No Such Thing As A Fish - No Such Thing as the Milkmaid's Tale

Episode Date: January 12, 2023

Dan, James, Anna and special guest Rhys Darby discuss boats, goats, Tintin's tuft and mystery moose. Visit nosuchthingasafish.com for news about live shows, merchandise and more episodes.   Join Club Fish for ad-free episodes and exclusive bonus content at nosuchthingasafish.com/apple or nosuchthingasafish.com/patreon

Hey everyone, welcome to this week's episode of Fish. Before we get going, I just want to let you know that we have a very exciting guest on this week. Andy unfortunately was away and is actually furious he was away because he missed out on the absolute tornado of comedy that is Reese Darby. You probably know Reese for his roles as Murray the Manager on Flight of the Concords or as Nigel Billingsley from the Jumanji movies. Or perhaps you listen to his absolutely brilliant podcast about the mysteries of the universe called the Cryptid Factor. which he hosts with his buddies' buttons and a doofist called Dan. But what you may not have seen, if you live in the UK, is Reese playing his greatest role yet, Steed Bonnet, Gentleman Pirate in the sitcom Our Flag Means Death.

This is such a great series. It came out last year on HBO Max, but it's only just come to the UK on BBC 2, and it's all about the real-life story of Steed Bonnet, who decided to give up his entire life and become a gentleman pirate of the seas. He befriends Blackbeard, who's played by the absolute genius, comedy director, Tycho Waititi, and you can watch it now in the UK on BBC 2 every Wednesday at 10pm,

or if you're impatient like me, just head straight to BBC Eye Player, and you can watch the entire series in one bingy go. Anyway, it was so great having Reese back on the show. You can find the previous episode in The Fish Archives, if you want to hear his first time here with us. And he wasn't on that show either. Poor guy can't get a break. But we hope you enjoy it and then make sure to watch our flag means death immediately afterwards.

Okay, on with the show. Hello and welcome to another episode of No Such Thing as a Fish, a weekly podcast this week coming to you from four mysterious locations around the globe. My name is Dan Schreiber. I am sitting here with James Harkin, Anna Tyshinsky, and joining us once again, it is the return of our very special guest, Reese Darby. 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 Reese. My fact is that pirate Steed Bonnet invented the idea of working the plank. That's a pretty big invention, I would say, in the world of pirating.

I don't use it in my day to do. life. It's pretty niche, isn't it? It's putting together two things that already exist, walking and planks. It's not like, he hasn't come up with anything new there, has he? I know, but if you're even a child and you dress up as a pirate, one of the first things you learn in your entire life is that they walk the plank. I mean, he is, what a legacy. That's right. Is it true, though? Let's put it this way. It's more of a myth, really, that he came up with it. That's fine. That's what we deal in. It's a Dan fact, you know. Yeah.

Nice. You know the show. You know the show. Well, he might have done, right? He might have done. Some people say that he did. I actually believe he did. Because even though it's out there as a myth,

I believe knowing Steed, as I do, playing the role of Steed for two seasons now, that he would have come up with it in reality. Because the whole idea behind walking the plank is they blindfold the person and they make them walk it and so then they get away with not being accused of murder because that person has killed themselves the captain has said all right walk along that plank will you all the best and and the guy's like uh what hey what's happening hey what walk along here whoa whoa whoa you know you can imagine it as i'm i'm describing it here oh oh i've got a blindfold on what what's where's this plank going, you know, and then,

wha-ha-ha-l-l-l-l-l-l-m... Nice. That's the shark. Very good. So he wouldn't want to stab someone or shoot someone. No. He wants to do it. He wants to be slightly away from the action, right, and say,

you did it yourself. Absolutely. Very uncomfortable with the idea of killing someone. Why are you hitting yourself? Why are you punishing yourself? Why are you letting yourself get eaten by sharks? Exactly. That's it.

Is that getting you into heaven? I was uncomfortable with killing people, so I just let them kill themselves. He's still, he's walking a fine line, isn't he morally? He's walking a fine plank, for sure. But I think that's the point. It's a moral issue. And so he can think to himself, oh, I didn't kill him. He killed himself.

He walked off that plank that I designed. And it's quite an ingenious idea, really, to think that, especially back in those days, you could make someone kill themselves without you having to actually get your hands dirty. Yeah. Which was, we should say, like a golden age. of piracy. 1718 was it? He died? Yes. I think. So 17-700, 17 to

1730 was the golden age. He was right in the middle of it. Wasn't he very short-lived really as a pirate? For a pirate who is quite famous, it was quite a brief career, wasn't it? Two years. Less than that, I think it was like a year and a half. I think we should just quickly pre-see this guy in his entirety. This was

someone who was a really well-to-do character. He was living very rich. He had a wife. He had some kids. And then he just decided as part of ultimately what was, I guess, a midlife crisis or he was dealing with trauma of a quite difficult childhood, just left his family, bought a ship, and just said, I'm now a pirate, got a crew, named the ship the revenge, and just started sailing. And he paid his staff. You know, he paid the pirates. He was, as you say, a gentleman pirate with zero abilities. Didn't he not tell the pirates that they were going to be pirates? I read somewhere that he kind of brought them on. He got all of

these guys to be his staff. And then only when they were at sea, he said, oh, by the way, your pirates, this isn't just a fun cruise. That sounds like him as well. Knowing him being in his shoes, absolutely, yeah. He definitely, he bought the ship. It was already called the revenge, I believe, and he liked the name of it. And there was actually quite a common name for ships back then.

And then, yeah, he installed, this is the really, really fun stuff. He installed a library on the boat. so he built a library because he loved his books. He wanted to leave home and leave his wife in life, but he didn't want to leave his books. Something you might do, Dan. So he brought his entire collection of his books and put them on the ship. I reckon, Dan, I reckon you would go being a pirate with your books, of course,

but also probably your Ben Elton collection. Absolutely. You're signed. Everything's signed you've got in your house. Would come with you. Yeah, I would need memorabilia to sort of, yeah, wow. black beard with, you know. No, actually, Ben Elton did, I think,

actually hold this particular bit of tissue. Yeah. Really? Oh, wow. I was actually going to say it was pretty hard on his wife with the book stealing, not only as she lost her husband, but he's nicked all the bloody books. But actually, in your case, Dan, it would be

quite a relief, probably, for finale. Yeah, it'd be like the ultimate Marie Kundo or whatever that book was called. It's like, yeah. You know, step four, make your husband a pirate. Lose all. Thank God. Yeah.

