191: No Such Thing As A Cannibal Squirrel

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

My name is Dad Schreiber.

I'm sitting here with Anna Chaczynski, Andrew Hunter Murray, and James Harkin.

And once again, we have gathered around the microphones with our four favorite facts from the last seven days and in no particular order.

Here we go.

Starting with you, James Harkin.

Okay, my fact this week is that it's easier to speak Dutch if you're drunk.

As in if you're a non-native speaker.

Yeah, if you're Dutch,

you tend not to have too many problems in general if you're Dutch.

And you can't be absolutely hammered.

You have to be very slightly one pint kind of drunk.

And this is a study that's been done recently.

They got 50 native German speakers to talk to a Dutch person in Dutch.

And then they recorded it and they asked some Dutch people afterwards how did they do.

And the drunk people did a little bit better.

But unfortunately, I did read on Reddit, someone posted on Reddit, that Dutch is basically like a German got drunk and can't speak properly anymore.

So

there's a lot of slurred sounds in the Schfler Schlierlich Fleur.

I didn't know you speak.

And you're not even drinking.

Does anyone here speak Dutch?

Wow.

Have another drink and then see.

Because I wonder if it's slightly by accident that when you're drunk, you're just a bit more confident and you're saying words.

Because they've had words that are actually quite similar to English.

So the word for apple is apple.

The word for pear is pear.

Wait, someone does speak it down there.

Who's saying it?

You've gotten what I'm doing now.

He just owns a, he owns a greengrocer's in Antwerp.

I think that person has just understood the admittedly complex joke that you're doing right now.

But yeah, it wasn't so much remembering the words as much as they had better fluency and better pronunciation.

That's what people said.

And weirdly, the people themselves didn't think that they were doing any better.

You would think if you're drunk, you have a bit more bravado, but they didn't really have that.

The people themselves thought, oh, I'm doing okay.

But actually, the Dutch people went, that's amazing.

But Dutch people are so English proficient.

About 90% of people in the Netherlands speak really good English.

So it's quite hard to get conversation with people in Dutch.

I went there earlier this year, and as soon as you open your mouth and try to say hello or something, you know, apple.

Yeah.

You're spotted a mile off and they immediately say, oh, hello, how are you doing?

What would you like?

You want an apple?

Do you want a pink lady or a russet?

And it's very hard to.

But actually, this study was

German-speaking Dutch, but actually, there was a 1972 study which showed that Americans could speak Thai a bit better if they were a bit drunk.

Really?

Yeah.

I speak Mandarin much better when I'm drunk.

And I do speak Mandarin.

I grew up in Hong Kong.

And yeah, I do notice that when I'm drunk, I'm just, I'm awesome at it.

There's no anecdote with that.

I just want to sort of big up my language speaking abilities.

Has anyone else ever noticed that about you?

Or is it just that you think that you can't?

No, I just tell it to people who don't speak Mandarin.

I'm like, whoa, I am kicking ass right now in my Mandarin.

But I can know, because I was really bad as a kid.

I was the only kid in my year that when I went back to school, had forgotten his name in Chinese.

Oh, my God.

Isn't your name in Chinese, Dam Dab?

Oh, yeah, no, that was my nickname at school.

This is so bad.

I was called, so my name's Dan, obviously.

I was called Dan Dan at school.

And I thought that was a really cool nickname because everyone knew my nickname.

And I was like, wow, that's so cool.

And they'd be like, older kids.

Hey, Dan Dan.

And I only found out, it was about six years ago.

I was living in England.

I was in my late 20s.

And

someone on, I put on Facebook saying, Dan Dan just won a game against an old Hong Kong friend.

And someone wrote, haha, Dan Dan, you know that means testicles in Chinese, right?

And I had no idea.

No one told me.

I wrote to my friends at school, my old school friends, I was like, did you you know I was called Balls this whole time?

And they're like, Yeah, did you not know?

Whole childhood, I thought I was cool.

I was just a boy called Balls.

And a boy called Balls who forgot his name every holiday.

Yeah, and genuinely, I would sit in class and I would be sweating because they'd be doing the roll call, and I'm just going, I have no idea what my name is.

And when it gets to it, and then there was one time that I thought my name was Sheerboar, but I thought it was Law Ball, which is Radish.

So then I just got called Radish Balls or something, I guess.

So it's hard.

So I'm very proud when I get drunk and remember my Mandarin.

I don't even remember your name.

