No Such Thing As A Fish - No Such Thing As the Blancmange Olympics

Episode Date: October 20, 2022

Dan, James, Anna, and Andrew discuss candy, desserts, popcorn and what's wrong with a Shirley Temple on ice. Visit nosuchthingasafish.com for news about live shows, merchandise and more episodes. Join Club Fish for ad-free episodes and exclusive bonus content at nosuchthingasafish.com/apple or nosuchthingasafish.com/patreon

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 James Harkin. And once again, we have gathered around the microphones with our four favorite facts from the last seven days. And in no particular order, here we go. Starting with fact number one, and that is Andy. My fact is that one traditional Irish recipe for Blamage involves moss. Here we go. So, this is a cool fact about an old Irish pudding.

And it's what I think if you have to say it's cool. It's interesting and it's cool. And it's actually from Hackay magazine, which I know you read. That's Anna. Yeah, yeah. I'm on your turf already. But basically, there is this pudding. And it's made from a thing called dried.

Kerrigine. Okay. Now, it's called Moss. It's called Irish Moss. It's not actually moss. It's a kind of algae. And it's brown and crusty stuff when you take it out of the water. You dry it. Sounds delicious. And then you have to boil it in milk for 20 minutes. Okay. But the weird thing is, when you boil it in milk, it vomits out this huge, this huge... It sounds absolutely delicious. You know about having your own cookery show.

You're the next night, Jella. It sort of vomits out this jelly stuff. Yeah. And you had, then, you know, add the sugar and vanilla to make it slightly sweet. And you whisk it all up and then you let it chill out. I just love, just going off the Nigella analogy, the way that you really, when you said vomiting up, you said it a few times and you really stressed it. And then when you got to a nice bit of adding some vanilla and sugar, you're like, oh, yeah, we'll just toss over that.

That's fine. Yeah. And then you've got your moss blemage. And it apparently, it's quite crap, isn't it? What's bad about it? I just think it's extremely bland. But I think it's good if you have. It doesn't really taste of any.

Some people say it tastes of the sea. Yes. But actually, I think it just tastes really bland. And they used to give it to sick people, didn't they? If you were ill and infirm, you might get some of this pudding. It's in a 19th century handbook of invalid cooking by Mary Boland. That's one of the early recipes. Okay, right.

And other recipes in that book, oatmeal mush. Lovely. Scraped beef. Sgraped beef. Milk lemonade, which just sounds disgusting to me. Apart from it contains sherry, milk lemonade, and restorative jelly. And the restorative part of that is it has port in it. Oh, okay, nice.

Like, alco jelly kind of thing. I wish we were doing Hello Fresh ads in this period where these were the recipes that we were advertising. This algae, this seaweed. How do you pronounce it again, Andy? I said carrigine. Carragine, yeah. This is one of those stealth things that's in our life in so many different ways that we don't quite recognize. So if you look at the back of the ingredients list on many of the things in your house,

you're going to find this as one of the elements. So it's in things like toothpaste. It's in it's in shampoo and cosmetics. Firefighters use it to get a better foam when they're fighting fires. It's part of that. Yeah, it's used in that. It's used in personal lubricants. Check your ingredients at home.

But it's everywhere, shoe polish everywhere. Laxatives. Laxidates. Yeah. Helps those slide out. It seems to be. It's good for helping things slide out. Yeah.

Yeah. But it's very controversial. or did you guys read about the rabid controversy surrounding Karagin? Ooh. Well... Is this athletes? Oh, it's not.

Maybe there are two. Oh, no. Okay. Oh, my God. Okay. Let's compare controversies. This is just that it could be very bad for you and cause deadly diseases.

It doesn't. Oh. What? Yeah. A roller coaster. It was a very much a one-dead roller coaster. This is a rumor that goes around in health circles about Carraginen, which is like the...

extract from the seaweed and parricene. Ultra concentrated. Exactly. Yes. And that is used, as we've said, in lots of things. It's also in ice cream, cottage cheese, soy milk, things like that. And there was a academic called Joanne Tobachman, who I think is still going, campaigning against it, who said a few years ago that it caused all sorts of cancers, Parkinson's,

heart disease, things like that. She was actually looking at a different thing. So it turned out someone looked into the study and she was looking at something that was called like, gamma radiation. Yeah. A slightly different kind of seaweed. But it's spread. And if you go on any, like, health website, it's like avoid carogeen.

It will give you cancer. It'll give you heart attacks. It'll give you. So don't believe it. It's almost carcinogen. Like the word is very similar, isn't it? Maybe that's what she studied. She looked at carcinogens and said, well, these all cause cancer.

Next to each other in the dictionary. Yeah. His Latin name is really fun. It's called Chondas Crispus. Oh. It's just a nice... I'd like to hear about the sporting controversy and I'd like to have a guess of what it might be

because it's like a slippery thing, right? So maybe they attach it to toboggons when you do bobsled and it makes you fly down the bobsled. That's correct. That's absolutely right. Is that it? Yeah, there we go. Or, here's another version.

They put a load of it in the swimming pool and it thickens up the water and it means that you can just run across the water in a swimming race. That would help everyone, though. You have to put it in one lane of the swimming pool. One lane, someone doing the 50 metres. Yeah, okay.

Or you could do it in your opponent's lane and so it slows them down. I think they have to have a lot of carrigan to turn water into a solid. Imagine the Olympic swimming pool. You've got one beautiful clear lane of water and all the others are Blemagne, basically. So it's neither of those things. It's neither of those. No, the Australian cricket team have been using it for years. No, they haven't.

All right. it's bad that I believe that what it is is actually I don't think it's a control I jumped the gun a bit I think it's also being used by athletes and bodybuilders although I'm not completely sure

if what capacity maybe to make them smoother to make them look smoother that might be it yeah I said I jumped the gun on it I really but there is okay

there is a thing it's an aphrodisiac which is good news but for rats so okay good news for us fancy rats though It's fancy rats.

It really, I mean, it really, and I think it's a fertility aid, actually. It ramps up your testicles is the phrase I've written down. Raps up your testicles. You don't want to put ramps up your testicles. That's going to be. Hard not too much in tiny lilliputians now. Climbing up wheelchair-friendly testicles. Fun.

