592: No Such Thing As A Cat In A Muumuu

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Hello, and welcome to another episode of No Such Thing as a Fish, a weekly podcast coming to you from the QI offices in Hoburn.

My name is Dan Schreiber.

I am sitting here with Anna Toshinsky, Andrew Hunter-Murray, and James Harkin.

Once again, we have gathered round 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 Anna.

My fact this week is that ironing in Egypt is traditionally a man's job and they do it with their feet.

Yeah.

Perhaps we shouldn't let men do the ironing.

Do they put the shirt on the ground or do they put their foot on the board?

Yeah.

And also do they use an iron or do they have really really flat feet?

Flat feet.

Well, it's in the desert, right?

You just stand in the sand for 10 minutes until your feet get warm.

That's it.

No, they use an iron, a normal iron.

So these are people called the Makwagi, and the Makwagi Regal are specifically the foot ironers.

Makwai means iron.

And it's been going on for hundreds of years.

And on every street corner, you'd have a man who does your ironing.

You take your ironing to him.

It's passed down from fathers to sons.

And traditionally was done with feet.

So you'd you'd have a big heavy iron.

I read one reputable source saying that the irons can weigh 40 kilos.

What?

40 kilos?

I know, it doesn't seem plausible to it.

Do they even lift it with their feet?

They just push it.

And they look like a classic old iron.

So they're just an iron that's heated over coals or in a stove, right?

Like a big metal iron.

They're not plugged in.

Not plugged in.

Haven't got that little water button that you press or the steaming option.

Dan trying to pretend that ironing is a man's job in his household as well.

I think I could confidently say we all know I iron non-stop.

Dan is an obsessive.

Dan and Andy, actually, I feel like you spend half your lives ironing.

It's quite sad.

But it's not sad when these guys are.

Sorry, and can I just say that I don't just let my wife do all my ironing, I just like to be creased.

In answer to your question about the spray,

this is one of the coolest things.

And I was going back to old 19th-century sources when people visited Egypt and reported on it happening there to spritz the garments so they're a bit wet, they spit.

And so now these days, I think it's terrific.

Does that cost extra?

There are accounts of the real pros, the real traditional ones, having just a continuous spray constantly coming from their lips.

But if you were walking the streets looking for someone to do your ironing, and presumably there might be a bunch of competition, what you want to see is just one old guy dribbling like crazy, and that's the one you go for, right?

That's the best version.

How did this industry fare during COVID?

That's a really good question, and I

forgot to investigate.

Actually, people used to spit on their irons in the UK as well.

Really?

Yeah, yeah.

So, we're talking from the 17th century onwards, we had something called sad irons,

and sad meant solid in those days.

So, they were solid irons, and they're kind of pretty much, you know, like when you play Monopoly and you're the iron, it's that kind of thing.

So, again, it's just like a piece of metal.

You put it in the fire until it's hot enough and then you would use it to iron things.

And to find out when it was hot enough, you would spit on it.

And if the spit sort of laid and frosted around and spat around on the iron, then you knew it was ready to go.

Interesting.

But you don't want it too hot, presumably, because then you burn your clothes.

Yeah, absolutely.

As well as the sand iron things, there were slug irons, which I like as well, where you have a slug of metal, literally just like an ingot of metal,

that you put in the fire for ages and you draw it out of the fire and shove it in the iron.

That makes it hot.

There were rough irons, there's a thing called a goffering iron, where you could iron fabrics into a scalloped edge.

So, you know, all those amazing Elizabethan roughs?

Yes.

They had to be ironed into place, basically.

I do your first-level ironing, which is I just want things flat and uncreased.

But there is an art to ironing where you do put in these ruffles, you do put in the line on your trousers.

I aspire to be there.

You'll put a crease in the shirt sleeve, though.

Yeah, you might do.

You've got to have a crease on the shirt.

You have to have a crease.

But here's the thing: back in the day, ironing wasn't just for getting your clothes to be uncreased, It was for cleaning as well.

So, there's reports of, let's say, during the Crimean War, there's a report there where cannonballs might be heated and used as a makeshift iron.

And it wasn't so that people went, you know, I want to look uncreased when I'm going into battle.

It was because you would have things like lice living on your clothes that you want to get rid of.

So, it was burning it off, basically.

So, it was doing a double job.

It's very hard, though, to aim it correctly for an ironing job.

So, it just gets the iron right.

It's a difficult method.

Can I ask Dan, as the only other ironer in the room, I suspect

another question about this.

What's your opinion on wrinkle-free shirts?

Sorry, James.

I mean, James is wearing a collared shirt now, and it looks actually very nice.

No, no, I just, I've never really ironed any item of clothing since I left a proper job about 25 years ago.

Fair enough, fair enough.

And I live in hope of getting a proper job because I'm constantly heading to interviews, so I do need those shirts.

So what was the question again?

Would you wear a wrinkle-free shirt?

Like a non-iron shirt?

Because a lot of shirts sold these days are non-iron.

I definitely wore those when I was at university.

Yeah.

For sure.

It was the one thing if I went to a menswear shop, I would look to see if it would need an iron or not.

Really?

Yeah.

And the clip-on test with the clip-on tie as well.

Stop angry colleagues strangling you.

That's very hard.

I was talking about at university when we went clubbing, we didn't always wear ties.

How were you let in?

Ridiculous.

You borrow one from the bouncer.

He opens his jacket.

He's got a big rack of ties in there.

And he picks one that goes with your complexion and shirt.

yeah

no but so ring non-iron shirts are made with formaldehyde or they certainly used to be okay they've been treated with the special chemical which means that they don't crease which is very clever because they make you need to do a poo right we've talked before about how formaldehyde makes you need to poo that is true i think the good thing is that the formaldehyde is locked into the shirt so actually it doesn't do you any harm as the wearer but the people who made it people who worked in the non-iron shirt factories they all got quite sick, I think.

Right.

Really?

I think there's a higher proportion of cancer in people who worked in those factories than in the general population.

Well, they don't sound like good resins that get used for them.

I don't know whether they've

ironed out these problems yet.

But from what you're saying, James, it sounds like there might still be...

That might still be a thing, right?

