No Such Thing As A Fish - No Such Thing As Fangtooth Boxing

Episode Date: November 30, 2023

Dan, James, Anna and Anne Miller discuss big eyes, big teeth, bean juice, and James Joyce. Visit nosuchthingasafish.com for news about live shows, merchandise and more episodes. Join Club Fish for ad-free episodes and exclusive bonus content at apple.co/nosuchthingasafish or nosuchthingasafish.com/patreon

Hi everyone, welcome to this week's episode of No Such Thing as a Fish. Andrew Hunter Murray is off on his holly bobs, sailing the seven seas, looking for new unbeknownst species of moss. And while he is away, we have got a guest for you, and that guest is none other than Anne Miller. Of course you know Anne, she's one of the QIL, she's a really good friend of ours, and it's great to have her back. One thing you really need to know about Anne, especially in these weeks' upcoming. to Christmas is that she is also a published author. She has written a series of children's books. They are known as Mickey and the Animal Spies. They're known as that because that is their name and they're absolutely brilliant. My daughter absolutely loves looking at the pictures and I'm

sure when she gets to the right age, she will enjoy reading them as well. While we're on the subjects of books, of course it would be remiss of me not to mention our book, mine and Anna's new book, Everything to Play for, the QI Book of Sport. Definitely buy that for your loved ones for Christmas. Anyone who likes sport, definitely buy it for them. If you don't like sport, but you like what we do, I promise you'll love this book because it's full of loads of interesting human stories, drama. It's the ultimate sports book for people who don't really like sports, and also people who do like sports will like it as well. It's for everyone. That's the great thing about our book, but then that also has to be true of Andy and Dan's books. You definitely should go and get those

as well. Dan's book is called The Theory of Everything Else. It's a brilliant look into his brain. unique brain, let's say, but he's looked at the history of people who had done otherwise great things, but deep down they had a dark secret of believing some weird shit. And speaking of weird shit, you should also have a look at Andy's books. Andrew Hunter Murray, he has two books. They're called The Sanctuary and The Last Day. They're both brilliant, acerbic, dystopian books that tell you something about the modern day while thrilling you with an incredible story about the future. They're absolutely amazing. get those as well. Basically, what I'm saying is

who doesn't love a book for Christmas? And there's a ton of them made by your favorite QI elves. They're all available online and mine, Anna's, Dan's and Andes you can find at no such things of fish.com forward slash books. One more very, very important thing I need to say before I leave you in peace to listen to the podcast

is that we do have a couple of live shows coming up just before Christmas. They will take place in London on Thursday the 7th of Friday, the 8th of December at the Soho Theatre Now, we've already mentioned this to the Clubfish members, and I think it's been on social media, so the truth is there are not many tickets left.

If you do want to come and see this show, literally pause now, and go to No Six Thingsofish.com forward slash live, click on the link and check if there are any tickets left. You never know, sometimes extra tickets do come up closer to the date, so do go and check there anyway, and hopefully see some of you there for our Christmas shows. Anyway, thank you so much for getting to the end of this, without fast forwarding. If you have fast forwarded and got to hear without hearing the last bit,

shame on you. But anyway, it's time for our podcast with Anne Miller, so there is nothing more to say apart from On With the Podcast. And welcome to another episode of No Such Thing as a Fish, a weekly podcast coming to you from the QI offices in Hoburn. My name is Dan Schreiber. I am sitting here with Anna Tyszynski, James Harkin and Anne Miller. 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 and that is Anna. My fact this week is that a list of adorable things written over a thousand years ago includes chicks who look like their clothes are too big for them and faces

drawn on melons. Okay, can I ask for definitions of chicks and melons because I live in the 1990s? Right. Both chicks and melons mean what they've meant in every decade outside of the 1990s. I'm afraid, baby chickens and fruit. James just friendly a story at all his notes. Wow, people are writing about adorable things a thousand years ago. Yeah. I actually heard this reference on Radio 4 this week.

So I'm sure there are people who also heard it mentioned. It's the pillow book, which is this extraordinary book. written by a woman in Japan in the 10th century under the um, Hyann period and hi-an, hi. Hi. That's why we chose this.

God, it took me a long time to find a high-an period back. Um, anyway, this, um, this woman basically wrote a diary of just random stuff that popped into her head of lists and observations and things she thought should have. happen and shouldn't happen and things people should wear and shouldn't wear and one of them was his list of really cute things and one of them was faces drawn on melons one of them was chicks who look like their clothes are too big which i think is like if you see a chick but it's feathers look like they're a bit swollen you know they look like you dress them up in human clothes that's what

I thought that's cute I that would be even cuter from what I could tell from interpretations of it I think they're just talking about chicks who look like they don't fit into their clothes yet right They're too small. I would argue that's slightly less cute than a hat in dungarees. Well, take it up with Saye Shonagun, the author of this book. Maybe she hadn't thought of that.

The good thing about this book is, and I'm sure you all found this reading it, it's just like someone is writing today, isn't it? Yeah. It's just like this of cute things. So one is a young palace page, obviously that's not the thing anymore, but a young palace page

who is still quite small and walks by in ceremonial costume. And that's just like, you know, if you go to a wedding and you see a little, you know, A toddler, a page boy in a suit. Yeah, it's true. But it's not all happy stuff, is it?

Like, there's so many great pissed off lists, things like things that are unpleasant to hear. Someone who has an ugly voice yet speaks and laughs without restraint. So she has a list for that. She has a list for things that give a pathetic impression, the voice of someone who blows his nose while he is speaking. The impression of a woman plucking her eyebrows. It's all so odd. My favorite random one in there is the list of extremely. frightening things.

Do you guys? Yes, yeah. No, I didn't see that. Thunder. Yeah, fair enough. And then I just enjoy this one. Extremely frightening thing. When a thief has entered the house next door, one is extremely frightened.

If he breaks into the house where one is actually living. Because he breaks into the house where one is actually living, one loses consciousness and knows nothing more. Which is true. That's true. I think some of these, they sound like, up routine? Yeah, exactly. I've found one which is things that are infuriating, which sounds like it's like a Josh Whittaker routine, says this is what's infuriating. Someone suddenly falls ill and

an exorcist is sent for. They don't find him in the usual place and a tedious amount of time is spent waiting while they go around in search of him. Finally, they managed to locate him and with great relief you see him to performing the exorcism rights. However, the recent exertions of exercising some other possessing spirit seem to a warn him out. For no sooner does he sit down and start in on the chanting, then his spirit seems to have worn him out. His voice goes drowsy and that is utterly infuriating. I think. It's so relatable, isn't it? Yeah, my note for Josh may be broadened it. I like the idea this is that, hey, what about airplane food of like a thousand years of...

