40: No Such Thing As Captain Trousers

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We ran it on QI a few years ago.

Yeah.

Which was there's no such thing as a fish.

No, seriously, it's in the Oxford Dictionary of Underwater Life.

It says it right there, first paragraph, no such thing as a fish.

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.

I'm sitting here with Anna Chaczynski, Anne Miller, and Andy Murray.

And once again, we have gathered round the microphones with our four favourite facts from the last seven days.

And in a particular order, here we go.

Starting with you, Andy.

My fact is that in 18th century France, tooth-pullers were entertainers who performed in front of cheering crowds.

So one of them had the party trick of pulling teeth out of a patient with one hand while firing a pistol with the other, and all the while he had his head in a sack.

Why was he shooting?

I don't get the gun shooting bit.

It's just as a touch of flamboyance, as Shobid.

It was entertainment.

Yeah,

I've got a really painful tooth.

Great.

Well, I've got a show on at

APM if you can make it.

There was one guy who did that in the late 1800s who was called Edgar Parker.

He might be the person you're talking about.

Okay.

I think he's Edgar Parker, and he changed his name by Deedpole to Painless Parker.

That's really clever.

Clever.

James IV of Scotland was a keen amateur dentist.

A keen amateur sounds a bit like he wasn't good at being even an amateur.

He has like tried really hard.

Yeah, don't give up, son.

Don't give up.

One day you could make an amateur.

A glorious day.

Well, Peter the Great did that as well.

He practiced it on his nobles' dentistry.

So if you had a toothache and Peter the Great was around, you had to keep it to yourself.

Because otherwise he'd say, come on, get the chair.

No anesthesia.

Yeah.

Ow.

What was that?

You've got a sore tooth?

No, no.

Headache.

Sinuses.

Sinuses.

Headache.

I have something for that.

I'll just get my hammer.

I'll just get my brain sore.

And he kept all the extracted teeth in a little bag.

He was very proud of it.

And it's now in the Kunstkamera at the museum in St.

Petersburg.

There's a bunch of fairies planning a heist at the same time.

Mark Zuckerberg's dad is a dentist, and his website advertises, or used to advertise, We Cater for Cowards.

And he specifically targets people who have dentists.

That's a really good idea.

Because I think they're quite anti-anesizing if you don't need it.

But some people get so freaked out by the dentist.

His website should say, We pull teeth out of your Facebook.

So, I read that the Egyptians used to use toothpaste way before toothbrushes were invented.

Yes.

But it doesn't sound very nice.

It was things like ox hoobs, ashes, burnt eggshells, and pumis.

Oh, yeah, lovely.

Sounds penis.

Pumis.

Pumis.

Pumis.

Worst chatterblind ever.

Or excuse for infidelity.

I lost my toothbrush, darling.

The plumber happened to be here.

So the Egyptians used the gross toothpaste 5,000 years before the toothbrush was invented.

First toothbrush was maybe the bristles from a pig's neck.

Bristles from a pig's neck?

Damn, it's like better than the penises the ancients

use.

That's true.

It's definitely an improvement.

In 2013, a man escaped from prison in Sweden to go to the dentist.

He went to the dentist, he had the affected tooth pulled out, and then he reported himself to the police and they took him back to prison.

He got a day added to his sentence as punishment.

That's fantastic.

Yep.

Did he book?

You've got his own pool.

I should have known, really, when he was going, yeah, I'm the 27th.

Next one.

Yeah,

3 p.m.

Okay, cool.

I might be a bit sweaty and disheveled when I arrive.

I just want you to know that.

Just work around it, work around it.

While I'm here, do you have large sums of cash on the premises?

Just because your fact was about, obviously, funny sorts of entertainment in centuries past and freak shows.

There was a guy, Joseph Poujon, or Pouillon, who in the 19th century made his living by farting.

And his

living?

Was

what standard farting?

Was he Le Petermaine?

Was he what?

Yes, he was Le Petermaine.

There's a whole film about him.

He was incredible.

Yes, there is.

The man who could fart.

Yeah, he could suck air in through his bottom and then do tunes.

He retired from his farting career to become a baker after the first half of the year.