And so in the series as well, there's the relationship, the fact that he in real life meets Blackbeard, the most famous of all the pirates. And what's crazy as well is, I assume Blackbeard must have existed for a long time, but he had a two-year run as well. That was it. Yeah. Blackbeard's pirating years were two years. It's amazing.

You lived pretty fast and loose as a pirate, didn't you? It probably wasn't the safest line of work to go into, if we're being honest. No. They were like the Liz Truss of Pirates, weren't they, those guys? That's the most flattering comparison Liz Truss has ever got. But yeah, Blackbeard and him had quite a weird relationship. It's kind of the relationship to a needy loser and the real cool guy of the open seas. Because Steed wasn't that good at pirating, especially at first, was he?

No. So, I mean, you know, there's the reality through the knowledge we have from various accounts and history. And then there's the, obviously, the fictional version, which my show is. So without getting too confused about which, which, which is real and which isn't, because the real reports, you know, are sketchy at best as well. But when you look at it, it kind of makes sense that, you know, something happened between the two of them. Even if it was just a friendship, Blackbeard was fascinated by this guy because he looked glorious in his outfits. He had these little winker-picker shoes and glorious coats and various things like that.

He was a fancy man. And Blackbeard must have gone, what the hell are you doing in this job? because they were all desperate. They didn't want to become pirates. That was like the only life they had to go into because of their circumstance. And so here's this guy who's like, I want to be part of this too.

And he's absolutely not supposed to be there. And he was wounded. And I think instead of just letting him, like killing him or getting rid of him, I think there was a massive fascination. I think maybe if you look at Blackbeard wanting to see the other side of how the other side lives, like probably a lot of people did back in those days. you're either ridiculously poor and haven't got anything going on,

or you're the aristocracy, and never the twain shall meet. And so when they do, I think that's when you've got this really interesting, like, oh, how can I become you, or how can I learn from you, or how can I steal your ideas to make me better? So it was like the Louis Theroux of the pirating world, spending a few weeks, observing, getting all the excessive. Yeah, exactly, perhaps, because he could have just killed him. He could have just got rid of him.

I mean, this guy back in history was not, he's not as portrayed as capable as I am in the show, you know. And that's saying something. But I reckon it's, this is a really interesting way of doing history, right? Because we don't have much information about Steve Bonnet. We have little bits here and there. But Reese, you've lived as him for two years in the show, pretty much. And I reckon you've got a really good insight into what he might have been thinking and what he might have done and stuff. Why the hell he did it?

That's always the great mystery, isn't it? It's always portrayed as this huge midlife crisis, which makes sense. It's the fantasy that every eight-year-old has that we grow out of by the time of a 12th. That's not mid-life, is that eight years old? I feel like when you have a mid-life crisis, you revert back to the tragic fantasies you had as a child that are unrealistic. And it was portrayed in, you know, the famous book of pirates,

which is where we get basically all of our pirate knowledge by a mysterious person called Captain Charles Johnson, who was written a few years later. and his portrayal, which is often what is repeated, is that he was trying to bear the awful situation of having a nagging wife. But yeah, Rees, you've been him. Why did he do it?

I really hope that you, James and Anna are subtly trying to get Rees to sort of channel Steed and he comes through now. And Reese is no longer here. We're getting English dandy. Steed is just on the show. Look, I definitely think there was a midlife crisis situation going on if you look back at the accounts. but also he had this life that he didn't necessarily want.

He was born into aristocracy. And at that time, piracy had just kicked in, and it was this ridiculous, adventurous out-at-sea life that was pretty much the opposite of what he's doing. And he's never even been to see, by the way, this guy. So he's imagining, oh, wow, what would that be like? And, of course, anyone who's really intensely into their book reading has a great imagination.

And I think he just one day went, look, I've actually got the means to change this. And he probably had one massive fight with the wife that obviously he wasn't really getting on with and went, right, that's it, I'm out, I'm out. And in the middle of the night, you know, he sorted this out and just took off on a whim. And I think that, you know, he probably thought

that he had the means to get away with it because he was a chiefly person. He was someone who was sort of high up there. And so he probably didn't even imagine he was going to get into trouble. It certainly seemed like he didn't. It's confidence, blind confidence. Yeah. I once walked a plank in a virtual reality video game.

Okay. And this is why I was thinking about how these guys were blindfolded. So we weren't blindfolded when we did this, but you were walking the plank on the top of a massive building. And then the idea is you got to the end and then you jumped off. And then you were in virtual reality and you thought you were dying. And then you kept falling, falling, falling. And then you hit the floor and you absolutely shit yourself because you thought you were dead,

but actually you're in virtual reality. But what I thought was it was more scary because I could see what was happening whereas these guys were blindfolded. So is the idea that they wouldn't know when they're getting to the end of the plank, they'll just keep walking and that's it? Yes, well, let's have a chat about that.

I mean, I think why do they need to be blindfolded for a start? Because, you know, they're out at sea, they're on a boat. Step up, step up onto the edge here. Oh, this is, well, I can feel that this is the edge of the boat. No, no, it's not. No, you're going into one of the rooms. We're going to have a little party.

No, no, no, I can feel the wind in my face here. No, no, no, it's fine. Walk, just keep walking. There's a plank there. Oh, right, yes, yes. Oh, well, this is going out into the sea, isn't it? No, no, no, this is a little... It's actually a bridge towards the bar.

I've got a cocktail here waiting for you, Larry. Okay, okay, it's very windy, yes, well that. We're all blowing. Blow. Oh, that doesn't... feels like normal win, not you. Know what your wins like, Larry. Oh, cheeky bugger, just keep walking down there, mate.

And I know, I've really got into that. But, you know, I think... I've forgotten what we were asking. But I actually think that's true because it means you couldn't have like surprise parties on a boat, could you? Because every time you put a blindfold on and you're walked into a room... Fucking terrified.

And they say it's a party. Yeah. I think that's a good point we've got to. In history, there's been no... surprise parties on pirate ships for that reason. Happy birthday! Shutter real quick. It actually doesn't make any sense that they would be able to walk a plank while out in the rough seas, blindfolded, and shaking with nerves.

