476: No Such Thing As Othello's Casio

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Hi, everybody.

Andy here.

Just before we start this week's episode of Fish, we wanted to let you note that our special guest this week is none other than Carrie Ed Lloyd.

Carriead has been on the show before, of course.

You may remember her very funny previous appearances.

This time, she's back and she's better than ever.

And the good news for those of you who are Carrie Ed fans is that she has just written a new book.

Carrie Ed is the host of the Griefcast, and the book that she's written is all about grief.

It's about her grief, about other people's, about what we do when someone we love dies.

And it's brilliant.

It's full of interesting facts for those of you who like facts.

And if you are listening to this, you probably do.

And it's also very heartfelt.

It's very personal.

It's very moving.

It's very funny.

It's all of these things and more.

So do check it out.

It's called You Are Not Alone.

And if you'd like to see Carrie out in a live setting, she is also part of the brilliant Jane Austen-themed improvised comedy group, Ostentatious.

And they are on every Monday at the moment at the Arts Theatre, just near Leicester Square in London.

It's a very funny show, I can personally attest to that.

Du Book first.

Okay, that's it.

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 relocated QI offices in Hoburn.

My name is is Dan Schreiber.

I am sitting here with James Harkin, Andrew Hunter Murray, and Carriead Lloyd.

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

And in a particular order, here we go.

Starting with fact number one, and that is Carriad.

Hello.

My fact is that if you are having trouble with your grief, it might be Bill Murray's fault.

Because he

kills and kills and kills again.

And then he finds people who are grieving and he hits them.

That's his thing.

No, because I should backtrack this and say that the reason it might be Bill Murray's fault is the very famous film Groundhog Day, which is based on the five stages of grief theory.

The five stages grief theory is a very, very famous theory, began in 1969, created by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross in her book on death and dying.

And it is really has been the most famous grief theory since then.

It is now contested heavily.

It's considered not to be that helpful or useful,

but it's still the griefu that most people encounter when they enter the world of grief.

It's the thing that people will come up to me still and say, oh, you know, I'm trying to do the five stages.

It's not really working.

And it makes me want to scream because it's, I can swear, I can't, yeah.

It's bullshit.

But the film Groundhog Day is based on the five stages, which I think helps to...

promote this idea that the five stages of grief is something that you can work through.

Grief is something that will end.

Can you give us the five stages?

I can then give you the five.

You wake up.

Yeah.

You wake up.

They're playing the same song as they were yesterday.

Yeah, yeah.

Yes.

Something about a weather report.

I haven't seen this film.

James, genuinely, have you seen Grandpa?

I'm afraid not.

Oh, you know what?

It is worth, it is one of those that does stand up to me.

James hasn't seen any films before about 2000.

Something like that.

Well, I've seen some.

There's a few that make it through.

Normally, I'm absolutely fine when you say you haven't seen a picture film.

And sometimes you'll say, well, I'm like, what, that?

And then I'm shocked.

I haven't seen it on TV much.

Is it on TV all the time?

In my childhood, it was a classic.

It was one of those ones that would be be on all the time.

But that was in Australia.

Okay, I reckon it's denial.

Oh, yeah.

Acceptance.

Denial of the next subject.

And that is where people struggle.

No, the five stages of grief

are denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance, or the worst boy band in the world.

Basically.

Yeah, and so that was Elizabeth Kubler-Ross who defined these five stages of grief.

But isn't she, I thought that when she came up with it, first off, it was to relate to the dying dying as opposed to grief.

Yes, yes.

But then secondly, she also said this doesn't happen in any particular order.

It's much like the facts on our podcast.

It's you can have you could have acceptance, but then later have denial.

But they always start with the celebrity, don't they?

So on her book on Death and Dying, written in 1969, written in 10 weeks, she had something like an article in Time magazine where they were like, wow, this woman's doing amazing work.

And then someone was like, you should write a book.

And she wrote the book and it became the the bestseller that it is yeah i mean you know you can write a book fast doesn't mean it's it will be bad it's just like it's very of its moment of its time um she was an amazing woman like she was a founder of the hospice movement she was working with people with aids in the 80s before that was considered like safe she was incredible and at this time she was working in hospitals where people were terminally ill mainly with cancer and this was a time when they didn't even use the C word they were just saying malignancy and they would also not tell people so for example if a wife was sick they would tell the husband, not the wife.

So, she would be being told, she'd be having like radiotherapy and she'd be told, it's to make you better.

But they'd all be going to her husband, she's not going to live.

So, she came into this situation and was like, hmm, this isn't great.

If you told people that they were dying, she observed when she did that and helped them through it, that they would go through five distinct stages and they would reach an acceptance.

And it would, I mean, that makes a lot of sense.

They would deny it, first of all, like, oh, no, I'm not really ill.

I'm fine.

I can't believe it's me.

Why am I dying?

Oh, God, why did you do this to me this is the worst thing actually okay I'm dying I'm going to pay off my debts and apologize to all those people so she was talking about people dying and I honestly in my research for my book couldn't find the moment that it became about grieving it just became about grieving because it was like well it's death it's same room

and it makes no sense for a grieving person.

Like anyone who's been through any loss will tell you, like you don't go through five distinct stages.

You get them pretty much all at at once, all the time.

And it can, you know, hit you five years later, two years later, ten years later.

So I meet so many people who are like, oh, God, I feel so bad.

Like, I need to get to acceptance.

And I haven't done it.

And I'm always raging because I'm like, that isn't what Gruis

looks like.

But the reason it works in a film is that's how films work.

They need to end and we all need to walk away thinking.

I mean, not all films.

Not all films.

Every film will do that.

Yeah.

I'm fingering a few mental suspects.

What?

Yay!

I haven't seen that film.

Hello.

Andy McDowell is in that as well.

Fingering a few mental suspects last one.

She plays the doctor.

She's really good.

We should just quickly say, because James hasn't seen Groundhog side day.

So Bill Murray is a journalist.

He goes to this town to do Groundhog Day.

He's the weatherman.

He wakes up in the morning and the day has begun again.

He's conscious of it.

No one else is.

And then the day.

So he's like Russian dollar their TV shows.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Happy Death Day is like, yeah, yeah, yeah.

But he reacts differently.

So, first of all, he's like, this isn't happening.

Then he gets furious.

And he starts experimenting with his day.

Like, well, if I do this, will I be here tomorrow?

And it doesn't matter what he does.

He tries literally everything.

It's a weird moment where he starts fingering.

But.

And he's trying to woo Andy McDowell's character.

And eventually

he learns everything about her, becomes perfect, and it still doesn't work.

Oh, that's a bit creepy, isn't it?

It's really creepy.

It's creepy.

That doesn't really stand up to today's standards.

But it is a great film.

It's a brilliant film.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Kubla Ross.

Oh, yeah, Cubs.

Cubs, Cubs.

She has a cool phrase.

She said later on, there's no such thing as...

Any guesses?

Death.

Yeah, death.

Oh, did she?

Yeah, she said, like, she...

Her podcast is great.

It's like a mixture of our podcast and the art podcast.

Yeah, yeah.

Oh, my God.

She said that she basically became so convinced there was an afterlife that she said, we don't need to worry about death.

There's no such thing as death.

That's why she was great at getting people into acceptance.

It's just like, don't worry about it, guys.

