457: No Such Thing As An Acoustic Tram

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Hi everybody, just before we start this week's show, we know that Christmas is on the way.

And if you are hoping to do any Christmas shopping for the fish fan in your life, then we have some last-minute recommendations that will save your bacon and save Christmas.

Yes, my first bacon saving recommendation is that you buy two books immediately by The Sanctuary by some randomer called Andrew Hunter Murray. Yes.
Generally is British. That's, yeah, that's this guy.

Look, it goes against all my principles to say this. I don't even necessarily like the guy, but it really is a brilliant book.
It's got amazing reviews. It's gripping.

It's about this remote island owned by a mysterious billionaire. It's a very twisty-turny, thriller.
It's fantastic.

And once you've done that, go and buy The Theory of Everything Else by a certain Dan Schreiber. Very different kind of book.
It's like getting inside Dan Schreiber's head, but in a really fun way.

It's not as chaotic as you'd imagine. It's full of the amazing theories that geniuses have come up up with that you definitely won't have heard of.

It's a fascinating fact on every in every paragraph basically. So get those.
Absolutely and alternatively you can get Christmas goodies from no such thingasafish.com.

We have just launched two new t-shirts along with lovely pin badges. You can identify other fish listeners in the wild slash public by getting yourself one of these two things.

There's also a lovely tour book from the recent tour we've just finished, which is a complete history and demonology and future guide to fish and all its iterations.

They're all so much fun, and you can get them at no such thingasafish.com. Yep, that's right, and now we will cease flogging presents to you and say on with the show.
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 Covent Garden. My name is Dan Schreiber.

I am sitting here with James Harkin, Anna Toshinsky and Andrew Hunter Murray and once again we have gathered round the microphones with our four favourite facts from the last seven days and in no particular order here we go.

Starting with fact number one and that is Anna.

My fact this week is that many of the Muppets were designed and created by someone called Kermit Love, who had absolutely nothing to do with Kermit the Frog.

When you say he had nothing to do with Kermit the Frog, that's literal. It's not figuratively.
I will have nothing to do with Kermit the Frog. They had huge beef from the start.

Yeah, yeah, big falling out. I picked up.
Huge beef was Mr. Snuffleupper.

He just wasn't involved in the making of him. So Kermit Love was a designer and builder of Muppets.
He was most famous probably for doing Big Bird. Yeah.
Was his big hit.

But, you know, lots of the other ones, Snuffle Up of us, I think, Oscar the Grouch, the Cookie Monster. But Kermit was created about 10 years before he even thought about joining the Muppets.

And they're just both called Kermit, which I think just must have been a more common name

than it was. Yeah, definitely.
Because there was one of the presidents had a son called Kermit, didn't he? Yeah, Kermit Rose.

I don't think he designed Big Bird. I think he helped to create the design.

So there was a sort of drawing, and he was, they couldn't make it work, and just so many design flaws in it, so they needed Kermit to come in. Current design to him.

Well, he designed.

He manufactured, I'd guess.

Basically, Jim Henson would draw what he wanted, I guess. And then he'd give it to people like Kermit Love, who was the main person on Big Bird, and say, can you make this?

And then he'd try and make it as close as possible, I suppose.

One thing about Kermit Love was that he had all this amazing experience of puppets and costumes before he joined the Muppet Show, obviously.

So one of the things he'd worked on was spangling the girls at the Paris Lido. So ballet.
That's a euphemism, isn't it?

Where were you last night? Were you spangling the girls at the Paris Lido?

Lido as well. It's such a weird word in English.

Lido is quite a common sense. It's a common word.
Yeah, Lido is a very common word. I don't think that it was an open-air swimming pool.
No, it's not going to be euphemic.

So he's not spangling girls who are paying five pounds for a swim. No, no, no, exactly.
No, he was working with ballet dancers a lot of the time.

So he worked for the New York City Ballet, and he specialised there on turning humans into half-puppets.

That was a big part of his.

And of course, that's what Big Bird is, right? Right. It's half human, half puppet.
Unlike the other Muppets that are kind of actual classic puppets. Exactly.

Well, Big Buck, because there's a human inside.

Yeah. Wow.
Sorry, Dan. No, you're right.

I think when the character dies one day, Big Bird, they should do a live autopsy and all the Muppets freak out when they find a human inside.

God.

The design that Henson sent apparently didn't have feathers. Germit Love added those.
But that's weird, isn't it, to have a bird without any feathers.

Yeah, I'm trying to think of any actual birds without feathers. I don't think there are any.
A pterodactyl, I suppose, is the early

a pterodactyl isn't a bird. Dinosaurs are birds, and yet pterodactyls aren't the weird thing.
I guess think of Cookie Monster, right? Like, I know he's not feathered, but the material could look...

I could imagine a big bird with that kind of felt material or whatever it is.

What I wondered is the one birds that don't have feathers is really, really young fledgling or pre-fledglings, like little chicks, right?

So so maybe he's a really baby that big bird and he will grow up into something even bigger yeah that's good is he quite does he seem quite immature because i've never actually he's actually six years old isn't he six years old i love that yeah but there's an amazing detail that um that kermit love went overseas to china uh for a filming and they took big bird and big bird like the costume because they were doing that but big bird was given a seat on the plane and because he's six years old the chinese airline charged him half price fair enough yeah well no what's fascinating about that is i can't believe that you used to get half price tickets for children because I am paying so much money anytime one of my million kids turns two years old.

Why don't you put the child in a Big Bird costume? Fly them to China

and make it a big publicity thing, which is why they actually did this. Exactly, yeah, yeah.
You need more publicity. That's what we've got working on.

Big Bird is, in a way, the opposite of Tinky Winky. Oh, yeah.
Okay.

Can you work out why? Well, Tinky Winky, giant purple, telly tubby, famously gay. Carries a handbag.
TV on his stomach. Thank you.

TV on his.

You did all the legwork, James. And Tinky just

came in at the end. I think I know teletubbies too well because they all have TVs on their stomachs.
And I was going about what differentiates him from the other TV tubby. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I'm really sorry. I should have said the opposite of a teletubby.
But it's that where Tinky Winky has a TV on the outside of his stomach, Big Bird has a TV on the inside of his stomach. Really?

For the puppeteer to see what he's doing. Wow.

