No Such Thing As A Fish - No Such Thing As The Gordon Ramsay Songbook

Episode Date: December 4, 2025

Michael Palin joins Dan, James and Andy to discuss roadworks, Reeks, rescues and raspberry ripple. 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 a Fish, where we decided that we would help a new up-and-coming comedian, who is our guest today. Andy, can you remember their name? I can't quite recall. He's called Michael Paulin? Michael Paulin. Yeah, that's what I'm reading here. Oh, I'm sorry. Oh, it's Michael Palin. It's Michael Palin. It's only bloody Michael Palin. From everything from Monty Python onwards. We are so excited to have Michael on the show. We hope you'll enjoy this one. We certainly did recording as you're about to hear. He's amazing. It was such a fun episode. He has a new book out. A lot of the facts that you hear at the start of this podcast will be recounted in that book, but there is so much more besides. And that book is called simply Michael Palin in Venezuela. Michael Palin in Venezuela does exactly what it says on the tin. It's a brilliant book. Dan has read it from cover to cover multiple times. And he tells us that it's

an incredible book so you should definitely go out and get that and if you want to know anything more about michael then go to his website it's michael palin dot com and there's so much on there yeah like you just can't you'll be on there for weeks absolutely and we have club fish which is our super secret private exclusive extraordinary members club you can get add free episodes of fish you can get bonus bits of fish there is a longer version of the episode with michael palin as with every other one. You can get Fish XL. There's so much other stuff and goodies on there. Go and check it out. It's at patreon.com slash no such thing as a fish. But in the meantime, please do enjoy this episode of No Such Thing as a Fish with Michael Palin.

And why not check out some of the other stuff he's done? I've heard it's quite good. I think so. I think so. On with the podcast. On with the show. Hello and welcome to another episode of No Such Thing as a Fish, a weekly podcast coming to you from the QI offices in Hoburn. My name is Dan Shriver. I am sitting here with Andrew Hunter Murray, James Harkin, and Michael Palin. 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 Michael. In the Venezuelan Andes, there's a town called Merida, and it has two entries in the Guinness Book of Records. One is the tallest cable car in the world, and the other is the Eladaria Colomoto, which is an ice cream parlor, which has the record number of ice cream varieties on sale.

860, including avocado, garlic, and trout. Can you imagine that? A trout ice cream, please? Trout ice cream. Oh, daddy, can I have a trout ice cream? Mushroom and wine, Girkin, chili, shellfishes of some time.

You went to Venezuela. Have you been to this town and to this specific ice cream parlor? Well, I haven't been to the ice cream parlor. We were doing various other things. I haven't been up on the amazing cable car, which takes you right up in the mountains. But I know where it was,

the Aladera Corimoto. And it's obviously fallen on hard times. I think it may have been superseded now by some other, probably in China. There's another place that's got more. I really like the sound of, is it, I'm going to pronounce it wrong, Pabillon-Crio, which is a traditional food, but it's five different kinds of ice cream, beef, rice, plantain, cheese, and black beans. So five little scoops with a scoop of chili on top.

Well, on the flip side, they've got Viagra Hope, which is blue like the pills. So maybe those two are tied. Does it have any sort of natural ingredients, perhaps? It's only got honey and something else natural. They don't use anything. We know that everything is an aphrodisiac, really, isn't it? That's what they claim honey's an aphrodisiac for sure.

Kippers are the only thing I know that aren't an aphrodisiac. Are they not? Right. I don't think so. I've had a lot of kippers in my tongue. You know, my legs are main cross. I think you're right, Michael, that it's now not so. 80 flavors anymore. This was the glory days, but when the original owner was still

trading. I think, and it's also been overtaken, not by somewhere in China. It's actually MiG and Mutsk craft creamery in Colorado. Oh, gosh. Well, how many do they do? And do they do garlic? I think it's something. They must have more than 860, so I can't imagine garlic isn't in there. Imagine if you walked in and you said, do you have raspberry ripple and they go, oh, damn it! Yes, exactly. Chocolate. Ooh. But you did do the cable car. Yeah.

Which sounds, I mean, it looks. I mean, I don't really like cable cars where you're floating over a big one. It looks terrifying. I don't really. And they're big gondolas and they take about 40 people. So not only you're hanging from these very slim cables. You've got 40 very large, you know, Venezuelans also traveling with you. But the thing is it's not a continuous ride.

You have to stop at various places and get into another one. And so there are four stages. But it is, I mean, it's amazing if you, imagine if you were some geography teacher, you take a class up there and they can see all the different environments from the river valley with all its agriculture and all that and the city itself to the very top where it's all completely bleak and you end up alongside the highest peak in the Venezuela andes. It's pretty amazing. I read that chapter and I read your book, but in that chapter you talk about it

And you say that it's an hour journey, basically, to get to the top. But in that time, you're traveling basically half the height of Everest. So when you get to the top, the oxygen level has changed vastly, and you're all giddy. And there's all these signs in the gondola that are sort of talking about, you know, how you're feeling? You know, how's the old ticker doing? Is it feeling okay? Yeah. I mean, it's quite extraordinary that people get in downtown, you know, it seems like getting on a bus or something.

