172: No Such Thing As A Cat-a-Cops Cartoon

For the final trivia question, what is the largest mammal in the world?

Sir, in the orange, phone away, please.

Um, my Kennedysmart Smoke Alarm sent an alert through their Ring app.

See?

The train monitoring agent is calling now.

Hello?

The Kidda Smart Smoke Alarm sends real-time mobile alerts in the Ring app.

And with a subscription, emergency help can be requested even when you're not home.

A compatible Ring subscription is required for 24-7 smoke and carbon monoxide monitoring, sold separately.

A happy place comes in many colors.

Whatever your color, bring happiness home with Certopro Painters.

Get started today at Certapro.com.

Each Certipro Painters business is independently owned and operated.

Contractor license and registration information is available at certapro.com.

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 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, Czaczynski.

My fact this week is that in China, you can hire mistress dispellers to lure away your husband's mistress.

Incredible.

Yeah.

What if your husband doesn't have a mistress?

Do you have to hire a mistress?

Yeah, you can't.

And then hire a mistress dispeller.

It costs twice as much, and it's almost futile.

This was a piece in the New Yorker, which they did on this new thing, which is becoming bigger and bigger, which are these companies that call themselves mistress dispellers.

And if your husband has a mistress that you know about, and I think people a lot of men in China are quite unsubtle about it, then you go to one of these mistress dispelling services and you say, can you sort this out and they charge tens of thousands of dollars but they do a really comprehensive service they have like a psychotherapist they have lawyers um and it's a two-pronged attack so one psychotherapist goes to the mistress and lures her away so for instance there was one case where a mistress was convinced by the therapist to get a job in a different city yeah they they're banned from getting emotionally involved although there are stories of some male mistress dispellers who will start having an affair with the mistress yeah and there there are lots of different companies, so lots of them do different things.

So there are some companies that say, don't get involved, but then there are other companies that openly say, Our mistress dispellers are attractive men.

They're there to seduce the mistresses.

What's the, you guys probably know this, I'm surprised I don't.

What is the male mistress?

Master.

Just master?

Master?

Well, mistress is a feminine version of the word master.

That's etymologically.

You wouldn't say, I think my wife's got a master.

You'd say, she's got a fancy man.

Right, sorry.

Fancy man, that's all I'd say.

So, obviously, there's no equivalent because we've lived in a very sexist society for the last 4,000 years, but it's a fancy man.

I know we may not have the wording, but are there fancy man dispellers in China as well as the menu?

I don't think there are because it's just not such a commonplace thing.

Isn't it true?

I read somewhere that actual family counselors and people like that really don't think this is a particularly good idea at all.

That sounds very plausible.

I read that it was the director of the Guangdong Province Marriage and Family Counselors Association who says, really, these problems need to be solved between the husband and the wife rather than spending tens of thousands of pounds.

No, absolutely not.

You need to spend $45,000 to hiring someone to trick your mistress into leaving you.

It's funny because if it's a traditional family where the husband is earning the money and sharing it with the wife, the wife then goes and spends the money on getting rid of the mistress.

So

it's money's circling around.

Do you see what I mean?

Yeah, it's winning.

It's like the man is the breadwinner.

It's then the husband's own money that's being spent on getting rid of his mistress.

Yes.

It's quite pleasing.

Do you think he notices and says, what's happened to all of our money?

And then the wife says, well, I spent it on disposing of that woman, you were shooting.

But I think that's probably the problem is that some of the case studies where they produce accounts from the wives and the reason they've done it, in some cases they've said too much money is disappearing from the family account because these guys with the mistresses have gone too far in.

They're spending way too much money on them.

They'll put a stop to to that by throwing thousands of dollars more off them.

I guess, yeah.

You'll have lots of very happy marriages of extremely poor people.

Yes.

Yeah.

I found another curious job.

This is a website tester.

So basically, a lot of people release new websites they've created and they're way too complicated in some cases, unusable, not very friendly.

So this is called This User is My Mum.

And it's this guy's mum, who is very bad at the internet, tests out your website and says out loud, I don't understand, what is this doing?

How does this lead?

And he writes you a report, and his mum just tests it.

What's interesting about this is it's a job where the more you do it, the worse you get at it.

Yeah.

Because

you'd get more proficient on the internet, so you wouldn't be as stupid.

Yes.

Yeah.

She must be replaced.

She must be secretly replaced.

She must be replaced.

You can't secretly replace someone's mother like you might do a hamster.

This isn't really a job.

This is one bloke.

But

James, you and I were talking about China's doing this massive face recognition drive at the moment.

Oh, yeah.

And they're installing facial recognition technology everywhere.

Uh and uh you need it now to get into your taxi app on your phone or you need it to get into your your you know digital wallet or all this stuff.

Yeah.

But there is a guy called I think it's called Wang Yuheng and last year he beat

a facial recognition software machine.

He's one of these super recognizers, right?

And he played three rounds against the machine and it was a draw for the first two rounds and then he won the third one.

But on a T V show he was on last year, he successfully identified a single glass of water from more than 520 identical glasses of water.

Whoa,

what?

Yep.

No, you didn't.

Well, the one thing here is they can't have been identical.

Yeah.

They were identical to you and I, but really, Wang saw.

What did he see in it?

What are you seeing in a glass of water?

I don't know whether that was the only one which was

that one was half empty and all the others were half full, but I think that's it.

I went to a club the other week and they had facial recognition stuff.

So you went with your ID and they scanned your ID and then they scanned your face and it had to look the same, otherwise they wouldn't let you in.

Really?

But mine didn't look the same because my ID is from when I was about 18

when I had short hair.

But they just let me go anyway.

They must look at the age it was taken at in there.

Yeah, and thought that guy is obviously this guy needs a drink.

This guy's had a hard life.

Let's let him in.

That was the same club I tried to get into at the weekend to meet you, and they didn't let me in.

No.

But then I didn't bring any ID, so that's probably...

They couldn't scan it.

Just brought a glass of water.

Wait, are you guys hanging out on the weekend?

