No Such Thing As A Fish - No Such Thing As The Farto Phone

Episode Date: May 30, 2024

James, Anna, Andy and a silent puppet of Dan Schreiber discuss Key West, D-Day, tomahawks and trouser handles. 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, welcome to this week's episode of No Such Things of Fish. Thank you all for snapping up tickets for our upcoming Thunder Nerds tour. It's going to be so much fun and so many of you have already got tickets. It's been absolutely staggering, to be honest. We have sold out a number of the dates. There's still quite a lot of tickets available though. So do go to no such things of fish.com forward slash live to see what tickets are available now. but the main reason that I've come here today

is to speak directly to the people of Sydney, Australia. You, of all the people around the world, have really pulled out all the stops and helped us to sell out the Sydney Opera House in just a couple of days. Absolute insanity, it has to be said. But to thank you for doing that, we're going to put on an extra show in Sydney.

Now, the details of that will first be told to Club Fish members at the beginning of your next bit of bonus content which is due to come out on the 11th of June. You people will have a pre-sale and then if there are any tickets left they will go on sale on the 14th of June

and we'll give details at the top of that Friday show. So that's the big news. We're really looking forward to this tour. It's going to be absolutely amazing. If you haven't got tickets yet then do not dilly-dally because they are going super, super fast. And like I said, you can get those. at no six things of fish.com forward slash live.

One more thing to say, and that is that there is a bit of an odd thing about this week's show. That is that one member of the team was unable to make it to the office on time. Despite leaving home on time, they never made it. I will leave it up to you to guess who that's going to be. But what it means is that this was a three-person show.

Obviously, we very much missed the person in question, but hopefully you will enjoy it. this show nonetheless. Anyway, no more to say, apart from, as we always do every week, on with the podcast. Hello and welcome to another episode of No Such Thing as a Fish coming to you from the QI offices in Hoban. My name is Anna Tosinski and I'm joined here today by James Harkin, Andrew Hunter-Murie and superior replacement to Dan Shriver in the form of if you're seeing the video clip of this, a puppet of Dan Shriver, who will say much less, and I think that'll be

appreciated. I'm afraid Dan is stuck on a train somewhere in the east of England. Hashtag Broken Britain, let's go. Nice to hear Broken Britain making a comeback. No one said that for years. Is that quite dated? We're too busy living it, you know. No, Dan is, Dan, this is the first ever, I think, three-person podcast we've ever done. Yeah. If you prefer the format, let us know. Yeah. I think this could be it. Do you think? We might crack it. I just want to say, Dan, if you're listening, which I know you will be, I really missed you. James was the first one to suggest.

He said, let's cut the soundbag loose. He kept saying, kept saying it over and over again. He said that before your train was even delayed, actually. We had a whole train going. How do we ditch down? It was actually me that stopped the train. I put five people on the track. And then one person on another track. No, you put one leaf on the line, so he'll be there for a couple of days. Anyway, we're going to kick off with fact number one, and because I'm hosting, I've made that MyFact. My fact this week is that as part of the preparations for D-Day, one scientist persuaded another to inhale oxygen until she vomited.

They got married shortly afterwards. Sort of a weird rom-com in a fact. A meat-cute. Is it a meat-cute? Maybe they already knew each other. I don't know what Meat-Cute says. Guys, that's in a rom-com, the moment where the couple, they bump into each other, she drops all her stuff, he helps her pick a month. She vomits.

They're under the ocean, maybe. They're in a hyperbaric chamber. They're simulating me under the ocean, certainly. Okay, well, it's the original meat cute. This is from this amazing book that's, I need to cite. It's written by someone called Rachel Lance, who is actually a blast injury specialist and a researcher into bodies surviving the extremes of being underwater. But she's written this book called chamber divers. And she's uncovered this story, which is that.

The D-Day landings hadn't happened yet. This is Second World War. But there had been a disastrous Canadian beach landing in the Second World War on the beaches of France. And it had been disastrous because they had based it on a bunch of old photos they had, like old holiday photos from the 1920s. You're joking. And they're like, where's the ferris wheels? Exactly. Where's all the zombies?

So you've got to make landfall by the donkeys, right? And it turned out the donkeys and the ferris wheel and all of that had been replaced by German guns. Oh, that's bad luck. Which is such bad luck. And it was awful and huge number of casualties. Was it that the sand had moved or the tides had moved the sand or they couldn't land in the same way because of the ocean conditions?

I think it was that they couldn't tell what the terrain was like based on the pictures. So they thought it was going to be nice and sandy. It was very rocky. It was very hazardous. Couldn't land properly. Really bad. And so it became apparent that in order to do a successful beach landing to invade the Germans, the Allies would have to know more about the coastline,

which would mean divers getting right up to the beach, spending a long time underwater, going deep down, getting out to the beach, then popping up at night and actually figuring out exactly what was on the beach. And to do that, we needed to know how to dive, which we didn't really in the 40s. Interesting. You know what I was reading yesterday,

I was reading a book about the history of barbed wire, and this is really off topic. Of course you were, yeah. There was a thing in it how during the war, they used to put barbed wire under the sea. so as in when people would come and land you would jump off the boat and start running up but your feet would get tangled because there's barbed wire

under the sea under the sea yeah under the sea it's not better that's mean it was a time of mean it was it was wasn't it? That's extraordinary I did not know that but that would be useful for your divers as well

because they would notice it I guess exactly with the goggles on because they wear goggles don't they? Anyway this is a long wind of way of getting to the point that there were these two researchers, JBS Haldane and Helen Spurway, they worked for UCL, and they shut themselves repeatedly in these hyperbaric chambers, chambers that could be filled up with oxygen and simulate underwater pressures. They did this over and over again to find out the effects on the human body so that the D-Day landings could happen. And Helen Spurway is in there and she's the one who's inhaling pure oxygen because it's the other body

deals with oxygen at high pressures because it can be very dangerous. And JBS Haldane is sitting next to her taking notes in this hypervaric chamber and she managed to last for 33 minutes on pure oxygen before she tore the breathing tube out of her mouth, vomited repeatedly, hallucinated and said, I'm done, thanks.

Well, she might have said, I'm done, thanks. Because I read about what happens to you in those situations and yeah, your voice goes really high like to run helium. Helium. I didn't know that. Yeah. They should do that a kid's birthday,

party, shouldn't they? Well, it's kind of... Yeah, exactly. Well, there's a lot of vomiting at kids' birthday parties. I've said that. It does sound kind of fun, apart from people can't whistle.