Oh, no, I wouldn't eat his pies.

I do wonder how successful he was in that.

So he went from breaking wind to breaking bread.

Oh,

just a joke for you all.

He claimed that the farts also did not smell.

He memorably said, My parents ruined themselves scenting my rectum.

What?

Who is this man?

What does that mean?

He was a French cabaret entertainer.

Cabaret's really improved.

His parents have spent an enormous amount of money making sure that his farts did not smell bad.

Like a scented candle.

Could he have used himself as an air freshener, do you think?

Hired himself out to people at the end.

Every 15 minutes, he just releases another waft of lavender into the room.

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Okay, time for fact number two, and that is Anna.

My fact this week is that in the First World War, the Romanian army issued an order that only officers above the rank of major had the right to wear eyeshadow in battle.

That's the best thing I've heard about.

Very funny.

There are so many elements in that.

The rank of major, then wearing eyeshadow, and then in battle.

So presumably outside battle, all bets were off.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Outside battle, you can do what you want.

You want to wear socks on your nose.

That's the army, isn't it?

Outside battle, we don't care what you do.

Have a good time.

Nail varnish still alright?

I think nail varnish is okay.

But again, in the U.S.

Army new regulations, there's recently been a ban on men wearing nail polish.

Who's doing that?

In China and Japan, a few thousand years ago, everyone painted their nails.

Okay.

Maybe that's a niche little kind of tribute group to ancient China that exists in the U.S.

Army that I would crack down on.

The Romans used to paint their nails with blood.

It'd go weird brown almost immediately, wouldn't it?

And they'd keep reapplying the fresh supply.

Yeah.

That's the only reason they they were so murderers, actually.

It was to get an army thing.

Because they couldn't tell who was murdering because everyone had blood on their hands.

In those days, you've got blood on your hands wasn't a bad thing.

It was just a statement of fact about everyone.

Look at you.

Blood on your hands.

Yeah.

That's true.

Yeah, be down super drug, two for three pounds.

It's smudged a little bit, actually.

It's also on your knife.

But that's where we get cosmetics from, is Roman times.

They had cosmetae, who were slaves whose job was to apply makeup and perfume to their mistresses and help out with the toilette.

So So that's where we get the word from, cosmetite.

Cool.

Do you know where we got the word makeup from?

Have you seen those adverts for Max Factor, the makeup of makeup artists?

He was an actual guy called Max Factor.

Yes.

So his name was Maximilian Factoritz.

He's from Poland.

And he coined makeup as a noun from to make up your face as a verb.

And he was the first one to turn it into a noun.

He was the first person.

Max Factor.

And that is why it's extremely hard to research makeup if you're looking for what people were wearing in the olden times as a brand new bloody word and there's no real old equivalent for it.

Except blood on your hands.

Turns Turns out some of history's biggest murderers were actually just height of fashion.

The ancient Romans, who were bold, would disguise it by painting their heads.

Weirdly, when it rains, it sort of seems to

gross.

Yeah.

My favourite fact that I've read about the whole thing of just what you're allowed to wear in war and so on is that hygiene in clothing was quite a big thing.

They always wanted the soldiers to have clean clothes.

So apparently, anytime you saw a battlefield, there would always be huge clothing lines just behind where they were stationed of people drying their clothes for them and getting them clean.

Yeah, so anywhere that an army moved behind them was almost a laundry.

That was a quick staff.

Yeah, that came along.

Where were you in the war?

Were you on the front line?

No, I was really on the washing line.

I don't know.

Speaking of effeminate, did you see those pictures of North Korean soldiers, female soldiers, who wear stilettos when they're on parade?

Yeah, trying to look taller, like cats, and making themselves look big.

Maybe.

Well, that's why we have the bearskins, isn't it?

Was to do them even to make it to fool incredibly stupid enemies of the crown.

Thinking that bears are cut big.

These British have really long heads.

They've got massive skulls.

I find the bearskins quite weird that they still exist.

Do you know how many bears it takes to make one of those hats?

Or how many hats per bear?

You could probably get ten hats from a bear.

You think ten hats from a bear?

Well, hats are quite big.

One hat!

