No Such Thing As A Fish: 471: No Such Thing As A Toin Coss

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

time and the second is about a live show we have coming up. So firstly our guest

this week is the brilliant comedian Rachel Parris. Rachel's been on once

before but if you haven't heard of her or you didn't hear that episode she is a

fantastic writer, comedian, presenter, musician, you name it. She's an

ostentatious, the Jane Austen themed improvised comedy show. She also is in the

throes of publishing her first ever book. It's called advice from strangers

everything I know from people I don't know. She toured around for a year asking

her live audience for advice and this book is the brilliant result. It's funny,

it's uplifting, the advice rate is from be kind to never pass up the

opportunity for a wee. It spans the gamut. It's a brilliant book and it's out

in paperback now so do check it out. The second thing to say is that we have a

live No Such Thing as a Fish coming up on the 21st of April and this is a global

streaming event. Very exciting. We're doing a show at the British Library, the

World Hallowed British Library. As part of their season special season all about

animals it's called Fantastic Beasts and we're going to be having a very

special guest on the show and the show will be streamed globally. If you go do

nosuchthingasafish.com forward slash live you'll be able to get streaming

tickets so you can sign up buy a ticket and watch from the comfort of your own

home wherever in the world you are from Kettering to Kalamazoo all the tickets as

I say at nosuchthingasafish.com slash live we hope to see you there. Alright

that's it. On with the show.

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 Rachel Parris

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 Rachel. My fact is Dame Maura Limpany remains the

only castaway on Desert Island Discs to have chosen entirely her own recordings

to be marooned with, which I admire. Me too, bold. Straight in. I feel like I should say

straight away like in her defense, it was her second appearance on the show.

Her first was 22 years earlier and she didn't want to repeat any of her choices.

And there probably hadn't been any music in the years. It's the problem, back in the day there was eight songs.

So that's a big problem. We should quickly say because our British listeners will

obviously know what Desert Island Discs is, but we're not the young ones. Not the

young ones possibly, yeah, but and international people won't know it either.

This is children and foreigners. A new book by Sally Rooney.

Yeah, so it's the UK's I believe longest running radio show, if not it's right up

there at the top. It's an interview show and the basic premise of it is you

bring eight records onto the show, songs you love that mean something to you and

then at the end you're asked to make a decision. You're going to be marooned on

the Desert Island. What one song are you going to save while the seven other wash

away and you get to bring a book and you get to bring a luxury item and it's

awesome. It's my favorite radio show. Yeah, and they use that to talk about their

life and thoughts and everything as well. So it's really like esteemed, isn't it,

in British culture. I think it was Dame Elizabeth Schwarzkopf who did a lot of

her own recording. She was a soprano, but it was only Maureen Limpany who chose

entirely her own recording. I read that Schwarzkopf picked seven out of eight,

featured her voice. And was Dame Maureen Limpany, she was a... She was a pianist.

Pianist. Pianist. Okay, okay. Is it Pianist? Pianist. Pianist. Pianist. There's a hinge

in Pian. Pianist, yeah, yeah. Pianist. To be fair to her, Limpany, she didn't pick

songs composed by her. They were Mozart songs and they were Chopin and stuff

like that. So they were all classical pieces that she was playing on. But

then you get people like Norman Wisdom, who is for children and overseas people.

He was a comedian, very big in Albania. I mean, anyone under 80 is gonna struggle with

Norman Wisdom. What about him? Well, he chose five of his eight as his own songs,

but I think his actual own songs don't laugh at me because I'm a fool, stuff like

that. Yeah, someone who chose three of their own for foreigners and not for

children was Rolf Harris. Oh gosh. Just for the edit. Wow. One weird one was

David Frost, who picked David Frost interviews. Not even music. Did he do the

next one? Must have done. I'm not sure that he did bizarrely. With those people, I do

wonder if, was it just a matter of having not thoroughly researched what the

program is? Well, it could be. In the early days, I think. It's so eminent. These days,

being invited on Desedon Desk is basically, in Britain, it's kind of a minor gong. Yeah.

It's like getting an MBE or something. Yeah. Yeah. I'm sure you guys found out that

some people have done it twice. That's pretty eminent. That's like double gong.

Yeah. And you've got some people who've done it three times. I need two people as

far as I can tell, I've done it four times. Oh, really? Yeah. Do we get to guess who?

Have a guess. Someone like Maggie Smith. Yeah. I would say even more eminent. David

Attenborough. Oh, wow. And if you guys guessed the other one without having it,

having read about it. Yeah. I was going to try and word my way in some way. Wait, I don't know.

Is it one of the Chuckle brothers? It's Barry Chuckle. Yeah. And his

luxury was Paul Chuckle, which was nice. Sorry, is it actually Barry? No, no, no. Don't do that.

I believed you. But he's a comedian, isn't it, from old? Yeah. Arthur Aske. So modern name

that cuts a lot of ice today. But like a music hall guy, was he? Yeah. Yeah. A really,

really, really famous comedian in the 50s and 40s and 50s. Yeah. The original host was a guy

called Roy Plombly who invented it. And he invented it during the Second World War,

actually. It was a sort of wartime commission to cheer people up and just clearly a good idea.

But he was incredibly austere about it. And in fact, he was so controlling that the early shows

were scripted. So he would script each dialogue in advance, and then they'd just sit and they'd

read the script, him and Roger Urie. And then that was it. And it was largely just about the music,

wasn't it? It was basically like being Zoe Ball and sort of going, let's listen to this next

track. It was, you know, they were DJing to an extent. Also, he would ask about whether you

could survive on a desert island, as in he was incredibly interested. Can you build your own

shelter? Can you fish? Can you swim? You know, what are you going to do about the sun? It was

almost purely... That feels like that's what it should be. It was really fun, I think. Do you

know before he pitched this, so he was like 27, I think, when he pitched this. And he came up with

it. And he thought that it was going to be six episodes, and that was it. He thought they paid

him quite well. And so it was a shock that it lasted for him like 41 years and became this

national institution. But before that, he used to pitch shows to the BBC. And one of the shows

he pitched was called I Know What I Hate. And it was a show in which guests choose songs that they

hated. And they would just have them, you know, Room 101 basically, I guess, the pre Room 101.