The study with this, of the instance of cancer, was 2009.

Okay, okay.

But yeah, ironing, basically.

Okay, so let's say you've got a cotton shirt.

It's made up of loads of fibers, chains of cellulose and when you put it in the washing machine the cellulose goes a bit wonky and it comes out and it's all creased and the ironing works by loosening these cellulose threads and when they're loose when they're nice and

warm and relaxed warm and relaxed then they can get into a line you press them down and they'll stay in that line that's how it works interesting but the the non-iron ones the formaldehyde basically locks those celluloid fibers in place um when you join the army yeah if you go to sandhurst which is a very, very posh British

army

academy.

Yeah, probably went to Sandhurst.

You have to carry in your own ironing board.

Really?

Yeah.

And I asked a friend of mine who went to Sandhurst and he said, yes, you do.

Of course you do.

Of course you do.

You've got to bring your own ironing board.

Could you not share an ironing board between a barrack?

There's simply so much ironing to do.

You've got so many different kinds of uniform as a modern heroic action man type.

Okay, yeah.

And because they don't have so many cannonballs in warfare these days, you can't just wait for for it to happen naturally.

I wonder if it had with a cruise missile to get a really crisp line on it.

I wonder if they're bulletproof or if the fabric is Kevlar, because that is a fantastic defense shield that you could double up an ironing board with.

Yeah, it's basically human-sized, isn't it?

It is.

That's a human-sized shield.

You're suggesting people wear their ironing boards into battle.

Are we not talking about the front lines here?

We're just talking about back of the barracks.

Okay, right.

Here's a really British thing that I'd never heard of before that used to happen in the past with ironing.

Some homes, and we still know a few examples of these homes, had a room for ironing newspapers.

Fantastic.

And this was...

This is the dream.

This is the dream.

Yeah, I read about this in Bill Bryson's book at home, and it was featured, I think, in Downton Abbey.

But the idea was before the master of the house would be given the newspapers, the butler would take it into the ironing room, and they would iron the newspapers, not for creases, but to make sure that the ink becomes dry and solid into the newspaper so they can wear their white gloves as they're leafing through the newspaper and not worry about ink smudging on them.

I didn't know that was why it was.

I think I honestly always thought it was to make the newspapers nice and flat for the posh people.

We should say ironings at risk.

What?

Sorry?

Ironings at risk, big risk.

What?

From the youth.

Oh, yeah.

30% of 18 to 34-year-olds, many of whom may be listening, don't own an iron and never do any ironing.

What do they do instead?

I don't know.

They do, like me, just be wrinkled.

I think so, yeah.

And they will claim things like their clothes don't need ironing.

They don't.

Oh, mine don't, and James's don't.

Honestly, I would always wear mine flat.

So what I would do is I would wash my shirt and then just before it was dry, then I would start wearing it and my natural body shape would flatten the shirt.

I mean clever.

You want it

to be the shape of your body.

You do.

I mean that's the point, isn't it?

If you iron it to an unrealistic standard of a completely flat person, which is not what any of us are,

my whole body is actually creased.

When I'm naked, I have these terrible creases all over.

That's a good idea.

Although a better version would be to put it on someone whose body you aspire to look like so that when you get it back, you can feel what you want to eventually.

And your body can iron itself into the shirt.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Speaking of nightclubs,

as I was, ironing boards are good for DJs.

Let's say you're an aspiring DJ.

You're going to a house party.

You've got your decks.

But you don't really want to bring a big old sort of like all the

stand.

So, what do you need?

You need something that's flat, but also you need it to be a very certain height.

And

you don't want the decks to be up at your eye level or at your knee level.

And the good thing about ironing boards is they're adjustable.

Yes.

There you go.

That's so cool.

So you look at interviews with DJs and they say, oh, yeah, my first ever DJ gig was on an ironing board.

And if you pop some, pop, pop a pair of pants under the decks, by the time your set is finished, they'll be lovely and crisp.

That's the journey home.

Exactly.

Actually, probably the heat of the decks.

Might do it.

Yeah.

That'll, that'll, yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Do you think in the future they'll be looking at these ironing boards and saying, did you know these used to be used for ironing?

That's right.

When everyone's a DJ, the DJ boards, yeah.

And there is actually a guy called DJ Ironing Board who built his rig that fits perfectly on a normal ironing board and he does festivals and stuff.

That's awesome.

Oh, wow.

But I mean, you've got to be careful.

And so many times when I'm mid-iron, you hit the little handle underneath that sends the entire thing down.

You don't want that.

What do you do now?

I've never had that experience.

Hasn't it been non-stop?

I've never done that.

No one else would.

No.

Can I give you another use for an ironing board?

If you want to be pope.

Okay.

Quite new.

Well, for instance, the most recent guy who was pope was Robert Provost,

Pope Leo XIV.

And as a child, he played at being a priest by using the family's ironing board as an altar, according to his brother.

So he would get the ironing board up, he would get a load of biscuits, and then put them there, and his family would come round and he would give them a Kit Kat and say, Body of Christ.

Really?

Are you serious?

Absolutely.

And again, you can alter the altar as you're growing up to better the altar.

It's all good.

I mean, they must have thought he was on a, that was a pretty long shot when he was a kid doing the Kit Kat thing.

But that's incredible.

They're laughing on the other side of their face now, aren't they?

He works in mysterious ways.

This is good news for the world of ironing because actually the last Pope, Francis, actively announced that ironing needed to stop in certain homes.

So there was a question about all these Italian kids that weren't leaving home and what do I do to get my son a job and get him out of the house?

And the Pope said, stop ironing for him.

And that was like mums over the mum.

Exactly.

Why would he leave home?

He's got his stuff being ironed every day by you.

You're mollycalling him.

An interesting thing to focus on as Pope, but you know, they're still focused on worse, I suppose.

Turns out they're all obsessed.

Another great world leader who did a spot of ironing in her day, Margaret Thatcher.

Really?

Even after she was an MP, she would iron her husband Dennis' shirts in Parliament.

During Parliament?

Not on the floor of the House of Commons.

Okay.

Just on the dispatch board.

There is a desk there, actually, isn't there?

Yeah.

I think it's wooden.

