No Such Thing As A Fish: 482: No Such Thing As Parachuting Into Hollyoaks

Hi everyone, welcome to this week's episode of No Such Thing as a Fish, where we are joined by one of our favourite, favourite people in the world, Rosie Jones.

Now, those of you in the UK will not need to hear an introduction for Rosie, because she is one of the great comedians of our time.

Any of you who've watched QI, which I know is a lot of you will recognise her, she's been on all sorts of stuff, so she kind of came into the limelight on the last leg

and worked on the Paralympics, you'll hear a lot about that in this show.

She's a writer as well, she wrote for the Netflix show Sex Education, she's written a brilliant children's book called The Amazing E.D. Eckhart,

which is about an 11 year old with cerebral palsy. She's just an all-round, very, very funny person and I really, really hope you'll enjoy this week's show.

I'm absolutely certain you will, it's one of my favourites that we've ever done, I think.

If you want to see Rosie in real life, then I think her tour has, I think it's literally just started maybe this week,

and if you want to go and see that, you can go to rosyjonescomedy.com and all the dates are up there, Rosie is R-O-S-I-E.

And that's all to say really, I really hope you enjoy this show with Rosie and on with the podcast.

Hello and welcome to another episode of No Such Thing as a Fish, a weekly podcast coming to you from the QI offices in Hoburn.

My name is Dan Schreiber, I am sitting here with James Harkin, Andrew Hunter Murray and Rosie Jones,

and once again we have gathered round the microphones with our four favourite facts from the last seven days and in no particular order, here we go.

Starting with fact number one, that is my fact.

My fact this week is that the world's greatest Paralympic equestrian with 14 gold medals under his belt is also allergic to horses.

That's not his Paralympic qualification, that's not the disability that means.

Absolutely, no, it's not.

So yeah, this is an extraordinary guy called Lee Pearson who has over the years won 14 gold medals, a bunch of bronze and silver along the way as well,

and he's just an amazing character generally.

I'll mention a couple of things, I'm really excited to ask whether or not you've met him, because I know you've been to the Paralympics, right?

But so he's the kind of guy who says like, my training is curry, Malibu and Coke, and he loves to party and he's got a life story which is, you know, he was born and put into a broom cupboard as soon as he was born.

We've got to unpick this.

So he was born with a condition which I've never heard of before, it's called athyrogryposis multiplex congenitor.

I think I've said that right.

I think that was known when he was born and he wasn't looked after especially well by the hospital he was in.

So he was put into a cupboard for a few days in a sort of crib thing and his mum was heavily sedated so that they didn't know she was trying to find out where he was when she eventually came around.

And as a result, he has no muscles in his arms.

So he does the dressage with his shoulders, that's what he pulls with to control and he got into horse riding because he couldn't ride a bike.

So that's the basics.

Sorry, is he British?

He is.

He's also gay.

And as a result, the headline on the story that I read was out of two closets and into Paralympic history.

That's amazing.

But so just to end the broom cupboard story is that he's left there for three days.

Finally, the dad comes to visit the mum.

Where's my baby?

And they go find the baby and they half kind of think they're going to find a dying baby, but he's doing okay.

And the mum has to play it cool because for some reason she just wanted to not make a big deal out of it,

worrying that they might then take him away because of her emotion.

And so he should have died according to the nurses.

So his life story from the get-go is just a phenomenal moment.

And he was kind of a young kid who experienced a lot of interesting moments along the way.

Like there's a story that Margaret Thatcher carried up the staircase at 10 Downing Street

when he was being presented an award when he was six years old for children of courage.

So he's always been sort of in the limelight and he's a huge advocate of gay rights.

Thatcherism.

But yeah, when the Paralympics were going to be happening in Russia,

he wanted to go and explicitly talk about gay rights there.

He's a really cool guy, he seems.

He is amazing because I've been to two Paralympics now

because before I was a comedian, I was a researcher in telly.

So in 2016, I went to Rio to work on the last leg.

And then in 2021, I went to Tokyo again with the last leg.

But this time, I was on telly.

So I was, like, corresponding out there.

And, like, tell me to shut up because there's not a fact in this.

But I just wanted to say how both times I got into the Paralympics,

I've had incredible emotional journeys because I've been disabled all my life.

I don't mind it.

I love the life and the world I created.

But it can be exhausting going into rooms all day every day

when you're normally the only disabled person.

So you get this disabled paradise where actually if you're able-bodied,

you look weird.

It's such an emotional feeling to know that we're not alone

and we're in this all together.

But what I wanted to say was, I met Lee at both games and he is brilliant.

We once interviewed him and he was naked in bed.

Like, he did not care, he's amazing.

It just sounds so cool.

I love that he learned to ride on horses, not on the horse, but on a donkey.

That was his first experience.

A donkey called Sally.

In ancient China, no, not ancient China, but early modern China,

the women polo players would play on donkeys.

So the male polo players would play on horses and the women would play on donkeys.

And it was because it's quite a high status thing.

It's like very posh people who would play and they just thought it was safer.

Closer to the ground, I guess.

And I guess that's why you practice to do your equestrian on donkeys as well,

because they're slower and closer to the ground.

There is a lot of horse allergy in Paralympic athletes.

Horse riding athletes.

There's Sophie Wells, she won Silver in 2012, she's allergic to horses.

I read that and I read an article with her that said

because she was allergic to horses, her mother had to brush down the pony

when she was a child.

It does sound to me like she's like, oh no, I can't.

I can't muck her out, I can't brush her down, I'm allergic.

I'm also allergic to dogs.

Making birds, I can't.

