No Such Thing As A Fish - No Such Thing As Lily Allen In The Hellespont

Episode Date: November 20, 2025

Cariad Lloyd joins Dan, James and Andy to discuss Byron, Bazalgette, bacteria and beautiful beaches.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/patreonGet an exclusive 15% discount on Saily data plans! Use code FISH at checkout. Download Saily app or go to https://saily.com/fish

Hey everyone, welcome to this week's episode of Fish. Dan and Andy here. Hello. And we just want to quickly let you know before we launch into this week's episode about this week's guest. Yes, it's our friend and yours. Carriead Lloyd. Yeah. She's brilliant.

She's been on loads of times before. She's always fantastic. Her fact this week is a really good one. And it's a brilliantly entertaining show. I've just listened to it and I've written it up for our archive. Have you? So you're in for a treat. I can tell you that much.

Oh, well, there we go. Yeah. And also, you should know that Carriad is not. Not only a comedian, not only a podcaster, she's also an author. That's right. Her new book is called Lydia Marmalade and the Christmas Wish. So it's a children's book. It's really funny.

It's charming. It's got a little Jane Austenie flavor to it. A little regency tinge. That's a terrible phrase. But it's really funny. It's charming. It's about a girl called Lydia Marmalade, obviously. There's an amusing sausage dog.

It's basically everything you could want for a kind of fun, classic Christmasy robber. Lydia Marmalade and the Christmas Wish. Perfect Christmas book. It's out now. And if you love books generally and you like being part of book clubs, Sarah Pascoe and Carriad Lloyd have a podcast. It's brilliant. It's called Sarah and Carriette's Weirdo's Book Club.

Weirdos, good name for a podcast. Yeah, shame us up in news before. And there's plenty of episodes. One of your favorite authors, Mick Herron, Andy, was a guest recently talking about his slow horses series. It's great. Check it out, but get Carriott's book. And one final bit of business before we start.

You can get ad-free episodes of this show, No Such Thing as a Fish. You can get bonus material. You can get extra mad, crazy fun stuff like shoutouts on the show and video things and longer versions of the main show. All of that is available at our secret super fantastic members club club fish. You can join it by going to patreon.com slash no such thing as a fish. It's been so much fun. We've been making so much extra stuff for it over the last month. It's been great and we're really enjoying it.

And if you would like to support the show, it is a fantastic way of doing so. That's right, so just head to patreon.com slash no such thing as a fish. You can find all the details there. But for now, on with the show. On with the show. Hello 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 Shriver. I am sitting here with James Harkin, Andrew Hunter Murray, and Carriead Lloyd.

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. So, starting with fact number one, and that is Carriad. My fact is that Joseph Basilgett, the famous engineer who had designed London Sewers, who was inspired by the Great Stink. His great-great-grandson was the lead guitarist of the band The Vapers, who were most famous for their single Turning Japanese. Yes.

Brilliant. Now, this is a very famous song. A lot of people might know. We've just discovered someone in the QI office does not know. know it who's in their late 20s. I think it's an age thing because I recently was telling people this fact and a lot people were like, what song? And I was like, come on, turn in Japanies.

And they just stare at you. Really? Yeah, I do think it's an age thing. Because it came out in 1980. Yeah, it's an oldie. It's an oldie. But a goodie. It's a effing classic.

It's a bagger. It's a brilliant song. The reason I know this is I know Ed Basiljell. No. Clang. Yes, Clang. Wow. Clang.

Because he is now, he left the vapors and became a TV director and he has directed Doctor Who loads of different things and I worked with him very recently on excellent Channel 5 police drama Ellis starring Sharon D. Clark and Andrew Gower. At what stage in your relationship did the great great grandfather come out? So I am of a mind like yourself. I managed to keep it together for five days filming in Belfast. But the whole time I was like, I'm Buzzled yet. Must be a Buzzerat. Must be related. That's such an unusual surname. Can't be. And then we went for a drink in Belfast, beautiful, beautiful Belfast.

after we'd finished our episode. And I think he was probably two pints of Guinness down. I was probably one rum and ginger. And I was like, so are you related to the Basel Jets? And he was like, yeah. And then some young actors near me were like, who? Didn't know. What?

Oh, my God. And they're classic sewers. They're from the 1860s, but I think anyone should know them. It's like the song turning Japanese. You just think, imagine being Basiljet and you don't know my song. You don't know my family sewers. Yeah. This is horrible.

He was now a very successful television director. And yeah, so then he said, oh, yes, I am related to that Basel Jett. And then someone else must he must, oh, maybe he just came out with it. I can't remember now because we were in a pub in Belfast, just said, oh yeah, and I was in the band The Vapers. And I initially didn't recognise the name until he said, Tony Jeffords. I was like, oh, my God. And it's curious as well as the vapors, the name, you would think might have been Ed's suggestion, but it's not. They all smoke tea cigarettes.

That's exactly right It was, yeah, before it's time Head of the game, yeah Because Ed was the guitarist And the main songwriter was someone else Wasn't it, I think Felton, Felton, yeah If it had been Ed Basilette

who came up with the name He probably would have come up with The cholera epidemics Yes, of the 1850s Yeah, and they're still going She's said, do you know this? The vapours are still, they reformed. Ed was in it for a bit

And now he's gone off to TV directing How often do you think they play the song Turning Japanese in an average set. I think it's quite a lot. Yeah. I do think it's quite a lot. I once went to watch Junior Senior, just after their song Move Your Feet had come out and been a big hit.

Oh yeah. And they played it four times. Right. They could have played it five and I would have loved it. Yeah. And it is a bit being your own tribute act, isn't it? Yeah. Turning Japanese was like a global hit as well.

It was huge. And it was their biggest hit. I like that they knew it at the time as well. So they had it ready. And they went, we should hold this back. This is going to be a big song. And so they released it as a second single as opposed to a first single from their album. Because they didn't want to be one hit wonders.

Yeah. But then, yeah, sort of. They are. And that's no bad thing. Sorry, yeah. There's no bad thing. That's no bad thing. And the former drummer, Howard Smith, was recently elected Mayor of Guildford.

No. I thought that was another. Plang. I met the mayor of good. No, I haven't. I haven't met Mayor of God. Sorry. The one of the thing about Ed Basil Jett is, as you say, he was a team.

