581: No Such Thing As Clean Victoria

Today, we're exploring deep in the North American wilderness among nature's wildest plants, animals, and

cows.

Uh, you're actually on an Organic Valley dairy farm where nutritious, delicious organic food gets its start.

But there's so much nature.

Exactly.

Organic Valley's small family farms protect the land and the plants and animals that call it home.

Extraordinary.

Sure is.

Organic Valley, protecting where your food comes from.

Learn more about their delicious dairy at ov.coop.

Too many tools, too much stress, and way too many bills.

ODU replaces it all.

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That's odoo.com.

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 James Harkin, Anna Tushinski, and Andrew Hunter Murray.

And once again, we have gathered around the microphones with our four favorite facts from the last seven days.

And in no particular order, here we go.

Starting with fact number one, and that is my fact.

My fact this week is that a lot of the Daniel Day-Lewis movie, My Left Foot, was filmed using his right foot.

What do you say using?

Is that was he operating the camera with his right foot?

That's what it sounds like.

Yes.

And when I say a lot, I also mean some.

So let's just put this into context.

This is a movie about an Irish writer and painter called Christy Brown.

He was born with cerebral palsy and by the time he was an older kid, he didn't walk, he couldn't do much and he only really could operate by moving his left foot, particularly the big toe on his left foot.

As he grew older, he got really excited by the idea of becoming an artist.

He started to learn to paint and then he started to write a book by using that left toe on a typewriter.

It was a massive success and this is what eventually became a biopic which starred Daniel Day-Lewis.

Now, for anyone who knows Daniel Day-Lewis, he's a method actor.

He loves to really immerse himself.

And in this case, he operated most of the movie from a wheelchair using his left foot.

Yeah, and when you say method actor, he basically lived as this character throughout the whole time, right?

He stayed in the wheelchair the whole time, pretty much.

Yeah.

Like he had to be carried places.

Yeah, made the cast and crew feed him.

Well, he just was trying to stay in character.

But here's the thing.

The movie involves some quite intense stunts, footwork-wise.

Okay, the movie is not...

i'm sorry i watched the film yesterday it's a terrific film stunts is not a good way to play this and when you say this movie contains footwork it's not like ginger rogers

so there's a couple of scenes where he as an actor was unable to do it by manipulating his left foot into the right positions but so the scenes are basically he's holding a paintbrush or a pencil writing and the first shot of the whole film yeah it's just a shot of a foot and it's taking a vinyl record out of the sleeve yeah and popping it on so and what you're saying dan is that he did that with his right foot instead of his left foot exactly now my question is how did we not tell the difference in the movie he has them switched round

his feet the opposite way around

his feet severed and then reversed

that's exactly it and he's got it right uh it was it was mirror filmed so they it's the detail is a bit actually quite hard to work out if they flipped the film itself as in they they they did a mirror image or if they filmed through a mirror

Right, okay.

That's that's too often.

Yeah, many years ago.

Good film.

And actually, weirdly, I read the book about 20 years ago.

It was also a great book.

Did you, right?

Apparently, he's a brilliant writer when the book came out, which bizarrely was when this guy,

Christie Brown, was only 22,

which is so young to be writing about your experiences so far.

But I think it was in the 50s.

And when it came out, someone said, I think the Irish Standard or something said that it was the most important book since Ulysses in Ireland.

I think that might have been the subsequent book.

Sorry, that's...

You're absolutely right.

That was his magnum mopus.

Yes, what's it called?

Down on all days?

Down on all the days.

But I mean, they were both absolutely massive.

And he was from a family of 22 children, not all of whom made it to adulthood.

I think 11 did.

11 did, yeah.

Imagine that.

Good grief.

The birthdays.

How did the candles go through?

Where's the candles?

Oh, yeah, I was going to say you could reuse them, but no, you can't reuse them.

Oh, it depends how quickly you light and blow.

But most birthday candles are so thin.

Maybe they had a very strict lighting lighting and blowing policy.

Maybe it is.

You'd have to.

You'd have to.

Anyway, it's a very...

Is that in the book?

It's been 20 years, I can't remember.

It's definitely not an overwritten book, though, because he's typing it with one toe.

So he doesn't go for the incredibly long sentence quite a lot of the time.

It's kind of the reverse Ulysses, isn't it, in a way?

Yes, it is, absolutely.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But it was good.

And it was a big book, right?

So when it came out, it made Splash internationally.

He actually got in a correspondence with this American woman called Beth Moore, and he eventually went over to hang out with her and she was married but they had an affair and this is where he wrote his magnum opus this novel and um she basically is the reason he got it done because at this point he did have a bit of an alcohol problem and it was preventing him from getting on with stuff she basically said you're not allowed to drink until the end of the day after you've done a full days of writing and then you can have that and that's how he got the novel done he dedicates it to her he goes back to ireland and then they have a more correspondence saying is he married as well at the time because he did marry no he's he was married as well she's married yeah so but she tells her husband, I'm going to marry Christy.

And just as that's about to happen, Christie meets his wife and gets married.

And then Beth is starting.

So a bit of an asshole, actually.

You know, people don't really focus on this bit, do they?

Abandons poor Beth for his new woman, who's the person I think in the film, which I haven't seen, but he goes off with a woman at the very end of the film, I think.

It looks like it's going to be happy.

Yes.

But actually, that's the person he went off with.

And it seems like, based on his life, Beth, who helped him write his great novel, was a lovely woman.

And he ended up with this other lady who I think a lot of his family didn't like, who turned him into a bit of a recluse.

She was an alcoholic herself, I believe.

There were allegations of abuse.

So he passed away quite sadly at 49.

Pretty young, yeah, yeah.

Choked while eating, but yeah, on his body, there were sort of unexplained bruises all over with the abuse.

What about Daniel DeLewis, eh?

Oof,

he's a character.

Well, more often than he is himself.

So before the before this podcast recording time, I had never seen any of the films with Daniel Joe Ellison.

Is that right?

Not a single.

Not one.

Wow.

I thought he was in Batman Forever, but it sounds like that was someone else.

House Falkilm.

You're thinking of Jim Carrey.

So I'd never seen any of his.

Have you just watched them all?

Have you seen.

I've now seen one and I'm halfway through two others.

Which two?

Gangs of New York.

Have you watched that?

No, haven't.

Oh, that's a brilliant one.

It sounds great.

I've started

not an American Werewolf in London, The Last Mohican.

Sorry.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

I've started The Last Mohican.

Terrific.

Was watching that in The Small House this morning.

And I'm also watching Stars and Bars, which is a goofy comedy he made immediately after My Left Foot, which appears to have been the only film for which he's never done any method work whatsoever.

What was his character in that?

The premise is just like, what if a goofy British guy went to the deep south of America and it is so bad?

I managed to watch the only tale of those film, which is not like five-star because of a change-your-life movie.

Well, in Last of the Mohicans, he he caught and killed all of his food.