I mean, you fall off, you don't get to the end of that plank, do you? No, such a good point. You're falling off straight away. Also, is this where we got the diving board from? Yeah. Oh, yes, I was just thinking. Imagine the cockiness. of someone that you've sentenced to death

who walks blindfolded to the end of the plank, jumps off and does a triple back with some assault that he goes in. That's amazing. That's a legend. What a death. What a death. Okay, it is time for fact number two,

and that is James. Okay, my fact this week is that goats like it when you smile at them, but only if you approach them from the right hand side. How can that possibly be true? Why could it be true? It was the findings of a study, in 2018 at the Buttercup Sanctuary for Goats in Kent. And what they did was they put photos of

humans, men and women, black and white, and they put one on the left and one on the right, and one of them was smiling and one of them wasn't. And the goats always went to the smiling one, but only when it was on the right-hand side. When it was on the left-hand side, they couldn't give a shit. They would just, they would randomly go to one or the other, but when it was on the right-hand side, they always went to it. And two things here. One, not many animals care whether humans are smiling or not. We know that dogs do. We know that horses do. That's because they're domesticated animals. And this is one of the first other animals that we found that actually cares if humans smile. And the other thing is that perhaps why are they only bothered about the right hand side? Well, it could

be the way that their brain processes things. So maybe they're processing emotions on one side of the brain or visual things on one side of the brain, we're not really sure. Why do they use a black and white photo? Can you not fork out in the budget for colour for colour photography? Do they see colour? Do they they see colour? Oh, that's a great question. That's a great question. You know goats almost as well as you know steed bonnet. Do you think they see colour? I would like to think they do, especially my ones. When I turn up to feed them, I always come in from the left. And they're smiling. I'm smiling. But they can...

You always make sure to smile? That's part of it. I'm just imagining that I must be smiling because I'm happy to see them. I don't see them a hell of a lot because they're in New Zealand, but I spend time with them when I'm there, of course. They are emotionally intelligent. I hadn't realized that they were to this extent. So they did a study where researchers recorded go making certain noises. Noises when they were happy and noises when they were sad.

So this did involve the researchers making the goats happy and sad. So they'd make them happy by sort of giving them food and then they'd make them sad. And this is sort of like really minimal level of sadness. They'd isolate them from their herd for five minutes or they'd get a goat to watch another goat eat

when that goat didn't have much food. But apparently the... But I know goats and that is very sad for them. That's tragic. The two things they really care of. about are being together and eating. Oh, really? That's it. Oh, yeah, that's it. And to have fun, they climb.

So they love to get on top of things and they love running around. But they'll always, they're much preferred to be doing all that sort of stuff. Right. Okay. Well, maybe this was like torture for them, perhaps. And also, Anna, I've been in a restaurant with you when one of us has got our food and yours hasn't quite arrived yet. And the look on your face. I make some pretty weird noises. I can't deny that.

Okay? I make some weird goat-like bleating. sounds. Anyway, the noises that goats make are pretty much indistinguishable to us when they're happy and sad in those situations, except probably Reese, if you own goats, you pick up on it. But if you play those sounds to their fellow goats, just audio recordings, their heart rates will stay normal and they'll be all chilled out when they hear the happy sounds. But when they hear the almost identical sounding anxious sounds, then their heart rates kind of shoot up. So they're feeling this empathy on behalf of this other goat. Yeah. Rees, have you ever, this is a,

leaning into a myth here, but I'd just be curious. Have you ever dipped your feet into salt water and then let goats lick your feet? No. No? Okay. I'd be... But I have taken the goats for a walk down on the beach. That's the thing. I know you've got a beach near you. We've been through salt water. Yeah. So, okay, next time you're back in New Zealand, give it a go, because I'd be curious to hear whether or not this hurts. This was a sort of myth that's been in books for a long time. And possibly it was tried once or twice, who knows, where the ancient Romans were said to have a thing called tickle torture. And the idea was that you would get someone,

you would soak their feet in salt water, and then the salt would then be licked by a thirsty ghost. Ghost? I took a turn. Oh, my God. They love salt, then. Oh, no, I just checked my notes down, and all this is actually about ghosts.

All this stuff I've been saying about ghosts. goats. It's ghosts like it if you smile up them. Always approach a ghost from the right hand side. Now it's making sense. So apparently that's if a goat licks your feet because they have really rough tongues that the torture and because they're so thirsty and the salt makes them thirsty they keep licking and then they rip your feet off and that would be a that would be a method of torture back in a rip your feet off their tongues aren't made of tears. No sorry they would they would slowly like like a lollipop lick their way through your feet. Oh, yeah.

Yeah, I tend to not let their mouths too close to my body bits. Okay. Because they have teeth and everything, you know, and they're always wanting to nibble. And so they nibble on my clothes, they pull my garments. And I certainly can't see myself getting my naked feet out and dangling them in front of their faces with salt.

Do they then, another question about your goats? I mean, do they urinate on themselves and each other or themselves? So first of all, they'll wheel over themselves to attract a female and it looks kind of cool. Billy goats shove their heads right between their legs because they want to wee and their beards. Because I guess that gathers up the smell better and they wheel over them and then they will go to the lady who can tell that he's up for a shag. But then he tests her urine as well to make sure that. that she's eligible to make sure that she's actually on heat. And so she will squat down and he'll put his head between her legs and then she'll

we all over him. And then they do this, the curl up the lips, the flame and response, which is where if you see a go expose its lip, like curl up its top lip. It's got all these receptors in it. Yeah, James is doing it right now. It's very attractive look, actually. It's got receptors in it that pick up whether the urine has the right hormones in it that says this woman is ready to be.

fertilised by you. And so it's very, very wee-based courting process. It's sexy stuff. I know nothing of that because I only have boy goats. Oh, really? Yeah. Well, when you have both, you know, you're into mating. And if you've got females, then you're into milking.

So I've only got male cast-offs, which, you know, the boy goats are only good for either meat or pets. Yeah. Oh, wow. So they're never aroused your goats. They never need to. They've never aroused and I've never even seen them wee. Oh, they must.