TV director, but one of the things he directed on his IMDB is seven wonders of the industrial world in 2003 where Robert Lindsay looked at London sewers. One compelling combination. That's great. When do you think he bought, did you think he went to production company with it? Or do you think they said, I think, because you know what? There are like eight episodes in that series and he only directed one of them and it was about the sewers.

They thought let's get him in. We'd like you to do one about the first. network, please. No, I'm sure. And that's good, because Robert Lindsay, as star of my family, has been in a lot of old shit. Wow. I love my family. I just couldn't resist.

I saw the opening. I'm sorry. Yeah, yeah. Sometimes you've got to throw your heroes under the bus for the joke. It's really interesting because it's normally done who says, I love my family. I love my family. I love my family. He's such a wife guy.

I do. Let's go into sewers. Yes. I said to Andy, I kind of thought that you guys would have sewers sewn up. So I thought I'd leave with more vapour stuff. I thought that somebody who's literally exploding next to me to talk about Baseljur. Have you ever been in the sewers? No, I never have.

I've been to the church where the Basiljet, Morsalium is. But I didn't know at the time that the Morsalium's there. And I'm absolutely gutted. And I'm going to have to go back. Oh, you're going to have to go back. You should go soon because it's in trouble. Is it? Yeah.

It's being refurbished. It's being refurbished. They've got a heritage grant. But I'm all over this day. Ironically, water is destroying it. It's not as well-complished. I think more I'm on you if shit was destroying it, I think, the water. Very good point.

It is underground, you know. And he was responsible for a lot of underground stuff, not just the sewers, also a bit of the district line was part of the tunnel. Let's get into it. Let's get into it. He was a bit forgotten for a while. I think he's not now. But I think there's one Baseljet family because it's such an old surname. There's one tiny place in France called La Baseljet. And the Baselette family came from France.

Weirdly, they came via America. It was a strange route. But they migrated to Britain and I think the early 19th century. And one person who was a few generations above Joseph was the tailor of Prince of Wales, George. Oh, wow. And he was the first British Basiljet. He was the one who... Would you like a new suit?

Would you like a new suit? I really think so. That's what it was. I can imagine it now. Yeah, yeah. He was the grandfather of Joseph. Right. Baselette.

What a family. It's a stunning family. And then there was Joseph William who we think might have been in the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. It's amazing. It's just like... Like nepotism has been going through the ages of the UK. Wow, it's like England is built on a feudal system. Stop it.

Stop it. If your grandfather was talented, somehow you managed to still be fine. It's amazing how they're all so talented. Yeah. Just despite everything. French immigrants. I will say that. Yeah, but when?

New arrivals. Yeah, 300 years ago. Anyway, I think Joseph was a stunning man. Mr. Suez is great. Yeah, basically, what he did, Joseph Basilichet, is he was born in 1819. He is responsible more than most other people, or maybe the biggest individual contribution to London turning from a medieval city into a modern one. Christopher Wren is the other one, I guess.

Yeah, but what Basiljet was doing was, so before Basilgette, the city was open sewers, cesspools in people's back gardens, you would have night soil men turning up to take away the poo. I mean, just, and that led to cholera, cholera, cholera, cholera, like it was just, it was cholera city. The Thames was disgusting. The Thames was, like, basically, just put all the... It's healthier now, isn't it, than it was then? So unimaginably healthier.

So basically you put all the poo in the Thames. The Thames obviously flows out to sea. That broadly, broadly worked as a solution. Well, it's a tidal river. But it's a tidal river. And it's so, so there would just be this mass in the water of poo that broadly is making its way out to sea, but sometimes the tire would come back in. Yeah, yeah.

And that normally is okay because it's normally in the water. Obviously it stinks and obviously it's very, you cannot drink from the river. Yeah, yeah. But the main problem comes when the river level goes down a bit. it. So in the summer? Summer of 1858 was unbelievably hot and dry, and the water level dropped. And there were piles of this matter on the banks of the Thames that were about six feet deep. Anyone who smelted at the time just wrote these accounts saying, I cannot describe the smell.

I will never forget the smell as long as I live. Yeah, right. And people were dying and dying and dying of cholera. Yeah. So he then set in motion the building of the sewers. Did a little thing where he sort of calculated that they should be double the size that they were planning on building, which means that we're largely using a lot of them 150 years later, right? We're still using them. But also, I mean, just on a tourist level,

if you're walking around London, you're kind of walking largely in Basel Jets, London. All of the embankments. The embankment's amazing that it just wasn't, the Thames was so much wider. Yeah, but those are basically to be described as sewer caps. They are where the sewers are underneath. That was never there. So if you ever walk along the Thames, that's Basiljet, basically. It's like 50 acres of New London that you created. And that thing about him doubling the capacity, some sources say he worked out the poohage of an average Londoner generously

and then doubled it. And then some sources say he doubled it again because he said, look, we're only going to do this. I know Londoners. They're going to be pooing more than this. I tell you, we'll need triple this. Exactly. And he basically said, look, we cannot do this a second time.

We have to do it once. And that meant, right, that as the population rose, you had either double or quadruple the capacity, which meant that when high-rise, building started being built and the poohage overall poohage did increase massively. Like there is an alternate world in which he didn't double the capacity and in which 1960s London was overflowing the raw sewage. Like swinging London would have just smelt.

It would have been the worst. It would have been a nightmare. But because of his solution, it lasted until today. And now we've just built this huge new sewer of the Thames Tideway Tunnel, which is designed to sort of solve the creaking of the system which we built. He's buried in Wimbledon, I think. In St. Mary's Church. Yes.

And the mausoleum is stunning. Sorry, most people won't know what St. Mary. It's like, you're like, yeah, like everyone knows what St. Mary's churches. Sorry. I've lived in London for 15 years. I don't know where that is. I used to live in Wimbledon. Sorry, yeah, yeah.

It's where they do the overflow parking for the tennis tournament. Oh, right, right. Sorry to get. Oh, you mean opposite the co-op? Right. Okay. There's no co-op in Wimbledon Village, James. It's near the second waitrose.

