No Such Thing As A Fish - No Such Thing As Jack The Stripper

Episode Date: September 2, 2016

Dan, James, Anna and Andy discuss hummingbird capes, spacesuits for ants, and the origin of the ballpoint pen.

And welcome to another episode of No Such Thing as a Fish, a weekly podcast coming to you from the QI offices in Covent Garden. My name is Dan Schreiber. I am sitting here with James Harkin, Anna Chazinski and Alex Bell. And once again... What? No! No! I'm back from Edinburgh.

I'm back from Edinburgh. It's Andy Murray. I don't recognize that name. And Andy Murray. And once again, we have... gathered around the microphones with our four favorite facts from the last seven days, and in no particular order, here we go. Starting with you, James Harkin.

Okay, my fact this week is that Neanderthals wore capes. Hmm. Do they only wear capes? I think they kind of did, and it seems like... Is that a good look? Is that a sexy look? I'm just trying to picture it. It's sort of obscene if you're only wearing a cape, I think. Do you think worse than nudity?

I think it's worse than nudity. Well, no, it's worse than being naked. just socks on. Like that's, that's what it is. That looks terrible. Having one item is always just a bit embarrassing. Absolutely. No, a cape's quite a good look because you can wrap it round yourself and then do the big reveal. So Neanderthals, they were capes. They did. Compared to early humans who wore more like parkers or hoodies. So the thing is, they found by looking at animal remains in early human settlements and Neanderthal settlements and they found that the Neanderthals didn't really have the ability to make more complex clothing like the humans could. All they could

really do is get an animal's skin and just wrap it round their neck like a cape, whereas the humans could kind of make more proper clothing. And they reckon that this may be one of the reasons why the Neanderthals died out when the humans proliferated. Kind of ironic that they'd done superhero gear in order to wipe themselves out. What a bunch of idiots. I read a thing about superhero capes, and it was a physicist who'd done an analysis on Batman. Cabe. He worked out that if, as in the film, he used the cape to help slow himself down, he would still have hit the building he was landing on at 50 miles an hour,

which would have immediately killed him. I don't think, I mean, I think we're assuming when we watch that, that there's some magical force holding him up as well as just the sheer force of his cape, aren't we? But he is just a bloke. Let's not like Superman with superpowers. He's just a guy with tons of money. Oh, I kind of thought he had a little bit of extra magic power as well. No, his sole superpower is material wealth.

I thought the really interesting thing about this new research that's been done was the idea that early humans, the real superheroes of this story, had fur trim hoodies. It's the all fur trim coats because what the researchers found is that certain animals were found at human sites that weren't found at Neanderthor sites. So I think there were animals like weasels and wolverines that were found on the human sites and they have like short hairs. And they're the kind of hair that you'd use to make a fur trim. so they've got this whole mixture of fur and if it's added to sleeves and the hoods of clothes then it insulates you better how are they sewing or putting stuff together well do you know that the oldest sewing needle

was found around this time around 40,000 years ago really actually it was found more recently but it was left 40,000 years ago no no sorry it was found 40,000 years ago but immediately dropped again in a haystack but weirdly it wasn't early humans or Neanderthals, it was Denisovians,

who were a third group of hominids, who kind of lived around the same time. Were we the most clever of the bunch at that period? They definitely have bigger brains than we did. Well, they have bigger brains Neanderthals, but there is a theory that, because they had bigger bodies as well, and they had larger eyes too,

so they had extremely good vision, but there's a theory that more of their brain would have had to be given over to their visual cortex and to controlling their body as well. So they were great, kind of gymnastics or seeing things from a long distance. The Neanderth Olympics were brilliant. And all the audience were five miles away as well.

But on the other hand, they couldn't do rubits cubes. And obviously that really got humans through the eyesight when it was very boring. And you had to have entertainment. Yeah, I think scientists have come forward in the last year slightly, not debunking, but saying there's no actual evidence to show that increased focus on your brain on eyesight or body size would mean that you had a less good height. cortex, but it's certainly a theory. That's the thing. It just changes all the time.

