No Such Thing As A Fish - No Such Thing As Unbroadcastable Material

Episode Date: January 1, 2015

New Year Special: A compilation of all the extra bits from 2014 that didn't make it into the podcast. Dan, James, Andy, Anna, and occasionally Alex and Anne discuss the discovery of Tahiti, sweary astronauts, the Queen's nickname, and the Snow Yeti of Wales.

Hey everyone, it's Alex here. You know, Alex Bell? No, you don't, because I'm never allowed on the podcast. Anyway, Dan, James, Andy and Anna have all gone home for Christmas, but I'm still stuck in the QI office. They've told me to edit together a best of 2014 episode for no such thing as a fish, but screw them, I've decided to put together a worst of 2014. So, here's some of the most crude and nane and ludicrous nonsense they've come up with over the past year that they never wanted you to hear. Enjoy. We run it on QI a few years ago. Yeah. Which was, there's no such thing as a fish. There's no such thing as a fish. No, seriously, it's in the Oxford Dictionary of Underwater Life. It says it right there, first paragraph, no such thing as a fish.

Hello, welcome to another episode of no such thing as a fish, a weekly podcast coming to you from the QI offices in Coffin Garden. Sorry. It's Coffin. I can't say it. Coffin, Coffin, Coffin. Speaking of health and safety, this is not quite related, but there's a guy called Hillar Perbrick. He's like an eco warrior, and he tried to live in a cave in Brighton, but then his cave got checked by the local fire brigade, and the council sought an injunction banning him from entering it because it didn't have enough fire exits. Just had one exit. Just one exit. One big one. But I think basically he's had like a running battle with the council because they shut down his vegetable shop in 1999, but they shut it down

even though he only had one customer, a pregnant woman who bought his sprouts. The only one she gives birth and stops raving sprouts. Exactly. We were talking about how to become an astronaut, and there was an interview last year with Dwayne Ross, who was the manager of the astronaut selection office in NASA, and they asked him, this is Popsi, any entertaining interview moments come to mind? And he said, one of my favorites was we had this one person say when we asked him why he wanted to be an astronaut, well, my grandfather was an astronaut, my father was an astronaut, and now I want to be an astronaut. We knew that wasn't true, but we didn't mind a little lightheartedness in the interview.

Very sweet. That's quite funny. I think I would have employed him however underqualified he was. I don't think they look for funny though. It wouldn't that get annoying after a year of an incessant joke? Imagine James is bad puns for a year, solidly. You can't escape. I don't even like him for half an hour. It's just a mere pun. That was amazing. I was punning on demand. It's like those people who can burp on demand. It's like a superpower. It's like people can burp on demand only a little bit more irritating. I think Gilbert of Gilbert and Sullivan once got involved in a lawsuit against a man with a barrel organ who was playing outside his house at all hours. I think you're right. I remember that happening as well. I think they went to court

and I think he lost. I think he got really irate and smashed up the barrel organ and then had to pay for a new one. He was working, wasn't he, and he kept hearing this music all the time and he couldn't do his job. Maybe that's what was inspiring him there. You'd think that he would be grateful of free music. Apparently not. I wish there was someone outside my flat shouting out facts all the time but I could just write down to be amazing. If anyone has any facts, then Andy lives on 27. I read that they found not too long ago the oldest spiderweb ever. It was in East Sussex, I think, and it was in Amber. I was trying to come up with a really, really good joke for that and I haven't done. Just giving you updated. How the podcast's going for me.

I was going to say, really cutting like George Osborne's wallet or, you know, Ming Campbell's vagina. I didn't know the circumstances under which George Harrison lost his virginity, and I find it hard to believe but it's straight from the horse's mouth. He lost his virginity to a horse. Not a horse, a prostitute. George Harrison, did he say? Yeah, so they were on tour in Hamburg, the four of them. He lost his virginity to a prostitute while he was in bunk beds in the same room as the other three Beatles. They stayed quiet throughout the whole thing but then they cheered as soon as he was finished. Yeah, they used to live in a yellow submarine.

