168: No Such Thing As Lord Cauldronhead

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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.

Also coming to you from the morning after the 2017 British general election.

My name is Dan Shriver.

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

Andrew Hunter Murray.

Sorry, I'm tired.

Andrew Hunter.

My name is Dan Shriver.

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

And once again, we have gathered around the microphones with our four favorite facts from the last night, the evening of the election.

And in no particular order, here we go.

Hey, Dan, you sound a bit tired.

I'm very tired.

Try and spot which one of us stayed up the latest and the longest.

Well, the problem was that I didn't watch it on TV.

I think all of us stayed watching it on TV.

You made the mistake of watching it on plus one, so you got even less sleep than the rest of us.

I watched it on my iPhone in bed with the lights off.

My left eye, which did all the watching because my right eye was in a pillow, is really twitching right now.

Well, because it's on the left, it'll be very happy with the result.

Okay, starting with fact number one, and that is Anna.

Yeah, my fact is really relevant to this result.

Fact,

all forfeited election deposits go straight to the Queen.

And this is just the thing I found out.

I was reading the Electoral Commission guide for returning officers.

As you do.

As you do in an exciting time like this, you've got to do exciting things.

And yeah, there was just a rule in it.

So it's like for returning officers, so for anyone internationally listening, returning officers are the people who are responsible in every constituency for like organizing and announcing the election.

And this is the long guide as to exactly how they go about doing that.

What it says in the guide is: if a candidate does not poll more than 5% of the total number of valid votes cast, their deposit will be forfeited.

You must send any forfeited deposits to Her Majesty.

So, the deposits are £500

that people put up if they want to be an MP, again for international listeners.

And then, if you get under 5%, you forfeit the deposit.

But I didn't realise it went to Her Majesty.

I can't find anything else about this online.

It's amazing, though.

So, in 2010, UKIP alone lost £229,000 in deposits.

No way!

The Green Party lost £163,500.

No wonder the Queen's so rich.

Yeah, I know.

In 2010, there was about a million pounds in lost deposits.

That is a lot.

It is a lot.

The idea of this deposit is to stop frivolous campaigns, isn't it?

Yeah, but it does a very good job.

I think the Monster Raving Mooney Party would agree.

In 1983, they had a look at this, the Home Affairs Committee, to see if

it was too much and if it was stopping poorer people from running.

And they kind of thought, well, maybe it it is, but actually, it's worth it because for your 500 quid, even if you lose, you get free postage for your campaign address and you get free use of buildings for public meetings and you get a great deal of publicity, they said.

So almost the 500 quid is worth it.

And they actually recommended it should be up to £1,000.

Oh, really?

But it never was.

I might just enter a not-even campaign just for the sake of getting some publicity for myself and some free buildings.

We were going to enter you, weren't we?

Because you live in the same constituency as Jeremy Corbyn.

But he did quite well in this one, didn't he?

He could have swung it out there.

I could have.

Am I saying that he did the best that any politician has ever done?

Well, no, he didn't win at the election, did he?

In his constituency.

Yeah, he got the highest ever vote in Islington North.

Wow.

Which is the smallest constituency.

I didn't know.

It's also mine, so I had a personal interest in that.

Really?

Yeah, it's the smallest place.

It's just you and Jezza, isn't it?

Yeah.

Do you know what the largest one is?

No, what?

It's Ross, Skye, and Loch Arbour in Scotland, which is 1,632 times larger than Islington North.

Really?

Yeah, huh?

Oh, my God.

So I worked that out, and I've worked out that if Jeremy Cobby's allotment was increased by that amount, then it would be the size of the Vatican City.

Wow.

Maybe it will be now.

Just on the Queen very quickly.

So overseas...

listeners might not know this, but the Queen's not allowed to vote in these elections.

She is allowed to vote, but she just doesn't.

Sorry, she chooses not to.

And every one of them.

She doesn't care.

Apathy is a real problem in this country.

It goes right after the top.

It's strange because she's old.

You know, you'd think she would care more.

Of course, she doesn't want the votes to go higher because she wants those delicious money from the ride of butter.

So sorry, you've just got 4.999% of the vote in this constituency.

See, the queen going, yes!

Yoink.

But

she spends most of her time in these periods and for the referendum and so on, just denying that she has an opinion, which I love.

Every single royal member just seems to spend their whole period any time they're mentioned in the press in these periods denying that what they've said is in some way alluding to an opinion about what way people should vote.

