No Such Thing As A Fish - No Such Thing As The Man-Trap Of Walford

Episode Date: May 13, 2022

James, Anna, Andrew and special guest Lucy Porter discuss Korean aging, Chinese quizzing, Dot Wordsworth and Dot Cotton.  Visit nosuchthingasafish.com for news about live shows, merchandise and more episodes.

Hi everyone, welcome to this week's episode of No Such Thing as a Fish. Daniel Schreiber is not here this week. He has gone to a place that shares a name with something you might take to the beach with you. And if you listen to the rest of this episode, you'll be able to work that out. But anyway, the main thing is that Dan is not here this week. And so we needed someone to replace him. And who have we got? We have the most incredible guest.

It is comedian Lucy. Porter. You'll absolutely love her on this week's podcast. And at the end, you're definitely going to want to check out all of her stuff. And that would include Fingers on Buzzers, which is a podcast she does all about quizzing with my good friend and the fixon from the TV show, The Chase, Jenny Ryan. Lucy has also got a brand new stand-up show called Wake Up Call. She's taking it to the Edinburgh fringe this year, and then she'll be touring the UK in 2023. If you want to go and see that, I definitely recommend you do that, then go to lucy porter.com.com. And you can find out more about Lucy.

Anyway, I'm certain you're going to really, really enjoy this podcast. We had such a good time making it. And what else is there to say, apart from on with the podcast? Hello and welcome to another episode of No Such Thing as a Fish, a weekly podcast, coming to you from the QI offices in Covent Garden. My name is Andrew Hunter Murray and I'm joined this week by James Harkin, Anna Tijinsky, and special guest, it's Lucy Porter. And once again, we have gathered around the microphones with our four favourite facts from the last seven days. And in no particular order, here we go.

Starting with Lucy. My fact is that if you were a baby born in Korea in December 2020, you could be one, two or three years old. Just take your pick? Yeah, multiple choice. Just be with it. I am very keen on being able to manipulate your age. There's so many people in show business I are. But I had never heard of this until I was watching Ultimate Beast Master,

which is my favourite of the competitive obstacle course shows. What? Everyone's got to have a favorite Ultimate Beast Master. Ultimate Beast Master. Is it like Sakeh's Castle? It is. It's like, yes, it's a big beast. And there was a Korean contestant on that.

And talking about his kid and he went, oh, well, he's two in Korean age. And I was like, what is Korean age? And it turns out that in Korea and other parts of East Asia, there is a different numbering system for age. So the Korean system, which is when you're born, you're a year old, right? The minute you come out, that's your first birthday, which makes sense because your first birthday is your first birthday. So then you gain another year every new year. day. So effectively what that means is everybody gets a year older on the same day, which I like the idea of that because I think birthdays are depressing when you wake up and you're maybe a little

bit hung over, certainly a bit tired after your birthday, and you're another year older. Whereas in Korea, everybody celebrates on the same day. But then it'd be hard to get a table in TGI Fridays, wouldn't it? If everyone had a birthday on the same day. Yeah, the soul branch. Also, you've literally you just had to buy everyone Christmas presents and then you have to buy an entire new raft of birthday presents. Oh yeah. Well, you'd get two for one, wouldn't you? I mean, it would be... I suppose you can cheat it like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So there's one system where you get a new birthday, a new year every new year's day. There's another system, which is the new year birthday where you are no years old when you're born. You have your first birthday after a year,

and then you do the thing where you add a year on New Year's Day. Or, of course, they also use the international system where you just turn one year older on your actual birthday. birthday. Wow. So that means you can have three different birthdays. So confusing. Or ages, three different ages. But I was to think, did anyone else you to think it was so unfair that people born

on a leap year like my granny, remember she was born on 29th Feb? And I thought that meant she would live four times longer than the rest of us. Because we'd always say, you know, oh, Gamma's only 15 years old. That's so interesting. Then I used to get so annoyed. And actually, she has not lived, it turns out, four times longer than everyone else. That is a shame. That is a real shame.

But there was a study, wasn't there, of three, four and five-year-old children asking them about, you know, changing your age and birthdays and stuff. And quite a large percentage of them thought that when you had a birthday, that was when you got older. And so if you had like three birthday parties in a week, you would gain three years straight away. Terrifying. Children, these four-year-olds. Idiots. They're all idiots.

Well, the Queen two birthday thing, I would. always was when I was a kid I was very jealous as you would be. Why do you get two birthdays? Because my birthday is the end of January which is a rubbish time. You should get to choose when your birthday shouldn't you? Well the reason apparently the Queen has her birthday, the two birthdays was it was George II who had a November

birthday and he was like well the weather's always miserable so I'll move it to June or whenever it is. Oh really? Yeah but she actually has loads because she has the official birthday, the actual birthday and then New Zealand, Canada, Australia. We've mentioned once, James worked out that she's actually 79,000 years old. If you've had all her birthdays,

she was definitely in the high hundreds. It was 669, I think, birthdays. I think this is what's happened to me is that I've actually, I've aged in dog years somehow. We all consider you royalty, so I think that might have come across. The grand old dame of her, I've actually had 5806 birthdays, In Korea they even find this confusing, don't they?

To the extent that they are apparently changing it. Although I don't know if they will. President-elect, who I think might be president by the time this podcast goes out, President Yun, he says he plans to abolish it, and 71% of Koreans are in favour of abolishing it because they're confused. And also when you have things like the retirement age, sometimes... There was a thing with COVID, wasn't there, where you were getting your injections at a certain age,

but they didn't say. whether it was your career and age or your international age or whatever and so people were kind of gaming the system. Yeah. Well, I suppose as well for things like if you're, you know, on the cusp of being able to drink booze or... Yeah? I remember when I was young and I used to, I didn't like to lie because I'm very Catholic, guilty. So if I was asked for my age when I was trying to buy booze illegally, I would say, oh, well, I am in my 18th year.

Wow. That's very clever. Has anyone ever full for it? No, of course not. No. Because I sounded like I was a Victorian. I'm in my 18th year. You're either a time traveler or you're only 150.