So the weird thing is in her original book, the 1969 one, she called the belief in life after death a form of denial.

So she actually thought that life after death was complete bullshit.

And then she went through a change in her life.

So she came to be spiritual.

Yeah, so she met a patient in a hospital who was called Mrs.

Schwartz.

And Mrs.

Schwartz had been pronounced dead.

And then hours later, she was found alive by a nurse.

She was wondering the stream.

So she went to interview her to say what happened.

And she recounted that she said, I remember everything that happened.

I remember being above my body.

I remember a joke that the doctor told in the room when I was laying there dead, all that stuff.

And that is what made it.

That's appropriate.

Report.

Report that.

So Kubla Ross basically went, oh, this is interesting and became obsessed with it.

And she even went to have, as it were, out-of-body experiences through a guy called Robert Monroe.

And then as she got further into it, she believed that she had spirit guides that she was contacting, one of whom was Mrs.

Schwartz, who did later die and then came back to sort of instruct Kubla Ross about her ideas about the afterlife.

And this woman is in charge of most known grief theory

known to humanity, like Western culture.

Yeah.

So one thing you write about in the book about Kiriat is the Victorian mourning rituals and how, although they were very starchy and very formal, they did give you a kind of structure.

And then you mention all the different paraphernalia of mourning.

Yeah, they were mad.

Yeah, I mean, it was really a culture highly focused on that.

I can't remember if you read about this morning stationery.

Yes.

Oh yeah, that's really common.

Yeah, yeah, morning stationery.

You get a black-edged card and when you receive that you know that the person who sent it to you is

I was thinking like rulers and all those silly stuff.

They had in Regent Street, Jays of Regent Street was basically like the primarch of grief and death.

So you was where you went and got all your clothes from and all your hats and like gentlemen's funeral scarves had to be a certain length.

There was like a book that told you like everything, like from the length of the bow around your hat to the staff to the colour of the ribbon on your door to your morning jellies.

They like they kind of like made an industry of it.

So what are morning jellies?

They're jellies that you have when you're morning.

Would they be light black?

I don't know actually.

I never saw one.

I just read about it in the book.

But is it for serving at a wake or something like that?

I guess serving after a funeral, yeah.

Or maybe you have it like on a Sunday when you're feeling gloomy.

Well jelly used to be, I mean if we're talking London, there used to be pubs where if you saw someone eating jelly a woman that would mean that she was uh available for sexual experiences

stop eating jelly in public

purchased sexual experiences

it wasn't like a traffic light park

no but if you're eating uh strawberry jelly yes

it's like handkerchief culture and yeah yeah um muffin knocker knocker muffling what is this

knocker muffling what's a knocker muffling so that it wouldn't be too loud to upset people of the house door knocker on your house.

Oh, yeah.

You'd muffle it if someone's died.

Yeah, and you'd also expect you'd have different colours as well.

So if it was a black crepe ribbon outside, it meant adult.

And it was white, it meant a child had died in this house, and it would be muffled.

And there was so, yeah, there was like it would cost you so much money to do a proper considered funeral.

Like, I think they read even a middle-class funeral at the time would have been like a thousand pounds.

Like, it was really.

And they had funeral clubs where you'd all put money in every week so that you could get like the funeral you like that person deserves.

Because if they didn't, they considered their soul would wander around forever, basically.

So it's like your pension, you know, you'll put in every week, and then when you need the money, you can take it.

Like a turkey club.

Like a turkey club, but for the dead.

Depressing.

Yeah, turkey's dead, I suppose.

But they don't get anything out of it.

No, you're right.

But they don't pay it, I suppose.

Would you have, like, you know, for a wedding, you have like a present list?

Do you was there a similar thing where I'd like this at my funeral?

And you can see it's a little bit more fun.

I think it was pretty set.

It reminds you of a certain standard of funeral.

Yeah, it was pretty set.

And you just go.

Can I just tell you one very tangential thing about

knockers, door knockers?

This is tough.

Because you told me it was tangential, but here we go.

So I was reading about knocker muffling, and then I just sort of went on a rabbit hole of

door knockers.

You know that in old Tehran, right,

houses would have two door knockers.

One was square and heavier, and the other was more rounded.

Can you guess why?

One for the ladies?

It's one for the ladies.

No.

It's one for the men and one for the ladies.

The men use the big square one and women use the rounded one.

And then you know who's knocking at the door.

And so then the woman of the house might not answer the door to a man.

That's for cultural reasons.

They might also, I read this, they might disguise their voice behind the door to ask the business of who's coming around.

Oh, is that like saying, oh, they've got some big men here, but they're going to beat you up if you come in.

Is that how you do it what you do, Jim?

That's what I say every time someone.

Just in case they might be coming in to attack you.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's good to let people know what's happening inside.

At an imaginary dog.

Down, Brutus, down!

That kind of thing.

Yeah, that really works.

That's when Julius Caesar's coming around, isn't it?

That's that great Rasheen Connerty routine, and she did it in her sitcom where you order too many pizzas, and the pizza guy's up with six, and you go, Yeah, it's here, it's here,

I'll bring it in in a minute.

And then they're like, It's just for you.

You could make it bigger, couldn't you, Andy, and have lots of different knockers, like a knocker for your delivery guy, and the knocker for a Jehovah's Witness person or whatever.

So don't come in, I've got some big men in here.

I don't want to know about eternal salvation.

And so how long was mourning in?

It depends.

Okay.

So they had a rule for every single situation.

So like rule for like your second cousin, your second cousin's child, your sister, your, but for the most common people know it's like for partner.

So a widow would have a year in mourning where she had to wear black and then you go into half mourning and quarter mourning.

And if you in that year got married, you were allowed to like not wear black for the day and then back in your black dress the next day.

So you could have a new husband and be like, sorry, babes.

Do you remember Alfred?

He was great, wasn't he?

I'm still pretty sad.

When did we drop it?

Was it like a moment where we dropped this for some reason?

Well, that's really interesting, Dan, because I don't think we have dropped it because I think we still have an expectation that we expect people to be over things by about a year.

And if it goes past a year to two years, and with grief, we're a bit like, oh gosh, three years.

Like, she's still upset.

And then, of course, you get the black armbands, which were still going up.

Like, my mum wore a black armband when her granny died in the 60s.

But I would say she's like the last person I've spoken to who you still get soccer players doing.

Yeah, so soccer.

I'm sorry, my brain went football in my head.

So it's really like sports people and like military stuff still wear them.

But other than that, obviously, you used to just wear it day to day.

And that comes up a lot on my podcast that people wish there was still a thing you could have that would mean like sort of handle with care.

Because it's like you don't want to be a society that says you have to wear a black armband.

But for some people, you know, if you're going to a shop, you're on a tube.

It's a bit like baby on board.

It's like, I'm in grief, like, just be careful with me.

Like, if I'm in a shop or like you have badges, don't you?

I did sell badges, yeah, but um, I couldn't keep up with the demand.

What did it say?

It said, Please be kind, I'm grieving.

And it had two little hands, and then one said, um, DDC member was in Dead Dad Club

with DMC.

And it was a little amazing artist called Camille Bassini who designed them.

It was like a little purple ghost with a hat with a flower.

DMC,

Dead Mum's Club.

No, I was thinking of run DMC.

That can't be.

I thought were.

They're dead.

They're dead.

It's like that, and that's the way it is.

