No Such Thing As A Fish - No Such Thing As Scottish Snow

Episode Date: October 6, 2017

Andy, Anna, James and special guest Cariad Lloyd discuss Unity Mitford's BFFs, how planes (don't) cure deafness, and why you shouldn't eat Scottish show.

Hello and welcome to another episode of No Such Thing as a Fish, a weekly podcast coming to you from the QI office in Covent Garden. My name is Andrew Hunter-Murray and I'm sitting here with James Harkin, Anna Tijinsky, and our special guest this week is Carriad Lloyd. Carriad is a comedian, we all know. She's been on QI a load of times. She's in an improvised show called Ostentatious, which is Jane Austen-based improvised comedy with me.

And she also is the presenter and host and producer and everything of the podcast Griefcast which is about grief and about people you've lost but it's also very uplifting and charming and funny and wonderful so do give that a listen. Okay, starting with fact number one this week and that is

Carriad Lloyd. My fact is that Unity Mitford was the only person to be BFFs with Churchill and Hitler. She was best friends forever just for any 80s kids in the room. Yeah, she was definitely best buddies bezies with Hitler. She was very

bezies with Hitler. But she was also very old family friends with Churchill. And at some point, just before war broke out, so she was living in Germany, basically completely in Hitler's inner circle. She was completely there. And she used to write to her friend, Winston, and

beg him very regularly to make peace with Hitler, because she really believed in both countries. Now, caveat, yes, she was a massive fascist. So obviously, not like saying I love her, but she did really believe that England and Germany could work together and become this incredible superpower. And she always said, if they go to war, I'll kill myself. I'll kill up because these are my two greatest selves, my country.

And spoiler alert, the moment war broke out, she went into a park and she shot herself in the head. But spoiler, spoiler alert, it didn't work. She survived with the bullet in her head. Wow. But then she did also die due to an infection. But much, much later. So Hitler, her BFF, when she did shoot herself in the head, Hitler felt so bad.

of it was his fault hashtag you cause the war he arranged for a train to take her to Switzerland and then her mother and I think it was Debo the young sister came and got her but he he you know wars breaking out everyone's leaving countries Hitler made sure that she got out of Germany and he knew she was going back to Britain and he funded her healthcare and stuff didn't it it's very easy to accidentally read the story and go

oh that's quite nice of him I know yes I know again he was a massive fascist but also I think he was quite big into he was one of the the worst, I would say. You know there's a theory about Hitler funding all this. So, the theory is that her sister, Deborah and her mother took her home after she tried to kill herself. She then recuperated at a little nursing home in a village called Wigington in Oxfordshire.

The home was a maternity home. This is a story. This is rubbish. There is a story from the woman who ran the home that she may have had a baby. And the baby had a tiny mustache. and was a massive fascist. Yeah, and so the journalist who wrote about this, she asked the woman who she thought the father might be,

and she said, well, my mother always said it was Hitler's. Although there is no record of this happening, so it's probable there is not a secret Hitler love child. But they definitely copped off, didn't they? No, also, that's a get. Really? Yeah, there's a lot of, like, it was very suspicious. In the inner circle, all the Germans hated her.

They were like, there's this British woman who Hitler, literally, she would, like, advise him and wind him up on stuff. and she was extremely jealous of Eva Braun as well. And Eva Braun was very jealous of her, though, right? So Unity definitely was in love with him, but what I read seems to be like that nothing happened. Basically, he was kind of using her because she was extremely useful.

And the other weird thing about Unity is her middle name was Valkyrie, Unity Valkyremy, Midford, and she was born in the town of Swastika. So weird. So weird. And so it said that he was very superstitious. And it was said when he found this stuff out about her, and she was a six-foot, blonde, blue-eyed woman

that he kind of felt like she was very lucky. But apparently there was no way they ever slept together, but she definitely would have. And she used to kind of hang out with other fascists. Did she sleep with Churchill? No, but her sister, Decker, was married to Esmond Romilly, who the big rumor is that he was Churchill's secret son. And it was all sort of hidden that.

Oh, really? But yeah. I thought Churchill was quite happily married, though. Not like that massive fascist Hitler. So this town of Swastika is in all. Ontario. Yes. And they wanted to change the name during the war to Winston because of obvious reasons.

And they even did it, I think, or at least they got pretty close. But then everyone who was living there said no. And so they took down all the new signs. And they said, no, we were called swastika before Hitler came along. Yeah. We came up with the idea first. Why should we change our names? And they were named after the symbol, which was a good luck symbol in, is it Hindi?

Hinduism. Hinduism. So that's, you know, they were there beforehand. Doesn't Dan have a fact about that guy, I think possibly also in Canada, who was called Adolf Hitler? Yeah. And it was asked if you're going to change your name. And he said, I'm not going to let one guy ruin the name. And he didn't change his name. Yeah. Yeah. They were amazing family. Yeah. They literally isn't one of them that wasn't somehow involved in something. So Unity was, well, they were all bizarre, but she was bizarre. So she said that her and her sister grew up,

her to be a fascist, her sister, one of her sisters like her to be a communist. Yes. And she said that they used to scratch, she would scratch swastika, and her sister would scratch a hammer and sickle into the window of the bedroom that they shared together and the scratches were still there. And so they really pursued their dreams. There was an article in The Guardian about how they're kind of inspiring in a twisted way because she was like, I'm in love with Hitler, I'm going to go track him down.