Well, the other thing for Koreans is difficult is that you greet people and talk to people differently depending on their age. So you do actually need to know how old people are because that will affect how you talk to them. So if you're saying happy birthday to someone, if they're your age or younger, you say Sang Ilchuk Ha He. if they're a little bit older than you, you say Sang Il Chukha Heyyu. And if they're much older than you, you say Sangil dukha, too, yeah. I was so confident at the beginning. Do you know that's a witch doctor? It's a bit of that, wasn't that?

I apologize to our Korean listeners. But that itself seems absolutely ripe with the potential for offence. because if you're someone's older than you. Well, here you just get someone the very insulting card and that's how you do it. You've got a horrible card that you see in the shops. Racks and racks of these cards saying, you old bastards.

I've no idea who's buying them. I've never bought. I always just go for one with a dog on the front or something, but they have mean cards. Well, it is women overwhelmingly buy greetings cards, don't they? But they buy them for men to give. So apparently it's, like I'm going to make up a statistic because why not?

Like you don't care about facts, guys, right? But like 80% of greetings cards are bought by women. So it's women buying really, you know, cards for their husbands to give to people they really don't like. But not back to them to give to other members of the family or friends or whatever. Because you wouldn't go to a shop. If you were buying something for your husband to buy for you, you wouldn't buy, dear old bastard.

I dare you to give this to me. We may have mentioned this before. that women buy almost all the candles made on the planet. 98% of candles made in the world of all by women. And is it true, Lucy, that women buy horrible candles for their husbands to give people, you know, smelling of burning tires and stuff like that? The last candle I bought smelled like Jeremy Clarkson's balls.

Is that meant to or did you just give it a sniffing thing? I know that. Yeah, I was like, I recognise that smell. It was like a Madeline moment. Yeah, a whole. anecdote there that we need to hear. It's from his farm thing. Gwyneth Paltrow's range has really

expanded, hasn't it? They've united. It's a natural partnership, Guinefaxon and Jeremy Clarkson. Anyway, South Korea. In 2017, they became the highest life expectancy in the world. So a girl who was going to be born, let's say, in

2025 or 2030, would expect to live to about 91, we think. Men probably around 84. Now, the reason I saw in an article that they're living so long, possibly kimchi is very good for you. Fmented food. Femmented food. Another thing, they said hypochondria.

Apparently, only 35% of Koreans believe they're in good health. And so they all go to the doctors a lot. And apparently that's one reason why they live a long time. But I also thought that obviously we're adding two years to their age. Yeah, I mean, we have no idea how old these people are. Let's be honest. They are very much, you know. Do you remember we did a story?

a couple of years ago, Doris Day found out that she was two years older than she thought. She was turning 93 and so to sort of celebrate her birthday, Ohio's Office of Vital Statistics looked into her life and stuff and uncovered and uncovered and uncover some cool stuff about her. One of the things they uncovered was that she wasn't born

in 1924 as though she thought she was born in 1922. So she found that she was 95. In Busan as well, isn't it? It turned out she was Korean now. You can't tell how, so Doris Day couldn't have told how old she was by going in a scanner or something because I was reading about this it's so hard to tell how old people are based on their bones so there are lots of arenas where it's tested like dental scans and the other thing

is wrist bones apparently this is a way of measuring but it's not very accurate because when do you think you get your adult wrists I thought that I had the wrist now that I think men get them about 13 or 14 just in time I genuinely thought I had the wrists now that I was born with James, you're not Popeye. Because James's got quite powerful wrists, you know. Do I? Well, yeah. But what I thought.

So you're born with a wrist. I mean, you know, I know babies are floppy, but you can drop out first. The body comes up. Look, all of you. Basically, wrists can reach maturity, which is where the bones are fused in a particular way, as young as the age of 15. But on average, it's 17.6 years. That, you know, that's the average age that wrists,

mature, but it completely varies. So most children do have adult wrists, as it were, before they are actually adults. So that is a bad way of telling. So I didn't actually realize that I wrist fused differently as adults to as children. I assume they were just the same as the rest of us and gradually grew.

But do they transform into grown-up wrists? Yeah, they do. They develop more serious wristwatches. That's the way you can tell. The old Mickey Mouse watch falls off and a new timex or something grows in its place. Yeah. No, just like bones, fuse.

Like your collarbone, for example. That's the last bit of your body. It's the last bit of your body, yeah. Yeah. Interesting. But then also, even if you can tell that they're probably over 15 or whatever, you can't tell anything beyond that by the wrist, can you? So everyone's either under 15 to 17 or over 15 to 17 if that's how you're aging people.

And also, you've had to cut off their hand. This is going to make getting into nightclubs very important. It's pretty controversial. Put your hand in here. Like with fish, you can tell with their ears, right? They have little otter lifts in their ears. Yeah. they get an extra, you know, it's like a tree ring kind of thing and you can count the rings.

But we don't have that is what you're saying. That's what I'm saying. You know, happy birthday. Yeah. Because I don't know if we mentioned that it was illegal for, it wasn't illegal for ages. It was copyrighted for ages. Yeah, but people in, yeah, people in TV shows and films would sing. Yeah, exactly.

Happy birthday, do you. Yeah, exactly. We're just sort of how it gets sung anyway. Yeah. It was even illegal to sing it in a made-up language. I like it so much. There was an episode of Star Trek where they were going to sing a happy birthday in Klingon. And they checked it out and they thought, no, we can't do that one to pay thousands of dollars to, you know, Warner Chippelhoa.

So they replaced it with, for he's a jolly good fellow in Klingon. I read something the other day on Twitter. And I think it was Jason Haisley who tweeted this, but it could have been Joel Morris. But they basically said that when you sing happy birthday, the first note you sing is the lowest note you will ever sing. and that's really useful to know because when you get to the end it's too high and you know if you started too high

then you can't reach that last note but if you know that the first one is the lowest you can start really low and by the time you get to the end you'll be able to sing it properly did anyone else genuinely think that James meant it's the lowest note you'll ever sing in your life

the only way you can reach those depths is the note that makes people pooed themselves that's scientifically proven it makes for a very awkward birthday parties. Okay, it's time for fact number two, and that is Anna. My fact this week is that in 2018, a new quiz show was launched on Chinese primetime TV where all the answers were about Xi Jinping.