But they can have opinions on things like ketchup or mayonnaise, or you know, do you prefer a buzz cut or long hair?

They're just not supposed to have political views.

Yes, no, exactly.

It's not any opinion.

No, no, it doesn't obviously mean you've heard of Prince Charles.

He consistently writes to everyone who will.

But these were leaked, weren't they?

He hasn't openly done that.

He doesn't know.

That reminds me of the Emperor of Japan,

Akihito, who's not allowed to give any opinions on politics at all, not even just in elections, just never, ever.

And it's in the Constitution that comes from the end of the Second World War.

And so he wasn't allowed to abdicate.

He wasn't allowed to say, I want to abdicate.

He had to kind of do an announcement alluding to the fact that he might want to.

And then people had to kind of infer from what he said that he wanted to abdicate.

So wink-wink, some of that stuff.

Wow, pretty tired.

You didn't maybe have not seen that in the news last night, but they passed that he is now allowed to abdicate.

Oh, really?

Yeah, yeah.

That was in the news last night.

Oh, I didn't see that.

Yeah.

Did you see the just on like process, weird electoral process, if it's a tie, it comes down to a coin toss, which obviously never happens.

But there was that guy in Anne's constituency, so one of our colleagues, Anne, used to live up north, and it's in northeast Fife.

And I think the person who won was an SNP candidate who won by two votes this morning, right?

Yeah.

Wow.

Which is quite cool.

Two votes.

Yeah.

Oh my god.

So that's just one person, isn't it?

Yeah.

Putting the X in the wrong box.

Did you guys see the Green Party candidate from Ashfield?

No.

Okay, so his name's Aaron Rangi.

He had to leave the count as it was going on because he had to get home to get some sleep because he has an A-level history exam at nine o'clock this morning.

So he's 18 years old.

He's the Green Party candidate.

And it just got too late for him.

So he was like,

I can't stay for the final count.

got my exam they should let you off having a history exam if you're making history

yes

as he definitely did in the green pass

yeah i take it he won the seat presumably right i have no idea no i mean you didn't win the seat okay

you know the deposit thing that we were starting off with did you know it used to be a lot harder so until i think 1918 or definitely in in 1918 it was 150 pounds that you had to put up but obviously that was a lot more money then yeah it was about I think they've worked it out as being about £6,600.

Wow.

And you had to win 12.5% of the vote, otherwise you would forfeit your deposit.

Oh, really?

So it was a much higher barrier.

Another place you need to get 12.5% is in Japan.

And do you know how much the Japanese deposit is that you have to pay?

No.

It's 3 million yen, which is the equivalent of £21,064.

And you need £12.5%.

But then they don't get all those hilarious fringe candidates that can entertain them during a tedious campaign, right?

I suppose not.

Unless they're extremely rich.

Very wealthy ones, yeah.

Just another thing on process.

I think process was the big winner in this election, don't you?

It was certainly what I voted for.

I just wrote it in my box.

I love that I'm doing this and the way I'm doing it.

So I didn't realise that actually, as long as you make your intention clear on the ballot paper, then your vote counts.

So I thought you had to do a cross or maybe a tick.

But if you draw a penis, as long as it's within the lines of the candidate in whose box you've drawn a penis, it does count as a vote.

And so there was, for instance, there was a Tory MP, Glynn Davis, in 2015, who held onto the Montgomeryshire constituency in Wales.

And he personally thanked the person who voted for him by drawing a penis in his box.

But it sort of depends how you feel about penises, doesn't it?

You're right.

So do you think when people call you a dick, Andy, do you look at them and think, yeah, but he probably likes

Actually, on that spoiling votes thing, in the last British election, 2015, there were 97,870 spoiled votes, right?

The last time the Gambia had an election, there were two.

Really?

Two spoiled ballots in the whole country.

In the whole country.

Yes.

Because the Gambian voting system is really cool.

If you've got three candidates, you have three buckets next to each other.

You've got three barrels next to each other.

and they've got a little chute at the top and you push, you get given a marble, and you push the marble through the little chute at the top and it dings a bell so everyone can hear you.

So how do you spoil your vote though?

Do you put your penis in the...

To spoil your vote, you have to balance a marble on top of the barrel.

And only two people did it in the whole country in this election.

Yeah.

What?

Are you kidding?

That's amazing.

That's incredible.

Great system.

They've had the system since the 60s.

It really works for them.

