No Such Thing As A Fish: 502: No Such Thing As The Opposite Of February

Hi everybody, Andy here. Just before we start this week's show, I wanted to announce our

special guest. This one is really exciting guys. Our special guest this week is none

other than David Mitchell. That's right, if you haven't heard of David Mitchell, you

haven't seen any British comedy recently because he's been in absolutely everything.

Of course, peep show, upstart crow, would I lie to you, the unbelievable truth, every

single panel show going, and he's here, he's on fish this week. David is here partly because

he has, as you are about to hear in the show, a new book out and it is a fantastic book.

I genuinely finished it this morning and I loved it. It's called Unruly. It's a history

book. It's a history of England's kings and queens. It goes all the way from King Arthur,

fictional, to Queen Elizabeth I, not fictional. And it is so funny and yet you also are being

educated all the way along the way. It's been described as horrible histories for grown-ups

and that's exactly what it's like. You'll laugh, you'll learn. It's got that classic Mitchell

wit all the way through. It's absolutely fantastic. There are lengthy digressions about

things like where you can get a nice coffee in Oxford or the James Bond films, all of

that. It's so good. And it's not even just me saying this. It has already been a number

one Sunday Times bestseller. So if you have a history fan in your life who you think would

like a laugh as well, this is a perfect present. Also, if you'd like even more David Mitchell

in your life after this episode, his new show, Outsiders, has just started its third series.

That's on Dave. It's a kind of outdoor challenge survival show hosted by David and the guests

this series include Alan Davies of QI and of course, former fish guest. So that's it from me.

I'll stop wagging on now. Hope you enjoy this episode. We really enjoyed recording it. 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'm sitting here with James

Harkin, Andrew Hunter Murray and David Mitchell. And once again, we have gathered around 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, that is David. My fact is that King Stephen owed his

throne to food poisoning or, you know, the shits. I haven't asked about swearing how much. You're

allowed to go for it. That's fucking great. Yes. So to diarrhea caused by food poisoning.

Okay. Previous King's diarrhea, not his own. His own. His own. Wait, not a previous King's diarrhea.

What? And so people saw him shits himself and thought this man must be King? No. No, he didn't go

like that. I mean, obviously there was a lot of diarrhea back then. It was, you know, there's a

lot now. It's one of the ways you can empathize for people in the past. They too had liquid shits,

but more often died of them. You know, King John, shot himself to death. Henry V shot himself to

death. So you've got a good king and a bad king there, both dying of dysentery. But King Stephen

didn't have dysentery. It was more of a short term thing. I don't know if it was a bug or something

yet. And he certainly didn't know. But because he got diarrhea, he got off a ship. And the ship he

got off was the white ship. It was a state-of-the-art lovely craft in Barfleur Harbour. And all of the

most important young people of the rain, the in-crowd, were on this ship and they were about to

sail to England. But the not-yet-King Stephen, Stephen of Blois, was on it. And he got diarrhea

and he got off it to go into Barfleur and relax on a privy. And the ship sailed without him and

sank. And everyone on board died apart from a butcher. That's interesting. Then he survived,

but that's the last, then he's lost to, he went on. Presumably being a butcher. And then died.

He had a good anecdote. He absolutely had a good anecdote.

Did he survive because of the buttery? Was that, but as in, does history relate whether he clung

to some of the meat? No, it wasn't the buoyancy of pork chops that saved him.

Was it him who provided the meal that provided the diarrhea for the future King?

I don't think so. I'm not clear as to why there was a butcher on board, but ships have, like,

they must have livestock. Well, if you get on a cruise ship, they've got, you know, a swimming

pool and a casino. So, you know, I don't think this ship had that. But, you know, they had some,

they might not have had livestock because they're only going across the channel,

but they will have had food. Yeah. I don't think there's any connection. There's no suggestion

that it was his meat that he retailed that caused Stephen, King Stevens, not yet King

Steve. So I can't help calling him King Stephen. He's not King Stephen yet.