No, they had a residency at this bar in Hamburg and so they had to live in the back in these bunk beds. So everything, they all. They didn't have to have sex with prostitutes in the back though. No, but I mean, they, yeah, they did kind of, they had nowhere else to go. What I'm saying is, what I'm saying is that's just what they all did. They all did it. Mr. Shriver, couldn't you tell us why you had sex with that prostitute in the back of Tesco's? I had to do it. Yeah, the others had blocked up all the good spots in the QI office. Can I quickly talk about just running generally? I was thinking about in sports because I remember as someone saying how much David Beckham runs per match, which is a lot. I didn't remember

the exact amount, but then I thought, I wonder in other sports, I wonder which sport you run the most in outside of running. And it's quite surprising. Someone's done a list of what happens. So with basketball, there's quite a lot of running that goes as something like 2.4 kilometers or something per match that you end up running. Soccer is about, sorry, football soccer is about nine for the high end. It's roughly around seven. American football, what do you think it is for American football? Less. About 500 meters. Are you counting walking off and on again? So are you counting walking off and on again? Yeah, counting everything. A lot of like, it depends which player you are. Like the running backs would run a long way. That's the thing. It's really tiny. There's

only average per match, 11 minutes of movement. Oh yeah. Isn't that insane? How long is a match? Three hours. Three hours. And there's only 11 minutes worth of movement for the whole match. Couldn't they just do the 11 minutes and get it over with? No, it's much better than that. It's like cricket. It's nuanced, let's say. Right. Wow. And tennis. Tennis, they run a lot. Oh yeah. Yeah, they do. Yeah. But it's surprising, I guess, when you consider the length of the field in comparison to say like American football, you just think it's the higher end. It's just behind football. Do you have figures for the 400 meters? No. I should have, sorry. That's all right. I have a question for you all. Okay. Yeah. It's a question. In the last Olympics, Usain Bolt

ran 100 meters in under 9.3 seconds, but he didn't get a world record. Why? Why? Why? Why? Is this workoutable? Yeah. Okay. And it was during an Olympic contest. It wasn't in a practice or anything. It wasn't a full start. Nope. He had his shoelaces untied. Nope, although he did have one shoelace untied when he broke the world record. Was he disqualified for some reason for it? Nope. Was he just running for a bus? No, the answer is because it was part of his 200 meter race. The second half of his 200 meter race he did in 9.3 seconds. No way. Because he had, you have a running start, don't you? Yeah. So whereas like 100 meters, you have to get up to that speed and 200 meters, you're already at that speed. That's fantastic. Yeah, that's good. That's

really good. Good fact. We probably won't use this, but I just want to, it was just when I was looking into smells and space and the farting thing came up. I discovered a video. It's a sort of audio extract from the 1972 Apollo 16 mission in which John Young is on the moon talking about farting, not knowing that his microphone is on. And he also swears. And it was a big deal because if you remember on a previous podcast, no such thing as a swear word on the moon, they've done so much work to make sure astronauts don't swear on the moon. And this guy just let one go as he was talking about farting. And I've got it here. He let one go as he was talking about letting one go. Exactly. Yeah. So there is a swear word on the moon. It was John Young

while talking about farting. And he swore twice. God. What a piece of shit. So basically this fact is pretty much just an excuse to talk about Serenal Fines. Well, he was expelled from the SAS. He calls it that castle cone business, which is where he plotted to blow up bits of the set of Dr. Dolittle. And it was being filmed in Wiltshire. And he was plotting to blow it up with some flares and plastic explosive. And he got fine 500 quid for that. He got busted though, because some local squirrel saw him doing it and reported it to Dr. Dolittle. Since we're on explorers, my new favorite explorer is Joseph Banks, who was the botanist on Cook's expeditions. But he's so great. He was this really charming guy who always

