No Such Thing As A Fish - No Such Thing As President Muffler

Episode Date: May 25, 2023

Dan, James, Andrew and Phil Dunster discuss thatched theatres, fake footballers and the Oval Office. 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

Hello and welcome to a brand new episode of No Such Things a Fish. First things first, let me tell you about our very, very, very special guest. And that is Phil Dunster, the brilliant actor who plays the character Jamie Tart in the unbelievable TV show Ted Lassow. I don't know if you've watched Ted Lassow. If you haven't, it's definitely worth checking out. It's on Apple TV right now. They're about to show the final episode. And if you don't have Apple TV, I'm pretty sure you'll be able to get a free trial somewhere.

It's well worth it. There's loads of good stuff on there, but especially Ted Lasso is such a good show. Phil actually does listen to Fish, so he came well prepared with loads and loads of facts. It was such a fun show to record, and we all had such a great time. A few more little bits of news. We have some live shows coming up in the Soho Theatre in London. There are still tickets available for that, although some of the dates are now sold out. So you want to get in there really quick to get tickets for that.

And those tickets can be found at No Such Things. fish.com forward slash Soho. And apart from that, join up to Clubfish. There's loads of fun stuff happening there all the time. There's bonus episodes. There's Discord where you can chat to fellow fish fans. You'll learn about live tickets first. There's all sorts of bonuses for signing up to that.

So do that. And apart from anything else, if you're listening in a place where you can follow no such things of fish, then do that. We taught some industry bods the other day, and they said that is very important that you click follow. like us. Anyway, enough about that. Really hope you enjoy this show with Phil. I'm absolutely certain you will. And all I can say is on with a podcast. 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 Schreiber. I am sitting here with James Harkin, Andrew Hunter Murray and Phil Dunster. And once again, we have gathered round 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, that is Phil. My fact this week is that the Shakespeare's Globe Theatre is the only building with a thatched roof in London since the Great Fire of London in 1666.

Very cool. Andy is very excited right now. Fetched roofs, are you kidding me? Yeah, this is your thing. Is it a fetish? No, I wouldn't say. I wouldn't say fetish. Would you like to have sex underneath the thatched roof?

Everyone's got a bucket list. Right? That's not it. Anyway, look, the Globe Theatre. Sorry, let's talk about the Globe Theatre. So what's the story? What's going on? So Andrew Hunter Murray had sex inside the Globe Theatre

because it had the Thatcher Room. It was fascinating. It was made, it was originally built in Shoreditch. It was called the Burbage Theatre in 1576. And the land was owned by this bloke. called Giles Allen. And when the lease on the theatre came up, he didn't want to renew it. And so the Chamberlain's men, which was Shakespeare's company of actors, they decided that they will just literally up sticks, take all of the timber from that theatre and hide it in someone's

shed for a bit. And then whilst Alan was away at Christmas, they built it a few hundred meters away from where the current globe theater currently is, is where they built. So that one was that. That one was thatched, the sort of proper original South Bank of the area. But that will have been before the Great Fire of London, will it? That was Shakespeare's time. Yeah, it didn't hang around for very long. It was 1599, I think, was when it was built.

And then it was actually burned down itself. It didn't need no Great Fire of London to burn itself. Wasn't that canon during a play? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I think it was Henry the 8th? Was it? That bastard.

I think it's one of the least good histories. Well, they don't play it very often, do they? You don't go down the globe and see Henry the 8th on very often. I think there must be a reason for that. Yeah. But last time they performed it, the whole fucking thing. Yeah. Probably on the band list.

So did Shakespeare do his stuff in Burbage's theatre up in the East London side? Oh, really? So was anything ever performed in his lifetime during? Well, yeah, like Phil says, they moved the globe. They moved the whole thing. And Shakespeare went along with it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think they rebuilt it within his lifetime, even though it burnt down quite closely.

He died in 1616. And I think it burned down not long before that. But they rebuilt it and, you know, you're still showing new Shakespeare plays then. Yeah. Yeah. That's really good to know, because whenever I pass it, I think, oh, this is just a replica. It's not got any kind of original, you know, meat to it, you know. Shakespeare was dead by then.

It's just, you know, a fake. But if he was alive while people were performing in there. Well, the modern one is a new one. It's completely new. It's even more. new one. Yeah, so the modern one was built in the, what, 80s? 90s. Something like that. In the 90s, yeah. And that was by, what's he called? San Juanemaker. San Juanemaker. And that's the one which has got thatched now. That's right. Yeah.

Yeah, it's pretty much the same. It uses green oak and it has like wooden, like postings or sort of whatever, you know, dowling or whatever it is that holds it all together. They tried to make it as close to how it would have been made at the time using, you know, all of the techniques that the builders would have used, but they had to use stuff like modern scaffolding and they had to increase the amount of fire escapes and exits and that sort of stuff. They got sprinklers. They got sprinklers, yeah. I read them, I was reading the newspaper articles from the time,

and as late as 1988, the papers were saying that there wouldn't be thatch, and it would be tiled, and that was due to fire regulations. And then sometime around 1990, they kind of changed their mind and said, yeah, we're going to be a loud thatch after all. That's cool. It's got some cashmere in the walls. Is it? Cool.

Because they used, they made proper old, old-fashioned plaster. as in 17th century plaster. Wattle and Dorb is the name of it, and it includes cashmere goat hair, which is an ingredient of the plaster. That's cool. Yeah. And the that's roof that they have now

has a hidden set of sprinklers all the way through it. Oh, yeah. Just in case. Just in that they learnt their lessons. I found the company that made the fatch. They were called T-A-S. And there was an article about them.

And apparently the globe wasn't the biggest ever contract that they had. They had one bigger contract for thatch roofs. Can you guess? Oh, my God. It was, oh, I've given it away, it's multiple roofs, multiple faxed roofs. Does they redo a whole village or something? In a way.

In a way. Okay. Phil, I'll let it out all these silences, by the way. Oh, an Olympic village, but like an old-fashioned Olympic village. That's right, yeah. It was a 2012 Olympics. Everyone lived in facted houses. That's why they were all having sex all the time.

