No Such Thing As A Fish - No Such Thing As Old Testament Podcasts

Episode Date: October 5, 2023

Dan, James, Andrew and Lou Sanders discuss skating, shanties, flies and fishing. Visit nosuchthingasafish.com for news about live shows, merchandise and more episodes.  Join Club Fish for ad-free episodes and exclusive bonus content at apple.co/nosuchthingasafish or nosuchthingasafish.com/patreon

Hi everyone and welcome to another episode of No Such Thing as a Fish, where we were joined by none other than Lou Sanders, one of the funniest people I know. You'll know Lou from all sorts of TV stuff. She was on Taskmaster. She's been on QI many times. She's just a really, really, really funny person. We had such a good laugh with her making this show in the Soho Theatre last month. But what I really want to say, and what is very important, is that Lou has a brand new book out.

The book is called What's That Lady Doing? It's a really, really great book about how she maybe used to be a little bit unhinged and now channels all that unhingedness into amazing comedy. It's so well written. I really highly recommend it. But one thing I should also say while we're talking about books is that Anna and I have written our own book. It's called Everything to Play for, the QI Book of Sport. It's for people who like sports

It's even for people who don't like sports Who just want to read a load of interesting stories And fun facts I mean, it's from me and Anna You know what you're going to get And it comes out next Thursday But the reason we wanted to mention it now Is because if you go to Waterstones

And you put in the offer code QI Sport 23 Then you will get 25% off And that is a deal for pre-order only So you need to do that before Thursday If you want to get our book for a quarter off. Anyway, more importantly, really, for this week is you must go and check out

Lou Sanders' book, what's that lady doing? That's available right now in all bookshops and all online places where you get your books. Hope you enjoy the show. On with the podcast. Welcome to another episode of No Such Thing as a Fish, a weekly podcast this week coming to you live from the Soho Theatre in London. Sitting here with James Harkin, Andrew Hunter Murray and Lou Sanders, and once again, we have gathered around the microphones

with our four favorite facts from the last seven days and in no particular order, here we go. Starting with fact number one, and that is my fact. My fact this week is that names of registered competitive roller derby players include skate bush, Venus Thigh Trap,

Camille Toe, Alice in Woundherland, and Weird Alps. Spanker bitch. Very rude, but this is the most fun naming convention I think I've ever discovered, which is the amazing sport of Roller Derby largely takes place in America. They have this huge registry of names where when you join,

you almost get like a WWF wrestling name. You pick it for yourself, you put it forward, and you get added to this big register, and then when you're out there, that's who you are. That's who you embody. and there's something like 40,000 names that have been put over various different lists over the years. That's so good. Yeah.

The names are so good. It's a huge list, and you can waste a lot of time, as I did. So, H.P. Shovecraft, Roldermort, that's a good one. And some of them are just, like, pure on, like, there are some just violent ones. Affirmative Smaction. Agatha Krushty.

Al-Strapone. Bit of a stretch. Strap-on, I think they're going for there, are they? I think it's Al Capone, but with the strap-on? Got it, Al-Copone. There's also Adolf Glitter, Adolf Hitzer, Adolf Wistler, and Adol Hitter. I think flirting with the taste line. I guess.

But they are good. Ferting and winning. It's an amazing spot, isn't it? It's mostly women who do it. In fact, it's almost exclusively women. Finally. Well, you do it. You're not roller derby, but you're a roller skater.

Yeah, yeah. I know some roller derby people, yeah. And do you have a name? Oh, what do we call? Loose ends. Loose ends. Loose ends. Because if you, a skating term is to send it.

Lou, sends. I actually found Roller Derby names for each of us. It's going through the database. So for you, Lou, there is Lou Brickend and Lose your daddy. Lose your daddy's lovely. There's Andy Clockwise, James Bondage. And... Do you know what they do in Roller Derby?

Did you think it's bondage? In his fantasy, it's a little bit different. And Dan Halen or Dan Sin Queen. Dan Haylon. Oh, that's good. Yeah, so, yeah. But the sport is basically you roll a skate around the rink, right? And you've got one person who's kind of in charge

and who you're trying to protect while the other team are trying to get them, basically. It's like that kind of thing, isn't it? And it started off, their whole sport started off as endurance races. So in the 1880s, there was this huge thing in America. I think we might have mentioned it before, of women doing six-day races, where they would just walk and walk and walk and walk again and again

until basically there was one person left. They would just keep walking, keep walking. And then they started to do it on roller skates. And what they found is that some of the people who were faster would get around the circuit and that start overtaking people. And then the people who were being overtaken would really hate it. And so they start knocking them over. and they found that people enjoyed that way more

than they enjoyed the rest of them. They didn't really quite like people just going around in circles, loads and loads of times, but they loved it when people beat the shit out of each other. Yeah. Well, I can see why, though, because the very first one that they did, this is what you would come and watch. People skating, roller skating, around a ring,

57,000 times. Yeah. The idea was that they were going across America. That's the thing. They'd worked out how many times around the thing was to get from New York to L.A. or whatever. And so... They'd stop for breaks, right?

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. But not much. She wouldn't stop for much breaks. You stop for just like 20 minutes here or there. And you go 24 hours just with the occasional just stopping for the off-map. I think it's a lot more fun now. They're sort of bashing each other out of the way.