And it's quite warm in Merida. and you see these people like party-goers and tiny little girls and slim dresses with sleeveless dresses and all that and short skirts

and they're going up to half the height of Everest I read that it was there because originally there was a ski track there on some ski slopes because there was a big old glacier there

which you could see from the city but now it's gone the dasi has gone in the last two years and they thought well it may return but it's now gone for good so a lot of things

in the cable car saying this is how the planet is changing everywhere you go and Venezuela has no snow anymore. Michael, did you say because I was reading about some of the amazing creatures that live I mean it's a huge country

it's equatorial it's got a lot of amazing wild spaces so there is the Marida cable car frog which you might have seen what? What? Lives in the cable car away. He takes your tickets yes. Hello Oh, you call me frog, please.

It just lives very near the stations of the cable car and it's been found nowhere else, so it's now called... That's very interesting. Sorry to say, is it found at the top and the bottom? So you can imagine that, like, it travels from one place to the other to mate, maybe, or to migrate? That's it. 15,000 feet to mate. That's that.

You've got to really love somebody. They've all got their kippers ready. Honestly, the Assumbra, the great migration of the cable car frog. just all of them in one gondola, just coming up. Okay. The oil bird? Oh, I don't know if you saw this. Yes, actually, I did hear about the oil birds.

I hope it's not, because in the olden days, they used to take oily birds and then use them as candles. I hope it's not that. Yeah. I'm really sorry to say it, James. It is. They did use them as. They had a very high fat content, and I'm afraid it's especially the baby oil birds. Oh, no.

And they basically were burnt down to make oil. But they're an amazing animal. They're the only bird, or one of very, very few birds, which uses echolocation. Yeah. So we're used to that in bats, but they make a stream of high-pitched calls to navigate as they live in very dark caves, and that's how they get around. Another animal they had in Venezuela was a guinea pig, the size of a Fiat 500. Just one?

Did you see that? Did you see that when you were there, Mike? I saw lots of Fiat 500s, but none of them looked like a guinea bird. Yeah, yeah. It didn't have fur all over them at all. I'm afraid it was many. hundreds of thousands of years ago we only know about them because of their teeth

and we've extrapolated the size but they were ten times the mass of the largest living rodent today which is the largest living rodent also in Lender's Way there is it's like Capibara which is apparently the largest living rodent Have you seen one? Yeah yes

you don't look very impressed no they're a bit sort of sad really like they were supposed to be a model for another kind of creature but they didn't get the fitting, so it's just pretty basic, the four legs and a sort of back and a nose, but there's nothing very

distinguished about that. When you went to Peru, did you eat a guinea pig? Because that's like a big delicacy over there, and every market they sell guinea pig and stuff. Not knowingly. No, I mean, seriously, you never know half the time what you're eating. Are you one, when

you go to all the different countries that you like to try different foods that they have and stuff, or are you not really? You'd rather have your kidneys? No, I like to, because it's Part of getting to know people and meeting people is, you know, hospitality offered has to be taken. Otherwise, people get a bit offended. And also there's this feeling, you're going to brawl with a food at Europe.

You're going to fraud. And yet the people in these countries don't want to poison themselves. They're not making bad food. We're wishing there we had McDonald's or something like that. They make strange ingredients. sometimes, but always very, very well cooked. I so wish you were the opposite, that you would go to the ice cream shop and just go, vanilla, please.

Yes, yeah. I think I might have said this before in this show. One of my favourite Beatles facts is that when the Beatles went to India for their great, you know, spiritual awakening and all of this, Ringo Star took a suitcase of baked beans with him, like full chocker block just so he didn't run out of baked beans. I just, I love that. When we did around the 180 days, I remember that. The sound man, Ron, he didn't like foreign food, and we'd got all these tins of canned food.

We end up on a Dow, you know, just very basic. There's no cabins or anything like. You all sleep on deck together. Is that boat, sorry, a boat. A boat, yes, a Dow. So it's a big, the old sailing boat. They use around the African coast and on the Gulf, Persian Gulf and all that. So we got on the thing, and, you know, it comes to the evening and the guys are all fishermen

from India, very, you know, not wealthy at all. And so we get our food out, and they get their food out. And the first thing that gets out is a tuna from Sainsbridge. And it sort of comes out of the can, like a sort of oily mass. It goes boing on to the plate and sort of wobbles there a bit. And it's sweating slightly. I said, right, we're going to have that. And these guys, these wonderful guys, the fisherman, said, you know,

please, I could see that some of us didn't really like this. We're making a curry. We'll share it with you. And they did. And from then on, we always ate what they ate. Yeah. The tins were put to one side. Did Ron stay with the tins?

Right. Yeah. Ron, we threw him overboard. With a tins strapped with him. He sank immediately. Yeah. I noticed, Michael, in your book, that Venezuela is your 100th country that you have visited. Yeah.

More or less, or you think that's... No, I think that's right. I'm a bit of a list nerd, and I've kept a list. You've kept to... Ah, because that's what I was going to ask. You can now do a top 100 of countries of the world that you've visited. Yeah. So where does Venezuela, just off the top of your head, where does that rank?

I was thinking about 93, really. I'm full of positive thoughts about Venezuela at the moment. Oh, sorry. I see what you mean. Sorry. Yeah, no. Sorry. Three.

Three? Or nine. Wow. Yeah, sorry, math is not a strong point. Yeah, so there was an interesting point about the airport when you arrived, which is, I wondered if you were aware of this. This might have stopped now, but you were paying tax in the airport, and one of the taxes that you would pay were for the air you were literally breathing. Oh. Because they tax the air.

