540: No Such Thing As The Three Gorgeous Dams

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Hey everyone, Dan here.

Welcome to this week's episode of No Such Thing as a Fish.

Before we get going, I just have a quick personal announcement that I want to make, which is to tell you that my first ever non-fiction kids book is out today.

You can get it in shops now.

It's called Impossible Things: Unbelievable Answers to the World's Weirdest Questions.

And in it, I have gone on 10 adventures to try and answer some of the big questions that kids often ask us about the mysteries of the universe.

Oh my god, get out of here, James.

Is time travel possible?

Will we ever talk to animals?

Do ghosts exist?

Can imaginary friends come to life?

Are we all actually living in a giant video game simulation?

Using these questions as starting points, I've written something that combines really interesting facts with great spooky tales.

And along the way, I managed to get a 2,500-year-old Babylonian ghost, a Guinness World Record, and also sit down with a psychic spy.

It's the perfect summer read for your kid for any of those questions.

if they've ever wanted to know why we haven't been taken over by zombies, why in 1991 there were over 60,000 jellyfish in space, and how to throw their own time traveler party, well, then this is the book for them.

So, guys, I'd really appreciate it if you could buy it.

So hard for authors these days to sell their books, but we rely on people like you, our fish club, to help us do that.

And I'd really appreciate the support.

So if you can do it, it's out there now.

Impossible things in all good bookshops.

Thank you so much.

And on with the show.

Also, buy my book yet no next week buy his next week on with the show

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'm I'm sitting here with James Harkin, Anna Toshinsky, and Andrew Hunter Murray.

And 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 James.

Okay, my fact this week is that Yves Saint-Laurent's gardener used hair clippers to keep his cactuses perfectly trimmed.

That is.

That is care.

And hair clippers are those ones that

men use to keep their hair really short, right?

Yeah.

So you set them to a setting and you go, or you might use it for your beard.

Right.

So yes, that's what hair clippers are.

Cactuses are succulent plants.

And Yves Saint-Laurent was a fashion designer.

Any more nouns in this need explaining?

I didn't think that cactuses...

I've never seen a shaggy cactus.

Do you know what I mean?

Ah, well, the thing is, there's lots of different types of cactus.

And Yves Saint-Laurent loved cactuses.

He had a garden in Marrakech called the Jardin Margarelle.

Actually, it was started by another artist called Jacques Margarelle.

But Yves Salarant bought it when it was going into disrepair and he looked after these cactuses.

And it's a really beautiful garden.

It's a place that I've been quite recently where I saw this fact.

There was a video of his gardener who was going around with these hair clippers,

making them all perfect.

The only thing I can imagine you could do with hair clippers on a cactus is to trim the spines.

Yeah, that was a good idea.

Is that what he's doing?

Yeah, yeah.

Is he blunting them so they don't prick anyone?

No, it wasn't.

It was just to make them all look perfect because i don't think it's controversial to say that yves saint laurent was something of an evesthete yeah

i don't understand when just because i don't know much about fashion but when i read about yves saint laurent and his achievements his concrete accomplishments they're all quite you know he he took risks by turning a trench coat into haute couture yeah what does that mean i don't understand

this is the encounter of dior he has taken on the mantle of one of the biggest fashion houses ever and he's looking at trends that are going on out in bits of America and bits of France.

And he's saying, This has seen as low rent.

I'm putting it back into the...

That's a risk.

It's basically me not understanding the plot of the film, The Devil Wears Prada.

It's basically what I came to and said, all right.

That's how it is.

The thing I guess that I found interesting was his personality, because I agree.

It's hard to get a grip on fashion if you don't know fashion.

But it is striking that he was so young when he took over at Christian Duel, right?

He was 21.

And he was, for someone who was kind of famous for being a strong character, maybe not that likable a character later on.

He was apparently incredibly shy and like couldn't even look anyone in the eye.

He was just new at Christian Dior and Christian Dior died suddenly.

And I think there were these four women who worked there.

And the company was left to him to basically take charge.

This weird, shy boy.

He was crazy.

He couldn't look anyone in the eye.

It's an amazing story because he moved to Paris when he was 17, 18, and he entered a competition where he just did some designs.

He then took it to Dior.

Dior saw it.

It really was so similar to what he was working on at that point that he just on the spot said, you're now my second in command, you're my assistant.

What's nice is this little competition.

You know, sometimes you hear about a school where it's like seven comic book writers were there at the same time.

Carl Largefeld came second in that competition that he won, that eventually got him his job at Dior.

Dan, was this the competition of the International Wool Secretariat?

Yes, yeah, I think we were saying that, yeah.

Did you have to make everything out of wool?

Yeah, they gave you a big pile of wool and 20 minutes.

20 minutes?

No, I'm joking.

I'm joking.

I think it was just the design.

Do you know?

This is off topic now, but I was reading about wool this morning.

And

in, let's say, when was it?

Probably about the 15th century, there was a wool guild and a knitters guild.

And if you wanted to be a knitter and sell your knitting, you had to be part of this guild.

And in order to be part of it, you had to study for six years

and then do a knitting exam at the end of it.

And the knitting exam would take like a day where you showed off everything you've learned over the six years.

And if you didn't pass that exam, you couldn't be like a professional knitter wow could you take the exam again uh

because some questions are all or nothing you know what i didn't go into all the admin yet but um

you will because you're applying

um dior yeah so he obviously became very famous colossus of the industry all of this he was responsible for i i think the most french thing that has ever happened right okay

1998 yeah we're in paris yeah what's going on 1998 1998.

Diana died the year before.

That's right.

It was the one-year anniversary.

Was it the World Cup?

It was the World Cup.

Yeah.

So France was hosting.

Yeah, and they won it.

And they won it.

Zina Din Zeden and all that.

Bloody hell, Andy.

I do contain multitudes.

It's on the paper in front of him.

No, it's not.

It's not.

It's not good.

Before the final of the World Cup...

On the pitch in the big stadium was an Yves Saint-Laurent retrospective show

with 300 models celebrating 40 years of Yves Saint-Laurent.

I just think that's so French.

Like, we will have the football, but first, fashion.

They do take it seriously the way that Yves Salaurent's career is reported on sometimes when it talks about the absolute scandal.

What was the scandal?

The scandal, so it was 1971, and it was this show called Carante, which was a reference to the fact that it was an imitation of 1940s fashion, and it was put on in Paris, this show, waylap.

And of course, it was early 1940s fashion.

Now, as you may or may not know, listening at home, the early 1940s was a difficult difficult time for the people of France.

And the fashion was meant to imitate kind of occupied France.

And sort of not only that, but the costumes that he recreated sort of imitated people who were doing quite well in occupied Paris.

Talking collaborationists.

Are we talking like René Artois from LOLO?

It was

one for the younger listeners there.

Good moaning to you if you're listening.

He sat around the cameo in LOLO.