Probably everything we're saying right now is just going to be disparate, particularly with Neanderthals. Every day there's a new story that says, oh, they were killed by bunnies or they loved. Have you not heard that theory? No, no. Oh, they were killed by rabbits. Were they? No. It was to do with the fact that they couldn't, I think,

I'm gaining this in the sort of area of right, their main source of food also became the main source of food that rabbits were eating and rabbits were eating all the food and so they just ran out of food effectively so rabbits kind of took i don't know here's a thing if you try to live off rabbits your whole life you wouldn't be able to because they don't contain nearly enough nutrients unless they've eaten all of your other food and so they contain all the food groups now inside of their bodies is this an all you can eat rabbit situation yeah if if the only thing you could ever eat was rabbits you would die no you die quite quickly as well i'm not sure exactly what

it is that you're missing. I think it's a famous kind of thought experiment about rabbits in particular. Really? And lots of other things, presumably, or rabbits, the only one's trying to screw us over. Yeah, you could probably live just off Guinness. Yeah, okay, James, good luck with that. They always say that, they always say that, don't they? They say, like, two pints of Guinness and three

Mars bars will get you through the rest of your life, but it doesn't sound right. Who says Irish people? Did you know? Because people always used to say, oh, drinking your Guinness is the same as having seven roast dinners or something, that there's the same number of calories in a pint of tenants or a pint of fosters is there isn't a pint of Guinness. Didn't you? I always thought there was way more in Guinness. Yeah. It feels like the small

when you drink it, doesn't there? Yeah, it does. Does it? Heavy. I don't know. You had a full pint of beer for your birthday the other day, didn't you? Yeah, fruit beer. I really like this clothing thing because it's sort of interesting in the knock-on effects that things have. So if Neanderthals only had capes, as we're saying. then they might have only been able to hunt during the very warmest bits of the day. So that limits your hunting range time-wise. It means you can't hunt in the morning or the evening.

Or it might have stopped them foraging further north, whereas if you've got humans in sort of park-like for things they can hunt further north, that extends the range. Or in that part of Europe, ambush is quite a good means of killing prey because you use the landscape and you wait for animals to come along and then you jump out and kill them, rather than chasing them as early humans did in Africa, for example.

So if you're doing, just lying down in a cape all day. You can't do it. You'll freeze. Do you remember there's that book that came out called The Singing Neanderthals? Yes. Yeah. So this is a professor from Reading University called Stephen Mithen. And he believes that they sung a lot and they like to dance, dance and clap.

And they used to do in their caves together. They used to sing in groups. I have read that book quite a few years ago. And I think, is it not also that he thinks that language came originally from singing? Yes. So people would just kind of sing and get rhythm, and then that rhythm and noise would turn into meanings, and then that meaning would turn into language. I think that's what you do.

Yeah, yeah. So for that reason as well, the language part, he says that he thinks that they would particularly have liked rap music. And he says, I can see them rapping in my mind. He thinks a lot of stuff this guy. Neanderthal males had one massive arm and one puny one. No. Like Nadal? Like Nadal?

Exactly like Nadal. Athletes, cricket and tennis players in particular have upper arm bones, which are much stronger in their dominant arm, right? Of course. So, all of us here, our dominant arm will be between 5 and 14% bigger. This is the arm bone, the upper arm bone, bigger than on the other side, right? In Neanderthals, the upper arm bone is 50% bigger than on the other side. And this is only the case in cricket and tennis players in modern humans today. So when you're saying adult, it's absolutely right.

And they thought that this was because they were doing spear thrusting, right, to hunt animals. But actually, they got modern humans to sort of practice thrusting spears and measured how much energy it used. And actually, that uses the non-dominant arm loads too. So they reckon that what it is is processing animal hides, i.e. scraping laboriously away at the inside of animal skins to make them suitable for wearing your capes. And we don't know if female Neanderthals had the same thing because we haven't found female Neanderthal skeletons where both arms are present. but we have found male ones. Do we know that female in the underfills had two arms? No, we don't, no.

Which might be a reason why they died out. Just one thing on capes, that capes were quite big in the Aztec world, and Montezuma particularly was into them in that every year he collected a tribute from his people of 2,560 of them. The word escape comes from the word cape. Does it?

What? It's like when someone grabs your cape, but you could run away because you kind of leave them with the cape. And you're just naked if you're in Neanderthal. That's actually... According to the etymological dictionary of the English language, to escape is to ex-cape oneself to slip out of your cape and run away.

