No Such Thing As A Fish: 492: No Such Thing As York Minster Crisps

Hi everybody, Andy here. Just before we started this week's show, wanted to

introduce our very special guest who was live at the Soho Theatre with us a

couple of weeks ago when we recorded this. He is none other than the mighty

Richard Osman. You might know him from Pointless, you might know him from

Richard Osman's House of Games, his appearances on QI, his appearances on

every other brilliant British comedy panel show ever made, and he is also the

author of a series of books called The Thursday Murder Club. And if you have

read a book in the last few years, there is a pretty good chance that it was one

of The Thursday Murder Club novels because they are absolutely titanic. They

have broken so many records they have sold millions of copies. The first three

in the series are called The Thursday Murder Club, The Man Who Died Twice and

The Bullet That Missed. They're about a gang of retired sleuths who live in a

retirement village in Kent. They like going through case notes of old murders

and then they find crimes start happening a little closer to home. They're

honestly such good books. They managed to pull off the trick of being

simultaneously gripping and thrilling and they are page turners. You have to keep

reading, you have to find out what comes next and also being heartwarming and

joyful and very human. The characters are beautifully drawn. There is a reason

they have sold so many millions of copies around the world and that's

because they're really good. We are all huge fans of them and the next in the

series is called The Last Devil to Die. Very exciting title and it is out soon.

It's out on the 14th of September. It is available to pre-order now from wherever

you get your books. It is a safe bet that anywhere that sells books will be

selling The Last Devil to Die and they will have lots of copies. So that's it.

We just wanted to say we're super excited to have Richard on. We've been

trying to get him for years and finally he's free so we really hope you enjoy

this show. We had a blast recording it. We hope you like it too. On with the podcast.

Hello and welcome to another episode of No Such Thing as a Fish, a weekly podcast.

This week, coming to you live from the Soho Theater.

My name is Dan Shriver. I am sitting here with James Harkin, Andrew Hunter Murray and Richard

Osman and once again we have gathered round the microphones with our four

favorite facts from the last seven days and in no particular order here we go.

Starting with fact number one and that is Richard. Tumbridge Wells does not have a

Waitrose. For anyone who's not from England, I should explain, Waitrose is a

very high-end supermarket and Tumbridge Wells is the sort of town you would be

absolutely fucking insane to think didn't have one. And when you write a novel

there's a wonderful group of people called copy editors and they're the

greatest people in the whole world and copy editors pick up on every single

little thing in a book. I wrote in one of my books that Joyce, who's the head of

the Thursday Murder Club or one of them, she gets a drink from a trolley on a

train from Polgate to Victoria and the copy editor says they stopped trolley

service on that route in 2008. So just to give you an idea of how good they can be,

they pick up on every single thing ever. The one thing they didn't pick up on I

sent someone to Waitrose and Tumbridge Wells and nobody even bothered to check

because why would you? And now people at Tumbridge Wells are furious with me.

That's incredible. I reckon it's like a dirty secret of the people in Tumbridge

Wells that they don't have a Waitrose right? Well no because Richard's told

them they do so it's kind of. But I think Richard picked a really sore subject for

them so I started looking into this. There has been a sort of decade long

campaign in Tumbridge Wells to get a Waitrose and for whatever corporate

reasons maybe they're just doing it for the fun. Waitrose keeps saying I'm so

sorry we just can't find a space. We just can't find a site. Like 2016 this story

ran shoppers in Tumbridge Wells are fuming after a new store to open in the

town was revealed to be a Wilco. Imagine they put up the W and everyone's like

whoa. Because Tumbridge just a few miles away they've got a Waitrose. They've

only got 8,000 people. Tumbridge Wells as we all know has 56,000 people.

So weirdly my wife's family lived down in Heathfield. That is weird and I get

that why is he never mentioned that before. Nine years. Nine years I've been

sitting on that. I thought Richard's brought the Waitrose Tumbridge Wells fact

and so I get off at Polegate all the time. No way. And I know there's no

trolley service. So hold on. Right. Two questions. Yeah. Are you my fact

checker? B. Why didn't you pick up on the Tumbridge Wells thing when you were

my fact checker? I think if Dan was your fact checker you would know about it by

now. Yeah. This book is much longer than when I sent it in. Awesome. My three sons

were born in Tumbridge Wells so I'm really rooted there as a kind of yeah my

my history now is. Did you pop down to the Wilco to buy a celebratory? I did. Well

we did a gig in Tumbridge Wells and I got to meet the daughter of a barbershop

guy. He's passed away. He ran a salon there and he was the seventh son of a

seventh son which means he's a wizard and he had the Guinness world record for

shaving most faces in the shortest space of time. He did like a hundred faces in

something like ten minutes. They just came to remember he was a military guy

and he just went and he kept coming in blood. I was a very member. And weirdly the

next day the local morgue broke the record. Yeah. I think another name for a

barbershop guy is Barber. I was confused when that's a barbershop guy. I was

thinking oh. And both my parents are hairdressers. I don't know why that came

out like that. I was thinking is he the baritone? Yeah. I did. In the most

recent book that I bought out I sort of did an apology of sorts. Joyce who

writes a diary through the books she goes to Tumbridge Wells and she said I had

read somewhere there was a waitrose but there isn't so whoever wrote that had

got it wrong. Oh wow. And that's my apology to the people of Tumbridge

Wells. I have a little quiz for you Richard. Okay. How many times do you

mention waitrose in the Thursday murder club? Just in the first book. Yeah in the

first book. I mean is it over a hundred or a hundred. I'm going to say I

mention waitrose. The word waitrose. Yeah. Eight times. Five times. Okay. Okay.