No, never. Never, never seen them wee. Mind you, mine a pedigree. So I don't think they do. Yeah, good point. I've got to be honest. I've heard that about certain breeds. They just explode with urine at their death, don't they?

So I haven't really... Well, sometimes I see them hiding and I come to the pen and I think, oh, what's... Oh, you're having a wee, are you? And then I can hear, oh, don't come in here. I'm in here. And that kind of thing. And so I wonder, there's probably something happening there. And then they just come through, oh, hello, Dad.

What's what's going on today? Do they call you Dad? Yeah, they call you. Dad. I didn't see you coming, Dad. I came on the left-hand side, did you? Yeah, yeah, sorry. I was going to check on you guys.

See if you want to go for another walk down to the beach. Oh, no, I'm fine. Alexander's just behind the pen there. Don't go going around there. He's just doing something. Don't worry about him. Are you sure you've got goats, not sort of pantomime act as it? Here's an interesting thing about goats.

So you said like pedigree goats. You can get them. You can get really good goats, especially for milking and stuff. And in order to get those, you might need a stud. So you might need a really good male goat who's going to have sex with lots of females. But the thing is that they can only have so many. They can only have sex so many times, right? There's only so many hours in the day that you can do that.

And so recently they've come up with a new way. of basically what they do is they put some genes into a goat which changes its testicles. So they're effectively the testicles of another goat. And so this goat, which isn't the normal stud, can have sex with a female and the offspring will be the offspring of the original stud, even though the stud's just at home having a coffee. Really? That's like the handmade's tale, kind of, where you think you're shagging one person, but you're actually. shagging the more fertile person. It's actually a less dark version of the handmade's tale

without the feminist and dystopian undertones. The milkmaid's tail. Exactly. I wonder if that's quite demoralising, though, for the goat who the person said, your testes aren't good enough, we're just going to shove these other blokes on you, who you've always been intimidated by anyway.

I don't think they even know their goats. Goats? Of course they know the goats. Do they? Yeah. I've tried to take them out We've gone into town And my guys have gone

No no we can't We're goats We can't go away We're not gonna We won't be allowed in there dad Can I Can you take the blindfold off me No just

You'll be fine Alexander We're just We're going into town I can sense There's someone coming up to me On the left hand side I can sense it He's asking me for ID Dad

What do I do? Dad, I don't have any idea. I'm a goat. I'm a goat. I'm sorry, he doesn't know he's a goat. If you could just listen. I do know I'm a goat, Dad. I told you.

And get this blindfold off me. I saw a photo earlier today of it was a tree which looked like it was growing goats. There was like an apple tree. There was like 30 goats. They love climbing trees. They were just sitting in this tree. And I didn't think they had the dexterity to do. it.

I don't you? Yeah, they're big on. They do like climbing trees and they like climbing, but often if you see those photos, some places will... Fake it. Just fake it for tourists, basically.

They'll kind of tie the goats into trees and then say, look, all these goats have climbed this tree and they're all free will. Because at the end of the day, they need the tourists to come and take the photos, but the goats aren't going to do what they want. Sometimes they'll climb and sometimes they won't. So they kind of fake it sometimes. Oh, that's the shocking reality of tourism in some of these places.

I'm afraid so. The other thing is there's a theory that goats used to be birds. Sorry. That's why they're in the trees a lot, because they are reverting back to their previous life. Are there scientific papers written supporting this theory, or is this just sub-blok in your local pub? No, I'm pulling it up now.

Okay. There it is. Scientific theories. Yeah, yeah. Goats used to be birds. Here it is. goats goats used to be birds

there it is in bold letters absolutely incredible wow that's two pages and it's signed at the bottom there two pages that's your evidence they believe they're flying

that's the closest thing they can get to going back to their old life as a bird by flying and then they'll end up in the trees and you'll often hear them twerking twerking no twirping

you should see them Torque. He's amazing. What's the actual word that birds make? Tweet? Tweeting. Oh, tweeting. Chirping. That's where I'm getting confused.

You mash those two together. Yeah, I'm mashing those two together and coming up with twerking. Yeah. I think that's how twerking was born, actually, wasn't it? That's how it was created, yeah. Yeah. Well, that's absolutely amazing. Thank you for sharing that facts. Another goat facts, which isn't as a.

amazing is that, but it is true, is that we've never talked about myotonic goats. And I think they always deserve a mention, the myotonic fainting goats. Oh. Oh, yes. We've mentioned on this podcast. They're a breed in Tennessee that basically have an anomaly in their genes where when they panic, if they're approached from the left, for instance, or not smiling, or there's a loud noise, something like that, then they try to escape. But what this does is contract their muscles, so they stiffen up completely. And then just, kind of. kind of fall over onto their side. And it's quite comical to see if you've never seen it.

It's bizarre. I've seen videos of that, yeah. It's very odd. Do we know why it happens, Anna? Because it feels like it would die out quite quickly. Well, I think it was only died in, as it were, quite recently through breeding. So I don't think it would have any evolutionary purpose. And you're right, in the wild, they probably wouldn't survive very long.

But they are now bred from the same batch that have this. I think Steve Bonnet suffered from that same. gene anomaly, just sort of stiffing up and fainting at the sight of any sort of Yeah, yeah. And he overcame it. Did he? Well, how did he overcome it? Well, you know, just really sort of You know, getting with a really tough pirate and learning how to proper be a pirate. And I think goats, if you put those little fainty ones and with, you know, some real hardcore proper rustic goats, they'd probably learn the ways and would become more goaty, at least fainty. Billy goat blackbeard takes them under their wing.

Yeah, that's right. What you can also do is you can deprive them of water, which bizarrely cures this problem. There are other problems if you don't give the water, aren't they? So it's a very fine balance to strike. But they're kind of useful now because my Antonio is also a thing in humans, like sudden muscle seizures. Some people have that. The jumping Frenchmen of Maine, are they called or something like that?

I remember. Really? I didn't know. I don't know about them. Are they a group of my adonics? There was a group of French immigrants in Maine, I think. And they had this kind of thing where as soon as you shocked them, they were just faint. Oh, really?

Wow. Wow. Yeah. How long are they stiff for? How long do they, like, does it just slowly wear off? Yeah, I think so. The goats. Yeah, they just kind of wake up, don't they?