Then there's so much oxygen either. Oh, no. So, you know, it's... Well, I wouldn't like that, because I'm a whistler. Are you? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I get told off for whistling from my wife's family

who think it's bad luck in the house. Well, you're whistling out of the window at passing women, aren't you? And you've got your hard hat on. They're right. It really affected Haldane, didn't it? So I read that in the course of this research, he got a bubble at the base of his spine,

which stayed there for the rest of his life, and it made it incredibly painful for him to sit down anywhere. No. Yeah. Yeah, it was extremely dangerous. He was an incredible guy. JBS Haldane. He was, yeah.

John Burden, Burdon, Sanderson, Haldane. He was amazing. I was just saying before we started recording this, sometimes you meet someone researching this podcast, and you think, I just want to spend weeks with you. I just want to do like a month-long special of the show about this guy. Andy, if you spent weeks with him, he'd make you do so much mad stuff that you wouldn't have the guts for, I'm afraid.

No, okay, fair enough. But he was constantly experimenting on himself, and his dad was also a really famous scientist who experimented on him, and he did all of this science, despite not having a science degree even. He studied maths and then classics. I'm sorry to say, but if you do that, you're going to end up with a bubble on your butt. Leave it to the professionals. No, you're right, you're right, you're right.

But he was a geneticist by training, and yet throughout his life he was constantly doing crazy experiments. Which were really useful as well. Really useful. You know, he really did find out a lot about how the body responds to these pressures and different gases. I think he did a lot of research into nitrogen as well. If we get overexposed to nitrogen, he went down. When he was about 13, he was first experimented on undersea by his father.

So this is a lifelong thing for Haldane. Right. He and his father, who was called also John. John Scott Haldane. John Scott Haldane. Sorry, yeah, yeah. They went up to the west coast of Scotland on HMS Spanker, which was a navy ship.

Do you have a cap? I have a naval cap with the bad HMS Spanker which was an old prop from QI and I wear that standing at my window and I also have had complaints and his father was trying to work out the speed divers should rise at to stop getting the bends

the decompression sickness and they didn't know what caused that and he found out basically and Haldane Senior put his volunteers including his 13 year old son Jack in a badly fitting diving suit got them to repeatedly go down into the sea and then come back up at different speeds

he did work out eventually how to come back up. But Jack Jr. became incredibly cold and frightened. He was 13 years old. And his dad just apparently dosed him with lots of whiskey and then put him to bed. And that was parenting in the Edwardian. And now we look back and think, what a legend.

It would be charged with. That's true. Because actually it was him and Naomi, his sister. And she was a sort of equally amazing character. So she was four years younger than JBS Haldane. And their dad experimented on both of them constantly. apparently Naomi's job as a child from literally the age of three was to monitor test subjects through an observation window

in these gas chambers that he'd set up. Make sure your brother's not dead. It was literally that if they fell unconscious, she had to drag them out and resuscitate them. Honestly, I'm starting to warm a little less to this guy. I have to say, yeah. I'm just imagining what a genius he would have been in adult life, Haldane, had he not had his brain squashed by gases every weekend.

Maybe that's the equivalent of the bong on the head, though. Maybe that was what sparked the genius. Yeah, maybe. Maybe we should all be doing it. Yeah. Actually, he spent his whole life being gassed. I've just realised. He was gassed in the First World War as well. Was he?

Yeah, yeah. So he was in the Black Watch. And the Black Watch were very famous Scotch regiment. You know, like legends of the British Army. They all wore Black Watch, didn't they? That's right. Cassio. Cassio.

And that's why they never started their attacks on time, because they'd all drifted a little bit. One, two, three, beep! Let's go! The German was just open the machine gunfire as soon as I hear this huge beep. So his job was trench mortar officer, so he had to lead groups to throw bombs by hand

into enemy trenches. I mean, it's quite fierce and hard and horrible work. He loved it. And he was gassed, which sparked an interest in mustard gas and experimenting on that. But while he was at the front, I love this. He was writing back and forth with Naomi, his sister, about mouse genetics.

And he later, he boasted, he was the only officer to complete a scientific paper from a forward position of the Black Watch. No way. It's amazing. It is amazing. But he must have been like the gas comes towards him. He must be like getting a Madeline moment of his childhood, mustn't he?

He's like, oh, this reminds me of old dad. He's taking off his mask mate, getting his notepad out. Can we talk about Helen Spurway? Yeah, she was also awesome. She was the other one in the diving experience. She was the one who vomited. Yes, and who we did marry. And they did mention after vomiting all over him, they did get married afterwards.

Go on. She reminds me a bit of Erica McAllister. Because most of her research was on drosophilia, fruit flies. So she was a world expert on fruit flies, basically. And then she later wrote a paper about pathogenesis in guppies, in the fish. So that means that a female guppy can give birth without having sex. Virgin birth. Virgin birth.

But she also said that possibly it could happen in humans. because of her work in guppies. She was like, well, there's no reason if it happens in guppies, it can't happen in puppies and then in humans. Guppies, puppies, puppies, humans. Yuppies. She was extremely hardcore as well, wasn't she?

As you'd have to be, they sort of found each other's soulmates in each other. And she was quite a strange character. So there's a Time Magazine report of an incident that happened to her in 1956, which, you have to bear in mind, it is 1956. It began Britain's a blonde girl. biologist, Helen Spurway Haldane, wife of brilliant biologist JBS Haldane. The blonde and the brilliant.

Emerged from a London pub after downing three and a half pints of bitter and encountered a bobby stamped on his police dog's tail and clouted the cop. So she was clearly a bit feisty. Maybe she was just experimenting what would happen if a dog got its tail stomped on. Maybe she was. Well, the answer it turns out is you end up in prison for two. Two months. Yeah. Two months. Wow.

Yeah. Yeah, but she was offered to pay a fine. And she said, no, not up for it. And she was about to go to India. And she said, I'll fit in much better with some of the other people who've gone to India if I've done a prison spell. Basically, that's why they left Britain. So Haldane was at Cambridge. And she got arrested for drunk and disorderly.

And he said, well, let's just go to India then. Really? Yeah. But whenever anyone asked him why, he said, oh, I'm the Suez Crisis. I think the government has handled that so badly that I want to leave the UK and I want to go to India. but it's actually because his wife was a pissout. Because I read a few reasons that he gave. One was that he was broke as well.

Like after the war, his lab had no money and he was broke. Those pites are bitter, don't get cheap. And he'd be given a really good job offer from the Indian Statistical Institute. But also, he then claimed, this is a bit more in the Suez line of things, that he just didn't want to wear socks anymore. He said, 60 years in socks is enough. So I'm moving to India. Yeah, okay.

