173: No Such Thing As Symphony For Sizzurp In D Minor

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

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

Starting with you, Andy.

My fact is that to be a tennis umpire, you have to learn a 230-page book.

This is a rule book, specifically about tennis.

It's not a novel.

And this is specifically the US Tennis Association.

So over in Britain, we've got the Lawn Tennis Association, which is a slightly different thing.

It's the more or fewer rules, do you think, for the lawn one?

I don't know.

It's going to be similar, isn't it?

Probably a similar length.

Yeah, yeah.

But I have been reading the rules of Wimbledon.

And so is Wimbledon the same guidebook?

Wimbledon is lawn tennis.

So there's a slight

changed horses almost immediately, this fact.

I think the rules are generally going to be the same, aren't they?

It's not like in Wimbledon, you're allowed to kick the ball over.

In American tennis, you have to hit it outside the lights.

When they have to learn it, do they get tested on it?

Do they have to memorise the whole thing?

Can they not keep it as a reference kind of of in their pockets?

Well, check it as they go through.

I used to be a football referee.

I was qualified as a football referee, and you have to do an exam.

So you really only have to learn what comes up on the exam.

Really?

It's kind of like a drive saying for a driving test, you have to learn a 500-page book on the rules of driving, but actually, you can't recite that from start to finish, can you?

Can't you?

Can't you?

Go on.

That's why you're constantly crashing your car around the place.

Well, it's I, who I'm constantly referring to a 500-page book.

Go on, give us some rules.

All right.

So I think it's quite well known that at Wimbledon you can get fined for swearing.

Yes.

Can you?

Yeah.

You can get fined $20,000 if you swear.

Does it depend on the word?

No.

Oh, so you might as well use the strongest one.

You may as well, yeah.

That's if you're a player.

Right.

If you're a player.

Just walking around the grounds.

Oh, fuck, they overcharge me for my beer and they take you away.

$20,000.

Thank you.

That could have bought you one punnet of strawberries.

No, if you go out in the first round, though, that is nearly half your winnings you would have spent on swearing once.

Wow, wow.

And the umpires and the staff have to learn swear words in other languages in case a Latvian tennis player swears in Latvian.

That makes so much sense.

It's interesting about the people being paid if you lose in the first round because that was in the news last week because people were losing in the first round injured and they knew they were injured going into it, but they've turned up and played anyway and then just given up halfway through to get the money.

And the thing is, they've worked to get there.

You know what I mean?

Over the whole year, they've got their rankings high enough that they get to where they are.

So they kind of, it's fair enough, I think.

I think it's totally fair enough.

I'd be like, one of us turning up with no facts.

That's me every week.

Right, yeah, but every week we fine you £20,000.

But Dan, over the last three years, has done enough to earn his place and done enough to just turn up with no facts.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I'll tell you what's bad, though, is the fact that tickets to Wimbledon cost a fortune.

To get centre court as well, you're paying huge amounts of money well in advance.

So on this particular day we're talking about in this current Wimbledon competition, Federer was playing.

So you're thinking, I get to see Federer, centre court of Wimbledon.

This guy pulls out 25 minutes into the match or so.

Next match, Djokovic comes on.

Same thing happens.

Guy pulls out.

So you've got centre court tickets for two of the great tennis players of our time.

You do expect that in the first round.

Don't get centre court tickets in the first round.

Anna only gets them for the final in the semi.

The box.

I don't know.

Obviously, it's ridiculous, but there just should be rules.

It's stupid to imagine that an individual should make that decision.

There just needs to be a health check.

So, in normal tennis, that's not the Grand Slams, they do have the rules.

So, if you're injured, but you've already qualified, you get your money, and then like a substitute comes in, and they play and they only get money if they win.

So, if they lose, they don't get anything, but if they go through to the second round, they do get money.

They don't play under your name, you mean they're

they have to put on a mustache if you've got a mustache Learn these swear words in my language.

But I think it was, it might have been the other Andy Murray's idea to do that, and they brought it in this year as a trial, and it seems to be working quite well.

That's cool.

I like that.

The other Andy Murray.

Yeah.

As someone who's been the other Andy Murray until now, literally now, when you just said that.

But just on the swearing thing quickly, there is another rule which is about visible obscenity, which I had never read before.

And so it's this.

For the purposes of this rule, visible obscenity, stop doing that, that, James, with your hands.

Visible obscenity is defined as the making of signs by a player with his hands and or racket or balls that commonly have an obscene meaning.

And does it define what they mean by balls in that situation?

There's even a rule on abuse of balls.

Abuse of balls.

Yeah, players shall not violently, dangerously, or with anger hit, kick, or throw a tennis ball.

Because that happened.

Was that Tim Henman did that once?

