No Such Thing As A Fish - No Such Thing As Sheep Number Five

Episode Date: December 25, 2025

Dan, James and Andy discuss 2026; get special messages from new Friends of the Podcast; and exchange gifts of varying quality.  Visit nosuchthingasafish.com for news about live shows, merchandise and more episodes.  Join Club Fish for ad-free episodes and exclusive bonus content at apple.co/nosuchthingasafish or nosuchthingasafish.com/patreon

Hi everyone, Merry Christmas and welcome to this episode of No Such Thing as a Fish. We have something very special for you today. It is our Christmas special. Well, it's kind of a 20-25 special. We've looked at this entire year and we found our favourite news stories. Do you remember when we used to do our own TV show called No Such Things and News? Well, this is a kind of version of that where we don't have to do makeup and don't have to sit in front of the camera. I really hope you enjoy it I really hope you had a great Christmas I know not everyone has a great time this time of year but if you didn't

I hope you can kind of just turn off for the next hour and listen to us be really silly if you would like some more fish in your life perhaps to help that time between Christmas and New Year go very very quickly then the place to go is definitely

Patreon it's patreon.com slash no such thing as a fish and there you can find everything about club fish all of our extra content that you can get with all of our different tiers. Not only will you get lots of extra stuff, but you will be helping to support the podcast, so do go there if you fancy it. If not, then please stay here and listen to the podcast, which is free and which will always be free. Okay, on with the podcast.

Hello and welcome to another episode of No Such Thing as a Fish, a very special Boxing Day edition. I hope you had a great Christmas. I hope you got all the presents you wanted. And here's an extra present for you, a sort of different No Such Thing as a Fish today, because we are going to be going through not our favorite facts from the last seven days, but our favorite bits of news from the last 365 days. We are now presenting the podcast of the year in sort of tribute to our books, the book of the year and our TV show

no such thing as the news. So this is the podcast of the book of the TV show. Of the podcast. Of the the podcast. Of the TV show because it came from QI. Yeah. So this is the podcast of the podcast of the TV show and in no particular order here we go.

It's like the Blade Runner of podcasts. Yeah. So we're actually doing something different today because as well as finding our favorite news stories we have actually tracked down characters from the news to tell us their story. So I'm going to go first. I'm going to play a little bit of audio now.

And James and Andy, let's see if you can work out who this is from the news this year. Hi, I know such thing as a fish. This is Mariel Burnett from the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. This year, along with my co-writer, Paul Sylvia, I published a scientific paper that set out to answer a very important question. So what do you think that question was? Oh, okay, quite vague.

Quite vague. University of Massachusetts, so Boston, perhaps. Yes. Something to do with the tea party. Oh. So we're to do the New England Patriots football team. How many sugars were there in the Boston tea party? Or how many sandwiches? Yeah.

No, we're nowhere near close. And yes, it is so vague that it's going to be virtually impossible. Well, no, Dan's interests. Yeah. Via to the cryptid. His wife. There's no way of talking about vanilla. Sorry, I didn't hear what you said initially.

The cryptic. Oh, sorry, yeah. A hairy, mythical and terrifying beast. Fennela is much loved by everyone and that is actually like as fish. Oh, thank God she doesn't listen to our show. So is it they've discovered why people believe all this rubbish? No, it's not to do with that sort of weird world. Psychologist, did she say?

Yeah. So it's something to do with the way that people act, maybe? Why we cry? Why we cry in public. Why I cry in public? Why we kiss? That's been a study this show. That has been a study.

Well, because it's good for podcast team unity, isn't it? It just stops you crying. I think it's relevant to what ends up happening a lot on this show when we, tedious arguments about minor points of information. But now we're getting into the zone. Bad jokes. It's not bad jokes. Let me give you the answer. Here is the answer from Mariel Burnett.

The question we asked was, what's Brown and Steve? And the answer, of course, is a stick. Actually, that was just the title of the paper. The thing we really wanted to know is, who finds dad jokes funny? And after collecting over 32,000 jokes and putting them to a group of volunteers, we found our answer. And so, my fact, for your podcast of the year is this. The people who find dad jokes the funniest are, in fact, dads. So, so good.

Oh, well, I beg to differ. My daughter finds my jokes hilarious. I agree with you. If our kids were involved with this. Now, this is Mariel Burnett, and she wrote a paper this year called What's Brown and Sticky, peering into the electable comedic mystery of dad humor with a handful of machine learning models, hundreds of humans, and tens of thousands of dad jokes. And so they collected 32,000 different dad jokes, which can all now be found on one PDF online,

by the way, if anyone wants to get their hands on that. So they came out with multiple different conclusions, but the main one being that dads definitely found the dad jokes the funniest of any group. I think that makes sense because you wouldn't tell the joke if you didn't think it was funny. Yes. So you automatically think it's funny when you say it? I'm not sure I always do. No.

I'm just trying to get a laugh. And I'm pretty dead behind the eyes, you know, when I'm telling any joke actually. And we talk about, yeah, we're not talking about dad jokes here, are we? We're talking about your stand-up set. Just anything I do. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm trying to get a laugh, but that's the only calculation I make is will the audience laugh. Okay, fair enough.

And they often don't. Interesting, because I'm so self-centered. All I care about is whether I find it funny or not. This says a lot about us. Yeah, yeah. What about Dan? You just do long, Stuart Lee-style monologues to your kids, don't you? Yes.

