the names of the three U.I's men were? Yes. Balthazar, Melchior.

And Casper, yeah. Okay. And according to a survey by the British Christmas Tree Growers Association, your sourcing is getting worse. There is only one place in the world, or at least in the UK, where there are people with those surnames that all live in that place. And it is...

Eaton. It's East. It's Bedfordshire. Apparently there are people with that names. And they decided, because presumably it was a slow season for Christmas tree growing, that they'd look at all the different Christmassy names and see where people are. There is only one Mr. Scrooge in the whole world,

and he lives in Canada. No. There are 16 people in England called Grinch, the surname Grinch. Really? And there's only one person in the whole UK called Mr. Barbals. All right, let's move on to our next fact. It is time for fact number three, and that is Andy. My fact is that Oregon has 12 times as many Christmas trees as humans.

Yeah. So this is just a fact about how many Christmas trees there are. You've heard the fact. It's about... It could be about how few humans there are in Oregon. That's true, but it's not. It's got a reasonably healthy human population and just a shitload of Christmas trees.

But the amazing thing is how it harvests them. So it harvest them, you may have seen this, by helicopter to where the van is waiting. Is it a magic helicopter? It's not a magic helicopter. They get lifted up in massive bundles. And it's incredible to watch in action because they're doing a constant zigzag

between where the Christmas trees are in bundles and where they need to be loaded. And it takes about 26 seconds to fly a few hundred yards from one to the other, and then they zip back. And one of the pilot trainers, the helicopter pilot trainers, said, it's similar to sprinting down a field, putting someone on your back, piggyback, and then dropping them off, then running back across the field.

Which is such an unhelpful analogy. But in America, there's a massive shortage right now. Of trees? Yeah, of Christmas trees. Right. And this is because of the recession. When the recession happened was about that amount of time ago that it takes to grow a Christmas tree.

So just under 10 years. So now we've got a massive shortage because people's businesses went to pot and they went into other industries. So actually in Oregon, which is one of the main Christmas tree industries, pot growing, marijuana growing is a big industry as well. And so a lot of Christmas tree farmers have gone on to marijuana instead.

So you can't get a Christmas tree, you can get some weed. But does that mean like in, what, 15 years time, everyone will have pot plants. Well, pot plants. Yeah. Really? I guess so, yeah. Giant pot plants that they hang baubles and tints.

off and put an angel on top of. Yeah. But there is a shortage. It's a problem. Not a huge problem, but it's a problem. Do you know, Britain has a Eurovision for Christmas trees. No. Yeah. It's from the British Christmas

Tree Growers Association. They have an annual Christmas tree grower of the year competition, and they all compete on various metrics of, you know, height and... So when you say Eurovision, sorry, Is it all of Europe? It's not all of Europe.

It's all the British Christmas tree growers. The only thing that even makes it slightly like Eurovision. Is we all ring up to see who wins? It's on BBC One. It's hosted by Graham Norton. It's got an undercurrent of Cold War rivalries that determines the winner every year. Is that they get to vote on each other's truths?

That's great. Anyway, what happens to the best tree? It's not interesting. No, it gets to go outside Downing Street. Does it really? Yeah, do you know what happens to the runner-up? Popped.

It gets... Yeah, palped. No, the runner-up gets to go inside Downing Street. Amazing. That's the better... That's the better prize. You don't get seen by the public and stuff there. Yeah, but you get to hear all the juicy goss.

That's true. So you can buy half Christmas trees. Have you seen these? They're pretty cool. It's basically, they're plastic ones, but they're basically half a Christmas tree, and you lean it up against your wall. That is so clever.

Isn't that clever? I mean, it's awful, but it is awfully clever. Oh, yeah, that's really cool. Because if you live in a small flat, let's say in London, for instance, You don't have that much space, but you still want to see the Christmas tree, then you can have it just half of the wall. Yeah, that's great.

I think I was going to get this. And you can also have Argos cells upside down Christmas trees. So the pointy bit is at the bottom and the fat bit is at the top. And that's if you don't have much floor space. That's very cool. And that used to happen in the 19th century. Did it?

People hung it upside down from the rafters. Yeah, really? Yeah. Yeah, because there was not much floor space. Same reason. But actually, the Christmas tree industry in the 2000s really hated these plastic trees. In 2004, the National Christmas Tree Association of America

launched a free online video game called Attack of the Mutant Artificial Christmas Tree. And in it, you would throw snowballs at artificial trees that were blamed for sucking the spirit out of Christmas. Whereas actually, artificial trees have been around for almost as long as Christmas trees have been around in popular terms, right? So feather trees were a thing.

from the late 19th century. Feather trees? Yeah, so the first artificial Christmas trees are made of goose feather and they used to kind of like back comb it so it looked like a tree and then they would paint it and that was an artificial tree

because they were really worried about deforestation in the 19th century which I think is quite interesting. And it's still an argument about what's best for the environment like an artificial one or a real one, right? Yeah. I read one report and a few of them kind of vary but one of them says that it's better to use real ones but not if you're going to use your artificial tree for 20 years or more.