But that church is, the mausoleum is really interesting because it wasn't built for him. Did you see this? I did, yeah. It was built for a slave owner called John Anthony Rucker. Oh, no. Who died in 1804. And then his family did not want to be in the mausoleum with him

for whatever reason. So it's just... Figured out he was a terrible statement. Yeah. Mother Rucker. And then his family didn't want to be in there. So there was just almost empty. He just one grave filled.

So the Basil Dets bought the mausoleum. Wow. But he is still in there. Oh, Rucker is still in there? Yeah. Yeah, so it's Rucker and then half a dozen Basil Jets around him. Wow, yeah, there's main Basil Jett and then I think five children of his. And Mrs. Basil Jaze.

So it can fit nine, I read. So what are we up to? Seven, eight. One more space. Ed could go in that mausoleum, couldn't he? I mean, God forbid. Then there's also Peter, who's his other great... Yeah, the other famous Basiljut, who's a television producer.

Yeah, also as in TV and made Big Brother or something. He was the creative head, I believe, of Endemol. And so he's the one who they brought. brought in Big Brother because that was an international format, but really the British one is what made it go global. And deal or no deal as well, he's got his name too. Just what I'm thinking is obviously he works in formatting. They've got one space in the Basel Jet Mausoleum and all these Basil Jets who might go in. It's like reverse deal or no deal because it's who goes in the box.

This is DeVina. I'm going into the big Basilette Mausoleum. I'm coming in. That's so good. Let's ask Ed if he wants to direct it. Robert Lindsay wants to host it. I think that won't. I should just say, Robert Lindsay's great.

You can call it my family. And friend. Or no. And, yeah. Okay, it is time for fact number two. And that is my fact. My fact this week is that this year, 26 new bacteria species were discovered in a room

specifically designed to not have any bacteria in them. Brilliant. So I got this story of a pop science writer. of my favorite pop science writers, Dr. Robin George Andrews. He wrote it for National Geographic, and this is a story about the clean rooms that they have at NASA. So we build all of these rocket instruments that are going to Mars, all the Rovers and so forth, in these specific rooms, because you don't want to bring any life to Mars. I just love the way he said we. It's involved in it. I was like, wow, did we? I feel great. Is that like you're talking about the podcast?

Okay, me, sorry, I am heavily involved. I have to own it. You did it. Be proud. So basically, the idea of the clean rooms is that humans can't allow any form of life onto Mars, because if we're looking for life there and we bring it there, we won't be able to tell if it was there or if it was from us. So these rooms are made very specifically to make sure that the smallest of bacteria gets killed off. And they have various different ways that they do that.

They fill the room with ultraviolet lights. They have radioactive beams going through. They have prolonged periods of dry heating, and they get it to above water's boiling point. So it would kill anything that would be on the surface. They do basically everything they can to make sure nothing goes up. Vinegar, that's quite good. Cleaning surfaces.

Yeah. Detto. Yeah, that's good. Detto's good. That only kills 99.9% of the bacteria. So that's the opening wash. You need to use another brand, I think, to get that last. And if you just pour them into a bucket together, dumb.

I'm going to set up a bleach company that kills not. 0.0.1% of bacteria. My, Daniel, I can need it. I feel like we need it, you know. That's so good. Yeah. Yeah, so, and a while ago they found a bacteria that did survive and did possibly go into space on various missions. So it is possible that right now on Mars there is a bacteria there that they didn't detect.

So life might be on Mars right now. That would be good. But what I loved was they, weren't they saying that it's not that this bacteria are extremely good at, like, they're not like so small they couldn't find them. This bacteria was playing dead. That's the thing. This is what's not. The bacteria knew to hide. Come on.

You know, like when the Velociraptor figures out the door, like that's. That's what we've got, right? The bacteria was like, guys, guys, sh, sh, sh, they're just passing. They're passing. Everyone lie down, everyone, light down. Yeah, it's basically. They've gone, they're going, go, go, go. Like the ties in Thai style.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, he's gone, he's gone, go, go. It's learned to sort of camouflage itself. It goes into a hibernation that makes it seem as if it's dead. These are the, because normally that bright red, aren't they? And he's like, oh. Guys, put a camo on, pull the camo on. Get down, get down.

Behind the bush, behind the bush. Okay, we'll be in Mars in 14 years. We've just got to keep quiet. What I find really interesting is that because the rooms are cleaned so much, the microbes that are found there, it's almost like we are putting them through an accelerated breeding program to make sure they can withstand cleaning, drying, UV treatment and lack of food. And all the sterilization methods we're using, actually we're creating superbacteria. But what do they like swab the surfaces to see if it's there? I guess they must do, right? Yes, I think.

And the ones they find, the really weird thing is sometimes they're found only in cleaning. rooms. So in 2013 scientists found a new microbe which had only been found in spacecraft clean rooms one in Florida and one in French Guyana. Yeah, was that the one where they found that they were actually eating the cleaning products that they were using?

Oh, yeah. That's amazing. This dead top is delicious. Yum, yum, isn't that bad that they found them in two different places? So then that's proof that it's proof that it's us doing this then. It's certainly a heavy implication, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. But that's right, they swabbed, James saying about swobing,

They do swab certain places, and then they put them into solutions and test them. And they're like, oh my God, yeah, this thing is still alive. That's how they've been discovering them. Yeah. Bacteria. Oh, yeah. And being discovered and so on. Yeah.

They've recently found, we've spoken a bit about the largest single-celled organisms, which is kind of algae, I think, and they get really big. But in 2022, the world's largest bacterium was found. And it's the size of an eyelash. It's 5,000 times bigger than the previous largest known bacterium. Right. You can pick it up with a pair of tweezers. What?

It's crazy. It's called Theo Margarita Magnifica. And I've ordered that from Pizza Express. Disappointingly small. Yeah, yeah. Very big for a bacterian. Tiny pizza. Tiny, yeah.

Waiter, there's a hair in my beta. Actually. Don't shout everyone. Apparently it's the equivalent of us meeting a human being who's as tall as Mount Everest. What? That's how big it is in comparison to not a normal bacteria. To a normal bacteria. Right.

Isn't that? I mean... Crazy. That's funny in the clean room when you go, hide. And Mount Everest did. Leaning against the walls at awkward ways. Let me give you one more story about bacteria. Oh, okay.