Imagine if you got them mixed up and you're Dame Mora. Just bring your own songs. Has desert island

discs ever had a gap, or has it just run continuously? It has, yeah. The early days it had. I think

these days they only do 40 a year. Oh, right, okay. There are a few gaps. But there was a

couple of years of like five year gap where it kind of just went off air altogether, yeah. He also

did a panel show called Many a Slip, which sounds amazing. So in a typical round, he would read out

a piece of text, and there would be some grammatical error in there. And the panel had to find the

grammatical error. Bring it back. Isn't that amazing? I absolutely love that. I would really

enjoy being on the panel for that. Yeah. I was reading the early guests, like the really sort

of the first 10 guests they had. So did you guys read at all about Captain Dingle?

Sounds great. He was unbelievably interesting. So he's just listed as explorer, right?

Dan is very interested by this. Yeah, keep talking. Well, Captain Elwood Edward Dingle

was born in 1874. And then he was on the show in the mid 40s. So he's pretty old by this point.

And he was uniquely qualified to be on the show. Can you guess why? He was especially good.

Because he'd lived on a desert island? He had lived on a desert island himself.

Or he was a disc. He was both. He was a uniquely circular guy. No, he had been shipwrecked five

times in his life. Brilliant. Wow. In 1893. So he was 19. He was in a schooner called the Black Pearl.

He and his shipmate were going to retrieve gold from a sunken ship, which had sunk 20 years before.

It's a Black Pearl from Pirates of the Caribbean. It's the same one. Yeah. And so then they got

shipwrecked. And it was only two of them in this boat. And they spent 11 weeks on a desert island

eating raw penguin and drinking rain. Wow. There's some good news, which is that while on the island

they found some other treasure from a different shipwreck. And then amazing story. And the two

of them got along so badly, these two, that they weren't speaking at all for like a few days in.

They were just not speaking for days on end. It's kind of understandable, isn't it? Yeah,

completely. Yeah. This would make such a better episode of desert island discs than

how difficult your childhood was. Yeah. Bring it back. Bring back exclusively shipwrecked.

So who did Dingle's partner do an episode as well to sort of counter B.C. balance?

Oh, what a shame. Can I just say one thing about Plomley? Yeah. His grandfather was called

Wright Hayhoe. What? Excuse me? He was called Wright Hayhoe. And his surname was Wigg. So his

first two names were Wright, W-R-I-G-H-T. And his middle name was Hayhoe, H-A-Y-H-O-E.

What? Wright Hayhoe. Do we know the story? That's amazing. It's not one of those Bible

things, is it? You know how people were named after just putting a... No, it's just that they were

just normal names back in the day. Imagine at school, like the teacher goes, right, Hayhoe,

everyone would start packing up and leaving. That's so good. Yeah. There's an episode that Dan

will be especially interested in. Oh yeah. The Buzz Aldrin episode. Oh, okay. Which we've never heard.

Okay. It was during Sulawli's tenure. She's massively respected, obviously. Amazing

broadcaster. And she and the production team went to Buzz Aldrin's house in California,

all right? And they were setting up, you know, doing all the sort of pre-chat bits.

And Buzz Aldrin left the room and never came back. I really? So they didn't make it? Where did

they do it? Did they do it in 1969? I've just got to quickly do something. And that's why

Lawley was second on the moon because she was trying to get the interview. Yeah, yeah. That's

amazing. Was he pissed off or do we know? We don't know anything. He just walked out. Okay.

I don't know. Someone will know. Buzz will know. Yeah. Let's ask him. Let's ask him. I mean,

he came on our show in our Museum of Curiosity. Came all the way over here. We didn't even have

to go to Califar. Yeah, you should have done a reverse Lawley on him. You should tie your audience

leaves. Alistair MacLean, who was a novelist in the 20th century. Like a detective E.U.

Yeah, thriller, like Where Eagles Dare and Guns of Navarone. I mean, huge author, right?

And Plomley was a mega fan. He loved Alistair MacLean. Really excited. And he arrived and

they were doing the pre-interview, you know, they were talking about, just talking about what

they're going to talk about. And as they were doing the pre-interview, Roy Plomley realized

he was not talking to Alistair MacLean, the novelist. He was talking to a guy called Alistair

MacLean, who was the head of the European Tourist Bureau of the Government of Canada.

He must have got the letter saying, can you come on Desert Island Diss and thought,

finally, my work has been appreciated. Why have they waited so long? I've got so much to say about

Canada. That's amazing. Can you guess what we did? I would say, I think you style it out,

don't you? You have to just say, this is the person we've asked. It's the whole point. I reckon

he just buzz-uldrined it and just walked out. Well, he stuck it out. They just recorded it anyway,

and then didn't broadcast it. Was it just terrible? I have no idea. But I don't think it was,

I don't think it was broadcast in the end. That's a shame because it is a format that thrives on

just someone you've never heard of because the songs allow you in. As a Canadian, this guy would

probably be quite good at wilderness survival. Possibly. You like some islands in Canada,

one of the most islands. I think that's absolutely heartbreaking for Alistair MacLean,

the Canadian. Imagine you get the letter and you're so flattered and you're like,

I knew actually that my life did mean something to people. This really validates everything

that I've had doubts about, I'll be honest. Years of misery being the head of the European

Torres Bureaus. Am I on the right path? Then you record, you even record it and it goes fine.

And then it never airs and you inquire why it's never aired. They must have told him

the tapes were burned in a fire. I hope so. I hope that's what they said. The UK's burnt down,

unfortunately. He'll be like, I can come back, I can redo it. I was wondering how many islands

there were like in the Pacific, for instance, if you put one celebrity on each one.

Could you fit everyone who's been on Desert Island discs onto their own individual island?

I think even just in the Pacific, you would easily be able to do it. But it wouldn't be good for the

local flora and fauna. Desert islands usually they have lots of species on because there's no humans,

there's no cats, there's no rats, so it's quite good for species. But if you put, you know, Barry

Chuckles. The insects will be hurting themselves on the pane of glass. He's accidentally smashed,

carrying. There's a story, Herbert Morrison, who was a politician, he was sort of under Clement

Atley in his government. When he died, he was found to have his eight songs in his wallet

waiting. Should he ever be called at moments noticed to suddenly appear on Desert Island discs?