The goats. It's like a faint. Yeah. Yeah, I've seen the videos. It's bizarre. It's bizarre. I imagine if people did do that in general. It's a very bizarre trait, isn't it?

Yeah, it would make the start of the 100 metres not much good, would it? As soon as the bang goes off, everyone just fades. It would be a race to see who came around the quickest. Yeah. That's why the goat Olympics have never taken off. Yet we call the best in the world the goats. What's going on? Okay, it is time for fact number three, and that is Anna.

My fact this week is that Tintin's hair, originally lay flat on his head until it got blown upwards in an early comic strip and it never came back down. Wow. And that's why he's got that famous stupid quiff. I think it's a brilliant quiff. How dear you.

Yeah. What are you talking about? You're stupid. Actually, Reese's sporting head's sort of half-tinny and quiff at the moment, so should be careful. But yeah, and it's, and it's, and it's, It was not mentioned anywhere in the comic. It's just the very first Tintin comic that was released.

This is in January 1929. And it was Tanta or Pied de Soviet, Tintin in the land of the Soviets. And about sort of 10 pages in, in the version I was reading, he drops out of a tree, much like a goat, and falls into a convertible car sitting underneath it deliberately and drives the car away. And in the next plate, you see his hair pushed up. and then you follow the story through it, it just never drops again.

So weird. Did they do it on purpose? Was this a subconscious thing? We'll never know. Well, I actually have the book here, of course, because I'm a big Tintin fan. And I looked at this and yeah, you're right. We can have a look here. I think it's, as you say, around page 10.

Yes This is Yeah this is an audio format Yeah You've all got imaginations at home We want you to imagine Tintin climbing up a tree So in this one here

See his His quiff here is forward Uh huh Yep Okay He climbs up the tree And then there he is For those at home

That are listening to this You guys can hear him Here jumping Now he's in the car And it's flick to the back And it's because of the wind of the car and you can all hear that in that panel there. Yeah.

But that's, that's, that's, that's, that's pretty amazing that it happens midway through a comic. It's not like the start of a new comic. It's like, it's like, it's like, herjie, the creator and the illustrator of Tintin, did that in one panel and went, oh, that looks good. I think so. I'll just leave that. Yeah. Yeah.

And do you know what's amazing about what you just showed us? There's a little something in that comic, which is what absolutely exploded Tintin into the masses of Europe. And it was a very specific thing that you might not have noticed as we were all just looking at these cartoons. Did you notice at home? Anyone?

Write in if he spotted the moment. The four of us is what I'm talking about. And what it was is that this is 1929. This is the same year that Popeye was invented, by the way. So this is, you know, it's years before Superman and Batman. This is really old school comic books. What they have in these drawings, are speech bubbles.

And Europe did not have speech bubbles at this point in their comics. They were over in America, but they were a completely new idea to certainly Belgium and, let's say, surrounding countries. I don't know about the UK specifically. Luxembourg. Possibly Luxembourg. The Netherlands. The Netherlands.

Let's go there. Yeah. And I read a great biography, or rather I read a few pages from a great biography by Harry Thompson about Tintin saying that basically his words in these speech bubbles were treated as if they were carved on tablets of stone. They became quotes and they became something you would remember as a result of these speech bubbles and that is why Tintin exploded. So sorry, are we claiming, I would say at the moment for me, the invention of the speech bubble is up there with the invention of the concept of walking a plank. I don't know if it's getting kind of... He didn't invent it. Einstein.

He didn't invent it. Exactly. He didn't even invent it. And it's not... It didn't independently appear, did it? It wasn't like, oh wow, how weird they've got these in America. Presumably they just read a comic in America and thought, well, let's start doing that. Is that right? No, but do you remember when OK Go did their first video on treadmills? And you barely even heard the music. You were so busy watching this innovative video. That's what it was.

I couldn't tell you what the song is. Exactly. Oh, the treadmill song. The treadmill song, exactly. What a relatable for future generations. Well, you know, in like, 300 years, everyone will be talking about, you know how we all do those treadmill dances now? Yeah.

You know how everyone does them? Well, guess who did them first? Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. That book, by the way, the tin tin in the Soviet countries, or whatever it is, I have that as well. But if you go to the tin shop in London, they'll only sell it to you under the counter. Oh.

No. Yeah. So I went to, it was my tin anniversary. And I thought I'd buy my wife some tin tin stuff. and she's Russian, so I thought I'd buy the Soviet Tintin book, and I went, and it wasn't anywhere, and I didn't really know enough about Tintin that I knew it existed, but I assumed that it was maybe really rare, and I said, oh, do you have this book? And they went, yeah, well, we keep it under here now. And since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, they don't put it on display anymore

in that shop. Wow. Isn't that amazing? So weird. So you felt like you were buying comic book porn. Is it quite exciting? They gave me in like an unmarked paper bag. Yeah. Do you know it's crazy? So 1929 is when Tintin debuts. By 1930, the comic is so massive that Herge was invited to meet the empress, who was the ex-empress, I guess, Zeta of Austria-Hungary at the time.

And when he arrived, he arrived by train, and there was just huge crowds of people there to meet, not Herge specifically, but Tintin, because they hired an actor to be Tintin. who was an unknown kid who didn't have the right color hair. And he was mobbed. And not only did he not have the right color hair, he also couldn't quite keep the quiff up. So Herge had to keep this little, like, little tin of oily grease, hair grease. I thought you were going to go something about Mary about it there, Dan, for a second. Oh, Jesus.

Tintin had to ejaculate every 30 minutes. Like those poor goats. Like the goats. Have someone else's testicles implanted into him. Exactly. Blistering barnacles, Tintin. But yeah, so they came off this train and Tintin, the kid, was mobbed and he was ripped away and Herscha had to go and chase him and bring him back.

But it was like one direction. Yeah, right. If you remember them. Poor guy. Yeah. Yeah, it was. And in fact, you said you gave a famous Tintin quote there, James, blistering barnacles. Listering barnacles.

