BONUS: Drop Us A Line - January 2024

Hi everyone, welcome to Tuesday in No Such Things a Fish Land.

What are we doing with new material on a Tuesday?

I'm sure you're asking yourself, well, what it is, is it is a special New Year's treat, even though it's not really New Year anymore, and it is an episode of our show Drop Us a Line.

Now, Drop Us a Line is normally hidden in the secret bowels of Club Fish, which is our special paid-for area, which you can get to by going to no thingsafish.com forward slash apple or no such thingsafish.com forward slash patreon now full disclosure obviously we're releasing this in the hope that some of you will feel like you're missing out and subscribe but honestly no strings attached please do enjoy this show and actually if you wanted to come and join for just a month say on apple you can go to the apple app and it will offer you one month for free and then if after that month you don't want to subscribe anymore then of course that's absolutely fine we will think no less of anyone because we know that not everyone has that kind of disposable income and actually even if you do have it you might not want to spend it on this that is absolutely fine one thing to say is that no such things as fish the main podcast will always be free to everyone and clubfish only contains extras so we have the showdroppers align we also have meet the elf where we meet some of our colleagues and they ask us some fun questions we have loads of compilations of outtakes from our shows.

We also have a discord where like-minded fish fans can meet and chat and we dip our toes into there every now and then to say hi.

But the main show is and always will be free.

Oh, I should just say one more thing.

If you're Alan Brazil, the ex-footballer, or indeed any of his family or friends, you might be surprised to hear in this podcast that I said he was no longer with us.

That was a genuine mistake on my part.

I think when I was researching, I might have searched for Alan Ball instead of Alan Brazil and got the wrong information.

So, huge apologies to Mr.

Brazil and to all the Brazils.

But anyway, despite that error, I hope you enjoy this week's episode of Drop Us a Line

on with the bonus material.

Andy, Andy here, joined by my three chums, James.

Who are they?

Anna.

Come on, Anna.

She sounds.

Come on.

James, Anna, and Dan are here as well.

And this is Drop Us a Line.

I've got a mouthful of stroop waffle, otherwise I would have said hi as well.

Oh, young?

The standards of professionalism.

Do you have any?

What is a stroop waffle?

I'm actually going to start us again.

Guys, this is too unprofessional.

Yep.

Hi.

Hello.

Oh, my God.

Anna, would you like a stroop waffle?

I get no respect.

Welcome to Drop Us a Line, everybody.

This is the bit of the show where we are.

No, James, open your bottle of carbonated water.

It's Airbnb.

Anyone got anything else they'd like to get off their chest or out of their bags?

Okay, welcome to Drop Us a Line.

This is where we are going through your words.

I'm reading them out to these guys.

These guys will say something funny and we'll end after about a little while.

That fair assumption?

Yeah, that's excellent.

Why don't we get on with it?

Yeah, okay.

Maybe we should start again.

No.

Look, we've had some cracking correspondence.

Great.

Here is Ian Dunn with an I'm actually

a great friend of the show.

Hi, Ian.

Just a quick note regarding Rutland, which came up in episode 511.

Oh, yeah.

In it, you, Andy, said that Rutland was the smallest county in England.

However, he's from Teesside, Ian.

Is that,

yeah, is that you're going to say that's smaller?

No, it's not small.

No, he just says, as was mentioned in the QA episode England, Ruttro,

a general ignorance question said that the smallest county was actually the Isle of Wight at high tide.

That's right.

When the tide is out, indeed, Rutland is smaller.

That's great.

That's a nice fact.

And I've also heard from Hattie Hodgson Chrome, brilliant name, on Twitter, the population of Rutland are crying out

in the latest episode of.

Just imagine flying over Rutland in a small aircraft and just hearing the people.

Absolute wailing and gnashing of teeth coming from Rutland.

In the latest episode of No Such Thing, Andy, you said it had become, I think, a unitary authority instead of a county.

Right.

Actually, it became an independent county again in 1997.

As a primary school there at the time, I received a mug to mark the occasion.

I'm sorry, Hattie, and I'm sorry, Ian.

I would say, of all the things, having worked at QI for 20 years, more in fact, the thing that gets people hot under the collar more than almost anything else is the 1971 Unitary Authorities Act,

which made all of the counties of England the new counties.