It's like Prince Charles calling him King Charles. It's impossible to get into your head,

or it is for me anyway. Yeah. I've managed, I'm, I'm now saying King Prince Charles,

which is a way of easing myself into it. And eventually I'd be able to drop the Prince.

I was saying it two years previous, just, just to make sure I was, yeah, running with it.

This ship though, it does sound, it sounds amazing. As in it was obviously stated with the

art, but I mean, everyone who was anyone was on one ship at one time, which I presume wasn't

thought of as being fine. I mean, clearly it wasn't fine. Yeah. Cause like, is it like the

Royal Family aren't really supposed to be on the same airplane or something? Is that right?

Yeah. Oh, wow. Yeah. But the air, the real air to the throne was on that ship. That's the key thing.

Yes. The real air to the throne. The King at the time, King Henry I, he wasn't on it.

He was on a less snazzy ship with older important people, but the younger, cool,

important people, including William Atherling, the air to the throne, they were all on the white ship,

and they all died. Cause obviously the butcher wasn't part of that team. He was, he was staff.

And so the only survivor was one of the staff, which I'm sure at the time they thought was

absolutely the wrong way round. One of the other staff, I've read that one of the other staff,

the ship's captain, also survived the initial shipwreck, came to the surface, heard that the

air to the throne, William Atherling had drowned and then just decided to drown himself. The only

person who could possibly have told us that story is the butcher. Yeah. It feels like as the addict

don't has gone on, he's kind of added little bits to it. Obviously that's, if you were the captain's

fact, that's a very positive anecdote for the butcher to say. And the thing is obviously the

butcher, we don't know what happened to him other than he didn't die in that shipwreck. Probably

murdered the captain is what I would think possibly. And maybe he made a hole in the ship,

but the thing is he didn't even get a book deal out of it, which just shows you what primitive

times these were. Cause nowadays that would have been, it would have been on the gravy drain for

life. What a ship show, something like that. So what year are we talking here? 1120.

Okay. So that's ages ago. We didn't even know we had proper shits crossing the channel at that

point, like commercial trips. You must have guessed, cause 1066, quite famously. How do you

think they got here to get across the toilet? A lot of swimming operations. I'm sorry, I had the

whole lifeguard swimming pool, cause see, you know, think of my head. I don't think they hadn't

bought tickets. It wasn't a scheduled cross. I think it was absolutely just, it was commissioned

for the, just for the posh people to go across. Cause they were having a very nice time at the

point. Henry I had just won a small war against the King of France. William Athling had been

confirmed as the heir to the Dukedom of Normandy. At that point, the King of England was also Duke

of Normandy and he was running this cross channel regime. And so they've shored up their position

on the continent in this sort of weird situation where the King of France is King in Normandy,

but not in control of it. And the Duke of Normandy runs Normandy, but has to sort of pay lip service

to the feudal seniority of the King of France. But that's all been lined up for William Athling.

The King of France is back in his box. He didn't live in a box. There will have been French kings

who lived in boxes. There was a French king who thought he was made out of glass, but this one I

think was sort of comparatively normal. So Henry I was very happy. Let's all go back to England,

this other country we own and hang out there for a bit. So it was a happy day, very successful

period of Henry I's reign. And then it was a bit like a sort of mega-som in that the heirs to the

whole ruling class just died in one go. Is it true that they were all drunk as well? I read that.

Yes. Basically they decided to get the boat across at night time. Yeah. We're not sure why,

but it might have been just so they could get pissed in the meantime. Right. Apparently everyone

on board was absolutely shit-faced and that could have been one of the reasons that they crashed.

That's interesting. It seems quite likely to be one of the reasons, doesn't it? Because they were

obviously quite, I mean those days there were more shipwrecks than there are now. It wasn't a

done deal crossing the channel, but I don't think the weather was bad. People were nipping back and

forth all the time. But yeah, William Athling essentially declared it a party boat and said

we're all going to have a drink and not to be a snob. He very much included the staff, the crew,

the butcher and crucially the people driving the ship as they didn't call it then. So one set of

people they didn't include was the priests. So usually the priests would bless the ship before

it set off. Because it was a party boat, they decided to dismiss the priests and so they didn't

get blessed. Right. And so later on some people said that may have been the reason that they

crashed. Yeah. Do you think that's the reason they crashed? I'm only reporting what some people said.