Oh, cool. Isn't that great? Were there any famous villains that were known for that? Like, I mean, like, Jack the Ripper, we've got his cape, you know? Was there any... Like, just with a cape done up by poppers at the front or something, that they just whip off and lose? That's Jack the stripper, you're thinking.

But another kind of cape in the Aztec world that only Aztec rulers were allowed to wear was the Hummingbird cape And so hummingbirds were sort of revered by Aztecs Because I think of their tenacity And the fact that they'd attack things that were bigger than them And they wouldn't rest until they'd got what they wanted And so Aztec kings could wear capes made entirely of hummingbird feathers

I think I've seen one of those Yeah, they're pretty spectacular I think there might be one in a museum in Hawaii or something Oh really? Like really yellow, amazing kind of feathery cape. Wow. Hummingbirds, I think, are they the only bird that can fly backwards? Yeah.

But yeah, one cape would take 8,000 hummingbirds. Oh. How do you? Quite impressive to catch that many, though. It is. You probably sneak up on them from the front. Elvis Presley famously used to wear a cape in the later years. And the very first time that they had the idea for the.

cape because the idea was that it was going to be used to reveal himself not in that way on stage to the audience so it was a great way of hiding himself before if they could see him because you can still see the cape obviously yeah I guess but you're like who's behind the cape I mean I know they're at a presley game all right thing is is that with the cape so he commissioned it from this guy who was in another bit of America and so they made the cape and they sent it over on a plane and Elvis put it on and it was so heavy that as he walked forward he immediately immediately got dragged back by the weight of it and crashed backwards onto the ground. Who did that in the VMAs last year or something?

Was it Madonna? I think she just fell down forward. Did she not get dragged? No, she got dragged off by her cape. She did. Someone stepped on the back of her cape. Maybe it was just a tribute to Elvis. No one got.

Someone else who had a massive cape on stage was Liberacee. Oh yeah. Famously. He one time had such a massive cape. He was brought on stage in a custom made Rolls-Royce. and then he took off his cape, which was then taken offstage by a smaller Rolls Rice. No.

That is fantastic. That's ridiculous. I was looking at Sherlock Holmes because he wore a cape. Yes, he did, yeah. Described as wearing a cape. And he was illustrated wearing a very sort of famous cape. I think it became famous because he'd worn it. I don't think it was a famous cape that Sherlock Holmes adopted.

Who was this weird bloke inside my favorite cape? Sorry, you're absolutely right. He popularised that cape. But there was something really bizarre about the stories in that the man who was commissioned to draw the stories ended up not drawing them. His brother sort of got the gig somehow instead. But then he drew the man who'd originally been commissioned

to draw the cape was then the model for the cape, which his brother then ended up drawing for the stories. Was that a consolation prize thing? His brother was like, oh, sorry he didn't get the gig. They're really weird these Victorian... Because there was a coat with a cape built into it. Yes. Yeah.

I don't really understand it. Is it just to protect you against rain? Just fashion. Yeah. Must have been fashion. Yeah, because I... Exactly, I was trying to work out, was there a purpose to Darth Vader's cape? And a lot of people...

Because he's in space. What's he doing with the cape? There's a lot of anti-gravity going on. That's not a useful garment to have. A lot of people say that it was because of his authority and that a cape would suggest a military kind of authority for some reason. But then I don't really know much about Star Wars. But it doesn't seem like they have a lot of problem with anti-gravity at any stage.

Which is, it's interesting, isn't it? The one scene where I think you should see that is when he's flying, when Vader's in his own ship, because I imagine that's where anti-gravity kicks in. But he must be sitting on the cape. That's what I thought, because you don't see it in shot. You're right, because they must have thought this through. Well, they have because, look, there's a description on Wikipedia

about his entire outfit. So the outer cape was made so that it could block fire and acid jets, helping to protect the suits electronics, because remember Darth Vader was part of robot. And, yeah, but the cape was so heavy, you get this, the cape was so heavy that it restricted movement, so he had difficulty lifting his arms over his head, which is why you rarely see that in the movies.

Really? I can't really see a scene where that would have fitted in. Is when he does the YMCA. It's when he's on that football match on the Mexican wave comes around this way. Okay, it is time for fact number two, and that is Chisinski. My fact this week is that when the first bullpoint pen was launched in the US, riot police had to be deployed to restrain the crowds. It was the new iPhone of its day.