It feels like an easy quiz. Now the quickfire round, instant buzz. Or if you're doing blockbusters, which X? Well, he's lived a long time now. I think he's done quite a lot. So there's a lot of stuff to memorize there. But yeah, it managed to last for five full episodes of Shijimping-based trivia. It wasn't cancelled.

It can't have been cancelled because the ratings were like, I don't think. Yeah, yeah, it wasn't cancelled after five. With the questions like, which premiere from China looks nothing like Winnie the Pooh. It was quite similar to that. Some people would say it was embarrassingly brazen. So this was on Hunan TV, which is. China's most popular TV channel for young people and it's called Studying Xi in the New Era

and it was about understanding his thought and memorising bits of his speeches and knowing interesting facts about his life and the questions were things like and they all got it right so I think Well you would wouldn't you? I mean you would The ones who got it wrong

We now move to sudden death I watched a quiz over Christmas and it was a Harry Potter quiz and it was loads of teams and they were all massive Harry Potter nerds no one got a single question wrong in the whole show like one person would get one question wrong and then that would be the end because no one else

would get anything wrong was that co-ced up by Helen Mirren? I don't recall. I read about it and there wasn't sort of Harry Potter tournament Hogwarts thing. Because you ask young people about anything they're interested in and they know everything about it that's the beauty of being young and having a memory,

isn't it? Yes, exactly. It's an absolutely pointless. It reminds me of when Andy Oshow was on Mastermind, the brilliant comedian Andy Oshow, and her specialist subject was John Humphreys, who was the host at the time. And it was brilliant.

Get in his head. Is there an advantage to getting in his head? I guess so. Well, I mean, it's a very strange place to be his head. I mean, I did mastermind when he was the host, and we had to, you know, you do like the banter, and it was a very strange chat. Really?

Really? They edited out a lot of it, yeah. Can I ask about, I mean, we'll come back to that. Can I ask quickly about the Andy Oshow? thing, when he phrased the questions, did he ask about himself in the third person? Or did he say, what a, what a color of my pants? Do you know, I can't remember, actually? Or did he keep it professional? What color of John?

One reason. Anyway, so, Xi Jinping is, I'm sure he's very embarrassed about this program and just can't leave. They made it about him. And it feels dreadful that they've had to do it. But it does feel a bit like a propaganda thing, but there's some quite interesting facts I learned about him from it, so he knows the whole of Faustus off by heart, because one of the questions was

at the age of 15, President G was sent to become a farmer. During that period, he walked 15 kilometres to borrow a book. What was the name of the book? Faustus. Very strong. Was it, Anna, I was reading

this she quiz was a follow-up to another ideology-based quiz which was called Mark's Got It right. Which had a very ambiguous take actually on Marx's legacy, whether it was good or bad. He could have called it like top marks or something like that. That's a much better title. The New York Times reported that contestants have nothing to lose but their chains, which is a very good. Nice. That's funny. Yeah. And the winner is everyone. Again. And forever. With no points.

Just in terms of Chinese high stakes quizzing, the exam. The exam, to be in the civil service in Imperial China was even more grueling than this TV game show. So you would take bedding a chamber pot, ink and brushes, and spend three days and two nights in an exam centre. And if people died, the walls were so high that apparently nothing could get in so that there was no possibility of cheating.

And also you'd write your exam paper and then it would be transcribed by someone else so that there was no chance of somebody seeing your handwriting. in recognising it. And if you died, you were just bundled up in sack and tossed over the wall. Is that right?

Thanks for playing, but... When you were at school, there was always a rumour, wasn't there in your GCSEs or whatever, that if someone died in your year, then everyone would get an A? Do you remember that? No, we don't have that at your school. They just told us if someone died,

they get tossed over the wall. Yeah, that's more of an incentive, isn't it, really? Yeah, it was amazing that thing, wasn't it? It changed throughout the centuries because these exams, they took place throughout all the different Chinese eras. But at one stage, they came up with them an exam to do the exam. And then when you pass that exam, you would get to do the main exam. And then everyone who did that main exam, then would do one final exam. So you had to do two exams to get to the final exam, that the emperor themselves would apparently supervise the final exam.

What, invigilate? Yeah. Again, that's very scary hearing the clack, clack, clack. of the emperor's feet as he walked up and down. No gum. And apparently the first exam that you would do, which was the regional one,

it was so big and so important that all of your family and friends would kind of sit outside because they want to know how you did and they would set up like stalls and food stalls and stuff so that they'd be able to feed. See your body paraboliting towards them.

Is that? Yes, it is. On communism and quizzing, in 1975 on University Challenge, you'll probably know this, Lucy and James, about the Manchester University team, which was David Aronovich. I didn't know he did this, journalist now.

Of course, we were famous journalist, but he was a socialist student back then, and he entered with a team. It seemed to be some kind of accident because they entered intending to take down University Challenge from the inside for its elitism and answered sort of Trotsky, Engels, Marx,

until they got told off for it. I've been questioned. Well, yes, until... Bamberg Ascoigne got really pissed off. Which of the Kardashians? Yeah, no footage exists of it, sadly. No, you're kidding. But yeah, it's a legendary university challenge.

And it's interesting that no footage exists because it's really the fallibility of memory because according to David Aronovich, he just said nonsense answers. He remembers it as like, he answered like Yellow Brick Road or a fluffy hat. That's what I did on University Challenge, not intentionally.

You just got really lucky, didn't you? It wasn't a fluffy hat? Challenge? I did, well, the sort of so-called celebrity one, which is much easier. Oh, cool. Yeah, everyone's like, yeah,

you want to do the actual university challenge. But yeah, no, I went to pieces completely. Me and Rob Rinder, Judge Rinder. Really? Just sat there looking like, oh, what are we doing? But Lucy, yours was a protest

about the elitism of university challenge, wasn't it when you fell apart? It absolutely was, yeah, one woman protest, yeah, well done. Stage through the medium of looking a bit confused. But, yeah, that's... Judge Rinder, he was protesting about his wig,

which is, he was. You wanted a new wig. You wanted a wig. You want to be allowed to wear a wig on it. Well, no footage exists of that, but there is footage readily available of the contestant on family fortunes, the UK version of Family Feud, who answered the same thing to every single question in the final round.