I mean that sounds tremendously convenient, the prevailing religious ethos of the times.

They blamed everything on religion because obviously they lived in baffling times where

they didn't understand much of what was happening to them. So they were very keen in the Middle Ages

to say it's not that we're tiny little creatures in a universe of which we have no comprehension,

it's that we didn't pray enough. So there was something we could have done. Yes. And I think

it probably made living in the Middle Ages a little bit more relaxing than it otherwise.

Anyway, the white ship, yeah, thanks. And the future King Stephen is probably equally uncomfortable,

but in a way with fewer long-term consequences to his survival. Was he seen as someone who is,

you know, useful? Did they look at him and go, okay, at least we've got someone who might be a

good king? Or was he a sort of, well, dear with Stephen, just Stephen? No, no, no. Because Henry

the First, who they say after the white ship disaster, he never smiled again. And I don't

know how they know, but I'm not going to call them liars. But he was very, very upset. And he

was upset in two ways. His, obviously his beloved son was dead. Lots of other people's beloved sons

were dead. But crucially, his plan for the succession of the English crown is in absolute

ruins. Because he's had lots of children, Henry the First, but only two of them with his wife.

And the two with his wife are William Atherling, who drowns, and Matilda, who goes...

Tall, dreadful lies. No.

She is the former wife of the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, as it wasn't then called. But the

emperor would be the expression. So she went around calling herself Empress Matilda,

with some justification. And he quickly married someone else to try and get a new son going,

because they didn't like the idea of women ruling then. Totally fails to beget any children with

his new wife, even though he's begat children all over the place. And she begets a load after he's

dead. So I don't know, whatever. His sperm and her eggs, they don't make a good team. Probably

because he's so desperately trying to beget an heir. And it's just the whole begetting vibe is so

unromantic, isn't it? So anyway, so he doesn't get any more legitimate children before he dies. So

he's stuck with only Matilda. And he says, okay, well, the only way my bloodline can continue,

which is the main thing. So he makes everyone say, look, I know it's I've only got a daughter,

and everyone thinks women shouldn't be in charge of things, because this is the past and it's

sexist. I'm quoting him directly. But please come on, so that my DNA can carry on. Please

say that she can be the next king, effectively ruler, queen. And everyone goes, Your Majesty,

of course, for you, anything. And twice, all of the big shots of the rain, all of the men that

denies the women, which are perhaps a sign that this is a problematic strategy for the age. But

nevertheless, all of the men go, we absolutely as soon as you're dead, Your Majesty, she's in charge,

and we'll absolutely do everything she says, like we did to you. And they all swear,

including Stephen of Bloch. And Henry goes to his grave thinking, maybe this will be okay. But as

soon as he dies, everyone's more thinking, well, you kind of a woman in charge. That's either because

they themselves think a woman couldn't be in charge, or because they think, well, I'm quite

woke. I think it'd be fine for a woman to be in charge. But other people won't accept it.

But yeah, so then please, can Matilda be the next queen? Yes, of course, Your Majesty.

He dies. No, she can't. Stephen runs to London, gets himself crowned. And he's King Stephen.

Well, the other thing is that Henry, the first death was also due to food poisoning, we think,

right? Oh, yeah. So it's like a double food poisoning thing, because he famously died of a

fit of lampreys, I think that's what we're always taught in school. But there's been a few recent

studies, one by Matthew D. Turner in 2023, who reckons that he died of listeria, possibly from

the lampreys, or possibly from something else yet with the lampreys. But also perhaps it would have

made him confused just as he was about to die, because that's what happens with this illness.

