No Such Thing As A Fish - No Such Thing As Kylie Minnow

Episode Date: March 11, 2021

Dan, James, Anna and Andrew discuss hungry marines, thirsty police and sleepy snooker players. Visit nosuchthingasafish.com for news about live shows, merchandise and more episodes.

Hello and welcome to another episode of No Such Thing as a Fish, a weekly podcast coming to you from four undisclosed locations in the UK. My name is Dan Schreiber. I am sitting here with Anna Tyshinsky, Andrew Hunter Murray, and James Harkin. And once again, we have gathered round the microphones with our four favorite facts from the last seven days. And in a particular order, here we go. Starting with fact number one, and that is James. my fact this week is that US Marines are considered to be so stupid that members of the other armed forces called them crayon eaters. This year, a Marine has invented an actual edible crayon. Now, does that prove the Marines are not stupid? I think so. Does it prove that they are

and that they haven't understood the joke? This guy, he's invented something, so that makes you smart, doesn't it? Yeah. And does it draw? It actually draws like a crayon. It's not just an edible stick. Of course it. It does draw.

He might have just taken a pepper army and shoved a nib in it. Does that count as a crayon of pepperami? I mean, I suppose if you smeared it on the wall, you could get some kind of drawing out of it. No. So this is a guy called Frank Manto, and it was both him and his business partner, who's called Cassandra Gordon. and they decided in 2017, having heard of this thing about being called crayon eaters, that they would decide to come up with an edible crayon. And they've got these things called crayons ready to eat,

and they taste like delicious vanilla-flavored chocolate. And anyone can eat them. Don't give them to your pets, because I think they have some chocolate in them, and pets aren't allowed to chocolate. And actually, this guy called Frank Mantot, he was using some crayons to color in a project once when he was at a high school.

And not when he was at high school, he was kind of... I was going to say, I mean, he's not a Marine's reputation here. And what happened was he put a crayon in his mouth, like, to kind of, because he only had two hands and he needed to hold one. So he put it in his mouth. And that was when he realized, wait a minute, are there any edible crayons, actually? And so then he got in touch of this lady called Cassandra,

who's a pastry chef, and she helped design this new product. I bet that when he put the crayon in his mouth, immediately a Marines recruiting officer of paper said around the door and said, you, you're the kind of guy we need. So they're currently trying to crowd fund the crayons in order to go out, these new edible crayons.

So if anyone wants to check it out, it's crayons Readytoeat.com. And they're looking to get $75,000. At the moment, they've got $5,750 as of recording. But you can go to their shop and buy a T-shirt. So that is available right now. Is it an edible t-shirt? It is not an edible t-shirt.

It would be a real shame if today, the day that we are doing a comic relief marathon asking people to donate money to the best causes in the world if actually all of their funds were redirected to fund this edible crayon. I just want to say, if you have to choose one, just think really carefully. Look, comet relief are trying to feed the world, don't they?

How'd be better to do that than to send a lot of edible crayons everywhere? James, is it a pun on meals ready to eat? because that's what they call their U.S. military supplies, isn't it? MREs. That's the kind of the meal rations you get in the field. To be honest, I didn't know about that. But now you've said it, I mean, it definitely is, isn't it? Must be. Yeah. It's even in the same packaging style, Andy.

So it's like a brown bag, yeah, it's got the font on it. And it's the idea that you, it's the idea that they be given to children or to Marines. Because obviously, children tend to use crayons more, but Marines might need emergency supplies in the field. They're not supposed to be emergency supplies. I don't think. I don't think you replace them with the usual crayons that Marines take in the field.

It's very boring. A lot of it is waiting around, but they've got to have something to entertain them. Yeah, it's funny products like I like it. Yeah. Okay. It's just it's an in your face to the abusers, right? To the insults. Yeah, exactly. And why do they call Marines crayonators?

It's like, this is quite a new thing. The interview with Frank Mantot that I saw, he said that when he was in the Marine Corps, they never called them crayon eaters. That was until 2002. They said they were known as jar heads, grunts, ground pounders, bullet sponges, but

they were never known as crayonators. And I can only think, looking at those dates, that it's due to Ralph from the Simpsons, who was a regular cryonator and famously supposed to be a bit dumb that they must have taken that. It must be. You're so right. Yeah. There was a blog from another Marine

about that nickname railing against it, not because it's insulting, but because it's just so shit. and I couldn't tell if it was like the Lady Doth protest too much but it started out at him saying you know we always make fun of each other in the military so we call the Air Force the Chair Force very funny

the Coast Coast Guard are puddle pirates the list goes on apparently but he didn't he didn't but then he said the crayon eaters is just super lame do you think that something is lame as lame as a krayon eater is going to offend a member of a tribe whose trainees are taught to yell kill during training.

Yeah, well, he makes a point. Well, he makes a point, but I think, like you say, he makes it a bit too strongly, doesn't he? The article is very, very funny. Just a couple of extracts. It's bullet point. It's like, point one. First off, it's just kind of weak.

Maybe we're just too dumb to understand the insult here, but quite frankly, it sucks. It's lame. It's no better than a kindergarten insult. You might as well say, you poop your pants. At least there's some truth of that for the Marines. I mean, it's really... I mean, that seems to be a...

a self-owned there, doesn't it? At least we shit ourselves. Should we be calling them pant poopers instead? You're right. He's shot himself in the foot with that article. It's just more ammunition. He shot himself in the pants. It doesn't seem like they had a tremendous reputation

before if they were known as jar heads, grunts and bullets bunches. It's not as though the fine nickname they had before has taken a battery. I reckon they probably like ground pounders because that implies running, you know, you know, strong runners, maybe. That's true.