Brilliant.

Apparently, to get into that character.

Yeah.

Yeah, he lived for a whole month in the wilderness, didn't he?

In order to fully immerse himself.

He was in the crucible, and he didn't bathe for the entirety of the crucible.

Now, I'm not sure.

Is that about the witch trials or is it about snooker?

It's the happy marriage of the two.

He bathed, but he kept one foot on the floor and all five out.

I think my favourite one, because I'd only ever heard of him, is like this incredible that he lives the role.

My favourite is The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

I'm sure you guys all found this, which is based on a Czech novel by Milan Kundera.

And he learned Czech, learned to speak Czech almost fluently for the film, despite the fact the film is in English.

All of his lines are in English.

And he said, yeah, but I can't just do an accent.

I need to know where that accent comes from.

Great.

So he put all of his lines through the Czech he knew and then back into English to do the accent.

I mean, insane.

And do you know what people who speak Czech, and particularly British people who now live in the Czech Republic, say that it's a really bad Czech accent?

He's horses.

If you learn how to speak a language, that doesn't mean you learn how to speak English in that accent.

You're so right.

That's the one problem when you learn a language is you can never nail the accent.

Yeah, I also really want to find out how fluent he is because there's so much

allegation about this.

And apparently, according to the Foreign Services Institute, which ranks languages by difficulty, Czech is in the fourth out of five hardest languages.

So, I mean, it takes years and years and years to nail.

So, how, I mean, was it, do you think it was like primary school French level?

I always wonder that whenever you see like a top football or a basketball player going I speak nine languages

to you

Did you Kobe Bryant?

Did you really?

Or did you just learn how to say oh, I got that three pointer today?

Exactly.

Because there's that fact we did ages ago about umpires and tennis do need to learn all the swear words in multiple languages so they don't understand.

Maybe it's just that.

Yeah.

I mean obviously some of it is myth-making, but I love it.

I just love it.

Like he played Lincoln,

President Lincoln.

Yeah.

So

he got assassinated for that.

He had himself made president first.

And then,

so on the set of Lincoln, it was just

totally period-appropriate.

So supposedly, nobody was allowed to turn up wearing a t-shirt with a logo on.

Like, I presume all the thousands of electricians and people who work on the film had to be in frock coats and things like this, all dressed as Union soldiers.

No shorts, no paper coffee cups.

Lincoln wouldn't have had a paper coffee cup.

I'd imagine it's more for Daniel Day-Lewis than it is for everyone else.

But you've got to slightly create the scene around him, haven't you?

I mean, like, in there's a famous thing in Gangs of New York when he was filming, where, first of all, Stephen Graham, who's a very famous and brilliant British actor, said that he was such a great guy to work with and they became friends before they started filming and they did the training together, some martial arts training together.

And then the first day on set, Daniel Day-Lewis walks onto Set and just touches him on the shoulder and says, from now on, I call you Shang and you call me Bill.

And then moves on.

So cool.

Bill the butcher and then D is that his character yes yes I read that he worked as a butcher for some time I know I read butchers were flown over to the said it was one butcher but I've got a theory about this butcher I don't think he's a butcher

okay I think this butcher is the ultimate method actor he's a guy called John Dell look him up he's a butcher who runs W Head and Co.

Butchers in Peckham.

Sounds like he is a butcher.

Well, no evidence of that online at all.

There's like one little company record of it once existing.

John Dell.

How many butchers have websites there?

Especially at the time that Gangs in New York is a 2002 film.

It's early internet.

It wasn't required that a butcher had to have a buzzing online presence.

It was 2002.

Everyone's Google reviewed something.

Oh, come on.

I can find nothing.

He was an amazing character, though.

When he was interviewed, first of all, he was asked by the producer who lived in Beckham and who knew him and who was like, this guy's a legit butcher.

He knows how to slaughter a pig.

It's an avatar worker.

You've completely.

If your butcher's killing a pig, that's a problem with the sourcing.

Butchers don't normally kill the animal.

No, sorry.

No, butcher.

Sorry.

I mean, butcher the animal, but he was very good at butchering pigs.

So he trained Daniel Day-Lewis in how to butcher a pig.

And they got along really well.

He said Daniel Day-Lewis could butcher a pig like no one else.

He'd never seen anyone else with the knife skills.

He'd never seen anyone else with like the natural feel for cutting.

This is a man who probably has known a lot of other butchers.

I reckon because they hang out together, don't they?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I love the sound of Daniel Day-Lewis.

He sounds like a really nice bloke.

And when he's interviewed about it, he sounds quite normal.

Yeah.

Because Because I'm just trying to get into the head of the character so that when I put it on film, it's real.

I think he's a big old liar.

No,

I genuinely do.

I mean, I think some of it's true, but I think there's some...

And actually, I think a lot of the lies are made up by people around him.

But like, there was the famous thing where he walked off stage because he thought he saw his dad in the wings when he was doing Hamlet.

That's right.

And then later on, like, he did an interview saying that's what happened.

And then later on, he went, no, it didn't really happen.

He said he was just tired.

Yeah.

He said he was just exhausted.

And you're doing a play for every day for 18 months or whatever.

That's really exhausting.

But you can imagine if Daniel Day-Lewis says, I saw my dead father in the wings, you're going to believe that.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

He's never done theatre since.

But he explains, actually, he prefers the medium of film.

But it is weird.

I kind of agree.

It's sort of like if he was less sort of thespian-like and had so much integrity, he's Brian Blessed.

Like all these stories are just...

tall tales.

Apparently on my left foot, he broke two ribs because he was hunching over so much while he was in the wheelchair that they just snapped under the weight of his hunchback.

I think that that breaks your ribs.

I hunch over my laptop all day, every day, and never have I broken a rib.

You're not committing to the work like Day Lewis commits to his work.

No offense, Anna.

I'm sorry.

But he is a very, very successful actor, Daniel Day-Lewis.

His Wikipedia, he doesn't have a separate Wikipedia page listing his movies because he's done so few movies.

I think he's done less than 20 or around 20.

Wow.

But he does have a separate page listing all of his awards.

Just because he's won so many.

Yeah, he's done around 20 feature-length films and he's had 212 major nominations and 139 wins.

And not one of them will have been for Stars and Bar.

I guarantee it.

What I worked out is if each episode of our podcast was as successful as each of his films, then we'd have more than 4,000 awards.

And if they all weighed the same as an Oscar statuette, the total weight would be about the same as two elephants.

Oh, big god.

So that puts it into perspective.

Not for Shadow Peggle, too.

That's brilliant.

Tells Tells you a lot about Daniel Day-Lewis.

Today, we're exploring deep in the North American wilderness among nature's wildest plants, animals, and

cows.

Uh, you're actually on an Organic Valley dairy farm where nutritious, delicious, organic food gets its start.

But there's so much nature.

Exactly.

Organic Valley's small family farms protect the land and the plants and animals that call it home.