I'm a bear.

Does the hat include the head of the bear, or is it just the skin?

Yeah, that's what they've got underneath the hat, is this roaring head.

That's the last line of defence.

Yeah, is the bears.

Take off the hat.

You unleash the bear at the right moment.

So, one bear, one hat per bear.

Yep, and so every year we need 100 new ones, and so 100 bears we're killing a year.

That's terrible.

Just lean to the guy.

Just cut a tiny square out of this bear skin.

Throw the rest away.

Are you sure we can make nine or ten more hats out of this single single bear skin?

No, no, no, no.

We want only the finest back hair from the bear.

Do you know what's the bear?

One bear ones.

Small of the back, that's it.

Do you remember because I went bear trekking in Greece a few months ago?

Yeah.

Did you see any bears?

Of course not.

They're all in Buckingham Palace.

They're all in the hats.

That's where you want to go.

Just go watch the changing of the gun.

We saw lots of tracks, but we didn't see any in the wild.

I have one other really cool make-up fact.

Do you know that Dave Myers, from the Hairy Bikers, started his career as a make-up artist?

Did he?

Yeah, he specialised in prosthetics.

He worked at the BBC.

That's where he met Cy King, the other Harry biker.

He was a locations manager and first AD on films, including Harry Potter.

And they met on the induction of a Catherine Cookson drama.

Can you guess what Samuel Pepys bought his wife to improve her looks?

Was it his cheese?

No.

He liked his cheese.

It.

It's not nice, I'll tell you that much.

Oh, a snake.

No.

It was puppy urine.

Why does get her a puppy?

You'll get plenty of urine.

Urine.

That's true.

Up with some little discontent with my wife upon her saying that she had got and used some puppy dog water,

being put upon it by a great desire of my aunt White, who hath a mind to get some for her ugly face.

Oh, she's a charmer.

It's your anniversary, darling.

Look while I've got you.

So ugly, puppy urine will improve your face right now.

I'm not going near you until you've covered yourself in dog weed.

It's quite possibly the worst anniversary gift.

So looking into military dress, drab is a colour.

So drab comes from in the 19th century when the British Army knows that stopping colourful and we started wearing camouflage, we started wearing a dull brown colour.

It was drab and everyone dressed up in drab.

That is fantastic.

I can legitimately say to my girlfriend, you're looking very drab tonight, dear, and she can't be offended by that.

But would you say to her, you're looking very red tonight or very blue tonight?

I'd say your outfit is very drab tonight.

Sorry, that's what I mean.

Here you go, Anthony.

Okay, time to move on to fact number three, and that is Anne.

My fact is that the most borrowed children's author from British Libraries doesn't exist.

How does she not exist?

She's not a real person.

Okay.

What?

What's her name?

Daisy Meadows.

But she's.

Is she a syndicate?

Sort of.

She's a front for this group.

So it's a series of books called Rainbow Magic.

They're crazy popular.

There are over 150 of them.

They sold over 20 million copies.

And it's a company called Working Partners who created the book.

They make it by committee.

Nobody owns any of the ideas, any of the characters.

They have a bunch of writers who write the books.

They're basically loads of a mini series.

You get the pets series or the school fairies.

There was one I read about called The Pop Star Fairies.

And they all have names names that kids will recognize.

There's Jesse, presumably Jesse Jay, Adele the singing fairy, Miley the stylist fairy.

But there are seven in the series, and four of them are.

Did you guys know this band?

So think of a band that have a Vanessa, a Frankie, a Rochelle, and an Una.

The Saturdays.

Right, there are five people in the Saturdays.

Molly's the other one.

Molly's the other one, so she's not in the Pop Stays.

Let's just take a moment, shall we?

Yep.

And see what just happened there.

I just know there's a Molly in the Saturdays.

There is a Molly in the Saturdays.

You read that phrase, don't you?

Molly from the Saturdays.

Yes.

But it's very pop culture.

Are they directly doing that?

Yes.

Do the characters look very similar?

I don't know what they'd look like, because I haven't actually read the full series myself.

But I did notice they.

I'm really sorry, guys.

I didn't read all 200 books.

