No Such Thing As A Fish - No Such Thing As The Queen's Christmas Burlesque

Episode Date: December 25, 2019

Merry Fishmas! Live from Birmingham, Dan, James Anna and Andrew discuss the earliest known pornography, Mariah Carey's Christmas tree, and how a poodle saved the Queen's speech. Visit nosuchthingasafish.com for news about live shows, merchandise and more episodes.

Has he been? Who, James? Father Christmas. Has he been where? To your house to give you presents, because it's Christmas Day! It is Christmas Day! Yes, he has. He went down the chimney of my laptop to deliver me a new episode of No Such Thing as a Fish.

Amazing. Yes. What we have got for you today, a little bit earlier than scheduled, is our Christmas special, recorded live in the most Christmassy of places, Birmingham. Oh, it was so Christmassy. We're so Christmas-y. There was stuff outside. There were lights. There were German sausages.

So many German sausages. It was like flipping Latland. It was. It was Christmas. It was Christmas City. It was such a fun episode to do. We enjoyed ourselves, like we always do in Birmingham. It's one of the best places that we go and visit.

Really, really hope you enjoy it. It's full of Christmasy facts that you can tell all of your family over the Christmas table. Over the Christmas table? Over it. Over the Christmas table. Get over that table and tell them our facts. Uh, well, hey, this has been successful. Uh, enjoy your day. That's the main thing. Yeah, the main thing is that you have a really good day, enjoy your Christmas,

hope you got lots of amazing presents, and here is an extra early episode of No Such Thing as a Fish. Or ho, ho, ho, ho, such thing as a fish. Sure. Okay, on with the podcast. Stop, guys. Stop! On with the son of Godcast, not like it. Welcome to another episode

A No Such Thing as a Fish, a Weekly podcast, this week coming to you live from Birmingham. My name is Dan Shriver. I am sitting here with Anna Chisinski, Andrew Hunter Murray, and James Harkin. And once again, we have gathered around the microphones this time with our four favorite Christmas facts from the last seven days. And in no particular order, here we go. Starting with you, Andy. My fact is that in 1958, the Queen's speech was lost on the day of delivery and then found by a nearby poodle.

It's a heartwarming Christmas story for the 80s. Although what it says to me is that the coggies are really shit at finding things. Yeah, that's true. This was in 1958, so obviously she hadn't been done many of these speeches before. Pretty nerve-wracking, still live delivery. And one of the most important copies of the speech, one with all the producers' notes, on it was lost and then found by a poodle.

What was the poodle doing there? I thought security was quite tight around the queen. It was not by the queen. I mean, she would have found it if it would have been next to her. But surely, it must have been near the queen. I think it was at a nearby train station, wasn't it?

So this poodle has no involvement in the story. Well, no, he's the main protagonist in the story. I don't know if you heard the story. So what I mean is it's not like the poodle was in Buckingham Powers going, Lost script, I'm on it. No, no, no, no. They didn't summon it in to find the script.

He was brought in to find the script. No, no, they didn't summon it into find the... Jesus. You don't say, I've lost a script somewhere in the United Kingdom. I need one poodle. The poodle at a train station noticed a bag, there was a bag, and the poodle went over and explored it. I can't remember the name of the poodle.

I don't think I wrote it down. How did he know it was the Queen's Speech? Well, he... did a sort of series of mimes to his master. The owner of the poodle was a guy called John Harvey, who then took it to the police. The Queen's speech was saved, and things just carried on as normal.

Right. Thank God, because where would we have been without that speech? Right, right. Everyone remembers the 1958, right? I remember the 1959 speech, and when I say I remember, I'm not that old, but I can tell you about the 1959 speech because it was the first speech

that had a joke in it, as far as I can see, because I read through the early ones. And this one, the Queen said, she explained all the places that they were going, all these new countries in the Commonwealth, and she said, so between us, we are going to many parts of the world. We have no plans for space travel at the moment.

I mean, I'm not saying it was a great joke. It passes our bar for joke, but I'm not sure if it passes many people's. There was a good one in 1957. A classic in 1957, I would say, again, it was still live, and the Queen was doing her speech. In mid-speech, there was interference in the signal for the speech itself on TV. So while people were watching, suddenly they could hear American police officers coming over in place of the Queen speaking. And the line that was heard most by most people was, Joe, I'm going to go grab a quick coffee.

That was suddenly just in the middle of the Queen's speech. in 1957. Some of them, they put them out on telly, but there was no picture. Yeah, I think between 1952 and 1957, they realised they had television now, and so they broadcast it on TV, but she didn't have her makeup done or something. Because the first TV broadcast was 57, wasn't it?

Where you could actually see her. But before that, you could just listen to her, but watching a black TV screen. Wow. Wait a minute, so people might not have really known much about the Queen, what she looked like and stuff like that. So when they heard someone saying, Joe, I'm going to get a coffee.

