Little Fish: Poor Benighted Mountain Beaver

Speaker 1 What do you think makes the perfect snack?

Speaker 2 Hmm, it's gotta be when I'm really craving it and it's convenient.

Speaker 1 Could you be more specific?

Speaker 2 When it's cravenient. Okay.
Like a freshly baked cookie made with real butter, available right now in the street at AM PM, or a savory breakfast sandwich I can grab in just a second at AM PM.

Speaker 2 I'm seeing a pattern here. Well, yeah, we're talking about what I crave.

Speaker 1 Which is anything from AM PM?

Speaker 2 What more could you want? Stop by AMPM, where the snacks and drinks are perfectly cravable and convenient. That's cravenience.
A.M. P.M., too much good stuff.

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Speaker 2 Hello and welcome to Little Fish.

Speaker 2 This is the weekly bonus episode where we, James, Andy, and Dan, step away from the facts that we've been discovering over the last seven days and instead read out your facts that you've been sending into us via podcast at qi.com.

Speaker 2 We've We've had so many awesome ones this week so let's get straight into it. Who wants to begin?

Speaker 2 I'll start with one. Let's do it.
All right.

Speaker 2 Rosie Watson writes, found out yesterday that Jeff Bezos's biological dad is one of the two notable unicycle hockey players according to Wikipedia.

Speaker 2 Unicycle hockey. It's amazing.
It's a sport? It's an amazing sport. Wow.
Picture a hockey game. Put everyone on a unicycle.
They may not slip around on the ice.

Speaker 2 This is not ice hockey all right because when you said picture a hockey game sorry okay picture a hockey game yeah melt all the ice

Speaker 2 put them in a car park or whatever cool street hockey field hockey field hockey wow i don't know it's not on grass either it's on tarmac i suppose god sorry anyway there was this guy called theodore john jorgensen um is he the other notable one No, this is him.

Speaker 2 This is Jeff Bezos' biological father. So he and Bezos' mum, they split up when Jeff Bezos was a very young baby and he didn't really stay in contact.

Speaker 2 And so Bezos considers his dad to be the, you know, his sort of new father, his mum's new partner. But they were in a relationship.
They were. The wheels fell off.
Oh, dear.

Speaker 2 Well, the wheel. Just one.

Speaker 2 But he was the president of the Albuquerque Unicycle Hockey Club. Wow.
Wow. World's first such club.
And

Speaker 2 how many members? You just. There were loads.
There were loads. And it turns out that unicycle hockey is a big thing in various countries.

Speaker 2 So Germany, at the latest count, has 89 teams, which is genuinely about 85 more than I thought there would be. And that's quite big.
The real skill is the goalie.

Speaker 2 There's only 92 or 93 teams in the English Football League. Exactly.
Why isn't this should be as big as the English Football League, in my opinion? It should be the global sport.

Speaker 2 The goalie just has to go back and forth, back and forth, back and forth in front of the goalie. That feels cheating to me.

Speaker 2 I feel like, you know, when a bicycle stops at a traffic light and they just have to shimmy at the bottom of the street. I know the god it is doing that.
Oh, it's light back and forth.

Speaker 2 It's doing a little bit of,

Speaker 2 you know, and still having to defend a goal with a hockey stick. I mean, it's crazy.

Speaker 2 I love it when someone comes up to a traffic light and does that and they can't keep it up for long enough and they have to put their foot down. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Because I feel like it's such a failure on their part. Oh, it's hard.
Yeah, well, you shouldn't do it. Just

Speaker 2 put your feet down like a normal person. I fully dismount.

Speaker 2 Really? Yeah. I fully dismount and I just wait patiently.
Just sit on a card's bonnet having a ciggy.

Speaker 2 And to me, it's like anyone over the age of 12 cycling with no hands. It just really makes me laugh whenever I see it.

Speaker 2 I just imagine them in their head. They're thinking, oh, look at me.
I'm doing it with no hands like you did when you were 12. I'm still impressed by no hands, I've got to say.

Speaker 2 I saw a kid in Edinburgh this year who was riding a bicycle on the road and everyone was looking at him. And as he passed me, I was on the pedestrian side of the main Princess Street.

Speaker 2 Oh, he grabbed your phone. No, I'm sorry, mate.
This happened to the best of us. It's even better.