He just needs basically, and it's below. it's a small TV monitor, and he just has to look down at what is going on on the monitor to see what's going on.

What I found because I read that as well, but what I read didn't go into any more details.

It said so he could see the set and I couldn't work out whether the TV would be giving you a projection from Big Bird's eyes, in which case he'd have to have cameras in his eyes, which I don't think he does, or you're seeing the actual set, as in you're seeing yourself from like the third person.

That must be difficult, right?

To know where to walk if you're seeing yourself on TV. Yeah,

you'd have to invert left and right, wouldn't you? That's probably the least of the problems. I don't know, really.

It's like being a ghost when you, you know, when you leave your own body after you die and then you look back at it. Oh, yeah.

But then you can't, it's not like you have to control your body then, so you don't have the difficulty.

That's why ghosts always walk through walls, because they don't know which way they're going, and they're like, oh shit, just walk through a wall.

Just very quickly back to Kermit Love. So one of the innovations that he brought to the design of Big Bird was molting.

So he allowed for the feathers to drop off big birds. So it looked like, I don't know, like they were real feathers that could fall off, which is really, really nice.

And he used 6,000 dyed feathers from a domestic white turkey, not a single one,

in order to make the suit. Oh, the suit's made of actual turkey feathers.

I think in the initial period, it's probably very different now. Kermit Love, he usually spoke with a fake English accent,

sometimes with a fake French accent.

I do the fake English accent thing.

Yeah, you're actually.

Where are you from?

I'm from Guatemala.

And how do they speak novelly? Okay, well, I'm not going to go. You can't break character.

He made Big Bird with a guy called Christopher Lyle, who he was in a relationship with for over 50 years. So I think from before they started making Big Bird together, right?

Until Kermit died in 2008. Yeah.
Christopher Lyle was in the pilot for the Muppet show. Yeah, so like right now at the very, very starting.

I looked at his IMDb because I thought, oh, what a cool guy. He seems like Chris Ville.
And it led me to a fact that I didn't know, which is there were two pilots for the Muppet Show.

So one, very kid-friendly. The second pilot was called The Muppet Show, Sex and Violence.
He was the second ever Muppet pilot.

Did you see what it was about? I couldn't find too much information on it, actually.

Well, it was a parody of the fact that there was starting to get lots of sex and violence on television, so people were complaining.

And so they were parodying lots of different things that were happening on TV at the time. Okay, right.
So it's not fully

excited. It still sounds like it's not for six-year-olds.
The third wasn't banging Mr. Snumble up.
Yes, exactly. That's what I would expect.
A feather was a slang.

The other thing is how physically injurious it is to be a Muppeteer. Oh, yeah.

Yeah, yeah. And this is partly because of something.
Oh, oh, I've got another quiz link. Why did you just interrupt yourself there?

It's going to be very hard to edit around. You're absolutely right.
What's the quiz link? What you need to know. So what we...

I feel like we missed a lot of steps in your head there. So you need to calm down.
No, I'm so excited to be talking about Muppets. I love the Muppets so much.
Do you? There's one link between

Muppets and something that we covered recently, which is Disneyland. When Jamie was on, we mentioned Disneyland, right? Yeah.
And there's a link between Disneyland and the World of the Muppets.

And the World of the Muppets.

I prefer that you don't mention shows when I wasn't sure. Oh,

is it something about the acknowledgement of characters in real life? You have to talk to them as if they're real? No, that's not it.

I think you said you started off that sentence before you had a stroke and you were talking about the puppeteers. Yes.
So it's something to do with the puppeteers. Something to do with the puppeteers.

Oh, okay. Oh, they have a secret tunnels.
I'm going to say that's it. Muppet Filming Land

is actually on the first floor. It's about eight feet above the ground

so that the Muppeteers can stand upright. But the problem is...
Some of the Muppeteers are quite short, so then they need to wear platform shoes to get them up to the level that they brought up to.

And this brings me back to the point about Muppeteers also being physically injured. So the guy who plays Gonzo the Great, he's still going actually.

He's had to have four shoulder operations just due to holding up your hand all the time and doing

a hip replacement. And, you know, you're cramped.

The sacrifices people make. It's heroic.
It is. Guys, when you're operating a Muppet mouth, imagine you're doing that with your arm up it.
Show me what you do.

I know you can't see this at home, but you've all got it wrong.

You're joking. Whatever you're doing at home, we reckon that's probably wrong as well, right? I think it's unlikely you're not going to be able to do it.

I'm doing a mouth with my hand. We all are.
But the key is, is that how mouths move, guys?

What bit of your mouth do you move when you're talking? Your lips. My tongue.
Which lip?

It's only the bottom. It's only your thumb.
You're moving your jaw.

So you say you move only the bottom. You move only your thumb.
This is what one of the operators said. I was watching an interview with him.

He said, you've got to keep your top of your hand still and you move only your thumb.

Hello, I'm I.

Yeah, that does not work. It's Pac-Man.
That's how Pac-Man moves, right? Does Pac-Man have... Yes, he uses the thumbnail.
Because Pac-Man's going.

Yeah, Yeah, yeah. We've got an aerial view, most likely, of Pac-Man.
Well, why is he sideways? Yeah, that doesn't make any sense. We've got to slow this thing wide open.

Yeah, well, is he grinding along the floor? We've got an aerial view. He's just on the floor sideways, isn't he? Yeah, but he's a disembodied head, right? Like, he's

sideways. We shouldn't be able to see anything of his mouth movement from the mouth.
He should just be a circle. Yeah.

No, unless he's from a species with a sideways mouth. What are you talking about? Oh, you think he has a mouth on the side of his head? Possibly.
He's an alien. He's not an alien.

He's not a human. A man implies human.
Wait, no, sorry.

In later illustrations, he has legs, shoes, arms, and gloves. So

like the M ⁇ Ms, like the cartoon M ⁇ Ms. Just like that.
Also wearing gloves.

Same universe?

Clearly they're related to the break. Wait, am I thinking of the yellow M ⁇ M? Oh, bloody hell dare.

You are, aren't you?

No, I'm pretty sure Pac-Man has legs. There are cartoons as well of Pac-Man

in the 90s. I didn't know that.