Well, you don't have to wear socks. Well, also, one thing he really liked, apart from the nice job offer, and the cultural of that, he liked the socialism there. Because they had a lot of socialism in India at the time. Yeah. And he was a former communist. He spent years and years in the Communist Party. Yeah.

And slightly embarrassed himself a bit over Lysenko, who was the dodgy Soviet pseudoscientist who claimed he was going to revolutionize crops. Well, yeah, that's the thing. Like, Lysenko, he was the one who said, Darwin's theories are not completely correct. But obviously for Haldane, this is a big problem because he was such a geneticist and he was so...

That's weird. For him, like, to be a world expert on genetics, for a while, he was kind of saying, well, you know, there might be something in it. And he slightly compromised his scientific principles. Naomi was also a socialist. Was she? And committed socialist. But anyway, she also proofread Lord of the Rings in her spare time. Get out.

She actually, in fact, wrote over 90 novels. She was incredibly... What are you going to say? Over 90% of it. The grey dunt of valued women. Yeah. She proofread it? Could she not have got him to kind of pare it down a little bit?

It was actually 19 books long. Well, she edited it. No, if she wrote 90 books, she's not a master of precision. Haldane's first wife, Charlotte Franken, was a daughter of an alien. Oh, yeah? Go on. Yeah. Dan?

No response from Dan there? No, he's just sat there. He's stunned. You've stolen his only fact. Her father was Jewish and the son of a German. And during the First World War, there was a thing called the Alien Restrictions Act. If you personally wasn't a British citizen, then the... they would. You would have less rights than anyone else in the country. So he decided to leave

and left Charlotte on her own. But she became a reporter for the Daily Express, apparently because, and this is according to the Dictionary of National Biography, because her father had taught her to drink like a man. So that helped her to become a reporter for the Express. I believe it. Yeah, yeah. It's pretty much the only qualification you needed. But she was actually married when she met Haldane and she got divorced and the divorce quoted her. Caldane as a person in the divorce, and he basically got fired from Cambridge because of that. As in he was quoted as a person she'd been, um, shagging. Munking about with.

Exactly. Cambridge was very uptight back in the days, wasn't it? He was brought up in front of the sex viri. The what? The sex viri. V-I-I-I. What are they? Well, sex.

Six men. Yeah. So they were the moral guardians of the University of Cambridge, which if you'd done anything, wrong, you would be brought up in front of them and they say you're going to lose your position in that universe. Sex-Viri. That must have led to some confusion. People turning up for a good time.

Seeing the plaque on the door. Well, Haldane, he contested the charge. He won. He started calling the sex-vary, the sex-weary. That's a bit of a joke. And they basically lost all of their authority and they weren't there anymore. Not thanks solely to that.

No, but it was really part of it. Really? Well, the pun. but of the whole escapade was part of it. Of course, if you are speaking classical Latin, the way it's traditionally spoken, it's pronounced sex-weary anyway, isn't it? Oh, maybe it's even better joke. Even better back in those days.

That's great. Latin. Okay, it's time for fact number two, and that is Andy. My fact is that the Swiss have a special kind of wrestling trouser named the Schwingerhausen with a special belt for your opponent to hang on to. Does your opponent want to hang on to your trousers? Well, the shinghosen are these heavy trunks that you wear in the Alps when you're wrestling with your fellow farmers and loggers and herdsmen and all of that. It's quite a blokey sport traditionally.

There are also, it's been making strides. There are some lady swingers now, but originally it was a lad's occupation. And basically you put your right hand on your opponent's belt, your left hand on their right leg, you brace. I'm sure and then you tussle and you're trying to make your opponent vulnerable to the schwunger

the schwunger which are the holds there are dozens of holds the average shvinger masters several shvunger three or four

but they'll know loads but you have your three or four signature moves it's kind of like street fighter the arcade game and once you enact a swunger your opponent

might go for a Geigenschwunger which is a counter hold and you get points for you the holds that you make or... I think you just get points for throwing your opponent or moving them... Maybe it's moving them out of the zone. I think it's just throwing them on the floor.

It seems to be the aim. And it tells us, if you watch videos, it's very crotch heavy a lot of the time. Because if you imagine you've grabbed someone's belt loops from behind and you're sort of a lot of the time, just shoving them towards you, aren't they? As they're doing the same. I see.

So you're sort of crotch on crotch quite a lot of the time and then eventually one of you flips the other onto the ground and you've won the bout. Yeah, amazing. And the competitions are often known as swing Fests. Yeah. But don't get them mistaken with the South London Swingfest, which is a celebration of swing music,

the Sussex Swingfest, which is a golf competition, or Swingfest, a Swinger-Omi festival from East Yorkshire. Is that swinging, swinging? Yeah, yeah. That's right. That's harsh. So we'll get mixed up with any of those if you want to go for your homoerotic Swiss wrestling competition. Yeah. Leather trousers would be useful.

I think they'd probably be useful for a few of those. For all of those, really. Absolutely. It should be one of those flow charts in a magazine. in which swing fest are you? Oh yeah. Do you have leather trousers? That doesn't help us.

Yeah, and I read a great article in the German language press about Paul Eggieman, who's a master sadler, and he makes the wrestling trousers. And he's one of, I think, a handful of people who now truly knows the art of how to make Schringerhosen. And did you read it in German?

No, I clicked the button that said, I toggle from German to English. Oh, right. I always do that as well. I think of languages that I can speak. Even for English, you toggle. More English, please. More Englishy.

Yeah. And there's quite a nice thing at the end where it's a sort of respectful thing. At the end, the winner ends the match by brushing the sawdust off the loser's back. Oh, yeah. What do you think that used to be? Did he brush on his back? He's going to get a tissue. Come on.

Oh, dear. It's huge, though, isn't it? I mean, I think it's... Shringen. One of the most well-attended sports in Switzerland, if not the most. About 300,000 people attend the finals, which happen every year to crown the king of the swingers. Brilliant.

The Shringer-Kir-Kir-Kir-Kir-Kir-B-I-P. There was a magazine called Shwinger Zeitung magazine, which the first edition was in 1907. And in that edition, they talk about bets being placed in taverns on swinging. But it's also, it's amazing. There's a big article about how. terrible cycling is. It's so weird.

1907. Really? Yeah, I guess that's when it was taking off, you know, so that would be a... And people were quite anti. They were anti-women cycling, especially. Why do they think it was bad? Well, because it was an imported sport. I see.

And compared to shrinking, which obviously all normal, upstanding Swiss people love to do, cycling involves wretched hunchback figures on the velocopedes. You can't commute to work by shinging. Can you? Shing your way to work? If you and another shvinger, grab each other and then throw yourselves off the mountain,

you can get down to your office in a kind of wheel formation. So you are the bike, basically. It's one of the three Swiss national sports, or often sighted as one of the three really traditional Swiss national sports. And the other two being... Can we guess? Swiss national spot. I doubt it, but give it a go.