Okay. This starts off very bad, but it does have a happy ending. Okay. So there was a woman in 1984. She was in America, and she was studying gonorrhea. And she was driving home from work, and she picked up her son on the way, who was three years old and then left the sun in the car while she went to the shops to buy some stuff. Oh no.

The gonorrhea was in a petri dish that contained something called chocolate agar, which is like a type of jelly that you used to grow. It's not sweet, but you grow bacteria on it, but it looks a bit like chocolate. Oh no. Anyway, the child et the agar. Yogi gonorrhea, mom. And tested positive for gonorrhea two days like. Oh my God.

And so they took them to the centres of disease control and told them what had happened. And the happy ending is that the child was cured because they gave them antibiotics mixed in with ice cream. So you got some ice cream in the early. Dancing chocolate and ice cream. What a win for this kid. Oh, good Lord.

Imagine beating that when they get much older and being like trying to like, you know, STD chat and being like, oh, yeah, no, I haven't had gone of here. It was a long time ago. I just think don't make your egg jelly look like ice cream. There are a few different barriers that have been gone through there in the, like, it's a real get-me-Henemore situation.

Now, Hennemore, I've left the gonorrhea in this thing. Labelled chocolate. It's very 80s parenting as well. It's like left in the car with all the chemicals. Well, it's like the marshmallow test, except the marshmallow is all because I can't gorearria. It's really interesting. This weirdly sort of ties back a bit to the previous fact because bacteria were first discovered in the 17th century

and we think maybe in the 1640s, Athanasius Kircher. He wrote that vinegar and milk abound with an innumerable multitude of worms. So that might have been him observing with a primitive microscope, the microscopic life. But basically, in 1900, so even 200 years after bacteria were discovered, the leading causes of death were influenza,

tuberculosis and gastroenteritis, right? These are all microorganism-based. In 2000, 100 years later, the main causes of death were heart disease, cancer and stroke. It's just a massive shift in what does eventually end of lives. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was so bacterial before. Back in the dinner, yeah. Yeah, and before things like penicillin as well.

Yeah, exactly. Penicillin, I always think as one of those moments that we're so lucky happened because there was a real sliding doors moment there. Because Alexander Fleming was to come back from holiday, so he was sitting inside his lab and he was going over all the petri dishes that he had left before going off on a holiday. Chocolate.

Just have the chocolate. And out of nowhere, sort of as he's looking, a man called Merlin pops his head round the door and they used to be colleagues together and he was looking for a new job, I believe. And he sort of said, hey, Fleming. And Had he said, let's go to the pub,

which is why he was kind of coming in to have a, to have a, chat with him and take him away from the work, he would have not have seen what he saw in the petri dish in that moment. So Merlin said, no, no, keep looking. And that was the moment when he went, that's funny. And he saw what would become the mould. The bacteria had disappeared and that some mould had presumably killed it. And that was penicillin. How much do we believe that, Andy? Well, then the other thing he hasn't said is that then Merlin handed him a sword, which he pulled out of the stone and he became the rightful king of England. And that, I think that's a pretty big part

of the penicillin journey. I don't know why I left that out. Yeah. My grandpa was called Herbert Mervin, but he told me as a child that his middle name was Merlin. That's because we were descended, as Welsh people, from Merlin. And I was about 25 before, you know, and you say a fact out loud to someone. And I was like, oh yeah, because we're descended from Merlin. Oh, no, he lied. So do we think that that's questionable if Merlin came in or not? Well, obviously Fleming was already a bacteriologist.

And he had made this discovery of lysosyme, which was a thing which it did inhibit bacterial growth, but against a few small numbers of bacteria. So it wasn't a game changer. He found that in about 1921 or two. And then several years later, he left some Staphylococcus bacteria, a culture in the lab. And then he got back and he saw there being contaminated by a fungus which had destroyed the colonies of staff around it. So that was an accident. But obviously he was very well placed to discover it. There is this story that it's only because he was in a...

rifle club at his local medical school. He was in medical school just doing general medicine and the team captain really wanted to keep him in the team and said, well, you'll stay in the team if you join the research department at St Mary's Hospital Medical School in Paddington. And that's why he became a bacteriologist. He's also written up on collegiate water polo.org as the most significant water polo player of all time. Get out. It's because... Who are the others? Isn't it just him? He played water polo at age 16 for the London Scottish Regiment. because he was in the army as a young man.

And this is a great website, collegiate waterpillar.org, which basically re-centers the universe around water polo. It's so funny. I love it. That's very good. And even off he discovered it,

it wasn't rolled out until 15 years later. Yeah, so there was that thing where it didn't yield as much penicillin as they need, that particular mould. So they became a global hunt in order to try and find a different mold that produced penicillin. And I guess it's part, you know,

there's a lot of legendary tales about this stuff, but the story of Moldy Mary, who's the person who often gets attributed to being the person. I think I've heard that like you are. There was a lab in Illinois that was trying to find a new mold. And they sent basically a calling out to soldiers around the world who were in the field trying to find mold and send it back to this lab. She, Moldy Mary, the story of her, was a lab assistant working there. And one day when she was coming into work, she passed a grocery store outside. And she was buying a melon.

and she saw an interesting melon in the batch that had some mould on it. And she thought, how it looks like the mould we might be looking for? I still remember the day in QI when someone came into the office. I think it was probably just in Pollard and told us about mouldy Mary's melons. And we were just like, okay, well, that's 20 minutes of material right there. The episode writes itself. Also, isn't it funny, there's that other Mary, TBMerry, Moldy Mary. Typhoid Mary.

Typhoid Mary. I'm like, don't call your kid Mary is the thing I'm getting. If I'm getting here. One thing about the older days is a lot of people called their kids married. We all have relatively young kids, so know how hard it is to get them to brush their teeth. Oh my God. Oh, my God. Bribery, begging, crying.

Just open. Just let me, yeah. Awful. Well, here's something we can say to them that might help them to do it. If you brush your teeth properly, your mouth becomes full of nice bacteria. Whereas if you don't, it's full of evil bacteria. You don't get rid of bacteria. James, come out to my house, please.

engage my five-year-old son with that argument. Let's see how far you can. Yeah, I think you're raising your child a bit differently to help maybe carry it an eye. That's not going to do much for mine. They do not give shit about the good bacteria on nice bacteria. Here's what I do. If you clean your teeth, I'm going to give you five pounds.