Sainsbury's. Okay. Three times. Twice. Okay. Starbucks. Starbucks. I think they

definitely go to a Starbucks in an airport at one point. Oh and they go to

it. There's a lot of Starbucks. I'm going to say four times. Three. Are we

going to go through all the words? Yes. I've only got Tesco, Asda, Lidl, Acosta

and Aldi to go through. I mean I do need people to buy these books. There's

murders as well. It's not all just shops. I'm just saying for the next book if

you need the fact checker I kind of know all the shops you mentioned. That's

very kind. My daughter who speaks Chinese was reading the Chinese version

of the book and literally the footnotes are longer than the actual book

itself. She said even on the first three pages they'd had a footnote explaining

what Oliver Bonus was. Oh wow. Who Mark Duggan was and what Lilt is.

I can speak Chinese. So if you need somebody to speak Chinese to fact check

that work I am also available. I mean we're going to have to take your word

for that. I definitely did speak Chinese just then. Imagine if you didn't.

Wow. What a way to get cancelled. I feel like I need to help the non-English

listener about these supermarkets in the UK. So a little bit of information. I

read there was some research done by the Sex Education Show which was a channel

for classic and they looked at people who went to different supermarkets and

they found that people who shop at Mark's and Spencer's are big fans of

sex parties. They do such big cakes don't they?

Is that Colin Caterpillar in your pocket or he just thinks he's seeing me?

I should say it's double the national average which particularly isn't that

high in the first place. People who like sex parties. People who go to

Iceland are more likely to be involved in cosplay and people who go to

Waitrose are more likely to use nipple clumps.

So just a little bit of context for the... And people who go to Lidl like it up the middle aisle.

You never know what you're going to find in there do you? You never know what you're going to find.

Hey baby I've come back with a kayak.

So mistakes in books. There are some which are you know you get your typos you get your small factual ones

I think my favorite one that I found out was there was the Bridget Jones book the

return of Bridget Jones after a long long gap for the third book was called Mad About the Boy

and there was a bit of a typo in that book because readers when they bought it

suddenly started reporting back to the shops that about a quarter to halfway through the book

there were suddenly 40 whole pages of David Jason from Only Fools and Horses

order biography in there. Just 40 pages of him talking about his Uncle Albert and...

And was that Helen Fielding just absolutely phoning it in and thinking...

No let's get it against that.

What if Bridget just reads someone else's book for 40 pages?

What a great idea.

Let's just call it Mad About the Delboy. No one will notice.

Well it's just a printing cock up.

Yeah so they had to return in pulp and all that sort of stuff.

There was a thing this might this is maybe an author's nightmare something that happened to

Jonathan Franzen the big American. He was recording a reading for Newsnight of his book

Freedom which was absolutely massive as a mega book and he stopped halfway through the reading

and he said I'm sorry I'm realizing to my horror here that there's a mistake here

that was corrected early and they printed the wrong version of the book they

printed an early file of book and it was obviously you know full of all the bits he

didn't want to be read and you know just sounds like...

It was a British version and this was like called The Book of the Century.

He'd been working ten years on it. It was a massive book and they published like

something like 80,000 copies.

Wasn't this previous book called The Corrections?

Yeah.

Oh that's a nightmare. You wake up in a cold sweat when you've handed a book in

thinking just little things like about could he've got there on Tuesday if he was there

on Friday you just think you've missed something.

Because by the time it gets printed maybe ten people have read it maybe twelve

something like that so it's not many so if we all miss the same thing yeah that's it

you could get this book when everyone just goes why did you not notice that the

yeah I think oh my god it literally yeah I've got a book coming out really soon

so you're terrified.

I remember when our first book was just going to the printers you literally rang

our producer.

I had a lucid dream the night before the book went to print.

Bullshit. You've never had a lucid thought in your life.

So I honestly I was really sweating we did a book where it was called The Book of the Year

and in it we made references to all all over the book so you would say see this

article and you would go to it and the introduction was full of these things so

I was having a dream and this was I was down in Tumbridge Wells so I just got the

polegate train I mean I was in sorry in Heathfield yeah yeah so my in-laws picked

me up from Polegate I'm starving because the trolley service is gone so I'm so

off I go to the Heathfield Costa anyway.