So, yeah, it's a shame in a way that we don't have

Ron DMC.

Because you never know what anyone's going through at any time, do you?

You do, yeah, yeah.

Although I can see why, you don't, like, the Victorians were very strict, obviously.

Like, you had to do it.

And if a woman couldn't, you would know where you'd be allowed to walk around in...

like, you know, a bright yellow dress the next day.

I think we'd have to draw a line on where, what kind of badges you'd have.

Because I definitely would have like, be gentle, lost an eBay purchase.

Like, you know, like a small badge, isn't it?

I've only got facts about groundhogs now.

Let's talk about groundhogs.

Oh, groundhogs, yeah.

Do you mind?

No.

No.

Groundhog Day is about groundhogs, is it?

Because there's a special groundhog who comes up, and if he can see his shadow, it's going to snow for a month or so.

If you've seen the film Groundhog Day, all this stuff.

They get him out of his little

nest.

Punk Satani Phil.

Punk Sutani Phil.

But there are loads of Groundhogs.

That's the interesting thing.

I mean, all over, lots of places have a groundhog celebration.

I was just wondering if punksatani is the most difficult word that everyone knows how to pronounce

from the film Groundhog Day.

But it's basically if he they get him out and if he turns around and sees his shadow then there'll be another six weeks of winter and if he doesn't then the spring will come.

How do they know if he sees it?

Well what I read was in the real Punksatani, there are two scrolls and if Phil picks the scroll that says he sees a shadow, that's how they know he's seen a shadow.

So there's these secret scrolls.

Do they look up the long-range weather forecast and lace one of them with groundhog food or whatever?

They ask to.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

It takes place on Gobbler's Knob.

I read it.

Do you know where the name Gobbler's Knob comes from?

There's two theories.

If you get either of them, you can have a point.

Goblins.

Oh, no.

Knob.

No, no.

No, no.

Okay.

Was it somebody was gobbling a man's knob and they said, we should call this gobbler's knob because she's always there.

She's always doing that.

Jelly Sue?

Yeah, Jelly Sue.

Jelly Sue didn't stick with me.

That's not one of the two theories.

Oh, wait,

too often.

You stick with your theories, I'll stick with mine.

Oh, is it where people ate on mountains?

Yeah, like a knob is just like

a hiller.

Well, that's why I thought goblin's knob, because it looks like a goblin's knob.

No, no, no.

Your theory was not that bad.

Oh, oh, oh.

Oh, he's going to get it.

So it's where the old shoe mender used to ply his trade, Cobbler's Knob, and slowly it became Gobbler's Cob.

Why?

Why did they start going?

Because he gave a lot of blow jobs.

Yeah, yeah.

I'm going to call it goblin.

Offer to sell shoes.

Is that like a happy ending for massages, but in the shoe cleaning trade?

You know when he comes down to measure your feet?

Send me down

while I'm down here.

No, it's because a group of turkeys might have lived there.

Gobble, gobble, gobble.

And then another theory is like Dan said, maybe they were hunters, and then that's where they would eat their food after the hunt.

So they would gobble up the food.

But I think the turkey is the most likely they were goblins.

Yeah, that is good.

I didn't know Groundhogs.

The Groundhogs are amazing.

Yeah.

Sure.

No, they really are.

So I didn't know they were the same as a woodchuck.

And it's the largest member of the squirrel family.

What?

Okay.

I know.

And they're brilliant diggers.

So they dig.

They'll dig several feet down in a row, right?

They live in burrows.

Several feet down, then a few feet up, and then they level out and go along.

That's clever.

And then off the side of that main tunnel, they'll dig several different rooms, one of which is the toilet room, and they only go to the loo in there, and then when it's full, they just seal it up and they dig a new toilet elsewhere.

They're very clean.

Yeah, I was going to say the first thing that you said, they go down, then up, is that so they don't drown?

It's to avoid flooding.

Yeah, right.

What do they do if they go to dig another room and they're like, oh no,

that's three years ago's toilet.

Glise up, close up, close up.

You have to hit it eventually.

There's how many rooms?

How long is it?

I guess you keep moving the tunnel down.

You really have to hide that when selling it, wouldn't you?

To the next.

What's that?

Oh, Joe, Joe.

What's behind these walls?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

We want to extend.

No, you can't.

You can't extend that.

Okay, it's time for fact number one, and that is Karriette.

Boom.

Boom.

Brilliant.

It's actually time for fact number two, and that is James.

Okay, my fact this week is that there's a bus tar in Hong Kong which is specifically run for people to to sleep all the way through.

Lovely.

Lovely, lovely idea.

Sounds great, doesn't it?

Is it because people are tired in Hong Kong?

That's part of the reason.

What do you think, Andy?

Otherwise, it'd be a terrible place to do this.

We just get people up and they're all like, no, I'm quite awake.

We don't sleep in Hong Kong.

Why can't they get a normal bus?

I love sleeping on the bus.

Why can't they just get a bus tus?

Well, they could.

Yeah.

Which nice, doesn't it?

And so they might wake you up and kick you off.

Oh, I see.

The idea came from this guy, Kenneth Kong.

He worked for a bus tour organizer.

And he was chatting to one of his friends.

And his friend said he was really stressed.

You know, he's got a really busy job, couldn't sleep at night.

But whenever he traveled to work on the bus, he would always kind of fall asleep.

Oh, yeah.

And Kenneth Kong thought, this is amazing.

This is such a good idea.

I'm going to do a bus tour where people are just encouraged to sleep.

And unlike a normal bus ride, we're going to give you a goodie bag with an eye mask, some ear plugs.

Maybe we'll get a very soporific tour guide or something.

That's a good idea.

But actually the first time they did it, they had the upper deck for people who wanted to sleep and the lower deck was for people who wanted to have a tour guide chatting to them.

Which feels like the wrong way around because if you want to see the sites, you want to be on the top level.

Exactly.

Really good point.

But anyway, they noticed that a lot of people...

found that more difficult and didn't sleep so now they're making two separate bus tours one for sleepers and one for not sleepers i also read as well that i don't know if they do this every single time but they might start with a huge two-hour long lunch.

So that's very good.

You go into a food cat early as you're getting on the bus.

Oh, nice.

You could do this for lots of things because there are lots of activities where you're put in a, like the cinema, for example, or theatre.

That you go to sleep in a.

I'm saying that it's very easy to fall asleep, especially if the thing is not good.

I once went to a Bach concert, which is, you know,

it's really sort of deep and sort of quite long notes and stuff.

And about halfway through, I looked around and literally half the men, mostly, I must say, but they were mostly asleep.

Yeah, yeah.

It was really.

I used to go to lunchtime concerts at Wigmore Hall.

And I thought, oh, this is an exciting London thing to do.

But it was full of people like head-nodding.

Just like, oh, this is so nice to have on my lunch base.

It's really hard to.

Yeah, you could get like 15 minutes.

That's headbangers, you know, at mail concerts.

They're actually just about to fall asleep.

Trying to wake it up.

Wake up, Gary.

This is about to stop.

I once went to Brian Blessard's house and I was hanging out with him.

And he tells stories that go on and on.

And it was just me and him sitting in his adventures shed that he has.

And he was, I was so tired, and he was telling me stories, and I fell asleep.

And I remember waking up with that sudden start, and I looked up, and he was still talking at me.

Amazing.