They don't usually hear the end of the punchline because they're gone to school by that time. Stuart Lee, there is no punchline. That's where I mean Stewart slightly different. I try to swing a punchline in about the 25-minute mark. Yeah, it's an interesting study. I asked her, actually, by the way, about what her least favorite dad joke was, because, you know, she must have her favorites and her, the ones she doesn't like. She said, these are the two.

It's a tie. Why is a fish my best friend? Because... He's with me single swim? Oh, really good. It's really nice, yeah. I don't know. He always keeps it real with me.

Now, she hates that because she says, real is obviously a fishing term, and real sounds like real, which would make it keep it real, a proper sentence, but keeps it real, makes no sense. She just hates the logic that that doesn't... It keeps it real. What does that mean? Keeps a real? Keeps it real. Keeps itself on the end of the real. Yeah. Yeah. I see what you mean. Doesn't work. So she hates it for the lack of logic. She says contrasts this with justice is a dish best served cold. If it was served warm, it would be called just water. Because it's just ice. Yeah. Very nice. Maybe that works better in the Boston accent. And it works as well, I think, as a sentence rather than as a spoken out thing. I actually think the first one isn't a dad joke. Like to me, a dad joke is something you say, repeat. repeatedly whenever something happens. Yes. Like, if your kid says, I'm thirsty, you say, hello Thursday, I'm Friday. Yes.

And this is my friend Robinson Crusoe. Like, but they do it all the time. Yeah, every single time. Or like Anna's mom, who whenever Anna said, can you turn on the lights? She would go over and start flirting with the lights like. Like, I think that is a proper dad joke. That's proper dad jokes. And I don't think a bad joke is a dad joke personally.

I say one. Yeah, that's a good point. I say a dad joke virtually every day in our. house. It's the same one. At the end of the day, Phinella will say, can you draw the curtains? And I always say, well, I'd love to, but I don't have a pen. The kids have gone to bed hours ago. She's rampaging across the Tibetan highlands. So anyway, thank you so much, Mariel Burnett. Yeah, great work. But this brings us into the world of science. Science news. Yeah, do you know there was a study this year that found that

cat poo might be the cause of the decline of fertility around the world. Okay, so more people have cats. More cats means more cat poo. Yeah. Capu is horrible. Yeah. The more you're exposed to cat poo, the less likely you are to think, I'm in the mood for love.

Actually, didn't we say in one of our earlier podcasts that the more disgusted you are? Oh, the more aroused you are. Orrerozen you are. Oh, basically the other way around, I can't remember. It's the more aroused you are, the more you're willing to do disgusting things. Okay, so maybe it's like every time someone gets a bit horny, instead of having sex and having children, they go and take the cat poo out.

Yes, yes, exactly. Now, what this is, is it's toxoplasma gondii, which is a parasite that you find in cat poo. There's been studies about this for a while, like if they give it to mice, it makes them more brave and stuff like that. But they found this year that if you put human sperm in cat poo, then the sperm gets decapitated.

Okay. And so they wonder if there might be something in the cat poo that could be a natural spermicide and that could be the cause for the fact that male fertility is going down all over the world at the moment, which it is. If men are exposed to cat poo

somehow the thing gets inside them and is already acting away inside their bodies? I hate the thought of it is like a little sort of French revolution for all your sperm. They're all being guillotined. Yeah. Yes. That's horrible. I don't have a cat and I have three kids and you've got a cat, you've got one kid.

Well, that's a, that is a data point. On the other hand, my child came maybe a year and a half after we got our cat. So with us, it didn't quite work out. But this is the thing about science. Our two tiny bits of data, that isn't science. You have to take in hundreds of thousands of bits of data. Yes. Agreed. Hence, why my papers always get rejected. I say, me and my mate, James. I don't really think about something that's going wrong with scientific papers. this year, which is so interesting. Basically, there is this phrase that is starting to turn up in papers, right?

Vegetative electron microscopy. Okay, well, I know what electron microscopy is. Right. I've done scanning tunneling electron microscopy at university. A few? Yeah, I've used a scanning tunneling microscope. It's another episode of The Thousand Lives of James Harkin. It is!

I think that my lives are so less, I mean, they're way more interesting than yours, Andy. But like, yeah, you can't say, oh, like, oh, my landscape is more mountainous than Norfolk. It's just like, who cares? Yeah, sure. But compared to Dan, Dan, Dan has lived a billion lives. Dan's had an interesting life. Do you two are both? Look, I just look up at both your lives and I'm really impressed.

Anyway, okay, vegetative electron microscopy, you're right, James. It means nothing. It's not a meaningful phrase. Okay. But it has become what scientists are calling a digital fossil. This is so cool. it's a mistake there were some scientific papers printed

in the 50s and 60s which were written on columns you know like long tall columns of print and when these papers were being digitised the two things got bolted onto each other so the words are not next to each other in the original text but the digitising machine just bolted them together

this has now started turning up in lots of papers because it somehow got into the knowledge base of AI models and people are starting to use AI to generate science papers and this is disastrous you know this is proof that there's real brain rot going on at the heart

of lots of the AI models that are being used and lots of science papers are being found which contain phrases like I am an AI model or I am a large language model or right, wow, uh-oh Breaksues this year? Yeah, oh go on. First gonorrhea vaccine. Oh, what a treat. Finally. Good news. It's only got a performance rate of

30 or 40% but that's better than nothing. Right. That's terrific. first successful bladder transplant one has never been done until this year really that's good really and I think it's in China some scientists have invented contact lenses which give you infrared vision

and let you see things even if your eyes are closed now cool is that what if you want to close your eyes because you don't want it like you're watching a scary movie and you think oh I don't want to see what's happening here so I close my eyes but then you can still see it yeah yeah yeah you walk into your

parents' bedroom, but they're shagging. I want to give a quick shout out to an amazing person who passed away this year, an Australian called James Harrison. He was 88 years old when he passed this year, and he is one of the most prolific blood donors that we've ever known. So he was known in Australia as the man with the golden arm. His blood contained a rare antibody, anti-D, which is used in medication. that's given to pregnant mothers, and it's blood plasma, basically, that he's handing over it.