Indeed. His captain had it. right? Who says that? Yes. Yeah, frequently. And this, at least are quite an interesting thing about translating Tintin into English, because obviously it was originally written in French. I was reading an interview with Leslie Lonsdale Cooper and she was one of the two main translators of Tintin from French into English and she was doing it for 30 years, but she said one of the great challenges is fitting the words exactly into the speech bubbles because you get exactly the same images. But I don't, you know, when you hear a French announcement on a tannoy and then you hear the English one

and the French one always goes on about five times longer. So I don't know how she was compressing that. But blistering barnacles was one of the things that she came up with as a translation of actually me sabore. I think it was in French, which means a thousand port-holes. He's from Belgium though, isn't he? Yeah. But they speak French.

They speak French. In half of Belgium they do. It's supposedly based on a Frenchman. wasn't he, Tintin? Robert Sexe. Yes. Oh, that's a good name. It's a great name, isn't it?

Robert Sexy. He was a French journalist, and apparently he looked a bit like Tintin. He went on adventures to the Soviet Union, to the Democratic Republic of Congo, and to the US, in the same order that Tintin does those books. But Herge always said, Tintin Semois. So he always claimed that Tintin was based on himself, but we think he might have been inspired. by various different journalists. There was another theory that Tintam and all the characters were based on the family members of Herge. And he denied it later in life.

He said, no, no, no, it's nothing to do with them. But let me just quickly tell you about his family. There was his younger brother, Paul, who had a round face and a quiff. There was his dad, Alexis, who was a clumsy man who had a twin brother called Leon, who lived nearby. And the two of them would go for walks, and they would wear identical bowler hats. and carry identical canes singing in unison as they did.

His dog Snowy, who originally had the name Milo in French, who does have the name. Sorry, rather, who does have the name Milo in French, shares that name with Herge's first girlfriend.

Yes. But that's no. A lot of people have suggested are you saying something rude? But Harry Thompson points out that at the time it was considered to be a great, crime if you were a young boy hanging out with the opposite sex certainly if you were

depicting that in comics and so the only way he could represent this person who was very fond of was to put her as a dog in there otherwise he would have gotten a lot of trouble what what kind of weird excuse-maker for the fact that Ere put pretty much zero women in all of his comics were you reading oh we weren't allowed to include women in comic books back then they had to be dogs they had to come in disguise. He just didn't put any women characters in. It's a bit of a bit of a mystery.

Hard to draw, women, aren't they? That's not true. What about Bianca Kesterfjore, the opera singer? She's a huge character in the... You're right. She's a heroine as well. That's true.

No, you're right. He had one. He had Bianca. That is true. And he did have the dog who maybe was based on his girlfriend. But also, weirdly, the person James mentioned, sex there, he had a travel companion called Milu as well So it might be in there

Oh no way Have you guys read what is apparently the best Tintin And I haven't read it I'm ashamed to say But Tintin in Tibet people seem to say I'm guessing have you read that Ries Yes so that's that's my favourite I mean I've let people know that Yeah I think I remember back

It might still be there on It used to be on one of the social media As you put down your favourite book And I just always put Tintin in Tibet Oh, well, you've got such good taste That was his favorite You probably know this That was Euget's favourite as well

Oh really? Yeah, yeah I didn't know that That's awesome I just because it's got a Sasquatch in it As well, that's why Oh yeah, of course That's why it's your favourite

I thought you liked it for the great Philosophical undertone And the exploration of kind of Buddhist theology But it's the Sasquatch No, I've never read it I just flick through And go straight to the Sasquatch And look at the pictures

Every time Well, it makes Tintin The only fictional character to have received the Light of Truth Award from the Dalai Lama. So this is like the best honor that the Dalai Lama can bestow. And it's to anyone who improves public understanding of Tibet, which is questionable if they did chuck a Sasquatch into the storyline. But yeah, the Dalai Lama gave Tintin this amazing light of truth.

Well, it's a Yeti, you know. Yeah, it's a Yeti. It's perfectly correct. It is. You're right. And he's a good guy. Like, he saves them. So I love it when that happens.

Yeah, there's a. It's a great book. Does the Dalai Lama believe in Yetis? Do you know, Dan? If anyone knows, he would know. I would say so. Yeah, so he has alluded to a belief. Unfortunately, the person he alluded that belief to was Brian Blessed.

So I'm not sure if we can trust Brian's reporting. But when Brian was looking to climb to Mount Everest and obviously looking for Yeties along the way, he had a, what's it called, an audience with the, Dalai Lama and he met him. They apparently did some boxing together. Brian took a walk with him in the wood. He saw him revive a headless dead snake back to life. And then they talked about yeties and he suggested that yeah, that they are real. Okay, that's a headless dead snake back to life. What did he do? Just pick it up and wobble it. Look, it's back. Oh my God.

You're just wobbling that. No, it's alive. It's alive. It's alive. Again. He was doing it like the thumb trick where you make it go, hey, look at it. Well, here's the other thing, too, I'll say about the hair, the haircut on Tintin. Think about when you do find your do, you know, when you're young or whatever, maybe in your 20s, you're playing, whether you're sorting something out, and you go, right, that's me. Quite often, not everybody, but a lot of people will keep that hairdo for their entire life. And so that kind of fits in when you think about that because even when you lose your hair or it goes gray or whatever, you know, you go into your later stages of life. You're still got that same hair do you had when you're in your early 20s.

That was a really good point. There was a thing, wasn't there, there was a scientific paper written about Tintin, which was when the first book was written, he was supposed to be 14. And by the time the last book was written, he must have been about 60 because Jorge was writing. them for so long. Right. But he was 60 years old, never had to shave. None of his hair's fallen out. He's still got those boyish features.

And according to these scientists, they reckon he suffered from hypopetutorism due to repeated blows to the head in some of the early bucks. And does that stop you aging properly? Yeah, it means you never go through puberty. I see. Poor guy. He's got sort of an inverse to what most middle-aged men have. where he's bald all around the middle of his head

and then he's got just lots of hair in the middle and I'm looking at James has actually brought a tin tin doll Oh you have a tintin, yes, yeah. To this episode, another visual feature that will be lost on our audience. It looks like a Mohawk from here. He really does. Yeah.

Oh no, he does have hair. Sorry, when you turn it round. Yeah, he does. It's just from the front he looks bald. I'd just say one final thing is that that he really didn't like Tintin at the end, much of the way that Arthur Conan Doyle got sick of his creation of Sherlock and he threw him off a cliff and killed him.