It's a ventilation system that they have, and they say we're providing clean air. Wow, just so foreigners, I guess. Yeah, I'm guessing so. Just in the airport. It's not the whole country. No, just a year. And you go, breathe in. And don't read that for three weeks, okay?

You save a lot of money. Because they did have the world record for the lowest petrol price in 2016. Wow. I was trying to look at some other records that Venezuela have had. It was one cent per litre. And at the time, the price in the UK

was 110.7 pence per litre. I was trying to work out if I could do some kind of business where it offset the price of the flight. But it feels like you're going to run into some legal difficulties I think you can try and bring it back in hand luggage or whatever yeah well they do they've got I mean they've got a lot of or we need to brush this episode out basically before America invades so one of the things

that Venezuela has is a lot of oil yeah oh yeah but it's not really it used to supply a lot more to the global market I think it provides less now due to sanctions and sanctions also oil price sort of fell so other countries are producing a lot of a lot more oil yeah but I mean there is more oil still in the ground in Venezuela than any other country. They're not just ringing out oil birds. No, exactly. That's what the oil birds are very pleased, you know.

They're not needed. I found a couple of records that are held as well in Venezuela. This is Guinness World Records. The living person with the largest feet. Oh, really? Yes. The right foot measures at 40.55 centimeters and the left foot at 40.4.7 centimeters. Now, Dan, did you Google Bigfoot Venezuela?

Are these their own feet? It's not someone who just has two extraordinarily large feet that he's managed to. Yeah, no, it's one person with one foot. I read an interview with this guy. Yeah. He said that he realized he had big feet

when he and his friends would often compare their foot sizes and he would come out on top each time. It's like, what are his mates doing? Surely it's always going to be him, the winner. Unless they're clowns and they're just naturally in oversized shoes. That's true.

You can't tell. Does he do something for a living that's foot I don't know what advantage you What is it What would you do If you've got

Very, very large feet I suppose Real life Monty Python opening credits Yeah Yeah Yeah that's true

Stop the podcast Stop the podcast Everyone We'd like to let you know That this episode is brought to you By Airbnb That's right

And James You're a traveller I am Yeah I like a bit of travelling I'll be going away this Christmas and New Year, probably. Well, I tend to go away over the Christmas and New Year so that I can see my family abroad.

That's very nice. But what that means is my house is empty and loads of people want to come to London for New Year, didn't they? Yeah, it's an exciting... It's one of the places to be. Absolutely. So maybe I could help out by putting my house on Airbnb. That's right, and there are a lot of benefits to doing it.

It can really realistically fit around your lifestyle so James, you can exactly select the dates when you're going to be away, visiting that family. It's a really good way to earn a little extra money. And you can put that towards your trip. Maybe put it towards some Christmas presents. What's a good idea. Yeah.

I'm not saying who you have to give those presents to. Oh, you're thinking co-workers. Well, I think that's a, I think it's a very nice tradition, actually, to give your colleagues all a watch. A watch. Yeah. I was panicking there. But it's practical.

It's a smart thing to do. you have this empty home, why not listed on Airbnb? You know what, and you're talking about me as the person in this conversation, but it could be anyone. It could be anyone listening to this. And if you are listening to this, your home may be worth more than you think. And you can find out how much at Airbnb.com.com. Dot-Uk slash host.

That's right. But for now, on with the podcast. On with the show. Okay, it is now time for fact number two. my fact. My fact this week is that in 1949, the BBC issued a company-wide ban on making any rude jokes about solicitors, chambermaids, and one very specific

Irish man called Mr. McGillicuddy. Wow. This one guy. What was so funny about him? There was people who continued to make jokes about this man, Ross McGillicuddy. Of the reeks. Of the reeks. Yes, McGillicuddy's reeks. I've heard of that. Well, there you go. And I imagine

it was fun to Vaj. This is quite a funny name, isn't? He's got a big comedian drawer who got that. So what had happened was there was a comic called Leonard Henry, not Lenny Henry, Leonard Henry, and he'd found the name of McGillicuddy of the Reeks in an Atlas and thought it was a place and then turned it into a comedy person. And then this person who really existed said, well, I never gave you permission to use my name and the BBC had to apologize.

Yeah. And there's still a McGillicuddy of the Reeks to this day. Yeah. His title, and The Reeks is a, I think, a range of, it's an ancestral territory in County Kerry. So there's a range of mountains, which is called The Reeks. And the last evidence I have found of the current Megillicudy of the Reeks is him writing to the Daily Telegraph in 2017 about the price of stamps. He's about 85 now, and I believe he looks after the Earnham herd of cattle. That's the latest news on McGillacudy of the Reeks.

How could you ever laugh at someone like that? He's a serious man. Does he have any administrative powers? I mean, is he like a sheriff or something like that? He might do, because it's sort of... Honoury. It's an honouring thing. You're sort of a chief of family, chief of the name is the term that gets used.

And this, like, senior McGillicuddy of the 1930s and 40s was a big deal. You know, he was an officer of the British army. He was an Irish senator. He was, you know, all sorts of serious. And he just objected very strongly to being joked about. And he did try, he complained. The BBC said, Come on, it's an overplace.

