482: No Such Thing As Parachuting Into Hollyoaks

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Hi, everyone.

Welcome to this week's episode of No Such Thing as a Fish, where we are joined by one of our favorite, favorite people in the world, Rosie Jones.

Now, those of you in the UK will not need to hear an introduction for Rosie because she is one of the great comedians of our time.

Any of you who've watched QI, which I know is a lot of you, will recognize her.

She's been on all sorts of stuff.

She kind of came into the limelight on The Last Leg and worked on the Paralympics.

You'll hear a lot about about that in this show.

She's a writer as well.

She wrote for the Netflix show Sex Education.

She's written a brilliant children's book called The Amazing Edie Eckheart, which is about an 11-year-old with cerebral palsy.

She's just an all-round, very, very funny person.

And I really, really hope you'll enjoy this week's show.

I'm absolutely certain you will.

It's one of my favorites that we've ever done, I think.

If you want to see Rosie in real life, then I think her tour has, I think it's literally just started maybe this week.

And if you want to go and see that, you can go to rosiejonescomedy.com and all the dates are up there.

Rosie is R-O-S-I-E.

And that's all to say, really.

I really hope you enjoy this show with Rosie and on with the podcast.

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

My name is Dan Schreiber.

I am sitting here with James Harkin, Andrew Hunter Murray, and Rosie Jones.

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

And in no particular order, here we go.

Starting with fact number one.

That is my fact.

My fact this week is that the world's greatest Paralympic equestrian with 14 gold medals medals under his belt is also allergic to horses.

That's not his Paralympic qualification.

That's not the

disability that means.

Okay, okay.

Absolutely.

No, it's not.

So, yeah, this is an extraordinary guy called Lee Pearson who has, over the years, won 14 gold medals, a bunch of bronze and silver along the way as well.

And

he's just an amazing character generally.

I mean, I'll mention a couple of things.

I'm really excited to ask whether or not you've met him because I know you've been to the Paralympics, right?

But so he's the kind of guy who says, like, my training is curry, Malibu, and Coke.

And,

you know, and

he loves to party, and he's got a life story, which is, you know, he was born and put into a broom cupboard as soon as he was born.

We've got to, so, okay, we've got to.

Yeah.

Can I pick this?

So he was born with a condition which I'd never heard of before.

It's called a thyrogriposis multiplex congenita.

I think I said that right.

I think that was known when he was born, and he wasn't looked after especially well by the hospital he was in.

So he was put into a cupboard for a few days in a sort of crib thing.

And his mum was heavily sedated so that they didn't know.

She was trying to find out where he was when she eventually came around.

And as a result, he has no muscles in his arms.

So he does the dressage with his shoulders.

That's what he pulls with to control.

And he got into horse riding because he couldn't ride a bike.

So that's the basics.

Sorry, is he British?

Yeah, he is.

He's also gay.

And as a result, the headline on the story that I read was out of two closets and into Paralympic history.

Yeah, yeah.

That's amazing.

But so just to end the broom cupboard story is that he's left there for three days.

Finally, the dad comes to visit the mum.

Where's my baby?

And they go find the baby and they half kind of think they're going to find a dying baby, but he's doing okay.

And the mum has to play it cool because for some reason she just wanted to not make a big deal out of it, worrying that they might then take him away because of her emotion.

And so, yeah, and so he should have died, according to the nurses.

So, his life story from the get-go is just a phenomenal moment.

And he was kind of a young kid who experienced a lot of interesting moments along the way.

Like, there's a story that Margaret Thatcher carried up the staircase at 10 Downing Street when he was being presented an award when he was six years old for Children of Courage.

So, he's always been sort of in the limelight, and he's a huge advocate of gay rights.

But yeah, he's um, you know, when when the Paralympics were going to be happening in Russia, he wanted to go and explicitly talk about gay rights there.

He's a really cool guy, he seems.

He is amazing.

And yeah, I've met him

because I've been to

two Paralympics now

because

before I was a comedian

I was a researcher

in Tilly

so in 2016

I went to Rio

to work on the last leg

and then in 2021

I went to Tokyo

again

with the Latz Lake

but this

I was

on to it

so I was

the corresponding out there

and

tell me to shut up because there's not a fact in this

but I just wanted to say how

both

time to go into the Paralympics.

I've had incredible

emotional journeys

because I've been disabled all my life.

I don't mind it.

I love

the life and the world I created.

But it can be exhausting

going

into rooms

all day, every day when you're normally the only

disabled person

so you get this

disabled paradise where actually

if you're able bodied

you look worried

it's such an emotional feeling to know

that we're not alone and we're in this old takeaway.

Yeah amazing.

But

what I wanted to say was I met Lee at both games

and he is

brilliant.

We once interviewed him and he was naked in bed like

he did not care

It just sounds so cool.

I love that he learnt to ride on horses, not on the horse, but on a donkey.

That was his first

experience.

Yeah,

a donkey called Sally.

In ancient China, no, not ancient China, but early modern China,

the women polo players would play on donkeys.

So the male polo players would play on horses and the women would play on donkeys.

And it was because it's quite a high-status thing.

