No Such Thing As A Fish: 468: No Such Thing As Drama-Free Pringles

Audioboom Audioboom 3/2/23 - Episode Page - 56m - PDF Transcript

Hi everyone, welcome to this week's episode of No Such Things as a Fish, the first in

the post-anna apocalypse since she's gone on maternity leave but don't worry she'll

be back before you know it and in her stead this week we have the amazing Sarah Pasco.

Now you don't need me to tell you who Sarah Pasco is but you might need me to tell you

where she is about to go on tour. She has a brand new show, she'll be in the UK, Ireland

and Australia and if you're in Cambridge, Dartford or Leeds and you're listening to

this when it goes out you might be able to get tickets to see her right now this weekend.

If you're in Northampton Brighton, Oxford Newcastle, Hull, Manchester or Birmingham

you'll be able to see her in the next few weeks, then in Dublin, Cork, Belfast, Aberystwyth,

Cheltenham, Cardiff, Bournemouth, Colchester, Milton Keynes, Liverpool, Harrogate, Basingstoke

that will be over the next month or so and then in April and May she'll be appearing

in Sydney, Canberra, Brisbane, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth. Like I say you have to

go and see Sarah's show, it's called Success Story, it's absolutely brilliant. Tickets

are available now at sarahontour.com and you can also go to her website which is sarahpasco.co.uk

for more details about Sarah. Anyway once you've got those tickets then please do enjoy

this week's show and I'm absolutely certain you will and what else is there to say apart

from on with the podcast.

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 am sitting here

with James Harkin, Andrew Hunter Murray and Sarah Pascoe and once again we have gathered

around the microphones with our four favourite facts from the last seven days and in no particular

order here we go. Starting with fact number one, that is Sarah.

Okay my fact is that the man who invented Pringles was buried in a Pringles can.

He was tiny.

He was very small. You've seen him, the guy with the moustache around his face. He doesn't

have a body. Do people have to carry him down there?

They employed four but they only needed one. So they passed him like in a relay race.

He was the baton, yes.

So I should add he wanted to be buried in a Pringles can because I think he was very

proud and actually it's quite an interesting story I think. So the back story is for this,

in 1968 Pringles went on sale, advertised as Pringles newfangled potato chips. That

was their full name. They're not called that anymore because of one of the five Pringles

dramas I'm going to be telling you about which doesn't even include being buried in

a Pringles can. So back story, 1939 I don't know if you know there was quite a big war

and crisps were deemed non-essential and they stopped making them. They brought them back

after the war and they were rubbish. They were really greasy, apparently there was loads

of air in the bags and all the crisps were broken.

This war sounds horrible.

I know and that was the worst thing that happened to anyone. So people really moaned

about the crisps. I'm sure they had other things to also moan about but they were like

we're miserable, let us have cheap tasty snacks. And so Proctor and Gamble they started trying

to invent something better. In 1956 they employed a chemist and mathematician Frederick T. Bauer

to invent a new kind of potato chip that was more palatable. He's been two years inventing

a saddle-shaped, the mathematical term is hyperbolic paraboloid, a saddle-shaped chip

that would go in a tubular can which meant there would be no air in it and they wouldn't

get broken but they tasted rubbish so he got moved onto it.

Why the saddle shape? Because you could just do a round in the same tube. You could absolutely

fit that in. I wonder what it gave you.

No, they're not stronger.

Are they maybe stronger?

They might be.

They're stronger than a flat for sure.

Okay and if they have to be that thin then...

There's quite a lot of buildings made in that shape for instance. There's a velodrome

in London for instance.

That's one.

Name 10.

Name 10 Pringle buildings.

I don't think I could name 10 buildings under this kind of pressure.

No, you're right.

You're right.

But quite often in buildings you'll have odd shapes and it will be to do with strength

and support and something. Maybe it was just aesthetically pleasing for a mathematician

to sort of go this shape will fit together.

I can give you a reason why they're stronger because I just thought of one.

I only want nine more.

It's because they have two arches. So you know an arch is a strong shape.

Yeah.

Now a Pringle has two arches. One goes in one direction and the other one goes in the opposite

direction and so you've got two arches which are both strong and they're both fighting

against each other so it makes it super strong.

That's really cool.

Can I ask you a question because you seem to know a lot about this. Is that the same

with feet?

It is exactly the same with feet.

So that's why feet.

Oh.

So there's your second Pringle shape.

There we go.

Our human feet.

That's why feet are so delicious.

Yeah.

Okay.

So they made one that was disgusting.

Yeah.

So he made one that was disgusting but it fitted together really neatly.

So he was moved to a different snack.

I couldn't find out which snack he was moved to.

Right.

But he was moved somewhere else.

But then a couple of years later they came back to his idea that was granted the painting

in 1971 and they came up with a new recipe which was paste of dehydrated potatoes, rice,

corn and wheat. They used a cookie cutter to make them that shape flat and then they

put them on a saddle thing that Bower had invented to give them the shape.

Oh.

I didn't know there was a saddle shape that they sat on to be baked to it.

I guess that is the saddle.

Yeah.

That's the saddle.

The Pringle is the Drocki.

Exactly.

Riding that saddle.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So lots and lots of work.

And he didn't just invent Pringles.

He also invented freeze dried ice cream.

That other snack were always popular.

Amazing.

He was really proud of his freeze dried ice cream.

Yeah.

Of course.

We didn't get buried in one.

No.

Is that like astronaut ice cream with the freeze dried?

No.

Basically it's just add milk.

Yeah.

And then you have ice cream.

Of course.

You have to freeze it as well.

You have to freeze it and add milk.

I'm not exactly sure what was remaining after that.

That's the same as making instant coffee.

I think that's completely fair enough.

Yeah.

Because you have to pour hot water in it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I like that.

We don't know who the original Pringle was because the original was Pringle's

newfangled potato chips and it was Pringle's apostrophe S.

Oh yes.

Yes.

There's a few theories.

They're all really boring.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I did think, oh, maybe this will be juicy.

And it's like, oh, there's a guy called Mark Pringle who's named as one of the people

on the paint and two people lived on Pringle road.

But they were going to call them Winkles, weren't they?

Were they?

Yeah.

I think they paid an advertising company to say, what should we call this thing?

The advertising company came back and said, let's call them Winkles.

Wow.

And they thought, no, that sounds a bit like a willy.

It's bad, so they're like, yeah.

Yeah.

And then they said, Frederick was cremated and then his ashes were put in there.

He wasn't buried.

Yeah.

Oh, everyone listening knew that, actually.

I did.

I did.