Have you done that? Have you tried that? No, but so many people have told me... So basically it's quite aggressive sport. Like my friends do it and it's like you end up with a lot of breakages and stuff and it's often like big units that do it. And so many people have told me that I'll be really... good at it.

You should do that. Do you know what your friends, do your friends have particular names that? Yeah, but I can't remember any of them. But I only wrote down to C unit, but the eye is very small. C unit. Oh, yeah, yeah. And Captain Beaver. And I thought, sounds like my love life.

I was chatting to someone called Lynn Huin, who was England captain. Hang on, is that a joke name? It's not. It's real. Her real name. What's say the name again? Lin Hwin. Oh, okay, Lin-Gwin.

I did think he said Lynn Quim, and that's why I asked her. That might have been her fake name. No, her fake name was Shaolin Scarlett, and she was a captain of the England team in the World Cups in 2014 and 2016. And I was asking her about how it works. She said lots of teamwork is really, really important to teamwork. And where they came up with a new tactic, they all get matching tattoos of their tactic of London.

That's pretty hard, isn't it? We do that with our facts, don't we? Yeah. We are absolutely coated. Head to toe. They've had to make the font smaller and smaller as the years go by

because they keep thinking we'll stop, but we won't. Have you got any tattoos? Have a guess? No. I'll never tell. Only, this is a podcast

you can say what you want. Oh yeah, I got 16 huge ones. Got all the lingo. 16 big ones. That's what you walked into the tattoo place and said, give me 16 big ones. I don't mind what they're off

as long as they're big. Yeah. Teenage mutant Inger Turtle is another one. Oh, very nice. I thought that was your tattoo. Tupac Shanker. That's clever. That's good, yeah.

Twat Rocket. I think that one's so clever. The events as well. Night of the Rolling Dead. Noctober Fest. Spanxgiving. Season's beatings. Okay.

They're great. But there were these big mass events earlier, even in the 19th century, before they started doing proper skating, before these sort of like formal events. So in 1884, there was a guy called Victor Clough, who skated 100 miles in 10 hours, like in around a course, which was very impressive.

And then in 1885, there was a six-day event where they had 36 skaters, again, roller skates, competing. And then soon after that, the winner of the race, who was a guy called William Donovan, and another competitor, died. Oh. Ooh. Yeah, and they said, oh, maybe we shouldn't do this for 10 hours a day all the time,

because people just weren't up to it, and they just kept going. I was reading about the walking version that came before the skating, and this was, like I said, it was women doing this for six days at a time, and it became so popular that there was one stage, I can't remember where it was, but there was a load of kids went missing in an area, and everyone thought, oh, shit, all these kids had gone missing. And what they found is they were in a warehouse, and they'd started their own events of walking around in circles for days on end.

and they just were trying to copy what these women were doing and were like, yeah, let's do it ourselves. And they'd been walking around in circles for three days when they were found. I thought that was going to take a darker turn. I thought it was going to be like a roller-skating Pied Piper situation where the Pipeper had skated through the town and all the children had danced along.

Yeah, we thought it's a chimisafel in that direction. I didn't think that. Did you hear of Rinkomania? No, what's that? This is the Edwardian craze for rinks, skating rinks. Loads of venues around everywhere. used to be rings that are now converted, just because it was so crazily pop.

Basically, because you could meet the opposite sex. That was the, you're a bit less chaperoned, you're able to skate away from your chaperone. I read one article saying, Mother Grundy dare not trust herself on skates, which meant that some, you know, older person isn't going to be watching you and making sure what you're doing with the other,

exactly. The opposite sex, yeah. My wife started, I can't believe, I've just thought of this just now. But my wife decided to start roller skating. Oh, yeah. And her skating instructions. is very handsome.

What's her street name? Ooh, I'm not sure. I don't want to say anything that will mean I can't go home tonight because she's here. But here's the thing, right? So she bought a pair of roller skates. She hasn't done it since she was a teenager. And we're leaving the house and she starts putting them on. And I said, what are you doing?

She was like, I'm just going to go and do it now. And I was like, you've got to test it out in a park. We're on a main road here. And you're going on your own with our child in a buggy. Wilf was like only a few months like, you know, nine months old or something like that so I said, listen, I better come with you and she was insistent that she does it.

So she put the roller skates on she took the buggy outside. And you live at the top of a very steep hill, don't you? We do have a bit of an incline on the street. And you go everywhere by unicycle as well, there you have those. So I close the door and all I hear is

and I turn around and Phinella and the buggy have just gone off and she can't stop because she doesn't know how to use the brake on the back, and I have to chase them down the road as they're heading to oncoming traffic coming on the other road. There's two guys with some glass going across the road.

Wow. I love that spirit, though. That's amazing. Oh, can I ask you, have you seen Roller Limbo? No. What's that? Amazing. Okay, so it is literally, as it sounds, there's limbo on roller skates, and you... Oh, yes, yes. You think you know what it is, and you're wrong.

So... No, no, okay. So what you're imagining maybe is someone skating towards and then bending backwards. That's right. It's not how you do it. You basically, it's so hard to describe, because I'm behind a desk. But basically, your legs go out to the sides. You go down into the splits.