And she did and she went to Germany and she sat in a cafe that he frequented months after Yeah, she sat there every single day until eventually he was like, who's that six-foot blonde woman that keeps staring at me? And that's how she got to know him. And apparently she told, she wrote to Decker and said, this is my plan. Like any good obsessed teenager, this is how I'm going to get him. And her and Decker, Jessica Mitford, shared a room and they had a chalk line down the middle of the room. And at one end was a bust of Lenin and the other end was a picture of Hitler. Wow.

But they were obviously still sisters and loved each other very much. And then completely opposite. But obviously growing up in exactly the same. household. Do you think maybe like sometimes brothers and sisters go against their brothers and sisters, right? Yeah, well, they're sort of, if you read any of the Mithford stuff, there's an amazing biography by Mary S. Lovell, which is the best Mittford S. Rontory, which says that they, all of them had these incredibly obsessive personalities and filled them with, so either fascism or communism or Pam, who was obsessed with farming. She's so safe. Yeah. Pam is the one that. Pam's the one that,

Pam's the one that's one that's one everyone forgets, but she introduced a new breed of chicken into this country. And Pam apparently was quite a wit and like Evelyn Moore was in love with her, I think. But the only people who heard her jokes were the chickens. Yeah, exactly. Were there six? So there was, yeah, there's a brother who died in the war.

And then you have Nancy, who was a very famous writer. Diana, who obviously also being of a fascist. They do not, they don't do well on fascists. Diana was the mistress of Oswald Mosley, who was the wife, the eventual wife of Oswald Mosley. Well, I was just referring to the courting thing. But she was the one who famously said, Hitler had beautiful blue eyes.

Oh, yeah. Did she tell Stephen Fry this? Well, Stephen definitely mentioned that on QI. He said, he says, Stephen Frye says that she said to him, of course you never met Hitler, did you? Yeah. She was an incredible woman, Diana. She was said to be like the most beautiful woman of her age.

Like, men were literally falling over. And then she married a Guinness and had an affair, not a pint of Guinness, and then had an affair with Oswald Mosley and then ended up marrying him. And then went to prison. Went to prison. And she was the only, during the war, they were interred. And she and another woman were allowed their husbands in Holloway Prison.

So she was in Holloway Women's Prison. And then Oswald was allowed to join her because Churchill said that was okay. Because he was mates with the family. Nancy Metford was famous for doing the upper class and lower class writings. Yes. You and Non-U was a famous essay she wrote, yeah, about the correct ways. What things show you off as being posh or not posh, right? Have you got a test for us?

I couldn't do one. How do you pronounce the word which refers to a large cat with a main? A lion? Lion? No, not posh, not posh. Oh, no. Lion? Oh, you're pretty posh.

I'm putting it on, I'm putting it on. It rhymes with barn, apparently. Lawn? Yeah. How do you pronounce the game which I like to play where I hit little balls around with a stick and a field? Golf. Goal. Good.

Goff. Gough? No. Oh yeah, Gough. Who's it Gough? Like Darren Gough. Going to fair game of golf? Oh, wow.

There was a study recently that found the Queen has become less posh over the course of her reign. As in if you listen to her vows from 1953, she's still quite posh. She's still quite posh. Not as posh, though. If you listen to the old recordings, it's almost like, it sounds almost any in the language. But that's her accent is less posh. She still lives in a massive country. She hasn't kept it real recently.

But she talks quite street, I think, is what we're saying. She lives in a palace, but she lives in a palace, but she lives in a palace, but she lives. She talks pretty straight. She says BFF. Yeah. Wasn't the non-new you thing, part of it was about that thing where people who want to be posh put on posh words. So things like serviette instead of napkin. So it wasn't about telling the posh from the working class.

It was about telling the posh from the kind of middle class who wanted to be. The really posh don't say the posh word. They just call it a napkin. Yeah. Whereas the social climates is a serviette. Exactly. What if you call it a mouthface? wipeer.

You were just a plain old widow. Yeah, Nancy was very like acerbic and witty about so she was sort of taking the piss out of people. There was a lot of piss taking involved, wasn't there? Yeah. Apparently a gentleman

when he's drunk may become amorous or mordling or vomit in public, but he would never become truculent. That's how you know Andy's so common. Regularly truculent. Fighty, fighty, okay, it's time for

Fact number two, and that is Anna. My fact this week is that in the 1920s, doctors prescribed intentionally terrifying flights and aeroplanes to cure deafness. Why? Did they think that that would... What was their reason? Well... I would think maybe because it makes your ears pop. Yeah, but like...

Is it that? It was not that. No, it was the shock factor. So it actually... It actually started with someone who couldn't speak. It was an army serviceman who I think lost the ability to speak during the First World War. And this is in 1921. this doctor called Charles McAnerney

said it was a psychological problem and that the solution would be going into a plane and being treated to a series of loop the loops and nose dives and spins and things that made him think he was going to die and lo and behold he was he took this prescription, he did it,

he stepped off the plane and he said, I don't know if I can speak anymore and it turned out he could because he said that. And then it started being touted as a cure for everything including deafness. So deaf flights were a thing that was quite commonly prescribed And Charles Lindbergh, very famous, obviously, aviator, on his business card, he had deaf flights as one of the things that he often to take deaf people up.