Do they have to have the gloves? Because it's weird seeing his hands. Like, gloves are kind of effectively a sort of...

Well, the same as Mickey mouse right yeah why do you have gloves why are all his easiest struggles he's always at a crime scene

he's a snooker referee in his spurtite mickey mouse

oh boy what a shot that's not what referees do

they're not hype men

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Okay, it is time for fact number two, and that is Andy. My fact is that the German army has just had to tear out some of the size labels from their new uniforms because they read small, short, or SS.

Yeah.

Oversight. Yeah.

There's a lot of small, short people in the German army. Well, not that many, but one is too many to have the SS label in their clothes.

So, yeah, most of them were small, medium, large, and extra-large, and that's fine. But the SS stands for the Schutzstaffel, who are the Nazi paramilitary organization who largely ran the Holocaust.

And it is literally illegal to display their symbols in Germany.

So the German Defense Ministry had ordered the soldiers to tear out the SS lettering. I mean, they weren't on display either.
It was literally just a size label. Unless you're wearing it inside out.

Which, often, if you get up in the dark, put your clothes on, that's suddenly.

That's an offence on the parade ground, though, to have your uniform inside out. I don't know much about military discipline, but I imagine.
Imagine they say get down and give me 10 if you do that.

Yeah, pretty sure.

They said if you cut it out, that's one thing, but if it's got important information on it, what you should do is cut around the SS, so just lose the SS. They didn't say that, yeah, did they?

So it's still the shape of an S and an S.

What important information is that? Well, the washing instructions.

Yeah. You know, what if you accidentally put it in at 60? No one's ever read those on any item of clothing.
Excuse me, anastronomist.

It's my regular reading. Regular reading.

Oh, I can't wait to read this.

Can I I ask, what is the German for small short? Because presumably it's SS in German. Well, that would be KK, which is

it English? I think the supplier would have been English language, and that's why it was a problem. KK is still awkward, isn't it? Because you do feel you've sensed that lingering third K.

If you're a really, really small soldier

and you're a KKK, that is a problem. I didn't realise that, though, about the SS being a combination of words that is banned in certain plates.

Like, one of the things which was in the article that you sent around, Andy, was that SS on number plates is not allowed in most spots in Germany. So,

yes, you can't have SS, you can't have KZ because that references concentration camps, you can't have HJ because that's the Hitler youth, you can't

because there are German words. Yeah, it doesn't sound like it makes sense.

HJ is also a rude, rude thing.

I like hand job, he's thinking. Oh, what's hand job in German, though? Actually, testing my GCSE German now.

Actually, didn't come up either in the GCSE. Not in the the oral.

I found some German military uniforms which are literally made of cardboard, which is an interesting thing.

And it's not in Germany. It's in Namibia,

which was a German colony until after the First World War.

And there is a group of people living there, the Herero tribe. And I think they're like a lot of colonised peoples, treated pretty badly.
Genocide, I believe. Right.
Yeah, all the way.

All the way to genocide. Worst ways to be treated.
Yes. Well, the Herero people now wear a lot of Edwardian

European, specifically German clothing for traditional rituals and for special days and things like that.

So if you go to a Herero funeral the women will be wearing Edwardian dresses that were popular in Germany in 1910 and the men will be wearing uniforms that are some of them made of cardboard because they've been replicated to be exactly like the fashions of that time.

And it's really similar to the Bolivian cholitas that we talked about a few weeks ago. And also it was the women women who adopted this first.

By some way, I think they adopted the European style of dress. But then, much like the Cholitas,

they made it much more full of bright colours, like the clothes that they wore. So, yeah, they've got these beautiful hybrid Edwardian dresses

with these colourful colours on them. That's awesome.
Do you know Germany gave Namibia $1.35 billion

a couple of years ago, I think it was? I just thought that was very interesting when people talk about compensating. In compensation, they said this was a genocide and his $1.5 billion to develop.
So,

what do you get in the Herrero embassy whenever you go there? Oh, my God.

Wait, I don't get it. So, what do you get? What do you're at an embassy party? There's someone going around with a tray.

I get it. I get it.

Yeah, yeah.

What's the quality stream?

Have we mentioned this about French military uniforms and Napoleon and the baguette? Yeah, yeah. Supposedly, the baguette was invented so you you could hide it in your trousers.
That's right.

Yeah, we have talked about that yet. Sort of like hidden down the inside.
So it would just fit in the trouser pockets of the army uniform. I just couldn't remember if we'd.

Can I just say, while we're talking about Napoleon, and we might not keep all this in anyway, because we have mentioned it before, but this morning I was reading a book about cannibalism, and there was a nursery rhyme in it.

And it went, this apparently was a genuine nursery rhyme. Baby, baby, naughty baby, hush you squalling thing, I say, peace this moment, peace, or maybe Bonaparte will pass this way.

And he'll beat you, beat you, beat you, and he'll beat you all to pap. And he'll eat you, eat you, eat you, every morsel snap, snap, snap.

Not sure about this bedtime story you're reading for your daughter.

And I will be appearing on CBV tomorrow evening for the bedtime story.

So, yeah, they made the uniform so you could put a bucket in your pocket and then you could always do the joke: Is that a gun in your pocket? Or whatever? Or if you're hungry,

have you read about how modern military uniforms in America are progressing at the moment? No.

They're turning them basically into computers, which means that anything that happens on your outfit can be reported back to base.

So if you're shot, your suit will know with a spot because it can sense a change.

Are the computers good enough that they can, if the soldier's been shot, can the computer make the soldier keep running, basically?

Not yet. See, that's

like a RoboCop. Yeah, we haven't got to RoboCop yet.

But it's, I mean, it can tell GPS, it can tell literally the liquid level of how much heat you're exerting and how, like, if you're in trouble or whatever. Like, it's just got all the information.

All the data is now being collected. Yeah.
Yeah, nice. And I don't know if they can send it right back overseas.
I think.

I think if you can send it over the internet from one place to another, it could probably go all the way around the world. That's not around the internet, right? James.

Everyone's attached to the Pentagon.

Massive cable. It's like a door leave.
Pull them out, pull them out. Someone literally pulls them all out.
I don't know how reassuring it is if someone says to you, here's your suit.

And the good thing is, when you get shot multiple times in the chest, we'll have a computer back home that knows exactly where you've been shot.