So in the dream I'm and this is true I'm showing Frank Skinner our book and I'm

saying look Frank this is how the intro is and all these words and and I read in

the book a reference to something that I knew was not in the book and then I kept

reading and this is I'm now awake in the book reading the book going that's not in

there as well that's not in there as well I wake up and I grab a PDF of the book

and it turns out I'm completely right we forgot to change the new article and I

managed to get through to Nigel our editor in the morning and he stopped it

from going to print it had to be printed within the next two hours and he sent a

new PDF in and I managed to change it the last second yeah a lucid dream with Frank

Skinner one of the world's great heroes my friend can you imagine what would have

happened I don't want to think about us as a nation wow yeah things things could

have been really going to shit now yeah I was reading about some errors in rap

songs so this is rap songs that could have done with a fact check all right

remove some of the more choice words from these but there's a song by common

featuring cannabis and they said I'm your worst nightmare squared that's double

for those who ain't mathematically aware although if your worst nightmare is

two there's a song by Drake he says I could wrap around those others like a

cobra snake cobras of venomous they're not constrictors major laser said make

yourself bigger like mushroom Mario Kart he's referring to Super Mario not Mario

Cart where they make you go faster and Nelly once wrote I'm a sucker for cornrows

and manicure toes and he meant pedicures amazing I hope we have beef with all of

them now yeah this is a major laser who ever fuck you are let's say the very

first very first thing I ever had published in my life had a typo in it

I was like 15 years old and there was a magazine in Brighton called the punter

and at one point they said oh we want some of the right just a little small

thing about some of the towns outside Brighton and I lived in a place called

Haversheath so I said I'll do Haversheath and Burgess Hill I said I do both of them

because I think it was seven pound each so I wasn't just going to do one of them

so I wrote this thing and it came out so first time my name's ever been in print

first thing I ever saw and it said at one point Burgess Hill is like Haversheath

with anemia right and my mum read that she went that's pretty good I went yeah

yeah it's not bad is it yeah yeah yeah Burgess Hill is like Haversheath with anemia

and one of my teachers who lived in Brighton said I read your thing Burgess Hill is like

Haversheath with anemia he said that's pretty good that's not bad I go yeah

well listen just stuff comes into my head what I'd actually written was Burgess Hill

is like Haversheath with a cinema

which is factually correct

stop the podcast stop the podcast

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it is time for fact number two and that is Andy my fact is that after successful

amnesty is on knives and guns in 2016 a Scottish council offered an amnesty on

zimmer frames you get happens all the time that they have these amnesties

yeah because everyone's got old zimmer frames in their house or all walking

sticks everyone what fact check have a look yeah well no you're right but a lot

a lot of money is tied up hundreds of thousands of pounds in walking sticks

that are given out all zimmer frames and then like you injure yourself they give

you on after a little while you get better you don't need that anymore use

it as a clothes toss yeah yeah yeah they reckon there's something like a hundred

and sixty thousand pieces of equipment that are needing to come back that

haven't come back yeah yeah so they had this amnesty and they got lots handed

back in crutches to walking sticks walking stick and amnesty is one of

those things to say look if you deliver your knife or gun you will not be

prosecuted yeah we will not send you to prison you know if you delivered a

zimmer frame like two years later said I'm so sorry we found this in my mother's

house and we realized we've tracked you down we realized this is where it's

come from you're not going to get a prison yeah they actually a lot of people

a lot of people were wrongly banged up oh rightly if you look at it that way I

think so yeah no you're right it was yeah yeah amnesty was a kind of sexing up

way of putting it but yeah they had a lot of them in the 80s and 90s I was

working in the newspaper archives in Hull they said that people using them to

hang clothes on like I said and that's why they they all gone missing in the

world they said people using them to grow climbing plants

Torbay made a special zimmer frame bin so you could return them anonymously if

you were a bit worried about handing them in that you might get in trouble

yeah it was really waiting for you to say and in Tombridge they used them for

their sex parties well I got one link with Tombridge Wells slightly and that

is that the stairlift was invented in Tombridge Wells was it get away yeah

like so wow it's the navel of the universe yes so they I mean there have been

old ones I think the eighth might have had one but that was just sort of like

you had a stairlift oh yes yeah it was pulled up by people because he was so

big at the end of his life he couldn't get up the stairs but this is an

invalid chair with tramway for use on staircases that was patented in 1931

enrolled Tombridge Wells by a guy called Walter Muffet okay and the only other

thing I could find about him is that he was once the oldest St John's ambulance

member in the world that's really good that's very cool I wasn't going to get

out my stairlift fact right like right at the beginning of this fact because

it's incredibly boring my one

do it do it do it do it do it

okay it's so shit I gotta say

oh now because we have a discord for people who are members of clubfish

subscribers yeah and they have a big conversation about the most boring fact

you've ever said on fish this fact is gonna it's gonna shove the others aside

for the podium I swear right the 500,000th stana stairlift ever made

was produced in part by Prince Charles who pressed the button to start the

procedure oh and he I told you I told you it was bad

then he said I'm someone who is a great admirer of family companies

particularly hereditary lift makers

anyway I started telling my wife this fact and she said literally wait think to

yourself is this interesting think about it

that could literally be the title of the podcast

have you got anything better than that or

I've got something worse than that I think I was looking when I saw you talking about