So I'll ask you the question. Yeah. Let's see. So name a food that you would stuff. Turkey. Pepper. Stuff pepper. I was thinking turkey was my first thought.

Well, Turkey is your first thought, and that was exactly what he answered to every single question. Oh, every question. Yeah. So was the stuff one the first answer and then he just got stuck on Turkey? No. Was the next one name a country which is in both Europe, Pandasia? Imagine me. What do you get if you remove the letter N from the word turnkey?

Any more? No, I'm out. Yeah, well, what they think happened was, you know they have a soundproof booth. And obviously something had gone wrong with the soundproof. booth and he had heard the guy who went first, answer the question, name a Fuji stuff with chicken. He sort of lost his mind, basically. And he came out and the first question was, name something you'd take to the beach. And he said, Turkey. Maybe he did. Maybe him and that turkey had great days down Brighton Beach. There's a Chinese quiz show at the moment where one of the

most recent episodes, one of the people in there had to spell the word, Toad. And not only did they get it wrong, there were three judges, and they couldn't decide whether or not they'd spelled it right. Well, A, there are two ways of spelling toad. There are three ways of spelling. Tode the line, towed the car, or there's a toad in the hole. Tode in the hole. Yeah.

This is obviously the Chinese characters dictation competition. Oh, sorry. I was forgetting we were in China. Yeah, we're in China. And the thing is that the word toad for the animal has 46 different individual strokes. And so if you want to do it perfectly, it's actually really, really difficult. And a lot of people make mistakes. And it was a 14-year-old contestant called You Schwang.

And she missed out one little dot in the word toad. And two of the three judges noticed. And then she got kicked out with the final. So it wasn't done. It's not done verbally, is it? Where you have to say a straight line and then a curvy bit and then two dots on to me. And then it's like diagonal. Incredibly boring, too.

So you write it down and then the cameras can see it. But her teammates are there as well. And the camera sort of pans to them. And they're all kind of drawing it with a finger in the sky. Do you know what I mean? Going, no, no, you need to do it this way and do it this way and do it this way. Oh, God. Really cool.

That's a really crazy format. But yeah, spelling bee in China. Who knew? Yeah. I didn't write how far bees go back generally. And they, I mean, they evolved obviously from insects. No, not those kind of bees. bees go back over two centuries I think in America

I was looking up the earliest mentions of them in the late 18th century there were references to things like quilting bees that seems to be the earliest kind and bee just meant a gathering of people who were doing something that was kind of useful often for a single person so a quilting bee would be like this person needs a quilt takes months to make a quilt they're cold now if we get together we'll get it done in one day

and you'd have a quilting bee but the thing I like best is raising bees they were for when a new settler came to town and wanted to live there and I guess it was in America where lots of new people were turning up a lot then the raising bee was when the village would get together and build them a house

Oh really? You could just rock up and be like Do you mind having a raising bee? The barn thing, because the film witnessed with Harrison Ford where he's a cop and there's a murder, an armish murder has happened and he's in this weird community that he doesn't know anything about and there's a scene where they raise a barn. Oh really?

Yeah. It's confusing, isn't it? Because raise can mean, either lift something up or burn it to the ground. If you got the wrong memo. Yeah, yeah. If you missed the spelling bee last week, you turn up a bit late, burn the new bar into the ground. Well, if you get at the wrong end of the stick with spelling bee,

then you could be very embarrassed because you think you've just got to spell B, which is one of the easiest words to spell. I might have a drinking bee later if anyone's interested. Let's just apply B to anything. I'm having a crying bee if anyone wants to join it. When you were on Mastermind, Lucy, did you win Mastermind? I don't like to talk about it but I have won it twice and I'm the current champion of champions but I don't like to mention it I wish I hadn't brought it out.

Wow, that is quite a good. So I did Steve Martin the first time and then Victoria Wood the second time that I did it but I thought it would be quite a nice thing to just sit and watch his movies for a couple of days. Yeah yeah yeah. Lovely. Very good because you are a quizer but you're also a quizer I would say because the word Quisor, the first use of it was someone who tells jokes. Oh.

So a quizer used to be a comedian. In 1797, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word quizer meant someone who does pranks or jokes or whatever. And then obviously the word quiz is more recent than that, isn't it, for, like, quizzing. You think it's 20th century. Well, I, for years, the legendary origin story of the word quiz was that there was an Irish theatrical impresario who wanted to attract attention. so wrote it on walls in Dublin and everyone said,

oh, what is quiz? And a complete nonsense, obviously. Yeah, that guy was called Richard Daly. And the anecdote, the earliest I could find was from 1835 in the Manchester Times. But he died in 1813. So it's quite close to him dying that the anecdote was used. You know, quite contemporaneous sort of, however you said that word? Yeah, it's contemporaneous.

Yeah. I noticed, I was listening to an old episode and I realized that, I don't know how to say that word. And I think I've said it quite often. And I don't know how to actually say it. I'm going to leave it. But Richard Daly is really interesting. He went to Trinity College in Dublin when he was 15.

And he was a really turbulent student. He used to get into fights all the time. Apparently he fought 16 jewels in the first two years that he was at university. And then he left Dublin to go and live in London. And we're not sure why. But one of the rumors was that he killed a billiard table marker in a district. duel and he had to leave and go to London. A billion table marker?