And we were definitely way further away than where the story was when I fell asleep.

Wait, we could hire Brian Blessard to go around to people's houses.

Oh, yeah.

He must have some audiobooks you can listen to.

Oh, I was looking up good bus tours.

Yeah.

Oh, okay.

There was a tour bus for dogs in 2017 in London.

But it was a bit of a.

Well, okay, it was the Route Master K9.

And there was a live commentary of dog trivia from around London.

Okay.

Fine.

But and the route was between places where you could go for walkies.

But wait, so the owners with the dogs?

Yeah, that's the thing.

There are dogs in Moscow who get on the tube, who live kind of down on the tube and sort of jump on between stops.

Like the pigeons do.

I don't believe that.

I've seen them.

I've seen them.

I've seen them.

Okay, guys, pipe down.

I've done research on this, which I didn't get to read out a few weeks ago on the podcast.

It was all about can pigeons get the tube, and do they know they're doing it?

And I literally saw the pigeon do it there.

No, no, we didn't, because he read our research.

A pigeon can be on the tube, but it does not have a conception of the map, in my opinion.

I've seen it.

Okay, but you know, there's the...

We've also seen the pigeon tube.

No, but listen.

Let me say it.

There's the tube bit that's overground.

So then it's getting on at one stop and going two stops and literally walking on, waiting by the door, and then walking on.

That's what I saw as well.

So it's like, it's not doing underground tube.

It's like, oh, if I get on at East Finchley.

I'd be more impressed to see a pigeon on the underground tube than I'd like to see.

Yeah, that would be

dangerous and upsetting for the pigeon and distressing.

It would be fine.

It sort of slides down the escalator.

What we've seen is much more normal.

An outdoor platform, pigeon gets on, rides and stops, gets off.

For me, it's so normal it's banal.

It's actually come round to banal.

I can't even accept it.

I don't wonder what you think, Andy, now that you've read this research.

Are you trusting your own research?

Are you believing the eyewitness reports?

I've literally seen it.

I just want to close this up.

I believe what you've both seen.

You've both seen a pigeon hop onto a train, the train goes stop or two, the pigeon hop off.

Wait by the doors.

Wait by the doors.

No distress, no panic.

Mine did the gap.

Pressing button.

That button when it's the open button.

That's what makes it clear that the pigeon's stupid.

The doors operate anyway.

Not on the overground.

Not on the overground.

I didn't see overground.

I saw underground.

Underground train.

I saw an underground.

Well, the point is, I don't think...

I think they might be hopping on looking for food or something.

I don't think they're...

But it didn't do any food accomplishments.

It wasn't commuting home.

Andy, this is what I saw.

It just waited by the door.

It was playing candy crush.

It literally got on, stood and faced the doors like a commuter.

Everyone was like, oh my god, pigeon.

Doors goes, and then it went two stops so that it didn't have to do.

The two is more convincing.

If it was the one thing,

it did like East Finchley,

to Finchley Central, like to West Finchley.

So it went out to North London and then got out.

Mine had a baby on board now.

If it's the several days in a row within the same half an hour period, I will believe you've got a commuting pigeon.

Okay.

So

what were we talking about?

Buses, vaguely.

Oh, Bosso, dogtar.

You started this, Jason.

You said there are dogs on the Vosco Tube.

Sorry.

Can I just ask on your dog tar?

It's basically a way for dog walkers to get from one walkies area to another one, and they gave them stuff in the meantime.

I think so.

I think it was around for a few days as a kind of to promote the firmware.

Are your Russian dogs commuting there?

They're just living there.

I think that's the idea, is that they do go from one place to another where they know they can get food from different places, but I can't really quite remember.

Yeah, I believe that.

I believe that.

Oh, that's fine.

James has never seen it.

But that's

when I went to Moscow,

I've been a few times, but whenever I've gone, I've tried to look on the underground for these dogs and I've never seen them.

Well, the anti-Sopoliji.

I was reading about

the

bus drivers of history.

Okay.

One significant and

very controversial bus driver was a guy called James Blake.

You know him?

Oh yeah, of course.

Rosa Parks.

He was the Rosa Parks bus driver.

Here's the thing I didn't know.

So he was called James Blake.

It was 1955, this happened.

The most famous incident.

But she and Blake had beef already.

Oh, I had read this somewhere.

Because she was like a known activist, wasn't she?

Like, that was a big thing.

But 12 years earlier, in 1943, she got on a bus, paid, but she'd got on the front entrance.

And

Blake was the driver.

And he said, no, you've got to get off and get on the sort of back doors of the bus because that was the rule, segregated buses.

And she got off to, for God's sake, all right, she got off to get on the other entrance, and he drove off, which was a thing they would do sometimes as a kind of cruel prank.

So she avoided his buses for years, you know, when she saw he was the driver.

And then that day, she didn't notice that he was the driver.

She was tired, she was preoccupied.

And so that's what happened.

But he was a bus driver for 19 more years.

19 more years.

Yeah.

Wow.

Well, because it were quite, her story was one that sort of hit the right moment at the right time.

There were quite a lot of stories of people who were refusing to step up from their seat and go to the back.

I think even Rosa Parks' story slightly displayed.

Yeah, I was going to say, she wasn't tight.

She knew it was all planned and they used her because she looked quite mild-mannered and they thought that it would be like

you know a way for it to get on the bus and look like she wasn't going to cause trouble.

But they absolutely, she was a super intelligent, brilliant part of the organisation and it was very, very well they knew like they were going to do it.

And Luther King was part of that group.

Yeah, yeah, she genuinely actually only know that because of a Doctor Who episode from the Jodie Whitaker period.

So that probably needs a fact check.

But But I think they would have got that right.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, a lot of seminal moments have happened on buses.

So, George Harrison joined the Beatles on a bus.

Did he?

Yeah, so he was sitting on top, top deck of a bus.

On top of Paul Bacon's head.

He was giving him a shoulders ride.

Paul already knew him, and that's where he introduced properly to John Lennon.

And John said, Can you play a song that was a very difficult song to play on guitar?

He played it, nailed it, and that's when they said, You're in the band.

So that's important.

George Michael wrote Careless Whisper on the bus.

I'm never gonna dance again.

Guilty feed have got no N17.

The

original lyric.

I was a tour bus guide.

Tour bus guide?

That sounded wrong.

No, I was.

That's the right way.

Tour guide who was a tourist guy.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I was like, tour bus guide in the way.

Here's another tour bus.

Yes.

If you look over there, another tar bus guide pants.

So many tour buses.

I was a tour guide on an open top bus for some time in London.

And I got in trouble a lot.

Yes.

For what?

Making stuff stuff up?

No, I never made stuff up.

I

made a joke about the royal family, and someone wrote and complained and said I should be ashamed of myself, and I disgraced my country.

Wow, it was about Prince Andrew.

It wasn't.

At the time, that sort of thing wasn't known.

It was about Prince Harry taking drugs, which was absolutely known.

And it was a really crap joke that every tour guy did on St James's.

So the shops have royal warrants.

So that's where they have a crest in the window that means the royal family shop there.

And the whole of St.

James's, there's like, oh,

Berry Brothers, Lobb and Co.

See, there's all like the boot makers, the hat makers, and there's also a pharmacy on St James.

And you say that's where the Royal Family get their drugs.

Although I think Prince Harry probably gets hits from somewhere else.