It was so weird, wasn't it?

Yes, it was all LOLO and, you know,

dad's army-based fashion.

Oh, but it's Vichy France, right?

It had a lot of nods to Vichy France, and it was quite extreme.

The press were very offended, saying, you know, it's in a very insensitive reminder of the Nazi days.

It's an insult to fashion.

But this was obviously good for him because any publicity is good publicity.

So it was things like, I think people had to wear practical clothes because they didn't have many materials.

So it was lots of tiny mini skirts and platform shoes.

Actually, this is like hello, hello.

When was this?

71.

Okay.

Wow.

So that was when he was an Yves Saint-Laurent designer, not a Dior designer, right?

Yeah, he was himself.

Because he was Dior and he did all this stuff where he was taking stuff off the streets, like Dan said.

But then they basically kicked him out, didn't they?

Or rather, he got conscripted to the army.

And the fashion house could have said, well, no, he's so important to us that he can't go to the the army but they didn't say it they just let him go yeah interesting and he suffered a nervous breakdown didn't he yeah well he didn't go to war uh because he had a breakdown in the induction did he even make he was because he was going to be sent to it was algeria wasn't it the algerian front um he didn't even make it to algeria didn't even make it to algeria but the thing is that while he was doing his induction before he collapsed they replaced him with someone else and they really shouldn't have done that like they should have kept his job open for when he came back and so they sued the or and they got some money from Dior and that's when they set up their own fashion house, Yves Saint-Laurent.

Right.

And when you say they, you mean him and his partner, lover, best friend in the world, soulmate guy, right?

Berger.

Berger.

With whom actually he bought this cactus garden in Marrakech.

Oh, just to bring it back to that.

And of course, while we're in North Africa, Zinodine Zidane himself of Algerian stock.

And the Yves.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So if Yves San Laurent had made it to the war, he might have met Zidane's family, you know.

What have you done with Andrew Hunter Murray?

I feel like you've just recently read the encyclopedia entry on Zed and you're desperate to smuggle in.

It's the last football I paid any attention to because I was 11 at the time.

I'm so impressed.

Yeah, Berger was an interesting guy and seemed to run Yves Saint-Laurent's life because Yves Saint-Laurent was a very vulnerable person, wasn't he?

And Pierre Berget just was the organiser.

So he was his lover from 58 to 76, and then they were very good friends.

And he had a weird introduction to Paris as well.

So he moved to Paris from an island and he was 18 years old, moved there on his own.

And on the day he moved, he was walking down the Champs-Élysées and a famous poet called Jacques Prévert fell from the sky above him and landed at his feet.

Wow.

So not on him.

Not on him.

Right in front of him.

No, he says, I always remember my first day in Paris as the day a famous poet landed on my head.

But he didn't.

In his actual description, he fell out of a French window a few stories off.

Oh, right.

Crashed down.

They're all French windows.

If we're in Paris, sorry.

All these people are so young at the time when they sort of move and have their formative experiences.

So when Saint Laurent was,

when he got the job, when Dior died, did he say

that?

21.

21.

And at that point, he went home.

And again, this is the story.

He drew a thousand designs in a fortnight.

And I can't imagine once you've drawn like five different pairs of trousers.

No.

Oh, God.

not fashion, and I know that there's really

possibly.

There's skinny, there's straight, and there's flares.

I think all of that football knowledge has pushed out all of the fashion knowledge we've had.

Do you remember Andy having any fashion knowledge?

Did you cast your mind back over the last 10 years?

And then they moved to Marrakech, didn't they?

Because it was the cool place to be in those days.

It was where all the hippies went.

And there had actually been an international zone in Tangier, which was like not owned by anyone, really.

It was just like a trading port, and it was very, very low tax.

And there weren't many rules compared to other places in North Africa.

And loads and loads of hippies went there.

But eventually Morocco took over it.

And then they decided, actually, Marrakesh is a better place to go.

And it was set up, this kind of hippie group in Marrakesh by Talitha Getty, who was the wife of John Paul Getty of the Getty millionaires.

And he was like a playboy.

And he had this partner who was just absolutely crazy.

And she had all the the best parties and Keith Richards said she had the best friends and the best opium

and she and John Paul Getty named their son Tara Gabriel Galaxy Gramophone Getty

which is a name isn't it

gramophone

you've got options when you grow up you know if you want to be a bit kooky you can take on gramophones

and I actually think they took the other option of removing their middle names as they got older

have a gramophone related fact.

Brilliant.

Which brings it in a big circle because cactuses are incredibly useful in the world of gramophones.

The needles.

The needles.

Yeah.

It's so cool.

I did not know about this, but in the 1920s, when people had wind-up gramophones, 1920s and 1930s, cactus spines or prickly pears were really, really popular.

And they were thought to produce a much higher quality sound than the actual steel needles.

That's amazing.

Yeah.

And you could sculpt them, couldn't you?

Because they're a bit softer than the steel.

So you could sculpt them them, so they don't.

And they wouldn't break the record.

Wouldn't break the record.

Yeah.

And just this one company found the niche in the market.

Some cactus names?

Yeah.

Big nipple cactus.

Lovely.

Wally nipple cactus.

Bonker hedgehog cactus.

Sorry, is that bonk a hedgehog?

It bonks a hedgehog?

No, it's bonker hedgehog.

And it's named after Frances Bonker.

She was a cactus expert.

And she also wrote a book called The Mad Dictator, which was a novel about Hitler's life.

The Prohibition Cactus, because it likes its home place dry, likes a dry area.

Clever.

Applies to a lot of them, doesn't it?

It does, actually, doesn't it?

And there's a lot named after nipples.

But I think that's because the part of a cactus where the spines come out of is called the areola.

Yeah.

Because they are kind of a little bumps, aren't they?

This is so weird.

I have a related nipple, cactus-nipple fact.

Perfect.

Yep.

Which is that scientists have, this is a very recent discovery there are a hundred species of cactus which act as breasts for ants okay

so they have these tiny nipples in their flesh not i think where the spines are but they produce this tiny supply of sweet nectar and the ants go crazy for the nectar and then the ants protect the mother udder against insects and they clean bacteria and they fertilize the soil they spread the seeds to new sites so that is that's not what babies do though if when they're drinking from breasts i mean they do a lot of fertilizing but not necessarily

They do very little protective work.

You're right.

I didn't realize the threat to cactus.

So, the climate is one thing, because it is obviously they're living in an extreme environment already, you know, and if it gets much hotter or drier, then they're in trouble.

But the other risk to them is cactus smuggling.

Huge.

It's one of the

cactuses down my underpants when I went abroad last time.

Can I go the cocaine next time, please?

I just can't fit another one up there.

There is a cactus called the dildo cactus.

It doesn't look very usable, does it?

No, I'm not actually sure why it's got that.

I tried to find out why it's called the dildal cactus.

I think because it's slightly phallic in shape, but obviously.

