221: No Such Thing As A Fully Carpeted Country

From Australia to San Francisco, Cullen Jewelry brings timeless craftsmanship and modern lab-grown diamond engagement rings to the U.S.

Explore Solitaire, trilogy, halo, and bezel settings, or design a custom ring that tells your love story.

With expert guidance, a lifetime warranty, and a talented team of in-house jewelers behind every piece, your perfect ring is made with meaning.

Visit our new Union Street showroom or explore the range at cullenjewelry.com.

Your ring, your way.

From Australia to San Francisco, Cullen Jewelry brings timeless craftsmanship and modern lab-grown diamond engagement rings to the US.

Explore solitaire, trilogy, halo, and bezel settings, or design a custom piece that tells your love story.

With expert guidance, a lifetime warranty, and a talented team of in-house jewels behind every piece, your perfect ring is made with meaning.

Visit our Union Street Showroom or explore the range at cullinjewelry.com.

Your ring your way.

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

My name is Dan Schreiber and I'm sitting here with Anna Chaczynski, Andrew Hunter Murray, James Harkin, and special guest Alan Davies.

And once again we've gathered round the microphone with our four favourite facts this time about the World Cup and in no particular order here we go.

Starting with you, Alan.

Austria qualified for the 1938 World Cup but then had to withdraw because it stopped existing as a country.

It's a good excuse.

That's a good excuse.

And it was the 30s.

There was a lot of that kind of philosophy.

They made an existential crisis in the camp.

They're not sure they exist, and on that basis, they've withdrawn.

Also, they have been annexed by Germany.

Tiny thing.

Tiny thing.

The Anschluss, not a big deal, guys, but we won't be there.

Yeah, so that's Germany-claimed Austria, right?

Yeah, but they had to qualify.

You had to qualify in that year in 38.

Well, a lot of teams entered.

So they'd gone to a lot of trouble only to be annexed

in the preamble to the tournament.

And they were very good, weren't they?

In that they were then sort of the German team and the Austrian team then came together so they still eventually played a lot of the players.

Some of the players yes some of the players went a bit more van trapped about it did they just would not have it oh really yeah yeah

and actually the players who played didn't get on with the Germans and they all fell out and they ended up losing quite early didn't they?

Did they?

Yes, yeah.

Did you know what happened to the trophy during the Second World War?

Ooh, no.

It probably melted down, I presume.

It was under someone's bed.

Was it?

Yeah.

It was in a shoebox under an Italian official's bed.

Really?

Yeah, because I think did Italy win

1938 when it happened elsewhere, didn't it happen in France?

So France took it after Austria stopped being a thing.

Yeah.

And then I think Italy won, and so an Italian official just looked after it.

Italy won in 1934.

The suspicion was that Mussolini chose all the referees for their matches.

And in 34, Austria came fourth behind Germany.

So presumably they hoped the combined might of Austria and Germany, Uruguay, who had staged a tournament in 1930 and won it, then sold and didn't come.

Yeah.

Because none of the European teams went to Uruguay, only four of them turned up.

It's such a strop.

It's so immature.

You didn't come to my party.

I'm not coming to your party.

But when they did come back, they won it again.

Do you know what happened when Austria did drop out in 1938?

So obviously that left a gap.

And the runners-up were Latvia, who should have replaced Austria then in the tournament.

And the people were just like, no, we'll just do without.

It's fine.

And they just gave Sweden a bye through the rounds.

Instead of letting Latvia play at all, they just decided

knocked it off.

I'm beginning to think these FIFA guys are not completely fair and honest.

I'm sorry if that.

Did they not offer for England to take part?

Oh, maybe they did.

Yes, England refused.

England refused on the grounds that the home international tournament.

between England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland was of a higher standard and a more significant event.

I'm not even making that up.

We have our own international tournament.

This wouldn't even go.

It takes place entirely within our nation on our little island where everything's better.

And this Austrian team, they were so good.

They were kind of beating everyone at the time.