The other thing about her, Sophie Wells, is she went to school

at somewhere called the Robert Pattinson Academy.

Really?

No.

That's great.

Isn't that amazing?

Yeah, it's open at the toilet.

It's named after Sir Robert Pattinson who was an MP for Grantham in the 1920s.

Margaret Thatcher's old constituency.

Strong link between Paralympic dressage and Margaret Thatcher.

Sophie Wells, the rival of Sophie Wells, Sophie Wells won Silver in 2012.

Her rival who took gold was called Michael George.

Now if my surname was Michael, no, if my surname was George,

I'm not sure I'd call him Michael.

Why?

Because it's George Michael's.

I was two first names.

I'm thinking it's like a George Michael reference.

If they stood next to each other, they'd be a palindrome.

Yeah.

You didn't pick up on someone called Michael George having a name like George Michael?

No.

I didn't.

No.

Am I the only one here?

No, I didn't.

Oh, thank you.

Okay.

You.

Well.

That first no was what Tommy M.

Yeah, that's it.

He was in Thatcher's cabinet.

I went to the Sydney Paralympics.

Did you?

Yeah.

Yeah, it was awesome.

I don't actually have much memory.

We sat in Homebush, which is the big stadium that was built for it.

And it wasn't, the Paralympics wasn't a big deal in the country.

It's sort of the Olympics was such a big deal.

2000.

2000.

And I remember on the day, my impressions of it were the stadium was virtually empty.

Yeah.

It was a lot of school excursions, which is what we were on.

And the music that they were playing over the sound system.

And these are what people are doing.

The big Olympic events were kids songs like row, row, row your boat and stuff.

And I just remember thinking, is that during the rowing event?

Yeah.

Good motivation.

But I just remember sitting there thinking, these are professional athletes who've spent

four years getting to this point.

And they've got nursery rhymes play.

It was really odd.

And now it's kind of like, like the opening closing ceremonies will have cold play and

they'll have Michael George.

Michael George.

Michael George.

Doing whisper carols.

They're first Olympic Games were Osainne Rome, in 1960.

And they had a few games like unfortunately no longer happen.

unfortunately no longer happened my favorite was a sport called

öttschy re

in a pub

Everyone was strong.

They didn't like that for them, they had to get down to sleep.

That's a great idea.

But we bow and I bow.

But what's crazy is Archery has a very big, effectively a large dartboard, doesn't it?

So that's making Archery 10 times harder, suddenly your place of aim is a dartboard

like that's, oh yeah, you've got less surface area for...

Was it the size of a dartboard?

Yeah, I think so.

Oh, I thought it was literally a dartboard.

Your normal arrow for an Archery, if you fired that at something the size of a dartboard,

it's going to go in numerous different numbers at the same time.

That's what I was confused about, but you've raised a really good point.

What if it was bigger?

I was reading about visually impaired skiing, which I think is amazing, because you're skiing

down and then there's someone else who's skiing in front of you, and they're attached

by Bluetooth, so they're telling you what's coming all the way down, and then you have

to ski behind them.

Wait, so they're not attached physically?

They're not physically attached, they're a guide, and they have like headphones.

But like, how hard is it to attach your headphones to your phone by a Bluetooth?

That must be terrifying to just like your Bluetooth is now disconnected.

Oh fuck!

What if you then connect to someone else?

Getting the wrong info?

No, no, what?

I just think that must be absolutely terrifying.

Visual impairment is such an interesting territory about how there's assists, just for that tiny

bit of guidance.

So for swimming, there's a thing called the tapper, where when you're coming, they'll

tap a swimmer on the head to let them know that the end is coming up, or if you're a...

I think that's, because it's so basically as the swimmer, who is visually impaired,

you can just swim at full pelt, and you'll know that the end's coming up, so you don't

have this uncertainty ahead of you.

But I think that has a big responsibility on the tapper.

Absolutely, you've got to get that in one.

You've got to get that back on it.

Yeah, exactly.

And you have to agree what the thing is before you start the race.

What the distance is.

I'm sure they do, Andy.

I'm sure they do.

They're starting to not just wing you there.

Surprise!

So I'm going to try and tap you one centimetre before the edge of the gear.

You laughed, but there was an incredible swim in Rio, and he had no arms and no legs,

and his way of stopping in the pool was literally to hit the head.

So good.

For the end of it, it must have had brain damage as well.

Was he wearing like a helmet or something?

No!

Oh my god.

No!

That's amazing.

Also, what I love about the Paralympics is all their different groups.

Yes.

There's a million groups and a group on ability, and I think that's why I love it more than

the Olympics, because you know that everyone in that race is the same sort of ability.

Oh yeah.

I didn't know about the classification thing.

And it's why there are so many events as it were, because you've got ten classes of disability

from the least to the most impaired.

Well, yeah, but you get different classes if you're swimming, different classes if you're

swimming.

Yeah.

You just need it, because you cannot have a visually impaired person next to an amputee.

Yeah.

You can't have someone with no arms and legs against someone who's allergic to horses.

Yes.

But I think it's right.

So within class seven or whatever it is, there will be different kinds of impairments.

So you might have someone who's got a limb which is shorter, or someone who's got impaired

muscle power, or someone who's shorter, but they have been assessed as being the same level

of impairment.

And what it means is the winner is whoever's the best on the day.

Yeah.

So obviously the Paralympics countries compete in against each other, but when I went to

me, I set up Team CP, so I only supported people with cerebral palsy.

That's good.

And if there was anyone with, like, ME, I'd be like, get away!

You're not, I grew!

That, I think, is the spirit of the Paralympics really, right there.

I'm fishing, laying, pad, pet, something like that.