befriended the locals wherever he went. So they landed on Tahiti and within days he was picking up bits of the language and he was sleeping with them, sometimes actually copulating with them and sometimes just sleeping next to them. And on the first day they arrived in Tahiti, picture the most cliched, like if you're watching a cartoon of discovering Tahiti. And that's basically what happened. So they climbed ashore and they ended up on their first night dining deliciously on fish and breadfruit. Joseph Banks sitting next to a Tahitian queen. He spotted a really beautiful Tahitian lady at the opposite end of the dining area, beckoned to her. She came and sat on his other side. And they spent the whole evening eating delicious tropical fruits and hanging out

the beautiful Tahitians whom they all went and slept with over the next few days. It just sounds like the dream explorer. Yeah, it sounds like they made it up. Didn't Cook end up being killed and eaten. Yeah, he did. And it sounds like it was there's a lot of theories about why that happened and it sounds like it was a miscommunication. Am I making it up? Was it on the sandwich islands? Sandwich islands are now Hawaii, aren't they? I think it might have been the sandwich islands. I think I've just conflated two different stories in my head. One thing you can think about. You're confating the Earl of Sandwich with Captain Cook. Yeah, didn't the Earl of Sandwich eat Captain Cook? Between two slices of breadfruit.

At the glorious Tahitian party, the thing that broke it up was the Tahitians didn't understand property. So they kept on stealing Cook stuff without quite realising that it was stealing. And the party was broken up on the first night they were there because two of the guys from the expedition that had come on to land had a snuff box and their opera glasses pickpocketed. Now, what were these people doing? Bringing opera glasses onto a newly discovered Tahitian island into the South Pacific. Oh, into the South Pacific. And you claim you don't like musical theatre. Can I just do something about haunted genitals? There was a guy in the medical literature who

had a haunted scrotum and he went to the doctor because he had an undescended right testicle. And when they did a scan on him, they saw his left testicle and they said the left side of his scrotum seemed to be occupied by a screaming ghost-like apparition. Were these doctors? Yeah. And in the report that I read, it said, but what of the undescended right testis? None was found. If you were a right testis, would you want to share the scrotum with that? So the idea is this ghost-like left testicle scared away the right testicle. What? I'm not sure they were being entirely serious about that reason. This medical literature sounds very... Have we talked to haven't we before about the

African, somewhere in Africa, there was a panic recently where people believe that their testicles were disappearing or their penises were disappearing. This is a common cultural trope. Don't feel bad, it happens to everyone. I was trying to think of stuff that we think is on one date, but actually it's on another. Obviously there's American Independence Day, which I think John Adams at the time famously said, because independence was voted for on the 2nd of July, and John Adams famously wrote to his wife, didn't he, saying, the second day of July 1776 will be the most memorable epoch in the history of America and was entirely wrong. It was obviously the 4th of July, which was when it went through. But also I read about a 106-year-old woman who just

discovered that she's been celebrating her birthday on the wrong day for more than 100 years. It was the previous day. They just found her birth certificate and went, oh, that's weird. So technically now she's only six years old? Very, very quickly, because I think this is really cool. In 15th century Germany, speaking of vampires, there was a biting epidemic that broke out. What? And one nun in a convent fell to biting her companions, and that spread throughout the convent, and then from one convent to the next, and it went from Germany up to Holland,

and as far as Rome, and convent throughout the land, nuns were just biting each other. Wow, that's amazing. Mass hysteria, I guess. Yeah, mass hysteria. The same thing happens with nuns meowing around the same time. What was the, how did the meowing stop? It was a soldier who came in and said that he would hit them, unless they stopped meowing. Yeah, he'd beat them with a pole. Did the trick? Do you know, in the book Dracula, how to kill a vampire? Stake through the heart.