I think quite similarly, I have on purpose learned all of the words to trouble by Iggy

Azalea, just in case I ever get asked to do celebrity lip-sync. No way. Is that with Jennifer

Hudson? Yeah. Because I know the chorus, I will be your great. You can be Jennifer Hudson, I'll be Iggy Azalea.

It's very much the same and equal esteem, I think. I've actually learned a lot of

ice skating moves in case I'm ever invited on. I don't even know the name of the show.

I've actually been practicing eating kangaroo testicles for the last five years, just in case.

For masterminds. Kangaroo snackers. Stop the podcast. Stop the podcast. Hi, everyone. We'd like

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podcast on with the show. Okay, it is time for fact number two. And that is my fact. My fact this

week is that a man called Mike Merrill found making decisions so hard that he floated himself

as a publicly traded person. And for over a decade now has had over 800 people making his decisions

for him. Right. Very clever. So this guy, yeah, so this was back in I think it was 2007. His career

was sort of at a point where he wasn't knowing fully what he was doing with his life. So he

decided to separate himself into 100,000 shares and float himself and ask the people who were

interested in purchasing these shares at one buck a piece, would you like to make the decisions for

me? That is quite a big decision to make. And he kept the majority shares, right? Yes. But he made

his majority shares non voting. So he didn't have any sway. No one can own him. Yeah, no one can own

him. They can rule him. Exactly. They can rule him. But he throws up the question that he needs

deciding. So it's not like they can just say, we've decided this week, we want you to dye your hair pink.

He has to say, should I dye my hair pink? So he set up a website. It's called k-mike-m. And you

can go I went to it in the course of doing the research. I tried to buy some shares, but none

are up at the moment because he's very popular at the moment. He sort of releases them in small

batches on demand and they fluctuate with the demand. So they could be anything as low as 99 cents,

but they can go all the way up to $18 shares for you. Yeah. And there was well, I mean,

it was has anyone made a big profit on Mike Merrill? Yeah, his brother who sold when he got to a

high point. Yeah, he sold all his shares and bought a new dishwasher, I think. He does make the

decisions about what they vote on. But when he moved in with his girlfriend, he got complaints

from the shareholders who said, this is a decision I think you should have consulted us on. He's

definitely going to affect, you know, it affects the value of him, doesn't it? Yeah, if you get

married, because someone else is then not making decisions, but helping him make decisions as in

if you're living with a partner, you do chat stuff over with them, they might have an influence on

you. Yeah. Well, the other thing is shares depend on how much he's valued at, right? And his value

is going to change when his life changes. So the amount of money you have changes when you get

married, it might change for the better or for the worse. But are you saying his value would

either saw or crater when he moved in with a girlfriend? It's plausible. But it's your value

on different markets, isn't it? So on the dating market, your value is, it sinks when you're

does it sink when you pull up from supply and demand, you would think it would increase.

Well, some people say that. Some people say, oh, no one's interested in you until you move in

with a partner and then suddenly everyone's after you, you know, but then is that your experience?

No.

So you're backfired.

So, Mike's witness is total indifference.

Can you maintain very nicely consistently? Thank you.

When, when this happened and he had to explain to his girlfriend that he had to consult his

shareholders, he issued her with a relationship contract that she had to sign, which sounds

bonkers. But I'm reading that this is, it is quite bonkers, but also relationship contracts

instead of getting married or before marriage are very much on the rise the last few years.

In the relationship contract, do we know any details or is it simply?

I don't, I don't know the details of that one. I did want to tell you though about another

relationship contract that was in the news recently. So the independent reported that

Shailene, someone called Shailene or at Salami Queen on TikTok, made headlines because she

made her boyfriend sign a relationship contract that said that if he cheated on her, he had to

pay all her bills. Indefinitely. That's the thing I put for how long. I don't know what he said.

And her comment on it was, I'm, I'm so smart or crazy. I don't know.

That's the Salami Queen. He was unconscionable to me. Apparently it was a legal contract.

And yeah, I don't know if the contract just said pay her bills with no other parameters.

You've got to define the terms, haven't you? You've got to define what cheating is, you know.

Is it casting a flirty glance at someone, in which case he's going to be paying bills pretty

quickly. Is it hiding money underneath the boarding monopoly? Right. Yes. Is it making a cup of tea

quietly? So you don't have to make the other one a cup of tea. Is it with sleeping with someone else?

We don't know. Something like that. We don't know. Did you hear about Patrick Campbell? No, no.

So he owned a company called Profitwell.com and he sold it in 2022 for $200 million.

And he decided to do a hostile takeover of Mike Merrill. And he has since bought 15% of Mike shares.

And he reckons, because you can tell how often people vote. And usually his shareholders,

Mike Merrill shareholders, don't vote. Most of them, it's just a joke and they might vote once or

twice, but they don't really do it. This guy, Patrick Campbell, reckons that with 15%, he has

enough power to influence all the shareholder votes and he can basically tell him to do what he wants.

Wow. That's amazing. That's exciting. But he's still got to only tell him to do what has been

presented. So Mike can still only ask certain questions and it's up to him. But he basically

now reckons that he will have the deciding vote on any question that he's asked. He reckons Mike's

undervalued at the moment. Well, here's the kind of things that he's probably influencing

his decisions on. So he would have possibly been part of the decision of whether or not Mike

invested in a Rwandan chicken farming business. That was approved by the shareholders. Grow a

winter mustache. That was denied. No winter mustache happened. They decided on whether or not

Mike believes in ghosts. He asked, do I believe in ghosts? They voted on whether or not he does.

66% said yes, you do. So he does believe in ghosts. I'm sorry, I've been on board with this

until that makes the whole thing look ridiculous. It does. Yeah, yeah. I found it interesting that

when he made the decision to embark on this, he valued his life at $100,000 and sold shares on

that basis. That was a very low calculation compared to what economists value your life at,

because they have to calculate this in terms of what the government make decisions on. Officially,

economists think the average human life in the US is worth about $8.7 million.

Really? Wow. That's a lot. It varies a little bit. I'm rich. So like the Environmental Protection

Agency uses $7.4 million. Another one uses $9.6 million, but there is a figure on that.

How does Andy get at this? Yeah, I'm theoretically loaded. I don't know that you can access it,

but it has a huge... What if he cuts off his leg? Yeah, he's got a worth of $1 million.