And the idea was that people might have suffered from these things for psychological reasons. She was saying, like, shell-shocky kind of thing? Yeah. So were they take, yeah, was it only if you develop deafness or was it more like, oh, I've been death since birth? There were some people who were deaf since birth. So, for example, in 1930, there was a boxer called Fred Mahan, his nickname, was dummy, which is a cruel nickname, because he'd been deaf since the age of eight months. Oh my God. So he took a flight in 1930.

It was designed to cure his hearing. It was designed to cure his hearing with a parachute jump that he was going to take out of the plane, okay? In front of a crowd of thousands. The parachute failed to open. Oh, my God. And he died. Where's the happy ending, Andy? Probably in the next fact, I'm afraid.

Oh, my God. Sometimes people did die. The idea also was that it had to be a surprise. so the patients were told that. Where are we going? Don't worry, just put on this rucksack. They were told they were just going in a flight because it was the altitude that cured the deafness.

And then they'd go up in the flight and then it would be a horrible shock when you suddenly started nosediving towards the ground or spinning around in circles. Because obviously if you knew it was going to happen, then the cure wasn't going to be as effective. Have you heard about this flight that happened in... When did it happen?

In 1969 with Alan Funt. Have you heard this before? I don't think I've ever heard the word Alan Fund before. I think I'd remember. He was the host of a prank show in America that was like absolutely massive. Kind of like candid camera. What was it called? It was called Candid Camera.

I feel like a Funn. What a fun. Alan Fund hosted Candid Camera, which is like the original You've Been Framed. And he was hugely hugely famous as much as I would say, Jamie Beadle was in his day. And he was on a flight with his family. And they had a camera crew because they were going to film like this new prank show. and it got taken hostage. So the plane, a guy stands up

and it was at the time, apparently there was loads of this happening and they were just constantly in 969 being taken to Cuba. It was like quite fashionable. So everyone starts panicking. Then some of the passengers see Alan Fund and go, oh, it's a prank. And it wasn't a prank.

So Alan Fund standing up, he's like, it's not a prank, which obviously is what Alan Fund would do if it was a prank. So the whole plane starts laughing and relaxing because they think it's a prank. And I think they even got flown to Cuba. and they were on the ground for like five hours with everyone really relaxed thinking

in a minute yeah it seems like the whole plane thinking in a minute the camera's going to come out we're all going to laugh and they were winding up the whole time and he was with his wife and child and the daughter husband accounted it and said like they just thought

he was getting more and more frustrated and upset because no one would believe him no Alan Funt eventually Funt hijacked the plane himself take me to anywhere apart from Cuba it did happen a lot I remember Randy had a fact where there was a guy who said take me to Cuba

but the flight was already going to Cuba. Oh my God. That's a Book of Heroic Failurek, that one. Charles Lindbergh. One of his other specialities listed on his business card, which is an amazing business card,

by the way, including death flights. One of the other things he offered was plane change in mid-air. Yeah. And this was a trick in early aerial circuses where you would just climb out of the plane you were in or flying and climb into another plane next to you.

Would you do you do? that if you're traveling and you'd do it for an exchange or is it a trick? It's a trick. Right. I was going to say, it wasn't what changing your flight was in the old days. If anyone from Ryanair is listening, they will be considering that. He was a real daredevil in some ways. So, Limburg, he did New York to Paris in 1924.

I did not know this thing about it. He had to get rid of all non-essential equipment, make the plane as light as possible. So he took out all non-essential equipment and then he put a big fuel tank on the front of the plane so he could have as much fuel as he needed. Unfortunately, that meant he could not see out in front of him. I'm not even kidding. To see out of the plane in front of him, he had a few options. He installed a periscope in the cockpit.

Oh, my God. He also sometimes just had to open the right-hand door to peek out in front of the seat. Oh, my God. His final option was just to turn the plane sideways for a bit. That's how I drive. It does work, it does. But yeah, aerial acrobatics was super popular in the 1920s. It was this very specific phase because a lot of people learned to fly in First World War

and then they realized they could make a living out of it. And barnstorming, it was called, and it became this very popular thing. And I can't tell if it was, I think the etymology of it is vaguely unclear. It's either because people would often do these amazing aerial acrobatics in like fields and people would stand by a barn and watch. But also quite a common trick they do is to fly through a barn. they'd open the doors of a barn, and then you had to fly your plane through the barn

and come out at the other end. Is that way the trope of bursting into a barn and then you burst out the other end and all the chickens are, you know, flapping them out madly. You know it happens in every show. Seinfeld runs into a barn. It happens less than...

And Panmet for showing this work! But is that obviously where the word barnstorm, it was a real barnstormer? I think it is from that. I've seen videos of them going, flying through, and I'm sure that must be where it comes from. It must be. I think they played some stunt games of tennis on planes.

