No Such Thing As A Fish: 470: No Such Thing As A Walking Stick Full of Bagels

Hi everybody, Andy here. Just before we start this week's show, we have two exciting announcements

to make. The first is about who our special guest is this week. She is a brilliant Canadian

writer, screenwriter, showrunner, now also a first time author. She is Monica Heisey

and her debut novel, Really Good Actually is out within the last few weeks and it is

unsurprisingly really good actually. It's all about the life and travails of a woman

who has become a surprisingly young divorcee. It is extremely funny. It's kind of, you

know, accidentally snort milk out of your nose funny. It's great. Highly recommended.

So we hope you enjoy the show. Monica was great as you will hear shortly. The second

announcement we have to make is that we are doing a live show of no such thing as a fish.

Very exciting. We are going to be at the Hallowed British Library in London. They are having

a season all about animals and as part of that we are doing a show called Fantastic Beasts.

It's going to be Dan, James, myself and a special guest to be announced. It's going

to be on the 21st of April and if you don't live anywhere near the British Library there

is also going to be a streamed version of it. So just go to no such thing as a fish.com

slash live. You will see there the tickets are available for our British Library show.

But check it out. Okay, that's it. That's all of the announcements on with the show.

Hello and welcome to another episode of no such thing as a fish, a weekly podcast coming

to you from four undisclosed locations in the UK. My name is Dan Schreiber. I am sitting

here with James Harkin, Andrew Hunter Murray and Monica Heisei and once again we have gathered

around the microphones with our four favorite facts from the last seven days and in a particular

order here we go. Starting with fact number one that is Monica. So my fact is that in

ancient Hebrew times men could get a divorce if their wife had been alone in a room with

another man. And I was really interested in this fact because my divorce lawyer told me

that this may still be true. I couldn't find anything backing up, but she basically said

if he could prove that a man and a woman had been alone together in a room for more than

an hour it could be reasonably assumed legally that adultery had occurred. I think we should

just say that we're not all in the same room at the moment. I think that's very important

to bring up. I think people were a bit desperate because it used to be that you could only

get divorced for five reasons, one of which was adultery. And so I think people just could

stretch it a bit to be really just trying to get out. The history of what you needed

to say or allege or agree that you had been doing to get divorced is absolutely mad. For

a long time it was only adultery or adultery was the only substantial grounds and then

they introduced other ones a bit later on. But there was one rule where if one of you

had committed adultery then your partner could divorce you. But if you both had, they might

not be able to because legally the divorce was kind of an acknowledgement that one person

had committed wrong with the other was being like an eye for an eye and a shag for a shag.

And if you'd both done it then and you weren't allowed to lie saying, oh, I've committed adultery

elite, adulterally. Sorry, that's a Ned Flanders version of adultery. You weren't allowed

to lie saying you'd committed adultery. That's perjury. So they made it very, very difficult.

Well, that's religion for you. And also it was a very specific definition as well.

Adultery legally is a married person having full sex with someone of the opposite gender.

So if your husband had a gay affair and you were a woman, you couldn't sue him for divorce

on grounds of adultery, but you could sue him for unreasonable behavior.

Oh, really? Yeah. Wow. This thing in the Jewish law, this is from the Mishnah, which

is the oldest written question of Jewish oral traditions. And the thing is that because

if the woman had been in a room with another man, in theory, there can't be any other witnesses,

right? Because it's basically one person's word against another person's word. And okay,

you have the perjury thing. But what they would do is they would give you the ordeal

of bitter water. And this was to tell if you were telling the truth or not. So they would

give the woman some water with some dust in it. And it's not really clear what the dust

is. It might be bits of barley, it might be bits of something else. And the idea is if

the woman drinks it and the water is so bitter that she has to like spit it out. Then that

proves that she was in the wrong.

God, it's like witch trials.

A little bit like that. It's a trial by ordeal, there we go.

I feel like I give myself this test every morning when I try for one sip of the water

that's been out by my bedside table all night.

I'll tell you, the worst divorce situation I read about in this research was to do with

if you were divorcing the king of Thailand.

The problem is, is that if you go to divorce the king of Thailand, you have to obviously

accuse the king of Thailand of reasons for the divorce. Unfortunately, by law in Thailand,

you were not allowed to accuse the king of anything. So when the current king's divorce

case was going on, I think he was the crown prince at the time, he went to court and he

made all these accusations against the wife. And the wife had to just say, yeah, he was

fine, couldn't say anything, couldn't defend himself. Yeah. So he obviously, he obviously

won.

I've got a fact about the king of Thailand. Do you remember the king and I that the play

or musical play? Yeah. It's about someone called Anna Leon Owens who went to work for

the king of Thailand. And the real life Anna Leon Owens was the great-aunt of Boris Karloff

who played, was it Frankenstein or? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. It's just a fact.

It's just two people you wouldn't expect to be related to each other, I reckon.

Yes. Yeah, that's very true. Like Ben Elton and Luke Longley are brothers in law. We mean

nothing to no one except Australians. Yeah. I've never heard of Luke. Who's Luke Longley?

One of the great Australian basketball players played with the Chicago Bulls in the Michael

Jordan period. You know, he's a legend. One of the great Australian basketball players.

How big is this color? There's three of them. And one of them is related by marriage, but

not blood to Ben Elton. Amazing. Gosh. Why didn't you pick that as your headline fact

this week, Darren? I've been pitching it for nine years, you guys. Swatting it away every

week. I found a modern divorce story, which I can't believe that this is true, but it

was reported in a bunch of places. So this is to do with a Bosnian couple, Sana Klarek

and her husband, Adnan. And Adnan had not been happy in the marriage and he started

looking around for love and he went online. And so he started chatting to someone online.

He used a fake name just to make sure that no one could clock on to who he was. He met

someone. He said, I suddenly was in love again. It was beautiful. I thought I'd finally found

someone who understands me and who's in a similar situation in a bad marriage like

I am. So they decided to meet up and they meet up and he sees a city in the spot where

his online love should be. His wife, who has also gone online, created a pseudonym, looked

for love. They found each other. And what's remarkable is that is how they found out that

each of them were basically cheating on each other and divorced off the back of it, despite

falling back in love with each other in this online scenario. They looked at it as negative.