On the open market. Wow. But I found it so interesting what this means to us in terms of

rulings in government. So for example, in 1972, the auto industry put a life's worth at $885,000

in today's dollars. And then two years later, the figure was more or less the same,

the Department of Transportation rejected a regulation to install bars at the rear of trucks

to prevent passenger vehicles from sliding underneath them. So a safety measure for trucks

was rejected because they did the maths on it and it wasn't cost effective because the lives

that it would save weren't worth it for the price that it would cost to install them.

Which is bleak, isn't it? Bleak. It was like it would save so many thousands of lives,

but they weren't worth enough for them to do it. I guess there's got to be some kind of calculation.

You're making decisions about a limited amount of resources, all your income in the country,

and you're trying to maximise the human life. We all agree I'd rant.

But is it like if you're mountaineering and you get lost and the government are like,

well, he's actually already had $3 million because we put him up in hospital that time.

If you're in one ravine and in the next ravine, there's a lot of Bitcoin.

It makes more sense for the government to go for the Bitcoin. Depending on how Bitcoin's doing,

you know, it's very variable. You know, the calculation was actually, there's a bit more

to it, the 100K. So it wasn't that he thought that was his full life that was worth that amount.

He calculated it based on the fact that he had a day job and that this decision making was only

going to apply to his free time. So 100K is based on his nights and his weekends. So yeah,

there's still, if you round him up, it's still low. It'd be about a mill, just under a mill,

maybe, I guess, for the rest of the, and there's bleed between your, you can't separate those

perfectly. As in if you grow in the start, that will affect your job, depending on what you do

for a living. If you believe in ghosts. Exactly. It's a 24 seven activity. He works in a creepy old

house. I think it's harder to make decisions everywhere, for everybody at the moment, because

there's the thing about how many more decisions you have to make. So there's an economist called

Eric Bynhocker. I think it was very eminent and famous and he wrote a book. It was a huge seller

about this kind of thing. And he had estimated that between 10,000 years ago and the modern day,

human choices had multiplied 100 million fold. Wow. I have five or six different eye creams

in my bedside table. Okay. And every night I choose one of those five or six eye creams.

Based on mood. Yeah. Based on mood. Right. Based on vibe. And I sort of enjoy that process. Yeah.

That's just one of the many examples. Yeah. I've walked 40 minutes near the office wondering

what to have for lunch. Yeah. And I've gone into four places and not had lunch in any of them.

Back in the day, Andy, you would have been walking around the jungle going,

shall I kill that buffalo? Or shall I go after that? Exactly. That lemon. Yeah. Returning it

when it doesn't taste as good. It's a bit of a habit of Andy's. Right. Sorry. Remember the time

you returned that sausage? I once. One time. I once went back to a local restaurant and it

wasn't because it didn't taste good. It tasted great. Was it a single sausage? Well, yeah. And

I was 11 pounds down on the transaction. A single sausage. I ask you must have the picture of you

on the door when you walk in. So do not allow this man to return a sausage. They gave me another

sausage in the end. But by that point, the whole transaction was so spoiled, you know. Yeah. I

wasn't able to enjoy either of the two sausages I ended up taking away. Yeah. I like you holding

a fork with the sausage on the end, walking around the restaurant trying to find the manager

tutting. It was a takeaway. So I actually had to go back in. So you take the box on trust,

don't you? I'm sure this is a nice test. You take it away. You open it up. I think this is

ridiculous. Was it a hot dog? Painful. No, it was just a sausage. Rachel, it was a sausage.

Why did you buy a sausage to take away? You don't understand the meal. It was a sausage and rice.

Okay. It was still odd. It was a very nicely spiced sausage, but it was still ridiculous.

What was wrong with it? It was too small. It was two, it was 11 quid. One small sausage for

11 quid. This was about five years ago, I should say. This was before the cost of living crisis.

Yeah. You know, at the time sausages were going for like two quid, you know, this was ridiculous.

Yeah. This is ridiculous. So you didn't think you were getting your money's worth? I didn't,

and I went back and I remonstrated for quite some time. But you stay, I mean, we had a good

20 minute chat here where you were deciding whether or not and building the fury. I mean,

this is not me remembering a random thing. This was a big incident. This was sausage gate in

this office. I've just got a couple of things on decision making. One of the great ways of deciding

is just coin flipping. So many things in history have been decided from just doing a flip of a

coin. So, you know, the company Packard Hewlett. Packard. That's right because he won the towing

cost. It could have been the other way around. We could have had Packard Hewlett. Did you say

the towing cost? Well, that could have been cool. That was a coin toss that went that way around

as well. We went that out with a computer, didn't we? Yeah. So we've got Hewlett Packard off the

back of that. Portland, we've all heard of Portland, the city in America. Yeah. That was

meant to be called Boston, but they lost the towing cost. We don't keep saying it. Should we

cause a towing? Yeah. So that should have been called Boston. Wait, they were trying to call

themselves, but what did Boston have to say? I don't think Boston was called Boston at that

point. I'm guessing. Oh, James thinks it is. Why would they have called it Boston then?

That was just another Boston. Okay, right. Yeah. Yeah. The Wright brothers as well. So

Wilbur Wright. We're going to be called the wrong brothers.

Should we go in the air or should we go underground?

So Wilbur became the first person ever to fly a plane because of a towing cost.

And but this was an unfortunate one because Wilbur's first flight didn't go. It didn't

work. So the second flight then went to Orville, who then became the first person to fly a plane.

So sometimes it can go against you. Yeah. And that's why the duck was called Orville and not

Wilbur. Was it? No. No. He famously couldn't fly Horville the duck. I wish I could fly way up in

the sky, but I can't. You can. I'd like to pick that Lauren as my desert island. Thank you very

much. That one's going out for the children and the foreigners. Okay, it is time for fact number

three and that is James. Okay. My fact this week is that according to a survey of pubs in 1930,

the average time someone in Bolton took to drink a pint of beer was 52 minutes. In Liverpool,

it was 22 minutes. 52 is a long time. 22 is quite speedy. I'm in the like 10 to 15 mark,

I reckon. Well, on average, like if you have five pints in a night, it slows down, doesn't it?

