No Such Thing As A Fish - No Such Thing As Sexygesimal Time

Episode Date: June 24, 2022

Dan, Andy, Anna and special guest Bobby Seagull are discussing charts, talking clocks, and having a chit chat about Kitcatts.  Visit nosuchthingasafish.com for news about live shows, merchandise and more episodes.

Hi, everyone, just to let you know, we've got a very special guest on our show today. It is one of Britain's top nerds. Oh, is it me? It's even more top than you, James Harkin. You're not even supposed to be doing this bit. Oh, yeah, sorry. I know, look, you're very welcome. It is Bobby Seagull.

He's not only a mass teacher. You might know him from University Challenge, where he came to prominence. He's a TV presenter. He's written a book called The Life-Changing Magic of Numbers, which will change your life. He should definitely get it. And he's also written The Monkman. Seagull quiz book. He's a brilliant guy full of interesting nerdy facts. He now co-host the

Mass Appeal podcast, but today he's on ours. Yes, and I'm not on ours, so I'm not even sure why I'm here to be, oh, I know I am here. I'm here to remind you that we are going on tour in the autumn and in the last day of summer, if this is how you count your seasons. Basically, the 31st of August, we're going to be in Inverness, then we're going to be in Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Glasgow and Cardiff. If you're in any of those places, come and watch our show. It's going to be so much fun. Loads of facts, loads of silliness.

We just can't wait to be back on tour again. That's right. And even if you don't think that the 1st of September is the first day of autumn, which I don't happen to, if you disagree with James's delineation of the seasons, just come anyway. That's right. It's from the 31st of August to the 13th of September. Go to no such shing as a fish.com. Slash-live. Get your tickets now.

On with the show. On with the 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 Covent Garden. My name is Dan Schreiber. I'm sitting here with Anna Tashinsky, Andrew Hunter Murray, and our very special guest, it's Bobby Seagull. And once again, we have gathered around the microphone with our four favorite facts from the last seven days. And in no particular order, here we go. Starting with fact number one, and that is Bobby. My fact this week is that the UK pop charts were originally compiled by phoning around 20 record shops

and asking what their best-selling songs were that particular week. So we're talking 50s, are we? This was November 52? Yeah, November 52. So the Queen's Jubilee, 52. So that means for the first few months of her reign, there was a different way of assessing the music charts as it were. So in the US, they had the billboards. So for the billboards, it was a, I think since 1940s, it was like weekly sales.

But in the UK, they didn't have a chart based on music sales. So it was an organisation called the PRS, the Performing Right Society. And they would look at the best selling sheet music. The word sheet always annoysing you. In school, if I say the word sheet, it's just like, sir, is that what? Do you have two sheets on you, sir? We've got the sense of humour of your students. Bobby's a teacher, by the way, yeah, we should say.

So it was the sheet music. So a man called Percy Dickens. So hail Percy Dickens. So he was a magazine advertising salesman. And he was actually a founding member of the new Musical Express magazine, which is now enemy. Although there's enemy shut nowadays. It's still online. It's still functioned online.

RIP print copy. Yeah. Hail to the digital copies. So he thought actually what's the best way of getting advertising revenue for a magazine? And he said actually, we can attract commercial advertising revenue if we tie up something with the record industry. So then he thought, oh, actually, how about we do some sort of record-based music chart? And that's how the initial brainwave spark for this. Okay. So records was sort of like an obscure, you know, why buying your record? You could just buy the sheet music and your own piano.

You can sing it on yourself. Yeah. Okay. And then they decided calling around 20 shops would be the most reliable ways to do that. Yes. So, but why his system was like, like that. So what the management of NME decided was, I think they agreed with 50-ish shops that they would be willing to exchange data. But with those 50-ish shops, I think it's 53, but it's 50-ish,

it's always safer. As a mathematician, you don't like giving exact numbers. So every Monday morning, Percy Dickens would pick up the dog and bone phone and call up about 15 to 25 shops, on average 20 shops, and each store would give their top 10.

But this is where things get a bit murky because he would then have a points-based system that he'd allocate to this. And this is a bit, we don't know, it's like a Eurovision type system. We don't know the exact system. But because of that, it meant his first ever top,

I think he was trying to do like a top 12, but there were 15 entries because three entries, number 7, 8, and 11 tied. And we all know in reality, it's unlikely that three songs would have exactly the same number of sales. But all the chances.

But because he went to 20 shops. Yeah. You're probably have like two songs with 17 sales each. And then how, Because I sort of read that they're not that great in monitoring anyway, are they, the shops? And also, they might just say the song that they like best. Well, if they were told we're going to be ringing you up and asking for your sales,

they probably would keep the sales. Maybe they'd count. But I like that. I would just, I do find myself wondering if anyone ever tried to game the system by picking a particular shop and saying, well, I'm going to send 15 different friends in here all to buy this one single. I hope they get phoned up this week by Percy Dickens. That did used to happen though. I don't know specifically to British charts, but certainly overseas in America.

you would have, you know, the really rich people just buying huge units of an album from one specific store just to get those numbers up to get them into the charts. Oh. That was a thing to get in the charts. I mean, that's happened forever, you know. Taylor Swift's doing a gig and she's bundled it with the new album or she's released a new t-shirt and she bundles it with the album. And so you cheat the sale because you're attaching it. Does it count to the same?

It used to and not anymore because they noticed that bands were just, you know, cheating the system. They were gaming the system. So were they actually not popular at all, Ed Shear and Taylor Swift. Does it turn out? No. No one even likes it. Almost Spotify top tens or false. Exactly. But May 2020, Jewelippa, she had future nostalgia, which was the lowest selling number one album ever. Imagine getting to number one and finding out you were the worst asset. That's a awkward record to have. Why did they tell her that? That's mean.

Yeah. 7,317 copies. Wow. That was the sixth week that she was at number one. Oh, okay. Yeah, but it's got to be some tailing off. Yeah. That was still number one in that week. Yes, it was still number one in that week. Yeah. And so what's amazing about this is that it's basically since streaming music has come along that the charts have been altered in such a weird way.