Yes, he's the first player ever to be kicked out of Wimbledon for um yeah what no yeah because you um so another thing that swearing does for you is if you don't get a fine you get a penalty point and you can be penalized out of a match so there's a there's a famous example of a guy um called Bryden Klein he was facing a guy called Sam Groth and during the match he served and this was in the final game he was losing served it into the net and just yelled out stupid stupid person talking about himself he claims but the umpire said i don't know who you directed that at but that's rude.

You've been given a penalty point, and because he got one earlier in the match, the match was over.

They didn't even get to finish the match.

Stupid, stupid person.

Stupid, stupid person.

Very rude in Latvian.

The funniest bit about it, though, is that he looked to the other player to say, hey, come on, like, bail me out here.

Like, you know, that was me.

The guy said, I'd like to help you, but it's too tough to call from here.

And he pointed to the lineswoman.

And so the guy who said, stupid, stupid person said, she's a 60-year-old lady wearing like a...

And then he stopped himself because he's like, ooh, I'm about to get another penalty.

I read some of the rules.

This is for normal tennis, which is not Wimbledon.

One of them is quite good.

The event organizer has to announce how many balls they'll have before the event in play at any time.

Okay, and the number of balls for play is either two, three,

four, or six.

Ooh.

I want to know what happened with five.

Why not five?

Yeah, why not five?

Very weird.

I completely understand that, though.

It's to do with how many are in a can.

You wouldn't open a new can for just one ball, I guess.

But you wouldn't have seven.

That's two.

But you wouldn't have seven either.

There's just something that feels a bit wrong about it.

So you're allowed two or three, but no other prime numbers.

Is that what you're saying?

Yes, that's exactly what I mean.

Yes, exactly.

I think it might be Dan's explanation.

Because you do get cans in three or four

portions.

You technically.

But then you wouldn't be able to get one and two either.

That doesn't make any sense.

One tennis ball can would be a very sorry sight indeed.

would be like a tiny Pringles.

Just on balls, I didn't know this, but men and women tennis play with different balls.

No.

The only reason that I read about this was that in March 27th at the Miami Open, Andy Murray, mid-game, complained to the umpire that he was playing with women balls.

And the idea is that the female ball is much quicker, much speedier.

You have so many dominant male servers in the game that it means that they're almost unreturnable.

So the male tennis ball is a bit more fluffy, which means a bit more drag in the air, which means that it slows the game down.

And with the female balls, it just has way more speed on it.

That is amazing.

That's when I learned it as well when Andy Murray complained about that.

And I think the whole country went when he did that.

What the hell?

There are women's balls?

And I felt like Andy Murray had leaked something that maybe no one was supposed to know.

Yeah, because I have read an article about the behind the scenes at Wimbledon, basically, and it refers to the guy who is basically the ball ballmaster,

who's a man called Brian.

And Wimbledon uses two lorries of balls every year.

It uses 57,000 balls.

And they're all kept at the same temperature in rooms under centre court.

And apparently they're now divided into men's and ladies' balls.

And no one mentions them.

Well, this is why I think the can argument for there being no five-ball games can't be right, because they've got a lorry load of them, right?

It doesn't really matter about having five or six or seven.

But do you think they're just balls, free balls, stuffed into a lorry?

And they open the lorry and they all cascade out.

I'm thinking of it as the world's greatest ball pit.

Yeah, that's exactly what I was thinking.

The thing is, though, the lorry carrying the ladies' balls actually drives a lot faster to get to Wimbledon because it's got less fluff on the outside of it.

So one thing that they're really strict on at Wimbledon is clothing.

And I didn't realise how many players have objected to this in the past.

So Andre Agassi, so obviously at Wimbledon you have to wear all whites, which isn't the same other Grand Slams.

And Andre Andre Agassiz refused to play at Wimbledon until he was 21, which I know doesn't sound very old, but you know, he didn't play in the juniors or anything.

I too refused to play at Wimbledon until I was 21.

I'm still refusing, actually.

Once they changed that rule,

you're in.

But yeah, he refused, and then eventually he succumbed and said, Oh, I'm obviously going to win this a bunch of times, so I'll play.

But he used to wear denim shorts to play his Grand Slams, which is an insane thing to wear.

There was a woman in Eugenie Bouchard, who I think still plays.

But Eugenie Bouchard in 2015 got a dress code violation for there was a black bra strap showing.

So there's only one centimetre of any other colour allowed at Wimbledon.

And she was wearing a white sports bra underneath because the rules say, as you will know if you've read this document,

that any undergarments that either are or can be visible during play, brackets including due to perspiration, closed brackets, must be completely white, as in make sure when you wet your white shirt, you can't see a black bra underneath.

What if your perspiration gives you miscoloured stains?

What if you piss yourself?

I don't know.

I think

you can find 20 grand for pissing yourself on centre court.

Especially as you go to the umpire, I've pissed myself, and they go, that's another 20 grand.