Did they maybe think it was the queen doing that? I think from all the money, they knew what she looked like. Yeah. Okay, here's a challenge for you. Can you guys guess one thing that she never does while she is recording the speech?

Burlesque. That's fair? That's technically the correct, it's a correct answer. I've never seen her stuffing a turkey. Yes. Andy, you've got to reframe the question. She's gone for a long time.

She never takes a wee. She never stands on her head. She doesn't smile in a genuine way. She does her kind of queen smile. She doesn't do the sort of big friendly smile. She has a kind of controlled smile. She's got a queen smile. That's cool.

Yeah, but there is. There was a time where the sound man decided, oh she's got such a nice smile, I'm going to see if I can make a smile during a thing. So he attached a sign saying smile to the camera boom arm and he put a sprig of holly and some tinsel next to it and she saw it and she immediately frowned.

And he was the last victim of capital punishment to this country, wasn't he? I discovered while reading about the Queen's Christmas broadcasts that she is a podcast pioneer. Is she? Yeah. The Queen's speech was released as a podcast in 2006. Wow.

We started in 2014. Like, that's how distant it is. And it's, I haven't heard it, but I assume it's the same as the speech. But yeah, it's not very long. You know, she could have done a podcast slant. One's father wrote a porno. Stop the queen's speech.

Stop the queen speech. Hello, we're sponsored this week. By the royal mint. By all of you. Of course, before the Queen's speech was the Queen speech, it was the King speech. Right? So it started, I think the first one was 1932, although it only became a yearly thing in 39. And 1932, they'd actually, so John Reith, who was general manager of the BBC at the time, had been trying to persuade King George V to do a King's speech for years.

And he really didn't want to. He was sweetly shy and nervous and thought he wasn't a very good speaker and was a technophobe, so didn't really understand this newfangled radio thing. And he finally was persuaded to do it when it turned out that Rudyard Kipling was going to write it for him. And then he thought, okay, well, that sounds good. He wrote it for him. Yeah, he wrote the speech for him. Jungle Book Guy.

Jungle book guy, as some people know him better. What a speech. The bare necessity is... The simple. No, it wasn't... He wrote some other stuff as well. Okay, cool. Yeah, so it was one of those other things.

But apparently, King George, from his naval days, I read, felt most comfortable in small rooms. And so even though they made a fake recording studio, which was one of the grand rooms in the palace, he actually recorded it in a box room under the stairs at Sandringham House. And, yeah, Harry Potter. It was like Harry Potter, yeah. His hand was shaking. If you listen to it, you can hear the paper rustling because his hand was shaking so much. And he said it ruined his Christmas.

Oh. Guess who produced the... Can you see if... I've got another Christmas challenge for you. Yeah. See if you can guess who produced the messages between 1986 and 1991. Was it Dieter Vontes?

Oh, yeah. I wish I hadn't got you that book about burlesque. No, it was not Dita Vantes. So, a BBC producer. Yeah. But also a friend of the queens. Friend of the Queens. Oh.

Prince Charles. David Attenborough. David Attenborough? Great fact. It's just not his normal thing, is it? But he was, was he the guy, he was quite a famous producer before he did his other stuff, right? He was in the 60s, yeah. Is he the guy who, I might get this wrong, but is he the guy who decided to put snooker on television to sell color TVs? Yes.

Yes. Yeah, it was when he was a control of BBC 1, I think, then he said to sell color TV. Can I say, that's just a tiny bit worse than me saying, is that the jungle book guy, to say David Attenborough, is he the snooker guy. Well, coming from you, the queen, is that the woman off the money? Oh, why do we always argue at Christmas? Some more stuff about TV and movies around Christmas, something like that. So there were four Flintstone's Christmas specials, which how exactly they celebrate Christ's birth?

I don't really know. Oh, yeah. They were pioneers. There was a... there is a YouTuber called Jake Roper, and he decided to look at that classic Christmas movie Home Alone. Oh, yeah. And he found out that...

He looked at all the tricks that Kevin played on the burglars and found out what would happen in real life. So apparently, shame on me, I haven't seen this movie, but I believe this is what happened. Whoa! I know, I know. James, that's a better fact than whatever you're about to tell us. So apparently at one stage, he heats up a door-knop, and they burn their hand.

And apparently the temperatures needed to transfer enough heat to the outside knob would have melted the door or set the house on fire. There is a crowbar that goes to the chest of one of the burglars. That would have punctured his lungs and his heart. But it wouldn't matter

because Kevin would have already murdered both of them with the paint can trap. Apparently the force of those paint cans would have killed both of them. That would be a very different movie. Would have been. Yes. How do you know?

You don't know? I'm assuming. Maybe they both die. It is weird. It's like watching you read a foreign language where you don't understand it. You obviously don't quite know what this is in reference to at all. Look, I read the synopsis on Wikipedia.

