No Such Thing As A Fish - No Such Thing As Lord Cauldronhead

Episode Date: June 9, 2017

In a special episode covering the 2017 general election, Dan, James, Anna and Andy discuss policies regarding yetis, the underwater constituency, and (of course) the election in Kenya.

And welcome to another episode of No Such Thing as a Fish, a weekly podcast, coming to you from the QI offices in Covent Garden, also coming to you from the morning after the 2017 British general election. My name is Dan Shriver. I'm sitting here with Anna Chazinsky, James Harkin, and Andrew Hunter Murray. So I'm tired. Andrew Hunter. My name is Dan Shriver. I'm sitting here with Anna Chazinski, James Harkin and Andrew Hunter Murray. And once again, we have gathered round the microphones with our four favorite facts from the last night, the evening of the election. And in no particular order, here we go. Hey, Dan, you sound a bit tired.

I'm very tired. Try and spot which one of us stayed up the latest and the longest. Well, the problem was, is I didn't watch it on TV. I think all of us stayed watching it on TV. You made the mistake of watching it on plus one, so you got even less sleep than the rest of us. I watched it on my iPhone in bed with the lights off. my left eye, which did all the watching, because my right eye was in a pillow, is really twitching right now. But because it's on the left, it'll be very happy with the result.

Okay, starting with fact number one, and that is Anna. Yeah, my fact is the really relevant to this result fact. All forfeited election deposits go straight to the queen. And this is just the thing I found out. I was reading the Electoral Commission guide for returning officers. As you do. As you do. In an exciting timeline, this, you've got to do exciting things. And yeah, there was just a rule in it. So it's like for returning officers, so for anyone internationally listening, returning officers are the people who are responsible in every constituency for like organizing and announcing the election. And this is the long guide as to exactly how they go about doing that. What it says in the guide is,

if a candidate does not poll more than 5% of the total number of valid votes cast, their deposit will be forfeited. You must send any forfeited deposits to Her Majesty. So the deposits are 500 pounds that people put up if they want to be an MP, again, for international listeners. And then if you get under 5%, you fall for the deposit. But I didn't realise it went to Her Majesty. I can't find anything else about this online. It's amazing, though. So in 2010, UKIP alone lost £229,000 in deposits.

No way. And the Green Party lost 163,500 pounds. No wonder the Queen's so rich. Yeah. No. In 2010, there was about a million pounds in lost deposits. That is a lot. It is a lot.

The idea of this deposit is to stop frivolous campaigns, isn't it? Yeah, but it does a very good job. I think the Monster Raving Looney Party would agree. In 1983, they had a look at this, the Homer First Committee, to see if it was too much and if it was stopping poorer people from running.

And they kind of thought, well, maybe it is, but actually it's worth it because for your 500 quid, even if you lose, you get free postage for your campaign address, and you get free use of buildings for public meetings, and you get a great deal of

publicity, they said. So almost the 500 quid is worth it. And they actually recommended it should be up to a thousand pounds. Oh, really? But it never was. I might just enter a not even campaign, just for the sake of getting some publicity for myself and some free buildings. We were going to enter you, weren't we? Because you live in the same constituency

as Jeremy Corbyn. But he did quite well in this one, didn't he? So I think... You could have swung it as a fore. I could have. Aren't they saying that he did the best that any politician has ever done? Well, no, he didn't. He didn't win the election, didn't he? But in his constituency.

Yeah, he got the highest ever vote in Islington North. Wow. Which is the smallest constituency? I didn't know. It's also mine, so I had a personal interest in that. Really? Yeah, it's a smallest by... It's just you and Jezer, isn't it?

Yeah. Do you know what the largest one is? No, what? It's Ross Sky and Lock Aber in Scotland, which is 1,632 times larger than Islington North. Really? Yeah. Oh my God.

So I worked that out, and I worked out that if Jeremy Cobbine's allotment was increased by that amount, then it would be the size of the Vatican City. Wow. Maybe it will be now. I'm just on the Queen very quickly. So overseas listeners might not know this, but the Queen's not allowed to vote in these elections. She is allowed to vote, but she just doesn't.