Reverse Pina Colada song. It's like a Richard Curtis film until the last sentence, isn't

it? Yeah. Yeah, it is. Yeah. Super plot twist at the end there. There was a guy in New York.

He was from New York anyway and he divorced his wife in Dominican Republic and she didn't

find out for 22 years. So he filled in the form and got her to sign something which she

didn't know what she was signing. And he got an official divorce and then she only found

out when she got a letter through about the house that they owned and her name wasn't

on the deeds. And she sort of rang her lawyer and said, what's going on? And he said, well,

it turns out you're not married and you haven't been for 22 years. But they can't have been

living together. Yeah. What? He just didn't tell her that they weren't married anymore.

And what she said in the case, and I couldn't find out what in the end happened, but she

said that she thought that he'd done it deliberately so that he would own everything. If he left

her in the future, she wouldn't have any rights. That's what she said. But then he stayed with

her for decades? Yeah, because apparently, I mean, I can't really speak for him. But

what she said is that the marriage was kind of happy, but he just did it as a kind of

backup in case he needed it in the future. Oh, my God. Oh, no. That's about that, isn't

it? Yeah, it is. I became really obsessed with unreasonable behavior as a category.

So they changed the law in 2022. And now you could have a no fault divorce in the UK, which

means that you don't have to identify a guilty party. You can just both agree that you want

to dissolve your marriage. But prior to that, you had to pick one of these five categories,

kind of whether or not there was something going on. And unreasonable behavior is such

a very capacious category. And I think 51% of women filing for divorce in this country,

that was their grounds. They're only 36% of men. And a lot of it has to do with gaming.

People were divorcing because either their husbands were gaming too often, but a lot

of them like a non negligible portion or people who are having digital affairs. So you're

basically meeting someone via not by fortnight. Your Sims avatar is having sex with someone

else's Sim. So what are the other limits to this? What was it called again? Unreasonable

behavior. Unreasonable behavior. What are you worried about, Dan? Excessive Ben Elton

memorabilia purchases from eBay. Is that, do I need a watch out? I do think it's a very

bendy category. It basically is like a prolonged commitment to behavior that is a problem to

the marriage. So that can include like actively building a life separate to your partner. If

you're developing too many not shared interests or you're really going hard on, I don't know,

you have a new hobby and you're going away and pursuing rock climbing all the time and

your partner is no interested in whatsoever. Eventually, after a certain amount of rock

climbing, I suppose it can account unreasonable. I think reckless spending counts as well.

If you're spending loads of money on Ben Elton memorabilia, Dan. Damn it! I'm done. Yeah.

Did you guys ever hear of the Brighton Quickie? No. This is a divorce practice and I've done

a fair bit of reading about it. I can't quite work out how real it was. Basically, in 1923

the law was changed saying you could petition on adultery only. It was the only grounds

for divorce. And that led to this thing where it's kind of like Monica's original fact

about the being in a room together. You would go down, as the husband, you would agree to

be the adulterer. You'd book a hotel room in Brighton because it's easy on the train

from London. You spend the night there with a woman you don't know. You don't have sex

or anything, but there's a hotel receipt saying you've booked a room for two. The next morning

maybe you're witnessed by the chambermaid. Two pairs of shoes outside the door. Exactly,

exactly. And there's then a small body of evidence that you can use to get your divorce.

And then times link back. Yeah, you haven't even got to commit adultery, but you will

be divorced in due course. But I just can't tell how much it actually happened if at all.

It's in a few novels and it's written about at the time, but it's not. Also, how important

is the chambermaid in this? Are all the rooms in this hotel packed with people going for

a Brighton quickie and she's got to sort of be... She's the witness. Yeah, she's the witness

for like 40 things a day where she has to... Was that... Yeah, then I saw the shoes outside

that door and then was it the pancake? I took a tea and they were on top of the bed, but

there was a pillow on the floor. So that's suggestive. I read that in Delaware and Colorado,

you can get your marriage annulled if you did it for a dare. But none of the other 48

states is that explicitly in the rules. Like probably you still could get an annullment

if you said that but it would have to go into something else. But in those two states explicitly

says it is illegal to get married on a dare. I mean, all marriages are kind of a dare.

Yeah. That's what the proposal is. It's a big dare. Yeah, I dare you to stay with me

until one or both of us dies. I bet your wife is wishing she shows truth. Yeah, every day.

I got a thing which is one of really classic Marvin Gaye albums, which was called Here,

My Dear, was made within a divorce proceeding whereby Marvin Gaye didn't quite have the

alimony that he needed to pay for his child. And so the agreement was the next album that

you do. Your wife, who you're now divorcing, is going to get half of the money, royalties

and the upfront money from the album itself. And he decided, well, I don't want her making

any money. So I'm going to do a quickie album, basically, I'm just going to not really do

anything good. It's going to come out and it's just going to be panned by the critics.

No one's going to like it. And then suddenly he got fascinated by the notion of this album

and ended up putting more heart and soul into this album, possibly than any of his other

albums. He was really hands on. He wrote the lyrics. He never writes lyrics for his songs

according to the stuff that I was reading. He never really was hands on with playing

the piano. But in this album, he insisted on doing the lyrics, the piano. And it was

panned at the time. But it's been, it's one of those albums that's been reviewed by everyone

since, you know, the Rolling Stone has named it one of the best 500 albums ever made three

times in lists that they released. And it constantly appears on these lists now. But

it was a, it's a pure divorce album. Pretty cool.

That's the story of the producers, the film the producers done. We've just done, you've

given us a fact, which is the song Pina Colada, and now you've given us the film, the producers,

but you've translated it to being about Marvin Gaye.

No, no, no.

We see you. We see what you do.

They made it bad. He made this good during the process. The producers was bad.

I wonder at what point he decided to start making it good. Like if he's like, I'm going

to make it so bad. And then what day did he realize, Oh, I'm actually very invested. I'm

really trying quite hard now.