Zimmer frames I'm always fascinated about you know who Zimmer might have been

because when you look inside companies it's interesting and I assumed he was

German he's not is American and it's called Justin Zimmer and it was a

sort of post-war I think that he set up this company it's one of the biggest

companies in the world now this company he set up so I was googling him but

unfortunately there's also a defensive linebacker for the Miami Dolphins called

Justin Zimmer so I literally gave up because everything was about him so I can

tell you that Justin Zimmer the linebacker is now a free agent he is now

available because the Miami Dolphins cut him in pre-season so he's 30

but you know still I think he's got something in his legs he's got time

he just in the old Zimmer of Warsaw in Vienna he also invented the aluminium

splint for broken arms the advantage of that was the old ones were like

papier-mache and the new ones just covered part of your arms you could put

it in a x-ray machine and you could still x-ray your arm your broken arm

without taking the cast off so that was a good thing for him

that's very cool I prepared a little quiz game quiz for you oh great let's do it

play your Canes right yep that's good what about Richard Osmond's House of Canes

yeah there you go all right would have been a lot better and it would have been

yeah all right not getting invited back on that show right I'll give you a cane

and you have to tell me if it's worth more or less than the previous celebrity

owned cane okay cool Oscar Wilde yeah I'm gonna say higher is it higher it's harder

it's harder than it looks isn't it Richard this quiz shows higher than zero

all right Richard's off the blocks early yeah Oscar Wilde with Inkwell

interesting his walking stick a little inkwell built into the top oh that's nice

7700 quid roughly okay so James Craig who was of course the first Prime Minister

of Northern Ireland okay I mean less obviously I'm gonna go more it's more

no sir James Craig's walking stick was sold for ten thousand pounds it was

full of cocaine Oscar Wilde's cane was sold for 7000 yes no yeah what year like

the 1800s no recently this century I don't think people have that I think they

like his his writing yeah I'm not sure the cane is the thing there you can walk

like Oscar Wilde would have done he had an inkwell that's that's a historical

artifact Michael Collins the space the I don't know the Irish Republican leader

sorry it's an Irish themed play your canes right yeah yeah right wow more or less than

10,000 pounds for sir James Craig more I'm gonna say more yeah must be more it is

again that's a format problem because we all get we all gave the same answer

didn't we it's more it's 52,000 pounds last one whoa yeah a lot Oscar Wilde

must be gutted um Labour leader Michael Foote oh not Irish Oscar Wilde always

had a cane Stephen Fry the poster he had a cane I'm sorry this is a historically

important if you want to get down angry at any point just tell him that an item

of very recondite celebrity memorabilia sold for less than Dan would have paid

for it he has steam coming out of his ears me and my friends just equally like

we've put in together paid a lot of money for Sir Edmund Hillary's backpack

he's the one who got to the top of Everest first but for his second expedition

when he looked for the Yeti and we bought it and no one else bid but straight in

there at 50 grand how much you pay for it New Zealand dollars it was 12,000 but

in actual money I think that's what six quid that is a translator no I think

that's a few thousand it is there was three of us and yeah but no one else

bid well we accidentally one of us outbid each other we got two incredibly

motivated buyers it's so weird I feel like I was taking your quiz seriously

yeah it does feel like no one's that one's interested how much Michael Furt's cane

was auctioned for okay lower lower lower yeah lower I'm gonna say lower thank oh

but I'm what you want to do oh I'll say hi for a bit of the format well thank you

that's really kind Richard yeah it was obviously much less than it was 650

pounds you're interested that's a bargain my foot foot Kane yeah yeah okay big

foot they used to call him Edmund Hillary found him there was a cane up for auction

recently for half a million dollars okay Kane that was Charlie Chaplin's Charlie

Chaplin's cane from modern times sold for four hundred twenty thousand dollars

this one went for more it was Yoda has a cane yeah who has a more famous cane

no who is a Michael Kane no it was Michael Kane no it wasn't Michael Kane it was

it was a very normal came but had a light on the end with batteries and it lit up

oh the lightsaber wasn't a lightsaber it was used by a survivor of the Titanic oh

