NSTAAF International Factball: Italy v Switzerland

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Hello and welcome to another episode of No Such Thing as a Fish Presents International Fact Ball.

Brought to you by the QILs in association with visitengland.com.

My name's Andy and I'm here with three of the QILs.

They are in no particular order, Anna, James and Anne.

And today's match is a humdinger.

It's going to be Italy versus Switzerland.

So

there's the whistle.

Interesting facts about Italy.

Take it away.

I love the fact that in Italy they have a word for the at symbol, which we kind of don't when it's commonly used, and their word is tiocchiola, which means snail, because obviously it looks like a snail.

Oh.

That is very good.

It's nice.

Yeah.

And paparazzi, the word paparazzi, you guys know what that means in Italian?

Is it buzzing insect?

Yeah, it's buzzing mosquitoes.

Yeah.

It's from La Dolce Vizzi, isn't it?

It's named after the paparazzo character.

Tiramasu means pick me up.

Yes.

Spoozy.

You have an actual lunch that gets you through the afternoon.

If you want to pick me up, yeah.

I read that confetti, obviously it's an Italian-sounding word, but it was also invented in Italy, but it was originally candied spices, and Italian families would throw it from their balconies to the crowds below.

Isn't that cool?

That is good.

10% of all food stolen in Italy is parmesan cheese.

Wow.

It is pretty pricey.

When McDonald's first opened in Italy, they opened in Rome in 1986 and everyone was furious.

And the designer Valentino tried to close it down because it was too noisy and there was an unbearable smell of fried food fouling the air.

That's great.

What?

That doesn't sound like McDonald's, I know.

I read that at the grand opening of that McDonald's, people stood outside handing out pasta because it was a traditional Italian food, and they said, This is what you should be eating, none of these burgers.

Even now, they don't want foreign food coming into Italy.

There was a politician called, I don't know what his first name was, I think it's Mr.

Zaya, and he was trying to stop all foreign foods from coming in.

And someone asked him, Have you ever eaten a kebab?

and he said, No.

And I defy anyone to prove the contrary.

I prefer the dishes of my native Veneto, and I even refuse to eat a pineapple.

That is great.

Yeah, pineapple piece of the potato.

Oh, yeah.

And the other thing, tomatoes aren't native to Italy, are they?

Well, pasta isn't a traditional Italian dish at all.

It was brought over by the Arabs in the 13th century, wasn't it?

And they adopted it as their own.

But it used to be eaten with honey and sugar.

Before the 17th, 18th century, pasta wasn't eaten with tomato sauce.

It was dipped in honey and sugar.

So don't want to try that.

Mussolini wanted all Italians to eat rice, not pasta.

And he had a national day for rice, and there was the national rice board, which,

brought free bags of rice to people, and it really wanted to encourage them so that they could be self-sufficient.

Do they also have a national cheese board?

Very good.

My favourite kind of Italian pasta is strozza pretti, which are these little things which I think they look like cord.

And the literal translation for strozza pretti is priest stranglers.

Oh, cool.

Didn't chiabata mean slipper?

Yes, it's a slippery strip.

And it was invented really recently.

Yeah,

1982.

Yeah.

My favourite Italian food fact is actually also a football fact.

Maybe it's not allowed.

No, we can.

I love it.

We average about one football fact per podcast.

Can I claim this this week's?

There was a football match.

It was Scotland versus Italy.

And the Scotland fans chanted, We're going to deep-fry your pizzas.

Just speaking about football chants, there was a match.

It was Napoli against Verona.

And the Verona fans were singing, We Hope That Vesuvius Goes Off.

And the Napoli fans were singing, Juliet is a whore.

Wow.

Wow.

Okay, I have a question for you.

Name something that happened in Italy between the 5th and the 14th of October 1542.

A new pope.

No.

Was Leonardo da Vinci died?

Nothing.

Did they have a calendar jump and they switched their days?

Exactly.

Nothing happened.

Nothing happened between the 5th and the 14th of October in that year.

Pope Gregory ordered that those days should not happen so that they could make up for previously inaccurate calendars and get with the programme.

Yeah.

Do you know where the easiest place to get cocaine in Italy is?

Yes, but I cannot tell you on this podcast because the next time I go, it'll be swamped.

No, the easiest place is the air.

Researchers have tested the air in Rome and found that there are traces of cocaine.

Also, cannabis, nicotine, and caffeine.

You just walk around with your mouth open like a bear trying to catch something.