It was like very posh people who would play and they just thought it was safer really because he's closer to the ground yeah right yeah and i guess that's why you practice to do your equestrian on on donkeys as well because it's they're slower and closer to the ground yeah yeah there is a lot of horse allergy in paralympic athletes is there uh horse riding yeah athletes yeah there's sophie wells she won silver in 2012 she's allergic to horses but i read that and i read an article with her that said um because she was allergic to horses her mother had to brush down the pony when she was a child.

It does sound to me like she's like, Oh no, I can't, I can't muck her out, I can't brush her down, I'm allergic.

I'm allergic to

making beds.

I can't.

The other thing about her, Sophie Wells, is she went to school at somewhere called the Robert Pattinson Academy.

Really?

No,

isn't that amazing?

Only open at twilight.

It's named after Sir Robert Pattinson, who was an MP for Grantham in the 1920s.

Margaret Thatcher's old constituency.

Strong link between Paralympic Dressage and Margaret Thatcher.

Sophie Wells, the rival of Sophie Wells.

So Sophie Wells won silver in 2012.

Her rival who took gold was called Michael George.

Now if I if my surname was Michael

if my surname was George and I had a son I'm not sure I'd call him Michael.

Why?

Because it was George Michael.

It's two best names, but I'm thinking it's like a George Michael reference.

Oh, I didn't pick up on it.

If they stood next to each other, they'd be a palindrome.

Yes.

Yeah.

You didn't pick up on someone called Michael George having a name like George Michael?

No.

I didn't.

No.

Am I the only one here?

No, I did that.

Oh, thank you.

I guess the first

time.

My first thought was what Tori MG.

It was in Thatcher's cabinet.

I went to the Sydney Paralympics.

Did you?

Yeah, it was awesome.

I don't actually have much memory.

We sat in Homebush, which is the big stadium that was built for it.

And

the Paralympics wasn't a big deal in the country.

It's sort of the Olympics was such a big deal.

2000.

2000.

And I remember on the day, my impressions of it were the stadium was virtually empty.

Yeah.

It was a lot of school excursions, which is what we were on.

And the music that they were playing over the sound system, and these are what people are doing their big Olympic events, were kids songs like Row, Row, Row Your Boat and stuff.

And I just remember thinking

good motivation.

But I just remember sitting there thinking, these are professional athletes who've spent four years getting to this point and they've got nursery rhymes playing.

It was really odd.

And now it's kind of like the opening and closing ceremonies will have cold play and they'll have Michael George.

Michael George

doing Whisper Curlies.

And the

first

Pablo Olympic games were in Rome in 1960

and they had a few games that unfortunately

no longer happen.

My favorite was a sport called

Dart Churry.

Doctory for the first time.

Which is exactly what it sounds like.

It was archery.

In a a pub.

Everyone was strong.

Then they had to like

that board.

And they had to get down to zip.

That's a great idea.

But what's crazy is archery has a very big...

effectively a large dartboard, doesn't it?

So that's making archery ten times harder if suddenly your place of aim is a dartboard.

Like that's oh, yeah.

You've got less surface area for was it the size of a dart board?

Yeah, I think so.

Oh, was it?

I thought it was literally a dart board.

If your normal arrow for an archery, if you fired that at something the size of a dartboard, it's going to go in numerous different numbers at the same time.

That's what I was confused about, but you've raised a really good point.

What if it was bigger?

I was reading about visually impaired skiing,

which I think is amazing because you're skiing down and then there's someone else who's skiing in front of you, and they're attached by Bluetooth, so they're telling you what's coming all the way down, and then you have to ski behind them.

Wait, so they're not attached physically, they're not physically attached, they're a guide and they have like headphones.

But like,

how hard is it to attach your headphones to your phone by Bluetooth?

That must be terrifying to just like your Bluetooth is now disconnected.

Oh, fuck!

What if you then connect to someone else

Getting the wrong info.

No robot.

I just think that must be absolutely terrifying.

Visual impairment is such an interesting territory about how there's assists just for that tiny bit of guidance.

So for swimming, there's a thing called the tapper where when you're coming, they'll tap a swimmer on the head to let them know that the end is coming up.

Or if you're...

I think that's because it and it's so basically as the swimmer who is visually impaired, you can just swim at full pelt and you'll know that the end's coming up.

So you don't you don't have this uncertainty ahead of you.

Yeah, but I think that is a big responsibility on the tapper.

Absolutely.

You've got to get that.

You've got to get it in one.

You've got to get that bang on it.

Yeah, exactly.

So you have to agree what the thing is before you start the race.

What the distance is.

I'm sure they do, Andy.

You're starting to not just wing it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So I'm going to try and tap you one centimetre before the edge of the

boy, yeah.

But there was an incredible

swim

in Rio, and they had

no arms

and no legs

and

his

way of

stopping in the pool was

literally to

the further end of it a motion of our brains and

what

was he wearing like a helmet or something?

No!

Oh my god!

No!

Also, what I love

about the Paralympics is

all their different groups.

There's a million groups and they group them

on

ability

and I think that's why I love it more than the Olympics

because

you know that everyone in that race

is the same

sort of

ability.

Oh yeah.

I didn't know about the classification thing.

Yeah, I know.

And it's it's why there are so many events as it were.