So good.

Stop the podcast.

Stop the podcast.

Hi everyone.

We'd like to let you know that this episode of No Such Thing As A Fish is sponsored by

No Such Thing As A Fish.

James, it's true.

We finally inceptioned ourselves.

What?

Well, more specifically, we are sponsored by Clubfish, which is a wonderful secret place

beyond the velvet rope where you can get all sorts of goodies.

That's right.

Clubfish.

If you are not a member of Clubfish, you're missing out.

Basically, if you don't like listening to ads, like this one, go to Clubfish.

And if you sign up for just a couple of quid a month, I think it's two or three pounds a

month, it's small.

You get ad-free episodes.

And the other thing you get, which is really fun, is bonus content.

Yeah, we do things like drop as a line, which is delving deep into our mail bag of lovely

listeners who never send us anything insulting whatsoever.

It's always, oh, you've never got anything wrong.

We talk about those things.

We have bonus compilations of things that didn't fit in the normal episode.

We have a very cool thing called Meet the Elves, where we have a chat with one of our

younger colleagues who we're all very jealous of because of their youth.

It's mostly us asking them, why is your skin so nice?

Basically, Clubfish is really fun to be a part of.

If you enjoy fish and you can find room for a little bit more of it in your life, then

all you need to do is go to what's that website, James?

NoSitchThingsAfish.com forward slash Apple if you're an Apple user and NoSitchThingsAfish.com

forward slash Patreon if you are not an Apple user.

That is right.

Just go to NoSitchThingsAfish.com forward slash either Apple or Patreon.

We would love to see you there.

Come on in.

The water's lovely.

And it's time to say on with a pa- or is it?

Well, the other exciting thing, James, is that we have some live shows coming up in

London.

They're going to be at the Soho Theatre, deep in the heart of Swinging London.

Yeah.

It's at the Soho Theatre.

We're doing 11 shows between the 17th of July and the 21st of August.

There are going to be celebrity guests.

You don't like us?

Doesn't matter.

The people on stage won't be us.

We can guarantee pretty much anything could happen except for swinging.

There'll be amazing facts.

There'll be dorking out.

It's going to be really, really fun.

Already quite a lot of the dates have sold out.

And the ones that have not sold out, there are very, very few tickets available.

So we are here to tell you if you want to see us live in London in July and in August,

then really this probably is your last chance to get tickets.

That's right.

If you want to, know such thing as a fish.com slash live and snap yours up now.

OK, now for sure it really is on with the podcast.

On with the show.

OK, it is time for fact number two and that is Rosie.

And from Yorkshire once changed its name by default to Yorkshire Bank PLC,

a fascist bastard.

I love this.

Now, for avoidance of that,

we're not saying that Yorkshire Bank PLC are fascist bastards.

No, they don't know one man saying that.

And his name is Yorkshire Bank fascist bastard.

So are we going to call him Mr Bastards or?

Well, actually a brother to his friends is known as Yorkshire.

Because this was a few years ago.

1999.

The 90s.

Yeah.

So has he stuck with it?

I wonder.

I try to look and I can't find it.

But I like to think that Yorkshire's out there enjoying Yorkshire and hating Yorkshire Bank.

I reckon he's probably now called like United Utilities are fascist bastards.

Royal Mail are fascist.

He probably just keeps doing it.

Because actually he's changed his name to those what that six words.

So four of those are middle names.

So he will look like he's just called Yorkshire Bastards.

Well, we don't know fascist bastards as a double bound.

Oh yeah, it could be.

I always picture this going to a depot because I need to change my name to something.

Let's say a lot of actors do it right where a name's taken.

So they pick something quite normal.

They pick you and the person in front of you is like, oh, what are you changing it to?

And he's like, oh Yorkshire Bank of Fascist Bastards.

That's pretty cool.

Guy behind you.

What are you changing it to?

Oh, you know, Rainbow Sunshine Lollipops.

God damn it.

And I imagine I would just keep coming out with a different name.

I'd buckle under the influence.

You came in just to call yourself Don Shriver.

Yeah, exactly.

I'm not a Don Shriver.

I'm leading as Indiana Jones, Platypus, Orange Man, whatever.

I've got an idea.

I think after this we should all go and change our names to each other.

Oh, that's a great idea.

I don't mind being Rosie Jones.

A lot more work.

His real name was Michael Howard.

Yeah.

Like the ex-conservative leader.

Was Howard big in the 90s?

Huge.

Michael Howard?

Yeah.

He was a minister because the conservatives were in government at the time.

So yeah, he was a big deal at the time.

So extra incentive to change from Michael Howard if you didn't want to be.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But the report from the time is so good because he asked for his balance at the bank, 69 pence,

to be returned to him by check.

And a spokeswoman for the bank had to say the relationship with Mr. Howard has irretrievably broken down

and we very much regret that.

And he said, sorry, who are you talking about?

Mr. Howard, who's he?

Conservatively, no.

I love Rosie.

The link you sent over was from a Guardian article, which was called It's a Funny Old World 1999.

And this was published in November.

And just the other examples in there, just to read one or two of them.

There was this great one in Sydney.

120 men named Henry attacked each other during a My Name Is Henry convention.

Henry Panty of Canberra accused Henry Pap of Sydney of not being a Henry at all.

But in fact, an Angus.

It was a lie, explained Mr. Pap.

I'm a Henry and always will be, whereupon Henry Pap attacked Henry Panty,

whilst two other Henrys, Jones and Dyer, attempted to pull them apart.

Several more Henrys, Smith, Calderwood and Andrews, became involved,

and soon the entire convention descended into a giant fist fight.