Because there's a thing called the golden hour after a soldier's been injured, which is the time to really, you know, whereas you're most likely to save their life.

And there's also a thing I think called something like the Platinum Five Minutes, which is even more, you know, like you can do absolutely the most help for that to save their life. And, you know.

And there's the diamond five seconds where you just put your arm in, pull the bullet out, and it's like nothing happened.

So, why do you think the SAS had so many condoms in the first Gulf War?

Okay,

is it to do with burns? Only because we were once told to bring condoms to stop burning, but Dan's got it. It's water, it's water.

Yep, they took loads of condoms because they can hold about a litre of water each. And if you're on the run, it's very useful.
If you pass a stream, quickly fill up your condoms with water.

Yeah, you've got a litre of water there. Will taste quite spermicide.

Might be one of the strawberry ones. Might get lucky.

But then so that kind of led me on to this. In 1991, the British Army ordered half a million bespoke camouflage condoms.

Right. That's a great idea.
Can you tell me why? Well, sand coloured. Oh, sand-coloured.
For the Gulf War, that was.

If you forget to do up your flies after you've been to the loo, you're always wearing a camouflage condom, so it doesn't matter. You lie down in the sand with only your penis stick out,

but you don't want anyone to shoot it. So you have to cover it in a condom.
It's the periscope. It's the

right.

It's for the rifles. To cover the rifles to stop any water getting in.
Yeah, and sand in the tip. It can be seriously debilitating if you're firing a rifle.

At the end of World War I, in New York City, they had a tower of 12,000 pickle halbers,

which are those kind of helmets with a spike on top, you know, like the old German helmets. It was like a victory parade.

They got a massive pyramid of these helmets in the middle of New York, and then they sold them off. But the idea was, look, we've won the war and we've got all these trophies and whatever.

Now, the thing is that the Germans didn't really use these helmets.

They used them in the 19th century, but then they were really phased out during the start of the 20th century and they were completely replaced in 1916 by steel helmets because they're made of leather, the ones with the spike on.

They don't help you really.

They're conspicuous as well. If you're in a trench and just you can see a spike moving back and forth.
Yeah, they're no use.

They were replaced by steel helmets, but they had all these old ones, so they put them in an old warehouse.

And then the Americans captured the warehouse, took all the helmets out, and then showed them as these are our spoils of war, as if they'd taken them from the soldiers, but they didn't take them from an old thing.

Very clear. And the reason you had the spike is because it's from the older days.

You might have a big plume on the side, like like a ceremonial helmet and that was kind of the the spike would hold the plume i was wondering if it was the old ben franklin lightning rod hat

i didn't realize loads of other armies have them oh yeah today they have them yeah so um the british household cavalry used to have a spike uh the us marine corps uh russian

purposes is that the i think almost all yeah but the prussian army had um changed theirs in 1844. They ended in a ball because people kept on sort of injuring their horses or damaging equipment.

The thing with the lightning rods was you had the spike versus the ball as well,

yeah, and maybe lightning kept happening exactly.

Yeah, interesting. Yeah, today I think ceremonially only, but you would see them in South America, I think, or

the Romanian army, maybe. Oh, back in Guatemala, the kind of penny

every day.

Have you guys ever seen the Lansknecht mercenaries? Pictures of drawings of these.

These were Germans who fought between the 1400s and the 1600s. They made up the majority of the Holy Roman Empire.
They were like the elite fighting force.

So they were using mostly pikes and crossbows, but they also used these things called Zweihenders, which were swords that were way taller than the soldier himself.

So they look like they're carrying, I mean, you have to carry them over your shoulder, and it looks ridiculous. The point, it must have been way too heavy to wield.
I know, I know.

I think the idea was you could basically get at your enemy because your sword was longer, but I think it wasn't that practical in the end.

You could think in the really early days of warfare, when all you had was a sword,

having a slightly longer sword than your enemy would be an advantage. Yeah, yeah, and then

eventually you got a mile-long sword. That was what the arms were.
He was not so sweet. Back in the day, the arms race was just adding a centimetre off to.

You breed soldiers with super long arms, actually. You know, Mr.
Tickle, in his time, was a ferocious warrior. He had to donate sperm every month, didn't he, for this new Legion?

He was very good at donating sperm, it was very easy for him, obviously.

I would think it would be quite awkward if you're Mr. Tickle, because it's easy to reach things a long way from you, but your own penis.
Yeah, your penis.

I don't think we've got any data about Mr. Tickle's penis, though.
Was it?

Is everything that long and tickly?

Okay, it is time for fact number three, and that is my fact. My fact is that in 2015, the actor Vicki McClure was kicked off the Vicki McClure tram for not having a ticket.

I think she shouldn't have to have a ticket if the tram's named after her.

Turned out she didn't need to have a tram ticket, just the ticket inspector didn't realize that and kicked her off for their evasions.

So, Nottingham is where this tram is, and it's the Nottingham Express Transit, and they have a lot of trams that have a lot of local hero names on it. Vicki McClure.
Who is she, sorry?

She's oh, yeah, sorry. So Vicki McClure is an actor.
You might have seen her in Line of Duty. You might have seen her in the replacement.
You might have seen her.

The replacement bus channel.

She's a very

big actor. She's a big deal.

Huge deal.

And yeah, so in 2015, she was offered this for it to be named after her. She accepted it.
She was very excited. She brought her mother along to the ceremony.

She sort of officially unveiled it, got onto the tram for the inaugural ride. And then the conductor said, where's your ticket? And she said, wow, I don't have one.
I'm Vicki McClure.

And he says, yeah, yeah, we're all Vicky McClure. Get off.
And yeah, Nottingham has a lot of trams named after people.

A lot of them. So I'm going to say a few names.
Martin Polyakov, scientist. Yes.
Big deal scientist. D.H.
Lawrence,

sex writer.

Cricketer Stuart Broad. Yeah.
Torville and Dean. I don't know if that's one tram or two, actually.
It's one. It's one, yeah.
Shame.

Who gets the front half and who gets the back half?

Trams. Trams.
Okay. Did you know that there's an annual tram bowling competition every year? We sure did.

Tell us. Pretty exciting.