What does it do, sorry, to your testicles? It rumps them hard. What does that mean? Like the outer coating or like the inner, the inner ball? It gives the sperm a lot more motility. I think makes the balls bigger, maybe, as well. Carraguine is responsible for My Fair Lady, the musical. Really?

Well, we'll see. Wow. So it was used in medical circles. These are terrible headlines. These are like those websites. They're like, did you know that? And it's just not there. The controversy of seaweed.

Well, it's used medicinally, Irish moss. It's good for like your throat. It's supposed to be good for your throat. In fact, there's some evidence that it might stunt the replica. of COVID as well, although that's not certain yet. But anyway, the person who introduced it into medical use was a guy called Mr. Todd Hunter. And Mr. Todd Hunter is more famous as a playwright. Okay.

And he did a play called The Land of Hearts Desire in Dublin. And it was so bad, so, so bad that everyone just booed him off. They kept booing him. Every time he put it on, they booed him off, they booed him off. It was taken off the rotor of the playhouse. and it was replaced by arms of the man, which was the first success of George Bernard Shaw, who went on to write Pygmalion,

which my fair lady was based on. I was going to guess that. Yeah. That's flawless. Actually, I think that does check out. That's great. I've got in my, I've got in my notes here. I don't know who wrote these.

The Irish Moss saved America because there was a lot of it grown in the USA, and there in fact, there's a town near Boston it's called Skittuate um

skittuated very near Boston brilliant which is supposedly it calls itself the most Irish town in the whole of the USA about 50% of the population

there are are Irish and from the 1840s onwards it was a big site for Irish moss farming as in they farmed it yeah you get it

it kind of comes on to the shore in North America and in Europe doesn't it exactly yeah yeah and he's saw some in the water and he thought, wait, I know that. I recognised that from when I was in Ireland. And so he, so he set up the industry basically, this guy who's called Daniel Ward. Anyway, so it became

big, big, big industry for this town. During the Second World War, suddenly there was a thing called Agar, as in Agar jelly, you know, that was no longer available because that was grown in the Far East. Okay. And you need Agar to grow bacteria and stuff? Well, it's a thickening agent. It's in all sorts of foods. And basically, it was no longer available because it was largely grown in Japan and places like that, which were obviously not longer trading with the USA. Irish Moss Karaginan basically rocketed in production. In Canada

they made 261,000 pounds in 1941. The next year they made over two million pounds of this stuff for use in foods. Yeah, it was a huge deal. And why did it save America? Well, otherwise they would have starved to death because they didn't have... Well, they wouldn't have had

pleasant sauces during the war. Oh, wow. Yeah. That's on morale. Yeah, yeah. Is it called the Man in the High Castle where they imagine that the Germans had won the Second World War. Philip K. Dick, yeah. I think we should make a prequel of it where we actually look at what the reason they lost the war. Yes.

And it was because of this lack of Egar. Probably. That's huge. Yeah. That's right. So are you buying that? Nope. You know how we were saying that Carragine was in health food?

Always has been, many thousands of years, it's been around. And I came across an article in the New York Times in, I think it was like 1904 or something. And it was, I just found it really amusing how little the police obviously had. to do it this time. So it was a story about how a Romanian gypsy woman had been arrested in Jamaica for charging over $7,000, which was a lot then for basically Irish moss. It's a lot now for Irish moss. It's good. It is, don't pay that. But how much Irish moss are we talking about? It was a very small tincture dropped in a glass of water. What? $7,000? Yeah, it's too much, isn't it? Who's the buyer? Well, it was this lady who had a hunchback that she wanted cured.

So she employed a healer, this woman who said she was Romanian. Anyway, the healer said she boiled some water. She covered it with cloth. And she said, look at that water. Don't touch it. Don't move. Don't tell anyone for 24 hours what I've done. And then you'll be cured.

And the woman, idiot, ruined the cure by telling her mates. She was like, look, I've employed this doctor. But I'm a bit suspicious about the cure because she just told me to like not touch this glass of water. For 24 hours. While she goes to the coast and gets the nearest ship with her new $7,000. Well, no, because she'd only charge like 100 at that point. So the woman reported it to the police. Two detectives came to her house, hid behind the curtains,

and the Romanian lady came back to say, you know, okay, that was the first step. Now the next step comes, and the detective saw her slip some Irish moss into the water and then say, okay, now I'm going to charge you $7,000. And then as she was going to hand over the money and the details, the detectives jumped out behind the curtains. Do you get police doing that much these days?

Sort of, we'll come into your house, hide behind your curtains. I think you don't I think it's a disgrace For my taxes I want policemen hiding behind my curtains Every day of the week Did she have an exact time she was coming back How long were the police

Hiding behind the curtains She said Wednesday Passing another cup of tea Behind the curtains I'm sure She had to knock So they could just hang out in the kitchen I suppose until

Like a surprise party Everyone everyone quick quick Exactly False alarm It's an Amazon delivery Did you guys hear about Mim Flynn? Mim Flynn?

The Irish mossing queen? No. No. She was a, she wasn't a beauty queen or anything. She was the queen of the Irish moss industry because she was a great mossa. And she started at the age of nine. Is it a mossa someone who eats it or she collected it? I think she was in, um, Skittuate.

Why is she? I thought she said she was Irish. No Irish moss. Oh, I see. Oh, where were she? America. Okay. She was the American Irish mossing.

Were you not paying attention? Remember his hilarious pun earlier. It's just outside Boston. I blanked them out too. It's Skituated just outside Boston. You not hear that? I must not have been here at the time. I didn't think I was.

If there was any evidence of audio. Imagine if I add it out your original thing. So, but yeah, give us more about her. Is she, how's she doing? I think she's passed away now. Right. But Skiduate these days, it does have a mossing museum. Cool.

That's it. Yeah. It's no longer much of an industry has moved overseas. Well, if you're in Skittuate and you're wondering what to do. Yeah. Also, I've probably said Skituate wrong. That's the way through it. So look on the map, don't ask a local.