It clearly is. Like, there's a list rare things. A silver tweezer that is good at plucking out the hair. This is today. It is. You can't get tweezers that pluck out. hairs well. How have they not designed this in the last thousand years? It's basically shots miscellany, isn't it? Because it is list, but it's also essays sometimes or diary entries, observations. So this is, just to put it into the period. I know everyone probably knows the years of the high end period, but... Do you refresh my memory? We're talking the year 1000 is what's going on here. And at the time that she was writing this book, Beowulf was being written also, just to put in context, the other great pieces of literature.

Not nearly as relatable, Bear Wolf. No, no, that's true. I haven't actually read it, so I... Well, the first word in it, we still don't know what it means. Really? I think so. Wow. Really?

Yeah. Do you say the word? Do you know it? It's like, what? Right. Yeah, there's arguments about what it means. Yeah. And she was...

So she was working in the court of the Empress at the time. She was like a lady in waiting who was always there. And she basically wrote this book because she just had a lot of spare time with nothing to do. So she never intended it for publication. It was just a personal book that she was writing. We don't even properly know her name. So she's called Say-Shanagon,

but that's-Shonagan is the title that you're given. It's a minor counsellor. And Say is the name that was added later, which refers to her father's name, so you can distinguish her from the other shonagons who were in part of the court. So do we think it could be Josh Whitacom gone back in time to the high-end period?

It's possible. Say-Shonaghan. Does sound like a Japanese version of Josh Whitigone. at them. Yeah? The word hyan means peace in Japanese. Because it was particularly it was quite long period and it was a time where there wasn't much war going on so people

had time to write these stand-up routines. That's why she was so bored. I reckon she craved a war. Do we think she was a bit of a bitch? Was she? What? Well, I mean just from what she writes. What do you like adorable things? Give us some examples. I mean... Depends which lifts you're reading. Yeah, you're right. I think she had

mean qualities. In fact, there was a story about her where one her neighbour's houses burned down and they lost everything they own. The fire in the house next door is the most scary. That gun it wasn't in her house. Well, I don't know how scary she was finding it because basically she wrote a kind of little note mocking this person. He's lost everything.

He's standing outside his house, you know, naked and gives it to her mum and says, hey, go give this note taking the piss out of this guy to him. Okay. She had what was effectively a lot of people claim was a rival. I don't think we fully know that. but it is someone who is friend of the podcast, Murasaki Shikibu, who wrote, and we mentioned in episode 63 of Fish, The Tale of Genji.

Yeah, the first ever novel, which finished mid-sentence, right? Like, it just cuts off. Yeah. What happened was, is that Saye Shonagun was working for this empress, and at the time it was one emperor, one empress. That's how it worked. But they bucked the trend with this one, and suddenly she was no longer the exclusive empress.

So he got married again, and the lady in waiters, who became the lady in waiting for the next lady was this person, the tale of Genji. No way. Yeah, so that's why they were kind of like in rival land, according to certain historians. So that book, The Tale of Genji by Murasaki, has a word kawaiushi,

which is the word which turned into the modern day word kawai, which means cute in Japanese. And this idea of, you know, lots of cute animals and, you know, Hello Kitty and all that kind of stuff. This is kind of a 20th century thing that we're not sure exactly. There's lots of reasons why it might have come about, but possibly a reaction to the war, to the bombs, stuff like that.

People wanted to go from the horrors of war to cuteness. But definitely seems to have become popular when mechanical pencils came out. So you know those pencils that kind of, you know, you twist them and the lead comes out. Twist them? Do you not click them? There's two options. Or the one where you take the little one out and put it in the top? Do you remember them from primary school? There's so many different ways.

No. Hang on, you had to, there was a little pocket containing less. Inside the, where the leg would go, they were like tiny little things and you pop one at the bottom and pop it in the top. To see if you're chopping your pencil. I hated them all because they write so horribly. Well, they were very popular in 1970s Japan where you would not have fit in. No. Because they could write very, very thin lines. And it inspired a kind of writing among teenage girls where they would put like lots of little hearts and little,

you know, characters and stuff in their writing. And it was so popular and it made their writing so difficult to read that it was banned in loads of schools. You weren't allowed to write in this kawaii style. But by then the trend had already taken hold. I guess once you've started doing it and sort of becomes your hand,

like there were some people who would do like proper circles over their eye or like little hearts. And I was like, why? It takes a little longer. I was just going to ask, Anne, were you a hearts above the eye? No. duck my eyes.

Your eyes are just a line. You don't have time for that dot. But it's not, I was reading a sort of paper on it saying it's not as cutesy as maybe our version of cute, like it's got a bit of an edge. Okay, kawaii cute. The koii cute, yeah, the Japanese cute, which you can kind of see. There's sometimes a bit of a dark edginess to it. There's a character called Gloomy, the Naughty Grizzly, who I hadn't come across,

but apparently it's a big cultural phenomenon. and he's a two-meter-tall, like, cuddly bear, but he's very violent. He's covered in blood quite a lot of the time. He attacks his owner quite a lot. And that's Kauai in Japan, but not necessarily something we would say was cute. I think that's like Kimo-Kauaii,

so it's like grotesque and cute at the same time. I mean, that's what they call it. And, yeah, obviously they have loads of mascots, don't they, in Japan? In 2015, the governor of Ossica complained that he couldn't recognize most of his prefectures mascots. They had 92 of them. Wow. In Osaka alone.

And he ordered a cull. And 20 of his characters were... Oh, wow. Murdered by the grizzly bear. Public executions, I hope. See, but Jickey made the list like 20 mascots that really annoy me. I bet.

Yeah. It's amazing how successful it was, though. You know how when governments try to be cool, you know, like David Cameron saying he supports Aston Villa or whatever? and it's just massive cringe. But the Japanese government, basically in the 90s, did, like, Cool Japan, which was a bit like we had Cool Britannia here. Yeah.

And Cool Japan was the idea of exporting all this Japanese cultural stuff. And I don't know how they did it, but they nailed it because it's so popular now, isn't it? You get people who are really into manga, really into those styles. Hello Kitty is a global phenomenon. Hello Kitty. But like in the Cool Britannia was like Blair versus Oasis, and do you think in Japan now kids are listening to what's a starring morning, glory. Yeah. Oh yeah. It's still blur and oasis there. Yeah, yeah. It's not resolved. Hang on, but are blur and

oasis popular there? I think not now. I think not now. Damn, it would be great if they were because that would be my cultural homeland. That's when I stopped learning about pop music was in about 1998. Yeah, wouldn't it be great if there was like a little museum somewhere where you could go and they're still listening to all your kind of, it's called smooth effem. Oh God. cuteness is a funny thing, isn't it? And we are the cutest of the primates. So that's nice for us.