I wonder how they hoovered up after that.

That final line, the brawl was eventually broken up by riot police,

led by a man named...

Henry!

Shane.

That was Australian.

Rosie, you're from York, aren't you?

Yes.

Okay.

I'm proud of Yorkshire Lady.

And I think we get a reputation of being tight-backed.

But I wanted to call me and say,

actually, that reputation isn't even true,

because I was a survey done that said more than 60% of Yorkshire folks

never use a rubber draft.

And three-quarters of people from Yorkshire

put up to £200 a month aside.

So we forgot the money going on.

Wait, are you a Yorkshire ambassador?

Are you trying to change?

Is that where you're here?

You've got an agenda.

Come terrible thinger!

All that says to me, Rosie,

if they're not going into their overdraft and they're saving money,

is that they're not spending any money.

Oh, yeah.

There's a weird fact I found which kind of combines

the name changes and the money thing.

So is it pronounced Connysborough in Yorkshire?

Yeah.

Connysborough, okay.

So there's a place in Yorkshire called Connysborough,

which has a road in it, which is called Butthole Road.

Okay?

Lovely.

Lovely.

They didn't love it.

It was probably named after a water butt

that used to be in the road.

I mean, perfectly innocent, normal, not funny, you know,

but three words, Butthole Road.

And that wasn't funny.

I know.

I know.

Well, the thing is they were getting a lot of prank calls.

They were getting tourists turning up with their arses out

and that kind of stuff.

Taxi drivers point blank refused to believe it was a rickshaw.

They wouldn't take you there.

There were tour buses turning.

I mean, quite quiet tours, I guess, but one family,

one family actually sold up and moved in 2003

because they were so annoyed about the jokes.

Yeah.

And the new owner of the house, Peter Sutton said,

he knows what to expect and he's looking forward to moving in.

I know.

It's very sadly for our purposes.

They changed the name of the street in 2009 to Archer's Way.

Archer's Way.

That's what.

But the council refused to replace the street sign for free,

which I don't know if that plays into the other Yorkshire stereotype.

Also, there's a village that I've never been to,

but I see signs for it called the Land of Nod.

Really?

The Land of Nod?

Yeah.

That's quite nice.

It's in the Bible, isn't it?

It's the Land of Nod.

It's the place east of Eden where they get sent off to, I think.

Really?

There's lots of houses around the Bible, but yeah.

Is that where they call it God's Own Country?

Yorkshire?

Yeah.

No, it's because they're deluded.

Oh, sorry.

OK.

Oh, I'm starting jumping now.

I'm from Lancashire, so.

Do you guys, yeah, do you have rivalries that beat?

Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Wow.

Have you heard of a little thing called the Wars of the Roses?

Because...

OK.

It's still ongoing.

Yeah.

But actually, my mum and dad are from Lancashire.

Are they?

Oh, you're not.

No.

A peace offering has occurred so quickly.

Sorry, Rosie, so you're from Bridlington, right?

Yeah.

They have 21 fish and chip takeaways within a five-minute walk of the centre of Bridlington,

right?

And now you call that a challenge.

And the problem is you have so much fish and chips that also means you have a lot of seagulls.

Yes.

Right?

I was reading the Bridlington Echo, and it's a recurring story about the problems with

seagulls.

The Royal Mail had to warn residents that they wouldn't be getting their postal deliveries

because seagulls kept attacking postal workers.

Oh, wow.

And there was a bank that was closed because nesting seagulls had caused a leak in the roof.

And the Bridlington Fire Station had to rescue a stranded seagull after it sat on top of

a metal lamp post for too long in the winter.

So it's, you know...

Wait, did it get...

Sorry, just to burrow down into that one a bit.

Was it frozen onto the...

I'm afraid.

You know, like when you put your tongue on a metal...

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well, apparently, if you're a seagull, it works with your feet as well.

Oh, no.

How do they rescue it?

Well, with the tongue, you usually pour, like, lukewarm water.

Yeah, yeah.

Something similar.

Yeah, definitely.

Yeah.

I think they're so great, but I think what that shows some more than anything is shit all

happens in Bridlington.

Yeah.

Well, there was a big story recently.

A woman called Susan Radford, she was a grandma, and she spoke out against sexually explicit

sweets that were on sale on the seafront.

Do we have any examples?

Yeah, come on.

Well, you know, like rock, like solid sugar.

Yeah, stick of rock.

Oh, you mean, like, the shape of it.

In the shape of...

Oh.

We can get what?

Of penises.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

What do you think?

I knew.

I knew.

And she was so upset that she's...

She got in touch with the local Anglican church to help her complaint, and she said she's

not going to visit Bridlington again until they get rid of the...

She's not from Bridlington.

No?

She just went on a holiday one day, saw them, and went, I'm not coming back here again.

Wow.

Good.

We don't need her.

I saw a couple of articles where it said Bridlington voted one of the worst towns in the UK and

stuff, but everyone who then went to ride up on it came out going, it's awesome here.

What are you talking about?

Like, who said that this was bad?

Yeah.

What are you talking about?

So I don't know, but the picture is...

It looks kind of pretty.

I mean, I think Bridlington is very good if you're under five and you're over 85.

Right.

In between, there's not a lot to do.

It's a pretty rough message to hear on your sixth birthday in Bridlington.

Get out now, Freddie.

Can I quickly tell you a couple of Yorkshire world records?

Yeah.

Very proud Yorkshire world records.

Fastest time to make a litre of ice cream, which was 10 seconds.

Wow.

Andrew Ross.

But the ingredients did include liquid nitrogen, so I feel like there was some...

Yeah.