Yeah, yeah. Get a pair of compasses, put the middle point in Boston, the other arm to 30 miles, and it'll be on that line. Which way? Well, it'll be coastal. So I only know it's 30 miles outside Boston. Okay, cool. Just go 30 miles south of Boston along the coast.

and if it's not there, go 60 miles north. So just on Blamange, we should talk about the fact that it was only quite recently that it stopped containing meat. Yeah. Yeah. Weird. So Blamange's been around since, I think, the earliest recipe maybe comes from Baghdad in the 10th century, a long time. And it was only in the 18th century. They thought, let's stop putting chicken in this.

Yeah. It just sounds so rough. They just used chicken as basically in the same way that they use this. weed as kind of to make it more gelatinous to make it stringy. It had a pleasant stringiness, I think. Lovely. And you shredded and really pounded up the chicken, so it lost all of its flavor, I believe, and mixed it up with some almond milk and some sugar and some rice.

And yum, and they still eat it in Turkey, almost the same thing, it seems like. Actually, with the chicken in still. Yeah, yeah. It's called the Tavuk Gogsu. And it literally means, and I really want English people to have gone and ordered it, having done the Google Translate, because it literally means. because it literally means chicken breast, but you order it and what you get is a blemange.

You look at everything on the menu, you're like, oh, I can't, I don't want that, I don't. Oh, chicken breast. That's safe. What a weird ass chickens are they having, so? Have you guys had a Bomperson par? No. They're a jelly innovation firm,

and they basically do absolutely mad things with jelly all the time. They're constantly coming up with incredible innovations and, you know, weird flavors. and anyway, I just, I've looked through a list of all the things they've done over the years. One year, for Valentine's Day, they created a jelly which was called Throbber. Oh, boy. T-H-R-O-B-R-B-R, which... Sounds like an app, doesn't it?

It does sound like a app. It's amazing what this jelly does. It locks onto your heart rate. Right. And it pulses in time with your heart rate as you're eating it. How? I don't know. So if you get very excited as you're eating the jelly,

the jelly itself will start. reflecting that. It does feel like that, because it's called throbber, that perhaps if you got an erection the stiffer your erection the stiff of a jelly would get. Need a stake knife for this. Okay, it is time for

fact number two, and that is James. Okay, my fact this week is that when communism fell in Czechoslovakia, the US ambassador in the country was Shirley Teton. Temple. I think this is amazing. Some people might know this already.

I've spoken to one or two people who have, but to me, Shirley Temple is a child movie star, who basically retired when she was 10 years old. Exactly. But actually, when she got a bit older, when she was 44,

she became a diplomat, and she did loads of stuff for the US. She was the first woman to serve as US ambassador to Ghana, but she was also the ambassador in Czechoslovakia in 1989, when the Velvet Revolution happened and the communist regime fell in in what is now Czechia and Slovakia. Amazing.

It is amazing. Weirdly, she was sort of there towards the start as well, wasn't she? She thinks maybe one of the things that helped her get that gig was the fact that in the 60s she'd been in Czechoslovakia and I think she was working for a multiple sclerosis foundation, which is where she got her taste for international diplomacy and stuff. So her brother had MS. And so she founded this organization.

She was doing some international work in Czechoslovakia, and she happened to be there at the time that the Russians basically invaded to crush the uprising, to crush the Prague Spring. And yeah, she remembers watching from her balcony as a woman got gunned down. And that made her think, yeah, I'll take a career in diplomacy. The other thing was that she married her second husband in, I think, in her 30s, and he was an aquaculture engineer, an oceanographer. So that also got her to go into the environmental side of diplomacy.

So that was part of it. She's really, I mean, so she did have political ambitions outside of being an ambassador. She was a Republican candidate. She wanted to run for the House of Representatives in 1967. And she lost out to a guy called Congressman Pete McCloskey. But she obviously had close relationships with the leading Republicans at the time because it was under Gerald Ford, that she was the ambassador to Ghana. She was under Ronald Reagan when she did another of her post.

And then the checklist of the last year one was George. H. W. Bush, Bush Sr. She must have been really good mates with them, and you can see that this child stock, because Shirley Temple really is even to my generation. I used to watch her movies in black and white as a kid. When were you born?

Danny, you're 100 years old. Right, okay. Yeah, no, but no, like she's still a name that most of us know. I mean, largely it might because of the drink, the non-alcoholic moktail that you can get. But before this, I thought Shirley Temple, old child, sort of

Curly Hair, child actor, like hugely famous child star and also non-alcoholic drink. I only thought Good Ship Lollipop, which was that song that she said. That's basically all I know about her. But in a lot of her early films, she preaches fiscal responsibility and the importance of a low-taxed small state. So it's kind of unsurprising that her... That's true. We should have seen it, actually. She was an independent Republican candidate, I think, for the 1967 election to be a part of the US House of Representatives.

What does that mean? I believe that it means she was Republican. but she wasn't officially on the ticket, I think. Okay. I'm not sure about that. But she said during the election, I think men are fine and here to stay, but I have a hunch that it wouldn't hurt

to have a woman's viewpoint expressed in that delegation of 38 men. Mm. Too much too soon, Shirley. She started, okay, so she's a child actor, as we know, and sort of like age six, she was already winning, like, special Oscars that were being given to her. Like, she was a big deal. What's, I did not know this.

There's something quite seedy about her, intro into the world of acting. Nothing against her. It's her parents who obviously signed her up. She was three at the time, you know. And it was part of this thing called baby burlesques. Yes. It's incredibly weird.

Yeah. Did you watch it? Because I didn't. I didn't watch it. The bad news is we've all had our laptops taken away. Is it online? I actually must be somewhere, right? It must be historical.