But I really liked that it was only most of him got into the tube.

Yeah.

I think there was a lot of him after the cremation.

So the overflow went in and earned, and then most of it went to the tube.

His son, Larry, was interviewed in Time Magazine all about it after he died, when did he die?

About 2008, I think.

2008 exactly.

Yeah.

Yeah.

He was interviewed by Time Magazine because that's, you know, it's important stuff.

And he said, Larry Bauer said, my siblings and I briefly debated what flavour to use,

but I said, look, we need to use the original.

Yeah.

Which I think is fair.

Yeah.

Not the original original, which tasted like shit.

Yeah.

I've written a list of all some of the Pringle flavours that are locally here, and these

are, a lot of them are special, so they weren't out in every country all the time.

Right.

But here's some.

Like it, ketchup, zesty lime and chilli, chilli cheese dog, pizza-licious, buffalo wing, low

fat, jalapeno, honey mustard, cheesy fries.

Oh, low fat.

Was that a flavour?

Slow fat.

Slow fat.

Oh.

Onion blossom, screaming dill pickle, pumpkin pie spice, soft-shelled crab, shrimp, which

was pink, seaweed, which was green, blueberry, hazelnut, lemon, sesame, mushroom soup, eggs

Benedict and hot, diggity dog.

Oh.

Diggity?

That's my one.

I have hot, diggity dog.

Thank you.

I'm going to see you at the Pringles restaurant and have to go through all those.

Yeah.

Every single person's going to order hot, diggity dog, aren't they?

Yeah, exactly.

Well, one of the smaller Pringle dramas, and I was so impressed by this.

Yeah.

They've had two flavours recalled because of Salmonella.

No.

Which is amazing.

With something, with such a low food content.

That was the raw chicken flavour, wasn't it?

Yeah.

Cheeseburger and taco night were both taken off the show.

Very nice.

Salmonella.

Well, did you know that, of all these flavours, quite a few of them are vegan options.

Oh, they were vegan.

Yeah.

So, has that changed now?

One of the dramas.

Oh.

Drama number...

I hope you're counting at home.

I've got it as drama number four.

Pringles added milk.

Ah.

And apparently, from the articles online, vegans were in uproar.

But I know quite a few vegans.

Right.

And I think they just choose other snacks now.

Right.

Yeah, yeah.

You're vegan, aren't you?

Yeah.

How many Pringles can you have?

Can you have the original?

I can't have any.

You can't have any?

No, they added milk to it as they used to be plant-based.

Right.

So, who is the adhesion of the flavour?

It's in that textured, hydrolyzed vegetable protein.

I've got another controversy.

What was it?

What was it, Pringles?

I'm saying dramas.

Pringles' dramas.

Right.

Because I don't want them to sue me.

Okay.

Because I've had too many court cases.

Oh, sure.

Yeah.

Wait, wait.

Let's try and print.

I say Sarah does have this.

Yeah, definitely.

Yeah.

This is...

It's a rumour that went around.

Oh.

Okay.

Was the Pringles creator cremated and sold to customers?

Oh.

And is he vegan?

I wonder if it's not vegan.

Yeah.

Every single can.

Humans, isn't it?

Yeah.

No, it's the answer, right?

The answer, no.

Yeah.

Snopes did a pretty quick debunk of that one.

Right.

But that did the rounds on the internet a while after he died.

Okay.

It would be...

Because you know how they always say that in every glass of water, like two of the molecules

had been weed out by Julius Caesar or something?

Yes.

I wonder how many, if you put one of his molecules in each crisp, that still wouldn't be that

many, right?

No, I would eat it if I knew that there was one molecule, which is such a small amount

of the founder, and it's kind of a tribute in a way.

Right.

Would you?

I would just pay more for it.

Oh, no, I wouldn't pay more for it.

I'm too skin-flinty to pay more for the friend recognition.

I so would pay more for it.

That's exactly the kind of thing I'd buy.

It's like how I tried to buy a Frisbee that had the ashes of the Frisbee creator inside.

Yeah, they did arrange.

The family did arrange of Frisbee infused with the ashes.

And that was the guy who invented the Frisbee.

Yeah.

Was it just as a tribute?

Yeah.

They put it in a load of different limited edition Frisbees.

Yeah, yeah, and there was a limited edition.

I don't know.

It's just as a fun thing.

That's fun, isn't it?

It's making me think, if I want to be buried in an interesting way, I'm going to have to

invent something.

Yeah.

Otherwise, people are never going to want to eat me.

One of your DVDs, maybe.

Yeah, something associate, like...

Yeah, if I do a Netflix special, and then they have to show my autopsy.

I don't like that.

Yeah.

Do you pay extra for that?

Yeah.

Yeah, for now, that was in prime.

I'll buy that.

So Pringle Guy.

Oh, yeah.

Pringle Man.

Oh, Mr. Pringle.

Mr. Pringle has a first name.

Yes.

Well, this is drama number five.

This is the final drama.

And it may be the best drama, actually.

Do you think?

I think it's the juiciest drama.

Well, you take the lead here.

I want to go through the boring dramas.

Yes.

And then let's come on to this one.

Okay.

Well, let's hold back.

I don't want us to, yeah, to peek.

I'm not sure you'll have.

Okay, great.

Sarah.

This is Simon Lee, 28, who was stopped by security in Asda after they mistook a bulge in his

pants for a can of Pringles.

Wow.

This is reported in the Metro.

I'd still go to see a doctor.

That's on my list of Simon Lee dramas.

Not Pringles.

Oh, my God.

What was it?

What was it?

It was just a fold in his pants.

So Simon Lee, 28, said, looking back, I could see the funny side.

It was just a cock up, no pun intended.

And the Spock's person from Asda said, no colleagues at this store are aware of this incident.

What?

So it wasn't an official member of staff.

It feels like he might have made it up and the Metro reported it.

But I don't want to get sued by Simon Lee, 28.

So let's call it a drama.

Yeah, I think there's definitely a drama.

Yeah.

So here's the legal dramas.

Drama number one, the US FDA in 1975 ruled that Pringles were not potato chips because

they're not from sliced potato, which is what people expect from potato chips.

So they couldn't call themselves the newfangled potato chips.

They could say they were potato chips made from dried potatoes.

They thought that was too long and then they changed their name to crisps.

Yes.

I found that really interesting.

And in fact, I think we might put it on this season of QI of like what do Americans call

this and put some Pringles on.

Yeah.

So that's a far fit of chips.

Also, you know, you can't call them crisps.

Oh, really?

Because this is the next court case.

In this country, though.

In this country.

Yeah.

And also then it got overruled.