It's a terrible joke.

It's fine.

And then they...

You got your first comedy review.

We got up at Buckingham.

I said, oh, this is Buckingham Palace.

And the couple marched up to me and they said, we're getting off.

I said, oh, okay.

They said, we don't want to.

I said, oh, what's happening?

And so it's you.

We're getting off because of you.

And I was like, oh, what?

She said, what you just said about the Royal Family was so disgraceful.

And then, when the letter, they said I had disgraced Prince William.

So they hadn't even been listening to my joke.

You wouldn't make that joke about Prince William.

It was so annoying, but yeah, I got in quite big trouble.

Do you apologise?

No, they're gone.

They're long gone.

What do you mean?

Unrepentant.

I'm glad you weren't my boss, Andy.

Do you know a London bus?

Just a London bus.

Yeah, yeah.

Do you know how long they are in terms of how many London buses they are?

They're one London bus.

No, they're 1.2 times the length of a London bus.

Okay.

And that's because they're new Route Masters.

And if you ever look at, like,

whenever anyone says, this is so stupid, but whenever anyone says, this is like 10 times the length of a London bus, they're talking about the old London buses.

Oh, talking about the Route Masters.

Yeah.

But they've got the new ones, which are 1.2 times the length of the brilliant.

I have a genuine interest in that.

Do you know?

Like, I loved...

I'm the age of remembering Route Masters, and they were great.

When you could jump on the back of the bus, obviously, it wasn't safe, but it was brilliant.

Yeah, you never had to worry about missing a bus, you just ran.

You could still jump on.

No, because they closed them all because it wasn't safe.

Do you remember the old ones that had no door?

Totally open.

Yeah, yeah, no, sorry.

I've jumped on the back of one when the door was open.

Wow, Annie, you're so lucky.

You jumped on a bus and it was open.

You didn't just run headfirst into glass.

I was sneaking off one bus and onto another one.

It was after a party.

Anyway, I don't want to go into my show is life.

You know, we're familiar with the Spice bus.

Yeah.

from spice world the movie you can you can uh you can rent it now can you stay in it overnight

are you is this a hint for your next birthday

is it still so

it's on the artist it's tedious i haven't seen this movie but is it like i think it's like union jacket that's not that's not missable you have to watch spice world

meatloaf is the driver is it still does it still look the same as it did in the

yes it's still the exterior looks the same but the interior unfortunately obviously in the film the interior was this huge three-story.

It couldn't have been what it was, yeah.

And it's just a possibility.

Was it like bigger on the inside kind of thing?

Yeah,

exactly.

Well, they never, I don't think they made us kind of space-time definition about how big it was.

Just kept showing you different rooms in it, like a groundhog's nest, basically.

Exactly,

yeah.

There's one more full of shit from the Spice Girls than if you tap through.

Oh, God.

We spoke about the Dave Matthews band a few months ago.

Oh, yes.

Did you know the Dave Matthews band?

I know Dave Matthews band.

There was this thing in 2004 where they dumped 800 pounds of raw untreated sewage into a river, the Chicago River, while they were crossing a bridge on their bus.

It's on their tour bus, yeah.

It was on their tour bus.

And unfortunately, they were crossing a slatted bridge and there was an open-top tour boat passing by beneath the bridge.

Can I just say it was the driver rather than the band?

I understand.

Yeah, to be fair, I was like the band were there like, now.

So anyway, that was a huge thing.

It led to a lot of

I think there were apology letters.

So they

Yeah, they apologise.

But I was reading about what happens, how you release what they call the black water, you know, the

sewage from the thing.

Right.

And, you know, buses have changed a bit since then.

I think they've been altered a bit.

But I was reading an interview with the bus driver from 2016 about how you release it.

And there is a switch that says dump, which they keep.

Supposedly, they keep it by the driver's left elbow, which feels risky.

Thanks to the indicators.

But these days, like a nuclear button, there is a plastic cap over the switch.

So you have to make a conscious decision to leave the cap before you get to the capital.

I mean, we all need that in our lives.

Make a conscious decision to drop your shit.

They should put the key for it inside a person.

Sorry.

This is a callback to something the other day.

Okay.

Yeah, the idea of a nuclear button,

you would put the key inside a person, so they had to kill the person to get to the nucleus.

And the president had to do it himself.

He has an initial.

But how's he going to keep that inside him?

Without shitting it out.

It'll be under his skin.

Oh, okay.

I thought you meant like swallow it and then go through the shit.

Get the cake.

In this case,

sir, the missiles are going to be in two minutes.

President is sieving a food.

I'll find it.

I'll find it.

The keys coming in sweet card.

Are you sure you want to lose up the plastic cover?

Not yet, not yet.

Oh, God, sorry.

Okay, it is time for fact number one.

Okay, I'm sorry.

They say our love won't pay the rent.

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

My fact is that for many years the secret of the British Army's balloons was known by a single family of Alsatians.

By which I mean people from Alsace.

Were they all on a bus together?

This is a thing where...

So the ballooning

took off.

If only the people at home could have seen the way that you've built this.

I know, the face.

You lifted up the plastic button and you dumped.

You pressed dump on your joke.

It took off?

I thought,

oh my God, I could do it.

I could go for it, couldn't I?

They'll all laugh and we'll just move on and it won't be made a big thing of.

The British Army, they were experimenting.

They were making hydrogen balloons.

And this is in the 1880s.

So it's 100 years or so after the Montgolfier brothers and so on.

And hydrogen balloons are great in lots of ways.

But there's a problem.

Hydrogen molecules are so tiny that they escape from almost any bag that you keep them in.

You keep them in the bag.

I'll put them in the Saisi bag.

It's the time I got home.

Exactly.

And so they were looking for a way to improve the balloons.

And there was this family, the Weinling family.

They were a family of Orthodox Jews.

They came from Alsace in France.

And they had their own effectively secret proprietary method of making these balloons and they'd made some for a scientific toy shop in the east end of London which is cool called Mr.

Heron's and the commander of the first royal balloon factory was called Major Templar he hired the Vineling family he bought their secret effectively and then for a few decades Britain had this big advantage in balloon technology because the Vinelings were on board and they were kind of supervising the first balloon factory.

They had to be persuaded to tell other people how to make the balloons because they originally, it seems like they wanted to make the balloons themselves.

We'll do it it all, we'll do it all.

We just don't want to tell anyone.

I cannot understand.

Yeah, that makes sense.

It's pretty amazing as well.

So it was a guy called Henry Coxwell who was walking through this scientific toy shop and saw this thing.

Can you imagine, like, during the war effort, you're looking for ways, and suddenly here's just a toy for kids that is going to give you the great advantage of the war.

And what did the toy do?

It was like, it was like a little hot air balloon.

It was a balloon, yeah, yeah.

And it worked, basically.

Wow.

And the method that they used was a thing called Gold Beater's Skin.

So it's used, it's made from the lower intestine of a cow.

And what they would do is they would stretch out the lower intestine.

And because, as you were saying, Andy, nothing could escape, molecules can escape, is what they found.

But what's amazing is that when they were when they make the balloon itself, you wouldn't sew it together.

So sewing might be a problem because there's micro holes that, if you miss whatever, something can escape.

But with this intestine skin, all you had to do was make it a bit wet, a bit damp, and then it would just stick.

And that would be strong enough to make it

collapse.