And there is a story that on his deathbed, he actually told some of these lords, oh no,

Matilda, I've changed my mind, I don't think Matilda should be Queen after all, I think Stephen

should be King. Right. And yeah. My feeling is that that's not so much the effect of the listeria,

the effect of those people who were in Stephen's camp lying about what the King said. So that's

also... Who can say? Yeah. But yeah, so I'd heard that it was, yes, it wasn't like surfeit of lampreys,

rather unfair of him, right? If he'd had two fewer lampreys, it would have been fine,

right? No, it's just that the lampreys he had, or as you say, something that went with them,

the chips or something, that yes, they'd been badly prepared. Apparently it's quite difficult to

prepare lampreys in a way that doesn't kill you. On this occasion, they hadn't bothered.

They're kind of like the blowfish of the day. They can really do a number on you.

You never see them on menus anymore. No, that's why it's so risky. I went to a restaurant once that

only did blowfish. Oh, yeah? Only? Yay. Oh, thank you. It was in Osaka, I think, or somewhere like

that. And my wife wanted to try blowfish, and I had a bit of food poisoning, didn't really want it.

So we went to this place that sold blowfish, and the menu, it was like pictures on the menu.

Yeah. And so we looked at them all, and it was like, blowfish, blowfish, blowfish, blowfish.

And then there was some chicken nuggets, and I'm like, oh, thank God, I'll have the chicken nuggets,

you can have the blowfish. And then we went in, they sat us down, we ordered our sake or whatever.

And I said, in English, hoping that they'd speak it, I said, I'll have the chicken. And they said,

oh, no, that's blowfish, go nuts. It was deep fried blowfish, go nuts. So we left.

I'm not sure if I was going to eat blowfish, which I'm not. I'm not sure I'd want to eat it in the

sort of place where they show pictures of the food. The ones where they show a photo, almost

to prove that they can cook at all and not learn. A lot of the places, after they go for their

Michelin star, they decide that the photos need to be excised. Henry, King Henry, he has, I think,

the most baroque afterlife of any English king I've read about. I mean, so he dies in, he's in

France, isn't he, at the hunting lodge where he has the lampries and then and then does. And he

instructed him to be taken to Reading just before he died, because he'd founded an avi there. He'd

always wanted to go to Reading, haven't he? Loves his biscuits. It was nearish Legoland, or the site

of the future Legoland. So he wanted, he'd founded a big avi in Reading, so he thought, right, I'll

go there. So, but he was taken to Ruin, his body. So after he dies, he was taken to Ruin and embalmed

there. But not all of him, because his heart, his bowels, his brains, his eyes and his tongue

were removed and buried in Normandy at a different monastery or abbey or whatever it was. Okay.

And then he was embalmed and he was rubbed with salt and then he was put in a bag made of ox hides

for the journey. So he's, you know, he'll hopefully get to Reading in a decent state.

I mean, you've removed his heart, his eyes, whatever. I mean, he's not going to look lovely.

No, no. Well, he's in a bag. So that's fine. He's in a bag made of ox hides. Don't open the bag.

They get to the coast. They get to the coast and the boat is then delayed by four weeks due

to bad weather. And everyone's looking in the bag and thinking, oh no. And it's in the bag,

I think, starts to leak and sort of very body juice. I've heard about this. Very, very pungent

stuff. There is, I think, a story. I think this is about him, that the man who was ordered to remove

his brain, there was such a bad aroma about the brain because of how he died that the man

ordered to remove the brain also died of smell, brain's died of smell. Yeah, I read that. That was

albeit 40 years later. They associate under the carriage accident. Yeah, but he was definitely

that. He was never the same again. Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, what a what an afterlife. What a shame

that the Elizabeth line wasn't named after him because that terminates in Reading. That would

have been a beautiful tribute. And it's subterranean as well. So maybe it literally comes up against

his skull. Yeah. And that's used to save money, keep it under 50 billion. To use some of the

heft of former King Henry to slow the trains down. Yeah, ox hide buffers. Yeah. What I should say,

though, the consequence of Stevens food poisoning, and then him being declared King, and then him

being not very good at being King and Matilda Henry's daughter being extremely pissed off to

have been passed over is that she she doesn't take it lying down. And she tries with all her might

to rest the throne from Steven. And there is a huge civil war called the anarchy in a way that

historians now say shouldn't be called the anarchy, that in some way reduces it. What you

should just do is spend thousands and thousands of words describing it minutely rather than giving

it a label. These are of the historians are not not familiar with the concept of language.