But so they have things like they brought out Elizabeth the Jubilee Fairy.

Okay.

They have Kate the Royal Wedding Fairy.

More cynically, they brought out Alexandra the Royal Baby Fairy in May 2013.

Prince George was born in July 2013.

And I'm pretty sure Alexander was a running favourite if it had been a a girl.

So it's like an alternative timeline now.

Maybe fairies have different pregnancy

periods, yeah.

Maybe they only go for six months.

I don't think it's ever been documented.

So these have become quite popular, collaborative writing.

It's a thing now.

There's another one called Erin Hunter, and the reason she's called Erin Hunter is because so that the series is pitched at the same kind of people who like the Brian Jack Redwall series.

And the reason she's called that is because Hunter would be close to Jacques in libraries, so that people who were browsing Redwall.

But this happens again.

I think Lee Child, who does very well with his books, picked his pen name, and he picked it because Child is between Christy and Chandler.

So he thought people would be browsing that section and then be like, hey, who's this new guy?

We should check out his family.

Oh, okay, right.

There's a new app called Inkvite.

Have you guys heard of this?

No.

No, I haven't, because my phone doesn't do apps, but it's where you can do collaborative fiction yourself.

So it's kind of like a more pretentious game of consequences, I think, where you can invite up to four people and you're allowed to write, I think, 280 words of your novel, and then you pass it on to the next person and they write.

it, and then you pass it around.

I think you mean more fun rather than more pretentious.

Yeah, no, it does sound actually quite fun.

A set of collaborative books that I really like.

I've been obsessed with them since I've arrived in this country.

I haven't read any of them.

Was it Sweet Valley High?

No, but Sweet Valley High also obviously fits into this category.

So, no, this is not one single author, but Mills and Boone books.

You love Mills and Boone.

I love the concept of them.

I just love the turnaround.

No, I really would love to write one one day.

I'd love to write a science fiction one.

And I know that they don't have, or I thought they didn't have, their own science fiction arm, but they do.

There's a science fiction paranormal arm.

There's amazing titles.

They do this thing, by the way, where they, if someone in a paranormal one visits a dinosaur and has an erotic moment with a dinosaur, they don't consider it bestiality because all the animals and crypto animals in it are intelligent.

So

they're just like us.

Yeah.

So

taken by T-Rex.

Hang on, it's still.

Hang on, I remember seeing these book covers.

They did the Rounds of the Wild Go, like Dinosaur Erotica.

Was that Nils and Boone all that long?

That was Dan emailing them.

He's got a whole round of physical.

That's my novel.

I've got a birthday coming up.

Hint, hint.

Go on.

Taken by a T-Rex.

The rest are too rude.

Frankenstein's a bitch.

It's not rude.

That's lazy.

That's lazy, lazy writing.

Milked by aliens?

That's what I've got.

That's not even a sexy thing.

I know, this one's just farming.

This one's the oddest.

Come for Bigfoot.

But here's the thing.

So, Mills and Boone, why I'm fascinated by it is that no same book stays on the shelf for longer than three months.

They pulp it straight after.

Wow.

So they have a huge turnaround.

And

in 2008, they were saying every 6.6 seconds, someone bought a Mills and Boone book.

The same guy?

It was Dan.

Well, here's the thing that's standing at the till with a bigger and bigger pile next to him.

You know, I've got to have another one.

I've finished this one already.

You can read them very quickly, to be fair.

Yeah.

And they equate for three-quarters of all romance novels that are bought into this country.

I like how we're calling these romance, taken by a T-Rex.

I've headed back to.

It's not romance, are we?

Not by MX's any of them.

Did you do that brilliant thing about what they do with pulp mills and burns?

Oh, yeah, this is a QI question.

Yeah, is it the M6 or the M8 toll Road?

It's made up of pulp mills and burns.

So when you drive down, you're driving over all those taken by a T-Rex.

They use the foundations

in the foundations to stabilise it.

That's why it's always a bit of a turn-on when you're driving, driving down the M6.

Only for damn.

Yeah, turn left, then turn on.

Very good.

So I was looking at libraries, and the Tarzan books were banned from some libraries in America in the 1950s because Tarzan and Jane were living in sin.