So a thousand album streams equates to one record sale is what they say. One physical product. Yeah. I think that's in the UK, isn't it? Yeah, that's in the UK. That's how you do that. But also what they found is so interesting, such an interesting time, where gigantic musicians who are global names,

are fighting it in the charts with bands that are independent local British ones with a big fan base who can get them to that number. So they're in the charts. But because everyone's streaming the biggies, they're not buying the album. But then the little ones, they've got such hardcore fans who might buy five or six copies to give to their friends and family. They're making a dent in the charts. Oh, I see. So you mean the bands that only their friends and family are buying it, they buy physical albums.

But because that's so rare to do, and that equates a thousand. I think they count more in the equation as well. So I think for singles. charts. A hundred paid streams is one sale and 600 free streams. So the freemian versions is one sale. So if you pay for your Spotify iTunes and you're streaming it, it's six times more valuable than someone on a ad-based. Wow. Oh, that's good because if I find a song I like, I will often listen to it 600 times. If you buy it once, it's the same. Oh. You don't have to subject yourself to the 600 listens and you can just buy it. I don't want to. No, I, I, I, I, I,

I want to, A, save the money and B, I do really like the songs I like. I do it. I'm just back to Percy Dickens and the first list in 52. I was reading about the first ever number one single, which was called Here in My Heart, and it was by Al Martino. Do you guys read about him? No. He was crazy. So I'd never heard of Al Martino before.

He was an Italian-American singer and former bricklayer, and he went on to great fame because he was in the Godfather playing a singer called John. Johnny Fontaine. Oh, yeah. And Johnny Fontaine is the one who leads to someone getting a horse's head in the bed. Yes, yes. That's right. Confession, I've not watched The Godfather.

I was told off at a party recently about this. I do know the fact, but I was not, I've not seen The Godfather. Well, it's a very exciting. It's only average. It's no grown-ups with Adam Sandler. But then, this is, okay, this is the really weird thing about Amartino. So he was, he played a singer connected to the mafia in the film The Godfather. Yeah.

But then eventually he was forced to leave the UK. buy the mafia because they tried to buy him out of his American management contract and there was some controversy and there was some disagreement and then so... Really? Yeah. Yeah. So he was involved in, um, mafia-ish circles.

It sounds like he may have met them sometimes. I don't want to... The Godfather filming maybe. I don't know. Method acting. Good. Oh my God, I love that. I went to method.

I'm Percy Dickens. So do you know his second claim to fame? Obviously, the chart is his first claim to fame. But the second one is, so do you know, we have modern sort of like award ceremonies and stadium rock concerts. So he actually, in the early 60s, he pioneered the something called the Enemy Pole Winners concert. And he managed to get, I think, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. And again, this is like a tenuous claim to fame. But some people in the music industry say that was responsible for the sort of award ceremonies we have nowadays. So he

was the first person in the UK. So all the winners of the awards, music awards, let's have a big, all together in a big concert at Wembley. So I think it was Wembley Arena, which is the Empire pool at the time so that's his fault we have these awards so right I love that what a big character so he's from my I didn't realize he's from my hometown of East Ham so I'm east ham from the london borough of new him which is why I'm a master best ham fan but I never knew he was from East Ham and I was trying to find out where in East Ham and I can't but if there's people listeners out there we need to get a blue plaque for this man in East Ham because he started the chart and possibly pioneered the music award ceremony yeah that's incredible I agree that um I

was reading about, did you guys happen to read about the first ever top 100 Billboard single? So this was in 1958 and it was a song that was called Poor Little Fool by Ricky Nelson. And yeah, so it came out. It was a massive hit and it was actually written by a woman called Sharon Shealy. And she wrote the song because she'd met Elvis Presley when she was 15 and he basically encouraged her to get into writing. So she thought, okay, I'll do that. She based it, the song on a very short, short fling that she had with a guy called Don Everly of the Everly brothers. So the song that's the first number one is actually based on a musician, which is quite cool in its own right. And effectively, she might have dabbled with some other songs, but from what I read, this was the first song

that she wrote. And so she thought, I need to get someone to record it. So she thought Ricky Nelson could be perfect for this. So she drove to his house and she faked breaking down outside of it, the car, not emotionally. So she broke down. Her car supposedly was broken down and she was like, please, can you help me? And he was like, yeah, okay. And he came out and he tried to help her with the car.

And then she went, I've got a song. You've got to hear it. I want you to sing it. And he heard it. And he went, okay, I'll do it. And that's the first number one. Her first song at 18 handing it by faking a breakdown. Yeah.

Did he fix her car that wasn't broken? What happened there? It fooled him because he didn't know he could do that. He subsequently left the music industry and became a mechanic. He's the worst mechanic. There is someone who collected every single track that entered the top 40 from 1952 onwards. A guy called Keith Sivya and he died in 2015 so the collecting stopped then. But he bought every single track, every one that entered the top 40.

How many is that? Do you know? Well, his lounge alone contained 35,000 vinyl. He had and 10,000 CD singles as well. I mean, it was a lot. We think that's cool, but for his kids, every time they went home, you'd have that conversation with your dad.

Like, Dad, have you thought about clearing me out? I mean, he lived in a normal house in Twickenham. It was not a big place, but it was entirely full of stacked records. Just insane. Wow. If I was his kids or children or nephews and nieces, I'd feel like a responsibility to continue that from 2015.

You can't just like, from 52 to 2015, you can't just leave it. Like, oh, yeah, you're right. Family tradition. Exactly. I don't think any, I read a piece about it, and I don't think anyone of his family was saying, oh yeah, we'll keep going. I love me.

You could be the foster child. Yeah. Can I just tell you something fun about sheet music charts? Yeah. What type of music? Sheet music. How many sheets? This music is sheet.

So Bobby, you mentioned earlier about sheet music being how the charts were compiled before the 50s. And so, yeah, that was how people took in music, basically. They went and bought sheet music. and then I guess they'd have to play it at home or look at it and imagine it being played. And so sheet music publishing and promotion was a huge industry. And you got people who were hired as songpluggers

who would be like demonstrators who would sit in shops that were selling sheet music and they'd have to play the music. So someone would say, I want to buy this by so and so. And then people, so certain people got their starts in life doing that. Lil Hardin, who was Louis Armstrong's wife, started as a songplugger. Irving Berlin, George Gershwin,

the song pluggers. Did they slip their own songs in? Is that how they got big? This is a cracking hit. Yeah. People come up to you in the shop. Do they say, I want to buy a song that goes like this? And then they play it?