So many are.

And in fact, if any of the cacti that I have seen, that one could do with pruning.

It's a very

furry and spiky fish.

People like different things.

Yep.

Yeah.

Do you guys know about...

So we're recording this on the 4th of July, big election day.

And I found a nice little political connection to cactus, which is Nick Clegg, the former head of the Liberal Democrats.

Do you know that he was arrested in Germany, or certainly was taken,

got in trouble in Germany because of arson, because he was lighting cactus up.

Yeah, was he smoking them for a drug?

No, he was just drunk and he was just setting fire to cacti, you know, and he admitted this.

You are a prick.

You are a prick.

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

My fact this week is that in the early 1400s, China had ships four times larger than anything else in Europe.

By the 1500s, it had deliberately destroyed them.

European ships tiny, Chinese ships massive, phasically.

European ships, perfectly acceptable.

Chinese ships, unbelievable.

I just think more people should just know about this fleet because it is an amazing period in Chinese history.

It was called the Treasure Fleet, and they seem to have now proven how big they were because the claims were that these ships were up to 140 meters long.

And I think no one really believed it.

And no one believed it.

No, it was like, come on, that's not possible.

Genuinely, I mean, the ship that Columbus sailed on was 20 meters.

And that was sort of huge.

That's almost the same size as the world's largest foosball table.

It's not incredible.

It's not

unbelievable, yeah.

Thank you, Dave.

So, yes, ships as long as a particularly large football table.

And there were tons of them as well.

There were 3,500 of them.

So, for comparison, you know, our pathetic navy today is 66 ships.

And

even.

There have been some cuts lately.

I mean, we had a lot more in 1945.

It's not necessarily something we need.

Russia and China, though, they have the largest navies in the world, and they're in the 700s.

So, this is, you know, much bigger than any of those.

Almost 30,000 sailors went on just one of the voyages.

So, this whole scale of it is mad.

Over 300 ships would sail out at once.

And they went an incredibly long way.

And they were mostly to just show off, weren't they?

Well, it's quite.

It kind of was.

Yes, basically, yes.

Yeah, it was a cultural sort of to say, hey, have you heard of China?

It's like kimchi.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That was about last week.

Exactly.

It wasn't really plundering.

They did bring back some treasure, but it wasn't, when I read about it, I thought, oh, well, they'll be going off finding treasure, bringing it back.

And that wasn't really...

No, no, no, not really.

It was more showing off their treasure.

It was destroying pirate fleets occasionally for a bit of fun.

Bit of a laugh, yeah.

Imagine if you're a pirate.

I mean, it's not fair, is it?

Like, you're just doing your thing, getting a little bit of plunder here and there, and then suddenly 300 foosball table-sized.

You've got to stop using that comparison.

It's so confusing.

But so, the Wikipedia on the treasure fleets is great because it does acknowledge there are a couple of gaps, right?

So, listen to this: there is still much debate regarding issues such as the purpose of the voyages, the size of the ships, the magnitude of the fleet, the routes taken, the charts employed, the countries visited, and the cargo carried.

Basically, we don't know who was going, or where or why or what they were on or who they were with or how.

Well, I think what we have is that's very good in our time on it, actually.

What we have is very detailed records from China.

So, we do know a lot about it.

It's just we don't necessarily know the negative things that might have been how many ships sunk.

I mean, we have no evidence that any of them sunk, but it's implausible, surely.

And we genuinely thought it was impossible to make ships out of wood this big.

They're the biggest wooden ships that have ever existed by a long way.

And one thing was discovered not too long ago, which was an meter long rudder.

And that's one of the most concrete bits of evidence we have for the size of these ships.

Something like.

If I was a 15th century Chinese emperor, I would just make a massive rudder to mess with future historians.

Imagine the size of the ship.

I think you're misunderstanding their ambitions.

They're non-tranempers us.

The thing I find most amazing about this whole

saga, this whole sort of journey that these fleets went on, is the leader of it.

So this was a guy called Zheng He, who was basically,

he was a young kid whose father was killed in a war.

He got taken as prisoner, brought to the Emperor's Palace in China, made into a eunuch and just showed amazing skills in the world of warfare.

Britannica says he was six foot five.

Others say he was seven feet tall.

This is a guy, imagine a ship coming and this seven foot giant...

So to him, the ships were quite small.

He kept hitting his head.

They said his voice was as loud as a bell.

He was, by all accounts, an issue.

I've never heard a huge range of bells.

we've got a tiny dinner bell in our house which is going ding ding ding ding ding sorry well he's

like

pause the pause the show oh i knew this had to come out eventually is that because your gong is at the repair shop or is it

that's a good point because i have been thinking he's going to have this deep booming voice but i've completely forgot he was a eunuch yes

one of the reasons they think that he was chosen is because he was also a muslim and um they were going yeah,

and they were sailing.

Part of where they got to was the Gulf, and so he was going to be in lots of Islamic territory.

And so, the idea is it's a diplomatic mission to go and make contact with these places and basically say, Will you acknowledge that China's the best country in the world?

And if you do that, we sort of won't take over you.

And it was lots of Muslim countries, so you know, he would have been able to go and be like, Hey, I get you.

My dad went to Mecca.

Is China the best?

Yes, great.

Off you go.

He sounds amazingly impressive, Chang-he.

And I'm interested also in why their voyages ended because there's lots of debate about what brought them to an end.

One theory is that they were worried about Mongolian invasions and obviously Mongolians invade over land.

But another reason they were discontinued potentially is that there was the conflict between the Confucians and the eunuchs.

There's this big eunuch power base in the court and there was a eunuch establishment partly because it was thought, oh, well, if eunuchs can't have children, then they're not going to be seizing power and starting a dynasty.

That's why they were chosen.

That's why they weren't the court assistants, really, wasn't it?

That's what I mean.

Yeah.

But for some reason obviously that builds up into a powerful bureaucracy it feels like the movie franchise we're all waiting for the bureaucrats versus the eunuchs

i mean it's weird isn't it there being this court of eunuchs and then this court of confucian bureaucrats and this war between them you know

looking for position when zhong hei died basically he was the main eunuch when he died there was kind of a vacuum in the eunuch world and it meant that the the um confucianists could jump him well in addition to the obvious vacuum in the eunuch world of course yeah

and it was a new emperor as well.

So Zhang Hei's emperor, who took him on, had died.

A new emperor came on.

He became part of the expansion of the Great Wall of China.

There were lots of different projects going on.

He talked him into one final adventure going out.

And Zhang Hei died on the way back.

So then that was kind of it.

I think that's it, kind of like you can't spend all your money making a massive wall to stop the Mongolians coming in.

And you can't spend the same money.

making massive ships to go to the Muslim lands.

You have to choose one or the other.

What's all that to the Labour Party?

You apparently aren't even going to raise taxes, James.

No,

I guess.

Wow.