Cheat.

Yeah.

World's loudest clap.

Okay.

And we're talking about the action.

We're not talking about the disease.

So painful you could hear him screaming for miles.

I've got the clap.

No.

I once read, I don't know if this is true, that the name the clap came...

This is awful, that they used to put your penis between two pieces of wood and then whack

them together and it would like get the discharge out of the...

Right, we're talking about a seven year old girl here.

So I hope you're all very proud of yourselves.

I think that might be truly good.

I'm not sure.

I think that's to cure a different thing.

I think there's a thing called peoria where the penis starts to bend and it happens increasingly

as you get older and it's incredibly painful and there are now ways of dealing with it.

Also, if your penis isn't flat enough.

Yes.

Anyway, look, can we get back to this?

Poor kid.

Sorry, what was this?

So a young girl, seven years old.

Martha Gibson.

Martha Gibson.

She was clapping.

She's got an incredibly loud clap.

You know when some people, they really have these hollow space in their hands and it's

apparently the equivalent of a heavy goods vehicle passing by 73 decibels and they got

someone from Guinness to measure it.

So a seven year old.

Yeah.

And maybe there's someone louder who hasn't been officially Guinness approved measured.

But anyway, she was born in 1998, which means she's out there somewhere.

Yeah.

You know, she's in her 20s now.

I don't know if she's still...

She has a bit sweaty of our kicks, I can say that.

Can I say one last thing from these?

It's a funny old world.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So it's just, they're just such great stories.

A sexline caller complained to trading standards after dialing an 0891 number for an advertisement

saying, hear me moan only to be played a tape of a woman nagging her husband for failing

to do jobs around the house.

Oh, I love that.

And then a sign seen in a police canteen in Christchurch, New Zealand.

Will the person who took a slice of cake from the commissioner's office return it immediately.

It is needed as evidence in a poisoning case.

Okay.

It's time for fact number three.

And that is Andy.

My fact is that despite them being one of the largest fish on the planet, nobody knows where

female whale sharks live.

So not the ocean.

Yes, the ocean.

Yeah.

So.

Okay.

Solve that quickly.

Detective Dan investigates.

You are welcome.

They live in the ocean.

It's a big place.

It's a big place.

Just a shout out to Rich Horner, who sent this fact in, not knowing that, you know, Dan

would solve it so quickly.

Yeah.

Yeah.

This is about whale sharks, which are absolutely massive.

And I don't know very much about them.

They're the largest shark.

Yeah.

So they're not a whale, they're a shark.

Yeah.

And they're only called a whale shark because they're just so huge.

Largest fish, I reckon.

He said one of the largest fish, but there can't be many bigger.

They're a sunfish, aren't they, which are massive.

I don't know.

There are different dimensions.

They're like this mass and then there's length and there's all of this, but they are absolutely

huge.

Apparently they were used to march at three elephants.

Wow.

Yeah.

And yet we don't know where the females live.

It's mad.

So scientists, they know where young males are because they tend to frequent waters that

are more coastal.

Oh, they're very harmless, by the way, should say.

They're omnivores, but they eat plankton.

Not if you're a plankton.

Well, that's a good point.

Yeah.

And there's one place where scientists know they're likely to find female whale sharks,

which is just off Darwin, which is the northernmost Galapagos Island.

But that's the only place that they know they hang out.

Okay.

I mean, they live across thousands of miles of ocean.

They're just missing.

Just have made us.

I read that they actually found one confirmed pregnant whale shark, and it was 10.6 meters.

Okay.

And she contained 300 pups.

What?

300?

300?

Holy moly.

But they don't all share that.

Well, thank, I mean, thank goodness.

In a sense, that means we know exactly where they all were because it would be knee deep.

It would be like Bridlington and fish and shape shops.

Wow.

Yeah.

And they give birth.

They're called a placentally viviparis.

So all the parruses where you lay an egg, viviparis is live young, but a placental viviparis is

where you lay an egg inside yourself.

It then hatches also inside you.

And then you eventually give birth to the live young which is actually egg.

So 300 eggs will have hatched inside that manner.

Those eggs are the biggest eggs on earth as well.

Are they?

Yeah.

I didn't realize that this might be common knowledge, but what makes this is a whale shark.

What makes it more shark than whale?

What's the difference between a whale and a shark?

One's a mammal and one's a fish.

Yeah.

The difference which I didn't know is that sharks are all cartilage and whales are bone.

That's what makes it the shark.

That's true.

Is that crazy?

No bones.

One interesting thing because of that is that you know how or I know this because I'm old.

As you get older as a human, you kind of get stiffer.

Yeah.

A lot.

Well, sharks are the opposite.

Sharks start off being quite stiff and then as they get older, they get fluffier and fluffier.

Really?

Yeah.

Maybe I haven't got cerebral palsy.

Maybe I'm a shark.

If you've got more than 300 teeth, that is another sign.

Oh no, I've only got 200 to make it.

Speaking of teeth, where your sharks had teeth on their eyes?

Yeah.

What are they called?

Denticles or something like this?

Yeah.

Because sharks don't have eyelids.

So in order to protect them, they have what looks like little teeth.

Yeah.

That's amazing.

And their eyes stick out a tiny bit from their head, which is also a problem, obviously,

in terms of protecting them.

So they have another trick, which is that they can retract their eyes.

Oh, really?

Yeah.

They just go boop.

When what?

I guess when danger threatens.

It's quite a long way.

It's about half the diameter of the eyeball.

They can just...

Wow.

I love the noises for whatever animals do.

Anything at all.

I remember when hippos retracted their testicles by going...

Exactly.