Extraordinary.

Sure is.

Organic Valley, protecting where your food comes from.

Learn more about their delicious dairy at ov.coop.

Too many tools, too much stress, and way too many bills.

ODU replaces it all.

One connected platform for every part of your business so you can work faster, smarter, and for less.

ODU, the only software you'll ever need.

Try it free today at odoo.com.

That's odoo.com.

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

My fact is that some French unions have special barbecues that can be used to cook sausages while on a protest march.

Brilliant.

They do like a strike in France.

They love a strike and they love a saucy song.

And

they found a way of combining the two.

And this does the rounds every now and again.

But Snopes, the brilliant people at Snopes, looked into this picture.

You can find it online.

It's these French people.

They're very clearly French union workers.

They're in their high-viz, and they're pushing along this mobile barbecue, which is in tram tracks.

Yeah.

So they're going the tram route.

I presume.

Oh, they're French train workers who were on strike.

It was in Nice.

It was in Nice.

Very annoying if it's French teachers on strike and they're confined to the tram route for the whole French system.

It's because they were doing some reform of the SNCF.

There was some probably mild change suggested to working hours and absolutely everybody out now!

We leave Needs to rot for a year.

It's really cool though, isn't it?

And there's actually video footage.

It's like one second of video footage from what I saw where they're just pushing it down.

It's a massive grill going over the two tram tracks.

It's pushing it along and they've,

you know.

So why do they put it on tram tracks rather than just putting a barbecue on wheels?

Good call.

Good point.

I suppose they were marching the route of the tracks.

I mean, I suppose they were only walking the tram route to to make a point about their, you know, whatever beef they were having

with

their bosses.

Maybe it makes the point more emphatically if they're like, we've even made a barbecue to make our point.

I mean, we're talking about them now.

This was, this was several years ago.

So you know, it's worked.

Their wages will probably shoot up now that we've discussed it.

You're welcome.

Yeah.

I did actually know Nice had trams.

I've been to Nice, but clearly I wasn't paying attention.

So, you know,

is that an all-new low in terms of buying anecdotes?

It's because I cycled into Nice.

That's it.

Now we've hit the rock bottom.

There we go.

You know, the barbecue I have is a Weber or Weber barbecue.

Okay.

Oh.

And that is a, it's like a circular one.

It's almost like a ball and it's on legs.

I think of that classic.

It's a classic garden barbecue.

Yeah.

It's like War of the Worlds, the tripods.

It's a war with a tripod.

Do terrifying aliens leap out of it if you don't cook the meat.

Sort of.

Well, they climb into your body and then they leap out several hours later.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, they were invented in 1952 from two halves of a steel boy.

A boy?

You know, a boy?

A boy?

A boy.

Ocean boys.

You know, those things that float in the ocean.

Yeah.

Well, yeah.

They decided they wanted to make a new kind of barbecue and they thought, wouldn't it be nice if it was circular?

And what do we have that's circular in our iron works?

Well, we have some boys.

Boys.

That's brilliant.

And the guy used it in his garden, and basically all his neighbours called it a spaceship and laughed at him.

But it turned round.

And it took off?

It did.

So

was the previous barbecue not a round looking?

No, because in America where barbecuing started, that's not really what barbecuing is.

It's more like roasting meat for 24 hours until it's really, really, really soft, isn't it?

Right.

A slow coach.

Because I should say to any Americans listening, in the UK, a barbecue is you sit in the garden when it's raining and you put burgers on a grill.

You You go into the house and put them in the oven if it's really raining.

As far as I'm concerned, a barbecue is a metal tray that you buy from Tesco Metro on a sunny day and then take to the park.

You tramp.

You three bottles of white light.

Delicious.

I discovered that I spell barbecue differently to you three.

No, you spell it wrong, which is what I noticed.

It's a document where we put our research.

Are you spelling it with a Q?

I'm spelling it with a Q, which is the Australian way of spelling it.

That's the actual way of spelling it in Australia.

Yes, it is.

And New Zealand as well.

And also, oh.

But you pronounce that barbecue barbecue.

They pronounce it Barbie, as we know.

Oh, we have a Barbie, but yeah, barbecue.

And in Sydney, there's a thing.

If it was, sorry, if it was meant, if you were spelling it like it was pronounced, but you wanted to include the Q, you'd have to end it Q, U E, U, E.

That's how you do Q.

Join the barbecue.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, no, I'll bring that up.

Anna, next time I'm at the Australian Embassy and they're asking me for my international opinions, they've constantly got a barbecue on the go at the Aussie Embassy.

They do, exactly.

But this relates to a really interesting etymology of barbecue because there's a kind of mythic folk belief that it comes from a French phrase from barbe a queue,

which means from beard to tail.

You're eating the whole pig.

Yeah, yeah.

Joke's on you.

That pig is Daniel Day-Lewis in disguise.

He was method acting.

You're in big trouble now.

You got an eating pig.

Was he in babe?

What was the movie?

Because the word queue in English, as in to stand in a line, comes from the French for tail as well.

Right.

Right.

But you're saying this isn't correct.

It's not from that.

In fact, we very briefly mentioned years years and years ago that it's from a guy called William Dampier, who was a privateer, sailor,

pirate, roaster.

The original Robinson Crusoe, I want to say.

But wasn't he was a buccaneer and a buccaneer is a pirate who cooks meat.

Basically, that's the etymology of buccaneer comes from that as well.

Yes.

It's all the Caribbean languages, basically.

So there's a barbacal, which is from sort of various Caribbean peoples who...

who got it.

So it's from the Americas, the word in the first place, yeah.

There's a fun phrase in Argentina where barbecuing is huge and it's called asado in places like argentina brazil other parts of south america and then you get asado al disco do you know what that is

circular revolving yeah rotating oh it's the the disco gets so hot that you feel like you're cooking so mirror ball full of meat thank you i was looking for some disco stuff and then i could say no it's about the first things that you guys said but a disco is the disc from a plow um so a plow has like very sharp discs that it cuts the crops with and once they've worn out then in argentina you take take that off the plow and you cook on it.

And it's like a, it's basically like a wok, a giant wok.

And that's Apollo aldisco, is using the disc from a plow to barbecue.

Yeah, barbecuing is very common around the world.

And one thing that's quite interesting is it's very common for men to do the barbecuing almost everywhere that you go.

So, like, we think of it in the UK, at least, and probably in America, as like the dads go and do the barbecuing while everyone else does something else.

That's right.

And the men, the men obsess over it.

And they talk,

what trunk are you cooking with these days?

You know, that kind of stuff.

But yeah, Levi Strauss, the anthropologist, he says that, yeah, basically, if you look all over the world from Amazonian tribes, people in Africa, it's often the men's work for the barbecuing.

There was a book called The Complete Barbecue Book by John and Marie Robertson, who put it, they said that the man who does the barbecuing takes on a somewhat godlike stature.