I can see why you've got a dinner bell and not a satire bell in your home.

So yeah, I think the main thing was, you say the Confucian bureaucrats, and mostly the bureaucrats' complaint was it was freaking expensive.

And there was one claim that it costs half of the tax revenue of a whole year to send them out, which is mad.

And probably an exaggeration.

But also, there's one other theory that they've just done what they wanted to do.

I mean, they got as far as the East African coast, they got to Somalia.

They've shown everyone how good they are.

Everyone has said, yeah, you're the best.

Yeah, they've gone, cool, job done.

Jung He supposedly named the Durian.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Supposedly, he ate it when he was on one of his journeys and it was so delicious, he forgot where he was.

And he stayed there for three days and then realised, oh.

Wait a minute, I was supposed to be doing this for three days.

And so he went back again.

And the name Durian means to linger and forget to return.

Supposedly named by him.

And also he supposedly invented the queenfish.

So the queenfish is like a fish which has got like five spots on it and the theory goes that there was a big storm.

There's a hole in his boat.

He prays to God and the storm dissipates and they realize that they haven't sunk because there's a fish in the hole in the boat.

Brilliant.

Okay.

And it's this queenfish.

He takes it out.

His five fingerprints go onto the fish and forever are on this fish.

And for that reason, Chinese people in Malaysia don't eat queenfish.

Although some skeptics point out to the fact that it is quite poisonous.

Just the second best reason not to eat it.

Obviously, this young guy thing is the main reason we don't eat it.

There's another thing about these giant ships.

They had rigging that was decorated with yellow flags.

The sails were dyed red with henna.

The hulls were painted with huge, elaborate birds.

And on the front were large eyes painted onto the bow.

So as it was coming towards you, just the sense of a big face heading towards you.

I mean, that's what an image.

What a striking thing.

And a seven-foot giant walks off the ship.

It'd be like Avatar.

He'd be like, we've been invaded by the aliens.

Here's a last legacy of the treasure fleets.

Oh, yeah.

This is a New York Times.

report from 1999, right?

What?

One year after the most French thing that has ever happened?

Yes.

Two years after the death of Diana?

They had a reporter called Nicholas Kristoff, right?

And he went to this tiny island off the coast of Kenya, which was called, I think it's called Pate.

P-A-T-E.

It might be Pate, it might be Pate.

I think it's Pate.

It's called Pate.

It's great.

It's inside it.

Yeah, yeah.

It's very squishy ground.

And he found there a number of elderly men, and they claimed to be Chinese, right?

Now, they looked like they might have Asian ancestry, East Asian ancestry, and they claimed they'd been there for 600 years.

Well, they claimed that their ancestors had got there 600 years ago.

They claimed that they were descended from the sailors of the treasure fleet who'd been shipwrecked on Pate 600 years ago.

And they supposedly had some very ancient porcelain in their homes, some sort of relics.

Which

is incredible.

Insane.

If true, that is unbelievable.

That's true.

I mean, you know, big tongs on that one, but it does seem like that.

I'm sure you can tell when you go somewhere if someone's because they can't have shared much outside if they've only been there.

Can't we take a swab or something?

Like, we've got technology now.

It might have been pre-swab.

I don't know.

If anyone listening is in Pate, can you write in and tell us?

In return, we'll send you some very small bits of toast.

Vikings had big ships.

Oh, yeah.

Famously.

I mean, not by comparison.

But they were also quite decorated, like the ones who were talking about

that.

You should always realize.

But it turns out they had woolen sails.

I was just saying that I was reading about wool today.

So that's why I bring this up.

And there's a traditional handicraft expert called Amy Lightfoot who decided to try and make a sale like a Viking woolen sale.

And she and her colleagues had to spin 188,000 meters of yarn to make this sale.

It took them three years to complete.

And it used the equivalent of a year's production of wool from 2,000 sheep.

What?

To make a single sale.

That's insane.

So how did the Vikings manage to make all these sales?

Is there an answer that you can tell us?

Okay, okay, okay, we can get this.

did they tie together their clothes and make a sort of amusing like like they're trying to escape from a

nice building

how would they do it they just they had 2 000 sheep they had lots of sheep they had lots of sheep is half of the answer okay and lots of people and lots of time no telling yeah that's basically all of it the only missing bit is that obviously there were lots of them going on sailing missions so they didn't really have time to make the sails did they knit as they so who made the sails did they knit as they sailed like you row and and then you knit a little bit.

It was the wine that can make them together.

Precisely.

It was all the women, basically.

All the women would live near the coast and they would make all of the sails for the ships.

I feel like we were really working our way towards a good wrong.

I know that.

So I ruined it by like...

So sorry.

Reminding you, women were also existing in Blackboard.

Actually, just on what you were saying, and on women, I was reading about wool earlier today.

Oh, God.

And you know the herring girls.

Do you remember them?

Yeah.

They would like gut herring.

And they would start in the north of Scotland because the herring shoals would come down the coast of England and they would follow the coast because they would follow the herring.

So as the year went on, they would just like get further and further down the coast until they ended up in Great Yarmouth.

And they would stop off at the gutting centres.

But as they went, because they were walking this whole way, they would knit as they went and then they would sell their goods as they were walking down.

So they would do walking and knitting, walking and knitting, sell their stuff and then do your gutting and then do walking, knitting, walking, knitting.

Do you think it was, you know, when you see someone on their phone walking down the street and you're like, oh, for God's sake, just put it away.

Do you think people thought that when they saw them?

Yeah.

Just admire the scenery for a minute.

Do you remember we talked about the drovers?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Similar.

With their magic dogs.

Do you remember they walked along knitting as well, didn't they?

Well, they had woolen socks for their

pigs, didn't they?

Yeah.

It's quite romantic, the idea of, you know, a drover and a herring girl meeting.

Yeah, they wouldn't ever meet up.

That's quite a long distance between shoreline and

but if you're drovering in from the coast, maybe I don't know

romantic, like they accidentally swap balls of yarn, and then oh no, and then they've got to get back to each other.

I just think it's I know it's the same ball of yarn, and it's like in Lady in the Trans Reverse Lady in the Trans, they're getting further apart, but connected by the same yarn.

James, you're shaking your head.

It's a divorce, it's a breakup story.

There's a screenplay in this somewhere.

He was a drover, she was gutted herring for a living.

Can I make it any more obvious?

Let's Let's not imply any historical consultants while we're making this

or geographical ones.

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

My fact is that the largest kettle in Hamburg is called Caroline.

This is about a very large kettle called Caroline, Caroline with a K.

And um Did you get offended if you misspell it?

You were quite sad about that.

So this is because there's a lot of renewable energy being built in Europe at the moment, mostly wind and solar.

And it's pretty cheap, especially during sunny or windy hours, basically.

Prices drop massively.

It just gets really, really cheap because there's so much excess being produced.

And in some cases, the prices get negative because the power has to go somewhere.