No, oh my gosh. On the wings. On the wings. From one wing to another, there are a few photos of people doing, oh, it's wingwalking. You know, normally you're sort of discreetly strapped to the plane. You're not standing completely free because obviously you'd immediately fall off. Did that mean you had to hit the ball ahead of where the person was at the time? Does physics work, aren't he?

I think the person who really suffers is the ball boy. There's a guy called Orma Loller. Locklear, who was a 20s stunt pilot, he, I think, was the first person to fly from one plane to another in mid-air, possibly. Sorry. Fly from one plane to another. Sorry, climbed.

He launched a smaller plane out of the window of a jumbo jet. It's incredible. So, Alma Locklear was a stunt pilot in the 20s. In a film called The Great Air Robbery, his one stunt he did, he climbed down from a plane to a speeding car, fought the baddie for a bit,

kicked the baddie out of the car, then he grabbed the plane's undercarriage. and climbed back into it as the car overturned and crashed. You should never climb back into someone's undercarriage. Very rude. Do you know another old cure for deafness around about this time in the 1920s and before was to make your own artificial ear drum or have an artificial ear drum inserted? But you could order them, I was going to say online,

and they sent you things that were often made of Elksclaw or Pigsbladder or Fishbone or something called Gold Beater's skin, which I didn't know about, but your dad probably would, Andy, because it's used in the gold leaf making process, and apparently it's animal intestine. But anyway, you put this on a little stick and you put it in your ear, and it apparently replaced your eardrum. It didn't work, but it was invented in 1853 or pioneered by a doctor called Joseph Toinby, who is Polly Toinby's great grandfather.

Wow. Isn't that weird? That's good. I read the other day, and I haven't looked into this, I just saw the headline that your eardrum moves the same way as your eyes move. So when your eyes kind of move to the left or right, your eardrums slightly move around.

Like cats' ears, you know, when cats are obviously doing it themselves. Our eardrums are obviously doing it. Yeah. Oh my God, I can kind of feel it. If you move your eyes around. I think that might be your earbones moving in your jaw. Yeah, it might be.

The other thing with, you know, like, well... No, I can feel it too. It might be your earbones. You have earbones too. It's not just Anna who has earbone. No, I'm just moving my eyes. There's something moving in there. I think that's your jaw moving, which is connecting to your earbone.

But why would my jaw move when I'm just moving my eyes? Because you're moving the muscles around your eyes to look that way. Carry out, we're not really into logical fact-based explanations here. So this is kind of a psychological affliction that they thought could be cured by flying. And there was another fashion for curing psychological afflictions in about the 1920s. And this was pioneered by this doctor called Henry Cotton. and I'd never heard of this, but he thought that all madness or depression or anxiety

was caused by physical stuff and could all be cured by surgery. And so he used to just pull more and more body parts out of people until they were cured. So he'd start with the teeth. So you'd go in and you'd pull out all of your teeth if you were mad. And then if you'd still, he'd go for another body part. He'd keep on going, so then he...

It's like that game operation, isn't it? I bet he invented it. He was like, I could... This is fun. It was a lot like operation. He'd go tonsors next. and then adenoids and then he'd remove your colon if you still weren't cured. Remove your colon?

I feel like you need your colon, don't you? What about the appendix? No, he did acknowledge that... I mean, once my stomach's gone, yes, my anxiety is going to go because I'm trying to deal with not having a stomach. So I'm probably just going to be really upset. Probably not lying. Little platypuses don't have stomachs.

Don't they? No, they used to be very anxious. No, they don't. They used to, this happened to my granny. They used to pull out all your teeth as prevention for toothache. So when you were like 18 or 21 And this was offered to her She was extremely poor working class lady

And so they said well to save you some money And worrying about your teeth Just take them all out Lose them out Did you go for it? Yes she had out Every single tooth removed at 21 My granny was offered it

Didn't didn't take them off in the offer Wise lady Yeah This guy did pull out his own children's and wife's teeth As soon as he had children and a wife But that was At what point in the ceremony Or the reception did he do it

The christening There's one in there Now kiss the bride Well, just one thing before I hear that. You may now plier the bride's mouth open. Okay, it's time for fact number three, and that is James Huckett. Okay, my fact this week is that there is a patch of snow in Scotland that fell 11 years ago and has just melted this week.

That is amazing. It's sad. It's very sad. I thought it was amazing, then when I looked into it, I realized it was sad. It's super sad. At first I was like, wow. Oh, sad. Yeah.

So there are these people who kind of always looking for the last. bit of snow that's on the Scottish mountains. And most years, it's still there when it starts snowing again. So it's always going to be there. And actually, it always melts from the top. So the bit at the bottom will have been there for the whole time. But this week, and I'm going on a bit of a limb, because as we're doing this podcast, I think there might still be a tiny bit there.

But it's like a bit the size of a rucksack or something. There's hardly anything. And it looks like it's on its last legs. Probably we're recording this on September 29th. And I think by the 30th or by the start of October, it will definitely be gone. God, but you're in trouble if there's an unexpected blizzard in Scotland over the next week. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, hasn't it only disappeared six times in the last 300 years or something mad like that?