This was in 1945, and I actually read about this in a book I've just bought called Adventures in Stationery by James Ward. and this ballpoint pen was brought to America by a guy called Milton Reynolds. It was 29th of October, 1945, and he launched it in a department store called Gimbals in New York, and thousands of people came. So I think 5,000 people swarmed Gimbles department store and 50 extra policemen had to be deployed as an emergency at the last minute

because it was being swarmed so much. So they cost the equivalent of $160 now, which is a lot, but still they sold, you know, they'd sold millions. That makes sense. I'm presumably they weren't the real. crummy cheap barrows that you're paying $160 for. Because even, I mean, that was a time of some hardship across the world. Well, what he was thinking actually, you say it's of some hardship.

A, they didn't work because he rushed them through. But B, I think he was thinking it's the end of the war. I need to launch it now. People want a treat. Well, that war was terrible, but at least we've got a barrow. It's almost worth having another war. It was called the Reynolds Rocket, though. So there was a little bit of militarization going up.

He actually took out an ad in the New York Times to promote a full page ad. That's how big they were promoting the thing. And in it, he said that it was fantastic, miraculous pen, guaranteed to write for two years without refilling. Yeah, and you got your money back of it, didn't? And a lot of people did, didn't they? Yeah, loads of people, yeah. It was 104,643 had to be replaced in the first eight months. So I think, yeah, it had massive problems.

It was really leaky. or it would stop writing altogether. It just wasn't a very good design. And the reason was because he was a very competitive businessman. So there was this chap called Laslo Biro, who a few years beforehand had invented the Biro in Europe, and he brought it to Argentina. And Word had reached America and this guy Milton Reynolds of the Biro.

And he really wanted to patent the design, which was just this round tip and this capillary action, which meant that you could write in all directions and the ink wouldn't bleed out onto the page. Anyway, he tried to buy the patent for the design, and it had already been sold. And so he was so pissed off. He decided to rush through his own design before Biro could get his out.

So he knew that Biro in 1945, which was now run by a company called Evershard, I think. He knew that they were about to rush a design out. And so he put his out prematurely. But the thing was that his didn't use capillary action. No. He relied on gravity. So Darth Vader wouldn't have been able to use it, for instance. Indeed.

That's why you never saw him signing papers. Actually, there is a theory which Andy was just pointing. So I bet he was about to say this. Yeah. There is no writing in the whole Star Wars universe. The theory is a post-literary universe. You just see people pointing at, you know, pressing buttons with little symbols on them.

Right. Apparently there are some scrolls at the Jedi's... You can see it in the background occasionally that there's a scroll there, but whether they have writing on, we don't know. Also, you can see in... This is getting too geeky now, but you can see in Raiders of the Lost Ark,

when they have the Ark of the Covenant, there are symbols on the Ark of the Covenant of R2D2 and C3PO. So they've now put that in a suggested LucasArts, timeline of the universe. So a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, was remembered close enough on Earth

that they knew about 3PO and R2D2. So it's not that long ago. When you said this is too geeky, I was about to say, no, it can't be too geeky for this show. You managed to do it. So one of the first big orders for Byra's was by the RAF,

actually during the Second World War. So this was by the Laszlo, Beiro inventor himself. What's he called Beiro? I think it's originally pronounced beer. We've been saying it wrong all these years. It's probably Lashlo as well. Lashlo Biro, I think. I think it's Bero.

Probably. He was Hungarian. Well, he was born in Budapest. Right. He was Hungarian. Then he moved to Argentina. So this is a really weird thing also about the way he invented it. I mean, he had to flee the Nazis and he went to Argentina, partly because he'd had a chance encounter on a beach with a fellow holiday maker and told him about this great invention

he had. And the fellow holiday maker said, oh, well, I'm the president of Argentina. So do you want to come and set up in my country? And he said, thank you very much. I will. And isn't that amazing? It's extraordinary. Just, yeah, they're on the beach and they're happy to be chatting to the Argentinian president.

He was the former president. Oh, was he? But then really tragically, a bureau never made much money from it because he had sold the patent to it very early on in the process. Because partly, I think, to get more of his family out of Europe. I think his last shares were sold to get his family to Argentina. Yeah. I really love the sound of this guy, Biro, because apparently before he invented the biro,

he was a hypnotist, a race car driver, and a surrealist painter. That's awesome. Sounds amazing. And you'll like how he invented the ballpoint pen, Andy. He was just sat there looking out of a window, and he saw a marble go through a puddle, and then it left a line of water on the ground, and he thought, wait a minute, I could make a pen like that.