Now, he has been doing this since he was 18 years old, donating his blood every two weeks until he was 81 years old. Crazy. Yeah. Did he get a sticker every time? And a lollipop. And a lollipop. It's morbidly obese by the end.

I talked about cats earlier. There's been some dog studies this year. The epidemiology and clinical management of acute diarrhea in dogs. under primary veterinary care in the UK was a study that I read and it was very very technical lots of lists of dogs lots of reasons why they get

diarrhea very complicated but what I took out of it is that cockapoo's are 25% more likely to suffer from diarrhea than Shih Tzu's brilliant and why they didn't put that as their headline I don't know why they gave it that wordy thing I feel like most science reports

should just send you a quick email before the story breaks just for a quick We can rewrite on the headline. Just in case it's a dad joke I could slip in there. Yeah, exactly. All right, it's time for fact number two, and that is Andy's fact. Okay, here is my guest introducing him or herself. Yeah?

See what you make of it, okay? All then. All then. Right. Hi, Fish. My name's Lee Durant. I'm a radio presenter in the late district. Can you guess what I did this year?

year that made a few headlines. Okay, very nice. In the Lake District. In the Lake District. He's got that DJ voice, hasn't he? He's got a great voice. Yeah, he's on Lake District Radio. Okay.

Maybe he launched a load of Sabrina Carpenter CDs into water. Oh, yes. That's what he did. Yeah, submarine carpenters. Yeah, take a drink. You've earned that. You earned that sip. Yeah.

Very good. Okay. So is it related? It is related to music or? It is related to music. He did something in the course of his job, which was... Hmm. Okay.

But also related to the Lake District. Oh, okay. Interesting. Oh, no. What? I've just thought of something that's in the Lake District. Oh, yeah. Something that's very special to Andy's heart.

Is it anything to do with the Pencil Museum? I wish it were. Oh, no. It's not the Keswick Pencil Museum. Oh, okay. So is it related to people who are from there? So Wordsworth. No, it's a modern thing

He's drawing attention to a problem In the Lake District It's going on right now There is a nuclear power plant up in Cumbria He's very happy with that Actually, no, I don't want to put words in his mouth We had a couple of chats We didn't talk about everything

Is it to do with water pollution Because we have a lot of problem with that in the UK Yes, it is Okay Did he do a poo in Lake Windermere To what's the goal of that race I didn't know whether he's pro Or against

he's just pointing out it exists guys well shall I tell you what it is because I think you've got so close now I'm the presenter on Lake District Radio who played a marathon 24 hour show of number two records to highlight the real number two problem sewage in our lakes and waterways

very good how good is that I love it he did a dirty protest he played 24 hours straight of number two songs. Great. It was so good. And so all songs that peaked at number two in the charts. And there is lots of sewage going into Lake Windermere and the utilities companies that, you know, they pay their bosses a lot. In my chat with him, he said this phrase, which I just absolutely love. So what's

more sickening? The fact that these water firms are paying themselves millions while failing to fix the sewage problem or that Oasis never got to number one due to Robson and Jerome. Oh, yeah. So unchained melody for Robson and Jerome, presumably. And I don't know, just a very, very funny idea. Yeah, really good. Good for him. And has it solved the problem? Yep. I think it's embarrassed United Utilities who do run the water up there. Unfortunately, number ones are also a problem if you put too much of them in the water. Very good point. Yes. Very good point. Wow, amazing. That's the second marathon of songs that happened this year. One just happened with Alex Horn. Oh yeah. They played one song on repeat for, I think it was 24 hours of

as well. Which song? I'm going off the top of my head here, so I can't quite remember. It was something apt. It was like, don't stop me singing. I know that isn't the song, but it was like that kind of like. Right. Yeah, and they had, the guests non-stop flooding into sort of do a version of it. Wow. Yeah. Those, those marathons are very, I was part of a marathon this year. Yeah. I mean, it only lasted for 365 minutes, but it was the 31st anniversary of Agadoo this year. Oh, yeah. By black lace. Yeah, exactly. So it's a do, do, do, do. Yeah. So you pushed a pineapple for 300 hours.