Speaker 2 As he went by, he went, Welcome to Scotland, really loud, disappeared, and then behind him on the road, wearing a giant delivery box backpack, was the guy whose bike he'd just stolen, who was a deliveroo rider

Speaker 2 chasing after him down the road. It was so Hollywood.
It was incredible. It was so

Speaker 2 holy rude. Yeah.

Speaker 2 I was so annoyed that I flubbed that joke. It was such a solid one.
You went to the edit. Shall I do one? Yeah.

Speaker 2 This is from paleontologist Thomas Halliday, who I briefly met at a party. Oh, sorry.
That was my briefing notes.

Speaker 2 You didn't meet him at a party table. I didn't recognise the name.
But hang on,

Speaker 2 we've had a letter from Thomas Halliday in one of our duels, one of our drop us a line episodes. Yeah.
But he included such good stuff. You're just getting your mates to write in, Andy.

Speaker 2 I say this in the nicest possible way. He's not my mate, but we met once and he he was a really nice guy, and he sent a great email.
Great author. Yeah.
Other lands he wrote.

Speaker 2 It was like a Waterstones book of the year. It was, yeah.

Speaker 2 I've never met him. I love his stuff.

Speaker 2 Okay, well, Tommy H says,

Speaker 2 you are genetically descended from only about half of your ancestors that were alive 250 years ago. Oh, piss off Thomas.

Speaker 2 What a twat. Whoa.
I'm joking. I was playing against the whole liking him as a buddy.

Speaker 2 That's funny because I got to cut out all the first bits. i'm just gonna sound like

Speaker 2 that's very cool what do you mean what does thomas mean well actually we've come across this on qi james ross and our good friend and colleague found this as well and i've literally just written it up for the x series of qi which will be on your tvs in about 18 months so send your calendars yeah but basically what it is is you're 50 DNA from each parent yeah right but the DNA comes in chunks so if you're you get 50% from your mum, what if all of that 50% was what she got from her mum?

Speaker 2 In that case, you got nothing from her dad. Okay.
And that's possible. Wow.

Speaker 2 So the way I like to look at it is imagine like playing cards, right?

Speaker 2 So your mum might have hearts and diamonds and your dad might have spades and clubs. Yeah.

Speaker 2 But you might get all of the hearts from your mum and all of the clubs from your dad, in which case the parent who gave them the spades and the diamonds wouldn't give you anything.

Speaker 2 And what you're saying is that's obviously possible, but unlikely two generations up. That is absolutely, completely impossible, really.
Like, it wouldn't happen because of the statistics.

Speaker 2 But when you go far enough back, actually, it's not just possible, it's certain, I would say. Crazy.

Speaker 2 And according to Thomas, he reckons that the tipping point of 50%

Speaker 2 is

Speaker 2 10 generations. Now, for QI, I did the maths for this as well.
And I reckon after 15 generations, you're extremely likely to have at least one ancestor who's completely genetically distinct from you.

Speaker 2 So Thomas is doing like the 50% chance. I'm saying after 15 generations, one of your ancestors will not be related to you genetically.
Doesn't that mean problems with genealogy and tests?

Speaker 2 I don't think when it's that far back, someone's going to be hearing the words, I'm sorry, but you're not the great, great, great, great, great grandfather.

Speaker 2 It's jeremy kyle meets who do you think you are

Speaker 2 who do you think you aren't

Speaker 2 she's not your aunt

Speaker 2 oh superb what a fact yeah it's brilliant it's really interesting and it really blows your mind when you start trying to do the maps and stuff but um yeah it's a great great fact so cool should i jump in with one yeah

Speaker 2 This is from Felicia Winterhook. And it's sort of similar to a fact that we got sent in from the last episode about relocating an entire entire thing.

Speaker 2 We were talking about how a full village was moved.

Speaker 2 So same thing happened this year in north of Sweden in a town called Koruna where they took literally the entire church, the Koruna church, and they rolled it to a new destination three kilometers to the east.

Speaker 2 And they've done that because Karuna is like a mining town. And so the stabilization underneath them, because they'd taken out so much from underneath the ground was getting a bit

Speaker 2 unsettling that for

Speaker 2 slight subsidence and stuff. I think so, yeah.
And so they decided, okay, that they're gonna move it. I wonder if their tourism sort of went off a cliff when coronavirus came out in 2020.