Do you know, there's such a weird thing about Home Alone. So Joe Pesci, who was the bad guy in it, who's not an idiot. He obviously was more used to doing kind of gangster films. He's in quite a lot of serious gangster films. And I think he might have thought this is a similar thing. So we went really method in Home Alone. So on the set of Home Alone, he refused to see McCauley Colkin at all because he wanted McCauley to be really, really terrified of him. So, you know, he didn't want to kill the magic of him being this bad guy.

And in the scene where which you may remember, and I do remember, and James doesn't remember, where he's hung up on a coat hook at one point, if you remember, by his coat. And Joe Petty says to him, I'm going to bite all your fingers off one at a time. And in one of the rehearsals, he actually bit Culkin really, really hard and drew blood. and he still has a scar. Really? Yeah. Apparently this little nine-year-old boy had to do a screaming fit

and be like, I don't care how many Oscars you've got and don't go around biting nine-year-olds. That's apparently in E.T. When they were filming it, Stephen Spielberg needed Drew Barrymore to cry during a scene. There's a scene where she really sobs. And behind the scenes of it is that apparently before the take was done,

Stephen Spielberg leaned into her going, it's going to be a good scene, you know, you'll be great, you'll be great. by the way, your dog just died, and then walked back, and she burst out crying, and that's her genuinely crying. Wow. Anyway, Merry Christmas. We needed to move on to our next fact. Time for fact number two, and that is Chazinski.

My fact this week is that, as well as being the birthplace of Jesus, Bethlehem is also where we found the oldest known depiction of people having sex. Yeah. Which is very, that's very ironic. Because famously, that was a sex-free zone. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I don't think it was a sex-free zone. It was just they hadn't two people, of many people, hadn't had sex, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it is related to non-sex. They, Mary and Joseph, didn't have access to this piece of art. Otherwise, they would have known what you know. They didn't have instructions. Yeah. So, yeah, I think this is such a weird coincidence. This is really quite a beautiful piece of art.

It's made of calcite. It's from 11,000. thousand years ago, so it's a stone-aged piece of art, and it's kind of this couple of androgynous humans sort of inside. I don't know how sex works when they're that androgynous, but sort of intertwined, like, legs over each other. Look it up, it's very nice. Face to face, so the traditional way. And it... Sure. You've got to specify. But not missionary, I would say. Well, when you look at it, it's quite hard to tell if it was meant to be upright or horizontal.

So that's sort of in the eye of the beholder. Anyway... I'm really looking forward to your BBC 4 documentary on the history of art. So this... When I first looked at it, I thought it just looked like a rock. Okay, maybe I'm just not into my art as much as Anna is. It doesn't look like a rock.

It looks like two people gloriously intertwined. Sure. Okay. But according to artist Mark Quinn, depending on the perspective and how you look at it, It also resembles a penis, breasts, or a vagina, depending on which way you kind of move it around. So it's like a bit of trick art.

Oh, cool. It is very cool. Because if you put it sort of sideways onto you, so it said it's widest, it looks like the couple, one next to each other, and then if you move it so it sort of end on, it looks like a penis. And then on the base, there's a cheeky vagina. So it's a very, it is amazing. A cheeky vagina.

It's a three for the price of one, isn't it? Yeah, it is. Basically your porn hub of 10,000 years ago. Yeah. Because you could just search for any of three things, and then you would get it. Anyway, so it was found in the 1930s by some Bedouin Shepherd Boys,

and obviously it's now in the British Museum. It's quite nice that it was Shepherds. That's cool. Isn't it? Just watching their flock. Right. Yeah. No, because it's not while Shepher's looked at their horny rock by night. Is that a star in the sky?

Doesn't matter, keep looking at the rock. We have no evidence. They got any kind of arousal out of it. They found it, and then they gave it to an archaeologist. It's in an area just within a few miles of Bethlehem called Ein Sackri, and it's in a cave. And, yeah, made by the Natufians, who were...

They're called a sedentary people, which isn't as insulting as it sounds. It just means that they were not nomadic. Very unusually for that time. They weren't nomadic. I think they're my favourite group of people from history than the Toofians. Really? Are they?

Yeah, because the first example we have of anyone who domesticated the dog. They're the first examples we have of a big feast. They were the first example we have of beer. It might be just people are looking in that place and stuff like, but I think they sound like a really cool, you know, a bunch of people. The first known beer, I think, is from 13,000 years BP, which... What's BP? This is not a petrol reference, but...

So I didn't know about this. phrase, but it stands for before-present, and I don't know why we need it when we have BC. But, so it's 13,000 years BP, so I guess about 11,000 years BC. And when do you think before present is sort of starts from? As in this, well, just when you said it a few seconds ago. But not anymore. Now, it's now. And so forth.

Is it not that? I'm going to have to say your first answer. And it's not. It's 1950. Okay, boomer. Isn't that way an archaeologist just decided the present is 1950? That is so strange. Is it because some people think it's like where there was atomic bombs?