As for the ladies, well, they're virtually your slaves.

I feel like John wrote that bit, not Marie.

But yes, an anthropologist and food writer called Calvin Trillin reckons that if you want to be a good barbecuist, you have to be basically a misanthrope because you're going in the garden on your own.

You're not really talking to anyone else.

Your friend is the meat as opposed to.

God, it's such a lovely chance not to have to fulfill your social obligations and just stand there feeling useful.

I would say in Australia, I don't know what it's like here properly, but

it's the water cooler.

It's everyone hangs around the barbecue.

What are you driving these days?

Yeah, that kind of thing.

Exactly that kind of thing.

But then this guy says that actually it's quite good as a hobby because, you know, golf and sailing and fishing, these are also things where men sort of like to go just a couple of men on their own and not see anyone else misanthropically.

But at least in this case, everyone gets some food out of it at the end.

That's true.

Not guaranteed with fishing.

And very rare with golf.

Unless you really hit something.

Yeah,

I think misanthropically, for activities like fishing, which is so dominated by men, we need to replace the word misanthrope, which has a kind of coolness to it, with unhelpful, because that's all it is.

That's just men pissing off and not helping out.

So when my wife says to me, why have you not taken the bins out?

I could just say, oh, it's been misanthropic.

Exactly.

The male thing is interesting, though, and going back to French barbecues, a green politician in France got in trouble in 2022 because they were saying, obviously, meat, very bad for the environment.

20% of our greenhouse gases still come from the meat industry.

And she was saying we have to change our mentality so that eating a barbecued entrecote is no longer a symbol of virility.

And basically, people said, you're blaming men for killing the paradox.

I don't think I've ever heard someone say the word entrecote and think that is a virile person.

France is a very different place to bolster chicks.

The male, the interesting male thing about barbecuing and meat is that men just do eat more meat.

And actually, we don't know why.

But around the world, in almost every country...

This must be cultural.

It can't be biological.

Well, a lot of people think it's biological.

So there are arguments that female hormones suppress the desire to eat meat around your period or when you're pregnant, which sounds very implausible to me.

There's another argument that says men behave in more risky ways.

So evolutionarily, they need to eat more protein to make their bones stronger.

But also cooking a sausage for three minutes to say gal is probably fine.

That is a risky behaviour.

But it's really interesting.

And also, there's a study looking at 23 countries and the wealthier and more gender equality we have.

What would you think?

As you get more gender equality, which tends to happen in more developed countries,

does the gap between men and women's meat eating get bigger or smaller?

Well, you would think it would get smaller.

You'd think it would get smaller and it gets bigger.

Doesn't it?

Because men are trying to cling to something to show their blokes.

We don't know, but I like that's a nice interpretation.

Have you heard of transglutaminase?

I'd be really surprised if you had.

No.

No.

Some kind of molecule.

It's a molecule, all right.

It's an enzyme.

And it's it's a thing that gets called meat glue.

Oh, okay.

That's a good thing.

And if you buy a big piece of steak, you may notice it might be skewered.

And if it's skewered, there's a good chance, this is in America, this stuff is not legal in the EU,

that it's had meat glue

sort of painted on it.

And if you paint meat glue on it and squish it all together, you can make a big, expensive-looking steak out of several pieces of small scraps.

Oh, cool.

And that's how it's not cool.

It's really horrible.

No, but it's cool that, like, you could bring a dino burger, basically.

It's like the Power Rangers, you know, they combine their forces to

if you're listening to this after the Trump tariffs have forced us to do a trade deal with America, then you two could be eating one right now.

These days, yeah.

I was looking at sort of out-of-place barbecues like the one on the tram line and there was a really cool thing I found which is there used to be a tour called the Vans Warp Tour.

It's basically a festival that you would have like 20 bands and they would go from city to city together.

So not like Glastonbury, just one, yeah.

And they came to Australia in 1998 and I remember it being a big deal.

So they had big bands.

You'd get people like Blink 182 and No Effects and stuff, but then they would also give opportunities to younger, newer bands.

And one of the conditions of being on the warp tour was you could be the barbecue band.

You get a slot on stage, but when it's done, you go backstage and you're in charge of the barbecue and you cook for everyone.

And so that's the condition, the trade-off of you being on the tour.

Do we know any bands that went on to be massive having begun as barbecuers?

Yeah, the Dropkick Murphys,

Art of Shock,

Grillas,

Gorillas, Grillas.

Yes.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Seeing it?

I was seeing it.

Grillers is

Oh, you mean Agnes?

Damon Alban, you mean Damon Alban.

Damon Alban.

I mean, he belongs on a farm anyway.

So, you know, there are these rubs.

Yeah.

This is a big meat rub.

Meat rub.

So it's basically a load of spices that you rub over your

meat to marinate it.

Exactly.

Exactly.

And there's a shop near me which stocks something by what's called the Gentleman's Rub Club.

And I have tried to.

And I've tried to find any evidence that it existed online because I remembered it running up to this podcast and they're nowhere.

The thing is, it's a bit like butchers in the 1980s.

You don't necessarily have to have a massive online presence if you're a rub club.

But apparently, the first rule of gentlemen's rub drug.

But this just got me off onto like

got me onto grilling awards, barbecue awards.

So I was looking at the NBBQA, National Barbecue and Grilling Association, because they have an awards of excellence every year.

I think this is an American thing.

So they've got beef rub, pork rub, poultry rub, seafood rub, spicy rub.

And I just wanted to read a few of the prizes from the latest awards.

They're terrific.

Barbecue apparel category.

First prize, a t-shirt reading, wanna see my rack.

First prize.

First prize.

Third prize.

Well, they're trying to encourage women to get into it, aren't they?

Second prize, want to see my sausage.

Third prize, t-shirt reading, I got sauced.

Fourth hat reading, my dad's barbecue.

But there's a barbecue book of the year.

Oh, yeah.

A barbecue, badass backyard cooking.

Oh, damn.

Oh, cool.

And there's even an award for best barbecue audio series.

There's barbecue podcasts.

Could we put this section up for us?

I think so.

If we want to dethrone the Smoking Hot Confessions BBQ podcast.

Well, I definitely want to check out my rack t-shirt or whatever it is.

So let's do it.

They're massive, the barbecue contests in America.

They're all run by the Kansas City Barbecue Society, and it's trained over 15,000 judges to judge barbecues and the rules are very tight.

So judges are not allowed to eat with utensils, but you're also not allowed to lick your fingers.

Why?

No one knows.

You just have fingers covered in like barbecue meat the whole time.

How can you eat some ribs without licking your fingers?

That's unnatural.

Well, I think it's a good idea.

Maybe you have wipes.

Gloves?

Yes.

I don't remember.

Like a super referee, another 20,000 pairs of linen gloves, please.

Yeah.

The scores are on a scale of one to nine, but there's no three and four, weirdly.

One, two, five, six, seven, and nine.

That's so funny.