Sorry, she chooses not to. And every one of them. She just doesn't care. Apathy is a real problem in this country. It goes right up to the top. It's strange because she's old. You know, you think she would care more. Of course. She doesn't want the votes to go higher because she wants those delicious

money from the last department. So sorry, you've just got 4.99% of the vote in the constituency. See the queen going, yes. Yonk! But she spends most of her time in these periods and for the referendum and so on, just denying that she has an opinion, which I love. Every single royal member just seems to spend their whole period any time they're mentioned in the press in these periods denying that what they've said is in some way

alluding to an opinion about what way. people should vote. Well, they can have opinions on things like ketchup or mayonnaise or, you know, do you prefer a buzz cut or long hair? They're just not supposed to have political views. Yes, no, exactly. There's not any opinion. No, no. Obviously, have you heard of Prince Charles?

Consistently writes to everyone who will. But this were leaked, weren't they? He hasn't openly done that. He doesn't. That reminds me of the emperor of Japan, Akahito, who's not allowed to give any opinions on politics at all, not even just in elections, just never, ever, and it's in the Constitution that comes from the end of the Second World War. And so he wasn't allowed to abdicate.

He wasn't allowed to say, I want to abdicate. He had to kind of do an announcement alluding to the fact that he might want to, and then people had to kind of infer from what he said that he wanted to abdicate. So wink, wink, that stuff. Wow. You may not have seen that in the news last night, but they passed that he is now allowed to abdicate. Oh, really?

Yeah, yeah. I was in the news last night. Oh, I didn't see that. Yeah. Did you see the, just on like process, weird election, electoral process, if it's a tie, it comes down to a coin toss, which obviously never happens. But there was that guy in Anne's constituency. So one of our colleagues, Anne, used to live up north and it's in North East Vife. And I think the person who won was an SMP candidate who won by two votes this morning, right?

Yeah. Wow. Two votes. Wow. Oh, my God. So that's just one person, isn't it? Yeah. Putting the X in the wrong box.

Exactly. Did you guys see the green? the Green Party candidate from Ashfield? No. Okay, so he's named Aaron Rangy. He had to leave the count as it was going on because he had to get home to get

some sleep because he has an A-level history exam at 9 o'clock this morning. So he's 18 years old. He's the Green Party candidate. And it just got too late for him, so he was like, I can't stay for the final count, got my exam. They should let you off having a history exam if you're making history.

Yes. As he definitely definitely did in the green pass. Yeah, I'd take it he won the seat, presumably, right? I have no idea. No, I mean, you didn't win the seat. You know the deposit thing that we were starting off with? Did you know, it used to be a lot harder. So until I think 1918, or definitely in 1980, it was £150 that you had to put up.

But obviously, that was a lot more money then. Yeah. It was about, I think they've worked it out as being about $6,600 quid. Wow. And you had to win 12.5% of the vote, otherwise you would forfeit. your deposit. Oh, really? So it was a much higher barrier.

Another place you need to get 12.5% is in Japan. And do you know how much the Japanese deposit is that you have to pay? No. It's 3 million yen, which is the equivalent of 21,064 pounds. Whoa. And you need 12.5%. But then they don't get all those hilarious fringe candidates that can entertain them during a tedious campaign, right?

I suppose not, unless they're extremely rich. Very wealthy ones. Yeah. Just another thing. on process. I really think process was the big winner in this election, don't you? It was certainly what I voted for. I just wrote it in my box.

I love that I'm doing this in the way I'm doing it. So I didn't realize that actually, as long as you make your intention clear on the ballot paper, then your vote counts. So I thought you had to do a cross or maybe a tick. But if you draw a penis, as long as it's within the lines of the candidate in whose box you've drawn a penis,

it does count as a vote. And so there was, for instance, there was a Tory MP, Glyn Davis in 2015, who held on to the Montgomeryshire constituency in Wales, and he personally thanked the person who voted for him by drawing a penis in his box. But it sort of depends how you feel about penises, doesn't it? You're right.

So do you think, when people call you a dick, Andy, do you look at them and think, yeah, but he probably likes penises? Actually, on that spoiler, votes thing. In the last British election, 2015, there were 97,870 spoiled votes, right? The last

time the Gambia had an election, there were two. Really? Two spoiled ballots in the whole country. In the whole country. What? Because the Gambian voting system is really cool. If you've got three candidates, you have three buckets next to each other.