Skiing. I'd say no from me. Cow riding. You've got to put a bell around the neck of the biggest. as bull in the valley. Do you know what? That's not a terrible guess. Blowing that massive horn.

That big alpine horn thing. Oh, yeah. The Alpin, Alpin horning. Oh, yodeling. None of it. I'm telling him that's a sport. Are we calling that sport? No, I'm going to tell you.

Eating Tobleron. You'll kick yourselves. Making knives. Anonymized bank accounts. Protecting the Pope. Yes. I'm going to tell you if that's all right. Dan, anything?

Oh, Dan. What was that you said, Dan? Steins Tossing and Horn-Nosen. Yeah, you were absolutely right, Dan. Did I not say Horn-Nuson? Did you say Horn-Nuson? Well, I said horn. It has nothing to do with horns.

It's like a giant. I've watched a bit of it. It's really fun. It's like fly swatting, but on a giant scale. And it's a bit like golf. Someone swings this whip at the hornus, which is a hornet. Oh, I've seen it.

It's like a golf club, but it's like got a whip bit on the end. Exactly. Oh, yeah, I've seen that. It's like if your golf club, If you had a trick golf club that was flexible and you hit it. So what am I hitting it at? You're hitting it at this massive field in front of you or slope.

And up the slope are the opponents. And they're all holding these huge flapping bats that look like giant fly swats. And their job is to swat your ball out of the air. And you've got to see... Sounds incredibly difficult. Wait, so I'm whipping my ball into the air. Yeah. And they're trying to swat my ball out of the air.

So imagine I hit a golf ball to you. You're 200 yards away. Yeah. And you've got a tennis racket. And you're trying to hit the golf ball before it lands. Right. But with additional difficulties. And you're trying to get it what passed me or?

You're trying to get it to hit the ground before someone swats it. Right. Okay. Okay. It's such a pretty basic concept. It's a kind of game you come up with as a seven-year-old with your sibling. And they've stuck with it. And it's huge.

And in fact, Rudolf Minger, who I'm sure you guys know, it was a 1950s Swiss politician. Dan, no, please. Come on, mate. It's just a name. It's not funny. Not a funny name, it's just a name. He said it was the ultimate mark of patriotism

alongside wrestling and yodeling. Can I tell you a thing or two about leather trousers? Sure. Did we talk ever about the ale Connor? I don't think so. So basically this was this idea that in the old days, the way you'd tested beer was that you'd go to a pub, you'd pour the beer onto a wooden bench,

and then you'd sit down and you'd see if you stuck to it, right? And this is a myth. It's a complete myth. Is it? It's from 1911. How interesting. Yeah. It's from this book, Inns, Ails and Drinking Customs of Old England.

So it already sounds like copper bottom nonsense. The idea was that like a publican might put extra sugar in or something like that. And it would make it sticky. Yeah. If you, so you'd come in wearing your leather trousers. You'd get some beer, pour it on your bench, sit down. And then you'd sit there for half an hour and try and stand up. And if you stuck to it, it had too much sugar in and it was impure.

If the bench came up with your ass As you stood up And they would walk out with the bent stuck on their ass And they'd take your plaque to show you a licence with them As they went And it's How interesting that that's not true There were aleconners but they tasted

There are no contemporary sources on the time Saying they sat in a pint Makes sense Because if it's got sugar in it You would be able to taste it wouldn't you Yeah That's the test Dave why are you part in it

No no this is how I do it But no, it just tastes really sweet. It tastes like honey. No, no, I'm going to sit on it for half an hour. Is this my tea or yours? I don't know. Has it got sugar in it? Sit on it and sleep.

You've never had that exchange, have you? No. And if the nail was strong enough, it could make something stick to a table. Like, it's sticky. That's brilliant. That's a real exploding of a very niche QI myth, which is something we specialize in.

Absolutely. I tried to find something interesting out about Theresa May's leather trousers. Oh, yeah. Which, for international listeners who don't keep a hawk eye on British news, Theresa May, former Prime Minister, wore some leather trousers famously in a photo shoot at 2016 and got in huge trouble for it. It's probably why she had to leave, because it was revealed that they'd cost £995,

and also they would just noticeably leather trousers. And that was worth a lot more before Brexit as well. And did you find anything? It was very hard. They're designed... All I found out was that she really didn't want to wear them. And it was her director of communications, Fiona Hill, who you may well remember, who insisted that Amanda Wakely, the designer, sent a van full of clothes to Downing Street

and sort of squeaked her into these leather trousers. I'm imagining like that scene in Ross from Friends, when he has to sort of put flower down his legs. And yes, her other director of cons, Katie Perry said, she didn't even like the bloody trousers. They were the wrong kind of brown, if you know what I mean. Which I don't. No. But it was quite mad because Cameron did. habitually wear

and other male leaders who habitually wear things that cost 3,500 so when everyone was demanding that you declare it have you declared this on your register of interest?

I imagine Rishi Sunak's wide fronts cost more than that. Yeah. Are they leather? Let's put in a freedom of information request and find out. He's at the press conference he's answered all the big questions

as it comes to yeah, no such thing as a fish yet. That would be a good. Amazing if we could get into those junkets. Oh my God. We've got to do that. How do you get into those junkets?

I'm going to drink first. The Lederhausen has been banned from time to time in Germany. The church banned it during the 19th century revival of Lader Hosen. What? And in 1913, the Munich Archbishop declared Lader Hosen immoral. And they've got a Lader Hosen seen in Peru as well. I think. There's this tiny bit of Peru, this village called Blederhosen.

Puzuzu between the Andes and the Amazon and it was set up by Australian German emigrants led by a priest called Joseph Egg. Oh yeah. Hang on, you had another egg earlier. Yeah, you did. Did I? Yeah, an egg name.

Oh, was it? In your German article that you'd got Google to translate for you. Oh, yeah, poor eggyman, the master saddler. I am the eggy man. Yeah. And anyway, so every year they have Pauzuzzo Fest. So these Germans went over to South America, did they? Yes.

Right, okay. As we said in the previous episode, when? A hundred years before the unpleasantness. Although King Edward VIII wore Lederhausen on his honeymoon with Wallace Simpson where he went to met Hitler. Did he? On their honeymoon, they went off and had a meeting with Hitler. It's very romantic, isn't it?

It's every girl's dream. Foe of the podcast. They went to the eagle's nest, which is that, you know, it's called Berthusgaden. It's sort of Hitler's very high mountain alpine retreat. It does sound like a bit of a glamping situation. Maybe she thought when he said, we're going to the Eagles Nest. I found it on Airbnb.