Yeah. Okay. So I read this in a book called Darts in England 1900 to 1939, a social history by

Patrick Chaplin, which I've mentioned before, which is an amazing book, which is mostly about

darts. And he really does talk about darts quite a lot in this context as well, because it was

related to a thing called mass observation, which was, it was this thing in Britain where they got

a panel of observers and they made a diary about what was happening in their day to day life.

And the idea is they do it over time and in different places. And it would give an idea

of what was happening in the country. But anyway, there was this thing in Liverpool that they banned

darts and actually any pub games. And they thought it was encouraging people to go into pubs.

And so they wouldn't let you do it. In fact, Liverpool was the only city in the country where

no one played darts in pubs. But what happened was it had the opposite effect. Because you

couldn't play darts or pool or dominoes or whatever, you had no distractions. You just drank more

because you didn't have anything, you know, if you're playing darts, you have to go and

collect the darts and come back and stuff. And it's, and you're not drinking. Whereas in Liverpool,

they were just getting drunk. Then eventually they brought sports back into pubs in Liverpool.

Is that, is that why? Yeah, because in Bolton was famously at the time, a lot of people played

darts and played pool and stuff and still do. Oh, that's really interesting. This is weird,

because I was separately reading about pubs in Bolton. But I got a fact from the mass

observation study. Oh, really? Yeah. So it was in this one was in 1937 and 38. I don't know whether

is that about the right time? Yeah, 30s. So and yeah, as James says, massive survey of people.

But I think they didn't have many people who were from Bolton doing the study. So what they did was

they got a lot of middle and upper class southerners who dressed as northerners and put on accents

and went incognito in pubs in Bolton and just drank and you reckon they got away with that

because I'm from Bolton. I just wonder what it was like. What were they doing? They were

observing for the mass. I think observing in people's behaviour in pubs and recording and

to say, you know what was said. And so I just a couple of nice details from this study. One observer

who was EL in the notes was rendered incapable of doing any observation after drinking eight

pints in an hour and 45 minutes. That's a lot. They got into a lot of fights. It was all kind

of glossed over. I think it was a pretty inglorious. I mean, if you're a middle class or upper class

person from the south going to the north dressed as a northerner and doing a fake northern accent,

you're going to get in fights. And they also had a covert photographer in the corner dressed as a

whippet. Taking secret pictures of the fights as they broke out. Do you want some pub slang? Sure.

Quiz. Pint hole. My mouth. It's not the mouth. Oh, dear. How are people drinking pints?

We need a funnel. Pint hole. Is it like the cellar where you go and get the beer from?

This is actually the least good answer of the three that I've got. It's just the public bar.

Oh, all right. A wobble shop. Wobbling like, you know, unsteady because you're drunk. It's

just another word for a pub again. It's an unlicensed pub apparently. It's down the wobble shop.

Do we get unlicensed pubs? Well, they're not loud. But it's quite bold.

Right. This one's hard, but it's good. You're you're an admiral of the narrow seas.

Okay. Does it just mean drunk? It is something you do when you're drunk. You sway like you're on a

boat. Very nice. No, buy some stuff off eBay that you really shouldn't buy. That's it. That's it.

No, it's drunkenly throwing up into someone else's lap. Oh, all right, but admiral of the narrow

seas. It's okay. I'm qualified. Take it up with the Navy.

Come on, Captain Dingle. Let's get out of here. There's a pub in Bolton called The Old Madden

Scythe. We talked about Bolton before. It's possibly the oldest pub in the country. It's

certainly in the top 10. And there's a mention of its name from 1251. So we know it's at least that

old. But it's where the Earl of Derby was executed in 1651 for his part in the Bolton massacre.

This was during one of the civil wars. And there's a chair there. It was the last chair he sat in

before he was beheaded at the Earl of Derby. At the pub? It's in the pub. Yeah, it's quite very

famous in Bolton this. And they have 53 ghosts in this pub, apparently, including a ghost dog

that's known to lick the manager's feet when he lets them hang out of the bed in the middle of the

night. Oh, good. Well, Mike Merrill, if you're listening, you need to get there ASAP. But that's

a lot of ghosts for one pub. It's an old pub, though. It's from 1251. So, you know, that's yeah.

Because as I was looking into is that the most there's usually the most haunted

everything in Britain. And I couldn't find pub. And that and then the ones that I read

didn't have they had like four ghosts. So this isn't huge. Yeah, I would imagine with pubs,

unlike houses or hotels or anything, because you don't stay there overnight. Yeah, it's a lot less

spooky, isn't it? Because you can just leave. Do you know what I mean? Like you go to the pub for a

few hours, but then you go home and also it's like busy and social. So I don't know, it's got a lot

less spook. But most pubs outside cities would have rooms, wouldn't they? And you know, there are

taverns, you know, Jamaica Inn, that kind of fine spooky old pub up on the moors. And you know,

there's dark business. That's based on. Yeah, I accidentally backed into someone's car.

Wow, are you the real pirate? I know, well, I went into the bar and told them that I did it.

Oh, okay. There was no problem. But yeah, I've been there. And also I've been to what I think is

the most haunted or they say it was the most haunted, which is the mermaid and rye.

Which has got a billion ghosts in it. Ryan Sussex. Yeah, I'll count someone. It's on the

coast. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Rye is a lovely town. It is very nice. The mermaid is a lovely pub.

You've been to quite a few supposedly haunted places. Yeah, I'm a big fan of them.

Maybe. I don't believe in any of it. Maybe you're a ghost. That's spooky. Maybe you're Hailey Joel

Osmond. I don't know. 6 cents. Oh, sorry. Right. I was watching clips from the sixth sense the

other day and that that joke still went over my head. Sorry. No, no, I love it. Thanks for calling

it a joke though. I was just looking into drinking beer fast, which is related to what you're talking

about. So before we get to beer, the fastest drinker of a fizzy drink certainly is a guy called

Eric Badlands Booker. Such a sexy outlawish name. You could just drink fizzy drinks fast.

He drank a liter of Mountain Dew, the American fizzy drink, from a measuring cup in 6.8 seconds.

What? And previously his record was drinking two liters in 18 seconds. That was just last year.

But I came across this guy who is a British man called Peter Dowdswell. And he has not only got

the record for drinking a pint of beer the quickest, but he's got records in so many food and drink

speed competitions. So he had to retire a few years ago when he suffered back and shoulder

injuries as he tried to sink a pint while being held upside down. He was 71. 71? Yeah. Oh my god.