We self-proclaimed. I guess it is self-proclaimed because we're the only ones that can write about it. Were any of the bonobos allowed to vote in this? Screw you, gorillas. You can't read, you can't define what's cute. So what's kind of defined as cute is the traits that are common in infants. And that is, it was actually defined by this guy called Conrad Lorenz, who won a Nobel Prize. It's called the Kinder Schema, and it's large brain capsule, as he puts it,

big forehead, I think I'll call it, large and low-lying eyes, bulging cheeks, short and thick extremities, a springy elastic consistency and clumsy movements, which is like the ugliest way to describe what is actually a really cute. Adorable, yeah. There was a thing I read a while ago about animals who found as cute. It was like an elephant, like caressing people, and they're saying, like, oh, you're just so cute and small. It was really lovely. I don't know if I want to be caressed by an elephant, you know, of all the animals that could caress me.

It may not. I think it doesn't elephant. I feel like it was a trunk involved. That sounds likely. They're quite empathetic elephants, aren't they? One of the scariest things is an elephant caressing next doors baby. It's absolutely terrifying. There was a study done in 2009, and this was they gave people a load of cute images, and then they asked them to play the game Operation. So you know where you have like a plastic body, and you have. have to pull out the funny bone and stuff so that it doesn't buzz. Well, it turned out that anyone

who'd been exposed to high cuteness stimuli was better at operation. So first of all, a tip for Christmas if you go home and someone's got operation, have a quick look at some kawaii stuff before you play and it'll help. But secondly, it's due to extreme carefulness and the idea is you've seen lots of cute things, you want to look after them almost and you want to be more careful. Right. But don't look at the bloodied bear because that might give you impression that blood all over your operation human is going to be adorable adorable i let you have like 4d operation as a kid to handle that real blood you guys didn't use real blood oh my god okay it is time for fact number two and that is anne my fact is that the viper fish has teeth that are so long it can't close its mouth

properly or it would impale its own brain hmm i bet there are a few that have though yeah do you think Yeah, the idiot kids, yeah, the Darwin Award Viper Fish. Exactly. So have they sort of evolved like the equivalent of a doorstopper? They have. So basically they're very like very long and silver and they've got these lighty up spots along their, um, on the bottom of their stomach. And then they have these huge teeth that kind of pierce upwards from their jaw. Um, and luckily it doesn't impede their hunting because to hunt it basically just swims around with its mouth open until it finds prey.

Right. It can unhinged its jaw and rotate its skulls. When it finds prey, it just basically swims straight at it. And then it clamps its teeth. shot like a cage and holds them in its mouth and then eats them. It can close its mouth. But the teeth are coming out so it's like making a seal. So it kind of like having a very extreme over a bite.

Yeah, because I know there's another fish called the common fang tooth, which as its name might suggest, has fangy teeth. And what they have is they have special sockets on either side of their brain so that when they close their mouth, their teeth go into those sockets. Isn't that amazing? Yeah. It's so precise with the pockets. I think like if you got punched in the jaw and that was slightly dislocated, The first time you tried to shut your mouth, it would then miss the holes and pierce you in the brain.

That would be. That's why there's no boxing in the fang tooth community. I think that's correct, yeah. But by perviction is really cool. So as well as being able to get it's prey in this cage, it can expand its stomach. So it can swallow prey. It's 50% bigger than itself. Oh, wow.

Which is. That's amazing. So I just think whenever you say, oh, I could eat my own body size of this. Yeah. He can. Very unsuttle, though, if you're invited to a dinner party. And you know, sometimes you have a meal before you go and you just fake it and just say, no, no, no, I'm, yeah, yeah, yeah. starving, starving. You're actually really full. Can't hide that. You've got 50% more body weights

coming through the door. Goldfish. Oh yeah. Have teeth. Can't believe it. How do you think they eat? I just thought they swallowed things that didn't need chewing. Well, they eat like little fishy flakes. Yeah, I thought it was like, kind of like, yeah, if you open their mouth, you can't see it, but the teeth are at the back of the throat. We just have a set of teeth that do all the old crunching. Yeah, right at the back. Yeah. that'll often happen and I always think how does that do you sort of contract your throat as a fish because lots of fish have it don't they this teeth in the throat thing yeah seems like it'd be very uncomfortable but what's really cool is if you have goldfish at home right now go and have a look

in your little uh little aquarium that you have look at the bottom because what they'll do is they often lose teeth and they and they grow new ones and so either you can catch your goldfish in the act of literally spitting its tooth out or look at the bottom there'll be little teeth You should say how often they do because I worry that someone's going to sit in front of their goldfish tank staring at it for days on end every seven minutes If you have a pet Pacific link cod

Then you might be able to do that Because they gain and lose on average 20 teeth every day Such a hassle Yeah so every day 20 of the teeth fall out And 20 new ones grow in their place Amazing They are also probably too big for your fish tank, aren't they? I think they're about five feet long

Depends, obviously, on the size of your fish tank. They could fit in my pond. Yeah. If they kind of bed themselves in half. Have you seen the really horrible sheep's head fish? If you haven't seen it, Google it, but it's pretty gross. It's basically got, like, just human teeth. It's like a big gummy smile with, it's very unpleasant.

And it's not nice human teeth, is it? It's sort of like someone who hasn't cleaned their teeth for 20 years. It's really disconcerting when you see a fish that doesn't have the face of a fish. Yeah. If anyone, I don't know if it's still there. I don't know the lifespan. but about seven years ago I was in a restaurant in Bow Road in a Chinese restaurant they had an aquarium and there was a fish there with a face

of a dog it just had a dog's head it was the weirdest thing is this one of those restaurants where you go in and you choose the fish you want them to cook because I reckon if it is it probably is still there I'll have the dog face to be fair it is possible that maybe a dog was looking through the other side of the tank Was it a fellow diner's pet? You can see fish that have human-looking teeth as well. What's it called the Pac-U? Wait, you mean as well as the one that Anne's mentioned?

Oh, is that the Pac-U one? Mine's a sheephead fish. It's called Shish, but that might be the official name. Probably there were more fish than you would think with, like, human-looking teeth. But the one that scared me the most, I didn't know, docs could have teeth on their beaks. You see? Yeah, the Gusander duck.

Not only that. He lives in the UK. They're everywhere. I'm now terrified of this duck. That would be great animated cartoon for Lousander's to do. You got the Goose Sanders, which say, Seanigan, Josh Whitacum, Goose Sanders. Looking up this line up really well. I was thinking, oh, what did you see in the park?

Goose and the duck? Oh, really? Two things. Just the one with all the teeth. The pack who we mentioned a few seconds ago, they supposedly can bite human testicles off. They're invasive. They were, I think you get them in like Papua New Guinea or somewhere, and they have come into the Northern Hemisphere more recently, and whenever they catch one, it's always in the news.