No. They could do that. I guess you'd adapt to your customer. So if you came in and, you know, sang the, I don't know, that. That. They'd say, oh, well, you might like this song. I think, yeah, exactly. Like a Spotify algorithm.

They're more just, they're radio. They're just a live radio. They're just playing the hip. hits presumably from the week. Oh, people say, oh, I like that one. What's that song you're playing? Yeah, yeah. They're like a jukebox.

Like a Shazami type of... Yes, the original Shazam. Yes. But they did, it wasn't just playing. They'd also be paid by the song publishers to do things like they'd go into theatres and in the intervals they'd be paid to start singing a tune really loudly and you'd have to get the whole audience to sing along with you. Cool.

Which you have to be quite confident to do that because you risk looking like psych bath. But yeah, and then people are, like, God, I heard that tune at the theatre in the interval recently. I'm going to buy it. Yeah, that's really cool. Yeah. What a clever way. I mean, we should do that. We should go in the intervals at theatre and go, my fact this week. Okay. It is time for fact number two. And that is my fact. My fact this week is that there are two members of the National Trust's food and beverage team who both have the surname Kit Kat. Kit Kat. Kit Kat. So, I'm a good. Tate. So, I'm I got to tell you how I got this fact.

I was at an event recently and someone came up. It was a podcast event and someone came up saying, hey, I really like your podcast. I said, oh, thanks. And we had a bit of a chat. It turned out he worked for the National Trust and then I went off. And then about an hour later. Then you went on.

He said I worked for the National Trust and you just turned around. Yeah, I actually slapped him before I went as well. And then so I had to go to an event and then I finished. And as I came out, he clocked me from across the room. And he kind of ran towards me and said, I forgot to tell you my, favorite fact. And this was the fact. So his name is Jack Glover. He's a podcast producer for the National Trust. They have their own podcast. And yeah, and he was saying that basically it's, he doesn't know either of these Kit Katz, but someone mentioned that there was a Kit Kat who worked for the

National Trust. And as they were Googling it, they found not one, another Kit Kat. So they're related. They're not related because they're spelled differently. So Louise, yeah, Louise's a Kit Kat, who spells it K-I-T-C-A-D-T and then you've got Sam Kit-Kat who's just got one T. We don't know if they know each other. I've tried to find them online. They're on LinkedIn. I didn't have time to get through to them. I think Louise is on Instagram, but it's a private account so I couldn't get through to her.

Gosh. These poor Kit-Kat. Some weirdo trying to contact them all week. I've just never heard the surname Kit Kat before. Me neither. I've never heard of that. Well, that's a brilliant fact. It's amazing.

Food and beverage. Love it. Should we say what? I don't know if overseas every country has. its own National Trust in the same kind of way. But in Britain, there's basically an organisation. They're an independent charity and they buy up places of national importance and they make it public. So they make places that might otherwise have been private like Winston Churchill's old house chart well that was that was bought by them and it was transformed into a public place. And so it means

that the public can go and visit all of these extraordinary places. Yeah. And yeah. The National Trust has some amazingly weird stuff. Oh, yeah. Oh, my goodness. So I was just reading about the odd things they have. Did you know they've got the National Rubarb collection? Cool. Is that just lots of people muttering away in the back? Out of work actors. Yeah, yeah.

They've got the largest fern in the UK at Colby Woodland Garden. It's 400 years old, 19 feet around. Wow. Impressive. Big fern. And they've got one nudist beach, which I've been to, actually. Have you? Studland.

I may have mentioned that before. It's in Dorsetland. Studland. Stodland. Dunland! I went down there with my friends, and we didn't know it was a nudist beach. Did you get naked?

No, we didn't. Well, I didn't. I don't know if they did, but no, we didn't. But you happened to be naked at the time. Fortunately, I was able to seamlessly blend in. No, yeah, there were the... Because it's quite sand duney, so it's quite undulating,

so it's not immediately apparent that it's a nudist beach. But every so often, so we'll just hove into view who is naked, and you sort of pop up like a little mere cat. You think, oh, that's funny. And then pop back down. Anyway, yeah. Do you think the undulations are a nod to the human form?

Yeah, absolutely, yeah. Yeah. Well, because this actually does link to another National Trust property, Oh, really? West Wiccan Park, West Wend Park Gardens were designed in the shape of a woman's anatomy. Oh, apparently. Which anatomy? Like the whole thing?

I think the whole thing. No, right. It's just the ear, the left earloaf. No, it's mostly centered on a mound of Venus, which has a passageway underneath it. Oh, blimey. So I think that's a vagina. But this is so cool. This was the home of Sir Francis Dashwood,

who founded something called the Hellfire Club. Oh, yeah. Which is the, I mean, it's an awful club. It's basically a worst version of the Bullington Club, but also really fun, which is basically. The Hellfire Club or? Oh, maybe it is. It's a club for posh people to meet up and do really sordid stuff

that probably is still around. But yeah, he designed this house and gardens, and then this hillside nearby, which you can also visit, which is National Trust. And it's full of tunnels and caves that were covered in like fallacies and pre-apic statues. And they'd like act out religious rituals there, but in a porny way. And so they'd have nuns, but they'd be sex workers. And they'd be asked to lie down.

And then the members of the club would lick holy wine from their navels and stuff like that. But lots of people got involved in it. Ben Franklin paid a visit. Oh, Ben. A bit of navel licking, I'm afraid. Ben? Wow, Ben, first name terms. Not even first name, Ben.

Abbreviated first name terms. Abbreviated, that's what got me. Benny F. Benny F, yeah, well, in the club, we refer to each other. Oh, sure, yeah. Anyway, after he died, Francis Dashwood, then his heirs called in Capability Brown, the famous garden designer to remove quite a lot of the more sordid elements of the garden. Wow.

You can still visit. Do you know what, the membership, anyone know of the membership price for National Trust, for a single person. Oh, I don't. I have been a member. Actually, you're a Benjamin. How much is that in the States? Benjamin.

Is that a $100 bill? Yes, it is. We call it a Ben, but yeah. So actually, I think maybe based on trial, it might actually be the price of a Ben. I think it's £76,000, which might be a Ben. Yeah? Yeah. That's a Franklin.

Yeah. Does that get you into all of them for 30? Yes. 76.80? That has gone up a lot. In fact, I guess you had to post a living crisis. Hello? Yeah.