That's a person not a thing. Well, it could be a misprint for maker, but all of the sources say marker, so it could be someone who draws the lines on a billion table. All the old crafts are dying out, aren't they? Wow. But yeah, and then he went to prison after he was doing a show and he got in a fight with an audience member. And when he was in prison, he wrote a lurid account of an affair with one of his singers

who was called Elizabeth Billington. And she was amazing. She was basically, of all the English singers who have ever gone to Italy, up to the current day, she had the best reputation as best singer from England ever in Italy. Okay, until she shacked this guy. Well, she was, you know, she was sometimes known as the Poland Street Man Trap because she had affairs with the Duke of Rotland, the Prince of Wales, the Duke of Sussex, this person. Wait, and this was the woman to trace the back

who shagged the guy who apparently did, but actually didn't write the word quiz about town. That's why we're talking about her. Well, I'm delighted to have heard of her. I want to hear her version of happy birthday for the start.

I think she probably would have done that. The Poland Street Man Trap. Yeah. I'm going to go and hang around Poland Street now. It's not far. Try and co-op that. The Poland Street man repellent. That's what I want of it.

Okay, it's time for fact number three, and that is my fact. My fact is that in 1804, William Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy built a hut lined with moss. Thanks, Andy. Lucy, you're familiar with Andy's moss obsession that we're trying to tramp down, right? Tramp it down. Tramp it down. The Mossman Kamath. I should say this was sent in to me by a guy called Nick Hodder on Twitter, so thank you, Nick, for the Moss fact.

because now send me moss content every week. It's great. So he and Dorothy, his sister, they visited Scotland in the year before, 1803, and they saw this hut, a wooden hut, lined with fog, which is what they called moss at the time. So they were very taken with it, and when they got home to the Lake District,

they built their own hut, lined it with moss, covered it with heather on the outside, and it was destroyed, very sadly, this important bit of English literary heritage by the later, owner Thomas de Quincey. Oh, really?

I know. Opium fan and fellow word celebrity. He probably smoked it. Can you smoke mom? Is that thing? You're right. Probably roll the whole thing up.

You'd give it a go, wouldn't you? Confessions of a moss smoker. And anyway, so the good news is that in 2020, 200 years after this absolute travesty, a new version has been built. Isn't it interesting that the word fog in Scotland means moss? Yes, it is weird.

It's weird, that isn't it? Apparently, it used to be a word for grass, like long grass. it became moss because it's like on Kent's ground. And they both come from an old Scandinavian word meaning wind blown. So you would kind of get fog blowing over the hills and you would also get the windblown grass. And it comes from an old Norwegian word fucker, which meant sea mist or light drizzle. If you trace any etymology back far enough, eventually you can find a swear word.

That's okay. Weather forecast must have been so much. It's going to be an absolute fucker coming in. From the north. So Wordsworth and Dorothy, they were tight, weren't they? They were super tight. They were super tight. The brother and sister, obviously.

But they didn't grow up together, or they grew up in the first bit of their childhood together, and then both of their parents died, very sadly. And they were separated, and William went to school, and Dorothy was sent elsewhere, and they reunited in adulthood. And they seemed to have been full-on soulmates. And there were even things like the night before, Wordsworth's wedding to Mary, who was his childhood sweetheart, who I actually think was a friend of

Dorothe's, the night before his wedding... I think you're not applying anything like that. Anyway, sorry, he married Mary. He married Mary the night before his wedding. Dorothy, his sister, wore the wedding ring in bed that he was going to give to Mary, and then in the morning, William and Dorothy did this ritual where words were sort of knelt beside her and took the ring off her finger and replaced it onto her finger again. So it was a sort of ceremonial marriage.

sister and then went and married Mary. Blimey. Wazers. And she didn't go to the wedding. Dorothy, his sister. Did she not? No, no, she didn't attend. It was a... What? Do we know why? Was it a, wasn't invited venue not big enough kind of thing? You have to draw a line somewhere with a wedding,

don't you? And it's like... I think she just was grieving terribly that this was happening and that this big, you know, emotional change was happening in her life. Who knows? But she did have a diary, which he read, by the way. Another aspect of their relationship. But when she heard the wedding had happened, there were people coming up in the driveway to inform her.

Oh, yes, they're married now. She wrote, I could stand it no longer and threw myself on the bed, neither hearing nor seeing anything. Wow. And she lived with them for the rest of their lives. She outlived William, then she died, then eventually Mary his wife. So when William died with the two women living together, yeah.

There's a sick home. Indeed, isn't it? That's awkward. She's like, I can have the ring back now. Maggie Smith in that section. Oh, yeah. It would be like, do you remember death becomes her, that movie? Yeah, the Goldie Horn kind of gradually disintegrating.

Yeah, there's like two people who live together, but they're immortal. Yeah. And they hate each other and they start trying to beat each other up because they're immortal. They just, all their bones break and their wrists get all floppy. It's not their wrists. They're adult wrists. Well, shit, on the subject of the diary, and stuff though but they sort of had joint journals didn't they and they collaborated and i did not know

that the i wandered lonely as a cloud the inspirational walk for that was one that dorothy and william took together round old's water in 1802 i mean how annoying would it be if you're on a walk with someone it inspires a poem and it's called i wandered lonely as a cloud it's like well i'm here but i was laying my sister had stopped attire laces and it was her because she wrote up the daffodils encounter yes yes yes they did see a load of daffodils on the walk and then well there's a lot of daffdil's around there all smart and she was right she used some very evocative language about them they were you know bouncing around and flopping about

or whatever it was it wasn't that but you know the waving uh dancing host and all of that that was some of that language made its way into the poem so you know co-writer credit Well, I think they were co-writers of lyrical ballads, basically. There was this amazing kind of threesome they had, essentially. So it was Dorothy and William and Kola Ridge. They all lived together in Dorset for a while and Somerset. And like you said, Lucy, they wrote in each other's notebooks and they sort of finish each other's sentences. And Dorothy would write up this journal of their walks and the flowers and the clouds and shit.

So I think it was a collaboration in Lyrical Ballads. But Wordsworth wouldn't let anyone else have the copyright of it. So I think even though it's got a bunch of coleridge in there It's got five or six Coleridge poems in there Including ancient mariner Which is one of you'd want to own that really Isn't you? It's the biggie

But like Wordsworth was such a genius poet And Coleridge was all like Wordsworth You're the better one You know you're the genius You take this So it was originally anonymous When he first met Coleridge said he was so excited

That he leapt over a fence To get a word word It's such a sweet It's like a real sort of fan Man boy. It really is. I mean, and I had only recently got to know anything about Wordsworth. And I had thought, oh, he's the daffodils and it's all very prissy.