Yeah, what the hell?

We went to a party.

Oh, dear.

You guys were invited, I think.

Were we?

I don't know.

Just not mention it.

Yeah.

I've been doing a bit of extra research because I've been free at the weekend.

I was reading about sort of the king's mistress, which in France was an official position for centuries.

You know, you'd get your own flats and you'd get an official title.

So, Madame de Pompadour was an extremely famous mistress to Louis XV

for 20 years, despite the fact they didn't really sleep together.

She found other women for him to go to bed with, and then she would just talk to him.

But she's a pimp.

Well, no, she's more of a madame.

A madame, yeah.

A madame, yeah.

Well, she is, she's Madame de Pompadour, yeah.

But she used to be called Miss Fish, she was called Mademoiselle Poisson before she was elevated.

Was that her surname, you mean?

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

But when she met Louis XIV, it was at a ball in 1745 where she was dressed as a shepherdess and he was dressed as a tree.

So did she bring her sheep underneath him to shelter from the rain or something?

Yeah, I think that was it.

Yeah, yeah.

So romantic.

Very cool.

Until 2006 in America, if you wanted to get divorced, you could get divorced in Guam by mail.

So both of the people could write to Guam and say, we want to get divorced, and they would just do it.

You need never have ever been to Guam, you could just do that, and that was a legal thing.

Wow.

And then they changed the law, so now you can still get divorced in Guam, but you need to have stayed there for eight days, and no one does it anymore.

Yeah, because Guam is really far from everywhere.

Imagine how suspicious you'd be as the partner when they say, Hey, have booked us a holiday to Guam.

Ask work for eight days off.

So, Benjamin Franklin wrote a letter which was advice to a friend on choosing a mistress.

Have any of you read this?

Yeah, bedside reading.

It's not going well, is it, Andy?

So this was a letter to his friend.

That is harsh.

No.

I've just been dispelled.

They didn't dispel the mistress.

They dispelled the husband.

It was the only case they decided to change policy.

She's way better off at that other guy.

A fancy man.

He still uses phrases like fantasy man.

I've got a single thing.

What is the phrase?

What's the word?

Well, master, according to this.

I was talking etymologically of the word mister Manner.

Bit on the side.

That's it.

Squeeze.

Squeeze.

Squeeze.

Sorry, Anna, you were saying.

Anyways, squeeze.

Even just as old as fantasy man.

Saucy gentleman.

Andy and I are from the same century.

It turns out.

Saucy gentleman.

Speaking of centuries, so Ben Franklin in the 18th century wrote this letter to a friend of his called Cadwalla Colton, who

had written a letter to Ben Franklin saying, I really want a mistress.

And a mistress in those days wasn't someone who you were cheating on your wife with.

It was just if you didn't have a wife, anyone you wanted to have sex with was your mistress.

So Ben Franklin.

The way you got this was you wrote to Benjamin Franklin.

He would get his mum look through a list of people.

Maybe his mum was involved because his first piece of advice was choose an older woman.

Yeah, you ring old Mrs.

Franklin, are you?

She's good.

Anyway, he wrote this letter in 1745, and it was actually genuinely quite good advice.

And first of all, it said, actually, I advise you to get married.

But if you will insist on not getting married for a while, first of all, get married to an older woman because they're smarter, they've lived longer, they've got better chat.

And also, he said, there's no hazard of children, which irregularly produced may be attended with much inconvenience.

So he's talking about quite an older woman.

Well, indeed, post-menopausal.

And he also says, when they stop being beautiful, they study to be good in other ways.

You say good advice, but it sounds a little misogynistic.

I don't know what you're talking about James.

I'm the woman here and I think who's right on

the feminist money.

But this is interesting.

He says don't worry about the appearance issue because even though in old age some bits get wrinkly it starts from the top down so he says the face first gets wrinkled then the neck and then the breasts and arms but the lower parts continue to last as plump as ever so that if you cover all above with a basket and regard only what is below below the girdle it is impossible to know an old woman from a young one.

You're absolutely right.

This is feminist.

Happy birthday darling.

Get the basket ready.

I've had to upgrade you to a deeper basket every

cat.

A basket?

Did Franklin sign off with?

You should see my mum.

She's got a basket on her.

She's alright.

A teacher actually got in trouble for using a quote from this letter in his classroom, but this is this teacher in Oklahoma, and he had a picture in his classroom of a cat, and he had the quote, in the dark all cats are grey, which maybe is saying something about don't judge by appearance.

And actually, Frank Ben said in this letter, also, you don't need to worry about the appearance because in the dark all cats are grey, as in, doesn't matter, you turn the lights out, not an issue.

And this teacher got suspended.

Right.

It's quite an old gag as well.

I mean, that was used by one of the Russians, Catherine the Great or Peter the Great or somebody.

Oh, it was about the same kind of era.

It would have been darker then as well, right?

Because this is pre-electricity.

So,

just when it gets dark, you've either got your candles or you're so you're saying people even more were even more familiar with darkness just cat concepts.

Like might as well not have even bothered.

Yeah.

I mean

what's the point of having colour if you're a cat in the olden days?

Aren't cats colourblind anyway?

No.

No?

I think I've got a colour.

I'm a dog of dogs.

All dogs are grey.

To all other dogs.

To other dogs.

All the time.

Do you know that the first ever divorce in America was due to bigamy?

It was a guy called James Luxford, and he was fined £100 and sentenced to an hour in the stocks.

But they gave him an even worse punishment, which is the worst they could come up with.

They banished him to England.

Wow.

That is rough.

I guess if you're an American, being sent back to England is embarrassing because it's like being sent back to your mum's house.

Yeah, no.

It is.

That's exactly what it is, because they were all English.

They'd all come over for their new life.

Oh, okay.

And they were like, okay, we don't need you here anymore.

Yeah.

Head off back to England.

Do you think he went back to England and went?

Didn't even like it there anyway?

That was rubbish.

Too many wives.

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.

A happy place comes in many colors.