It's a joke. Come on. It's a joke. Just reeks of envy for me. But then he said that he'd never appeared or contemplated appearing before the public for their amusement. So you must apologize immediately at the BBC caved. They did and they produced this thing called the Green Book, unofficially called the Green Book. It was a pamphlet that was sent internally and it was largely sent to people kind of like Spike Milligan

and comedians of that ilk who were writing topical, not topical shows necessarily. but shows that we're going out live weekly. And so it came with a long list of things, jokes about lavatories, immorality of any kind. You couldn't make any suggestive references to honeymoon couples, fig leaves, ladies underwear, baskets. Because baskets could be used as innuendo in sexual relation. A nicely placed basket in a sentence could suggest sex. What? Yeah, it was used as a replacement word, let's say.

I'm sure Shakespeare used baskets in China. He must have said you. Sainsbury's must mean a hotbed. Did you ever come across the censors yourselves, Michael? Yeah, we have some censorship on Python. What did they object to? Were they objected to the word masturbation? Oh, yeah.

I'll give you the context. You just come out and say, oh, we love the latest sketch, Michael. We're not sure it's... It was cut out of the parrot sketch. I am not interested in masturbation No, the context was we did a sort of Northern quiz show on stage thing where people came on stage

and it was a very nice item where people had to sum up Pruss It was officially called the All England Summarised Proust competition They had 15 seconds to summarise Proust Anyway, the ones who comes up and they get a little cheery, Wilfrid Pickle sort of Hello, how are you?

What are your hobbies? And this man's hobbies are strangling animals, golf and masturbating. It was a huge laugh. And anyway, very quickly, the sketch itself, this is one of my favourite bits

because, all right, you've got 15 seconds now, summarise Proust and his masterwork and all the various volumes of Proust were on a sort of thermometer. So he goes, oh, yeah, oh, ah, did it, that, um, berb.

Swan Swan Swon Swon Swon comes along and bing but the BBC said you can't

they reviewed the tape and said you can't say masturbating and so you'll have to cut it out and in those days we were recorded on tape so you had to physically cut the tape so our director said

he cut the thing out the word masturbating but he left the gap which is brilliant so you hear what are your hobby strongly animals golf

huge laugh never has golf got a laugh absolutely colossal laugh and that's a good summary of the life of Proust from what I remember was that he spent

he was in his bedroom for a lot of time very true he was with oil birds possibly I think he was putting pins in mice or something

wasn't he when he was a kid Proust I think so I've never heard of him playing golf and I would know if Proust played golf I would know that It's a shame. I love that there's a great story in your diaries, the Python years, the first diaries, which is that you had obviously the most famous story of censorship and banning

in comedy history, Life of Brian, and all the things that you guys had to do in order to say that this wasn't an attack on religion. It was, you know, Jesus is not being mocked in it was the big thing, right? And you got banned in places like Norway. And in the diary, you point out that in Sweden, the posters read, so funny, it was banned in Norway. Yes. I just think that's fantastic. Yeah. And you, because there was a great moment, because it did get banned in a lot of places from cinema altogether.

And one of those places was in Wales. And that was overturned by the mayor, Sue Jones Davies, who happened to be in the life of Brian. She was Brian's girlfriend, skipping around naked. Oh, yeah. She was the revolutionary leader. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So she suddenly becomes mayor of Averis. And for one night, she says, I'm going to overturn the ban.

That's so funny. And Terry and myself, and her went to the local Odian in Aberystwood with arms links, like, you know, we were on the sort of Thelma March or something like that. And we saw one night of Life of Brian. I think it was banned the night after that. Yeah. I was looking at a few songs that maybe should have been banned, because the BBC had a lot of rules about songs as well.

Yeah. So they banned things like My Generation by The Who? Really? 60s classic That was banned Not because of any profanity It's banned because it has a stammer It was much

Very interesting You know Why don't you Yeah Yeah And that was just like people With a stammer We'll find that

Offensive Interesting Space Oddity By David Bowie Was banned Because it was I think it was Banned until Neil Armstrong

Had safely got back to Earth Oh really At Al Armstrong and Collins Because they thought Oh it's a bit It's a bit sensationalist

Oh okay Yeah He's stuck in Tin can, of course. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. But there's this whole, there's this whole genre of songs called Dirty Blues from the 20s and 30s, which are all sort of, they're all black singers, many women, but the lyrics

and the song titles are so extraordinarily rude that I can't believe the songs are released, basically. So I just want to give you a few of them. Go for it. Please warm my wiener. I mean, they're single entendres, basically. Yeah, they are single entangular, but. Get them from the peanut man

Brackets, hot nuts Lil Johnson was one of the women singing these Let Me Roll Your Lemon Sort of just about a double entendre My stove is in good condition Any news of her basket Anybody want to buy my cabbage That's not rude

Well the way she sings it is very You sound like sort of Gordon Ramsey songbook Really Margaret Carter There were all Actually there are loads of cooking ones So Margaret Carter had I want plenty grease in my frying pan

Yeah And Memphis Mini had I'm selling my pork chops But I'm giving my gravy away Which has lost me completely Is that like my milk shape Brings all the boys to the yard I think it is but with more pork

You think it's sort of Yeah More sex took place in the kitchen Than anywhere else That sounds like it Yeah yeah Do you know whose was the first song banned from the BBC. It's someone you've all heard of.

So, okay. 1933. 1930. Adolf Hitler. With his. With his. Chancellor's Waltz. 33.