I'd be honest, Andy. I don't think the fact there's a desk here is what makes that difficult for you to my time. I so wish I could show you all. Well, we have got some skates for you. So you're doing a sideways slip. You do a sideways splits, but you're moving forwards, and you're holding onto your calves. I know, and you're going under these bars,

which are about, I don't know, 20 centimetres high, and you're so low as you head foot. You've got to look it up. It is so good. Wow. It's the most amazing thing. Those people need to grow up a little bit. Well, the competitors are mostly children, so.

No, good on them. Have you heard of Jean-Eve Blondeau? No. So Jean-Eve Blondeau has invented a new suit made of plastic that has 30 roller skates attached to it in all different parts of his body. So wherever he, if he falls over on his back, he can roller skate. If he falls on his front, he can roller skate. Brilliant.

If he falls on his head, he can roller skate. He can walk along a wall and roller skate along the wall as he's going. He can. There's videos on YouTube as he does it. Has he using it is powers for good or for evil? I would say neither good nor evil. He's just using them for more hits on YouTube. What can he do on his head?

That's incredible. Yeah, the head one that probably maybe exaggerates a little bit. But he could do in theory, yeah. And he basically goes down all these really big hills around the world as quickly as he can on his suit. How does he stop? Does he have a break on like his elbows or something? You know what?

I'm not sure. He must have some breaks. He's just still going somewhere right there. Eventually, you get against the bottom of the hill. You don't need to stop. Like, the reason you stop himself is in case you fall over. He's already fallen over. You don't need to stop.

There's a big wall there. Yeah, you need. He could just go up the wall and then on the side and then on his head and stuff. He cannot be stopped. He should be stopped. He also has one of his suits, which... These ones, you can buy these 30 ones.

I don't know how much they are, but they are available. But he does have one suit, which isn't for sale, which also features Samurai Blame. and spike horns. Oh, my God. What is that useful for? Probably evil, I reckon. I'll give him six years' life expectancy.

Yeah, exactly. I need to move this on very soon. I've got a couple of other names that I found. So here's the thing. There's a lot of extremely rude names on this registry. And it's done in a kind of empowering way. I think it's sort of, you know, it's exciting to have these real badass names. But God damn it, they really go for it.

So some of them I discovered. Bitch hiker is one. Viginamite. Oh, wow. Is that like marmite? Yeah, you love it or you hate it. It's some kind of yeast extract. I'm not sure.

It is time for fact number two, and that is Lou. Okay, my fact this week is that the TikTok singer who went viral with the sea shanty is unable to perform his song on a boat. because he suffers from terrible seasickness. Yeah, it's ironic. That's what that is. It's sweet as well.

It's lame. No, it is sweet. It is sweet, actually. It was an amazing thing, wasn't it? He basically, it was 2021, he suddenly releases this sea shanty called Weller Man, and it went to number one, which is, yeah, it went to number one in the UK charts.

It's a song about a whale trawler, and they're looking for a whale. And this was 2021. So you would think by now, maybe it's died down a bit. But I went on to his Spotify listens. He still, as of today, gets 5 million listens a month on his Spotify account. That's the same as Tom Jones. Wow.

Yeah. So it's not unusual, though. Don't shake your head at your own. That is really good. It's not even a sea shanty, is it? No, not really, no, isn't it? No, it isn't. None of these are.

Is it River Shanti? What is it? It's just a song. A sea shanty has to be something that you sing when you're working. So, like, drunken sailor is like, what would you do with the drunken sailor? You're pulling the rope and you're bringing in the sails and stuff. But if he's getting a record deal, he's working sort of on that.

That's a really good point. Yeah, you got me there. It's like, mate, Harkin. That is the cool thing about sea shanties, like the old sea shanties is that because on a vessel you only had, very skeleton crew that had to do multiple things. The song is the beat of allowing you to know how we all work as a group. So the rhythm of it, the lyrics of it would mean you have to pull at that moment and pull

at this or whatever place this and whatever. So people often see it done on like Navy ships. It never really would have happened on Navy ships because they had so much crew. You didn't need this multitasking. They were banned the UK Navy. They were banned Sea Shanties because you wouldn't be able to hear commands if you're singing too much. But you're having a laugh.

Yeah. So it's like merchant ships, and wailing ships and things like that. And there were specific songs for different things you were doing on board. So there was hauling shanties, running shanties, pump shanties,

swabbing shanties, capstan shanties. Capstan is that thing you turn around in the middle of the ship that pulls the anchor up. Oh yeah. And all these had their own songs, really?

That's pretty cool. Yeah, I love it. But it's been, like, that song that he sang, it's not like it's an obscure song that's not been around for ages. It's one of, like, the better known sea songs. And you can read a list of places it's appeared.

So it was in 2013. It was on the album, now that's what I call C-Santies, Volume 1. Yeah. Yeah. I found that. Did you find the volume 2? Yeah, I did.

No. Yeah, it's on Spotify. Not as many listens as Tom Jones. Really? But it's doing okay. To be fair, it's a great title, and it's not multiple different C-Santi acts. It's just the one band from Wellington and New Zealand

called Wellington Sea Shanties Society. But there is a whole genre. And how did they get that name? There is a whole kind of niche genre of pirate metal. And they sing Wellerman as well, this song. It's a Scottish band called Ayl Storm and Storm Seeker. They've been known to sing this song. So it's been around.