Speaker 2 You know what, Andy? When you put your head in your hands like that, it really discourages me from doing this. Well, that's why I'm doing it, Jack.

Speaker 2 Hey, I've got one. Yeah, go for it.
From Louise Drake. Pleasingly, Louise Drake from Louise.
Actually, this is about a place I've been to, very excitingly.

Speaker 2 A place called Basildon Park, which is a National Trust place.

Speaker 2 And it's a lovely old house, gorgeous, and grounds and all of that. And it was where the 2005 Pride and Prejudice, which is the one with Kieran Knightley in, was filmed in part, right? Lovely.

Speaker 2 So when they were filming it, They filmed a ball scene there. I just find this so funny.
The scale of the ball scene was so large that they put some of of the National Trust...

Speaker 2 Are you laughing at the faith ball scene?

Speaker 2 In my head, because I don't live in that Jane Austen world like you do. And like, to me, ball scene, I was thinking like a ball pool, like kids.
No, that's it.

Speaker 2 It's a very modern adaptation of the story, but it's all...

Speaker 2 Oh, no, Mr. Darcy's weed and the card.

Speaker 2 He dives into the ball pit and then he comes out without his shirt off. It's very sexy.
It's incredible. I had no idea.
So all Jane Austen is set in soft play. That's right.
Wow.

Speaker 2 No, so they filmed this ballroom scene.

Speaker 2 The scale of the ball scene was so large, writes Louise, that they put some of the National Trust conservation staff in costume as supporting artists so they could keep a closer eye on things without looking out of place on camera.

Speaker 2 So I presume that's just so they don't break any of the priceless artifacts around the edge of the room. I just find that so funny.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 So if you watch that scene, there'll be some people there who are just National Trust staff like, please look after this vase.

Speaker 2 Don't touch that. Yeah.
That's really funny. And then I looked into this place, Basildon Park, right? Mid-18th century.

Speaker 2 Do they do a fair bit of film in there? Yes, they film lots of stuff there.

Speaker 2 I think I know the one, yeah. And basically, this is a bit of gossip from the 18th and 19th centuries,

Speaker 2 which is pretty hot gossip for us, to be fairness. Yeah.
It was bought by this guy called Francis Sykes, right? And I looked him up, and he sounds like an absolute rotter.

Speaker 2 Astonishingly, someone who built a really, really big house then had not made all of their money entirely

Speaker 2 pleasantly. He was an East India Company guy and lots of bribes and insider trading and private embezzlement.
I mean, just all sorts of dreadful practice went on basically.

Speaker 2 And he made a huge amount of money who spent on this house. But the really spicy gossip is about the third Baronet Sykes.
So I imagine his grandson, who inherited the estate at age five, right?

Speaker 2 So, you know, turned into a giant bullpen.

Speaker 2 And he married this woman called Henrietta Villebois, who was very wealthy. He was marrying for wealth, you know, sort of like dynastic marriage, whatever.
They both had lots of affairs.

Speaker 2 She had an affair with Benjamin Disraeli.

Speaker 2 What a cameo. What a cameo.
Who then he wrote a book called Henrietta Temple, which was all about having a secret affair with a married woman, which I would say is not a very good way of hiding.

Speaker 2 If you're putting her first name in the title of the book, okay, fine, whatever. But she had this other affair with a painter called Daniel MacLies, MacLeese, who was friends with Charles Dickens.

Speaker 2 And when the husband, Sykes, the rotter, found out about this, he put a notice in the newspaper saying, Whereas Henrietta Sykes, the wife of me, Sir Francis Sykes, Baronet, hath committed adultery with Daniel MacLese.

Speaker 2 This is in the newspaper. He's putting this out,

Speaker 2 with whom she was found in bed at my house, and then he gives his address on the 4th of July, 1837.

Speaker 2 This is to give notice that hereafter I shall not be answerable for any debts she may contract or any goods which may be supplied to her.

Speaker 2 What a scoundrel. This is like the 19th century.
It was Rebecca Vardy. It's exactly that.
And you remember who I said McClais was friends with? Charles Dickens. What's the surname of this baronet?

Speaker 2 Sykes, Bill Sykes. Sykes.
But also,

Speaker 2 Bill Sykes is from Francis Sykes. Yeah.
It's a direct takeoff, and so everyone knows this guy, Francis Sykes, is a worm. Yeah, that's amazing.