You've got three barrels next to each other, and they've got a little shoot at the top, and you get given a marble, and you push the marble through the little shoot at the top, And it dings a bell so everyone can hear. So how do you spoil your vote, though? Do you put your penis in the tube? To spoil your vote, you have to balance a marble on top of the barrel.

And only two people did it in the whole country. No. Yeah. You're kidding. That's incredible. It's great system. They've had the system since the 60s. It really works for them.

But can you imagine if you spoil your ballot by putting your penis in the tube? And then the electoral guy comes along and goes, do you like penises, though? The bell keeps going digglylinga, linga, ling. That's actually more akin to the word ballot, isn't it? Because ballot comes from, I think, a word that means little ball, because it used to be that you actually put a ball into a box. Is that right? I think so.

We can start thinking about moving on. Yeah, should we move on? Does anyone got more stuff to say? More on process, Anna? So much process. I do like that the first ballot box. She's got more on process. I know you said.

and Jess desperately hoping to move on. Look, this is a great fact, guys. It's not all about this election. The first ever secret ballot when it was introduced in the UK was in 1872, and the seal of the first ballot box was made with a licorice stamp. So there are famous licorishes in the UK that are called Pontefract licorice. And they're like black sweets and they have a stamp on them, which says Pontefract Liquorish and has a picture of Pontefract Castle.

And when they had to close the first ballot box in 1872, they had to whip one over. It was in Pontefract. So they got one of those stamps over from Pontefract and they stamped it with a licorice stamp. That's really cool. That's very cool. Liquorish logo on it. It's a good process.

Great process, guys. Okay, it is time for fact number two. And that is my fact. My fact this week is that only one political party in this 2017 election offered to do anything about Yetis. Did they get your vote? I only found out about it too late. What's the party? The party is, it goes by a number of names.

That's it's actually. Yeah, it's sort of formally as its main headline name known as Church of the Militant Elvis Party. It's also known as the bus pass Elvis Party. Oh yeah, those guys. This year they ran under the title Elvis and the Yeti Himalayan Preservation Party. So there is a common theme that runs through their names, isn't there? Yes, party. Yep.

Yeah, so the guy who is running is a guy called David Bates. Bishop, aka Lord Byro. And he was promising this year that if they were voted in, that he would do stuff about the potential threats from North Korea and launching missiles, because if they mislaunched a missile in the wrong direction, it might hit Tibet and harm Yetis. So that was his protection policy that he wants to get in on. And he actually was stepping down. He said he was going to step down completely and then did his own personal U-turn on it

because Theresa May called a general election when he thought I'm not going to be in fit state in a few years to come. But then he said when he heard that Mc Jagger was going on tour again this autumn, he thought, okay, I can run too. Actually, this snap election has been bad news for these kind of slightly unusual candidates. They've not been really able to organise things very quickly. There was a guy who had the rebooting Democracy Party. He's standing in Cambridge. And he's got this idea that he wants to change democracy, make it more direct. He wanted to fight all 650 seats in the election, but due to the snap election, he was only able to get into one.

But his idea is to go into sortition, which is basically that everyone randomly gets chosen as an MP. So rather than people becoming career MPs and deciding they want to work their way up into Parliament, you basically, it's like jury duty, you get just chosen. and they did that in ancient Greece it's called their sortition so it's quite an old type of democracy so they put all our names in a hat and then they just pick it out

just pick it out and they go you're an MP great and did that go well for ancient Greece are they still doing that today the reason it's called ancient Greece this guy Lord Byro he actually 2014 in a by-election in Nottingham

he got 67 votes part of his campaign promises were that he was going to try and get OAPs a 30% discount at brothels he got more votes in that by-election than the Lib Dems Is it possible that they misheard and thought he was talking about Brussels This brothels bureaucracy is what we need to stem out Well here's the other thing you might have liked him actually Andy Because one of his other

Quite old I'm getting on One of his other policies was that he wanted to protect public toilets from being wiped out. Wait a minute. So why does that do you like public toilets? I just remember ages ago we were talking about public toilets and you had a big thing about your theory of the high street public toilet being wiped out. A lot of them have been cut and yeah. And it is a substantial problem for people. If you're trying to get around and you need to access to a public toilet, as loads of people do.