It's overlapping, and it just.

how did the Wilings find this out?

Like, I'm sorry, how did this one family be like, oh, you know, that cow intestine we've got hanging around?

Let's stretch it out, dry it, and put, like, what was going on in that family?

It's Mikey's birthday.

Have we got balloons?

Like, sorry, that's what made me laugh so much because it's amazing.

It's like really amazing what they did and discovered.

But

what was going on in Alsace?

Well, they were already using this stuff for gold beating, which is why it's called gold beatings of skin, right?

But what are they using it in gold beating for?

So you would put your gold in between two pieces of

intestine or paper or whatever, and then you would whack it, whack it, whack it to make it really, really, really, really thin.

And so then you would have gold leaf instead of a gold bar.

Oh, and that's why it still comes in as two bits of paper, the gold leaf.

It does, yeah.

Do you buy gold leaf?

You can buy it like for decorating.

People use it for like if you want to do like a gold effect on tables or on food or on like.

I have had biscuits covered in silver.

that's a the blue name

silver what they're indian they're um oh it's silver leaf yeah they're yeah silver leaf that they're really they're popular it's not sorry i'm sound like an emperor there

he's doing well with his silver biscuits and two knockers

But the amazing thing is about this gold beating, right?

So you're making gold leaf out of a piece of gold and you could get a sheet of gold that was two millimeters thick and then knock it down, make it thinner, thinner, thinner, so that it was 100 nanometers, right and it's hard to say what that is but it's basically it's like if I was squashed into

a flat sheet which is the thickness of a human hair they're not gonna do that James they're not gonna do that to you are they that's well you know I get hit by a bus

but yeah that's how much it's they reduce the thickness of a sheet of gold by 99.996%

and they do it using this paper this ox you know this gold beater's paper

but that's the second process.

To get it down to two millimeters, you need to put it through a different two pieces of paper, and that's called Montgolfier paper.

And that was the same paper as the Montgolfiers used to make their balloons.

Isn't that amazing?

So, the first section of gold beating was Montgolfier paper, and the second stuff was this Goldbeater's paper.

Because the Montgolfiers, they came from a family of paper makers, and that's how they got into hot air ballooning, because they had all of this amazing paper to use, and they turned them into balloons.

So cool.

It's so weird how one invention leads to another.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And it was the reason I knew about this is because we talked a while ago about jobs in the UK that don't exist anymore.

And the last gold beater, I think, went out in the UK maybe in the last 10 to 20 years.

It feels like a very labor-intensive job.

Gold beating.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It is.

Also, for the size of the balloons that they were making during the

day, you needed a lot.

So one kind of classic Zeppelin would require 250,000 intestines in order to make the size balloon that they needed in order to do it.

Again, how did they first get the idea?

And it was mostly women, right?

It was women doing this work.

The Weinling family was...

It couldn't have been just them, right?

They must have taught it to...

But it was women that were doing all the work.

Women did the

skin

assembling, the skin treating, and that factory was staffed by women.

I think it was one Fred Weinling.

There were a couple of sons, but there was Mrs.

Weinling and two daughters who were the chief balloon makers for

the army.

And it was such a secret as well that when it eventually got seen that it was being used by other countries, that was seen as treason.

And this guy, Major Templar, who was the one, he actually got charged with betraying military secrets because they thought this was so secret, no one could have known it.

He was acquitted because I think they worked out that he didn't do it.

But that's how important this was to the war effort.

But it kind of didn't matter for a few countries because what you needed was cow intestine.

So they were being farmed in America and they were being imported to here.

But Germany couldn't get them because they have cows in Germany.

I don't think they had enough at the time.

I think we've mentioned once before that Germany had to choose in the war between airships and sausages.

It's a hard choice to make.

You're in total war.

Your society needs to survive.

It is the worst choice to make.

Come on.

Yeah.

In fact, they still use balloons in war right now, don't they?

Like, for instance, well, we saw in the news with the so-called spy balloons.

Oh, yeah, they're coming back in.

It's a new fashion trend.

In the Ukraine war, I think both sides used balloons.

They kind of put them up there so that the other side kind of uses up ammunition trying to shoot them.

They're just distractions, really, but they are still used.

Well, there were barracks balloons in the Second World War.

You saw images of London at war.

They're all these balloons floating over, and it's to make...

you know, bombers have to fly higher to fly over them.

And they have steel cables hanging down from them, so you can't fly around under them.

So they're a good air defence.

And those were largely staffed by women.

There was the Women's Auxiliary Air Force.

They were on the ground.

They would operate the winches, basically, because there's no one actually up there in a barrage balloon or hanging beneath it.

So, yeah.

And Balloon Command was set up in 1938.

Oh, yes, please.

Even at D-Day, Good morning, Balloon Command.

What colour?

Purple?

Yes, plenty of those.

How old is he?

Seven?

Oh, we'll see what we can do.

D-Day had the Barrage Balloon Balloon Battalion, who was specifically bringing to the Normandy beaches the balloons.

Wow.

Yeah.

They were pre-inflated in the UK and then sailed over.

Wow.

To defend the...

I think that's good because if you're in opposing territory, you don't want to be that...

Stretch it.

Stretch it out a bit.

You're absolutely right.

They didn't show that at the beginning of Saving Private Ryan, did they?

I'm asthmatic, sir.

I can't do this.

Speaking of women in war, the UK's first official policewoman was Mrs.

Edith Smith of Grantham, and she became a sworn officer in 1915.

And the Home Office weren't very happy about it because they said that women were not proper persons.

That's what they said.

It's something we have to live with.

I know, but this is amazing.

Quite a lot of the stuff they made her do was spy on women on behalf of their husbands who were away at war.

Wow, the power of the patriarchy.

You can work for us if you take down your own people.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Have we ever mentioned the Hello Ladies?

Hello.

Have you heard of them before?

Hello ladies.

Hello ladies.

Hello ladies were a group of women.

They were in the battlefields of France.

They were basically the operators who connect phone calls.

The telephone operators.

They were doing it on the front lines.

And so while being bombed, just connecting these phone lines to make sure that these crucial calls could be made back.

And at the height of it, the hello girls were connecting 150,000 calls a day.

um and there was how many total there was 223 in total that were doing

yes a lot yeah it's when a lot of a lot of those were calls being made to a police woman in grandfather

okay what's she doing now

or do they look like they were friends or did they look like it was more serious

but yeah and they um annoyingly after the war they weren't considered for veteran status and benefits because they weren't seen as part of the military and it took until 1977 oh my god petitioning presidents constantly to get them any kind of compensation that they finally did it.

But they were essential to the war.

Yeah, you were there.

You know, yeah, you were at the front line.

You weren't there there.

Yeah, exactly.

Oh, my God.

That's awful.

I've just got one more fact about balloons.

Yeah.

Go on.

There has only ever been one balloon hit and run accident in the UK.

Okay, amazing.

2004?

Yes.

Are we talking hot air balloons?

Yeah.

Wow.

Oakum, Cumbria.

Retired couple sitting in their cottage having a nice time.

Suddenly, bang.

Hot air balloon.

Someone stole the chimney.

Smashes into their chimney and their roof and then flies off.

Oh my god.

Oh no.

It was blue, yellow, and red.

I'm going to say, in defence of whoever this was,

if you're flying over and you're out of control enough that you hit a chimney, you're probably out of control enough that you can't stop.