She didn't quite realize. Airy and B&B. Okay, it's time for fact number three, and that is James. Okay, my fact this week is that in 1963, a fire at the Curry building was put out by a man called Bum Farto. It was also started by him, though. He was just setting fire to his far toes. And no, this is a fact about Key West in Florida.

City? Yeah, it's a city. Yeah. It's the southernmost city in mainland America. Pretty sure. I think so, yeah. I think it's probably fair. I know, because is it right at the tip of the Florida Keys?

It is, you know what, the Keys, you can drive there. So it's kind of mainland. But the truth is, there's lots of bridges. because the keys are so close together. So they are, they are irised all the way. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've never been there.

It sounds like an amazing bit of the world. It's great. It's extraordinary. Let's talk about it in a bit because it's good. So bumfarto. Bumfato was a major figure in 1960s Key West because he was a fire chief. Okay.

And he was a friend, I believe, of Julio Dupu, who was one of the main surgeons in the town. But I thought his name was Marjorie. funnier. So we'd talk about him. But he was really good. And the reason I came across him actually is because there is a musical that's been written about him called Bumfato the Musical. And it was written by Pamela Stevenson. Oh yeah.

Who is Billy Conley's wife. Yeah. She's a shrink and a comedian. And she wrote from sort of Rodgers and Hammerstein, hasn't it? We've really run out of all the, we've done Hamilton and there have lots of other key figures in American history. So he was the fire chief, he wore red suits, drove around in a lime green Ford Galaxy, which had a Yoruba shrine on its hood, Yoruba as in the Nigerian religion.

Religion, yes, he was a practitioner, wasn't he, of the Yoruba religion? He called himself El Jephe. Or El Jeph, if you want to give it this angersized pronunciation, which is more funny. Is that the chief? The chief, yes, okay. I think he painted that on his car, didn't he? Yeah, he had a licence plate that said L-JF. Yeah.

And he eventually got done for selling drugs out of the fire department. That is tragic. Can I just ask about the Curry Factory fire? Oh, yeah. Yeah, I can tell you that it was owned by Mr. Curry, whose name, have I written it down? So he didn't make curry? Or did he happen to be called Mr. Curry, but it was a curry factory as well? No, no, no, it wasn't a factory.

It was Curry building. Oh. And he was Mr. Curry, and he was the first millionaire in Florida, and he was a wrecker. So a big thing in Key West back in the day is you would have people sort of sat on big towers. And whenever a ship went past, if it wrecked, they would go, wrecker high, wreck a high. And all the men would run out and try and get at the wreck. And then it was just like finders keepers. It was just finders keepers.

And then they would have a big auction in Key West every month where they would sell everything that they got from the wreck. It's very bad behaviour wrecking. Well, it's bad behaviour where you put the light up and you lure a ship onto the rocks. I think actually most of that is relatively mythical. That's rare, isn't it? And I think that's really, really different. That's like the difference between murdering someone

and pickpocketing a dead body. And I think what is much worse than the other. Anna is really clear about the difference between those things. No, you're right. Wrecking is sort of different to, yeah. I think that's all. The myths about that are in Cornwall, aren't they? Yeah, but no, the myths are the same in Keynes.

Really? Yeah. Basically, in fact, if you read about Wrecking in Cornwall and Wrecking in Key West, it's all the same stories. It's the same myths. It's the same, you know. Because it must be quite hard to mimic a lighthouse accurately if you don't have a lighthouse. Do you know what I mean?

I've got a pretty good Halloween costume, actually. It's awesome. Just going around flashing people. Look, as a former subscriber to Lamp magazine, I can assure you that I've done my reading on this. Anyway, can we say why Farto was called Farto? Sorry, why he was called Bum. Yeah, Fato was his actual name Farto was his name

And his first name, his birth name was Joseph Fato And his parents probably thought Well, you know, it's an unfortunate surname But at least it can't get any worse And then he loved fire from a young age And he was always hanging around the fire station And he was known as the little bum The American version meaning tramp

You know, or one friend reported That he was always bumming things Which again shows the difference between American and British English Where he... Oh, I don't know, you would say, Can I bum a cigarette? Yeah.

And he disappeared, didn't he? In the end? He vanished and he was never found. He's somewhere with Lord Lucan and Elvis. And Shergaar, yeah. And Shergaar at the party of the century. Because he was flogging drugs. Yes, and he got caught because he tried to sell it to an undercover police officer.

And then they arrested him. And then he was out on bail. And they thought that probably he would go out to prison for a long, long, long, long time. Or perhaps he would dobb in the people who gave him the gear in the first place. Right. because he had connections with Cuba. So then he disappeared. Maybe he drove off and started a new life.

Maybe the people who didn't want him to dobb them in might have done him in. And there was a lot of stuff like that going on. I mean, it was a very shady, gang-heavy world. And in fact, the person who dobed him in, who basically told this undercover agent to go and set him up was a guy called Titus Rudolph Walters. And he convinced the undercover agent

who was a guy called Larry Dahl. I quite like. Larry Dollar. All right, everyone in the story has a great name. Titus Walters is a good name. It's really good. But Titus, before the deal even happened, where Faso was set up by Larry Dollar,

Titus, who dogged him in, was brutally murdered. And I ended up reading this description of his murder. And it was extraordinary. He was like the Rasputin of his time. He was murdered by, you know, other gang people who shot him in their head multiple times. He just wouldn't die. He was, like, crawling out of the bathroom.

Eventually, they had to inject him with her. heroin and drain cleaner to kill him off. Lorks. Were you just reading it to make sure that somebody had been through his pockets? Yeah, but a few good things that Fato did when he was fire chief. He installed a system

which turned all the traffic lights near the fire station on green with a push of a button. That's fantastic. No, that sounds incredibly dangerous. Wait, all of them? All of the ones that he needed to go to get to the main road. It's brilliant.

There's only like one main road in K-West, really clever. That's a really good idea. Yeah, well, he did it. I bet he used it a bit nefariously sometimes. He's late for a date. Do modern fire engines have that capacity? I don't think so. I don't know he just turn the Cyrus and go through red lights, didn't they?

Yeah, I think you're right. As I've seen. But he also had a hotline to his home phone that required no dialing. So if he was at home and there was a fire, someone could just press one button like the bat phone, the Farto phone. The fartophone is a completely different prank toy Instead of a spotlight into the sky

It's just they play the noise of a huge guff over Key West He hears it He stops flogging cocaine to a student I must go He runs into a phone box And he pulls on the fato costume I think Do you know what

He would be 104 years old now And part of me does hope Maybe he's still out there somewhere Oh me too Right You know? Yeah Listening to this show.