Because you've got ten is it ten classes of disability from the least to the most impaired?

Well yeah, but you get different

classes about

women, different

classes are running.

Yeah, you just

need it because they cannot have

a viciously impaired person that says when I'm picking it.

You can't have someone with no arms and legs against someone who's allergic to horses.

Yes, no.

But I think it's right.

So, within class seven or whatever it is, there will be different kinds of impairments.

So, you might have someone who's got a limb which is shorter, or someone who's got impaired muscle power, or someone who's uh shorter, but they have been assessed at being the same level of impairment.

And what it means is the winner is whoever's the best on the day.

Yeah, yeah.

I like to set up rivalry, we've been rivalry.

So, obviously, the parallels are

countries

competing against each other.

But when I went to Tokyo

I set up team CP

so I

only

supported people

with terrible positive

and if there was anyone with like Amy I'd be like

get a one

you're not a groom that I think is the spirit of the paralyzing movie right there

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

A man

from Yorkshire wants

changed its name

by Deepole to Yorkshire Bank

PLC.

A fascist

bastard.

Loveless.

Now, for avoidance of doubt, we're not saying that Yorkshire Bank PLC are fascist bastards.

No, there's only one man saying that.

And his name is

Yorkshire Bank

Fascist

Bastards.

Yeah.

So are we going to call him Mr.

Bastards?

Well, actually,

I read that two words friends.

He's known as Yorkshire.

Has he stuck?

Because this was a few, well, a few years ago.

1999?

The 90s, yeah.

So has he stuck with it, I wonder?

I tried to look and I can't find it, but I like to think that Yorkshire is out there

enjoying your show

and hating your show bank.

I reckon he's probably now called like United Utilities a fascist bastard or

you know the Royal Mail are fascist bastards you know he probably just keeps doing that right because actually he's changed his name to those what that six words so four of those are middle names so he will look like he's just called Yorkshire bastards well we don't know fascist bastards is a double barrel oh yeah it could be yeah yeah true yeah yeah yeah I always picture this going to a deep poll because I need to change my name to something let's say a lot of actors do it right where a name's taken so they pick something quite normal and you're standing in the queue and the person in front of you is like oh what are you changing it to and he's like oh Yorkshire Bank of Fascist Bastards.

Oh, that's pretty cool.

Guy behind you, what are you changing it to?

Oh, you know, Rainbow Sunshine Lollipops.

Oh, goddammit.

And I imagine I would just keep coming out with a different name.

I'd buckle under the.

Because you came in just to call yourself Don Schreiber.

Yeah, exactly.

I'm not a Dodd Schreiber.

I'm leading as Indiana Jones, Platypus, Orange Man, whatever.

I've got an idea.

I think after that,

we should all go

and change our names to a job.

Oh, that's a great idea.

I don't mind being Rosie Jones.

A lot more work.

His real name was Michael Howard.

Yeah.

Like the ex-conservative leader.

Was Howard big in the 90s?

Michael Howard.

Yeah.

That was when he was a minister, because the conservatives were in government at the time.

So, yeah, he was a big deal at the time.

So extra incentive to change.

from Michael Howard if you didn't want to be.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But the report from the time is so good because he asked for his balance at the bank, 69 pence, to be returned returned to him by check.

And a spokeswoman for the bank had to say, the relationship with Mr.

Howard has irretrievably broken down, and we very much regret that.

Alex said, sorry who you're talking to, Mr.

Howard.

Who's he?

Conservative leader?

No.

I love Rosie.

The link you sent over was from a Guardian article, which was called It's a Funny Old World, 1999, and this was published in November.

And just the other examples in there, just to read one or two of them.

There was this great one.

In Sydney, 120 men named Henry attacked each other during a My Name is Henry convention.

Henry Panty of Canberra accused Henry Papp of Sydney of not being a Henry at all, but in fact, an Angus.

It was a lie, explained Mr.

Papp.

I'm a Henry and always will be.

Whereupon Henry Papp attacked Henry Panty whilst two other Henrys, Jones and Dyer, attempted to pull them apart.

Several more Henrys, Smith, Calverwood, and Andrews, became involved, and soon the entire convention descended into a giant piss fight.

They hoovered up after that.

but final line the brawl was eventually broken up by riot police led by a man named Henry Shane

yeah it was Australia

Rosie you're from Yorkshire aren't you yes okay I'm uh proud to Yorkshire lady

and I think we get a reputation

of being

touted

but I wanted to call me

and say

actually

that reputation

isn't even true.

Because there was a survey done

that said

more than 60%

of Yorkshire votes

never used a railroad draft

and

three quarters of people

from Yorkshire put up to £200

a month inside

so we've got the money going on

wait are you a Yorkshire ambassador are you trying to

change is that why you're here you've got an agenda

all that says to me Rosie if they're not going into their overdraft and they're saving saving money, is that they're not spending any money.

Oh, yeah.

There's a weird fact I found which kind of combines the name changes and the money thing.

So

is it pronounced Connisborough in Yorkshire?

Yeah.

Connisborough.

Okay.

So there's a place in Yorkshire called Conisborough which has a road in it which is called Butthole Road.

Okay?

Love it!

They didn't love it.

It was named after probably named after a water bud that used to be in the road.