Did he know? Yeah. Because, Andy, you really hate these ideas of serendipity in inventions. I just think that often inventions are, it's so much nicer the story of Biro seeing a child playing with marbles and the marble going through the puddle. And who knows, that may well be the case. But often you get the whole, oh, yes, he had invented a whole load of fountain pens and then one of them was dropped and it created a weird ball on the end of it. He thought, oh, I know. Yeah, because Bayerow didn't actually invent the ballpoint pen or he wasn't

the first person to come up with a patent for it. No. I think it was John Loud. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Who did have the first patent. and he wanted something that would be able to write on wrapping paper. And he invented this thing, but unfortunately it was just a rubbish design. There were 350 ballpoint patents before Beiro came up with his. Yeah, yeah. From, you're right, John Loud, in I think the 1880s, all the way through to the 1930s. The idea had been thought of a lot.

It's just no one had made it work properly. So it's weird that he had to wait for a marble to propel itself through a puddle. Yeah, it is a bit weird, isn't it? considering there were 350 other inventions exactly the same as his. It's bizarre. It's almost as though that did not happen. Have we ever talked about, just speaking of riots and police having to be called unexpectedly

about the girl who put a Facebook invitation up and accidentally made it public, not private, the Dutch girl in 2012? And she got 30,000 people responding saying that they would attend. About a party, was it? Yeah, it was about a party, but it meant to go to just her friends. And apparently you have some private setting on Facebook.

There's a movie. about it, isn't there? Is there? Yeah, I can't remember what it's called. Oh, no, it was based on that film. So that's why people did it. And then they turned up in T-shirts saying Project X, Haran,

because it was in the town of Haran. And, yeah, like, up to 5,000 people turned up and 600 riot police had to be called and the girl fled her home to somewhere else because she'd accidentally put this invitation on private. It sounds absolutely terrifying. Yeah, it happens quite a lot.

What, 5,000 people rocking up to an impromptuant party. You did say it. up to 5,000 people. I mean, even at these parties, there's up to 5,000 people. Okay, it is time for fact number three, and that is my fact.

My fact this week is that not only was Lady Chatterley's lover banned from Australia, but a book about the ban was also banned. Yeah, so Lady Chatterley's Lover, famously a book that was banned in the UK, it was banned in Australia, many other countries, and what happened was in 1960, Eventually, after, I believe it was 1929, it was originally banned.

So a huge amount of time, and they finally got the ban lifted. And it was such a weird trial. Everyone who was at the trial reported about it at the time in 1960 because they had things like the fact that the jury, who were forced to read the book, weren't even allowed to bring the book out of the courtroom. So the jury had to just sit in the jury room and read the book. There was probably somebody really smug juror

who got to the end of it first before everybody else. Yeah, just did all the spoilers. She shacks him. That reminds me of something I read that in the 90s or late 80s, early 90s, there was a pornographic TV channel called Red Hot Dutch, which came over to Britain because people could get it with their satellite dishes.

And there was a big kind of moral crusade against it in the newspapers and stuff. And before the parliament could debate it, They had to have a special viewing of the channel in the Houses of Parliament, and apparently it was one of the most well-attended viewings of any thing that they ever had. I don't know. Because, oh, you're allowed to watch some really steamy hot Dutch pornography, but you have to watch it in a room full of MPs.

I'm not sure I click attending. So the really tricky thing when the book was going to be published is that this was all after a 1959 change in the law, which said that literary merit is a defence. So it was an extremely sexually explicit book. It had been banned in 1929, but then this change in the law in 59 meant that suddenly there was a possible defence, which means that it could be published legally. And Penguin then announced, you know, for Lawrence's anniversary,

we are going to publish a huge run of this. And they were intending to publish it for, I think, three shillings and sixpence, which is really cheap and would have put it well within the reach of working class people. So that was why the authorities, if you like, was spooked. Yeah. because there was still the thing in law which was an old Victorian thing which was it's all right for you to have something

which is explicit and obscene and whatever so long as only gentleman can read it but once you do it so that the poor people can read it then it becomes a problem and it's called variable obscenity and really yeah and so there's a very famous part of that trial where the chief prosecutor who's called