I'm always impressed by that.

But getting drunk can improve your skills in various ways, can't it?

So

a snooker player, Bill Verbenyuk,

how do you say?

Werbenek, Verbenyuk, like who's counting?

He used to get

the referee.

He used to get really drunk.

So he used to have six to eight pints before a match, and then he would have one during each frame during the match, and that made him play better.

And everyone does always think that they play a bit better after a few points.

After a few, maybe, but not after.

How many did you say?

Six to eight, before a game, and then during the game.

How many frames are there?

I presume there must be only about three.

Well, in

the World Championship final, which he never reached, I don't think, I think there's like 34 or something.

37.

I can see why he never reached that stage.

But also, the World Anti-Doping Agency bans alcohol from just five sports.

So it bans even drinking from five sports.

Motor racing.

Motor racing is one of them, yes.

So motor racing, power boating, air sports,

auto racing, motorcycle racing.

So you can see why it bans drinking in those.

It's a bit dangerous.

And archery.

And actually, the reason it bans archery is that there was a study done in 1985 that found that drinking a little bit makes you slightly better at archery and it's considered cheating.

Yeah, yeah.

That's why that strongbow guy is so good, isn't it?

So, in 2008,

the Dutch voted the word of the year.

Now, all countries do this, a whole lot of countries do this every year.

But in 2008, the word of the year in Dutch was swafflen.

Okay, and according to Wikipedia, swaffalen means to hit one's penis often repeatedly against an object.

Didn't they start doing that?

There was a trend for swaffelen in the Netherlands, I think.

There was in April.

It started in April 2008 when a Dutch student committed the act on the Taj Mahal.

That was it, yeah.

Now that.

I mean, that's not cool, is it?

I don't know, but I don't think it is.

I've never known what's cool, but

given a list, that'll be low down it.

They've got the words in Dutch are so amazing.

Similar to German, which has a lot of these compound words.

You know, we just strap words together like a glove is a hand shoe,

which I think is cool.

So pochini mushrooms, and I'm going to mispronounce this, are I khornjesbrud, which literally means little squirrel's bread.

Yeah, sweet sweet.

Suede.

Peanut butter is pindakaz or peanut cheese.

Slightly less appealing.

And oh, see what you if you can guess this, mülepir,

mouth pear.

Do you mean pear as in two of something?

No, I mean pear as in Dan's peer peer.

It's a slap in the face.

Slap in the face.

Yeah, as it was for you guys just now when you realize what it meant.

Wow.

You know the little squirrel bread thing though.

So I think that's pronounced acorn.

And it's good that we don't have any Dutch speakers in the audience, so you can't correct me.

But which is very confusing, apparently, because it's pronounced the same as acorn.

So the word for squirrel in Dutch is pronounced the same as the word for acorn in English.

Yeah, that must be hard for cannibal squirrels.

Well, they don't get caught, I suppose, because they just say, I'm going out to eat an acorn, and their mates go, yeah, fair enough.

And then they eat their brother.

I found a word, it's Finnish, but this is just a great description of a word that means a lot, and it's a Finnish word about being drunk.

Kalsayuchunnit.

That is the feeling when you're are going to get drunk home alone in your underwear with no intention of going out.

Wow.

So you just go, I'm just going to have a koshalionit tonight, guys.

Yeah, it does make it sound like a choice, which is nice.

True.

Did you know?

I mean, this is so off topic, but I read a study this week that said that if you refer to yourself in the third person, it is a great way to de-stress.

So if you're stressed out, instead of going, oh my god, I'm really, really scared about this show I've got to do tonight in Bath where I haven't done any prep for it, then all you need to do is

like random example, all you need to do is you step back and you go, Anna's really worried about a show she has to do tonight.

Sorry, James is really worried about a show he has to do tonight in Bath.

And if you talk to yourself in the third person, it de-stresses you and it genuinely works.

I do that quite a lot.

You do.

I've heard you do it.

Yeah.

And you always go, oh, James.

Yeah, you don't.

You sound very stressed when you're doing it.

You're always saying, oh, James, you idiot.

That's what I do, yeah.

James is going to lock you in the cupboard.

I'll be honest, it's pretty messed up.

I'm not stressed, though.

No, you're not.

James isn't stressed, that's what you say.

I'll say what I want.

Daniel is scared.

So here's the thing about the Dutch language.

There was a guy called Johannes Garopius Bicanus, and he thought that Dutch was the original language in the whole world.