I think that would be very bad for it.

Yeah, you're right, you're right, you're right.

No, there was a ladies' room.

And this was a time when there were fewer female MPs than there are now.

So there was a need for women to have their own space in Parliament.

And uh, it had an ironing board in it, and she frankly monopolized that um, that iron.

Well, she was a fan of monopolies, yeah, brilliant, absolutely brilliant.

That's the best Thatcher iron and monopolies joke you'll hear on any podcast this week.

Um, this week,

but if you listen to off lady next week,

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Okay, it is time for fact number two, and that is Andy.

My fact is that 900 years ago, England beat Scotland in a battle with an Earthhorn super weapon, which scattered the Scots by frightening their cows.

Lot to unpack?

Yeah.

What's an earth horn?

Glad you ask.

It's not a common thing anymore.

This was word of the day on the OED website the other day.

Highly recommended.

You know, if you're listening to this, just go over to the Oxford English Dictionary website and see what the word of the day is.

And this is Earthhorn.

I think this was the first and maybe last time it was used.

It's a Hapax Legominon.

Yeah.

As in there's only one mention of it in the whole of Liberty.

So it didn't take off basically this Earth horn like secret weapon, whatever it was.

Seems to have been a big horn.

Despite working, apparently.

Yeah, you're right.

You're absolutely right.

And the other thing to say as well is it was only mentioned once, and that was in 1338.

And it referred to a battle that happened in 1138.

Okay.

It's like the 200th anniversary of this battle.

Finally, we're going to to uncover this secret weapon that we used.

No one's mentioned it before now.

And again, it's not completely clear from the OED source why frightening the cows was a key factor in the end of the battle.

Okay.

Well,

give us everything we know about it then.

No, because we don't know a huge remote battle.

I think all the earth.

We don't know anything about the earth horn.

Definitely.

We don't know if it was a sound.

I mean, horn implies it.

And do we know why Earth?

Is it made of Earth?

Is it comes from the Earth?

I can't stress enough this was 900 years ago.

As James says, first recorded 200 years later for the first and last time.

We really don't know much about it.

This is my challenge fact for the week.

As I said, it happened in 1138.

So what was going on?

What was going on was a thousand years of conflict between England and Scotland, on and off,

but quite a lot of on.

So

what I found was the earliest battle recorded between Angles and Scots slash Picks, that was in 596 AD.

Wow.

And the last battle between England and Scotland as completely independent kingdoms was

when was it?

That was 1547.

And this particular one that we're talking about, the Battle of Northallerton, also known as the Battle of the Standards.

This was that time when Henry had died.

Matilda was maybe going to be our queen.

Stephen was maybe going to be the king.

There was a whole load of conflict about who was going to take over.

And the Scots were on the side of Matilda.

And a lot of the barons in England were on the side of Stephen and so there was a big old battle because the Scots wanted to help out because Matilda was the daughter of a Scottish kick.

I read that this battle took place on Cowton Moor.

Jesus.

Isn't that interesting?

That is interesting.

Moor.

Do you want to say that again?

Cowton Moor.

Yeah.

You didn't want to stress the cow part.

Well, that was obvious.

The moor was going to be a bit more difficult.

Yeah.

No, I think that's really good then.

Yeah, that's very nice.

I like that.

Given there are lots of cows.

Yeah.

We talked about this when David Mitchell was on the podcast.

This era, we did, yeah.

Yeah, if you've got your English history kings and queens ruler, it's the bit that goes willy, willy, Harry, Steve.

It's the Steve bit.

Yes, King Stephen.

And if you've got the ruler that goes all the way forward, and just to emphasise how much the Scots and the English didn't like each other back then, and obviously it's all water and the bridge now, but between 1040 and 1745, 33 out of the 36 English monarchs either invaded or were invaded by Scotland, which is strong.

It's a strong record, isn't it?

So it's a long old skirmish.

I know.

Although, it could have all been avoided, or the worst bits could have been avoided, if it weren't for just a small diplomatic cock-up.

So, the worst phase, and with all the famous battles like your Bannock Burns and your Mel Gibsons, was the 13th and 14th centuries, and that was the Wars of Independence.

And it all kicked off when Alexander III of Scotland dies in

early 1290s.

And there are these two guys, John Balliol and Robert bruce who was the grandfather of the famous robert bruce sorry was one robert the bruce and the other one was just robert bruce yeah the was his middle name yeah well you sometimes got to slip that in there to differentiate so no there was a guy called john balliol there was a guy called robert bruce robert bruce's grandson was also called robert bruce he's the famous one who for bad reasons we now call robert the bruce i think related to the fact that he was robert the bruce he's braveheart for anyone who knows that movie this is mel gibson's granddad robert bruce exactly They couldn't decide who was going to be king.

So they asked Edward I of England as their neighbour and friend, as an impartial observer, to say which one of us should be king.

Mad decision.

Edward I thought, great, here's my chance.

And he said, okay, I'll do that.

But first of all, I need to have legal authority over Scotland to have this kind of authority to decide who's king.

And so little legal loophole, he gave himself authority over all of Scotland.

And then the rest is history.

He just started getting in the way all the time.

And what a cock up.

Yeah.

Beric upon Tweed is the.

Now, if you're heading north from England to Scotland, it's pretty much the last English town you pass through.

If you're heading on the East Coast.

If you're heading on the East Coast, absolutely.

Sorry, a big fan of the West Coast mainline over here.

I love the West Coast mainline.

But for international listeners, let's simplify.

I'm just saying it's the last town before Scotland.

So, Berwick upon Tweed.

Very, very northern English town.

It has changed hands 13 times over the last thousand years.

I mean, mostly mostly like

centuries ago.

And all the times it changed hands, it wasn't just being captured in battles.

So in 1174, Scotland gave it to England because William I had been captured, and that was part of the ransom.

It was like, we want Berwick upon Tweed.

Then 20 years later, Scotland bought it back because King Richard needed money for a crusade.

They're like, what can I flog off?

Oh, I'll sell Berwick upon Tweed.

The Scots love that.

For about 200 years, once every 15 years, it changed hands.

Do you think they ever knew?

The people in Berwick upon Tweed going about their their lives.