But can you imagine if you spoiled your ballot by putting your penis in the tube and then the electoral guy comes along and goes, Do you like penises though?

The bell keeps going ding a lingering.

That's actually more akin to the word ballot, isn't it?

Because ballot comes from, I think, a word that means little ball, because it used to be that you actually put a ball into a box.

Is that right?

I think so.

We can start thinking about moving on.

Yeah, should we move on?

We've probably got to.

Has anyone got more stuff to say?

More on process, Anna?

So much process.

I do like that the first ballot box.

She's got more on process.

I know you said it in jest, desperately hoping to move on.

Look, this is a great fact, guys.

It's not all about this election.

The first ever secret ballot when it was introduced in the UK was in 1872, and the seal of the first ballot box was made with a licorice stamp.

So there are famous licorices in the UK that are called Pontefract licorices, and they're like black sweets, and they have a stamp on them, which says Pontefract Licorice and has a picture of Pontefract Castle.

and when they had to close the first ballot box in 1872 they had to whip one over it was in Pontefract so they got one of those stamps over from Pontefract and they stamped it with a licorice stamp so that's really cool that's very cool licorice logo on it

it's a good process great process guys

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

My fact this week is that only one political party in this 2017 election offered to do anything about Yetis.

Oh, did they get your vote?

I didn't, I only found out about it too late.

Yeah.

What's the party?

The party is, it goes by a number of names, actually.

Yeah,

it's sort of formerly as its main headline name known as Church of the Militant Elvis Party.

It's also known as the Bus Pass Elvis Party.

Oh, yeah, those are the parties.

This year, they ran under the title Elvis and the Yeti Himalayan Preservation Party.

So there is a common theme that runs through their names, isn't there?

Yes, party.

Yep.

Yeah, so the guy who was running is a guy called David Bishop,

aka Lord Byrow.

And he was promising this year that if they were voted in, that he would do stuff about the potential threats from North Korea and launching missiles.

Because if they mislaunched a missile in the wrong direction, it might hit Tibet and harm Yetis.

So that was his protection policy that he wants to get in on.

And he actually was stepping down.

He said he was going to step down completely and then did his own personal U-turn on it because

Theresa May called a general election when he wasn't.

He thought, I'm not going to be in fit state in a few years to come.

But then he said when he heard that Mick Jagger was going on tour again this autumn, he thought, okay, I can run too.

And so actually, this snap election has been bad news for these kind of slightly unusual candidates.

They've not been really able to organize things very quickly.

There was a guy who had the Rebooting Democracy Party.

He's standing in Cambridge.

And he's got this idea that he wants to change democracy, make it more direct.

He wanted to fight all 650 seats in the election, but due to the snap election, he was only able to get into one.

But his idea is to go into sortition, which is basically that everyone randomly gets chosen as an MP.

So rather than people becoming career MPs and deciding they want to work their way up into parliament, you basically, it's like jury duty, you get just chosen.

And they did that in ancient Greece.

It's called sortition.

Right.

It's quite an old type of democracy.

So they put all our names in a hat and then they just pick it out.

Just pick it out and and they go, you're an MP.

Great.

And did that go well for ancient Greece?

Are they still doing that today?

The reason it's called ancient Greece.

This guy, Lord Byrow,

he actually, in 2014, in a by-election in Nottingham, he got 67 votes.

Part of his campaign promises were that he was going to try and get OAPs a 30% discount at Brothels.

He got more votes in that by-election than the Lib Dems.

Is it possible that they misheard and thought he was talking about Brussels?

Because brothels bureaucracy is what we need to stand out after.

Well, here's the other thing you might have liked him, actually, Andy, because one of his other policies.

I'm getting on.

One of his other policies was that he wanted to protect public toilets from being wiped out.

Wait a minute.

So why does Andy like public toilets?

I just remember ages ago we were talking about public toilets and you had a big thing about your fury of the high street public toilet being wiped out.

Well, a lot of them have been cut and yeah, and it is a substantial problem for people.

If you're trying to get around and you need access to a public toilet, as loads of people do, and you don't want to go into a restaurant or a cafe or something, because often they're snippy about letting you use their loose, and it's a massive problem.

That is actually a problem, isn't it?

And the fact that you have to pay for it a lot as well.

Exactly.

So in some American cities, they have laws, I think, now that you're not allowed to charge for going to the toilet, or at least they're trying to get them in.

Yeah.

So, it is a big, big subject.

It is, and Lord Myrow's on the case.