And his logic behind this was that the word Adam sounds a bit like the Dutch words heart dam, which means damn and hate.

Okay, and Eve sounds a bit like you that,

meaning the eternal barrel.

Okay?

And he thought that these two names were originally Dutch, and therefore Dutch was a language of the Garden of Eden, and therefore Dutch is the original word and then everyone just kind of stole words from them.

Wow that is a desperate man.

He has too much time on his hands.

He also thought that Antwerp was founded by Noah's kids after the big flood.

They decided to go to this place which is basically below sea level.

But on Noah's Ark there would have been some ants so maybe they said, oh we'll name the city after whatever gets off first and then the ants got off first?

Sure.

I mean, I sound a bit unreaching here as well.

I read a great fact about Adam and Eve the other day,

which is that

they weren't really humans, because they were prototype humans, so they were actually garden vegetables, both of them.

So if you look at old...

If you look at old drawings of them,

they're like groove in

Guardians of the Galaxy, like tree-like characters.

Can I just take you back to the beginning of this

bit of yours where you said, I read a great fact?

Yeah.

But no, no, it's because it's like it's a fact that someone

and myself believe that that is.

And so check this out as well.

Because they were root vegetables and they were like, woo,

they didn't have sex with each other, but they had to procreate.

And secret societies are looking for what is known as a lost word.

Because it's a lost word, and they're searching for for it because it's said to be so powerful that if said to the face of a woman, it would instantly impregnate her.

That was the worst minute of my life.

My God.

So I was reading some real facts about

language learning.

No, The Economist did this thing where they went and searched for the hardest language to learn.

And it's really interesting.

It tells you loads of cool stuff about various languages.

But they concluded that the hardest language to learn is this language called Tuyuka, which is spoken in the eastern Amazon, I think.

And the hard thing about that, which I think would be a particular problem for us and for you, is that

the verb endings on statements require you to show how you know something.

So if you state a fact

In the verb ending, you have to say how you've known it.

So, like, the way the verb.

Is there an ending for according to secret societies?

I think they'll add that when

there's no toyucifer citation needed.

They don't need it.

That's so cool.

Yeah.

So like the phrase for the boy played soccer, I know because I saw him play soccer, is the played would be a different word to the boy played soccer, I know because I read about it in a book or on Wikipedia or from a mad person on the street.

All right, it is time for fact number two, and that is my fact.

Oh, God.

Yeah.

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So, my fact is that American President Calvin Coolidge used to ride a robot horse inside the White House three times every day.

Isn't that extraordinary?

Can how did you learn this?

I was talking to a root vegetable who

so Calvin Coolidge, 30th president of the United States of America, rode horses.

There's a surprising amount of presidents who ride horses, but Calvin Coolidge was allergic to horses.

So he was built this mechanical horse that sat inside the White House.

And he thought it was a joke that it was being given to him, but he tried it out and he really loved it.

And it had two different options of it.

One was gallop and one was canter.

And he used to dress up as a cowboy every time he got onto it.

Sometimes just the hat and totally naked.

No.

Yeah, yeah.

He liked being naked a lot, Calvin Coolidge.

And get this, check this out.

Chew on this, Murray.

The horse was invented by John Kellogg, who invented Kellogg's cornflakes.

Yeah, he was outside of Kellogg's cornflakes.

He invented a lot of things, the mechanical horse.

He invented this really cool thing for if you're getting too hot in bed.

It was a tent just for your head that led to a sort of tent pipe that went outside your window.

So it just

and you can see you can see pictures of it online.

Yeah, you know how like there's sometimes windows just have a fan that like sends out that little, yeah, it was exactly like that.

And so you see pictures of people laying in bed with just a tent door open so they haven't zipped up and just getting cooled by.

I like that idea.

He invented the mechanical horse, as you say.

He also invented a mechanical camel, which was pretty much the same, actually.

Just had a hump.

He invented a kneading machine in which you would lie on it and mallets would pummel your bladder and intestines.

Wow.

And a colonic machine for enemas.

And they would fire gallons of water up your rectum for.

Gallons.

Yep, gallons.

No, no.

Followed by eight ounces of yoghurt.

Afterwards.

That's quite a lot of yogurt as well.

Sure, it's not gallons.

No, no, no.

And I've seen a picture of it, and they have multiple kind of bits coming out, so it was for more than one person at once.

No.