But anyway, I'm going to call it the anarchy. It does sound quite an anarchic like an 18 years

of a war. It was quite it was quite enough. Yes, but also equally, you could take a little bit of

it. It was quite calm, awful at night, for example. So it's very, very reductive of you to use that

word. So, you know, for example, I think it's very bad to call an apple an apple. What you want is

a printout of every individual cell. And that's actually a better way of describing it. Anyway,

this anarchy happened and was awful. And Matilda nearly got to be the queen at one point. She was

about to be crowned. But then the people in London got cross and she had to run away. And then

at another point, she was under siege in Oxford Castle, and she ran away through the snow. It's

quite exciting. But eventually she gave up and went back to Normandy, which by then her husband,

Geoffrey of Anjou, had rested from Stephen. But then her son does inherit the throne because

Stephen's regime essentially, Peter's out. So they do a deal. Matilda's son, Henry becomes Henry

the second, Plantagenet, named after his father, Geoffrey. And then you have then you have quite

ordered succession for quite a long time. It's all it's all in the first four, you know, the rhyme

of all the kings and queens of England. It's Willie Willie, Harry Stee. It's all it's this is all the

Harry Stee bit. Right. It's just just that bit. Wow. It's just Harry Stee. I was just jumping a

few Henry's ahead. Henry the eighth, I was looking up food, because I thought her royal meals sound

a bit odd. And I discovered that he used to serve this meal called cockentrice or cockentries.

Okay. Have you heard of this? No. So it was a pig sewn to another animal. And he pitched it as a

mythical beast. And he would say this is a this is a mythical beast rings of a bird. I think it

became in a few different permutations. I think it always usually had a pig on the front. It's a

chicken, but with the testicles of a blowfish. Yeah. So I just love that. Henry the eighth would

just present, you know, what was effectively the old version of a Yeti at the table for

not only have I discovered a mythical beast, I've killed it.

And it's the last one, sadly. There it is. Look at it now. And then what do you fancy a bit of wings?

And they're like, Oh, it tastes a bit like chicken. It's weird how everything tastes a bit like

chicken. My big taste like pork. Well, that's the thing about the cockentrice. So full of flavors.

Yeah, the bottom's got chocolate in it.

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Okay, it is time for fact number two, and that is Andy. My fact is that sea turtles have been

going to the same restaurant for 3,000 years. Blowfish served? Yeah, it's only blowfish.

Yeah, it's nice you find a thing you like. Yeah, just eat that forever. Yeah, exactly.

So this is about green sea turtles. It's a new study from the universities of

Groeningen, Exeter, York, Copenhagen, and the Society for the Protection of Turtles.

They've all teamed up. So they're quite pro-turtles. Very pro-turtles.

Society for the eradication of turtles. Do you get a look at it? Absolutely not.

That's quite, I'm not sure if that's appropriate. If this was on the BBC, you'd have to have one

person on the show going, I fucking hate turtles. So they're a right pain. Think about it. People,

you know, Americans use the same words they do for tortoises. I mean, it's just confusing.

Let's just have one. We don't need the aquatic version of those shell people.

I've been trying to book a table at that restaurant for months.

Always by the window, party of eight turtles.

Restaurant is such a way of putting it. But basically, it's a huge meadow of seagrass

off North Africa, and sea turtles go there to eat. They spend the first few years of their life

drifting around because they don't have the control to swim and live in these meadows. And

then when they do get the control, they head to the meadows. They swim miles and miles and miles

to get there. And they've used archaeology and ancient samples to work out these are the same

habitats in use that sea turtles 3,000 years ago have been heading to. And it's kind of,

it's just amazing. And the meadows all have their own chemical signatures, which end up in the bodies

of the sea turtles. So yeah, because they're kind of made of these meadows. So yeah.