So how come he gets all the money for it then? Just because he made it popular. It's a traditional song. And so traditional songs, I don't think there's any copyright over... I'm not sure if that's right. I think that's what's right. I think you do get royalties, but you have to bury them. On a remote island.

It's quite a pain in the ass, actually. Okay, I had a little quiz question for you. When did the last actual proper shanty man, not like modern singers, when did the last proper shanty man die? Oh. Oh, well, I would have thought probably 18th century. Okay, any advance on that?

92, 1992. 1992? Good guess. Yeah, 1993. We're just having to laugh. Well, Lou, you're correct, because he died in 1992. I'm not joking. I was...

As you said it, I was like, keep the poker face, keep, like, don't give away, shit, she's got it. Wow. That's insane. He was a guy called Stanley Hugill. Yeah, I knew that. Yeah. He was born in 1906. He was at sea in 22, at the age of 16.

Yeah. And then he was the shanty man on the last ever British sailing ship, which was called the Garth Pool. And that was on its last voyage, and that ship was wrecked in 1929. And he lived his soul life. the Saccoa War, he settled down, he wrote down all his shanties because

like they're all all traditional, aren't they? Like, there wasn't a proper songbook? And he died in 1992. Wow. Yeah. I, I, I, and that, you won't like this, but this is not really yours at a bag, but I do think I'm a bit psychic. What are you talking about? You're sitting right

next to the person who absolutely loves hearing that kind of stuff. Why do you think you're psychic? You think you pulled that out of Andy's head just now? Yeah, basically, and I'm very emotionally intelligent. But you don't even believe in UFOs, so I'm not going to continue. I said that to you in private backstage. That's true.

He said he doesn't believe in UFOs and he hates women. One of those things is true. He's a lovely, like... Just jokes. Punishment, anyone? I think... I can't feel like I've had enough. This is to do with...

Music and the army. So corporal punishment in the British army was often meted out by drummers and bands people. You were the drum. I suppose in a way you were. The Cat of Nine Tails is the drumsticks. So it's like rhythm? Well, no, it wasn't so much that.

It was probably... There was two possible reasons. One, that other musicians would play music and it would drown out the screams of the person being punished. But probably because just the people who were drummers are in the... banned. They were not proper sailors. And so they were like the lowest of the low, as far as,

you know, who's the most senior. And so the idea was, if you're a sailor, you wouldn't want to be meeting out punishment to your, to your peers. And so maybe you would get the person at the bottom to do it. And that apparently is where we get the idea of being drummed out. So being drummed out of the army is because it was the drummer who would do the, do the beating. That's very cool. They're actually beating you? Yeah, with the cat and nine tails. Oh, I see. Okay, okay, okay. And do you know what, boys pussy is? So,

it's a former champion roller derby winner. No, just on topic, it was a cat of nine tails, but four younger recruits. So if you're a young person who joined the army, you weren't of age, perhaps. They would have a, like, a cat of nine

tails would have nine, like, wips on it and there would be knots on it, but yours would only have five and it'd be made of smooth cod. Oh, that's nice, isn't it? Wow. Yeah, boy's pussy. Cricky. Have you ever heard the sea shanty,

Come all ye tongues? No. Sing it. It's good. I can't sing it. Is it the same as Come All You Faithful? It's about the tongues were the guys on board ship who collected stray intestines of whales floating around.

Wow. Yeah. I think in Wellerman, he says, we'll get the tonging done or something like that. He does, exactly. So that's what that means. That's what that means. Yeah.

That's very cool. Not a lovely job. I got a fact about whales singing, actual whales and whale songs. So I love this. Okay. Whale song spreads like human songs. So the scientists found there was a, basically there was a hit whale song among humpback whales in the west coast of Australia.

It was only found there. But then several months later, they heard that same song on the East Coast. Right. And this happens in the Atlantic too and basically hit whale songs, make their way from west to east. So you will get whales in the east, which are still singing the old songs. But the whales in the west have a new

song by now, and it gradually spreads across, and it's always west to east, and we don't know why. That's amazing. So imagine, like, the radar listening. It's not on you. He's got to get those Spotify numbers from somewhere. This is a cool thing.

There's sea sickness we're talking about, but there's other kinds of sickness that you can get. motion sickness. C-sickness is one of the motion sickness. Love sickness. We don't know who the person... Love sickness. Yeah, yeah, sorry, yeah, go.

What? Is that a thing? I thought you were wanting us to join in with more kinds of sickness. Is that a sickness? Yeah, it was. Is love sickness not a thing? This is a lucky guy.

No, it was a proper thing in the 19th century, wasn't it? Love sickness. Yeah, right. And they thought that it meant you, if you had like a pallid expression and, like, just deep-sunk highs and stuff, that's because you were lovesick.

Right. It's supposed to be a thing. Okay, so with all the sicknesses, it's probably impossible to ever say this was the first person who ever had sea sickness. This is the first person who had love sickness, right?

But we do know the person who had the first sickness of one kind. So I'll give you the name. He's called Germant Titov. What did Titov have a sickness? Okay. Herpes. Herpes sickness. Teetov, presumably space race.