Mervyn Griffith Jones asked the jurors to consider if it was a kind of book that you would wish your wife or servants to read and in the newspapers they all thought that was hilarious because this is the 1960s we don't talk like that anymore but of course he was referring to the old Victorian law

which was is it something that working class people or women or whatever can read as opposed to gentlemen like me wow yeah and so when they eventually lifted the ban and said it could be sold in shops it's not dissimilar to the great ballpoint pen debut

shops were packed people were not writing but it was chaotic and it was mainly men who just heard so much about this book. And copies that had been bought were then being resold just the hour later in Soho. It's also a very quick read. But people, it's almost like when a huge superstar comes into town, you know, sculptors buy up the tickets and resell them for a hiked price. So in Soho, they were hiking the price of these unread books that had just been bought in the London bookshops. So just to bring it back quickly to the opening fact. So what ended up happening was that the ban was

lifted and that was great and someone then went on to write a book called the trial of lady chatterley's lover and that book then got released here in the UK and it attempted to get released in Australia but Australia had not lifted their own ban and so they decided to continue to ban anything to do with lady chattelie and that was one of the books that wasn't allowed in so did this book have like excerpts from the original do you think yeah no I'm not sure exactly what this book contains it's actually quite hard to find it online. Well, it's because you're part Australian done. Yes, exactly.

It's not allowed to read anything like this. And yeah, what's really nice about this is that a group of Australians actually decided that they were going to sneakily import it and start selling it in shops. And they did. And that kind of created a new conversation once they got caught because they were caught and the government attempted to prosecute them. And they said this shouldn't be done. And a lot of other politicians agreed. And as a result, that's what's what. kind of kick-started the whole thing about the relaxation laws of the obscenity laws in Australia.

So it's interesting. Lady Chatterley itself did it here, and in Australia, a book about the trial, did it in Australia. Yeah. It's kind of amazing. You'd have customs officials taking banned books off people. Apparently when trains used to go from Europe into the Soviet Union, when they stopped on the border, they'd check your passports, and there'd also be a guy going through going, Bibles and pornography! Bibles and pornography! And so you had to give up your Bibles or pornography. Wow. I know what it looks like.

It's just actually a very broadly interpreted Bible. Okay, it is time for our final fact of the show, and that is Andrew Hunter Murray. My fact is that Henry VIII contributed to NASA space suit design. Go on. So he had a suit of armor, which was built for him in 1520, for a thing called the Field of the Cloth of Gold,

with this huge diplomatic jolly in France. And in 1962, one of the teams working on space suits for NASA, a firm called Garrett AI Research, they visited the suit. And the Tower of London sent the firm data on it, and they sent photos of it, because they were trying to work out how to build better suits, which could completely overlap and completely cover the body. And that was sort of, you know, something that went into their research.

Yeah, so cool. So now you're going to have astronauts with massive cod pieces. Yeah. That would be good though, wouldn't it? Great. So good. He did have a bigger one than everyone else, didn't he? The king had to be shown with a bigger codpiece.

Indeed. Women in subsequent centuries used to put little pinpricks in them, and it was hoped that that would make them fertile and bring them babies. That's the, isn't that at the Tower of London? It's an actual, yeah. Were you there? We were shown around the Tower of London. No.

When was that? Oh, good few years ago I was shown around the Royal Armouries with Molly Oldfield, I think, for her book, the Secret Museum. And they have the copies there, and I think they have the actual one which the pins were pricked in. Oh, really? That's so cool.

Henry Eight had regular enemones from a pig's bladder, didn't he? So I actually thought that this fact was going to be, I think I may have misread your email, that the space suit was designed on Henry the Eighth's bottom. And so I did quite a lot of research into Henry the Eighth's bottom. So I was also reading about his toilet, and they were really lavish,

but I didn't really understand this. I think this was from Lucy Worsley, maybe, said Henry Leight's lavatory was lavishly covered in black velvet. Its lid opened to reveal inside a padded and beribboned interior covered with the same material. Oh, God. Those ribbons are going to be very nice for one use so.

That's a really good point. I mean... I think there must have been a hole in the middle, which... And maybe you had to aim well and just make sure you didn't catch the padding and the ribbons on the outside, maybe? No.