Right. No, it wasn't that. Was it for like a Game of Thrones set? Okay, not Game of Thrones. Harry Potter. Lord of the Rings? No. Hobbit? No.

Ted Lassow. I think, I don't know when this. I think it was 90s. So it's a similar era. This zina the warrior princess. Film came out. Matrix. Stop it.

It's a historical. Shakespeare. Shakespeare in love. Shakespeare in love. No. But that would have been... That feels good. Yeah.

You feel it's going to be a bit of a downer now that I tell you. It was Robin Hood, Prince of Thee. Okay. You were their tracks. And they had to do the entire kind of village and they put thatch on all of them and that was the most money they ever made and the Globe was the second most they ever. Wow, his movies are expensive, man. Waterworld. Yeah, they'd flood the earth, you know, for that one.

Kevin Costner, his huge sets. Dancers with wolves, they had to teach all those wolves how to dance. You know the globe? I do. When they rebuilt it, it then shrank. Oh, riddle me that. Oh, okay. They built it in the summer and then it got cold.

What kind of just the timber dries out? And it takes years and years for timber to properly dry out. And it dries and it hardens and it shrinks a bit. So it gets stronger through time, which is amazing. That's cool. That's really good. Do you know where they got the timber from? No.

I think it might be the 1987 storm in the new forest knocked down loads of trees. But it's certainly a big storm in the late 80s, knocked down a load of trees in the new forest, and they got all of the timber from there. That's really cool. Yeah. And also the Duke of Edinburgh offered wood from one of his oaks at Winds Lovely.

Nice. Good bloke. Good bloke. Do you want to hear another fact about the royal family in this, by the way? Yeah, cool. Well, let's not say good blokes for this one. So they crowdfunded it quite a lot of the money for this because they need a load of money and they need to get it from somewhere.

So they went to America and they had an event called UK LA 88, a celebration of British arts. And according to the Desert Sun newspaper, the real stars will be Fergie and Prince Andrew. So Prince Andrew is partly responsible for the building of the globe And the British consulate said When you think of Britain We don't want you to think about fatched cottages and bobbies

But of Concord, microchips and Phil Collins I don't love to see Phil Collins perform at the Globe Theatre Concord's not even going anymore No Microchips Do we make many microchips in the UK? I don't think not A huge centre of...

Phil Collins are still going strong there That's a good point He's the one part of Britain's not Have you played there, Phil? I haven't played there. I've been to see quite a few productions there. I was a poor student when I went, and so I was standing.

I was one of the groundlings. And I was, I mean, I've got a pretty bad attention span as it is. And being stood there for like three and a half hours, I'm like, oh, fuck this, man. Do you remember what you were seeing? I saw Mid-Summer Night's Dream there. And they were all great productions, but this is my, listen, I've, you know,

I'm working on, I'm working right. But they have another space, which is called the Wanna Make a Playhouse, which again is made like a playhouse would have been back in DIR. And it's fully lit by candles. And you can just imagine that, again, the schematic's coming along. And they're like, right then, Globe Theatre. What are you got for us today after all the thatched houses and all the stuff? Oh, a fully wooden theatre.

And it's only lit by candles. The way you just said DER, just then the second I go back into DER, apparently you see Shakespeare. You won't hear it to be or not to be. You'll hear it to bear or not to bear. Is that right? Well, this is what I read. So apparently the Globe Theatre has a tradition now these days of making sure that the accents that are spoken while Shakespeare players on is the accent of the time. And so David Crystal, who James you and I met years ago, he's a linguistic guy. He studies all types of language. And no one really knows how people spoke back then fully. He kind of clobbered together an idea of how to speak and to be. to bear. To bear? Or not to bear. Okay. That's a question. It's quite Brian Butterfield. Oh, did you have any snacks when you were there? This is relevant, I promise.

A beer. You got a beer? Is beer a snack as more of a refreshment, isn't it? A beverage. It's still a something from the theatre. But it was very of today. Okay, so it wasn't, yeah, yeah. A bear. Can I have a bear? To bear or not to bear? Exit pursued by a bear.

I was just wondering because they've, like, archaeologists have done lots of digging around under the sites of the old theatres and they found out what the snacks would have been in Elizabethan times. That's great. Yeah. Okay. So what, go on. Well, they're slightly limited by what remains as in what rots and what dozens. But they have found thousands and thousands of oyster shells. That was a huge thing.

And because oysters were not the food for the posh, they were just, they were just a sort of standard snack. Yeah, yeah. Just get a few oysters when you went to the theatre. So that was a big thing. Yeah, nice, that's very cool. Just go back to the accent thing. There was, because it was such an amalgamation of different accents that were in London, and they hadn't really sort of formed a London accent yet, I guess, at that time.

It was such a hodgepodge of different accents, like a sort of Irish, British West Country, Lancashire, Jordy, sort of thing. And I could give it a bit of a go. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Nobody can tell me I got it wrong because no one remembers it. Something like two households both are like indignity. In Fay of Verona where we lay our son. From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,

where civil blood lay civil hands and clen. Wow. That's great. That's great. I did just get hit in the head before I tell you. Could you do the rest of the show? Yeah. There's a lot of, if you go to the globe,

there's a lot of things on the floor, which are the names of patrons, basically. I think you've helped to fund the new globe and so on. And so there's lots of very famous names on there. And two in particular, which are exciting to see it, John Cleese and Michael Palin, which is very cool. Yeah. Michael who? Michael Palin.

Hey, Palin? No, Michael Palin. Oh, stop it. Because according to the story, John Cleese only agreed to donate to the theater on the condition that Michael Palin's name was misspelled. And so, on the floor, you can see it. it's P-A-A-D-L-I-N. Wow. What would you have done if we just politely glossed over that?

I was so nearly did. I was holding on going, come on, guys, someone, someone call me on this. It's a problem when you pronounce everything wrong. The thing is that Dan's such a big fan of Michael Palin. I was thinking maybe that's how it's pronounced. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But yeah, so the Globe says that this is a story. When you go on the tour guides, they say this a story.