So I actually don't know what you can call that.

It would be clangers going off all the time because the next court case in 2008, Procter

& Gamble lawyers successfully argued that they're not even crisps, even though it said crisps

on the packet.

They won it.

The potato content is only 42% they argued and they said their shape is not found in

nature.

Which I love.

It's so.

Does no one get their feet out and say, what are you talking about?

God, those are good lawyers.

So they were doing this to avoid paying VAT on crisps.

But then I think it went to appeal.

I think it went to the highest court in the land, which was then the appeal court.

Yeah.

And I think the judges there ruled that, no, that's ridiculous.

They're clearly crisps.

You have to pay your tax.

And I think it cost them about a hundred million quid.

And they'd already paid it because they knew they were going to lose.

Right.

So they did that.

Like, hey, we've been paying it proactively all of this time because I think it's, I mean,

tax dodging isn't a nice thing for a company to be very publicly doing.

Yeah.

And we're not suggesting that Pringles did that.

No, they didn't.

That's what I'm saying.

Oh, yes.

Sorry.

If they did want to send us somewhere, they're disgusting someone out of products.

Vegans can't even eat.

Ash infused, please.

Yeah.

I was excited at the time, the appeal court Lord Justice Jacob, I just like this thing.

He said, he said, there is more than enough potato content for it to be a reasonable view

that it is made from potato.

Wow.

Yeah.

Old fashioned legal.

58% then flowers.

So sort of wheat, corn.

Got it.

So no, it's a number of delicious other palatable ingredients that are legal.

Yeah.

Agreed.

Yeah.

So I think the fun is drama.

So some people because they weren't fine.

This is actually number two.

So people trace their popularity back to an advert in the 80s because in the originally

60s, 70s, they were flop.

People didn't really eat them.

Yeah.

But then Brad Pitt was in an advert them.

What?

Yes.

Brad Pitt didn't add.

You can go and watch it on YouTube, which I really recommend because it's really fun.

It's fun, but it's also it's just a young Brad Pitt.

Is it sexy?

He's so sexy.

Oh, okay.

It's about theft.

So I'm going to disagree with that.

Does he put some Pringles down his pants?

He's next straight out of Asda.

What period Pitt are we talking in?

Proto Pitt.

Proto Pitt.

Proto Pitt.

As in very Thelma and Louise.

Yeah.

It's his first break.

Although apparently he was 27 in the ad.

Yeah.

So it took him a while to get his big break.

His big break in Thelma and Louise.

It's really inspirational.

It's not too great later.

Well, actually, I'd argue it's Pringles.

Yeah.

Well, I think without the Pringles ad, he probably wouldn't have got Thelma and Louise.

Yeah.

Well, most actors at the beginning will survive off those kind of jobs.

Pringles.

Well, that's what the thing in the advert is.

You've got these boys in a car and all of them are wearing their sort of swimmers.

And they're driving.

But, oh my God, they've all got a tube of Pringles that's empty.

Like they've run out of Pringles.

Oh, no.

But then they use the Pringles cans as like binoculars.

And they see three hot chicks in their swimmers also driving in a car.

But they've got like a whole sack of Pringles with them.

Oh, wow.

So they all get out by the side of the road and they dance while eating Pringles.

It's kind of Pringles orgy.

Yeah.

So the girls turn around and the guys have stolen not only all of the remaining Pringles,

but their car.

Oh, wow.

Because they just drove off in their car.

Okay.

Once you twerk, you can't stop.

So let's come back to the final drama.

Here we go.

The name of Mr. P.

Mr. P.

Mr. P.

So it suddenly got revealed that he does have a first name.

No, his name is Julius.

Julius Pringles.

And people loved this, including Pringles.

So Pringles tweeted it, it was on one of the American talk shows.

People were really excited.

Like, oh my God, guess what that guy's name is?

It's Julius Pringle.

And then...

Well, it's a sort of early day Wikipedia hoax, basically.

Someone went into the Pringles page on Wikipedia, edited it in.

Someone saw that, that got passed around.

So two students in Chicago, they were watching American football.

One of the players was called Julius.

One of them asked the other, what do you think the Pringles guy's called?

And he said Julius Pringle.

They thought it was so funny.

One of them went into Wikipedia and changed it.

The other one was a moderator, went in and backed it up.

As all of this can be proven as well, because they've still got the same sort of app name.

So Justin Shillock, Platypus222.

There's records of him changing it on Wikipedia.

And on Twitter, there was a previous Facebook group where he was called Boris Pringle.

They went in and changed it to Julius Pringle.

So it was backed up everywhere.

And when Pringles was sold, Kellogg's just went back to the Wikipedia.

They said Procter & Gamble would never have fallen for it.

They knew that they hadn't called him Julius Pringle,

but they just...

But they ignored it.

Yeah, they said fine, it would be Julius.

There is a theory who Mr Pringle is.

What it is is there was one other person who was involved in the initial concept of Pringles in the making of it.

And it was a science fiction writer, a guy called Gene Wolfe,

who writes pretty incredible sci-fi novels.

I actually haven't heard any of the titles before, but they seem to be really well regarded.

And he was responsible for developing the machine that cooks.

I don't know if he invented the saddle, I think that must have been Bauer, but he did the machine.

And if you look at a photo of Gene Wolfe, some people have noticed that he's got the parted hair,

he's got the big mustache, he's got zero body.

And he looks very Pringles.

Is that right?

Yeah.

But that's a tiny theory.

I'll admit it.

It's one person's theory.

I haven't seen it.

Well, every theory starts with one person.

Exactly.

You know, relativity started with...

Is that true?

Is that what's standing on the shoulders of giant tweeters?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Did you know that Julius Pringle, because we might as well call him that now,

he once shaved off his mustache for my Vemba.

What did he look like?

Shaved it for my Vemba.

Yeah, yes, the opposite, but to raise money for my Vemba.

So he just had a white round face on the Pringles.

Is he a potato?

He shouldn't legally be, but is he...

Maybe he's 42% potato.

His dad was a potato.

His mum was some corn powder.

Yeah.

Do you want to hear a...

This isn't a drama.

It doesn't even merit the name of the drama, but I just...

I read a bit of a spicy takedown of Pringles.

Oh, yeah.

And this was on the website SiriusEats.com, so you know it's pucker.

The author wrote,

I've creepily watched a lot of folks eat Pringles and can say with absolutely no authority

that most people pop them in their mouths oriented as an upside down saddle, right?

So you're putting that...

Now, this mostly makes sense because it's the way they come out of the tube

and you get all the flavour on your tongue.