And so it's kind of not totally ideal because you want to put power to good use, basically, when you're generating it.

You just see what I mean.

This is all from an article in The Economist.

And you need to use the power a bit better.

You need to link to other countries which don't have a surplus at at that moment, maybe, or you shift demand.

So, like, everyone charges up their cars in hours where there's lots of power on the grid, whatever.

And another option is to boil up the largest cattle in Hamburg, Caroline, and just tease all round.

Just see everyone in Hamburg, whether they want one or not, is getting a cup of tea.

This is a giant electric cattle, basically, and it turns surplus wind energy into heat.

It heats up water using the electricity.

And it gets used in a thing called a district heating network, which is like where everyone's hot water comes from Caroline.

And sort of 20,000 houses, I think, are on this

system.

So, yeah, and that's Caroline.

Good on her.

I know.

And she doesn't look like, you know, she doesn't whistle and she doesn't have a spout and a handle, right?

She looks like a big tank, presumably.

Basically, a big container of hot water is what I have chosen a kettle is.

Yeah, fair enough.

That's fine.

I think that's fine.

It heats up to very, very hot.

And yeah.

Nice.

Renewable energy.

Well, I think it's amazing because we're at a point now in history where we're literally looking at everything around us, going, How do we turn this renewable?

How can we be using this to be...

I was reading the other day that there's in toilets now, there's a thing that they're trialing whereby how do you create renewable energy off the back of toilets?

Oh, what if you put in the equivalent of a wind turbine into the pipe?

For your farts.

No, yeah.

You lean over and fart at the little windmill.

Yeah, yeah.

That's good.

No, it was, it's, it's using, it's using the idea of water.

It's using the water.

So what do you think?

Do you mean a watermelon?

More like a watermelon.

Sorry, I forgot about that.

I'm trying to talk to the kids.

Sorry, I haven't got aloe aloe references to this.

It's basically you flush and it spins and

turns out great idea.

I actually came up with this idea quite a few years ago of putting mini sort of water wheels in everyone's gutters.

That's what I thought.

I thought it was a brilliant idea that no one had thought of.

Right, yeah.

And then I never pursued it.

And it seems like it's actually going to become reality.

It's not.

None of these.

We should go back over all the things, quirky renewable energy ideas we've mentioned over the years and look at how many of them have come to giant fruition.

Big aisles.

Sorry, I must clarify here.

I am incredibly pro investing huge amounts of money in the big scale ones.

But quite a lot of these little ideas are so nice, aren't they?

But they can't scale up and you can't like fix them into the...

But I reckon they're like a good science fiction idea.

They're worth saying out loud as much as possible because someone listening out there somewhere will go, well, that's a great idea.

Actually, I could do this with that and turn that into, I just think as much as it's pumped out.

What happens when a poo gets stuck in the water wheel again?

Again.

Every day.

Every day.

Millions of engineers are going to be called at unaccountably put a poo in the water wheel again.

Here's the thing about kettles.

This is crazy.

It comes from a book I read recently.

I think I've mentioned it before.

It's called Power Up.

Okay.

It's a great book.

This is about the world's first ever coal-powered public power station, right?

Right.

So it was called the Edison Electric Light Station.

It was built in London in 1882 and it generated enough electricity to power 30 modern kettles.

Wow.

Now that is partly, it was a small power station.

It's also partly British kettles are world-leading.

They're just so powerful.

It sounds actually like the dream would be that your kettle didn't use that much power in order to do the same thing, yes.

No, no, no, no, no.

It's you want tea now.

You know, that's the point.

Did they call this power place electric eels no they did they didn't it was the Edison electric light station they should have done they should have done

but they didn't and it generated 93 kilowatts of electricity at one time which was for lights in the local area yeah but basically it's partly a function of just British kettles being absolutely a punishingly powerful that's the thing we should say to foreign listeners especially Americans what a kettle is right yeah yeah yeah Americans don't have kettles it's like a saucepan with a lid yeah if you want to make tea with water that's more than 40 degrees in temperature, and that's Celsius, not your Fahrenheit system.

You know what?

I think if we start a battle with the Americans over tea, then we're only going to lose.

What do you think?

Oh, I see.

It's a funny reference.

The Boston Tea Party.

Yeah, yeah.

Very nice.

Very lovely.

Don't ring that satire bell again.

Another China fact for this section.

The world's largest hydroelectric plant is in China, unsurprisingly.

Yeah.

Like the world's largest, most things.

And it's the Three Gorges Dam, which you've probably heard of.

And it's obviously massive.

And

gorgeous, sorry.

I heard gorgeous.

The Three Gorges.

I think it is gorgeous.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Do you think it's gorgeous the displacement of over a million people?

I was going to say, what about the people living downstream of the Three Gorges Dam, Andrew?

Oh, I dropped you in that one, mate.

Do you think it's gorgeous the submerged villages?

You think it's complicated and they have to be trade-offs, Henry?

Yeah, I I know I'm with you.

It obviously produces a huge amount of power, but it does slow the Earth down.

What?

Oh, yeah,

yeah,

I think it was NASA who verified this in the end because there are rumors that it slowed down the rotation of the Earth and lengthened our day a little bit.

So, if you're if it's 4:59 and you're at work looking at your watch right now, you can blame the three gorges damn.

Yeah,

yeah, it's the dam's fault, damn it.

Oh, God,

Anyway, it is quite...

In fact, kind of everything does that when you move mass around, but it does it to a measurable extent.

And so it's because it's this huge amount of water is being held.

It's 39 trillion kilograms of water is held 175 meters high above sea level in this dam.

So that's a huge amount of water that's being held at quite a big distance from the center of the earth.

Imagine you're spinning round on a chair, right?

You're spinning around at a steady speed, and then you get a huge water balloon, and you hold it in your right hand at arm's length.

It's going to slow you down a little bit.

And it's crazy.

That is crazy.

Has slowed us down by 0.06 microseconds.

A microsecond being a millionth of a second.

So where does that matter most?

Like what business?

The Olympics, you know?

So

Usain Bulk has...

Oh, he's just missed out on smashing the 100 meters.

That would be good, wouldn't it?

If you could just like let the water out at the same time

give your athlete an advantage.

That's correct.

You are all running in the same direction in the 100 meters, I suppose.

Yes, it's true.

There will be a use, I'm sure.

The next Chinese Olympics, they're taking notes.

I can imagine them doing that sort of thing.

But you know, that got proposed in 1919.

Well, they drain the dam just to help someone win 100 meters.

The building of the dam

was proposed by Sun Yat-sen, first president of China.

Really?

Yeah.

Really?

And it took, and it was partly because they got insane floods about once every decade that were just totally destructive.

So it was partly that and partly for electricity.

And the water that they store up there gets dropped through tubes and turned a turbine, much like Dan's toilet idea.

But it drops 185 meters, which is two statues of liberty in height.