Actually, last year there was controversy.

There was a Uruguayan player called Pablo Cuevas, and he was accused of urinating into a ball can during a match

under his towel.

He was issued with a code violation although Wimbledon Chiefs did say and I'm quoting here no urination was involved.

So he just got his willie out and put it in a ball can

you might want to cool it down during a match.

That's true, yeah.

I was playing tennis the other day and we lost a crucial point because what ended up happening was my doubles partner hit the ball, didn't quite capture it and hit it again in the same swing.

No, you're allowed to do that.

You're allowed to do that, it turns out.

Reading this rule book, it says you are allowed to do that.

We lost that crucial point.

In the same swing, it has to be in the same follow-through, the same swing.

So, if you hit it and the ball bounces, obviously, that's you can't do that.

If you hit it away and you chase after it and you get it, but if it's in literally the same motion and you just almost scoop it slightly, unlike golf, for instance, where if you do a double hit, that counts as a penalty.

But, Isaac, because surely once you hit it, it's moving away from you faster than the

depends how good you are.

Because sometimes your first hit is only almost a stopping point for it.

So let's say it hits the rim of the racket and then it kind of slows down and then you kind of hit it with the strings.

I think that's why it probably exists is because that does often happen.

You rim it and then it hits the other bit of your racket and it's a double hit.

So I've seen you play tennis, haven't you?

You struggle with single hits.

I do.

I do.

In Wimbledon, not only do they have 230-page rule book for the games, they have a rulebook for the queue.

Yeah, they do.

Well, there's rules anyway.

You get given it in the queue as soon as you join them.

Yeah.

Because it's a main big thing, isn't it?

The queue.

People stay there for days.

The rules are no barbecues, no gazebos, no music after 10 p.m., and any tent can only hold a maximum of two people.

Why is that?

Is it to stop?

Or three or four or six, but not.

No, it's to stop having massive tents because there's only a certain amount of space.

They want, you know.

But couldn't you have a massive tent, but only two of you in it?

Well, again, that's the kind of thing that's trying to stop.

Oh, I see, yeah.

Yeah, I've done the queue, and they try to make it fun.

It is, you know, you start queuing it.

I think we started queuing at four in the morning, and we managed to get onto one of the very outer courts.

I don't think I've ever done anything fun that began at 4am.

Except for if you've been up until 4, right?

Oh, yeah.

There you go.

I've never done that.

The thing about the grass at Wimbledon, I found out is that.

So obviously they're very, very...

I was about to say precious.

They're just very precise about the grass, is in it's treated, it's shaved by exactly a millimeter each week for 12 weeks.

But the guy who does it, the head groundsman, is called Neil Stubbly.

So you would have to kneel down

to make it Stubbley.

Yeah.

Did you see that that study just came out that says you can predict who's going to win a tennis match based on the noises they make?

Oh.

And they're grunting.

If the noises they're making are, oh shit, they're going to lose.

It's kind of similar it's uh so they analyzed a bunch of top tennis players and the pitch of the grunts they make and the higher pitch the grunts go the more likely it is you'll lose and in every case you get higher and higher you're getting less and less good at tennis funny you don't grunt at all when playing tennis neither do I no I don't neither of you are elite sports people I do I mean I do sometimes say things like that's another game to you I know

but a lot of people think that even though it's not against the rules grunting is against the spirit of the rules yeah because Because it basically gives you an unfair advantage, according to some people, over the opposition.

It does.

Wasn't there a specific coach who's like known as the grunt coach?

Yeah, he's called Nick Bolettieri.

Right.

And he looked after Celaz, Agassi, and Shrapova and the Williams sisters, and they're all big grunters.

And he says that actually he doesn't tell them to do that.

It just so happens to be the case that they do.

But then other people think that he's telling them to do it because it stops you from being able to hear the sound the ball makes on the racket and that might be able to give you some clue as to what spin might be on it or whatever.

There was a study that did show that grunting makes people respond more slowly in tennis and so it is an unfair advantage.

I saw yesterday morning on the BBC there was a little piece with David Attenborough which was really exciting because he's very much involved with Wimbledon in a large way.

So

Attenborough is the one who turned it into colour television and there were interesting things that happened with that.

One is that's when they started using yellow tennis balls.

Up until then they used white tennis balls.

And the reason they started doing that is obviously color television, it was much more visual for people to see as it was going along.

And there was this other thing, I haven't been able to find it online, but it was said in this piece, which is that the trophy that they now use is not the original Wimbledon trophy.

It's a different trophy because the original one just didn't look that good on camera.

It was actually black and white.

It was a black and white trophy.

Yeah, no, they started using this different trophy, which is gold.

And so it's more photography.

It's a televisual, yeah, exactly.

Well, get rid of that old coal and chalk trophy that we've been using.