He was dropped twice by the men who were employed to hold his legs. Who was holding him?

Yeah, that's amazing. So he holds like all, he's gone through, he's really like belt and braces.

He holds the records for drinking ale, beer, coke, champagne, milk, and milk upside down.

And he holds records for eating quickly. Raw eggs, cocktail sausages, pies soaked in Worcester

sauce, sushi, Weetabix, sausages upside down. And my favorite, eating quickly, sausages on

John Evans's head. Do we know John Evans's? No, I don't know. I don't think we're meant to know.

Right. Actually, I am impressed by that because it's hard. I would imagine to eat a sausage off

someone's head because heads are not plate shaped. Oh, you see, in my head, he was sat on the guy's

head. I thought he was sat on. I think you're right. I think you're right. Yeah. I don't,

sorry, you're, you're correct. I'm sure you're right. Yeah, and it's probably not a plate.

I think either could be possible. I don't know. Do you know that the, I was reading about pub

quizzes and that when they existed, when they first came about, and if you look at the internet,

it says that they came about in the 1970s, but I found in the newspaper archives, there was definitely

one happening in 1954, in Neath in Wales. So we reckon around just after World War II. But probably

they didn't exist in 1947 because I found an article about a pub quiz in Sunderland. And this was,

they advertised it as the pub quiz. And what it was is young people could go to a pub and ask a

panel of married people about the intricacies of sex. Oh, wow. It was called a pub quiz. That's

amazing. Isn't that amazing? Quizzing someone asking questions. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's, um, I could do with that. Is that still a thing? I think any good pub quiz master will

be able to answer some of your questions, not all of them. I didn't have to do it between the rounds

as well. But yeah, and I think it's like World War II just finished. They're trying to get the

population up, you know, young married couples got questions. So they just finished the music

round. Any questions? Dan sticks his hands up. Yeah. It's foreplay stuff. Is sexual or optional?

I wonder what the questions were that were asked. I didn't say it was just like,

uh, this is a thing that's happened. Wow. That would be, that would be great if you could

ask married people what, what it's like. Well, can you remember what it was like?

I think, I think I remember a question when my mum told me about sex when I was, uh, I don't know

what age, like, I think I was nine or something. Um, I think I remember, she described it to me,

and I think I remember asking how, how do you both move at the same time?

Yeah. Which I still think is quite a valid question. You know, uh, I don't know, I've never had sex, but

the answer ultimately, of course, you know, you just sort of, just sort of works most of the

time. It just kind of happens. Yeah. I've just, I, did you, the very first time say to someone,

hey, don't worry, I know what you're thinking, but I've got it covered. I spoke to mum, she explained

it. It will work. You just, it's a to me to use situation. The Chocolate Brothers were the greatest

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On with the show. Okay, it is time for our final fact of the show, and that is Andy.

My fact is, when he was approached for the role, the first actor to play Mr Blobby

was simultaneously appearing in Shakespeare's measure for measure.

So I just imagine him turning up in the wrong outfit.

Oh, no. I wish I knew any quotes from measure for measure.

This is about Mr Blobby, and I think for international lessons, we should just quickly say

Mr Blobby is kind of like one of the national animals of England, I would say.

He's a big pink object, humanoid creature. He's seven feet tall, he wears a bow tie,

and he screams Blobby, Blobby, Blobby, and he wears a big inflatable suit, and he just turns

up on TV and causes mayhem. And I think he- Mr Blobby doesn't wear a big inflatable suit.

Mr Blobby is the inflatable suit. It's not like inside Mr Blobby, there's a smaller Blobby.

No, inside there's a man who it turns out is classically trained.

Yeah, inside there's just a very big heart. Thank you.

So basically, Mr Blobby's been having a bit of a moment because he was really big in the 90s,

and he was on a thing called Noel's House Party, hosted by Noel Evans,

and he's been sort of back in the news recently, just there's been a few sightings of him,

and there's been a costume put up on sale and all this, and I was reading this piece

in the news statement, Beautiful Piece, by Stuart McConey, all about Mr Blobby.

And I just wanted to read you this line, because it's I think maybe the most beautiful thing that's

ever been written about Mr Blobby. Malice and stupidity were never far from Blobby's

puce bulbous surface. There was surely something of Antonin Atoad's Theatre of Cruelty in Blobby's

defiantly senseless nihilistic interventions. He's such a great writer. He's great. And so he

basically he would just cause absolute mayhem and break things and, you know, sit on people and

throw them and get in fights. Yeah. What was the name of this guy who played him? He was called

Barry Killaby. Barry Killaby. And he's gone off and done other things. He's done bits of acting.

He was in Chuckle Vision, for instance, with his Chuckle Brothers at one stage. Yeah. And just

before COVID, he put on a one man theatre show about the final days of Harry Houdini.

Again, not in the Blobby costume. He was just doing that. But he has come back and he is doing

the Blobby from time to time. He still goes into the Blobby suit. The reason being that actually

is a lot of acting is, you know, it's difficult thing to do to get the point across when you're

in a massive suit. But recently he was on This Morning on ITV and he was punched in the stomach

by Maggie Philbin. And the article said that he let out a piercing scream and fell down like a sack

of spunts. Now, what I find interesting about that is that Barry had just done a play about Harry

Houdini. How did Harry Houdini die? He was punched in the stomach. He was punched in the stomach.

Yes. Barry must have thought it was the end of his days, wasn't it? Yes. It's happening again.

Does Blobby have an appendix? Which I think Houdini had appendicitis. And that's,

we don't know about Blobby's organs. We don't know about the organ structure of a Blobby.

No, we don't know. That's very exciting. That's really awkward. What a spot. That's interesting.

What your mind does because I definitely thought that Houdini died from getting trapped in one of

his boxes with chains around it. And that's obviously something I've just invented in my head

from films or something. Yeah, it would be good dramatic irony. Barry was just, while we're talking

about his sort of other life outside of Mr. Blobby, so he was married once and then he and his

wife broke up and then he got together with someone else. And do you know who it was? Miss Blobby.