Do you think they ever knew?

They just say they're from Berwick.

A lot of people there just say, I'm a Berica, you know.

Yeah.

There's a guy called Derek Sharman, who's a local historian, who says this a lot.

Derek from Berwick.

Derek upon Tweed.

He says that basically.

He says basically that they're all just Bericas.

And actually, if you're from north of the river and south of the river, that's kind of a distinguishable sort of almost nationality as well.

Is it?

That's when the next big civil war's happening, is it?

Edward I, who was, you know, the famous antagonist, the Hammer of the Scots, Hammer of the Scots, Long Shanks, lots of nicknames.

He is still in Westminster Abbey buried just in a very plain lead casket, not with the normal regalia of English monarchs.

Is that to not upset the Scots?

It's the absolute opposite, James.

It's because

it's to really fucking piss them up.

No, I think it would give the Scots, it would gratify them because basically he said, I don't want to be buried properly until the Scots are finally conquered.

And they haven't yet, finally been conquered.

And so no one's yet exhumed him and buried him in a body.

Did they not consider when we beat them in Euro 9621 with that Colgas coin goal?

People were battering away at Westminster Abbey with spades.

How interesting.

Yeah, Edward I, the really interesting thing about him is the siege of Stirling Castle when he got this enormous trebuchet built.

So a trebuchet is like a catapult.

And it was called the War Wolf.

It was 90 meters tall.

It took three months to build.

And the Scots, when they saw it sort of trundling up, they went, oh shit.

And they said, it's okay, we surrender, we surrender, we surrender.

And King Edward went, oh, no, I've spent three months making this now.

And so he attacked them anyway,

even though they surrendered.

Yeah, Denise, it was basically going, okay, I'm just going to test it, though.

And you're not allowed to leave the castle until the test is over.

Good lord.

Pretty wild.

It's a great name.

the warwolf.

Yeah, it is cool.

You don't want to waste work like that, do you?

You know, you can see its point.

We'll just wheel it on to the next place.

I'll tell you what, the werewolf was good against this castle, but it was even better up against the castle made of sticks and the castle made of straw.

Hey,

get it, I get it.

Yeah, one of the chief nobles who led the rebellion, the Scottish rebellions after Edward I little land grab there, he was called Andrew de Moray or Andrew Murray.

Oh, really?

He was like the other William Wallace.

He was the one who wasn't William Wallace, Wallace, basically.

That's Damore.

Bannockburn is where

Freedom was won.

That was the moment for Andrew Murray here, then deceased.

Was it you or was it William Wallace?

I think I was dead by this point.

Right, I think it was an earlier battle where I did very, very well, by the way, but then I got injured and died.

It was Sterling Bridge, in fact, sadly.

That's so would be on your tombstone, Andy.

Did very well, actually.

Red like a four-star battle.

When you're killed in a fight, but you still did all right, that's DeMoray.

So many battles over the centuries.

It's kind of insane.

Scotland had a huge role in what gets called the English Civil War, which turns out we shouldn't call the English Civil War.

It should be called the War of the Three Kingdoms.

Is that the War of the Roses, or is it the War of the Roundheads versus Cavaliers?

That one.

So, War of the Roses

ends in 1485 with Henry Richard III and Battle of Bosworth and Henry VII taking over.

What's called the English Civil War is the 1640s, basically.

It started partly because Charles I, who was basically a useless, like imagine a useless king.

Oh, you call a Cromwell Cool.

Like big, floppy, rough, you know, suspicious continental practices.

People worried he was a Catholic.

Imagine the ironing it took to get that one.

He had tried to interfere with the Church of Scotland and he had tried to impose his own prayer books on the Kirk in 1637.

This went down phenomenally badly.

It led to a thing called the Bishop's Wars, where just like ecclesiastical attack diagonally.

That's the best bishop

this week.

I don't know.

You haven't heard parenting hell this week, have you, Andy?

And Scotland got so angry about this prayer book difference that they occupied northern England, and he had to not only back down, he had to pay expenses, which is so humiliating after a war.

Pay expenses?

What?

Like, we bought these train tickets to get down to Lee.

Pretty much.

Yes, we've not really

£10.60 at Prett.

Sandwich and a drink.

It's expensive these days.

And so Charles then had to ask for money from Parliament

because of the war debt that had been imposed, and that helped kick off the entire Civil War period.

And then at the end of it, the English execute Charles.

Cromwell comes in, and the Scots are furious.

And that leads to another battle because they were so angry about, as they saw it, their king getting his head jobbed off by Cromwell.

Okay.

Do you know this William Wallace period, Robert the Bruce?

Robert the Bruce, don't hear too much about him these days, but he influenced something great in modern popular culture.

Someone was named after him.

Someone was named after Robert Bruce, Bruce Forsyth.

No.

Bruce Bringstein?

No.

Robert

Mugabe.

Okay.

Is that what we say that's popular culture?

Oh, his middle name?

Winnie the Pooh.

no it's Bruce and it is in the world of fiction Bruce Almighty nope Bruce Bruce who's the most famous Bruce Bruce Dickinson the guy from Matilda the fat kid yeah yes and a Bruce Banner from the Hulk you're so close Bruce superhero Bruce is he Australian oh Bruce Wayne Bruce Wayne

who's Bruce Wayne what do you mean who's Bruce Wayne oh you only know Batman okay so Batman

Okay, it is time for fact number three, and that is my fact.

My fact this week is that in 1999, the first ever TV ad made for cats was broadcast on ITV and had an estimated viewership of three million cats.

Three million.

Three million.

Well, the numbers.

Because the number you sent around was seven million.

Yeah, but then I did some additional research.

Interestingly, I have two million.

I have two million as well.

I've had to go over my numbers quite a few times.

Basically, this was a commercial that was put together by Whiskers, the cat food people, and they wanted to put something together that was specifically for cats.

And so they asked someone what would generate a cat's interest.

And it turns out an incredibly surreal 40-second animation full of weird ping noises, little sounds, a mouse running up, a line going up and down the screen, very random stuff.

And they made a big deal out of it.

It was a big promo thing.

And on the 27th of January, 1999, there was an announcement just before it was coming on, a pre-ad, to say, we're about to play the first ever ad for cats.