Whatever your color, bring happiness home with CertaPro Painters.

Get started today at Certapro.com.

Each Certipro Painters business is independently owned and operated.

Contractor license and registration information is available at Certapro.com.

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

My fact this week is that Richard Nixon's chair was 2.5 inches higher than everyone else's in the cabinet room.

This is amazing.

So, I read this in an article in International Business Times, and it's about how much money Donald Trump has spent on furnishings for the White House.

So, in four months, he spent $133,000, which is triple what Obama spent.

But one of the things he bought was a conference table from a company called Kittinger, and on Kittinger's website, it says that they got this stuff for Richard Nixon including a 24 chairs around the table one of which was 2.5 inches higher than the rest and that was for him.

It's just the back I think.

I think it's the back of the chair isn't it?

Wait the back of the chair.

So it means just the just the horizontal bit button that supports your back but surely if that's higher then you will look a bit shorter relatively in your chair.

I think the idea being that you have such a magnificent chair by 2.5 inches that people give you a bit more kind of leeway because like it's like a throne isn't it?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Big throne that the queen sits sits on presumably I don't know does she sit on a big throne yeah I imagine she sits on one a bit like the Game of Thrones iron throne yeah a bit less bony but okay yeah a bit less made of swords yeah but she did at the opening of parliament yeah oh yeah and one of the reasons because obviously they were mucking around with when they were gonna have the queen speech I think part of the reason that she was angry they said it was gonna be because she was gonna miss Ascot and she loved seeing the horses but also I think it's because she normally practices wearing the crown for a week before the ceremony Because it's really heavy.

It's extremely heavy, yeah.

And so I think

she didn't know when to start practicing.

It's a little bit like the guy's mum with the website, though, right?

She's been wearing the crown so often now that surely she is used to it at this point.

Surely her neck muscles have permanently.

Look at the queen.

She doesn't look like Frank Bruno with a massive neck, does she?

Anyway, sorry, chairs.

Yeah.

Can I just ask if, because Nixon ordered the Kittinger table, and do you think he actually was looking for Kissinger and he just mispronounced it?

And it was all a big mistake.

Is that the we want you guy in the poster?

No, that's Lord Kitchener from the First World War in the other country.

So Kitchener had very little to do with Richard Nixon, whereas Kissinger and Nixon were a very strong partnership for a very long time.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

But he did try and buy some furniture for his kitchen and accidentally got a poster of Lord Kitchener.

Sorry, just to say, I read there's a book called Believer My 40 Years in Politics by David Axelrod, who's the chief strategist for Barack Obama's presidential campaign.

And he says that Obama's chair was slightly taller when he was president.

Oh, so is it not the same chair?

Because it's the same table still.

I thought it was.

Maybe it's not, actually.

Yeah, I don't know.

So the cabinet office in Downing Street, the Prime Minister's chair is the only one with arms on.

And this has prompted a diplomatic row in the past.

In 1979, the president of France, Valerie Guiscard d'Estaing, was visiting the UK, and he was going to visit Thatcher in the cabinet room.

And his aides said, Yes, could he have a chair with equal status to the Prime Minister, please?

And they said, What?

And they said, Well, it's very simple.

Either he wants one with arms, or you have to put that one in the corner, and Thatcher has to have one without arms.

And they had to write to the British ambassador in Paris and say, Look, can you sort this out?

And he wrote back saying, Yeah, they're really serious about this thing.

So they were insistent.

We're actually still at war with them.

The ambassador said his first reaction was to think that the obvious solution was to stand the Prime Minister's chair in a corner and have her seated on the same sort of chair as the President.

He thought the President would be very surprised if it was otherwise.

So

unfortunately it's not recorded how they solved it, but.

I think the obvious solution is to have one sit on the other's lap and then they switch around halfway through, right?

Hey, the other difference of cabinet chairs in the British cabinet room is that the Prime Minister's chair is the only chair that's left on an angle so that it's more accessible to the Prime Minister.

They can just slip into it, whereas the others have to pull the chair out or

something chucked out of it.

That's very interesting.

Yeah, it's just when they walk in, all the positions are straight except for the Prime Minister's, which is on a slight angle, which allows easier access.

Another important person in the world who has a high chair is...

Prince George.

I was going to say Lord Sugar.

in the apprentice.

Yeah, he has a platform that his chair's on, which is about three inches higher so that he's the highest person in the room.

And they found that out because they had a camera shot from behind him in one of the episodes.

Wow.

And everyone kind of noticed that there was like a little platform that he sat on.

Really?

That's interesting.

It's always people who are universally loved and respected who have these slightly higher chairs, isn't it?

John Watson, Alan Sugar.

Sarkozy, have we talked about when Sarkozy

went to, because he was obviously quite short, he went to do a speech in a factory

and he had lots of factory, the factory workers standing behind him when he made the speech And he made sure to select the 20 shortest factory workers to stand behind him.

And they interviewed them afterwards and said, why were you chosen to be in this picture?

And they said, well, they checked my height.

And they said I was adequately small to not make him look too short.

Because he's working in Willy Wonka's chocolate factory.

Sorry.

So.

Okay, I do have one wild fact about presidential chairs.

Gone.

There was a guy in the 19th century, and his name was Seth Kinnerman, right?

He was a hunter.

He claimed to have shot 800 grizzly bears in his life.

Yeah.

I'm sure he did.

I'm sure he did.

He was Californian, but he made for a spell.

Every single new president of the USA got a chair made by Seth Kinnerman, and they were the creepiest chairs you've ever seen.

One of them is made just from elk antlers strapped together.

He once played for President Lincoln, according to Wikipedia, on a fiddle made from the skull of a mule.

Wow.

Okay, so this is the kind of guy he was.

Anyway, the chair he made for Andrew Johnson was made from two wild bears, bears, right?

The legs of the chair, the forelegs, were all bare legs.

And when you touched a cord, the head of a grizzly bear would snap out from under the seat and gnash its teeth and then go back.

That's amazing.

Who is that for?

That one was for Andrew Johnson.