It's because it's quite obscure. It's like early 30s. I couldn't find an online version. There's one. film which I reckon he could get on YouTube if you tried. Oh, it's on the dark web. So what, yeah, sorry, Dan, you should say what it was. Yeah, okay, so it's described by the New York Times as a series of sexually suggestive

one real shorts in which children played all the roles. Yeah, so what it was is basically they were parodies of films for grownups. Yeah. So at the time, all the grown-up stars were people like Marlena Dietrich and May West, and they were obviously, you know, very sexy women with very flirtatious, dialogue. And these baby burles, they kind of did parody versions of these films where there are children playing the roles. Like Bugsy Malone, I guess, right? It's like a close. Yeah, but not with like saucy dialogue. It's so, I'm a three year old. It's so weird. In defense of the

olden days. It was probably okay. It was a comedy and they wore, um, so they'd wear sexy outfits on the top half and then they'd have their nappies on on the bottom half. Like they're doing kind of a Zoom meeting from home. I don't think it would get made today. And the stories that Shirley Temple would tell about it later in her autobiography where she'd say that if they got in trouble, the kids that were part of this production would be sent off to a sound booth where they'd have to sit on a block of ice.

Apparently, every night Shirley Temple's mother would curl her hair into 56 perfect curls. So she would have to sit there and do her hair every single night. And then she would be read a bedtime story. but the bedtime story was the next day's script that she had to learn. And so the mother would read the lines from the script and she'd have to parrot them back and she'd keep doing that until she fell asleep. So Shirley Temple's mum, Gertrude, she does sound like a proper, classic, good old-fashioned

Hollywood, insane, pushy mum, as in. Yeah. She ensured that other child actors who might threaten her daughter's roles had their parts cut. Which parts? Body parts. Fingers, yeah, yeah. And so she was very protected. very, very forceful in getting Shirley, you know, to fame. Also, one thing she stole from Shirley

Temple herself was a year of her life. She knocked a year off Shirley Temple's age. So Shirley was at her That's actually giving someone an extra year. Oh my God. She's the perfect mum. I mean, if my mom could suddenly turn around and say that I'm 35, that'd be great. Well, no, but she wouldn't be. She'd be telling you you're a year as in. So Shirley Temple was, she was at her 12th birthday party and her mom said, oh by the way you're 13. Ah, well, but when she was nine, they said that she was eight. But that's why, so it's all part of the same story.

Basically, when she was three or four, her mom thought, oh no, she's getting a bit too old for this old baby game. Like she's about to be, no, I think she was about to turn five and a half or something. So her mom was like, right, we're going to make a four and a half again. And then surely, from the age of four and a half, thought that she was four and a half, five and a half, six and a half. And then it was when she was 12 that her mom went actually,

surprise. Right. Welcome to a teenager hood. She's just like turning the clock back in the autumn and turning it forward again in the spring. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So your mum could do this for you, James, but you'd be on borrowed time.

I'm happy to borrowing time. At this stage of my life, I'm up for borrowing any time I can borrow. And on her eighth birthday, so she was actually nine, but she thought she was eight. She got 135,000 gifts. Yeah.

That's amazing, isn't it? Pretty amazing. And it was sent to her by fans, around the world, right? It wasn't just her parents. Yeah, her mom was, yeah. She got a kangaroo from Australia. That's a burden, for anything.

Is it? Well, you can keep other presents in the pouch. Good point. It's a suitcase. Yeah. Yeah. Her life just sounds insane. Her life just sounds insane.

She was the biggest box office star of the year in 1936, 37 and 38, which I think were the years where she was eight, nine and ten. I mean... She was the biggest child star that's ever been. There's been no contest ever since really. Colie Culkin. is the only other one I could think of the amount she earned at the time, the fact that she was the only person anyone wanted in any films.

Between the ages of three and ten, she was in 29 films. 1935, her salary was $2,500 a week. This is when she was seven, six or seven. That was a lot of money in those days. It wasn't just like a third of a tincture of Irish moss. God, her house was stuffed with Irish moss, though. Wow. She was also responsible for quite a random bit of cultural input.

possibly, and that is the novel The Power and the Glory. Okay. By Graham Green. And this is because she had sort of a feud with Graham Green at the age of sort of nine, eight or nine. That's so funny. I want to see. Do you remember in the 90s or the early 2000s, they used to have celebrity boxing. And like Ricky Chavez fought with, I don't know, some random person.

Did they? Yeah, yeah. I don't remember that. Like Patrick Kilty or something like that. Yeah, yeah. I just want to see Graham Green. Shirley Temple. Clocking Shirley Temple.

That is a pay-per-view I would pay one. I think I'd back Shirley. She was pretty tough under those ringlets. He was quite mean about her. He wrote a review of her films saying, sort of suggesting that she was trained to deliberately be a bit coquettish. Okay. Saying she symbolized dimpled depravity.

She had a well-developed rump and suggesting that her films were targeting sleazy middle-aged men. And it's unclear how humorous he was being. Having read it, I don't think he was. as being that humorous. I think it was just a pretty nasty review. And then her mom and Fox decided to sue him for slander for saying that, for suggesting that. And he, according to a friend who wrote a biography of him years later, he realized that he was about to be sued. And so he might go to prison. So he fled from England where he was to Mexico, which didn't have any extradition rules. And in Mexico, that was where he was inspired to write, maybe his greatest magnum opus,

Power and the Glory, set in Mexico. About a Russian of Catholics. As an adult, she broke the ice. Whatever, she sent him a copy. She was been sitting on all that time. She sent him a copy of her autobiography and she invited him to tea. So clearly there weren't very many hard feelings on her part. Well, she was a diplomat, wasn't she?

Oh, yeah. There you go. Well, she had got £3,500 from Graham Green in the settlement. I wonder how much she saw of that, though. I haven't got this written down, but I do in the course of reading, remember that a lot of the money was taken by the parents and wasn't seen by Shirley. Oh, I've got the figures. Yeah, what are they?

Right. She earned $3,200,000 in her acting career. Quite a lot of money at the time. By the time she was 22 years old, there was $44,000 left. And was that because it was depleted by her parents? It was her dad, right? So her dad was a banker, and so he was in charge of all of her money. Obviously, her parents, they would be.