20 years. Basically, 20 years worth of real trees is what one plastic one is worth. But I throw away my plastic one every year. Do you know how the Christmas tree was made popular worldwide in the way it is today in the Western Heart? Like Martin Luther or something? I'm thinking about commercially popular. It was made popular by Queen Victoria.

So it was in 1846 when Victoria and Albert had a Christmas tree because in Germany, Christmas trees were where they celebrate break of Christmas, and Albert came over, and he brought that over with him, and then this image of their Christmas tree was published in, like, London Illustrated magazine or something, and then it really caught on, because they had this decorated tree, and so everyone got this decorated tree. But then it caught on in America a couple of years later, because it was in something called Godi's Ladybook,

and it was totally innocent, by the way. But what they did was they took this picture and they popularized it in America, but they thought that Victoria's tiara and Albert's mustache were too British, so they removed them. And this was like the early days of Photoshop, and that's how the Christmas tree got popular in America, was a moustachless Albert. Can I give you a story from the New York Herald in the early 20th century

about a cursed Christmas tree? Someone's allergic to cursed Christmas trees over now. Chopping the butt of a Christmas tree in prospect this afternoon, William Smith, a farmhand, nearly cut off his great toe. Angered, he threw an axe, and it broke a window and struck a child. In the face, inflicting a severe cut. Wow. Can I just say, you're all laughing at a child.

It's a long time ago. Yeah, it's a different time. It was a different time. Trimming the tree later, Mrs. William Scoville, fell and broken ankle. indignant over the chain of events Howard Scoville, son of the woman, insisted on doing the rest of the work himself and while testing the candles set the tree a fire

and nearly burned down the farmhouse. Believing the tree bewitched, the father, Ambrose Scoville, threw it into the hog pen, where it fell on and killed a chicken. I find it amazing that people didn't die constantly from Christmas tree accidents because before electricity became a thing,

they were all lit by candlelight and that was 50, 60 years. of just being candles strapped to a tree. And they were decorated with snow made out of cotton. Yeah. Oh, yeah. You could get, in the 50s, you could get, it was called flocking, wasn't it? You could get an attachment for your vacuum cleaner,

which was like a gun to fire artificial snow from your hoover all over the tree. Wow. At the candles. No way. Way. That's so cool. I know, isn't it good? And you know, like you're saying, the Christmas tree with Albert and Victoria suddenly took off,

that was the same for electric Christmas lights that we all have now around our tree. That was invented by a guy called Edward Hibbert Johnson who was the right-hand man to Thomas Edison. People were putting candles on their tree. They kept burning down and he thought, okay, I'm going to try and make this a thing. And it just caught on in the next few years in America just so quickly because it was just such a beautiful thing.

And he died of an electric shock. No way. It says citation needed on Wikipedia next to that, but... But it sounds plausible, doesn't it? Should we move on to the final fact of the show? It is time for our final fact of the show, and that is James Harkin.

Okay, my fact this week is the man who brought the phrase Merry Christmas to English was also the first Englishman to use the word Prosecco. Was it in the same card? Merry Christmas. I have invented Proseco. So he didn't invent it. It was invented by some Italian people.

But he was in Italy at the time. He was a traveler called Fines Morrison. And he wrote all about Italy and lots of different countries, actually. And he was traveling around the time. It was in the 16th century, late 16th century. And it was kind of dangerous to travel around the world, really, but especially in Europe. There was a time of kind of bad religious strife. And he would always, whenever anyone mentioned religion to him,

especially around Easter, he would immediately move to another city to avoid inquiries. When he was in Spain he pretended to be Czech. When he was in France, he pretended to be Polish. When he was in Netherlands, he pretended to be German. When he was in Italy, he pretended to be Dutch, except when he was in Rome and he pretended to be French. Okay, and he travelled without any funds, he didn't like have any official protection. And so whenever there was any problems, he adopted a deferential posture and avoided eye contact. That's great. That's a good way of travel though, isn't it? Yeah. Sounds like me on a night out. I read something about Fines Morrison.

This is from the Wikipedia entry on him, and I'm quoting exactly here. His biographer, Charles Hughes, says he had a sane charity for all men except Turks and Irish priests, which is another way of saying that he was prejudiced against Turks and Irish priests.

Yeah, he was. He was a man of his time. But also, no one had seen Prosecco, before. And this was, it was a drink that even Pliny drank. And it was also known as Pukinum. And then he said it was cold Pukinum, now called Prosecco, much celebrated by Pliny. And when we say celebrated by Pliny, we mean sparkling white wine, presumably. Yeah. Yeah. I had no idea that sparkling wine went that far back. Yeah. Yeah, because with wine, its default position is often sparkling. We get the, we get the stuff which they've taken the bubbles out.