There's a weird coincidence about him or just like a weird collision of histories where his parents owned a restaurant in Key West, which is called Victoria, and they sold it to a guy called Joe Russell, who was mates with Ernest Hemingway, who had recently come from Cuba. So Ernest Hemingway has come from Cuba.

He visits this restaurant that's just been sold by Bumfato's family. And he says, you know what, you should call this place Sloppy Joe's? Because that's the name of a place that I used to go to in Havana. And that is now incredibly iconic sloppy Joes. And have you? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I've been in sloppy Jones. Yeah. Well, there you go. That was named suggested by Ernest Henry. No. And it's this iconic bar. And in fact, once it changed lodgings because the rents were massively increased. And so it moved across the road.

But the bar never closed when it moved. The people just picked up their drinks as they moved venue and walked across the road as they moved to sign. That's brilliant. That's commitment. to your customers. That's fantastic. A few other good things that Fato did.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I just quickly say. So he ordered the replacement of all foam mattresses in the jails because if there was a fire, he knew they would release cyanide. So they were really dangerous. So he got rid of all the foam mattresses.

And obviously, the irony of that is the likelihood was that he would have ended up on one of these mattresses when he got arrested. See, if it had been Haldane, Haldane would have delighted in setting fire to one of the mattresses while he lay on it.

Delicious cyanide. And the other thing was that he was like the unofficial welcome for Cuban exiles. So a lot of people were leaving Cuba at the time because Castro had just come in, right? So he would provide food and accommodation just for the first couple of days when you arrived in Key West. And then maybe even sought you out with a job and stuff like that. That's interesting. It's very close. In fact, I think is it closer to Cuba than it is to Miami?

It's closed. It's a hop skib and a job. It's harder to drive, I can say that. much. You'd need a subterranean halidine designed car, yeah. The road down that you drove along, James, it used to be a train. Yeah, you can see it, actually. I think there are still some bits of

railway, I think. I think so. It was called Flagellas folly. It was Henry Flagellar, who was a millionaire and he had this vision of a railway all the way down to Key West, all the way through the Florida Keys, all the bridges that you drive over now. And it was his life's work. It took $50 million of his money.

It nearly killed him. He finally saw it open the year before he died. And he In fact, he was tragically, he'd gone blind by then. He was in his 80s by the time it opened. And, you know, he couldn't see his life's achievement, but he could hear as he arrived on the train in Key West, the children of Key West cheering as he stepped off the train. Oh, wow.

He was weeping at emotion at this amazing achievement. Did you know the... I'd learn something about Miami, which I didn't know, which was very interesting in the course of this. So the only reason he could bring the railroad down to Florida Keys all the way down was because it had extended down to Miami. there was a woman called Julia Tuttle who lived on what became Miami in the 1890s. And she really wanted to improve her business standing.

So she owned a few hundred acres of land. She wanted the railroad to come down there because obviously that's very useful commercially. And she wrote to him saying, bring your railway down here, bring it down here. And he said, no, can't be bothered. She invented Disneyland. Oh, damn, she's not quite that cool. But she did, the story goes, send him during the Great Frost of 1894. some flowering orange blossom from south in Miami saying,

look, our fields are so fertile, even though it's so cold, that it's a great place to set up shop. And he eventually was persuaded to build the railway down there, and therefore Miami is the only city of any note in America founded by a woman. So she's the founder of Miami. I did not know that. No. But she didn't make Disneyland, so what's the point?

I read this website, I've got to say, it was fun facts about Key West. Look, just judge for you. At one point, about 10% of Key West's population was chickens. Okay. Okay, that's all right. All right, here's another one. I want to know what population, are they counting the insects? Because when they're saying 10% of its population.

You've got a good point. Are they covering all animals at that? You can't just include humans and chickens. You can't. The bacteriophages. What about them? Okay, all right, I've got two more fun facts from this same website for you. Key West was a major hub for salt production in the 1800s.

Okay. That is fun. Oh, because it's near the sea? Yeah, I guess. I'm feeling the fun draining away a bit. All right, here's the Nadel in the Coffin. Key West is home to the largest historical district of wooden structures on the US Department of the Interior's National Register of Historic Places.

Wow. Dan, wake up. The sound thing is, I know how excited you are about that fact, Andy. Yeah, I mean, that's mega. Well, a lot of the wooden structures would have been lookouts for wreckers as well. I think there are some that are still there, although they might be reproductions. But they're just like, if you can imagine like a 30-foot building,

but it's just like slats of wood, almost like in the shape of a lighthouse. I'm thinking of an umpire's chair. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like a big version of that. Like that, but with a big sort of flat top, which you can stand on. That's cool. Although they do have one of those in low sugar loaf key, which is one of the Florida Keys, which isn't one of those.

It is a similar looking structure, but it used to be filled with ground-up female bat genitals. Um, this, firstly, grim. And second, sorry, I just want to say that. Secondly, is it to lure in male bats? Is it a bat trap? Oh my God, you've got it. And he's got it.

And why do you want a bat trap? Uh, you've got too many bats. No, no, you want more bats. You want more? Oh, you're a bat farmer. Um, no, there's a mosquito problem. There was a mosquito problem in the 1920s. So a chap called Richard Clyde Percy,

read a book about how to get bats to kill mosquitoes, wrote to the guy who wrote the book, said, how do I do this? And he said, build a tower, fill it with great. Ground up female bat genitals. Why do they have to be ground up? Can you just put female bats in the tower? Would that, you know?

You've got to have the ground up. Maybe it's easy to source ground up genitals. That's so weird. I guess without being ground up, the female bats can maybe fly away. Whereas in this way, when they're ground, their genitals ground up. I presume you've killed the whole bat and you've had to take, and you've had to. But why not just grind up the whole? Is it to Leo male bats?

Yes. And the male bats come and they eat all the mosquitoes. So it's only the male bats that eat the mosquitoes. No, I think just that's the only way. You're a bat. Yeah, the males are probably more likely to be like, well, I can smell female genitals. They might be not attached to a bat anymore or ground up, but beggars can't be chooses. Give it a go.

Okay, it's time for our final fact, and that is Dan's fact. Should we get him to send it as a voicemail? And I'll play it in. That's a good idea. That's a great idea. Let's do that now. My fact this week is that for over two decades, the actors Grace Kelly and Alec Guinness secretly hit a tomahawk in each other's hotel rooms around the world.

Well, great fact, Dan. I've got loads of questions about it. Yeah, tell us more. Who's Grace Kelly? Actually, I didn't look into Dan's fact and sorry, to peel back the curtain for a second. He's still not here live in the room. So I'm not sure exactly what happened with this story. No, I'm not either.