People can't even afford to visit stately homes anymore. I've had to buy cheap wine to lick out of this sex workers' navel. So I was looking at their National Trust website and they very proudly declare, we have 5.37 million members, which is more than Costa Rica. Are they planning like an invasion? Like, we should arm get your shovels and picks and your membership cards, we should go to Costa Rica.

They're quite proud of it. I mean, that is huge. That is really huge. That's in their website where I don't see further digging. Actually, it's apparently 5.9 million rather than 5.37. So their website's out of date. So in theory, they could be more ambitious. Forget Costa Rica, Denmark or Singapore.

Wow. They could invade them. National trust. Which would you go for? Denmark, I think, probably has more historic features that they could. Easier to get to from Britain as well. You get like the Vikings. Yeah.

Take back. Yeah, Denmark. Let's take with Denmark. Yeah. Yeah, I love this one place that Jack was telling me about, who sent me this fact called Orford Ness. And it's a nature reserve. And they have lots of amazing.

animals there. They have the white face woodland sheep, but they've also got a nuclear bomb. Yeah. So really? Is that why the sheep looks so pale? It's still there. So basically, Britain detonated an atomic bomb, didn't they, in the 50s, 1952. There were a few tests and things. Yeah, exactly. We had some tests. And the pre-test was done at this place, Orford Ness. And the reason that it was done there is what they did was they built these big kind of buildings that would go into the ground. and the bombs were effectively being tested for their stress levels. So what they did was they put them in the buildings, and then they just shake them and just kept shaking them,

shake, shake, shake, shake. And the idea was if you were transporting a nuclear bomb by plane, they wanted to make sure that it didn't detonate as it was being flown to the place, purely because of the stress levels that it would have. So this is where they did it, and they still have one of the bombs sitting there. It's deactivated. Okay, I was going to ask you. They always use deactivated.

I mean, yeah, they didn't test it with an armed bomb anyway, but it's sitting there next to the sheep. I'm going to Orphaness in a couple of weeks. Get out. Go see the bomb. I will. That's so cool. Yeah, the founding story of the National Trust is it's got a lot of great characters at its beginning, hasn't it? So there were sort of three founders.

It was a lawyer, clergyman and social reformer. It sounds like a sound of a joke, doesn't it? A lawyer, a priest and a social reformer, Washington. What happened? they make a socially responsible organization. But yeah, this woman called Octavia Hill, who was the eighth daughter of her father, which I always like, if you're called Octavia or Tertius or whatever,

be the eighth. Yes. And so maybe that's why he had eight daughters, so he could call on Octavia. And she was amazing. Her parents had sort of set up a school for the poor and stuff and would do good as anyway, so she had good examples set for her.

But then her dad went bankrupt. corrupt and left the family in the 19th century. Maybe. We had age as old. Yeah. It does. I've read a story when age 14, she was left home alone. Her family had gone to church.

Oh, I know this story, isn't it? And two burglars. Oh, yeah. The eyeing on the feet. Yes. She mutilated them horribly. Yes. But they came back.

They came back. Now you said that. I think this might have been the home alone origin story. Yeah, yeah. Because it was one burglar. Oh, seriously? Yeah, yeah. one burglar came in,

fell out of a cupboard actually. She was on the third floor of their house. He fell out of a cupboard where he'd been hiding. And apparently she said, how did you get in here? And he said, I walked up the stairs. And she just said,

then will you please to walk down them again? And then she led him down the stairs and out of the house. Wow. So that's a much shorter. Did need a punch up, didn't it? For the, for the, for the,

for the, for the collie coal and conversion. Yeah. But what a compliant burglar? Like, how responsible. Yeah. It's ethical burgling. Ethical burglings.

If you ask me enough. nicely. I won't do it. Yeah. And didn't she, I think I'm right in saying that she later went to New York and she got lost, didn't she? Yeah. She boarded the wrong plane. Yeah. Yeah. Octavia Hill was amazing. Yeah. But I kind of got sidetrack reading about the clergyman of the three founders. Canon Hardwick Drummond Rornsley. Which is such an incredible name. Yeah, it is formidable.

So he was a bishop from Lincolnshire. He was described as the most active volcano. in Europe by one of his parishioners because he was so energetic, involved, always, you know, coming up with new schemes and committees and plans and projects and papers and all of this, you know, constantly writing and thinking and meeting. But his main interest, as far as I can tell, seems to be building bonfires. Like, he had this huge passion about bonfires. So there was a diamond jubilee for Queen Victoria in 1897, I guess, would have been. Yeah, and he was the head of something called the National Bonfire Committee.

He basically spent his whole time suggesting huge bonfires. at any opportunity, any national opportunity. So when the First World War ended, 1919, they had huge bonfires everywhere. Coronation in 1911, huge bonfires. How many natural trust properties did he burn down in the course of 2020? It's just amazing. They're these huge towers of work. The coronation ones in 1911 are so impressively massive.

And he organized 2,200 of them across the entire country. It was a mega, it was a mega theme of his life. Really? We should have like a bonfire czar, national bonfires are. Oh, that's such a good idea. That's an awesome idea. Because we just had the Jubilee, and there weren't lots of beacons. But they were tiny compared with these things.

I don't know. We're making cuts of the civil service. I'm not sure we're talking about the bonfires are in Boris's vision. Just back to Octavia for one second, because I think it's worth mentioning there's quite a lot of descriptions about her character and who she was by her friends. And I find them such, like, bizarre representation. So she had a friend called Henrietta Barnett.

And Henrietta described her saying she was, was small and stature with a long body and short legs. She did not dress. She only wore clothes, which were often unnecessarily unbecoming. Her mouth was large and mobile, but not improved by laughter. Really quite cutting stuff. She's one of her friends writing this thing. Yeah, yeah.

I see, yeah, it was her friend. Gertrude Bell had a comment about her saying she was despotic. So not a great review. And the bishop of London, who was called Frederick Temple, he had a meeting with her. and afterwards he wrote, she spoke for half an hour. I never had such a beating in my life. Really?

Yeah, so, you know, it sounds like she was really, you know, sort of confidence. She was formidable, definitely. But I was really a lot of... Just quick nominative determinism. Sorry, Bishop called Frederick Temple. Yes. Good pause. Thank you.

Thank you. Octavia Hill as well, Hill. National Trust. Oh, yeah. Because the first thing that was donated to the National Trust was a hillside. Really? Yeah. By someone called Fanny Tolbert.