But she'd never blamed him. She reckons that he got duped. So basically, he made a lot of... bad investments because people could see he was making a load of money and he didn't really you know he wasn't the greatest he was in seventh grade he wasn't the greatest banker of all times he was a monopoly banker basically i'll be the banker yeah great they should have looked underneath the bar that's where the money would have been but yeah she said that she didn't blame him one little bit and it was the people that counseled him who were the bad guys who were the bad guys just a quite a nice

link between her past and her sort of future if you're placing yourself in 1940 okay it goes back to this fact, James's fact, to the start of the show, so when communism fell. So basically, she never liked references to her history as a child star, you know, she would say, it's not fair, everyone was a child, how come I'm the only one who, as a very high-achieving diplomat and politician, you know, gets labelled as former child star. But not everyone, like, Black Cloud Havill wasn't in movies. We don't know. There might have been some obscure Czech films undiscovered with him spouting philosophy age nine.

But she did give them a treat just once. So it was when communism did fall in Czechoslovakia, a big day, very exciting. She called all of her senior staff together, shut the doors, very private room, and apparently looked them very sternly in the eye and said, I'm only going to do this once. And then she started prancing around the room

and singing on the good chip lot of time. That's amazing. I've just got one thing on child stars and how to become a child star. A bit late for us. A bit late for us, but, you know, I've got a kid on the way, so I could actually get going on this, which is there's a company called Jam 2000, and they're the agency that basically, when you see a baby in the UK on TV and call the midwife,

you know, even the crown of Sherlock, if there's a baby in it, it's a good chance that Jam 2000 gave them. So when the baby is born, a baby can get an acting license within a few hours of being born. In America, it takes about 15 days. You've got to be 15 days old to get a worker's permit for acting. Do you need to audition? Like when you're coming out of the birth canal, you're going, Merry come laugh. Exactly.

So that's the issue. They say that often people complain like, this baby's crying all the time. They say, well, you just happen to have been given a crying baby. Unfortunately, that's the case. But they do have specifications that they like. So triplets or twins are particularly liked because twins most likely are going to be born three weeks early. Triplets, in some cases, seven weeks early, right?

Is that good? It's good. So they'll be extra small because they can be a bit older and they can look newborn. Exactly. I actually thought it would be that they would only have to work for 20 minutes at time because you can keep swapping them in and now. That's the other reason. So when they're looking for tiny babies, twins are fantastic.

They're tiny, but you can do double time because you've got two babies to swap in there. Babies look almost identical anyway. So you would think so right. But sometimes it's to do with hair and sometimes to do it. But yeah, so the youngest at this company said that they've ever handed over as a four-day-old old baby in order to be used. Amazing. Yeah. And so it's a great article which just tells you about different times babies have been using.

And just a little nugget for any Star Wars fans out there. In Star Wars Revenge of the Sith, we get to see Luke and Leah, who are twins that are born. Wait, that's episode three. Three. Yeah. So you get to see them as babies, and that's where you learn that their brother and sister in the series. And the babies that were used for that were actually one, which was a guy called Aidan Barton. He plays both Luke and Lillian. Really? He's like, Alex Guinness and Kind Hearts and Coronets. Yeah, he's Eddie Murphy and then meet... What a reference for you to make, James. From someone who hasn't seen any films made before about 1987,

for you to make a Kind Hearts of Corrinets reference. What have you done with James? That's just somebody does a lot of quizzes. Sorry, yeah, I've not seen Star Wars. What are you talking about? Twins. Also, can I quit, quick... Sorry.

No, no, I know what you're going to say, and don't say it, because... The point of when you find out in the series that Luke and Learer are siblings. Yeah. Okay, James. If you start episode one, like a psychopath. James, where would you start? One. There we go.

When's you going to find out? Come on, you've asked James, the only person who doesn't know when to start watching Star Wars. And I think that's an unfair sample. It's the first episode. There's a second episode. Presumably, they wouldn't have called them episode one, two and three if they didn't want you to watch them first. Absolutely. No, no, no.

It's absolutely correct. Jabba the Hutt was actually played by a six-week-old baby-back. Very overfed. Okay. It is time for fact number three, and that is my fact. My fact this week is that there used to be a cinema in Melbourne, Australia, that had a cloak room to keep your babies in. What?

So this is called The Sun Theater, and this was a place where when you were arriving at the cinema, you would have a cloak room, but rather than leaving your coat in there, you would push your baby in its pram into the cloak room, be given a ticket, and then go watch the movie. Now, obviously, you don't want to completely abandon your baby. So while you're watching the movie,

if your baby in the cloak room kicks off and starts crying inconsolably, the ticket number that you hold will flash up on the screen of the movie to let you know that you're desperately needed in the cloak room so you can get out and look after your baby. It's very clever. Brilliant. Hang on, would it flash up for all the other members of the audience? Is it going to replace the image that was on the screen

or is it a little thing in the corner that's subtle? I think just a quick superimpose the number 29, whatever. Really? I think that would work. I think that would be mid-film. I don't know if it would be directly over the whole thing. It might be in the corner. I couldn't actually find that out. It must be corner.

It'll be so annoying because babies cry constantly. And if you've got 50 babies at a big blockbuster film in the cloak room, you're just going to be watching a series of numbers flashing out. I'm going to be able to the National Lottery. So this is... It's ingenious. It was a very clever idea. Why do we not have it today?

Exactly. Why don't we? It seems like a very... Probably because people don't think they should just leave their babies. Yeah, I don't think I'd leave my baby now that I say that out loud. Oh, your baby's probably in the movie. That's right. It's a big in there.

Well, you do have baby cinema now, which we take my son to go see. I go to that. Yeah. You really should take your child. No, I know. The first movie that we took Wilf to see, Fenella, my wife took Wolf to see, was the movie that was on the biopic Churchill that came out about four years back.

So all the babies look like Churchill. Like, Wilf was really into it because he was like, wow, it's me in a suit when I'm older. This is amazing. So there's the Sun Theater. It opened up in Melbourne in 1938, and it was a single screen. theater. It had 1,050 seats and it was it was really massive. It was a it was a big deal and then

over time people stopped going as much and they had to sell and new owners turned it into smaller screens. So they stopped doing it. It's no longer a pram, you don't bring your pram in there anymore, which is a shame. And I can't find any other cinema that did this. No, I think it was just this one. Yeah. There are people who've left their children in cloak rooms before. I won't go suffice to say this is a thing because it's not. But in 1999, Tony Blair's Chief of Staff was a guy called Jonathan Powell.