It's exactly that, yeah. Is that because of it? And so then any rocks from then on have some kind of radioactivity so you can't use carbon dating as well. Exactly. Everything's kind of screwed up after 1950 because of all the nuclear shit, as you say. There is a theory that it's the other Bethlehem. But this is the Bethlehem that we have,

where there is a church and a cave and all the... tourism and religion. What do you mean other Bethlehem? There's one in Wales for instance. It's not that one. I know there's one in Pennsylvania. It's not that one. There's one in the Galilee. And an Israeli archaeologist has said that although there probably won't be any proof due to modern building work, a lot of Jesus's life happened near the other Galilee or near the Galilee. So, and also that one is only a few hours of a walk from Nazareth, which is where Mary and Joseph traditionally came from. So it's more reasonable that a heavily pregnant woman would have walked for a few hours. But didn't they say that they spent like weeks in the desert walking from one place to the other? They must have got really lost if it's

this one right next to. That's true. That's the thing they didn't though. That's the weird thing. So the nativity, the birth of Jesus is only mentioned in two of the Gospels anyway, Luke and Matthew. And it's only in Luke that they make the journey. So in Matthew, they're already living in Bethlehem. and even in Matthew, this is the extent of the whole journey that we have the impression of the donkey and the long trip. He just says, you know it was for a census, so they both confirmed that they were going to Bethlehem for a census, and they sort of happened to have a child while they were there. But it went, Joseph went to be registered with Mary, who was expecting a child. While they were there, she gave birth and wrapped him in bounds of cloth and laid him in a manger because there was no place for him in the inn.

And that's it. And all the other stuff is from later, the donkey, the long journey, the cave, it all comes from. of the proto gospel of James? Wait, you didn't say the keg, did you? The cave. Oh, the cave, sorry. They cracked open a keg and had a whale of a time. Traditional English Christmases used to have a mince pie in the shape of a manger,

and you would put a little Christchild doll in the pie. Sorry, not in the pie. On the pie, on the pie, which was sort of shaped like a manger, like a kind of trough. And then you would put the Christchild in it, and then at dinner time you would eat the pie. so sorry, did you eat the Jesus? No, you didn't eat the Jesus. The Jesus, I think, was an annual decoration to be got out every year. The pie was just, the pie was the edible bit.

I see. Just complain to the waiter. Waiter, waiter, there's a Jesus in my pie. And what comes next? Is there an ending to that joke? Are you joking? With the fly? Yeah, you are, but...

No, I'm not. What's the end to the fly joke? Oh my God. Should we set together? There's a fly in my soup. Don't talk too loud. Everyone will want one. That's, that's, that's dated.

It's the way we told it. Do you guys know where the animals come from in the nativity? You know where you usually have an ox and a kind of a donkey in a sheet? So they're not mentioned in the Bible either? They're not mentioned in the Bible, but they come from the gospel of Pseudo-Matthew who appeared in the 8th century and claimed that he sort of remembered all this stuff. No, so Pseudo-Matthew wrote the gospel, which is where we get a lot of our nativity ideas. and he introduced the stable

where Jesus was born and adds an ox and an ass but he also added to the scene lions, leopards and dragons no that's so cool yep that's correct if you want to do the nativity properly

if you're having an ox you might as well have a lion a leopard and a dragon he said they were all wagging their tails to show their devotion have we spoken about nativity thefts I can't remember if we've ever talked about it before is people stealing nativity scenes

Yeah, it is. And it's, so there's been a huge rash of this in lots of places in the last few years. So there is another Bethlehem in Pennsylvania. And there, a woman stole the crib in 2016. And, you know, it broke a bit. And the chief of police had to glue baby Jesus's leg back on. It was very, you know, embarrassing. So they had to put a security camera solely on the baby Jesus when they reinstalled it. But this keeps happening. So there's a place in Wisconsin called West Bend where 2017, Jesus was stolen. Then they found it. They replaced the Jesus.

Then on Christmas Eve, it was stolen again the baby Jesus. And there was a police officer who saw a woman suspiciously cradling something. I don't know how you do that. And it was the replacement baby Jesus they put back in.

And the officer yelled, please stop. And she dropped the Jesus and pegged it. So now, in West Bend, literally everything is bolted down. The baby Jesus is plastered to the manger. and there is a camera which has hunting technology where when someone leans in for a closer look

a motion activated trail camera kicks in and starts recording their every move. We need to move on in a sec to our next fact. We could talk about some erotic art. Oh, okay, yeah. Oh, yeah, sure. Well, I just wanted to quickly mention another very old piece of art

which is all the statues of this Egyptian god called Min, who I didn't know existed, but he was the god of fertility, and you see little sculptures. of him from around the fourth millennium BC. So a bloody long time ago. And he has a very close association with lettuce. And that is because, so if you look at him,

he's always seen standing with an very erect, very long penis, which he's cradling in his left hand, I think. And then he's associated with lettuce. Suspiciously cradling? That's how you always suspiciously cradle something. If it's a penis, it is always suspicious. I don't think that's how she was cradling the baby Jesus, though, was it? No, it was not, I'm sure.