Like it really is.

And it generates so much power.

It's just extraordinary.

I think it's 20% of China's electricity.

comes from hydropower.

And China's big.

And China's big.

And they had also the construction of it, they had to divert the entire Yangtze river while they built the dam imagine yeah it's just it's stunning it is good i can see who the propaganda is working on andy

is china the best country

for this yes so there's another heating plan operating at the moment because waste heat is like massive like way waste heat if it can be used would be an enormous resource.

So there is currently a project going on.

You know when you're somewhere cold and you get those little hand warmers where you snap a coin?

coin, yes, I do.

I know, and it heats up.

Oh, yeah.

It's like this jelly use them on the golf course.

Yeah, it's got like stored heat, and you snap the coin, this little metal thing in it.

And it's like, I always thought it's like two little chemicals sort of mixed together, and then that heats its exothermic reaction.

That's exactly it.

And then you can put the heat back in, like you can reheat it, and then it sort of

those things only last about like 40 times, right?

Those little hand warmers.

But there is a system currently being worked on to charge thermal batteries from

places where they burn rubbish, for example, and then transport the heat back into the centre of London and use the heat there where it's needed.

Right.

Like really creative things that are being proposed to deal with like using burning rubbish, basically.

Well, that's already used.

For example, maybe you generate a bit of electricity from that, but it gives off a lot of waste heat in the process.

That's amazing.

Well, similarly, if you swim in Redditch,

in the Abbey Stadium Leisure Centre, anyone who's ever done that, you are being heated by dead dead bodies from the crematorium.

And they came up with the idea in, I think it was 2012 that they started implementing it.

And it saves 40% on the leisure center's energy bills because it's so much cheaper.

And, you know, what a useful thing to contribute in your last moments on this earth.

They're doing this system in Sweden, by the way, as well.

But it's actually crematoriums that are using it to heat their own crematoriums.

So if you're waiting in a crematorium,

you don't need that.

I mean, having been into a crematorium, it's like a room.

How much heat do you need?

Well, there's a a waiting room.

There's a there's the front desk.

You've got a person got an office.

You got a whole system.

What country is this in?

Sweden.

Sweden.

It gets very cold, Anna.

It does get colder there.

Yeah, fair enough.

Yeah.

So they're using that.

I love, just by the way, Andy, that thing you said with the coin that you snap.

That technology is going wild at the moment.

I was at an arcade down the road from where I live, and my son had enough tickets to win a prize.

And he got an inflatable hammer.

And instead of having to blow it up, you just snap a thing inside it now and it inflates.

Yeah.

I was not on barred with this anecdote until I heard the end of it.

And now I'm so on bored of it as someone who's had to blow up lots of inflation in the last year or so.

Yeah, it's this giant hammer that you don't do anything to other than snapping a thing in the middle.

I asked the guy behind the counter and he was like, I don't know, mate.

I really do just work here.

I didn't actually construct everything you see.

I'm not Wallace for Wallace and Grubbit.

That's the first thing I'd do.

I'd be like, how the hell do these hammers inflate?

I really do just operate the till I open up a closer shop at night.

Can I do a quick facts on Caroline before we move on?

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Because that was the name of this so-called kettle.

Do you remember a few days ago when England won the Euros?

And we all sang Sweet Caroline.

Yeah, my Master Farage came out to shake the hands of the boys.

We're both recording in the past and in the parallel universe.

So we recorded this before the Euros.

But at the time of recording, we had just absolutely battered Slovakia 2-1 after extra time.

And we did sing Sweet Caroline.

Other England fans did.

And Sweet Caroline is written by Neil Diamond about his wife, Marcia.

And he called it Caroline because Marcia doesn't scan

with the tune.

But what's interesting is that...

The reason England sings Sweet Caroline is there was a DJ at Wembley Stadium called Tony Perry who was supposed to play something else.

And he played Sweet Caroline before the game and it had gone really well.

And so after England won, this was against Germany, he thought, well, I'm going to play it again.

And he played it again and it really kind of took off.

And when the women's football team won the Euros, whenever that was, a few years ago, it was the big sort of song for them.

And it is the big song for England teams now.

And this guy, Tony Perry, he's said something really interesting in an interview, which is like, he's quite important for the team.

Because if you you imagine like England played Denmark a few years ago and there were 15 minutes left England are winning they have the half time of extra time the fans are getting really nervous the nerves of the fans can kind of go to the nerves of the players and it can kind of affect the game yeah but what he can do is he can get the fans going and he would play uh freeford desire by whoever that's by it's like a real proper dance anthem the crowd go absolutely mad the crowd is suddenly really really enthused and that helps the team to to do the job so actually the dj who's at the football stadium can affect the game can alter the game that's amazing i didn't know they had djs in football stadiums yeah they do but where do they set up they're going to annoy the people on either side of them aren't they

not in decks in the middle of the pen street

they're just in a little booth in there so if england does lose and you want to take out some steam of your own sort of anger you mean in the next world obviously we will in the next world cup yeah yeah find the dj and kick the shit out of them

didn't do his job.

I thought it was all chanting the referees a wanker and stuff like that.

Is that gone out these days?

Well, during half-time, you don't just sit there shouting the referee.

I mean, the referee's having a cup of tea.

You can't hear anything.

There's no point.

Okay, that's interesting.

But then they'll play music.

They'll play like loads of music.

And there's specific DJs whose job it is to do all these big events.

And they'll do the Super Bowl and do the World Cup and all this kind of stuff.

And they make their living by knowing what will get the crowd going.

That's interesting.

Do they take requests?

Can I pop to the booth and say, could could you please be a bit quiet?

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

My fact this week is that the classic textbook, The Art of Editing, was co-written by Jack Scissors.

Very good.

Yeah, it's great.

It's 432 pages.

It was 434, though, before Jack got involved.

Do you know that in

the old newspapers when they were editing, they used to use scissors because a big part of making your newspaper was you would take all the stories from all the other newspapers and you would cut them up and then you would put them on a sheet of paper to make sure that they all fitted in the right place and then you would send them to your printer who would then

print them.

Hang on, that implies that to do your newspaper, you're just taking other stories from other newspapers.

What are the first newspapers?

Well they borrowed from your edition yesterday.

You know,

that's basically kind of how it works.

So, if you're a national newspaper, you would take it from

the towns and stuff like that.

In the really early days, there were things called avisi, which were like newsletters that were sent around people, and then they would be all sent to the newspaper and they would cut those up.

But actually, all the newspapers would just copy off each other a lot of the time.

And obviously, you had to have someone who wrote it originally, but there were so many newspapers and so many pages to fill, you wouldn't have enough reporters to do all that.

So, So you did have to do that.

And you would usually credit wherever you got it from in the same way that today it would say this is an AP Associated Press report that is in on the BBC or whatever.

And that was really, really common.

That's amazing.