There's no solid, you know, John Cleese needs to say it out loud. Okay, but it is misspelled. Yeah, it's misspelled. Yeah. We need to move on in the same. Does anyone have anything before we do? I've got some stuff on Richard III, but that's... Oh, yeah, do it, yeah.

So a lot of archaeologists found the old theatre buried underneath a car park, not so far away. And as was Richard III found under in a car park in Leicester. And obviously was one of Shakespeare's big villain protagonists. And Dr. Joe Appleby at the University of Leicester looked at the bones and saw that Richard of the third got fucked up when he got killed. Oh, right. That he was, they see from his bones. He had a glancing blow to his cheek.

He had a wound from probably a halberd, which is like big stick pike with a sort of axe thing. It sort of was potentially the fatal blow. The back of his head, a sort of chunk was missing there. And then they think that they didn't want to do too much more to the face because Henry the 7th needed to parade this dead body. around to be like, look, this is definitely him. This is him, not just some pulp.

Yeah. Yeah. And they saw what they thought would be some post-mortem injuries to his rib and to his spine as well. And then one up his bum, they reckon. There's sort of a mark like a... Was that after he died? Well, this is it. This feels like a monster. That's a different play, Dan. He's my kingdom for a horse.

My kingdom for a horse with a very soft saddle. Yeah. Wow, that's amazing That was in battle, wasn't it? That was in battle, Battle of Bosworth. He was the last king, killed at a battle? Was he? Okay, I don't think anyone since that has been.

Cowards. Come on, Charles, come on. Okay, it is time for fact number two, and that is Andy. My fact is that, when residents of Greater Manchester were recently asked, they identified four distinctive accents in the region. Mank, Lancashire, Wigan and Posh Brilliant Yeah

It's like a good version of the Spice Girls But instead of Wigan Spice Yeah Mank Spice Wigan spice is eating a pie all the time James do you When you see that there's these four

Does that make sense to you? Oh yeah yeah yeah for sure I would say my accent began as Lancashire with a bit of Wiggin Because I went to primary school in Wiggin And now it's posh probably Right. Like, I've lost a lot of my accents since I moved to London.

So I think people in Greater Manchester would say I was in the posh bit. You do, I notice when either you're around family or people from the north, you do slightly slip back into it. It's like the wording like Tintanet. I don't want, like, you know how that's a word. Yeah, yeah. But you miss out like certain words sometimes. I don't do it on purpose.

I did it when Phil came in and then he opened his mouth and I'm like, oh yeah, you're not Jamie Tart. It's always disappointment. What's Tart's accent? Is that from... It's sort of new Boston sort of way. Because the people who did this research, one of them was called Dr. Rob Drummond. He listens to fish, it turns out.

And I emailed him and sent him an example of your accent and asked him if he could place it in. Oh, my God. So this is an academic. And he said, no, it's shit. No, he didn't. He was like, no, it's really, really good. And he says, you do a great Manchester accent. And it's all about the letter.

vowel and the happy vowel. And apparently, when you say letter, as I would say, if you're in Manchester, you say letto, which Jamie Tart does. And happy, as I might say it in Manchester, they say hape. But anyway, he could take your accent and he reckoned he could pinpoint it to pretty much central or just north of central Manchester. Wow. From Seoul, kind of Smedley, that kind of area.

Wow. That's so cool. An academic agree. That's good report card. Three years later, that's a relief. It depends what series you watch. Because I think the first series I was like, I don't really know if I'm doing this right. But it was an American show.

So I was like, right. Oh, yeah. They won't care. We should name the project, shouldn't we? It was called Manchester Voices. And it was a three-year research project at Manchester Metropolitan University. Yeah, Dr. Rob Drummond, who checked out Phil's accent. He is a listener.

He listens to fish all the time with his daughter Cassia. And he has a new book coming out called You Are All Talk. pork. It's not out yet, but if you want to pre-order that, you can. They had a really cool thing. They had an accent van, which drove around, and they bundled people into the accent van and recorded how they spoke. I think that, yeah, they were...

There was consent. They had hoods. They had cuffs. That's so funny. And so the specific questions that they asked were things like, oh, and I'm curious, because you're from Boltonton. Yeah, yeah. So, if they said, I've never heard you say, instead of bottle,

bockel, yeah. Yeah, or Lickle instead of Lichol. That is a Bolton thing, but I don't really speak like that now. School with two syllables. Skuyl. That's more of a Wiggin thing, you would say school. So the word book, as I would say it, 10% of Boltoners say Buk. Buk.

And 71% of Wiganers say that. So that's how you can tell the difference. And 30% of Boltoners say buzz instead of bus. And I actually do say buzz instead of bus. Did you, just with all those words James were saying, when you were doing your accent, is it something that you studied, or is it one of those things that once you start speaking in an accent, you almost naturally find the way that they would pronounce it anyway? I guess studied, watched documentaries and whatnot.

My agent, who I love very dearly, is a Mancunian, and she's very sassy. And there was a lot of sass in Jamie Tart, so I was like, that's quite a good sort of start point. And I think generally I sort of am okay at picking that up. but there's a rapper called H. And it's funny that the difference... Yeah, I know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, he's much cooler.

H from steps is coming on next week. Careful. But H is really like proper mank, isn't he's like that? Yeah, yeah, it's the rapper. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, and I think that one of the things was when we were auditioning for it, they didn't necessarily want a Mancunian. They just wanted someone who didn't sound like me.