It looked looked great live, but

they also used tennis courts, used to be hourglass-shaped, didn't they, until Wimbledon came along.

I mean, really, really early tennis courts.

Yeah, well, no, I did.

I didn't know that.

So until Wimbledon was established, I think the first Wimbledon was in 1877.

That was when they decided to make them rectangular.

But before that, they used to go in at the net.

So they were like a.

Is Wimbledon kind of the originator of all these Grand Slams?

Is it the original Grand Slam?

I think it was.

Because before that, it was just croquet.

Oh, it really beat out croquet.

It's a bit sad.

We could all.

So, the reason croquet disappeared was that they thought, let's start playing tennis on these croquet lawns a bit.

And then everyone went, oh, this is a better sport, isn't it?

Of course, the fact that croquet is a pretty shit spot

doesn't help.

Penalty.

Penalty.

Language.

One more, you're out, mate.

I think croquet's a great sport.

You can be really devious and

not great.

I think you see the true side of human nature when you play croquet.

Where do you guys learn about football?

The Uber CEO, as in Uber's CEO, not

the chief of all the CEOs.

Yes, not the chief of all CEOs.

He's been involved in what people are calling a tennis scandal.

Is he the current one or the one that he's just left?

This is Travis Kalanick.

He's the one who just left.

His biography on the website, amongst many other things of what he's done in the past, also claims that he managed to rack up the second highest Wii tennis score in the world.

People are now claiming that they think that that's not possible.

Yeah, I think it's not.

Yeah, largely because there is no game called Wii Tennis.

You've got Wii Sports in which which it's a game within it, but that doesn't have a leaderboard, so it can't be that.

There's another game which is called Wii Grand Slam

tennis, and there's a third one which is called Wii in Your Tennis Ball Container.

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

My fact this week is that in Mexico, artists can pay their taxes in artwork.

Amazing.

It's so weird.

It's the only country where you could do this, unsurprisingly.

And yeah, it's this rule that's actually existed since I think it's 1957 that it was first suggested.

And it's the idea that artists, if they can't pay their taxes or don't want to, they instead donate a work of art as a portion of their sales.

And so it's not even done on monetary value.

The way it's done is that for every five pieces of art you sell, you pay an additional one to the government.

So if if you sell up to five pieces of art, you pay one, and then if you sell more, it becomes like a progressive taxation system.

And the maximum number you have to give to the government any year is five works of art.

That's interesting.

I wonder.

So let's say you sell four incredible, massive works of art, and then you just do one doodle on a napkin.

Does that count?

Yeah.

That's great question.

I don't think it does count because apparently there is a committee to make sure that people don't take the piss.

There is.

It's basically you have to give them an average one, which means you're paying 20%, I guess, right?

Yeah, well, they're not clear.

I think it's a little bit more touchy-feely than that.

So, yeah, there's this jury, which is 10 other artists who judge the quality of the painting and decide whether it's

for an artist.

That's got to be hard, isn't it?

Yeah.

Oh, this one's a bit dodgy.

What?

And some have been rejected in the last few years.

There are some famous artists who've had their paintings rejected as taxes, which is pretty harsh.

But yeah, and then they go, okay, we'll accept this one as tax, sure.

So in South Carolina, you can donate a deer carcass and get tax credit for it.

There's a venison for charity tax credit, and so you don't pay tax on $50 if you donate a dead deer to the government.

What?

Is there a box when you're doing your tax form that just numbers the amount of dead deers you've got in your garage waiting to be submitted?

So hang on.

So presumably hunting is allowed.

Yeah.

It's not that you find a deer that's died of natural causes.

I guess they'd have to accept that as well.

I don't think they specify cause of death.

Okay.

They're not going to have a mortician for every single carcass that comes in, are they?

That would probably cost more than the $50 you're saving on the tax.

But

you would hope that they test the quality of the venison because you don't want some old bit of rotting roadkill being sent to the charity.

There's a committee of 10 chefs who are actually.

The World Bank and Price Waterhouse Cooper came up with a check for who has the most complicated tax code in the world.

And the way they did that is they imagine a hypothetical ceramic flower pot manufacturer.

And this manufacturer has one building, two plots of land, one truck, and 60 employees.

And they work out how difficult it would be for that person to do their taxes.

Okay.

If you were in the Maldives, it would take you less than an hour to comply with the Maldives tax code.

And in Brazil, it would take 2,600 hours

to do it, which is 108 days of non-stop work.

No, yeah, that is insane.

Yeah, they've just got an incredibly complicated tax code.

Does there much tax avoidance in Brazil?

Because I imagine that would surely encourage people to avoid taxes.

Well, that's the argument, isn't it?

That why you should simplify your tax code in every country.

Because in America, in 1913, their tax code was 400 pages and now it's 70,000 pages, which is about 280 times longer than the tennis law book.

All right.