No one has been talking about it in this whole campaign.

It's all been Brexit, Brexit, Brexit.

Process, process, process.

Brothels, Brussels, Brothels.

These weird candidates are fantastic.

So,

Lord Buckethead has been a big character in the election.

He is incredible.

He, or someone dressed like him, has been standing on and off since 1987.

Yeah.

He first stood against Thatcher.

Yeah.

And he stood against Thatcher in 1987 1987 with a promise to destroy Birmingham and replace it with the Starbase.

And he stood in this election saying we should defer the decision on whether to destroy Birmingham and replace it with the Starbase until 2022 at least.

So you were implying there, I think, that perhaps it's not the same Mr.

Buckethead.

Is it like Doctor Who?

He kind of regenerates.

I think it might be.

Yeah.

There's a chance.

And that sense.

They should have had more than one Darth Vader.

You know, like send, you know,

just like, you know, there was only ever one Darth Vader, but you could just put another guy in there for like minor battles.

Yeah.

I guess so.

Yeah.

Why was there no like duplicate expendable Darth Vader?

Yeah.

Yeah, that's true.

He's just like the stormtroopers.

Yeah.

Tweet from Lord Buckethead this morning.

249.

A new Buckethead record.

Something to celebrate, eh?

It's so funny watching him.

I mean, it was already a horrible moment for Theresa May, I think, by that point when she was standing there.

And he was directly behind her?

Was it all he was?

Oh, no, actually, he was up quite on the edge.

Yeah, he was.

It wasn't as bad as Tim Farron because he had Mr.

Fishfinger stood behind him.

Tim Farron did.

That was it.

Okay, let's explain this for overseas listeners who won't know this.

Okay, so like Dan says, we do have these very odd fringe candidates, and some of them like to dress up.

And Tim Farron, who's the head of the Liberal Democrats, who's the third biggest party in England, no,

who's the head of like the fourth or fifth biggest party, he was going up.

Which actually, you might need to explain to people in Britain as well, given the state of Tim Farron's campaign.

He ran against a guy called Mr.

Fishfinger who dressed like a fishfinger.

And he, there was a man called Mr.

Fishfinger running because

wasn't there a there was a Twitter poll.

So there was a Twitter user called Skip Liquor who just asked the question.

Just a normal guy.

First name Skip, second name Liquor.

And

he asked.

We're all completely losing the Twitter.

You think that's his real name?

Of course it's his real name.

Why would it be his Twitter name if it wasn't his real name?

It would be a weird thing to make up, wouldn't it?

Why would you?

Anyway, he asked the question to Twitter, who would you trust more, MP Tim Farron or a Fishfinger?

And the Fishfingers got 95% of the vote, and so this guy ran on.

Tim Farron almost lost his deposit in the Am I More Trustworthy Than a Fishfinger competition.

But Mr.

Fishfinger is amazing.

So if you go on his website, I wanted to count the puns on it for this, but it was going to take me too much time.

But he ran on the pledge to hate Britain great again.

He had a manifesto in which there was a polychy document.

He talks about his own constituency.

He has a list of endorsalments, which is quite labour, but I guess fish have a dorsal fin that's a big deal for them.

I was just wondering, we've explained all about the election, but do we need to explain for foreign listeners what a fish finger is?

Oh, yeah.

So a fish finger is a piece of fish with breadcrumbs on it and deep fried.

And it is delicious.

Oh, it's wonderful.

It's better than Tim Farron.

But yeah, and so the point is that he was standing behind Tim Farron as Tim Farron made his speech, his acceptance speech.

But Theresa Mayhead also had to stand next to

Buckethead and someone dressed as Elmo.

Yes.

A massive Elmo, which I think only got three votes, although I may be wrong.

Absolutely.

Buckethead wiped the floor with him then.

Buckethead absolutely destroyed Elmo in this election.

Well with a bucket for a head he can do a lot of wiping, I suppose.

He mops the floor with him.

So, I think we did a fact before on this podcast about people who got no votes in a general election, but that was before the rules were changed, and then you were allowed to vote for yourself.

But I think someone has got just one vote, a guy called Rainbow George Weiss,

who stood in 13 different constituencies at one election before they changed the rules.

You can really only stand in

one constituency.

And he stands for the Vote for Yourself Rainbow Dream Ticket Party.

And in 2005 in Cardiff North, he got one vote.

And it wasn't from him either because he wasn't registered in that constituency.