Because if you got something just completely wrong, usually you'd think as a local newspaper, you go, well, at least, you know, only a couple of thousand people saw that.

Suddenly it's global news, literally, by the way.

Exactly.

And there was the Charlotte News, this was in 1902.

So towards the end of when they were doing this, but they set up a trap saying that there was a gang of anarchists in the Vladivostok who were going to kill all of the prominent rulers on the globe.

And the leader was Count Robgian Ruomorf Laietsu.

And if you read that backwards, it says, we steal from our neighbor.

Oh, very good.

That method of cutting out and arranging on the page.

That survived.

Private eye magazine, where I work also,

until quite recently.

Yeah.

Oh, is that done now?

No longer.

It has gone out now, but it's during my time working there.

Oh, yeah.

But it is that it stopped.

I one day popped into the office while you were there and you showed me how it was laid out.

It was fascinating.

So sometimes, you know, if someone picks up one of the finished pages and carries it across the room, there is a bow where everyone goes, well, just no one cough at you, man.

Like, really.

Yeah.

So scissors.

Yeah.

Scissors.

Scissors.

I was looking into a few words around the world for what scissors are in different languages.

Oh, yeah.

That's a good idea.

It's quite fun.

So the Maori for scissors is kuti-kuti or kuti-kuti.

German, Andy, you speak German.

Do you know what scissors are?

Isn't it scheiss?

It's like shear.

Yeah,

yeah.

So like shearing has a scissor.

So you say in English, I guess.

Shears.

Sheers.

This is the most interesting one.

Hungarian word for it is olo.

Olo.

Yeah.

Now, why is that interesting?

Is it because it looks like a pair of scissors?

It looks like a pair of scissors.

Yeah, that's good.

Is that why it's called that or not?

Well, that's what.

Actually, what you've drawn looks like a penis.

That's a

pair of cheeky testicles on the other other side.

That's great, yeah.

Good.

That isn't presumably why it's called that.

No, I don't think so.

I think it might.

I mean, but it's hard to think that that's not why it's called that.

They're still made in the UK.

Scissors?

Scissors are?

Yeah, but you know, lots of manufacturing has gone elsewhere.

In Sheffield.

Bingo, there used to be...

In Sheffield, 40,000 workers in the scissors and cutlery trade.

Mostly cutlery, yeah.

Mostly cutlery.

But some scissors too.

And obviously, a lot of them aren't in business anymore.

But I think there might still be two.

There's Whiteley, who've been going since 1760, at least.

And there's also Ernest Wright and son.

They have two,

they're called master putter-togetherers.

That's literally that.

That is what the title is for anyone who does the job of putting scissors together.

The putter-togetherer.

And they're proper, you know, they're metal, like all the way, handle, blade, everything.

They're sort of proper.

Stainless steel, I guess.

Yeah.

And there was a brilliant video in 2014 showing the trade and how it's still operated.

So I don't know if this guy is still working there anymore because he'd been there about 50 years when this was made.

So he probably isn't still there now.

But he, one of the two master put it together as, was called Eric Stones.

Now,

you would have white stones in them.

Yeah, just show.

Oh, I was thinking.

Brine stones.

I was thinking like rock, paper, scissors.

What's another word for a rock?

Oh, I see.

Stone.

Does anyone ever say stone, paper, scissors?

Yeah, and in other countries.

There we go.

I did see a story of someone trying to rob a shoe shop with a stone, but the person behind the counter had some paper.

No, had some scissors.

Oh, sorry.

But the story made it into the papers.

So you've got all three there.

Anyway, Sheffield, yes, did used to make even more exciting scissors.

They made the smallest pair of scissors in the world in the 19th century.

Did they?

Yeah, they did.

So they claim.

Was it for cutting something very small or was it just for fun?

I think it was just for fun and to entertain the royal family.

They went to show them all.

Britain's chief industry until the mid-20th century was just doing things to impress the Queen.

It was actually the 1820s.

so it was King George IV.

Wow.

And it was the manufacturers, Joseph Rogers and Sons.

And they took some tiny scissors to show George IV.

And according to Sheffield Museums, they dropped them on his carpet and they were so small that they were never found.

No.

Get out.

Oh my.

They're still there on the floor of Fucking Palace.

That's a risk, isn't it?

You know, you don't want to walk around barefoot, do you?

No, on the carpet where you know there's a pair of scissors here somewhere.

That's why the royals are always wearing shoes.

From small scissors to large scissors.

I didn't know this, but often, you know, those large scissors that you get when someone's unveiling something.

Oh, yeah, the novelty cutting a ribbon.

They don't look very sharp, those.

I don't think they are.

No.

I think.

I don't know.

Oh, they're sharp enough for a ribbon.

Oh, yeah.

They really aren't that hard.

They can't do microsurgery or anything like that.

But why would you want them to?

But normally, they're far.

Your daughter brought those out during microsurgery.

The last thing you see is you're doing the count for the anesthesia.

I've seen what the fuck is.

But normally you hire them.

I guess because why on earth would you want to keep a two-foot-long pair of scissors?

It's just.

But there can't be many in the country.

There aren't many in the country, James.

I'm so glad.

So there's in the UK, there's unveilingcurtains.co.uk.

Oh, yeah.

And they say no unveiling ceremony is complete without a pair of our giant ceremony ribbon scissors.

But in America, there's goldenopenings.com.

Oh, I saw their website really, right?

Yeah.

Golden up.

What were you googling when you found that?

But they are 40 inches long.

They advertise themselves as the largest working scissors in the world.

Someone who apparently keeps scissors on them at all times is a hairdresser.

A hairdresser, yes.

In this very specific case, Richard Branson.

Oh.

This is such an odd thing that he does.

He hates when people are a bit too formal.

He thinks that businesses should be relaxed.

He's often asked by CEOs, how can I make my business more relaxed?

If he sees anyone around the table with a tie on, he gets his scissors out, he goes over and he cuts their tie off.

And he says, everyone laughs.

Everyone has a great old time, but that's his thing.

I'm sure they all continue laughing when he's left the room.

I don't just call him a wanker.

This tie was given to me by my grandfather.

Does he have special.

They must be quite sharp scissors.

I'm sure they are.

But

you know, how strong are you?

Do you have ties made of wood?

No, to cut through a tie in a single

amusing chief executive gesture is quite...

He must have killed thousands of underlings.

I do have a tie made of wood, like a bow tie made of wood out of hog.

Of course you do.

But I think if I ever meet Richard Branson, I'm going to wear it and see how strong his scissors really are.

Oh, very good.

There's a pair of scissors that I've only ever used three times.

What are they?

I know what they are.

Oh, yeah.

I mean, umbilical cord scissors.

I don't own them myself.

I've only ever used them.

But yeah, umbilical scissors, which I have used three times because I have three kids.

Okay, you haven't used the same.

It's not like you bought some specially.