Not England.

They came over to England and lost, but they were beating everyone else by quite a lot.

And they had a new system that no one else used, and it was a 2-3-5 system.

So two defenders, three in midfield, and five strikers.

Which has long been claimed to have been invented by Herbert Chapman at Arsenal.

Is that right?

And England didn't go into the the World Cup, but Arsenal played Italy at Highbury.

I say Arsenal, it was England, but they had seven Arsenal players in.

And won the game.

Won the game 3-2.

Would you say that the current England team is basically Tottenham?

Basically, yeah, so we're doomed.

Won the game 3-2, it became known as the Battle of Highbury.

Oh, really?

And it was decided by Arsenal supporters at the time that therefore we were officially the world champions, having beaten Italy on our

own.

And that was with a fight 3-2.

Yeah,

it was a revolutionary system.

Has any team ever played?

1-10.

Nothing, nothing.

Yeah.

It's worth a try, right?

So, 1938 FIFA World Cup, the draw was selected by Jules Rimmet, who was the founder of the World Cup.

Jules Rimmer.

Draw Jules Rimet.

Interesting fact, it's Rimet.

Yeah, you Rimmit.

Rimmett got his grandson to do the draw from a bowl.

It was his grandson on top of a table, picked them out, and that's how the night was.

Now, the draw nowadays can be seen from space, and more technology is used in it than was used on the Apollo moon landing.

Oh, come on.

Is that made up?

It's just two things you say about almost every single fat we ever have.

And it's also bigger than a blue one.

It does sound like a QI script just came out of your mouth, though.

They did reveal the logo, though, for this World Cup up in the International Space Station.

So it was the Russian cosmonauts who

said.

And this year's match ball has been to space.

So it just came back down, in fact.

It was made in Pakistan, sent up to the ISS.

So no one kicked it up, did they?

Oh, sorry.

They kicked it while it was up.

Right.

Did they hoof it into the rocket as the rocket was just leaving?

That would be a good idea.

Only Beckham could do this.

Can I check something with you?

So you've said the match ball.

Now, that to me gives the impression there's only one ball for the whole World Cup.

And I know that can't be true, obviously.

I think this is the main, the,

what would you call it?

The signature ball.

Yeah, the one they'll probably use in the first game in the final, I guess.

But they'll use they'll have lots of balls in every game.

It's a good call, though.

They'd probably be like, we really need to wrap up these penalties with England and Brazil.

The Italian-German match needs to happen.

I've got a fact about the 1930 World Cup.

Okay.

Which is.

The original and the best.

The original, yeah.

Uruguayans say that, don't they?

So it was in Uruguay, and it was not a very advanced World Cup.

So for example there was a match between Brazil and Bolivia where everyone was wearing white, which is obviously very confusing.

Were they just cricketers who got on the wrong pitch?

But there was one way of telling which is that half the Bolivians were wearing berets as well.

So

if you kicked it to a guy wearing a beret there was a one in two chance he was on your team.

That's really good.

No if you kicked it to a guy wearing a beret there was a hundred percent chance he was on your team if you were Bolivian.

Yeah.

It's just that it was a one in three chance I guess if you kicked it to a a guy without wearing it.

This is the sort of pedantry I came in.

I knew this went on.

I can tell you what a privilege it is.

It's to be in the inner sanctuary.

They do actually say things like that to each other.

No, you're right.

You're going to get home and go, they do it.

They actually pulled him up on it.

We were talking about

England in the World Cup.

And British teams in the World Cup have a good history.

So Scotland

basically got in, but didn't quite in 1950.

So, in 1950, it was so weird.

FIFA really wanted British teams to be playing in the World Cup because they were still being really snooty with this whole Britain's better thing.

And so, they said that if they played their home championship, the winner and the runner-up could play in the World Cup, would both qualify.

And Scotland said, That's insulting.

If we win, we'll play in it.

If we're runner-up, we refuse.

And so, they played their games and they both smashed Wales and Northern Ireland.