But yeah, he was the god of fertility and associated with lettuce, and it was thought the lettuce was the most aphrodisiacal food stuff, because it looks like a penis, but also if you break a leaf off a lettuce, it oozes kind of white substance. And so this was really revered.

Sorry, I must say that these are old lettuces that you would get in ancient Egypt. If you go to Sainsbury's and get an iceberg, one, it doesn't look like a penis, and two, it doesn't ooze white liquid. It looks a tiny bit, is that remain long, romaine, long phallic thing but yeah, it looks less like a penis and doesn't do the oozing.

Waiter, waiter, there's a penis in my lettuce. That one actually doesn't have an ending. Sorry, can I say one last thing about nativity, sorry. It's just there was a nativity set available on Amazon. I've read a lot of reviews of nativity sets that you can buy for yourself, and there is one set that is available on Amazon for £3.69, so this is a very, you know,

cost. Reasonably priced. Reasonably priced, nativity set. And the main review for it says this. Bearing in mind the price, I did not expect a work of art. But I did hope for something tasteful. The three figurines were tattie and badly painted. Joseph had white paint splattered all over his cloak and down his staff.

The beard... No, stop. Are you sure that wasn't lettuce juice? This nativity gets worse. The beard on the right side of his face was higher than the left, and covered his whole nose. Mary's paintwork was even tattier. She has two left hands.

Baby Jesus has a right eye that is twice the size of his left eye, and his mouth is on the right side of his face. So it is an optimistic. And there was no dragon. We need to move on to our next fact. Okay, it is time for fact number three, and that is my fact. My fact this week is the most likely time in the year

to have a heart attack is during a family Christmas gathering. This is absolutely true. This was research that was done in Sweden. They looked at DASER of 283,000 heart attacks that took place in the country between 1998 and 2013, and they found that at 10 p.m. on December the 24th, which is when the Swedes celebrate, that's when the Christmas gatherings happen,

that that's when it was most likely to happen. 37% more likely to happen on Christmas Eve than, you know, say 20,000. percent on New Year's Day or any other period of the year. Wow. Yeah. That's really good. And they got this information from a database they have of 283,014 heart attacks, and the database is called Swede Heart. Oh. That's nice, isn't it? That's sweet. It's something that ruins lives. Do we know what they think is due to? Is it due to Christmas arguments?

It's due to arguments, stress of did I get the right present? I've got all the family here. we're suddenly, you know, we've got uncles and aunties and children who don't usually hang in one room necessarily or when they do. Well, you know, you say it's due to, obviously we don't know why it is, but this is, we're speculating that it's because of that. It wasn't like they interviewed everyone mid-heart attack and said, what is it that you think's caused this? And they said, well, my wife's being a real bitch in the kitchen. Yeah, yeah. Because people thought that it was the cold quite a lot. But then they did a similar study in the Southern Hemisphere and found quite similar results, I think, didn't they?

Yeah. I think it's monopoly. Have you seen this about Monopoly this year? They've released the longest ever game of Monopoly. Really? Yeah. Oh, because they're always doing new editions and things like this. So the newest edition, they have 66 properties that you can get instead of 28.

There are 40 extra spaces, but you only have one dice, so it takes you way longer to get between each one. And the game carries on until one player has absolutely everything on the board. So you keep going into more and more and more debt. And basically you just keep going forever until one person wins all the money. That's good, isn't it? Because that's what I've always said about Monopoly is that it's just over too fast.

Actually, in 2016, Hasbro ran, they're very good at PR stuff. They ran a monopoly helpline from the 24th to the 26th of December to stop, literally because they said people always argue while playing this dreadful board game of us. Yeah. And the idea was the person at the end of the hotline

wouldn't solve this sort of like family dynamic argument. it would be, I will tell you what the official rule that you are disputing. Because that's the main thing. So there would be people, so people in the list of why people would call would be, or why the arguments happen, free parking. No one really knows officially what the rules are. That would be a big thing that they would argue about. And then it would be stuff like people taking too long to take their turn,

someone buying a property that you want when they definitely didn't need it. On the top of the list, it was people being... That's allowed. I know, it's allowed. That's the best part of the game. Exactly. Well, this is why your attitude is causing. And, yeah, the top being people being too cocky when winning. So this is just a hell of line people who can't be asked to read the instructions,

which are all of four pages long. Is that what we're saying? Yes. Right. Just checking. Who this was targeting. There are theories about why people argue, actual psychological theories about why people argue over Christmas. And one theory that I really like is that there are things which are social allergens. so you're not allergic the first time someone makes a tiresome joke to you over Christmas, but by the fourth or fifth time, you're having a very much stronger reaction,

even if it's someone completely different, making that joke again. I don't know, don't talk too loud, everyone or want one, that never gets old, you see. There was a study done recently which asked people their main reasons for post-Christmas grumpiness. So people get very depressed in January. it's sort of kind of depressing things. Like suicides go off of it. On New Year's Day is the biggest day for suicide. But happily Christmas Day is the smallest day for suicide.