Like Paul Nuttall.

Paul Nuttall didn't vote for himself.

Did he not?

Because he's not registered in the constituency where he was standing.

Really?

Paul Nuttall, you mean ex-UKIP leader?

Because as we came in here, he resigned, didn't he?

That's true.

The caretaker between Farage leader of the.

Did you know?

I think Winston Churchill couldn't vote for himself himself in the 1945 election.

Really?

Yeah, so there was

it being,

didn't he?

He sure did.

Was it by one vote?

It was a bureaucratic cock-up, so there was a lot of disorganisation because it was the end of the war.

People had bigger fish to fry, and they didn't have enough ballot papers.

Bigger fish fingers to fry.

So you had to use your ration card as your ballot paper to prove who you were, and he just wasn't registered, and so he rocked up and didn't have a legal vote.

It's pretty bad after you've defeated fascism.

It's awesome.

But it's process, isn't it?

It's all about process.

You've got to respect it.

Do you know that the joint leader of the Green Party, so the Green Party has dual leadership, and one of the leaders is this guy called Jonathan Bartley.

And he's also a drummer for a blues band called the Mustangs, who've reached number five in the iTunes Blues Chart.

Wow.

And they were nominated in 2010 for Best Band of the British Blues Awards.

And I've listened to them, and they're genuinely really good.

Really?

Yeah, really fun to listen to.

So well done, Jonathan.

Just speaking of green, but in the drug sense, Green,

Mr.

Byrow, Lord Byrow, as well, he once wanted to nationalise marijuana, cannabis, and he wanted to call it British grass.

Very good.

Just on process, Ada,

if you are high on drugs or indeed drunk, they can't stop you from voting.

Oh, yeah.

Even if you're the queen.

And also, if you're wearing a bucket on your head or something like that they can't stop you from voting you don't have to show your face you're kidding no wow well otherwise you wouldn't be able to vote in a burka yeah I guess not and we'd find out who Lord Buckethead is when he goes to vote

there was a party that lost all of their deposits okay this is and they lost between 1992 and 2001 they contested 500 seats in that time they lost every single deposit you'll probably remember them the natural law party oh yeah yeah I remember that were they the levitating ones they yes they weren't they were the ones who thought they could levitate.

They believed, so a lot of listeners might remember them, a lot of listeners might not.

They believed you could do this thing called yogic flying, which is basically bouncing around with your legs crossed on your bottom with big hot water bottles underneath you.

Oh, wow.

And

they believed that their first policy, right, if they had won in 1997, was that they would make a special air service from the armed forces of 7,000 yogic flyers to hover in and fix everything in the country.

Wow.

I remember, remember, I'm sure you told me this, Andy, that the trick to yogic flying has three steps.

Oh, this is mine that I remember researching for one of the series.

You could say it then.

What was it?

Because I can't remember.

Oh, it was just that yogic flying, yeah, the way you get there, it's a three-stage process.

So I think stage one is standing on one foot, and stage two is being able to hop on one foot, and stage three is full levitation.

And I remember a proud statement by the Yogic Flying Institute saying we have successfully completed two of the three crucial steps.

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

Okay, my fact this week is that Kenya have an election later this year and they're running out of symbols for

their candidates, which means that candidates are now using symbols such as a milk packet, a termite and a robot.

Okay.

The Conservatives ran with a robot as their main thing this time around, didn't they?

Yeah.

Yeah.

No, that's the joke about treason matt.

It doesn't matter.

Guys, you two are tired, aren't you?

That's a very strong, very strong joke, unstable.

So, yeah, this is this actually happens in quite a lot of places in the world, and it's that how important it is to have a symbol next to your name.

So we know in Britain we have symbols for the Conservatives and Labour, like the rose and the torch.

And in America, they would have the elephant and the donkey and whatever they have over there but in lots of places of the world you have a lot of low literacy and so if you can't read the name of your preferred candidate you need to have the symbol and so they need a symbol which is really memorable and they thought a termite was just they thought a termite would be there you want to vote for that I might I would would you think

ants are very industrious and they're you know they're hard working and they get the job done and they I think that's the idea they club together and they achieve things yeah yeah was the milk carton

half full or half empty or was it a full of milk?

Depends how you look at it, Adam.

Depends what kind of person you are.

No, it was just, you couldn't look inside the milk carton because it was just a depiction of one.

And actually, this happens, like I said, quite a lot around the world.