So, yeah, I read it as in the last 300 years, there have only been six times when there's been no snow on the ground in Britain. God, you know, like every time you listen to the news at the moment, you feel like it's end of days. And then you read a story like that where you go, and the snow has also gone. And you think, oh, God. But it's got a name. Yeah. There's a few of them. I think the one that I'm talking about

is called the sphinx. Yeah. And it's because there's a rock above it that looks a bit like the sphinx. Oh, I didn't know that was the reason. Yeah. What did you think it was? I thought it was like the patch of snow

asked you a riddle when you get there. And if you answer wrong, it folds you into its cold heart. I don't know. That's how it keeps going. It keeps on absorbing. He's one more virgin to come and ask you a question. Andy, whenever you're saying.

Hey. So these people are very interesting guys. There's no patch hunters. Yes. And so we only know about this because of this guy, Ian Cameron. Yeah, and he's like one of the main guys. And he often goes and tries to find these patches and then we'll take photos of them.

And then eventually, pretty much if Ian Cameron says they're not there anymore, they're probably not there anymore. And he's got a Facebook group, which you can go on. And, you know, every few days he posts. And he's like, oh, there's still a little bit left here, but probably not tomorrow. But all of the data he gathers is really useful for climate scientists. because he's got a record stretching back years and years now,

which is very useful in terms of the temperature on the ground. And this is what they think is climate change. Is that what basically? He is quite circumspect about it. He says, look, I'm just going to leave it to the scientists to decide this kind of stuff. I wish more people would take that attitude. I suppose it seems pretty likely that it's climate change, right?

Well, you know what? I, like Ian, I'm going to leave it to the scientist. Yeah, it clearly is. But he told the new statesman when they spoke to him, he said, it might sound weird to say, but it's like seeing an elderly relative or an old friend. you're slightly disappointed if it's not in as good a condition. And you're really disappointed if you turn up and it's not there.

He is all about the snow, isn't he? Yeah, I think he just, he only cares about these snow patches and he says he... I'm sure he cares about other things. His poor wife covering herself in snow. Look at me, Ian, look at me. His children wearing snow hats, eating snow. Desperately putting carrots out in front of their noses. Daddy, are we snow now?

No, you're hot. You're hot and you're nothing to me. I'm sorry if it's not like that being Ian's child. I would like to counter it and say the F.P. reported he is an enthusiast, but he is not mad. Tell that to his poor melting wife. I think Ian Cameron is a bit of a hero because he's like looking at this kind of thing and no one else is, but actually it's like you say, really good data and... No, he sounds amazing. It's amazing.

And obviously it needs recording. People do seem to be taking notice. There's a whole Wikipedia article called Snow Patches in Scotland. which I suspect maybe Ian Cameron wrote this. There are things like, it's so weird, it does seem to be a big thing based on this. So it describes a relatively little known snow patch, which was Scotland's largest at the time of writing.

It said, this patch does not appear in the known literature on the subject, so it may be very under-recorded. Only the hipsters know about that one. Exactly. It's really obscure. You probably haven't heard of it. Do you want some good news? Sure.

Do you want to know about the world's tallest snowwoman? Of course. Guys, I feel like... It's Mrs. Cameron. So her name is Olympia, and she is 30 feet shorter than the Statue of Liberty. Oh. Her arms consist of 27-foot-tall evergreens, and she has 16 skis for eyelashes, and 2,000 feet of rope hair.

Like, she's amazing. And five red auto tires for lips, which were painted by the Mahusuk Kids Association. So basically, the whole town got together and made this, you know, because there's... This from the photo, this absolute travesty of a snow person. I want to know what the carrot is made of, because presumably that's the size of a bus. The carrot nose is made of muslin, chicken wire, and wood rain by the MSAD number 44 elementary school children.

Yeah, it's in Bethlehemian. I have to say, if that magically came to life and approached me one night, I would run for the hills. Andy, why is that might, why would that happen? Well, like in the snowman, you know, the Christmas thing, I would not go walking in the air with that beast. I would sit indoors with a hairdry on full blast if it came near me. I mean, it's not 100% clear.

Just looking at this from a bit of a distance, that she is a woman. They've given it eyelashes in the classic cartoon version of gender. I think a snow vagina would be a bit much, I don't. You don't see many snow penises on the old snowman, do you? Is it hanging down in walking in the air? I didn't notice. You see a lot of snow penises.

I was to say. Have you guys heard about the oldest ever ice? Is it in Antarctica? Yes, it is. And it was discovered this year. It dates back, guys, 2.7 million years. What? Yeah.

I'm the one that Putin drank. I sincerely hope not. Do you not remember that? He did that. They drilled down to some really old ice and then melted it and Putin drank it. What, just dropped it in a whiskey or something? He's going to live forever. He wasn't down at the bottom.

bottom of the hole eating the ice when they jump down to him. Yeah, no, so as a climate scientist, keep on drilling down because the snow that falls and then compacts in Antarctica, obviously, not obviously, but it has tiny bubbles of air, which tell you a huge amount about the climate two million years ago. And you can find out how much carbon dioxide there was and what that means for the temperature of the earth, which is going to be very useful for us over the next century. But this year in April, there was a freezer in Canada where they had ice cores. that dated back thousands and thousands of years,

yeah, your way ahead of me, Kerryad. No. There was a freezer malfunction. No, guys. And they melted. Guys. I've had that with ice cream, and it's really disappointing.