Wow.

Yeah.

What was the great fact you told me about Tarzan, Anna?

It's that, oh, yeah, the guy who wrote Tarzan is the great-grandfather of Wes Anderson.

Oh, yeah, true.

Edgar Rice Burroughs.

Yes.

So I was just looking at other, or I stumbled upon other stuff that's been banned for amusing reasons.

And do you guys remember a couple of years ago when dictionaries were removed from classrooms in California?

No, because

a parent complained that a child stumbled across in the Merriam-Webster dictionary the phrase oral sex.

So the district spokeswoman, Betty Cadmus, told a newspaper that the books were immediately pulled off the shelves and temporarily housed off location to make sure that children didn't get their hands on it.

And I really like it, and it wasn't me that spotted this stunning irony, it was a blogger who's Dennis Barron, who's a professor of linguistics, pointed out that her name was Betty Cadmus, who was issuing the statements.

Cadmus was the Phoenician who brought writing to the ancient Greeks.

Wow.

And she takes it away.

That's great.

It's nice, isn't it?

That's so good.

In the 1960s, in public libraries, you used to have things which were called block books, which were wooden blocks on the shelves.

And that was in place of any books that the librarians thought were risque or obscene or

like top shelf.

Well, what you had to do, basically, you had to take the block to the counter, and then they would get the book out from under the desk and give it to you.

Was it to shame people?

Because you feel really dodgy when someone has to go beneath the counter to get something.

Imagine arriving at the front desk with just an armful of wooden blocks trying, I'd like all these, please.

Granny behind you giving you a really disapproving stare.

It's Tarzan, come on.

Do you guys know what the most banned book in 2013 was?

I think this was in America.

Wasn't someone trying to ban Kill a Mockingbird again?

I don't know.

That was banned though.

That was famously banned.

Was it Atheism for Sexy People?

Was it Billy Goat?

This is just another excuse to slip in a fact, but Billy Goat's Gruff was banned in Oregon because it was deemed too violent for children to be in a children's library.

Oh.

But I take it it wasn't that.

It was

Captain Underpants by Dan Pilkey.

That's an outrage.

It's one of the great works of literature of the twentieth century.

Fantastic kids' books.

God, I used to read.

I've never heard of them.

No, you know what?

They're they're very popular.

They're about school they're about a headmaster who gets hypnotised into thinking that he's Captain Underpants, and any time a a certain key word goes off, he suddenly becomes becomes Captain Underpants and runs around with a cape in his underpants and does adventures, and it's all in his head.

That's

very funny.

I really thought you were going to say, anytime a certain keyword goes on, he whips his underpants off.

He's a head teacher.

I just sort of see why these books were banned.

If he's Captain Underpants, does he wear his trousers over his underpants, like the opposite of Superman, who famously wears his underpants over his trousers?

Superman's not called Captain Trousers.

That's heard in the name.

That's where my clever analogy breaks down, unfortunately.

Also, another banned book.

I was very surprised by this.

Where's Wally?

Got banned for quite a long time.

Why is it so frustrating?

Because it's too hard.

Yeah, no, it's called Where's Waldo?

But someone noticed.

So, in the Americas, Where's Waldo?

Someone noticed that in one of the drawings that on a beach there was a topless lady laying on the beach.

Yeah, and you could, I mean, she was laying on her stomach, lifting up, so it was kind of more side boob.

Well, it's obscene, and I'm disgusted.

Well, I reckon the person that found her is probably a genius at finding Wally.

You can find boobs on a page.

Yeah, that's a good idea.

Yeah, well, I'm sure he's fantastic at finding oral sex in a dictionary as well.

Some people are just desperate to be offended.

I really like this.

In the Second World War, some authorities, some local authorities, established,

they put collections of books in air raid shelters.

So there was a tube station at Bethnal Green, and it had 4,000 books in it, and 6,000 people would turn up every night in the shelters, and they'd have a library available to them.

And there were really, really sort of intellectual books as well, like Bertrand Russell and Schopenhauer, and, you know, all kinds of.

Oh, I see.

The people with low brown tastes don't deserve to be entertained in an air raid.