You know that one of the... The lawyer that was one of the trio was Robert Hunter. He's a lawyer. Lawyers are like hunters. You're like, find it. You stretch it too far, Bobby. I'm sorry. That's a word too.

It's okay. You're new to the show. It's fine. You'll find you feet. You've lost everyone. Beatrix Potter, too. I'm sure you guys came across this. What did you just say?

Beatrix Potter. Well, what's her? I'm sure you guys came across. Beatrix. You pronounce your name in a really odd way. Beatrix Potter. Oh God. Oh, God.

Oh, God. I've said it all my life is Beatrix Potter. Beatrix. I say Beatrix Potter. Beatrix. Yes, Beatrix. What did you say? Beat tricks.

Oh, like beetroot. Yeah, I guess. People are going to have an absolute field day with that. Yeah, well, get over it, guys. I say bee tricks. Sorry, go on. Christ. She donated so much to the National Trust.

She'd made 4,000 acres. After the success of Jamima Puddleduck and Mr. Jeremy Fisher and all of that, she just devoted her time to breeding sheep. Sorry, Puddle Duck. Oh, God, how are you meant to pronounce? Well, no, it's just another... Jemima Puddle Duck, yeah? Do you not know a jemima.

my own puddle duck no oh that's a character that's a character within the 19th century reformer president reform is the founder of the national trust i thought we were saying she advocated i think for free bread for everybody yeah near like watering home yeah oh come on who gives a duck a surrey that's unfair oh my god okay it is time for fact number three and that is Andy my fact is that is Andy the French speaking clock was created by an astronomer who was annoyed that members of the public kept phoning his office to ask for the time. Which would be annoying. It was.

So this was from an article in the Times, which was about the fact that the French speaking clock, laur-lage parlante, is winding down and winding up and closing down. Clock related things. It's the oldest speaking clock in the world, I think. or it was the first one founded and it was pioneered by a man called Ernest Esclan-Glangen in 1933 who was a French astronomer

and I think was at the sort of official you know the government He was the director of the Paris Observatory Oh there we go okay yeah and people kept ringing up to ask the time because that was one of the ways Before speaking glocks existed you verify the absolute nailed on time was You phoned an astronomer

And his phone line was constantly busy with people phoning up and his office staff were always being distracted by people Yeah, it's 1033 and a bit. So that was the inspiration. I love the idea that maybe he spotted an oncoming comet, you know, crashing into Earth and he just wasn't able to notify anyone. Did he have then a reliable clock

sort of in front of him that he set? Or would he... How was he telling the time? I don't know. I think it would have been... That's where the official timekeeping device for the country was kept. That's where it started.

I think the Paris Observatory was where it was. Yeah. Much like the way that Greenwich were the official stewards of, you know, official time. Because there was huge rivalry time-wise between Britain and France. It's the main beef between us, almost to this day. It wasn't there. It was like, where's official time going to rest? And it ended up being Greenwich for the world.

But I think Paris Observatory was the other big contender. I think they defined Greenwich Time as Paris Time minus two and a half minutes or whatever number of minutes it was. And they did it so until about the 1990s. Like, they really dug their heels in on. on Greenwich Time, yeah. So this clock, the first speaking clock in France, it was the 14th of February, 1933, when it debuted. And on its very first day, that's true.

Yeah, that's lovely. So 140,000 people called up or rather recalled up trying to hear it because they could only get 20,000 answers during the course of the day because they had 20 lines that were doing it. So that might have been one person just recalling, just desperate to hear it. But yeah. Yeah. Very lonely people on Valentine's Day that year.

When you were children, did you ever call up the one, two, three number? In the UK, we've got like a one, two, three number. Yeah, I did. I used to annoy my parents. I used to call them up on the number. And you'd hear, like, at the third stroke, the time would be. And then 10 seconds later, I'd call again. And then my parents would get, like, an enormous bill.

It was so expensive. So expensive. But in the UK, I think, is the BT speaking clock. And at some stage, they called it, I think they called it timeline, or they call it Tim for short. Because for the major cities, if you're trying to get, the time, you'd dial 846, which T-I-M would be on that. Oh, yeah. Although, ironically, even though the name was Tim, the first two clock speakers in Britain for

the first 50 years were female. Ethel Jane Kane and Miss Pat Simmons. But the first one, there was an incredible competition to select them. So there was a pool of 15,000 telephone operators who worked for the general post office. And they all organised a nationwide competition to find the golden voice. And a bit like X-Factor, or Britain's got talent. the judges. We got the poet laureate John Mayfield. We got the actress Dame Sybil

Thorndyke. We got the chief BBC announcer Stuart Hibbert, yay! For this week's edition of The Speaking Clock. Who'll win this week? Awesome. Proper competition. It was so eminent the panel. Yeah. How it laureate? And Sybil Thorndyke, who's a famous name even today. I actually don't know, Sybil.

Just an incredibly famous actress from the time, you know, great heroine of stage basically. I think she was a bit pre-screen almost. Yeah. But then you've got the crap one on the end. Is there one of those an ex-factor the one who's like the expert, but no one cares about them? Someone called Mrs. Atkinson and Lord Eiley were the rounded out the committee in 1936. So they always have a kind of fancy panel of judges, which I love.

So I think we're only on the fifth voice of the speaking clock now, the official speaking clock. They always have a fancy panel who choose. And I think the panel these days always includes the previous speaking clock voice, if you see what I mean. Yeah. They sign up to, so it was a guy called Brian Cobby who was on the committee in 2006

when they were picking the new voice but he had been the voice for the previous 20 years. So they had him, the current voice, Natasha Kuplinski, newsreader. And strictly gum dancing. Did she win the first,

or she in the first season? She was in the first season, certainly. I don't know if she, this was pre or post her strictly triumph. So she knows how to read stuff. I guess she knows what a good voice sounds like.

I know. And the other voices, the other members the panel included the guy who voiced the national lottery. Oh, okay. 47? Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Exactly reading numbers. Basically, that's the gig. My dream job. Who can read numbers best? You're going to get the lottery guy and then a couple of others. But it wasn't the poet laureate. No, you mentioned Brian Cobby because I found unsubstantiated claims that at one stage, he may have been the person that did the voiceover to the Thunderbirds.