I remember Powell? Oh, those are the good old days, weren't they? Friend of, Anna. Anyway, he went to the Groucho show club and left his eight-week-old daughter with a cloakroom attendant, and that was a brief comment about it, and then the family complained saying, the child has a right to a private life,

and I think the newspapers said, well, don't leave the chart in the cloakroom there. Anyway, but the observer sent a reporter called Saskia Sissons, who took a colleague of hers, five-month-old baby, to various cloakrooms all over London. It's a great feature. So, Kings Cross, left luggage office? Absolutely not. The Ivy Restaurant?

Yes, please leave the baby with us. Really? We'll stash him on a ledge. National Gallery were incredibly rude to Saskia and her young friend. One of the cloakroom attendants said, out of the question. The second said, you need your head examined. And the third said, that's very, very irresponsible. Good on you.

I know. So, wait a minute. That was all in the same. That was all so close. She keeps saying, I want a second opinion. I want a third opinion. But restaurants seem to be much more willing. The Oxo Tower Brasserie, which is a restaurant in London, said, yes, of course, please leave the baby with us.

I guess restaurants are smaller, so, you know, you can go to the parent if there's an issue, whereas National Gallery, you feel like you could lose the parent for ever. Yeah, that's true. One famous person left in a cloak room is the character from importance of being earnest. Oh, yeah. Left in a handbag in the station. Okay. So I thought I'd look into that.

play by Oscar Wilde. Yep. So Oscar Wilde famously, could you tell I can find anything else about cloakrooms? So he was famously brought up with charges of immorality, wasn't he, because he was homosexual. And in 1952, there was a movie, the first movie made of the importance of being earnest. And it was directed by a guy called Anthony Asquith. And Anthony Asquith was the son of Herbert Henry Asquiff, who was home secretary, and he was the one who brought the charges of immorality against Oscar Wilde, which got him imprisoned in Reding Jail. That's interesting. Yeah.

And so he was the one who got him in prison, and then his son was the director of the movie. That's really cool. What a great full circle. I found some famous people who worked in Cloak rooms. Oh, cool. Mark Ormond. Did he? Soft Cell?

Soft Cell. Of tainted love, fame? Can I just ask, is that the most famous, and you're going to less and less? because I haven't heard of him. I'm going to switch off for the rest. Don't worry. I actually, I started with my weakest one. Okay, great.

Yeah, yeah. Where did he work in the cloak room? Sorry, did you say? Probably at the front bit where you take it was good. So he was high up and the roll. I didn't write it down. I'm sorry. Cilla Black.

Yeah. Cloak room attendant at the Cavern Club. Who else is on your list? Boy George. Boy George. Nice. At the culture club, wasn't it? Good.

That's the band that Boy George was in. Thank you. Didn't get it. And boy George is a singer in the band I don't want to ruin every joke by asking So sometimes I'll stay quite a little happen Karma chameleon was their big hit That didn't help the joke

No just I'm just helping Anna Understand who this is He was interviewed about it later And he said I was always riffling through pockets And handbags Most people were too pissed to notice Oh Any babies in the handbags?

He didn't find the thing Riffling hey In my notes I've got riffing But that can't possibly be true No I just would always say it rifling That's better that is correct. Yep.

Sorry. On cloakrooms. Oh yeah. I read, so I think we've talked before about how popcorn wasn't really allowed in cinemas until the third. And it was sort of post-depression, I think, when everyone was so depressed. They were like, let us have the popcorn. And also, yeah, they thought people would tread it into the nice carpets.

Well, before that, exactly. They thought we would tread it into the carpets. It was too noisy. And so you used to have to leave your popcorn in the cloakroom. Because people set up popcorn. Corn stands all outside cinemas. And they sell it to you, leave it in the club. That's amazing.

Just hand it in like a gun or something, and then you get it back afterwards. You take a gun to the cinema? No, sorry, I'm thinking of the thing in Old West. Every time someone looks at their phone in the middle of a movie. You got in a lot of trouble in your tour of some national gallery clubs, didn't you? Can you keep my AK-47? Wasn't there a thing where you had to hand in your gun when you went to a Wild West bar?

Towns, like most of the Wild West towns. wouldn't allow guns inside so they would have a way to sort of stop, you know. Often you had them taken at the periphery of the, what we've talked about it. In fact, I think we said that in the OK corral, the problem was, the reason it happened is because they hadn't put their guns in the cloak room before they arrived. That's what I'm thinking of. That's my incredibly convoluted part of that. Actually, speaking of weapons in cloakrooms, tell me something famous about the houses of parliament.

Oh, yeah, the swords in the cloak room. You've got a place for your sword to go. There are hooks in the cloakroom so you can have. hang up your sword. Yep, absolutely. If you go into the houses of Parliament cloakrooms, all the coat hangers have a loop of pink ribbon around them, and that is for holding your sword.

So you're not allowed a sword in the chamber. And I read a good expose of the fact that this, there's no evidence, this is true. So various reasons. So in the massive fire in the 1830s, when everything was destroyed, that was way after anyone would ever bring swords in. And so it's weird that they would have the sword.

sword hooks. But even if they were for swords, the first mention that they were was 1928 and it was like an MP saying, hey, they've got ribbons there and that's from the olden days because of the sword thing. And actually, all the mentions before that say they were for a much more sensible item. Umbrellas. Umbrellas. There you go.

I've got a bit of Australian cinema news just while we were talking about Aussie cinemas. Australia's longest running pornographic cinema is finally going to shut down. And according to the article, it's called the Crazy Horse Cinema. And according to the article, dozens of 90-year-old pensioners are going to be absolutely distraught because it's their meeting place. There's a big group of... What?

What did she say? What was she doing? She's going to get a cold. He's not a real plumber. Sorry, what? Yeah, this is, you know, this place has been open for many years. And supposedly, it's a really good meeting ground for a lot of these 90-year-old pensioners.