They just wanted, you know, or Italian or Spanish or whatever. And I think that it just felt right. for him that sort of sense of like he'd come from a place that was that you had to sort of graft to get out of and that's why I say season one, season three I'm being totally honest

it started off as one of the Gallagher brothers and it sort of slowly stepped towards sort of Jesse Lingard come sort of a far more sort of contemporary version of that it would be like alright how you doing you know what I'm going yeah I take you a look to get in it but it's like do you know what I mean

yeah it's a lot more like sort of contemporary and it feels a lot more like he's just got, I feel like he's rapping all the time, do I mean? Right, right. So, yeah, I just, yeah. So anyway, it's sort of, it's shifted from a sort of 90s version of it. I've read quite a few things about actors who,

so Austin Butler, who just played Elvis in the biopic, the Basloem and biopic, there's videos of him prior to doing the role to how he speaks now and he's been unable to shift the Elvis voice, the Elvis role. So when he received his award at either the Emmys or the Golden Globe, is, well, thank you everybody for this incredible award.

He can't get rid of it. And he actively talks about it because he's questioned about it. They're like, you don't talk like this. And he's like, oh, no, I can't get rid of it. And so he's trying to lose the Elvis accent. That's so random. Yeah, well, no, it happens with quite a lot of actors. That's how I was going to say.

Did you ever have anything where at home suddenly found yourself not being able to shift the accent? Was it not long enough a gig to each time? Oh, I think there was probably a couple of words I just enjoyed saying, like, pooper. I just really enjoyed when he went a puba. It just feels right.

A lot of the air words at the end is just quite fun. But you can track what film Tom Hardy was doing by interviews at the time because he's, I mean, he's got a real sort of

chameleon accent. Do you remember Steve McLaren when he went to work in the Netherlands? Yeah. And he just started talking with a Dutch accent. Oh, really? He was only there for like,

so he was a former England football manager and he became a manager of I can't remember who it was Iax or someone. He wasn't Iex. But a Dutch accent. tweet and then he would do interviews in England and he just have this really strong Dutch

accent and he's been there for like only a few months and he was like trying to ingratiate himself in the culture I think it's I think it's subconscious though isn't it when people do that because you're talking to people who let's say you go to America or Australia or somewhere you naturally will what some people do and some people don't it's a really interesting thing you do naturally you imitate someone's accent don't you because it makes them like you better that's the idea but also they've they've decided this is a good idea, and they've got this AI software, where if you phone up, you know, what do you call it,

like a chat, not a chat line. Call center. Call center. Yeah, one of those call centers. My bank card isn't working. If you phone up a call center. And, yeah, they've worked out this AI, which can hear your accent and then imitate your accent,

and so they come back in a slightly similar way to you. top and it means you trust the mark. It's so weird and it's mostly, basically, because of where call centres are around the world, it's mostly to make people in places like the Philippines sound like they're from Boston or whatever. But this is the plot of a film. It's a film called Sorry to Bother You.

And it's about a young black guy who gets a job in a call center. And then someone tells him, like an older guy in the centre says, use your white voice. And he starts getting lots and lots of business because he's sounding preppy and whiter. And so they've literally turned this. It is a horror film.

They turn it into a technology. Wow. James, what is this is a little Bolton quiz? Oh, I don't know why I'm quizzing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You should give it to us. Okay, alright. P-wet.

Dan. Oh, I know what that is. I read it. P-wet. You've read it, so you're out of detention here. I'm afraid of film. P-wet. Yeah.

A pee-wit is a type of bird. Absolutely. Is that helpful? Maybe not. Could be. Because it goes, pee-wit. P-wit. Would James be trying to help you in this quiz?

Maybe. Yeah, is he a friend or distractor? Is it pee wet? You've got yourself with pee. Didn't even think of that. Yeah, good if you ever come to Bolton. Yeah. That's what you have to say.

You go to a chip shop and they say, do you want pee wet? No, of course not. Don't mind if I do. I don't need your help for it. Thank you very much. James was helping you that pee wet is the mushy pea water. Yeah, so you can get them to put, if you have chips with pee wet, then you don't have to pay for the peat wet, you get the chips and they'll just pour a bit of the wet bit of the mushy peas.

The water run off from the mushy peas. Wow. I'm sorry. No. You didn't think. That's not what I thought. I thought it was just mushy peas, but that's a step towards insanity. Why do you want that?

Like, you'd have wet chips. It's delicious. But you'd have wet chips are too dry. Ah, so kind of like a vinegar. Put vinegar on, don't you? Yeah. Wow. This is very exciting.

Shakespeare in English, isn't it? Yeah, it is. I want to try another one about. Cracking the flags. Or. to flags. Cracking flags. Cracking flags.

Is it rude? She's got a pair of cracking flags. No, I... Do you know what it is, Phil? I don't know what this is, no. Really? What if I was to tell you that the flags relate to flagstones, as in, like, pavement?

Oh. Cracking the flags. Like, walking as a pedestrian? Cobbled streets. This is so funny, because these are words that I thought everyone knew. And I've never heard this in. That's the reason I mention it. Yeah, yeah.

It means it's really hot. It's cracking flags out there. Oh, okay. It's so hot that the pavement's breaking. Yeah, yeah, nice. Wow. God, I'm really failing as my pretend Mancunian here, aren't I? But the Mancunian accent was, sorry, just to close this again,

the Mancunian accent was voted, and I found this in the Daily Mail, and the research was provided by Best Casinos, so. So it's flawless, yeah, come on, on we go. I know that you love your water. type fact checking here. After they asked 2,500 people, they found that the Manchester accent was the sexiest accent in the world. That's interesting.

And that's from Best Casinos. Is that recent? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. It was, I think it was last year. That's interesting. Because, like, I reckon that change. You see those things quite often, don't you?

And they say, oh, the Irish accent's most sexy. All the Yorkshire is, never the Birmingham, weirdly. But they, you know, they do say that. And I wonder if it's, like, fashion, like, they've seen people like yourself doing the Mank accent on TV and they associate it with... Did the Gallagher's have an effect? I think they did, yeah. Yeah, that's what I'm thinking.

Yeah, because I read a thing that in America there was once a vote on what was the most sexy accent from the UK. Oh, the UK. Yeah, and Glasgow won it, right? And I wondered, because Billy Conley is so big in America, whether or not there was just something kind of like, I know he's not seen as like a sex symbol, but he's seen as really charismatic, really funny, everything that's like, like, likable.