Five. Oh, yeah, I read that. But I think the Thunderbirds, the main creator says it wasn't him, but Brian Cobby claims it was him. Oh, wow. Okay, controversy. What happened there? It's a quite a strange thing to claim if it wasn't you, isn't it? Well, you might think it, like, you know, Brian Blessed claims that he was the voice of Tarzan's, oh, when Johnny Wisemuller couldn't do it anymore.

But is that true? I don't know. Is it a Brian thing? Brian's just make up random show of themselves. When Cobby recorded his script So he started in 1985 I really like this So you don't have to do 24 hours

Obviously you just There's a limited number of numbers That you have to record And that's something like 86 different prompts But you have to record You know for about an hour I think Oh okay

But the script that copy recorded Was about 33 pages With various different things on it You know that you have to But amazingly they spent a while In the recording studio They sent him home And then they had to summon him back

because they forgot to record the O'clock. Oh, no. You only need that once. Oh, okay. But it is important. It is. It's important, yeah. You need it for the beat,

because when it's on the hour, because usually it'll be, you know, it's one and 24 minutes. Oh, yeah. You know, do they say precisely at that when it's like a round time. Yeah, exactly they do. Yeah, yeah.

Two o'clock. Precisely. Yeah. Precisely. That's what everyone loved about. The first reader was her precisely. Oh, really? Yeah, that was the famous.

Yeah, the famous. word, her most famous word. Can I ask, did they like it because it sounded quite sexy? Is that what you were trying to get your brain out of the gutter? Just curious. Like, you know, sometimes people with sexy accents, you know, can make any word sound sexy. I'm sure there are people on Valentine's Day who did ring up, you know, I don't know, cock in ham. I'm sorry.

I do like the use of the word that came from. I do like the use of the word sexy for time because time is based on, based on. 60. Oh. And sex, sex, yeah, sexogesimal is the, is a sexy.

You need a sexy voice. Sexy time. Yeah, yeah. And that's the joke you were making, wasn't it? Exactly. I knew that we had the mathematician in. I thought, I'm just going to leave that.

She, Ethel Cain, she had a speech impediment, which they didn't notice when they were recording it. She had a slight speech impediment. She whistled a bit at the end of each word. It's two o'clock. And that's where the cuckoo clock comes from.

Yeah. Yeah, but they didn't notice in the recording. So it must have been quite slight. And then they decided, because the clock ran on these beautiful glass discs. I have read about it. I don't understand fully the mechanism they used. But they had to take the glass discs out of the machine

and edit them. And it took about a year to fix this. Oh, to get through the water. Very minor thing. Yeah. Yeah. She can say the word precisely. Is that the word precisely?

Precisely. Yeah. Down at the other end of the line. So in the word, precisely. the 1970s, I think 1971, the UK experienced decimalisation, so we lost the imperial system. Not lost, we had imperial with the decimals as well. But in 1975, not for much longer though, thank God. Oh, yeah, yeah, I missed my ounces and miles and farthings. Farrthings. Faddings. So in 1975, in a Northern Ireland BBC program called Seen Around Six, they had a newscast

and it started off saying, it looks a lot more frightening than it actually is, but the government preparing people for the phased introduction of the decimalization of time. You'll need to get dual standard time pieces. There'll be 100 seconds to a minute, 100 minutes to the hour, 20 hours per day. But it was the 1st of April, 1970. Oh, so good.

Meenies, those meanies at the BBC. They said, you'll take 10 years for this to come through, so don't panic right now. Yes. Wow. I mean, that's brilliant. Do we know if people believed it? It was a BBC broadcast scene around six,

so people would. I thought the French government actually did something similar with the calendar, didn't they? The French Revolutionary calendar had ten months in it. Yeah. I think they might have even tried it. They did an April 1st.

No, wasn't an April 1st thing. Let's just do this so you get your head chopped off thing. Napoleon loved a joke. What if the French Revolution was just an April Fool's that got badly out of the band? Guys, we were joking. It was no king. I didn't say no king.

I said joking. Oh, God. The people who do the speaking clock, just quickly on that. Sorry, back to my obsession, Brian Cobby, who I love. Bizarrely, two out of the five of them have been from Hove. I'm not suggesting any conspiracy or anything like that, but I just find that quite weird. They always have loads of finalists, by the way. The last time they did it, there were 15 finalists, which is so many for the judges to listen to.

But when Brian Cobby got the job, the runner-up was lady from Loisdoft, and she got the consolation prize. Can you guess what the consolation prize for this specific job would be? Doing the London Underground announcement? Not bad, very close. That's good. Oh, doing like a Sainsbury's announcement, you know, sort of aisle six needs replenishing. Very close. Okay, I'll tell you, she got, you will all have heard this. The runner up became the voice of the number you have called has not been recognized. No. That is. Oh my God. And the most terrifying words you can ever hear as a child. Was she the person who did the, when he did 1471 as well? Oh, I don't know. You were called today at 1722.

Oh, I think you might, it is a similar voice. I think it might be here. I think it might be, because I always found that most terrifying thing was. Really? I kind of quite sexy. What to have had it? Oh, God, Dan. Did you have this in Australia?

When you did 1471, if someone called, you're alone in the house, you're 12. And usually it'd be, you were called today by this number. And then, one in ten times it would go, you were called today at 1700 hours. The caller with held their number. Do you do such a Look in the cupboard On the third Yeah

Yeah Ethical burglar's I was fine I was just Generally looking into Interesting clocks Not just speaking clocks Can I give you a couple

of interesting Normal clocks Are they sexy clocks To go with this new Fasset of your personality I'll let you be the judge I'll let you be the judge No I was

I was reading that Windsor Castle So on the Queen's staff is an actual clock man who goes around every single day checking out all of the clocks within the Windsor Estate, which is up to 400. There's 250 clocks within the castle itself. If he looks at his, you know, pedometer, he gets 16,000 steps in every single day. Yeah, and the clocks there are absolutely amazing. So there's your normal clocks, but you've got historical clocks, right? So my favorite one is that there was a clock that was made.

by Charles Clay in 1740, and it plays melodies by the composer Handel. And four of the songs that it plays were composed specifically by Handel for this clock. So they're original pieces. They worked in collaboration, and I think they made a few of these that went out to different royal families all through Europe. And it, you know, it's just an extraordinary thing that has pipes underneath it and so on that plays out the tunes. And they have all sorts of clocks like this that have historical relevance within the castle

itself. Yeah. Can I tell you one more weird time. It's actually not a time thing. It's just a weird, disembodied speaking voice thing, which is an innovation in Tokyo. It's a toilet that has just been launched in Tokyo

where you don't need to touch anything. Because... How do you wipe your bum? Okay, you might need to touch one thing. You just stand and sort of... Pull even pumps come. Because there are lots of studies that show that when people use public toilets,

they kind of avoid using... their hands, they'll step on the lou lever, which is actually a reason why you would need to step on the louisleaver of the previous 50 people have all stepped on it. Anyway, so you walk in and you just say, hi, toilet, and it kind of responds. So it gives you a menu of actions, you can flush the toilet. Hello, Andy. Back again. The sexy toilet.