It was Mr. Blobby. No. Yeah, not Mrs. Blobby. Mr. Blobby. So he was, he was split from his wife

and he was invited down to the staging of the crinkly bottom castle show. So crinkly bottom is

where Noel's house party took place. It's where it kind of fictional village and they opened up a

theme park. They did three in total, which were basically Mr. Blobby theme parks. And part of it

was that obviously Mr. Blobby is a character there. So Barry got invited down to teach all

the aspiring Blobby's how to move inside the suit. And one of the people, one of the Blobby

apprentices was this woman who he then got on with and they ended up getting together and

moving in with each other. So yeah. Incredible. He's with another Blobby. Incredible. Yeah,

she stuck it out. I mean, I want to know so much about the story. I want to know what Blobby Academy

was like. I want to see a boot camp montage of Blobby's school. And then I want to see the moment

where she takes off the Blobby head. And he realizes, Oh my God, you're the love of my life.

And they lean into kiss, but they can't quite make it. I looked at other trained actors in

costumes. So Teletubbies, Simon Shelton played Tinky Winky. And he was a trained ballet dancer

and choreographer. I mean, many of them, you know, they're just classically trained, you know,

actors and often, often dancers because of the movement. And I don't know if I think we've all

got, we've all got boys, haven't we, little boys? Oh, you've got a girl. Oh yeah. But does anyone

delete all of this because it's completely irrelevant to what I'm about to say. But in the

Night Garden. Oh yeah. So that's my dog's favorite show. Yes. Yeah, my boys love it. It's Billy's

favorite show. And Iggle Pigle is played by Nick Kellington, who also starred in two of the recent

Star Wars films and The Dark Crystal. Wow. Is that right? It's quite a range. Wow. I read the other

day that Little Monster from Justin's House, while we're on there, was also in Jurassic Park,

like one of the new Jurassic Parks. Okay, right. A dinosaur. So Little Monster's like a little

Muppet thing. But it's the person whose hand is up. Little Monster was also on the dinosaur.

Wait, so were you watching Jurassic Park and some random guy goes, could I get the, and you're like,

I know that hand. That's brilliant. Barney the dinosaur, he went on to become a Tantric sex

instructor. The guy who played. There was some controversy wasn't there with Barney the dinosaur.

Was that what it was? I think that's what he did. That's so interesting because there was a New

York Times article about Mr. Blobby in the 90s saying what the hell is this thing in the UK.

And they compared him. They were saying he's basically Britain's Barney. Yes, he's very,

he's very similar except with chaos because Barney is a very measured safety, health and safety guy.

I was reading a piece comparing the two. It's the fence magazine, which is a brilliant magazine.

It said Blobby was a dark mirror to Barney the dinosaur. And the later blobby called Paul Denson

said he was a reaction to that to Barney the dinosaur to say what would England have if it

was shite. That's what Mr. Blobby is. He was created by a man called Michael Lego.

What? Yeah, I just like that. Yeah, just in keeping with kids. He was called Mr. Lego.

Can I just say one more thing about in the night garden? Yeah, it's worth just mentioning while

we're on this topic that obviously the narrator of the night garden is National Treasure multi-award

winning Sir Derek Jacobi. Yeah, that's right. So you've got this, you know, absolutely hugely

famous, fantastic actor going maca, paca, waka, waka, waka. Oh, my name is Eagle Pickle.

Is that a pip? But they're all like that, aren't they? Who does the clown? Does it someone really

famous? That was Olivier. Late Olivier. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And blobby. Oh, yeah, I can't go again.

Please, Mr. Sorry. I'm so sorry. How familiar are you with him? I'm not. I'd love to meet blobby.

It's kind of hard to overach how much a big thing blobby was in the 90s in Britain. So was he? So

I wasn't here was huge. Yeah, right. Oddly huge. Okay, let's down. You want some stats? Yeah. His

Christmas single in 1993 sold 600,000 copies, which is pretty good. Thank you. He got the

Christmas number one. Yeah. Nearly didn't was knocked off the top spot by take that the week

before and then reclaimed it the following week to get Christmas number one. Yeah. Merch included

lemonade, bubble bath, knitting patterns, pasta, lampshades. I mean, anything you can imagine

had blobby put on it. Yeah, one of the businessmen evolved so that they done some research in the

90s and found that every household in the country owned at least one piece. That must have been

on average. Because we didn't have any growing up. Exactly. There we go. There we go. The system

works. Rachel, how many did you have? None. Oh, okay. Anna will have had two. Yeah, knowing Anna.

I was trying to look into I'm sure everyone else did other similarities between Shakespeare and

Mr. Blobby. Great idea. And I couldn't find many. I found a couple. One is that one thing they share

is that so this theme park stuff I was talking about, there was an abandoned place of one of them.

And one of the houses there that survived was called Dunblobbin House, which is what he is

that way he lived Dunblobbin House. No. Bobby, if he had a house, well, this was his house. Yeah.

In the in the place. And so they left it and it was abandoned. And so what would happen is is that

ravers would come and have parties all night long in it and they would just use it as an abandoned

party house basically. And so the local guy who owned the area was so pissed off that people kept

coming that he smashed it down. Not dissimilar to Shakespeare's home. Do you remember Shakespeare's

house? Is that the link? I thought your link was at Dunblobbin's house, but like Duncinane, maybe?

Oh, yeah. Yeah. No. So where where Shakespeare's house was, there was the the owner of it was so

sick of tourists coming and taking photos and messing about that he just knocked it down.

And so we lost Shakespeare's yeah place. So so there's one similarity. Well, second

similarity. Oh, sorry. I don't know. I worked really hard Andy to find this. I'll just quickly get

this on. So the 1993 Christmas single that you were mentioning in which there's a very famous

video that goes along with it. It was a parody video. And there's a parody video. It's the link

by Shakespeare's sister, the band. They parodied that. So there's your second Shakespeare connection.

You're welcome everyone. It's almost too close actually. It's eerie. I was thinking of links

and I didn't put in as much work as Dan. How could I? But I was just thinking measure for

measure, which Barry Kiloby was starring in, is a problem play. As in, there are these three

categories of Shakespeare plays, the tragedies, the histories, the comedies, and you know,

they're all clear. And then there's this fourth quasi category, which is called the problem plays.