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Offers are subject to change and certain restrictions may apply.

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Speaker 2 Kate Moore writes, mountain beavers are the most primitive rodent and also host to the world's largest flea.

Speaker 2 They also neither live in the mountains nor are they a beaver.

Speaker 2 Mountain beavers are mountain beavers. They're a type of rodent.

Speaker 2 Or the world's most primitive rodent, I hear. Oh, yes.
Yeah, they are. Wow, that is a real...

Speaker 2 Because rodent is not a one with good associations, but to be the world's most primitive rodent is that that's a double whammy. That's bad.

Speaker 2 The flea can get around 10 millimeters, so about a centimetre. Okay.

Speaker 2 But beavers have smaller faces than you. Like mountain beavers, especially.
They have quite thin faces.

Speaker 2 And so if you had a flea that was comparatively the same size,

Speaker 2 it would cover your whole eye. Oh, yuck.
One flea covering your own eye. Okay.
Two fleas, both eyes. Both eyes.
Yeah. Poor benighted mountain beaver.
Yeah. No?

Speaker 2 Actually, it's only the females who get that big. The males are about half that size.
And actually, you get much smaller ones.

Speaker 2 This is like a big hefty flea. Yeah, I wouldn't like that at all.
There you go. I wouldn't like at all to have a flea covering my whole eye.
I know that's a crazy out there thought. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Can I do one? Yeah, please.

Speaker 2 Jesse Quick writes, it seems almost too ordinary to be true because we've all tried this once, but did you know the world record for most melons chopped in half on somebody's stomach with a samurai sword while they lay on a bed of nails

Speaker 2 was set by a man named Johnny Strange.

Speaker 2 He's famous, isn't he, Johnny Strange? He is. He's got multiple Guinness worldwide boards.
He's quite the man. Is his real name, do you reckon? No, he's actually called Luke Strange.

Speaker 2 Well, Strange is a surname, right? Yeah, yeah. I've heard people with that surname, but then also, conceivably, you would make it up.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 I think JohnnyStrange sideshow.co.uk, I think it's might be a stage name. It's an incredible website.

Speaker 2 So he sliced 10 watermelons in 30 seconds on his glamorous partner's tummy, and she's on a bed of nails. And watermelon to bare skin.

Speaker 2 there's no board there's no board yeah there's no board she's the board and then this watermelon record is is

Speaker 2 i think she deserves the credit for that well i know what you mean because badass woman he's broken a lot of records and she's involved in some of them so he's broken the record for most apples held in one's own mouth and chainsawed out of it in one minute that sounds like you've got a load of apples in your mouth and like let's say you have somehow got five apples in your mouth and the only way to get them out is to chainsaw your face so that they fall out Sorry.

Speaker 2 He's biting an apple which is mostly sticking out of his mouth and he's getting rid of it by chainsawing across it.

Speaker 2 He chainsaws across the apple. Okay, so you need someone with a small nose.
You do. I think

Speaker 2 you've got a small nose. Very good point.

Speaker 2 He did eight apples out of his own mouth, but when his glamorous partner was holding the apples in her mouth, he did 12 in 60 seconds.

Speaker 2 That's hardly surprising that it's easier to do it out of someone else's mouth than your own mouth. Yeah.
You reckon? Yeah.

Speaker 2 Okay, fair enough. All right.
He's done heaviest weight pulled by pierced ears uh-huh he's pulled a small plane was it his ears or his partner's ears

Speaker 2 um and i love this he's done sword swallowing inside the globe of death you know that cage where they ride a motorbike around the inside i saw one of those quite recently i saw one i went to zippo circus recently did you yeah yeah oh you were you were the guy with his trousers falling down on the ladder weren't you yeah yeah you were the glamorous assistant

Speaker 2 but it's so exciting when they bring out that globe of death and they they cycle motorbike around the inside of it.

Speaker 2 He was standing in the middle of it, swallowing a sword while someone was riding a microbike around his head. Right.
Really cool. Yeah.
Yeah. I mean, very dangerous.
Interestingly, I got one.

Speaker 2 If we can jump into another here from Shona Mack, which is also a Guinness World Record, which is the world's oldest continuously operating post office, is in the small town of Sankar in southwest Scotland.

Speaker 2 The post office has been operating on that site since it was established as a staging post in 1712. Pretty good going.
Really good. That's cool.
That's very good.