yes this is incredible she used it to signal and it was essentially a cane

but I don't know why she thought to take it on the boat because what else is she

using it for on to the lifeboat yeah she took it on to the lifeboat she said she

signal with it and it was it was the the guide price was five hundred thousand

dollars and it went for fifty thousand it went for fifty thousand fifty thousand

that's not even as much as Michael Collins's cane well he's been to space

so come on that's where he got the idea for United Island yeah he looked down

but it was to be shared between eleven of her heirs and they thought they were

going to get half a million they got what's that like four four thousand five

hundred each they got in the end hey here's the most significant walking

stick in history this I think this genuinely has a claim to be the most

important one it was wielded by the Archbishop of Milan in 2005 okay so come

on thank you for church history what's happening in 2005 Roberto Baggio

leaves Milan was it that new pope new pope and he was a he was a very

significant Catholic leader the post yeah wow you have gone downhill what

it bears do tell me Andrew sorry yet the Archbishop of Milan was a senior guy

and he might he like I dread to think what my wife would say of that fact the

Archbishop of Milan was very senior he could have he could have been a contender

if you know he could have he could have made it to be pope and he appeared in

public at the conclave whatever it is walking with a stick and it was seen as

a sign by the people by the other cardinals who might have voted for him

on block he's saying he's saying no I'm sorry because they always vote for

youthful right they voted for Cardinal Ratzinger who was the mid 80s yeah yeah

you're right yeah he would have been a secret sign to say that's how it was

interpreted yeah and he would have been a very radical pope oh yeah yeah yeah

he was he was pro contraception pro no he wasn't he was none of that but he was

he was slightly more progressive maybe than the Benedict 16th ended up being so

you know I need to move us on in a second some amnesties quickly yeah quickly

so they quite often have these things where you can give in your weapons or

whatever and there was one quite recently where there was a rocket launch it was

handed in in Cleveland in Guernsey they handed in a Klingon war sword

oh wow in Birmingham they handed in a three-foot cannon and in Hertfordshire

they handed in a herb cutter and a fondue fork

all right we need to move on to our next fact it is time for fact number three

and that is my fact my fact this week is that in 2010 the annual Liars Club

lie of the year award was marred with controversy when the winning liar was

accused of having lied about his lie huge news big in Burlington Wisconsin

so this is a club that began in 1929 because of a lie as well the story is

is that two journalists basically decided to announce that there was a local lie

of the year that happened and they sent it out as a news story and they thought it

would disappear but then the country picked up on it and it got spread around

the country and then as the next year was approaching they were getting all

these messages saying we're so excited for the lie of the year competition from

the Liars Club and so they had to then actually invent the Liars Club in order

to have the lie of the year so it's been going since 1929 and it's effectively

if anyone was reading every year Edinburgh does the funniest jokes of the fringe

yeah it's that kind of thing it's that kind of thing people a bit of a joke

exactly so the lie was sent in by someone called David Mills

and he said his lie was I almost had a psychic girlfriend but she left me

before we met that was the lie that's not a good lie and every single lie that

you read of the modern-day Liars Club it's just these one-liners and it was

discovered that that wasn't an original line that was someone possibly Stephen

Wright the comedian oh yeah and and then the two runner-ups were also stolen

so people were allegedly just taking funny lines off the internet and saying this

is my life exactly yeah so the times have changed so the Liars Club obviously

had to deal with this and they just came out and said well we don't care that's

fine and so it just went on and they they kept their championship but yeah it

made me realize that there's a line club and it's not the good one the good one

is the British one have you read about the British one the one in Cumbria yeah

yeah so that was so this one in America has been going since the 20s the one

in Cumbria has been going through since the 70s and it was held in honour of a

former landlord at the Bridge Inn it was revived by his grandson who was a

160 year old former cesspit cleaner from Hungary but it is essentially just the

same thing isn't it although I think the Cumbria one they tend to tell a bit more

of a long story you get five to seven minutes and you go up and you build this

long story so someone who one at one year has said that they took a wheelie bin

as a submarine and traveled under the ocean and it's a real whimsical tall

tale yeah yeah there was one in 2011 Glenn Boylan one after telling a tale about

crossing a whip it with a mink but Paul Burroughs failed to defend his title with

the story about a bishop and a magical sausage the one in 1929 was supposedly

won by someone who said that they'd seen a three mile long whale and then the

second year they rang up and said to the people so okay live the year last year

was this thing what's the live the year this year and they didn't have an answer

because they didn't have a competition and so they said that the local police

chief had said I never tell a lie and that was their lie yeah right they kind of

do a few things like that so there was one year a few years in they had a

thousand entries so this was the fourth year in and they had one from Canada and

they disqualified it because they didn't want it to be an international contest

and the head of the contest said let the foreign countries pay up their war debts

if they want to get in the Liars contest

that is a huge leap

you can imagine like Germany and Britain and Frasgaard we might as well pay up them

is there a war debt from Canada?