In India, the Election Commission allots symbols to you.

And so there's a big, long list of 164 available symbols, and you provide them three of them that you would like, and then they choose one of the three if it's available.

Yeah, so

and they have bizarre ones, don't they?

Like they have.

I was reading an article that was saying I think they've modernised their symbols lately because they've recently added a sewing machine.

So I don't know how modern they've got, but they have scissors as one of the symbols you can choose, a stethoscope.

Do they have rock and paper?

It's a three-way marginal.

An ice cream going for the youth vote.

Yeah.

They have.

They do it in Egypt as well.

I saw the actual symbols.

I've got the picture here.

They use everything from a tractor to a ballistic missile to a tap to...

This is my favorite one, a mobile phone.

But the mobile phone symbol has a picture in the mobile phone, like a background, and I'm pretty sure it's the politician who was running for that school.

But do you know the thing with Egypt is it's not just that you choose three and they choose for you, it's actually completely random that they choose the symbol for you.

So you say, I'm going to run in Egypt, and they just randomly pick pick you a symbol.

And so you'll have some politicians who think they're really kind of serious and you'll see their poster and then it's got all of their picture and all of their stuff on there and then there's like a picture of a banana next to their head and it just looks ridiculous.

Oh my god.

And like for instance it can be quite bad because there was a female MP who had a rocket as her symbol just allocated randomly

but rocket means hotty.

in Egyptian slang, apparently.

So she was like, well, I can't do this.

I'm a serious MP.

You can't call me a hottie.

But

that wasn't random.

I bet it was an all-male panel that randomly selected those symbols at some point.

Is one of the symbols a penis?

No, I think bananas as close as you get.

One of the ones I'm looking at here is a Canon camera.

Like, it's actually got the Canon logo on it.

That's cool.

Well, I looked through the Kenyan list,

and there are really random.

So there's an electrical socket, there's some broken handcuffs, there's a steering wheel.

Broken handcuffs does not say to me tough on crime.

That says major cuts in crime.

So the Kenyan election is between Uhuru and NASA.

NASA, what the American Space Agency?

No, the National Super Alliance Party.

So it's President Uhuru Kenyatta, and everyone else has kind of ganged together with a coalition to go against him.

And they've called themselves the National Super Alliance Party, known as the abbreviation NASA.

And they're hoping that their coalition will unseat him.

I think the election's in August.

Wow, I'm glad I don't live in a place as unstable as Kenya where there's one party which has got just about half the seats and one which is desperately trying to club together.

This is going to go out of date so quickly.

I don't know what I mean by saying it.

Won't go on date before tonight, will it?

Might do, actually.

You don't know.

Yeah.

So just you mentioned brands and logos.

Yeah.

There are some places where companies get a vote.

So I was looking at how Hong Kong elections work actually.

You might know this.

So the way Hong Kong constituencies are divided up is that five of their seats are geographical seats, and then all the rest are

and then all the rest are like for companies.

And so they get like an industry seat and they get an agricultural seat and they get a tourism seat.

And it's really weird because that means that people like Canada Air get a vote in the Hong Kong elections.

That's so

insane.

Yeah, they do.

So all these airlines from all around the world get votes in the Hong Kong elections.

Does a company vote equal the same as a single person's vote?

I think it does, yeah.

Or it might be more, in fact.

Wow.

Wow.

Yeah, it's really weird.

That's amazing.

They just sit as MPs.

Because corporations by law are individuals, aren't they?

Right.

I mean, that's just a technical legal thing, but I think they are.

Yeah.

So they should be able to vote in this country.

But they're not standing up for themselves.

They used to have.

I think we've said this before, that universities used to get a vote.

Did they?

So as well as the city of Oxford having an MP, or maybe it was two MPs, actually actually, at the time it was each constituency had two MPs, Oxford and Cambridge each got to send an MP or two to the House of Commons.

And that meant that students used to get two votes.

It was until 1950, I think, or 1948.

And so it was Oxford got an MP, Cambridge got an MP, all the London ones got an MP, and then just all the other unions got an MP.

And then, yeah.

It sounds like university challenges, doesn't it?

It morphed into that.

Wow, that's amazing.

And then students didn't vote again until last night.

So, did you hear the thing recently about Donald Trump's logo?

Speaking of logos,

it's a crest, and it has the word Trump on it.

But it turns out that he just nicked it from somebody else, and it was an old English crest, and he took off the word integrity and put on the word Trump, which is the most amazing metaphor.