It's sometimes certain turtles will visit the same 50 meters squared. They have the very

specific, it's like having a, it is like having a table in a particular meadow that they return to.

It's pretty amazing. Sea turtles, you know, conservationists have always been trying to

monitor if they're declining, you know, what's going on. And 2023, there was an amazing

count that happened. Volunteers went around, they found 74,000 nests a bit over that. But

there's a huge problem that's happening, which is that the sex, the gender is determined by the

climate. And as it's getting hotter, they tend to be born as female. And so we're slowly losing

all male sea turtles. There's a genuine worry that we're going to just, we've got all these women

now and no men to sort of. And you need enough diversity in the population to, it is a big

problem. It's to do with the temperature of the sand, I think. So if the eggs are laid in sand

that's above 31, then they're all female, you know, 31 Celsius. And if it's below 27,

they're all male. And the species relies on the sand being a range of temperatures in between the,

you know, historically, it's been what would be colder years and hotter years. So we'll get a

reasonable number of both. Yeah, that's the problem. Yeah. So no, it is a huge problem. So we're

hoping for an hour, maybe if you get above like 32, it goes male again. So actually now we'd be

rooting for further global warming in order to push through to the, the really the hot guys,

let's call them, that come to start coming through again. Well, the other problem is that the

seagrass meadows are also hugely under threat. So just everyone in every, like lots of sea turtles,

some sea turtles are doing all right. There is, I think, seven different species of sea turtle

was inside. And I think several are endangered, but there are a couple of doing okay, but several

endangered. And the meadows, lots of them are off North Africa, where there isn't much environmental

protection. And lots of the country's nearest are undergoing quite chaotic times at the moment.

And so, yeah, there is a risk that we lose a football pitch is worth of seagrass every 30 minutes.

Jesus, every 30 minutes. Yeah. That's never have to say that whatever's mowing that seagrass,

we want to use that on land because that's really quick. I think it takes more than half an hour

to cut the grass on a football pitch. And this is just literally the use of, I mean, using global

warming as a force for gardening. Yeah. Hot turtles, better gardening. I kind of like climate change

now. I'm not in favour of climate change. Because the seagrass buries carbon 35 times faster than

a tropical rainforest. Another fact that I read. It's amazing. Yeah. Seagrass, they take carbon

from the water to build their leaves. The leaves eventually die. That sediment stays on the ocean

floor for hundreds of years. And so that's how they sequester. So that's essentially carbon capture.

It's captured in the silt at the bottom. Yeah. It's really functional carbon capture. And I think

10% of the carbon in the ocean is buried by seagrasses or sequestered by seagrasses,

despite them being 0.1% of the ocean floor. So it's really, it's really impressive stuff. We,

yeah, we need loads more of it. And we plant it. There are a few plans to plant 18 hectares around

the UK by 2026, which is not, doesn't sound like that. I don't know how many hectares in a football

pitch, but it sounds like a few hours and that's done no good at all. It's not. Yes. I think there

might be more like pilot schemes, but they are trying to get more going. And of course, if you

protect bits of seafloor, then the turtles, Andy, did they eat seagrass? They eat the tips of it.

I think that stimulates growth. Okay. So there's no cause to eradicate the turtles.

You've got to be open-minded. Maybe the turtles are the villains of the piece. David,

we're blaming ourselves for all our factories, but maybe those turtles.