Silky guy. Yeah. Or whether the person doing the research was Glasgowian and they felt intimidated. Yeah. I get, so one of my favorite things about doing this show is I quite often, I haven't actually had it in the last sort of 12 months, but I used to get a bunch. Linguists would write to me saying, I take samples of your accent and my accent. And I play it to other people who are linguists and the challenges work out where he's from.

And every time they say no one can work out, they say like Canada or like. like New Zealand Australia. Like, they get elements of it, but no one... I used to collect on tour. And we sort of do like signings afterwards, and people would sometimes come up and say, where are you from, Dan? And then you'd ask them to guess.

And I used to keep a list on my phone of everywhere people had guessed. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it was, I mean, the whole world. Because I think you just have an international accent, like from as if you went to international school, like my wife's got similar, kind of slightly North American weird accent. Yeah, but I guess if then that becomes the challenge for the linguists,

what are the influences on this accent? We were saying before that when, people who are from a certain place go back to that place or speak to other people from that place, that accent starts to come out a bit more. Do you have that with one of your... If I go to Australia, I definitely lean into Aussie a bit. I should have a British accent by now, because I've been here long enough, but I don't. And the Hong Kong accent was very American, where I grew up? But where do you go to sound more like you are now? Not just more Aussie, you know, because you don't really sound very Aussie. No. When you travel internationally,

it's actually only in departure lounges. Dan sounds most like himself. Whenever you're buying a Tobler on, it's like, oh, yeah. I'm like, oh, no. Okay, it is time for fact number three, and that's my fact. My fact this week is that of the few people who have top secret clearance at the White House, one of them is the person who writes all of the party invitations. It's such a good plot for something, isn't it?

You know, the calligrapher. And it's the president's party invitation. writer, it's missing. Yes. Oh, yeah. Because you'll know, as the invitation writer, who's coming to the summits, who's, you know, who's. Yes, everyone's address. He's got Brezhnev's address.

He's got... Bresnev. Yeah. What do you think of a key global player? Brezhneb. When did Brezhnev stopped running the Soviet Union? I was thinking of mine as a Cold War thriller. Imagine how beautiful his ransom letters would be.

Oh. Yeah. be perfect. So this is a thing where this kind of came up in the news when it was during Trump's administration that Jared Kushner, his son-in-law, had been downgraded from top secret clearance because they sort of just tried to stop making everyone have it. And people noted that because he had too many links to the Saudis. But yeah, sure. Yeah, yeah. So it's nice not recording on the BBC. So it got downgraded and someone was pointing out that actually he's now got less clearance than the calligrapher has on the in-house.

And the reason the calligrapher has it is because they have to know everything about the president's appointments, what's coming up, who they have to, and they're near dignitaries all the time. And so they need to be on top of everything that they need to write because they write so many invitations. They have a unit. It's a calligraphy unit. It's a whole office that does this. It's not many people. There's only like three or four people. But, you know, it's still a lot. It's a lot. In fact, one of them said that in one December period alone, they believed that they did 19,000 envelopes. Brilliant.

And those are handwritten. So, yeah. And they're paid very, very handsomely. And they've been going for a very long time. Like, they're like long-term posts that they can run for. But they did ask one of the, I think he was by this point, the former calligrapher, when the story broke. And Rick Paulus, who had run the office, he said that it was just because of the schedule

and the proximity to world leaders. He said he never ever dealt with intelligence matters, which you would hope. hope he would not. As in something gone wrong if he has to solve a crisis. I wonder who's the best RSB peer. Oh, like the timeliest.

Yeah, yeah. Of all the world leaders. Yes, that's interesting. I feel like Trudeau's waiting by the waiting by the post office door. Yeah, yeah. They did a thing, I guess, with the royal wedding. There was a, I can't remember which royal wedding it was,

whether it was William, Kate, or Harry and Megam. But they ran a thing of so-and-so's replied very quickly, saying that. Oh, really? Really? Yeah. Do you remember there's that fact that Megan Markle, her former job, when she was an actor, as a side job, she was a calligraphist for invitations. So that's what she did.

Robin Thickey. Of Blurred Lines, Robin Thickey. Yes. Yeah, a blurred lines fame. He did her, his wedding, the invites were written by Megan Markle. You know Robin Thick? Who's that? The Blurred Lines guy. Do you know his dad was really famous? He wrote

the theme tune to different strokes. the TV show. Oh, is that also a problematic song? Sounds it. It's not like a sexy song, isn't it? Like a sure, it means something very different. Wow. That's the best, I mean, no offense by this, James.

Trivia fact I've ever heard. Like, that's good. It's just something that happened to know. That's all. That's fabulous. Rick Paulus, by the way, so this guy was the head of calligraphy. Have you seen his website? Rick Paulus calligraphy.com. Wonderful.

He's quite annoyed because the kind of digital age where computers started recording all the examples of all the invites that they write over the years and now being archived, he kind of just missed that. So a lot of his work is an online for you to see. So he presents on his website, my favorite invites and my favorite bits of calligraphy that I did for the White House. Yeah. So you can see menu for the president of Ireland. That's a good one, isn't it? He did a load of... convoluted Celtic style design.

Oh, that's great. All of those meals the president pays for, doesn't he? Yeah, is that weird? Is that right? Because it's, we, when I went to the White House. Clang? Yeah, clang. Oops.

Guys, are we talking about the White House? Where did you go? I went, the start of this year, the cast of Ted Lassow were inexplicably invited for an audience with the president and the first lady. Insane, yeah. Six of the cast members sort of spoke to her. the president and the First Lady about mental health and the effect that the show has and sort of impact that is needed over there. But we also, you know, we were having a tour and we sort of had, you know, learned some things about,

a little of a thing or two about the White House. And one is that the president, because a lot of it is state funded or sort of funded by taxpayers, they can't be seen to be handing out big banquets for everybody that comes. It is just like it's this gaff, isn't it? Yeah, exactly. And, you know, hopefully one day we'll be able to say, huh, gaff guys. I'm right, guys.