No, no, they're hanging up in the hospital and they're labelled property of D Schreiber.

Do not touch.

He will be back for another one soon.

Yeah, I use the ones that were in the hospital.

I was asked if I'd want to cut the umbilical cord.

But

you said yes every time.

I said yes because I was like, why would I, why?

Oh, right.

I thought everyone said yes.

Why would I, though?

Why would I want to do something that a professional can do?

Were you offered the chance?

Yeah, of course.

I think they always offer the chance.

I frequently will sneak into hospitals and ask if I can pretend to use, like, oh, can I, when the time comes, can I do the cutting?

You're subbed in.

You're on the sidelines.

Yeah.

It's quite thick and sort of gristly.

It is.

It's a bit odd, and you're a bit nervous when you're doing it because you think, well, what if I get this wrong?

Nothing can happen.

Well, you don't know that in the moment.

Unless you get really wrong and like shop your baby's Willie off or something.

Yeah.

And that's not the umbilical card.

Jesus.

It was a very well-endowed baby.

That's so funny.

No, but you can, I looked online.

You can buy from Amazon Amazon umbilical cord scissors to use on your own at home, say for home births, right?

That would be good if you were opening a new wing of a maternity ward.

Yes.

You could, like, instead of a ribbon, you could have an umbilical scissor.

It's like a newborn baby just

slowly pulled away from a mother.

Mother just after birth.

Sorry, do you mind if we just move you to the ceremony room?

It's the grand opening.

Yeah.

Is there anything special about them except a gimmick to get money out of people?

No, no, no, these are used.

Are they specially shaped?

Oh, they're specially shaped.

They're different types of scissors.

Yeah.

You don't use your classic scissors.

Really?

I think those need to be sharp.

Really?

I think they're slightly curved and like half moon shaped.

The blood.

Yes.

Aren't they?

But yeah, it had a one-star review.

This main pair that is it.

Wait, is it one star?

Baby's still attached.

He's four years old now.

Yeah.

said does not cut well stiff to use needed several attempts to cut which is a bit terrifying but i was trying to look into them this is a very random tangent but i discovered a guy who said hey when you're in the hospital and you are offered to cut the baby's umbilical cord why not suggest biting it off instead of using the scissors and brian blessed like brian blessed style that's right who what he did that in a park he didn't know he said that he said that he did but this guy this guy said that he did he said i went in i said to them is it cool if i do the umbilical cutting he believed that because i started the baby with my seed this is me ending the process by using my mouth to bite into it.

It's a bit.

He said it tastes like calamari, the rubbery kind of stuff.

It tastes like calamari.

Yes, it tastes like blood.

His wife was a squid.

Were you watching My Octopus Keeper or whatever that thing is?

Yeah, no, no, he said it was basically like blood, iron-like.

The texture of it was calamari-like.

And apparently, if you ask, they might say yes.

So if anyone fancies it, worth asking.

Worth asking.

They'll think you're a real weirdo, but they might say yes.

Can I give you a riddle?

Yeah.

Okay.

2017.

Yes.

Right.

There's a guy in Vietnam.

He's 54 years old.

He has a road accident.

Yeah.

And

there's...

This is not a good riddle.

There seems to be something sharp inside his stomach.

Is that scissors?

Wait, do I haven't finished the riddle?

He'd recently been to fucking a palace and was licking the carpet.

fucking your fathers cleaned

up to lick the floors

that's the deep clean um no and the second hospital scanned him and they found a six inch pair of scissors inside him okay which had been there since 1998 oh did he have an operation year

of the most french thing that has ever happened

a year after diana

said sacrile bleur

because he was actually watching the world cup at the same time.

No, 19 years, this guy had had a six-inch pair of scissors inside him and had had a little bit of stomach pain, but basically nothing else.

Isn't that just the six inches is long?

And is it from having an operation and someone dropped it in?

Yes, it was.

So the riddle is a bad one.

Forget the riddle element.

But I just think that's stunning that he'd had a previous road accident in 1998, had an operation for it.

They'd left the scissors in him then, and they only found it as a result of the second road accident.

Right.

That's kind of.

I think if you're a surgeon and you need to put down the scissors for a second, yeah, put them on a tray.

Yeah, yeah, don't put it on someone's spleen.

Well, that was the gross thing.

They had rusted and they had become stuck to his nearby organs because they'd been there.

So that's going to make him super sick.

He was all right, was he?

Yeah, he was fine.

It is weird that the body can withstand that size because it must have really misshapen various bits of him, but they obviously just stretched to accommodate them.

Yep.

Spleen went, hey, all right.

Take you.

Do you know what knob cutters are used for?

Knob cutters.

Yeah.

Type of scissors.

Vasectomies?

No.

Eunuchs.

Knob cutters.

Knobs.

Oh, doors.

Doors.

Knob doors.

The type of cactus.

Knobs of butter.

Oh.

Cactus have nipples, but what has knobs?

Oh.

A plant with a knob.

Yeah, just trees, I guess.

A tree.

Well, why would you use scissors on a tree?

You want to make it nice and smooth?

Because you work for Yves Saint-Lero.

And she's mental.

Well, you would use shears or you would use like a chainsaw, right?

Tiny tree, then.

It's got to be...

Bonsai!

Bonsai!

They are used by Bonsai

gardeners, yeah.

They are the Bonsai scissor world is pretty amazing.

Well, they're like the knob cutters are really cool looking because the bit which you cut looks like it could be a tiny Sheffield, like the world's smallest scissor, but then the handles are normal sized handles because obviously you need to sort of have your fingers in there and put your fingers in it, but also you're cutting something really, really small.

That makes so so much sense.

That's a good thing for like a James Bond supervillain to say, is like, you know, when Bond's tied to the chair or whatever, bring me the knob cactus.

And then he just turns into his bonsai tree.

He gives it a little troop.

That's brilliant.

You would have to set up that joke earlier.

Oh, yeah, oh, yeah, I wouldn't show that I did.

Or put some subtitles explaining what they are.

Sean Connery's like, I don't know what you mean about the knob.

And then Blo Felt's like, well, actually, it's a name of, you know, some scissors that use in Bod Sai.

I'll bring in the dildo cactus.

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 at Schreiberland on Instagram.

James.

My Instagram is no such thing thing as James Harkin.

Andy.

On Twitter at Andrew Hunter M.

Yep, or you can get to us as a group.

Where, Anna?

You can go to Instagram at no such thing as a fish or Twitter at no such thing or email podcast at qi.com.

Yeah.

And head to our website, no such thingasthafish.com.

All of our previous episodes are up there.

There is a link to our upcoming Thunder Nerds tour.

Tickets are still on sale.

Check out if we're coming to a city near you and book them now.

And also a link to Club Fish, our secret place where we put up bonus episodes and extra content.

It's really awesome.

Check it out.

If not, just come back here next week where we'll have another episode and we'll see you then.

Goodbye.