No, I'm not saying no.

I'm just saying it's it's you know very impressive thinking of people sheltering from air raids and also reading some of the great works.

But you're not so pissed off.

You're terrified.

You just need something easy to distract you and all you've got is great works of philosophy.

Exactly.

I would have preferred books with the titles like How to Survive an Air Raid and How to Survive Being Trapped in a Small Tunnel with a group of other very, very scared humans.

It's not very escapist though, is it?

No, making more families.

It's more sort of in the brutal realism tradition.

Okay, well, when we're fighting over the last rat in the tunnel and you're quoting deep philosophy to me.

Dan's munching away on his rodent.

Who's having the better time?

Because I read 101 Ways to Cook a Rodent.

The first ever mobile library was horse-drawn.

That's really nice.

I think it is so cool.

And they still have, in bits of, I think, North Africa, they have a camel mobile library.

They travel around from town to town and they have school books and they have all kinds of educational things.

I just think that's incredible.

Wow.

And then when they stay for a few days and then they go off across the desert again.

Seeking out the next air aid shelter.

That would have been cool if you'd gone into an air raid shelter and there were just loads of camels there waiting for you.

Shut the danger and be trying to eat them.

Yeah,

there are some places where I may be in the UK where you can get books from the National Health Service if you're depressed.

Oh, I thought you meant books about the National Health Service.

You actually mean you can get them prescribed.

Yeah, you can get prescribed books.

Well, kind of like Bertrand Russell.

I'm not sure what kind.

Life and I'll go live.

Wound cauterizing for dummies.

That kind of thing.

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Okay, time for the final fact of this show, and that's my fact.

My fact this week is that it would cost $850 quadrillion dollars to build the Death Star.

And you're probably wondering how

I know this.

I discovered this fact.

There's a website that you can go on online called We the People, which is set up by the White House specifically for people who want to ask a question to Barack Obama.

And the idea is that you put it up as a petition, and if enough people sign it, the White House has to officially reply.

And one of the questions was a response to secure resources and funding and begin construction of a Death Star by 2016.

And the response, it was a fantastic response.

They said, we can't do this.

We agree that we share your desire for job creation, a strong national defense, but it's just not on the horizon.

One, being that it would cost $850 quadrillion.

Two, the administration does not support blowing up planets.

Wait, wait, wait.

Has the administration calculated how much it would cost them to build a planet?

Actually, no, it was someone else.

Oh, they didn't actually say it.

They've provided a link.

If it's under 100, we can do it.

Yeah, so he's kind of a point.

Is this feasible?

Yeah.

I mean, NASA.

No, and also,

it would take years and years to gather all the material that you would need.

I think it said it would take 833,315 years to make.

Well, they'll be dead by then.

To find to get enough steel.

Get enough steel to actually make it.

On petitions, you know, this recent innovation in the British government, which is that the government has an e-petitions website, and anything that gets 100,000 signatures is passed to a business committee in the House of Commons for possible debate.

This has generated quite a lot of amazing petitions, like ban bald football players from Liverpool Football Club.

Okay.

Royal baby to be given Lion King welcome.

Oh, no.

Isn't that good?

Yeah.

What is that?

Is that held up on the edge of a cliff?

Yeah.

By Rafiki.

Do you know what's really cool is this We the People site.

It's actually, in terms of research, really a fantastic place to find stuff out.

So one of the petitions was asking the White House if they could release the recipe for the honey ale homebrewed at the White House.

I'll just quickly, just very quickly tell you about it, which is so President Obama bought a homebrewing kit for his kitchen in the White House, and then they had the chefs and they had all the people who work there, who do brew their own beer, come and sort of create this ultimate kind of recipe that they could then use.

And now they stick to this one recipe and it's the White House's official honey ale brewing beer that they all it's a drink they all drink there.

It's the first as well, I've learned from this article, it's the first evidence that there's been beer brewed in the White House.

So they have in the past have known that George Washington used to do whiskey, but that wasn't in the White House.

That Jefferson used to make wine, but again, that was maybe that was in the White House, but this is definitely the first beer in the White House.

So President Obama's given the White House a beer.