2023. Did you get an invite, Phil, then? Oh, you did. Like a handwritten one? No, I did not. We got an email, and obviously we all thought it was fake that we'd be invited to the Whitehouse. I wonder if the same guy types the emails. He types them incredibly, he has a little wand he uses to tap each letter.

Yeah, yeah. Did you have lunch with Biden, or did you just say hi? Because I saw a photo. You were in the Oval Office, right? We were, we took going to the Oval Office, yeah. Oh my God. Which is wild. It was the energy we walk in the room.

You're like, oh, some scandals that have happened. Yeah, right. But no, we, we were, we were kept in the map room where we ate, which is where they planned the D-Day landings in the map room, just to be sitting there eating as odd. And you're there with like 25 secret service all just sort of knocking them out, who were so cool, really nice. Right. And also, like, have, you know, you ask them any question and you can see them go through the roller decks of what can I say, what can't I say. Yeah.

And the weird thing was, I don't know if you had it, you call someone by a title. It suddenly feels very strange. And these people that you've been knocking about with the cast members I've been with, hearing them call someone a title, it feels very contrived the whole thing.

Do you mean like Mr. President? Mr. President. Huh. Yeah, yeah. And so you're just thinking about that the whole time when you're meeting him. What's the term for the first lady? Dr. Biden, I think.

Dr. Biden, sorry. Dr. and obviously the whole time you're thinking it's like it's like in taxi driver when denoero's going you're talking to me you're talking to me it was like before i turned up i was like mr president mr president hello mr president and of course it just don't say trump don't say trump don't say trump don't say trump but it was funny when when we were saying goodbye the guy who plays isaacadu collar bikini uh i was stood next to him was he was shaking our hand the president was shaking her hand uh it sort of going around the circle and it turns to connor he goes thank you for coming

along son and he goes yeah yeah yeah uh cheers he's he turns to me and he says i just said cheers to the president that's so good i wonder how often people call the president dad by mistake you know like calling the teacher mum exactly yeah yeah it must happen to him on a sort of daily basis it's such a shame you didn't have lunch with them because i've heard great stories about his lunch times uh well when he sits with kamala harris and they have their lunch. He likes to eat with a slideshow going. So they just eat their meal while they're watching a slide show of all the like recent adventures they've had just so that they can sort of remember and reflect on. Well, just the photos of. Yeah, yeah. It's just a slideshow photo that's going

Yeah, I think. Yeah. Is it a slide show of his stuff or both of their? Both of them. I think it's yeah. It's just like, oh, okay, here I am. Shaking a hand. Yeah, so I got that's Ted Lattern guy. He said, cheers. Can I tell you one last calligraphy thing? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Did you hear of Rick Muffler? No. What a guy.

So Rick Muffler used to be a calligrapher. Maybe the chief one. And he was controversial because he was the only left-handed calligrapher in the office. Oh, that means you're going to smudge everyone else's calligraphy. Exactly. It was a nightmare. But he's cool, particularly because it's kind of a family thing for him. So his grandfather was a chauffeur for President Warren G. Harding.

Wow. And then his dad, John Muffler, was an electrician who wound the clocks in the whole White House. He worked there for 50 years. He arrived in the late Second World War, and he was there for Bill Clinton. All that time, he was in the White House. And so muffler's the third? Is that who we're talking about?

Rick muffler was the third muffler. I don't know if there's a new muffler. I would like to dream that in, I won't be here to see it, but in like 500 years, there'll be a muffler president. Oh. And like, they'll have muffled the way all the way up to the top. That would be good, wouldn't it? That'd be great.

There was some sort of airs and graces that the Trump family didn't really follow. Oh, really? There were traditions that the first lady, when the president leaves office for the last time, the first lady would sit for a portrait. And Melania refused to do that. It certainly has yet to have sat for it. And there's this corridor where all of these paintings are put. And Michelle Obama is still placed at the end of the corridor,

is traditionally where the previous incumbent would have. So interesting. To be fair, I feel like both Donald and Melania probably have a painting in the attic somewhere. Very good reference. Thank you. I was reading about top secret clearance, just because these calligraphy people have top secret clearance. It's a very weird thing, top secret clearance, because it appears to so many people have, the numbers are mad. Okay, so there's like secret, confidential and then top secret, or something like that.

The top secret is the highest. But top secret clearance, even back in 2015, it was 1.3 million Americans. That's like one in every 300 people in America. Yeah. And if you broaden it to confidential, maybe that's the bottom rung. It's about 1% of all Americans have secret status. None of the children will have it. So that's even, you know.

God, you're right. Yeah. It's really common. If you're American listening to this and you don't have top secret clearance, shame on you. Give you head a wobble. So when I said at the top of the few, people who have top secret credits.

But I wonder if it's slightly different the White House Top Secret compared to, this is like Civil Service Top Secret. Yeah. And there's CIA and there's... There are different gradations within Top Secret where not everyone can look at the plans of where we're going to invade next or whatever. Who's coming for dinner?

Yeah. Biden's slideshow. Yeah. But it is strange. But that became evident when during the recent leaks during the Ukraine war, that was one of the things that people were so surprised about was that there's so many people had this clearance that was, you know, the guy had a 21-year-old. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Very peculiar. Yeah.

I was reading about some other parties or some parties at the White House because this is a party invitation guy. Yeah. I found there seems to be quite a common thing of riots in inauguration parties when people go to get their coats at the end of the night. This is really weird. It happened in President Reagan's Ball in 1985, like everyone went to get their coats. at the end and they got all mixed up. Because the inauguration takes place in winter, right? It takes place in January. So everyone's got loads of coats and they're never prepared for it.

In 1989, President Bush had a ball which got known as the Bastille Day coat check riot. Because people were yelling and screaming and some people never to the day haven't got their coats back. There was one coat check person for 3,000 coats. What a nightmare. And people like, obviously, Obviously, these are all like really high up people who think, well, you know, I'm the most important person in this room. I should get to the front and get my coat first.