Did you, Andy? Yeah, thankfully, I did. That's good, isn't it? Because I went and read Alec Guinness's memoir. And so it's a story he told. Basically, he was making this film called The Swan, and Grace Kelly was in it too. And if you don't know who Alex Guinness and Grace Kelly are, they're two of the Grace. That's all we need to say.

The greatest actors ever. Brilliant. And Alan Guinness, he got given this Tomahawk by some Native Americans who were also involved in the filming. And it was massive. It wasn't a prop. It was a proper thing. And it was really heavy, and he didn't want to take it at the end of the job. So he asked Hotel Porter, as he was leaving, you know, going off to the next job, whatever,

to slip it into Grace Kelly's bed as a kind of joke. You know, it's a sort of silly thing. because she would have known it was his because she'd seen him get it. And then a few years after that, he came home from a performance in London. He was doing a lot of theatre at the time and he found it in his bed.

Dund-d-dun-dun. And she had found a way somehow to smuggle it into his bed. I don't know if she ever told her end of the story. Oh, that's great. He waits a few more years. And then he finds out that she's doing a project in the USA with someone who he doesn't know, actually. And he gets in contact via a third party

of the, I think the poet she was doing this work with, she was traveling around with this poet. And he gets in contact via a third party so her companion can honestly say, no, I've never met or spoken to Alec Guinness. So he really goes to a length. And then he gets it back into her bed that way. But wait a minute. Like that does seem a bit pointless because is she going around her whole life

just checking that everyone doesn't know Alec Guinness? She only hangs around with people who don't know Alec Guinness. After she's found it in her bed, she comes downstairs the next morning and says to the poet, you don't know Alec Guinness at all, do you? And he can honestly say, no, I've never met Alec Guinness. But he did, it was. And then eventually he goes to Hollywood in 1979 to receive an Oscar. And what does he find in his bed?

Grace Kelly, no, he finds the tomahawk in his bed. And, yeah, so that was a long-running good Hollywood prank. And then one of them murdered the other with the tomahawk. That's right. That's famously how Grace Kelly died tragically. I think she did die, because I didn't read the whole story, but I'd like skimmed it. She did die, eh? And she died without ever being acknowledged.

So I think that's this really weird thing that's left hanging. Her and Alec Guinness never discussed She died in the car crash didn't she? Yeah I think in the early 80s She was still very young She was in her 50s at the time But she died a princess

She did In many ways we all die princesses Oh is that right In many ways we all die a pauper Because you can't take it with you For a really good point Well she died in an incredibly wealthy princess So yeah she was the princess of Monica

Yeah Some listeners will remember maybe She, some, a few listeners. She married Prince Rainier of Monica. Rainier than here. It's actually a lot drier, I would suspect. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, not as rainy.

And she was 26, which means that her Hollywood career, the grand total of five years, maximum, I believe. Yeah, she was in 11 movies, I think. Because he forced her to stop, basically. Yeah, although I think she was up for it, wasn't she? She was keen to retire. In fact, do you know why one of the explanations she gave for why she left? The Suez Crisis.

She didn't like wearing socks. Yeah, I've been wearing socks. 26 years. That's long enough. She said, when I first came to Hollywood five years ago, my makeup call was at 8 a.m. I'll be goddamned if I'm going to stay in the business where I have to get up earlier and earlier and it takes longer and longer to get me in front of the camera.

I think saying as she gets older and older, she's going to have to come in earlier and earlier to get the makeup. That's very funny. I see that point. I thought you'd empathise James with that a bit. Well, because I'm allergic to makeup. Pretty much.

Shut. And you know, you used to like a lion. Because you have to get in at 6am every day for extensive hair and makeup before the board. I thought you were talking about yesterday we did some filming and I was wearing makeup and just came out in. No. Sobing. Yeah. If you see the film, we sound cheerful but James is streaming from his eyes. Well, that's working with you, Anna. That's. Blame it on the makeup. Yeah. No, I think he did Fosters retire because he also banned any showing of her movies in Monaco. Well, I heard that, but I also heard that she was in the middle of a big contract with MGM. You know,

you sign up to these seven films and all that. And I think the deal, part of the deal was that she would be freed from the contract. She didn't have to make any more movies. But the wedding was filmed and broadcast to 30 million people and it was in cinemas. Yeah, 30 million people. Like half the population of the UK that is at that time.

There were nearly 2,000 journalists at the wedding. Yeah, but not many like kings or queens of Europe were there. Because they all kind of disagreed with it because it was a royal marrying a plebeian. Oh, really? Yeah, a lot of the royals got invited, but none of them went. Wow, that's interesting. Because it was very much an arranged marriage, it seems like,

as in it was, I believe it was suggested to Irania that he find a Hollywood star to marry because they wanted to increase tourism since the war people have stopped going. That's right. And the person who suggested it, did you see that? Aristotle Onassis. Oh, yes, the ship guy.

Greek shipping magnate, again, crazy name crazy guy, later husband of Jackie Kennedy. Yes. I believe his yacht had bar stools made out of Wales foreskins. That's correct. Oh, cool. So he didn't have taste, all right? There were female whales were flocking to his shed.

Grace Kelly's story is very interesting because it's kind of a riches-to-riches story. Like she grew up really wealthy. Her father was a brick magnate called Jack Kelly. He was amazing, actually. He was an Olympic gold medalist. And her mother was a competitive swimmer, Grace Kelly's mom. So very athletic, be honest, the entire family were stunningly good-looking.

It's not surprising that she became a Hollywood star. He was a rower, wasn't he? That's why you got his meddling. And she said, once someone asked her, Grace Kelly, would you write an autobiography? And she said, no, but I would like to write a biography of my father. Wow. And in 1920, he wanted to be in the Henley Regatta,

which is a big, posh rowing competition in the UK. But he was banned because in those days, anyone who was a mechanic, artisan or labourer or works in any menial activity was not allowed to take part in the Henley Regatta. Really? Really? Was that a sort of class barrier?

Yes, it was. Well, it was. Sounds like what as opposed to? You don't want them to take the time off their job. Well, if someone's plumbing doesn't get fixed. According to them, it was because they wanted it to be amateur. And if you had a job as a bricklayer, then you were technically a professional. It's unfair.

It's actually cheating to have big muscles from your work. Only softies who spent a whole lives punting so far, reading a little bit of Tennyson. Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. So obviously, it was. was class base, but he was very annoyed about it. But in the same year, there was an Olympics, and he won his Olympic rowing medal.