And then England beat Scotland, and Scotland ran back to FIFA and said, Please, we didn't mean it, please.

And FIFA didn't.

They were like, I'm really sorry, you gave us your word.

You said it was only if you won it.

You're on.

And that was the end of Scotland in the World Cup.

Have they never won it since then?

They've never won it.

They've never won it.

You can't win it if you don't qualify, you see.

Right, got it.

They used to qualify.

In my school days, it was always Scotland in and not England in the 70s.

They used to be on a level pegging, actually, didn't they?

Yeah, England had a policy of refusing to pick their best players on the grounds that they had long hair and i'm not even making a note

it's that people like stam bowles and rodney marsh who had long hair and frank worthington who were all the most skillful players in the first division because they didn't have a short back and sides and play cards

they they would pick people who looked like they were in the army because most of the managers had been wow they also would not pick maverick managers who were clever and inventive like gareth southgate

yeah

the tradition of the english manager looks good in a blazer

i mean i've never seen Andy look so confused at all the references being made.

I do not know what's going on with this wheel side.

Oh great.

Well I imagine I'll make it then, right?

In the 70s everything changed in the fashion front so people started growing their hair long and England failed to qualify in 1974 and 1978 and I'm convinced it's because all the best players had long hair and the older men were offended.

And then in the World Cup in 1978 the leading scorer had really a load of hair and a beard and I think he had his ear pierced.

And his name was Mario.

And he gave the lie.

And his partner in crime, his fellow centre-forward, had a headband.

I mean, they absolutely gave the lie to short back and size being essential for winning football matches.

Okay, that's our excuse.

That's our excuse in the 70s.

What about the 80s and 90s?

Then we started...

We've got loads of people in the long.

We even had people with mullets.

And we got to the semi-final.

That's true.

And in fact, it was one of the mullets, Chris Waddell, who blasted his penalty over the bar.

But be forgiving.

I'm just thinking about the current current squad.

There's not much long hair there, is there?

No, times have changed.

What matters now are tattoos.

How many arm sleeves have they got and how many piercings?

Do they want more or less?

Yeah, more.

The more...

I mean, Leonard Messi, who's the best player that's ever played football, has had one of his legs from the knee down entirely blacked out.

Wow.

Yeah.

So they can't see it on the field.

Yeah.

He's on himself in night matches.

It just looks like there's a floating boot going around with him.

As if he's not good enough as it is.

this boot is now detached from his body.

It doesn't mess he have really dodgy legs or something.

Like he had polio or something as a child.

He did.

He was

tons of drugs.

He had to have lots and lots of

hormones for growth.

Growth hormones.

And some people think that's a little bit naughty.

Well, I'm not sure about that.

He came from Argentina when he was about 11 or 12 as this kind of mercurial prodigy and he went to Barcelona and they said he's brilliant, but he's too small.

and then one of the coaches saw him and said no he really is brilliant what are we going to do about him and they did they had him on growth hormones until he was about 13 but he's still only five foot seven yeah that's not worked that well has it you don't know who he is he's not like Michael Jordan

you actually think he's that small because half his legs are blacked out yeah you can't see his legs and that's actually major advantage

Running a business online?

Look legit and own your own brand with professional tools from GoDaddy.

Instantly build trust with your customers and boost your credibility with an email that matches your domain so people know you mean business.

There's never been a better time.

Just go to godaddy.com slash GDNow and choose from a wide variety of popular domains to find one that's right for you.

Pair that with a professional email that works for all your business needs from daily communications to email marketing and everything in between.

That's a little price for a lot of credibility.

For a limited time, get a domain and matching professional email for just 99 cents a month for one year.

Go to godaddy.com slash gdnow and look legit with godaddy.

That's godaddy.com slash gdnow.

Again, go daddy.com slash gdnow.

There's never been a better time to choose the domain and email that's right for you.

New customer purchases only products auto-renew separately.

See terms on site.

Go daddy.com slash gdnow.