I say if you're, everyone's brushed her teeth. We put the telly on. That's the deal. That's the deal. No one gets telly to the teeth to brush my teeth with yakled to get the friendly bacteria on there. Am I doing the right thing? Yeah, that's right.

So the idea is that if you put a load of bacteria together in a petri dish and some are nice and some are nasty. You've got a party. And the nasty ones, they love a party and they're going to kill all the nice ones, right? And that works in pretty much all situations. But if you keep cleaning somewhere, then everyone's energy is used up by the fact that they keep getting killed by the fact that they're being cleaned and it suddenly becomes no use anymore to attack the other bacteria.

Because they're fighting a bigger problem. Exactly that. And so what you find is that the clean, the more that people will. brush their teeth, the more the bacteria that's in your mouth are the ones that don't attack the other bacteria. And there's lots of links, isn't there, to plaque bacteria in gums and dementia? Yeah, heart disease as well. Like flossing is one of the biggest things you can do because they found this bacteria in

the plaque and then, I haven't read it, I can't remember, but there's some link to then finding the, yeah, the mould in the brain. And so the one of the biggest, like, causes they think is in between the teeth. Oh, my God. Is interdental brushing okay? Yeah, so no, that's as good as a floss, yeah. Oh, great. Because I use them as well.

In other words, that's five pounds well spent, then. That's what we're saying. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Finally start cleaning my own teeth again. I stopped when I moved out of home and that money dried up. Okay, it's time for fact number three, and that is James. Okay, my fact this week is that Byron's Don Jewan, which Gertor called a work of boundless genius, was inspired by a pantomime.

Wow. Two wows. One for the fact. The other for Don Juan. How do you pronounce? I thought it was Don Juan. I say Don Juan. Juan.

Well, if you read the poem, you would get very confused by some of the rhymes. Really? Does it fail? They're in Liza Tale. Yeah. So Don Juan is a story, isn't it? A sort of classic. Is it Spanish?

Spanish, yeah. He's a nobleman. He's a dirty boy. Yeah, Don Juan. And the devil drags him to hell. At the end. Sorry, spoiler for Don Juan. Does he?

Yeah, sorry. Don Giovanni. Moza opera? Right. Same story. There's a Johnny Debt film, which Brian Adams did the song for. Have you ever really loved a woman?

We've all got... I was going to say Moliad, but yeah. Don Juan. Have you ever really, really ever loved a woman? Oh, I love that song. Carriad, I've held back until now, but the number of copyright breaches you've made this show, but they're going to be a nightmare to edit around. Sorry, sorry, Piaris.

All we have to do is review it. That was beautiful singing, Carriad. Thank you so much. I call him Donny Johnny. Oh, that's what Byron called me. Yeah, I really like that. In letters, it was found there. he was referring to him as Donny Johnny.

Now, this is not a Byron story, is it? This is a story that goes further than... Yeah, it goes all the way back, but Byron did his own version, which was actually quite different than Don Juan. But in his version, he said he was inspired by a bodlerized version of Shadwell's Libertine. And Shadwell's Libertine was a pantomime. In those days, pantomime wasn't... He's behind you and stuff.

There was all sorts of different things. They could be marionettes. They could be... They were basically very popular plays that happened in the... the West End of London. And this one was made by Charles Anthony Del Pini at the Royal Theatre, Byron Soare, and thought I'm going to write something that slags off all my mates, but with this theme. So this is what Don Dewan is, basically. Do we know if it was, did you say, do we know if it was pantor or a puppet show or a... Well, I've really tried to find out it was definitely a pan...

This was a pantomime, but some pantomimes did have marionettes in, and I think this one did. And I think it was also based a little bit on Punching Judy, because that was very popular at time as well. Right. It sounds like the poem itself, which has seemed to be Lord Byron's sort of masterpiece, really, and which he published many years, because they were written in cantos, right? So they sort of were released. Yeah, you do a book at a time. Yeah. It's about six years who they were coming in. It's like Game of Thrones. Yeah, exactly right. Yeah. And like Game of Thrones, the final book was never written, I believe. Yeah. I mean, we've still got a chance with George R.R. Martin, but. Oh, it was the last seven were missing. He said it was meant to be 24 cantoes. miniature books in four

and there are sort of 60. Has anyone around here read it? I've read the whole thing. Have you? Oh, because I studied English. I thought in as a little prop for you all.

Oh, nice. My university edition of Lord Byron and it's very like. We did, Byron, but Sussex, you didn't ever read the text.

You just had to talk about the historical context of what was after. The other one. Look, it's so, look, so it's that, it's about,

it's nearly 500 pages of this book and it's eight line verses. It's really, it's really substantial. I remember looking at it and finding it. Not quite hard to read. But the thing is, I think it's the most readable epic poem.

Carriott, give us a random verse. You gentlemen, by dint of long seclusion, from better company have kept your own. At Keswick and through still continued fusion of one another's minds at last have grown. To deem as a most logical conclusion that poetry has wreaths for you alone, there is a narrowness in such a notion, which makes me, wish you'd change your lakes for ocean. It's so bad. Absolutely devastating slam.

Come on. It's like when a 10 year old does a little rhyming poet. Did he say, was Kessik that? So is it about Wordsworth that? It's about the lake poets. Is it? He were his big rivals, Sothey, who was the poet laureate at the time, it was very stodgy. He spends a lot of this epic poem about, supposedly, about Don Duhin, slagging off Wordsworth et al. And he mentions Kessick, home of the Nauph. world famous pencil museum.

Right. But like it's, I would say Byron is probably the only one of those who's readily readable. Like pretty much anyone can pick up. Wordsworth. Wordsworth is so readable. It's much more readable. I think Don Joon is so funny.

It's so clear. And it's so entertaining. It's a brilliant story. It's all about this young nobleman and it's the scrapes he gets into and it starts with him, you know, accidentally getting into an adulterous situation with a married lady when he's a young man.