It's like testicle biting fish in the Thames or whatever. Really? And I think it's not true. They're vegetarian, so they eat nuts. Okay. That does make sense. The story goes that someone with particularly nut-like testicles was standing by the water in Papua New Guinea urinated.

That's some swollen bulls that person has got, if they've got the consistency of a nut. It depends what kind of nut. Are there any nuts that are as soft as simple as? testicles out there? No, this does sound like one incident, and it's similar to a man going to a hospital saying, I don't know how my penis got inside this vacuum cleaner. It's an invasive species of Henry Hoover's. They supposedly eat penises.

I think there's a little bit of that. I think there was one story of some people in Papua New Guinea, and one person possibly had their genitals bitten by this fish. And it has since kind of... But what was he doing with that? that fish is my question. He was urinating by the side of the lake. Yeah, right.

There was a story, a scary story, but fish that would swim up your urine stream? Yeah. Is that real? No. I feel like they're not. Can we just establish it? There's a big difference. And I feel like tab boys often do this as well in headlines, then you read the text.

And James, you may have just done it between bitten and bitten off. And I think it's much less scary to have something bite your arm than to have a bite off your arm, for instance. Same with testicles, I would argue as well. Yeah, probably is the same. what I'm saying is that there was a very small little nibble on this man's genitals. And it made the national news. It snowballed into whenever the pack who comes to town, everyone's like, that's the ball eating the fish.

The other option is that he was bid on the balls by a human and had to quickly come up with an excuse for his wife and went, no, it was the fish that has human teeth. It's called the sheep's hair. Because someone's human has bitten his bowls, he's gone, no, I know, it's a fish. And she's like, well, you can see the teeth. Marks. They're clearly human teeth. Yeah, yeah, yeah, the Pacu. It's the Pacu. Not only are you having a fair. I'm going to fare with someone who gives very bad blood

Jonas. I was reading about the different type of mouths that fish can have. Oh, yeah. You can have a superior mouth or an inferior mouth. Okay, what's your criteria? Can you guess what it is? Can you guess what it is? A superior and an inferior? One's on top of your head, I suppose. On top of your head? Well, because if it's superior, I feel like it's on the top.

How many fish have you seen where the mouth is a, the eyes. Oh, look, we've said that I bet there are some fish by the mouth is above the eyes. That was an upside down fish. You're looking at. Turn it around.

It was my dead goldfish. Is it? You're more or less there in fairness. A superior mouth is basically, imagine a smiling fish. Yeah. And imagine a frowning fish for an inferior mouth.

Oh, so it's like whether it turns up or down. Yeah, precisely. And if you have a superior mouth and you're a smiling fish, then you usually would feed on the surface. So you might get insects from the surface of the water. Oh, so it's like turning your spoon around. Like, go up or go down.

And if you're an inferior mouth, you're probably a bottom feeder, as in you're getting stuff off the floor. Yeah. And they have terminal mouth like goldfish, which is just at the front. So it's neither a smile nor a frown, and they're usually omnivores. They'll eat all sorts of stuff. It's quite interesting that if you look at a fish

and you see whether it's smiling or frowning, you can tell how it eats. It means you can't tell their mood. No, you can't. Because much if you were a really grumpy, pessimistic fish, but you've got the superior mouth, and you're like, oh, everyone thinks I'm so jolly. having the worst day. We've never

haven't really talked about narwhals before. Oh yeah. And they're a toothed whale, count as a toothed whale. That's one big tooth. That's just, yeah. It's where they think unicorns. The idea for unicorns came from.

They found these narwhal tusks and they're like, wow, this must be from a horse. Okay, right. But not only is it one big tooth. It's their only tooth. Yeah. And it's actually their left tooth. The left tooth.

It's the left canine. So they all have a round. right canine that doesn't erupt in their mouth. In fact, occasionally you'll see an R where it's right one is erupted and it's got a double double horn thing going on. That's cool. Is it like mostly the males have really long ones? Yeah, females tend not to have them actually.

Really? At all. And what's the, do we know what sort of like the evolutionary reason for them retaining just one? I think if males have them, it feels like it's sexual selection. It does, but again, bizarrely, given they're quite prominent, we really don't know and they've looked at lots of things. They thought maybe they use it as an ice pick. or as a tool for echolocation

and sort of like a cocktail stick for how you put sausages and pineapples on and cheese and so on but then that would only be for catering because if it was on your tooth you couldn't get it in your mouth that's true but you might bring it to the mate

that you're trying to oh yeah look what I've got for you yeah yeah do you think that's sexy Dan if your partner has a really long to attach some pineapple and cheese on and feed it directly into your mouth is that what does it for you You know she's got that.

You're not signed up to my only fans. I thought you... Is that the biggest tooth in nature? Oh, it is big. How long can they get to? I feel like they can get to a couple of metres, can't they? I think, yeah, I reckon it must be. It's about half their body length.

Yeah. Because tusks are not teeth. Tusks are Ketterin. Keteran? No. Ketit. Ketan. Can you have a word with my drug dealer.

It's doing nothing. from me. My hair looks amazing. I'm being accused of poaching. What's going on, man? The only thing, other thing, could be possibly like other large whales that have got teeth, but I reckon that would be the biggest. Yeah, it's got to be up there.

Yeah. Just on the subject of fish teeth, I came across, actually a while ago, and I've been looking for a chance to mention it, an old Russian folktale of a beautiful young woman who's married to a really disgusting man that she hates. Sounds like my marriage. Tell me how long that continues to be true of this story.

And so to put him off, having sex with her, she puts a fish head into her vagina so that every time he's up for it, he's like, oh, what are all these teeth? I guess it's one of these goldfish with the teeth heads. That's the Pacu. It's a Pacu head.

It's a Pacu head. Specifies. And then she says, what, you idiot. All women have this. You don't want to do it. You don't want to do it. But that's what everyone's doing. And so he never gets to have sex with her. Oh, wow. That's a shame. It's really sad story for him.

It is rather. And for her, who's got a fish. Yeah. Places where you shouldn't have fish. She's kind of a bit worse off, yeah. If she'd have put a sucker mouth catfish up her valley, it might have been better because they have bendy teeth. Oh, okay. First fish that we found that have got bendy teeth. Really? Yeah. Because they scrape stuff

off rocks. And if they had hard non-bendie teeth then they might fall off or they might break or whatever and they reckon that probably more fish have them as well but we've never found them before so that might be quite nice some bendy teeth yeah oh she'd be so annoyed if she got that one fish

she's like oh I'm into this vagina dentata is common in folklore isn't it and is it who's the god in Moana is it Maui does he get eaten by some vagina Yeah, I think that's not featuring the live action Rwana remake of Disney are currently working on.