No, to celebrate it, the crab museum guys who live down where I live, they put the song on on 41 different devices and played them at the same time. And it was wild. It was a, it was a cacophony of sound because it all goes out of sync very quickly. Does it? Yeah, that's interesting. On different devices, you're at different bit rates, I think. And so it just slowly goes off. nice let's get back to actual news no that's really good um so we're a couple of other sewagey protests this year oh yeah there was this month actually this december there was a santas against sewage swim in falmouth in cornwall had to be called off can you guess why uh because all the reindeer's drowned that's it um too much sewage in the water for them to do a santas against sewage swim this is the

second year out of three it's had to be cancelled due to the sheer volume of sewage in the water. Oh gosh, it's bad. It is bad, bad, bad, bad. Do they sort of hope it's going to be cancelled? Is that the whole point of it? Does that get the press? Is it annoying if they actually have to do the swim? I don't know. I think these people are all, you know, what they're like in Cornwall, they like their beach and they're surfing, swimming, so I think they're probably are up for it. Yeah. There's been a big protest in France this year. Oh, isn't that every year. Very, very strange for the French to cut up rough. In fact, it's the most French.

protest. The length of baguettes has shortened. That's the second most French protest. There's a campaign at the moment to raise the retirement age in France to the ungodly age of 64. And I can't stand the thought of that. What is it currently? I think it's 62 at the moment. Right. And every French president for the last 40 years has been saying, look, we really need to raise the retirement age just a bit to make the money add up. And every time they do it, people set fire to cars. Pretty much. Yeah, absolutely. And a French group of artists this year, they launched a campaign encouraging the French to make up for the extra two years by being systematically late for work for the entirety of their working life. They've put together an official calendar and you plug in your age and it says, right, this is how late you need to be for work every single day of your life from now on in order to get those two years back.

That's interesting because I was 10 minutes late for this today. Yeah? Just embracing my French side. I met a man who was in his 40s when I was living in Angoulin, in the south of France, and he told me another chapter, another chapter in the book of Dan. I honestly did not know that you used to live in Anglia. Yeah, just for like, it was like three months, four months. I was living with my grandmother.

That's a long time. Yeah. That's a long time to live somewhere that we've never heard of in our 11 years, making a weekend. If I had ever been to Angulem on holiday, you guys would know all about it. Was that when you opened that? That patisserie that was based on Marcel Marceau. All the baked goods are the other side of an imaginary pane of glass. So no one could ever get me.

Fucking bread. Yeah, this guy said that he was now on his pension because he worked in the army as... Which guy? The Frenchman who was in his 40s who I met. Sorry, yes. There was the bit connected to this. You met a guy. I met a guy and he was retired.

He had, he was on. as French pension, and it's because he was in the army, and he was a parachuter, a paratrooper, and there was a little blip, I guess, in the wording, which meant that if you'd done a number of jumps, you could retire and go into your pension. Okay. Right. So he did something, like in the space of a year, something like 500 jumps. He literally got up, got in a plane, jumped out, got down, got back up, and would just continuously do it. And now he was just living a life, just free on a pension in his 40s. That is amazing. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the chance of one of the jumps going wrong is very low, but obviously the more you do.

Yeah. And then presumably the idea of the government is if enough people die in jumps and they'll have less of a pension bill. That's possible. Yeah. The last hundred you have to do volcanoes over the mounds of snapping alligators, yeah. There was a big problem in America this year with the budget, wasn't there? Do you remember that?

No. So basically, the Republicans tried to pass a budget and the Democrats decided to put the whole country into lockdown, which, you know, every time the president tries to do that, the other side tries to do that. So it's not a Republican Democrat thing. It is just a thing. But in Charlotte, in North Carolina, they were trying to pass a budget and protesters stopped the meeting by releasing an unknown number of crickets. is in the room. That's an interesting way of stopping something because actually it causes an enormous amount of tumult

but crickets you think that's just like silence and quietness, don't you? It's like a bad joke is crickets. Yes. But actually it caused an absolutely amazing amount of craziness because people were running around trying to get rid of these crickets. Not because they were very noisy.

No, it wasn't. It was just that people don't. Have you ever watched I'm a celebrity, get me out of here? No. Well, if you do watch that, you'll know that celebrities at least, but you can extend it to the general public don't like insects jumping on them.

Yeah, celebrities aren't different in that respect. No, they're better than those in many respects. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, that's an unknown number is a good thing. That's like the old joke of you release five sheep somewhere and you paint on their sides one, two, three, four and six. Yeah.

And then you can reduce the city to chaos for days as they try and find sheep number five, which doesn't exist. They all fall asleep every time they start looking for it, don't they? I've got one more music thing to add, seeing this was a musical protest fact that you opened up with, which is that one of the other big things going on in the world right now is how people are responding to AI coming in and destroying certain fields. In the creative arts, it's a big deal. And in music, it's been a big thing. So earlier this year, a thousand musicians got together to release an album called Is This What We Want? Question Mark. Oh, yeah.

And it went to 38 in the album charts, and it was an entirely silent album. Oh, considering that's actually pretty good. Exactly. So, like, it included Kate Bush, Annie Lennox, Damon Alburn from Blur, Ed O'Brien from Radiohead, Dan Smith from Bastille, the mystery jets. Did they all have to pay royalties to John Cage? Interestingly, I haven't heard whether or not that's the case. That's a really good question. But they all contributed bits of silence to it.

I managed to track down one of the musicians to get an exclusive outtake from the album. Oh, wow. Yeah, so here we go. This is something that didn't make it to the album. Hello, no such thing as a fish. It's Dan Smith here from a band called Bastille. I wanted to send you an exclusive outtake from my contribution to Is This What We Want, the album from this year.

This is my favourite bit, and I was pretty gutted that it didn't make the cut. But I'm just really happy to have the opportunity to share it with you now. So here we go. Wasn't that beautiful? Anyway, have a good show and have a great break. Bye. That's amazing. Yes, that was great.