Yeah. It is so disappointed. Well, imagine if there was 22,000 years of history in your ice cream. It's okay. If it's a queen and black's chocolate, I'd be as upset as I would be. And the director of the Canadian Ice Corps Archives, the guy called Martin Sharp,

and he said, Fuck! This is a bad day for Martin Sharp. He said, I've had better days. So you're not far off. But by a massive stroke of luck, which sounds crazy,

but there was a massive stroke of luck, 90% of it was saved solely because a camera crew had been filming a documentary about this ice core archive and they had said, can we move most of it into this other freezer which has better lighting?

No way. So thank God most it was saved. That's amazing. Is it like ice cream where if it re-freezes it's not quite as good? It's a bit crystal. And then you still eat it,

but you think, oh, I should have eaten this earlier. Yeah. It's hard to shove the little bite. of ancient carbon dioxide back in at the right height. I love them though because they're like time capsules, but from literally millions of years ago, I kind of find the fact that these bubbles are 2.7 million years old

more exciting than the ice, because it's like a little world, even though it doesn't have the cool stuff like the blue Peter badge or whatever inside it, it's still like a little time capsule. Apparently you're not supposed to make snowmen in Antarctica. Really? It's taboo, according to the telegraph.

Taboo! They're so uptight in Antarctica. Apparently, the rules are... designed to prevent the Antarctic's animals from being disturbed. Oh, right. Yeah, that's fair enough. Penguins, I don't know. They might be like, what the, is that? Yeah.

You know, hey, that's my to know. Imagine I came into your house and rolled up all your cushions and made a giant cushion man and you woke up. Yeah, it does sound like I'd wake up because that sounds like, that happened in a dream, I think, the other day. So it's for the penguins. They're like, just mind no business and suddenly someone's taking all their, like, house. Antarctica had no land animals, permanent land animals, apart from that tiny fly.

He's got penguins. I think it doesn't have a little permanent. Yeah, but they live in the sea. The only, I think we did this on QI, the only permanent land animal. It's a mid. It's a mid, is a mid with no wings. Hey, and what, the midge doesn't have feelings? It's even worse for the Mitch, because it could be quite a small snowman,

but to them, it's going to look like that one from Maine. Yeah, the princess. Okay, I now understand. And yeah, the point, because what about, like, the Antarctic bases they've built and all the science stations? Like, no one's like, hey, we're disturbing them, are they? No, the penguins are fine with that. Yeah, they're fine.

That must look like the death start of the midges. Okay, it's time for a final fact That is my fact this week My fact is that The first person ever to use the word sponge cake Was Jane Austen Good old Jane Good old Jane.

Now we mentioned this because Carriad, you are in an improvised comedy group called Ostentatious Which is about Jane Austen? Yeah, I am, A-HM. Great. Who's in that with me? John Mopurgo, yeah

Joseph Mopo is a great character, is it? He's a great comic, isn't it? He's amazing, yeah, he does very well. And he's also in the first. agree with me. I am. I'm honest. And you guys have got some big shows coming up. We have. We're going to the West End for three dates. The Piccadilly Theatre. We're going December 5th, January 23rd and special Valentine's Day, February 13th. Go the day before. That's what all the fashionable couples are doing.

And then on February the 14th, you can do something actually fun. Yeah. At the Piccadilly Theatre at 7.30. Yeah. Ostentatias are playing their biggest dates yet. And we've both seen it and it's amazing. It's fantastic. Yeah. So, sponge cake. So we know our day in Austin, right? Andy. We know what she coined us. But she coined the word sponge cake.

She's got a few citations in the Oxford English dictionary. And this is, so it doesn't mean that she invented the sponge cake. She's the first person just to write it down. They called it something else before her. Do they call it cake sponge? Yeah. So the first record of the word comes from her writings. I'm not even convinced it's a word.

Well, is it two words or is it one word? I thought she wrote it down hyphenated. She wrote it down hyphenated in a letter to her sister. She said, you know how interesting the purchase. of a sponge cake is to me. I think it was the famous Jane Austen's sense of humor coming in there. So it's interesting. The first mention of a sponge cake is it being given a sick burn in the letter by Jane Austen.

Which is a shame because sponge cake is a great thing. But do you know, are the words that she either coined or first usage, first evidence of it comes from her? I went through the OED and found as many as I could. Did you read the whole thing? Well. I've only started at the beginning. Hard fact, no. Antibilius.

They're all kind of very ostiny words, the ones. Like there's coddle, cousinly. She invented coddle? She didn't invent them, I suppose, but she's the first example we have of it. Isn't it something you coddle an egg? Yeah. Ah, yeah, so maybe it's coddle in just that specific term as in to Molly Coddle. Right, yeah, yeah.

Irrepressible, obtrusiveness, titopi. What's titopi? Titopi. It's the study of tits. That's titography. Sorry, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. It's not a tautography.

I get them mixed up. Oh, I'm getting confused. Tittopi, I think it means like a tit up. Oh yes. And I suppose a tit up is a mistake or something. No. Darcy's always titoping, isn't he? That ball went really titopi.