Bullet sponge just makes you sound pretty damn hardcore. Yeah. Yes, that's true. I guess so. Or more like just people who are disposable in war. That's what it sounds like to me. Cannon father. Do you know, if you have chewed off a bunch of crayon, but you've left some over,

do you know what those are called? Those tiny little bits at the end that are sort of useless. No, I don't know that. Rubbish? They're called left olas. And left olas. Yeah, left olas are very important because, you know, They can be collected and remolded into new crayons.

And that's a project that a guy called Brian Ware was doing. So for hospitals in the US, he would collect all the endings, all those tiny little bits at the end. And he has a new mold and he would pour it in. He would melt it up and he would remold crayons. And they go to hospitals for free. So that's pretty cool. God, I mean, I know hospital food is shit generally, but that is a bit beyond the pale, isn't it? That's their offering.

What was the name of that, the little end bits done? Left ola's. Left olas, and that probably comes from the ola of Creola, right? That's right. So the name Creola, right, I think this is amazing. The etymology of this word, it's so ridiculous. It was coined by Alice Binney, who was the wife of Edwin Binnie. These two people kind of started the Creola company.

And she got the word from the French word, cre, meaning a stick of chalk, and the English word oligidus, meaning oily. so it means oily chalk but I just love that I mean, oleaginous is such an unusual word to just think well I'm going to make a kid's play thing

out of this word It's a stupid name it's neither chalk not oily and in fact the whole point of crayons creola crayons is that it was the first type of crayon to not use oil

it used wax instead so it does seem bizarre to me to then give it the oil name it's non-olijinous well exactly but the Binnie family in general They made, obviously, they made millions out of crayons. And the really nice thing is what the money was spent on.

Because in 1986, the San Diego Museum of Art got a world-class collection of art bequeathed to them. And that was the result of the Binney family millions. I think it was Edwin Binney, who must have been, I guess, grandson of the original Edwin Binney. He had bought this wonderful art collection. So crayons paid for a world-class art collection, which I think is a very nice. It's all the art that made of crayons. Yeah, it was only crayon art. It was really...

No, I can't remember exactly what was in it, but it was really good stuff. Although, people used to paint with proper crayons. That's right. Yeah, well, do you know, 2012, up until 2012, the most expensive painting ever sold at auction was done by crayon, or rather pastels, but, you know, the same thing, really.

I know there's an oil and wax, slight difference to it. Yeah, and also reputational, if you say I've done a lovely pastel drawing, then people think, oh, you must really know what you're doing. If you say I've done a lovely crayon piece, I think, you've got five. Interesting, though, fruit pastels began as a painting tool that tasted a fruit. Oh, God, poor guy.

It's already been invented. We should tell him. Mate, they've done it. Fruit pastels. The painting, by the way, was The Scream by Edvard March. Oh, yeah. He did one, yeah, because he did a bunch of versions of the scream, and one of them was on cardboard, and it was done with these crayon-y pastels,

and that sold for something like $119 million at the time. It's now 23rd in the list of the most expensive pieces of art that have ever been sold with a Da Vinci right at the top. But yeah. And also his name, Edward Munch, comes from the fact that he used to eat his boring equipment as soon as he was done, didn't he? Crayola Vigood at PR, I would say, when their latest new colour, Blutiful, came to be.

The company said it beat, four other finalists, so the other finalists were dreams come blue, blue moon bliss, reach for the stars, star spangled blue. They're the four that it beat. And they said that the company chose Blutiful from over 90,000 unique submissions. Someone read through 90,000 names and then there were 400,000 votes to decide the winner. It's insane that you could have 90,000 unique names when the public have no ability to think of anything new, do they? Basically, if they've got 90,000 unique ones, then think of all the people who said blue-emate blueface and add that to that number. And you're in the millions. So I think they can't, they can't have meant unique names. They must

have meant unique submissions from people. Some people must have been coming up with the same ones. They must have been. There aren't 90,000 sounds in the world. What? But yeah, there's not 90,000 puns with the word blue in. That's for sure. Even you couldn't generate. No, but they probably just had people just sausage stick. You know, it's probably just random submissions. 90,000 is a lot of people.

That's really so many to be participating in it. It's kids, isn't it? It'd be schools that they're all submitting around America. I think it's. But it's crazy. I was looking through, I read this amazing site that I want to give a shout out to, which is Jenny's crayon collection site. And a woman called Jenny has gone through and cataloged every single.

single crayon that's ever been and ever been retired. I read through all the colors, obviously. And they prioritise bizarre things. So the initial ones are really obvious, like red, yellow, blue, brown. But by the time you're in the 32 crayon box, you're getting Timberwolf as a color. In the 48 box, you've got macaroni and cheese as a color. And yet maroon and navy blue, you don't get them to the 96 box. Really?

Wow. People in the Navy must feel very bad about that. Yeah, those puddle pirates. But one other thing about that, the colour changes, is the famous thing when they changed the flesh colour. So it used to be that Crayola had this colour which was flesh, which was very much the same colour as a white person's skin. But obviously that is extremely unwoken, not the right thing to do.

And there was a woman called June Handler. She was a scientist. And she realized that when she was observing children, they would often bully each other. Like the white kids would bully the non-white kids by saying, you don't have any flesh because you don't have the same color skin as this crayon. She wrote to Crayola. And Crayola, to their credit, very, very quickly changed it, changed the color to peach. And now they have a colors of the world crayons where you can, you know, basically it's all the different skin type colors that you can get in one pack. It's pretty cool, isn't it?