And you don't want to go into a restaurant or a cafe or something because often they're snippy about letting you use their loose. and it's a massive problem. That is actually a problem. Exactly. And the fact that you have to pay for it a lot as well. Exactly. So in some American cities, they have laws, I think, now that you're not allowed to charge for going to the toilet. Or at least they're trying to get them in.

So it is a big, big subject. It is. And Lord Miro's on the case. No one has been talking about it in this whole campaign. It's all been Brexit, Brexit, Brexit. Process, process, process. Brothels, Brussels, Brussels. These weird candidates are fantastic.

So Lord Buckethead has been a... a big character in the election. He's incredible. He or someone dressed like him has been standing on and off since 1987. No. Yeah. He first stood against Thatcher.

Yeah. And he stood against Thatcher in 1987 with a promise to destroy Birmingham and replace it with a star base. And he stood in this election saying we should defer the decision on whether to destroy Birmingham and replace it with the star base until 2022 at least. So you were implying there, I think, that perhaps it's not the same Mr. is it like Doctor Who? He kind of regenerates. I think it might be. Yeah. There's a chance, isn't that sense? They should have had more than one Darth Vader. You know, like send, you know,

what? What? Just like, you know, there was only ever one Darth Vader, but you could just put another guy in there for like minor battles. Yeah. I guess so. Yeah. Why was there no like duplicate expendable Darth Vader? Yeah, yeah, that's true. He's just like the stormtroopers. Yeah. A tweet from Lord Buckethead this morning. 249. A new buckethead. record. Something to celebrate, eh? It's so funny watching him. I mean, it was already a horrible moment for Theresa May, I think, by that point, when she was standing there. And he was directly behind her. Was it all he was, oh no, actually, he was up quite on the edge. Yeah, he was, it was, it was, it was, because he had Mr. Fishfinger stood behind him. Tim Farron did. That was it. Okay, let's explain this

for overseas listeners who wrote, though, this. Okay, so like Dan says, we do have these very odd fringe candidates, and some of them like to dress up. And Tim Farron, who's the head of the Liberal Democrats, who's the third biggest party in England, no, who's the head of like the fourth or fifth biggest party. He was going up against...

Which actually, you might need to explain to people in Britain as well, given the state of Tim Ferrance campaign. He ran against a guy called Mr. Fishfinger who dressed like a fish finger. And he, there was a man called Mr. Fishfinger running because wasn't there a...

There was a Twitter poll. So there was a Twitter user called Skip Licker who just asked the question just a normal guy first name skip second name liquor and he asked

we're all completely losing the top do you think that's his real name of course it's his real name why would it be his Twitter name if it wasn't his real name it would be a weird thing to make up wouldn't it?

Why would you? Anyway he asked the question to Twitter who would you trust more MP Tim Farron or a fish finger and the fish finger's got 95% of the vote and so this guy ran on

Tim Farron almost lost his deposit in the I'm more trustworthy than a fish finger competition. But Mr. Fishfinger is amazing. So if you go on his website, I wanted to count the puns on it for this, but it was going to take me too much time. But he ran on the pledge to Hake Britain Great Again.

He had a manifesto in which there was a pollocky document. He talks about his own cod constituency. He has a list of endorsements, which is quite labour, but I guess fish have a dorsal fin. That's a big. deal for them. I was just wondering we've explained all about the election, but do we need to explain for foreign listeners what a fish finger is? So a fish finger is a piece of fish with breadcrumbs

on it and deep fried. And it is delicious. Oh, that's wonderful. It's better than Tim Farron. But yeah, and so the point is that he was standing behind Tim Farron as Tim Farron made his speech, his acceptance speech. But Theresa May had also had to stand next to... Buckethead. Well, bucket head and someone dressed as Elmo. Yes. A massive Elmo. I think only got three votes. Although I might be wrong.

Oh, so bucket head wiped the floor with him then. Buckethead absolutely destroyed Elmo in this election. Well, with a bucket for a head, he can do a lot of wiping, I suppose. He mopped the floor with him. So we did a fact before on this podcast about people who got no votes in a general election. But it was before the rules were changed and then you were allowed to vote for yourself. But I think someone has got just one vote, a guy called Rainbow George Weiss, who stood in 13 different constituencies at one election before they changed the rules.