Well, it's your chat-up line, isn't it?

You ask people in bars what they think about it.

I just stand on the corner of Cumbria and Northumberland.

Do you remember a thing where we spoke about people not being called BJ in the UK?

Yeah, that was me.

Yeah, I just said I feel like Americans are called BJ.

A few people have messaged me saying I know an Aussie BJ.

Yeah.

Well, Chris Blundell Joyce writes.

Since we amalgamated, hyphenated our names when we got married, we are now the Blundle Joyce's, a.k.a.

the BJs.

We live in York.

And now our family and friends know us as the BJs.

God help our two-year-old daughter when she goes to school.

So there we go.

Thank you, Chris.

I think it's one of the few instances where being BJ is going to be less embarrassing for her than being called Blundle Joyce.

That's a lovely name.

It is a lovely name.

The word Blundell, I wish, meant something, because I'd love to be saying it on a regular basis.

Blundlebus.

If they have a car, they should call it the Blundelbus.

Yes.

It sounds a bit like Blunderbuss.

And what's that?

A a large gun yeah just a cool word cool

andrew morse writes

you know the bit where you say something and then we're funny after it oh yeah when do we get to that bit

we'll keep going until we've got something okay andrew morse writes

how dare you andrew

oh lovely another andy m as he points out um i recently joined Clubfish to see if you guys ever mentioned my amazing fact about the Hoover Dam back in November 2022.

Brackets, no.

Do we have the fact?

I did look at it.

It's fine.

Can I tell you a fact now?

Okay.

See if it's the same one.

Oh, yeah.

They used to, if you had a

mental illness, they used to prescribe you to go to the Hoover Dam and listen to the water going down the Hoover Dam, and that was supposed to make you feel better.

Lovely.

That is a good fact.

Was that his fact?

No, his fact, it was a really good one actually.

It was about the construction of the dam and it was really tragic.

It was about the first person and the last person to die and I think the first person was someone like the architect or and the last person was his son.

Right.

And

it was a great fact but it was quite sad so I thought

it might be a bit gloomy for us.

Yeah, yeah.

Anyway, I joined to see if you mentioned my fact with every intention of unsubscribing before I had to pay because I'm cheap and have very little money at the moment.

That's fair.

That's fair.

However, around a year ago on the bonus podcast, Andy admitted to peeing in the shower, which was a shocking revelation from such a private and conservative man.

I have hence committed to paying for at least one month for the privilege of hearing you all open up.

Because I love you guys.

That's the last time Andy ever opened up.

I know, and I closed right back down.

It was such an unpleasant time for me that I've never said anything.

No one ever gets anything out of me now.

It was months of therapy, wasn't it, after you admitted to that?

Which I know you don't want us to say, of course, but.

Yeah, Jesus, Hannah.

Here's a fact about Dan's teeth.

Oh,

yeah.

So so he doesn't have canines right and this is from jessamie glove please this is a brilliant stunning name stunning i know as an american who lived in britain i noticed that many white british people have really long canines compared to what seems normal in the usa so much so that it gets distracting wondering if the british person you're talking to is actually a vampire

this is just the thing we said well we were talking about canine teeth and we just noticed that you don't have yeah everyone said, look at your mouth.

And Anna, I think it was you, who said, Dan, where are yours?

People have since gone through my Instagram finding photos of me with a smile going, yeah, you don't.

Like, just pointing out something that's just a thing.

It's really unusual to me.

So she says, despite having listened to fish for years, I still get the names mixed up.

But when Anna pointed out that Dan had no canines, I easily guessed he was the least British of the four.

Right.

I think that's a coincidence.

I like the theory, but we need more data.

I like it.

And she says, there's no clue if it's genetic or environmental, but I've never seen an American try to open a bag of crisps with their teeth.

I actually think that that is the thing that Americans and non-English people find very unusual about the British.

That if you go to a pub, people will go to the bar, buy a pack of crisps, bite it open, and then just open it and leave it on a table.

Yeah, yeah.

How are they opening their crisps to share?

I don't think they share.

There was someone on Twitter who was

far more on the nations.