Yeah, good on you, Crayola. Yeah. Oh, good at PR. I'm telling me. Did you read the list of internet crayons that Creon released in the 1990s? I mean, it's just the same colours all over again. But they were called things like web surfing blue, circuit board green, green. Green.com, just another green, online orange.

And my favourite floppy yellow. Oh, really? Floppy yellow. That used to be my nickname at school. I don't know why they called me that, because I used to ship my... myself all the time. Okay, it is time for fact number two, and that is my fact. My fact this week is that the London Metropolitan Police used to have a van called

Tea Pot One exclusively to deliver cups of tea to officers stuck at the scene of a crime. Wow. That's awesome. Yeah, so this sadly, I believe that Teapot One and its brother or sister, Teapot 2, are now decommissioned, tragically, they're no longer running. And it's a shame because T-Pot 1 was this, it looked kind of like a burger van that went around, but it had also the sort of regalia of a classic police car. And on the very front of it, written in Capitals was T-Pot 1. And it would be called for, say, example, if police were called to an area where they thought

maybe a protest was, or if there was a big festival and they needed police on standby the whole time, this was the catering truck that would come by and top them up with tea. There would be other things like coffees and sandwiches and so on, but it was known as Teapot 1. Am I correct in thinking that behind Teapot 1, you would also get the milk motorbike, and that would bring the milk in the sidecar. And you had the sugar scooter behind that, didn't you? Yeah. Yeah, so it was basically the government privatized the catering of the Met Police after that

and put it out to tender. So this was the Met Police's own thing that they had. But then the government said, no, we'll be able to make it more efficient if we put it out to other companies. If you ever want an argument against privatisation, the N of T-Port 1. Well, I read one vlog about it where they said, let's be honest, in the main, the food was shit. But that's not the issue here. Who else could give you a frozen pork pie, a sandwich, an apple and a cup of hot grey water at 4 o'clock. the morning and do it all with a smile.

So it's one of these things where everyone knew it was terrible, but it was their thing, and that's why they were a bit upset about it. That is such a show. When Teapot was written across the front of it, Dan, was it written backwards so that if you were in a car and it was blowing up with its sirens behind you, you could see. And the siren was the kettle just whistling. I think from the photo that I've seen, unless they've reversed the photo, it looks like it was a normal reading for if you were standing in front of it, so the correct way.

So before T-Pop 1 existed officially on the front of a van, it used to just be a call sign. So police have all sorts of different calls signs for if they need certain types of units to come in. So if there's rioting going on and they have a van full of riot police, that call sign might be gold or silver. And they would know, OK, we need to send that van. It's good that they're quite different, isn't it? You don't want to accidentally send the tea lady in. Especially, James, if you say, right, we need to kettle everybody at this practice. Get the teapot.

So I actually spoke to a former police officer to ask, you know, do you know anything about where this came from? And by an astonishing coincidence, the person I spoke to is the person who may have generated the call sign, T-Pot 1. His name is Stephen Colgan. He's a buddy of ours. He is a former QIEL. He's been on the show before.

and he told me that at the time when the call sign came out, he was an instructor at Met Telecom and Wireless School. And one day, he created a temporary call sign, T-Pot 1, for the catering van, and it started getting used and it got stuck. And his colleagues started doing the same. And then the second van came, which was T-Pot 2. He says it's quite possible that he wasn't the very first to use it, but he can't find any instances before where anyone had done that.

And it was years after he left the police that it became the call-sign. much that they eventually turned it into the van itself. Wicked. I was on a Reddit thread which asked a question that everyone's probably wondering, which is, is it appropriate to offer police officers tea or coffee if they're outside or near your property? Which, so most answers were from American people saying this is the most British question I've ever heard being asked.

And not only you're offering the police tea, but you're asking you if that's polite to do it. But the answer seems to be from various police officers who responded. They love tea. Always right to. offer. Please don't be offended if we turn it down. Sometimes we're busy even if we don't look busy. But also, there are some instances where it may be considered a bribe. And so they are going to be obliged to turn it down. I was told, I was told when I worked in a hotel that when the police came

for our regular fights and things that we had to call them for, that we weren't allowed to give them tea or biscuits or anything like that. We were told we weren't allowed to because it was counted as a bribe. And that was by the police. But we still would ask them all the time, because is just polite, isn't it? Would you like a cup of tea? But then probably about half of them would say, no, we're not allowed. And then the other half would say,

oh, yeah, go on then. And there was one time that I was working behind the bar and there was a massive fight, like a really, really massive fight going on. And we called the police. We kind of put all the shutters down and stuff. And then eventually the police came. I'll never forget it.

We gave him a cup of tea. And he had like four massive guys who he was kind of corraling out of the building with a cup of tea. on the saucer with a biscuit on the saucer all the way through and he didn't spill a single drop. It was one of the greatest things I've ever seen. No, that's policing.

Bad ass. I did spot that the St. John Ambulance Twitter does say, as of 28th of June 2020, that they have a vehicle called The Teapot, which seems to still be running. And that is used to deliver refreshments to hospital staff and medics and volunteers, so on. So it is possible that, despite,

the police teapot one being down, we still might have a teapot on the road, helping out hospital staff. Thank God. As long as Britain has a teapot vehicle on the road somewhere. Hey, look, tea is very important to our country. It's like what we were built on. Absolutely. That's like the crows of Tower of London. If there's not a teapot van on the streets of London, England will fall. In wartime, especially, we get very possessive about tea. In the Second World War, I don't think we've mentioned that, well, first of all, once the Blitz came, all British tea stock was moved out of London, and it was dispersed through the country to 500 different locations. Whoa, 500. That's you're really making sure they can't get all 500.