So every year there is the European Tram Driver Competition, which is a competition which sees tram drivers from all over Europe gathering together to compete against each other to find the greatest tram driver of all.

They do things like trams, billiards, they do tram bowling.

So tram bowling would be you've got giant pins that are at the end of a little track, and you've got a tram racing down, and two people are holding the ball, and it nudges the ball, and it tries to break the balls.

And it's a huge, inflatable ball, it's not your average bowling ball. No, I think what's interesting is that's quite obvious what that would be.
But, tram billiards, on the other hand,

good point, which you haven't explained. No, I don't.

I can tell you what tram billiards is.

Tram billiards doesn't bear that much relation to actual billiards,

but it looks like a really boring spectator sport. It is where a tram goes very slowly and cautiously towards a table which has got lots of scores written on it.

And coming out of the table is kind of a channel with a little ball at the end. And the tram nudges into the channel and knocks the ball onto the table.
And whatever score the ball lands on.

Oh, so it's shuffleboard. Shuffleboard is

hate me. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Like that. But there are more exciting events than that, even more exciting.

There's stopping within 20 centimeters of a cone without hitting it.

That's good.

What does that entail?

Accelerate to exactly 30 kilometers an hour without a speedometer. That's pretty good.
How did they remove the speedometer from the

I think you put some black masking tape over it or something? That's not what it says. It says without the speedometer.
Yeah, yeah. They have to commission hundreds of new trams every year.

It's the most expensive sport in Europe. Yeah, so trams.
When I was reading about this, I realized trams were much more revolutionary than I had realised.

And I think we say that a a lot, but it is true. So, they were the way that you got around

for about 100 years. They still are in some places.
But there wasn't other options, or there weren't many other options. So, they took over from horse and carts, really.

So, the first trams were horse-drawn, of course. The first horse car was 1807, the Swansea and Mumbles Railway.

So, those are, just to be clear on what a tram is, it's on tracks, but it shares space with the road. Yes, at some point.
Whereas the train is on tracks, but it has its own complete space.

Yeah, Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah.

So the Swansea and Mumbles railway actually was commissioned in 1804 and just carried goods and freight, and lots of kids used to hitch rides on it to get from Swansea to Mumbles.

And so they thought, well, maybe we should make this a passenger thing. And so that became the first passenger one.
And then there were sort of no other trams for about 50 years.

And then George Train came along. George Train bluntly.
He brilliantly named George Train.

He went into trams. Yeah.
And he made one in Birkenhead.

And he invited all the crown heads of Europe to the Grand Opening, and none of them came.

Come on. Oh, really? Wow.
It's Birkenhead. It's quite hard to get to it.
Oh, okay. Fair enough.

But we just invited all the Crowned Heads of Europe to our Christmas show, which is coming up in a few days at the time of recording. I think they will be there.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And he founded the football team, didn't he? Train Mir Rovers.

Brilliant. A Birkenhead joke.
Amazing.

Was it? That's where Tradmere are from, Birkenhead. I've got to be honest.
Okay. I did not intend that.

It is an extraordinary coincidence. Well done.
Because it was such a shockingly bad joke that I thought there must have been something extra there. So did I.
Wow. And there was.

So James did all the work to make that work. That's right.
Yeah, yeah. Amazing.
And then he started one in London, Joyce Train. Yeah, I went from Marble Arch to Bayswater and it was very popular.

Lots of people used it apart from anyone who lived nearby because there were lots of really, really posh houses around there. And anyone who lived there had to cross over the line to get to Hyde Park.

They were just walking across. Now they had to get past the tram line and people would just smash it up.
The tram lines were raised, weren't they?

And it was a complete pain in the bum to walk around and walk over and all of this.

In 1952, all the trams were, all the final trams left London, and the tracks were torn up and all of this. And this is a cool thing.

The final journey of the trams went from Woolwich to New Cross, and it took three extra hours to normal because of the crowds cheering it along the way.

It's so sweet. And the driver of the final tram, this is so nice.
It was a guy called John Cliff, who was the deputy chairman of London Transport.

and he had started his career as a tram driver 52 years before and he got to drive the final one,

which is just like that, you know that Fraser thing?

No.

So in the first episode, someone brings in Martin's horrible chair. Right.

And when Fraser's dad is moving in, and then in the final ever episode, 11 years later,

a removal man comes in to take a chair away, and it's the same removal man. And that's the best example you could think of of someone going through their whole career doing that.

Well, it's the most relatable one, isn't it? We all know it. It's gonna be understood.

George Train was later declared a lunatic and arrested for reading the scripture in support of Victoria Woodhull, the suffragette.

When trams went electric, so that was a huge step. They were horse-drawn for ages.
Was it accepted, or was it like Dylan going electric?

People preferred the acoustic trams for a long time.

Yeah, they went electric in Britain in the sort of 1880s and 1890s. And so now we tend to have trams with the cables above, but they used to be under the ground.

That was a bit of an issue because then the rails would be electrified, so if you stepped on them, that was a problem.

So they had this cool system called contact studs, which is where basically along the tram rail, you'd have these big metal studs, and they were connected to an electricity supply underground, but they would be switched off and they would be triggered to switch on when the tram ran over them by a magnet on the tram.

Really hot. It sounds brilliant.
They were really unreliable and they often stayed live.

So what you had to do with the contact studs was employ street urchins often to go and stand on the rails and say, look, we think this is not life anymore, but could you just step on that rail? What?

Are you just checking? No. This is a complicated electrical job.
We need an urchin to do it.

No, no, because they were just testing it. They were literally there to see if they got electrified.
And how badly would they be electrified? Pretty bad.

Like, horses would sometimes leap up and then drop down stone dead. Why didn't they use a horse?

Yeah, they should have used a horse. They're all out of work.
It's terrific. Yeah, it's pretty bad.
I must say, I grew up near Manchester and they have trams there.

And I was always worried that they might be electrified and didn't want to stand on the

legs. They were.
I'd seen so many urchins go on Manchester.

Can I tell you one cool thing about tram design? And I'll need to guess why it exists.

So they would have spiral old trams would have spiral staircases so you could get up to the top level.

Yep, and you've got a driver. That's my clue.
Picture the driver. Is the driver on the on the top, like an old horse and cart where you don't have to? No, bottom.