Get your cat.

Let's do this.

I think it was also announced in like the newspapers and stuff beforehand because I remember it happening.

They had to advertise the advert.

Well, it clever, really.

Because you get publicity out of the fact you're doing an advert.

That's very hard to do.

It won a lot of awards, basically, for innovation, of getting the interest of the people to make sure that their cats were in.

Now, the numbers are dodgy, obviously.

1999 was a a period where it went from viewership to households.

So you don't know how many people would be in a household.

So 2.2 people per household roughly is what the ratings would suggest we're watching.

How many cats?

Well, let's get to hang on, guys.

Don't dump your head on the numbers.

Okay.

So we know what the numbers were of the viewing figures that night.

It was 18,520,000.

That's what we're watching.

However, that's viewers, not households, right?

Okay, so if we're talking houses that might have a cat in it, we've got to look at houses.

Right.

Yeah.

So let's, let's, 2.2 people.

So you've got to bring that down, that number, basically split that number in half, right?

Yeah.

Then it wasn't just shown on ITV that night.

It was also shown on Channel 4 and Channel 5.

So we need to add those in.

So that's 21.2 million viewers.

Split that in half.

It's roughly 10.6.

I'm not counting the channel 5 viewers because I remember channel 5 in the 90s and it was too blurry to make anything out.

Okay.

They didn't see any of those images.

And how many did it contain a cat, I suppose?

Well,

at that time, it's estimated that a quarter of all houses in the UK had cats.

And then what percentage of households invited their cats into the room to watch when it happened?

And do they have one cat or two cats?

So most houses had 1.6 cats.

So you then got to add those.

It was a gruesome time the 1960s.

So roughly, when you add all those numbers together, in theory, there could be roughly around 3 million cats that were in front of a screen in the room.

Are you having 3 million as your number?

I'm going to go for 3 million because I'm also going to add in the fact it was played in America.

And so those numbers are going to happen.

Can I say I think the number might be 3 million and 1

because I let Harley watch it this week.

Oh, really?

My cat.

And if you want to know what she thought of it, then go on my TikTok or Instagram because I'll put the video up.

Oh,

that's very exciting.

And a little ad for another format within our show.

You're doing what the cat people did.

Yeah, no such thing as James Harkin.

Get on there.

Wow, that's very good.

It was considered a success.

So successful, they released it on video, VHS.

And I actually

found it on eBay.

So this is it.

The first ever commercial for cats.

Oh, my God.

Officially released by Whiskers, an old VHS.

Wow.

Why is everyone calling it the first ever as though now we are inundated by cat adverts?

Well, perhaps at the time they thought this is going to be massive, right?

So the back says thousands of cats across the length and breadth of Britain jumping, staring.

Could have been thousands off thousands.

Thousands of cats.

So one in a thousand viewers of the advert had any reaction whatsoever.

So yeah, so we don't know the numbers and they've just muddied the waters even more

advertising yeah but it did good for them it did really good oh yeah you know what else did welfare whiskers eight out of ten cats

that's one of theirs yeah what do you mean it's one of those slogans yeah so there's a tv show eight out of ten cats and eight out of ten cats does countdown but that came from a slogan by whiskers which was eight out of ten cats prefer our product

and they ran it for quite a lot of years until the advertising standards authority encouraged them to change it and they changed it to eight out of ten owners who expressed a preference said that their cat prefers it

and the problem was that basically they'd been doing this eight out of ten cats for ages and everyone knew at the time and then they went up to nine out of ten cats so they did a survey in 2001 and they thought that actually now it's nine out of ten and when they did that the people at frisky's who is another cat food company said oh we're not having this and they went to the ASA and they said that this is a biased survey and you know it wasn't a fair reflection

eight out of ten owners who expressed a preference.

That leads to other questions, doesn't it?

How many owners express a preference?

Absolutely.

Yeah, that's fair enough.

But does this mean that Jimmy Carr has to change the title of the show as well?

Surely.

Yep, let's do it.

Cool.

Let's get in contact.

They were very good Whiskers, by the way, with their promotion in 1999 specifically.

So over in Australia, there was an Aussie Rules footballer called Gary Hocking who changed his name by Depol to Whiskers.

And the idea was that as he was playing, they had no choice but to say, oh, Whiskers has got the ball.

They would be.

Did they do that or did they just use his old name like that's what happens when football teams change the name of their stadium to a to a company name people just call it the old name yep the afl were very against calling him whiskers and really stuck to gary hocking um they were paid a couple of hundred grand in order to advertise them generally and this was a sort of extra move by gary hocking because he thought it's gonna be funny and it made news stories it did the job right like that's all that this needs to do it's like when the snooker player jimmy white changed his name to jimmy brown to advertise hp sauce oh

did did he?

Yeah.

One of us should change our names to something.

I've changed my name years ago to Maserati, but no one

they keep asking me to stop.

No one nearly uses it.

It's a nightmare.

Videos actually look crap to cats.

This T V advert would have looked rubbish because they see so much better than us.

They see about a hundred frames a second, so we only need to see twenty frames a second for stuff to look smooth to us.

And I think T V is about twenty four, or T V is thirty and films are twenty four.

So to cats it's just gonna look like a series of photographs.

So cat videos in general, can you think of a role, a famous role that was inspired by cat videos?

Catwoman.

Well, there's no fun if you're going to get it immediately.

When Anne Hathaway, no,

she played Catwoman.

It's just because we did the Batman thing, yeah, yeah.

Wow, yeah, yeah, but Catwoman isn't an actual cat.

Well, no, but she

look,

she's got to justify her fee somehow, Anna.

So, exactly, well, I spent a couple of weeks looking at cat videos online, so that'll be another million quid.

When Daniel Day-Lewis went for the same party, he just sat there licking his ass for three weeks

thank you mr day-lewis we've actually received enough half mice

and now we're going with hathaway i'm sorry she fits the suit better

that's been done by a bunch of them tom holland studied the movements of a spider in order to

robert downey jr watched ironing videos non-stop

there's something to say in an interview isn't it you run out of stuff to say in interviews, yeah.

I read a really good article.