Why? Why? Why? Why do these people treat us like children? Who doesn't want all wine to be sparkling wine? Children love busy stuff. Yeah. Why they're treating us like grown-ups? But Prosecco, Christmas drink at the moment, right? The UK consumes 77 million litres of Prosecco last year.

And I worked out that's in the region of the amount of rain that falls on Wembley Stadium in a year. Also, my favourite thing about Brexit and it's a long list. It is... Thank God I've got a favourable audience. Okay. So, no, but is that champagne

can be sold by the pint again? So there's always been this weird dichotomy, which is that wine can only be sold in metric and beer can only be sold in Imperial. But Paul Roger always used to sell champagne by the pint. It was a bottle that

there was a size of a pint, rather than a pint glass of champagne. Yeah, yeah, yeah, a bottle of those sizes of pint. And Churchill loved Paul Roger that was served in pints. He said it was perfect for lunch. And actually he actually had Paul Roger, the champagne manufacturers, deliver him a pint of champagne at 11 a.m. every morning because he was so such a fan of it. And now, Paul Roger have explicitly said,

maybe one of the advantages of leaving the EU is that we'll be able to sell champagne by the pint again, and they're already preparing to sell champagne by the pint. So if you want to be optimistic about the future, this is it. Is that one of the battle buses we didn't see for you? Did you know, one of the first battles of the First World War was called the Champagne Offensive. No.

Really? So it was when the German armies were moving west through the champagne region, and lots of people at the time fled underground to the wine cellars. But basically, they learned their lesson in the champagne region because when the German army arrived again in 1940, there were false walls built in the wine cellars to conceal the really good stuff.

And supposedly, some houses like Bollinger mislabeled their really good bottles, poison. They did. It was a real front of the Second World War that we haven't acknowledged so far. I think there's a book called Wine and War, I think, which has first-hand accounts of winemakers in France, who fought the Nazis by withholding their best wine

and they're so proud of it. So it's so sweet. So it's in the champagne region and there's one winemaker who bragged about the fact that he watered down his champagne before giving it to the Nazis or he would bottle his worst wines in the champagne region.

He would bottle his worst wines and say this is the special cuvée for the Vermeckx and there was one guy who said that we got orders from the Nazis to deliver the ones. them lots of wine and they made the foolish mistake of not saying which vintage wine they would prefer and so we sent them a thousand bottles of our 1939 which was absolute rubbish and that that absolutely taught them I have a fact about wishing people a Merry Christmas okay so this was a

an experiment that happened in 1974 sociological two sociologists called Philip Kunz and Michael Waltcott, they posted nearly 600 Christmas cards to people they didn't know. They got the addresses out of the phone book, and they sent some high status cards, which were very lavish and fancy, and somewhat low status, which were just plain white cards with Merry Christmas, written in a red Sharpie on the front. And they were either signed from Doctor and Mrs. Philip

Kuntz or from Philip and Joyce Kuntz, and they included a return address, saying where you can send them back to. So they were definitely for people they hadn't met. and over 20% of people sent a sign card back with varying degrees of detail. Some said Merry Christmas. Some sent pictures of their families to people they had never met. Some sent letters of several pages

saying what have been going on with them for the last few years. I know. But six people wrote back and directly asked, how do I know you? Which is incredibly balzy to me. I wouldn't have the courage to do that. When was that? 74.

You can't imagine it would happen today, could you? Do you think? If you got a random Christmas card through the post guys, would you respond to it? Yeah. Well, a few liars, but most people say... My parents, they keep getting a card addressed to the Cajunerries, and we've no idea who they are, but they arrive. It arrives like clockwork every year.

Every year. And the family has grown, it's added several members in this time. And they never include their return address. and they keep saying, we'd love to see you in their new year. Please, please get in touch. So Wendy, John, if you're listening. We need to wrap up, guys. Anything before we do?

Some stuff on wine or fizzy wine or whatever. In 2015, Scotland made its first homegrown wine. And it was described as undrinkable by experts. The guy who produced it said, it has potential. It doesn't smell fresh But I enjoyed it in a bizarre, masochistic way Okay, that is it. That is all of our facts.

Thank you so much for listening. If you'd like to get in contact with any of us About the things that we've said over the course of this podcast, we can be found on our Twitter accounts. I'm on at Shreiberland. Andy? At Andrew Hunter M. James?

At James Harkins. and Anna. You can email podcast. QI.com. Yep. Or you can go to our group account, which is at No Such Thing, or you can go to our website,

no such thing as a fish.com. It's got all of our previous episodes. It's got a link to our book. We usually give one away at the end of this show. But, um... So what we're going to do tonight is take one away. Thank you so much for being here, guys.

That was really fun. We'll see you again. Goodbye. Goodbye.