That's incredible.

Yeah.

I see photos of it, and it is terrifying.

If you wanted to make a really creepy chair, you should have a chair that then has an arm built into it where if you sit in it, the hand is resting on your thigh.

I just think that would be a good creepy chair.

That's a good creepy chair.

You're in the market for one.

That's a good idea, yeah, yeah.

Because it's always creepy when someone rests their hand on your thigh.

It's not always creepy.

I find somebody to ignore.

When you become Prime Minister, Anna, you can have one of those chairs in the British Cabinet room.

Well, apparently, they won't let me because it has to be this, you know, slightly armed chair.

Perhaps I'll be able to do that.

I can be honest with what you want.

As long as you have the same creepy chair for the President of France,

can I make a quick presidential chair correction?

Many, many, many podcasts ago, probably about 10 in, I made a mistake.

I said that underneath the chair of Barack Obama's Oval Office table was a trapdoor.

That should the president in an emergency need to get out of the room, he could open the trapdoor and slide down a slide.

It turns out that that's not true.

I was fooled by a website, the White House website, which turned out to be a website called Not the White House website, a parody of the White House website.

And I failed to read the strap line and the knot.

I think if this guy needs to replace his mum, he could quite easily hire you down.

Apologies to anyone who's used that fact, because I didn't edit it out of the show, despite having learnt that.

So Richard Nixon's inauguration, one thing he didn't want was a pigeon poo all the way down the road where he was being inaugurated.

Who does?

No, every other president has requested it.

But he was weird.

He just didn't like it.

And so he decided that what he would do is try and get rid of all the pigeons.

And so they sprayed something called Roost No More, which is a bird repellent, on all the trees nearby.

And the idea was it would make the pigeons' feet burn and they would fly off.

But unfortunately, it contained a chemical that killed them.

And so as he was being inaugurated, they went down the road and there were just dead pigeons everywhere.

Amazing.

That's amazing.

That's incredible.

It's not a good start, is it?

It's a first omen.

Or is it like when you get pooed on by a bird?

It's like, that's actually a really good sign.

Lots of dead birds falling all over you.

Sure, that's what his advisors said.

But that's the thing, I guess.

Being pooed on by birds is supposed to be good luck, isn't it?

So he's got rid of all the good luck and got pigeon corpses.

It's double battle.

That's a double double battle.

No wonder things played out as they did.

So Nixon was very, very clumsy.

I hadn't quite realised the plethora of hilarious stories about him.

So he used to always drop medals at award ceremonies.

So any military award ceremony, he was trying to put a medal on someone, he'd drop it to the extent that...

Dead veterans scattered all over the thing.

So one of his military aides said that he had to take the pins off the back of medals and replace them with clip-on devices because if he didn't drop the medal, he'd then stab the military person in the chest with it.

He once picked up a lobster as part of like a PR thing.

He was visiting a fish farm, and he picked up a lobster and it clawed onto his suit lapel and wouldn't let go.

It was hanging from him.

He spilled the inkwill at Downing Street.

He always spilled soup on himself, and so he said that soup courses had to be eliminated from state menus.

That is so funny.

It's really good.

In Middle Kingdom, Egypt, it was a symbol of status to have a folding stool.

Wow.

Yeah.

Stools were popular, but folding stools were very difficult to get hold of and they were expensive.

So if you weren't quite as posh as a pharaoh, but you were pretty posh, you would have a folding stool.

I didn't even know they were invented as far back as that.

Is that to prove you were rich enough to go on beach holidays?

I think every holiday is a beach holiday in ancient Egypt.

Oh, yeah.

It's a constant beach holiday.

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

My fact is that there is a special police unit in France whose job is to monitor six million dead people,

and they are called the catacops.

So these are the guys who look after the catacombs in Paris.

And the catacombs are this massive

thing.

I'd heard of them before.

I didn't realise how big they were.

They are 200 miles of tunnels over 32 square kilometres in area.

So they still haven't all been explored.

It's 10 times the area of Central Park in New York.

It's absolutely massive.

And the catacops are the people who walk around underground trying to find people who are trespassing and, you know, people who are mistreating the catacombs.

So they're not actually policing the dead themselves and checking they don't cause trouble.

No.

But there are.

Although if they do cause trouble, I'm sure they'll be first on the scene.

Exactly, yeah.

Although there are only five people in the catacops these days.

I read they're called cataphlix in French.

Yeah.

What the people who go down there?

The cops.

Oh, the cops.

Oh, that's good.

Because everyone is called catasomething.

There are cataclasts.

These are people who mistreat the catacombs.

They're people who leave rubbish and they spray paint over older works of art and they're very bad people.

But there are cataphiles as well, people who love the catacombs and who treat them well.

And then, if you're a cataphile and you bump into a catacop, he might well let you go.

Surely if you're a cataclast, then you claim you're a cataphile if a catacop comes along.

Yeah, but if you're if there's litter behind you or you're daubing stuff on a wall that you're carrying spray paint cans.

You're a cataclass, no.

No, no, because I actually took them off a cataclass because I saw they were doing something wrong.

So I've got the cans, but they're not mine.

I haven't been using them.

Oh, well, on your way.

Thank you.

And then you point and you say he went that way.

He went 200 miles that way.

And also, there's catachiks, apparently, who are a subculture who walk around the tunnels in bikinis.

No, apparently.

Is there a pool down there?

There's a lot of flooded catacomb area.

In fact, in that case, yes.

Yeah.

I think it was last year, maybe the year before, a surfer called Alison Teal went surfing inside a catacomb.

You can watch the video.

It's pretty extraordinary.

She says surfing, and all the media said surfing.

She's laying on the surfboard

in her bikini.

She's in a bikini.

And she goes through it.

But it's an amazing video because she goes into these tunnels, which are super tight.

Like it's just her and the surfboard can fit through and there's moments where people who've been down there obviously having fun with all the bones down there then arranging them into a chair so you can see her sit in a bone chair just extraordinary like incredible is that chair made by Seth Kinman the 19th century grizzly bear hunter

Wow They are incredible though, these catacoops.