It honestly was a revelation when I came here and I saw that happen.

And then, as my Aussie mates came over and other international friends, I would do it, knowing each time that I was introducing them to something.

Oh, wow.

It's funny.

It's sort of inoculated Britain against true socialism.

Like, that's what we do to share.

And

I've never had a proper redistributive.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Anyway.

Because we redistribute crisps around a table in a pub.

Yeah.

I actually don't like doing it.

Don't you?

You don't like sharing.

Because I hate sharing.

I'm very selfish and very greedy.

But also, I feel like you know this about me, or my favourite thing about crisps.

My favourite thing to do with crisps you lick the bag

No

I you've got to pop the crisp bag so as soon as you've ruined the crisp bag So I just overturn all the crisps onto the table and then I bang the bag Yeah, bang the bag

This is that opening up stuff that this guy wanted us to do yeah happy now that's good stuff

Simon Graham writes

this is about when Dan's fact was about the wall crashing into Ayrton Senna.

Oh, yeah.

Which is such a good fact.

Yeah, brilliant.

So in the following discussion, you all lamented the demise of the lollipop man in the pit crew right

in 2009 this i love this email formula one introduced hybrid engines with kinetic energy recovery systems which harvested energy when you're breaking yeah it's the same stuff as you get in electric cars today right and they store it in batteries and then when you're overtaking you sort of

use that the technology was a bit unknown and somewhat unreliable at the time During this early period of the KERS, there was always a pit crew member standing by with what looks like a shepherd's crook in case one of the crew was electrocuted.

What?

They'd pull him off stage like someone is

a terrible comedian.

That's it.

No.

There was always a crew member holding one during the pit stops in case of electrocution.

Wow.

He attached a photo showing a pit member wearing extra heavy rubber gloves.

And yeah, since the technology has moved on, it has become more reliable and safe.

And the shepherd has gone the way of the lollipop.

Wow.

I wonder if it did ever happen.

Because we'd have it on camera, presumably, if it was a F1

kind of thing.

I don't know.

Many of you haven't.

But isn't that lovely?

It is quite nice.

I imagine you being sacked as the lollipop man and going home.

And then you get the phone call going, darling, don't worry, I've got a new gig.

I've got an upsetting email to read.

I know.

It's from Alex Stroh.

Yeah.

Subject, Dan was right.

I'm upset already.

We'll cut this, so what's the point?

And he's quoting from, I think, a piece maybe on Wikipedia, but it's, as water monsters, Kappa have been blamed for drownings and are often said to try and lure people into water.

I really thought you meant the tracksuit trouser brands.

And they would.

They'd weigh you down if you jump in the sea.

Sorry, Kappa, what?

They lure people into water and pull them in with their great skill at wrestling.

This is like a fictional beast.

Yeah.

Kappa, right?

Yeah.

Mythical beast in Japan, I believe.

They're sometimes said to take their victims for the purpose of drinking their blood, eating their livers, or...

gaining power by taking their shirakodama, a mythical ball said to contain the soul which is located inside the anus.

So sorry, Dan was right about something.

that we were talking about.

We were.

This is from before my time.

No, no, no, we were on stage together.

This was

Soho Theatre and we were talking about the bung ball.

The bung ball.

That Aussie is.

I was in this one.

Yeah.

I was asking what the word bung ball meant, and it was actually a party thrown by a publican because bung is part of a barrel.

And Dan thought that the bung ball was a thing found in an anus.

I was asking if it was the anus soul ball, which these Japanese mythological creatures would.

Yeah, I'm still not getting the respect from having.

Well done.

Never questioned down on cryptozoology.

I can't believe we even know.

Mythological.

It's mythological stuff.

Was it, because it's in Japan, was it believed by the Ainus?

Which is

a large group of Japanese people.

And they're the Ainu.

Yeah, but we get to them every time we mention them because James insists on calling them the Aenus tribe.

Dan, can you read out that word?

That one word?

Manitowoc.

Okay.

This is an email from Alex.

Andy, just wanted to say that Dan pronounced it completely correctly.

It was like he was from Wisconsin.

I'm as shocked as you are.

Peel it.

P.S.

If you use this on drop as a line, please make Dan read my last name.