So people hang on. But people get upset in January. Can I just apologise for my fact? I've never... I don't believe I did this to us tonight. It's a depressing fact. No, the main reason people get upset after Christmas, apparently, is because there were a list of 20.

One of them was, our house is full of Christmas presents and I don't want most of them, which extremely ungrateful. Apparently, children become a complete nightmare because they get used to the indulgence of Christmas, which I don't know if that's true, but they become terrorists, basically.

And then people cited chocolate withdrawal symptoms. That's not real. Top 20, why I'm grumpy in January, medical chocolate withdrawal. Wow. One bad thing that in the olden days would happen just after Christmas. In the 1600s in Wales, they had a tradition

where you would beat up the last person to get out of bed on Boxing Day. Bring it back. And is that why it's Boxing Day? No. They would also, around the same time, they would throw food at the wall

on Christmas Day, and whatever it's spelled out on the wall, that's who you would marry. I mean, do they have Alphabeti spaghetti in 16th century Wales? What? What? Can you hope to spell out? I suppose.

If you're not trifle, it'll go, ugh. Yeah, you're right. I suppose maybe like spaghetti. They probably didn't have spaghetti in those days, did they? Wow. Have you guys heard the song? An eel. They would get an eel from the table and throw that up.

Again, their name of better begin with S. Oh. Have you guys heard of this song from 2004 called The Twelve STIs of Christmas? No. This was an official... This was a song written by the Department of Health as part of a public safety campaign. And it was to teach people, especially young people, about the risks of unsafe sex. And it started, it had all the verses.

So it started on the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me a bug that made it hard to pee. Okay, so that's... Right. But they kept mixing up the verses all the way long. So I just want to share verse 9 with you on the 9th day of Christmas. My true love gave to me, genital warts, trichomoniasis,

hepatitis, pubic, lice, gonorrhea. Genital herpesythilis, clermidia and sores that spread anally. That's real. That's an official thing. I reckon no one has ever stood on this stage and sung the word garneria quite as beautifully as you did.

There was a study in 2016, and it was a Christmas study, so it was quite lighthearted in its intent, but it said recent estimates show Santa has to travel 510 million kilometres at nearly the speed of light each night before Christmas, while controlling the estimated 5.6 million reindeer necessary to pull his 2.3 million tonnes sleigh.

Considering one fatality in commercial aviation about every 323 billion passenger kilometres, and assuming that Santa sleigh is not considerably safer than a standard aeroplane, Santa would die on duty every 45 years. When's the next one due, do we know? Well, it says statistically

he should have died four times since his first appearance in the 18th century. But he keeps on surviving. He's fine. He's fine. He's okay. Yeah. They looked at some injuries in America between 2007 and 2016 over Christmas. These are just injuries, but 36,000 people just over died from

sorry got injured from electrical decorations 80,000 got injured from other types of decorations 17,928 got injured from artificial trees and 277 children were hurt during interactions with a Santa impersonator

and apparently according to the researchers their examples they gave is by either falling off his lap or falling while running away in fear We need to move on to our final fact of the show, and that is James. Okay, my fact this week is that Mariah Carey has three Christmas trees, one of which is decorated with pictures of herself.

Okay, so this is the modern day Santa Claus, Mariah Carey, and she has a main 19-foot tree in her living room. She has a smaller one in her bedroom, and she has one in the family room area that they call them. the Charlie Brown tree. And it's a really cute kind of slightly scraggly looking one, but they put polarites of the family as well, not just her. So it's a nice, it's a nice thing. And she has told us all about what happens at her Christmas. She always takes a plane to Aspen in Colorado, and she comes off the plane and she gets onto a sleigh pulled by reindeer's while they play, all I want for Christmas is you

again and again and again. Yeah, and she absolutely loves it. She, Actually, she does really like her own music. She likes to do stuff with her own music. According to her ex-husband, Nick Chanon, when she gave birth, as the babies came out, they were playing a Mariah Carey song, and they didn't just want any old Mariah Carey song. They wanted a live version of Mariah Carey singing fantasy

in Madison Square Garden, so that when the babies came out, they came out to a round of applause. Wow. She is the absolute moby-dick of pop divas. She is just, yeah, the perfect. Wait, so sorry, is the Manky one decorated with pictures of her? Yes, it's just like, like I say, Charlie Brown,

it's kind of a more traditionally kind of a small, small one. Okay. Yeah. She has... I think it's quite sweet, actually. Yeah, the thing is, Mariah Carey, I think we need a few people who exist in that diva land that we just celebrate as opposed to going there crazy

because it's so amazing to know that there's someone out there just living this insane life. And all these rumours, we don't know which ones are true and which ones are false. Are the things like people say, she never wears a watch, she can whistle with her hands. She never wears a watch. It's not diva behaviour.