I don't know what you could say. I don't know if you could say, get my knob out. I don't think we can do that. So how's it work? You say turn on the tap or flush the toilet. So that's the hands-free element of the system. Okay. I think it may even be able to raise and lower the seat.

I'm not sure. But you've still got to sit on the seat, which is, I would argue, largely the biggest bit of touching that happens. You can hover slightly above it. Can you? I don't have the thigh muscles to achieve that, I'm afraid. You lay the loo roll down on the...

on the seat. I cover the whole thing. You can lay it and hover. Wow. You can lay it doubly pretend. Double safe. Well, I mean, we have those anyway. We have toilets where, which is so irritating. Voice activated once.

No, no, but as in, we have the non-touch version, which I hate, which is the ones where when you stand up, they flush off their own accord. So, you know, sometimes it'll just start to turn around a bit to wipe your bum, whatever, or to hang up your coat halfway through a wee, and then it flushes itself. Mid-wee. Mid-wee, I'm just going to hold this in. Take my coat off. It's good practice.

It's like, cleanse those muscles. Is this at home? Where are you hanging? Are you going out the toilet to the... It's in the neighbours now, actually. Okay, it is time for our final fact of the show, and that is Anna. My fact this week is that Spain's gold reserves can only be accessed via drawbridge. It's very cool.

And they have a dragon as well, don't they? Yeah, they do. The other end of the drawbridge. A trumpeter like... This is most of Spain's gold, which is in a Bank of Spain vault in Madrid. And it's very well protected, as a lot of gold reserves are. But it's such a cool setup. So to get to the gold reserves, you have to penetrate three massive steel doors.

And the first door weighs 16 tonnes, which is about eight hippos worth. And also they fit so well. So when the door closes, it fits so tightly that according to the bank, even if a tiny bit of fluff got in there, it would sense it and would not be able to close. It would say, you know, you've got to get rid of that fluff. Anyway, once you've got through these doors, then you go down a 35 metre elevator shaft underground

and you're let out, I think you walk through a tunnel, and then you've got across a drawbridge. So a drawbridge has to be let down over a moat. It's not a moat. It's just a ditch. And I think it's about three or four metres drop. Yeah. Okay. But I struggled to find, there are like obviously pictures It's quite limited with this kind of thing.

They're quite secretive about it. And once you've got through the retractable drawbridge, you've got the gold. No, there's another door, isn't there? Oh, then there is another door, one of the last doors. And there's two people standing outside telling you a riddle. And you have to. But I love the way they, because they have, it's not just a ditch. They have a mechanism for filling that ditch with water.

So the entire vault is under, obviously under the city surface, but it's under, there's a subterranean canal which flows along beneath the city. And then the vault is beneath that. And so if they need to flood it at any point, they just divert a bit of the subterranean canal, which will then slosh down into the drawbridge area and then completely flood that. So there's no way of getting in a route.

Unless you're a fish. Unless you're a fish. A trained fish. A goldfish. Yeah. Oh, very nice. Got to watch out for them. Is it possible that this is just all made up?

It's just in someone's back garden, isn't it? Yeah. It's just a tiny, like a hotel safe, you know. We just pull, punched the numbers in. Have they just created a myth so that we think, oh, it's like area 51. Those are impossible the hotel safe I find to get into. I have a curious knack of, like, locking myself out

before I've put any of my stuff in. I have to call someone at reception and this whole thing. What do you, do you put your stuff in the hotel safe? You're paranoid android. Yeah, of course I do. Do you? Passport, money belt. Traveller's checks. Penny pack.

You're only talking about those locks. Can I listen, as a mathematician, raised a bug bear about terminology. So you know these locks, bicycle locks, what do you call them? I call it. Combination. Yeah, combination.

So if imagine the combination was 1-9-8-4, like the Orwell book. My birth year. Oh, yes, Orwell's book. A dystopian year in many ways. But imagine you put 1948, would it unlock it? Oh, Terry Pratchett's birthday. Oh, my gosh.

Why would it not unlock it? I'm just like a mass listening. Because it's in the wrong order? Yeah, correct. Mathematically. 1984 and 1948 are the same combination because combination is just a set of numbers or letters in any order.

The word, when they're in the precise order, in the precise numbers, it's a permutation. So actually, it should be called a bloody permutation lock. It's bug me for years. Wow. Well, I'm so glad you had a chance to air it, and now we'll all call them permutation locks. I mean, that is, because James calls a single pinini, a pinino,

and he is going to be absolutely thrilled to hear that, It's a permutation lock. This is great. I really want to set James up in some way. Like expose him to a combination lock. Get him to refer to it as a combination lock. Okay, one of us next week picks a combination lock. That's taken down right at the top.

Sorry, Bobby. That's so good. That's so good. That's great. This bank vault door, the armoured door in the Madrid vault is one extra thing about it, which is that it's constantly covered with a thin layer of Vaseline. Just in case you got a bit. Just excited.

Wait, is that a talking vault? Sexy talking box. In case Dan turns up with his robbery tools in one hand. Did you get the gold? Actually, I got a bit distracted. But it stops it rusting because it's made of steel but not stainless steel.

And so it constantly has to be very slightly protected from rusting. Someone's job is to apply Vaseline. There must be like a, basically a vault gold. who has a huge tub of Vasily. He's left out there all the time. Every day. Smooth as hands on her. Welcome.

Remove the fluff, then apply the Vasily. Fluff on the door. Very bad. I can find that why they're not stainless steel. It says everywhere. They've got steel, but it's not stainless, so you need Vaseline. Did they just cock it up at first?