And the cocaine just jumps in.

The mafia is still very dominant, isn't it, in Italy?

I think 80% of small businesses in the capital of Sicily pay pizza protection money.

80%.

80%.

It's a lot, isn't it?

Across the whole of southern Italy, the mafia makes more than 20 billion a year through extortion.

Whoa.

And Corleone, so Corleone, the town in Sicily, has got a petition to change its name because of the negative connotations.

Only nicer.

Yeah.

Speaking of the mafia, did you hear the terrible thing that they did last year?

They kidnapped the world's smallest pony.

Oh, not got it in someone's bed?

That is too far.

They put it in the very small bed.

It was a 63cm tall animal named Charlie, and he was taken from his stall in Citadel Castello.

Are they getting back?

I'm not sure, actually.

I couldn't find it.

If anyone knows what happened to Charlie, you can call this number.

Charlie, if you're out there, we're not angry.

Okay, just come back.

We're just disappointed.

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Okay,

that means that at halftime, it's time for our mid-match quiz brought to you by visitingland.com.

We've got three questions relating in some way or another to England.

So, who would like to go first?

I have one.

Yeah, Anne.

I had a brilliant time a few weekends ago.

I went to Cadbury World in Birmingham and they had lots of great information.

They had a bit about how the Mayans used cocoa beans as currency.

They didn't have coins.

So it costs two cocoa beans for a pumpkin, but how many for a rabbit?

Okay.

Answers on a postcard.

James?

Okay,

my question is:

in Old Cheshire, what did they mean when they said sparrow farts?

Okay.

Do they mean the farts of sparrows?

Maybe you'll have to tune in to find out.

I'm gonna be here.

Oh, yeah.

Anna?

So, during World War II, for what did MI6 use human semen?

Oh, I thought it was mostly the Navy who used semen.

Very good.

Okay, so that's the halftime quiz over.

So we will give away the answers at the end.

And now it's time for the second half of the match, which is Switzerland.

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Every year, they have an annual Santa Claus World Championship called Tao Wow.

Is this how Santa Claus is selected?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Is it?

Yeah, there's going to be a Channel 5 reality show coming soon.

Switzerland is the only country to have enough nuclear shelters for its entire population.

Wow.

Oh, yeah.

You can't name your child pineapple or banana or fairy tale or whatever it is that everyone who is famous these days names their children if you're in Switzerland because you have to choose from an approved list of baby names.

But the country has has been neutral since about the mid-14th century.

They used to be quite an aggressive territorial expansionist power, and then they had one really unpleasant battle or a few battles in the 14th century.

And they said, right, actually, we're not doing this anymore.

And they just formed the boundaries almost completely of modern Switzerland soon after that, and they just have not gotten involved since then.

They have had the odd little battle in between themselves, the cantons.

Oh, yeah.

There was a battle between Zurich and Zug rather nicely in 1529.

War was declared, but before any fighting could take place, the two teams or the two groups of soldiers sat down, settled their differences and called off the war.

And the soldiers from both sides sat on the border and shared a cauldron of milk soup.

Wow.

One thing I really like is that senior soldiers in the Swiss army, they have flowers instead of stars.

A major general who would have two stars on his epaulettes in other NATO countries would have two Edelweiss on his epaulettes in Switzerland.

Oh, that kind of looks awesome.

Speaking of keeping yourself to yourself, I read about a block of flats near Zurich.

This is for people who claim to suffer from hypersensitivity to chemicals and electromagnetic radiation.

And there are apartments there that have been designed specifically so there's no smoking, no perfume, no mobile phones.

And it's supposed to be for people who find that they're allergic to modern life.

I might use allergic to modern life as my excuse for not being on Twitter, hence.

One thing I love about Switzerland is that the Reichenbach Falls, where Sherlock Holmes fell to his death, are in Switzerland.

So the Sherlock Holmes Society go on a pilgrimage to the Reichenbach Falls where they reenact the fall but with dummies, not with real people.

And one thing I learned from reading about it was that apparently in 1910 Sherlock Holmes books were banned from stationed booksellers because they were having a bad effect on the Swiss youth.

What?

Apparently jumping off the falls possibly.

They weren't all just smoking pipes and wearing those funny hats.

And solving crimes in a slightly annoying way.

Yeah.

So Switzerland was where Conan Doyle, Arthur Conan Doyle, popularised skiing.