I mean, you're not wearing a watch right now. Ooh, Dan Shriver, the Mariah Carey of no such thing as a fish. She has supposedly an extreme aversion to overhead lighting and has, as she claims that elevator lighting is toxic. And the thing is, some people, sometimes, pick her up on the fact that she has these big rumors about her and ask her about it. And often the answer is crazier than the actual accusation. She was interviewed by someone who said, there's a rumor going around that you only bathe in bottled water, sort of sparkling water.

And she said, that is insane. I bathe in milk. I don't think that was actually with Mariah Carey that interview, because this was in The Guardian and the description is so bizarre, but basically he sort of led into this roomway, he says it's dimly lit and he can barely make her out, and she's sitting in a weird throne and then she asked to be moved to a different chair slash throne, doesn't she? And there's this sort of air throughout that all he can see is her glittering diamonds and sort of the red of her outfit in this weird dimly lit space. And I think she's just sending stand-ins around the world

to repeat mad stuff about her. But there are clues that it might have been her. She wasn't wearing a watch, for instance. She whistled to beckon him. So the song, all I want for Christmas is you, is I think it's just over 25 years old. Really? Yeah, it's now an oldie. And when she was told, when Mariah Carey was told that the song was turning 25 years old,

she had an amazing response. She just said, I don't acknowledge time. That's why she doesn't wear a watch. She doesn't acknowledge time because she doesn't have birthdays. We don't truly know when Mariah Carey was born. that's a real thing. She was either born, I think it was in 19... What are the two days?

I think it was it 59 or 1960? Yeah, exactly. And we don't fully know because... Oh no, sorry, she was either born in 19609 or 1970. She was either born in 1969 and 1970. We don't fully know because we haven't got the birth certificate to tell. But she doesn't have birthdays. She has anniversaries because she doesn't acknowledge time.

Well, it's still acknowledging time if it's an anniversary, isn't it? You've just given it a different name. Good point. Yeah. She hasn't thought this one through. Yeah, no, she's, I think she's a fascinating character. And the amazing thing, all I want for Christmas is you, she's expanded it into so many territories.

There's a movie that she made recently, an animated movie. All I want for Christmas is you, the kid's cartoon, which I watched the other night. She's made... Sorry, you watched... Yeah, I saw it the other night. Was it good? It's fantastic.

Yeah. Did your son enjoy it? He doesn't watch that shit. He's, uh... I put it on, he was like, I'm out. He went to play with his Thomas a Tank Engine Toys, so I watched it on my own. But it's...

That is so depressing. Why? It's a fantastic song, a fantastic movie. She's a fantastic human who doesn't acknowledge that time exists. Like, it's a... How long is the film if time doesn't exist? To be fair, it did feel like forever, but... There is a whole article deconstructing the meaning of the song, All I Want for Christmas is You, on the Atlantic,

which is really good. kind of does it slightly academically. So it says, the author carefully sets out her premises. There exists an entity, I, representing conscious selfhood. This entity exists in relation to material space, a lot, and seasonal time for Christmas. The entity expresses this relationality

through the vocabulary of desire or want, and though its desires could theoretically be expansive, they are not. Yet how could we understand the author's examination of Christmas as anything but an implicit critique of capitalism. Hmm. She doesn't want all the other stuff for Christmas, she just wants you.

They've plagiarized her notes when she was writing that song, haven't they? Because she did write it, we should say. I didn't quite realise that she wrote all of her songs. I come up how many number one she said, but dozens. She did write basically all of them. She co-wrote that one, I think, right? She co-wrote it.

I think as a co-writer, she is unique in that she's had one number one hit for every year of the 90s, and no one else has had that she's heard yeah so she's yeah heard she'd had about 19 she'd written 18 of them or at the very least current of them and there is a theory our colleague James Rawson who is a big Mara Carey fan has a theory that all the diva stuff is actually to distract us

and it's to not it doesn't draw attention to the fact she's a very good songwriter and she has a five octave range which is almost unheard of but you know if she goes on about that it might sound vain so she just does the fun diva stuff instead although I don't want to suggest her career is going downhill but last year She was doing the tube announcements in London. Was she? She did the please mind the gap.

Or she did, she did, please. All I want for Christmas is Houston. Very, very strong. The next train will be along at some point. When? No, she did. She did a please stand clear of the yellow line. And also have you heard my new album,

Tube announcement. Wow. Cool. Did she actually save the new album bit? She did, yeah. Oh, wow. This year is a fight like every year for Christmas number one. Last year it was won by We Built This City on Sausage Rolls by Lad Baby.