Speaker 2 I would have had the post office starting a bit later than that.

Speaker 2 When was Roland Hill? I thought he was like

Speaker 2 19th century, the Penny Post. Yeah.
But maybe they just had a very quiet 100 years before

Speaker 2 it was a long queue.

Speaker 2 Here is one from Richard Galt. When bored at work last week, I came across a pamphlet from about 1970 preparing the company for metrication.

Speaker 2 So when we're going to go to the metric, the pounds and the pence and all that kind of stuff.

Speaker 2 Anyway, it contained a fact and that is that the SI units that we use today are based on the kilogram, the meter and the second.

Speaker 2 And that's a bit messy because kilogram is already a thousand of something.

Speaker 2 So kilometer, you've got the basic thing, which is the meter, and then you add the kilo on.

Speaker 2 But the kilogram is already a kilo. Really, it should be the gram, or we should change the name of the kilogram.

Speaker 2 And indeed, in 1970, the standardization committee the ISO was planning to change a kilogram and give it a different name and one option was to rename it the Einstein and if they'd have ended up doing that it would have meant that Einstein himself weighed about 79 Einsteins

Speaker 2 which is a good fact apart from the fact that Richard I think means mass not weight

Speaker 2 because mass is in kilograms or would have been Einsteins whereas we measure weight in Newtons

Speaker 2 And Newtons is kilograms multiplied by the gravitational pull of the Earth. And Isaac Newton's weight would have been, according to my calculation, around 686 Newtons.
Lovely. And

Speaker 2 your basic metabolic rate, so the amount that you create energy, means that James Watt created about 100 watts of power.

Speaker 2 Humans have no charge, but we do have a lot of electrons. And the electrons in the body of Charles Augustin de Coulomb would have been minus 9 billion coulombs.

Speaker 2 And if he was wearing high heels, Blaise Pascal would have asserted 5 million Pascals of pressure on the floor.

Speaker 2 And do we know whether Blaise Pascal ever did, maybe he was going out to the Rocky Horror Show?

Speaker 2 Andy, have you got one more? I've got one more. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Ari Toons-Samundson writes from Norway.

Speaker 2 I really like this fact. In 2020, the number of near-complete Viking helmets doubled.

Speaker 2 From

Speaker 2 one.

Speaker 2 But Aaron knows how to sell a fact. Yeah, yeah.
I mean, that's really good.

Speaker 2 So until 2020, only the, I'm sorry for my pronunciation here, Gjamundbu helmet was known. The Jarm helmet was found in the 1950s, admittedly, but it wasn't authenticated until 2020.

Speaker 2 So there you go. That is the doubling of the Viking helmets.
And Ari adds an additional three fragments are known, largely eyebrow pieces, but none of them has horns. Okay.

Speaker 2 So, yeah.

Speaker 2 Very cool. Yeah, you do get horned helmets, but they're pre-Viking.
So

Speaker 2 yeah, you get like from Scandinavia, you definitely get horned helmets, but by the time the Vikings came in, they didn't have horns anymore.

Speaker 2 And our thought of the horned helmets comes from Wagner, basically. I had no idea.
I I thought there were never any horned helmets. No, they do exist for sure.

Speaker 2 I think one day we'll find some Viking ones. I genuinely do.
But what year will that be on current evidence? It'd be ages away. Well, no, if it doubled this year, then next year there'll be four.

Speaker 2 The year after, there'll be eight.

Speaker 2 Okay, well, that's it for all of your facts. Before we wrap up, though, we have something very important to do, which is to announce the latest custodians from the Fish Archive.

Speaker 2 Each person who joins the friend of the podcast here in Club Fish gets to become the champion, the effective owner of a fact from our 600 episodes. And so today we are going to be handing some out.

Speaker 2 Andy, why don't we begin with you? Yeah, all right. Here's a fact that is now under the stewardship of Hollis.

Speaker 2 It's this. Some rats were once the size of hippos and weighed two tons.

Speaker 2 I would say

Speaker 2 a vintage fish fact. It is.
It's about animals being an amusing size. Yeah.
I remember we talked about whether they made a weird noise as they got bigger and smaller, going,

Speaker 2 which is the same as the weird noise that a hippo makes when it retracts its testicles into its body. Yeah.
Yeah. It's all flooding back.
It's all flooding back.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 That's very good. That's a great fact.
Yep.