Yeah, five is poor, and then two is inedible, nothing in between.

That's very fun.

There are various rules.

To judge a brisket, as in the big chest of a cow, you have to be able to manipulate it like an accordion.

Wow.

Oh, wow.

What a sentence.

Horrible.

I think it's you.

I'm surprised, yeah.

Because

you can play the accordion, right?

And so you have to move it quite a lot, right?

And to move a rib cage, I don't feel like that would be possible.

Yeah.

Maybe the rib cage.

That's a terrible shoe.

But if a couple of the ribs have already been broken, let's say because Daniel Day-Lewis has been living as the cow.

Dan can ask you a question.

Yeah.

Australia?

Yeah.

You're from there.

Yes.

Have you ever seen a coin-operated barbecue in the park?

I was going to mention this before I was cut off for my terrible spelling, which was not terrible.

In Sydney, we actually have not even coin-operated, you have free barbecues on most of the beaches that you go to.

So we would go down to Clareville on the weekend, you would just press a button and it gets going.

And your only thing is to just clean it up.

Wait, is it like gas or do you have to bring your own charcoal?

Oh, just yeah, it just goes up.

Isn't it unhygienic?

No, you clean.

So there are raw sausages on the...

I kind of think the thing with barbecue is it doesn't matter if you drop it in the mud like because you're cooking it on such a massive massive heat

a thousand degrees.

What's surviving at?

There's a real pride thing, by the way, of you leave it ready for the next person.

Yeah, it's a thing that is sort of just part of the way.

I see.

That's national culture.

Well, supposedly, even some zoos have free barbecues, which I feel is open to misuse.

What do you think?

That's a bit scary for the animals sitting around.

Have you seen the woman?

Where's the woman?

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

My fact this week is that epileptic fits can be triggered by thinking about toothpaste.

That's wild.

Yeah, not widespread, don't worry.

Do you have to have a specific condition already for this to happen?

Epilepsy, I'm assuming.

It is more common in epileptics, yes.

But you ask all the right questions, Andy.

Tommy, love to have you in the class.

This I just came across this paper

from 2006, which reported on a patient with epilepsy.

Came across a paper from 2006, which reported on a patient with epilepsy, in which seizures were induced both by toothbrushing and by seeing or thinking about toothbrush and toothpaste.

Hesmosin.

So extraordinary.

Is that someone who is stressed about the idea of brushing their teeth?

And then the stress brings on it.

Like, what is bringing it on?

I don't, well, it's very mysterious, and I don't think it's quite that.

It's a type of reflex epilepsy, which is epilepsy that's triggered by something.

And this type is called thinking epilepsy.

And it's where thinking about something, and I don't think it's necessarily something that causes you stress, but thinking about a certain thing triggers it.

So there was other cases reported on where someone, when they thought about food, whenever they thought about food, which is quite debilitating, would have thought about it.

I read about one who every time they tried to do Sudoku, they got an epileptic fit.

This seems to be a thing that puzzles crosswords Sudoku.

Oh, yeah, I hate a Sudoku.

Yeah, but it's not about hating it.

I don't know.

Do you have underlying epilepsy?

I'm starting to feel like I might.

But is it because there's a particular location in your brain where the neurons for toothpaste or Sudoku or whatever, or food, are kept and there's a crossed wire in there?

That seems

logical, doesn't it?

But I don't think anyone really knows.

No, no.

And it is rare, but it is amazing.

And some people can think themselves into an epileptic fit.

It just sounds like the most awful thing because what is the only thing you can do when you're told not to think about something, obviously, is think about something.

if you know that you can't think about this there was a guy who was taken to hospital and he had a brain lesion I think and he had an epileptic fit and the only way he could characterize it was if he started to feel enthusiastic he would then have a fit so interesting I wonder if you have that Anna we probably never know me

that's why actually I play it safe

so it could be anything is it's you've just got to identify so he's not allowed a hobby not he's not allowed a a hobby that he likes, no.

He can do Sudoku to his ark content, actually.

They actually made him induce one, which does feel quite mean.

They were like, could you try and replicate the

feeling when you have one so we can have a look?

So he was like, okay, I'll make myself feel enthusiastic.

You're ready?

Toothpaste?

Yes, please.

How do the stripes get in?

Oh, my God.

The ultimate question.

Why don't I know?

I believe there's a couple of different ways of doing it.

Yeah, they've got a couple now.

But my understanding is that the main one, there's a little thing near the nozzle or something.

Oh, yeah.

It's disappointingly technical, the explanation.

It's not like.

Is it not through the back door?

What do you mean through the back door?

There's one rope of toothpaste that goes into the toothpaste.

You've got the nozzle at the top, and then you've got the bottom.

Maybe that's not closed up when the stuff's put in, and then you seal it up.

What you're saying is that one long string of toothpaste is put in, and it comes out in the same order that it went in the other end.

No, I'm picturing it a bit like Mr.

Whippy.

What if you get it wrong and squeeze it?

It doesn't work the opposite way around, though, because it would mush inside.

It's white on the inside, up to near the nozzle end and then the colour or colours this is one way of doing it yeah are the colours are up at that end and there's a very thin pipe so as you squeeze from the back end yeah the white goes up through the nozzle but the colour bit is also pressed out through the holes in the sides and joins the main white bit cool and the main bit is white and the other colours then are the garnish that's fantastic that's very

i never knew that so if you don't like the colours you know if you get a bit perturbed when you spit it out and it looks like your mouth is bleeding you can cut your toothpaste tube in half and then just use the bottom of it and it's just white.

That's what I do.

Think of someone who could have had a tube of toothpaste, right?

A famous person in history.

Margaret Thatcher.

She could, yes.

Even more impressively, even further back than that.

Da Vinci.

Jim Callahan.

Julius Caesar.

Yes, Jim Callahan idea this.

I do know why.

I've designed.

Wilson.

Harold Wilson.

You're dusting PMs.

Yeah, just going backwards.

I think even before Balfour could have had it.

Yeah.

I don't know if designing quiz formats is for you.

Lord Salisbury.

Oh, God.

No.

Was it between Disraeli's first term and Disraeli's second term?

No, it's after all of Disraeli and Gladstone.

Campbell Bannerman probably could have had.

Wow.

He was a turn of the 20th century prime minister.

Atlee.

Yeah,

we've ascertained Attlee could have done, James.

You're not catching up.

You're not playing the game at all well, which is surprising to me, because it's such a good game.

What's your point?

Toothpaste was invented 100 years ago.

How young?

Joan Rivers?

Liz Truss.

So, yeah.

All of these people.

So what I'm trying to say is that the squeezy toothpaste tube, the collapsible toothpaste tube,

was invented in roughly the 1880s, 90s.

So Queen Victoria could have had a tube of toothpaste.

Which just makes you think, doesn't it?

What does it make me think?

Well, it's just the tube of toothpaste is older than we might think it is, you know.