Arguably it's just a wet cliff. Only because I went there a few weeks ago. Did you? To the Ricanback Falls. Yeah, yeah. Would you say wet cliff is an accurate description? So he really didn't like Tintin at the end and he was quite sick of him. And so the final Tintin book that Herge was working on up until the point of his death

was a book called Tintin and Alf Art. And all we have is the sort of rough sketches of it. But the final pain that he got up to, the final bit of the story, was having Tintin covered in liquid polyester and being sold as a work of art. And that's the cliffhanger. We don't know what happened.

Does he die? Does he survive? Tintin is like Woody from Toy Story left on a cliffhanger. We'll never know. So do you mean he was put in like a work of art like a Damien Hearst kind of thing? Yes. Knowing Tinton as I do, I would say he'd probably escape from that.

Yeah. But his God might have turned him against that, right? Like, Jorge was, who knows what he was going to do there? We just don't know. We don't know. Rees? It's interesting. Yeah, I will.

It's interesting, isn't it? These people that play, also when you think of actors, that play these characters that are so loved and they get sick of them as well I was just thinking of Harrison Ford with Hans Solo Oh does he not like Did he not like Hans by the end? He said he'll come back to Star Wars

But he wanted the characters to die Which is a spoiler But at least that's if you haven't seen that one It came out a few years ago now But And then the whole James Bond dying In that last Bond that Daniel Craig That's a bit more fresh

That's a bit more fresh It reminds me of that character Anna Karellina. I don't know if you... Okay, it is time for our final fact of the show, and that is my fact. My fact this week is that for over 50 years now, the author of a nearly complete history of the moose in New Zealand has been looking for moose in New Zealand, despite there being no moose in New Zealand.

Or is there? Yeah, exactly. Or is there? Is there? No, there isn't. Well, there could be. There is. Could there be?

They could. Well, talk to us about... Why would he not be looking? Is it quite a short book? It sounds like there's not much to put in this book right now if there are no moose in New Zealand. Are you kidding me? No, there's plenty in this book and it's not his only book. He's written a bunch of books.

He's written a wild moose chase. He's... This guy is a legend of New Zealand. Yeah, I knew you'd like that, James. This is a man called Ken. Tustin and he has been in the national parks in New Zealand and Fjordland looking for moose because there was moose back in the 1920s 30s when they were introduced and there's your clincher there's there was moose so that it's not like oh he's going to look for theories and I hope there's

some there you know there there was moose put there they'll be dead by now those ones it's hundred years ago it's a little thing called mating oh is that Yeah. Go down to the sea. Get your toes wet. Come and meet me on a wet cliff, mate. Wow. I'll blindfold you. Is that someone blowing? No, it's not. It's just the wind. All right. Get your ID out.

Show us your twerks. Here we go. And mating. So this is, okay, so I got the decade slightly wrong. This was in 1910. And what it was is that New Zealanders, basically in 1910, wanted something to hunt. And they had no natural land mammals of that size. And so moose were introduced basically to rectify that. So initially, the moose really adapted well to the surroundings. But then red deer were introduced into the area. And that changed the whole food change so much that by 1952. So there was a good, you know, 40-odd years that they were around, the moose population really dwindled and then basically by 1930 disappeared altogether. But then in 1952, one was caught on camera. So there's a 20-odd year period where people thought they were extinct. And then suddenly, boom, here is a moose. And that is why this guy says there may be more moose, because moose are really good at hiding.

Yes. They are really, they're really hard to see. They're huge. I know. They're not. They're Big antlers. I know, I know. But this is a huge national park. You know, it's really hard to spot one. A moose could be standing in a field, 100 yards away and you won't see it. They do get hit by cars a lot,

don't they, Moose? That is a big problem in Canada. And is that because of this invisibility that they can switch on off? Well, that must be, right? Yeah, because they've got this mystical ability. They can stand still for a long time. And one of their, I think one of their

Look, if you can just take this seriously One of their, you know, like a security measure Defense mechanisms? There you go, there's the terms. I knew you'd get there. Is to, you know, like quite a lot of animals use that where they just freeze. Like the goats?

And it's always, yeah, well, no, that's a different one. That's, you know, but that, well, kind of. But that's a gene anomaly. Yeah. I'm just trying to think of some other animals that do it, do the old freeze. A few bugs. Rabbit and headlights.

Rabbit and headlights is one. And mules. Mules do that definitely, I think, when they're... They just freeze when they can't deal with a situation. I think so, yeah. Like a possum, they would kind of pretend to be dead. No, I think all of the examples you've given so far are incorrect. Okay.

There are some bugs and things out there that will just... I think, okay, here's one, the stick insect, because I saw it yesterday. Okay. A frozen stick insects. So the thing is, I used to have pet stick insects as a child. and they never moved ever. It wasn't that as soon as they were in danger they stopped moving.

They just stayed still. No, that's defence mechanism. They were scared of me. Yeah, absolutely. So I've had one on my steering wheel the other day. This is back in New Zealand when I was in the rural property. And I went to grab my steering wheel to drive as you do. And there's a sticky on there.

And I went, oh, come on, mate. Because my hands need to be there. He was in the two position because you know, you go for 11 and 2. It's the worst place. And I went, I grabbed the 11 and I always grabbed the left first.

Grab the 11. Go in for the 2. Oh, there's a sticky there. And I says to him, come on, mate. And he just, honestly, he's seen him looking at me. I'm on the right hand side of him. No prob's there.

But he's not moving. And I come in slowly. And I even told him, coming in with the hand, buddy, coming in, you're on my two position. And nothing. Just absolutely frozen. So in the end,

I just picked him up and he made out like he was a stick the whole time. I've come to think of it, it might have been a. Poor stupid stick insect, because I see what you're saying. Now you're saying animals that are camouflaged to their environment freeze, but he's not a steering wheel insect. So it would be good if you could know as an animal that the thing you're sitting on. Yeah, it's nothing like. You look nothing like it.