So they all meet up there at 10 a.m. This is very early to start. Very early. This comes from a quote from the lady. They come and they do their thing in the morning. Oh, disgusting. Whatever. They come and then they have the meeting.

Yeah, they can come and do their thing at the morning. Whatever that is, they do. And then they go and maybe do some shopping for the wife and maybe have some lunch and then come back if they like. What they get is, is all male pensioners. It's male pensioners. And they get a $10 pensioner all day. ticket to the

porno cinema. What? So, sorry, when they're having this meeting, is it in the cinema while watching the film? It's not really a meeting, is it? It's sort of like a gathering.

I even think as a teenager, I would be able to get my money's worth from an old day ticket on a photographic cinema. It was an pensioner. For agrious sales in Australia and through the room. That is so funny. Yeah, they've been, so these guys,

these 90-year-olds have been going for 20 years. So, you know, they were a, you know, a fruity, fresh 70-year-olds at the time. and yeah and then obviously these lads are going to be thrilled when they find out

about the internet well yeah that's that's you know so they're distraught at the moment and it's closing this year this is from this this year this article

good the crazy the crazy lock it down so the ground with salt I don't know it keeps them out for the full day

it's judging by the sounds of these men sounds like something the wise is popcorn allowed um the carpet's got bigger concerns, actually.

Okay, it is time for our final fact of the show, and that is Anna. My fact this week is that the original vapes were Pez dispensers. So, you know, for people in the UK who maybe don't, pez dispensers are like those sweet holders.

They're a huge deal in America, right? They're kind of tubes, the whole suites, and they have a funny head on top. Well, yeah, so you go a little funny head, and you tip the head. headback and it's like an elevator system where the latest suite that's sitting on top arrives at the top, bing, and you get to pull it out and it's a little rectangular sweetie. Like a brick, but much smaller.

Exactly, like a tiny brick. Yeah, if you were building a house or an house. Imagine if you were building a house, but you had an elevator and every time you needed to put a brick on, the brick had to come up in an elevator. Yeah, and then it would come out of there. Well, this is a classically helpful. No such things are finished explaining explainer. The lucky thing is everyone knows one of Pesdusisers.

That was a waste of your time and ours. Yeah. It's, yeah. Are you going to try as well now? I think of them as kind of confectionary staplers because you have to load it a cartridge You load it. You load it? Yes.

And you like some staples. Yes. That's actually the best simile that we've had so far. That was actually really good. Yeah. We'll allow it. Anyway, Pes sweets were created in 1927 in Vienna. And people smoke them.

And people load them into their cigarettes. No, but they were created by a guy called Edward Haast the third And he was an anti-smoking campaigner Thought it was bad for your health Well done, very forward thinking of him And he wanted to create a tablet that helped people To cut down on smoking or overeating And so they were these mint tablets

And that was what they were explicitly for Early advert said no smoking pezzing allowed Like vaping. And then when the dispensers came about in the 50s They are sort of, well the first ones were shaped so like really like cigarette lighters and that like they were for adults marketed very much for adults very and they they used to send women in sort of like quite cleavage heavy dresses around in vans low putts we call them cleavish heavy not a word okay I'm wearing a very cleavish heavy talk tonight it's a pot your saucy fashion show the descriptions are not good they said they they do look a bit like lighters but according to sean peterson who is the historian at peasant Candy Incorporated.

They were only designed that way to fit into pockets. It's just a coincidence that they look like lighters because lighters are also designed to go into pockets. Yeah. I did hear that Pez Candy Incorporated does have an official historian. I thought, Sean Peterson. That's a very light historian gig. As in it's a very, very small area of history.

I reckon he does other stuff. You'd have to. I think usually the historians in these kind of companies are actually someone who does another job, but in their spare time, they kind of... I'm sure you're right. Because otherwise, you'd feel like a fool turning up at a historians conference. And you're like, what do you study?

Oh, the 19th century mostly. What about you? You sat next to Mary Beard on one side and Dan Snow on the other side. But yeah, it was until they came to America that they still, even when the dispensers were added, you know, this was a way to give up smoking. And apparently it was only when they went to America

in the 50s and tried to market them there and they were targeting adults. He has how to quit smoking. America didn't have the same appetite to quit smoking. I think maybe there wasn't such a campaign back then as there was in Austria, saying this is bad. And so they thought let's start putting fun, turning them into fun kid shapes and marketing to children.

Yeah, and changing the taste, obviously, of the thing from a sort of anti-smoking nicotine patch. It wasn't to peppermint. No, no, as in they changed it to sweeties. They made this. But they were always minty. They were always minty on the start.

Because that's where the name comes from, comes from the German for peppermint. Oh, yeah. Weirdly, one of the first flavors they had was chlorophyll. Yeah. What? So what is that? It's the green stuff you get in leaves.

It's hard to know what it tastes like. Exactly. I never thought of it. It tastes like grass, I reckon. I would imagine so too, but it's such a weird flavor. Can we talk about Edward Haas, the third? So it's a really interesting family because that, so his father, Edward Haas the second, was a baked goods merchant. Okay, so sold baking powder.

And his father, Edward... It's not actually a baked good, is it? It's a good for baking. What a good point. It's a baking goods. Yeah, yeah. Sorry, I stand corrected. Okay.

But basically, Edward, the third seems to have invented the first ready-made cake mixture. It's a huge deal. So, wait a minute. Was this the one who did Pez? The one who did Pez, the one who did, Edward III is the guy who did. Hassin for the baking of health sponge cakes. Edward's grandfather. Edward Haas, the first.

Yeah. Okay. I've read one reference to this. I cannot find any more detail anywhere. But there's a source online which claims that he does. as a result of medical experiments he did on himself. There's no further evidence that I found. So if you know, please write in and enlighten us because it's...