James thought Clement Attlee was the earliest prime minister who could have had one, but actually,

1880, a dentist from Connecticut, confusingly, he was called Sheffield, launched it, and then it was launched in York, confusingly, the place, in 1896.

So, other people who could have enjoyed it include Adolph Sachs, Friedrich Engels, William Morris, and Rutherford B.

Hayes.

Goni women there who cleaned the teeth in the Queen Victoria, I think, was the opener.

Queen Victoria.

Queen Victoria.

Here's a worrying thing for toothpaste, possibly.

Do you know that sales have dropped by a lot?

Some say almost half since the late 90s.

What?

Yeah.

Now riddle me this.

Is it that people used to have much bigger toothbrushes?

You got in one.

Electric toothbrushes.

Oh.

Electric toothbrushes have such a small little surface area for you to put it on that you're not squeezing as much.

And also, the rise of the two for one or three for two promotion has absolutely knocked out sales for them as well.

But it's literally that we're using it almost half the amount.

But I'm so surprised because I don't think a high proportion of people use electric toothbrushes.

I'm surprised that it's half.

Do you guys?

Well, so the promotions as well.

The promotions.

But I tend to just cover my whole flannel with toothpaste and rub that around my mouth.

Well, do you know?

That would probably keep the industry going.

That would work.

And this is here's

it.

You don't need to put it on a brush or anything.

And this is something that will really send toothpaste sales plummeting.

If they were worried before about this drop, it's totally pointless.

What your teeth are toothbrush.

Toothpaste.

What?

So

study after study.

If you're looking at removing plaque, study after study, like dozens and dozens of studies, very, very reliable, broad studies.

Look at the difference between toothbrushing without any toothpaste and toothbrushing with toothpaste.

And there is absolutely no difference.

Your teeth are going to be stronger if you use fluoride.

Your teeth will.

So the only thing is, the fluoride in toothpaste is in the long term good for your teeth, Only if you do the thing that I've always known you should do, but can't bring myself to do, which is not rinse at the end.

Do you guys all not rinse?

I do now, having learned this, because we talked about this from QI coming up.

Oh, did we?

But yeah, it is quite interesting because I think, and there are so many ingredients, but it is literally the only thing is fluoride that does anything.

Unless, except like breath-smelling mint.

Because you get a fluoride-free toothpaste, which I do have friends who use.

And I'm not judging them because they're my friends.

Yeah, but you can't invite them to the barbecue because they can't get through the meat.

That is RFK.

See, all right?

It's so interesting how we got fluoride in toothpaste and, in fact, in water.

In 1901, there was a young dentist called Frederick Mackay, and he moved to Colorado Springs in America.

And he found the people there had a thing called, have you heard of Colorado Brownstain?

But I wouldn't buy that toothpaste brand.

Isn't that one of the sports team, the Colorado Brownstains?

Yeah, that's right.

Go Brownstains.

um this is insane 90 of children had it almost no one in the rest of america had colorado brownstain or any kind of brownstain the water was tested turns out the water was very high in fluoride right particular towns with particular water sources had awful brownstain but the good thing was they did some experiments makai and et al and they found that basically this waterborne fluoroid changed the color of your tooth enamel, but it also made this mottled tooth enamel that people had was very resistant to decay.

And so they started thinking okay we pop a little bit these kids had rock hard teeth basically and they thought if we put the right amount of fluoride in the water you won't get discolored teeth but you will get strong teeth and the year after the first place at grand rapids in michigan got fluoride the number of cavities dropped 60 percent is one of the most effective health interventions ever made it's like that thing in switzerland where everyone had goiters on their neck yeah they started putting iodine in the salt just overnight changed it well and bizarrely we don't do it everywhere in britain which i actually didn't realize until recently and lots, in most places, we don't do it.

But does that mean we should actually,

good teeth, are mottled brown teeth?

Like really if we want super strong teeth, why not triple the fluoride?

You can have too much fluoride.

You definitely can.

There are advisory levels.

And people go a bit nuts about it, obviously.

There's lots of stuff online about it.

When it was installed in Grand Rapids in 1945, lots of people said, this fluoride, it's giving me sore teeth and sore enamel and it's really bad.

And they were told, yes, we haven't actually put the fluoride in the water yet.

that's happening in a few weeks yeah so we know now that there's no toothpaste before campbellbadaman well there's no tubes right usable tubes yeah okay but what did the romans do to um to keep their mouth nice and healthy what they used as mouthwash oh like

so there is this sort of factoid that romans used urine from portugal as mouthwash

and it is put across by lots of popular historians but it's really probably not true like if you look look for any classical evidence, there is a mention by Catalus, and it's a poem, but he's mocking someone and he's saying, oh, yeah, you're in Spain, you've been to Spain, so you probably wash your mouth with urine.

And it might be that maybe some people in Spain did that, but this is a satirical sort of taking the piss.

Really, they didn't do this.

You mean not only not Portuguese urine, they probably didn't use urine in general.

No.

Right.

Otherwise, why would you take the piss out of someone for doing it, having just been to Iberia?

Yeah, yeah, that makes sense.

I thought you were saying, like, it's a myth that they imported large quantities of Portuguese urine, and actually, they just used good old-fashioned Roman urine.

You were saying no urine was probably involved.

No, I don't think there was any urine involved.

It was only after they introduced the urine tariffs, of course, that they started getting good at making their own.

There's a lot of old methods to clean your teeth and alleviate toothache.

Before it was a paste, it was powder, so we were all using powder toothpaste.

One of my favorite ones, if not my favorite, is you would use the ground-up ashes of a wolf's head.

But what you say is when you find that dead wolf and you get its head in order to mash it up and use that, it is a well-known fact, too, that there are bones generally found in the excrement of that animal.

These bones attached to an amulet are protective as well.

There's a lot going on.

It's an undertaking, isn't it?

It's laborous every night, I guess.

Yeah.

Out of toothpaste.

Honestly, compared to, because I've literally been to the dentist two days ago, and compared to that, I'll take the wolf crap.

You'll follow a wolf around until it does a shit, immediately kill it, turn the shit into a necklace.

Rather than an hour and a half of drilling, yeah, I'll go for it.

Fair enough.

My dentist said, Mr.

Harkin, you have a very strong tongue.

Wow.

Would you like to join my gentleman's rub club?

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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 things that French newspapers were censored from mentioning during World War I included any use of the word peace without the word victorious, any mention of the cold weather in case it reminded people about the shortage of coal, and any reference of a meeting between the president's wife and a wild ape.

I mean,

did that reference a specific occasion, or was it just in case anyone it did?

Did it?

It did.

Yeah, there was an incident involving Henriette Poincaré,

who was the wife of the president.

And on the Wikipedia for the Elysee Palace, it says in 1917, a chimpanzee escaped from a nearby menagerie, entered the palace, and was said to have tried to haul the wife of President Raymond Poincaré into a tree, only to be foiled by the guards.