There we go. What? Space sickness. First person to ever have space sickness. How do you know that? I feel I'm a bit psychic. Could be all the Russian history I've read, but I think it's a psychic sickness.

So Tittorv, he was... Livid. Wow. I can't read mine. I know what you're thinking right now. Yeah, but you're saying that because you've read it, you're not psychic, but I've never read a book of my life. How you explain that?

You've written one, yeah. Yeah, I've written one. So, 1961, August. Germant Titov is the, I think, the fourth human, certainly one of the first batches of humans to go up and orbit the Earth. And he's the first person who up there gets motion, well, space sickness and vomit. So first ever human to vomit in space. And so landmark thing, and it affects so many people, so many astronauts who go up there.

And it's for the opposite reason that you might get sea sickness or any kind of motion sickness on Earth. You have an opposite effect, right? I don't know the proper science but to like put it in context, if you were in a car and you were reading your phone or a book, you might get motion sickness because what you're staring at is counter to everything else that is in your normal life.

Like there's movement around you, you're trying to keep that still. Yeah, exactly. In space to get rid of everything moving around because of the lack of gravity, you should read a book and to get yourself. My book is now available for all the bookshops. It's called What's That Lady doing, Full Starts and Happy Endings? Cheers. Have NASA expressed any interest, Lou?

They've not expressed interest. So here's the thing. They were very worried when it happened to him because he came back down to Earth and was space sickness something that's going to carry through on into life? And then suddenly they noticed huge changes in his personality.

He suddenly was sort of like sleeping around with different women. He was being really rowdy in bars. He was like all these different personality traits and they thought, God, the space sickness has come down. So they studied him. Hang on, did my dad? Go up to space.

That's the missing chapter in your book, is it? But here's what they worked out. It wasn't space sickness. It's just he was a dickhead. All right, cool. We need to move on to our next fact. It is time for fact number three. And that is Andy.

My fact is that the people of Iceland can think of a good use for 95% of a cod. So this is a fact about recycling specifically. Can you tell us what part of a cod there? Yeah, I'm thinking that. That stubborn last few percent. Basically, the blood and the eyeballs

are quite hard to monetize and make, you know, you probably use it. I've always said that. Blood and the eyeballs are hard to monitor. We have said that the acreous humour in the eye can be drunk in an emergency. Yes, it's just hard to monetize.

Yeah, it's hard to... monetised emergencies. Yeah, and like there is a use for the blood as well. It can be used in sausages, or as fish food, but it's hard to get fishermen to collect the blood from the... Anyway, basically, this is from a magazine called Hackai magazine, which we've mentioned before. It's great.

And his favourite. Anna's favourite magazine. It's all about the sea and everything nautical and all about water, basically. And Iceland catch loads of cod, and they didn't use much of it until recently. They used 40% of the cod in the early 2000s. nightmare lots of waste yeah you know you're using the fillets so you're eating the meat but not really using it properly so there is a project called 100% fish which aims to put all of the cod caught to

good use you know just just use the whole thing which is much more sensible so the skin if you've been if you've had a burn the skin can be grafted onto people now so there are people who are part cod no yeah really you can see the imprint of the scales as well but it's a really good thing for skin grafts. Like it's really, it's really, thousands of people have been treated with cod skin. Would it make you swim faster? No. What? No. Absolutely not. Why not? You're recovering from a major operation. You've been through hell. Suddenly there's Dr. Harkin at the door. So, in your speedos, come on. But what I'm thinking is, you could, is there not a way in the Olympics, the next Olympics, we put this cod skin on all of our swimmers? Yeah. No? You're right. Well, maybe it would. Maybe it would.

Maybe it would work. That's a good point. I don't know. But then you retire like. But then you retire, age 27 and you're just covered it cold for the rest of your life. Smelling a fish. No one wants to hang out with you. Yeah, yeah. No, you're right. Tom Scaly. Yeah?

Tom Scaly. Do you get it? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. There's a guy called Tom Daly. And he's got, yeah. Do you get it, Tom Daly? And then put the cod on him and it's Tom Scaly. Which would presumably be a nightmare if he was plunging downwards and then just like hit the bottom at torpedo speed.

Yeah. No suits for Tom Scaly. Anyway. Some uses of a cod. Oh, yeah. So if you are a professional fisher person, and when I say professional, I mean you're doing it in competitions,

so you're seeing who can catch the biggest fish. Yeah. The way that they tell which fish is the best is they weigh it. Now, some people will put some, like, metal or something inside the fish to weigh it down. Now, what if you bought some cod on the way and you shoved it inside your fish, they'll never find it because it's fish inside fish.

Amazing. And that's what happens. There's this big scandal in fishing, which people have been buying fillets of cod and shoving them inside their fishes to make them heavier. That's disgusting. That's so disgusting. It's true.

And there was a notorious case really recently last year, which was uncovered by a judge called Jason Fisher. Brilliant. Wow. How desperate do you have to be to win an angling competition that you're busy shoving cod up another fish's ass. Like, what is the... You must have a look at your life then and think,

I've lost my priorities. I'd go down the mouth. Would you? I probably would, yeah. As opposed to the small opening. Which is more plausible. But which is more fun, you know. You've got to get some questions.

