No Such Thing As A Fish - NSTAAF International Factball: Cameroon vs Chile

Episode Date: June 18, 2014

Cameroon v Chile: The QI Elves in association with www.visitengland.com bring you the seventh episode of this No Such Thing As A Fish Factball special - the only football podcast that has absolutely nothing to do with football. Today Dan Schreiber (@schreiberland), James Harkin (@eggshaped), Jack Burke (@jacksburke) and Anna Ptaszynski (@qikipedia) pit Cameroon against Chile to find out which is the most Quite Interesting country.

Hello and welcome to another episode of No Such Thing as a Fish presents the World Cup of Facts brought to you by VisitEngland.com. This is a football podcast in which we make absolutely no mention of football whatsoever. We are the QI Elbs, my name is Dan, I'm sitting here with Jack, Anna and James and once again we're pitting two countries against each other to find out who the most quite interesting is and today those countries are Cameroon versus Chili. We're gonna start with Cameroon so let's go. Yeah I read something really interesting. During the Great Depression in 1931 the people of Cameroon clubbed together to collect money to send to the starving Americans and they managed to send over a total of three dollars seventy seven cents. I love that fact

that's amazing. You could buy a bagel for that. It would have been worth more though wouldn't it? Three dollars. Yeah probably two bagels. Two bagels. Yeah I'm not sure it would have brought them out of extreme depression but yeah. It probably would have made them more depressed the idea that Cameroon was sending them money. Yeah. Like wow that's how bad it's got. Yeah how times have changed because and so I'm kind of interested by the president of Cameroon Paul Beer who's been president since 1982. Paul Beer. Paul Beer. Oh yeah sounds like. Paul Beer is not spelled like that. Is B-I-Y-A but he leads an extraordinarily lavish lifestyle him and his wife. In 2009 he took a holiday in France and he spent £25,000 a day on hotels and that's coming from a country where the

average annual income is about £600 a year. He's an interesting guy. In 2004 he got so annoyed by the criticisms of the international vote monitoring groups that were constantly saying that he just makes these elections up he just doesn't for show to prove that he's a legitimate president that he set up his own committee with six ex-US congressmen paid them all who certified his election as free and fair. You have to if you hear the national anthem in Cameroon you have to stand still wherever you are if anyone's ever there you can be put in prison for not doing that. It's like a nationwide game of musical statues. Wow. It's exactly like that. That's great but if you have to stand still and you don't presumably you've got enough of a getaway time from the police who

do have to stand still. Or it could be the last person to stand still gets kicked out of the country. Oh my god yeah. It's a new UKIP policy isn't it? They're going to play the national anthem and the last Romanian to stand still gets kicked out. In Cameroon you can pay for taxi rides with beer bottle caps. What? There's a competition in the in the country with the beer companies and if you get the caps with a certain symbol on then you get a free beer and everyone knows how much a beer is worth so people are using these caps as payment. So would then if you were paying a cab driver in it would the cab driver go off and get a beer or would then he use it as money? Yes he could do or he could get himself a beer. So it's a whole new currency? It's a whole new

currency even bribes have been paid in this beer bottle cap currency. Wow. Can you forge a beer bottle cap? I shouldn't think so otherwise the competition would be a bit pointless. Yeah well just speaking of beers the bars in Cameroon where you would buy such beers they've got fantastic names there's one called Begon Gloom another called Polygamy and one called Word of God. I'm suspicious about the purpose of the polygamy bar I feel like it's got it behind the scenes other means of getting money. Yeah they do have some good names there are 21,400 people in Cameroon who speak a language called BUM. There are 3,000 Cameroonian speakers of the language gimme but it's an extraordinarily diverse place anyway isn't it there I think there are 275 ethno-linguistic