It's so funny.

Yeah,

it was the husband of the woman who built Mar-a-Lago got given this crest in 1939.

Mar-a-lago, his second wife.

His golf club.

And the Trump organisation just took that coat of arms, changed the word, never asked permission from anyone.

And then when he came back to the UK to open his horrible golf course, he...

I'm sure it's a very nice golf course if anyone wants to give me a free round of golf.

Sorry, when his fantastic golf course opened,

he got in trouble because he hadn't registered the emblem according to the 1672 Lion King of Arms Act in Scotland.

And then he tried to trademark it.

They said, no, there's already already a thing here.

You can't do that.

Wow.

So he had to invent a new crest solely to use in his Scottish golf courses.

But in America, he's still using the one he's nicked.

I think a lot of it is Americans listening to this will probably be quite amused by how uptight we are about our crests, I should think.

Yes.

Well, the New York Times wrote in its coverage: they said, the British are known for taking heraldry very seriously.

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

My fact is that in the 19th century, one of England's constituencies had no people living in it.

And another one was underwater.

Wow.

These are so good.

They're called Rotten Boroughs, which are constituencies where there used to be a load of people living there and it made sense for them to have two MPs.

And then over time, the population changes or the place goes derelict, but the rules haven't been updated, so they still get MPs.

And then it's really easy for someone, normally the landowner who owns the land, to just take over the place, pick his own MPs, and send them to the health government.

That's amazing.

Yeah, there's a Black Adder episode which is all about this, basically.

Really?

And one of the constituency that was underwater, Dunwich, Dunwich, is the inspiration for the thing in the episode, which is called Dunny on the World.

Oh, really?

Do you know that Dunwich was the capital of the Kingdom of the East Angles?

Was it?

Yeah, it was.

So it used to be a really important place.

And it was a port similar in size to 14th century London, according to Wikipedia.

So it was a massive, massive place, and that's why they had this vote, I think.

Yeah.

It supposedly, yeah, exactly.

Rivaled the capital.

I mean, and it's called, Dan, you're like this, the British Atlantis.

Oh, yeah.

What do you mean it is called that?

I'm calling it that now.

Who calls it that?

This guy.

But Atlantis, isn't the thing about Atlantis that we don't know where it is?

We know where Dunwich is.

It just doesn't, it's just not there anymore.

It fell into the sea, like Atlantis might have done.

But this is the British Atlas.

It fell into the sea.

I forgot it fell into the sea.

I thought it was just a place we couldn't find.

Yeah.

No, it fell in.

Yeah, and it's the British Atlantis.

It's not claiming to be the Atlantis.

Anyway, guys.

Yeah, I got that.

It's still there, okay, and it's underwater.

And supposedly, at midnight or at night, you can hear church bells dangling around in the water.

And that's just someone voting with their penis.

And it had eight churches, it had two hospitals, and there's one man.

This was a piece in the Indie about 10 years ago.

He's called Stuart Bacon, and he's done about a thousand dives.

down there and he has a map which was printed 500 years ago and he can make his way around by touch

the city underwater that is extremely cool is so cool yeah that's amazing so what's left of it is are there black buildings?

There was almost nothing left.

Most of it was swept away in these huge stalls.

There's like a church, a few houses, a Prat.

So there are.

Soggy sandwiches.

So it did have...

That actually had about 200 people living there, which is much larger than a load of other constituencies.

Before they were reformed, there were 50 seats in the country, which each had fewer than 50 voters living in them.

That's so funny.

And it was the 1832 Reform Act, a bit of process for you, Parana.

And it was that act which got rid of these boroughs, but it it was also the act that excluded women from voting.

Because until then, it wasn't explicitly against the rules for women to vote.

If they were landowners, they could in theory.

Yeah, and one did actually.

I think the first woman to vote was in the late 1500s because she was a widow of a big landowner who'd been the person who would nominate the person to go to parliament.

So she got to nominate.

So women got the vote in the 16th century.

But did you know that Charles James Fox, who's a famous British Prime Minister, when he became leader, he was too young to vote.

So he was 19 when he became leader, yeah, yeah, in 1768, and the voting age was 21.

How does that work then?

I guess just other people voted for.

Oh,

his father bought the constituency for him.

There we go.

It was sheer nepotism.

Wow.

So Aaron from the Green Party doing his A-level history exam back then might not have been able to vote either.

Yeah, exactly.

18 would have been too young.