But also in 1942, Britain bought up the world's entire supply of black tea. This is how much we realized we needed it to get through the war. It was all the tea on the European market. and it was largely for the North Africa desert campaigns because apparently all their water was transported in fuel containers so it tasted like oil. So the only drink they would drink was tea. But yeah, they bought up all the tea pretty much available to Europe.

The suffragette movement, tea was very important in that. There was a suffragette called Patricia Hall who once said that the promise of a cup of tea was a great inducement to get women to come to meetings. And also a lot of the tea rooms in London was where they would meet. So there was one in particular on Oxford Street called Alan's Tea Rooms, where a lot of the early suffragette plans got made. And this was run by a guy called Alan Liddle. But Alan Liddle was actually a pseudonym for the person who actually run it,

who was called Marguerite Liddle. And her middle name was Alan. So she called it Alan's T-Roobs after her middle name, because she was called Marguerite Alan Liddle. And I can't work out whether that Alan as a middle name was fake completely or whether just by coincidence she had a male-sounding middle name and she could use it for this tea shop. But yeah.

That's hilarious. Was this sort of like how female authors in the 19th century had to have male pseudonyms? Was it like you weren't allowed to establish a tea room unless you were a male? I think that's what I think it was like to stop people from worrying that this was a place where women were going to hang out because like Helen God and Liddle was one of the people who went to Marguerite's tea room and she was one of the very famous kind of suffragettes who wrote a book about, I think, about force feeding,

I think. It was like the first account of women being forced fed in prisons and stuff. So yeah. But they went on to found Little, didn't they? Little, yeah. Yeah, really good. Do you guys know who invented tea? God.

God? So close. so close it was Buddha. Oh. Yeah. There's an Indian legend that Buddha went to China. And when he was there, he said, right, I'm going to meditate for nine years now. Okay, he thought he was in for a long meditation. But he fell asleep.

And when he woke up from his nice sleep halfway through his nine years of meditating, he was so annoyed at his own weakness that he cut off his own eyelids and he chucked them on the ground. And where they fell, a tree with eyelid-shaped leaves sprang. up in its place and that was the first ever tea tree. Oh, wow. I've never heard that. Citation needed, but still, it's a nice story. Yeah. Tea pots. Original teapots came from China, where tea came from and they became popular in the Ming dynasty, but apparently I read one source that said that Chinese people would carry them around with them and just drink straight from the

nozzle, which kind of says... Oh, that does make... Well, it would burn, wouldn't it if it was too hot. Yeah. I think that's the only thing that stops me from doing it is that I'm worried that I've burned. You're right. Your lips are going to blister. Anna, was it known as the nozzle back of the day? I'll be honest, in ancient China, I don't think they even called it a spout handy. They probably have their own word for it.

You're right. I don't think nozzle is a Mandarin etymology. I read that on a lot of ships, so sort of military ships, that the teapots you get there, they are cube-shaped. Are they? To stop them rolling around and stuff? Exactly, yeah, the cube teapot. So it's, yeah, it's just a really cool teapot shape. It's, sorry, cube shape. It was invented by a guy called Robert Crawford Johnson.

And it's still going. Like, it's a big cube teapots limited is a big thing. It's easy for storage as well, because you can pack them up, you know, like those square watermelons that you get. Yeah, but the nozzle's going to get in the way, but I do see that point. But it's quite hard to make square, ceramics, isn't it? It's like, because you have the joints are really, really difficult to make them watertight. Yeah, interestingly, it does not have a nozzle?

Does it not? Which is interesting, which is why you can pack it, yeah. Does it have a handle? It does have a handle, yeah. Because I was going to say, it's like, I'm a little cubic teapot, short and stout. I don't have an handle and I don't have a nozzle. So it's just, it sounds like they're boxes. Yeah, it's a cardboard box.

And you write teapot on the side in crayon, hung it on the ship. Give it to the Marines. They'll know what to do with it. Do you know that the oldest petrol station in America is shaped like a teapot? No. So this is at least claimed to be the oldest petrol station in the country. It's in Zilla, which is in Washington State.

and it opened in around 1920s, 21, 22, something like that. And the reason it's shaped like a teapot is it's based on the teapot dome scandal, which was a bribery scandal during the presidency of Warren Harding. There was an oil field that was known as the teapot dome oil field and someone had been paying to get their hands on this oil field. And the teapot dome oil field was named after a teapot-shaped rock, which was in the middle of the field. And then that became the name of the scandal, which became the name of the first petrol station.

Amazing. You wouldn't guess a teapot-shaped petrol station was associated with mass government corruption. That was what it was not up towards. You think they probably sell tea. Yeah. They probably built it thinking, oh, this will be one in the eye for the government, won't it? Everyone will see this for hundreds of years. And the first thing we'll think is what an asshole Warren Harding was.

But actually what everyone thinks is, oh, that looks like a teapot. Sorry, do they call the nozzle the spout? Spout, yeah. I know a completely random thing about Zilla, just to chuck in this very small town, which is that they've got a church there, the Church of God in Zilla, and they have a giant 10-foot-tall T-Rex out the front of it, or they used to, which is dubbed and known to the locals as Godzilla. Oh, no way.

Yeah, and so it's become an attraction. You go and see Godzilla at the Church of God. And what kind of corruption was that a metaphor? It was a lizard-selling scandal in the presidency of Taft. Quite confusing, because Godzilla, am I right? It's not a T-Rex. Yep, you're raising a very obvious point. Okay, very obvious.