And then Canto, too, is massive shipwreck story which is so exciting. Unlike Don Juan, he's not a lethario. He keeps binding himself with older women and stuff like that way. It's basically Byron slightly excusing his own

lethario-ish behaviour by saying, look, it's not like that, Your Honor. It just happened. I just fell into this room. But the second book of it is all about this big shipwreck which Don Joon gets caught up in. And this is really cool

because Byron's grandfather, Byron, again very aristocratic family. He was Lord Byron. His grandfather was a young man called John Byron, maybe 50 years earlier. So it's Joanne Byron. And he was in a shipwreck himself. There's this amazing book called The Wager, which is all about this English ship which got sunk in 1732.

I've just finished it. And one of the main sources of how it all went down, and there was cannibalism, there was mutiny, there was murder. One of the main sources is John Byron, who later became an admiral and got, nicknamed Fow Weather Jack because everywhere he went, the worst storms in the world happened to him. Like if you're on a ship with Lord Byron's grandfather, you were going to have terrible weather. That was his reputation.

So then, and the Fow Weather Jack's son was Mad Jack, Byron, who was Byron's dad. And then Byron didn't seem to carry on the nickname for theition. Everyone was called Jack or Mary. Yes, while we're learning here. Yeah. But basically Byron took a lot of the shipwreck stuff from his grandfather's own book about the shipwreck. Like, there's a bit where they eat Don Dewin's dog and it's a really sad story.

and that had happened to his own grandfather. Well, that did seem to be the thing about Byron was that his poetry, as you're saying, that's laced with autobiography in it. And the Lothario stuff, which is what he was known for in his real world. People are sort of reading it almost in the way that as we're talking, a new Lily Allen album has been released, yeah, which just lays out the life that she's recently experienced with her now ex-husband. It's just like it's all the stories.

It's like a gossip ratic. We say that Lily Allen is the modern day. Lord Byron. You know what? Fuck yeah, we are. Because that is a piece of genius. That album, the writing on that is so beautiful. The lyrics are unbelievable.

Also, I'll take her as modern day by then. Her dad was very famous. Yeah, Mad Jack. Mad Keith Allen. Come on. I don't think you'd object to that title either. This is the most, how do you do fellow kids way of describing Lord Byron's life to work.

Sorry. And her brother was in Game of Thrones. And they've slept together, haven't they? Lily Ellen and her brother. No, no. No. Half brother, Your Honour. That was Alfie Allen and Gemma Wheelan.

Oh, yeah, sorry. Lily Allen. Sorry, yeah, yeah. It was Gemma playing her sister. I know. I really like the Lord Byron as Lily Allen theory. Oh, yeah. Because he did have to flee England.

Lily Allen's never had to flee England. She's been living in New York. She fled New York. Fred to America. She bought a big brownstone because he told her to buy it and encouraged her to get a mortgage. These are the lyrics to the first song, basically. We're continuing Kerryard's copyright corner here, which is fine. Does she have a club foot?

Do we know? She has a club. She, yeah, yeah. She swam the hellesponts, the straight between Europe and Asia. She died into the canal in Venice, famously. She's a huge fan of Greek independence. But Byron, he had to flee England after his marriage fell apart, and he was accused of unnatural vices and having appallingly mistreated his wife.

And, you know, there was this thing about his half-sister. Did they have an affair? But also, he was the only poet who properly walked the walk. And he went to Greece and funded the government. and funded the Greek Navy for a while because Greece was trying to win its independence from the Turks. That's track five on the Lydia Alba.

But like, will the Greeks try and keep Lily Allen's lungs after she dies because she used her breath to speak out for Greek independence? Byron died in Missalongi, which is this Greek town, promoting Greek independence, and he'd been there for years, backing the Greek.

He was this huge fan of the Greeks, and he wrote some very rude stuff about Lord Elgin and, you know, like, nicking Greek treasures. And the Greeks kept his lungs, the source of his numah, the breath of the soul, and his larynx. And they were sort of put in an urn in Greece until, and they've disappeared. Give back those marbles, we might get the lungs back coming as a fair swap. Okay, it is time for our final fact of the show.

That is Andy. My fact is, for several years in the 1920s, a beach in South Wales was the fastest place on the planet. How can a beach be fast? Well, good point. I'm not surprised as someone with South Walesan heritage. So you're Welsh, Kerry. I'm half Welsh. Yes.

I've never fully understood the extent to which are Welsh. Well, my dad is Welsh. Well, there we go. And I was born there. And I am called Calli Adloid. I thought that was... That was my clue. So have you ever been to the Pendine Sands?

In Camarthenshire. Oh, Camarthenshire. Yeah, I have actually, yeah. So is this stunningly beautiful beach? The whole of the beaches of South Wales are the most beautiful beaches in the world. Sorry, Dan. I don't know if you're going to... check there with the beaches that you may be from, but the Gawa Peninsula, all of that bit are

stunning. Absolutely. I wasn't trying to raise up or lower the Pendine Sands above or below any of the other beaches of South Wales, all of which are 10 out of 10. Or Australia. Or Australia. Sydney ones are terrible actually. I'm sure they're fine. Yeah. You know, but oh, the Gawa. Oh my God. Tell us more. Tell us more. Well, there's this beach called the Pendine Sands. And the interesting thing about it is it's very long and the sand is nice and compact and hard and it was traditionally used for foot races, you know, horse bet races, bike races. They started having motorbike races there in the early 20s and they realized that hang on, in the 20s, people were starting to get serious about breaking land speed records in a car. And the early records have been broken at a track

called Brooklands, which is circular or Ovoid. And what you really need to break a land speed record is a very, very long straight track because you need a couple of miles to get up to top speed, you need a mile at top speed, and then you need another mile to slow down. Turning those corners is only going to slow you down. Exactly. And so they realized this beach is perfect to drive on because it's seven miles of sand. And you can drive more good. I went on it a few weeks ago.

Yeah. And it's absolutely, it's amazing. Of course it is. It's stunning. Yeah, yeah. But I thought that it's now property of the MOD. It is. You can't walk on it during the week.

I was there on a week day and there are loud dystopian announcement saying, do not walk on the beach. You can go at the end by the cafe in the museum, which is where I went. What did they do on there? They test weapons today. You know what the MAD are like. They're testing weapons. They're not having cups of tea.