So it's from Alex Tievsky.

There we go.

Sounded like it plausibly could be correct.

Quite good, actually, as well.

I've been spelling, just so people can play along at home.

T-I-E-V-S-K-Y.

Okay.

I'd have maybe gone with Tievsky, but Tievsky sounds very, very likely.

Okay, Alex, writing who was correct and the odd L.A.

And did I pronounce the place right again?

Oh, good.

Maybe that was because it's like

sheer chance.

You've got to, you know, throw one dart right once.

Yeah.

Do it randomly.

Can I give you a piece of correspondence that someone sent in?

Yeah.

This was sent on my Instagram, no such thing as James Harkin, by someone called Katie Collinson.

and it was about an episode that I wasn't in.

And she said, tell Dan that liquid soap is normally full of preservatives because it is made with water.

And apparently, you were talking about the difference between, apparently, I did listen to the show, which is very good with Rhys James.

And you're talking about the difference between block soap and liquid soap.

Yeah.

And what I found really interesting is, I think in the show, you guys mentioned that liquid soap is worse for the environment because it contains water and you need to ship that around the world.

I think that's true.

But what's really interesting, I think, is what Katie said, which she worked for Lush, by the way.

She says that the water causes it to go off.

And because you've got water in there, it can collect bacteria and stuff like that.

Whereas solid soap can't do that.

So solid soap is cleaner than liquid soap.

Wow.

Nice.

You don't think of off-water, do you?

You never, you rarely take a sip of water and go, oh, that's been.

But if

need to live, they need water, yeah.

Yeah.

Well, there we go.

Glad that we've got more anti-liquid soap propaganda.

That's brilliant.

Here's one.

This is a bit of a controversial one.

This is a spicy meat.

It's from Ben Lydgate.

I just listened to your most recent Christmas episode in which Dan mentions the fact that Chuck Norris edits out all the fight scenes from his movies in order to show them to his kids.

And the rest of you all sounded interested and entertained as if this was new information for you.

However,

I am also currently re-listening to all your old episodes and have just listened to episode 29 from the 3rd of October 2014

in which Dan mentions this fact and episode 30 from the 11th of October 2014 in which Dan mentions it again and each time you all sounded at least slightly surprised.

Well two things here.

I think Dan did say this is a fact I've been trying to prove for a long time.

So he did reference that.

I did.

And secondly, that's just being polite, isn't it?

it'd be terrible if every time one of you said a fact that i didn't find interesting i commented i don't find that interesting

ben says i'm beginning to suspect that the hilarious banter that sounds spontaneous each week is in fact entirely confected how much of what we hear is real are all your interactions entirely scripted or is it simply the case that none of you pay attention to dan and he could come up with the same fact every week and none of you would notice bingo there we go

by the way i did have a listener write into me having tracked down the interview that i was talking about

And it is the case that he re-edits the movies.

Sorry, Chuck Norris.

Yeah.

Re-edits movies.

Why would he do that?

So basically, he doesn't want his kids to...

No, I said I would only fake it three times.

However, in that specific interview, he says he takes it from an R-rated movie to a movie that they can watch.

He doesn't specifically say takes out all the fight scenes, which is something I feel I definitely read somewhere else.

So he might take out some of the swearing as well.

Yeah, or the love scenes or whatever that is.

He's hoping that you track down the truth and we'll end up hearing that fact a fifth time.

And we're getting closer.

Oh, you see?

Over a 10-year period you keep mentioning it, someone will help.

Gene Monterastelli writes, with a sport fact, actually, it says that he really enjoyed everything to play for, by the way.

Thank you for the QI Book of Sports.

Oh, thank you, Gene.

Or Sean, I'm going to say.

Gene.

Okay, or Gene.

Oh, is it G-E-N-E?

Yeah.

Sorry, I thought it was J-E-A-N.

No, no, no, I'm sure you know how to pronounce the word that I've got written in front of me better than I do.

I know you're distracting from the fact that we've got a plug chance here.

I'm on reading.

No, we're moving on.

Actually,

he hated it.

What was it here?

He talked about that.

He talked about, you know, we talked about the name change for the British Basketball League.

It became the BBL.