But the more enjoyable way is to eat them flipped over

so that you're working with a crispy saddle for your tongue.

I'm confused about which...

When you eat a Pringle, are you popping it on your tongue like a saddle?

I see, yeah.

Or are you popping it the other way out?

I do it the other way because of a retainer I had as a kid

and it feels like it slots into the top of your mouth quite nicely.

You do have taste buds at the top of your mouth as well.

That's powerful.

Not that many.

Oh, yeah, definitely.

You don't taste any of the hot, diggity dogs.

It was you guys who said there were taste buds on testicles.

That's how I eat them.

They're just that they're a nice little saddle for the testicles.

It's like that guy was in Asda.

Yeah, he was just showing them down there.

Put them in individually.

Delicious shoplifting.

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

Okay, my fact this week is that the world's first IVF clinic

was opened in a town called Bourne.

I love it.

Brilliant.

I love it.

We never heard that.

I can't believe it.

I can't believe I've never heard it.

So this was, we're talking 1978, the first IVF baby, Louise Brown in Oldham.

And just after it happened, the NHS kind of refused to support the service.

So it's really controversial.

You know, we might get to it later, but a lot of people did not like the idea at all.

Can I quickly ask, is it more or less controversial than Mr Pringle's first name?

I'm not sure how many dramas we're going to get to in IVF.

But yeah, so the NHS wouldn't support them and they didn't know what to do.

They had to find a building where they could start up their own clinic.

And they found this old Jacobean manor called Bourne Hall, which I think is in Cambridgeshire.

And they started the IVS centre there and you know, many thousands of babies were born there.

And it's just fun names.

So where did you say Bourne is?

I think it's in Cambridgeshire.

There's another nice coincidence, which is that the first IVF baby born was Louise Brown.

And Brown is, with one letter different, an anagram for Bourne,

except of course that she was born in Oldham, which is somewhere else.

And what's the opposite of old in Oldham?

Young, what are babies?

Oh my God.

Come on, it's all coming together, I think.

See, sometimes you go sit back and just watch the magic.

Beautiful.

Yeah, she's a pretty amazing character, Louise Brown,

because she's become the spokesperson really for what a success it is.

And she goes all over the world basically doing conferences.

So does her sister, because her sister, who is also an IVF baby, was the 40th born baby.

And then the first ever person to have a baby off the back of being an IVF baby as well.

Has sister had children first, did she?

Yeah, but Louise Brown did as well.

Because I think it's hard enough being sort of a middle child, let alone.

Yeah, your eldest sibling's like, oh my God, a medical miracle.

Oh, Andrew, how do you as well, did they?

One thing about Bourne, is it called Bourne House?

Bourne Hall, sorry, yeah.

They were there, the pioneers of IVF, partly thanks to the Daily Mail.

Were they?

This is a very interesting thing, so yeah.

You're always talking about how much you love the Daily Mail.

I didn't cram it in again.

Every episode we edit out an extended round about how great the Daily Mail is.

But the pioneers, specifically two doctors called Steptoe and Edwards,

the editor of the Daily Mail got in touch and promised help,

and helped them to look for premises.

And the mail originally purchased Bourne Hall, the Jacobean House,

and they appointed architects and surveyors, because it needed lots of work

to turn it from a crumbling manor house into an IVF clinic.

But then in 1979 they pulled out, because apparently the venture was too risky.

So it's not an unblemished success story for the Daily Mail, unlike most of them.

And then Steptoe and Edwards raised money and bought it themselves.

And Jean Purdy as well.

Yeah, we've got to bring her into the story, because she has been left off.

I'm not saying Andy, you're leaving her out, but you did.

And I think it's time to bring Jean Purdy back into the story permanently.

She was a pretty amazing character, and by all accounts,

this wouldn't have happened without her, to the point where many people see her as

the nurse who was working on it.

Therefore, if a plaque was ever put up about them,

it would have the two names of the doctors, and then she would be linked into,

and all the supporting staff.

And famously Edwards, the doctor who was still alive,

absolutely was refusing to have anything to do with it,

unless they put Purdy's name on it,

saying that I feel strongly about the inclusion of the names of the people

who helped with the conception of Louise Brown.

I feel especially about Jean Purdy, who travelled to Oldham with me for ten years

and contributed as much as I did to the project.

Indeed, I regard her as an equal contributor to Patrick Steptoe and myself.

And there was a point when Jean Purdy's mum got ill,

and they just stopped everything, because they couldn't do it without her for months.

So she was so integral to this thing.

Andy.

Because she wasn't a doctor, that's why people overlooked the fact that she was involved in the whole process.

She found the hall, she's the one who located it in the first place.

And then she died before they gave the Nobel Prize,

so she wasn't allowed to get a Nobel Prize, because you can't if you're dead.

And Steptoe as well, right? So it was just Edwards who ended up collecting it.

And it was controversial, wasn't it?

It was sort of like everyone, particularly within the religious faction,

sort of thought, are you going to give birth to a soulless baby?

Well, I did IVF, and they still now, because there's two different kinds of IVF.

You have IVF or you have ICSI, which is where your partner for some reason has low sperm count or substandard sperm.

There's probably a better term for it than substandard.

Your partner's got really weird sperms.

What they do is they pair them up rather than letting the sperm swim and choose.

And when they do that, they say, obviously some people have real problems with that,

because it doesn't allow the accident of nature for them to choose.

So even within IVF, there are still frontiers where people go, oh, that's so clinical.

Wow, yeah.

Interesting.

I mean, I can't believe they're real, these things, but what are they?

They're micro syringes.

I'm going to get them all micro needles, which they use to inject a single sperm into the centre of an egg.

Yeah.

It's not just introducing them anymore.

Well, they do both.

I think they do both.

Do they make a needle that's small enough to inject an individual sperm?

Probably with microscopes.

Probably.

Actually, no, sir.

I think it's an old craftsman called Luigi who's got a very steady hand.

I think that's it.

Yeah.

So when she was born, she was called the test tube baby.

And she was made in a test tube.

It's a Petri dish.

Yeah.

So test tube is the term that's the media throughout there, which we've all kind of kept going.

But yeah, it's Petri dishes.

And she was saying that there was all that stuff.

So is she going to have no soul?

Are they making Frankenbabies?

All that sort of stuff.

But there was a lot of love as well.

And a lot of people were writing anonymous letters in just sending them support.

When she returned to her hometown after coming out of hospital, the streets were blocked

and lined with people from her town and a hundred reporters on the streets.

And they all stood out there like it was like the Queen coming.

You know, you know, it was a huge showing.