And cut off the head? Yes, there's one other thing. Do you have to have sex with it, or is that just in modern adaptations? I don't remember reading that in my edition, but I did get the penguin classics. I was thinking of the the rays of sunlight. So that never appeared in the original Dracula book. Oh, that's why I didn't know it. Yeah, it's exactly that. I just thought that that was the classic thing that everyone knew

about it. That was in the movie, the very first movie, and the reason it was put in the movie is because they didn't actually have the rights to use Dracula as an adaptation, so they created this other false ending to be able to say that this is a different vibe. I've got one last thing that I want to throw in before we move on, which is that there's been a study that's shown that male kangaroos can attract the opposite of sex. What's the opposite of sex? Oh, the opposite sex. Oh, right.

What I normally end up having made. They are called their genus is Pongo, isn't it? Which I quite like the Pongo genus. And I also love reading about gorillas when you're reading it like the new scientists, because they put their scientific name after it. And obviously for gorilla, their scientific name is gorilla, gorilla, gorilla. So they just they'll refer to a gorilla and then in brackets, it just sounds like they're chanting gorilla, gorilla, gorilla. I only think of Pongo as being a name for extremely posh people. I've never even heard that as a name.

Oh, wow. Well, this is the secret clubs I'm a member of where, you know, they tell you the secret names that really posh people have. That's true. We think that we have nicknames for posh people, but actually those posh people have nicknames for even posh people. Nicknames for basically the people at the top are just calling the queen Pongo. Speaking of myths and legends, who here has heard of the the snow yeti of Wales? Wales have their own yeti. Yeah, it's a really lovely story. This is the description of it by the locals.

He has it's a repellent beast that has razor sharp teeth, a matted coat and eyes of flames. He has blue earwax that trickles down his chin. He lives alone in an igloo at the top of Mount Snowden. And yeah, he beneath his heart of stone, he has someone who he cared about. So that's why he's angry. So many people who've climbed Mount Snowden, it's bizarre that none of them have ever mentioned. Maybe that's something I could go and look for. When we tell you all our facts for the week, so we can all look them up, do you just type them plus yeti into Google?

She said you would leave us. Daniel quite her suit, aren't you? Yeah, I can grow a beard quite well. Ever done it? Yeah, I have. It doesn't work. What kind of function is it supposed to serve? Well, he was aiming to look like Brian Blessed. Yeah, exactly. Well, it's meant to suit your face, isn't it?

It's meant to, you know, if you grow a beard, you know, whatever you have on your face, you want it to suit it. And I guess it doesn't really suit it. Speaking of Brian Blessed, he told me that when he was in Tibet last, a lot of the encounters that a lot of the Tibetans and the stories that come out about the idea that there are these ginormous yetis, I'm going into yetis for a second. It turns out that the majority of people or yetis that they thought they were seeing actually turned out to be Westerners because most explorers, when they go out

into these icy cold regions, they don't shower for months on end, they can't shave or anything, their beards grow even thicker up there. I guess because of the climate, I don't know if there is an actual science behind that, but they just, by the time they see anyone who's a local, they look like this weird-ass creature because they're wearing fur clothes, their face is furry as hell. So the majority of Westerners who have been killed by locals, it's because they've mistaken them for a yeti or a brown bear.

The majority of Westerners. Explorers who would go into these kind of uncharted territories. Really? Sauce, Brian, like it. This is sort of Brian Blethard. Yeah, no, I always believe Brian. Yeah. The most plausible fact I've heard about yetis from you yet, but that's all relative.

When Thomas Moore was beheaded, he moved his beard out of the way and famously said, my beard has not committed treason. Which? Those were his last words. Those last words, my poor beard doesn't deserve this. Nor his neck, though. Well, indeed. I think surely your whole body's done it or none of it.

Yeah. Maybe the beard grew out post treason. There are some cars that are too quiet. Some of the hybrid cars. The car makers have had to put artificial machines into the engines to make them loud so that people can hear them coming because people aren't ready yet for quiet cars. And also the BMW M5 engine is so quiet that they've had to get the car to, sorry, the BMW M5 engine is so quiet that it artificially plays car noises,

engine noises, inside the car on the stereo system so that people sound that feel like they're driving a proper car with a real noise. Wow. In case they forget they're driving. Pretty much. They turn on the TV. It doesn't feel right because it's so quiet. It must be hard to know when a thing is on or off,

if the noise that you're used to hearing with it is accompanied. They say that the ATMs have that, don't they? I don't know if that's true even, but they say that if you get money out of an ATM, it makes this whirring noise and they don't need to make that whirring noise, but they put that in so that you feel like it's actually doing something. Like it's counting your cash. Yeah, I don't know if that's true. I still love the ones when you ask for money, the fax noise still comes out.