They're so cool.

And when the first ever Catacop chief retired, his name was Jean-Claude Serret.

He did 20 years in the tunnels.

The cataphiles organized a massive feast for him, and he turned up and he said, I tried for years to catch you, but now I'm retiring.

If you want, you can take pictures with me.

And they all had their picture taken with him.

Oh, wow.

That's pretty cool.

And they threw him a party.

I gotta say, Catacops sounds like quite a cool 80s cartoon.

It does.

It really does.

Are they cats?

Yeah, but they're in the catacombs.

Are they also cops?

Oh, yeah.

And they're wearing policeman's outfits.

Andy, it's in the title.

Every element of this cartoon is in the title.

That's great about the 80s.

Yeah.

You never had to think about titles of cartoons.

They just illustrated they're thunder cats.

Yeah.

They're cats and they like thunder.

Danger mouse.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Dangerous.

Danger.

Didn't even have to watch the cartoon.

Look at the title.

You know what you got.

Hoopera's Peppa Pig.

What's that about?

No one knows.

You're anyway.

So the cataphiles are incredible, aren't they?

I really would recommend looking them up.

This is one of those facts.

I was so glad you chose it because I had no idea they existed.

And they sort of invented themselves in about 1980.

And the idea is they're kind of urban explorers, but they go around restoring parts of Paris that are going without being restored, or the government hasn't got the funds to restore them, or they think need restoring.

And the catophiles are the people who do so in the catacombs.

And so, for instance, a few years ago, the catacops just came across underground, in some of the catacombs that you're not allowed to access, a cinema complete with like a bar and a restaurant.

This is all underneath the Trocadero, an area of Paris.

It had seats to watch films in it.

It had this whole collection of films.

They'd wired in at least three phone lines.

They had their own electricity system.

And there were just people hanging out down there watching films on a big cinema screen.

And so they found this and they were like, wow, this is amazing.

We found this whole cinema system.

Who the hell is this?

And the police came back three days later and all the electrics had been cut off.

And there was just a note that read, Do not try to find us.

Wow.

Can you find what films they watch?

Because I have been trying to find out.

Oh, yeah, I actually saw the name of one of the films.

It's very art house, sort of stuff.

Oh, because I was hoping they were watching, you know, Terminator.

Oh, you mean like Lovely Bones?

Awesome.

Oh, that'd be good.

Like, bone-related.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Oh, you could have a great time watching zombie films down there.

Yeah.

The mummy, surely.

Yes.

They've all got their own catacomb name as well.

Everyone has a nom de plume or a nom de catacomb down there.

And

you're not meant to ask about anyone's above-surface life.

You don't say, so what do you do?

Because the answer is, I walk around the catacombs.

Yeah, I see.

Yeah.

Right.

Do you know what they also found in the cinema, by the way?

They discovered that there was a CCTV monitor in order to see who was coming so they can review the tapes.

I guess if they could see if it was cops or anything.

And along with the CCTV, they had a bit of sound equipment so that if anyone passed a certain point, it triggered a dog barking to scare them off from going further down the tunnel.

Wow.

Yeah, so it was like that was their security system to stop the cinema from being discovered.

I used to work for the catacop cartoon cuts, as well.

But they're very dangerous, these catacombs, if you are not a catophile and if you decide to go exploring off the beaten path, as it were, because these are ginormous, and there are counts of people who've heard of stashes of wine.

And they've said, I'm just going to go down and look for a stash of wine and never seen again.

I mean, you're in France, there's wine everywhere.

Oh, well, finally, I can get some of this mysterious wine that they speak of.

So, very recently, two boys disappeared for three days.

They were found.

They got put into hospital.

They had hypothermia.

And they were only found because they'd been leaving clues along the way.

But the catacops, I guess, sent in search dogs in order to find them.

And they managed to find them.

But I kept thinking that that's...

You can imagine being a dog and going down into a place with all those bones.

Well, this is the thing.

Do you know why the bones are down there in the first place?

Because they weren't originally there.

So the bones were put underground because all the cemeteries were running out of space in the city above ground.

And it was horrible.

So there's a very famous cemetery in Paris called

the Innocence.

And it was giving off a strong smell of decomposing flesh in the late 18th century.

And supposedly, even perfume shops were claiming they couldn't do business because of the off-putting smell.

Surely they're the one people who should be cashing in.

It's amazing, isn't it?

Yeah.

If they can't sport that business opportunity,

anyway, in 1780, a wall collapsed at Les Innocent and rotting corpses fell into a nearby house.

At that point, people said, oh, maybe we should move these millions and millions of corpses.

So they, over a period of years and years, they moved all these six million bodies from the city cemeteries into the catacombs.

And what it was is they'd had all these tunnels because it was where they mined for limestone.

Originally, they would get limestone from near the ground level, but actually that was kind of spoiling the topsoil so you couldn't make any agriculture there or anything like that.

So they had to go deep, deep down to get the rocks.

And this is amazing.

Once they'd made, they'd got rid of all the rock and the catacombs existed

but completely abandoned because they weren't being used for anything, people started farming there.

So mushrooms were grown in these catacombs and all the farmers got kicked out because they wanted to throw all the bones in there.

No one else.

Yeah, and still today in bits of catacomb that are not occupied by bones, are growing mushrooms still.

I got to say, as someone who's scared of mushrooms, like I am, I have a real phobia.

I think I could live with the bones and the skulls and stuff like that.

You'd freak out.

Fresh out of that.

I really would.

That's a horror movie for you.

And here's the other thing about the catacombs:

they are the reason that Paris has maintained not having high-risers in the city.

Because they collapse.

They would collapse.

The ground ground underneath them are not stable enough in order to allow for high-rise buildings.

It was Louis XVII.

He founded the organization the IGC, the Inspection Général de Carriere, which does all the maintenance and mapping.

And he was forced to found it because in 1774, 300 meters of street just collapsed into a 20-meter deep hole.

Oh, wow.

Imagine.