Gotta get some fun out of it. God, that's really clever. Yeah? It's good, isn't it? It's really clever. By the way, how many of us... on this stage have been to Iceland? I haven't. I know you have. I've been a few times. Yeah, you went. You did a TV thing though, didn't you?

What was it? Dangerous roads. And it is good to go to Iceland when someone else is paying for it because it's so expensive. Is it really? Yeah, it's so expensive. I was like, this is really good. I'll have another sandwich. What did you see? Like, what... Oh, yeah, I suppose it wasn't about the sandwiches. Saw Ed Campbell.

Do you know a fact about Iceland? Everyone's... Loads of people are called Daddy. so it's my heaven because that's the name of Dave. They're called... If your name's Dave in England, it'd be called Daddy in Iceland. Wow. Chaz and Daddy.

Yeah. So our fixer was called Daddy, so we had to keep saying, Daddy, Daddy. Wow. Good fun. So in Iceland, they're like, they're like, oh my God, the winner from Taskmaster, from Daddy, Channel Daddy. Yeah, Channel Daddy, yeah.

It was on Channel Daddy. Wow. Dave. Oh, I just understood that. Sorry. I was thinking it's on Channel 4, isn't it? Got it. Oh, sorry.

No, it did get bored by day. Yeah, yeah. But series eight when you were on. Yeah. Which is there more of in Iceland? Rabbits or rabbis. Ooh. Oh, that's good.

Rabbis. You're saying rabbis? I think so. Audience have pitched him with a vote for rabbis, okay. Well, rabbits. Rabbits, thank you. Yeah, I would say probably a lot of countries don't have any rabbits, so I'll say rabbis.

One rabbi, no rabbits. You're half right. They've got loads of rabbits and only one rabbi. I know. I know. I know. a really good fact about Iceland here we go

they've got a dating app because because it's such a small country everyone's sort of related so you could sleep with someone in the pub and it could be your first cousin and so they've got a dating app which this is true I don't know why everyone's looking at me like this

and they've got a dating app where you can tell how far removed the person you've just got off with is wait don't you do it before yeah maybe do it before They're not like they're going to turn the lights on it, you're like, Daddy!

So they don't know, like, you don't know all your cousins or whatever. Because so many people are related and it's caused problems with babies coming out odd and stuff, that someone developed this dating app so you can tell. Wow, that's amazing. But imagine if you were in the throes of passion, and you're like, oh, God, I've just turned the app, maybe. Oh, no, maybe I won't bother that.

Iceland is home to the hottest hole on the planet. The hottest hole. Literally the hottest hole. Okay. It's a geothermal hole is the Iceland deep drilling project. And it's 5,000 degrees Celsius at the bottom. It's really hot. I've really resisted.

You've been there? I think have. I think so. I think there's a big factory on top of it where you can go and visit. That's very cool. Yeah. And basically it's the pressure is too hot. You put water down there and it becomes something called super

critical, which I do not fully understand, but it's basically neither liquid nor gas. I don't know what it is. Solid? It's ice. If you heat water up enough, it becomes ice again.

Very new science. Yeah. It's so useful, because they use it to heat everything. They can have under pavement heating from the geothermal heat, so people don't fall over on the ice, because obviously it gets really icy, but you don't slip over and fall, so it's very... But they use it.

so much, don't they? Like most of the houses that the hot water comes literally from the core of our earth. It's heated by geothermal. Literally from the car of our earth. You can edit out the literally from my weather.

But it's like they got around problems of, yeah. But what about that dating app? Have we ever spoken about the day that all the women went on strike in Iceland? I think we have. In 1975, basically, there was a thing, the United Nations proclaimed it women's year. And basically, the women of Iceland got together this group of women as a sort of representative

and went, we should go on strike and make a point about the fact that we're paid less, we should make a point about we're doing all the domestic stuff at home, we're doing all this stuff. Let's really let them know that this is something that we disagree with. And Iceland back then in 1975, there's 200,000 people that live in Iceland. 25,000 women were at one single event to hear the speeches that were in the lead-up to this. And so instead of calling a strike, they thought we might piss off too many people and it won't happen. So they said, could we have a day off?

And they went, oh, a day off sounds nice. Yeah, have a day off. So every woman in Iceland had a day off. And the country went into chaos. Supermarkets sold out of sausages because dads didn't know what to cook their kids. everyone was working jobs that they didn't necessarily knew how to do because they thought they were at a higher level

and they were suddenly having to be the teller at a bank rather than the bank manager at a bank kind of thing. The men refer to it still the Long Friday because it was such a nightmare. Hey, I need to move us on to our final fact of the show. Can I tell you one last thing?

This is something that happened to an American visitor to Iceland in 2016. He was called Noel Santillan. He was on holiday and he arrived, hired his car, He wanted to go to Lauga Vegu Street, I'm sure I'm pronouncing that wrong, 45 minutes from the airport, thought no problem. He misspelled it by one letter, and Iceland sat-nav sent him six hours, two hundred and sixty-five miles away to a tiny fishing village. So, like, he got there. Bloody hell, he did.

But the people were very friendly and they like, oh, what a funny mistake to make. Oh, well, he stayed there for a few days, like making friends. Oh, it's the funny American. On the way back, he was trying to get to the Blue Lagoon geothermal spa. It happened again. He ended up in the coastal town, which is home to the office of the company, which owns the spa.