Yeah, I don't know. I guess if you're an artist, it's going to be really hard to go, I'll

just put out a shit album. Like that's, that must be a painful thing to do, to make a decision

on.

I don't know. Some of them managed, don't they? But I think like, I think if he didn't

normally play piano and didn't normally write the lyrics, and then he started doing it,

he must have not normally done it because he didn't think he was as good as the people

who were doing it, right? Originally. And then when he started doing it, he's like,

Oh, this is pretty good.

It's also a little bit self myth making. Oh, I tried to make an album which said I've made

one of the 500 greatest of all time.

Oh, that's just me.

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Okay, it is time for fact number two, and that is Andy. My fact is that the same fingers

are responsible for the clicks in the Adams family theme, the bongos in the mission impossible

theme, and the xylophone in the Simpsons theme. The same human fingers created three of the

great artworks of the 20th century. I think it's unbelievable. I think it's so great.

Would you say that you play the xylophone with your fingers?

I was going to question that. Yeah, his name was Woodfingers Richards and he he was incredible.

You know what fingers Richards when he clicked his fingers for the other family did himself

on fire.

Emil Richards, he was a hero of percussion. I should say where I got this is via a brilliant

piece is published each year by a guy called Tom Whitwell, which is a 52 things you learn

each year. I think I may have mentioned him before either one or two or three years ago.

But anyway, it's a brilliant list. And this is one of the facts. I just couldn't believe

it. And Emil Richards, it turns out, born 1932 died 2019 in between those two dates

had the most amazing musical career. Yeah, he played with Frank Sinatra. He toured with

George Harrison. He was one of the most amazing session musicians ever. The list of people

who played with this just he played with Charlie Mingus, you know, he was proper into the scene

of jazz and blues. And and then, yeah, as you say, he went on tour and also played on

three George Harrison albums. He was inducted into the Percussive Arts Society Hall of Fame

in 1994. That's a very hard Hall of Fame to get into. Is it harder to get into than the

Australian Basketball Hall of Fame? Yes. I imagine to get in, you have to do a special

not to get into the Percussive. But no, yeah, what an extraordinary guy. Yeah, it's amazing.

Frank Zafer, Doris Day, The Beach Boys, The Bee Gees, Blondie, Ella Fitzgerald, Marvin Gaye.

I don't know if it was on the the I imagine I think I think Marvin did all his finger

clicks on that album. Right, okay. He was just incredible. His I love this his autobiography

was called My Life Behind Bars. Oh, you may have come across this in the course of your

research. Do you can you guess what kind of animal he wanted to come back as in the next

life? Oh, I didn't see that. I did not see that something percussive. So would pecker

such a good, such a good guess. I wish it was that imagine it's just totally unrelated.

No, no, no, it is related to his percussionist life. Oh, it is an octopus. Oh, woodpecker

is better actually. Yeah. Six of them are legs. He had the world's largest collection

of percussive instruments. Really? This guy. Yeah, he had 700 over 770. I don't know if

that's 771 maybe. He had an angklung, a bulbul terang, a chimta, a flaphamba, a janggu,

a mbira, and a pak havaj. When I was looking here up, they said he's a he plays the vibraphone

and I went to look up what a vibraphone was and the first thing that just said not to

be confused with the vibraphlap. And what is that always getting them fixed up a vibraphlap

is have you ever seen that instrument? It's like a piece of wire bent into a U and there's

a wooden ball on the end and it hits the box. So that's a vibraphlap and a vibraphone is

more looks like a xylophone. I don't know how you would confuse them. They don't look

at all like and they're both so obscure that I feel like it's very unlikely you'll be talking

about one and not know what the other one is like either you're not talking about these

at all or there's no risk of you confusing the two. What a guy. So he did the Mission

Impossible theme tune. The bottom goes on that. And I was looking into the Mission Impossible

theme tune generally. So there's this fact which is that the the beat of the song was

written to the Morse code of M and I. So can you give us the one it goes like for anyone

who doesn't handy you're you're a bigger fan. I always end up doing Bond by accident. Can

you do it quickly. Do you mean the bit that go. Yes. Yeah. So it's it's dash dash dot

dot is the thing for it. But the guy who wrote it shifrin. He wrote that whole song he says

in three minutes. Wow really. Yeah. You often hear that with a few musicians where they

say I just bang that out and it just came to me as a fully formed piece and that happened

and that happened with Mission Impossible. So that's quite cool. And the same with the

James Bond theme. That wasn't written in a quick time. But if by guy called Monty Norman

and he actually which is I really like this he was hired by the Bond people to come up

specifically with this theme and they took him out to Jamaica on a holiday and he met

Connery out there and Ursula Andres because they were because they were filming Doctor

No. Yeah they were filming Doctor No the first one out there and so he was brought to meet

them all and and get a vibe of it and he ended up just using a previous tune that he had

written for a completely different adaption that never got used. It was a stage production

of V.S. Naples novel A House for Mr. Biswas. That's the original James Bond theme and it

was played on sitar. It's the other one that goes. Oh because I know the original lyrics

about something like I was born with an unfortunate sneeze and yes that's it. My parents said

that I was made the wrong way around. Oh my God. This is a bigger repurpose than Candle

in the Wind. This is a big shift. So strange. And I think at the end of the song he sneezes

so much that he falls into a lay cuss of them of that tune. Oh right. This guy Monty Norman

he also wrote an autobiography. So Life Behind Bars very good title. Do you know Andy you

look like you might know the title of his autobiography. No I don't. Is it musical and

James Bond theme. No. Well I'm not going to get it. No it was called a walking stick full

of bagels. Okay. Without knowing the context that is not a good. I think that must have

been a classic phrase back in the day. You're like a walking stick full of bagels. And what

does that mean. How would a stick be full of anything. There we go. Yeah. So many questions.

I bet they were all answered in the unpublished autobiography and we are yet to find out.

I think the best autobiography title I've ever heard was Tori Spelling's autobiography

Storytelling by Tori Spelling. Really good. Really strong title. I got it. I got it off

that title. But that doesn't go down well in the divorce case. Tori Spelling's autobiography.