It was originally the BBL, I should say, which is also Brazilian buttlift.

And their logo looks a bit like a bum.

Yeah.

And he says, when you were talking about this, there was a discussion of how a large rump might be helpful in basketball.

Basketball Hall,

Basketball Hall of Famer, Charles Barkey.

Sorry.

Let's speak to man who doesn't know much about sports.

I thought you were capable of reading the words right in front of you.

Yeah, okay.

That's fair shot.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

All right, whatever.

Basketball Hall of Famer Charles Barkley

was known for his ample butt.

Yeah, he used to use it to bounce off people a little bit, didn't he?

He would like sort of, you know, if people are running towards him, he'd move his bum in their their way and they'd kind of exactly that.

He was very effective at using his generous posterior to move taller players out of the way.

Incredible.

What was it?

Can you smell my ass?

You smell my ass.

That's it.

Brilliant.

Ross Maguire writes, This is a, what is it called?

When we get something wrong?

Um actually.

Um actually is what it is.

This week's episode said that Bethany England was the first person to play for a country that shares her name.

Oh,

it was one of you, Daniel and Anna.

You said that.

The first person to play for the

country that shares her name.

Sorry, yes, that's right.

I did claim that.

Well, it's not right, Anna, because of a man called Stephen Ireland.

Oh, yeah.

He played for Ireland.

That's so good.

Six caps and four goals.

When we talk about football, we are usually thinking about women's football, so sometimes we don't always immediately bring the men's game to mind.

Absolutely.

I think that's what happened.

Yeah, it's very sexist of us, and I do apologise.

Yeah, of course.

That was a great question.

Well done.

No, it's a brilliant.

You know what?

When we sat on stage, I was going through all the countries trying to think of any other ones, and I never got to.

Because Alan Brazil, we were talking about Alan Brazil, weren't we?

Actually, mostly the Alan Brazil stuff got cut out because we didn't know that he recently died.

Oh,

I'm sorry to hear that.

I mean, it was sad.

But we spoke about him as if he was still alive.

Yeah, right.

Yeah.

I've got a bad one here.

This is a good one, but it's bad for me.

Matt Shaw writes.

Your novels are shit.

James, I've asked you to stay out of the inbox, all right?

It's important that you hear these for the first time fresh.

It's rather that than on the numbers of you.

Matt Shaw writes, I'm a sommelier and a wine importer with a specialization in fortified wine.

And I love the section you did on Sherry.

But I was compelled to write in as Andy has unfortunately fallen foul of one of the classic misunderstandings of the Solera system.

Oh, yeah.

In Cherry Production, that pyramid.

Can you just quickly remind us of the Solera system?

Basically,

the thing I said that was wrong is that you move most of the sherry from one barrel to another, and the new sherry's at the top of the pyramid, and the old sherry's at the bottom of the pyramid, and you move it down and down and down.

So it all gets mixed up, and the older sherry helps the newer sherry develop, and blah, blah, blah.

He says it's always represented as a pyramid because it's a very useful representation, but the consistent and persistent side effect is that every single wine student gets tricked into thinking these are physical barrels of pyramids, which they're not.

So they just move it sort of with cups going to and from

or something.

Well it's like eggs in baskets.

He says if there's a fire or an accident you will only lose some of it whereas if it's in a pyramid you'll lose all of it.

And some of the wow some of the wine storage warehouses have their own microclimates which influence how the wine ages so they have to move around between

anyway the wine doesn't physically flow between the barrels it's blended in a separate larger tank

this is a small point in an otherwise well explained and very interesting section but given it's one of the most persistent myths I have spent a decade battling battling, one I felt it was worth being a pediment for.

That's 10 years well spent, I must say.

No, I think that's a good, that's a good, you know,

yeah, really good.

Here's a question.

All right.

Michael Caddle writes, Hello from 2019, sort of.

Ooh.

Oh, time traveller.

Playful.

Off to a playful start with Michael.

I've listened to the entirety of the Fisher probably five times or so at this point.

Wow.

Wow.

I'm passing through the end of 2019 again.

And James just mentioned that Polina, his wife, had booked a flight on a parabolic flight next year.

Did she ever go on that flight?

And if so, what did she think?