I said you can really only stand in one election, one constituency. And he stands for the vote for yourself, Rainbow Dream Ticket Party. And in 2005 in Cardiff North, he got one vote. And it wasn't from him either because he wasn't registered in that constituency. Like Paul Nuttall. Paul Nuttall didn't vote for himself. Did he not? Because he's not registered in the constituency where he was standing.

Really? Paul Nottal, you mean ex-UKIP leader because as we came in here, he resigned, didn't he? That's true. The caretaker between Farage leader of the... Did you know, I think Winston Churchill couldn't vote for himself in the 1945 election? Really? Yeah, so there was... He lost that, didn't he?

He sure did. Was it by one vote? It was not by one vote. It was a bureaucratic cock-up, so there was a lot. of disorganisation because it was the end of the war people had bigger fish to fry and they didn't have enough ballot papers. They had to use your ration card as your ballot paper to prove who you were and he just wasn't registered and so he rocked up and didn't have a legal vote.

That's pretty bad after you've defeated fascism. It's awkward, isn't it? But it's process, isn't it? It's all about process. You've got to respect it. Do you know that the joint leader of the Green Party? So the Green Party has dual leadership and one of the leaders is this guy. called Jonathan Bartley.

And he's also a drummer for a blues band called the Mustangs, who've reached number five in the iTunes Blues chart. Wow. And they were nominated in 2010 for Best Band of the British Blues Awards. And I've listened to them, and they're genuinely really good. Really? Yeah, really fun to listen to. So well done, Jonathan.

Just speaking of Green, but in the drug sense, Green, Mr. Byro, Lord Byro, as well. He once wanted to nationalize marijuana, cannabis, and he wanted to call it British grass. Very good. Just on process, Anna, if you are high on drugs or indeed drunk, they can't stop you from voting.

Oh, yeah. Even if you're the queen. And also, if you're wearing a bucket on your head or something like that, they can't stop you from voting. You don't have to show your face. You're kidding. No? Well, otherwise you wouldn't be on to vote in a bunker.

Yeah. I guess not. And we'd find out who Lord Buckethead is when he goes to vote. There was a party that lost all of their deposits. Okay. This is, and they lost between 1992 and 2001. They contested 500 seats in that time. They lost every single deposit.

You'll probably remember them. The Natural Law Party. Oh, yeah. I remember that. Well, they're the levitating ones. They, yes, they weren't. They were the ones who thought they could levitate. They believed, so a lot of listeners might remember them.

A lot of listeners might not. They believed you could do this thing called yogic flying, which is basically bouncing around with your legs crossed on your bottom, with big hot water bottles underneath. you. Oh wow. And they believed that their first policy, right, if they had won in 1997, was that they would make a special air service from the armed forces of 7,000 yogic flyers to hover in and fix everything in the country. Wow. I remember, I'm sure you told me this, Andy, that the trick to yogic flying has three steps. Oh, this is mine that I remember

researching for one of the series. You could say it then. What was it? Because I can't remember. Oh, it was just the yogic flying. Yeah, the way you you get there. It's a three-stage process. So I think stage one is standing on one foot, and stage two is being able to hop on one foot, and stage three is full levitation. And I remember a proud statement by the yogic flying institute saying, we have successfully completed two of the three crucial steps. Okay, it is time for fact number three, and that is James. Okay, my fact this week is that Kenya have an election later this year. And there, They're running out of symbols for their candidates, which means that candidates are now using symbols such as a milk packet, a termite and a robot.

Okay. The Conservatives ran with a robot as their main thing this time round, didn't they? Yeah. What was it? Really? No, that's a joke about Theresa May. It doesn't matter. Guys, you two are tired, aren't you?

That's a very strong, very strong joke, unstable. We'll get it. So, yeah, this is, this actually happens in quite a lot of places in the world, and it's that how important it is to have a symbol next to your name. So we know in Britain we have symbols for the conservatives and label like the rose and the torch. And in America, they would have the elephant and the donkey and whatever they have over there. But in lots of places of the world, you have a lot of low literacy. And so if you can't read the name of your preferred candidate, you need to have the symbol.

And so they need a symbol, which is really memorable and striking. thought a termite was just... They thought a termite would be there. People want to vote for that. I might. I would. Ants are very industrious and they're, you know, they're hardworking and they get the job down and they... I think that's the idea.