Fine. I'm saying, I'm saying, what I mean is everyone was thinking it. I speak for the people when I say, I wonder what happened to the T's made. Does anyone else ever wonder that? Sorry. You know the teasmaids That our parents reminisce about?

2016 by the Metropolitan Police When they decided to outsource their I don't know what a tease made is So a tease made was what It's like a little thing that you have on the side of your bed That not only is an alarm clock But it also makes you a cup of tea in the morning Yeah, it's the thing that makes your tea

Like everyone sort of had them in the 50s, 60s 70s And the first ones were actually in 1891 The first one was made It was called the Early Rise was Friend and it was basically an alarm clock, but apparently in the description of the patent, you replaced the spring of the clock with catgut. And when the alarm vibrated, the cat gut struck a match.

So it like pulled a match, struck against a surface, which lit some, you know, a bit of wick, oiled wick, which boiled water, and then the boiled water would tip itself into a cup of tea. It sounds a little bit like, I don't know if any of you guys ever played Mousetrap. You know, that thing that just never works.

Sounds like an OK Go video. It's like a Heath Robinson machine or, you know, whatever they're called. We've all found a reference that fits us apart from Anna here. Anna had mousetrap. Mousetrap. Okay, sorry. I don't recall hearing anything from you, Andy. You've been particularly silent for references on this one.

Oh, dear. Agree with the rest of us, haven't you, in this big old reference off? But anyway, tease-maids, about a quarter of households had them in the 70s, and I've always wanted one. And they were ruined, according to various articles, in the early 90s, by Norma Major. So, Norma Major, in an interview, as in John Major... Can you just say who... Yeah, yeah. Sorry, yes.

For international or younger listeners, Norma Major was John Major, Prime Minister John Major's wife. And she said in an interview that her tease-maid was the pride and joy of her bedroom. And almost immediately, sales of teased maids plummetes. I've got to say that's a bit of a slam on John Major to say that your teasemaid is a pride and joy of your bedroom. He was normally downstairs enjoying a curry. Good luck getting that one, international listener. Google it and then you'll have a good old laugh. It's very funny.

Okay, it is time for fact number three, and that is Andy. My fact is that the ninth longest running British soap ever was designed exclusively to sell soap. Nice. And you mean soap that when I first read this fact, I genuinely forgot the other meaning of the word soap. So I just thought you meant a bar of soap. The ninth longest running bar of soap was designed to sell soap.

And I thought, of course it bloody was. Great point. Very good point. I do mean a soap opera. Yeah. So this is a spin-off because last week we were talking about laundry. And afterwards, I just, I remember that we'd spoken about DAZ briefly. in the recording and I started reading about DAZ.

And I found out that for 18 years, from 2002 to 19, inclusive, they had a soap opera, which was in advert form, which was about DAZ, and they got soap opera stars to be in the DAZ adverts in similar roles to win the actual soaps they were in. It's basically, you know, the Marvel Cinematic Universe where everyone kind of meets all these characters from all over the place. This is like that because they've got people from Corey, EastEnders,

Brookside, Holyoaks. They're all in the same world mingling and interacting with each, other. Yeah. It's very much the most ambitious crossover in television history, isn't it? It is. It absolutely is. It's called Cleaner Close.

Does it count as a soap opera if it's actually an advert or not? Well, what a great point, James, and what a time to raise it. The Wikipedia on it reports that episodes have a character who does not use Daaz, which causes them problems, which are solved by a character who uses Daaz. So, I mean, I don't think anyone was... waiting tuning in each week. It wasn't like it ran for a thousand episodes or anything. But you'd only get like a couple of episodes a year, wouldn't you? Because they'd rerun the adverts and stuff. Exactly. Yeah. But fortunately, I don't think that is the dividing line

between soap and non-soap. And so I'm claiming that this is long-running soap. And what do they do in the ad breaks of the Daz Soap? They have extremely short ad breaks in those where they actually sell Purcell with another soap opera. So it's like a little Russian doll of soap operas. How come we've never seen this? I've never seen this. I know it quite well. Yeah, I've never seen it. A lot of people who listen to this podcast will be very familiar with this advertising campaign, I reckon, cleaner clothes.

More people will have known it than will have read Anna Karenina. And we're not going to spoil her either this week. But it's really pleasing because this is back to the original days of soap operas, which were sponsored by soap companies, soap manufacturers. The very first ever soap opera, which started 1930, was sponsored. sponsored by palm olive, who wanted ads for their super suds attached. And the reasoning was these are for women working at home, housewives, and what are they like? Well, they probably like soap.

So let's try and sell them soap while they listen and, you know, are at home. Do you know how Palm Olive got their name just as an aside? No. You can guess probably. All right. Was it founder by a woman called Olive, who had huge sweaty palms? We always needed to watch them. Yeah.

It's a good guess. I reckon the people at home might have worked it out already. But the two oils that it was made from with palm oil and olive oil. Oh, yeah. That makes more sense than the hand thing. It doesn't make more sense, I'd like to say. No, it's just different. Trumer.

But people hated soaps from the start, right? There was never a heyday where soaps were considered a high culture thing. They were railed against from that 19. early 1930s. They were 15 minutes long, and most newspaper articles, when they write about them, say basically about four to five of those 15 minutes of these blimmon adverts, all of which start with, as you say, Andy, ladies, have you tried X, Y, Z? And they were, they were sometimes called washboard weepers. That was an alternative name for soaps in the 40s. But I think really it was snobbishness, wasn't it? And also the fact that they were aimed towards women and often made by women.