For delete your details, yeah.

It's quite dangerous because around there they have quite a lot of Ministry of Defence flights they practice around there.

Do they?

Yeah.

Well, it's the only known.

Known

air balloon heading around.

They still have a.

I didn't find a follow-up to the story.

Maybe they did.

So that's interesting because only a couple of days ago I watched a video on Instagram of a hot air balloon coming in close to it.

There's a whole group of people picnicking on the side of in this grassy bit of a hill.

Yeah.

And they all turn around and look at it.

Everyone gets up and they're filming it and it just keeps descending and keeps descending and it suddenly hits the ground and mows through all of them.

They're all diving out of the way, all their chairs go through.

No one's hit, everyone's okay.

And it takes off again and disappears off into the distance.

And I don't know if they got their details later, so that might not count as a hit and run.

But could you claim a picnic over a chimney?

My picnic was ruined.

If they put everything back together, they noticed there was one sausage roll missing,

just grabbed it out of the way.

Just left a sausage skin.

Make your own balloon.

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

My fact this week is that Orson Welles' nose rarely made appearances in his movies.

Wow.

Can you give me some of his movies?

Yeah, Citizen Kane isn't that.

I have, but I don't remember any noseless men in that.

Well, he was never noseless.

Oh.

He never, yeah, he didn't.

He wasn't.

I mean, people would talk about Citizen Kane in a different way, but there was no nose on his face.

Like, he spends his whole time lusting over, what was it?

Rosebud.

Rosebud, memorialising rosebud.

He'd be memorialising his nose.

It's nosebud, more likely.

No,

thank you.

I nearly started watching Citizen Kane last night, but I can't.

Have you not seen it?

No, I got quite tired.

It's an incredible.

It's incredible.

You're the only one here who hasn't.

Yeah.

Oh, the worm turns and builds its little nest down.

Sorry, I was kicking over that.

Builds his little nest down, then realises this is full of shit from a groundhog.

Carries on.

Actually, absorbs it because that's his deal.

You've got to watch Citizen Kane.

It's classic.

Citizen Kane's great.

I've seen a couple of his.

What have you seen?

The Magnificent Ambisons.

Oh, I haven't seen that.

Very much a B-side.

Oh, okay, yeah, yeah.

But it is great.

That's an old man.

The Third Man, which he didn't direct.

He just is in.

Yeah.

Oh, sorry, but he was such a director.

Yeah, yeah.

That's okay.

So for the people that don't know Orson Welles, Citizen Kane is often regarded as one of the greatest movies ever made.

I actually was surprised when I went onto IMDb.

I expected to see it behind Shawshank Redemption.

It was actually 95 on the top 100 list, but I think, you know, there's three Avengers movies in that top 100 ahead of it.

So I think,

yeah, you went onto IMDB.

I don't think you checked like Guardian's top films.

Yeah, I think it'd be.

It was the Paddington 2 of its day.

It really was.

It absolutely was.

Orson Welles was, as Andy says, he was a director, he was a writer, he was an actor.

He went from radio to stage to film, doing iconic things in every single place.

He supposedly created a national terror when he did War of the Worlds on radio.

That's been mythologized to be a lot worse than it actually was.

People, you know, claiming they thought aliens were really invading, were really kind of newspapers just bumping that up.

But one thing about him is that for someone who was so confident and he was known to be so bolshy and

people would talk about his rage and his passion, one thing he was absolutely insecure about was the size of his nose, which he thought hadn't really grown since childhood.

And so every single movie that he did, except basically for one movie, as far as I can tell, which was The Third Man, he always had prosthetics on his nose.

And sometimes applying it himself, there's an account by a guy called Lewis Gilberts, who was a director, and he did a movie with him in 1959 called Ferry to Hong Kong.

And he said that basically he would do his own nose.

And the problem was that his nose would be quite different.

shot to shot.

Yeah, they said it was like wonky or green.

Yeah, sometimes it was tilting upwards, sometimes it was tilting downwards.

Occasionally it just went sideways.

It was not a consistent nose for the entire movie.

Yeah, I read one quote saying he said that his nose had not grown one millimeter since infancy,

which I don't, I don't believe it.

Yeah, exactly.

There's no way he had an actual baby's nose.

I felt bad though, because when you do look at, so I was like, what?

No, he doesn't.

And then I saw a picture of him without it, and I was like, I guess it is small.

I think it doesn't fit his personality because he was known for being this like huge raconteur character, like absolute, almost, I guess, Brian Blessed style, like fill the room.

Yeah.

It doesn't, you expect him to have a much bigger features, and the rest of his features are quite big.

Not that there's anything wrong with having a small nose.

He allegedly.

He kept every fake nose.

Yeah.

And he had a glass case for each one.

And he also gave them all names.

That's quite common in

prosthetic and wig world on TV.

They sometimes give them names.

Really?

Yeah, I don't know why.

I guess because often you have to look after a wig.

Yes, so you have to kind of like wash it and preen it and stuff or set it so you would give it.

It's not uncommon to give it a name.

Carried, you've done done a lot of sketch comedy on TV or a horrid shows where you're a comedy character playing a celebrity, like Murder and Successful.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Have you ever worn a prosthetic nose?

Yeah, I have.

I'm trying to think now.

I had to wear loads for Murder and Successful, but I can't remember which one.

I think for Cheryl Cole, I had to wear a prosthetic nose.

Did it have a name?

I think we called it Cheryl, to be fair.

He didn't call them the actual name.

He didn't.

He did a very weird thing.

He was in a film called Touch of Evil.

Oh, yes.

One of his classics.

He has a nose from that.

It's called sandra

oh yeah it might be always women's names

one the one of the king lear one was called sloan jr

so okay i don't know if there's a character called sandra in touch of evil but there's no character called sloan jr in king lear no it's gonerall's gonerwall's brother oh sorry yeah yeah yeah and actually when he was making that film I think they lost his nose halfway through production and it had been posted and it hadn't got come through and they basically halted production on this big Hollywood film while they searched every post office in Hong Kong for find his nose.

Awesome Wells's father was called Dickhead.

His name was Richard Head Wells.

Wells Dick Ed Wells.

And he's pretty cool.

Walter Mozer's father.

He was a kind of inventor and an engineer.

He invented a glider, get this,

which was attached to a steam engine on the ground.

Okay.

So it's a plane whose engine is on the ground and the plane flies up there.

And then...

You know what it feels like?

What?

You would have angular momentum on it.

If you just tried to go forward, you'd end up going in a circle like those fairground rides.

Yeah, maybe.

But it did not work.

Well, maybe it worked, but it didn't.

Didn't catch off.

It didn't

take off.

Hey!

Dan, you mentioned the War of the Wells thing.

Yeah.

He came a bit depressed afterwards because he said that he had two lots of friends.

One lot of friends had heard the recording and one lot hadn't.

And anyone who'd heard it would want to tell him everything, what they thought about it.

And anyone who hadn't heard it would tell him tediously why they hadn't

near a wireless on the day so that everyone he spoke to all wanted to speak to him about that is that like how you guys feel like people just come up to you with facts or they go i've never done any not only into podcasts

a lot more of the latter than the former i have to say i read an interview with him from 1939 and he said that no one has said anything original about that broadcast for at least nine months

there's a weird coincidence which is that hg wells was in america and he was driving around and he got lost and so so he pulls over and he goes, excuse me, sir, can you help me to find where I'm going?