not as far as I knew but you know

he knows about something

Sue Perkins did it one year the British one

she's a winner of the Liars Club

I was I told you he was a nice guy, Paul Hollywood

that's a joke, he is a nice guy, that's a joke

no it was Mary Berry

but there is a thing about what men and women lie about

because I think there are various surveys that say oh women lie more

oh men lie more and I'm sure there's almost nothing between it

but there seems to be a bit of evidence that women tend to lie more about positive feelings

you know like oh no it's nice or whatever

that it's like that kind of thing

that's a really interesting fact honey

you should do that on the show absolutely

no it's completely average darling

and you know

men sort of boast lie more

no it's completely average darling

anyway

there is a thing that if children lie early on in their life

then it's supposed to be a sign of intelligence

so they did a thing where they gave kids a toy

and put it behind them

and then they said whatever you do don't look at it

and then they left the room

and some of the kids looked at it and some of them didn't

and some of them lied about it and some of them didn't

and they found that when they looked in the future

or they didn't look in the future in the future

oh yeah

in the future when they look back they found that the ones

who kind of lied about it had a higher IQ

they're absolutely best ones were the ones who didn't look at it

and didn't lie about it

they tended to do better in future life

someone at my primary school said that he wrote

Golden Brown by the Stringless

that's amazing

and he was convincing

because actually if you think of the lyric I was thinking

yeah I can see that

I was absolutely fooled

I found out the truth somewhere around 2017

did you guys hear about Theodore Schaarschmitt

No, who's that?

He's a doctor

and he was writing a report about lying

and a patient he treated

who had a particular condition to do with lying

and this is amazing right?

In the 1990s he had a patient who he nicknamed

because you know when you write up patients

you don't give their name, you give a pseudonym for them

he had a patient who he called Mr Pinocchio

and the reason for that was

if Mr Pinocchio ever tried to lie

if he tried to lie

he would pass out and have convulsions

there was something in his neural chemistry

which meant he couldn't do it

the only problem was

he was a high-ranking European official

constantly involved in negotiations

every time he even

so much as tried to lie

he would start having convulsions

and passing out

and so it was a nightmare

Has he been involved in Brexit?

Yes, on our side

it was a form of epilepsy

he had this tiny tumour

tiny tumour inside his brain

it was operated on successfully

Is it a superhero thing in a way?

You've been amazing Prime Minister right?

You know he's telling the truth

I cannot tell lie

Prime Minister admitted hospital for 50th day running

It is like if everyone knows

that if you ever lie you're going to do this

then they know that what you're saying is the truth

Yes, except that he had the operation

had the tumour removed

Or did he?

Those are the only people who aren't allowed

to enter the Liars Club isn't it?