At least he brought them something.

It's nice, isn't it?

I don't mean that.

I quite like him.

And lastly, what's really nice is

the ingredients for the beer is all unique,

honey particularly, because they use honey that they tap from the first ever beehive that the White House has had, which is on the south lawn.

Their own honey, their own beer.

So it's their own beehive to create the honey for their own homebrewed honeymoon.

They're a bunch of kind of rural hippies, really, aren't they?

Yeah, and if it takes off, they might leave this whole government nonsense.

They might just go into a beer brewing.

Well, that is what the Republicans want them to do.

We want smaller government and we want more homebrewed honey ale.

Obama, don't get us wrong, we like your beer.

Do you want to know my favourite Star Wars fact?

Go on.

Oh, yeah.

It's that InSync, the band, Justin Timberlake's band, made a cameo in Star Wars episode 2, Attack of the Clones, but they were cut out at the final version.

Yeah, thank God.

Another thing I love about Star Wars is is Dave Prouse, who was Darth Vader's body.

Dave Prouse is also the Green Cross code man, and he gave an interview a few days ago where he said that that was his best role of his life: not being Vader, but being the goodie and saving lives.

You've just ruined Darth Vader for a lot of captivated and terrified shit.

I'm warning people.

Now I think he's a little goodie two-shoes car safety body.

Darth Vader never crossed the road between two cars.

You'll notice that in all the films.

All the films in the world.

No matter what he might do, he did cross the road safety.

Never does it once.

David Prouse has the best title of an autobiography for me.

What is it?

That I think.

It's called Straight from the Force's Mouth.

That is very good.

Kind of.

He doesn't talk in Star Wars.

Well, he's not known for his voice.

He thought he was going to have the voice of Dante.

They didn't think he was going to have it.

He was convinced that he was going to have it.

And then they revealed that actually, we don't really want a West Country accent for this master of the world.

But there is a video kicking about of him doing the voice.

I've seen it.

It's brilliant.

I actually came up with what I thought was a better title for his book.

Goal.

Which is The Empire Strikes Hardback.

That is very good.

So you have to change it for paperback.

Star Trek invented the touchscreen.

Did it?

Did it?

That's what Star Trek had.

Yeah, yeah.

Captain Kirk used to rhyme with his little touchscreen pen thing on a touch screen.

I mean, it's not like on set they had this new touchscreen thing that they've invented going, guys.

Should we patent this now or should we continue with the series?

That is true.

It is substantially harder to invent an iPad than it is to say, I've got a magic device that lets me do anything.

Talk to anyone.

It's like J.K.

Rowling invented the invisibility cloak.

I think

we should invent something right now.

Invisibility cloak does exist now, doesn't it?

It's collective stuff, isn't it?

You can see it, it's the only issue.

I thought you couldn't.

You can put it over your hand or your head, they've tried it, and it doesn't tamper with anything around it.

And you can see the background behind it.

Anyway, that's been invented.

A hopperboard's been invented, which is apparently a thing from Back to the Future, which is another thing.

I saw a footage of it the other day.

It looks amazing.

It does look funny.

It does look really cool.

I mean, it looks very beat-up.

It looks very, you know, early stages, but it is working.

That's fantastic.

There's a great blog about Star Trek inventions.

Years ago, it came out, so I'm sure most people, if they know Star Trek, know this, but someone did a list of all the things that Star Trek didn't invent.

Including cup holders.

There always are the cup in the head.

Seatbelts.

You think a seatbelt?

They're always flying around the Starship when they're attacking.

Yeah.

On Star Trek inventing touch screens.

The first touch screen in real life was invented in 1888.

And it was invented by this person called Alicia Gray.

And it was like a kind kind of fax machine.

So, it used this electric pen to transmit an electric signal across wires, and it meant you could draw a picture, and then someone at the other end in 1888 could see the picture that you'd drawn.

And this was used for things that needed signatures, so it was used quite commonly in hospitals and banks and stuff.

You'd be like, oh, you need me to sign that?

I'm sorry I'm not here, but I'll just sign that over the phone.

That's amazing.

That is amazing.

We still can't do that.

Well, we don't anymore.