He's at the bottom. And there was one step on the spiral that's full of little holes.

Why do you think it's full of little holes? Did he have shoes which he could click in like a Lego, a piece of Lego

and then he's stuck fast and he wouldn't fall over when it went round the corner. But if he's driving is that for the conductor for the conductors more it's related to the conductor

but it's about what if the conductor is a pervert oh uh

oh what's you're so excited

looking up women's skirts. You're bang on

so this was but well so you're you're sort of there if I'd ask you a follow-up question.

Basically the holes are there because the driver needs to be able to see over his left shoulder and the stairs block his his view unless you put holes in?

So there were holes in one step so he could look over his left shoulder. But they always came with a screen that you could pull down.

And that was because if the tram's going the other way and the conductor's at the stairs end, he can look through the holes at ladies' ankles. Ankles, oh no.

Ankles, even worse than up the skirts in those days.

I wonder if, you know, if you're an urchin. Yeah, yeah.

And they wanted you to kind of stand on this electrical thing. Do you think they tricked you by saying, do you want to be a conductor? And you'll just stand on these.

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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 because nobody can decide where it was invented, there's currently a split in the banana splits world.

Brilliant.

Some people say Croatia, don't they?

Yes,

There was also the banana Zagreb and the banana Dubrovnik.

So, yeah, two places in America, basically. In fact, we might come on to there was also a third pretender, but mainly two places in America: a place called Wilmington, Ohio, and Latrobe, Pennsylvania.

And Wilmington says that it was invented by a guy called E. R.

Hazard, who supposedly came up with banana splits, which is basically you take a banana, you split it in half, you put ice cream in the middle of of it uh he supposedly invented it to attract students to his um to his shop but they reckon that he did it in something like 1907 or 1908 and yet there is a lot of evidence that they existed before that so um no one's having a go at wilmington or anything but it seems very unlikely that they are the real ones you're taking aside here you think it was the other one i actually think that possibly it was neither but um certainly of these two i think latreaux pennsylvania definitely has the better um claim because they have evidence that there was a guy called David Strickler, sometimes William Strickler.

Different newspaper articles have different names, but he definitely was making them around 1904, 1905. We have evidence that he was buying these banana-shaped glass things.
I wonder if we know so.

Because Strickler is really celebrated there. Oh, yeah.
Why do we not know his first name?

I think we probably do, and I think one person made a mistake, and then that mistake has kind of gone through.

But yeah, if you look, in fact, even like newspaper articles relatively close to the time, some of them call him William and some of them call him David, it's so weird.

That's just are they split over what his

basically he'd made a special boat-shaped dish. He commissioned these glass-shaped dishes, but that no one has actually got a receipt that that hasn't turned up.

But maybe I'm sure there are contemporary reports. I know for a fact that they were being sold close by in 1905.
Oh, okay.

So I found some newspaper adverts, one in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, which is

fairly close to Latrobe, it was about 100 miles away. They were selling them in 1906, which was a year before they were supposedly invented in Wilmington.

There was a, yeah, some from 1904, 1905, 1906, you can see they start popping up in newspapers as being advertised.

Is it not possible, you know, with all great scientific discoveries, or a lot of them,

society as a whole has progressed to a certain place where it's inevitable that individuals come up with things simultaneously, you know and they'll be on the other side of the world

and is it possible this is morphic resonance

this is all sheep rolling across cattle grids around the planet well it's sort of like the dennis the menace thing of when they were individuals invented it's not like that at all was it the same banana pudding that we're talking about it is kind of the same so the benefit the dennis the menace thing there had recently been a song called dennis the menace right it was like a music hall song and kind of people came up with these characters probably influenced by that.

In America, in the late 19th century, they started importing bananas from different countries and they started selling them. So that was really big.

They'd also started making ice cream more regularly because they had much better ways of making ice cream. So ice cream was new, bananas was new.
It was the time for banana splits to be invented.

There we go. It's not rocket science, just merging them together.

Apology accepted, India.

Well, I don't think I've ever had a banana split. Have you not? No,

never had one. No, my God.
You're not missing out. I'd never choose one.
It's one of the least good puddings.

Yeah, but as a child, I must have been given them because it's a way to make you eat bananas.

I read that in the UK they're known as the banana longboat, which I like as well. But apparently.
I never heard that. Me neither.
I think it was only in Wimpy. Right.
In the restaurant chain Wimpy.

Okay. There was one other thing that I mentioned earlier.
The Soda Fountain magazine reckoned that the banana split was invented in Boston.

There was an ice cream convention in 1905, and there was a guy called Stinson Thomas who supposedly invented it. But Boston has since ceded its title

to this place in Pennsylvania. Very noble of Boston.

There was even a claim I read that it was invented by someone called Letty Lally in 1904.

I read this was a claim that she'd invented the banana split, and people were claiming this back in the 50s.

But historians have since concluded, so don't panic at Wilmington Octobe, that she actually invented the banana royale, which I was not familiar with, but it's like a crap banana split where you chop the banana the wrong way.

You drop the banana across the waist rather than dissecting it top to bottom. Yeah, but multiple times, like waist, neck, knees.

And do you put ice cream in it still? Yeah, yeah, and you put ice cream. Otherwise, it's just a chopped banana.

It seems pointless, right? Yeah, it just seems mad.

We love inventing words. I know, but you're not going to be in a restaurant going, I see banana split on the menu.
Do you do banana royale? I'm sorry, the chef can't.

We don't have the crockery for it. I'm so sorry.

It reminds me of one.

So that could be the case if your bananas come ready split, couldn't it? Do you know what I mean? So I used to work in a restaurant and we used to have scrambled eggs that came in a carton.

And so we would make scrambled eggs in the morning because, you know, you didn't have to scramble them yourself. They came ready scrambled.

But then people would come in and say, Can I have a boiled egg instead? And you'd have to say, we don't have any eggs. And they're like, well, what's this in front of me?

That's so funny.

It is another variant of it. Have you heard of the human banana split? Oh, disgusting.
You cut a human in half. That's correct.

Oh, I know what you're doing here. What? Is it the fact that we share 60% of our DNA with bananas? No,

you've made a huge reach from the fact that I make huge reaches all the time. But that makes us a literal banana split, doesn't it? No, it doesn't.

Doesn't it?