Yeah.

So you know how you don't like to sit even with us on a train, Andy?

Yes.

Yeah.

Imagine if we had to hang out while we were all having eight gala enemas.

My imagination was just shut down.

But horse machines were quite a big deal, because horse riding, everyone did it before the motor car.

So there were lots of horse riding exercise machines.

And then when bikes came along in the 19th century, then cycling machines became a big thing.

And I found an article on Timeline, which is a really great website, by the way.

And it's from a magazine called The Rambler in 1897.

And it's this description of something that had been invented, which was a stationary bike.

So it was a bicycle that has all the delights of outdoor cycling enjoyed at home.

And it was invented by a painter.

And what he'd done is he'd painted an enormous roll of outdoor scenery and he'd rigged it up to his cycling machine.

And he's attached the canvas to rollers.

And as he cycled, the scenery rushes past him.

That's amazing.

Because you can buy cycling machines now where you can see on a video like the Tour de France or whatever, wherever you're going.

So, this is basically that.

This is that.

That's very cool.

I found a really similar thing.

Okay, so I think the treadmill, one of its first uses was for horses.

As in they were for horses to exercise before they were for people to exercise.

Really?

Yeah.

So, case in point, the Queen last year bought a treadmill for all the Queen's horses, but not all the Queen's men.

She's got a treadmill that 18 horses can walk or run on at the same time.

And I think the big question is: could they put Humpty together again?

But

there were theatrical shows in London where they would have live horses on stage in theatres in Drury Lane.

So they would have a massive stage, obviously.

And then they did a huge spectacular show in 1902, which was, I think it was Ben Hurr.

Ben Hur, it was biblical epic.

And they had a massive treadmill and they had about a dozen horses on stage running galloping on a treadmill wow yeah while they wound a massive panorama beside like a chariot race wow very cool yeah that's insane that is really good the exercise horse since we're in bath i should say that the exercise horse is mentioned in jane austen um yeah is it yeah it sure is it's in sanderson the novel that she didn't finish um but yeah she mentions an exercise horse and basically in her day what it was was a chair which had lots of the springs on it.

And so you bounced up and down on it, like a trampoline.

It was a trampoline chair.

I found out a couple of facts about Calvin Coolidge.

Oh, yeah.

So he was famously a very quiet man and he became even quieter.

And I have one anecdote about him here.

So this is during the presidential campaign in 1924.

He was found out by a reporter who said to him, Mr.

President, what do you think of prohibition?

Coolidge said, no comment.

Will you say something about unemployment?

No.

The reporter pressed on.

He said, will you tell us your views about the world situation?

No.

About your message to Congress?

No.

And the reporter just started to leave.

And then Coolidge said, wait.

And the man turns around and Coolidge says, don't quote me.

That's good.

Apparently he

would always, he wouldn't let his children eat dinner unless they were in full tuxedo.

What?

Yeah, apparently.

And one night his son came home a little bit late.

He'd been out playing and he was a little bit late for dinner.

And he said, oh, do I really need to dress up?

Can I not just go and eat dinner and this?

And they said, young man, tonight you are having dinner with the president.

We've mentioned him, haven't we, a few times on the podcast?

He used to like to play little pranks.

So he used to do a thing where when he was in the Oval Office, he used to press an emergency buzzer that meant the Secret Service would rush in because there was an emergency.

But he would press it and quickly hide underneath the desk.

And they'd come in looking for the president and be like, oh, Jesus, he's gone.

And yeah.

Well, he loved to sleep.

So maybe he was just taking a nap.

One other famous thing about him was that he slept 11 hours a night and then he took frequent naps and long naps during the day.

And this is the thing people knew about him.

So he said nothing and also he was unconscious most of the time.

And one of my favorite people ever, Dorothy Parker, the

excellent witty literary figure of his time, said when she heard about his death, when someone told her he had died, she just said how could they tell

that's what he was famous for when he was awake he was a bastard I have to say this

when he went fishing he went fishing a lot when he was awake and he insisted that his secret service men bait his hook for him okay

fine I mean it's it's a bit hoity-toity but whatever but then as the secret service guys were baiting the hook he would jerk the fishing rod and try and spear them in the finger with the hook and he really enjoyed it he told people how much fun it is to do that does sound like fun

Do you think, like, when, how long ago was Coolidge?

100 years or something?

20s, yeah.

Just less.

So, like, now we kind of hear all the fun stories of the things that he did.