So that's, yeah, Bastille. That was an outtake from their contribution to this album. And it's, yeah, you can get it on vinyl. It's a pre-order right now if anyone's listening. But very cool protest. Very dangerous thing that's going on for a lot of artists. I did fight. Okay, guys, I'm really sorry.

I found something from, it's just over a year ago. I was going to put money on. I know. Bringing a 2024 story to the table. Last December, I'm so annoyed, this guy just missed this year. But it was a brilliant Windermere protest, that's all. Have you heard of the chain of supermarkets booths? Oh, yeah.

I used to live up there. So, yeah, they're like the waitros of North Lancashire and Cumbria. Exactly. And that's their slogan, isn't it? Yeah. There was a guy called Michael Moose. who got a parking ticket, I believe in the booths in Windermere, which is the only reason I bring it up, Windermere in the Lake District. And he didn't pay it, because according to him,

he didn't notice that he got the letters saying you've got a park ticket. And then he got handed a county court judgment for not paying his parking ticket. And at that point, that meant that he could no longer get a mortgage. Oh. So he decided to launch a protest against booths of Windermere. Okay. He traveled from his home in Skegness. Oh my God. That's a long way. Quite a way. A couple of hundred miles. His like Skegness for non-British listeners is on the opposite coast of the UK. Yeah.

He went to the car park of Booth Winderbeer. He went back to the scene of the crime or non-crime, whatever. The alleged crime. Where he got the ticket, certainly. And he moved his entire living room into the car park, which was like his sofa, some bookshelves, some coffee tables, his pet goldfish. He just moved into a parking space. Wow. At Booth Winderbeer.

What a hero. And what happened? I haven't been able to find an update. So I suspect they've had him quietly taken care of. John Wilkes Boots. Okay, it's time for our next fact, and that is James. Okay, here is my voice note from someone that was sent to me just last night. Hi, guys, my name is Shiven McCutcheon, and this year I achieved something.

with the help of my three brothers. He did something with his three brothers. With his three brothers and we are in the realm of sport. And I want to just say thank you so much to Shiven for sending me that because he is really sick. He's got the illness that's going around at the moment. So he came out of his sick bed to record that. But yeah, with three of his brothers, he did something this year. Three, so it requires four people.

Okay, so I think it's, and it's in the world of sport. Yeah. It's a four-person sporting team. actually there are four of eight in the squad and five in the two rowing very close unbelievably close for a first guess right actually i just think eight is yeah eight you don't get many eight in sports and so there's uh is it um curling no further away i i mean rowing was unbelievably close so i don't know why i don't know why curling would be well you were just close in the number i thought curling it's quite a big team you've got the guy who

throws the curl you've got the guy with the broom you've got there's like like four people yelling behind. Harder brushing. Yeah. Okay. Thanks for the explanation of what curling is then. I think, James was saying rowing was... Is it like yachting? Further away. Okay.

It's on a boat? It's on a small boat. Small boats. Sailing the English Channel. It's small boat. Small boat migration. Small boats. They're all in separate boats. Oh, they're all in separate boats.

Is this one of those sort of historical, reenact? where they're all sitting in tiny ships. It's like the Battle of Trafalgar. Yeah, that sport. I love that. I actually would watch that. I've watched the heck out of that sport.

Dan, you've created. A really good sport. I've got to say, especially for the English and the British, like, because we're going to go to the World Cup next year and probably won't win it. But I reckon in the annual Battle of Trafalgar competition. We're going to thrash him every year. In the bars, they'll be throwing pites everywhere,

Singing Sweet Caroline. Okay, what are we saying? Small boats. It's canoe, a kayak. Canoe? Canoe. Yeah. So they were four canoes in the Team GB, canoe polo team.

Canoe polo? That won bronze at the World Games this year. That's amazing. Cano polo. Cano's a boat. Absolutely. Fantastic. Wow.

So we won bronze this year and Shiven McCutcheon, Surrey and McCutcheon, Santanem McCutcheon and Kartik McCutcheon were all in the team together. Fantastic. That's so good. Were they raised to be... In boats? Well, did they have a parent like the, you know, like the William sister's dad who just hot house them, like from birth to be canoe polo.

I think what it is is there are not so many canoe polo teams in the UK. Right. But there is one amazing one in Liverpool called the Friends of Allenby, and they're all part of this canoe polo team. And in total, 13 of the canoe polo players from the male and females teams came from this one club. So it's like they're all the Liverpool or the arsenal of canoe polo. And you're going to have obviously a variety of ages between them. So it begs the question, what is an ideal age to be a canoe poloist? Yeah, they're all in the 20s, I think. apologies if any of's in their late teens or early 30s

but yeah they're all about that age and this was the World Games which is it's like the Olympic Games but it's for sports that are not in the Olympics I read that I'd never heard of it before and I found a list of sports that are in there which are not sports I know well at all I don't know anything about Finn swimming yeah I don't know anything about fistball

fistball I'm surprised fistball is like volleyball but the ball's allowed to bounce Oh, okay And the amazing thing about Fistball is it was written about in 1786 by friend of the podcast Johann Wolfgang von Gertha. Oh!

He wrote about going to a fistball game between four nobleman from Verona and four Venetians. Right. Amazing. Snooker is in the World Games because it's not in the Olympics. Yeah, right.