So he just ended up in an office building. He literally, he walked into a staff meeting and they said, ah, you must be the American. I need to move us on to our final fact of the show, and that is James. Okay, my fact this week is that there is an app that can tell you when your fly is down.

It's just useful, isn't it? It's the work of a guy called Guy DuPont, who is a YouTuber and a hacker. And he's invented loads of things. He's invented like a baby monitor which vibrates when the baby cries, so it's more accessible. He hacked his fridge, so it tells him when he accidentally leaves it open. But this is by far his most useful invention. It's a pair of smart pants. And whenever your fly has been down for, let's say, 30 seconds or maybe a bit longer,

a minute or two, then you'll get a beep on your phone saying your fly's low, you need to look at it now. Is it called the Yfly? It's called the Yfly. It's beautiful. It's really good. I read an article about James. It did sound like there are a couple of disadvantages. Yeah. I like to go and walk around with my flies undone, for example. It's constantly monitoring, so your phone battery lasts about half an hour while you're using it. Also, you can't wash the jeans anymore because there are powerful magnets inside the zip. Yeah. But it's teasing troubles.

Yeah, I'll just need to iron those out. What's the problem if your flyers are down? It's not that bigger thing that you'd... Would you ever get an app just to tell? I mean, who cares? Someone will tell you, right? Yeah, I guess so.

Maybe. You should someone go, sort that out. If you're somewhere quite busy, if you're something quite urban, though, often people don't tell you because people talk to people, like you're strangers. Yeah. If you're a primary school teacher,

that's a problem. Yeah. But just day to day. Yeah. I do see that. But yeah, like you say, because you can't wash it, that's going to be a problem. And it reminds me of they did make some robotic trousers for old people. Do you remember this?

And they were really good. Obviously, they wanted to stop old people from falling over. So they made this kind of exoskeleton, which would help them to walk. And it was absolutely brilliant. It worked really well. But the problem was that you couldn't wash them, and they couldn't stop the old people from trying to wash them, no matter what they said to them.

They just kept putting them in the washing machine. often shitting themselves. We're really living in a sort of golden, unrecognised, I would say, golden age of innovation in the app world. So one that I found is Air P&P. So like Airbnb, but Airbnb is for people

who hate public toilets and there are people in the local area who've put their apartment listed just as the toilets. So you can go and you can just, like it's like me being at home and someone knocking on the door and go, we got an P&P appointment,

and they come in and take a piss in my toilet and then head off. And we give each other a review. What's the review? I think that is run by perverts. It's got to be. As a woman, I was no way to a stranger's house to use the toilet.

I don't think so. No, good point. Not even if they were like 4.9 stars. I've never killed anyone. What, popping. Yeah, no, it's a really good point. I think it's more the ideas that I find interesting than the practicality of it.

Yeah. Because I did that's my dream. Have you put your home on air PMP? No, not yet. But it was my... Because it was my dream. I had a... Well, I was in a bit of London one,

so it was near a park, and there were no toilets around. And I thought, do you know, I should do? I should just open up a toilet. And I'll sit in there. Like, I'm Ted dancing in cheers. And people will come in and they'll have a pee and we'll chat,

and then they'll go out. I'll charge them, I don't know, 20 quid of piss, something like that. Well, they're getting a good chat, aren't they? Yeah, exactly. It's worth of 20 quid.

Who wouldn't pay 20 quid to have a brief chat with you and then a piss? Yep. I mean, you've invented the public toilet there. I don't think you can say you've invented that. No, no, no, because that's dirty and disgusting the public toilet.

And there might be people in there who are naughty. And so this is... They point at me when you say that. I was referring back to your point. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So this would be guaranteed a high class No one ever opens a house. No, exactly.

Nobody ever opens a public toilet saying, well, in two weeks, this is going to be a disgraceful... No, also, no one opens a toilet thinking, God, what I've got to do in there? I could do with a chat, actually. With a stranger. Have you heard of the app Car Matey? Yes.

It tells you where your car is, but in a pirate voice. Oh, cool. That's nice. Good app. Have you heard of Wakey? Yes. Because I've written those two. down as well. Oh good, go.

Give it to us. Give it to us. What's waking? If you struggle to get our bed in the morning, someone will call you as an alarm, a stranger. And you can call

other people to wake them up as well. That's nice. Yeah, so it's an alarm call. It's like, it's a call. You pick it up and it might be just like a fisherman in Iceland going, hi, how's it going? And that's your wake-up call.

I think they've now removed the waking up bit. It's now just random calls with strangers. So if I go to a public toilet, might someone chat to me while I'm there. I'm just thinking On wiki?

On wanky, yeah. That's wanky, I think. Very different app. There's a few other apps which I think is really cool. So there's an app that can blow out candles. What? Yeah, isn't that really cool?