Where's the most beautiful place in the country we can bomb? Unbelievable. But there is this bit which you can't go on, which is open to the public. And they've just opened a new museum there about the Landspeed Records. and it's amazing. And they've got a brilliant display about the different kinds of sand and the diameter of the grains,

which I found very interesting. How were your family waiting for you to read all those tiny pits of information next to the pictures? Were they? Because you reminded me so much of my father on holiday. They were in the car.

They were in the car. He's still reading it. He's still reading the information flags. But we spent two hours. Don't touch the petri dishes. That's exactly why I went to the website for the museum. And it said,

If you rush, you can probably complete it in two hours. So I imagine Andy's family were, yeah. No, I did a new land speed record in that, me, gee, because people were getting a bit impatient. But... People are getting a tad impatient. But this is where Malcolm Campbell, who's the sort of head of this amazing speed-breaking family,

I'm sure we'll talk about them. He broke the record at 146 miles an hour. His friend and rival, J.G. Perry Thomas, broke it, and his car babbs. Was that Welsh? No, Babbs is not Welsh. It's just the name Babbs. Oh, sorry.

Perry Thomas was Welsh. And he tragically was killed there during a land speed record attempt, instantly killed. And the action later moved to places like the Daytona Salt Flat. As a result of that crash, I think. I really, really. Basically, he was trying to get over 200 miles an hour, really. He was trying to get there or thereabouts. And they realized that when he died in that crash, probably this isn't the best place to go that fast.

Right. Like, you need somewhere even flatter. And then they went to the salt flats. didn't they? Yeah. And he got buried and so did Babs. His car was buried as well. Babs was buried in the exact spot where the crash happened.

So they literally dug a hole, put it down there, and it was buried there for about 42 years. And then someone petitioned to excavate it to put it back together. And it now very casually sits in the museum, Andy. I have seen it. Wow. You saw Babs. Yeah.

It's been lovingly restored. Wow. It's so, it's such a great museum. Yeah. But also, did you read about the heritage of Babs? It must have been there in the museum. Okay, so Babs went by a different name before. So that was a new name given to Babs because it was a new owner.

It was originally called Chitty Four because it was owned by a man called Count Zboroski, who was the inspiration for Chitty-chitty-Bang-Bang. This was one of the cars that was the inspiration for Chitty-chitty-chid-Bang-Bang. Sorry, I just need a PRS moment. Bang-bang-Bang-chitty-Tibing-Bang! We love you. Bang-Bang-Bang-Ti-T-T-Bang. There was Chitty-1, Chitty-2, Chitty-T-3, and then Chitty-F.

Chitty-T-T-T-T-V. Chitty, Cheney, Cheney, Cheney, Chitty, one became the ownership of Arthur Conan Doyle's sons. They took ownership of that and the other two went to other people. And number four. Yeah, so that's what you saw. You know who has the current British land speed record? Bob Geldof. I'm going to...

Oh, actually, I think I might know it. Is it Freddie Flintoff? It's not. Oh, is it someone from Top Gear? Is it? It's not Idris Elba. Idris Elba. Is it?

I'm sorry, Bob Gerdilf is far off from Idris Elba. They're both. They're both national trade. Prejudice. Exactly. Exactly. Okay. Okay.

He broke it in 2015. He did 180 miles an hour. Wow. For what they called the flying mile in a, in some kind of Bentley. I mean, but he did it on that beach. On the Pennine Sands. Yeah, I know. It's the UK land speed record.

Okay. The current world landspeed record is 760 something miles and out. It's very, very fast. Okay. But yeah, Amy Johnson, when she flew from South Wales to New York directly, she took off from... Pennine Sands. Wow. I know.

It used to be glamorous spot. It used to be glamorous. And it lasted a very, very brief time. So he talks about Malcolm Campbell. And then let's talk about some of the other family members. So his son was Donald Campbell, who was the only man to hold both the land and water speed records at the same time. Wow. And he was the one who famously died on Coniston in a water accident.

Lake District, Coniston Water. Yeah. I've actually climbed the old man at Coniston. Yeah. The same trip I went to the Keseek Pense Museum. Did you? Yeah. That's cool.

Yeah. And Donald has a daughter called Gina. And she has broken the women's world water speed record. The Campbell's just have this huge... We've done dynasties today, haven't it. It is dynasties. Don Wales, Malcolm's grandson, has broken the record for the fastest lawnmower on the Pendine Sands. Okay.

Who's... Who did that? He's a guy called Don Wales and he's Malcolm Campbell's grandson. He loves whales so much. He was like, just call me Don Wales. Don Wales. Don Juin and Don Wales. I think that's like, that is very British, isn't it?

It's like our landspe. record is so shit compared to the rest of the world. We're going to have to go lawnmowers. We're going to go novelty. It's 87 miles an hour, which is pretty good for a lawnmower. Just a sit-on lawnmower. Well, you do have to take part in a public grass-cutting demonstration before the race. It has to be a proper lawnmower.

You have a proper lawnmower. It's made from lawnmower parts. No, I get that. I think the engine's different. Yeah. Yeah, it's got a massive rocket strut up to it. The bit where the grass normally collects is now a fuel tank. Is that so?

Yeah. You can't be just getting up to 87 miles apart on a normal, old people will be dying all over Surrey. Imagine if that was a setting. What's the top speed? Let's try that. It'd be awful. Fastest shed, also broken on the Pendine Sands.

Well, the Pendine Sands are doing their best to keep these records coming, aren't they? Do you think, is faster or slower than the fastest lawnmower? I think slower. Slower because it's so bulky. Okay. Well, I guess I'll go faster. Dan's correct. 100 miles an hour is the fastest shed,

record. Was it on a lawnmower? Did they build it around the lawnmower? I don't know, but there's no shed demonstration. You don't have to get a side out of it. Was the lawnmower guy trying to put the lawnmower back into the shed when he went that fast? Landis! Oh my goodness.