groups so it's incredibly varied. They're biggest mountain or not their biggest mountain but it's a really nice named mountain if we're going on names Mount Faka. How are we spelling that? F-A-K-A. Mount Cameroon must be the highest mountain I issue. Yeah it's known by locals as a mountain of greatness. I guess as we're on geographical features that's got the most dangerous lake in the world hasn't it lake Nios which in 1986 killed 1,700 people in 3,500 livestock it's one of only three lakes in the world that's saturated with carbon dioxide and there's volcanic activity and earthquakes around it and they're not entirely sure what happened but the whole lake exploded with carbon dioxide suddenly got super saturated and it spilled carbon dioxide all over the surrounding

villages completely wiped out the population of one village. Oh my god that's terrible that's fixated scary stuff yeah it's rude in Cameroon to beckon with your palm turned upwards apparently so you know how we if we tell someone to come come hither because I am doing to you right now Dan you have to turn your palm downwards it's obscene to have your hand turned upwards. I don't know anyone who does the up word who summons people without saying hey can you just come here. I think Stephen Fry is the kind of person who would do that. Doesn't the rock do it in like he does the rock is a wrestler from the WWF and he does do that Dwayne Johnson but he does that when he wants to kick your ass yeah you're right the rock doesn't go come hither

yeah one thing that Cameroon uh this is very exciting I think the first ever disco record was released by a Cameroon born sax player wow called Manu de Banjo and doesn't play the banjo does not play the banjo but uh because that's not a featured disco musical instrument certainly not as far as I know but so they're kind of responsible for disco Cameroon well there's always B A N J O do you know what they gave the uh Pope as a gift when he visited them in 2009 no what a turtle oh nice yeah because it's the symbol of wisdom uh amongst the uh backer pygmies of Cameroon I do find the um pygmy tribes uh fascinating in Cameroon and so that I think there's some objection to the term pygmy because that actually encompasses a lot of tribes but

let's say the backer tribes which do inhabit the forest of Cameroon because they the legends of the backer tribes people completely mirror Christian ancient Egyptian Jewish legends but without them having had any contact so far as we know in the last 4 000 years with any of those major religions so for instance they've got a story where god made man so in back a legend and god made man and he put said that they'd have eternal life and live in this blissful haven on earth the tahoo tree he said is absolutely forbidden to man you must never for any reason violate this law and eat the fruit of the tahoo tree and then the woman violates this law convinces her husband to eat it she eats it and god says I'll punish you by making you come to grips with mortality and living on earth and

suffering and working which is that sounds very familiar so it's not a coincidence they came into contact with ancient Egyptians thousands and thousands of years ago and these legends were passed up and then yeah christianity that's amazing yeah that's my favorite fact um okay let's uh let's call half time on that that was a that's fantastic half uh okay it's time for our visit england.com half time quiz the qi elves have put together three great facts about england and we're going to reveal the answer at the end of the match and the three questions this match are jack in which town did the battle of hastings take place anna what animal related museum can you find in the grounds of leeds castle and question number three james which town has passed between

england and scotland 13 times find out the answers to all of these at the end of the match and now it's back to the game chili let's do it anyone got a chili foot yeah i like that uh they have an extremely large telescope in chili and that's it is uh it's bill it says 2600 meters up in the andes it's not finished yet it's going to be finished in 2021 uh and it's going to be the most powerful optical instrument in the world but my favorite thing is its name which is the elt does anyone know what the elt stands for egg lettuce tomato i don't know maybe named after a local astronomer you would think yeah no no it's not uh elt stands for extremely large telescope it's what it is does what it says on the tin wow they have the largest swimming pool in the world

in chili have you seen that i've seen a picture of it yeah it's pretty awesome it's over a kilometer in length um it's right next to the sea and they bring in the water from the sea and you can navigate it by boat yeah like it's big enough that you can actually put a boat in it and actually take it round the pool why you'd do that i don't know i i mean i've put boats in pools what are you talking about public pool dig cop pool i used to put a little rubber dingy in there yeah dingy it's not that impressive not a yacht well we're talking like titanic we're not talking titanic but we're talking a big ship okay giant ship an extremely large ship an els so i reckon they've used up all their imagination on their slang because chilians have really good