Do you think we'll hear fun stories in 100 years' time about the current president?

We're hearing them now.

It's quite sweet his relationship with his wife, who was famously a really outgoing, gregarious person, just called Grace.

And so he was the absolute opposite of her.

And the way they met was when she was reading law and she saw him shaving in his house.

So he was in his bathroom having a shave, and his window is facing out into the street.

And he was wearing just his underwear with his suspenders round his waist, you know, like braces, not female suspenders.

Suspenders round his waist, and he was wearing a bowler hat.

And

so she saw him and laughed, as you would.

And he looked round out of his window, saw her, tipped his hat, and went back to shaving.

And that was the start of their relationship.

Yeah.

I was looking at other historical ways of exercising and losing weight.

And I found one online called the Hallelujah Diet.

And apparently for the Hallelujah diet, you have to ask yourself, what would Jesus eat?

Okay.

And so the idea behind this is that Jesus, if he was around now, would probably be a vegetarian, probably wouldn't drink, you know, he'd have quite a good diet.

And they stress on their website, it's not about saying what people actually ate in the time of Jesus, because according to them they obviously didn't have a great diet as Jesus was constantly healing the sick

you know that Jesus has a house waiting for him if he does come back in Bedford

so there's the the Garden of Eden is said to be in Bedford

this is by a thing called the Panacea Society and they believed that the Garden of Eden was in Bedford and so they set up the society to make sure, because if Jesus came back for some reason, he would go back to Bedford.

And they bought a house for him, which was a sort of semi-detached, I think.

Not even a detached house.

Maybe it was a detached house.

It's a semi-detached.

Humble son of a carpenter wouldn't live in a detached house, would he?

I've seen this place, and it's an end terrace, in fairness, but it's a terrace.

Right, okay, yeah.

I would say that's semi-detached and end terrace.

Oh, yeah, okay.

But I also think that's why he's not coming back.

He keeps on going, what kind of property have you got lined up for me?

It's still the old terrace house in Bedford.

I'll stay up here for a little while.

But yeah, I think they rent it out to families, but if he does come back, I think there's a policy that he.

I don't know if they know that.

Imagine the family receiving the phone call.

Hello.

Yeah, Mr.

Sanderson, you are not going to believe this.

It's hard to believe that Jesus would turf out a family from the house.

Well, he turned out the Pharisees from the temple.

He was a turner-outer.

Anyway, we need to move on, guys.

All right.

It is time for fact number three, and that is

Chaczynski.

My fact this week is that a member of Iceland's pirate party just injured her eye and had to appear on TV wearing an eye patch.

This is the nicest of all pirate-related stories because it would be harrowing to hear she'd lost her lower leg and had to have a peg leg.

That's true.

It would have been awkward if you guys had laughed at that, but fortunately, it's just a kind of innocuous

Her one-year-old child scratched her in the eye, so she had an injured eye.

She wore an eye patch in this debate, and she clarified that it was not an old sea injury.

Because the Icelandic Pirate Party are not about old sea pirates, they're about more modern stuff.

Yeah, they're quite popular, aren't they?

Yeah, they are popular.

There was a time a couple of years ago where they were the most popular party in Iceland, I think, and now they're the third biggest.

Yeah, I think in the last elections, they might have got about 14%.

Yeah, yeah.

Wow.

But yeah, Icelandic elections, they're really into them.

So the last election was last year.

The government keeps collapsing.

It's like saying that we're really into referendums.

It's not that they have a lot, it's just that they like them when they happen.

So in 2016, the turnout was 76%, which is the lowest turnout ever at an Icelandic election.

Wow.

Which is quite impressive.

And that was despite 10% of the country in Iceland was away watching the Euros in the last election, I think,

when it happened.

Yes, so I was reading an AMA on Reddit by the Pirate Party, and they were asked about piracy.

Basically, their idea is they think that everyone should be allowed to do whatever they want on the internet, like just copy whatever they want and all that kind of thing.

And they don't think there should be copyright rules.

And they were asked on this Reddit AMA whether they think they'd be actually able to do anything

because other countries, like the US or the UK, have their copyright rules, and surely Iceland wouldn't be able to do anything about that.

And they admitted, yeah, okay, maybe we won't be able to do anything about it.

They said, no country is an island in a globalized world, not even Iceland, which really is an island.

I was confused about this fact when I read it because I thought, oh, that's so ironic when I read it.