And it's basically they don't obey any of the rules of any of that. So measure for measure is

kind of has comedy elements, but there's also a really serious death penalty plot line. So it's

a problem that you can't put it into a category. Is that the problem? Yeah, it's just it's more

problematic for scholars studying it. It's kind of one of these weird and lots of the later plays

are more problem play ish. I think people say the tempest is one as well. And I in a way blobby.

Jesus. Well, he doesn't catch the late comedy and tragedy. Exactly. Exactly. He is comic and

tragic at the same time. He puzzles scholars. Exactly. I've got a link between blobby and

Dickens. Well, this is cool because actually, like the thing about Noel's house party is

they were just looking for something for Noel Edmonds to do. So they gave him 18 different

shows that he might possibly do. And they chose this one because it was the best one. But they

had complete autonomy so they could do what they wanted. And they didn't have a commissioner telling

them what to do. They didn't have someone at the BBC saying you can do this or you can't do this.

They could do whatever they want. And quite often when you find that in TV is like people take

a lot of care about things and there's lots of like hidden jokes and stuff. And apparently

there's a bookcase or there was a bookcase on the side of the set that you never saw you couldn't

read any of the books, but all the books had got blobby titles. Oh, cool. And so there was like

blob finger instead of gold finger and Martin Bloblewitt. That's brilliant. But didn't Dickens

have a fake bookcase in his house? He did. He did. He had a bookcase in his house which had

fake book titles and it was hiding the door to another room or a panel or something. But it was

or it was above a doorway. And so both blobby and Charles Dickens had the same idea. Amazing.

Blobby is basically a literary great is what we're saying. Yeah. Yeah, he's huge.

Um, interestingly, we'll never know what Barry Killaby thinks about Mr. Blobby

because he's never done an interview. Isn't that weird? Ever. Sorry.

I only thought you were going to a really macabre ending because he's dead. Yeah.

No, I don't think he'll ever do an interview about it as in lots of people have tried to

make contact over the years. And he I think I think either he just thinks of it as a job

and he just doesn't want he doesn't want to become a personality associated with it.

Whatever the reason, yeah, he's never ever done it. And he seems like he never will.

Interesting. Yeah. I'm just going to say I like the idea of the people who don't know about Mr.

Blobby and Noel's house party, googling it and seeing what it was. Yeah, such a treat.

I had such a treat. And also, if you just see like, say a one minute clip of that show,

that will in no way explain what happens in the rest of the show.

You really have to watch. Yeah, I have no idea what I see. What it is.

It is a lot. One of the things you're saying about how so so much weird stuff happened on

that show, one of them was MTV. And I don't know if you remember that. So what it was is

they would go into someone's house and they would put a camera on their TV and they would talk to

them live. Oh, wow, cool. Oh, yeah. It was amazing. It was so cool. They could win prizes or something.

And did they know? Did they know that was it? No, they didn't know. And the amazing thing was

when you see interviews with Michael Lego, he basically said, every day we didn't know if it

was going to work. And you would be stressed out all the way through the week. And the only time

you could breathe is when that person didn't swear or say something terrible live on air.

But apparently, there was a researcher who would go and meet this person the week before

surreptitiously and pretend that they were just randomly meeting this person didn't tell them

they were on TV or anything. So get into their house, set up the camera. Yeah, exactly. But

they're applying the camera to the town. Yeah, so someone would have to nominate you and that person

would have access to the TV. So they make sure you weren't in at the time. But a researcher would

just come up someone you've never met before and you would come up with some story that they would

chat to you to make sure you weren't, you know, a person who is going to do something terrible

live on TV. I feel like if you flunked out of MI5, that would be a job that you could take.

Yeah, it's spy adjacent, but you're not actually doing any spy. I feel like you would get because

the Cold War is finished at that time in the 1990s. A lot of those, a lot of those spies went on to

do on TV and blobby. There was a lot of gunging as well on it, the gunge tank, where sometimes

guests wouldn't they get would get guns. So you'd be in a big glass tank and gunge would fall on you.

Right, okay. But gunge featured fairly heavily on British TV. Get your own back with great gunge

heavy. There's someone, this won't make the edit, but there's someone, a guy on social media,

I think it's only on Instagram, who I sort of assume it's all women, but certainly as me and a

load of women I know, constantly comments, Rachel, will you get gunged? Are you willing to get gunge?

Please respond. Just back on the gunge question. Would love to see you get gunged. Are you willing?

Always very polite, like wants it to be fully consensual. Right. And very persistent, like to

be fair, I don't think I've ever replied. But like the comments to everyone are the same.

He just wants to see certain people getting gunged. Does he have the capacity to gun?

I don't think I should ask. I think he'd take that as a maybe. Just ask, what's your setup?

Is he using a classic 90s gun recipe, or is this him, has he recreated his own gunge in a sort of...

I don't like to think of that. Oh God.

Well, or is it someone who worked on 90s television, and has kind of picked up this

petition? He's got all this leftover gunge after the show got cancelled. What am I going to do with

this gunge? It reminds me of the story. This isn't my story, so I'm not sure if we can keep it in,

but you know Rich Turner, our very good friend, who Dan and I work with a lot, and is a radio

producer and worked on TV for many, many years. He worked on a kid's show in the 70s for the BBC,

and he said that there was a child, and they kind of, they've been, it wasn't gunged, but there was

like a flower fight, you know, so they're covered in flower like this, and then someone on set had

to shout out, can someone deflower this child, please? And that was the only time that was ever

heard of in 1970s at the BBC. 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've said over the

course of this podcast, we can be found on our Twitter accounts. I'm on at Shriverland, James,

at James Harkin. Andy, will you be gunged? At Rachel Parris. Yeah, and remember, as we said

at the top of the show, you can see Rachel live on stage as part of the great ostentatious ensemble.

It is such an amazing night. It's live improvised Jane Austen novels that have never been performed

before. They've been written, I think 6,000 of them or something like that, that were lost to

time have been found. They perform a new one each night, and that's on in the West End. So do check

out online to find tickets for that or make sure to get her book. It is now out on paperback,

Advice from Strangers. It's out March 23rd. It's where Rachel spent basically a year of stand-up

life going around the UK and in Edinburgh, taking advice from strangers and working out the answers

and working out with the philosophy of what they were saying, meaning it's a brilliant book. It's

out now on paperback. So do check it out and do come back next week. We'll have another episode

waiting for you. We'll see you then. Goodbye!

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.