Yeah. It feels like with that, many animals. His name wouldn't have been so good. Long after someone dies, is it not treason anymore? So he got very fat later in life. Yeah. He was quite athletic when he was young,

wasn't he? But he got really fat later on. And I read this, that there was a 2009 study by the Royal Armouries that found that his waist was 52 inches. Okay, that's by looking at one of his suits of armour. But brilliantly, by coincidence,

Queen Victoria's bloomers, went on sale in 2012 were also a 52 inch waist. So they had exactly the same waistline, Queen Victoria and Henry the 8th. So this fact is also about spacesuits and NASA. Did you know, spacesuits these days are called emus. That's what modern spacesuits are referred to.

So in space you need to go and get into your emu. So I bet you is unit. Not bad. Extra. Yep. What's it going to be? I'll leave the next one to you, Anna. Mission.

Mammerie. No one near. I'm going to put us all out of all of our misery. It's extra vehicular mobility units. So where's the V? FMU. Yeah. Yeah.

Except that it's not a bird. But that's not a lovable creature. If you want to study ants in using an electron microscope, you would look at them in a vacuum. And to get them in a vacuum, you have to put them in a tiny little space suit. No. Well, they call it a tiny space.

suit. It's like you dip them in surfactant, which is a substance which causes like a tiny little nano suit basically that they go inside and it actually can even repair itself if it gets broken. But yeah, they call it a tiny little ant

space suit. Is it individual ones for individual ants? Oh my goodness. I know. That is so cool. That's incredible. Have you seen, I was looking at amusing looking spacesuit designs from over the years and NASA have tried some pretty wacky stuff but have you seen the

X-5 hard-shell spacesuit. We'd seen the X-3, haven't we? Yeah, we have, I knew you went up to date on this. So the AX-5,

the point was that you wanted to be flexible inside it, so that's often a problem in spacesuits that you can't move around enough, and it had a flexibility rating of 95% which means that the wearer

can move into 95% of the positions that you can if you were naked. But what this basically means is if you look it up. Reverse cowgirl. What are the positions that you can't get in? I don't know, actually.

Maybe they don't tell you in case you try and break it. I'm not sure I can get into all that many positions, even when naked. You might only have a 75% thing even without the spacesuit on. Oh, God. And each year as I get older, it gets less, doesn't it? Look, it's a funny space suit. It's not that morbid. It looks like someone's inflated.

So if I were this... If I wear this 95% space suit, does that mean I can now get into bar positions? No, certainly not. I'm afraid it's not 95% of the average persons. It's 95% of your position's naked. Your naked is 100%. You could barely do anything. So I could actually only get down to about 71.5%.

Don't buy it. If only you could transmute your consciousness into an AX5 spacesuit, then you'd be able to do more than you could today. How many Percenties do you think you could do wearing just a cape? That's over 100. 110.

Have you finished that? I just need to describe how this works. Because it's ridiculous. The AX5. We know. The AX5 looks like a hugely inflated Michelin man. So essentially it's like being in a giant bubble.

where it seems like you can pull most of your limbs out of the sleeves and sort of your legs out of the legs and move around inside it. But it looks totally absurd because it looks like you've put on a piece of clothing 20 sizes too big for you. So they decided not to let it go. But it's a good amount of roominess in there just with your head hanging onto the helmet and the rest of your body can swing around underneath it. That's a good idea, actually.

Shall you wrap up? Yep. Oh, do you know what the French for codpieces? Le croissant. I thought you'd go down that road. It's not. It's bragette. Spelled the same as burgette, but with an art, which seems to have so much room for confusion. Brugettes for breakfast? Yeah. Brilliant for a French 16th century sitcom, wouldn't it?

Yeah, stupid farce. Just put a broguezette over your penis and get on with it. Are you sure? Madame's halfway through eating it. Okay, that's it. That's all of our facts. Thank you so much for listening. If you would like to get in contact with any of us about the things that we have said over the the course of this podcast, we can be found on our Twitter accounts. I'm on at Shreiberland, James, at Egg-shaped, Andy, at Andrew Hunter M, and Chisinski. You can email a podcast at QI.com. Yep, or you can go to our group Twitter account, which is at QI podcast, or go to no such

thing as a fish.com, which is where we have all of our previous episodes. Also, why not go to iTunes. All of our first year of fish is up there now. You can buy that too. And we will be back again next week with another episode. We'll see you then. Goodbye.