And then, so a member of Iceland's Pirate Party, yeah, and then I thought, hang on, is it ironic?

And I couldn't work it out, and I was too embarrassed to ask anyone.

So I googled if it was ironic, and I found a website which, if anyone else suffers from not knowing if things are ironic, you can now go to isitironic.com.

And it's just Anna going, no, no.

And then Dan and Alanis Morissette constantly submitting requests.

Yeah.

Alanis is resubmitting, saying, isn't it, though?

Yeah, so you just, it's just lists of things where people are going, is this or is this not ironic just a couple and I and I put your fact up as well to see and it's got 50-50 at the moment

So do people vote on it?

Yeah, people vote on it.

So Katniss from the hunger games is injured by getting burnt after becoming dubbed the girl on fire.

Is it ironic?

No 75% say it is not ironic.

Yes.

Torch Tower in Dubai caught fire.

I think all of these things are ironic.

There are different meanings of ironic.

Guns won't be allowed.

Come on.

There's situational irony.

There's dramatic irony.

There's all sorts.

All sorts.

Go on, give us another one.

Guns won't be allowed at Trump's NRA speech.

That is ironic.

Yes, 63% agree with you.

The people are with me, guys.

That's not ironic.

That's a sensible precaution.

Just on Iceland, quickly.

Iceland has so many, as you say, scandals, political scandals.

So the last Prime Minister had to resign because

he was caught up in the Panama Papers, which meant he'd basically been hiding an enormous amount of money offshore, which you'd think the Pirate Party would be fond of, but

they weren't happy.

But basically, when that came out, when that story broke, the number of people who protested was nearly 10% of the entire population, as in 10% of the entire country, in basically one square.

Wow.

Was it the same 10% who went to the Euros?

I think it must have been, yeah.

They just love to travel.

Yeah.

It's big pirate news this week I think or certainly in the last two weeks the pirate party just came third in the Czech elections and they got their most votes that any pirate party has ever got in any election.

So it's big news that.

They've been on party for less than 10 years, so they're doing really well.

And as part of their campaign they kick-started a solar powered pirate boat to do all their campaigning, despite the fact that the Czech Republic is landlocked.

Is that ironic, Anna?

It's funny.

I'll take it.

In Taiwan, the Pirate Party wasn't allowed, I think.

So in 2012, there was an application to name a political party the Pirate Party,

and it was rejected by the Ministry of Interior due to bad connotations

because pirates aren't known as good people.

Well, there's a lot of pirates in the straits around Indonesia and Singapore and stuff.

Yeah.

And so the Ministry of Interior said that we think there might be confusion and people might think that you are real pirates.

So they were told not to do it.

But do you guys know?

So you know the pirate accent?

R?

R.

Yes.

Thanks.

Tell me what's happened to these guys.

Do you know where that comes from?

The

Somerset.

Everyone went from Somerset and Devon and ran away to see.

That's exactly what it is.

It's not what it is.

It was popularized in the 1950s by a guy called Robert Guy Newton, who was a Hollywood actor at the time.

And he was the person who was in Pirates of Penn Dance, I think.

And he played Pirates in a few films.

And he was from Devon.

And he just decided, I'll just really up my Devon accent.

And so he did that, being a pirate.

And then people decided that that was what Pirates sounded like.

So that's where it comes from.

That'd be a damned lie.

But actually, pirates, they came from all over the place didn't they and apparently i read an article that says the most number came from london so really the more correct uh pirate apps accent would be kind of a cockneyish accent with a load of vows and these and

that what johnny depp has in

uh what does he have it's a keith richards accent is that is that cockney yeah i think so yeah that's good it's kind of an extremely accurate movie and i met uh the lady who does the costumes for pirates of the caribbean last last year and she says they always bring

some wire wool to make all of the costumes old because you can't buy old clothes.

Well you can.

You can buy old clothes.

Wow, James, that is a very elitist thing to think.

Wow.

I mean, have you seen what I'm wearing?

I obviously don't believe it.

Yeah, no, but as in 17th century kind of well-washed.

Those have mostly run out in the shops now.

I guarantee you that.

To be fair, most charity shops do not have a long 17th century line.

Yeah, someone's grandpa's, grandpa's, grandpa's, grandpa's, grandpa died, and this is in their attic.

So, can you think of a pirate who went to Eton?

Not a trick question.

Oh, gosh.

I'll tell you.

Should I tell you?