Oh my God. What could it be? It's not clear what he was doing to himself. They're in the baking industry. What could he have done? He added too much bicarbonate of stutter to himself. He wanted to know how hot to bake things, so he tested the temperature himself. Sat in the oven?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. He cut a hole in his neck so he could dispense loaves of bread when he put his head back. it's so unclear what he did there's no further detail so mystery so the evolution of the pez dispenser itself is is very exciting you know poor house the hass the third didn't get to see the feet that were added to the bottom of a pez dispenser to allow it to stand that was a big innovation it's the it's the pez we know in love that was in 1987 i believe that was in 87 and they had they had weird designs before it so before they added the feet there was one in 1956 they invented a sort of space gun and also from what I've seen regular looking guns so the idea is that

the gun would shoot out it's like a pistol would shoot out the pez at the end into your mouth um and you have to put the gun in your mouth think so it doesn't seem like um the guy who set up the pez dispenser as we know it is a guy well the guy who was in charge of the decision basically was a man called curtis alina who was uh european he was born in prague in 1922 He was Jewish, and that was not a good time to be born Jewish in Central Europe in prime. His family were all sent to concentration camps. He was the only surviving member of his family in Europe after the war. He went to the USA and he started working for Pez,

but the US and the European Pez were kind of two different camps. They were quite remote from each other. They weren't really tied together. And he had to persuade the Viennese outfit. They wanted Syria, sober, grown-up mince, you know, adult mint, that this dispenser thing was a good idea. But I just,

I mention all of this because there's a weird link to Sigmund Freud, who was from Vienna. Okay. So, I'm trying to copy the old James Hagenville circle here. But the link is not just that they're both in Vienna. Well, he lived across the streets from Sigmund Freud when he was a boy,

supposedly. And there was this brilliant website I found which is called Freud's butcher.com, which is about the history of Sigmund Freud by an author called Edie Jarrellum. She's great. It's a blog about genealogy, psychology and meat.

Okay. And there's a theory that she posits that Edmund Hasse, Edward Hasse, the third, might have been considering Freud's theory of oral fixation when he came up with the idea of substituting peppermint sweets for cigarettes. Oh, I see. Not that the Pez dispenser looks a bit like a penis. No, that's not. Although that's an excellent evolution of the theory.

Maybe he was anything about it subconsciously. I see. But wouldn't that be appropriate, given that it's Freud? Yeah. What a load of absolute balls. Oh, he happened to live opposite Freud. What weird convoluted thing can we attribute to that? You're right.

She says it's a huge stretch. She says that as well. She also says that. Okay. I disagree. So have you guys come across Steve Glou? Oh, no. The Pez Outlaw.

The Peas Outlaw. Self-styled. I can't believe. I genuinely got like a tingler goosebumps. You both got excited by that. Who's Steve Gloo? He is basically. the king of collecting pezzers.

So he would go to Europe and he would get all of these really, really rare pezzers, sometimes digging through garbage to try and get ones which had been thrown out and then he would take them back to America and he would sell them to Pez enthusiasts. And he said at one stage

he was making $4.5 million or he made that much in total selling Pez candy dispensers that he'd take them from Eastern Europe and sold in America. And it seemed to be there was some kind of loophole in terms of importing them or? Well, he just sort of snuck through customs

quite a lot with them and it was it honestly, so this is where I first. Where was he hiding them? I think often they didn't check. It's just the right shape. That's why they're shape like that. It wasn't one per trip. I think that would have been profitable.

Just a little Mickey Mouse head stick it out of his rectum. Help yourself to one more you down there. Yeah, this is how much. how I came across this fact initially. I was reading a review of the Pez Outlaw, which is coming out this year, I think. Cool. And it's a film based on his adventures. And it sounds proper, exciting stuff. It was him and his son, who's an equally avid collector. And he was real down and out, like wasn't making any money until he came across this big scam where he'd fly to Eastern

Europe, go into factories and basically bribe factory workers to give him a bunch of Pez he knew would be incredibly valuable. But they, you know, they'd drive around in this truck. Apparently, his son said he'd drive 24 hours straight he'd be so tired that he often crashed the truck but just just kept plugging away and had he had this amazing rival called patek who was another pez guy who sort of got also got first dibs in the factories and flogged pez and apparently at one point glue pursued patek across austria in a car chase and said that they like drove on on a pavement they were on the wrong side of the road they had to bribe police with pez dispensers full of cash he claimed

it could only be tiny little son teams they went with notes apparently i don't know how many notes you can fit in a couple of hundred dollar bills maybe yeah but then of course big pez got involved right big pez and so this guy decided he sort of did a little bit of a deal with a guy in Hungary and said that this guy would make extras for him and they were discontinued ones as well sometimes so they'd be really really good expensive you know, rare pezzers. This guy in Hungary would make them for him

and he would buy loads of them and then take them back to America and sell them. But one day he logged into the Pez website and he found a new section called Misfit Dispensers and it was all the ones that he'd bought from this guy in Hungary but Pez was selling them for like a dollar each and they basically just flooded the market with other ones

and he reckons that it left him $250,000 in debt, this one train. And when he rang up this broker in Hungary and said, what's happened? Why are they doing this? The broker said, the right hand knows what the left is doing. So basically, it was all a sky. They just basically fitted him up.

That's extraordinary. So the dispenser was made by someone called Oscar Uxah or Uha. And his patent actually said that it would be helpful for people who have only one hand. So it was a way of dispensing sweets from a box. but you only need one hand to do it. And that's what it says in the patent. It's useful for people with... That's why it's so useful, actually,

for the pensioners at Dan's Blue Movie Cinema who want to have a hand free. And it's a cinema snacks. Blue Movie Cinema. As it is otherwise known. As it will be done, because they're selling it, aren't they? They're selling it.

I haven't been in my bed. Because in the patent, it says it's important not only for persons who have only one hand, but also persons who often have only one hand free. Right. So we go. Or his occupation, causes their hands to become smeared with dirt.

Well, this is all brilliant news, Dan. Get in touch with your drums. Freud's penis dispenser in one head and your actual penis in the other. Okay, that's it. That is all of our facts. Thank you so much for listening. If you'd like to get in contact with any of us about the things that we have said over the course of this podcast, we can be found on our Twitter accounts.

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and share our favorite stories and facts that you've sent in. Otherwise, just come back here next week, where we will be here waiting for you with another episode. We'll see you then. Goodbye.