Have you ever been on one of those? They're like in corner shops when they have the separate, kind of, you know, it'll charge you two pounds to take out. Yeah, you hear this dial-up fax noise. And you're the only person who knows about that because you're the only person who uses cash machines that charge you. I do, but I always get out like 500 pounds because I think I want to get my money. It's weird. Psychologically, you have to justify that two pounds.

It's true. It's like two pounds to 500 pounds. It's only like, what, 0.5% or something? Yeah, you're basically making money. I found something great about temperature in this. The sex of an alligator and some other reptiles, like lizards and turtles, is determined by how warm the nest is that they're laden. So for alligators, if the egg is kept in a nest at 30 degrees, it turns out female.

And if it's 34 degrees, it turns out male. Really? Yeah. How cool is that? That sounds like the kind of nonsense that Aristotle would have made up. Yeah, it does. I thought it was like cleanly the other, like bullshit. I thought you were going to say my name.

You are the new Aristotle. What a nonsense. Damn. No, that definitely is true. Wow, because Aristotle thought that if we had a war, if men had a warm right testicle at the time of sex, then it would be a boy and vice versa, didn't he? No, that was dumb.

And that's why I continue to wear a hot water bottle around my right testicle, strapped on every time I'm trying for babies. Unfortunately, no one wants to have sex with me, so it's... Could be the hot water bottle that's holding you back. There was also the female pope, wasn't there? No. Did that never, she never exists? No, you're still.

Oh, good, because the stories were just so conflicting what I read about her. Pope Joan, she died either by being mauled by an angry mob or of natural causes. That's a hell of an inquest. These wounds are consistent with one of two possible deaths. I have a question for you this week, and it is about technology, and it goes thus. In 1860, a new technology entered European life. Women who used it complained that it caused... Was it the telephone?

It was the telephone. Okay, come on team, let's hold this together. Okay, I have a question for you. It is about technology from the 19th century, and it goes like this. In 1860, a new technology entered European life. Women who used it complained that it caused extreme genital excitement. What technology am I talking about? Tom Jones, Tom Jones, was it Tom Jones?

I think he's a bit older than that. Oh, was it the saddle on a bicycle? Oh, that is about the right time. I like the saddle option because bicycles were strongly disapproved of for women because they were thought to be a turn on, weren't they? Yes, yeah, yeah. Women shouldn't be aroused. When you go over the cobbles.

Yes. Just gonna do it. Was it the portable bath, which was also invented in 1860 or 1861? Which is like a bath on wheels. But it was also like a four-poster bed, so you had those curtains around it. And then you could be pushed all about the house, I guess. I saw that last summer wine. Really?

People used to go around the streets with portable baths, I think. And then you could have one. I think that's true. Oh, like a bath merchant. Yeah, kind of. Yeah, and you used to have papier-mache baths as well. Some people invented those. Isn't that an incredible, because it was really light.

And it was actually. Also not waterproof. Well, papier-mache is waterproof. Is it? That must have been so hard to locate people you're looking for, like in your home at the time. It was like, where's dad? It was in the back. Is that the kitchen?

Or is it? No, it's down the street. It's down the street. I'm afraid none of you are right. It was the sewing machine. And French women who worked in sewing machine places from dawn until dusk would do it all day and then complain to their husbands at the end of the day that they'd had extreme genital excitement. Wow.

I think they're using it wrong. George Elliott, her real name was Mary Ann Evans. Yes, right. I think the first thing she wrote under the name George Elliott was an essay called Silly Novels by Lady Novelists. And it was basically slacking off all the women writers of the time, saying these women are shit. It sounds like she was trying to get people off the sense, doesn't it?