And what a life. What a life he had. Illegimate children. Revolutionary France. He was in Revolutionary France. Fathered a child and then bugged off and couldn't get back to the child for like 10 years or something. Couldn't? Although...

Yeah. I'm so sorry. Is the revolution still have it? Sorry. I just looked so aristocratic that it's a bit of a risk. Yeah, I can't even send any money. Yeah. Soz.

He did send money, by the way. In case his family are listening. Yeah, he did. He sent money. But, yeah, he didn't invite them out of Revolutionary France. And they were royalists. So there was probably some tension for... Oh, interesting.

Which is very bizarre because he was a revolutionary, at least at the start, like all cool, trendy people of the day. Obviously, went to... France thought these whole ideas of equality and fraternity and liberty, I love it, sounds great, met loads of other fellow revolutionary reformists, and then got a bit put off by all the sort of mass murder that happened. The terror and stuff. And I think he was very good friends with someone who I think he saw get executed.

Oh, bloody hell. And I think that will put you off sometimes. Well, it was basically his gap year. He was 22 years old when he went. And the with, I mean, the thing about Walsberg, he lived a very long, he lived 80 years at the time, 1770 to 1850. So there's a long old life And I think the imagination of him Was quite an old man

Because he was for, you know, a while Depends when you define older starting Well, measure the wrists Do you know one thing Wordsworth couldn't do Um, ride a motorbike Yep What couldn't he do? It is actually the daffodils

He would not have been able Oh, I know To smell them Yeah No sense of smell A nozmic. Early COVID. Early COVID.

And he had no sense of taste. As I think we can tell from the prelude. That's a joke about his big long poem. Yeah, his nephew, Christopher, wrote his first ever biography in 1851, so the year after he died. And he wrote, with regard to fragrance, Mr. Wordsworth spoke from the testimony of others. He himself had no sense of smell. God, that's awful.

As someone who is so infatuated with the countryside and nature and all of that. How dreadful? Although Dunfills don't really smell, do they? Yeah. Do they? Yeah. I don't like the smell. of daffodils actually.

Oh, they smell a bit like weed, don't they? Yes, I didn't like to say, but yes. They do have a big old smell. Yeah, you're right. Sorry, they smell very strongly of urine, so I've tried to black. That's probably why he wrote that.

He wrote this amazing poem about daffodils and everyone else is like, are they not the ones that smell of wheat? You say he lived to be very old, but a lot of people would say should have died younger. Should have copped it earlier because he got quite crap

later on in life, according to, I suppose, most literary critics. And even he, when he was asked to be poet laureate, when he was 73, said, look, I don't think I'm good enough. I haven't written anything decent for years. And he never published anything as Poet Laureate, did he? But when he was asked to be Poet Laureate, he said no at the start. But then Robert Peel said, well, the Queen really wants you to be Poet Laureate and you don't have to do any work. So would you like reconsider him? And all right, fine. But he was really famous at that time, wasn't he? And there's a bit where his wife,

was writing about when he was 77 years old. She's writing a letter to someone. And in the letter, she says, I'm looking up and a group of young tourists are standing before the window. So there's just people looking in his window and just going, oh, look, there he is. And apparently he was reading the newspaper,

and every time he lifted his head from the newspaper, all the tourists would bow to him. Oh, it's not amazing. I think that would put you off your work. That's why. I'm in the newspaper. Yeah. I can't do the Sudoku under those.

That's right. But he also always wore shades as well when he got older. Seriously? Yeah, because he had very inflamed eyes. And so he wore dark glasses to stop the light from getting in. Blimey, he couldn't smell and then couldn't see anything because of his shades. Eventually he would have been an entirely tactile-based poet. He got quite reactionary as well.

He did the old classic. This is why Better to Die Young. He went from being cool, revolutionary. reformist and thinking things like he was sort of part he was essential to the founding of the national trust because he really believed in land being shared by everyone everyone should have access and should get outside and experience nature the working classes should be you know it should be brought up to the late district and showing how lovely the rivers are or whatever um how come i went to a lot um a national trust property the other day and it was four o'clock on a sunday and he said

sorry we're closed yeah sorry about that they're not staying true to the spirit of wordsworth uh well he off the idea anyway in his later life because he, A, became very pro the death penalty, wrote poems in favour of the death penalty. Just to make sure people knew where he's to... It must be so few poems in favour of the death penalty. It feels like a weird crossover, doesn't it? Yeah, a death penalty fan and a poet.

You don't see them often in one person. What was it called? Do you know? Yes, it was called... Off with their hands. Nose on the loose. It was called Sonnets Upon the Punishment of Death. Wow. Crumbs.

And he did. didn't like it, actually it turned out, when the trains got up and running. And people did start getting the train up to the Lake District from sort of Manchester and stuff and disturbing his peace and quietude. Turn it to a miserable old goat. Really? I suppose people were standing outside your window, you'd be like, well, I don't want more of them coming up to stand and look at me while I read the paper. Fair enough. I think the death penalty for people who stare.

Nice. Fair and think staring You drop a guillotine from your window God, Porter's Britain is going to be a pretty intense place You thought Pridtel was hard for You're looking at me There'll be quiz shows about me on television That's the main thing that I'm looking for

Okay, it's time for our final fact of the show And that is James Okay, my fact this week is that we know a people who have died in the Queen Vic in EastEnders, although one of them was murdered 120 years before the TV show began. That's a prequel, isn't it? They were stabbed to death full staring at local bar, William Wordsworth. That's true, because Lucy has been in EastEnders, right?

I have very recently, yes. What did you stand at you? Didn't get murdered in the Queen Vic. So I had very successful. small part as a woman called Rita, who was the love interest of a character called Mitch. So for our overseas listeners, EastEnders is a beloved soap opera.