Have you guys heard of the village of Kong Thong in northeast India. No. This is a village

where every child is given a theme tune. It's a little village is really cut off from the

rest of India. I don't think you can get that by car. I think you can get that by boat.

But it's in the middle of a jungle and people would forage for broom grass which they would

sell on. And so a lot of the time you would spend in the jungle sort of walking around

probably alone. And the thing is in the jungle is quite hard to hear people for long distances

because it all gets soaked in by the trees. And so they came up with this different way

of telling people you're around by having a different tune that you would whistle or

you would shout or whatever. And so when you're born you get your theme tune and then for

the rest of your life whenever you're in the jungle people will make this little. You'd

be like oh that's me. That was the Simpsons. Yeah. I think lawyers will be in touch with

that kid. He was from the Simpsons family of Kong Thung. That is so cool. Isn't it?

That's awesome. Unfortunately it's kind of dying out because people now will connect

with each other using mobile phones so they don't need these theme tunes so much. Yes

again. The internet's ruined it all. I've got to have a quick think about songs that

use the old hand of ruse as a kind of iconic bit of it. And obviously if you're thinking

theme tunes, the Friends theme tune, I'll be there for you by the Rembrandt's. There's

like a clapping bit. Yeah. So it's four claps. Apparently there's a bit of controversy because

Courtney Cox did five claps on a TV show once and it sent the writers of the song mad. But

the song I'll be there for you, it was actually a song composed specifically for the TV show

and the Rembrandt's had very minimal input into the writing itself. It was the actual

creators of Friends who wrote the song and it proved to be such an iconic theme tune

that everyone was begging for it to be released in the... Yeah, I bought it in the charts when

it came out. So what that was was they had to go into a studio and write a whole song

because there wasn't a whole song. It was only the theme tune bit of the song. They

needed two more verses to be added in. Oh really? Yeah. So it was a backwards constructed

full song that ended up coming out. That's so interesting. So it was 40 seconds long.

There was like a time in the 90s when all the theme tunes used to come out and you could

buy them for the charts like the X-Files did around that time as well. Yes. And they all

did quite well in the charts just because people thought, oh, I like that song. Yeah.

I love... I mean the X-Files is my favorite theme tune of all time. And it turns out to

the guy who composed that song. Mark Snow? Yeah, Mark Snow. And David de Coventy claims,

I think this is tongue in cheek. I mean it completely is tongue in cheek, but he says

there were lyrics to the X-Files theme tune by Mark Snow. And these are the lyrics. The

X-Files is a show, show, show, show, show, with music by Mark Snow, Snow, Snow, Snow,

Snow. Those are the only two lyrics that we know of according to de Coventy. Do you guys

know what composers of TV theme tunes hate? I guess. Oh, when they... When on TV shows,

when the continuity in the announcer goes next up on BBC Three. Yeah. That's a really

good point. I'm specifically talking about the skip intro button. Okay. Which is very

controversial. Oh, of course. They get furious, those guys and gals, about the skip intro.

Because Netflix found out that the users were frequently fast-forwarding a bit because,

you know, if you're watching three episodes in a night, you don't want to see the theme

tune three times. So Netflix claims, I can't quite believe this, skip intro is pressed

136 million times a day, which cumulatively saves 130 years of human time. We never, especially

the shows where they've put some proper effort into the, into the intros. I think you lose

quite a lot from not having those intros. Can you imagine watching Game of Thrones and

not having that amazing theme tune with all the stuff happening, and then just going straight

into the shagging? That's... Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it really sets the vibe. I think grooving

to the Sopranos theme is like maybe 30% of what I like about watching the show. Obviously

the rest of the other 70% is that it's groundbreaking, beautiful human drama. But the theme tune

is also up there. It's a bop. I agree. We stand up in our house. We stand in silence for every

theme tune. It's a huge respect in this household. Monica, aren't you show running on a show

at the moment? I just finished show running on a show. Yes. Are you going to get to pick

the theme tune? I think we're going to have like proper opening titles. So we're going

to have to do a whole, we're going to have to figure out a whole thing. Yeah. I've really

been shown my own limitations in this area because my description is like, I want it

to sound cool. Out of their feedback. Well, I got, I got some advice for you, Monica.

If you're working with the sound person, do a, do a secret thing here, which is do actually

write lyrics to whatever the theme tune is, but don't put them out because you could then

claim 50% royalties on the song. This is what Gene Roddenberry did with Star Trek. He wrote

lyrics for the Star Trek song. They never use them. And anytime a royalty check came

in, he was a co-writer of the song. So he got 50% of everything. And the song suicide

is painless. The mash theme tune. It was used in the Robert Altman movie, commissioned

specifically for that movie by Robert Altman. And he tried to write the lyrics for it, couldn't

crack it. And so he asked his son, Michael, who was 15 years old at the time, to write

the lyrics. So Michael did that. And as a result of that song not only being used in

the movie, but then the long running TV show with Alan Alder, he says, Altman says that

he made $70,000 for directing that movie. And his son has earned more than a million

dollars over the years, just from that being sold. Those lyrics are good though, aren't

they? For suicide is painless. But Gene Roddenberry, is he not just stealing half of the credit?

Yeah. Feels like it. It feels like the workers and the musicians who have done all this work,

and he's just like, well, I'll pretend that I've written some lyrics and take half the

money. It's quite cheeky. It's very cheeky. Hey, that's the business we're in, guys. And

Monica, is it? That's Hollywood baby. Business is business. Just quickly, Ed Sheeran has

written the theme tune to James Bond, despite no one having requested that he do that, which

I think is quite sweet. I think that's a very Ed Sheeran thing to do. But that isn't that,

I would say that when a new Bond comes out, people submit songs. That's how that's always

worked. No, it's not. You don't send in. There are so many songs that are out that

are rejected Bond songs by bands that submitted a song that didn't get used, which they then

use. Is there a process? Is there an open process by which, I mean, could we submit

one? Yeah, that's what I was thinking. Did I accept anything?

That can't be true. I thought that they would commission a cool art. It can't be like a

bake off. The last film, they asked Billie Eilish to do.