I mean a perfectly innocent, normal, not funny.

Funny, you know,

but three words, butthole road.

Imagine when that wasn't funny.

I know, I know.

Well, the thing is, they were getting a lot of prank calls.

They were getting

tourists turning up with their asses out and that kind of stuff.

Taxi drivers point blank refused to believe it was a written, so they wouldn't take you there.

There were tour buses turning.

I mean, it was

quite quiet tours, I guess.

But

one family actually sold up and moved in 2003 because they were so annoyed about the jokes.

And the new owner of the house, Peter Sutton, said he knows what to expect and he's looking forward to moving in.

I know.

Very sadly, for our purposes, they changed the name of the street in 2009 to Archer's Way.

Ah, swap.

But the council refused to replace the street sign for free, which I don't know if that plays into the other Yorkshire stereotypes.

Also, that's a village that I never been to, but I see signs about it called

the Land of Nod.

Really?

The Land of Nod?

Yeah.

That's quite a bit of a sound.

It's in the Bible, isn't it?

The Land of Nod.

It's the place east of Eden where they get sent off to.

There's a lot of times it's around the Bible.

Is that where they call it God's own country?

Yorkshire.

Yeah.

No, it's because they're deluded.

Oh, sorry.

Oh,

I'm starting something.

I'm from Lancashire.

Do you guys, yeah, do you have rivalries?

Yeah.

Have you heard of a little thing called the Wars of the Rovers?

Because

it's still ongoing.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Actually,

my more men that are there from Lanke.

Are they?

Oh, you're not.

Peace suffering hasn't occurred so quickly.

Sorry, Rosie, so you're from Bridlington, right?

Yeah.

They have 21 fish and ship takeaways within a five-minute walk of the centre of Bridlington, right?

And I call that a challenge.

The problem is, you have so much fish and chips, that also means you have a lot of seagulls.

Yeah.

I was reading the Bridlington Echo, and it's a recurring story about the problems with seagulls.

The Royal Mail had to warn residents that they wouldn't be getting their postal deliveries because seagulls kept attacking postal workers.

And there was a bank that was closed because nesting seagulls had caused a leak in the roof.

And the Bridlington fire station had to rescue a stranded seagull after it sat on top of a metal lamppost for too long in the winter.

So it's, you know.

Wait, is it.

Did it get.

Sorry, just to burrow down into that one a bit.

What was it frozen onto?

I'm afraid.

You know, like when you put your tongue on a metal.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well, apparently, if you're a seagull, it works with your feet as well.

Oh, no.

How do they rescue it?

Well, with the tongue, you usually pour like lukewarm water

imagine they did something similar.

I think those are great but I think what that shows for more than anything

is

shit all happen

in Britain.

Well there was a big story recently.

A woman called Susan Radford.

She was a grandma and she spoke out against sexually explicit sweets that were on sale on the seafront.

Do we have any examples?

Yeah, come on.

Well, you know, like rock, like solid rock.

Oh, you picked it up.

You mean like the shape of it?

In the shape of

penises throughout the sky.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

What do you think?

I knew.

I knew.

And she was so upset that

she got in touch with the local Anglican church to help her complaint.

And she said she's not going to visit Bridlington again until they get rid of the

holiday one day saw them and went I'm not coming back here again

good

we don't need her

I saw a couple of articles where it said Bridlington voted one of the worst towns in the UK and stuff but everyone who then went to write up on it came out going it's awesome here what are you talking about like who said that this was bad i haven't been myself so i don't know but the pictures it looks kind of pretty I mean,

I think Bridlington is very good if you're under

five

and you're over 85.

In between,

that's not a lot to do.

Pretty rough message to hear on your sixth birthday in Bridlington.

Get out now, Friday.

Get out.

Can I quickly tell you a couple of Yorkshire World Records?

Yeah, so very proud Yorkshire World Records.

Fastest time to make a litre of ice cream, which was 10 seconds by Andrew Ross.

But the ingredients did include liquid nitrogen, so I feel like there was some

cheat.

Yeah.

World's loudest clap.

Okay.

We're talking about the axe.

We're not talking about the disease.

Soapful, you could hear him screaming for miles.

I got the clap.

I once read, I don't know if this is true, that the name the clap

came,

this is awful, that they used to put your penis between two pieces of wood and then whack them together and it would like get the discharge out of the

we're talking about a seven-year-old girl here so I hope you're all very proud of yourselves.

I think that might be true even.

I'm not sure.

Why do you think that's to cure a different thing?

I think there's a thing called peoria where the penis starts to bend.

And it happens increasingly as you get older and it's incredibly painful.

And there are no ways of dealing with it.

Also, if your penis isn't flat enough, that'll be a little bit more.

Yes.

Anyway, look, can we get back to this poor kid?

Sorry, what was this?

So a young girl's.

Martha Gibson.

Martha Gibson.

She was clapping.

Her family noticed.

She's got an incredibly loud clap.

You know when some people, they really, they have these

hollow space in their hands.

And it's apparently the equivalent of a heavy heavy goods vehicle passing by, 73 decibels.

And they got someone from Guinness to measure it.

So a seven-year-old.

Yeah.

And maybe there's someone ladder who hasn't been officially Guinness approved measured.