And one of the people who was standing in the crowd was a young boy called Wesley Mollander

who would go on to become a bouncer and then one day, Louise Brown's husband.

So.

Oh, really?

Yeah.

I'm not going to say you wouldn't let her in.

Sorry.

You need a soul if you could fit in here, I'm sorry.

It would be so great to be like Louise Brown.

Six or six and a half, I believe, if I remember exactly when we had that parade.

Wow.

But yeah, he was seven years old at the time watching his future wife be brought home.

That was crazy.

Well, the birth was completely met.

The police officers lining the corridor in hospital where Louise Brown's mum gave birth

because it was so controversial.

And the birth had to be filmed to show there was actual documentary evidence

that this baby belongs to this mother and is real.

She had the baby.

It's Louise herself when she was a newborn, you know, they normally have what do they do

about five tests when you newborn baby just to make sure.

Oh, the ears, the eyes.

Yeah, the colour of the skin.

Yeah.

Louise Brown had to have 60 tests before her mum could hold her.

Wow.

It was really just testing absolutely every aspect to make sure this is a completely healthy baby.

But for the first time, you would be a bit like, oh my God, this can't just be,

it can't just flip and made a human, have we?

Yeah.

You would, part of you would be like double check that everything's there.

And it is an incredible thing.

People who don't go through IVF, I know they think about it as like very medicalised,

but when you have your embryo transfer, you watch it on an ultrasound.

So you see the little globule of water that contains the embryo sort of being inserted inside you

and your partner can be there and they give you an ultrasound picture.

Wow.

So like with our son Theodore, we've known him since he was five days old.

Wow.

Wow.

And actually, I feel really romantic about it as well.

Yeah.

As well as like that, oh my God, it's so incredible they can help you.

Also, it's really smooth running now.

Yeah.

And when you, sorry, when you have that process you described,

is the old Italian craftsman, is he in the room?

Well, he has to be.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Sorry, yeah.

Where's that needle?

Only he has the dexterous fingers that can pick the needle out of you.

It will be sad when he dies.

And he wants to be buried in a tiny needle.

Yeah.

Steptoe was in a shipwreck.

Was he?

Was he?

Really?

Yeah.

And a proper full-off shipwreck.

So he was born in 1913 and he was a naval surgeon during the Second World War.

Uh-oh, he was the right age for that.

And his ship was off Crete and the Germans captured it.

Well, they sunk it, captured it and he became a prisoner of war.

Right.

Wow.

And then he helped, he helped other prisoners escape while he was in a German prisoner of

war camp in Crete.

Cool.

And then he was put in solitary confinement for that.

What a life.

Sounds great.

What a life.

Yeah.

Some of our things on conception in general.

Yeah.

So Elizabeth Christine was a wife of Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI.

And they wanted a male heir.

And they decided to do that.

They prescribed her a gluttonous diet, large amounts of alcohol, and to spend all day looking

at erotic paintings of men.

Oh.

She was like, all right.

If you think it'll work.

Wow.

People say a thing now, which I don't think is based on that much evidence, but about

the gender of the sperm making a difference at how fast they swim.

So like early in your ovulation, if you want a boy and late in the ovulation, if you want

a girl.

Oh, right.

Yeah.

What?

Because females sperm are slower swimmers.

Or they live longer or something.

There's something to do with the weight.

I don't think it's based on that much evidence.

It's like one of those old wives tales when people like you.

And also the old thing about wearing boxes or briefs or that thing, there was a recent

study and they found there was no appreciable difference in scrotal temperature in men who

were briefs and boxes.

Although the NHS kind of says, even though it doesn't seem to affect sperm quantity,

you may want to wear loose fitting underwear.

So the NHS kind of, you know, hedge their bets a little bit.

But according to the studies, it doesn't make any difference.

But they do say the thing about hot baths and showers is a thing that...

Well, that would, like a hot bath would change the temperature.

Change your core body temperature.

I guess the thing is that testicles are really clever at removing themselves from the body

when they need to cool down a little bit.

And I think they thought with pants, it would mean they couldn't do that because they'd

be stuck there.

But with a bath being so much hotter, I mean, they can't jump out.

What you need is one of those bath rest.

You know the things that go across the bath?

Yes.

They'll put a tray of food.

They'll be someone in the bath right now.

Just tie across a little net and put the nuts in that.

That helps.

I don't know.

Because these guys know this, but when we were trying for our third child,

my wife went to a acupuncturist because she thought we weren't conceiving.

And she said, does your husband take hot baths?

Yeah.

And she said, does your husband take hot baths?

And she said, yeah, because I love hot baths.

She said, well, that's the problem.

It's his fault.

It's all his fault.

And then she booked me a sperm test.

The acupuncturist just booked it for me.

And Finella was like, well, you got to go.

So I went and I did the thing.

And I was furious that I was going to do this thing off the back of the acupuncturist.

Then I wrote to them and said, where are my results?

And they said, well, we sent it to the acupuncturist.

So she then had my results.

And she's been telling a GDPR issue.

I know.

She opened yours.

She didn't open them.

And she's been...

This is why alternative medicine doesn't have got to practice.

And she'd been giving Finella crap for weeks, like saying, your husband, this is your husband's fault.

This is all your husband's fault.

And Finella was getting angry at me.

You and your buddy Bas have been trying for ages.

So she opens it up.

Finella calls her up and says, can we get the results?

And she says, I've been doing this for 20 years.

In all my time, I've never seen such strong sperm results in my life.

He is a super sperm holder.

So inappropriate though, even though that's a compliment.

I couldn't believe it anyway.

You know having a high sperm count can be bad for conceiving as well.

And that's because you're more likely to get two sperms that go in the egg at the same time.

And obviously, I think that can make twins, but it can also cause problems.

Too many people at a cocktail party, no one enjoys it.

Just talking over each other.

You need just the right number.

But it's never happened at any of my parties.

I'm lucky to get four.

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

My fact is that there is only one guy in Dijon who makes mustard.

And he's busy.

Any girls who do it?

I don't know.

And did you find this out from the Daily Mail?

Sorry, I got all my facts on the Daily Mail.

No, actually, I found this out from Atlas Obscura, and it's about a man whose name is Nicholas Chavie.

And since 2009, he's been the only muta die in Dijon.

And he wasn't even born to it.

He's made himself a mustard maker.

Is anyone born into mustard?

There must have been some mustard dynasties.

The Coleman family, maybe, I don't know.

But he used to work in IT.

And then he has a tiny boutique.

It's not a lot of Dijon mustard that gets made in Dijon.

Are you allowed to call it Dijon if it's not made in Dijon?