Yeah. No, she just got lucky. She just happens to have the best lot. They sent in a million.

Wow.

And hers just happened to be the best one.

They listen to them blind as well. They don't prejudice themselves.

It's like the voice. It's like the voice.

It could be anyone.

But I can't be true, Dan. Because they always pick the trendiest person in the world at

the time, don't they?

No, I mean...

And Ed Sheeran has consistently been the second trendiest person in the world. He just keeps

missing it.

The reason I say it is I know that Radiohead had a rejected Bond song, so I'm trying to

work back from there. And I'm pretty sure Johnny Cash had one as well. And I think this is

a thing, yeah. But I can't say for sure.

Maybe they asked people to tender for it, rather than anyone being able to send stuff

in.

Oh, yeah. I think they sent... I think they asked, like, a group of people. I don't think

it is open.

Right.

Yeah. It's not quite as open as that.

Open season.

Because you'd see, there'd be a thing every three years, wouldn't there?

Yeah, exactly.

Have you guys heard of Dusan Sestic? He's a composer of the Bosnian National Anthem. We

spoke about Bosnia earlier. He entered the competition to do the Bosnian National Anthem.

He didn't really want to win. He just wanted to get, like, second or third place. There

was money for it. He, like, was quite into the old Yugoslavia. He didn't really care

about the new Bosnia. But he thought, I'll get some money out of it because I'm a decent

composer.

Anyway, he won. And he wrote the National Anthem for Bosnia. And then in 2009, someone

noticed that it was remarkably similar to the theme tune of National Lampoon's Animal

House, the 1978 movie.

Right.

And when you listen to the both, they're almost identical. Like, there's no difference

whatsoever. But, bless him, he went on TV and they were all like, well, how come you

made our National Anthem? She said, National Lampoon's Animal House. And he said, oh, maybe

as a young man, I heard it and it kind of stuck in my head. And I, but I didn't deliberately

plagiarize it. It just so happened.

That is brilliant.

This is the problem with being national policies being decided by right in contest. This is

why Canadian legal tender is called the Looney and the Tooney.

The $1 coin has a loon on it. So it's called the Looney. And then they had a contest to

name the $2 coin, which has a polar bear on it. And the winning entry was the Tooney.

And now that is actually what we call it. And it just makes us sound like a joke country.

Without knowing the other options, Monica, I do think Tooney is quite good.

I think there's a bit of Bodie McBoatface to it.

Yeah, yeah.

We can't speak.

Haven't they also?

The Looney and the Tooney. Yeah, it works.

Haven't they recently, just while we're talking about money and having mentioned Star Trek,

there was the thing where you would spockify your Canadian dollar, right? The guy who was

on the picture looks so similar to Leonard Nimoy from Star Trek that you would draw spockiers

on him and you would draw the hair, basically.

Yes, it was called Spocking. Spocking. And the Bank of Canada had to issue a statement

saying that it was legal to do, but inappropriate.

And I think they've, from what I read, they've changed his image now on the bill. Is that

right? There's a new version of the same guy just so it's less spockable.

Yeah.

I think if you draw that spock on any note, then Chief Roddenberry owns half your money.

Yeah, and then a spokesperson for another agency in Canada, Evangelal Agency said to

the Bank of Canada, this is fine. As you say, it's perfectly legal. And I'm sure Sir Wilfrid

Laurier would get it. Who's the man pictured off the bill who died in 1919.

I've just got one more theme tune I'll quickly want to bring up, which is The Fresh Prince

of Bel Air. So we all know that theme tune. It's a Kraken song by Will Smith. And it was

a song that he wrote despite not being necessarily asked to write it at the time. He kind of

just did it and he showed it to, I believe it was Quincy Jones, who was doing the music

for the show. And they said, yeah, you can go and do it. Obviously, it's a massive hit.

And when it was released in 1992 as a single, but here's the thing. I don't know if James,

you bought singles as you were saying back in the day, 1992, The Fresh Prince of Bel Air

theme tune was only released exclusively in the Netherlands and Spain. And that's where

it charted. That's it.

That's really because I when you said that, I thought to myself, how come I didn't buy

that? Like I was so sure that I would if I was around at the time I would have bought

it because I bought wiki wiki Wild Wild West or whenever it was by Will Smith. So great

song. Yeah, I bought all his other crap. So I was really surprised.

James, James, did you buy Willenium? That was a great album.

Oh, an album. No, I was more of a singles buyer really. Yeah, it's not a good album

then. I'm sorry. I think enough time has passed that I'm able to have a pop at Willenium.

Keep the name of that album out of your dash.

Okay, it is time for fact number three. And that is my fact. My fact this week is that

in 2024, the first ever theater production of Dracula will celebrate its hundredth anniversary.

Unfortunately, fans can't celebrate it in the venue it was performed in because it's

currently occupied by an over 18s adult themed crazy golf course called The House of Holes.

Filthy.

So this is in Darby, a city in the UK. And I was there recently on the weekend for a

game of bitty golf.

How was your quick round?

I was there doing a ghost story festival and afterwards I was hanging out with this really

cool guy called Chris Horton and he said, I've got a fish fact for you. And he told

me he'd passed the House of Holes and made him laugh. And so yeah, so it is a very well

known theater as well. It was called the Grand Theater. Then it just got repurposed over

the years to be something new. And there was, you know, restaurants in its place and so

on. And now there is this, this amazing crazy golf house of holes.

Yeah.

Can I just, I'm sure we'll talk more about crazy golf. Can I talk specifically about

the House of Holes and Darby?

Yeah, sure.

I don't mean to cast any experts on it. I don't think it's terribly erotic. It doesn't

seem to be from the website.

Oh, really?

A lot of it just seems to be novelty.

Because I think that people at home, some people at home will have an image in their

heads.

Yeah.

Of what it is.

Yeah.

But let's sort of give context then through images. One of the holes, you have to hit

the ball through a bunch of standing dildos, for example.

Yes. I'm not saying it's totally erotic.