That's how Lizzie felt. And gad as in to gad about... You're kidding. The verbal use of Gad. Yeah. I think that's better than sponge cake, to be honest. to be honest. Yes, it is.

They're quite niche words. Yeah, that's what I think. It's not like Shakespeare who just invented the and Anne to the table. All the main words. Before that, we just literally left a gap. I've got some mind-blowing news on that, Anna. Oh, yeah. So, Shakespeare has always said that Shakespeare invented 1,700 words, right?

And I'm always saying it. And so the words include bump, hurry, road. I mean, it's nonsense. So the reason that he gets all these citations is because the first team of people compiling the Oxford English Dictionary knew his works intimately because they were all lexicographers. So when they were thinking, oh, well, where's the word critical? You know, they say, oh, there is a critical in whatever play it was.

And then, now that we've got better technology, we're going back and we're finding way earlier ones. So we thought that the word puke was a Shakespearean coinage. Turns out it dates back to 1465. almost two centuries before Shakespeare wrote it. I bet Chaucer was saying the word road. Come on. Can't be tell.

It was gone on a road. Yeah, because it would be weird if Shakespeare's plays were just full of words that no one had heard of. Well, the audience would be baffled. Imagine the reviews, you know. But you know, people say now, oh, I find Shakespeare hard to understand.

Perhaps this is happening in the 16th century. People are like, I don't know what it's on about. I can't really follow it. Did you see the amazing website right, like austin.com? No. So it tells you, you can type in a word and it will tell you how many times she used it or is she ever.

So she only used the word swoon four times. Wow. Which for people who watch us and anxious, we use that word quite a lot. She used the word curtsy six times. She never used the word marvel. So words it, but the word, you think of it's real. She has invented superheroes.

No, no, she was mainly using the word DC. She did, there were things that I think that she may have invented. Like, so the phrase Tom Dick or Harry, I think, comes from her. And you can imagine her thinking that up from her own head, right? Or dog tired comes from Jane Austen again. Like that's the kind of thing maybe she had made up.

That's just good writing. Yeah. If I've told you once, I've told you 100 times. No, she came up with that? Yeah, that was from her. That is a biggie. That's probably her, I'd say that's her lasting achievement. Yeah, but you're only saying that because you've been told that a lot of times when you're having that's right.

I think it's about puke. Yeah. Jane Austen wrote not very well, according to some. According to this professor, this is really interesting. I'm bristling. And according to a lot of people as well, let's not... According to a lot of men throughout the years have written harsh reviews of her. Well, Virginia Woolf didn't like her much.

Oh, no, that is true. Well, Virginia Woolf was a man. It's extremely interesting. You raised Virginia Woolf. So this is a study done by his professor called Catherine Sutherland. And basically, what she was saying is Jane Austen didn't write like we think she wrote. That was the work of an editor. So I agree with Carriad and Andy that, like, her novels are perfect.

in terms of like the construction of the sentences and the English language. But what this academic says is that that was all the editor. And if you look at her works, her first drafts of works, she writes totally differently. They're just, the daubings with cray on the back of a mirror that she posed to her. Big nice man, came in a room, yeah, and he was like, so nice. Well, she was more experimental. So it actually sounds like she was more interesting. And she said that she wrote a bit more like Virginia Woolf.

So for instance, when she had exchanges between characters, like speech exchanges. she wouldn't separate out one speaker from another so it would all be like blurred in a more stream of consciousnessy kind of way Yeah, keeping the idea of speech which she's so good at Yeah, her speech is so good Yeah, well the editor was one who had to separate it out And she couldn't spell so she didn't know which went first of I and E She didn't know punctuation

But also loads didn't spell, yeah, the rules hadn't been set You and non-you had not been set then Yes, the rules hadn't been set I think maybe she was a little bit worse than other writers at the time And also she didn't separate things into paragraphs very well So, to be first, she was a woman in the, like, 19th century or the one before that, the 18th century. She hadn't had a lot of education, had she? I'm not saying she didn't do very well.

We're really bristling, aren't we? Could it be that she didn't try and write sponge cake? She just misspelled like sponge carcass. What book is that in, James? You know how interesting the purchase of a sponge cock is to me. That is a way more interesting letter, to be fair, to be fair. Virginia Woolf said that one of the reasons, that she was so popular, is there are 25 elderly gentlemen

living in the neighbourhood of London who resent any slight upon her genius as if it were an insult to the chastity of their aunts. Wow. That's a lovely sentence. Equally brilliant writer, Virginia Woolrow. I know, it's so sad. They're both so fantastic and yet didn't like each other. Well, Austin didn't have many opinions on.

There will come in the years after my death, a woman who is crap. And I will call her Virginia Woolf, but spell wolf wrong. But didn't Charlotte Bronte hate her as well? Oh, did she? Yeah, I'm sure there's a quote from Bronte that said, I read that, like, I read that and I recognised no love that I've ever known. I can imagine the Bronte is not getting along with that. Yeah, but they're all howling on a moor somewhere.

It's a very different vibe, wasn't it? But when the Bronties came out, they were really popular, and Jane Austen went out of favour for all the time. Completely out of favour. And actually, I think it's partly only due to cinema that she's back in. So silent movies, very bad. And improvised comedy. Oh, yeah.