And people are shouting, bushing and all that kind of stuff. But it even goes back to 1849 at Zachary Taylor's inauguration ball, Abraham Lincoln lost his hat. And for Ulysses S. Grant's inauguration, all the workers who are working in the closed place were all illiterate and no one got their coats to them either. So it just seems to be a thing. That'd be dangerous for Lincoln because Lincoln used to keep, documents in the top of his hat, didn't he? Yeah, exactly.

It's all good. So just so weird. Shame that the beautiful calligraphy would have been wasted on those people that couldn't read. Okay, it is time for our final fact of the show, and that is James. Okay, my fact this week is that in 1999, the Times newspaper reported that Liverpool FC were about to buy a footballer called Didier Baptiste. The Times got the story from Liverpool's Premium Line news service. They got it from the news of the world.

They got it from a sports agency, and they just found it on a random Arsenal fans website. In actual fact, Baptiste was a fictional player in a soap opera. What role did Best Casino play in there? Yeah, so this is an amazing thing that happened. It was in the papers in 99. Liverpool were going to buy this guy Didier Baptiste, but he was actually a character from the show Dream Team on Skies.

It's so funny. And, yeah, just people have. hadn't checked it properly. The Times said he was a promising left back for Monaco and a proud member of the French under 21 national side, surely a steel for £3.5 million. Amazing. Wow. The News of the World said we think Didier Baptiste will be an ideal addition to Liverpool's back for. He's a really attractive player. You'll be seeing a lot more of him in the news of the world from now on. Obviously. It was just completely made up. Lying again. Is this like a transfer season rumours thing? Because lots of,

Lots of football stories seem to be about, you know, this plays. Yeah, of course. Like, you know, a club's going to buy a new player. You often have never heard of them. Right. Especially if they're coming from a different country. And if he's an under 21 player, he's quite young.

It wouldn't be that surprising that you might not have heard of them. But you possibly would expect that newspapers would do a bit more research. I mean, you think in today's age, that would be absolutely absurd. It was absurd then. But now, now obviously, you'd be able to sort of, you know, they'd be on FIFA or whether you could find them somehow. That's true. Yeah. Yeah.

It would be more difficult. got to do today for sure. When was this? It was in the 90s. It was in 99. Yeah, yeah. Because it was so much harder to find these foreign players on database or whatever, there was, do you hear about Ali Dia? Not Ali Dyer.

In 1996, Graham Sooness, who was the manager of Southampton at the time, he got a call from George Weir, who was a Balladour winner, you know, player of the year. Future President of Liberia. Yes, yes. Ooh. Yeah, there you go. And he's interesting. He really muffled his way up there.

He called Graham Sooners saying that he should give his cousin Ali Dyer a trial. Because he'd been playing at Paris Sanger Man. He'd been playing for Liberian. He'd been, you know, been doing pretty well. And so Sunnis was like, that's amazing. I mean, you know, playing at Paris Sanjaman. That's incredible. And so they gave him a sort of trial contract.

They gave him three and a half grand signing on bonus. and he turned up to training and Matt Letticey who was sort of the star player he's quoted as saying what's this bloke doing here I honestly thought he won a competition but it was

the reserve team that Ali Dyer had been put onto to play for that weekend their match was cancelled and so Southampton first team needed a sub and so he went there and subbed on when Letticee was injured

and he played for 43 minutes before being subbed off again. He was just a made-up guy. He was... Was it even... Was the George Weir thing? Was it actually George Weyer who called him? No.

So they don't know to this day who really who it was. But people believe it might have been his friend or it might have been his... It was just a bloke. I love these stories. Yeah. I love the Hertz power. Yeah. Did you guys hear about Carl Power?

Carl Power, okay. Carl Power was... He wasn't never a sports player, but he was a serial trickster. And his thing was tricking his way into sporting environments that he was not meant to be in, right? And he started, like, when he was a teenager, he would turn up at boxing matches with a towel and a gym bag, and he would get him for free because they assumed he was part of the fight, right? That's a risky one, though, isn't it?

If they think you're an actual boxer, you're in trouble. Like, he built on it, and he built his career. And he, so one of his greatest moments was when he got into a Manchester United team photo just before they played a big Champions League match. And you can see a shot. It's got Ryan Giggs, Andy Cole, Gary Neville, and Carl, just this guy and Neville was the only one who rumbled him they were all lined up for the photo and never pointed at him and said who are you who are you

and he said shut it Gary you grass you can see that video you can see Roy Keen right at the end clocks it and Roy Keene is a pretty feisty footballer and you see him look across and it is daggers absolutely That's brilliant He spent his whole career doing this

I said career he didn't get paid much for it but he played on centre court He just turned up and played He played a match Like a little warm up with someone like Tim Hemman He got onto the podium at the Grand Prix The British Grand Prix He came out to bat for England

At a test match they were playing once He didn't actually He didn't actually hit any balls He just walked towards And then they realised It was the wrong person And yeah yeah But I just I admire him so much

But that's that's performance art That's not Yeah That's still dougary That's pure performance art That's brilliant Is he still going Cold Power

I don't think he's still trading As it were I think he's still around Yeah Once you're get to an age, you can't pretend to be a footballer anymore. Pretend to be a manager, I guess. Or like a bowls player or something.

I found a, this is a real footballer, but had a fictional element to them. So it's sort of like mostly real person. But I was reading about Maradonna and Maradonna, so he used to do a lot of drugs. I think that's very well known to do. Yeah, breaking news. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Andy, he was big on the old cocaine. So he had, he was all real except he had a fake penis. And...

Sorry, Maradonna. He had a real penis, but he also had a special fake penis made a plastic so that when he had to do drug tests, he would pull the fake penis out and he would allow the urine to come through it. And it's so hard to get to the bottom of this story. Supposedly, the penis was put on display in a museum in Buenos Aires and then went on tour. I read this in The Guardian, written on tour, and then someone stole the penis somewhere on tour. So this missing relic of Maradonnas is out in the world somewhere. Wow. Yeah.