You are allowed to call it Dijon if it's not made in Dijon.

It's sparkling horseradish.

In fact, there are no rules about whether you can call something Dijon.

Is that right?

Yeah, it's a wild west for Dijon mustard.

We can't say anything as Dijon mustard.

You can call it any mustard Dijon.

So it's a recipe rather than some local prodges.

Interesting.

So there's Grey Poupon, which you might have heard of.

What?

That's a famous Dijon mustard.

And that's based in the USA, I think, since the 1940s.

Did you call it Grey Poupon?

Grey Poupon, to rhyme with coupon.

Have you not heard of Grey Poupon?

I have, yeah.

It's one of the most famous musters in the world,

but only because from about...

Well, no, it's basically because it's in so many rap songs.

There's a real thing where lots of rappers,

from about the early noughties, they started mentioning...

I'm going to go all Pringle buildings here.

I want 10 rappers.

Little Poupon.

Biggie Great.

The Wu-Tang Clan.

Kanye West.

Ghostface killer.

Buster Rhymes.

Kendrick Lamar.

I could go on with that.

Wow, okay, okay.

There's a brilliant Vox piece,

where it was noted by a writer called Estelle Caswell.

I think she writes for Vox,

or she writes for Vox at the time.

And she basically made a supercut

of Grey Poupon references in rap songs.

It seems to be the thing that you mentioned,

if you want to say...

I think, I mean, it's just a mustard.

It's just a slightly more expensive than normal mustard.

Yeah, who knows?

Not rap, but have you heard of DJ Mustard?

No.

DJ Mustard, big DJ.

Record producer.

Yeah, yeah, he's worked with a lot of famous people.

Is it a joke about Dijon?

Well, why do you think he's called DJ Mustard?

Because Dijon contains DJ.

Oh, no.

He's as keen as mustard.

That's great work ethic.

Cutting the mustard?

There's lots of stuff going on.

The mustard must have other slang.

Yeah, well, it's not that.

It is that his name is Dijon.

His first name.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's an unusual name.

That's an unusual name,

but that's certainly not.

Mustard.

Dijon Mustard.

Are they mispronouncing Dijon?

I don't know how he's pronouncing it,

but possibly.

Can we talk about Mustard?

Yeah.

The Romans were the first to eat it,

but the Greeks had it,

and they would use it medically.

They would rub it on the chest for bronchitis.

If your baby had sore teeth,

they might rub it on the teeth,

and Pythagoras took it against scorpion stings.

Yeah, my friend,

I was talking to my friend Ed about mustard the other day,

and he said that his dad used to put it on his horse's legs.

What, as a condiment?

No, he said a racehorse

when they've got leg muscle inflammation,

and this was during the 70s and 80s,

I guess, is when he was doing it.

Yeah, you'd mix it with linseed,

and you'd come free with water,

you'd make a paste,

then you'd put it on,

and you'd bandage up.

And the poor horse is like,

are you basting me?

Pope John XII appointed his nephew

as the grand Mustardier to the Pope.

Oh, what a name.

He was the Pope's mustard maker,

and the Pope's mustard maker

became a word for someone who was quite pompous,

and they had a pointless role in society.

That was great.

Yeah, I was supposed like someone

who would give your car a ticket,

and you would call them a Pope's mustard maker.

Oh, okay.

I want to stick out the track.

I think they've got an important role in society.

Oh, no, I do agree,

but I'm thinking that you might say it

because you're upset with them.

But that's the third missing mustard phrase.

We've got cutting the mustard,

Keena's mustard,

and you're the Pope's mustard maker.

And it's a tragedy that that one

dropped out of circulation,

because I think it's a really good phrase.

I think it sounds too much

like a euphemism.

Yeah, you're right.

And you said it's a nephew

who made his mustard maker.

It was his nephew,

basically.

It wasn't the Pope's nephew thing.

It was often their illegitimate sons,

who they...

That's a good point.

They would call them nephews.

Yes, I don't know if this is that in this case.

But they're not supposed to use

their mustard maker.

Oh, my God.

That's now the fourth phrase.

The guy in Asda thought it was my mustard maker,

but it was actually kind of pringles.

Oh, that's horrible.

France had a huge mustard crisis last year.

Okay.

Yeah, they ran out of mustard.

They ran out almost completely of mustard.

Oh, really?

Not.

French people eat a kilo of mustard each,

I read, somewhere.

Okay, right.

Oh, yeah.

Sorry.

Which is a...

That's a lot, though.

That's a good few jars per person per year.

You've got to be shifting it to get through that.

But basically, 80% of the seeds used

in French mustard are from Canada.

Yeah.

And they had a terrible summer of, you know,

weather failures and things like that.

Crops all suffered.

And France uses 35,000 tons of mustard seeds.

Right.

To make us mustard.

It's a mad amount.

And the other thing was that a lot of the yellow mustard seeds

come from Ukraine and Russia.

And so that meant there was a shortage in yellow mustard

for people like the Germans and the British.

And so the Germans and the British started eating Dijon,

and that meant that the French didn't have any Dijon.

Exactly.

It's like, man.

Okay, I knew they were going to blame it on us somehow.

In the 14th century, the Duke of Burgundy held a gala

where the guests ate 85 gallons of mustard in a single sitting.

With what?

Did they say with what?

It really doesn't say this was...

It must have been like a fondue.

They just used it with bread to make stuff.

Oh, God.

How much of that was left on the side of the plate

after they finished their actual meals?

It was a single sentence in the book,

Gastroobscura, which is made by the same people

who do have a subscura.

Didn't say any more, and I couldn't find anything about it.

But that's a lot.

It didn't even say how many guests there were, so...

Well, yeah, it's one of Andy's parties.

Yeah.

That's a lot for guests.

Okay, it is time for our final fact of the show,

and that is my fact.

My fact this week is that the poet W. B. Yates

once had a vasectomy to cure his writer's block.

So...

Oh.

There wouldn't have been much of a second coming for him.

Is that one of his books?

It's his most famous poem.

And, you know, if that stays in,

and it's a big if clearly at this stage,

there'll be a few people who really like that.

Yeah, yeah.

Oh, I'll keep it in.

Yeah, yeah.

Actually, you can still orgasm if you've had a vasectomy.

I really love the reference to the poem, though.

Podcast at qi.parg, do you want to make that point?

I was thinking to cure his writer's block,

they bored his writer's cock.

Mmm.

Spoonerism.

No, not technically in the penis.

Are you sort of really like this podcast?

Have you learned out of facts or something?

Is it just you in the inbox of the series?

It's on Kenny.