So, like, one of the real first amazing writers for soap operas was someone called Eana Phillips. And she was incredibly incredible writer. She wrote two million words a year at her best. And she was often suggesting new colors for the Creola Company, wasn't she? She used up a lot of her word allowance. She invented things like the cliffhanger ending. That was her idea. But she was kind of the queen of soap operas in the early, early days in the 30s.

Yeah, she had a show which was called Painted Dreams, which was the very first one that she did. So that started airing in 1930. And she was asked, can you come up with a daily show that would show the sort of home life of people? And as you say, it was sort of treated like, what is this? Lowbrow nonsense. But actually, for the time, it was 1930. The characters that she created were incredibly strong women on the show. And there were virtually no regular male characters in it whatsoever.

So she really pushed forward this idea. that women were more than what society was saying they were, that they were much more clever, they were more ambitious. And so that was sort of like a beautiful little secret movement to push women's rights. Yeah. But it must have made a difference because they were so popular straight away, weren't they? I think by like the started 1930, by 1940, 92% of programs on the radio were soaps, basically. It was like 25 of the 30 top rated programs were soaps.

So maybe they are the cause of women's lip. Well, they did have a lot to say for society because the person who came after Erna Phillips was Agnes Nixon. So she was in the 50s and 60s. She was like the successor of Erna Phillips. And she not only wrote very strong characters, but she also wrote about a lot of societal problems. You know these days, in your soap operas,

you'll have lots of echoing the problems of society. They'll do that. And she was really the first one who decided to do. do that. And there was one time where one of her characters had cervical cancer and they found it through a smear test. And that really was the time that the taboo over smear tests really kind of was obviously still there a little bit, but it was like it was completely taboo before that. And this really made a massive difference and loads more women got tested after that. That's very cool. That was in 1962. Wow. Didn't know they had smear tests back then. Yeah, early days. Another thing

at Erna Phillips innovated in the soap field was having an organ player. And most soaps then just had an organ player as part of the regular employees whose job was just to give a in between scenes.

Did they do that? I don't know if they played that specific piece, but they did have, you know. There's TV shows in Australia the soaps like Home and Away and Neighbors are quite famous for giving us a lot of big stars that are now, you know, Kylie Minot and so on, sort of all got, you know, cut their teeth on that show. And I didn't really... Sorry.

Kylie is massive. Yeah, but she's also her surname is Minogue. What? She's so big that most of us know what her surname is. Minow, like the fish, a small fish. She's literally not a... Kylie Minow. She's a big fish.

She is quite petite, though. I have been saying Minow my whole life. Well, she nickname. That would have been a good nickname for her at school because she was, she's so petite. For all I know, she was Minow, as in like that's technically the correct way to pronounce it, but that's not the way anyone in the world has pronounced it off the last of the... You're right. You're right.

Now that he points it out, I do know that every other person who's ever said the name to me in my entire life has said it with the GUE. Sort of really punctuated. Migno. Migno. Listen, whatever she's called. Neighbors gave her to us. And I've lost my place now. So basically, Corrie, Coronation Street, The Street, is responsible for quite a lot of big actors as well that we now have.

So people who sort of debuted on it include Sir Ben Kingsley. He was a Coronation Street actor. Yeah. Davy Jones of the Monkeys. He came out of Coronation Street. He had a little role in that. And so did Joanna Lumley. So, you know, yeah.

The soaps are responsible for some of our biggest highbrow actors. as well, Kingsley and Lumley. Yeah, David Jones. He doesn't slot into that category, does he? Not quite. He's the wild card. You can be promoted on soap operas, so I really like this. So there's a guy, there's an actor called Bill Tarnie,

who is very famous in Soap World. He played Jack Duckworth, right? And he started out, he's Corrie, isn't he? Yeah, yeah. He started out as an extra, and his job was to play someone who was just out of shot. What? You occasionally would see...

Was he playing an organ? You'd see one of his arms briefly and occasionally in a shot, but you would never see anything else of him. That was control. And then, it's true, that was what he was initially cast as, was just someone else to show that someone else in the room. Did he have a really attractive arm or something? He must have, because when he was a promotion, he then spent 31 years as a full body actor,

as they're known in the biz, and yeah, that's a pleasing thing, the pleasing career progression. So he was supposed to be just out of shot. So it was the idea that he's someone for the other actors who are in shot to sort of look at. So it's realistic that... I think in a crowd scene with a pub or whatever, you don't just have two people sitting there and you have to imagine that there's everyone else in the pub. You know, you have maybe an establishing shot and then maybe you're next to someone at the pub,

so your arms are up against theirs. So you occasionally see his arm. But then he's in shot. Okay, his job was to be predominantly and almost always out of shot. But then actually, when he... got the main role as Jack Duckworth, whenever he walked into a room, you would see his arm come in first.

Here's Jack Duckworth. He'll have to say. What's that sexy move that I think people do it in like some musicals in Chicago or something, a woman in fishnet tights would project her leg in first and then her body would follow. Does he enter like that? Yeah, that's exactly how he does it.

He's always wearing a very nice watch. Okay. time for our final fact of the show, and that is Anna. My fact this week is that if you take an hour-long nap after listening to this show, you will remember five times as many facts from it. Wow. So do it. Cool.

So five times more than we said on the show? Or where are these extra facts coming from? Not everyone remembers every single facts as well you should know on this podcast. Yes, five times as many as if you don't take a nap. Yeah. So this, I really loved to nap, so I really enjoyed reading about this study. And generally, a lot of studies that have come out in the last couple of decades about how napping is great. This one was from 2015.