Someone we've all heard of. Someone you've all heard of. Someone from my part of the world. George four. I was about to say George Foreman. George Formby. George Formby. Yeah.

Yeah. His song with my little ukulean hand was banned. But he was a real double entendre merchant, wasn't he? Yeah. Like one of his songs, My Little Stick of Blackpool Rock goes, it may be sticky, but I never complain. It's nice to have a nibble of it now and again. Oh, is that.

They're all the whole entourage all the way through. Very interesting. There was a number one hit in the UK, which was a very famous song, Jeetem. Oh, yeah. Serge Gainsburg, Jane Birkin. That was banned as well. I read this in The Monkey Diaries, Jane Burkyn's Diaries. Other diaries are available.

and the problem that they had was it got too popular it got so popular that it made it to number one and so in order to be able to play it within the charts they had to get an orchestral version of it and just play it completely without any voice at all because it wasn't even the lyrics it was the moaning that was the big problem of the song it was a breathing wasn't it was that thing yeah and all these

my generation all this is why Radio Caroline became a big thing was that pirate? Offshore pirate radio because no one was playing any of these songs. Yeah. I've got one last one, which I find pretty amazing, which is King Charles. I didn't realize he was part of the reviews in Cambridge when he was there.

He did footlight smokers, and he was part of them. What does that mean? So people... Get up on stage and you do sort of funny things, don't you? Yeah, exactly. It's like comedy stuff. It's comedy stuff. It's a smoker.

Smoking room. You and Terry Jones were in Oxford, but Eric Idol and... John Cleese and Graham Chapman would have been part of the Cambridge Footlights, you know, beyond the fringe, all that. And so he was part of the Cambridge Footlights. And there's a story that goes that they were not allowed to make fun of him or his family while he was part of the Footlights, which is pretty amazing.

And he did a few reviews. He was on stage quite a lot. He was in the Magic Circle as well, wasn't he, when he was Prince Charles? Yeah. Well, you guys with me when I did a tour of The Magic Circle. I can't remember who was down. No, we weren't allowed it. Well, we went there and they told us about when,

because you have to do a trick to get into the magic circle, and he did the bowls trick, like the cups and balls. Apparently, not the best person who's ever done it, but they decided that it was good enough for him to join them out. The answer to the throne. You don't say, sorry, come again next week. Yeah, yeah. I can make your head disappear, actually.

So he took part in two reviews. One was called Revolution with a you instead of the O in the middle. and quietly flows the dawn. And so you weren't allowed to make any jokes about him or royalty, but also the first play got in a bit of trouble in 1969 because they were putting it on a Sunday. And the Lord's Day Observance Society got in touch and said, absolutely not.

So it's basically a society looking out for anything going on on a Sunday that shouldn't be. I really think about them is they can only work on Sundays. You can't do anything on a Saturday, right? Yes, exactly. But, yeah, apparently it was quite odd because, you know, when he was on stage, they would sell tickets to the smokers, as they were called, the performances that you could go to. And they would fielding calls from Japan saying,

how many tickets are available? We have a full plane load of tourists who were ready to fly over to see the Prince and performance. Well, there we are. He's still performing, isn't he really? Is it? He is. Isn't he? What he learned for the footlights?

Probably very useful for public life, you know, meeting people. And the magic circle. He made Prince Andrew. appear? Yes. Okay, it's time for fact number three, and that is Andy. My fact is, the rescue team who tried to find the Lost Franklin Expedition did so with rockets, kites, flashing lights, gunshots, horns, drums, and by putting

collars on Arctic foxes. Wow. It didn't work, we should say, sadly. Were the collars, was this before they had sort of radio equipment? I mean, you just put the collars on. There was no recording device. Yeah, 100%. So what they did, this is in the 1840s and 50s.

This expedition, which you've written about, Michael, went north over Canada. They were trying to find a shorter route through the Arctic because that would be amazing for shipping. This fabled thing called the Northwest Passage, and it would cut thousands of miles off. So this is before the Panama Canal, right? Yes, it is. So they previously had to go all the way down South America. Exactly. And it's just a very, very long route to sail from Europe to Asia, basically.

So if you could find the, if you could find the Northwest Passage, it would be a huge boon to mankind. And this exhibition went out, the Franklin expedition, two ships, terror and Erebus. They went missing. And a lot of search parties went out for them. Some sources estimate more than 30 search missions went out. And one of them... Mostly financed by his wife, I have to say, she was absolutely determined that she could find him. And everyone was saying, no, it's too late now, he's dead.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And one of them decided to put collars on foxes, Arctic foxes, wild fox cubs, which had the coordinates of where they were, saying, we are looking for you, this is where we are based, and they just released the foxes into the wilds. And it was clever, it didn't work.

I mean, the foxes, I imagine, just the survivors. There's nobody there to read them. No, exactly. And they're all Inuit, so they wouldn't say, you know, what does this mean? Yeah, yeah, so read that. It simply did not work. That's a fascinating fact, though, because they did some very strange things at that time.