Yeah. I mean, chameleons, they're the other ones, that lizards in general will, will freeze or really dart away, but lizards are the ones that will freeze as a mechanism. So let's go back to what was your fact, Dan? What are we talking about? Moose. We were talking about mooses. That's right. And so, hey, this is pretty cool. We wrote a book years ago, where there was a New Zealand professor called Neil Gemmel who had gone to Loch Ness and he had used a new form called E-DNA to try and sample the waters of Lockheedonel. nest to see if the monster may exist. And so eDNA seems like quite an obvious thing that you would use

in order to try and find the moose because you could go there. And if the moose had been, let's say, around a little stream or a pond and if it had been sipping from it in the last 21 days, Neil would be able to use this device to then take extracts out and say, ah, there's moose DNA in there. That means they're alive. Yeah. So I actually DM'd him on Twitter and I asked him, you know, is this a thing? Would you be up for doing it? And he said, it's so weird, I actually met Ken. I met this guy who's been looking for moose. Yeah, and he met him when he went back to Loch Ness to deliver the results of his findings

about the water that he took from Loch Ness. And Ken happened to be there on holiday. And they met at Lachness to then discuss looking for the moose. Actually, I might seem like it's a massive coincidence, but where is Ken going to holiday? It's obviously going to be Lachness. Where are these two nutters that you've happened to have heard? I'm going to see each other. How day.

So is he going to do it? Well, he talks about it. So he said, what did he say? He said, Ken and I have kept in touch, and the plan was to jump on board with him next time he found some sign of moose, but there's been little found in the past few years. Still remains a possibility. We've surveyed quite large sections of Fiordland and do reasonably broad biodiversity surveys,

setting baselines and looking for various things. Endangered birds. some species that are presumed to be extinct, and of course, moose. So far, there is no evidence of those. However, there's been a hugely exciting thing for Ken that happened in 2020, which is that a kid, well, I say kid, he is a teenager. And when I say teenager, he's in his 20s. And he was on a flight.

He was a guy called Ben Young, who was in a helicopter flying over Fjordland, doing some surveying, and he saw, a moose. He saw the moose. Now here's the thing. Here's the thing. He's a Canadian who used to work with moose. He knows what a moose looks like. We all know what a moose looks like. No, but Canadians

really know. Canadian's really know. He was specifically a former moose hunting guide in Canada. I still listen. James, he would really know. Rees, you're the one who just told us a Canadian could be standing 100 feet from a moose in a plain meadow

and not see it. there you go yeah normally but this guy was a trained moose looker wasn't he he's a trained moose yeah yeah it's I have to say it's not it obviously is not the maddest idea

they were there like you say it is a big place and sometimes these things come to fruition so there's another really great Kiwi animal animal in New Zealand the Tarkahey which I think are pretty rare. Have you seen Tarcahaye? I think they're quite rare, aren't they, Rhys? Yes, they're rare, for sure. Nice, nice looking, very nice looking birds, though.

What kind of are birds? Yeah, they're the largest bird in like the rail family, so like Coots and Moorhens, but much bigger, very beautiful blue-green feathers, huge red beak that goes all the way up over their foreheads. They can't fly, but anyway, we thought the Tarcahaye was extinct by about 1900. So, I think the first sighting by Europeans was 1849, Obviously, the Europeans captured it, roasted it, ate it. They sort of went quite quickly extinct. And then there's a guy called Geoffrey Orbell, who when he was a kid, his mum just showed him a picture of one, I think, in a childhood book.

And he got a hunch as a child. I bet that's still out there. And he spent his life kind of reading up on them. And he was a doctor. I think he was an eye doctor, so he was a legit, had a job. He knew how eyes worked, so he'd be perfect for looking for things. He knows how they really work. he could really see.

Yeah. So he took his expert eyes out on this 1948 expedition. And they went up this mountain and, you know, these things haven't been seen for 50 years. And they sat by a little bit of water and two of them just walked straight into their nets. These lovely little birds waddled in. And we discovered and now they have them. I think they're only about 300. They're very unusual.

Yeah, they're very endangered. Yeah. But look, there you go. I mean, that's just one example of how animals, and don't forget, you know, the more intelligent they are, and they know we're around. They know that they're endangered. There's only a small group of them, and they hide, and they worry, and they, at their survival instinct is their main feature. And so they are doing whatever it can take, because otherwise they could be caught, they could be shot. We only think it from a human capacity of how would we hide, how would we stay alive.

but we're nowhere near as good as animals in the natural environment of the forest at staying alive. Yeah, you're right. A moose, that's ingrained in its system, isn't it? Get away. Just back to the Fjordlands very quickly. I just want to give a quick shout out to a legend of the world of ornithology. He was part of the Ornithological Society of New Zealand, joined in 1957, a guy called Ron Jack Nilsson, who very sadly passed away October 26, 2022. He was a legend of his. field and he's spent much like Ken many, many years looking for an elusive supposedly extinct species of bird which are called the South Island Coca-Co. Have you heard of that, Reese? The South Island Coca-Cola. Oh yeah, we found those this year.

In November, wasn't it? Yeah. It was the first of November last year. Yeah, when did he die? October 26th. Oh, no. Oh, God, that is. So close, yeah. But no, seriously, what, what, how do you spell the bird name? K-O with a line above the K-A-K-O, sorry, K-A-K-O, so K-K-K-K-O. And it's a bird that hasn't been seen for many, many years. People occasionally have supposed sightings, but no one has properly confirmed it. No one has a photo.

And if anyone in New Zealand in that region is listening, there is, at least there was, when this paper was written, a $10,000 reward for any photographic proof of the South Island Coca-Co. There's quite a lot of money to be made. Isn't there if you can find these things that don't exist? It's not the easiest way, probably to pull in a decent salary, a reliable salary. If you tell your partner, you know what, I'm going to quit my job because I've heard lots of money to be made.

You're nagging me too much. I'm going to get my books and I'm going to go and find the Coca-Cola. Okay, hon. I'll see you at dinner. old story. 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 Twitter accounts. I'm on at Shreiberland, James. At James Harkin. Reese. Please don't contact me.

I think I did this last time. I haven't got time to read all your messages. And Anna? You can email podcast at QI.com. Yeah, where you can go to our group account, which is at No Such Thing or our website. No Such Thing as a Fish.com. All of our previous episodes are there. Do check them out.

But most importantly, go and watch the entire series of our flag memes death. Reese's brilliant pirate sitcom. The entire series is up now to watch on the BBC Eye Player. It's an absolutely awesome series. Reese, thank you so much for being here. And for the rest of you, we'll be back again next week with another episode. We'll see you then. Goodbye.

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