slang and it's all like very metaphorical and it's full of imagery so uh things like they call popcorn cabritas which means goats because the way it jumps around like goats uh they have a saying tirar unchancho which literally means to throw a pig but it actually means to burp and they have another saying araglas los bigotas which means arranging their moustaches and that actually means making a secret deal or lining their pockets like a villain soft twirling his moustache there is a bird that's only found in chili called the mustachioed turka is there yep couple more seaside sink lodeys and the one finanda's tit tyrant wow i've seen on qi i think in 2010 the general manager of the royal mints was fired after misspelling chili on over a thousand coins

um the 50 pesos coin had chili spelt with a double i instead of i l um they were printed in 2008 but no one noticed until 2009 wow and they're now worth they're quite valuable now these coins um in 2007 6 000 chilians were duped by madame jilbert van erp's magic cheese kits let's just end on that no explanation no explanation if you'd like any explanations send me a check for 20 pounds go on tell us about yeah yeah yeah tell us about cheese kits please um not much to say really um she went around saying that this magic cheese was very popular in France and sold the kits to locals saying if you make this you'll be able to sell it for a fortune in France but there was no magic cheese they were just normal cheese kits there's one guy that

spent a million pesos he's a chilian newspaper vendor and he's spent it on having 82 julia robert's tattoos all over his body each one is from a different scene of the movie if you have on google now uh listen to the podcast one movie or all the movies various movies various scenes from our films if you look him up his name is miljenko bukovich and they're all over his torso and arms and legs and uh his dream is one day to meet her yeah i'm sure she's excited about that as well i'm sure they say we've got a fan outside he has 80 something tattoos of you she's going to go bring him in that's very exciting he's not going to stab me i've got um a chilian badass for you oh great yeah he was a native chilian uh he fought the spaniards his name was galvarino

and um the spanish caught him and cut off his hands um but he didn't put him off he went back and attached swords to the stubs of his hands and then went back and attacked the spanish wow amazing that's amazing what was his name galvarino galvarino so he had sword hands yeah like edwards sister hands but yeah but um okay we're gonna have to wrap up um anyone got any last yeah i think it has the coolest plant in the world chili which has only recently been discovered its capacity to do this but it's a woody vine called the bokeer trifolia lata and it's the only plant that's known to mimic the leaves of surrounding trees completely in everything in terms of size shape color orientation it can even so what it does is it seeks out trees around it and it climbs

up them and it pretends to be them by looking exactly like them otherwise insects would eat it so it's like easy prey for insects unless it pretends to be a tree that's not very edible which it does but one of these vines can mimic multiple trees at once to the extent that if there's a tree that like grows little spines on its tips and stuff it will grow a spine on the tip of its oh my god it's like an octopus it's like an x man i haven't seen it but probably yeah okay that's full time that's the end of the match uh before we give the scores out i'm just gonna give you the results of the quiz from the halftime show sponsored by visit england.com and they are if you give the question and the answer start with jack so the question was in which town

did the battle of hastings take place and the answer is battle not hastings oh so really it was the hastings of battle uh anna what was your uh question my question was which animal related museum would you find in the grounds of leeds castle and the answer is the dog collar museum oh that makes sense because you would attach a lead to a dog collar right that's such a good point all right uh james what was yours the town which has changed hands between england and scotland 13 times is berwick upon tweed uh okay uh that's the uh that's the answers to the quiz if you would like to win a prize though you can actually head over to visitingland.com where there's going to be all sorts of qi goodies waiting there but who won today's match due to the fact

that i just get to decide i am gonna say it was cameroon because i love that the original genesis story of adam and eve is traced earliest back to cameroon i think that's amazing uh so that's cameroon moving forward to the next match and we are going to be back again tomorrow with another world cup of facts match and this time it's going to be james columbia versus the côte divoire oh okay exciting exciting uh okay if you want to again contact with any of us about the facts that we've been saying today you want to find out any more we're all on twitter uh i'm at at shribeland jack at jack esberg james at eggshate and anna you can get me on the qi twitter feed which is at quikipedia and it still doesn't have a twitter account we'll be back again

tomorrow with that match and we'll see you then goodbye