But in India at the moment, for instance, they've massively simplified their tax, a thing called GST, where there's just four basic rates now.

Whereas in the past, all the different areas and villages would all have their different tax codes and they simplified it.

That's what we have in Australia: GST.

Yeah.

Goods and standards taxes.

Exactly.

And this is the biggest place that has ever done it.

So in India, there's a $2 trillion economy with 1.3 billion consumers.

But it's so important to them.

This has happened only in the last week or so.

There was a baby named GST.

That's great.

In Australia, apparently, there's a Queen Bee tax.

Only Queen Bees pay.

That's right.

No, if you sell a Queen Bee for over $20, you have to pay 10% to the government.

Who's selling a Queen Bee for $20?

That feels like a lot.

Over, for over.

It feels like a lot for a bee.

Are you joking?

A queen queen?

A queen bee?

An individual bee, yes.

I still think that's a lot for a bee.

bee.

No, don't, no, don't be.

That's so small.

They produce a whole hive.

I mean, diamond rings are quite small, aren't they?

Well, how much do you think I spent on my wife's engagement ring?

That's why it's a hula hoo.

I think that is a lot.

Are you joking?

They could yield so much because they're so important.

They'll yield so much honey.

You'd make such a profit out of $20.

I think the normal price would be hundreds of dollars for a queen bee.

Yeah.

Well, that's what I paid for my last queen bee.

And I just don't want you to be...

insinuating I was taken for a fool.

I don't know.

Is the Queen Bee pregnant at the time?

I think you might need a drone or two.

Yeah, so then how much do you pay for that one?

I think they're cheap.

They're super cheap.

Remember, you could rent them?

We did that years ago.

That was one of our first facts on the show.

But that's what I mean, because to rent a bee is like one cent per hour per bee or something stupid like that.

So the Queen Bee is comparatively a lot more than that.

It is.

And at the end of the day, they're all still bees.

But if you want to.

If you leave a Queen Bee somewhere, it'll attract a load of other bees.

Oh, that's right.

They just find them.

That's why bees keep on, you see a car covered in bees somewhere, that's because there's a queen bee under the bottom.

So, really, what you're doing is you're paying for the queen bee, but actually, you're getting hundreds of thousands of other bees.

It's like a sky TV deal, I imagine, where you pay for sky, but actually get loads of channels, right?

Except every channel is a bee.

And sky one is the queen bee, is it?

Yeah, that's right.

It seems expensive if you think you're just buying sky one,

but you're actually getting loads of sky channels.

I do understand that now.

I'm glad I put it into terms you can understand.

Did you finish your story or did we cut you off at Queen Bee?

I think we extended it far beyond.

Okay.

The IRS in America, one of the things that's tax deductible for them is ransom for kidnapped loved ones.

If you pay to have your loved one returned,

that's tax deductible.

That's brilliant.

It's an expense.

So that's not true in Britain because in Britain it's counted as a bribe.

And bribes are illegal and you're not allowed to claim them back, anything illegal.

But in America, you can.

And was it John Paul Getty?

Yes, III.

Yeah, whose one of his family was kidnapped, and they ransomed him for X amount, and he said he'd only pay Y amount, and that was the maximum expense that he was allowed to claim, or something like that.

Yeah, so John Paul Getty III was kidnapped, and it was his father who said he would pay the ransom, but only up to 2.2 million because then

that's the maximum that was allowed for tax deduction.

I'm sure, did his son understand that he couldn't go above that, otherwise, it would be tax?

I think he would have, because I think he would have been brought up in the way that his dad conducted business.

I read that Warren Buffett submitted his first tax return when he was doing newspaper and milk rounds.

So, like, you know, I think this guy would have been in a similar, like, oh, that makes sense, dad.

Yeah.

I like the excuse of

something my dad told me.

So, Ken Dodd was accused of not paying taxes for a while.

He was accused by the Inland Revenue.

And I feel like you, when you made that face, were doing an impression of Ken Dodd.

I'm really sorry if that's not what you're trying to do.

I wasn't.

I once met Ken Dodd.

Yeah, he was in the museum, wasn't he?

And he said to me, Do I know you?

And I said, I don't think so.

And he said, Yeah, yeah, I know you.

We were on the same police lineup together, weren't we?

Funny guy.

Yeah, he is funny.

So apparently, the Inland Revenue said, You haven't been paying us for years.

And he said, I didn't think it applied to me.

I live by the seaside.

Diddy?

That's funny.

No, no, Doddy.

Oh,

yeah.

It's a joke, Andy.

I would, sorry.

In 2015, one person living on a street in Hull complained that they were paying more council tax than all of their neighbours.

They went to the council, and the council upped all of their neighbours' council tax.

Turn on that made their life a lot worse, I imagine.

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

Okay, my fact this week is that the size of a rainbow can tell you how polluted the air is.