Hi, I'm Lexi from Blindster.com.

We make custom blinds, shades, and shutters.

and I'm proud to be part of the team that helps bring these window coverings to your home.

We're a family-owned business, and every order is made just for your windows.

No cutting corners, no middlemen.

I've seen firsthand just how much care goes into each shade, and we're here to help every customer find the perfect fit, no matter their budget or style.

If you're ready to upgrade your windows, we'd love to help.

Visit blindster.com today.

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

My fact is that this year Argentina's Football Association gave its players a World Cup manual with a chapter on how to pick up Russian women.

So this is a it was a book that was given out to journalists and to players and to coaches in Argentina and it was like a course about how to adapt to Russian culture and there was an entire chapter that was titled How to Stand a Chance with a Russian Girl and it included advice like make sure you're clean, smell good and dress well

because apparently Argentinian men love like filthy-smelling women.

Can I just say, as someone married to a Russian, I'm not sure they're bothered about cleanliness or

dressing well when the evidence sits before you.

Well, are they bothered about this, James?

The booklet also said, Russian girls hate boring men.

Never ask trite questions, be original.

I'm wondering if my wife actually is Russian.

It also said that they don't like to be seen as objects, which is singular to Russian women, but it apparently is true of them.

But yeah, this was in the booklet.

And then apparently, Argentina got word of it from some of the journalists and went and ripped all the pages out of this booklet and said, oh God, that wasn't meant to be in there.

Sorry.

It was a mistake, mistakenly included.

And it's no longer there.

I found a bit of.

So there's a problem that Moscow's parliament have been telling people to be smart.

for the World Cup.

And this is travelers, I think.

I think it's fans arriving.

And there are on-the-spot fines in Moscow if you don't adhere to these rules.

And it's 500 rubles, which is the maximum, which is about six quid.

Yes,

so you can actually.

That's great.

No jeans, no trainers.

Yeah, it's like a nightclub.

It's like a big nightclub.

Your name's not down.

You're not coming in.

That definitely is one.

They've had that down for years.

If your name's not down, you're not getting out.

But it's with visas this time.

Obviously, when you go into a country like Russia, you need a visa, but fans won't need a visa.

They have a fan visa, which is automatically given to them if they can show they have a ticket.

That's quite cool.

You can just prove interest or knowledge in football.

Just need a ticket.

Yeah, just need a ticket.

But Andy, you wouldn't enjoy it.

There's no point in it.

But I don't have a ticket either.

So it's fine.

The amount of information you have to give on the official ticket website to get a ticket.

Oh, really?

Oh, really?

Yeah, it makes.

Mark Zuckerberg would absolutely wait.

And you virtually have to give your parents details.

What sort of stuff?

Oh, everyone.

Certainly your passport information.

Yeah, probably everything.

Credit card information, like

everything that you vote for and love Ireland.

Well, Andy, Andy, we've suddenly hit an interest point for you here on the podcast.

We're not here to discuss that.

People aren't tense about this one, right?

Didn't the

about this Love Island?

I know I am.

Yeah.

Kendall was robbed.

I saw Kendall this morning in the flesh.

Oh, look.

Did she?

At the This Morning Studios.

She is very, very small.

And one of her legs is completely invisible.

Never been seen in the same room as Leonor Messi.

Fascinating.

They usually go out just on the dawn of the tournament.

The greatest conspiracy theory yet heard on this show.

Kendall Messi.

No, the head of policing, of football policing in the UK has warned the Brits basically not to be too aggro, haven't they?

In Russia, so they said, don't wave St.

George's flags around.

Don't drink Lagrenzig's hold.

Don't drink.

There's a security expert, a man who calls himself a security expert.

He's a director of the University of Buckingham Centre for Security and Intelligence.

He's called Anthony Gleese, but he did an interview with The Express, so I wonder how reliable he is.

But he warned.

Well, after he's been through the prism of The Express,

anything could happen.

When did he say the world's going to end, Anthony?

And where is Princess Diana?