And as a kind of comment against that, there is a couple called Gavin Chappell Bates and Giles Bryant, who are from Cambridge and Suffolk, respectively, and they've recorded a single called Peace on Your Plate, which is the world's first vegan Christmas single. The lyrics include, Children are Playing by the Fireside, there's magic at Yule Time,

but in a different land, it's a different scene in a factory shed, the animals scream. That honestly makes your fact, Dan, look like it's a wonderful life. I think it's unfair to call it the first vegan Christmas song when I think a lot of other Christmas songs haven't been rampantly carnivorous. Do you know who invented Christmas songs?

Christmas carols? Oh, it can't have been named after someone called Carol. I wish it was... No, it was a guy called Edward White Benson, who was the Bishop of Truro in the 19th century, late 19th century. And basically, Carols were sowing in pubs, and he wanted to move them to churches. And he went on to be an archbishop of Canterbury,

he was quite a big deal. But he had this extraordinary family life. So he was married. His wife had... She kept a diary of her lovers. She had 39 lesbian lovers. So she was gay. She kept this diary.

She had this. They had six children, four of whom were gay. And two sons. One went on to be a famous poet. The other went on to be a famous novelist. One of their two daughters, who was gay, stole her mother's girlfriend. And he was there being the Archbishop of Canterbury. Wow. She was brilliant, the mother. She was called Mary Benson and Gladstone at the time, called Prime Minister, called her the cleverest woman in England.

Which, you know, she had 39 lovers. That's pretty smart. Yeah, but not when they count all those STDs she got that in. We're going to have to wrap up very shortly. Anything before we do? Just some more Christmas songs. So for instance, the song I saw Mommy kissing Santa Claus was condemned by the Roman Catholic Church in Boston because they said it was showing adultery

because Mummy is kissing another man. And it was only when the guy who sang the song Jimmy Boyd met with the church leaders to explain that actually in this song the part of Santa is being played by the father in this... And then they lifted their condemnation. I think it makes sense to release Christmas songs. So I was looking at the royalties that you get. In 2016, Channel 5 did a review of all the biggest songs that get the number one royalty.

So she came in at number three. What do you think number two and number one were? Are they Christmas songs? Christmas songs. I think it'll be Slade. Merry Christmas, everybody. Number one. Yeah. Yeah.

How cool is that? And according to this report, they get one million pounds in royalties a year from that alone slayed not all of them wrote it though sorry it's only noddy holder and maybe one of the bloat yeah so probably noddy's getting most of it they get they get up between them with the other bandmates get nothing yeah yeah yeah way i didn't even say no way i just said no but here's the thing you don't even need to have written a good song that people have heard about in 1978 there was a guy called randy brooke who wrote a song called Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer.

Sold 40 million copies. It's been covered three times. The family have just been pulling in royalties each year. Yeah. Why have we not heard of this? Has anyone heard of that? Oh, really? It's a famous song.

Famous song. We just don't know anything. There is a firm called Mood Media, which provides tunes to shops. And 300,000 American shops have this music provided by this one firm. And they have 30 different Christmas music channels. That's how many different kinds of mood shopkeepers might want to evoke in their shops.

So if you run a small Christian bookshop, you might not want to have the raunchy Lady Gaga Christmas songs. Oh, yeah, okay. But if you're selling, if you've got a cool shop for young people, then you might want to play a song called Christmas in Harlem by someone called Kanye West. Yeah. Although some of the classic Christmas songs are raunchier than you might think.

So a lot of, I think Christmas carols didn't really start being sung in churches until the 19th century when they had to rewrite lots of them. But deck the hall, the hall with Bows of Holly, the opening line used to be, oh, how soft my fair one's bosom. Fala la la la la la. Wow. Did it really? Yeah, it was a Welsh song about how fit someone's girlfriend was. Of course, oh come, all ye faithful? Have you tried the lettuce?

Yeah. Actually, you know, that song, Oh Come Are You Faithful, if you sing that, you're technically pleading for the French to invade England. At this stage, why not try it? That feels like the big reset button that we need to hit at this point. It was written by John Francis Wade, who was an English Catholic, and he fled the country during the 1745 rebellion, and he wrote this song.

And it was basically, oh, come the Catholics to England and save us from the Protestants. That's weird, because he must have screwed up the lyrics, come ye, oh, come, you two, Beathlehem. Unless... Well, he meant the Bethlehem in Wales. Okay, that is it.

That is all of our facts. Thank you so much for listening. If you would like to get in contact with any of us about the things that we have said over the course of this podcast. We can be found on our Twitter accounts. I'm on at Schreiberland, Andy. At Andrew Hunter-M. James.

At James Harkin. And Shazinski. You can email podcast at QI.com. Yep, or you can go to our group account, which is at No Such Thing or our website. No Such Thing as a Fish.com. We have everything up there from upcoming tour dates to all of our previous episodes and a link to buy our new book. Thank you so much, Birmingham.

We'll see you again. Good night. Thank you.