So we lose it.

We obviously lose it.

So we've lost technology.

I mean, I don't know.

I've never been able to sign over the telephone.

Me neither.

But you can can key on your pins.

We couldn't do that in 1800.

We've forgotten it.

It's vaccine, isn't it?

It's like live vaccine.

It's like draw something.

I don't believe that.

Me either.

So exciting.

It's a real thing.

I suppose it sends an electric signal of a device moving over paper, doesn't it?

Yeah, but we just don't have that.

Don't we?

Sure, I've got it.

One somewhere.

Google Docs.

Look at the attic.

Check your draw.

Alex has probably got one in the stationary cupboard.

He's been telling us to use it for years.

Can I tell you my favourite Star Trek fact?

This will be my last Star Trek fact.

It's that Spock was originally going to be Martian.

He was going to be from Mars.

Wow.

Yeah, but he didn't end up being Martian because the other writers kind of laughed the idea out of the room because they said by the time the series was nearing the end of its first series or a few series, we would be on Mars and no one would mean it would just not be believable.

That's so funny.

Yeah.

That's great.

So they made him from Mars.

That was the bit they thought wouldn't be believable with the whole of Star Trek.

Yeah.

Everything else.

Something about space that I learned recently.

I'm reading Commander Chris Hadfield's book at the moment, former captain of the International Space Station.

He, when he was out on his first ever spacewalk and he was trying to fix something on the International Space Station, had a huge pain in his eye, which forced tears out of his eye.

And he was saying that it ended up sending him blind because

tears don't function like normal tears in space.

They don't fall.

They instead build up as a huge blob over your eye.

So he was suddenly blind completely in one of his eyes because this huge body of water was sitting in front of it.

And it got so big that it eventually passed over the bridge of his nose to his other eye.

So suddenly he's out in space and he's trying to fix the International Space Station and he's completely blind.

Just

literally blinded by his tears.

But he has made a double bubble, right?

Which is something you're always trying to do when you're blowing bubbles.

So part of him is flees and part of him is like this is very inconvenient.

Bad news, NASA, and some good news as well.

Good news for eight-year-old me.

But apparently what would happen is naturally the tears would get so big that it couldn't hold it anymore and it would flood space.

It would flood all of space for people out there.

Something could have feels like it.

But you'd still have to be seeing through a kind of, as if you were looking through goggles, I guess.

So I was looking at other things that people have valued, fictional things.

They valued Mr.

Burns' manor, which is worth $127 million.

But that has to include things like a bottomless pit, which he has.

So a Simpsons fan.

Let's see how many references a Simpsons fan listening can get.

Bottomless pit, a room containing a thousand monkeys banging on a thousand typewriters and a robotic Richard Simmons.

Wayne Mannon would be 105 million.

But also, also.

Is that it?

Yeah, no, no, it's affordable.

We're all clubbed together.

But they made a real Simpsons house in 1997.

They ran a competition for someone to win The Simpsons house.

And the winner had a choice of either taking home $75,000 or getting to live in The Simpsons house, which are being totally recreated to look exactly like it inside and out.

But if they chose the house option, they were contractually obliged as soon as they took their prize to repaint it so it looked like a normal house again.

Oh.

So the person who won it took the 75 grand instead.

I thought you were going to say the contract was every day when they got home, they had to recreate the intro title sequence, which would eventually get very annoying.

They have to paint themselves yellow.

They have their fingers as well.

Yes.

Do they do that?

Oh, yeah, of course.

Sorry.

Sorry.

Maybe every credit.

It's just that famous opening sequence of The Simpsons.

Where they all cut off my last finger.

Yeah.

Okay, that's it.

That's all of our facts.

Thanks so much for listening.

If you want to get in contact with any of us about the things that we've said over the course of this episode, you can get us all on Twitter at either at QI Podcast or on our individual Twitter accounts.

I'm on Schreiberland.

Andy?

At Andrew Hunter M.

And at Miller underscore Anne.

And Jasinski.

You can email podcast at qi.com.

And you can also head to no such thing as a fish.com for all of our previous episodes.

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

We'll see you then.

Goodbye.

And I'll hold on to you.

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