And Snooka was won by Xiaogu Dong, who is the world's number eight snooker player. and with the greatest respect to all the other players, he was the only professional there. Right. So he was like,

he really wanted to compete and win a medal for China because he's very patriotic. But he is, at the time, he was the eighth best player in the world and everyone else was an amateur. Oh my God. Can you imagine that?

Yeah. He just absolutely, in fact, he actually lost one of his group games, but yeah, he basically smashed everyone because he is one of the world's best. That's so funny.

That's so funny. So congratulations to Shiven. Let me play in the reveal. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. The answer is, we're part of the British canoe polo team who won bronze at this year's World Games in Chengdu. Yeah, we know that, mate. And, of course, just wants to say, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to Dan, Andy James, and everyone tuning in to the pod.

Oh, don't you feel bad? He said, Merry Christmas to us. Yep, got and prematurely, I apologise to all the brothers. That's really cool. Thanks for sending us that. That's amazing. Never heard of that game. Do you think it's going to make its way to the Olympics one day? I'd love it too. I think it's quite exciting. I've seen some videos of it. It's really cool. It does sound good. There is another, this isn't a proper campaign running at the moment, but I did read a piece recently about paintball players who are campaigning for it to be eventually an Olympic sport. I can see that. It's a fun game. I think it would be fun for spectators. I mean, it's fun to do, for sure, but it's not even recognised as a sport yet, I think.

So that's probably the first hurdle to clear before you get into the Olympics. It would be remarkable if it went straight from not a sport to end the Olympics. Here is a cool thing that has been revealed. There are a lot of track and field records being broken. Are there? Yeah. Because a lot of them have stagnated for decades. Because basically everyone took drugs.

and we didn't know about it and now people are taking fewer drugs or less good drugs and they can't beat the records anymore but there is a thing you can take which helps you run a bit faster consistently helps you run a bit faster all athletes are taking it now all athletes are taking it and it makes you run faster

you'll both have some in your pantry I'm going to say I don't have a pantry but let's say is it kind of is it like nutmeg you would use it in your it's in your your baking cupboard. Oh. My baking cupboard.

Yeah. I'm learning a lot about Andy's kitchen here. He's got a pantry of baking cupboard. Turn left after the second pantry and that's the baking cupboard. Ask the butler to retrieve it for you. Wheel the cheese fridge over to one side. Okay. What would be in your bacon cupboard?

Is it baking soda? It's baking soda. Is it really? What a disappointingly short quiz that was. I was gearing up for a very enjoyable half hour there. No. baking soda. This is so bizarre. Basically, it seems to act as a buffer against increased acid build up in muscles. It's legal. And they've developed ways of giving it to you. It probably

doesn't work if you take it in a cake, unfortunately. All the athletes is just scoffing a quick, quick bit of chocolate punch cake at the starting line. Very sadly, that's not it. But there were some events, because we had an Olympics last year, didn't we? And the winter Olympics is about to happen. Okay, because there were some events last summer where almost all finalists were taking baking soda. Right. Is that true? It's not illegal.

And how do they take it? It's in some sort of boring gel. Yeah, again, like, don't just go scoffing baking soda from your pantry. Yeah. The baking soda challenge. Don't do it. Don't do it, guys. Yeah, yeah.

It's been put in some complicated thing by some nerds. That's very cool. Do you remember this year when Donald Trump won the FIFA Peace Prize? Ah, of course. How could we forget? I was praying for it for so many months, and then it came true, and I just couldn't believe it. He also won the FIFA Club World Cup, which is a soccer competition. Oh, yeah.

Come on. This guy's not running. So most people, like the fake news, think that Chelsea won it. And sure enough, they did win the final. But it was in New Jersey that it took place. And Donald Trump was at the final. And the head of FIFA in Fantino, he went to the White House. and showed Donald Trump the actual trophy

and said, oh, you can look after this for a while. And then according to Donald Trump's account, he said, when are you going to pick up the trophy, Gianni? And Infantino said, oh, no, we're never going to pick it up. You can have it forever, and we're making a new one. So Chelsea got the replica, and the winner of the actual Club World Cup was Donald Trump. Oh, my gosh.

He still got it? You still got it? What? There was an amazing thing after. that final, all the players of Chelsea are stood there waiting to receive their replica trophy and their fireworks are going to go off the stuff. What do they get one each?

No, they'll get a medal and stuff. Okay, okay. And then they give them the trophy and then they hold it up and the crowd go wild. But Donald Trump was on the stage sort of handing out the medals, but then never left. Like all the other dignitaries left the stage

and he just kind of stood there. And there's an amazing video of Cole Palmer, the England footballer, who is an amazing footballer but perhaps didn't probably even know who Donald Trump was just kind of pointing out him going, who's this guy?

It's amazing. That's amazing. There's a Spanish football club called Leganez and they, you know how football clubs they have the jerseys that you buy and they have advertising. So they have advertising where your tummy is.

Sometimes they have advertising on where your shoulder is. But this team had advertising were your groiners. So right in the middle of the shorts, they had a little advert. Can you guess what the advert was for? Safe sex or some contraception stuff. Yeah, this new gonorrhea jab.

It was for the Testicular Cancer Society. And it was a bit of advertising to bring up awareness for that, but also to teach people how to self-check for testicular cancer. That's very good. That's very good. James, has any team ever, this is just a little idea I've had, put advertising on the inside of the shirt. Okay, what would be the point of that? Because when you score a goal and you pull your shirt up over your head, it reveals your secret sponsor.