And if you get a part in EastEnders, it is absolutely mandatory for everyone you know to then talk at you in a Cockney accent. All right, you're in EastEnders. Oh, you're not my mother. You slang! It's my name above the door, Frank.

So, yeah, but I didn't get to go inside the Queen Vic. So maybe I was lucky given that it's obviously were all of your all of your scenes outdoors no I was in the Laundrette which is another sort of absolutely iconic

location but I don't know if I've been killed off because they don't tell you obviously when you go into EastEnders they're not allowed to tell you anything about what's going on and especially when I was in it there was a big murder storyline which has now been resolved but they bumped up their

murder count because there was a man called Gray who was murdering loads of people and so I got the script and they were like, well, you can't tell anyone what happens because not my bit was like the little comic relief nonsense, but this big storyline was being resolved. And in fact, when I got onto the set, I was in the laundrette, and this murderer came in, and it was his last day.

And I was like, ooh, because he was the most hated man in Britain. And he came in, and it was his last day. So he did this lovely speech about how wonderful it is, and I've had such a wonderful time. And it was like seeing, I don't know, Fred West or Ted Bundy. Well, it's all been a marvellous luck. Wow, that's amazing. Was that in the last four or five years then?

That was in the last year. Right. Because, yeah, because I know EastEnders wasn't very murdery for a while. It was always Coronation Street, I think, was the most murdery. And then Holyoaks. Holyoaks took over. It was a hot bit of murder. I've got a friend who's in Holyox, and during COVID, she had to do some kissing scenes.

but she couldn't do it because obviously you weren't allowed to go near. And so her partner had to come on and be her love interest, but you only kind of saw his shoulder the whole time. He's a singer in a band. He's got long hair, very skinny guy. And her partner was this kind of hunky Asian bloke. That was an amazing bit of camera work to make sure. What a needle to thread.

They've both got shoulders, haven't they? She just kisses him once on the shoulder That should be fine Well even when I was filming it was like You had to stand and shout across the laundrette at each other But that's fine because you shout all the time in EastEnders anyway And in laundrettes It's a noisy working environment

So Did you have to do the tennis ball on a stick thing? What's that? In EastEnders during COVID they had to, I watched a sort of little documentary on all the tricks they had to do And one of them was whenever you see anyone in a close-up scene with someone else and he sent us during COVID.

They were talking to an empty space, but they would put a little tennis ball at the top of a pole, which was where you were supposed to look to see their eyes. So if they're sobbing or laughing or chasping, it's always engaging with a tennis ball.

So those two person shots were you seeing their face but the other person's back of their head? The reverse. Well, they did it in plates. So they did it, they'd film one person, a bit like how they did the parent trap.

Oh, right. I mean, they could have used it to make someone their own twin for a while. If you're going to do it, that way as well. Yeah. They could have done like, is it Eddie Murphy in that movie? Not he prefers to the clumps.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. It could have done everything. Or in kind hearts and coronets would probably be a better person. Everyone's Phil Mitchell. They should have had a completely Phil Mitchell episode of these senses where he played all the roles. Yeah. That would be good.

I haven't really explained the fact, have I? No, sorry. No, I should. Very, very quickly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They, in February 2020, one character called Sharon Mitch, Mitchell decided to tell a story. Sorry, the tentasmus with which you said, one of the seminal EastEnders' characters

names. Is that sorry? She's one of the five biggest characters in it. Sharon. I'm so sorry. Leticia Dean. I mean, she's a brilliant. Oh, is it?

Yeah, well, by my accent, you could probably tell I'm a Coronation Street guy. There. Anyway, so Sharon Mitchell talked about Mr. and Mrs. Bagstock, who were the original landlord and landlady of the Queen Vic. And apparently, back in the 1860s, when the third. fictional Queen Vic was first built and these this landlord killed his landlady by drowning her in the bath and maybe that's why they've had so much bad luck in Elvis Square since then it's a haunted it's a haunted pub effectively yeah I tried to see if there was a such person as mr bagstock

in London but bagstock doesn't appear to even be a name it's in Dumbian sons but I think it's just a made-up dickens name oh that's quite that's a nice little bit of pedigree though for this random bit of Queen Vic trivia that's great um so one thing that the the that EastEnders has in common uh with William Wordsworth oh yeah they can't smell they can't nobody can smell yeah pro death penalty um they uh they uh daffodils oh so there are some daffodils in albert square but wordsworth wouldn't have been able to smell these ones for a very good reason which is that they're fake and the reason that they're fake daffodiles I'm probably good filming reasons for that

but also they film is it about six weeks in advance you film the episodes about six weeks later so they they make it look like spring even though it's still winter right so that's their way of doing it is basically a time portal and then at the other end of the year

they obviously they have to shave the trees no that's I'm joking that's not real because I was thinking the very first lines of the first episode of EastEnders was Dirty Den walks in and he goes stinks in here Oh, yeah. So it might have been sticks of weed here for all those.

Daffodils. They're definitely real. Dirty daff. Well, didn't he get killed by someone was holding a bunch of flowers? The first time, he wasn't actually dead. But someone was holding a bunch of daffodils and they shot him through it. God, what I love it. It's all tying together.

My God. It's David Lynch, isn't it? We've broken EastEnders wide open. So the person behind EastEnders was due. woman called Julia Smith, who when she was advertising for jobs, said only EastEnders need apply. So it was all real people from the East End of London at first who were on it. And they weren't actually calling EastEnders at the time. They were calling it East Enders at the time.

They were calling it East End. Referred to it as East State when they were working on the show before it came out. And then she realized a bunch of her friends were saying, what's this estate program you've got? When's that coming out? And it's just the word estate. But it could have been called other working titles, Square Dance. or Round the Houses, which isn't that another show? That's quite a good title.

Round the houses. It sounds like a much more huggerable. I think there are fewer murders in Round the House. Yeah, that's the lovable 70 sitcom, isn't it? Yeah. That's the Terry and June style. Oh, Reg Cox is fine. He was just pretending to...