Very good. Pendine science is making the best of their large flat service. But generally, if you're nearby, the museum is wicked. land speed records are in a bit of a funk at the moment I'd say yeah so the last time the land speed record was broken was 1997 oh I guess as the world is being slowly destroyed it feels a bit disingenuous to just go really fast they have tried to find a synthetic fuel for the the Bloodhound project

which is this massive rocket they're trying to fire across the ground right you know they were going to try and do a thousand miles an hour with a slightly more eco-friendly version of it but it's they just keep running out of money and they you know it's sort of parked for the moment I mean, literally, it is parked. But it's the era of like breaking records, like, Guinness World Records. You know what I mean? Like, I feel like we grew up with like that being a big thing.

That was how fast can you go? And now maybe we're like, you know, we've stopped to think, should we do this? How many followers you have. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Just should, is it worth this? Yeah. We should all slow down.

Yeah. There was a bicycle record, really interesting one that was set there. Good, an eco record. Thank you, Dan. Thank you. This was in 2013. This was God. Martin. You know Guy Martin? He had this other. He's crazy. Yeah, he's a motorbike guy and he's

run a bunch of best-selling books and TV shows and so on. And he's set a record for a bicycle slipstream record. Okay. Isn't that amazing? So he was going behind another vehicle and then he used the slipstream and that's when they started recording the time. This fast or slower than let's say the shed. Give me the shed again? Shed was a hundred miles an hour. Okay. Cycling. Well, what do you think then? In a sit stream. Can't be a hundred miles. Even in a slipstream. On a bicycle as well. On a bicycle.

It's got to be slower than a shed. Not an e-bike. Was it a line bike? Because they can go. They do go too fast. Really fast. Yeah. A bit unnerving.

I'll say slower than, but only just slower than the shed. Yeah. I think this might be a minor anna's buck that I can't remember what it was. Oh, right. I think it was like 120 odd miles an hour. 112.9 miles an hour. Yeah.

So it goes lawn mower at shed. Guy Martin. In a flip stream. Yeah. You do have electric car speed records, don't you? I think we're talking about. Yeah. Are they first?

I've got one from 1899. It was the first electric car to go over 100 kilometres an hour. Wow. It was called Le Jamee content, meaning never satisfied. Oh, I really thought it was something to do with ham. Sorry. I was like, oh, the Jambon Conton. Happy ham, yeah.

I've seen a photo of that. It's insane. It looks absolutely benighton. as that. Apparently it was pretty tough to ride and the muscles of his body and neck became completely rigid as he drove it because it was just all over the place.

Obviously they didn't have any stability or anything like that in those days. They have just launched the fastest e-scooter on the planet. And you please mind out on the pavements because they are driving those things like crazy people. Well this one goes at 100 miles an hour. Oh God. Watch out. Why do you need that?

Watch out. Piccadilly Circus, watch out. It's not a good idea. It's a really bad idea. That feels like that's my daughter going to nursery in the morning when I'm trying to catch up with her. Those micro scooters are fast. It's called the turbo. It's made of aerospace grade aluminium and it has a range of 150 miles.

And I bet you some fucker would still not wear a helmet and be on the road with that. Yeah. Imagine being overtaken in the fast. You're driving in the fast lane. Someone behind you is on an e-scooter right up your back bumper. I've seen that in London.

I've seen people on e-scoaters like going so fast on the road. It's terrifying. This is the future. You'll be soon saying, honey, I think we were just overtaken by a shed. So some Welsh records.

Great. The number of people skinny dipping in a single venue is beaten this year and the Gau Peninsula. Of course. What a lovely place

to skinny dip. Wonderful. Do you want to guess how many? 130. Close? No, not close. Oh, I'm going to say 1,000.

I'm going to say 4 things. Closer than that. 995. 413. Wow. And did they turn into an orgy afterwards or was it late? No, it didn't. It was very respectable. They did at 9 a.m. to stop any rubber neckers from turning up.

They can still get up early. Perlmert's knowing what an alarm clock is. Hello. Morning wood. They're ready. They're primed. Oh, it's 8.30. I simply cannot be leering at someone before 9 o'clock. I haven't had my cappuccino. And recently the longest ever tug-of-war game took place on a Welsh beach. Now, when you say longest, are we talking longest? No, it is stretched out.

It's the longest rope. So it doesn't have to be the most people. It's just the longest rope. Here's the question. Was it longer or shorter than the longest suspension bridge in Portugal? Oh, no. Oh, no. No, because I know this one.

I know this one. Can I just say as well? As part of Clubfish, we're launching a quarterly quiz. And I can tell you, if you're listening now, this is the kind of gold you're going to get. You're going to love this. You've got to think about it logically. There's no way logic can apply here.

Why have I found this suspension bridge? Because it's very short. Or... Or... Or because I know the length of the rope. Yeah. And I'm searching for other things. So they're the same.

They're the same. Same. And it was the largest suspension bridge in the world until quite recently and then it got overtaken by one in South East Asia. Wow. So the rope was that long? How long? Do you have length?

20 metres, no. It was 1,694 feet. Is that two very strong people just leaving back? As in, could you hold that rope in the air? Two teams of 50. Oh, okay, that's what. But they're Welsh, so they're going to be strong. They've got to be strong.

That's just a fact. There's nothing they can do about that. Naturally strong. I always struggle to remember whether you're half Welsh or 150% well. Okay, that's it. That is all of our facts. Thank you so much for listening. If you'd like to get in contact with any of us about the things that we have said over the course of this podcast,

we're all online on various social media accounts. I'm on Instagram. Andy. Instagram at Andrew Hunter. James. Come and add me on LinkedIn. And Carriette. You can find me on Instagram.

at Carriad Lloyd. Yeah, you can also find her in book shops now. You've got your new book out. Yes, Lydia Marmalade and A Christmas Wish is available in paperback now. It's a book for ages eight and up set in Jane Austen Times featuring a mischievous winter spite and a very hungry sausage dog. Oh, nice. Lovely. There you go.

Well, listen, if you want to write in anything about what we've said over the course of this podcast, we can all be reached via podcast at QI.com. Send your emails in there. They go to Andy. Andy often cherry picks those emails, which we then. bring to our show, drop us a line, which is part of our membership club, Clubfish. Go to our website, no such thing as a fish.com to check out that and more. We've got merch. We've got an upcoming gig that you can get tickets to. Otherwise, just come back here next week, because we'll be back

with another episode. We'll see you then. Goodbye.