The teeth as well.

So these teeth that are all over their eyes are all over their body as well.

They've got these denticles all over their body.

And I've read this description saying that it's a protection thing.

Another shark bites them back without them really doing anything.

They're sort of biting the shark back itself because the teeth might hurt a bit, I guess,

if you're biting into it.

That's just mad.

You're biting something from your torso.

It's nuts.

They grow really quickly.

So they're born quite big, but then they get really big.

So there was one in an aquarium that went from weighing 1.7 pounds to 333.4 pounds in

three years, just over three years.

And I worked out in human terms that would be equivalent of a three-year-old baby growing

to the size of the world's largest unicycle.

You always go too far with these things.

I can cram in one more fact here.

You can imagine that with the world biggest...

Well, I can imagine a range of things with the world's biggest unicycle.

Because right now, I'm imagining the Empire State Building with a unicycle

leading up against the entire line of it.

It's smaller than that.

How big is the world's biggest unicycle?

It's 31 feet.

Oh, that's big.

I thought everyone knew that, actually.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

31 feet?

As in 31 feet, but in the same proportions as a normal human.

So the child wouldn't look like a unicycle is what you're saying?

No, it would look like a normal proportioned human, but 31 feet tall.

I think the unicycle thing is really throaty.

I've got more questions about the unicycle now.

Is it rideable, this unicycle?

Yeah, it has to be rideable.

Otherwise, it doesn't get the world record.

Yeah.

God, that must be a terrifying unicycle ride.

Yeah.

How long must your legs be to ride that?

Yeah.

I think what they do is they keep the pedals quite close

to where your bum is,

like the same distance as your leg.

Yeah, that's cut there.

I wouldn't have done it that way,

but I think they've done it better, actually.

That was a big wheel.

No, it's mostly like a long stalk.

It's mostly the pole, yeah.

It's really, it's a normal unicycle,

but they've just extended the distance

between the wheel and the pedals.

I've seen people do it on these record size.

It's petrified.

Well, you would be able to know exactly how big

one of these babies that don't exist would be,

because you've seen it yourself.

Yes, exactly.

So I was on board.

I thought it was a fantastic analogy.

You need to watch more YouTube clips, you too.

These are these pups we were talking about a bit earlier.

Yeah.

So those 300 pups, this is a really cool thing.

300.

They're often inside the mother.

There are different stages of development,

but they're all from the same father, whale shark.

The mother can basically stall sperm for ages

and gradually fertilize a little bit at a time.

Oh, yeah.

So I think other sharks do it, and maybe even kangaroos,

where they sort of like pocket away the sperm.

That's not what's in that pocket, is it?

That's full of sperm.

Wow.

Really?

So it's one, just to get this right,

it's one male whale shark, has sex,

the female keeps all the sperm,

and then slowly has more and more children

with that original, wow.

I think it's one mating session,

and then it's just amazing.

Imagine if humans could do that.

So many had sex for 20 years.

Yeah.

Yeah, when you finally get the call

that you've got an illegitimate child,

it's like, you've got 20 illegitimate kids.

Yeah.

And they're the size of the world's largest uter cycle.

Yeah.

And that drunken night in Bidlington,

well, you're a...

One 18, one 12, two and eight.

Yeah.

They have this really interesting habit,

whale sharks, which is they dive down about 2,000 meters.

Huge is the largest vertical range almost of any sea creature.

That's like 200 times the size of the world's largest uter cycle.

Oh, my gosh.

Yeah, well, that really makes you think, doesn't it?

Imagine that.

How long would your legs have to be to laugh?

Okay, so...

And the thing is we don't know why.

And also, when they sink, so scientists often tag

the few that they can find to research,

because that's a really useful thing for them,

but it shakes...

Basically, the tags don't work 2,000 meters down.

So they can see in the dark as a result.

They've got special genetic mutation,

which allows them to see in the dark

because they are so deep down.

Wow.

But there is a...

And we don't know why they do it,

because down there there's less oxygen,

there's less food, it's very cold.

So they have to warm themselves up a bit afterwards.

There is one theory...

Well, there are a couple of theories, I think,

but this is from a whale shark scientist

called Simon Pierce,

which is that it might be so they can navigate better

because they can get a better reading

of the Earth's magnetic field closer to the crust.

Oh, wow.

Which is effectively that they're going to get a better signal.

That's amazing, which I love as a theory.

It's like holding your phone up in the air

to get a better signal.

Wow, that's super amazing.

We don't know if they make noises as in vocalizations.

Oh, really? Okay.

Well, we kind of know that they don't,

but there's a few scientists that think that they do.

Okay.

And it's very confusing because they don't,

as far as we can tell,

have anything that would make a sound.

No vocal cords whatsoever.

The way that their teeth are set up is they can't do

a grinding sound to create a noise that comes out as grinding.

So they don't have a swim bladder,

which a lot of fish will use to control buoyancy,

but also noise will come out of that that you'll hear.

So you don't have anywhere really that sound can come from.

Yet there is a scientist called Heather Barrett

who has been recording them,

and a couple of times has got sound out of them.

So it's a sort of mysterious thing.

She's been following this one male called Shredder.

She said she thought it sounded like two strokes

over the ridged back of those wooden frog noisemakers

sold to tourists in every Mexican market.

Another relatable example.

Oh my God.

But yeah, so big mystery to be solved.

Wow.

Do the whale sharks make noises?

Very cool.

Yeah.

I was looking at some odd females in the animal kingdom.

Oh yeah.

Because I found that there's a thing called a pouched rat,

and some female pouched rats can create a chemical

that makes all the other females vaginas seal up.