It's a prank. On the subject of the script security, because you know it's set in Walford, right? So this was the fictional place they've created. So when my husband was in East Enders, few years ago and the, it was Christmas Day episode, which again, you know, they don't want anything to get out about the Christmas Day episode. So they have this ridiculous procedure where they send you a script, but they won't send the password to unlock that script to the same

email that they've sent the script to because obviously that might get hacked. So what they do then is they phone you and then they give you another special code which sort of unlock something else. Anyway, it's like a seven stage. You'd be easier to get the nuclear code to get into an East End script but what really made me laugh when my husband did it was they went through all of this and he was he had to be by the phone at a certain time take the phone call and he answered the phone went uh-huh uh-huh and then started typing it in and the password was wolford which was laughing no word and then since i did it recently and they have changed it because i told everyone i knew about that but the a was a four wasn't it so no one knew it yeah impenetrable

levels wow walford probably named after walford road which is in dulston uh because one One of the other co-creator with Julia Smith was Tony Holland. And he lived in Dahlston or nearby. And he probably saw Walford Road and gave it that name. He based Albert Square on a place called Facet Square in Dahlston, which I went to yesterday, had a cycle round. Very nice. And the nearest pub to Fassett Square is called the Victoria,

which I'm fairly certain must be where he got the idea for the Queen Vic name, at least. because it's got its license in 1848, so it's a very, very old pub. Anyway, I went there last night and you murdered some. I was hoping. You discovered you were your own father and the whole place burned there. I was so hoping for that kind of thing, but basically, it's the hipsteriest place you can possibly imagine. Instead of like light fixtures, it has upside down plant pots with trees coming out of it, and it sells four different types of kombucha.

but it's really you know that's a nice primary research pint of IPA and read my buck dot coffee wouldn't have approved of all of this would you know I mean everybody does complain about the fact that EastEnders is now set in an area of London where nobody who's in it could afford to live you know it would all be

merchant bankers and hedge fund managers or podcasters your podcast is doing well trust me not most podcasters but yeah the um but offcom I was reading all the offcom complaints about EastEnders and uh One complaint was people saying that people spend too much time in the cafe.

Someone had calculated how much the characters would spend if they were buying the amount of drinks and snacks. Because of course they're always eating and drinking. Yeah, but have you seen how many times Peggy Mitchell said, it's on the ass, it's on the ass. That's true. That pub would have gone under, isn't it? Very good point. They're almost on free drinks. I was reading some of the other complaints, actually.

And there was one saying that people were throwing the cigarette butts on the ground. And if they did that, why did they not get a fixed penalty notice for doing it? Right. You can be, yeah, you can be having an affair with your brother's sister's cat. But the unrealistic thing is. Something else realistic is Barbara Windsor's life. I always felt that her life was quite true to the, what seems like, a very unrealistic East Ender's life. So she was quite in the gang world, really.

in the 70s, 80s. She went out with Ronnie Cray. Hold on, who was the not mad one? She went out with Reggie Cray. Ronnie was the really mad one, wasn't he? I mean, it's like the Williams sisters. They're both good at tennis. She went out with the equivalent of Venus Williams, I suppose,

in Cray Brothers. And she was married to another guy called Ronnie Knight, who was another gangster. He was really the Venus Williams of the old. the world. That's amazing. Who'd have been so flattered? I think they'd both be flattered by that.

Now, ladies and gentlemen, please give your applause to the Ronnie Cray of Tennis. So she married a Ronnie, Ronnie Knight, who was another kind of gangster. And Ronnie Knight's brother, I ended up reading his Wikipedia page, basically, his brother, his brother's killer and the man. man who killed his brother's killer were all murdered. That's a trail of four murders. Sorry, so, sorry. So Ronnie Knight, Barbara Winters' husband, was his brother was murdered. Okay.

And then his brother's killer was murdered. And then his brother's killer's killer was murdered. It's an endless trail of murder. I'm still picturing it in the world of tennis and it's becoming, yeah, like, I mean, in the world of gangsters, it's not as implausible. This is, we're still in the group stages. Yeah. And did Barbara Windsor kill all of those?

Turns out, yes. Well, actually, her husband, Ronnie Knight probably did kill his brother's killer because he admitted to it in his autobiography later. But he'd already been tried for it and exonerated. So under double jeopardy, they couldn't get him in your face. There is a thing about, so Lucy, you said about the murder stats. Yeah. A way higher in EastEnders.

I think so in EastEnders, it's about a hundred, you're about a hundred times likely to be murdered in East Enders as you are in Britain. But there is good, there's a concomitant bit of good news, which is that residents of Walford are much more romantically faithful than real people. Oh, really? Yeah. And both of these things are only good news and bad news if you live in the world of EastEnders, not in the real world.

Yeah, it's bad news for all of us. Except me. So I just need to be in full time. So on the show, it's a tiny percentage, 2% of female and 1.7% of male characters have an affair each year. That's that right? I always thought they were all having affairs in Easter. Me too. I would have thought, so this is a study from 2003, so maybe they've sexed it up since then. But that's way lower than the stats from 2003 for men and women in the UK having affairs. Also, this was the other finding, the men of Albert Square are also less likely to visit a prostitute.

That's good. Just 0.18% of them are knocking on that door. Good on them. Well, again, you see, I should be suggesting this to the story. line as I should say, I could, I mean, become a sex worker, make the show more realistic. I could be the man-trap of Walfing. Okay, that's 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 about the things that we've said on the course of this show, we can all be found on our Twitter accounts. I'm on at Andrew Hunter M. James. At James Harkin. Lucy. Lucy Porter Comic. And Anna? You can email podcast at QI.com.

Or you can go to our group account, which is Anne. No Such Thing. If you want to go to our website, which is no such thing asoffish.com, we have all of our previous episodes there and lots of merch, live shows. We're coming to Scotland and Wales quite soon. There's all sorts of other stuff there. So go and check it out if you like. And you should also check out Lucy's podcast.

It's Fingers on Buzzers. She hosts it with previous fish guest, Jenny Ryan. So you're getting two fish graduates for the price of none. Fingers on Buzzers. check it out wherever you get your podcasts from. And we'll be back again next week with another episode of the podcast. We'll see you then. Goodbye.