He seriously said that English footballers need to look out for Russian women who are actually spies disguised as women trying to seduce them because he said if there's one way to scupper England's chances even more, it'll be through honey traps by leading the players on with gorgeous Russian girls.

Is that right?

I've heard the English team are going for a 10-0-0 formation this World Cup.

That's a good point.

I don't know how you jeopardise it.

Maybe you give them an STD or something that's well apparently Paraguayan prostitutes tried to seduce Venezuelan players in the qualifiers of this World Cup.

And

to what?

Well, it was weird because actually neither team could qualify at that point.

But apparently a load of prostitutes made it into their hotel lobby and they claimed that they were trying to seduce them.

But to sort of tie them out before the big match?

I suppose that might happen.

Because it sounds like they were just prostitutes doing their job and these were just men who wanted to join prostitutes.

Yeah.

It does sound like that.

This is an away trip that all the Paraguayan squad were available for.

Who wants to go to Venezuela for the dead rubber?

Meet, meet, meet!

The dead rubber?

Is that a prostitution phrase?

Or is it a...

It may also be, but in this context...

That's what gets thrown out the window.

Yeah.

But isn't it true that...

But actually, people think that you shouldn't have sex before football matches, right?

Well, I've heard...

No,

footballers don't think that.

No, but sometimes they've heard it.

The people in charge of them think it charges.

I've heard it doesn't really affect your performance, actually.

No, I don't think so.

There's a

football health coach called Nick Littlehales, who's Cristiano Ronaldo's sleep coach, as well as a bunch of other people.

Sorry, Cristiano Ronaldo's sleep coach.

Yeah.

Right.

Go to sleep.

Actually,

that's not a tactic that works.

But he says it's crap that athletes shouldn't have sex before big games.

But he just says they do need to sleep solo.

So what he says is, I guess they should have sex, but then their partners need to get up and go and sleep in a separate room, like in kind of Tudor times.

That's the idea.

And he introduced sleeping pods.

So Cristiano Ronaldo at

Real Madrid at the moment, isn't he?

Real Madrid has sleeping pods and every player has their own sleeping pods.

I imagine them all in orbit somehow.

Yeah.

They're on the...

brought in back into the atmosphere for the match.

And then launched back into orbit.

Yeah,

dry ice.

Let me get woken up.

Where am I?

What do you say?

You've woken up too early.

Let's wake up Jennifer Lawrence.

She's not here.

I like Paraguayan prostitutes will do.

Wear the Paraguayan prostitute pods.

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

My fact this week is that scientists have invented anti-diving shin pads.

Do these

sense psychologically that you're about to dive and they hold your body up

on the pitch

in mid-air.

And you're broadcast saying, I'm fine, it didn't touch me.

Well, what it is,

I mean, they're completely useless, like they're just stupid, but they do exist.

There's a sensor in your boot, there's a sensor in the shin pad, and when they touch each other, the referee has an alarm which will go off so he knows that there's been contact.

Unfortunately, the problem is that you can file someone by pushing them in the back or whatever, so it doesn't, like, it's completely pointless.

So, they need to invent anti-diving bodysuits,

yeah it's like the same technology as you have in fencing I guess when you know that someone's been hit in fencing there's a new version which makes your shimpas light up when you get kicked kids would love light up shimpas yeah but they'd be constantly kicking each other just in order to light up kick me kick me

kick yourself on the shimpa penalty they almost brought this in for the Khanefa World Cup which has just happened which is the World Cup for countries that aren't really countries and which is sponsored by Paddy Power and Paddy Power wanted to bring in some weird ass rules that were different than normal rules.

And they brought in one thing, which was a green card, which means if you get sent off for abusing the referee.

You can work in America.

It's very tempting.

Even now, because

of North Koreans offending foreshadowing a lot of Mexicans.

What happens if you get sent off for the green card, you get sent off, but they're allowed to bring on a substitute.

So they don't punish the team, they punish the player.