Captain Hook.

Did he?

Captain Hook is there.

He's an old Etonian.

Is he really?

Yeah, in the first ever play of Peter Pan, it's made very clear that

he went to Eton.

So that's what JM Barry says.

Yeah, that's what Jambarry says.

In the original play, in the actual play of Peter Pan, Captain Hook's final words are Floriat Itona, which is the school motto.

So there was a letter to the Times in the 1930s, and it said, sir, I see that the term pirate is being applied to the class of person who owns a wireless set without paying for a license.

Is this not a misnomer of a too flattering nature?

Unlawful though it might be, piracy has at least the merit of some romance and has in the past called forth qualities of courage and even courtesy.

The person, especially in these hard times, who listens without paying for a license, displays none of the daredevil virtues of a pirate.

He is a sneak.

And the term wireless sneak would be more appropriate.

Signed, James Hook, Eton College.

Last year, the largest salmon caught in Iceland was caught by Eric Clapton.

Sorry, I knew we were way off the Iceland thing.

I know, but I just had to mention that.

Hang on, the Eric Clapton.

The Eric Clapton.

I'm sorry to say, but I actually called the lake that that happened at, and it turns out that it was the biggest salmon at the specific lake, but not for all of Iceland.

Who'd have thought that Dan would be the arbiter of what was true and false?

How do you phone a lake?

They got one of those novelty shell phones.

That is great fact-checking.

That is preemptive fact-checking.

That's the most fact-checking I've ever had in my life.

All right, we need to move on to our final fact of the show, and that is Andy.

My fact is that the man who invented email later changed career to become a sheep semen importer.

Which one of those two things is taken off?

Yeah, who was this?

He was called Ray Tomlinson and he's the man who invented email.

I mean he later became a miniature sheep breeder but that involved the importation of a lot of sheep.

He wasn't just randomly importing it just for...

Sorry, when you say a miniature sheep breeder, was he very small?

No, he was massive.

He was massive?

Well no, he was just a human.

He was a normal man.

But he was a great man because he invented email, and he is the guy who picked the at sign for the email address.

And it was very, very clever because it basically meant you could send an email to any computer and it was outside a network, basically.

We know what email is, mate.

But this is before the World Wide Web, isn't it?

Yeah, exactly.

So you've got, yeah, you don't have a way of doing it.

And it's very weird because until he invented email, basically, the previous means of doing it was you had to leave a message on the same computer and then someone else had to log in to see what the message was.

And that was email before him.

Yeah.

Which is not a convenient thing, obviously.

So you would write the email on your computer, mail your computer to the person.

Dear Amazon, I would like to buy a pair of your socks.

Yeah.

And then you have to send it.

You send the computer.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

Do you know how Brian Blessard tweets?

Very loudly.

In capitals.

He has his tweets facts to him.

So, and then he receives his tweets by facts.

He reads through them.

He calls his agent.

He answers it over the phone.

And his agent takes a note of it and then types out all the tweets at the end of the day to send back out.

So the at symbol seems to be the thing that Ray Tomlinson gets asked about the most, right?

And I think it's weird that we don't have a name for the at symbol.

And this really, we call it the amphora, but no one.

Well, we all call it the at symbol.

We call it the amphibian,

yeah.

Show of hands.

Who calls it the amphora?

I've never seen fewer hands go off in a room.

But you can get me on podcast amphoraqi.com.

That's what I would say.

But no, all other countries call it something interesting.

So I think in,

is it in Spain or Italy?

It's the tiocchiolo, which is a little snail.

In Russia, it's the word for dog.

In Norway, it's called the sign of the meow which maybe is to do with the tail it looks like a cat curled up with its tailed up

so the at the moment the movement of semen the import and export in the UK

is sorted out by the EU by the Belai directive imagine sorting that out oh no that I mean

I just mean the rules.

Yeah, the rules of the system.

For listeners at home, Daniel's doing some really gross miming.

But I don't think anyone's talking about how this is going to affect it after Brexit, are they?

No one's talking about semen.

I'm not.

But this is really important because you need to import semen from different countries, otherwise, all of your livestock is inbred.

Yeah.

Because, like, for instance, in America, they're importing a lot of bee semen at the moment because they've got

semen, yeah.

So their bees are really struggling, they're all dying, and they need a new bit of genetic material.

And so they get the bee semen in from other countries and then they inseminate them into the bees.