There was a kind of hysteria to try and find him in a refusal to admit that they might be dead because they basically completely got it wrong. The whole expedition was given enormous amounts of money. They had lots of wine on board and libraries and all that sort of thing. And they just took a wrong turn and got stuck down a sort of a fairly narrow stretch of water where it was quite an extreme winter then and that froze and they were stuck so they drank all the wine

and said well when the spring comes it'll melt and it'll go off the spring it didn't melt there was two or three years of the worst and the coldest winters up in the Northwest Passage so basically we just stuck there for about two years ran out of food

went out and try and get the trade with the Inuit but they didn't do that very well because no one had actually done the research and saying well how do we speak to Inuit the people who live there so when it came to wanting to be helped by those people they couldn't do it whereas later Amundsen or someone like that

who was very much a sort of you know know the ground you're on sort of traveller he always knew to ask the local people so it was a bit arrogant really frankly next but were they a bit unlucky with the weather like if they had gone a few years later yeah I mean I think it was there's these two very, very cold winters.

But they'd also, if they'd gone a slightly different route and not gone down, they took like a shortcut. And then it got trapped. And the ice is obviously stronger when you've got a confined space. So if they've gone a bit further ahead where there's more open water, they might have got through. The absolute disappointment of the ice not melting that spring.

It must have been enormous. It must be nearly spring now. Yeah, yeah. So you wrote a brilliant book about Erebus. And you went and visited a lot of these places as well. I mean, it's pretty fascinating that it was lost for so long, only found in 2014. Yeah. I mean, that's remarkable.

The Inuit at the time in the late 19th century, people went out there, said they had seen a ship, the mast of a ship. They knew exactly where it was. But because they only had an oral tradition, didn't write things down, people thought, well, they're just saying that. And they didn't follow it up. And in the end, Erebus was found almost exactly where they had said 100 years before. Ask the local residents, what is going on. Afraid so, yes.

It's a real sort of imperial sort of attitude you have. No, no, you don't know. You just lived here for 500 years. We know. I think we, the 31st expedition, we just want us to find them without any help from you guys. Thank you. Collared wolves, you go!

I should say where I saw, I've seen one of these collars in the flesh. It's so exciting. A few of us... With words on it. Yeah, really. And the coordinates. And it's behind the scenes at the Royal Geographical Society,

which I believe you have been president. I was president for three years. Yeah. And they have, in the back rooms, they have these amazing collections of extraordinary stuff, you know, because it was founded in 1830 and basically contributed to founding geography as a discipline. Geography is a much newer area of study than many others.

So it's an incredible place, and they've got these collars there. It's amazing to say. Very cool. The thing is, which is quite interesting, I think, that one of the many attempts to sort of find out where they were was a ship called HMS Resolution. That was about sort of five years out they left.

And the desk from the captain's cabin, HMS Resolution, is the desk in the White House. Oh, in the office? In all the White House offices. I have heard it called the Resolution Desk. I've not found what the... That came from the search for Franklin. Isn't Trump just trying to turn that into a solid gold desk?

He'll be guilty of. He'll be gulting that right now. Yeah. I read that they took 8,000 tins of food for the voyage. Sound like Ron. It sounded like you're wrong. Yeah. And no bloody tin open.

Oh, come on. We could ask the locals, no, no. And 7,88 pounds of tobacco, which, according to my calculation, in today's money, would be enough for 3 million cigarettes. Wow. Which is really enough, isn't it? But, yeah, I think a lot of people thought that the tins were the problem. Right. So a lot of the men went away from the ship, maybe to try and find the way off somewhere.

But they walked away with a load of stuff they wouldn't really need, like button polish and curtain rods sort of writing desk and stuff. Yeah, exactly. And people thought, well, maybe they went mad. And I think now we do think that there was some lead poisoning. And for a long time, they thought it was the tins of food because they were soldered with lead. Now I think we're not quite so sure it might have been because the pipes in the boat had lead in them. because the levels of lead was so high that it couldn't just be leached from the tens. How interesting. It was about 150 men in total? 129, I believe. Okay, right.

Like all hands on both ships. Not one of them survived. Yeah, and is this right, Michael? I read this and it sounded too wild to be true to me. But is it the case that when you went out looking and writing the book that there's bits where in the snow, their footprints are sort of fossilized that you can see them in the ground? Um, I don't know.

I mean, you can see there are graves, the first people who died. Right. Um, I'm not sure about the first. Okay, yeah, it felt weird. Yeah, I've been surprised it for football, but unless it was that Venezuelan guy with a massive face. Yes, he had known that, but 24 yards across, we died of large feet. Unable to cut his toenails, probably needed some lumberjacks to get in there.

But they did find a lot of very well-preserved. bodies, I believe. And I don't know if they are, I think they must have been dug up, but bodies were found in 1984 incredibly well preserved. And you could see they had blue eyes. So there was a crew member called John Torrington who was found 138 years after he died. But he was put on People magazine's list of the most intriguing people of 1984. Really? Yeah, yeah. Wow. Bit of posthumous recognition, which I suppose is nice. But you are on ice. You know, that's what they say about places like Everest. cryogenic sort of situation.

Like when they found Mallory's body. Mallory's body was just still Mallory's body. They didn't get that many. Not many that many were brought back, actually. We should say Lady Franklin as well. Yeah. So John Franklin was the commander of the whole mission. Yes, yeah, exactly, yeah.

And I think there were questions about whether he was suitable, whether he was the best man for the job. Absolutely. For a start, Franklin wasn't the first person they wanted to lead it. They wanted James Clark Ross to lead it, because he had an extraordinary success in Antarctica in 1841 and stood on places that no human being had ever been before. But he didn't want to do it quite rightly.