Okay, it is time for fact number three, and that is my fact. My fact this week is that a book club in America has finally finished reading Finnegan's Wake after 28 years of monthly meetups. 28 years. 28 years. It's impressive. It's incredible. They started in 1995.

It was between 10 and 30 people who would show up to these monthly book clubs. And Finnegan's Wake is a very complicated, unreadable book. They decided, rather than getting through the whole thing and doing it in one book club, they would take it two pages at a time. That proved to be, I think, a bit too much. So they then brought it down to one page per book club. And they've been doing this. They did it through the pandemic.

They've been doing it over Zoom. They keep meeting up. And, yeah, they finally just got to the end. But it's being reported as the end. But as the man who runs the book club, a guy called Jerry pointed out, it ends on a sentence that is a continuous loop sentence, which means you come right back to the beginning of the book. So they're just starting from page one again now. What a horrible realisation that must have been in the last session. The last day, pot of champagne.

Thank God I never have to see these awful people again. That's amazing. But it's amazing. Like the people who've been in and out of this group, one guy dropped out of the group for 20 years and came back. You know, they must have been quite lost. But then I suppose everyone is. I think they got through 15 chapters in that time. Yeah.

Yeah, that's the whole point of it, isn't it? It's a completely impenetrable book. Even people that you would consider to be those who love literature and would, like, be snooty and say, no, it's actually a masterpiece. All just say, it's just lots of words. No one can agree, like, who the main characters are. It's amazing. Yeah. Have you dipped into it?

No. Finnegan's weight. No. Of all choices stuff. I don't know if it has. No. Yeah, I think it's amazing that even after all this time they've read it for 28 years They won't be able to say what happened because no one knows what happens

No one knows it's just that's so amazing it's mad it's almost like an endurance sport rather than a hobbit now isn't it like 28 years But this is the thing they're not like alone and being a book club that has done this they just happen to have possibly gone the longest There's a guy called Sam Sloat who's a historian he's an expert at Trinity College Dublin on Joyce he that's what he looks into and Yeah, he he was reading the book for 15 years. You know, there was other groups that they all go into like just over 10 years, but this is the longest one so far. Think of all the books you've missed out on in that time that actually makes sense. Yeah, that's true. You can't read all the books in your lifetime. Yeah. You might as well stick with ones, The Hungry Caterpillar. Absolutely banger.

Yeah. I just get through that many times in one meeting. I think this is what Joyce wanted. I think he wanted people to dedicate their lives to reading just him, to analyzing him. That's quite a big move, isn't it? Like, no, you'll be my book, and only my book. Yeah. Yeah, it is. It's a statement about what you think of yourself. He's kind of done it with certain people.

Yeah, yeah. You know your fact, sorry, I meant to say, Dan, is wrong. Yeah, I noticed that a spelling mistake. A spelling, a bit of a spelling mistake, yeah. Well, technically. Oh, I see. Yeah, yeah, a bit of punctuation era, wasn't it? Yeah, yeah.

I put an apostrophe S, yes. An apostrophe. I'd actually never noticed this until I went to the Wikipedia page. There's no apostrophe. in it. So it's not the wake of Finnegan. It's Finnegan's plural. Wake! It's like Finnegan's comma, wake, exclamation mark. And there's a character called Finnegan in it. And I believe he's being resurrected. So it's like he's waking up. So shouldn't he be the main character? I haven't read it either, but I would assume if it's called Finnegan's wake and you've got a finnigan. Well, there are quite a few

finnigans. Are there or are there? Oh really? I thought the Finnegan's was just referring to, was like pluralised to be confusing and refer to like Irish people generally, but are there multiple finnagons? Well, there are multiple finnagons. I think the collective Irish group being called Finnegan's is the most common explanation for the lack of apostrophe. Some people think it's so that the word wake can mean the awakening and also the wake as in after someone dies. So it gives you a nice little bit of uncertainty. Some people think it was a fuck up by Samuel Beckett who wrote. Wait, sorry? Samuel Beckett was his proofreader? No. Well, Joyce kind of spoke, what do you call it when someone speaks it to you?

Dictators. Yeah. Beckett dictated it. Really? Yeah. Or certainly some of it. Are you mixing transcribing and dictating? Oh, perhaps.

What's the difference? You would dictate. Can you dictate to someone and then they transcribe what you're saying? Oh, I see. Yes. I think Joyce is. Joyce was dictating. Beckett was transcribing.

Excellent point. Just maybe five minutes in the edit. Maybe they weren't there. Maybe it was always the other way around and Beckett wrote it. I was like, don't put my name on that. I don't want to be cursed. It's a famous story where Beckett is dictating, and there's a knock on the door, and James Joyce says, come in, and Beckett just writes, come in in the middle of the story.

Oh, really? So that was from a biography of Joyce, which where he interviewed Beckett, and Beckett said this happened. But if you look in the text and just Control F, you don't have to read the whole thing. But if you look in the text and look for the phrase, come in, there is no place where it's just like an interjection where it doesn't belong. So either Beckett made it all. or maybe it actually happened and then later on he thought you know what that was stupid I'm going to take that out right not sure what happened or an editor was like I don't think there was much of an editor because there was loads of typos in all of Joyce's work wasn't that that that's something that's really interesting because I was reading an article where they're saying that basically the way you can read Joyce now

people have been trying to make sense of this book so much that they've employed different ways of cleaning it up in order to make sense of it so there's a version out there where people have taken all the hypo's out so it kind of reads a bit more smoother and you're not going, what the hell is this word? There's a digital version now where basically everything is hyperlinked. Therefore, you can get an understanding of everything and you find yourself using it as a repository of all knowledge. It's basically a weird encyclopedia where you just go, oh cool, I'm now learning about this random thing by clicking on it. So they keep trying to turn it into something useful. But it's not. But it's not. Ultimately, it's just not in its own thing. And the words that he made up in it, There's a hundred-letter-long word on the first page, which is the sound of a thunder clap that was heard at the fall of the Garden of Eden.

Are you going to give us the word? Yeah, I want to hear the words. It's Baba Baba Baba Dalagra Gagra Gataka. Mimi, Nana, Rock, and con bon, bron to run, tu an Fatton, Rova, Honal Sokot, Tu, Renden, Tantorok. No, it's close, but not quite. That was pretty good. I felt like there was a storm outside. I would argue that Boom does the same job.

That would have been your first thing as an editor. Right, boom, opening words. Life would be more difficult for the Venga Boys if no one had invented the word boom and they had to do this four times. Much less catchy. It was reused by Sylvia Plath in the bell jar, that word. That word, right?