But anyway, she was born in 1998, which means she's out there somewhere.

Yeah.

You know, she's in her 20s now.

I don't know if she's still...

She hasn't been to any of our gigs, I can say that much.

Can I say one last thing from these?

It's a funny old world.

So they're just such great stories.

A sex line caller complained to Trading Standards after dialing an 0891 number for an advertisement saying, Hear me moan, only to be played a tape of a woman nagging her husband for failing to do jobs around the house.

I look that.

And then a sign seen in a police canteen in Christchurch, New Zealand.

Will the person who took a slice of cake from the commissioner's office return it immediately?

It is needed as evidence in a poisoning case.

Just a good gag.

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

My fact is that, despite them being one of the largest fish on the planet, nobody knows where female whale sharks live.

So not the ocean.

Yes, the ocean.

Yeah, so.

Okay, next fact.

Solve that quickly.

Oh, wow.

Detective Dan investigates.

You are welcome.

They live in the ocean.

It's a big place.

It's a big place.

So just a shout out to Rich Horner who sent this fact in, not knowing that, you know, Dan...

would solve it so quickly.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

This is about whale sharks, which are absolutely massive.

And I don't know very much about them.

They're the largest shark.

Yeah.

So they're not a whale, they're a shark.

Yeah.

And they're only called a whale shark because they're just so huge.

Largest fish, I reckon.

He said one of the largest fish, but there can't be many bigger.

They're a sunfish, aren't they, which are massive.

I don't know.

They're in different dimensions, aren't they?

Like there's mass and then there's length and there's all of this, but they are absolutely huge.

A paven day

to much

free elephant

wow yeah and yet we don't know where the females live it's mad they're so scientists they know where young males are because they tend to frequent waters that are more coastal and um oh they're very harmless by the way should say they they they they're omnivores but they eat plankton and not if you're a plankton well that's a good point yeah and that there's one place where scientists know they're they're likely to find female uh whale sharks which is just off Darwin which is the northernmost Galapagos island.

But that's the only place that that they know they hang out.

And they, I mean, they live, you know, across thousands of miles of ocean.

They're just missing.

Just ladies.

I read that they actually

found one

confirmed pregnant whale shack.

And it was 10.6

meters

and she contained

300

puts

Yeah.

Holy moly.

But they don't all share bags.

Well,

thank goodness.

In a sense.

We know exactly where they all were because it would be knee-deep.

It would be like Bridlington and

fish and shape shops.

Wow.

Yeah, and they give birth.

They're called a placentally viviparis.

So oviparis is where you lay an egg.

Viviparis is live young.

But a placental viviparis is where you lay lay an egg inside yourself, it then hatches also inside you, and then you eventually give birth to the live young, which is hatching.

So 300 eggs will have hatched inside that mammal.

Those eggs are the biggest eggs on earth as well.

Are they?

Yeah.

I didn't realize that this might be common knowledge, but what makes

this is a whale shark?

What makes it more shark than whale?

What's the difference between a whale and a shark?

One's a mammal and one's a fish.

Yeah, but one other difference, which I didn't know, is that sharks are all cartilage and whales are bone.

That's what makes it the shark.

That's true.

Isn't that crazy?

No bones.

One thing, one interesting thing because of that is that you know how, or I know this because I'm old.

As you get older as a human, you kind of get stiffer a lot.

Well, sharks are the opposite.

Sharks start off being quite stiff, and then as they get older, they get floppier and floppier.

Really?

Yeah,

maybe

I am

gocheval post.

Maybe I'm a shot.

If you've got more than 300 teeth, that is another sign.

Oh no, I haven't got 200 and they're teeth.

She baked in their teeth.

Why your shots had teeth on their eyes?

Oh yeah, these

are called denticles or something like this.

Because sharks don't have eyelids.

So we're not there to protect them.

They have

what looks like little teeth.

Huh.

Yeah.

And their eyes stick out a tiny bit from their head, which is also a problem, obviously, in terms of protecting them.

So they have another trick, which is that they can retract their eyes.

Oh, really?

They just go boop.

When what?

I guess when danger threatens.

It's quite a long way.

It's about half the diameter of the eyeball.

They can just...

Wow.

I i love the andy noises for whenever animals do anything i remember when hippos retracted their testicles by going

exactly the teeth as well so these these teeth that are all over their eyes are all over their body as well they've got these denticles uh all over their body and i've read this description saying that it's a protection thing so if another shark bites them back without them really doing anything they're sort of biting the shark back itself because the teeth might hurt a bit i guess if you're biting into it

um that's just mad

you're biting something from your torso

it's nuts

they grow really quickly so they're born quite big but then they get really big so there was one in an aquarium that went from weighing 1.7 pounds to 333.4 pounds

in three years just over three years and I worked out in human terms that would be equivalent of a three-year-old baby growing to the size of the world's largest unicycle

You always go too far with these things.

You always think I can cram in one more fact here.

You can imagine that with the world's biggest unicycle.

Well I can imagine a range of things with the world's biggest unicycle because right now I'm imagining the Empire State Building with a unicycle leading up against the entire edge of it.

It's smaller than that.

How big is the world's unicycle?

It's 31 feet.

Oh, that's big.