Wow.

Isn't that amazing?

Wow.

So is it a status?

Yeah.

Do you have to be the sort of lead?

You're a spot on.

So like the most dominant female in a pack of pouched rats,

she'll be the one who's mating,

and to stop any of the other females mating,

she sends out this chemical,

and all the vaginas go...

And close up.

I put it in terms I can understand now.

Isn't that amazing?

I find that astonishing.

What a power move.

Yeah.

That's the craziest thing.

That's one of all the years.

That's one of the weirdest facts I think I've ever heard on this show.

You should write Funny Old World for the Guardian.

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

and that is James.

Okay, my fact this week is that the place where Judas plotted to betray Jesus

is about to become a ziplining site.

So cool.

Will they mark on the ground the point where Judas did the exact plotting

so that as you zipline over it, you can contemplate that?

That would be good.

Or maybe you have to pay 30 pieces of silver or anything else to do it.

I don't know.

This is in Jerusalem,

and it's an area sometimes known as the Hill of Evil Council.

And according to tradition, this is where Judas plotted to betray Jesus.

And it's part of a more general sort of attempt in Jerusalem

to bring more tourists in and make it more tourist friendly.

Although some people say it as part of a bigger political strategy

to make East and West Jerusalem less solid things

to maybe make Jerusalem a more Israeli area.

What does ziplines do? They cross borders.

Normally a good thing, but sometimes it can be controversial.

It can be controversial, and according to some people in this case it is.

Can I check? Sorry, James.

What you said the place where Judas plotted to betray Jesus,

I thought, well maybe this is the place where Judas actually betrayed Jesus.

The Garden of Gethsemane.

Yeah, that's where he did the actual betrayal.

So this is just like the pre-betrayal...

This is where he thought about it.

You know, you can't just turn up at the Garden of Gethsemane with no plan.

You need to think about it first.

If you fail to prepare to betray Jesus, you prepare to fail.

Yeah, and this was in the Hill of Evil Council.

So it was where I think it was where the Romans sort of came up to him

and said, hey, want to do a bit of betraying?

Wow.

And yeah, that was where that supposedly happened.

And at the end of that meeting, Judas went,

God, I wonder one day in the future how they're going to commemorate this spot.

A statue of me, what's it going to be?

And then, yeah, you can get on your zipline

and it will take you down to a place called the Peace Forest.

Very nice.

It doesn't have any biblical story attached to it.

But then the developers are saying, well, it's nothing to do with this political thing.

It's actually because they're quite neglected areas.

A lot of drug dealers around there.

So how do you fight drug dealing?

Ziplines, yeah, yeah.

Make it easier to just go down.

I ain't going to get a drop.

Put a ziplock on a zipline.

It's very hard to drop a single E into someone's mouth from a zipline, though.

That is a...

I smell a challenge.

I've never been on a zipline.

I have.

Oh yes, I run to the channel for travel show.

But in hindsight, I think the producers were trying to kill me.

Because every day I go in the office and be like,

okay, turn that off.

You're going to go down.

Were the producers related to anyone you'd slagged off at the Paralympics?

Not previous, yeah, was that okay?

They all had an E, didn't they?

So we did one episode in Wales,

which is home to the Lungits and the Fascist Zipline,

and it was incredible.

That one looks amazing.

Was it with Jenny Eclair, was it?

Yeah.

How did you know?

It was on television.

I thought I just did it for fun,

but Jenny was hilarious,

because obviously,

then they came around and I was screaming and yelling

and having the time of my life.

When I looked back at Jenny's video,

and we were like, is she asleep?

Like, she was so zen that she said she enjoyed it.

I've been on a zipline only once,

and it was a tiny one.

It was one of those adventure places that you go to,

and I don't know what went wrong.

I don't know how I'd done my harness up incorrectly.

Oh, no, you didn't.

It sort of trapped my testicles in a really painful way.

So I go down the zipline screaming,

and I don't make it right to the end,

so I can't get my legs onto the thing,

and I am screaming like it's really hurting,

but unfortunately, the person I did it with

was my friend who's a comedian, Tom Davis,

who's a very sinister sense of humour,

and got everyone to step back

and let me just hang there while I was screaming.

There's a lot of photos that Tom has online

of me screaming with my testicles trapped in a...

Yeah, that's my only experience.

You were hanging there, ironically,

like a testicle, like a huge testicle,

but your own testicles weren't free.

Exactly.

And that was the problem.

Makes you think, doesn't it?

That's making you think.

James, have you been on a zipline?

I have.

I was just thinking, I've always liked Tom Davis.

I like him even more.

Yeah.

Yeah, now I have a few occasions.

Well, the only ones I've been on a zipline.

Around this table.

Right, come on, we'll all go to work.

We'll all go, change your name by the code.

We'll all go, change your name by the code.

I've been somewhere that has recently got permission

for a zipline.

A few.

But when I went there,

they hadn't got the planning permission yet.

Honest to Slate Mine and the Lake District.

Just wanted to give a shout out to them.

Okay, cool.

They spent 10 years trying to get permission

for a zipline.

10 years.

Really?

And the council said, no, this is beautiful here,

this old Slate Mine.

And I've got to tell you, it's not the place

that would suffer irretrievable.

Watch out, he's slating it.

Well, I enjoyed it.

I bought some souvenir Slate there.

I had a really good time.

It's a fun place to get.

I was there by myself and I had a really nice time

to Slate Mine Walk.

It was brill.

Lovely.

But you do think the addition of one wire

and the occasional person screaming as they pass.

Yeah.

Do you think?

Well, you could think of the amount of Slate

you could see in a short amount of time

if you had that zipline.