Yeah.

Wow.

So one of the features of rotten boroughs, which were a massive problem, obviously, in the country, was this thing called pot walloping.

And I had never heard of this.

It's so cool.

So, before the Reform Act, then you could vote in certain areas if you were a pot walloper.

And what it meant was that you had a pot or a cauldron.

And if you had a pot that was big enough, if you had a pot, a proper big cooking pot, it showed that you had a hearth that was big enough to put the pot in.

And if you had a hearth that was big enough to put the pot in, then you obviously had the freehold of a house, and therefore you were considered responsible enough to vote.

But could you not just get a knock-off pot off eBay or something?

You would have thought so.

Did you have to bring your pot with you to the voting booth?

That's why nobody voted because people were dragging these enormous heavy cauldrons around the streets.

They actually had one guy called Lord Cauldron Head.

Isn't it the case that they had to, if you were voting, it was done in public, one by one?

Yes.

It was done in public and it took ages.

Right.

So

but did you have to declare it sort of to everyone or was it a secret ballot?

No, no, you did.

The secret ballot wasn't introduced until 1870.

Wow.

That meant that you could obviously people could sort of bribe you.

It was called treating your constituents.

You gave them free food and drink, basically.

And sometimes that would cost so much money that only one person could afford to stand in the seat anyway.

People used to sign their ballot papers actually because that was a good because the person who'd been elected would go through the ballot papers afterwards and look at who'd voted for them and be like, oh, Johnny, I'll give him a little present.

Mr.

Penis has voted for me.

And if you were super rich, presumably you could gift people pots to allow them

to vote for you.

To give them the franchise.

Yeah.

To gain votes.

Yeah.

Okay, get this.

The seventeen eighty four election, voting opened in the Westminster constituency on the first of April and it closed on the seventeenth of May.

It took nearly two months just to gather the votes.

'Cause they didn't have this thing'cause obviously they didn't have mass communication and they didn't need to do the election all on the same day, basically.

Did Sunderland still turn in all their votes by 10pm that day?

Sunderland's like the swatty kid in the class, isn't it?

Hey, not this year, though.

I know, they've got to be tundled.

So quickly explain that for overseas people.

Sunderland usually.

So the polls close at 10 o'clock, and Sunderland, for the last 20 years, has always been the first constituency to give their result, and they usually do it by about 11 or something like that.

They're really fast.

Really, really quick.

But this was the first year in ages, in my lifetime, I think, that Newcastle has beaten them.

And as a Newcastle fan, I was thrilled with the result of that that derby between them.

Finally, it's been a bad year for Sunderland altogether, isn't it?

Because they got relegated from the Premier League and now this.

And Newcastle got promoted from the championship.

In your face, Sunderland.

Wow.

We're not doing a tour date in Sunderland, are we?

Not anymore.

Should we wrap up?

Sure.

Yeah, let's go to bed.

Oh, wait, can I tell you?

Oh, no, actually, no.

No, go on.

Go on, go on.

Bit of process.

Just a bit more process to finish off.

This is, I was just really surprised about this.

Supermarkets,

people who shop in certain supermarkets vote for certain people.

And where would you guess Aldi and Liddell have their loyalties these days?

They're budget shops, so I would imagine it's people on a tighter budget, so I'd say Labour.

You would have thought so, wouldn't you?

It's the Tories, the Tory voters.

So actually, the Tories have all supermarket shoppers.

I don't know where Labour voters are shopping.

People who shop in Tesco's, Waitrose, Sainsbury's, Aldi, and Liddell are now all Conservative.

And it's it's just Morrisons and Asta that have got the Labour voters.

But you do hear about Little Britain, don't you?

You do.

True Labour voters grow all their own produce on their allotment.

Okay, that's it.

That's all we can do.

We need to go to sleep now.

We are knackered.

I need to close my working eye.

And we will be back again next week with another episode.

Until then, you can reach us and chat more to us about the British elections if you want on our Twitter accounts.

I'm on at Schreiberland.

James.

At Skiplicker.

At Egg Shaped.

Andy.

At Andrew Hunter M.

And Shacinski.

You can email podcast at qi.com.

Yep.

And you can also go to our group account at qi podcast.

You can go to our website, no such thingasofish.com, where you can find all of our previous episodes.

There's also our tour dates for the UK.

And there's also a link to our book, which is coming out in November.

We'll be back again next week with another episode.

We'll see you then.

Goodbye.

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