That's really good. That's a good idea, right? It's a really good idea. Like, people will wear undershirts with a message written on it. So when they lift their shirt, the message is shown. I think you're not allowed to do that. I think you get a yellow card if you do that. There was a boxer once who the son advertised.

the soles of his feet because they were so sure he was going to get knocked out. When he landed, the camera would go onto the source of the feet. Really good. It was someone against Mike Tyson. I can't remember who it was. Such optimistic ways of seeing life, isn't it? That's really good. Guys, I actually, when I was trying to find a news story from the year,

I actually contacted someone else, and at the last minute, they have sent me a question for us to do with sports. Okay. So can we, do you want to quickly hear that? Yeah, let's do it. Okay, here we go. So, hello, no such thing as a fish. My name is Deermud Early.

And this year, in a competition that was broadcast live from Las Vegas on ESPN, I became a world champion. My question for you is, what am I now the world champion of? I've got a guess, which I think might be right. Oh, yeah. What was the name of your correspondent did? Deeramud Early. Deeramette Early. Okay.

Las Vegas, it was out on ESPN. Not a gambling thing. Not a gambling, but not strictly a sport sport, rather an e-sport. An e-sport, so something to do with computers. Or Yorkshire. Or ecstasy. Well, we've talked before about sort of fun things like Microsoft Excel. Yep.

Being sport. Was it that? Well, let's, do you want to have a guess, James? That would have been my guess as well. Well, the airs really got out of this balloon. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. Let's see what it is. Imagine if it's cold of duty.

The answer is that after an intense competition over three days among some of the World Fest spreadsheeters, I was crowned this year's Microsoft Excel world champion. Fantastic. That's really great. To be honest, you're not going to say, hi, my name's Lionel Messi. Guess which sport I played this year?

Or, hi, my name's Roger Federer. Guess what? He's such a big name in this podcast. We're just going to know that, aren't we? Yeah, this is his first world championship within the Microsoft Excel competition. He faced off against Andrew Nye, who has won at three times. So he took the win. Wow.

And, I mean, it's a pretty amazing competition. They get jumbled data, basically. And in some cases, they have to make the data make a famous painting. So they have to place all the things in the right places to reveal a painting. The one that was done this year was inspired by origami. So players had to use their knowledge of the software to complete 130 questions that were spread across seven levels. And the theme of it was origami. Amazing.

Okay. We would usually do a final fact to the show. There's always usually four. But as there's only three of us, we're going to head straight into... Dan's... Yep. Wait. What?

There is another. What are you on the other? I got an extra person. Oh. Did you? Yeah, yeah. I said, out a couple of liars

bobbing around on the water and I got two bites a couple of reels and a second person replied can I just play you one last yeah yeah it's such a great response hi my name is just von rossum I'm a Dutch typeface designer

I was in the news this year because it looks like I was the victim of a crime but can you guess why okay so he's a typeface designer did he put the word he did some work for the SAS a big sign but his A looks so much like an O

that it looked like it read SOS and they thought he was in trouble That's really good It's really good It's not that no So he is a Dutch typeface designer Is a typeface part important? Yes

Is it? So was the name that he was a victim of is related to his work So is the typeface name itself Something like murdered Oh that's very nice I'm going to say something to you guys a little extra clue

what's a classic bit of Dan's stand-up James oh gosh I mean there are so many there's so many that's related to typos typefaces I can't remember any of your stand-up I just there's so many different typeface gags that I have

where he would wear a fake nose and glasses and moustache and take them off and have the same thing underneath that was pretty good what about when he was cock-blocked from out of space by that astronaut that was a great bit Oh yes, Chris Hadfield, yeah, yeah. It's a thing? Is it the time when he was with a woman and she said, take off your trousers and his legs were so hairy that he already had taken off his trousers?

I'm so, I was so tempted right now to subtly put out the fact that I am on tour next year with a show, but this is not doing any favours for that. Dan is on tour next year? Yeah. How do people get tickets? Well, tickets are going to be allocated. by a sort of like, it's like going to be jury duty. You'll just get the call.

You have to do it. You do have to do it. Unless you've got an amazing reason. They're not inhuman. They will let you off if like, you're really unwell. No, it's called this changes everything. It's going to be in March and April. Tickets are on sale now, by the way, guys.

If anyone wants to come, London, Brighton, all sorts of places. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, is your quiz, if it's due with Duns, shall they he's doing. It's to do with a very famous advert. Oh, you wouldn't steal a car. Oh, ding, ding, ding, ding. Yes.

Do you want to hear Jost, Van Rossum says? I designed a font called FF Confidential. This year, an investigation found that the font seems to have been pirated and used in a very famous advert saying, you wouldn't steal a car. So good. Wow. This is like level zero of the podcast. This is friend of the podcast from the get-go.

So Just designed that font, which an investigation this year found had been nicked, because the font used in that advert is identical to the font he designed, and they did a little bit of kind of DNA testing on the font in the advert. Amazing. And is that font. Incredible. I'm starstruck. I was so excited.

I was so excited to hear back. Very good. Oh, well, thank you. Thank you, Andy. But hey, guys, we now need to get to an exciting little festive bit of the show. James Andy and I never get to be around the Christmas tree every year, which is a huge shame. What do you mean? As in we all go and see our families instead of spending time together.