Can I see it written down? Yeah, it's there. Are you thinking about using that in your next children's book, Anne? It is in the title. It depends if. you're on a word count for being paid a number of words or whether you're paid number of letters. Useful words as well that he made up, which we've already mentioned before, but quark.

Quark is from Fitigan's Wake. Yes. The scientific word, it's from, there's a line in it that goes three quarks for mustermark. And then quarks can cluster together in threes to form other, yeah. So that's where. I think Murray Gelman wanted to call them quarks. Yeah. And he always had this idea of they're called quarks.

and then he saw the word quark in Finnegan's wake where it clearly rhymes with Mark, but even though he spelt it in the same way that Joyce did, he always pronounced it quark. Do you think he really tediously corrected people whenever they referred to it? It's really interesting because I always call them quarks, having studied physics, and I think 75% of physicists say quark rather than quark. I can't believe as many as 25% are doing the pretentious. This is what he wanted quark pronunciation. Come on, physicists.

This is very like the laser loser. So laser is an acronym. Light, I forgot what they is. Light amplified. Yeah, and it was like actually the light's oscillating. So they should be called losers. But didn't catch on. I never heard that.

No, nice. Oh, that's great. Joyce was particularly upset about World War II, wasn't he? I know none of us liked it. But it was a real bugbear for him because it interrupted the publication of his book or he was worried it would get in the way. So as discussed, he spent 17 years.

writing it, which is not that long when you consider how long it takes to read, but he was realizing he was sort of getting close to the end in about 1936 and he was getting really stressed out about global conditions. At one point he complained to a friend, look, the fact that the world is in such a bad state at the moment is really stressful for me because I find it so hard to write being so anxious about it. And then when he handed in the manuscript in 1939, he said, please hurry publishing it because war's going to break out and then no one will read my book anymore. That is amazing.

That's not why. The thing is, if you're going to spend how long, 17, 18 years writing it, the chance of you, it would have to be in the high end period of peace, wouldn't it? Like, there's no other time when you're not going to run into some war or other. You're right.

So I was looking at what the longest book to read by pages rather than complexity. Oh yeah. So the longest novel in the Penguin Classics and Modern Classics is in Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust. Yeah. It is, six volumes, 3,616 pages.

So in the time it would take you to read it, you could fly from London to Auckland and back again and then to Barbados. But only if you have to not take any breaks. You have to read one page a minute for that entire time. One page a minute. Yeah, I bought a copy of that thinking I would read it and it was absolutely massive.

And I started and then I realized that I only had the first volume. If this is the first volume, there is no way in the world I'm going to read this. Years ago I thought I'd read all of a twist And I said, someone on, I've just finished Oliver Twitters. And they said, oh, did you like the bit about Dodger's trial? And I said, what trial?

And I'd had the bridge version and hadn't realized. Oh, really missed outload. You read the transcript of the musical theatre version. Oliver, exclamation mark. I love the songs. Yeah. You read as part of fish research, or you started reading, curious if you finished, Le Mez.

God, I started reading so many things as a part of this research. In fact, I started reading the Woman in White a few weeks ago, still haven't got to the end of that. But yeah, Le Maiz. I got most of the way through it, but I didn't finish it. Well, I read Le Mesa's 365 chapters, so you can read one a day, which is quite neat. But not an elite year. Or you can have a day off.

Interesting. James, have you ever thought about reading fiction for pleasure rather than for the podcast? I think you might get to the end of more books. I really struggle. I've got to say, I really struggle to read fiction for pleasure these days. Really? Yeah, because I read so much nonfiction for my job. I need like a year off.

What you need is a book club, because I started doing a book club. And it does force you to read, yeah, and it forces you to read, you know, things that you might not have, new books that have come out that people have been suggesting. Is that the idea of fiction that you're forced to read stuff and that's why you do it? It just, it's why you're forced out the time for you to do it, which is interesting. Accountability. Yeah. Aren't you in the same book club as Andy though? I think I've heard about some of the books. Is it just Andy's book every week? It is. Yeah. It does feel like a post-apocalyptic world that I'm living in every time we chat about it. What was your best book you discovered through a book club? Sylvie Plas the Bell Jar, which I love her poetry and I've never read the book. I've never read. Did you remember this? Because I haven't read that book. And so I was going off Wikipedia that this word was in it.

I think it is true. Weirdly, I don't remember the word. But, you know, you don't remember every detail. Well, you might remember a hundred letter word. Because I assumed it was a typos. Well, no, but, you know, also when you're on a deadline for book club, it's like, fantastic. What a great word to. Skip, skip, skip, zoom me forward.

It's like the fast lane. It's like a travel later. They are good. Aren't you in a book club? No, I'm not. But I think what I would like. to be in one for is that discovering books that you might not know about. So I've got some friends who are just so, so good at book recommendations and really good at like personalising it to what

you like to read. So I read an article years ago saying that actually there's an argument that you shouldn't read books that win prizes. And the argument being that if you say you're not into Russian high society and agriculture, why would you suddenly be so just because it won a prize? So actually it can put you off books. Where's actually if you go in and say... You're describing war and peace there? But what if you aren't into agriculture, aren't into Russian high society are into people

being hit by trains. What do you? Then I reckon there's somewhere at a bookshop with that's the category. You hear Andy's podcast at QI.com email pinging. Furious, how dare you spoil

in the ending? Well, that's good that we're bucking a trend a bit you being in a book club, Dan, and I in fact am in a book club and I'm not because it's extraordinary. I know we know that it's mostly women, but it's 88% of book clubs in America at least are all women.

and women generally read quite a lot more fiction than men and book club are so popular these days as well I think since Oprah Winfrey's book club they've shot up I think there was a survey of women who read at least one book a month that found over half of them were in book clubs which makes sense because when you're reading that often well here's a really interesting thing I went to a publishing party not too long ago and there was an author there who I'd met

whose book came out the same time as mine she had an American release It was a fiction novel called Wayward's brilliant. And she was a New York Times bestseller. And she's an Australian who moved over here. It's her first debut book. I said, how? You weren't even in America. How did that happen?

Book clubs. She said publishers desperately try and put their books in positions to get them into book clubs because if you do, you're a New York Times bestseller. Yeah. They're just massive. How do you what you go around like asking people, are you in a book club? So you give away a lot of free books and stuff online. as e-books and then it gets reputation and then book clubs pick it up and Reese Witherspoon is the other massive book club in the in America.