Politicians

Liars Club

Sorry people with incredibly rare tumours

Them as well

It's a weird thing

Isn't it great, I'm just remembering

an old childhood story

when you're lied to as a kid

and you don't realise it until you're in your 20s

in this case for me

I was at my friend Tom's house

and I went to the toilet

and there was no toilet paper there

and I came out afterwards

and I said to my friends

they've got no toilet paper there

and then one of my friends said

none of them in the family wiped their bums

and I went what do you mean they don't wipe their bums

and they said they're all clean shitters

it just happens

so they don't have toilet paper here

and then my other friend went did you not know that about Tom

and I said no I didn't know that about Tom

and so I believed for about 10 years

More than 10 years

You told us this anecdote at a time

when you still believed it

No, no, no

I remember this

Here's what I mean

10 years in the logic broke down for me

because I thought that can't be possible

and instead of accepting the truth

I went hang on this is incredible

are you telling me that the parents

who are not related because this could be genetic

they both

don't need to wipe their ass

they must have been dating

and then they moved in

and they just noticed the one toilet roll just kept hanging there

and then they produced non-ass wiping children

that's what happened 10 years after

I continued the logic

outside of it and then it was yeah

late 20s it clicked

I was like hang on a second I think

they were lying to me

Dan does your wife

ever give you advice about which facts to say

on the show

She's never heard the show

Stop the podcast

Stop the podcast

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on with the show

it is time for our final

fact of the show and that is

James okay my fact

this week is that unusual

crisp flavours in history

include prosecco

fish curry

butted garlic scallop

vagina

and Arthur Scargill

almost didn't let me get to the end of that one guys

this is I know Richard

you're a big fan of crisps

I'm just

at some point you must have made a choice about

which order to put those last two crisps in

is it vagina Arthur Scargill

or is it Arthur Scargill vagina

which of those is funnier

I think you made the right choice

oh thank you

who is Arthur Scargill I don't actually know

that's not really the important part of the fact

what's a vagina

Arthur Scargill

was basically

the main guy in the

minus strike in the 80s

and basically

there was a guy who made some human flavour

cannibal crisps

and they came in traffic ward and bank manager

and Arthur Scargill flavour

in the 80s

and he was going back because

there were hedgehog crisps

and hedgehog crisps were really famous in the 80s

and he was kind of going in a

slight sort of animal welfare thing

and saying well you shouldn't really be eating hedgehog crisps

but why not eat

Arthur Scargill crisps instead

do you remember hedgehog crisps Richard

I remember hedgehog crisps I remember Arthur Scargill

very well I remember yeah

hedgehog crisps was like it blew everyone's mind

it was like about 10 or something

and everyone just went oh you're kidding me

you

hedgehog crisps

it's like the funniest thing anyone had ever done

in the history of the world

they invented hedgehog crisps

they were just like beef really

as anyone who's ever eaten hedgehog will know

so I don't think they had real hedgehog

in them any more than Arthur Scargill crisps

had real Arthur Scargill in them

that was the problem actually

because they called them hedgehog crisps

and then trade descriptions said they couldn't use the name

because they didn't have actual hedgehogs in them

and then later they called them hedgehog flavour crisps

because this was actually

in the early days of like proper

crazy flavours of crisps

do we know what Arthur Scargill

what he would have tasted

like what the flavour was

to be honest I think they were just branded

like that I think they just tasted of random beefy

meaty kind of

he would have tasted like the solidarity of the working man

my friend

he would have tasted like

he would have tasted a social

justice Arthur Scargill

did you hear of

Virgin Mary flavoured crisps

so these were released in the last

decade this was 2013

by Pretta Morge

they released and they got a lot of complaints

obviously from Christian and Catholic groups

and what Pretta Morge had intended

was the

non-alcoholic version of a Bloody Mary

Virgin Mary

tomatoes

but they called them Virgin Mary flavour crisps

that's very funny

is that the sort of thing the Pope would have been unhappy about

or would he have been flying

if it had been the Archbishop of Milan

he probably

I wonder if the vagina crisps would have been available

in the UK because I was looking up

what you're allowed to do as a product and release it

and there's so many rules with

particularly companies house

Dan feverishly got 15 tabs open trying to find

anywhere that will ship these to you

I'm on eBay

I was just trying to find out about the trade's description rules

actually

it's a vagina

it's a burp, it's a New Zealand burp

but it's amazing

so

there's been a list that's been revealed

of all the company names

that have been rejected since 2019

and it's over 56,000

names so I don't think vagina crisps

would have made it into

these are a few of the names that were

applied for to say can we be a business in the UK

that were rejected

so you've got

anus ale limited

not allowed, ass cleaning limited

rejected twice

mixed shagger limited

bell and holdings

and little pricks acupuncture

none were allowed

that feels harsh

the vagina crisps are made actually by

a Lithuanian company so you're right to be doubtful

they're called chas

and I looked at the ingredients so to get a vagina

flavour they used salt

onions, garlic, sugar

cream powder, yeast extract

lemon powder

parsley, black pepper, sour cream

and bay leaves

and they also come penis flavoured

and when I say come

and their flavouring comes from smoked

salt, tomato powder, sugar

yeast extract again

maybe some cross contamination there

and spices

and they also sell Bosch flavour crisps

where all the money goes to Ukraine

so yeah, they're kind of cool company

but is that, do you think they've actually worked out

that the average penis and vagina

smells what those ingredients make up

taste rather than smells

usually crisps

Dan you're about to lose your mind

when you first taste a crisps

it's so exciting

I snort my crisps

smell is very integral to taste

because that did happen

that they got a load of experts

in the field

which field was this

and they went to some flavouring

experts and put the two together

and they came up with this

I haven't tasted them so I couldn't possibly say

and they left one packet of vagina crisps

and one packet of penis crisps

in the factory overnight

next morning a million packets

so I found a slightly old clay

but it was from about 10 or 15 years ago

and it was that half the crisps

eaten in the EU

are people eating crisps in Britain

that Britain ate half the crisps in the EU

that's a huge success

because crisps are not as much of a thing

nearly on the continent

like you might have an olive

you might have some sort of civilised micro

they have lays don't they

yeah but who buys the lays

it's British people on holidays

British people abroad

sometimes

is that why they call them lays

because it's kind of funny it sounds a bit like having sex

and they think they're going to get English people

to buy those

that's why I bought those biscuits

in Montenegro called knob lice

anything to declare sir

I have nothing to declare

except this cane

and these knob lice

but in Europe

they eat paprika crisps right

that's their favourite thing

whereas we're the geniuses behind corn maze snacks

it's the truth which we always think of