And so he got Franklin because he was quite old at the time. It was nearly 60, but he everyone liked him. He was all right. He was being in effectual, nice bloke, knew everybody. Yeah, come on do it. And his wife, who was very dynamic, must have pushed him forward. And I said, my husband's available. And here he is.

John, come in. On the other hand, I read that James Ross, one of the reasons he declined is because he promised his wife that he wouldn't go to any more polar expeditions. So it's all, we're blaming the wives for the whole thing. That's such a great detail. No, I promised my wife the Arctic. If he's just done four years to go to the Antarctic, it's reasonable. Where are you going?

Just to the Antarctic. Lady Franklin was very smitten with James Clark Ross because it was a sort of dashing character. At all Yeah, yeah That's why the wife didn't want him Going off to the other Yeah

Actually, it doesn't say that it was his wife Who didn't want him to go right Wow That's really interesting So James Clark Ross Led one of the expeditions And that was the one that put the collars on the foxes Really?

That was the Yeah And Lady Franklin did all the lobbying Didn't she? She said we must send out Search parties It's quite moving She wrote him letters for eight years

years after he departed and you know the large majority of that time he would have died no one knew for sure but what would happen to those letters would they just be kept in her house or would she post them and send them to Canada maybe she would have had them indexed yeah and looked after well yeah she had an assistant a woman who worked with her and they organized the whole sort of rescue business down to the last detail you know so the letters I'm sure and everything that she'd written would be kept. That's the other thing, right? Where they were going, there was no postbox, right?

They didn't take a postbox with them. They should have done, in the true imperial spirit. We're going to put the first postbox at the North Park. I can imagine the postman coming to collect those. Definitely wearing shorts. Yes, that's right. No collection on Sundays. Yeah.

Oh, the Lord's Day Observant Society have been in touch. Okay, it's time for our final fact of the show, and that is James. Okay, my fact this week is that in Bologna, there is a word, umarol, which describes a grumpy pensioner who stands with his hands behind his back complaining about roadworks. Yeah, the dream. The dream. For me, the dream life. We'll all end up there eventually, Andy. You a lot earlier than others, I'm sure.

Andy's there. So this is. is a term that was coined in 2005 by a writer called Danilo Masotti. And he had noticed that there was a lot of people doing this in Bologna, and they've decided that it's going to be a thing, and they've really embraced it. And now, if you go to Bologna and they do roadworks, the people who are doing the work will talk to the Omeralls.

When they finish some works, they'll put a sign-up saying where they're going to be next week so that the Omeroles can go and see them. And there was a very good way of institutionalising grumpiness. Good way of dealing with it. And there was an Burger King advert in 2016 about these guys. And in 2021, the word entered the official Italian dictionary. Incredible. So this is a real proper thing now.

Isn't it, Omarol sounds really nice and, well, it sounds like a laxative, to be honest. No, it's a very glamorous term for grumpy old men. Yeah, but also it doesn't sound very Italian, I think. Umarale. Umarale. Umarale. Umarale, I think. That's the way he pronounced.

Oh, yeah. But he's, uh, it comes from a Bolognian, like, regional dialects word meaning little guy. Oh. So is it, are they annoying to the builders? Are they looking through the fence and they're saying, I wouldn't put it there. If I, I wouldn't put that R.S.J. there if I were you. I think it all depends on the attitude of the builders.

Okay. I think some of the builders embrace it and like them and it's someone's chat to and, and, you know, they use the knowledge of, people who have maybe done this job before or know about it and then there are other builders who go off my building site. A lot of these guys will be retired. I love all that. Yeah, no, no, don't

put it through to Houston. Oh, all right. We've made the tunnels well, you should have asked us. I just think a lot of these guys are going to be retired solicitors or people who are not builders. There's a lovely thought that they kind of stand with their arms behind their backs, you know?

Like a sort of that's a costume. In Villa Santa, which is near Monza in the north of Italy, they have officially used these umaroles and the local government have spoken to them and said, right, you can stand next to this bit of roadworks and let us know if anything's wrong. So they're like professional omaroles. That's all right.

The snitches as well, basically. Yeah, that's true. That's largely one. But I found online, you can get a 3D printed model of an ummerole for your desk and the idea is you just pop him here and he will look there at work you're doing

that is brilliant ideas you'll get a lot more done because you're so frightened that he's going to complain it's lovely it's so sweet I feel like I would very happily even if because I don't speak the language just listen to a live stream

of just the old men yeah yeah and I think the theory is a lot of these guys well they're all retired and I think part of the theory is their wives do not want them around the house all day So very much like Lady Franklin, they've said, why don't you pop out and discover the North West Passage slash. And quite often what they'll do is they'll go in the morning, have their cappuccino, sit around, chat about the football scores or whatever.

But then once it comes to mid-morning, what do you do then? Right? And there's a lot of roadworks happening, so you go and tut. They sort of sound a bit like superannuated train spotters, really. Yeah? Rather more glamorous in Italian way, you know. They wouldn't be nerdy. train spotters in Italian

which sort of had have seen all the Fellini movies I do really hope that you're just mentioning Franklin that there were a group of Inuit old men just standing around the era of us I wouldn't go down that I wouldn't go down that body of water sorry mate

back up Michael this you're doing a live show at the moment and one of the themes is aging disgracefully right as part of a... Yeah, yeah, that sort of this, yes. Does that appeal, the idea of Ulmeral to be... Yeah, I mean, I'd like to be a bit more active.