Oh, so do you mean big famous book clubs? Sorry, you don't mean just like my book club. There aren't people will knock on. Probably them as well. Probably them as well, yeah. Just books that are like heavily marketed or promoted. Do you know where the biggest book club in the world is? The biggest in the world. Okay. In Europe China, right? Contender. I'm going to say Iceland because they're famously, they all write books and read novels. So I feel like you've checked all the book club counts, but I'm going with volume. I'm going with the digital world. So this is the book club version of TikTok. Oh, okay. So they believe that Book Talk has sold 20 million books in 2021. Like it's huge, there's this huge...

Colleen Hoover, right? Yeah, and they'll say like, TikTok made me buy it. And it's like these books that just really drive through TikTok. So much so that they've launched the TikTok book awards this year. And what I love about this is because TikTok, I guess, is so many people, they're not just books that came out this year that were popular in one shopper by one sort of person. So they gave an award to Jane Austen. She got revival.

Yeah. So it's like really new stuff, really old stuff. Can I ask, yeah, sorry. For like older listeners, not myself, obviously, but for other people who might not really know what TikTok is, can you explain how that works? It's not just one book club where everyone reads the same thing. No, so TikTok is video sharing,

and I'm guessing everybody who uses the hashtag book talk and can see what they're talking about, so things sort of trend and build. And I guess what's nice about it is if you've read a book that you love it and no one else has, you can find someone who's made a video and see what they say about it. Whereas if I've read one book and no one else I know's read it,

And to be fair, sometimes I finish a book and I'll go on to good reads just to see what people have said and see if I agree with them. Oh yeah, I'm usually. Definitely. So she was a good like twisty end and I'm like, did I understand that? What actually happened? I'll go and check. I have a mental reasoning question for you. Brilliant. Love these.

Going back to Oprah's Book Club. Yeah. So it's founded in 1996 and her, the idea was that it would be highbrow, quite highbrow literary options that she chose. So she had great books in there like William Faulkner, Tony Morrison, called Mike McCarthy. So really good books over the years And every time she makes a choice It pretty much becomes a bestseller It's like rockets to the top of the charts

It doesn't exist anymore I think it stopped in about 2010 or something But whenever she chose a book Book sales actually after that decreased Why? Do you mean book sales more generally? General book sales decreased Okay, this is why

Everyone wanted to buy this one particular book it went out of print really quickly and no one bought anything else because we're waiting for that one to come back into print. Interesting. Interesting. Not correct. Good guess though. Paper shortage. It used up so many trees that... Half of the Amazon, Oprah's responsible for destroying, actually.

No, it's specifically about the fact that she chose quite high-brow options but appealed to an audience that wouldn't necessarily be reading things like that all the time. Okay, so you're... So they spent more time reading? she got it so rather than buying two books you buy one and read it for two weeks exactly these people who are buying you know three books a week

and pacing through them they're suddenly reading you know the sound and the fury spending a few weeks isn't it so really everyone should be buying much shorter books and getting through more of them how long is your book there 345 pages but it's a very big font mine's a children's book so it's a bit shorter

okay it is time for our final fact of the show and that is James. Okay, my fact this week is that the liquid in a can of beans is more likely to make you fart than the beans themselves. Okay, good to know. Incredible.

Useful knowledge. Yeah. Is it? Are you going to start rinsing all the liquid? No, I'm going to start chugging bean juice because I just want to be more farting. So this comes from an article on the website Serious Eats and they partnered with

Harvard Science of Cooking Program. and looked at the fartiness of various beans and stuff like that and to see if there were any ways to decrease the effect. And they looked at various old wives' tales of how you do this, like you soak your beans for ages. This would not be a can of beans, for instance. You might soak your beans for ages and then cook them in a certain way and see if that makes me.

I like that idea of someone soaking their Heinz-bate beans. It always so, yeah, left them overnight. It might be cooking them with bay leaves or something like this, and nothing really made any difference. But they looked at tinned beans, and they did find, actually, that rinsed beans from a tin are 20% less farty than unrinsed, and that the liquid you throw away is 30% fartier than the beans are themselves. Wow. And why?

So it seems like it kind of seeps into the juice. And also the beans they kind of disintegrate the longer they're in there. And the more farty ones are the ones that disintegrate. The hard ones that you just kind of go straight through you, they don't disintegrate. Right. So, yeah, the fartiness seems to just get into the juice somehow. That's so interesting. I think some things probably work, right?

Like there are some things that could counteract the fartiness. There's kombu, the Japanese seaweed that you get in like kombu dashy. It's an ingredient of that. And that has these enzymes that break down the sugars in beans when you eat them. So the reason that beans make you fart is because you can't diet. digest the stuff in them, but the bacteria in your stomach can, right? And then the bacteria as it digests, it releases these gases. And I believe that kombu manages to break down those sugars, so the bacteria doesn't have as much to eat and fart out. Correct. And so if you add this seaweed

to everything, that might work. Might do. Give it a bit of go. I actually, you mentioned my book before, I wrote about a guy who tried to stop farts from being produced off the back of beans. Yeah, he did. Yeah, wonderfully, a man called Colin Leaky. And Colin Leakey is the son of Mary and Lewis Leakey, who were the great anthropologist who's discovered all these hominid skeletons throughout history. So he had seen a report of NASA trying to make beans that could be sent into space and not produce flatulence. So lose the fart stuff from beans. And he thought, yes, that would be amazing to do because if you could invent a bean that gave you less farts, you could have that in developing countries where they sometimes, you know, Crohn's disease, for example. Beans are meant to be avoided.

So there's a lot of health implications if you have a lot of wind in you. So he thought, if I could invent a bean, that could be like a meat replacement. And then we could have safe eating that's going on for all these poorer countries. So he spent a lifetime doing that. And he did invent two beans, which are on sale and have been sent over, which are meat replacements and less flatulence. So he was a scientist who did great things. But my favorite thing is he patented an invention called the flatometer,

which was a device that slots into your rectum. And there's a tube coming out that connects to a balloon on the other end. and you tuck the balloon into your shirt pocket and you just collect these. These are real invention. It's bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger. Kind of like the viper fish. At the end of the day, you're like, well.

But children's party ever. Yeah, the balloon dog you get given. So I was reading that they have measured how much volume a fart has and they did it by feeding everyone beans and using a rectal catheter to catch the fart. Would you like to guess the mills,

how many mills are average fart? It's so hard, isn't it? because it's a gas, so it spreads out quite a lot. So you would think it would be quite a high mills. Yeah, interesting. 572. What? I was going to say more like 20.

Kind of in the middle, 90. So we'll put in your airport hand luggage. Not really in the middle. I suppose it doesn't count as a liquid, does it, unless you've done a little bit of follow-through. Well, another useful thing scientists have invented, speaking of following through, useful things scientists have invented

is a machine that listens to your bottom and distinguishes a fart. from a shot. Ah. And... I would argue you would know without a machine whether that's happened.