Speaker 2 This is a fact then that goes to Matt. This was one of my facts, which was during his 27-year rule, Pope John Paul II took over 100 skiing and mountain climbing holidays.
A funny image. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Seeing the Pope Mobile on those slopes? Well, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 Not quite, but yeah. What he used to do, though, was sneak out of the Vatican.

Speaker 2 I seem to remember we spoke about it in a sort of like almost the beginning of like a Beatles movie where they have to wear false mustaches and hide behind newspapers, would cut out holes for their eyes to look through.

Speaker 2 Like he was smuggled out of the Vatican so that he could get privacy and that he could go on these skiing holidays.

Speaker 2 But surely it's incredibly easy if you're the Pope to be smuggled out of the Vatican. You just take off the papal regalia, regalia, which is what most people are looking at.

Speaker 2 Did we say this at the time? Like, just go out as an old Italian man. Yes.

Speaker 2 Like, no one will bat an eyelid. It's absolutely true.
Do you not reckon if there were 10 elderly Italian men in this room? Is he Italian, the new one? I think the new one's American. He's American.

Speaker 2 So 10 elderly Italian-American men in this room standing in a line, do you reckon you'd be able to pick out the Pope? No, shoot me now. I just couldn't do it.

Speaker 2 Do you not think he has some kind of glow, like a halo? Oh, I forgot to say that. Do you not think he emanates holiness? Yes, you're right.
Yeah,

Speaker 2 so you'd have to have a heavy, heavy coat to cover his papal aura. Yeah.
No, I just, I honestly, I would not recognize the Pope in a non-papal setting. Very interesting.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I could be standing next to one of the urinal and just not know that it was the Pope. But do you not think his penis has like an ethereal glow? I think, James, you've been excommunicated once.

Speaker 2 What are you doing?

Speaker 2 Okay,

Speaker 2 this is the next fact

Speaker 2 this one will be forever loved petted and fed by rebecca lovet and her fact is that in 1900 a quarter of the residents of new york city would move house every may the 1st at 9 a.m Brilliant fact

Speaker 2 another vintage one I'd say that was one of yours James it was one of mine yeah I remember the details what was the reasoning it's a long fact that all the details are in the fact but why

Speaker 2 it was just that everyone's rent would run out on that date.

Speaker 2 And that's just, to be honest, the answer was really that it was just so. That was the way they did it.
And they didn't really know any different. And it was Mayhem, wasn't it?

Speaker 2 You couldn't get a moving removal firm for love or money because they're all booked. It's really low.
It must have been tough to be a removal firm because the rest of the year, you're just...

Speaker 2 twiddling your thumbs. Yeah, absolutely.
But maybe that's where you make all your money and then you just hang out for the rest of the year. Oh, that's nice.
Like Santa. Yeah, exactly.
Just

Speaker 2 makes all Santa money one bucket in the year.

Speaker 2 Andy, let's go on from you. Okay.

Speaker 2 This fact is now going to be stuffed, mounted, and put on the wall of Stefan Locamp.

Speaker 2 It's one of my facts, actually, is that nobody knows why we kiss.

Speaker 2 Is that still true 11 years later?

Speaker 2 I think people do it because it's nice.

Speaker 2 But I think no one knows that for sure scientifically.

Speaker 2 I can say because the X series of QI will be filmed in the spring and will go out in about 18 months.

Speaker 2 I'm writing it right now. And we have a question on kisses because of XOXO kind of thing.
And according to my research, we still don't definitively know where kissing came from.

Speaker 2 Yeah, as a cultural practice.

Speaker 2 Is it from sort of mothers chewing up food in their mouth and feeding it to their baby? Which is one main theory, isn't it?

Speaker 2 And so you evolved to feel that smashing your lips against someone else's lips is nice. Yeah.

Speaker 2 No one likes thinking about that as the origin of kissing because it's a bit weird. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Thinking that that's what causes this very. The first human who ever kissed another human was kissing their own mum on the lips.

Speaker 2 Yeah, absolutely. So we don't like that theory.
No. Yeah, but it's, it's, I think it's, I think it's true.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 I mean, Dan, your mum's sexy.

Speaker 2 This is a callback to Dan saying his own mum was sexy. Not a great kisser, though, weirdly.

Speaker 2 Oh, my God.