It was like an inside look at the Wolfam Pet Care Science Institute in Milton Mowbray, which is the science arm of Mars Pet Care, which is where all of our pet food comes from.

Okay, Mars makes it all.

They go to such great lengths to look after their cats there and to test really advanced foods on them.

They found out that cats prefer Asian cuisine because their favourite flavours are, well, you can probably guess.

Plum sauce.

Plum sauce.

Same flavour, yeah.

Umami.

Umami.

And the new one, Kukumi.

Kukumi, yeah.

Yeah.

I'm sorry, for those of us not up on our flavours, what's that?

So it's,

I think it's like fullness and richness.

Cukumi.

Yeah, they keep that.

It's not like a flavour so much as an enhanced.

It is officially a flavour, but it's like enhances salty things and rather.

Is it like MSG?

No, that's umami.

Yeah.

Okay.

And once all the cats are tested on at Melton Mowbray at this site, they get taken home and adopted by one of the people who work there.

In other words, they get turned into pot pies.

Yeah, we know what you mean.

They're very good owners to the extent that one of the research scientists called Scott McGrain adopted a cat and then noticed when he took it home that the cat was a bit perplexed by his telly because they had never seen one before.

And since then, they've installed loads of TVs, a TV room for the cats there.

Why?

So that when they get adopted, they don't get confused by TVs.

Is that a massive like safeguarding welfare thing for cats being confused by TVs when they go to their forever home?

Is that really a problem for them the RSPCA is clamping down yes can I just say Scott McGrain is very much a name you would come up with if you're trying to come up with a name for a Scottish person and failing I do hope someone says Scott you've been mentioned on the show this week

listen in you know um cats falling off things yeah and flipping the right way up and landing on their feet yeah they land on their feet so this was a physics puzzle for much of the 19th century how it happens.

Because

there was a scientist called George Gabriel Stokes.

James, you did maths, you may have heard of him.

Yeah, Stokes equation.

I've heard of that.

Yeah, it's about fluid mechanics or something.

Okay, perfect.

So he was a Lucasian professor of maths at Cambridge.

And other holders of the role were people like Isaac Newton, Stephen Hawking.

So

big brain, George Gabriel Stokes.

He and his colleague, James Clerk Maxwell, another great big physics name, they were there at the same time.

And they could not work out, right?

Cats, if you drop them, they fall onto their feet.

How?

Because

they seem to be violating the law about the conservation of angular momentum, which is if something rotates, it has to have something to rotate against, which rotates the opposite way, right?

Yeah, got it.

So, how does the cat rotate with nothing to push?

So, like, let's say you jump off a diving board,

you've pushed off against that, and you use that kind of momentum to twiz round in the air.

Exactly.

Like, if the cat's just falling, how do they do that?

Yeah, exactly.

Can I just ask against the clarifying question?

If I didn't dive off the diving board, if I let myself just fall forward, can I swing around to my back?

Andy's about to answer.

Right, yeah.

But the judges will mar you down with that.

I've just proved Maxwell's theorem.

Two, two, north.

So this was so interesting.

Like, how on earth are they doing it?

It turns out what the cats do as they start to drop, right?

It uses its own mass to rotate around.

How?

It flips in its four legs, it pulls them in, and that means, like a gymnast, its top half spins faster.

Then it flips out its forelimbs and it flips in its back limbs, and now its back half is revolving faster.

And

it switches back and forth between those two.

So it creates its own momentum

using its limbs like an athlete.

So that is how the cat rotates.

And it can do that as quick as falling off this table that we're recording today.

Yeah, right.

I mean, so quickly.

In 1998, there was an Italian researcher who dropped a cat called Esther 600 times and determined that RSPCA have to get involved in some stage too busy with the telly thing

what are you in for introducing a cat to my home without briefing it about the TV me oh no I dropped mine 600 times

anyway came to the rainbow conclusion she could fall on her feet when she was dropped from anywhere between two and six feet but not from one foot so it's only from two feet up they can do all this mad weird gymnastics yeah and i i read the the same thing, Anna.

It was so good.

He dropped Esther from the height of one foot 100 times in a row to make sure she definitely couldn't do it.

Right.

And she didn't land on her feet once.

Yeah.

It's much bigger than the sample size that you statistically need.

He did write in his paper, I want to thank the cat Esther for her initial cooperation in this experiment.

So we didn't get an answer to my question.

Would if I fell off a diving board, do humans have the muscles to do what cats do?

I'll hand over to James.

He's got a physics degree.

I think that you would not be able to do that.

Right.

Maybe not flexible.

I would think if you trained for long enough, you might be able to.

Because the physics is there, right?

It is possible.

But I think it would take training, right?

Because you're not flexible enough.

Like, we can't shift our bodies like a cat.

Because they have got...

not extravertebrae, but you know what I mean?

They can move.

They can very flexible.

They're very flexible.

I think, yeah, with training.

The way I thought of it, and I think I skimmed it more than Andy, so this is probably wrong, but I thought of it as like squeezing a cat like a sponge.

You know, when you squeeze a sponge out, you have to turn it in two different directions at once, don't you?

And that's the only way that it's going to be able to twist around its.

So, Dan, stand up.

Yeah.

How easy is it for you to twist your top half in one direction and your bottom half in the other direction?

Yeah, you see, like this part.

Oh, dear.

Uh-oh.

Holy moly.

Oh, wow.

I've really

Dan, that is going to be the TikTok craze, dance craze of 2025.

Did you film it, James?

Can I make a cameo?

That is amazing.

Ow.

Sorry about that.

No, that's fine.

Do you think if you were sat holding a cat right now and I took a photo and then we put it on your dating profile, people would find you more attractive or less attractive?

Let's say women.

Okay, well, first off, my wife doesn't know about that cat.

So let's.

Yeah, I'd say they think you're more attractive.

With a cat?

Absolutely.

Say maybe less.

Yeah.

Anna?

As the woman in the room, I'm going to say less.

Yeah, absolutely.

Women view men as less masculine, higher in neuroticism, agreeableness, and openness, but less dateable.

No wonder I've not given less swipes.

Friend material.

Less flexible.

No, it doesn't say that.

And is there like a league table of animals?