Maybe it's old. Is it all? door pre the stainless steel process. I mean, lots of bank vault doors are very elderly because, you know, you make them once. Yeah. Or is it all bullshit? The drawbridges. The fucking ditches.

Yeah. Didn't know this before. Gold bars get ultrasound done on them like pregnant women. Right. Yeah. They probe it and they measure the reflections from the bottom or from within it. And that's because in the early 2000s, There was a panic that gold bars might have been adulterated with tungsten.

Because tungsten has a very similar density, really similar density. Oh, really? Yeah, but sound travels at different speed through tungsten or through gold. So if you had gold bars, which had been adulterated. You'd know. So when you think of gold vaults, what, obviously, Bank of England, any other famous place you can think of? Fort Knox. That's the one. Fort Knox.

Yeah. So I think, yeah, Goldfinger, 1964, was probably what gave its prominence. people think it has up to half of the American gold reserves. Wait, sorry, that was that the Bond plotline for that movie? Yes, Fort Knox. Right. Yes. So in, so obviously, conspiracy theorists again, like, oh, there's no Fort Knox.

There's nothing inside there. There's just like Vaseline and Fluff. So presidents were actually denied access to Fort Knox, apart from one president. Do you know which one? First half of the 20th century. Often known by three initials. Okay.

Okay. Okay. Okay. No, B.J. Oh, but joy. FDR, yeah, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. In 1943, he's the only U.S. president to have visited Fort Knox. Really?

Because he was concerned that it wasn't secure enough to be protected from foreign invasion if the worst happened in World War II. So he was the only president that we know has visited it. Are they allowed to keep presidents out? I thought the president could basically go wherever he liked. They did not give an access to it. But yeah, he's like, I think maybe if they like said back Obama Trump, I want to see Fort Knox, probably. but he's the only one that we know.

That's amazing. But what's even more fascinating is in World War II, they were worried about bombs fording and Washington, D.C. So actually they moved things like the originals of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the Declaration of Independence to Fort Knox. But even like Winston Churchill got on the act. So our Magna Carta was moved in 19... So for international Magna Carta, like, the UK version of the Bill of Rights, 1215.

They moved that to Fort Knox in the World of 39. Because I know we moved our gold to... Canada, which I hadn't realized, which seems like a huge undertaking in the Second World War, but we're sent to send it to Canada, and so the Bank of England vault became a canteen in the Second World War. I've been to the Bank of England canteen. Have you? Cool.

Hang on, so is that... It's not still... The vault has been turned back into a vault. Is that back into a vault? So have you been to the vault that was a canteen? I've been to the actual canteen. Twice. You've had a sandwich at your local branch of Lloyds.

They're like, why have you brought all this Vaseline? The Bank of England vault key is three feet long. Yeah, that's pretty cool. It's great, isn't it? Yeah. It's a real old school. That's dragon and moat-style stuff. But is it mainly like a javelin stick with one thing at the end?

Or is it all the way down? It's not not notched all the way alone. Yeah, it's notched all the way along. That would be amazing. Yeah, that would be really good. That's really funny. Yeah. I think it's pretty remarkable, by the way, that the Bank of England, which is in central London,

Bank Station is right next to it. if you get on the underground line. In fact, the actual tunnel itself has to take a bend. Next time you're on the underground, you'll notice that there's a turn, and that's because they're going around the vault. It's because they're literally going around the vault. And inside this vault is 400,000 bars of gold.

So that's worth over 200 billion, just sitting something like a half-hour's walk from where we are right now. $200 billion. Waiting in half an hour, guys. I got some Vasili It's amazing Yeah And there are really strict rules

About how much gold you can keep How many layers of gold you can keep In the Bank of England vaults And this is a big difference between London and New York So London is mostly on clay So you're not allowed on most levels To stack the gold higher than four or six pallets Because it will start sinking into the ground

And that is a problem So whereas New York is on granite and you can store gold as high as you like in there, it will not collapse. Yeah. And I think north of the river in London, generally it's the surface is stronger. So if Bank of England was south of the river,

it would be to sink even further. Yeah, you're so right, because that's why we could build the underground. Yes. Is that where there are no underground stops south of the river? That's one of the beach, yeah. Really? Yeah, rounds to yourself.

Yeah. Just outside of gold, but still with vaults, I was looking into sort of precious items that have been kept in the vaults of our world. And it's stuff that is kind of seen as the precious secrets of our world. So, for example, the formula for Coca-Cola, supposedly, kept in a bank vault. Equal as MC-square. Well, not equals MC-square, but because Einstein's eyeballs are in a safe deposit box in New York.

Do you remember, after he died, there was a surgeon who took his brain away and took his eyes and so the eyeballs have still not been... I thought it was just his brain. No, his eyeballs are sitting in a vault or a safe deposit, you know, in a about. preserved. They can't just be loose in a box. I think they're probably in from aldehyde, you know, sitting in a little beaker, I imagine. I didn't know. Was that because they had to get the brain out the eye sockets, do you think?

They had to remove the doors first. I think once you're just collecting bits of them, you might as well grab them while you're there, right? It's, you know. That's so creepy. Yeah, it is creepy. Dr. Pepper, the formula for Dr. Pepper, that's sitting in a vault somewhere. The secret ingredients of how you make WD40 are sitting in a vault. And they were moved once, which was on the product.

to 50th birthday. The guy who took it was the CEO, Gary Ridge, who rode on a horse through Times Square while wearing a suit of armour and holding the secret ingredients to WD40. Before you reach the drawbridge, yeah. That's incredible. But it wouldn't have been possible to rob him actually on that occasion because he'd been so thoroughly lubricated in the armour that robbers would just slide off. Okay, that's it. That is all of our facts. Thank you so much for listening. If you'd like to get in contact with any of us about the things that we've said over the course of this podcast, we can be found on our Twitter accounts. I'm on at Shreiberland, Andy, at Andrew Hunter M, Bobby,

at Bobby underscore Seagull. And Anna. You can emailpodcast.u.com. Yep, where you can go to our group account, which is at no such thing, or our website. No Such Thing is afish.com. Check out all of our previous episodes. They'll be up there. It also links to the final dates of our nerd immunity tour. We're going to be doing them in September. Come and see us live. It's lots of fun.

But if you can't, we'll be back here with another episode next week, and we'll see you then. Goodbye.