But I think you just keep going. And there's two ways of approaching age. One is to sit in a chair and the other is become fanatically busy and just say, I've just got to have things to do all the time. So I kind of, you know, otherwise it's completely boring. But some people choose one, some people choose the other. There's another term that I really like. The window side tribe, they're known as, in Japan. And it means an employee who at work is quite old, and they can't really get them to do what they used to do.

So they sort of sideline them. They just give them a desk by the window, and they don't really do anything anymore. So it's apparently the other dream. Yeah. It's quite big in Japan. They just, rather than firing or retiring someone, they just take away all the responsibilities, put them by the window, and just say, all right, just keep going. That's called executive producer in the BBC. But it's true that most other countries have a more enlightened attitude to ageing. They think it's valuable that people get older.

I mean, most tribal societies, you're the top man if you live. The more you know, the more experience you can pass on to others. So the idea of care homes here is quite sad, really. Yeah, I quite like, like, you know, getting involved in a heist. for example, in your older years. The fascinating story from a few years ago

that the greatest, largest burglary in English history was committed by people in their 70s. The oldest guy was 76. Was the Hat and Garden one? Which is just pretty astonishing. They went down an elevator shaft. They drilled through. They stole millions of pounds worth of stuff.

I didn't know they were that old. They had a combined age of 500. They just old bloke from the pub, you know. Let's go out and do it for real. Yeah. And they had a history. of having done quite a few heists in the past over a long career.

But they're being scripted by Richard Osmond. It just feels like quite a... One of them got to the heist on a bus using his pensioners pass. Ironically, his freedom pass. Yes, yes, yeah. But then what do you do with the money, really? Well, we never got to find out because they...

You haven't got less of your life to, you know, you've gone a few years to spend it. Some of it's still missing, isn't it? It is quite a lot of it, yeah. Really? So, and they're all going to come. out at some stage. We need to look for a care home that has installed, you know.

Gold taps. Gold taps. Vegas-style fountains. That'll be it. It's called the Trump home. Yeah, exactly. Well, there's one mystery man still missing who's called Basil. And there's a 20,000 pound reward on the end.

Bazzle! Yeah. Good. Did you find in the course of this the word gongusler? No. Yeah. It's basically the British Umarol. It's someone who stands and watches.

his activity on a canal quite specifically. Is this voyeuristic or just the canal activities that happen near me is basically graffiti taking drugs. Oh really? Are they hotbeds of vice?

I didn't know that. Well, I'm used to the genteel southern Kennet and Avon canals and places like that where it's just simply watching the locks. Well, the Leeds Liverpool, I can tell you. Drug-free canals. Yeah.

And loads of joyriders on the Leeds Liverpool Canal going at four miles an hour. I was reading a little about Britain's self-styled dullest man because this is about standing around Anyway, I'm very proud to have been nominated I'm thrilled actually No, I think he's called Kev And he was featured in The Guardian a couple of years ago

Because he's the man behind roundabouts of Redditch Oh, okay Calendar which did enormously well about 20 years ago And has led to a number of other works you know roundabouts of great Britain car parks of Britain well he's blown it hasn't he you know you can't be dull if you've been in the

Guardian and you've got 12 books out I know he sort of has he founded the car park appreciation society claims to be the only member but I did have a look and tried to join and I don't I think it's a closed shop I'm not sure he's admitting and he said my three ex-wives found me dull not in the bedroom but in every other part

of the house Oh dear Hey apparently There's been a study done by a professor in Brighton Who says the people that you shouldn't listen to about longevity There's one group of people you shouldn't listen to Ooh I would guess centenarians

Yeah people age 100 and more Why? Their advice is just terrible They're like, I ate one boiled egg And nothing else for 70 years It's always detail that has no relevance What they have is probably very good genes and they've managed to survive

despite the vices that they've taken in and the hot vice and the oil bag every day and the cocaine that goes with it, sorry I forgot to add I always find that the idea that people are 107 and they have well, I have three whiskeys every night and I think that's great

is this really true? I mean it's anything that's kept me drinking whiskey and I've got to 82 oh All right, well, time to wrap up. Michael's died. Okay, that is it. That is all of our facts.

Thank you so much for listening. If you'd like to get in contact with any of us about the things that we've said over the course of this podcast, we can all be found on our online social media accounts. I'm on at Schreiberland on Instagram, James. My Instagram is Nosey's thing as James Harkin. Andy.

Mine is at Andrew Hunter. Michael, do you have one? Social media account of any kind? You've got a great website. I don't have a social media account, I don't think. What would it be? Probably Michael Palin. Yeah, dull man. Dahlman, too. Dahlman seeks work.org. Yeah, but Michael Palin.com, I believe it is, if you go to your website. Venezuela is out now in Hardback as a book. It's also a TV series that you can find that was on Channel 5. And if you want to get through to any of us on the show, Podcasts at QI.com, that's our email address. Send us a message there.

Tell us extra facts about Venezuela, about ice creams you've tasted, all that stuff. And some of those messages are going to make their way to our bonus episode, drop us a line, which is where we read out all of your facts and emails. You can find that as part of Clubfish. That's our secret members club. So just go to No Such Thing as a Fish.com. You'll find all the details there. And come back again next week because we'll be back with another episode.

We will see you then. Goodbye. You know what I'm going to do.