So so is the rainbow more of a prominent feature in a more polluted area?

It's it's not really easy for us to see, but if you're a scientist, you have the right equipment, you can see very small changes.

So if there are chemicals like acid rain, it would change the size of the droplets, which would change the size of the bow.

And so they look at that and they can tell exactly what chemicals are in the air.

Wow.

Do you know like double rainbows that you can get?

Actually, this isn't double rainbows, twin rainbows, which is a slightly different thing.

You can have two rain showers that are kind of near each other, one with small raindrops and one with fat raindrops, and they will give you two different rainbows.

And they'll start in the same bottom left-hand corner or bottom right-hand corner, and they'll come round and one will be higher than the other.

That's called a twin rainbow.

I've seen those before.

Have you?

Yeah.

They're quite rare.

Yeah, I mean, it was,

I saw it once, and that's it.

Yeah.

Great.

Where did you see it?

I think I was in Austria at the time.

Really?

Yeah.

I really liked James' tone when he went, they're quite rare.

Like, I think you probably just saw a double rainbow, Dan.

Because, yeah, that's unbelievable.

So it looks like it's sprouting from the same origin, but then it sprouts into two different rainbows.

No, I wasn't listening.

I've seen a really big rainbow, is what I was say.

I can't tell if you're jammers, you're joking now.

So you can get a quadruple rainbow.

Wow.

Okay.

There was a photograph online of a quadruple rainbow.

It wasn't really a quadruple rainbow.

It was just four rainbows.

You can see why they mistook that.

Yeah, you can see it, but it was a rookie error.

A photograph of a quadruple rainbow just looks like two rainbows.

And the reason is that you've got two in front of you.

Say the sun is behind you.

You've got two rainbows in front of you, and then they reflect backwards, and so the other two are behind you.

So it's impossible to take a photo of them, of all four of them at the same time, unless you do like a panoramic picture.

And they're extremely, extremely, extremely rare.

So you've probably only seen a few of those.

I've seen six of those,

no more.

I think there's only one photograph of them ever.

Right.

And it's only of two of them.

It's not of the other two.

Why?

Because the camera couldn't get them in.

Because two are in front of you and two are always behind you.

Don, have you been listening to any of this?

You've literally just explained that.

Do you know you can get white rainbows?

So this is.

That's a cloud, mate.

That you saw a cloud.

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

These are big and fluffy and they float in the sky.

No, they are.

These are light rainbows.

They get called fog bows.

Okay, so if you've got fog in the air, that's where the water droplets hanging in the air are incredibly microscopically tiny.

So you do get the rainbow effect, but they're so small that they don't actually show colour.

yeah

they are stunning you can get all red rainbows as well just a single red terrifying i know that's cool and a lot shorter song as well

yeah they're sort of evening time aren't they so it depends where the sun is in the sky the kind of colour of your rainbow they gradually start to lose their colours one by one don't they the shorter wavelengths die first

that's a good title for something yeah

like a murder set at a radio station a murder mystery the shorter wavelengths die first yeah In Norway where they've just turned off their FM radio.

So it's a scandy noir drama.

But it's kind of also about the progress of technology and leaving behind multiple times.

It's got lots of layers.

Like a rainbow.

Just on the red rainbow, there's actually a physicist who in his lab has been creating red rainbows as well using lasers.

He's a physicist at the Von Karman Institute for Fluid Dynamics in Belgium, and he shoots a laser into a droplet, and so he gets these tiny rainbows that are all red.

And he says that the form of the rainbow, under those kind of controlled conditions, you can precisely determine what shape it's going to be, what size it's going to be, what the composition and temperature of it is purely by looking at the droplet before it's sprayed out.

How cool is that?

I would say that's like a really small version of this thing, which is that the size of the droplets and what they're composed of depends on what the rainbow looks like on a bigger scale as well.

And that's how you can tell all the pollution and stuff.

Right, okay.

So he says, just to put it into super cool, dorky words for this particular small one that he does in the lab, every single droplet has its own unique rainbow fingerprint already in it.

That's so cool.

Do you guys like rainbows?

Quick question.

Yeah.

Okay.

I'm more for them than against them.

Yeah, that's two yeses.

I'm a huge yes.

Okay, three.

Well, not everyone likes rainbows.

So this is

something from Amazonian cultures.

And rainbows there are very bad luck.

As in, they're associated with skin problems, with having miscarriages if you're pregnant.

How could they this doesn't make any sense?

They're so clearly such a positive, happy.

I don't know.

I think it's one of those glass half-empty things because it's caused by sunshine and rain.

Now, if it's always sunny and then you get some rain, then it could be a bad thing.

But if it's always rainy, like it is in Britain, then the fact that there's a rainbow means at least there's some sun around.

Okay.

This is from Wikipedia, I should say.

So,

but there is a saying:

Rainbows are shit.