And apparently he mailed his cap to King George V with a note saying greetings from a bricklayer. Nice. Slam. If that got to George VIII, and if George VIII had any idea what? I shouldn't think so. Random American brick dude. And then in 2003, the Princess Grace Kelly Challenge Cup was launched by the Roll Regatta. which was in memory of Grace Kelly,

but also in memory of John Kelly, who they'd snubbed all those years earlier. Wow. I read he was a nickname, the most perfectly formed American male, which is quite an accolade to have. Sexy, yeah. That is, that's impressive, you know.

It's because it's quite a high bar. It's not like the most well-formed man in H. It's interesting, isn't it? Becoming a princess is such an odd thing. Like, what have you done? Oh, I've won an Oscar. Oh, well, I've secured the grimaliener. the succession, actually, because the current Monaco prince is her son, Albert.

Yeah. And the reason they were so desperate to find her, as you sort of allude to, is that if he didn't have a son, I think the monarchy would have not existed. They needed a child, they needed a son. So they had to take fertility tests. She had to be properly tested to check that she could have children. She also had to have a virginity test, but it wasn't taken very serious. It wasn't a...

It can't think of Grace Kelly. Grace Kelly did. And she would absolutely have flunk that because she'd had... a love life before, you know. She had lots of boyfriends and things like that. Was it like a written test? It was like a driving theory test. Was it like that?

Have you ever shagged anyone? Yeah, I think it was a formality rather than an originally observed thing. But I mean, still weird, you know. Gosh. Alec Guinness? No one never gave him a virginity test as far as I can tell. Alec Guinness? Yeah.

No, as far as I know. He was called Alex Stephen until he was 14. And then someone just said, oh, you're not quite. called Alex Stephen. You're called Alec Guinness. Oh. What was his middle name? From, I think, his mom... His mother married David Daniel Stephen.

So he was given his stepfather's name in day-to-day life. But on the birth certificate, he was actually Alec Guinness. But it was only when he was 14 that his mom just said to him, oh, by the way, that's not your name. The thing that everyone's been calling you for the last 14 years, that's not your name. You know, this beer that everyone likes? Is that instead? We spoke earlier about how Andy, we were wondering whether you were,

be friends with Hal Dane. Oh yeah, yeah. You know, whether it might be a bit much for you. I hate sort of all the experiments and all the signline. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I probably would not see him a lot socially. Well, Alec Guinness, according to the Dictionary of National Biography, was a stickler for punctuality and for good service in restaurants of which he was a connoisseur.

He hated change, which in his opinion was almost always for the worse. And he hated any assaults or the English language, particularly those said on the BBC. Why are you assuming anything about how we would have clearly been the best of friends? I mean, we wouldn't have spoken much, but we would have approved of each other. Yeah, yeah. A silent nod. Gosh, yeah. It is weird, isn't it?

The thing he hated most of all is the thing that now he's best remembered for. Like most widely, you know, you can talk about the bridge on the River Kwai, or you can talk about Kind Hearts and Coronets, but he's best remembered for Star Wars, which he thought was basically a film for children. Yeah. And which made him rich, quite rich. You know, he got 2% of the profits. It must have been very rich, I imagine.

It's a bit mealy mouth, isn't it? He would always say how bad the dialogue was, and he was getting millions and millions from it. He claims he was taxed very heavily on those proceeds. So really, once all that was over, he got tuppence half and it, you know. But he was embarrassed. Harrison Ford kept calling him Mother Superior on set. He felt very old and out of touch.

It was the thing that everyone really knew him for. And people started to treat him as a kind of agony aunt for it, Because Obi-1 Canobi is a kind of wise being. I've only seen Star Wars once. I think he's like a wise man, right? I reckon he must be. He wears a cloak, doesn't he? Yeah, he's wise.

There's no one who wears a cloak who isn't wise. No. There you go. Please write in with your examples of people who want. But yeah, people used to write to him and say, please, can you give you advice on this? He said, an example of a request I would typically get. He said there's an interview is, you know, a married couple wrote to me once saying,

we're having problems in our relationship. Can you come and live with us and sort them out for us? Oh my God, that's a proposition though, isn't it? Yeah, that's a bit of a got schfinger vibes, hasn't it? The thing is, if you've played Hamlet, Shilon, Macbeth, you know, and then you've played Obi-Wan, you must feel a bit like you've slummed it, you know, because he was one of the great classical stage actors of the 20th century. Like, he took it really, really, really seriously.

He did. His art, you know. Well, there was many people saying, not as good as stage actor as the true great, a level below the Olifay's, and the Gilles Goods, according to some. Oh, wow. This is great. Oh, my goodness. Sick burn.

Even he said, I'm. really only suited to smaller parts. It was very modest, wasn't he? Wow. Okay. I did find a bad review of his stuff. It mentions, for the podcast, Adolf Hitler, where a film he was in called Hitler

the last 10 days from 1973. And the telegraph said, in Hitler the last 10 days, Guinness, having discovered through his usual assiduous research that Hitler was a boring man, unfortunately succeeded brilliantly in bringing this interpretation to the screen. I'm not asking you a quick quiz question. Quite a neat quiz question, maybe.

But Anna Guinness played Lawrence of Arabia. In what did he play Lawrence of Arabia? Oh, was it in Lawrence of Arabia? It wasn't, James. God, you've made a fool of yourself. Have I? He played King Faisal in Lawrence of Arabia. But, bizarrely, two years before the film, Lawrence of Alabia, Arabia...

Lawrence of Alavia. Sorry. So I accidentally watched. I can see why this shocked audience is in 1960, actually, yeah. There's your episode title. It's so nice, isn't it? I can't call it. It knows his thing as Lawrence of a Laibia.

It just falls right into your lap, you know? BBC sounds would have pittance. Okay, before he starred in Lawrence of Arabia. Two years earlier, he played Lawrence of Arabia in a play called Ross. So he played him. And then they were casting for Lawrence of Arabia. And they were said, do you want to be in Lawrence of Arabia? Yeah.

I have a strange name for a movie about Lawrence of Arabia. Yes. You name it after that guy from friends who put flour on his legs. Okay, that is it. That's all of our facts. Thank you so much for listening. If you would like to get in touch with any of us on the show today, Andy, you can be found on. On Twitter at Andrew Hunter M.

James? My Twitter is at James Harkin. You can find out on a stranded train somewhere, or you can get in touch with all of us by emailing podcast. that QI.com or tweeting at no such thing or going to Instagram No Such Thing as a Fish or you can go to no such thing as a fish.com to find all our previous episodes

or links to our tour of Zeworld. And if you don't want to do any of that, you can just come back again next week where you'll find us here. As always, we'll see you then. Goodbye.