A little bit. It's like this person could never be a woman. They're so misogynistic. Yeah, let's hope so. I don't know the Brontes also. They all did writing under pseudonyms. They put really weird names. Courabelle, Ellis Bell, and Acton Bell.

None of which is actually a name if you look at them. They did. Ellis is a name. Ellis is. Oh, I suppose so. Yeah, yeah. Maybe the rare names that we don't have anymore. But the Acton was not so much.

It's more a part of London with their name. I want to open a studio in Acton called Lights, Camera, Acton. Oh, that's a very good idea. But we can start a German club that gets things done. It's called Acton, Acton. That could be fun. I'm going to go have some Acton classes. Acton classes.

No, no, no. No, Acton. Acton classes. Learning about Acton. Acton was founded in 1834. Oh, someone said some Acton classes. There was a study done in 2005 of 100 academics, critics, and writers, and they found that of the men, four out of every five

said the last novel they read was by a man. Yeah. I think the last novel I read was by a woman. Was it? Well done, you're such a modern man. Well, it was by George Elliott. I actually thought it was a man when I read it. There was a thing that was done recently by the BBC History Magazine,

which was to find the most stylish, fashionable Britain of all time. Did I place? OK, I have one more thing which is about, it's not directly related, but I found it in the course of my research, which is about appearance and sexuality. And a recent study shows that men who watched sexy videos or handled lingerie sought immediate gratification, even when they were making decisions about completely different things,

about money or sweets or whatever. So they tested your sort of delayed gratification ability, and it declines. But the way that the three things they tested men out for were looking at pictures of beautiful women, watching video clips of young women in bikinis running through a park, or touching bras. Apparently, that's what men are like. If you just let them touch a bra, not attach to someone,

just a bra that they're all self-control out of the window. Have you guys seen the Sniper outfits for the Iranian army? Oh, I did, yes. The whole point of Sniper is you're not meant to see them. Yeah, I thought they only have an outfit. So they've given the game away. Well, it's a camouflage. Oh, it's not, like, very colorful.

No, but they look like, so they basically dress up their snipers as giant compost heaps. They look exactly like that character, Chewbacca. You know, that what's he called? That wookie. A wookie. Chewbacca, yeah. It's extraordinary, and you see them on parade,

and they're these huge green haystacks, and it's obviously meant so you can hide in a bush and then snipe your way in. But also, you want to move your arms quite easily. If you dress up as a haystack, I think you could just sit there and watch for ages. At what point do you put that on? Like, you wouldn't get on the tube and leave your house, kind of.

No one will know I'm here. Yeah. That haystack that rides a district line. Yeah, and maybe when you enter the bush. Also, there's enough bush around you. Why do you need to disguise yourself as a bush? If you're in a bush, that is your disguise. Yeah, but if you are a bush, you're in a bush, you're in a bush.

You are a whole bush. Yeah, be the bush. Be the bush, which is the motto of just doubly bush. That's a whole bush family motto. Yeah, yeah. Is that why you're on so much beef with him? He stole the catchphrase. Yep, yeah.

Be the bush does sound like a fun quiz show that we should make. I didn't try that, I didn't try that. It's just a load of bushes, and you have to guess which one is a person. That's a really nice idea. Camouflage, the TV series. You just, which of these is not a tree? It's very, very hard to find the TV series camouflage in the listings.

Yes, yes, exactly. The sky is itself with other names. Well, we should be the radio time. We should just claim that we're six series in. Yeah, you don't know what I'm saying yet. We need successful TV show ever, which is exactly what we hope for. We are thrilled with the results.

Fucking pigs. We need to continue. We need to pick up that laugh where we're left off. Can we just... No. I don't think that's the one. Do you know what it is? Well, now you can see why they edit the podcast so heavily.

Dan, James, Andy and Anne will be back again next week. I won't. Happy New Year.