I don't recall hearing an update, and I'm hoping Polina comes up enough that the question isn't too personal.

Okay, well, spoiler alerts for the guy living in 2019, but in 2020,

there weren't many trips to France to do parabolic flights.

I don't really want to explain exactly why, because it will spoil everything for you.

But there was enough vomiting going on in 2020 without parabolic flying.

Yeah, unfortunately, we had to cancel it because of COVID.

And then we had a baby,

and we will have to take a medical again before we get a chance to do it, because you need to take a medical.

That's fair enough.

Crying shame.

That's a sad ending to that aimer for Michael, but thank you.

Oh, here's a really good one.

Dave in sale, Greater Manchester.

Firstly, when are you going to do a new book of the year?

We'll get back to you.

Secondly, and more importantly, I thought it prudent to draw your attention to a possibility of a trademark infringement.

In the audiobook of Everything to Play For, the QI Book of Sports, by James Arkin and Anne Toshinsky, they both sign off the end of the audiobook by just using the word buy.

I can't believe someone's listening all the way to the end.

Do we do that?

I assume this has already been trademarked by you, hence my worry.

Civil remedies for trademark infringement include injunctions, damages, or accounted profits.

Criminal penalties are also available.

Okay.

Does Dave from sale say that, for instance, you might need to actually trademark something before it could be infringed?

No, he doesn't say that.

He just says he assumes I've I've got it.

Actually, we've trademarked it.

Stop.

And now you are infringing on our trademark every time you say it.

Yeah, how are you going to end this app?

Very abruptly.

Unlike my normal, slow language.

How interesting.

I remember us recording it, but I didn't recall that we'd done the buy thing.

So, what do you do?

You guys at the end just have a kind of like, well, that's it, everyone.

Yeah, well, we read the book and then we did a special extra bonus chapter where we just chatted a like a podcast but without the two dead weights

at the end of that i presume we just said bye i think that's i do remember that that's the only bit i remember is the bye

cross i'm so i'm furious all right well we'll we'll thrash that out thank you very much for that that's that'll thank you dave i can't believe you smelled the beans one final thing sorry tom wrist smith writes

hyphen double barrel double barrel yeah yeah um but wrist is spelt surprisingly you wouldn't think it was spelled this way but it is Oh, okay, it starts with a Q.

No, no, no, it's just anyway.

And weirdly, I've had corroboration of this fact already from someone else I know, because this is a fact from New Zealand, and someone else in New Zealand has written to me already saying this, right?

Tomorrow Smith writes, I'm in the toilet of a shuffleboard bar called Mean Doses in Wellington, New Zealand, and they are playing fish, but only in the bathroom, not in the bar.

Really?

And a friend of mine wrote to me saying, I was in a bar the other night and they were playing no such thing as fish in the toilet.

That's so cool.

That is so exciting.

So is he just spending spending lots of time in the toilet now?

Because you have to end like 55 minutes in the toilet.

And like, what have you been doing in that toilet for all that time?

Well, wrist is my middle name.

Anyway, that's cool.

We've made it.

That's probably the furthest toilet we've been played in.

It will

be for the moment.

That will.

Yeah.

That's great.

We should acknowledge it secretly in an upcoming episode.

Oh, yeah, that's great.

Just something.

Just something to get in there.

We could make a special 15-minute episode, send it to this bar.

If you want to be a completist, no such thing as a fish, you have to go to this bar.

Such a good idea.

Let's do that.

Let's do that.

Great.

Let's definitely do that.

That's going to be very bad for people's carbon footprint.

I'll feel very guilty about encouraging everyone to flock to

a shuffleboard bar called Mean Doses in Wellington.

Imagine if it's a long way.

300,000 people turned out.

God, I've got anxiety about how you're going to end this.

Toodaloo.

I think I got it.

That was fine, wasn't it?

Nailed it.

That was great.

I like it.

Pip, Pip.

No, thanks everybody for listening.

That was really fun.

Hope you enjoyed it.

If you want to say anything, just email podcast at QI.com.

We love hearing from you with your spin-off stories and your bonus facts and your I'm actually.

We'll be back again next month with another one of these.

See you next time.

Bye.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Wow, see you to that.