So it's called the blower app and it's a... You must have been disappointed when you downloaded that. Your mum designed it. It's basically, it's an extraordinary kind of innovation where certain frequencies are generated by the app that means that the phone itself shakes in such a way and where there are the holes for the speakers it turns the air that's inside into being propelled out strong enough that it can blow out a candle so you can

use it yeah but why can't you just blow out your own candles well it's it's it's that's that's not the spirit that you know conquer The American Frontier, is it? Let's do things the way we've done them in the past. No, let's make the phone app do it. Let's make the phone app conquer the American Frontier for us. We did say in the past that when you blow out candles on a cake, it puts loads of germs all over the cake,

so it's a bad thing to do. You don't think that's covered in gems? Well, I did read. There was a study of 3,500 swabs taken from people's phones, and they found nine unstudied branches of bacterial life, including many species of bacteria that were unknown to science. Wow. They found one species of Edwards bacteria

that had only previously been known in an underground water aquifer and another one that was only found previously in abandoned gold mines. Wow. And they're just on your phone. That's amazing. Isn't it?

Like, that's quite nice in a way. I feel like I'm harboring interesting things. Oh, yeah. We all feel that. I know what you mean. It is kind of nice in a way, but we don't know whether how safe it is. No, I guess.

Okay. Do you know the word fly? For your zip? Or for anything. Yeah, fly. Do you know what the word fly originally meant? Did it mean a zip? Did it mean the insect or did it mean to fly around somewhere?

Or looking cool. Oh, looking cool. There's four options. Which one do you think came first? I'd guess to fly. To fly as in the verb, yeah. Well, weirdly enough, it was the insect that came first. And then it came to mean like flapping your wings or flapping things.

or flapping things, and then it came to mean flying, as in the verb to fly. And the reason that you have a fly on your trousers, the fly is not the zipper. It's the bit that covers the zipper. And that's because it kind of flaps in the wind, like the front of a tent. So where you have the zipper of a tent, you have a little bit of cloth, and that flaps in the wind. Oh, yeah. And that was named a fly because it flaps, and then the front of your trousers was named a fly because it looks like the front of a tent.

So tents came before trousers? Before flies were named, yeah. Well, that in itself is a very exciting fact. Do you not think? Oh, yeah, I'm aroused. I found a couple of new apps that are launched, one new app that's launched this summer, which is quite exciting.

I've actually got it on my phone now, so I can answer questions about it. It's called Text with Jesus. Oh, lovely. And it's recreated, our Lord, as a chat GPT guy, and you can write, you can ask questions and he'll answer you.

And you get lots of people, you get Jesus, Moses, the Virgin Mary, Abraham's nephew, Lot. Was he the one who got turned into a pillar of salt? That was Lot's wife, I think. But you can ask Lot, what was it like when your wife was turned into a pillar of salt? And basically, they write back quite convincing

answers. They're quite realistic. Have you got any examples? Hang on, I have to dig out. Sorry, because I have been chatting to them. Like, Mary Magdalene cost $2.99 a month. Because various people are locked on the thing, so you can't access. How much is Jesus? Jesus is free.

Wow. That's good message. Jesus is free. Of the apostles, only Peter is free, and everyone else is locked. Wow. Get John the Baptist, Abraham. There's Judas on there? Judas Iscariot is on there.

How much? He's... 30 pieces of silver. Hey, oh! Don't get so much Judas material these days, do you? Um, I chatted a bit to Job. Oh, yeah. Oh, God, is he having a tough time of it, I guess.

He is when he's chatting to me. That legendary patience is coming very thin. He's finally given up on God now, has he? Also, when you look at the messages, he's written quite a lot. That's Joe. That's Joe. That's Joe. Jove's is a single-line answer.

Andy's is like a... Andy's like 10 lines per message. My opening gambit with Job was, what drobe should I get? Ha ha ha. Sunglasses emoji. Job replied, ha ha. I see what you did there.

Well, it gets into some detail replying. Yeah. Hang on, who is... Is that all the long message? Is that John? No, the long message was Joe. I'm not writing an essay to Joe. What does Job think of the podcast?

Can you ask? I can ask, yeah. Yeah, do that live and let's find out. Also, can you ask Job why he's so clingy? As an ancient figure, I must admit that I'm not familiar with modern podcast like no such thing as a fish. Oh, modern.

That's going on the poster. It's no, my dad wrote a porno, of course, but... Seriously? No, it's not what he says, no. He says, from what I gather, this is what it is, and they discuss interesting and unusual facts. Podcasts like these can be great for expanding your knowledge,

discovering fascinating tidbits, and even sparking curiosity. If you enjoy learning new... Don't laugh sarcastically at that. If you enjoy learning new things in an entertaining way, it sounds like no such thing as a fish could be right up your alley. Nice. Of course, everyone stays stiffer.

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've said over the course of this podcast, we can be found on our Twitter accounts. I'm on at Schreiberland, James. At James Harkin. Andy. At Andrew Hunter M. And Lou.

At Lou Sanders. We think. What do you mean? Well, I don't know. What's the name is. But also, you looked at me like that was incorrect, and I trust you more than me. That alone myself was doing. Or you can go to our group account, which is at No Such Thing, or our website. No Such Thing is afish.com.

All of our previous episodes are there. check them out. Of course, definitely, definitely pick up, Loo's amazing new book. What's That Lady doing? Yeah, out in bookshops now, we're online and do check out all of our previous episodes. They are on no such thing as a fish.com. Thank you so much, everyone, for being here. We so appreciate it. That was really fun. We'll see you again another time. That's the end of our Soho run. That's it. This is, yeah. Well, hopefully play here again. But until then, we'll see you around. Goodbye.