Not unless you were to clone a human and a banana together. That was the original draft of Jeff Goldblum's The Fly.

A banana gets thrown into the machine at the last minute and he comes out in a banana costume. No, this is it's it's a practice more than a dessert.

It's where some people throw bananas at you and then other people pour whipped cream and chocolate over you. And it's kind of a sex thing.
No, not at all. Not at all.
It's more of a prank than a.

I've only found evidence of it happening twice. It feels like the only fans kind of thing.

I'm sure it will be like within half an hour of the show going out.

Yeah, once. Hundreds of thousands of people watch that.

Once it happened to some guy who was raising raising money for charity, they sort of said, I'll send in videos of your human banana split being made, and another time it was Gordon Ramsey, it happened to him.

It's not, so it's not like a franchise yet, is it? It hasn't become a universally known. It's not as popular as the banana split original.

I don't think it will be.

So this, I think the reason they came about was really because of the popularity of soda fountains, right? Which is such an American thing that we don't really have.

And they were basically there because people would go to the drugstore and they wanted to cure stuff that they had and people believed at the time that carbonated water

I'm just slipping I'm just slipping in and out I'm slipping in and out just like Andy's from Guatemala Anna's from Boston I've got some Bostonian blood

people go to the pharmacy and they had these fountains which would give them fizzy water which people thought was very curative at the time like Coca-Cola was a curative thing yeah yeah then they'd so they'd mix it up by giving them flavours and Coca-Cola and stuff, and then they'd start adding stuff to these to make them more appealing.

And that's where the Sundays came about, and that's where the banana split came about.

And that's why Strickler was a pharmacist because he worked in a pharmacy and he thought, How do I get more people to my soda fountains?

He was a jerk, wasn't he? He was a jerk. Yeah, a soda jerk.
That's what they called them, soda jerks. Yeah.
Apparently, it was a pun on the word clerk. Clerk, clerk.
Yeah.

So someone who works in a like somebody who works in a a pharmacy might be a clerk. And then your guy who was kind of jerking down the

handle to kind of make the ice cream, he would be jerking that down so he would be a soda jerk.

Yeah, I really, I didn't know anything about soda fountains and soda jerks. Maybe we've seen them in a couple of films and things like this.
But there are so many...

Yeah, like Pepsi and Coca-Cola were the next stage where you got pre-made syrup. Because before that, everyone had their own recipes and individual soda jerks would have their own things.

Cocaine was legal in these until about 1914. Yeah, often you just drop some cocaine in it.

It was a small amount, obviously.

Like cocktails, weren't they, really? Yeah. A bit like that.
And that was a kind of golden age of crazy different recipes before the sort of more uniform, like really popular big drinks came in.

But okay, I got a few. I think it's a Cambrian explosion of ice cream.
Yeah.

Yeah, on a slightly smaller time screen.

That's the thing which happened in the Tree of Life, isn't it? I'm only vaguely aware of the Cambrian explosion.

I just know a lot of animals came with lots of weird arms coming off their heads and exactly like that. So, okay, I wanted to tell you what's going on.

What animals have arms coming off their heads? Unsuccessful ones. Okay, okay, the ones that died out.
Well, do you want to hear a few that have died out?

These are the ice creams. These are ice creams and ice creamy drinks.
So,

the black cow was milk, ice cream. I'll give you that.
Uh, Guinness. Chocolate syrup and root beer.
Pretty close.

That sounds good. Yeah.
Twist it, choke it, and make it cackle.

Well, I'd rather do it after the show.

Twist it, choke it, and make it cackle. Yeah.
Yeah. Did you have to kill your own chicken and then they put that in? Well, you had to put an egg in it, so kind of close.

That's not bad. Okay, but there were also for the winter, there were hot sodas.
Because obviously selling cold, icy sodas is very unpopular in the wintertime.

So they invented a load of hot drinks to go with these machines. So there was hot eggnog, hot mint juleps, and if you guys get any of the ingredients in this, I'll give you a

big smile and face.

You almost went for a thousand points.

I was just like, oh, I can't give them a thousand imaginary points. That would be different.
Oh, points, I thought pounds. I was hearing pounds.

I wavered between points and pounds and thought, I don't want to give either away.

The reeking smatch.

Reeking smash. What are the ingredients in it? Spinach.
Nope.

It reeks so kimchi.

Classic. 1950s.
Yeah, American

Korean import, export. Okay, the reeking smash.
This sounds like the worst drink I can possibly imagine. Water, some kind of water.

I'm not going to give you that, actually.

Clam juice, cream, and ginger. Clam juice, cream, ginger.
Just so close with cinnamon.

It just sounds absurdly foul. Yeah, that's not a good combination.

It's so weird to think why Coca-Cola took off in an environment where you could get a nice reeking smash. Imagine if we were all drinking reeking smash now.

Just very quickly, I was looking into other kinds of banana splits and one that I'd not actually ever heard of was a Hanna-Barbera cartoon. We were talking about

it. Yeah, it kind of

passed me by. And

it didn't last too long. It was 1968 to 1970.
There was a syndication that went on a bit later. Yeah, can I just say also, I wasn't alive in those years.

They did repeat it quite.

They did. Yeah, yeah.
It was syndicated from 70 to 82, but obviously it's been on TV ever since, and who knows in this country when. But it was cancelled.

So they made a movie in 2019, the Banana Splits movie. And it's amazing because this was a kids' TV show.

The plot line of this movie is that the Banana Splits are in studio and they're recording their show where they discovered they're about to be cancelled.

The movie is about the murder spree that the banana splits go on, killing everyone inside the studio because they're furious about the upcoming cancellation. And

they were silly banana splits because I don't know how they would murder anyone. They were like

huge sort of bears. Were they bears? Yeah,

they were like big animals. Big animals.
Exactly. People played in a band.
It sounds like Alpha Papa. Oh, it doesn't sound like that.
The Alan Parchers. It's an amazingly good film.
It is a film.

I haven't seen that. But yeah, it was rated R, I believe.
And this is.

So a lot of people were furious because their childhood classic had come back and, you know, they couldn't take their kids to it. Turn into screen.
Yeah, exactly.