So they did that in this in this World Cup.

And you actually went, didn't you, to the Khalifa?

To the final and to one of the other games, yeah.

It's funny.

Who did you see playing?

I saw Northern Cyprus against Abkhazia in the first game, and then Northern Cyprus against

who was it?

Carpitalia.

I won't believe Abkhazia lost Northern Cyprus.

I know, because I was supporting Abkhazia actually.

So I was quite

sure.

It's a breakaway area of Georgia.

Do we know who's won?

Does it finish at the same time as the winner?

No, it finished.

I went to the final last weekend, then it was won by Carpitalia, which is a part of Ukraine where Hungarians live.

Okay.

Oh, it's not a carpet warehouse.

Because it really sounds like one.

Yeah.

Run by Italians.

I'd like to see their television ads.

Sort of ones where the owner does it himself.

Let's go to Carpitalia.

Soon we will be our own country.

Fully carpeted.

The only carpeted nation on earth.

Build a wall and another wall and be wall to wall carpeted.

Wall-to-wall.

So on weird football rules, I was looking into.

Do you know the referee can send himself off?

Do you know that?

He needs a wee.

That is.

He gives himself a card.

He doesn't card himself a yellow card.

It can't happen, can it?

It can happen.

It has happened.

Not in big football games,

but

for instance, in 2005, Peterborough North End was playing Royal Mail AYL.

This was

a lower leagues match, and the referee Andy Wayne got really angry.

So, someone disagreed with his decision, a player disagreed with his decision, and he flung away his whistle and he untucked his shirt and he ran up and eyeballed the player.

And then immediately he saw the error of his ways and he gave himself a red card and set himself off.

Wow.

And there was no one to replace him, so the match had to be called off.

Oh, oh, yeah.

And then he waited in the car park for him.

Wow.

But they can also send off linesmen, which I didn't know.

So this has some type of stuff.

They've got so much power.

Yeah.

They've got more power than they should have.

So last year

there was Dundee beat Kormarnock.

So this was an actual match with teams that...

Well, it's in Scotland.

It's in Scotland, but it's still real football.

As are many of your listeners.

Oh, my God.

So naive.

When I tour Scotland, of course, they're the best shows I have.

Are they?

Better than Wales.

Don't say that.

On a minefield.

So in Scotland, whom we love, all of you,

in this match, the ref sent off the assistant referee and gave him a red card because he was vomiting by the side of the pitch.

Absolutely harsh.

Started vomiting, sent him off.

That is a bit harsh.

Yeah, I think it seems unsharing.

You can't be sent off for vomiting.

Who was it who vomited before a penalty in the world?

Sudan.

Yeah.

Who was it?

That was in the Euros.

That was against England.

It depends on whether it's deliberate and malicious vomiting.

If you do it in the face of the goalkeeper just before a penalty.

He just did it on the pitch.

He put his hands on his knee.

I was at that match.

He put his hands on his knees.

We thought, oh, what's he doing?

Wow.

And then he suddenly looked up, ran up, smashed it in the net.

And on the television replay, you can see when he had his hands on his knees, he was vomiting on the pitch.

But Gary Dineka said he once did a poo on the pitch.

Oh, yeah.

yeah.

There was a video of this.

Is there not a voice?

There must be.

There are so many cameras in the ground.

There must be a poo camera.

This video of him kind of dragging his bump on the grass to guide him.

Like a snap.

And then people tweet him all the time, just saying, just remind me.

You poo to the pitch.

But he never got a yellow card in his whole career.

He probably scored it all as well.

No, he never did.

Can I interrupt with just a tiny bit of personal news?

We're recording this on Anna's computer, and there's an alarm that's come up that is to tell her she needs to get lu-roll and olive oil in 25 minutes.

Well, the thing is, Anna always shits herself in the middle of the podcast.

Lou roll and olive oil.

That's what every paragraph prostitute

takes to the World Cup.

Wow.

I'm not extra virgin.