If I pose with a water bowl, am I

a mink?

Or koala must be a mink.

Do you remember when you did your first Edinburgh show, and I wanted you to do a poster where you were completely naked but with a water bowl over your privates and we were going to call it socks and gloves and cock and bowl.

Yeah, I do.

I do.

Why did you never go for that?

Why did you not do that?

Just ran out of time on the shooting.

It's such a shame.

Hand the bowl.

Yeah.

Can I ask James a question?

Yeah.

As the cat owner in the room.

Yeah.

Do you have a cat owner?

No.

Have done in the past.

Okay.

But as current cat owner, James, would you buy a matching outfit for yourself and your cat?

No, my cat only wears what God gave her.

Okay.

And she insists on it being ironed every day, doesn't she?

So it's very different.

No, I would never buy clothes for animals, really.

Then you're part of the nine in ten in your age group who would not buy a matching outfit for yourself and your cat.

Whereas a third of 19 to 28-year-olds would do that.

Really?

Yeah, that's the Instagram generation, isn't it?

Would they be able to get the clothes on the cat, though?

That's my question.

I don't know.

It depends on the clothes, doesn't it, as well?

If it's a shapeless uh sort of banous or a mumu or something it might be quite easy

to say

it's a if it's a

i don't know why the two items of clothing that came to my mind were a banous or a mumu

banous it's a it's a it's a sort of north north like north african desert calf isn't it's like lawrence of arabia might have might have got around in a banous

have you ever seen that show mr and mrs where you write it down and your partner's gonna gonna have to guess what you say?

One, two items of clothing.

I'm gonna go for shots and paps.

I'm afraid not.

He went for banous.

You must be kicking yourself.

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Okay, it is time for our final fact of the show, and that is James.

Okay, my fact this week is that America's nudist of the year 1973 who also invented a contraption that allowed him to sunbathe in sub-zero temperatures was a man called dick bacon

the name's bacon

dick bacon

what a guy oh dick bacon it's an absolute legend so i found this in an obituary of dick bacon damn it uh yeah

you always find out about these people too late right

uh he spent his life on Lake Michigan sunbathing, and anyone who has been to Lake Michigan or lives there knows that in the winter it gets very, very cold.

But the newspapers said that he set up a series of reflective shields to protect him from the wind.

And inside the temperature would get high enough for him to tan.

Still going to be pretty cold though, isn't it?

And he was naked, wasn't he?

He was actually usually bathed in a small swimsuit.

Okay.

But that was just to keep on the right side of the law.

And he definitely preferred to be nude.

He began his nudism when he was 25.

He worked as a live model at the University of Wisconsin but he didn't want tan lines.

He thought it was unfair on the people drawing him and that they had to draw in the tan lines.

So he thought, well, I'm just going to not wear any clothes anymore.

That's amazing.

And he basically just went, okay, how do I make it so that every single day I can be out there all year round?

So he worked in a brewery.

He always took the second and third shifts in there.

So he always had the morning free.

So he was a morning.

Oh, that's interesting.

Yeah, so just every day, go get the sun as it's going up.

He married someone and he had this line that I just absolutely love.

He met this girl and she said, what's your name?

And he replied, Bacon.

Won a strip?

And that works on two levels.

Yeah.

Like a strip of bacon.

Yeah, yeah.

And strip has in take your clothes.

I'm a nudist.

Yes.

Let's go strip.

Oh, it's just a wonderful double entendre.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's very strong.

That is good.

In fact, it's better than

fancy some pork.

It's better than that.

It is better than that.

He won nudists of the year in 73, like I said, but he won that by accident.

No, stop.

Okay, he did too far.

He did.

He just so happened to be in this place called Naked City when the competition was taking place.

He didn't deliberately go there for the competition.

And he said after his win, they interviewed him in the newspapers and they said that he was aiming to reach his natural colour.

Although the Daily Herald, where I read this, said that he was already a deep red.

Yeah, okay.

The idea of having a natural colour is a bit weird, isn't it?

Do we have a natural colour?

Yeah, good point.

Because you tan, it depends whether you've been in the sun or not.

Yeah, exactly.

I feel like my natural colour is incredibly pale, but that's only because I haven't been in the sunshine.

Well, you're looking tanned today, I would say.

Well, I'm trying to sort that out, yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, that's why I've got this Bernouse with me.

He was arrested a lot, Mr.

Bacon.

He was, yeah.

For nude baiting and allewed and lascivious behaviour, but he was a campaigner.

He was saying this isn't harming people.

This is a natural, healthy, almost sporting way of living in harmony with the elements.

I completely back that.

And he was in very good shape.

In fact, I was recently on a nudist beach, a partially nudist beach, not by choice.

Partially.

That's just a beach.

You were on a partially nudist beach, not by choice.

The plot is thickening.

I was on a beach where a lot of people were nudists, including myself, but there were a lot of nudists.

And it's completely fine, but they're not all in amazing shape.

Whereas he was like a gladiator, wasn't he?

Yeah, I guess he would be if he'd won all the awards that he has.

He won Mr.

Nude America, he won Mr.

Nude Apollo, Mr.

Nude Galaxy.

Are any of these awards big awards?

The Galaxy?

Yeah,

I think it might be.

Yeah.

You know, if you put Factor 50 Suncrem on,

will it stop your skin aging?

I guess so.

Probably.

Make it age more slowly.

Nothing can stop your skin aging, guys.

Well, I would have thought that UV rays might age your skin, and so the lotion might stop that.

Yeah, you're more leathery, right?

They absolutely do age your skin, but only UVA waves.

So what they don't tell you on the sun creams is that when they say the factor, UV rays are split into UVA and UVB.

And it's basically about the wavelengths.

So

UVB have shorter wavelengths, and they're the ones that cause sunburn, and they're the most carcinogenic.

So when you've got factor X sun cream, it's just blocking the UVB rays, or sorry, reducing them.

But it doesn't refer to UVA, and they're the ones that cause skin aging.

They're the ones that go deeper and make you wrinkly and crusty.

So you need to look at the star rating as well if you want to not go

wrinkly and crusty.

I've never seen a star rating on my sun cream.

They often don't have them.

Do they not?