We have affected her sales quite heavily. silent movies I think would have been terrible for Austin because it's all conversation I think the first adaptation was 1940 of Pride and Pritch Yes an amazing film black and white film starring Lawrence Olivier yes as Lizzie Bennett It's most versatile There's been some amazing spin-offs I don't know anyone looked into this like I mean obviously the Austin industry myself and Andy are employed by is huge and there's lots of fan fiction and lots of people writing other books so I just look

up the top of the top 20 of other books. There's just like, definitely not Mr. Darcy. Prom and Prejudice. Colonel Brandon's diary, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Mr. Darcy takes a wife. Pride and Prejudice continues. They read like titles from our show. Wow.

They're an incredible amount. I read that a lot of people do this fan fiction because there's not enough sex in the actual stuff. Yes, a lot of it is sexy. Darcy's passions, Pride and Prejudice, retold through his eyes by Regina Jeffers, I think is a little bit more sexy than her stuff. because she doesn't really go into it.

It has to be said. Darcy and Elizabeth, nights and days at Pemberley. These are all available to buy, guys. More nights and days, I reckon. Hot nights at Pembley. Mr. Darcy's undoing a pride and prejudice variation. Do you know her sexiest line, maybe? Or the line that most overtly refers to sex.

No. It's pretty... It's pretty... With Sponge Cucks. I would like to see Sponchcock Square Pants, the Kids TV show. Oh, my God. This is just a real classic Jane Austen line.

It's in Mansfield Park. Fanny Price is the main character. Fanny, is it Fanny Price? It's the rude name. It's Fanny. No, it's a reference to her getting pregnant. And the sentence is just about, it's one of the last sentences.

It's about how Fanny Price and her husband have come into some money just after they had been married long enough to begin to want an increase of income. That's not the rudest line in Mansfield Park. It is an overt reference to sex, though. Well, would you like an overt reference to something else? No, I would.

It's in Mansua Park as well, and there's a character called Mary Crawford, who's a bad, bad girl. And she's talking about the Admiralty. And she says she used to know a load of admirals. And she says, of Rears and Vices, I saw enough. Of Rears and Vicerroral and Vicer. Which are both kinds of Admiral, but they're also both references to something else. I don't get it. So vices as in woodwork.

Yes, okay. Rear is in the back of the room. Yes. Yeah, no, and that's an incredibly filthy line. That is quite raunchy. I don't know that. The academic community is divided of whether it refers to sodomy or spanking.

But it's one of the two. She's trying to hint that Mary Corford is a very saucy, not nice lady. And that's our main character is in trouble. So that's what she's doing. A good character study, really. She could have said that she's known a lot of seedment in the time. And with her bad spelling,

she could have made that quite obvious. You can play Jane Austen role-playing game now, which I really want to play. And his life is this? So if you don't want to fork out for Austin Tations, you could... No, there's this online role-playing game, and it sounds really fun.

Oh, yeah, I think I saw that, the video game. Yeah, and you get to pick a character, and then you have all these interactions, so a Guardian journalist went and played it and started out by making this character who lost her handkerchief, and then found it, and then went for a walk and bumped into a gentleman

Although the writer did say that while she was going on this virtual walk, she saw a bunch of sheep stacked on top of each other. So some of the algorithms in the game need some ironing out, she said. Every Austin novel, there's a discreet sheep stack. My, my Lord, Willoughby, this sheep are stacked so fine today. About 10 years ago, an Austin buff and an author sent off some of her manuscripts to various British publishers, seeing if you could get them published. and he made very slight changes to the title and the characters.

And the pseudonym he used was Alison Lady, as in A Lady, which was Austin's pseudonym. It wasn't the world's greatest pseudonym, is it? No, but, you know, he's the guy who runs the Jane Austen Festival in Bath. Oh, well, you know who were. They all rejected the manuscripts, and only one of them spotted the fact that it was almost identical to Austin's work. He got one letter back from Penguin.

He just sent them pride and prejudice, and they wrote back saying, thank you for your recent letter and chapters from your book First Impressions. It seems like a really original and interesting read. I'm going to say I really do like Penguin though, don't you? Oh, sure. We ran them out, so an excellent publisher. Oh, gosh.

Amazing. And thank God they haven't spotted that our book is just a complete rib-up of bleak house. Okay, that's it. That's all of our facts. Thank you very much indeed for listening. We will be back again next week with another podcast. But until then, you can check us out on Twitter. We are at No Such Thing

And we all have individual Twitter accounts I'm on at Andrew Hunter M James At James Harkin Carriad At Lady Carriad And Anna You can email podcast at QI.com Yeah

And if you want to come and see us on tour We've just announced a whole new bunch of tour dates We're going all over the UK And you can see that at QI.com slash fish events You can also see our book We're publishing a book Which is coming up very soon

You can get that by going to QI.com slash fish shi.com slash fresh or Google the book of the year which is what it's called and if you want to see kariad and me in ostentatious you can go to the atyg website or you can go to ostentatious impro dot com forward slash shows and that has all the booking links for all our london shows and our UK tour as well lovely okay we'll see you next week thank you very much for listening goodbye