But it's quite difficult if you get it through customs because they don't often see B semen coming through.

You're looking at me like I'm making this up.

Why do you I didn't know bee had bees had semen?

They do

so.

Each male produces one microlitre.

To put that into some kind of perspective, a single drop of water is one hundred microliters.

So you need a hundred bees to produce enough semen to be like the one drop of water.

What's the purpose of that?

That fact.

No, what's the purpose of getting the hundred bees together?

Oh,

yeah, that's imagine being invited to that party.

What?

As a bee.

Is it?

I want to know how they collect it because the ways of collecting semen as a farmer are

quite interesting.

There's one guy, basically.

One man.

One.

With tiny fingers.

Is it Donald Trump?

No, it's Michael Waite, 53 from Scotland.

Okay.

He's one of the few beekeepers who is inseminating queen bees by milking the bees.

I've seen a footage of it.

You just have to squeeze the abdomen very gently.

Ah.

Oh, wow.

It comes out.

Because

in farming of larger animals, then they have dummies, don't they?

So they have dummies of you.

So, for instance, bull semen, it fertilizes 75% of the cows in this country, I think, because it's just much easier, it's more convenient to do it.

You mean

imported semen?

What fertilizes the other 25% of cows?

There's a special word that you say.

Sorry.

Imported bull semen.

Imported bull semen that comes in vials, fertilizes dairy cows, but you need to be able to collect it.

And so you sell dummies, and you can look up dummies online, and you can buy dummy sows, sows, for instance, that you can get pigs to mount because you need artificial, you need pig semen to be imported as well.

And it's really hard to collect because you have to get literally in there.

So, you've got the dummy sow, but you have to swoop in there at the last minute with your cup to collect it.

And that's why it's much more convenient to use a dummy because, with an actual sow, it moves around the pen quite a lot, and so you have to chase it around, whereas with a dummy, it stays still at least.

But this is how a lot of farm animals are inseminated.

Yeah, there is another method which is that some males then mount other males and the other males are called teasers, okay?

And then they're interrupted at the last minute by a man with a rubber tube.

Oh my god, who volunteers for that job?

I don't think, I think it's paid.

Guys, we need to wrap up in a sec.

Have you got anything before we do?

I have something on sheep breeding.

Oh yeah.

Alexander Graham Bell was into sheep breeding.

He noticed that some sheep had more nipples than others.

And he tried to systematically breed sheep with each other to get more nippled sheep.

And he wrote a paper in Science in 1904 called The Multi-Nippled Sheep of Ben Bray.

Okay, and he managed to eventually they don't talk about this when they're talking about the phone, do they?

He eventually yielded five and six nippled sheep.

And he thought that by if they had more nipples they'd be more fertile but he was wrong about that

they just had more nipples

everyone everyone knows the first phone conversation don't they you know dr.

Watson come here I want you but no one recorded what came next which is I want you to read this paper I've done about nipples on sheep

all right should we wrap up guys okay that is it that is all of our facts thank you so much for listening if you would 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.

M4.

Andrew Hunter M.

James.

At James Harkin and Shazinski.

You can email podcast at QI.com.

Yeah, or you can go to our group account, which is at no such thing, or you can go to our website, no such thingasafish.com.

We have all of our previous episodes up there.

We also have a link to our new book, The Book of the Year, which is being released November the 2nd.

It's out, in fact, by the time you're listening to this.

And we're about to give one away to one of the members of the audience because we asked him to send in a fact at the beginning of the show.

And Andy, you've picked a winning fact.

Yes, this fact comes from Karis Rubinzer.

I hope I pronounced your name right.

And it's that the inventor of the bra had a pet whippet named Clitoris.

So.

And just one last thing before we wrap up.

This is such a cool venue.

We're so proud to have come up here to play it.

We've heard so much about it from our friends who have been here as well, and it has lived up to what they said.

And you'll notice that on your seats, you would have been given this thing, which says, save Bath from being boring.

Comedia is looking for crowdfunding to make sure that it can be secured as a community-led place.

So please, if you can, go to this crowdfunder page, help it out, because

it's my first time to bath, but I do know from doing comedy that venues like this do get shut down, and they're really important, and they're so good.

And that's how comedy in this country, and it's the best country in the world for comedy, still exists.

So please go to this and help them out.

We will be back again next week with another episode, guys.

Thank you so much for being here tonight.

We'll be out the back signing books and so on.

We'll see you then.

Goodbye.