Speaker 2 Oh no. I mean it's fine, it's fine, but like, come on.
Am I the only one with a tongue? Like, what's going on?

Speaker 2 That's all fine. James!

Speaker 2 Honestly, I thought I'd gone too far with the Pope at the urinal, but.

Speaker 2 Okay, here's a fact. Some years ago, a Belgian man had surgery to make himself look more like Michael Jackson.
Okay. Wow.
Okay, interesting.

Speaker 2 I wonder what Michael Jackson's status was when we did that fact. 20,

Speaker 2 I think it's still pretty bad. Yeah.
That was his latest album.

Speaker 2 That fact is now under the custodianship of Nick.

Speaker 2 with no see nik and nick you will have to look after that fact as if it was a member of your own family um that was from mark abrams by the way oh yeah the founder of the ignobel prize that you and i saw very recently we did indeed he came into this very room yeah um he was in town.

Speaker 2 And this is interesting because this is an episode where, once again, there were only two members of Phish on it, which is something we really rarely do. But in the early days, we did.

Speaker 2 I was away, and so was Anna. So in our place was Mark Abrams.
And then, also in our place, was Molly Oldfield, one of the original QI Elves.

Speaker 2 And her fact was the longest Viking longship ever found was discovered during renovations of Longship Museum.

Speaker 2 So that basically found the Viking ship underneath the Viking Ship Museum as they were just getting ready to expand it. That's brilliant.
That fact is going to now belong to Simon Mataljan.

Speaker 2 Congratulations. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Be proud. It's a great fact.
Where do you put that, though? You've got to build another museum now. Nightmare.
Yeah, exactly. And then you just keep discovering more and more archaeological treasures.

Speaker 2 Where do you stop? Don't know. All right, why don't we get another fact?

Speaker 2 Let's go to you, Andy. I'll do one.
This fact is for Michael Boulter, and it's that the tobacco hornworm uses very bad halitosis to stop predators eating it.

Speaker 2 Wow, so it's got really dreadful breath. And predators smell that.

Speaker 2 No tell. That's interesting.
So previous episode of Little Fish at the End, your fact that you gave out was to do also with

Speaker 2 a small insect that was being eaten. The spiders, the grass spiders.
Yeah, I think amusing animals.

Speaker 2 That was your thing in the early days. Stock in trade.
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2 We used to say it wasn't a proper episode of fish without an animal fact. Yeah.
Yeah. And

Speaker 2 I think we've outgrown it. Oh, we did all the animals.

Speaker 2 About 400 animals. We've done 600 episodes, do the maths.

Speaker 2 But honestly, with a gun to your head, how many could you name? I think 400 is toppy. You know, that's very ambitious.
Attenborough's really stretched that career out, hasn't he?

Speaker 2 Once you do, oh, giraffes, again. But once you do the big mammals and then the small mammals, and then, I mean, how many insects can we name?

Speaker 2 Cricket, Cricket, locust, grasshopper, and that's crickets and locusts are the same animal.

Speaker 2 399.

Speaker 2 Okay, let's do one more before we wrap up. So, this fact is you could have fallen asleep up to five times during this podcast and not known it.

Speaker 2 This was about the fact that everyone does little micro sleeps during the day, and that fact now belongs to Matthew Renner. So, Matthew, I really hope you enjoy that fact being part of your life.

Speaker 2 Sweet dreams.

Speaker 2 We've ascertained like since 11 years ago. Now, it turns out almost half our audience are using us as a sleep aide.

Speaker 2 Imagine if Matthew accidentally took his micro nap as you read out his facts and his name.

Speaker 2 And he's going to be listening for all these episodes going forward, going, oh, God, surely I'll be on this week's episode. Come on.
Yeah. Where's my fact? Oh, well.

Speaker 2 Hey, listen, we do need to wrap up.

Speaker 2 If you want to be a custodian of one of our facts from the archive, all you need to do is join Club Fish at our top tier level, which is Friend of the Podcast.

Speaker 2 We're going to be reading out more and more of these as the weeks go on with this new little fish show. We hope you're enjoying it.
Come back again next week. Stay tuned for our Friday episode.

Speaker 2 And of course, if you are a club fish member, you're going to get Duel. Drop us a line.
We're going to be reading out more and more emails, so send some in there. Podcast at qi.com.

Speaker 2 We'll see you next week. Goodbye.

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