Stop it.

Stop it.

You're trying to get me excited.

And it's working.

But it will be used to transport Slate

in quiet periods.

Is that right?

Yeah, yeah.

I believe that's the arrangement they've come to.

So it is going to happen?

Yeah.

Are you on a waiting list?

Of course.

On a Slate list?

Of course.

Anyway, just wanted to add my own personal anecdote.

Very such a good story.

I wanted to.

Topped all of us.

We know one of the dangers of going on a zipline.

I'm very glad you didn't get this.

That's one of them.

The other one is slamming into sloths.

So I've watched a video of a young boy in Costa Rica

going down a zipline.

And behind him is either an instructor or a parent.

I don't quite know who.

And you see the video is just going super fast,

super strong through this canopy.

And then suddenly you just see this ball of fur

and he slams into it.

And fortunately the sloth doesn't lose grip,

but they both stop.

And this sloth is just so confused and turns around.

Was it alright?

Yeah. Well, it seemed to be okay.

It didn't drop.

Fortunately it was the boy.

It was fine.

I saw that video as well.

And the person who's in charge,

who's called Flavio Layton Ramos,

he said the sloth or child weren't hurt.

They just had to wait for the sloth to get out of the way

for around 15 minutes.

And you watch the sloth climbing away

and there's moments where it's hands not on the wire

making so long.

It's on the wire?

Yeah, it's on the wire.

It's in the middle of the zip.

So the zipline is going past a load of trees.

And so it's obviously been on one of the tree hanging branches

and sort of thought this was a branch.

Yeah.

But it's literally, yeah, there's no tree near it

for I guess 15 minutes because there's no way for it.

It's got to just, it's like cliffhanger.

It was amazing.

The intro of cliffhanger.

Isn't that where the zipline comes from, Costa Rica?

The modern zipline was invented there

by a bloke called Donald Perry.

That's right.

He was trying to study the canopy

and there was no good way of going from tree to tree.

So he turned up in 1979 with a crossbow,

which is so cool.

That is cool.

He just started firing it around with a wire attached

and bringing it up.

What a guy.

They called him Hombre Mono,

which means monkey man in Costa Rica

because he was using, you know,

just using all these wires to get around.

So cool.

Really cool.

And he didn't patent it, I don't think.

So someone else came along,

but someone else came along and did do that.

It was a sort of a businessman

who wanted to make money off it.

And he was called Darren Hrenyuk.

And he's a Canadian guy.

And when other people then started using ziplines,

he used to go around and cut the ziplines down.

What?

But he would do it claiming it in a legal way.

So in some cases he would bring, you know,

a representative from a sort of official body

to sort of say, yes, this is a legal thing.

And so you'd go cutting these things down,

even though he didn't have a claim to the invention of it

because it was very clearly from this Perry guy.

Yeah.

Wow.

Can I tell you about a bloke called Jack Reynolds?

Yes, please.

Jack is the oldest man ever to use a zipline.

Okay.

That we know of.

It was 2018.

He was 106 years old.

Very cool.

I know.

I've got to say, just a shout out to Jack Reynolds.

He's very sadly passed away.

Died in 2020, aged 108.

Wow.

In a bungee jump accident.

Yeah.

James, you joke.

Oh, no.

Well, yeah.

But the year before the zipline, when he turned 105,

he won oldest person to ride a non-inversion rollercoaster,

which I love.

That was Twistersaurus at Flamingo Land in Malton.

On his 104th birthday, he got oldest person

to receive their first tattoo.

I remember this guy.

1912.

Yeah.

He was born.

Jack.

Did he go skydiving as well?

He went skydiving.

That was another thing he did.

I think that's a good excuse.

Like, if people say, why have you never had a tattoo?

You say, well, I'm holding out to become the world's oldest man.

And at the age of 108, sorry, the age of 107,

the year before he died,

he became the oldest person to,

I think it was having a cameo in a soap opera.

He had been in Hollyoaks.

Oh, no.

Yeah.

Do what?

He just, he had one line.

He just said, don't worry.

You know, I'm very old and I've had a great life

and you'll be all right and all that.

It was his first acting role in a hundred years.

So he'd had a previous one when he was seven.

Yeah.

No.

What was it on?

I don't know.

He was on a train approaching the garden or wasn't he?

That's amazing.

Hollyoaks.

I know, Hollyoaks as well, which is such a young show.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That IMDB though, just with a hundred year difference.

Two credits.

When was he on Hollyoaks?

That was the year before he died.

So it would have been 2019.

Okay.

Cool.

Yeah, yeah.

Watch, Hollyoaks.

I have a friend who was, who actually died over Christmas

in Hollyoaks.

Oh, in Hollyoaks.

In Hollyoaks.

In Hollyoaks.

Yeah.

Yeah.

She got crushed by a, by a buck case.

108-year-old man.

He's parachute to no pin.

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 Shrybland.

James.

At James Harkin.

Andy.

At Andrew Hunter M.

And Rosie.

At Josie Rownt.

And is there anything that you want to mention that's come up

on Twitter?

I'm on at Shrybland.

I'm on at Shrybland.

I'm on at Shrybland.

I'm on at Shrybland.

I'm on at Shrybland.

At Shrybland.

And is there anything that you want to mention that's coming up?

Yeah, I want to all of my dates are on RosieJamescomedy.com.

And if you want to see me on telly, turn it on.

I'm not with that.

Yeah.

Or you could go to our group account, which is at no such thing.

Or you can email us at podcast at qi.com.

That's it for now.

We're going to be back again next week with another episode.

And we'll see you then.

Goodbye.

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.