If they don't have a star rating, does that mean they don't protect against the UVA?

I believe it does.

Careful.

Okay, can I run a tanning practice past you guys?

Yes, please.

Have any of you heard of or you two done testicle tanning?

Jesus Christ.

Was it last week or the week before when you were talking about perineum tanning?

Testicle tanning is completely different.

This is actually, it's not sunlight.

You don't have to go down to the beach and bury yourself.

I do do that, but I always iron mine first.

It does take one of those 40 kilogram irons to get them flat.

This is actually, it's not even a real tanning.

It's a very dubious medical

thing, actually.

It's just blasting red light at your knackers and claiming that it'll improve your testosterone and a load of male energy and hormones and stuff.

Is that and people are doing this, are they?

And their bucket loads.

Thankfully, I don't think it's very popular, but it is the kind of thing that a load of dubious Americans have basically glommed onto and started saying is a good idea.

And it's not.

Well, unless you want to save the poor life drawing class, which apparently was Dick Bacon's motivation.

You can't draw two shades of skin colour.

Well, this is very similar to perineum tanning, which we did talk about a couple of weeks ago.

Friend of the podcast.

Very scientifically.

But I wasn't there, and so I insist on revisiting it.

And there was something I found interesting about this, because it's mostly obviously just a TikTok nonsense thing, where there's like one person who says it's a really good thing to expose your bum hole to the sun, and after 30 seconds, you get the same benefits you get exposing your body for a day, and it's nonsense.

And there is Josh Brolin, the actor, put a thing up saying,

So he's Thanos in Avengers.

And

no country for old men.

He's in that.

If you want to picture his face.

Yes.

And he put a thing up that...

That is the part of him I want to picture.

I must have been in this mat.

Thanos, more likely.

He said, don't try this on your Thanos because I did it and my pocket hole is crazily burnt.

I mean, he obviously didn't.

He's taking the piss.

I assume he's not an insane person.

But what I quite like is that, you know, conspiracy theories always come from a kernel of truth.

And the woman who started this said, it's an ancient Taoist practice to bathe your bum hole in the sun.

And actually, it does come from this idea in Taoism.

So Taoism is like ancient Chinese philosophy, basically.

And that hui yin is the collection point of all yin energy in your body.

And that is your perineum.

So all of yin, you know, you've got yin and yang, the two opposing forces that work together, yin is all gathered in your perineum.

And they do believe that it's good to bathe in sunlight and moonlight for wellness.

And so, you know, there's a kernel of truth in these bullocks.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Brazil,

home of great tanning culture.

Oh, yeah.

Do you know what the fashionable bikini is to wear in Brazil at the moment?

Is it like a full body, like a burkini, but it's very, very stiff, so your arms go out like Christ the Redeemer.

Oh, wow.

It's a staunch banoose effect.

Is it, well, okay, like Brazilian?

you would think, okay, very fungy.

It's very fungy.

Oh, is it that Borat one?

Is it that fungal?

It's not the mankin.

Not the mankey.

What's it made of?

What fabric is it made of?

Cashmere.

No.

I love it.

I'm linking.

I love it.

I know.

Spider silk.

Just one piece of spider silk.

Oh, you'll really feel that.

The aim of it is to give you incredibly crisp tan lines.

So something that blocks all of the...

It blocks really a bit of a...

So like a lead or a hazmat suit.

I'm going to tell you.

I'm going to tell you.

It's electrical tape.

Do you give yourself a Brazilian when you take it off?

Well,

what you need is this thing, the Machina Defeata, the little tape mark, and you go to a salon, they will put a literally tape a bikini onto you, and they'll give you a little bit of fabric for your nips and stuff like that.

Of course, because I was thinking, like, lead is the same as a swimming costume.

They all block it, but what you need is for your body not to be able to shift underneath it at all.

Exactly.

So it's just that one bit of skin that is covered with the fabric.

So you could super glue your swimming costume to yourself as well.

Well, look, there are all sorts of roads to the answer, yes.

But this is the biggie.

There are salons where you just go and people go up to the roof.

You pay about eight quid, which includes a breakfast buffet.

I would do this.

I mean,

that's cheaper than a travel lunch.

They don't do anything to your nets.

You're not going to be beach body ready after a full English.

Yeah, and then people lie there and they spray with water every now and again and that's how you get those incredibly crisp lines.

Hey, sugar nips.

Thank you.

Yes, sweetie possum.

Yes, go on.

Do you know what sugar nips are?

I read this today and I'd never heard it before.

No, I thought it was just something how you used it just then.

Me too.

So

sugar nips were like a little pair of scissors you would use and if you had a block of sugar in your house or a sugar loaf they would call it.

In fact Sugarloaf Mountain just outside Rio but they you would have a sugar loaf on your table and you would use your sugar nips to nip off a little bit of sugar.

Wow, yeah, I'd never heard that before.

That is a kind that's a because you guys know I like a rare bit of crockery.

I'm surprised and disappointed that you weren't familiar with them, and in fact, don't own a pair, Andy.

No, and I'm actually now regretting it because I could have bought you some for your birthday.

I'm gonna hop straight on eBay after this to go with the asparagus tongs and the butter spade.

Probably when you google sugar nips,

I'll take my chances.

I'll take my chances.

Okay, that is it.

That is all of our facts.

Thank you very much for listening.

If you'd like to get in contact with us about the things we've said over the course of this podcast, we can be found on our various social media accounts.

I'm on Schreiberland on Instagram.

James?

My TikTok, no such thing as James Harkin.

Andy.

I'm on Instagram at Andrew Honderem.

And Anna, to get to us as a group, they go to.

You can go to Instagram at no suchthingasafish or at no such thing on Twitter or email podcast at qi.com.

Yeah, and check out our website.

We've got a kick-ass website, no such thingasafish.com.

All our previous episodes are up there.

There's lots of merch that you can buy up there.

You can see if we're going to be doing any live shows in the coming year, check it out there.

And of course, there's Club Fish, which is our wonderful hidden private members' club.

We put a lot of bonus episodes up and so on.

It's great fun.

Check it out.

Otherwise, just come back here next week.

We'll be back with another episode, and we will see you then.

Goodbye.