How strong was it that they could have hauled her into a tree?

I know chimpanzees are strong, but that's

bulky.

A teenage girl chimpanzee would beat you in an arm wrestle.

I don't doubt it.

I don't doubt it.

I've already been bulking up.

Thank you.

I think a teenage human girl would probably beat Andy in an arm wrestle.

Oh, wow.

What's going there, are we?

I celebrate strong women, don't.

I'm sorry you don't.

Wow.

We have a metaphorical arm wrestle in this discussion.

You just got slapped.

I got beat shitless, yeah.

So I i read this in wikipedia and i looked for some contemporary reports and i found this mention actually this was from the 1930s they mentioned it it was in the london diary and it was things that you were not allowed to mention in 1916 in france in world war one

um so that seemed to be that it might have happened but then i went further back and found some reports in 1916 in the American press and this definitely did happen and the Baron Henri de Rothschild had a place near the Elysee Palace and he'd been to the Far East, which means that maybe this ape might have been an orangutan, we think.

He brought it to his home near the Elise Palace and it had escaped.

And I read one account in the Aldi magazine written more recently that said the ape wrapped her in his embrace, took her by the waist and attempted to carry her up a tree.

King Kong.

It is King Kong.

That's it.

And then apparently, Poincaré, the president, he apparently put the orangutan up against the firing squad.

No.

No, No, which is a thing to one of them.

He's still King Kong.

That's the exact one.

So, I mean, whether that's all true or not, like, it definitely was reported in 1916 when it happened.

Because it's really hard, isn't it?

Because it was censored from the French press.

So the number of...

You've picked a really hard bang to research that.

But it was mentioned in the world press around the time.

And apparently, President Deschanel, who came after him, he was so impressed by the ape that he took to jumping in trees during state receptions.

Oh, wow.

But he was the one who went a bit.

He was very mad, wasn't he?

Jeffrey Nel was the Manic Pixie dream president, wasn't he?

He was.

He was the one who woke up on a train, opened the window, fell out of it as it was going 35 miles an hour.

They didn't know until the next morning that he was gone.

And he was found by a local rail guy who he was saying, I'm the president of France.

He goes, Sure, mate, sure.

Okay.

Brings him to his home and they just keep him there until he convinces them that he is.

And then later on, he left the palace to go into the gardens and started chatting to a park worker but he had no trousers on and then he stepped into an ornamental fountain thinking it was a bath and then he resigned

the stress of the job no in fairness like we think now that he had some sort of really awful sort of sleep deprivation illness helper syndrome i think it was called

never heard drunkenness

yeah but um yeah it was basically he would never he couldn't go into rem sleep or anything so even when he slept he just wasn't getting his brain refreshed oh boy although it's so weird because he lasted a long time with being fine.

And then as soon as he became president, maybe the stress did do something for it.

Yeah.

His wife was called Germaine.

And I just think I've blown something open, but I don't quite know what because she's a Germaine Deschenel was a society lady.

She looks like she would have been so good at entertaining because your whole role as first lady then was throwing big parties and she was brilliant at that.

So it's such a shame.

He only lasted about a minute as president.

But

she's called Germain.

They were married in Saint Germain Church, and he first went mad in St.

Germain Forest.

Right.

Wow.

What do you think?

So, what are we saying?

Well, I've thrown something open, but I don't know what it is.

Is it like the Peckham Butcher?

Do you think she doesn't exist?

Well, she is the devil or something who she drove him mad by embodying a forest and then a church.

I think it's a very germane theory.

Oh, yeah.

And there's the missing piece.

Yes.

The pun

You need, for any conspiracy theory, you need a pun.

So this original president's wife, the one who bumped into the orangutan, was Madame Poincaré, right?

Yeah.

She was, so Mr.

Poincaré,

him indoors, was Raymond, who was president, very impressively, president for the whole First World War and some years on either side, PM three times as well over a longer period, like really very...

And then came back to be president again, I think, afterwards.

Wow.

Yeah.

I mean, so like amazing political career.

So he would have had tube toothpaste, right?

He would have had tube toothpaste.

Yeah.

So his cousin was Henri Poincaré, a mathematician who, James, you might.

Oh, of conjecture fame.

Of conjecture fame.

And I'm putting big quotes on that.

Poincare conjecture?

So he's, yeah, he's really famous, right?

Oh, yeah.

In maths world.

In maths world, yeah.

So I just love this.

This is a slight sidebar, but he was in a picture, Henri Poincaré, which is known as the most intelligent photo ever taken.

So there are lots of smart people in it.

Exactly.

More than that one from the Oscars with Ellen DeGenus in it.

Amazingly,

no, that one, that was now the most intelligent photo I've taken.

But this was in 1927, so it was

the previous record holder.

Can we guess who's in the photo?

Would we know?

Let's say Einstein.

Let's say Einstein.

I'll give you a clue.

Niels Bohr.

Can I give you the clue?

Wait.

Please wait.

Nari Curie.

Hugo.

I mean, you kind of hit all of them.

The 1927 Solvay Conference on Quantum Mechanics, which was held in Brussels,

attracted, there were 29 people in this photo, 17 of whom got Nobel Prizes.

The photo is stunning.

So you said Einstein.

Yeah.

You said Mary Curie.

You said Dirac.

Someone said Paul Dirac.

Niels Bohr.

Max Planck, Heisenberg, Erwin Schrödinger, Auguste Picard.

Everybody, 17 of them got Nobels.

Picard.

Wow.

I know.

Yeah.

Picard, yeah, yeah.

But there's just one photo of maybe the most intelligent conference that's ever happened.

It wasn't something that

Corey took it.

He was in it.

He was in it.

He was one of the

people of it.

And that's lots of nuclear physicists of that period as well, right?

Because I wonder if the phrase, if an atomic bomb dropped on us right now, would have been a- I'm afraid the atomic bomb hadn't been invented.

No, no, no, no, no.

A bomb.

Is there a phrase that says, if an atomic bomb dropped on us right now?

No, I was just adding that to the bomb for a while.

If a bomb hit this is a bomb,

like if a bomb hit this recording studio we're in right now, no effect on global history.

Although next year's top barbecue podcast might be Short One Candidate.

Can I just ask quickly, the censorship over that story?

Is it because it wasn't so much that it was embarrassing?

It's just that no matter what interview they gave, the journalist was just desperate to say, you know what, Dan, like I really, I did a lot of very, very in-depth research on this and it's very difficult to research, but I think it was because they were trying to keep morale up in in the country.

I can't think of anything that would improve morale more than if I found out, what's the name Starmer, has been attacked by a cheater in the bathroom of Downing Street.

Well, I think also, like, it could denigrate his authority.

Yeah, really.

Like, they're quite good about

private lives in France.

Yeah, that's true.

But you're right.

And it's sort of a leading industrialist as well.

It's like if Alan Sugar's pet kimodo dragon had temporarily abducted Mrs.