I thought that's very big actually.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

31 feet.

As in 31 feet, but in the same proportions as a normal human.

So the trial wouldn't look like a unicycle, is what you're saying.

No, it would look like a normal proportioned human, but 31 feet tall.

Yeah.

God.

I think the unicycle thing is really thrown.

Thrown as well.

Has that been.

I've got more questions about the unicycle now.

Is it ridable this unicycle?

Yeah, it has to be ridable, otherwise, it doesn't get the world record.

Yeah.

God, that must be a terrifying unicycle ride.

Yeah.

How long must your legs be to ride that?

I think what they do is they keep the pedals quite close to where your bum is, like the same distance as your leg.

That's quite quite flattier bum.

I wouldn't have done it that way, but I think they've done it better, actually.

So we're set a big wheel.

No, it's mostly like a long stall.

It's mostly the pole, yeah.

It's really, it's a normal unicycle, but they've just extended the distance between the wheel and the pedals.

I've seen people do it on these record size.

It's petrifying.

Well, you would be able to know exactly how big one of these babies that don't exist would be because you've seen it yourself.

Yes, exactly.

So I was on board.

That was a fantastic analogy.

You need to watch more YouTube clips, you too.

Oh,

these pups we were talking about a bit earlier.

They are.

So those 300 pups, this is a really cool thing.

They're often inside the mother.

They're at different stages of development, but they're all from the same father, whale shark.

The mother can basically store sperm for ages and gradually fertilize it a little bit at a time.

Oh, yeah.

I just,

Yeah, don't so I think other sharks do it, and maybe even kangaroos, where they sort of like pocket away the sperm.

That's not what's in that pocket, is it?

I forgot.

It's full of sperm.

Wow, really?

Is that right?

So it's one, so just to get this right, it's one male whale shark has sex.

The female keeps all the sperm and then slowly has more and more children with that original.

I think it's one mating session and then

imagine a human to come down.

Show my neighbor at Seth for 20 years, baby.

Come in

with their baby.

Yeah, when you finally get the call that you've got an illegitimate child, it's like, you've got 20 illegitimate kids, and they're the size of the world's largest unicycle.

Yeah, and that drunken night in Bidlington?

Well, you're a.

Warren's 18,

11,

20.

Yeah.

They have this really interesting habit, whale sharks, which is they dive down about 2,000 meters.

Huge, it's the largest vertical range almost of any sea creature.

It's like 200 times the size of the whale's line.

Yeah.

Well, that really makes you think, doesn't it?

Imagine that.

How long would your legs have to live like that?

Okay, so.

And the thing is, we don't know why.

And also, when they sink, so scientists often tag the few that they can find to research, because that's a really useful thing for them.

But it shakes, basically, the tags don't work 2,000 meters down.

So they kind of can see in the dark as a result.

They've got special genetic mutation which allows them to see in the dark because they are so deep down.

But there is a.

And we don't know why they do it, because down there, there's less oxygen, there's less food, it's very cold, so they have to w warm themselves up a bit afterwards.

There is one theory, well, there are a couple of theories, I think, but this is from a whale shark scientist called Simon Pierce, which is that it might be so they can navigate better because they can get a better reading of the Earth's magnetic field closer to the crust,

which is effectively that they're going to get a better signal.

That's amazing, which I love as a sound.

It's like holding your phone up in the air to get a better signal.

That's exactly like that.

Wow, that's

super

amazing.

We don't know if they make noises as in vocalizations.

Oh, really?

Well, we kind of know that they don't, but there's a few scientists that think that they do.

And it's very confusing because they don't, as far as we can tell, have anything that would make a sound.

No vocal cords whatsoever.

The way that their teeth are set up is they can't do a grinding sound to create a noise that comes out as grinding.

So they don't have a swim bladder, which a lot of fish will use to control buoyancy, but also noise will come out of that that you'll hear.

So you don't have anywhere really that sound can come from, yet there is a scientist called Heather Barrett who has been recording them and a couple of times has got sound out of them.

So, it's a sort of mysterious thing.

She's been following this one male called Shredder.

She said she thought it sounded like two strokes over the ridged back of those wooden frog noise makers sold to tourists in every Mexican market.

Another relatable

example.

Oh my god.

But yeah, so big mystery to be solved.

Do the whale sharks make noises?

Very cool.

Yeah.

I was looking at some odd females in the animal kingdom.

Oh, yeah.

Because I found that there's a thing called a pouched rat.

And some female pouched rats can create a chemical that makes all the other females' vaginas seal up.

Wow.

Isn't that amazing?

Wow.

So is it...

A status?

Yeah.

Do you have to be the sort of lead?

You're spot on.

So like the most dominant female in a pack of pouched rats, she'll be the one who's mating.

And to stop any of the other females mating, she sends out this chemical and all the vaginas go, whoop!

And close.

You put it in terms I can understand now.

Isn't that amazing?

I find that astonishing.

Power move.

Yeah.

That's the craziest thing.

That's one of all the years.

That's one of the weirdest facts I think I've ever done on the show.

You should write Funny Old World for the Guardian.

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

Okay, my fact this week is that the place where Judas plotted to betray Jesus is about to become a ziplining site.

So cool.