They club together and they achieve things. Yeah. Was the milk carton half full or half empty or was it a full of milk? Depends how you look at it, Anna. It depends what kind of person you are. No, it was just, you couldn't look inside the milk carton because it was just a depiction of one. And actually, this is a... happens, like I said, quite a lot around the world. In India, the Election Commission

a lot symbols to you. And so there's a big long list of 164 available symbols, and you provide them three of them that you would like, and then they choose one of the three if it's available. Yeah, that's so cool. And they have bizarre ones, don't they? Like, they have, I was reading an article that was saying, I think they've modernized their symbols lately, because they've recently added a sewing machine, so I don't know how modern they've got, but they have scissors as one of the symbols you can choose, a stethoscope. Do they have rock and paper? It's a three-way marginal.

An ice cream going for the youth vote. They have. They do it in Egypt as well. I saw the actual symbols. I've got the picture here. They used everything from a tractor to a ballistic missile to a tap to this is my favorite one, a mobile phone.

But the mobile phone symbol has a picture in the mobile phone like a background and I'm pretty sure it's the politician who was running. That's cool. But do you know the thing with Egypt is it's not just that you choose three and they choose for you. It's actually completely random that they choose the symbol for you. So you say I'm going to run in Egypt and they just randomly pick you a symbol. And so you'll have some politicians who think they're really kind of serious and you'll see their poster. And then it's got all of their picture and all of their stuff on there.

And then there's like a picture of a banana next to the head. It just looks ridiculous. Oh my God. And like, for instance, it can be quite bad because there was a female MP who had a rocket as her symbol just allocated randomly. But Rocket means hottie in Egyptian slang, apparently. So she was like, well, I can't do this. I'm a serious MP. You can't call me a hottie, but those are the rules.

That wasn't random. I bet it was an all-male panel that randomly selected those symbols at some point. It's one of the symbols a penis. No. I think bananas is as close as you get. One of the ones I'm looking at here is a Canon camera. Like it's actually got the Canon logo on it. That's cool.

Well, I look through the Kenyan list. And there are really random. So there's an electrical socket. There's some broken handcuffs. There's a steering wheel. Broken handcuffs does not say to me, tough on crime. That says major cuts in crime. So the Kenyan election is between Ahuru and Nassau.

NASA. NASA? What, the American Space Agency? No, the National Super Alliance Party. So it's President Ahuru Kaniata, and everyone else has kind of ganged together with a coalition to go against him. And they've called themselves a National Super Alliance Party, known as the abbreviation NASA.

And they're hoping that their coalition will unseat him. I think the election's in August. Wow. I'm glad I don't live in a place as unstable as Kenya, where there's one party which has got just about half the seats of one which is definitely trying to club together. It's going to go out of dates. quickly. Won't get on date before tonight, will it?

Might do, actually. You know, no. Yeah. So just, you mentioned brands and logos. Yeah. There are some places where companies get a vote. So I was looking at how Hong Kong elections work, actually. You might know this.

So the way Hong Kong constituencies are divided up is that five of their seats are geographical seats, and then all the rest are, and then all the rest are, like, very important. companies and so they get like an industry seat and they get um an agricultural seat and they get a tourism seat and it's really weird because that means that people like canada air get a vote in the hong kong election so yeah it's insane yeah they do so all these airlines from all around the world get votes in the hong kong elections does a company vote equal the same as a single person's vote i think it does yeah or it might be more in fact wow wow yeah it's really weird that's amazing i just sit as MPs because corporations by

law are individuals, aren't they? Right. I mean, that's just a technical, legal thing, but I think they are. Yeah. So they should be able to vote in this country. But they're not standing up for themselves. They used to have, I think we've said this before, that universities used to get a vote. Did they?

So as well as the city of Oxford having an MP, or maybe it was two MPs, actually at the time it was each constituency had two MPs. Oxford and Cambridge each got to send an MP or two to the House of Commons. And that meant that students used to get two votes. It was until 1950, I think, or 1948. And so it was Oxford got MP, Cambridge got an MP, all the London ones got an MP, and then just all the other uni's got an MP. And then, yeah, it sounds like university challenges.