Wow. That'll be on some billionaire's mantlepiece. You know, they've paid big, big money to a cabal or something to source. What's called the knob of God. A knob of God. Yeah. Someone's got the knob of God. And he's got the fake bladder too, I guess. It's called a Wizzinator, I think.

I've heard of these things before. And, yeah, you use them for, like, drug tests. Do you hook it up to, you hook it up to a fake bladder? Or does the penis contain the fake urine? It's not an actual human bladder. It's just a bit of plastic. But, yeah. But you've got the bag.

and the whizzinate, the fake penis. Yeah, yeah. And everything's in your trousers, right? Everything's, well, everything's about your person, for sure. But then there was a person who did that, and it turned out that they were pregnant, even though it was a male-in-sperson, yeah. He'd taken some female urine, and they were like,

good news, you didn't take any drugs. Her news, you're pregnant, and a horse, apparently. Before you said anything about explaining the drug test, thing, I thought you were going to say it was because people would try and grope him at clubs and then he could kind of make a getaway, you know, like a lizard losing its tail. Oh, right. That's a great idea. I mean, I don't imagine he played with it, did he?

Did he play? I don't think you're asked for your insults mid-game. To me, a non-fan, that would liven things up. Well, you've seen when Gary Lineca pood himself on pitch, haven't you? I haven't seen that clip. Well, because there's a missed it. We wrote about this in our book of the year, the fish book, that Gary Linneker, still to this day, some 20 or years after he did that,

gets sent a single piece of toilet paper that's got a bit of poo on it in the post. He's just constantly, and he doesn't know who's doing it. It's quite easy to find out shortly who's poo that is. Well, yeah, DNA does that. No, but if the person sending it is clean, they're not on any DNA registers. I was thinking with,

because Gary Lineca's been in a bit of problem with the government, hasn't he, this year? I wonder if anyone's checks are well a problem. Not saying it's her. But it's just worth checking everyone, isn't it really? All of his enemies. God bless him. What were we talking about?

Football. What sort of fake or lie footballers? Yeah. Looking at you, Phil. Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, our whole performance is on Ted is it's so edited that, you know, it's basically choreography on Ted Lassau. Rather than it being sort of pretending we're playing football,

I see it more as choreography. But it's so hard to do. Because one of the things I really found, I really tried to like, when you see close up of players, that was me breathing, but like, if there was other shots in the middle of a game, I wanted it to feel like. And probably panting. Yeah. And I feel like so many sports films you watch that that doesn't happen and it's really frustrating. But there were certain things that the production had to take into their own hands, which was some of the particularly difficult choreography that we had to do.

Like someone shoots, it hits off a post, hits someone's face. it's CGI, the ball is CGI. So we'd be running around the pitch sort of pretending to kick a ball which is very emasculating. That feels like that'd be more difficult. Yeah, it does. It feels hard.

Because you've got to think of like what the weight is of the ball and like what the how far it's going to go. Do they not like in some CGI they'll just have an orange instead of whatever like you're fighting a dragon but there's an orange or something. It's a guy in green. His head is the ball. And the wonderful best actor goes to the ball.

Tom Hanks's Wilson, Furious, never made it to nomination level. I've got one fact. It's less about sort of fake football, but more there is, do you know about Will Still, the manager at Ream or Ram FC? It's a league A team. And every single time the team plays, they are fined 22,000 euros. What are they doing out there? Well, it's not so much.

them, it's the manager himself. He is the youngest manager in European football. He's 30 years old. He's an English, Belgian, I think. And it's incredible. He's like this sort of real hot shot manager. But because he's so young, he hasn't really had time to go and get his certifications, which you need in order to be a manager in Liga. And so he's just sort of like, he learned off football manager. It's really sort of, you know, and he went to university. You got agree but like it's really theater um but yeah so so they find because he just doesn't hasn't got the certification yet yeah so they so one of the rulings that fine that's a big how big how big of that can they forward that like yeah i mean yeah yeah yeah but he's so but it's

he's done so well and he's and he's incredible if you watch a video of him you hear him speaking as one normally would in a training session in english and then like without missing a beat goes into perfect french and it's incredible you watch him it's just yeah he's really interesting guy That's a shame. I always thought that we could just become a football manager. Whenever Tramier lose their manager, like, Tramier last, I'm a tramier fan. So we lost our manager a few weeks ago. And I always think, oh, it's worth a try, isn't it? You know, it's worth a try, becoming a football manager.

But now I know I have to get actual qualifications. This feels like a French bureaucracy thing. Do you think ever since Carl Power turned up at one, Paris Saint-German, try to coach the two? You think it'll be okay. I think it'll be fine. I think you'd be fine, James. And what I don't know about football isn't worth knowing.

Right. So I say go for it. I can Frenton Park with a new thatched roof. I'll be there. I'll be there, all right. I've got a season ticket. 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 can be found on our Twitter accounts. I'm on at Schreiberland, James. At James Harkin. Andy.

At Andrew Hunter M. and Phil. At Phil Dunster. Yep. Or you can go to our group account, which is. at No Such Thing, or you can message us on our email podcast at QI.com. Otherwise, go to our website, No Such Thing as a Fish.com. All of our previous episodes are up there. And Phil, do you want to mention anything coming up? Ted Lassau is currently, I think it's just about to air its final episode, or may have just aired.

So go and watch that. And I love you. That's a great way to end our show. Damn, do we have any live shows coming up. We certainly do. James, you want to tell everyone about it? There you go. It's happening between the 17th of July and late August at the Soho Theatre.

We're doing 11 shows, sometimes two a night. So there are some tickets left, actually. I think about half the tickets have already gone, but there are some left. So hurry now. Great. Okay. Oh, and go to No Such Thingasofish.com slash Soho to book your tickets. There you go.

Do come. Tickets are going really fast, so do get in quick. And we've got a new guest each night. It's going to be really, really fun. So that's it, Phil, we love you too. Thank you for doing the show. And we'll be back again next week with another guest. We'll see you then.

Goodbye.