There's another one where, for some reason, there's a lot of blow-up dolls that are uninflated,

hanging on washing lines, just hanging in the vicinity of the hole itself.

Exactly.

Yeah. The area where you play pool, because you know these places, indoor places have

like, you can play arcades and stuff. The bed where you play pool is called anal butt.

What?

Yeah, and anal has a four instead of the second A in anal, so A-N-4-L butt.

Well, it's not got to do with pool.

What does that mean?

I'm not quite sure. I couldn't get to the bottom of that one. But it's there.

Surely the phrase anal and butt are sort of achieving the same, feeling a little redundant

to me personally.

It's definitely a redundant adjective, isn't it? How's your butt? Well, it's very anal.

But I don't know what's in the water in Derby, but there was a newspaper piece a couple of

months ago.

Derby is now about to get its second erotic mini-golf venue.

It's really popular.

The new Glory Halls Golf venue will apparently include risque items and decor, and some Derby-themed

holes as well, so that's nice.

That's cool.

That's good.

And that's actually just because let's give this fact just a tiny bit of substance before

we get into erotic golf.

I just want to quickly say that the production, just for context, was the first ever Dracula

production, and it was put on in the early 1920s, and it was a show that was sanctioned

and approved by Florence Stoker, who was the widow of Bram Stoker.

And this was the production that became the sort of official theatre production that as

it travelled around the UK and then went international, cast in its lead, Bella Lugosi, who became,

as we all know, the iconic Dracula in film, and weirdly, the final performance that Bella

Lugosi ever did as Dracula on stage was back in Derby at another theatre just around the

corner from the Grand, some 20-odd years later.

So Derby does have a real Dracula connection as a result of this playing.

Very interesting.

And Lugosi, so he got the role in 1927 when the play moved to the USA.

That's when Lugosi entered the scene.

And then in the 50s it was when he toured again and came back to Derby and did a big

English tour of this show.

And he got really upset because apparently the audiences were laughing sometimes because

Dracula was no longer the big scary thing.

It had been, it was the early 50s, you know, people have been through a bit since the

90s, they're not as scared and, yeah, it seems to have prompted the end of his career, which

is very sad.

And it was also, this play was also very important for the image of Dracula.

The guy who wrote it, a guy called Hamilton Dean, he made Dracula appear as that more

modern suave sort of coat wearing cocktail drinking kind of character rather than brams,

just all out vampire chaos energy zombie like stuff.

Does he drink cocktails?

Does he?

Is it passion fruit martini?

Sorry, he does.

There was actually one earlier theater production of Dracula, which came out eight days before

the novel came out.

This was, if you did a novel, someone else could make a play of it.

And there's not much you can do about it unless you put on your own play.

And so what Bram Stoker did was he had a dramatic reading of his book on stage.

They had to have it open for the paying public.

So they would put bills up half an hour before it started saying Dracula on in half an hour

had two people bought tickets for it and sat in the audience while a couple of actors sort

of just read through the book.

And from them doing that, it meant that no one else could play on because he owed copyright

on their theater production.

How amazing.

Yeah.

Monica, have you done that with really good actually?

I should do to stop someone doing a bootleg play.

Yeah.

And that was basically what my experience of doing the Edinburgh Fringe was, was going

out half an hour before the show being like anybody, somebody, and then wildly entertaining

two people.

Chills.

Actual chills remembering that.

That's everyone's Edinburgh.

Yeah.

OK, Dan.

Well, we've done the Dracula thing.

Can we go back to the erotic mini-golf now?

Let's do it.

I just remembered when you were talking about that, that I have played, not played golf,

but I've used a golf club shaped like a penis at the Penis Museum in Reykjavik.

They have one and you can sort of pick it up and play with it.

And yeah, it's like it's just the head part of the golf club is shaped like a penis.

But it's not, it's not for a serious golfer, right?

I said it's not built for proper play, you know, master's conditions.

I don't think it adheres to the official USPGA rules.

It's like a walking stick full of bagels.

You're not going to use it as an actual assist as a walking stick.

I think there's a link between the original boom in crazy golf and the current Derby based

boom in erotic golf.

OK.

So when was the original boom?

Twenties and thirties.

Some lots of sources say that it completely went out when the Great Depression happened.

But actually, it didn't really, it actually boomed during the early thirties.

During that period, apparently the USA built 25,000 mini golf courses.

It was described as a devastating craze in the times in 1930.

And I think the theory behind it is that property value had collapsed and the value of lots

of things have collapsed and people started their own tiny businesses to generate small

amounts of income.

You know, it doesn't have to be anything huge, but it's a small local thing on whatever

kind of waste ground or land you've got.

You know, some restaurants turned it, half the restaurant became a mini golf course and

the rest of it stayed a restaurant.

So maybe times of financial hardship when you get a lot more mini golf because you get

shops that are closed or empty.

So the new glory hole golf is the site of the old gap store in Derby.

You know, you've got retail space available.

What is a glory hole?

I thought a gap.

So no, that's my economic theory.

Yeah, no, it's a really, yeah, it's a really good theory.

It's almost a thesis rather than a podcast, isn't it?

But yeah.

Mini golf doesn't use golf balls.

Yes, I do.

There are, no, there are special mini golf balls.

They're kind of more rubbery.

They're more rubbery.

They bounce more.

And there's a standard, I find this mad.

There's the world crazy golf championships.

I mean, there are a few world crazy golf championships.

One is in Hastings and normally apparently they only get about three overseas players

each year.

So the extent to which this world is a bit debatable, but they don't tell you at the

world crazy golf championships what the ball is until the day before it starts.

Okay, but it's always going to be spherical.

It's always going to be spherical.

I'm pretty sure about that.

But then other championships, they will, they'll let you play a different ball on

every hole.

And the only rule is that once you've started a hole, you have to play the same ball all

the way through the end.

Like normal golf.

Is that true?

How about local?

If I was playing mini golf, like we play in Narrabeen in Australia, they're using

special balls.

I think they'll be more rubbery for sure if you, if you check them.

Yeah.

Who would have thought this would be the fact that blew my mind most in this whole round

of nine years?

Golf.

Again.

Go on.