Yeah, yeah, which is a huge disappointment every year for me. Oh, yeah. So what we thought we'd do is we'd end this week's episode as it's Christmas by giving each other a present. And so we've got them in front of us here. We've all bought each other a present. Get mine out. Let me get mine out. Dan's done a really nice wrapping job on his and a label and everything.

and mine looks a bit crummy. It looks like a sealed bit of evidence. Oh, James has got a magician's? Wait, wait, wait. Okay. This is all prep. I'll close my eyes. The bad news for you, I've had that operation where I could now see through my eyes.

So James has bought a present for me. I bought a present for Andy and Andy has bought a present for James. So let's do it. James, do you want to start? So you go first. So this is for you, Dan. Your present is in this bag. Okay.

Should I feel? Yeah, feel it. No? There's nothing in there. Oh, well, maybe there will be something in there. Let me see what I can find in there. Oh, that's my magic wand. It's not that.

This is amazing. What else is in there? Well, that's mine and Anna's book. It's definitely not that. Everything to play for, by the way. Oh, that's... I don't know what that is. What is going on here?

This is brilliant. This is amazing. Here it is. Here it is. It's a card signed by Jesse Eisenberg from the now you've seen me movies. You're kidding. There you go.

Oh my goodness. The best film franchise ever. Yeah. Wow. Oh, wow. It's amazing. I did find it. It's very, very rare.

If you go on eBay, there's only about 500 of them. Right. He makes a lot more off the signed cast, doesn't he, than he does off the movies. Yeah, yeah. How exciting. Thank you very much. This has been the surprise movie hit of the year for the podcast. Now You've seen me has become a friend of the podcast

I'm the only one who hasn't seen I haven't seen it now I haven't seen it now And I haven't seen the third one Which is out now But isn't there a character in it Called Schreiber There is

Yeah they have to call to London For some creative person I won't give too much away But they're like Get Schreiber on the phone right now There you go Netflix has seen Shriver do you know any

creative people. What's that? Your friends, James and Andy. They sound perfect. Beautiful. Thank you so much. That's a very thoughtful present because I do, I do love that movie.

Should we go around this way? Yeah, sure. Okay, this is for you, Andy. Thank you very much. The label there. Andy loved Dan. And three kisses. Yeah.

So nice. My son wrote that. Okay. Yeah. Could be anything. Could. Yes. At this stage.

At this stage. And it's wrapped. It could be anything. It's book shaped. Interesting. But it's a bit yielding, but that might just be the wrapping paper. Just doing a bit of foley. Hang, let me do this.

Listen to that. And what is it? It's, oh my God, it's a copy of Len B. Dell's book Too Long in the Bush. First edition hardback. Get out. First edition hardback. You don't have that kind of money, Dan. I know.

I know. Phinella is furious. Can I... Too long in the bush? Is the story extinct? ending over three years of how the author made the first road ever to cross Central Australia from east to west. Wow. Just one extra detail is that it is a signed copy. Beautiful. Beautiful writing. He had a lovely handwriting. It's stunning handwriting. For a man who built roads,

you know, he's got calligraphy on him. Yeah. He's just a multi-talented guy. I'm so chuffed. Thank you. And just in case Mel Bracewell's listening, can you explain who Len B. Dell is? Ben B. Dell was responsible for building huge numbers of Australia's roads. As it says here, he's made 4,000 miles of lonely roads across Central Australia. What a legend. Oh, look, I really can't cap that. But James, I hope you like this. This had better be good now.

Well, it's nowhere near as good as a Len Bidel book. Oh, that's signed card by Jesse Eisenberg. No kisses on this. It says, to my valued colleague. with esteem your colleague Andy I'm sorry I got a bit mushy I shouldn't have done that

I'm welling up and it's so beautifully wrapped so your note was written by your child was yours wrapped by your child Andy it's a very difficult thing to rap isn't it look at it it it's an awkward shape but I thought what does James like James likes a sport

I have I'm a one dimensional character as we've said but I think this has got two dimensions of this gift. It's Tramereover's golf balls. It's my favorite football team and my favorite sports

together at last. You've ripped off the price, which which was astronomical. Those people are outrageous. So it's got balls. Yeah, it's got a logo on it. Exactly. It's got teas with Tramier Overs

written on them. And there's a third thing. I don't know what it is. Yeah, what is that on the back? It's a little fork. Okay, can you guess what that's for? It's a little fork. It's a little fork. Molly said it was for marking your balls, which I just don't think can be right. I'm sorry to say Molly's wrong, but she's not far off.

Is it a little bookmark for Andy to read while you're playing the game? I'll be just sitting in the car. I'll chase cats out. Is it something to go on your top pocket to say, ladies, I am available in the 19th hole?

What it is? If you have golf clubs They have to be Like it's really perfect metal And they're the right length And they're the right size And if you flick them like that They make a little noise

And this is like a little tuning fork Oh wow And it has to make No No I was in I was in When the ball lands in the ground

It can make a little indentation And this you kind of flatten it So the next person who comes along Doesn't that ball doesn't bubble around Is that so? I had no idea Wow It's invaluable, Andy.

Thank you so much. I'm very happy with my gift. And I actually will use these for sure. Great. I'll actually read that. And Dan will be playing with his card. Snap again. All right.

Well, we hope that you also got amazing presents this year. Had a great Christmas. We're going to be back again next year with more guests joining us. Anna's going to be back in the late spring. It's going to be an exciting, exciting, exciting 2026. for fish, and we will see you then. Goodbye.