So the penalty was invented by an Irish guy called William McCrum, and no one liked it at first because they thought, how on earth would anyone be so low as to deliberately commit a foul?

This was a long time ago.

Yeah.

And they called it the Irishman's Motion.

But they.

Gary Lineker in

honor of that performed an Irishman's motion.

Running a business online?

Look legit and own your own brand with professional tools from GoDaddy.

Instantly build trust with your customers and boost your credibility with an email that matches your domain so people know you mean business.

There's never been a better time.

Just go to godaddy.com slash gdnow and choose from a wide variety of popular domains to find one that's right for you.

Pair that with a professional email that works for all your business needs, from daily communications to email marketing and everything in between.

That's a little price for a lot of credibility.

For a limited time, get a domain and matching professional email for just 99 cents a month for one year.

Go to godaddy.com slash gdnow and look legit with godaddy.

That's godaddy.com slash gdnow.

Again, go daddy.com slash gdnow.

There's never been a better time to choose the domain and email that's right for you.

New customer purchases only products auto-renew separately.

See terms on site, go daddy.com slash gdnow.

Time for a sofa upgrade?

Visit washable sofas.com and discover Anibay, where designer style meets budget-friendly prices.

With sofas starting at $699.

Anibay brings you the ultimate in furniture innovation with a modular design that allows you to rearrange your space effortlessly.

Perfect for both small and large spaces, Anibay is the only machine-washable sofa inside and out.

Say goodbye to stains and messes with liquid and stain-resistant fabrics that make cleaning easy.

Liquid simply slides right off.

Designed for custom comfort, our high-resilience foam lets you choose between a sink-in feel or a supportive memory foam blend.

Plus, our pet-friendly stain-resistant fabrics ensure your sofa stays beautiful for years.

Don't compromise quality for price.

Visit washable sofas.com to upgrade your living space today with no risk returns and a 30-day money-back guarantee.

Get up to 60% off plus free shipping and free returns.

Shop now at washablesofas.com.

Offers are subject to change and certain restrictions may apply.

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

My fact is that in April, police in Lima seized over 20,000 counterfeit Panini football sticker albums with a street value of $350,000.

Wow.

It's great.

It's amazing.

Yeah, and this keeps happening.

It happens all the time because they're really.

Well, only every four years.

Yeah, it's true.

But

the police in Italy have seized another 20,000 stickers, and they said this could be the tip of the iceberg.

Every World Cup, it happens, because they're quite, you know, valuable things.

I mean, the full ones are really valuable.

The empty ones i guess are valuable too because you can flog them well i went on ebay uh just to see what the highest you put in panini sticker and there are empty albums from previous world cups that the highest value is sort of five thousand pounds sometimes from for an empty book well the empty ones if if you can sell on ebay an empty book with all the stickers in it then that's the best you can get because then people get it and they get the enjoyment of putting the stickers in.

I understand that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's worth thousands of pounds,

money.

To people like me.

And you do it, don't you?

You've in previous World Cups called out on Twitter to say, can we swap Panini stickers?

Well, let's not put this on the podcast.

No, no, I do.

Yeah, I do do stickers.

And you live in North London, don't you?

In Finsbury Park, and you love people to approach you with football stickers.

Did you always do Panini?

Because they weren't.

We did a different one when we were kids.

Merlin, yeah.

I did Merlin when they did the Beano stickers.

Yeah, exactly.

But then Panini came back in, didn't it?

Panini, yeah, recently has become huge.

Yeah, well, huge in my household.

And your address, just to be clear.

Do you not do stickers, Alan, though?

Not for a while.

No, my little boy now is keen.

In fact, he found some at the bottom of a well-known breakfast cereal recently.

Oh, yeah.

And I thought, well, this is going to cost me about a grand.

Yeah, that's pretty much it.

It will cost you £773.60 to fill a book.

Yep.

Is that if you get every single sticker first time.

Does that include double buying?

It's a mathematics professor has worked out that if you just keep buying and you don't do any swaps with anyone,

it's an average to have to complete the album.