It morphed into that. Wow, that's amazing. And then students didn't vote again until last night. So did you hear the thing recently about Donald Trump's logo? Speaking of logos. No, what is his logo? It's a crest, and it has the word Trump on it. But it turns out that he just nicked it.

from somebody else and it was an old English crest and he took off the word integrity and put on the word Trump, which is the most amazing metaphor. It's so funny. Yeah. It was the husband of the woman who built Maralago got given this crest in 1939. Mara Lago, his second way out. His golf club. And the Trump organization just took that coat of arms, changed the word, never asked permission

from anyone. And then when he came back to the UK to open his horrible golf. course. I'm sure it's a very nice golf course if anyone wants to give me free round of golf. Sorry, when his fantastic golf course opened, he got in trouble because he hadn't registered the emblem according to the 1672 Lion King of Arms Act in Scotland. And then he tried to trademark and they said, no, that's already a thing here. You can't do that. So he had to invent a new crest solely to use in his Scottish golf courses. But in America, he's still using the one he's Nick. I think a lot of it is Americans listen to this

would probably be quite amused by how uptight we are about our crests, I should think. Yes. Well, the New York Times wrote in its cover as they said, The British are known for taking heraldry very seriously. Okay, it is time for our final fact of the show, and that is Andy. My fact is that in the 19th century, one of England's constituencies had no people living in it. and another one was underwater. These are so good.

They're called Rottenboroughs, which are constituencies where there used to be a load of people living there and it made sense for them to have two MPs and then over time the population changes or the place goes derelict but the rules haven't been updated so they still get MPs. And then it's really easy for someone, normally the landowner who owns the land, to just take over the place, pick his own MPs

and send them to the hell's gone. That's amazing. Yeah, there's a Blackadder episode, which is all about this, basically. Really? And one of the, the constituency that was underwater, Dunwich, is the inspiration for the thing in the episode, which is called Duny on the world. Oh, really? Do you know that Dunnich was the capital of the Kingdom of the East Angles? Was it?

Yeah, it was. So it used to be a really important place. And it was a port similar in size to 14th century London, according to Wikipedia. So it was a massive, massive place. And that's why they had this vote, I think. Yeah. It supposedly, yeah, exactly. rivaled the capital.

I mean, it's called, Dan, you're like this, the British Atlantis. Oh, yeah. What do you mean? It is called that. I'm calling it that now. Who calls it that? This guy.

But Atlantis isn't the thing with Atlantis that we don't know where it is? We know where Donich is. It just doesn't, it's just not there anymore. It fell into the sea like Atlantis might have done. But this is the British. I forgot it fell into the sea. I thought it fell into the sea.

I thought it was just a place we couldn't find. Yeah. No, fell in. Yeah. And it's the British Atlantis. It's not claiming to be the Atlantis. Anyway, guys. Yeah, I got that.

Oh, you've got that. It's still there, okay, and it's underwater. And supposedly, at midnight or at night, you can hear church bells dangling around in the water. And that's just someone voting with their penis. And it had eight churches, it had two hospitals, and there's one man. This was a piece in the India about 10 years ago. He's called Stuart Bacon, and he's done about a thousand dives down there. And he has a map, which was printed 500 years ago.

And he can make his way around. by touch the city underwater. That is extremely cool. It's so cool. Yeah, that's amazing. So what's left of it? Are there buildings? There was almost nothing left.

Most of it was swept away in these huge storms. There's like a church, a few houses, a Pratt. So there are soggy sandwiches. So it did, that actually had about 200 people living there, which is much larger than a load of other constituencies. Before they were reformed, there were 50 seats in the country which each had fewer than 50 voters living in them. So funny. It was the 1832 Reform Act. A bit of process for you there, I know.

And it was that act which got rid of these boroughs, but it was also the act that excluded women from voting. Because until then, it wasn't explicitly against the rules for women to vote. If they were landowners, they could in theory. And one did, actually. I think the first woman to vote was in the late 1500s because she was a widow of a big landowner who'd been the person who would nominate the person to go to Parliament.

So she got to nominate. So women got the vote in the 16th century. But did you know that Charles James Fox, who's a famous British Prime Minister, when he became leader, he was too young to vote. So he was 19 when he became leader, yeah, 1768 and the voting age was 21. How does that work then? I guess just other people voted for. Oh, yeah, I know his father bought the constituency for him. There we go.