I think he discovered it on holiday in Norway and then he was in Switzerland and he looked around and thought, look, mountains, snow, I know what I'm gonna do here and he found two other people in Switzerland that ski but they could only ski by night because they were mocked so mercilessly by the Swiss masses for doing such a weird thing but then Colonel Doyle was a big popular guy and he started doing it and of course yeah skiing by night doesn't sound particularly safe does it no I guess

maybe that's why people mock them that's where the very brightly coloured ski wear began yeah okay so one really fun thing I've this is a lot of my facts are from a book called Swiss watching I read last year which is really good so if you're into Switzerland I recommend you read it.

In Switzerland, people tend to rent their graves for about 20 or 25 years rather than buying them, and then the space is used again.

And all the old headstones are broken up to make gravel.

But the idea is, there's so little space, because Switzerland is so mountainous, there's almost no flat space, and when you know, there's a limited amount of space for people to die in, basically.

Since euthanasia is legal, they're dropping like flies.

So,

they should do like they do in Tibet, just put their bodies up at the top of the mountains and let the birds eat them.

That's going to traumatise the skiers.

Well, a Swiss celebrity is a six-legged calf called Lily, who I would urge everyone to look up because she's pretty.

Wow, Lily the calf.

Yeah, so weird.

It's two extra legs hanging off her back.

And she's a celebrity, you say.

Yeah, they don't have a lot going for them in the celebrity world.

Like, which programme does she host?

I think she hosts the 10 o'clock news, really.

Either they don't have many celebrities, or they've got so many that literally even a six-legged cow can achieve fame.

All right, Andy, just go ahead and get a camera.

I'm a celebrity.

Get these legs on me.

For the animal welfare, there's this brilliant fact that you aren't allowed to keep a solitary guinea pig in Switzerland.

Oh, you have to live a bit of friends.

If your guinea pig dies, you are too.

You can rent one to be mates with your one.

We're coming up to full-time now, so any extra facts that you want to get them in, get them in now.

In 1474, a rooster in Switzerland was prosecuted by law in the city of Basel for laying an egg.

Because obviously roosters can't lay eggs.

Now, a modern interpretation might say it was actually a chicken that had been passing for a rooster, but the animal was sentenced in a solemn judicial proceeding and condemned to be burned alive for the heinous and unnatural crime of laying an egg.

The execution took place, according to eyewitness accounts, with as great solemnity as it would have been observed in consigning a heretic to the flames and was witnessed by an immense crowd of townsmen and peasants.

It was witnessed by a great number of peasants who were cooking vegetables at the same time

gravy.

Preparing a white wine sauce.

That's the final whistle.

So now it's time for the answers to our mid-match quiz brought to you by visitengland.com.

And your question was first.

So my question was the Mayans use cocoa beans as currency, so they didn't have coins, and it took two cocoa beans for a pumpkin.

How many for a rabbit?

It would be 10 cocoa beans to buy a rabbit.

Although legally in the Mayan culture, I think you had to buy two rabbits by law.

So actually 20.

So it's always costing you 20.

Wow, great fact from a Cabriz World.

Cabri World, excellent place.

James?

My question was in Old Cheshire, what did the word sparrow sparrow farts mean?

And it meant very early in the morning.

Yeah, you would be up with the sparrow farts.

Nice.

Anna?

My question was in World War II what did MI6 use human semen for?

And they used it, well I guess one of the functions it had, was to be used as invisible ink for transmitting letters.

Yes, it is so.

God, Ian Fleming didn't write that up in the J's con books, did he?

Bond dipped his quill into the ink well.

Okay, there are your answers.

And if you'd like to win a load of QI goodies, we've got lots of things which we are giving away via the visitengland.com website.

So check that out and you can see what there is for you to win there.

So at the end of the match, I'm going to give the arbitrary job of picking a winner to Anna.

Anna, who wins?

I am going to go with Switzerland because I don't want my bank account being shut down.

Excellent.

Okay, that's everything from today.

We hope you've enjoyed listening.

If you'd like to get hold of any of us, you can do so on Twitter.

Anne is on.

James is at egg shaped.

I'm at Andrew Hunter M.

Anna still not on Twitter.

But if you want,

if you want, you can tweet at Wikipedia and I'll reply to you there.

Okay.

We have another match coming up tomorrow, which is James.

That will be Nigeria versus Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Well, one against two.

All right.

Hope you've enjoyed listening.

Thanks very much and tune in for another one of these tomorrow.

Goodbye.

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