Will they mark on the ground the point where Judas did the exact plotting so that as you zip line over it you can contemplate that?

That would be good.

Or maybe you have to pay 30 pieces of silver

to do it.

I don't know.

This is in Jerusalem and it's an area sometimes known as the Hill of Evil Council.

And according to tradition, this is where Judas plotted to betray Jesus.

And it's part of a more general sort of

attempt in Jerusalem to bring more tourists in and make it more tourist friendly.

Although some people say it as part of a bigger political strategy to make East and West Jerusalem less solid things and maybe make Jerusalem a more Israeli area.

I mean,

what do Ziplines do?

They cross borders.

Normally a good thing, but sometimes it can be controversial.

It can be controversial.

And according to some people, in this case, it is.

Can I check?

Sorry, James.

You said the place where Judas plotted to betray Jesus.

I thought,

well, maybe this is the place where Judas actually betrayed it.

The Garden of Gethsemane.

Garden of Gethsemane.

Yeah, that's where he did the actual betrayal.

So this is just like the pre-betrayal.

This is where he thought about it.

He was like, you know, you can't just turn up at the Garden of Gethsemane with no plan.

No, got that.

You need to think about it first.

If you fail to prepare to betray Jesus, you prepare to fail.

Yeah.

And this was in the Hill of Evil Council.

So it was where, I think it was where the Romans sort of came up to him and said, hey, want to do a bit of betraying?

Wow.

Wow.

And yeah, that was where that supposedly happened.

At the end of that meeting, Judas went, God, I wonder one day in the future how they're going to commemorate this spot.

A statue of me, what's it going to be?

And then, yeah, you can get on your ziplane and it'll take you down to a place called the Peace Forest,

which, as far as I know, doesn't have any biblical

story attached to it.

But then the developers are saying, well, it's nothing to do with this political thing.

It's actually because they're quite neglected areas.

A lot of drug dealers around there.

So,

how do you fight drug dealing?

With ziplines, yeah, yeah.

Make it easier to escape, yeah.

Put a ziplock on a zip line.

It's very hard to drop a single E into someone's mouth from a zipline, though.

That is the

challenge.

I've never been on a zipline.

I've been

have you?

Oh yes, I

did the channel for travel show.

But in hindsight, I think the producers were trying

to kill me.

Because

every day you get in that outfit and be like,

okay,

and now

you get winsky days.

Well, were the producers related to anyone you'd slagged off at the Paralympics the previous?

Yeah, was that okay?

They all had their knees, didn't they?

So

we did one at Pennsylvania Wales,

which is home to the long gets and a fat

set plan

and

it was incredible.

That one looks amazing.

I've seen clips of that.

Jenny or Claire was it?

Yeah.

Yeah.

How did you know?

It was on television.

I thought I just did it for fun.

But Jenny was

hilarious

because

obviously

there's a camera on us and I was screaming and yelling and never

time of my life.

We look back at Jenny's bed

and we were like is she asleep?

Like she was so zen.

Oh really?

That she said she enjoyed it.

I've been on the zipline only once and it was a tiny one.

It was one of those adventure places that you go to And

I don't know what went wrong.

I don't know how I'd done my harness up incorrectly.

It sort of trapped my testicles in a really painful way.

So I go down the ziplines screaming, and I don't make it right to the end.

So I can't get my legs onto the thing.

And I am screaming like it's really hurting.

But unfortunately, the person I did it with was my friend who's a comedian, Tom Davis, who's a very sinister sense of humor and got everyone to step back and let me just hang there while I was screaming.

There's a lot of photos that Tom has online of me screaming with my testicles trapped in a yeah, that's my only experience.

Yeah, and you were sort of you were hanging there, ironically, like a like a testicle, like a just like a huge testicle, but yes, your own testicles weren't free.

Exactly.

And that was the problem.

Yeah.

Makes you think, doesn't it?

Does make you think.

James, have you been on a zip line?

I have.

I was just thinking, I've always liked Tom Davis.

Yeah.

I like him even more yeah

yeah no i have on a few occasions

around this table right

yeah

we'll go jipline

i've been somewhere

i've been somewhere that has recently got permission for a zipline have you but i will when when i went there they hadn't they hadn't got the planning permission yet monista slate Mine in the Lake District.

Just wanted to give a shout out to them.

Okay, cool.

They spent 10 years trying to get permission for a zipline.

10 years.

Yeah.

Really?

And the council said, no, this is beautiful here, this old slate mine.

And I've got to tell you,

it's not the place that would suffer irretrievably.

Watch out.

He's slating it.

Well, I don't...

No, I enjoyed it.

I bought some souvenir slate there.

I had a really good time.

It's a fun place to go.

I was there by myself, and I had a really nice time, did a slate mine walk.

It was brilliant.

Lovely.

But you do think, the addition of one wire and the occasional person screaming as they pass.

Yeah, do you think?

Well, you could think of the amount of slate you could see in a short amount of time if you had that zipline.

Stop it.

Stop it.

You're trying to get me excited.

And it's working.

But it will be used to transport slate in quiet periods.

Is that right?

Yeah, yeah.

I believe that's the arrangement they've come to.

So it is going to happen.

Yeah.

Are you on a waiting list?