So, I got this fact from someone called Georgia Granger.

She's got a PhD in the history of vasectomy.

You can find her on Twitter at atsniphist,

which is, so she does a lot of vasectomy facts on there.

And yeah, she was, I asked her,

what's the most interesting thing that you know about vasectomies?

And she said about Yates and how he did this.

And this used to be a thing.

Why are you googling vasectomies, Dan?

The super spam.

I've got to stop it somehow.

There is no vasectomy strong enough.

We don't understand.

These tubes appear to have been unnotted from the inside.

The acupuncturist is shaking it.

20 years.

Yeah, so this used to be a thing that it was believed.

These are sort of, I guess, partial vasectomies.

And the idea was that there was rejuvenation.

And it was written about in the 1920s.

And the idea was by sort of taking the tubes and tying them up,

we'd do something to the production of the male hormone,

and that would be increased and that would go back into the body

and sort of revitalize it.

It's kind of like Doctor Who getting another regeneration.

It was kind of like a whole new life, basically.

And he was quite old, Yates, when he had this.

He was 68 slash 69 years old when he had it.

And he called it his second puberty,

because it kind of really did work for him,

particularly on the creative side.

His wife said his writing was just extraordinary

from that point on.

Whether or not that's a placebo or whatever.

Psychosomatic.

Yeah, but it did the job.

Having an operation, when your body recovers from pain,

you quite often do feel rejuvenated.

So it could just be having a sort of minor procedure,

even that in itself.

Yeah.

Wow, so for all writers blocked, just have...

No, I'm not going to recommend it,

because I think that whole thing,

like men losing their life force through ejaculation

kind of goes around and around in history.

Does it really? Yeah.

So similar kind of time when they were sewing monkeys testicles

onto people.

Yes, this is the same time.

Yes, to give them extra, again, the same theory,

extra sort of male life force.

The guy behind this procedure,

Austrian Dr. Eugen Steinach,

that's the procedure that's called being Steinach.

He made extraordinary claims for his procedure.

Obviously, so many of these doctors did.

So just a quote from one piece about this.

He claimed his patients changed from feeble,

parched, dribbling drones to men of vigorous bloom

who threw away their glasses, shaved twice a day,

dragged loads up to 220 pounds,

and even indulged in such youthful follies

as buying land in Florida.

That's the most virile thing you can do.

That's what young people do by land in Florida,

because that's not what I've heard.

How interesting.

But the other side of this, so Sigmund Freud,

again, similar kind of time,

was doing the same to women with clitorectomies.

Yes.

That same thing of...

I was moving them, wasn't it?

It was...

Moving them in terms of orgasms,

but also lots of people had them removed

from that same sort of argument.

Well, Freud is one of the people

who, when Yates was looking into it,

was amongst the list of notables

who had had the vasectomy done

in order to help him,

and he did it for...

He had jaw cancer,

which they thought that that would help with that,

as well as other things of the...

He kept smoking, unfortunately.

Did he?

Which is probably the reason he had jaw cancer in the health place.

I wonder if they want to know that at the time, right, I guess?

No, I don't think it would have been

conclusively proven.

Yeah.

Wow.

Yates did loads of sort of spooky spiritual stuff,

didn't he?

He's awesome.

That's why we're talking about him.

That's why we're talking about him, really.

Yeah, I mean, he was someone

who was very closely associated with the world

of Alistair Crowley and all that sort of stuff,

and he was very much part of a...

Yeah, a movement, which was...

Was it Blavatsky?

Was he part of the Theosophical Society?

Yeah.

Which is...

She was this extraordinary character,

Madame Blavatsky, who was an occult leader,

and she just took under her wing

all of these big thinkers of the time,

and she had theories about Atlantis

and our origin stories and so on,

and her sort of disciples were everyone from

Crowley through to Rudolf Steiner.

You know, the schooling education I had

was as a result of Blavatsky, basically,

and what Steiner took from that and built on it.

And Yates was someone else who very much believed in it.

Yeah, she claimed to have gone to Tibet

and had these llamas who she'd met,

and they could send her ideas through astral projection.

They could move from one place to another,

but they could also send her thoughts into her head

so that she could kind of speak to the dead

or tell what the future's going to be,

tell all sorts of stuff like that.

And there was lots of things like seances

where letters would fly around and all that kind of stuff.

And Yates was involved with this mob.

Yeah, he loved it.

But even when he turned up,

she'd already been theoretically discredited at that time.

So one of her acolytes had gone to the papers

and given them all the tricks of what she used to do

to make things fly around the room.

And it was in...

It might have even been the Daily Mail, but it was in...

You don't know about it, does it?

He wouldn't write it down because it involved a woman.

Oh, my God!

But yeah, I think at that stage,

it's the kind of thing where you double down,

even when things have been debunked,

if it's what you believe in,

you're kind of like,

well, they would say that they're trying to stop us from doing it.

Yates is...

I don't always approve of the thing of looking at...

I think some writers exclusively through their romantic lives,

you know, as in that can be a bit reductive.

But Yates' sex life was extraordinary.

I mean, strange, really weird.

He proposed to an Irish woman.

She was a politician and she was called Maud Gawne,

and she was later a really big Irish independence movement leader.

He proposed to her,

and he'd been in love with her for about 20 years at this point.

She said, absolutely not.

Then he proposed immediately, like three weeks later,

to her daughter,

second rejection,

then said, fine, never mind that,

and then immediately proposed to someone else

who said yes,

Georgie Hyde-Liz,

and they got married,

I think, kind of within a few weeks of that.

Well, part of the reason was that this...

I think it was Blavatsky, or someone like that,

had told him the best time for him to get married,

or in fact, he would get married that year,

and so he was like,

well, okay, well, let's go through the list.

That's what they say about marriage, don't they?

It's not about the person, it's about the date.

It's about the spiritualist who's told you it's this year.

You've got a suit, you've booked the guest.

But the relationship with Maud Gunn was really interesting,

and Maud Gunn absolutely was a character.

She had a second life in Paris,

which is why she turned him down all these times,

but they did get married in 1898,

but they got married telepathically.

They had a shared vision

where they kind of together imagined getting married

on the astral plane.

It was cheaper, wasn't it, on the astral plane?

The rooms are bigger.

Yeah, you can have more guests.

It was a good idea.

But yeah, they did do that.

So they had done it, but not legally.

That's not legally binding.

But she, oh my God, Maud Gunn.

I mean, there's one story,

and I'm sure you guys have read this or possibly not,

so she was part of, as we now know,

the astral plane, part of this mysticism stuff.