But apparently if you do have friends, it can be cheaper.

It can be cheaper, yeah.

And also you can buy stickers direct from Panini.

Yeah, your last 50 you can buy.

Yeah, but they've failed then, haven't you?

Have you?

I mean, I think if you're just calling them up and saying, please, can I have Marcus Rashford?

I've bought 5,000.

Well, that's what happened.

Music Magpie decided to test it out, and they bought 5,000 stickers worth £800,

and they only found 681 out of the 682 stickers.

So they were one shot.

They didn't have Raja Nangalan, and he isn't even going.

Yeah, he's not even going to the World Cup.

Is he not?

No.

Yeah,

I think he didn't get picked, but yeah.

Yeah, I remember that in 1990, David Rowcastle of Arsenal had a coin made.

He played, he started in every qualifying match that England played.

He had a coin made in the SO World Cup coin collection, and then when they picked the squad, they didn't pick him.

Oh my god.

He felt so, so, so hurtful.

But I mean, I've got a coin.

Never mind playing every qualifier.

You were thinking he had his own coin made out of vanity.

He didn't have his own made.

No, he didn't mint a coin himself.

There was a really cool idea, and James, I reckon you would like this.

There was a news agent in the 2016 Euro, so Panini did for the Euro 2016.

They did a shop where basically people could meet up just to swap the Panini stickers.

Again, I'm not interested in meeting up with people to do so.

This fact is about Lima, Peru.

So they qualified.

Sorry, they were in the fact.

Yeah, so they qualified, right?

Peru, yes.

Yeah, Peru qualified.

But in Lima, where the match was against New Zealand, it's where they had a 2-0 victory that got them in.

There was an app which is designed to warn people of an impending natural disaster, so earthquakes mainly.

And that app went off

when Lima was celebrating because there was so much activity going on that an earthquake warning went out to everyone with that app.

How cool is that?

There was so much.

There was so much geological activity.

Yeah, there was so many people just jumping around.

Yeah, which happens a lot in football stadiums, doesn't it, in America?

Yeah, so an American football stadium can register a very tiny earthquake to anything that's sensitive towards it.

And in Lima, they have that.

And there was once a madness festival in Finsbury Park that set off a earthquake thing as well.

Really?

Yeah.

You live in Finsbury Park.

I was bizarrely looking into sponsorship that appears on jerseys.

So my favourite one is Atletico Madrid, who the sponsorship for their team in 2003 was a deal with Columbia Pictures.

So the sponsorship kept changing according to what movie they were pushing at the time.

So, movies that appeared on their jerseys included White Chicks, Spanglish, and Anaconda's The Hunt for the Blood Orchid.

Okay, that's it.

That is all of our facts.

Thank you so much for listening.

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

I'm on at Schreiberland, Andy, at Andrew Hunter, M.

James, at James Harkin, and Alan.

No.

That's usually Chaczynski's role.

And Anna.

You can email podcast at QI.com.

Or you can go to our Facebook group or our website, no such thing as a fish.com.

We have all of our previous episodes up there.

We will be back again next week.

Thanks so much for listening.

Goodbye.

Tired of spills and stains on your sofa?

WashableSofas.com has your back, featuring the Annibay Collection, the only designer sofa that's machine-washable inside and out, where designer quality meets budget-friendly prices.

That's right, sofas started just $699.

Enjoy a no-risk experience with pet-friendly, stain-resistant, and changeable slip covers made with performance fabrics.

Experience cloud-like comfort with high-resilience foam that's hypoallergenic and never needs fluffing.

The sturdy steel frame ensures longevity, and the modular pieces can be rearranged anytime.

Check out washable sofas.com and get up to 60% off your Anabay sofa, backed by a 30-day satisfaction guarantee.

If you're not absolutely in love, send it back for a full refund.

No return shipping or restocking fees, every penny back.

Upgrade now at washablesofas.com.

Offers are subject to change and certain restrictions may apply.