That's right.

How does that translate?

There are diseases in one Peruvian language called Iona Achatan, which means the rainbow hurt my skin.

That's what you might say to the doctor.

And it's traditional to close your mouth at a rainbow, otherwise you'll catch a disease.

Oh, wow.

Yeah.

So I'm just saying, they're not all good.

So the Skittles adverts over there would not have gone down well at all would they?

Do not taste the rainbow.

So the rainbow flag for Pride has all the rainbow colours and it used to have a shocking pink

ban and the reason they did away with that is because they couldn't mass produce the pink cloth.

All the others were easy to make, but this was a cloth that wasn't very easy to make because the first guy who did it, he kind of made it himself just a one-off.

He didn't think of it it being a mass-produced thing.

And then it became really popular and they needed to make loads of them, but they couldn't get the pink.

It was after the Stonewall Riots, wasn't it?

That suddenly in the late 70s, suddenly there was this massive demand for these flags and they couldn't get it.

But then it had...

So how many colours do you think are in the flag now?

I think seven.

Um

six.

Did you just sing the rainbow song and still come up with six?

I took out one.

Did you?

Why?

Any reason?

Well, I put white in to

since I've learnt about some new rainbow.

You should have come up with eight then.

I didn't sing the full song.

I kind of backed out and thought, it feels like there's only a few left.

Oh, hang on, Dan.

I think we need to test something quickly.

What are the colours in a rainbow?

I don't know.

Red and yellow and pink.

No.

Red.

Well, actually, all the colours are in the colour.

No, hang on, hang on, hang on.

It is pink, isn't it?

No, there's no pink in a rainbow.

Red, anyway.

Red, orange, yellow, green, blue.

Wait, what's the song?

The song is not the actual colours of the rainbow.

That's just a fun song you learn as a fan.

Hang on, was I singing the right lyrics, though?

You were singing the right lyrics.

Okay, all right.

Now who's the fool?

But the colours in the rainbow are red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet.

That's the colours that you learn, although actually, you know, it's just a merging volume.

I was like, a jump ship to the anisphere.

I too was fooled by the song.

What a lie of a song.

Just take something that things people need to remember in day-to-day life.

It's like having a song January and February and orange and purple.

Exactly.

It is mean and I can understand why you thought that it went red, orange, whatever the song goes.

So what is it?

So there are seven colours in the rainbow, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet.

And the Pride flag used to have, as we've said, it used to have eight because it had these and the hot pink.

And then it went down to seven, but then it only has six colours in it now, which I'd never noticed.

Do you think that maybe it wasn't that the material was too expensive?

It's that the creator of the flag also was basing it off the song.

And then someone said, what's pink doing there?

And he thought, Oh, yeah,

we can't stay anyway, it's so expensive.

So, no, it wasn't because of that.

He knew the colours of the rainbow, this guy.

The reason they lost the next colour was because when the flag was round around poles, then one colour would get lost because it would be wound around the pole.

So, they needed an even number of colours, basically.

Because otherwise,

it was a vertical stripe, was it?

It wasn't a vertical.

It must be a horizontal pole.

What it said was, when hung vertically from the lamppost of San Francisco's Market Street, the centre stripe.

So if it was hung vertically, the centre stripe went around the pole.

Oh, okay.

And so they decided they needed an even number so that that middle stripe wasn't kind of, I don't know, didn't disappear into the pole.

Yeah.

That's why they did it.

And Philadelphia this year has added a couple of extra colours to their flag that they have been using as a nod to racial diversity.

Oh, okay, cool.

So they've gone up to eight, I think, again.

Oh, really?

Yeah.

So they've added brown and black.

The other colours stand for really fun stuff, don't they?

Yeah.

But it's such a shame they lost the pink because so the person who designed it said that the hot pink stood for sex.

So the others stand for life, healing, sunlight, nature, magic, serenity, and spirit.

But they've lost the sex one.

They should have got rid of the magic one.

Get rid of why is magic even in there?

I'm glad that stayed.

Oh god.

That's good.

And the other thing is that we were saying about there being seven colours in the rainbow.

I think that was Newton who decided that, wasn't it?

And the reason being, we think probably just because seven was like a magical number.

It was like the seven C's, the seven, you know.

It's his favourite, yeah, it's his favourite number.

It was just a good number.

And so he kind of looked and decided there were seven distinct bands.

And actually, if you look at a rainbow, you can decide really yourself how many bands there are.

There's pretty much an infinite number.

Although I always, because I think we've done that on QI, and so I always look at rainbows and think, okay, get beyond the seven thing.

Newton just made it up.

But I still only ever see seven colours.

I can't see more or less.

Really?

Yeah.

He passed away this year.

Newton.

Yeah, sorry to break it to you.

Yeah.

He had a good inning this year.

Gilbert Baker, who is the creator of the rainbow flag, passed away this year, sadly.