She had a son, a little boy,

who sadly passed away when he was very young,

he was two years old,

and she decided that she was going to force reincarnation,

him back into existence.

And the way of doing that is she went to,

she had a sort of place built for her son, the mausoleum,

and she went inside with the partner

who she had had George with,

and they went down and by the coffin of her little son,

they had sex, because the idea was to conceive

while being next to the coffin

would force the spirit and soul into the new child.

This is not like early IVF, actually.

So, incredibly, she did conceive.

Like nine months later, the baby was born,

so they assume from stories that this was the point

that this happened, and then,

and the daughter's name was Izzult,

they had a terrible relationship with each other,

I guess because of a slightly fracturous beginning

where she sort of was treating her

as if she was the reincarnated son,

and it became quite clear that she wasn't.

Well, the other thing is that Izzult was the daughter

who Yates proposed to.

Proposed to, yeah.

So, Yates, we haven't said properly

who, if anyone doesn't know, outside of that poem

that Andy referenced right at the top.

Anyone got it from that, though.

But he was an amazing writer, as a poet.

He got the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1923.

He was a sort of Oxford University-honored guy.

He was an amazing character who still held up,

and then there's all this sort of...

Irish, of course.

Irish, of course.

And he came from an amazing family,

and his brother was an Olympian.

He got an Olympic silver medal,

the first that Ireland ever got, for swimming,

which is amazing.

That's cool.

And it's not swimming the event.

It was a painting that he painted called swimming

because this was back when you could win

Olympic medals for paintings.

That's so funny.

Yeah, and so it's...

I'm an Olympic swimmer.

You don't look like an Olympic swimmer.

What are you trying?

Just clinging onto his painting.

Oh, no!

And they were a very creative family.

He had two sisters who were also...

They were very artistic.

They're sort of getting a second, you know,

kind of like a Purdy from IVF fame,

or lack of fame, getting their moment now

because they were very influential on Ireland,

being in its own state.

And Yates kind of half-wasn't, half-wasn't as well, wasn't he?

I think he was influenced by Morgan

and really wanted to be involved with nationalism

when he was with her, but I think also,

when he wasn't with her anymore,

he wasn't that fussed about anything.

Yeah, and she, I think...

It's kind of weird.

She drifted in a very radical direction.

Yeah.

And I think by the time that he ended up proposing to her

in this realm, she was really, you know,

very hard-line and very radical,

and she was also apparently a chloroform addict.

Oh.

A little bit much for him.

So when he proposed to Maud, to the mother,

he added quite detailed conditions,

which basically ensured he would get a no from her.

Really?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's interesting.

Plus out the chloroform.

But he felt, yeah, but he felt he had to propose

because I think she had been with another partner

who, and then they were not together anymore,

and he sort of felt it was incumbent on him to propose.

How interesting.

Just on the marriage that Yates ended up having with Georgie,

or George, as he called her,

they were also involved in the spiritual stuff,

because the honeymoon was going incredibly badly.

I mean, really badly.

If he's proposed to two other women in the previous month,

it's not incredibly surprising that the honeymoon

is going to go quite poorly.

Side note, it was in the 100-acre wood, which is cool.

Oh, is it?

Yeah.

Or the wood, the Ashdown Forest, it's called,

which was later the 100-acre wood of AML.

How could you have a bad honeymoon there?

I know.

Two sticks every day?

Stole all their honey on the first morning,

on the nightmare.

And basically, even on honeymoon,

he was writing letters to Izald.

So this is not a good sign for the proposal of honeymoon.

Oh, god.

And I know, it's like four days in.

It's almost like you shouldn't listen to psychics.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Psychics, actually puncturists.

I mean, careful when you get your advice, basically.

And then, but then she turned, she turned it round.

She said, let's try some automatic writing.

You know, where the spirits will guide my hand

and we'll just see what comes out.

And she said a bit later on that it had been fake, her word.

And then she repented and recanted using that word.

But basically, it turned the corner for the entire marriage

and it turned what was a very unpromising marriage,

obviously, four days in.

Together, they wrote 4,000 pages

in the first three years of marriage.

And the spirits seem to be really interested in him getting over Maud.

And they suggested diet tips for him.

They suggested ways to spice up their sex life.

This is such a clever tactic.

The spirits that they told him,

they told them when George was ovulating,

so they would have better odds of conceiving.

I mean, the spirits were unbelievably useful.

Yeah, apparently, there was a bit that was stressing

the husband's duty to give his wife sexual satisfaction.

Oh, my god.

She's an absolute genius.

She's an absolute genius.

Which somewhere pointed out that these messengers

must have been reading a book that was actually published at the time

by Mary Stopes, which is called Married Love,

which had that exact thing about sexual satisfaction

for the wife.

So, just on writer's block,

as this was what Yates was trying to deal with in the first place,

I found the person who I think

may have had the worst writer's block in history,

a writer for The New Yorker,

very successful, well-known writer,

who was called Joseph Mitchell,

and for 32 years,

he didn't write a single article.

He turned up every day to work at The New Yorker,

and he didn't write anything.

He was working on a memoir, but he couldn't get past Chapter 3.

Oh, no.

I think just skip onto Chapter 4 and come back to it.

Yeah, I think that's fair.

But there's a theory that he stopped because of

someone being nice about him.

Someone wrote that he was the greatest living master

of the English declarative sentence,

and that just clamped him up.

Oh, no. I know.

You should have checked his app messages.

Read your tweets.

Read the comments under your articles.

Okay, that's it. That is all of our facts.

Thank you so much for listening.

If you'd like to get in contact with any of us

about the things that we have said over the course of this podcast,

we can all be found on our Twitter accounts.

I'm on at Shrybland, James.

I'm Andy. And Andrew Hunter M.

And Sarah. At Sarah Pasco.

And you can also go to our group account,

which is at no such thing, or our website,

no such thing as a fish.com.

All of our previous episodes are up there,

but don't bother going to our website this week.

There's way more important websites to go to.

Sarahontour.com, or sarahpasco.co.uk,

you'll find links to all of the upcoming

legs of tours in the UK

that Sarah is doing,

and she's also going to Australia very soon.

So if you're living over there, make sure to check it out

in her show.

Anything else, Sarah, to mention?

I don't have an H on Sarah.

There's no H on Sarah. At Sarah S8.

R.A. Pasco.

For the Twitter, and then apply that

to the relevant internet domains.

Okay, we'll be back again next week.

We'll see you then. Goodbye.

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.

Dan, James, Andrew and Sara Pascoe discuss IVF births, WB Yeats, Mr. J Pringle, and DJ Mustard. 



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