as crisps

and the 1970s

was such an extraordinary era

it was like the 90s for the internet

but for corn maze snacks

1970

sorry what is it called can you give me an example

oh I'm about to

don't you worry about that

by the end of this little bit you will be in no doubt

as to what a corn maze snack is

carry on professor

1970

they invent what sits

1973

they invent

skips

1974

they invent frazzles

1977 they invent monster munch

all within seven years

the big hitters all within seven years

who are they

you're saying it's like NASA

well do you know what

quavers were invented in 1968

before man walked on the moon

before the Beatles broke up

you could have been eating some quavers

as you heard the news that the Beatles have broken up

that is striking

thank you

they could have had quavers on the moon that would have been amazing

that would have been amazing

I know you love an undiscovered hero

on the show

you know what Leslie Ivy did

1974

something snack related

yeah very much so

invented a new flavour

Leslie Ivy is a machinist

he was a machinist at the smith's

crisp factory

and he is the guy who invented

how to put stripes on frazzles

wow

wow

and he's here tonight

that's a weird suntan you've got

Leslie sort of

the first two ever flavours

you know that

you used to just be ready sorted

and it was a Tato crisp

who came up with flavours for the first time

a guy called Joe Murphy he ran it

and Seamus Burke who is his chief technician

and they thought we found a way

to get flavour onto a crisp

and they experimented with two flavours

they thought we're going to start with just experiment

with just in the lab or just experiment

and those two flavours

the first two flavours ever in the history of crisps

how about that

they've got the stranglehold

on the flavour market because they are the two

Tatoes

they were literally the first two they ever tried

I was reading that they thought of crisps in the old days

as potatoes because they're made of potatoes

so you would

like

we always like to throw something you don't know

into this show

first the pope now this

stop it this is terrified

because

please go on professor

potatoes

look

so crisps are made of potatoes right

they thought

only things that go with potatoes

cheese and onion

do you have a potato dish

and you'd have some cheese and onions on the side of it

or you'd slice potatoes and boil them up with cheese and onions

so those were the natural things

they hadn't freed their minds yet

so I was reading the process

it was called gas chromatography

and that was a very

that was a new procedure after the war

they invented that

basically in the old days to get an apple flavouring

you would have to start with a ton of apples

then you'd end up with two grams of apple flavour

and then gas chromatography meant you could identify the compounds

that made that flavour

and recreate it

another hero from the history of crisps

Laura Scudder

she invented bags of crisps

before her you would get a big barrel of crisps

or potato chips in America

or you'd be tins

or display cases and you'd go in

and they'd kind of shovel them into something

and you would take them out

a bag

there's no getting around it

it was a bag

but what she did is she got her workers

to take home sheets of wax paper

they ironed them in the shape of

what we would now today know as crisps bags

and then they would take them to the factory the next day

and they would put actual crisps

in crisps bags and we never had that

before then

and she was also the first person to put fresh buy dates

on any products

as in these would be fresh for this

you know like has the best before end

in America yeah fresh buy dates

well let's say yes

she's really interesting

because she only got into crisps

because she had a shed

she wanted to rent it out

and that was

the obvious next step

she was selling it

to people to work in

and there was a guy who claimed to be a barber

but he was actually selling bootleg alcohol

and she was very religious and she didn't like this

so she kicked him out and she's like

well what am I going to do with this shed

I might as well make crisps

sorry can I ask a question just a point of order

by barber do you mean barbershop guy

yeah

she couldn't get insurance for her delivery

trucks because she was a woman

and so she had to find a special

insurance company and she once turned down

a nine million dollar offer for her company

because the buyer wouldn't guarantee her employer's

jobs so Arthur Skaggle

would be proud

Quavers is it true

and I'm looking at you Richard when I asked this

is it made of the leftovers from potatoes

which have not made it into crisps

so basically it's the starch that gets

the walkers factory has a log flume

that the potatoes all go down

which washes out some of the starch

they all get their photo taken

oh I want that one look at you

I definitely want that one

it's above the mountain

every time I remember look at his face there

look at his eyes

it's dead now of course

dead now

a good question I don't know

I thought that they were corn but perhaps they're not

perhaps they're potato that's why they got

invented a bit earlier

I read that the starch has turned into Quavers

from the potatoes so it's a way of using everything

that they have basically like nose to tail

eating yes but for potatoes

exactly that's good

I know that Monster Munch

were not originally called Monster Munch

they essentially they got released

a year earlier I think this is the best

ever name change that a product

has had so in 1977

they came out as Monster Munch

and were a huge hit but the year before

yeah they were called something else

I would say I think like

they look like hands to me

I would say hands was the name

yeah do you know what

when they first came out they were called hands

yeah that's right

they were called hands

good name

they also look a bit like if you had tiny hands

like knuckle dusters right

you can fit your

you can fit two fingers in and maybe

wow

I wasn't talking about the vagina Chris

so I was talking about

oh god

I assume it must have had some monster

in there originally

was it to do with the dance

there was that big dance craze

Monster Munch

it's a really bad pun

oh monster

so I tell you you won't get it

Irish monster

I don't think you were capable of doing a pun this bad

York monster

oh yeah nice

not a million years away

he is capable

I take it back

I stand corrected

welcome to the world our new brand York

Minster

we were told it was a bad brand

they were called

Prime Monster

I literally was about to say that

and I thought that's so shit

I'm not going to say that

Richard if someone says that I'm pointless do they still get the point

yeah yeah

well I don't do pointless anymore

but yes if I look in their eyes and believe them

oh my god I didn't even get the pun I'm afraid

Prime Monster

Richard that's genuinely going to go down as one of the most disappointing moments of my life

and

and you've had a few right

yeah

my kids will hear this episode

not my wife obviously she doesn't listen

let's do a little edit

anybody anyone guess it

Dan?

Prime Monster

it's the right answer

oh

and that's all the time we have

that's it that is all of our facts

thank you so much for listening

I win this episode

and

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

at Professor Andrew Hunter Murray

at Andrew Hunter M

Richard that's a good question

at Richard Osman

there we go

or you can get us on our group account which is at no such thing

or you can go to our website

no such thing as afish.com

all of our previous episodes are up there so do have a listen

thank you everyone for being here tonight

Richard thank you so much for being here tonight

and

we'll be back again next week when another episode

will see you then

goodbye

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.