Because obviously the limestone is eroded or it's eaten away by rain or whatever it might be.

And suddenly, boom, 300 meters of a street.

It It sounds almost fun to be on a street that then kind of turns into a tunnel.

What are you talking about?

What are you talking about?

It wouldn't be.

I'm not saying it would be, it sounds like it could be.

My sister is terrified of sinkholes.

Really?

Yeah, me too.

Absolutely.

She has a massive phobia around.

Doesn't she live in a cemetery?

No, the other sister.

All right, okay.

Surely it's more logical if you do live in a cemetery to be afraid of falling into the ground.

Because you've seen all these other people who've done it.

My sister.

That's not how they all die.

My sister who lives in a cemetery grows her own vegetables.

And my other sister who doesn't live in the cemetery refuses to eat them because she thinks they've got dead bodies.

Oh, I don't blame her.

Yeah, there's something about that connection.

But you eat crops grown with excrement as fertiliser.

That doesn't bother you, does it?

Yeah.

But isn't that bizarre?

That we're constantly eating food that's grown using cow poo.

Or human poo.

All poo.

It's just poo.

Any kind of poo.

It all works.

It does the trick.

That is weird, isn't it?

We're all over it.

Not enough gets made of that.

You're right.

I agree with you.

People always say they look at like the way that animals are killed and say maybe if you knew how your animals were killed, you would all go vegetarian.

Yeah.

But maybe if you knew that there was poo smeared all over your vegetables, you'd only eat meat.

There's nothing like sinking into luxury.

At washablesofas.com, you'll find the Anibay sofa, which combines ultimate comfort and design at an affordable price.

And get this: it's the only sofa that's fully machine washable from top to bottom, starting at only $699.

The stain-resistant performance fabric slip covers and cloud-like frame duvet can go straight into your wash.

Perfect for anyone with kids, pets, or anyone who loves an easy-to-clean, spotless sofa.

With a modular design and changeable slip covers, you can customize your sofa to fit any space and style.

Whether you need a single chair, love seat, or a luxuriously large sectional, Anibay has you covered.

Visit washablesofas.com to upgrade your home.

Right now, you can shop up to 60% off store-wide with a 30-day money-back guarantee.

Shop now at washablesofas.com.

Add a little

to your life.

Offers are subject to change and certain restrictions may apply.

Turn up the Shine in Your Portfolio with the Sprat Silver Miners and Physical Silver ETF, SLVR.

Visit spratetfs.com or call 1-888-622-1813 for disclosure and prospectus information containing investment objectives, risks, charges, and expenses, which should be read carefully.

Alf's Distributors Inc.

is the distributor for the Sprot ETFs.

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

My fact this week is that the number one place to buy CDs in Indonesia now is KFC.

KFC, the fast food restaurant.

You should call it KFCD.

Oh,

yes.

This is amazing.

That's such an amazing fact.

This is extraordinary, isn't it?

Hang on, KFC D would be the Kentucky Fried Chicken disc.

Kentucky Fried Compact disc.

KFC CD is what you're suggesting.

Yeah.

So in Indonesia now, in KFC, when you go to buy your chicken, you are offered a bundle deal in which you can also purchase a CD.

And they sell over 500,000 albums a month in the KFCs all over Indonesia.

And this was set up by a very well-respected, well-known producer of bands like The Killers, predominantly U2.

He's done the majority of their biggest albums outside of Brian Eno.

And he realized over there, credit cards and streaming isn't such a massive thing.

So people are still buying the physical objects.

CDs get sold for $4, and there's a lot of black market CDs that go on.

He thought no one goes out to buy things anymore physically, but they do go out to buy chicken.

So what if I combined chicken and CDs together and started selling them there, and it's absolutely worked?

So, he releases at the moment predominantly Indonesian artists, but they're looking into bringing in the Western artist.

You two have got that new album coming out, haven't they?

Family Bucket.

His name's Steve Lillywhite, by the way, the producer of all these albums.

He's done the Rolling Stones as well.

I mean, he's ginormous.

They interviewed him.

The New York Times interviewed him, and he said, My job is basically like running a record label, except this record label also happens to sell chicken.

So, I think it's a man who's not fully adjusted to the new reality.

Very much sounds like a man who used to be a record label guy, then fell on hard times, got a job at KFC,

and then someone from the New York Times came along and said, aren't you that guy who used to produce U2?

And he's like, oh yeah, I still do that kind of stuff.

But

incredibly, that's not the case.

While he gave this interview to the New York Times, he was busy mixing or playing the latest U2 single that he just made in the background.

Like, this is a guy who's like jumping between producing pop hits and selling.

The music that he sells in KFC in Indonesia is not English language, is it?

So it's all Indonesian music at the moment.

And he says that he thinks 98% of the music sales come from people who just went to buy chicken and turn up there and go, oh, I'll have a CD too.

Impulse buy.

It definitely makes sense.

But also, piracy is not necessarily bad for CD sales.

So Japan is somewhere where CDs are still a huge thing.

So I think globally, 39% of music sales come from CDs.

Or this is true true last year, the year before.

Whereas in Japan, it's 75%.

And piracy isn't necessarily a bad thing because apparently when people pirate CDs, they copy them onto other CDs.

And that gets people used to just physically having CDs.

I think people are all used to physically having CDs now.

I think that's the argument of a pirate in the dock.

Quite possibly.

Actually, I was going to spread the sale of CDs, just happened to be blank ones that I was buying and then ripping off.

I don't know.

The Japan thing is bizarre, though, the CD thing.

So CDs in Japan cost about £25 on average each one.

So it's not like they're cheaper.

Well, it's because of all the bonus tracks.

Japan famously, there was a great comedian who once said where all the bonus tracks live.

Every Japanese CD, which is why they're often imported to other countries around the world, is there may be four songs that don't appear on a CD released in the West.

Wow.

So if Coldplay releases an album there, most likely there will be four bonus tracks, which are the B-sides or something that they would use later on in the life.

Four more completely indistinguishable tracks.