This is, I'm afraid it's back to the, it's back to a tangent from the original erotic

mini golf thing.

Oh yeah.

Just that it was on, you know, this new place opening up is going to be called glory holes

golf.

And we got an email in the fish inbox recently, subject line, Gibbon glory hole action.

Oh my God.

I know this story.

This is incredible.

This is a Gibbon in a zoo or a sanctuary.

This is a female Gibbon and she was living on her own and she got pregnant and it was,

it was basically a virgin birth and it was, it was so exciting for the scientists.

They thought, I can't believe this.

Anyway, they did a bit of an investigation and it turned out, obviously it was not a

virgin birth in between her enclosure and the next door neighbor male Gibbons enclosure

was a nine millimeter hole through which they had managed to successfully breed.

I haven't become parents.

Nine millimeters.

So they were just sort of both mushing up against the wall.

I'm afraid so.

Life finds a way.

Life finds a way.

Well, that's a scene I don't want to see in Jurassic Park.

I would like to hear David Attenborough do one of his little jokes.

You know when he sort of makes the animals a fool or he's like, our nest is as good

a place as any.

Stop the podcast.

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On with the podcast.

On with the show.

Okay.

It's time for our final fact of the show and that is James.

Okay, my fact this week is that in 2009, an aide to the Canadian Prime Minister called

10 Downing Street to offer condolences for the death of Margaret Thatcher.

In fact, she wasn't dead.

It was a misunderstanding due to the death of the Canadian Transport Minister's cat

who was also called Thatcher.

Superb.

Really good.

What a call.

What a call.

Flying the wall at that call.

A muggy, not a Maggie.

Oh, brilliant.

Brilliant.

Was that you Dan?

Someone else.

No, no, that's the headline of the Guardian article.

Oh, amazing.

So yeah, this was a black tie dinner in Toronto.

2000 Canadian Conservatives were there and many of them got a text message saying simply

Thatcher has died and Dimitri Sude asked who was the aide to the Prime Minister who was

Stephen Harper at the time.

He was sent to write a letter of condolence and he ran Buckingham Palace in 10 Downing

Street to kind of work out what they should say and offer condolences as well.

And then he found out that they hadn't died and it turned out that Transport Minister

John Baird had a 16-year-old grey cat called Thatcher and sadly that cat had died.

But he denied sending the text later on, but there definitely was a text that was sent

to all these people about the cat.

This is like international incident version of David's dead on Big Brother.

Yes.

The greatest TV moment ever.

There was a famous David who died.

David Bowie.

Yeah.

Bowie.

Yeah.

Did someone in the building know who?

I don't know why I'm telling this story.

Everyone knows it better than me apparently.

Monica, you can tell it.

No, no, no.

Please, you tell it.

I've actually only seen the clip.

Okay, so in the Big Brother household that year was Angie Bowie, the first wife of David

Bowie and also in the house that year was David Guest who was Liza Minnelli's ex-husband.

She gets called in while David Guest is having a sleep in his bed.

Everyone knows he's having a sleep, so he's not around.

And she gets told that David Bowie has died.

So she is obviously, she didn't like her ex-husband, but she's also very distressed because he was

a huge part of her life.

She comes out, she's trying to keep it secret and one of the other Americans who's staying

in the house comes up and says, are you okay?

And she says, you can't tell anyone, but David's dead and this other woman immediately freaks

out because she thinks it's David Guest who's died, but Angie hasn't made the connection.

So Angie's kind of going, God, I didn't think you were that big a Bowie fan.

I can't see how this has erupted and it causes chaos in the house for five minutes.

It's TV at its finest.

Well imagine that, but with 2,000 Canadian conservatives.

Yeah.

What a scene it must have been.

The true patriot love tribute dinner.

That's what it was.

That's what it was called.

Military families, honoring thing, but Canadian politics moniker is, is fabulous.

Is it?

Yeah.

Well, I feel like there is, I feel like there is a list of political scandals in Canada

on Wikipedia and you know, some of them are pretty dry, like the usual grift, you know,

or bribery or slightly dodgy dealings, but there are some, there are some fun ones.

Tune a gate might be my favorite.

Tune a gate.

Were you, were you involved in tune a gate, Monica?

Not to my knowledge, but I'll never admit it if so, you'll never catch me.

Tune a gate.

Actually think about it now.

It was a long ago.

You're clear.

You're clear.

You're clear.

Basically, there were a million cans of decomposing tuna.

That was, that was the central problem, right?

And it wasn't really, really, really unsafe, but it had started to go off before it was

put in the cans.

The firm involved was called Starkis and they said, no, you just, these inspectors, they

just don't like fish.

That's their problem.

And they said, and we'll close down our plant and you'll lose all these jobs.

And you know, and that's when it becomes a political thing.

Because then the fisheries minister said, oh yeah, it's probably, it's fine.

You know, all this stuff, it's great.

It's actually good.

And he got a panel together, just like, look, can you just assess this tuna please?

And they said, yeah, this, this is rotting tuna in these cans.

And he says, okay, I think we need a different panel.

And he got a different panel together who eventually said, yes, these million tins of

rotting tuna are fine.

And then he resigned.

Yeah.

And I don't think much of the tuna was eaten in the end.

And then the firm went bust anyway.

So that's a very classic Canadian scandal where it's like, it threatened to really kick off

and ultimately they just, nobody really consumed the tuna.

And it was sort of fine.

That's like the other great Canadian political scandal, the Fuddleduddle incident.

What's this?

The Fuddleduddle incident in 1971 happened to the first Prime Minister Trudeau, our current

Prime Minister's father, who was accused of having spoken or at least mouthed unparliamentary

language in the House of Commons.

He seemed to have been caught mouthing the words fuck off, but when pressed by television

reporters would only admit to having moved his lips.

So they were like, what were you thinking when you moved your lips?

And his response was, what is the nature of your thoughts when you say Fuddleduddle or

something like that, implying that he had said Fuddleduddle instead of fuck off.

Right.

That's good.

If no one's heard you, you know, you're across the room from them.

Well, then in 2015, his son actually stated on the record that his dad had not said Fuddleduddle.