Starmer and Starmer's had it shot by a firing squad, yes, lovely.

Um, she, Madame Poincare, she was quite controversial.

In fact, the Queen of England was very snobbish about her, Queen Mary.

They did an official visit in 1914, and she refused to be seen with her at first.

Sorry, Dad, I was just grinning away at the thought of Queen Mary using some collapsible toothpaste tubes.

How did you know?

Because I had the same thought, Dan.

I don't know the state of of her dental hygiene.

All I know is I'm trying to make the serious point that the English, the Brits, were very snobbish because Madame Poincare, she was very old when she married.

This wasn't why they disapproved.

This is sort of why I disapproved when I read about the story.

She was in her, she was 46 and the Prime Minister was a bit younger.

So Queen Mary refused to share a carriage with her because she was divorced, and her first husband was a cab driver who was still alive.

Uh-oh, okay.

Unbelievable.

It's a shame because they could have run with the headline cougar attacked by chimpanzee.

Very good.

I mean, that mirrors current Prime Minister.

Sorry, Brigitte Macron.

The French are into it.

They're also into presidents having lots of mistresses, aren't they?

Francoise Hollande, he had four children with his long-term partner, but then when he became president, moved in with his mistress.

Valerie

Troyopila.

Yeah.

But then he cheated on her with an actor, with an actress.

And it was really funny because he went off to see this actress with a motorcycle helmet on his head, thinking that no one would be able to tell it was him.

But he wore the same pair of socks that he'd been wearing at a recent international visit.

So the photographers took a photo of him and went, I recognize those socks.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's bad luck.

What does it do the socks say, President of France?

Like, what was

they must have been quite distinctive?

They must have been because most socks are just quite plain.

Most male professionals wear plains.

I always wear plain black socks.

It's so I can get away with

my people.

What socks are I wearing?

It just says shagger on your socks, James.

I'm wearing powder puff girls' socks, which I reckon if.

Oh, look at Dan's.

He's got bright yellow ones.

James, you must be the only man in London wearing those socks.

I know, but if I have an affair, you're screwed.

Dan, what's that?

It's blast skateboards.

It's their logo.

I am the only man wearing this in London today, but because of them, I will not be having an affair.

I think the same applies to James.

Yeah, I was like, I'll show you mine, plain black.

Lovely.

So, if you see a man having an affair in plain black socks, you know it's not me or dad.

No.

And if they've got a little garter and they're tied at the knee, you'll know it's me.

He is not, I don't mean to be rude about him, but he's not David Gandhi.

Hollande, you say?

Hollande, yeah.

He's an example of power being a great aphrodisiac.

You know, he's sort of just a very average-looking dude who happened to be the president of France.

He's not David Gandhi.

Is that the best?

Yeah, I don't know.

Is that Mahatma Gandhi's brother?

If Mahatma Gandhi had taken his well-man pills, he would have looked like David.

David's one of like top-end model male model.

He's an underpant model.

Oh, yeah.

Okay.

Is this the first ever modern popular culture reference that Andy's ever said on the podcast?

It might be.

Maybe that none of us have.

Well, I've got it, but like that you two haven't heard of it.

You haven't, Hannah.

He's a sort of famous guy.

Do you think I know a lot of male underpant models?

You might get a magazine or something.

I don't know.

But Jack Chirac, president of France.

Yeah.

He modeled underpants.

He might as well have done.

I mean, he certainly showed his pants off a lot.

Did he?

He, when he was mayor of Paris in the 1980s, he ordered the city council to buy him a coach fitted with a bedroom so he could meet lovers on official engagements.

Oh, wow.

Sorry, a coach fitted with a bedroom.

Coach.

Coach, right.

Coach like a bus.

Like a National Express.

Like a mega bus.

Like a mega bus.

Really, mega bus.

Well, it was that so he could have lots of efforts, not just so he could sleep between.

No, it was specifically so he could meet lovers.

Did he say that?

Well, you can in France, can you?

His private jet when he was president had a room that was for Trists.

Lovely.

That's the weirdest thing, which made me sort of warm to him.

So Jacques and Bernadette, his wife, brought a Vietnamese refugee to live with them and sort of adopted a Vietnamese refugee.

And it was on a whim.

So this woman was called Anne Dow Traxel.

She was actually about 20, but she'd escaped from a refugee camp in 1979 when the Vietnamese were having a not very good time.

And she was crying in the corner of an airport in France.

And Jacques Chirac saw her, approached her, and said, Don't cry, my dear.

From now on, you'll live with us.

Okay.

I've got a special bedroom on the jumbo.

Can I tell you one French heroine I found out?

She wasn't First Lady of France or anything, but just in the course of researching us, I found out about her because she was amazing.

Her name was Valerie Andre.

She died this year in February.

She was the wife of President Peter Andre, wasn't she?

She was.

And she was a mysterious girl.

girl.

She died this year.

She was 102 years old, right?

So she lived 1923 to 2025.

She was, in this order, a brain surgeon, a parachutist, and the first woman to fly helicopter missions in combat zones and the first French woman to become a general in their army.

Wow.

So she would do parachute jumps into combat zones if someone had been wounded, right?

You know, she would either do parachute jumps in, or she would fly a helicopter in herself, pick up a wounded soldier in the helicopter, fly them to hospital, and then she'd say, hello, I'm going to be your surgeon today and do the operation on them.

That's amazing.

I just think that's like, imagine that.

Imagine your pilot then becoming a surgeon halfway through and patching you up.

Just crazy.

I think I would feel less confident in her in both roles.

I think you're not putting your full life into being a helicopter pilot or a surgeon, are you?

Would you say that before she made the first incision or would you maybe wait until...

I'd be like, do we not have someone who's studied their whole life as a surgeon who could do my surgery, please?

Looking at gift horse in the mouth or what?

Sorry about me.

I'm not going to sign this consent form.

Okay, that's it.

That is all of our facts.

Thank you so much for listening.

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

I'm on Instagram.

You can find me at Schreiberland.

James.

My Instagram is no such thing as James Harkin.

Andy, I'm on Blue Sky at Andrew Hunt Ram.

And if you want to get to us as a group, Anna, you can go on Twitter at no such thing or Instagram at no such thing as a fish or email podcast at qi.com.

Yep, or you can head to our website, no such thingasafish.com.

All of our previous episodes are up there.

There's also links to an upcoming live show that we're doing later this year in Sheffield.

It is part of the Crossed Wires Festival.

That's happening on the 6th of July.

Tickets are available.

We also have all our merch that's up there.

We have the entrance to our secret club, which has bonus episodes, behind-the-scenes stuff.

It has extra compilations of all the outtakes from our show.

It's called Club Fish.

Is it still $2.99, though?

At the moment, but I am on the brink of changing that, James.

So get in quick, get in while that lasts.

And yeah, otherwise, just come back because we will be back here with another episode next week.

And we will see you then.

Goodbye.