Imagine how disappointed you'd be if you got to the end of what you thought was a coreplay album, and it turned out there were four more tracks you have to listen to.

The first massive selling CD was Dire Straits.

It was an album called Brothers in Arms, and it was the first one to sell a million CDs.

It was absolutely huge.

And since then, I think it's sold about something crazy, like 15 or 30 million copies.

But they were the band who were chosen for the big push of the CD because the guys who made it for Phillips said they're mainstream enough.

Like, we can't push punk, we can't push something that's niche.

But also, maybe they didn't want something really poppy, is that right?

They wanted something.

I guess so, yeah.

So, it was, but they were the ones who were almost chosen for that massive promotional push, which is interesting.

Okay,

the first person to have a CD released in America was Bruce Bringstein, born in the USA, wasn't he?

But ABBA was the first band to be imprinted onto a CD.

It's always the big ones.

Yeah.

When you say that kind of thing, it almost feels like there probably was someone else, doesn't it?

Yeah.

It kind of depends, though, because it's launching a new medium.

So I guess like Jay-Z doing Tidal, you know, he signed up.

So Tidal is its own Spotify, effectively.

Dan is looking at my completely blank face about the words Jay-Z and Tidal.

So Tidal is like its own iTunes, its own Spotify.

It's an exclusive streaming and downloading place.

You can only listen to Jay-Z.

You can only listen to Jay-Z.

It's like a Betamax, but all the tapes are Jay-Z.

Exactly.

Okay, I understand.

Why don't you put it like that?

So Beyonce released her lemonade album on there, and as a result, it didn't make it to the top of the charts, the first time that's ever happened to Beyonce in her solo career because it was a new medium and not enough people were signed up at the time.

But yeah, so you need a biggie in order to push the medium.

Yeah.

Just in Japan, on Japan CDs, you were saying they come with extras, so as well as bonus tracks, they come with other extra things as well.

So, now they're keeping the CD market alive in Japan by giving away prizes with CDs.

So, you get raffle tickets with CDs, you get these prizes, you get

a family bucket.

A raffle ticket is a terrible prize because it's basically not a prize, is it?

It's a piece of paper which almost always

not a very nice bottle of wine, though.

Or a box of matchmakers.

Exactly.

You can get sometimes you, if you are the first, you know, thousand people to buy a CD, you get the handshake thing, which is where you get to meet the band of of the CD you've bought and shake their hands.

That's incredible.

Yeah, exactly.

Get to Japan, Andy.

But this is a cool thing.

So there's a band in Japan, I think we might have talked about before, called AKB48, which is a band with loads of members.

And they hold band elections via CD purchases.

So the way they get people to buy their CDs is if you buy a CD by these guys, then it has a ballot paper inside, and you can write on that ballot paper which member of the band is your favorite, and then it's announced who's the favourite.

So that gets people to buy it.

That's pretty harsh though.

If you're in that band.

Yeah, but at least there are 50 members as opposed to a band like the Rolling Stones where there are five of them.

You get to cull a Rolling Stone every time.

It's Chas and Dave.

And every year Dave's like, sorry, Chaz.

Well, there was, it's not the end of the world if you lose, because the girl that came 48th or the girl that came bottom in the vote one year, the following year, I think this was last year or the year before, one fan spent £240,000 buying up as many CDs as they possibly could in order to send all the votes in because there's no limit to how many times you can vote.

Whoa.

So what I would say is, if you want to buy 250,000 copies of our new book that comes out this November,

should we put a little ballot paper inside saying who's your favourite member of the concert?

I really don't.

I think we should.

We absolutely should.

I think for you and me, we shouldn't.

Why didn't she just photocopy the bit of paper?

That's a lot of money.

There's going to be a barcode on on there, isn't there?

Some listener in Japan is going, fuck right now.

With a massive catacomb full of unsold CDs.

Eating their dinner off the place mats.

People keep releasing CDs in Sims language, by the way.

What?

What does that mean?

You never played on The Sims?

It sounds like you haven't, I like the way you said that.

No, I have a Simple.

Well, I like to play on The Sims.

I think I'm the only one here who has played The Sims.

I've never played on The Sims.

I've played on The Sims, sorry, yeah.

I have played on The Sims.

I just didn't ever talk about it until now, apparently.

So I was actually looking at weird music brand partnerships for this, and Simlish is the language they speak in The Sims.

And Katy Perry has recorded a song on an album called Teenage Dream.

And

what, no, no, no, A B-side?

I'm with Anne on this.

What is that?

A massive album.

Oh, come on.

It's not

a Lonely Hearts Club band.

It's one of the best-selling albums of this decade.

Well, I bet I'm the only one.

I'm the only one I've asked for that's heard the Simlish version.

So who's the bigger Katy Perry fan?

Anyway, all these bands keep releasing albums in Simlish.

So OK Go, Depeche Mode, Rita Aura, Lily Allen.

Cool.

They've all released Simlish songs.

That's very cool.

And so they just redo the language.

Yeah.

That's awesome.

Is there an album where you can buy all the Simlish songs with, you know, like a...

No, that's what I call Simlish.

One of the guys who developed the CD for Phillips, when it was first introduced, he was so excited about the new technology.

He said, I decided to get rid of all my vinyl albums and get my old Rolling Stones and Beatles records on CD.

It still hurts because he just feels like a complete idiot that he did that.

He got rid of all these fantastic original Rolling Stones and Beatles records.

And he just has them on CD now.

He was married to the cause, though.

You've got to throw yourself in with both people to the CD.

All five of the cause he was married to.

Even Jim?

That is bigamy.

You should go in the stocks for like five hours for that.

That's a joke that dates us, doesn't it?

I mean, I did a Chaz and Dave joke on the back.

We're all revealing our deeper secrets about, you know, Jay-Z or playing on The Sims.

In Indonesia, there's a big trend for

music related to bus horns.

Okay, and this is like a little meme that started on the internet.

And it's they videoed these kids holding signs up reading Om Telet Om, okay, which means

honk driver honk or driver honk driver.