Yeah.

Oh, Newton as well in the same year.

It's been a big 2017.

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

My fact this week is that a new study has revealed that the genre of music with the most references to drugs is country music.

Country music has, according to this survey, 1.6 mentions per song on average of drug usage.

And they did a list of genres which used most drug references.

So it started with country country music, then jazz, then pop, electronic, rock, folk, and then at last, rap.

You missed out other.

Yeah, I know.

I wasn't.

Because that's my favourite genre.

Others.

Yeah, others just underneath rock, but above folk.

Wow.

Yeah.

And I thought country was folk, so I'm on a learning curve today.

Yeah.

That is unbelievable, though.

I think that's really amazing.

That rap has the fewest references.

Yeah.

I think some people have looked at the methodology of this and aren't sure how it's ended up right.

We were talking about this, weren't we?

It just seems so unbelievable that this is the case.

Well what they did, they took, didn't they, the lyrics of many, many thousands of songs and they had a list of drug-related words, quite a lot of drug-related words, that they plugged in.

And then they went through manually making sure that, you know, if someone says reefer, they're not actually singing a song about a reefer on the coral reef.

Man who works on a coral reef.

Yeah, exactly.

And a lot of rap songs are about people who work on coral reefs.

So that's probably why.

So yeah, it is but um I wondered if the methodology went wrong in that they're not cool enough to understand some of the more modern drug references because they came up with this list of 65 names for drugs.

And so the examples that were in this article were things like Addy, Blow, Molly, Roxy, and Scizerp.

S-I-Z-Z-U-R-P.

So if they feature in a song, that games are the drug.

But maybe rap's just using way more modern, cool slang for drugs that these guys don't know about.

As opposed to Scizerp, the classic 1920s slang.

What is this?

I've never heard scissors before, and you're saying it like it's a hackneyed old term.

It's such a good word to rhyme with.

If you're writing a song about burping,

then you're gonna need a scissor.

It's the only thing that rhymes.

Yeah, what is it?

I don't know what a scissor is.

I don't think anyone has ever heard of scissor, except the person who wrote whatever song refers to it.

And then I'm just saying that they've got this list, but maybe they've missed things out that rap's using.

I think they also used a lot of songs perhaps you wouldn't hear on normal country music stations.

Yes.

And actually, the more popular ones probably aren't about Sysurp and the other drugs.

But they weren't counting, because they had a list of the drugs that they were looking for as well, and they didn't include alcohol.

But I reckon if you throw alcohol in, you know, country music has quite a lot of references to that, doesn't it?

Yeah, tons.

So I've just googled Sysurp.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It is a purple drink, a mix of codeine-based prescription cough syrup, soda, and often Jolly Ranchers candy.

Sounds quite nice, doesn't it?

Yeah, but don't do it, kids.

that sounds so country though jolly ranchers candy and then some prescription drugs yeah classic country music you can't really imagine snoop dog on the scissor could you that's but weirdly that's a word that's closely i would associate more with snoop than scissor for dessert yeah exactly it's interesting i wonder if in other um reggae's not on this list blues is not on this list Have they all been lumped into other?

So blues would be in jazz.

I guess so, yeah.

Reggae.

I don't know what That would be.

Classical.

Words classical in there.

Yeah.

Symphony for scissor pin D minor.

You were saying about the words that they use.

Did you see that America's Drug Enforcement Administration have made a dictionary of slang drug terms this year?

I wonder if any of these are in it.

Whiffle dust.

Bernie's flakes.

I wonder if any of these are in...

Is that named after Bernie?

Bernie Saunders.

Well, I don't know.

It means cocaine.

Yeah, that's Bernie's Flakes.

they're the people who were going to show up to vote for Bernie Sanders in the American primaries, but they didn't.

They were too off their heads.

Aunt Hazel means heroin.

I wonder if that's in any of those songs.

Smoochie Woochie Poochie means cannabis.

Aunt Hazel.

Aunt Hazel.

That explains what my Uncle Ian was up to.

This is why it's called Barbara.

Every night he was having a night in with Aunt Hazel.

Smoochie Woochie Poochie feels like it would be a good name of a song.

Maybe a a Eurovision hit.

Yeah, yeah.

But what if you're just really loved up and you're walking down the street with your partner and you say, Oh, give us a smoochie woochie poochie, and you're immediately arrested by one of these guys.

You deserve to be immediately arrested if you'll say to your loved one in public, give us a smoochie woochie poochie.

But I would say that that's probably true of lots of slang terms for drugs, right?

Yeah.

So if you do a song called Weed

into a tennis ball can,

they might think it's about drugs.

That's true.

Okay, that is 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.

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You can email a podcast at QI.com.

Yep, or you can go to our group Twitter account, which is at QIPodcast.

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We'll see you then.

Goodbye.