It was quite a small cohort, but basically it gave participants 90 words to remember. And then 120 word pairs. So that's two random words paired together. And so like milk taxi is the example they give in the study. Is that random? Sorry? Is that random? Milk taxi.

You could make a link there. Yeah, well, I mean, there is, of course, the milk taxi that follows the teapot water out. In all subsequent studies, they're going to have to remove that word pair now. We've ruined it for people. Because, yeah, they have to be so unrelated that you can't have a familiar connection, which sort of allows you to cheat and remember it. Anyway, they gave these 120 word pairs to people, and then half the participants

had to watch DVDs. And the other half took naps for, it was an hour and a half, in fact. and the nappers afterwards were five times better remembering the word pairs than the ones who'd watched a DVD. And in fact, I find this astonishing. The people who'd had the nap remembered exactly as much as they would have if they'd just been asked immediately afterwards. So you know how you're as soon as a couple of hours have passed

and you forget the majority of stuff that you've immediately heard. They remembered exactly the same amount as if they'd just been asked. I wonder if, so Fonella has a laptop that she was given by work and it was formatted by the people at her work. And the password to log into the computer is Cat Bus 1-1-1. I can say that. It's lockdown. No one's taking her computer.

It's fine. But immediately both of us went, Cat Bus. What the hell is a cat bus? Why would you ever use Cat Bus? And both of us have never forgotten it. Like the conversation and the pairing of it was just so bizarre that it's a connection that's stuck in the head.

Also, another thing that's interesting, that is now everyone listening to this will never forget it. So when we are out of lockdown, in the not too distant future, we hope, that everyone will be able to steal your wife's laptop. I'll change it after this episode. I'll reset the password. Try bus cat, everyone. 2-2-2.

My password is Cool Guy, 1-2-3, because no one's ever caught me that. Two totally unassociated concepts. That's what you need. I quite like this study also because of the choice of DVDs that the participants were given. So like I said, some got to go to sleep. Some had to watch these DVDs.

And it was two DVDs that lasted in total two hours. One was called Relaxing, the Most Beautiful Landscapes on Earth. And it was just what it sounds like. And both had only instrumental music. And the other is called Power Katzi. And it sounds like the maddest thing ever. So it's only instrumental. And it's this weird experimental thing.

made in the 80s about the conflict in third world countries between traditional ways of life and the new ways of life introduced with industrialisation, but all shown in very surrealist instrumental form. And so I'm kind of amazed that they managed to stay awake through that two hours. Yeah. So yeah, I wonder if the study is about how good it is to nap to remember things or whether watching weird DVDs just really distract you. It could be that, couldn't it? Yeah. If the DVD had been something else like stop all my mummull's shoot or, you know, grown-ups two or something like that.

Stop all my mummills shoot. I think that's the second time you've ever referenced that extremely obscure of Lester Stallone movie. We finally found the only film James has actually seen. I just watch it again and again and again. And you guys know my memory for facts is extremely good. So maybe if we'd given these guys, stop on my mom will shoot to watch.

To be fair, If that had been the first film you'd seen, I could understand why you didn't watch any other film shows until a few years ago. Because there's no point. You know, why climb any other mountains when you started with Everest? Yeah.

You know? By the way, I looked up whether there was a such thing as a milk taxi. I don't know if any of the rest of you did. And this is a new product. Well, actually, it was made in 2005 by a company called Holm and Lowe. And they revolutionized bucket feeding for calves by the invention of the milk taxi.

And it's almost like a bucket that kind of drives around the farm and goes to the calves and gives them exactly the right amount of feed and exactly the right amount of milk that they need. It's a bit like a tease-made but for cows. Wow. Is it like a robotic udder, though? Because obviously they want an udder to suck a lad.

I couldn't quite tell from the picture. They look more like milk churns on wheels, but I couldn't quite tell. but it is a thing, so, you know. Wow. You could call it a tits made because it's flying around giving your milk. Yeah. God, how bizarre?

Speaking of weird portmanteau words that I already regret saying, have you guys heard of the nappuccino? I'm sure you have in the course of this research. Pacino, what's that? I haven't actually. I can guess what it is, but also it sounds too much like the word nappy and would put me off. It's a practice.

It's a habit. It's a behavior. It's where you drink a coffee and then you have a nap. And you have to take a brief. nap because then you wake up supercharged just as you come out of the sleep the caffeine hits. It takes about 20 minutes. That's quite advanced, I think, because I'm a bit of a napper as well. And I did read about the idea of having a coffee first, and I tried it a few times.

But if you can't get straight to sleep, then caffeine hits you just as you think you're about to fall asleep and you just have a massive high and you can't sleep anymore. So I think you need to be one of the nappers who can really kind of just go like a light immediately, whereas I'm not really one of those. It takes me a few minutes to get it. I've always thought that my dad invented that. Really? I know. So I've read about that concept before, but he always did it. Car journeys when we were kids, you'd stop in a service station down a double espresso.

And he was one of these like, like when driving home. Back by the wheel. Yeah. Look, you're parked. It's actually incredibly boring for four children in the back. You're in a parked car for 15 minutes. But it's just 15 solid minutes. Wake up and it's like, you know, you're a new woman. Did it work?

It weren't like a dream, he claimed. But I'm with James. I don't think I could fall asleep like that on command. And then it's just annoying. I can. I think I could do that, but I don't drink coffee. One way that I nap probably once a week is this is a good way of getting to sleep, is because I edit this podcast every week,

I have to then listen back to it to kind of make sure that narratively it all makes sense from start to finish. And I think a good way to do that is kind of lie down in bed while I'm listening to it. and I usually get past about one fact, and then I'm gone. And then I have to go all the way back to the start and do it again. But I think like napping to podcast is a thing, isn't it? And I read an article about this. This was a guy called Craig Richard from Shenandoah University.