I'm not sure which one.

And the thing is, Indonesian buses have got really cool horns, so they make like little melodic noises.

And the kids just wanted to hear these horns.

And it became a bit of an internet meme.

And now there's a load of DJs in Indonesia who are making songs related to bus horns.

Cool.

Really?

Very cool.

So, popular DJs such as Zed and Firebeats and DJ Marshmallow.

You say that in the same tone of voice that Anna talks about Katie Perry.

So, we've all got blind spots, is all I'm saying.

Because Andy's downloaded their albums already.

Yeah, I love DJ Marshmallow and the other one you said.

I've got some KFC stuff.

Do you?

Yeah, me too.

Finally, we're getting to the nub of this fact.

So, in Japan, they have a KFC with a high-end whiskey bar.

Cool.

Which is pretty good.

In Russia, they had an advert because people weren't really eating KFC.

They had an advert, and what it was is there was a little kid in a school, and he was eating KFC or something, and the teacher got annoyed.

And so the teacher got the bucket and put it on this kid's head, and he had to walk around school with a bucket on his head.

And it started.

He hasn't been aging quite prematurely.

Yeah.

And it was just a meme in Russia, like the bucket head meme.

I don't think we've mentioned mentioned this before.

This year, KFC have released a novel for the first time.

What?

It's a novel starring the Colonel.

And it's a Mills and Boone style romance, and it's called Tender Wings of Desire.

He is a sexy man.

Well, we ascertained before we started recording this podcast that you quite fancy Richard Nixon.

Oh, yeah.

So you're talking about.

How did we miss that when we got to that?

We didn't ascertain that.

That's warping of the truth.

Oh, I'm sorry.

I find him not unattractive, given that there was an information.

Oh, for Randy, that's pretty much someone saying you're attractive.

That's the best I can hope for these days.

I'm not physically repulsed by him.

Great, Dave.

He said in an interview that something like, I know how I look, I'm under no illusions about my appearance, so I'll have to be good in other ways.

And I read that interview and I thought, well, he's good in other ways, isn't he?

Lots of ways.

Richard Nixon is a very good man.

What would you say?

What are your top five ways in which he's a great guy, Hannah?

Got a bird problem?

Here's your man.

Colonel Saunders was kind of divorced from KFC from quite early on, as he sold the company.

So he did loads of marketing for it throughout his life.

He travelled 250,000 miles, I think, visiting KFC restaurants around the world until he died in 1980.

But he used to turn up unexpected at various KFC outlets constantly to test their chicken because he was really pissed off that they weren't using the recipes.

There's a picture of him on the wall.

On every bucket, there's a picture of his face.

People behind the desk would be like, you look a bit familiar.

I guess if he takes the suit off and the glasses.

He never did.

There we go.

They showed him into it.

He's completely recognisable.

He never took us.

Even in the shower, even when he was swimming.

Imagine if Ronald McDonald was going to every McDonald's as a secret customer.

It's just not going to work.

Well, gave it away.

Was it my height?

Yeah.

So first of all, he literally didn't go out out in public without wearing his white suit and he bleached his facial hair to match his head hair and stuff.

So he never didn't wear his white suit.

And he'd turn up unannounced and then they would serve him.

He'd say, give me your chicken and gravy.

Please.

And then he would be really angry if they got it wrong, which they often did.

So KFC sued him once for...

They did.

They sued him for referring to their gravy as sludge and wallpaper-like.

What?

Because he turned up and said it was...

So he must...

Had he sold the company at the time?

He sold the company.

He was still doing their marketing and stuff, but he turned up and he was.

Was that a promoter's slogan?

Try new wallpaper-y sludge.

There was one employee who complained, so he did say there was a piece on him in the New York Times in the 70s when they interviewed him saying the Colonel is vexed almost beyond endurance by the subject of gravy.

And one of the executives at KFC said, Look, the Colonel's gravy was fantastic, but you had to be a Rhodes Scholar to cook it.

It was really, really complicated recipe that was way too labor-intensive.

I think everyone really likes KFC gravy, don't they?

Isn't that the thing that everyone loves about it?

I think it is a thing because he did make this massive deal about the gravy.

Well, did he win the case?

He had to pay $1 million

in damages.

Yeah.

Well, he called their gravy sludgy wallpaper paste.

What do you expect?

I guess so.

They sued him for about $30 million, I think, and he got it down to a million.

He could have said it's all gravy in the dark.

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, James, at Eggshake, Andy, at Andrew Hunter M.

And Chaczynski.

You can email podcast at qi.com.

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

You can also go to our website, no such thingasofish.com.

We've got all of our previous episodes on there.

We have all of our tour dates on there, and we have a link to our book, The Book of the Year, coming out in November.

Sounds good, doesn't it?

Yeah, okay, we'll be back again next week with another episode.

We'll see you then.

Goodbye.

Life's messy.

We're talking spills, stains, pets, and kids.

But with Anibay, you never have to stress about messes again.

At washable sofas.com, discover Anibay Sofas, the only fully machine washable sofas inside and out, starting at just $699.

Made with liquid and stain-resistant fabrics.

That means fewer stains and more peace of mind.

Designed for real life, our sofas feature changeable fabric covers, allowing you to refresh your style anytime.

Need flexibility?

Our modular design lets you rearrange your sofa effortlessly.

Perfect for cozy apartments or spacious homes.

Plus, they're earth-friendly and built to last.

That's why over 200,000 happy customers have made the switch.

Upgrade your space today.

Visit washable sofas.com now and bring home a sofa made for life.

That's washable sofas.com.

Offers are subject to change and certain restrictions may apply.

Power up fall projects with ego at Lowe's.

Every tool delivers power beyond belief.

So whether it's leaves, limbs, or lawn cleanup, count on Ego to deliver the power, performance, and innovation you need.

And now for a limited time, save up to $60 on select blowers, chainsaws, and pole saws.

Shop Ego today at Lowe's.

Offers valid to 10.1 while supplies last.

Selection varies by location.