You do usually know, don't you? But often... But do they tell you before or after? It actually tells you when it's happened. Wait, is it more for when someone's done it, but you're with them and you say, was that a fight or a shark?

And they say, no, it's just a fight. And then you go, let me get my machine out. Get to the bathroom, you filth pig. It's meant to also detect more than that as well. So it's the idea is that you have this device. It's called the, um, and listen carefully, the synthetic human acoustic reproduction testing. The shot. Um, yeah. And basically it's to give early warning of like colorectal cancers, uh, things like

bowel cancers because it's thought that you might have changes in your flatulent sounds or in your poo sounds. And if it listens, it might then say, oh, your poos sound a bit different these days, or your fart sound a bit weird, have you thought about getting checked out? And so researchers listened to many hundreds of hours of audio with various pooing and farting noises and then tagged them correctly to train the machine. Wow. And it can now identify whether something's urination, flatulence,

solid defecation or diarrhoea 98% of the time. So it's not at the super advanced level yet, I suppose. It's still at the stage of distinguishing a wee from a poo. Yeah, it's not that advanced if you play them, George Osborne's new podcast, it does say it's diarrhea. I was just thinking who I could slam of the podcast community. You thought? Wouldn't attack us for, yeah.

Good luck when he's on next week. How much do you think the cheapest can of beans you could buy in the UK was in 1996? Oh, 1996. Yeah. Like 4P? 9P. A couple of p. A couple of p?

Yeah. The answer is negative. 2P. They paid you to take them. Why? I'll have two million. Did you get like money back for returning the tin or something? No, this was, this was just a crazy moment in, in retail where it was called the Bean Wars and basically they were just competing and competing to make the price lower to win the competition that it got to a point where this one place, which is supermarkets, yeah, supermarkets. And this place called Sanders Supermarket basically had a deal whereby, surprisingly enough, doesn't exist anymore.

So too many beans and went fast. But it went so low that they went into the negative. So if the beans were part of a shopping pile that you had, they took the two P off. So of your final bill, if you were just buying the can of beans, they gave you 2P, but you could only do it for one tin. That was their thing.

But there was a point where you were paid to leave a supermarket with a can of Pee. This is like when you want to buy, when you want a sandwich and it's better to get the meal deal then so you end up having to like buy a drink as well and then your sandwich is cheaper. It is, but it's very rare that you can just take the drink from the meal deal and they'll pay you for it, the difference that you would have saved.

That is unbelievable. Tesco was selling them at 7p. Do you think people went around lots of different supermarkets collecting as many two peas as they could? But if it's 2P and 1 tin, it's quite limited. So they probably lose less money than they would from halving the price of ketchup or toilet roll. Totally. The price of petrol or bus fare to get to the shop is going to be more than 2P. So it's false economy to go around the country to all of these shops.

making two feet But it would feel nice to get your two feet off And get your free beans God, I'm the kind of person Who would just always do that For no particular reason Don't even need that many beans Just go again with different hats on

To get more beans I'm back again Hines, I was on the Hines factory website Because they make beans And do you know the average number of beans in a Hines tin Oh well what size The normal size? There are three sizes

Oh yeah you've got this mini ones Got the mini one the full one just like 200, 400, and then you've got a snack pot. Oh, you're so right. Yeah, sorry. I mean, the normal one. Showing you too much what I eat for lunch. And Ann mixes it up every day with a different one.

Yeah, I'm going to mix it up and have two small pots instead of one big pot. 572. That's a good guess. We'll switch tight in the reestablish. The 400s. The one everyone knows. The mainstream one. Yeah.

not your edgy left field trendy one you're so hipster these things okay in a standard size of beans I can't believe you now don't know the answer given your knowledge

you've bought so much time James how many did you say 572 okay I'm gonna go I feel so invested in this now I'm gonna go 424

nice okay then 365 and you have one so it's worth things such a sort. I like Dan's idea of 365. It's like every day I'll have one beam and read one

chapter of lay miserable. It's 465 on average. But the reason I say that is because in 2019, Councillor Steve Smith, in a break from cheating at cricket, got back. I do think it's a different guy probably.

He got back from a resident meeting late at night, so I'll crack into a can of pine's baked beans, and it was full of sauce and contained one bean. Oh, no. I remember that? How crazy that I remember that? Do you remember the story? Yeah, I remember that story coming out?

Imagine how farty he would have been next day. Hungry and farty. It's the worst combo. Very randomly, I was in an office the other day, and in through the door came Greg Wallace, who's in Master Chef, that guy. Yeah. That's weird. Yeah, he just, he was like, there was no connection between us two being there.

He came and walked up to me, just walked up to me and said, want to hear a bean fact? And I went, and I was like, okay, yeah, sure. I went, oh, I must listen to fish. And he went, so at the bean factories, they have a laser which tests out good beans. And if they don't like it, they flick the bean off. And he was like, so they have a bean flicker at the thing. And I was like, oh, great, that's so cool. We could use that on fish, a QI.

And he went, are you connected to that? I would have assumed this guy's really into food facts you know and he just tells anyone he literally opened a door looked me in the face walked up to me and said do you want to hear a bean fact of course I'm going to assume

I genuinely would never have assumed that did people just come up to you randomly if it's Greg Wallace he knows he's famous he's like I can get away with doing this to a randomer I just love him coming across as the weird one in this story you can't cause very self-involved

oh it's all about my podcast Craig Wallace is the bean guy Talks about beans It does sound like a dream That is bizarre It happens It happens It happens

Would you like to hear a horrifying fart fact Now we're approaching the winter months So you know when on a cold day If you breathe out you can see your breath Yeah Well if you fart loudly enough You can see your fart on a cold day But not if you're wearing trousers

Yes okay It's only a problem for like winning the poo That is like winning the poo and I think I've read that story Winnie the Poo on a Windy Day That's what that was about it Yes another reason not to go out in public naked Hey

I've never realised that There must be footage on YouTube Of people doing that right I haven't searched it But feel free to take it I will I rather think it might be on more Specialist channels in YouTube Back to Dan's only fans

Yeah that's a new whole threat for me WikiFarts Okay that's it. That is all of our facts. We have now reached the by-an period of the podcast today. Thanks for joining us, and we'll see you again soon. 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, you can find us on our social media accounts. I'm on Instagram at at Shreiberland, James.

Still on Twitter at James Harkin. Anne? My Instagram is at Ann Miller Books. And if you want to get us as a group, Anna, where do they go? You can email podcast.com. And you can also go to our website. No Such Thing as afish.com. All of our previous episodes are up there. Do check them out.

There's also bits of merch. You can find Clubfish. All sorts of fun to be had there. Or just come back here next week. We'll be back with another episode. And we'll see you then. Goodbye.