And this is a big scandal.

Minor scandal.

But that's sort of the scale.

It's like someone, that's always the scale, it's always a little bit funny.

Like someone threw a pie in Jean Chrétien's face in the 90s and that was quite a big deal.

The pies were actually coordinated ongoing assault on Tartis, sewer Canadian satirical

political group, and they even released a hit list of people they wanted to get with

pies, including Celine Dion and Conrad Black in Chrétien.

And then they were successful in pieing Chrétien twice.

Right.

Oh, that's got to stink.

The pies, were they the kind of clown pies where it's like just custard or is it actual

like apple pies?

Cream pies.

Like oh, it's just cream pies.

It may even have been shaving cream or just like what you guys would unfortunately call

squirty cream.

Squirty cream.

It's not a nice thing to say, and I'm sorry to say it.

Speaking of shaving cream, I can't believe we managed to get onto shaving cream.

William Lyon Mackenzie King, who was Prime Minister of Canada for 22 years.

My favourite.

Well, I'm not surprised because he did seances and stuff right then.

But he also used to see symbols in his shaving cream in the morning, which he thought would

predict the future.

Yeah.

Wow.

What an extraordinary guy.

He was Prime Minister for 21 years, which possibly is still the record length for anyone

to do it.

He had quite a tragic family life.

He'd lost all of his family during the war, and so as a result, turned like many people

did to spirituality as a thing.

But what many people didn't realise at the time was he was taking that spirituality into

the office with him as a Prime Minister and getting guidance from the spirits of Leonardo

Da Vinci and his deceased dogs.

The shaving foam thing, he would shave, and then the shaving foam would go into the water

in the sink kind of thing.

And at one stage he saw a polar bear and an eagle, and the polar bear was supposed to

represent like Russia or Soviet Union, I should say, and the eagle was supposed to represent

America, and they were kind of fighting in shaving cream.

And then a dog appeared in the shaving cream, which he thought symbolised Canada, and then

it came and helped to push the bear off the eagle, and that was kind of him thinking that

he, what side he needs to be in the Cold War, he needs to be on the other side.

As if he didn't know what side he should probably be on in the Cold War.

I think that probably just confirmed his suspicions.

I do feel like a polar bear would be fairly easy to see in shaving cream.

Like I'm wondering if the shapes he was seeing were sort of like, you know, I saw a vision

in my shaving cream of a cloud meeting sort of a fog.

Oh my God, what a cancer.

I was having a look through the old Fish in Box podcast at qi.com.

Really good fact we got in from John Ford, so thank you John.

This is something, maybe you've done at Monica, it's that Canada flies a new flag over its

parliament every single day, every single day there's a new flag, and they give the

used one to a Canadian, and you can apply to get your own flag.

And you think I have done this?

Well, guess it's possible, I feel like you haven't anymore.

I haven't quite, no, but it's nice to know that I have the option.

Well you have the option, but unfortunately you won't get the flag.

So this is a mad thing, the current waiting time is a hundred years.

It's more than a century, because so many people have applied.

So they mentioned this on the website, like it's a totally normal thing, they say the

current waiting time is more than a hundred years.

And so you can either log on and make a request, why would you, or you can change your details

if you made a request, you know, five years ago, and you're moving house now.

Just to keep it updated.

But why would you do that either?

Are you allowed to do it for your next generation?

Exactly, can it go to the descendants?

I don't think I'll know any of my hundred year from now descendants well enough to care

whether or not they get a flag.

It's also like not hard to get, it's not very special, it's only been up over a parliament

for one day.

Yep.

You could just get your own flag.

It's the kind of shit I buy in eBay, I'll knock it, this is all part of my divorce.

That's giving unreasonable behavior to me actually.

Have you been reading about William Amos from the Liberal Party in the last few months?

Very recently he was on a Zoom call, parliamentary Zoom call, and he had to apologise because

he said I urinated without realising I was on camera, and the amazing thing was is that

the month earlier he'd also been recorded in the nude during the virtual session of

the Canadian Parliament.

So twice in two months, the first time he'd been out for a jog and he was kind of getting

changed while the session was going on and they could see the right honourable member.

See his loony and his toony.

I can see myself not falling for that, I can see myself doing that.

Twice in a row?

You quickly check, maybe not twice in a row.

I think what's better than this case, right?

Yeah, I would definitely get a post-it for the camera after the first time, or would

I, I don't know.

No, you would think I couldn't possibly do that again.

That's what you think, that's what you think.

Oh my God, that was the stupidest day of my life.

You know what was the stakes on that front.

And then you just go along and you know, do you say he was urinating into a cup or something?

I don't know.

As far as I can tell, because this kind of thing has now happened, you know, we're pretty

deep in the pandemic, it's not happened a number of times.

Just in fairly high profile people.

And it has, as far as I'm aware, never happened to a woman, it's just men who I don't know

haven't thought it through or aren't worried enough.

I can't even believe that you're saying that you think this could happen to you.

This would never happen to me.

There's no world in which I would be like, okay, I'm doing a work Zoom, I'm gonna quickly

get fully nude, no one has to know.

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 be found on our Twitter accounts.

I'm on at Shriverland, Andy, at Andrew Hunter M, James, at James Harkin, and Monica, at

Monica Highsey.

Yep.

Or if you'd like to book a round of golf at the House of Holes, you can head to at

House of Holes UK.

It genuinely has amazing reviews.

Do check it out.

Everyone loved it there.

Everyone loved it.

You can go to atnoesuchthing, which is our actual Twitter handle, and you can get through

to us there, or you can email us at podcast at qi.com.

Also do check out our website, no such thing as a fish.com.

All of the previous episodes are up there, but the main, main thing that you need to

do is get to a bookshop or an online bookshop and get really good, actually, by Monica Highsey.

It is storming the charts here.

As we speak, it's been in the Sunday Times bestsellers list for four weeks.

It is an absolute rockin' book.

It's incredibly funny, so do get it now.

And otherwise, come back, because we're going to be back with another episode next week,

and we'll see you then.

Good bye!

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.