It was sheer nepotism. Wow. So Aaron from the Green Party doing his A-level history exam back then might not have been able to vote either. Yeah, exactly. 18 would have been too young. Yeah. Wow. So one of the features of rotten boroughs, which were a massive problem, obviously, in the country, was this thing called pot walloping.

And I had never heard of this. It's so cool. So before the Reform Act, then you could vote in certain areas if you were a pot wallopper. And what it meant was is that you had a pot or a cauldron. And if you had a pot that was big enough, if you had a pot, a proper big cooking pot, it showed that you had a hearth. that was big enough to put the pot in. And if you had a hearth that was big enough to put the pot in, then you obviously had the freehold of a house,

and therefore you were considered responsible enough to vote. But could you not just get a knockoff pot off eBay? You would have thought so. Did you have to bring a pot with you to the voting booth? That's why nobody voted, because people dragging these enormous heavy cauldrons around the streets. They actually had one guy called Lord Cauldronhead. Isn't it the case that they had to,

if you were voting, it was done in public? one by one. Yes, it was done a public and it took ages. Right. So, um, but did you have to declare it sort of to everyone or was it a secret ballot? No, no, you did. The secret ballot wasn't introduced until the 1870. Wow. Yeah. That meant that you could obviously, people could sort of bribe you. It was called treating your constituents. You gave them free food and drink basically. Yeah. And sometimes that, that would cost so much money that only one person could afford to stand in the seat anyway. Um, people used to sign their ballot papers actually because that was a good, because the person who had been elected would go through the ballot papers afterwards and look at who'd voted for them and be like,

oh, Johnny, I'll give him a little present. Mr. Pines has voted for me. And if you were super rich, presumably you could gift people pots to allow them to vote for you. To give them the franchise. Yeah. To gain votes. Yeah.

Okay, get this. The 1784 election, voting opened in the Westminster constituency on the 1st of April, and it closed on the 17th of May. It took nearly two months just to gather the votes Because they didn't have this thing Because obviously they didn't have mass communication And they didn't need to do the election All on the same day basically

Did Sunderland still turn in all their votes By 10pm that day Sundland's like the swatty kid at the class Hey not this year though I know, they got this tunnel Oh so quickly explain that for overseas people Sundalin usually So the polls close at 10 o'clock

And Sunderland for the last 20 years Has always been the first constituency to give their result and they usually do it by about 11 or something like that. They're really fast. Really, really quick. But this was the first year in ages. In my lifetime, I think that Newcastle has beaten them. And as a Newcastle fan, I was thrilled with the result of that derby between them, finally.

It's been a bad year for Sunderland altogether, isn't it? Because they got relegated from the Premier League and now this. And Newcastle got promoted from the championship. I know. In your face, Sunderland. We're not doing a tour date in Sondland, don't we? Not anymore. Um,

should we wrap up? Sure. Yeah, let's go to bed. Yeah. Oh, wait, can I tell you?

Oh, no, actually no. Yeah, go on, go on. A bit of process. Just a bit more process to finish off. This is, I was just really surprised about this.

Um, supermarkets, uh, people who shop in certain supermarkets, vote for certain people. And where would you guess, Aldi and Liddle have their, um, loyalties these days?

The budget shops, so I would imagine it's people on a tighter budget, so I'd say labor. You would have thought so. wouldn't you? It's the Tories. Is it? The Tory voters. So actually, the Tories have all supermarket shoppers. I don't know where

Labour voters are shopping. People who shop in Tesco's, Waitrose, Sainsbury's, Audi and Liddle are now all conservative. And it's just Morrison's and Aster that have got the Labour Vogue. But you do hear about Little Britain, don't you? You do. True Labour voters

grow all their own produce on their allotments. Okay, that's it. That's all we can do. We need to go to sleep now. We are knack. I need to close my working eye and we will be back again next week with another episode until then you can reach us and chat more to us

about the British elections if you want on our Twitter accounts I'm on at Schreiberland James at skip liquor at egg shaped Andy at Andrew Hunter M and Chisinski You can email podcast at QI.com Yep and you can also go to our group account

at QI podcast you can go to our website No Such Thing as afish.com where you can find all of our previous episodes. There's also our tour dates for the UK, and there's also a link to our book, which is coming out in November. We'll be back again next week with another episode. We'll see you then. Goodbye.