And it's Orson Welles.

And

they establish each other each other.

And this was not long after Orson Welles had done War of the Worlds.

But of course, he wasn't a big face back then, Orson Welles.

He was a range of people.

He wasn't a big nose, that's for sure.

You know, he couldn't have gone like, oh, I'm going to pretend I don't know who Orson Welles is.

I wonder if H.G.

Wells was recognisable.

Quite possibly from the back of books.

Were people just less recognizable back in the day, though?

Definitely.

You didn't have author jacket photos in the same way that you do these days.

And as we know, author jacket photos are not representative of what someone looks like in real life.

Excuse me.

Holding up my book.

Okay, yours is, but most people's are not.

I also read some newspaper articles from the day after the

recording went out

to see, you know, did it happen?

Or, you know, was this kind of craziness?

Did it exist?

And the Journal Times I read, they collected articles from all over America about what had happened.

And they said that Senator Clyde Herring of Iowa had called for more regulation of the press as a result of everyone thinking that the Martians had attacked, which is pretty typical.

Apparently in New York, one person had called the police and said, I want a gas mask.

I'm a taxpayer.

And the police had just said that that had definitely happened.

And there was a town of Concrete, which is in Washington state.

And apparently there was a power cut just at the moment the Martians put their death rays into action.

And this was reported the day after it went out.

So I think it did happen.

But the thing was, like, they did advertise that it was fiction.

They said right at the top.

Yeah, Osmoz comes on at the start and says, this is fictional.

And then they had four times in the middle.

They said, just to remind you all, this is fictional.

And then at the end, he comes on and says, by the way, that was a play you just listened to.

There was a good Radio 4 documentary about what happened and how true.

I mean, there were people who obviously did lose their mind.

But it's a tempting myth.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Like the five stages.

Oh,

guys.

Like, it's nice to believe that that would be true.

Yeah, it's just kind of, it's nice to believe that sort of people back in the day were so stupid they didn't understand radio.

You think, oh, we've come along so well, we understand radio now.

Yeah.

Wells, um, Wells.

So, Dan, you mentioned his most famous film appearance, maybe, and certainly maybe the one he's most famous for these days is in The Third Man, where he it's in Vienna, it's after the Second World War, it's and it's an amazing, it's amazing, that is unmissable, I would say.

It's incredible.

He's got to be so good.

And there's a big scene there's a scene in the sewers of vienna where they're chasing he's playing this mysterious um

sort of black market dealer and and and you know crook and um he's he's very very dodgy but they did the filming in the sewers of vienna and they you know they all went down there they were actually very clean in lots of places and the director had his coffee brought down to him on a silver tray by a waiter from one of the old viennese cafes you know the only person who refused to go down into the sewers awesome wellsome wells yeah and they had to build a fake sewer in Shepperton.

Wow, is that the famous shot of him, though, in that really, like, the really white circle?

And it's him in the middle of it.

It's either a body double or it's Shepperton, and everyone else had filmed their bits in Vienna.

Yeah, I know, but he wouldn't have been able to smell it anyway with his freaking

tiny nose.

I mean, he was at like, I can't remember what film it was, but it was filmed in the deep south.

And that actress was quoted as saying, like, it was so hot and sweaty that his nose was like falling off.

His nose is running.

But, like, he was, If he was a woman, he'd be called a diva.

Like, the things he would refuse to do.

He was a divo.

He's a divo.

Yeah.

And the guy, I think it's the guy who plays Yago or Cassio, wrote a whole book about the experience of filming Othello of, like, how insane and awful it was.

Like, that was his kind of made his money on this

show called Cassio.

Yeah.

The one that loves Desemona and starts off all the trust.

The one who has that great line, beep.

Yes, Andrew.

Yes, fellow English literature scholar.

Yes.

Oh, apparently, when he was directing Othello,

was that a film?

The film was a film.

Othello is a film, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, it's a great film.

It's really interesting.

I think he might have also staged a stage version of Othello, because apparently, when he was directing that, he would push the actors around the stage with a 20-foot pole, shouting, to hell with the method, this is the Wells way.

Act, you sons of bitches.

Amazing.

Do you know where Orson Welles is buried?

No.

No.

This is, he's buried.

Can we guess?

Yeah, have a guess, have a guess.

Perlichaise.

Oh.

That's the most famous cemetery I've ever seen.

That's in Paris.

Okay,

let me rephrase.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

You're like this.

You're like this.

I'm going to rephrase the question because this is actually the wrong angle.

Remember a few weeks ago when we had Sarah Pasco on, we talked about the guy who invented Pringles being buried in a Pringles tube.

Tube.

His ashes and you can't stop.

So where is Orson Welles buried?

In a film canister.

A film canister.

In the Hollywood Hills.

Very good.

And he's in the Hollywood sign.

they poured him in

into the oven into the oven

oh yeah yeah

well the three guys um in a

in a well awesome wells is in the well is it he's in the well james got it James got it no way he's buried he was this is years after his death his daughter brought the ashes of him to Malaga in Spain to a place called Ronda

where he's now on the property of a retired bullfighter who he really liked

quite recently have you yeah that's the end of the anecdote.

Okay.

But Orson Welles is in a well.

Oh, wow.

In Malaga, yeah.

Lovely city, Malaga.

Is that the end of the anecdote?

It's surprising because you think, like, you associate it with package holidays, but he's really nice.

Incredibly.

The cathedral is called

Lamanquita, I think.

Which means the woman with one arm.

And it's because it's got two towers, the cathedral, but only one of them was completed.

Wow.

So one of them is shorter than the other.

Simon Kello, the actor,

he is maybe one of the biggest Wells experts on the planet.

He's currently writing a biography of Orson Welles.

He started working on it in 1989 when Orson Welles had been dead a few years.

He thought, well, I'll do two volumes.

Take about three years.

1992, be done.

Great.

Book one was published in 1995.

Okay, took a bit longer, fine.

But book one, fine.

All right.

Book two.

Volume two was in 2006.

Volume three came out in 2015.

And he's now working on volume four.

It's so, it's such a huge project.

He's saying he's done other stuff in between.

Four weddings and a funeral was in there.

He's a busy man.

Pop idol.

Is that him?

I know.

I know.

Who among us doesn't make that mistake?

I always make that mistake.

The judge's chair.

He's surrounded by books on wells.

He's conducting interviews.

Okay, that's it.

That's 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 we've said over the course of this podcast, we can be found on our Twitter accounts.

I'm on at Schreiberland, Andy, at Andrew Hunter M, James, at James Harkin, and Carriad at Lady Carriad, because I did it a long time ago.

And I...

Because of your damehood.

Because of my damehood.

Or at Carriad Lloyd on Instagram.

It's more where I am.

Right.

And yep, you can also get us on at no such thing or go to our website, no such thingasofish.com and check out all of our previous episodes.

But most important of all, get yourself to an online bookshop or a real bookshop to pick up You Are Not Alone, Carrie Ad's book all about grief.

And it's tied in with her podcast, Griefcast.

So give that a listen as well.

I'm sure you have already, but get back to it this week.

And yeah.

Has anyone died?

Get back in there, guys.

But that's it for us for now.

We'll be back again next week with another episode.

We'll see you then.

Goodbye.