You know, when Bob Barley was accused of plagiarising that that tv show yeah he was accused of plagiarizing it for um buffalo soldier and it's the bit that in the theme tune that says tra la la and they shout tra la la la la la tra la la la la la oh my days oh that's the banana splits i don't know anything about who do you say bob dylan

i don't know any bomb songs buffalo soldier aye well obviously it's exactly the same tune i mean it's a very simple tune and it's almost certain he didn't plagiarize it and he has been his well people

who represent him have been asked about it. I mean that sounded bang on I gotta say.
I'm on the side of the banana splits. Yeah.

A friend of Bob said he was a very serious man and I doubt very much he had come across something. Well a friend of Snorkey from the banana splits said that bastard stole our song.

I've got one final thing about soda fountains and who killed the soda fountain, right?

So this is from a piece in the New York Times talking about why this declined, you know, because they were huge.

They were where people socialized, they were where people hung out, they were a big business as well.

So there's a theory it was whoever invented the drive-in restaurant, which then was the next huge thing.

There's a theory it was F.D. Roosevelt who repealed prohibition.

There's another theory, and this is all from the New York Times piece about it. There's a guy called William Painter.

William Painter was

the person who patented the crimped metal bottle cap.

So that makes sense. Because I thought Willie Painter was the guy who invented the camouflage concept.

Very good.

Sorry.

As you were saying. What's the word? Sorry? What is that? You know the crimped metal bottle cap? Like on a glass bottle of Coke?

That bottle cap is metal, but it's also got this kind of ruffles around the edge, the crimps. So that made it possible to standardize drinks.

And he actually invented that in around the early, the first decade of the 20th century. And that's why you could buy a thousand of them and keep them in a warehouse

each time someone making a new one. Exactly, yeah, interesting.
The only reason I mentioned this guy, William Painter, is because I thought I'd try and find out other stuff about his life and work.

Yeah, he invented a load of different things, including, and I can find no more details about this, an ejector seat for trains.

Brilliant.

And it doesn't say whether it's for the driver or for the passengers. Must be the driver.

Every single passenger had. You see them flying into the air, 300 people.

One last thing. Yeah.
Did you know that Liz Truss's mum used to regularly dress up as a banana?

No,

sorry, remind us of who Liz Truss is.

For any international or British listeners, Liz Truss was the person who was momentarily Prime Minister of the country a very short while ago.

And she's the second most successful member of her family by the South Championship.

Wow.

This actually came out in a book that was famously released, a book that's called Out of the Blue.

Well, it was called Out of the Blue, the Inside Story of Liz Truss and Her Explosive Rise to Power, and it had to be retitled that book, Out of the Blue, The Inside Story of the Unexpected Rise and Rapid Fall of Liz Truss.

But yeah, her mum was a big campaigner for various things. So she moved to Eastern Europe in the 1970s to try out life under communism, for instance.
Yeah.

And she wanted to promote fair trade in Leeds in the 1970s. And she did this by making herself a bright yellow banana costume and wandering around in it.
Wow.

And Liz Trust would say she'd go into the supermarket, and the kids would be like,

if she brought that up, yeah, I would be

kept saying she was from Leeds. She couldn't stop saying she went to school in Leeds.
I think I'd be saying my mum used to dress as a school. Do you think you would?

I think that's really on the cusp of is it going to work or is it going to ruin?

I suppose the Tory voters are not going to love the idea that she was going to live on the communist governance of Eastern Europe. You could leave out that part.
You're interested in fair trade?

This trust, she admired Margaret Thatcher, didn't she? And Thatcher used to work in ice cream.

So if her mum got together with Thatcher, we could have had a banana split. A human banana split.
Yes. Oh, my God.

Okay, that's it. That is all of our facts.
Thank you so much for listening.

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

I'm on at Schreiberland, James, at James Harkin, Andy, at Andrew Hunter M, and Anna. You can email podcast at QI.com.

Yep, or you can go to our group account, which is at No Such Thing, or our website, no such thingasafish.com. All the previous episodes are up there, so do check them out.

Also, bits of merch are up there. If you want to get some in time for Christmas, do it now.

Otherwise, just come back here next week where we will have another episode waiting for you of No Such Thing as a Fish. See you then.
Goodbye.

Attention, parents and grandparents. If you're looking for a gift that's more than just a toy, give them something that inspires confidence and adventure all year long.

Give them a Guardian bike, the easiest, safest, and number one kids bike on the market. With USA-made, kids-specific frames and patented safety technology, kids are learning to ride in just one day.

No training wheels needed. It's why Guardian is America's favorite kids' bike and the New York Times and Wirecutters top pick three years in a row.

This holiday season, Guardian is offering their biggest deal of the year. Up to 40% in savings on all bikes plus $100 in free accessories.

Guardian bikes have become the most sought-after gifts of the season, and inventory is going fast. So don't wait.
Join over half a million happy families who've discovered the magic of Guardian.

Shop now at GuardianBikes.com. That's GuardianBikes.com.

Owning a home is full of surprises. Some wonderful, some

not so much. And when something breaks, it can feel like the whole day unravels.
That's why Home Serve exists.

For as little as $4.99 a month, you'll always have someone to call, a trusted professional ready to help, bringing peace of mind to four and a half million homeowners nationwide for plans starting at just 499 a month go to homeserve.com that's homeserve.com not available everywhere most plans range between 4.99 to 1199 a month your first year terms apply on covered repairs think about the last time you had to cancel a subscription there's probably some waiting on hold some guessing at your password some mind-numbing small talk and maybe after all that you still weren't able to cancel it Good news, it doesn't have to be this way.

Thanks to Rocket Money, Rocket Money tracks, manages, and can cancel your subscriptions for you.

When you connect to your accounts, you'll see a complete picture of all of your recurring subscriptions all in one place.

Rocket Money organizes your subscriptions by due date and notifies you when something is coming up, so you'll never be caught off guard when you get charged.

If you see a subscription you want to cancel, Rocket Money simplifies the process. Instead of waiting on hold for an hour, you can cancel it right from the app.

Rocket Money will even try to get you a refund for the money you spent on subscriptions you forgot about. Stop wasting time trying to cancel subscriptions the hard way.

Make your life easier and go to rocketmoney.com/slash cancel.

That's rocketmoney.com/slash cancel, or download the app from the Apple App or Google Play Stores.