Of course.

On a slating list.

Oh, God.

Anyway, just wanted to add my own personal anecdote.

A very such a good story that I wanted to.

Top to all of us.

We know one of the dangers of going on a zip line.

I'm very glad you didn't get this.

Tash, Techo.

Yes, that's one of them.

The other one is slamming into sloths.

So I've watched a video of a young boy in Costa Rica going down a zip line, and behind him is either an instructor or a parent, I don't quite know who.

And you see the video, he's just going super fast, super strong through this canopy.

And then suddenly you just see this ball of fur and he slams into it.

And fortunately, the sloth doesn't lose grip, but they both stop.

And this sloth is just so confused and turns around.

Was it alright?

Yeah, well, it seemed to be okay.

It didn't drop.

Fortunately, it was the boy.

It was fine.

I saw that video as well.

And the person who's in charge, who's called Flavio Leighton-Ramos, he said the sloth or child weren't hurt.

They just had to wait for the sloth to get out of the way for around 15 minutes.

Yeah.

And you watch the sloth climbing away and there's moments where its hands not on the wire and it's taking so long you think.

Oh, it's on the wire?

Yeah, it's on the wire.

It's in the middle of the zip.

Yeah, so the zip line's going past a load of trees.

And so it's obviously been on one of the tree-hanging branches and sort of thought this was a branch.

Yeah.

Oh my gosh.

But it's literally, yeah, there's no tree near it for, I guess, 15 minutes because there's no way for it.

It's got to just

like cliffhanger.

It was amazing.

The intro a cliffhanger.

Isn't that where the zipline comes from, Costa Rica?

The modern zipline was invented there by a bloke called Donald Perry.

That's right.

He was trying to study the canopy and there was no good way of going from tree to tree.

So he turned up in 1979 with a crossbow, which is so cool.

That is cool.

Just started firing it around with a wire attached and bringing it up.

What a guy.

They called him Hombre Mono, which means monkey man in Costa Rica, because he was using, you know, just using all these wires to get around.

So cool.

Really cool.

And he didn't patent it, I don't think.

So someone else came along.

Well, but someone else came along and did do that.

It was a sort of a businessman who wanted to make money off it, and he was called Darren Hrenyuk.

And he's a Canadian guy.

And when other people then started using zip lines, he used to go around and cut the zip lines down.

What?

But he would do it, claiming it in a legal way.

So in some cases, he would bring, you know, a representative from a sort of official body to sort of say, yes, this is a legal thing.

And so he'd go cutting these things down, even though he didn't have a claim to the invention of it because it was very clearly from this Perry guy.

Yeah.

Wow.

God.

Can I tell you about a book called Jack Reynolds?

Yes, please.

Yeah.

Jack is the oldest man ever to use a zipline that we know of.

It was 2018.

He was 106 years old.

Very cool.

I know.

I've got to say, just a shout out to Jack Jack Reynolds.

He's very sadly passed away.

He died in 2020, aged 108.

Yeah, but in a bungee jump accident.

James, you joke.

Oh, no.

Well, no.

Yeah.

But the year before the zipline, when he turned 105, he won oldest person to ride a non-inversion roller coaster, which I love.

That was Twistosaurus at Flamingo Land in Moulton.

On his 104th birthday, he got oldest person to receive their first tattoo.

I remember this guy.

1912.

He was born.

It said Jack.

Didn't he go skydiving as well?

He went skydiving.

That was another thing he did.

I think that's a good excuse, like, if people say, why have you never had a tattoo?

And you say, well, I'm holding out to become the world's oldest man to have a spy tattoo.

Yeah.

And at the age of 108, sorry, at the age of 107, so the year before he died, he became the oldest person to, I think it was have a cameo in a soap opera.

He appeared in Hollyoaks.

Oh, no.

He was doing what?

He had one line.

He just said, Don't worry,

I'm very old and I've had a great life and you'll be all right and all of that.

It was his first acting role in a hundred years.

So he'd had a previous one when he was seven.

Yeah, no, yeah.

What was it on?

I don't know.

He was on a train approaching the Garde de Nor, wasn't it?

That's amazing.

Holly Oaks.

I know Holly Oaks as well, which is such a young show.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That IMDB, though, just with a hundred-year difference.

Two credits.

When was he on Holly Oaks?

That was the year before he died, so it would have been 2019.

Okay, cool.

Yeah, yeah, watch how there you are.

I have a friend who was, who actually died over Christmas in Holly Oaks.

Oh, yeah.

In Holly Oaks.

In Holly Oaks, yeah.

Yeah.

She got crushed by

a bookcase.

By a 108-year-old man who's parachuted to know it.

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 have said over the course of this podcast, we can be found on our Twitter accounts.

I'm on at Schreiberland.

James.

At James Harkin.

Andy.

At Andrew Hunter M.

And Rosie.

At Josie Ron.

And is there anything that you want to mention that's coming up?

Yeah, Ram, that one talk talks

a janitor comedy.com and if you want to

see me and telly

turn it on

and now we're there

Yeah, or you could go to our group account which is at no such thing or you can email us at podcast at qi.com.

That's it for now.

We're going to be back again next week with another episode, and we'll see you then.

Goodbye.