He wrote a book called Brain Tingles, which is about ASMR stuff. And he said that human voice podcasts are quite a good way of getting to sleep, as long as they contain a calm host voice. kindness, which means basically you're not just having a go at people all the time, and generally banal content. That's the three things that you need. Well, at least we've got one out of three. We're not kind and Dan's always stressed, but... Hey, do you guys know where you are allowed to nap at the wheel?

Driverless car. Oh, yeah. No. No, you're definitely not. Okay. No, that's time. Okay. Oh, you're not.

Okay. So some kind of wheel. A ship's wheel. A ship's wheel? Possibly. I didn't actually look through all the possibilities. Maybe at the roulette table. Oh, yes.

Very nice. Put it all on number 17. Yeah. Wake up three hours later and it's landed on 17, 200 times. And you own all the money in the world. Bad gambling advice from nothing as a fish. Is it a water wheel? Wake up and got a loaf of bread made.

Oh, Dan, Dan. Dan, Dan. Potter's wheel. So you put your hands there and then you just drop off, but you've made a perfect vase. A perfect cubicle teapot. No. No, okay. Please put us out of my misery.

No, Anna. I'm trying. I'm trying. For Christ's sake, try for five minutes. Go on, Andy. I didn't have anything. I was just stormed so James could think of another wheel. I know.

I'm thinking of the Wheel of Fortune, the TV game show. Well, it's not that either it is in the cockpit as a pilot at the wheel at a plane. There's no wheel at a plane? Come on. I know. Are we supposed to guess that? Well, you're at the wheel. You're at the wheel. Like you said that you're at the wheel. But we've talked about this before pilots sleeping before and it's a problem. They're definitely not allowed to do it, aren't they? Well, so that they're not really because there have been some horrible incidences like, for example, in 2008, both pilots fell as sleep at the wheel, and when they woke up, they'd just completely gone past where they were meant to land in Hawaii.

We're just like, where are we? We're way past where we're meant to be. But some countries, like Canada and Australia, allow for pilots to take naps in the cockpit. So basically, it's really strict rules, but what they call it is a controlled rest in position, CRIP. And the idea is that the pilot can sleep for no more than 40 minutes, must wake up at least half an hour before the descent of landing. and they have to sort of tell everyone like,

I'm going to have a nap now, and then they can go down for a nap sitting in their position without worry that they might affect the controls as long as obviously they have a co-pilot next to them. Okay. Controlled rest in position. That's a very good euphemism for saying having a little zizz

while you're at your seat. It's clever. Yeah, yeah. There is another place where you used to be able and able to have a nap and no one would mind or object, and that was in the House of Lords in the UK. So there was a convention until 2018, I believe, in the House of Lords that peers, members of the House of Lords are never, they're not sleeping, they are resting their eyes

and they're closing their eyes and leaning back to really focus on the intellectual debate and the laws that they're debating. And then that was a lovely convention. And then in 2018, they were told off for sleeping in the chamber and kind of burst the bubble. And then in 2019, they all ripped their eyelids off, didn't they? Right. Did Buddha never have eyelids for the rest of his life? Sorry, I've been thinking about this ever since he said it.

They must have grown back, hey? Did they grow back? It's a really good point, Dan. I don't think the myth says, but it should. But Buddha had all sorts of weird physical attributes that I think we've discussed before, didn't he? Like some tentacles coming out of his earlobes or whatever. I can't remember you'll have to refer back. Yeah, exactly.

Super long tongue. If they would have grown back, then that kind of defeats the gesture that he made. If he's just got another pair of eyelids under there, then I think that's a less impressive gesture to repent you falling asleep in your work. He probably didn't know he did at the time, though. When you do it for the first time, you can't be sure. That's true. I respect him for it.

The snooker player, Ronnie O'Sullivan, he has been seen napping even during competitive matches. Yeah, he does. And he said his doctor advised him to do it. But I really like this, because obviously the nap in snooker is the direction of the cloth, isn't it? Yeah. The bays. So that's kind of pleasing.

A lot of the other players think that he is doing it to try and out psych them. It's like, because when you play snooker, you're on the table or they're on the table. And when they're playing, you're just kind of sat in your chair and there's nothing you can do. But if you're sat there pretending to fall asleep and put in a flannel over your face like he does sometimes, then some people think that that's a bit bad form. You know what I mean. Not it. Get a nap while you can.

It's the perfect chance. It's fucking boring. snooker and he knows it so you might as well have a snooze. Okay, that's it. That is 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 course of this podcast, we can be found on our Twitter accounts. I'm on at Shreiberland, Andy. At Andrew Hunter M. James. At James Harkin. And Anna. You can email podcast at QI.com. Yep, or you can go to our group account, which is at no such thing, or you can go to

our website. No such thing as a fish.com. All of our previous episodes are up there. Also, there is a chance that if you're listening to this on Friday the 12th of March or Saturday the 13th of March in the morning in the UK that we're actually live right now doing a marathon-length version of our show in aid of Comic Relief, go to Comic Relief's YouTube page and you'll be able to find us there talking to an amazing sortment of comedians and actors and writers and musicians. They're all coming on 35 of them, so tune into that. We might be live right now. If it's past that, well, you can watch it again on replay. Try and find that on our YouTube page. Anyway, we're going to be back again next week with another episode, and we will see you then.

Goodbye.