For the listener, right? And cleverer than they look. David's wearing a T-shirt,

which is saying, stop sea turtles. It's really upsetting. Outside of seagrass, they're quite

fussy eaters, sea turtles. They're given a bigger menu to play with. So one of the other problems

of the climate at the moment is sometimes they're going off course, they're going into

colder oceans and they get hypothermia. So there's a lot of turtles that wash up on to shore and

either they're dead or they get rescued and taken to turtle hospital, where they then get this

brilliant menu of different things. And so each individual turtle has just a different

kind of taste. Like number seven doesn't like the squid, for example. A few of them don't like

tails, don't give them any fishy tails or anything like that. Yeah. And also it's creating chaos,

because turtles, they're very solitary, but they're in tanks together to be fed. And so there's

total bullies that they have to sort of reprimand and tell off and so on, because they're eating

the tails and so on. You can give turtles, if they're not very well, you can give them mayonnaise.

Did you see this? So this is if there's been an oil spill and the turtles have eaten a lot of oil.

If you give them mayonnaise, it helps them to shit it out. And the reason is because obviously

mayonnaise, it's what it's oil and whatever it is. Eggs? Yeah, it's an emulsion. We're revealing

our ignorance here, aren't we? It's really based food stuff as well. It's not complicated. This is

an off menu. We don't need to know anything about food. It comes out of a jar, let's be honest.

Yeah, but it has an emulsifier in it, which mixes water and oil. So if you've got oil inside you,

the emulsifier inside mayonnaise can help the oil to mix with the water already inside the stomach

of the turtle and then just makes it easier to excrete. That's so interesting. That's amazing.

So all these oil slicks are basically they're just a conspiracy by Big Mayo.

That causes massive spikes in the helman's share price. Whenever BP has a little mistake,

that's suddenly coaching. I've got a link to the previous fact weirdly. Oh yeah, to David's fact,

his headline fact. So seagrasses stop people getting gastroenteritis. Oh, isn't that good?

If you have gastroenteritis because you've drunk some water normally, which has the pathogens in

it, which cause it, seagrass may have way, way, way fewer of those pathogens in and around and

among them. So that water is just cleaner. You're less likely to get gastroenteritis from there.

And they've tried to calculate it is between eight and 24 million cases of gastroenteritis

prevented every year. Wow. And I think it's because a seagrass kind of uses it almost like

fertilizer and takes it into its body. It takes the gastroenteritis pathogens out of water.

But can it grow in non-salty water? Oh, almost none of it. No, I think there might be one fresh

water, but no, not as a problem there in terms of how useful it is. Well, if you only drink

seawater like me, it's still sparkling or salty. I've just worked out a mnemonic. So how many

cases did I say prevented every year? Little quiz, instant recall quiz. How many million cases?

I think it was a football picture. It was between eight and 24 million cases.

Now, if you need a mnemonic to remember that, those are the ages of Matilda and the Holy Roman

Emperor when they were betrothed to each other. And if you need a mnemonic the other way around,

you're like, how was Matilda? It was like, oh, what's the lower range of cases of gastroenteritis

prevented every year by seagrasses? Beautiful. You're welcome. So eight and 24 when they were

betrothed, but 12 and 28 when they were married. So not that. No, not that. That would be to

massively overstate the beneficial effect of seagrass on gastroenteritis. So that's...

I have a thing which I want to link back to the previous fact as well. So we have a mystery butcher

of the previous fact. I found a mystery turtle that I don't know much more about, that I want

to find out about. And it's the first turtle to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel and survive.

This was a... So I'm now plunging out the image of people glumly looking at a huge pile of dead

turtles at the bottom of Niagara Falls and go, I don't know, maybe try taping an X under the inside

of the barrel. Well, this was 1930. There was a guy called George Stathakus and he had this idea

of going over Niagara in a barrel and the barrel goes down. It doesn't break up, but it gets caught

in a sort of a tide that's underneath the... I don't know what you'd call it, but it's...

He can't escape and he's there for 18 hours in this barrel. So when they find him, he's suffocated,

he's dead and Sonny is... Oh, sorry. Yeah, there's a dead man in the story. Do we suspect the turtle

in this story? Oh, I haven't thought of that. I'm only one of us could survive this. Well,

the turtle might have been feeling quite negatively towards him, to be honest. This guy,

you know, I'm not... I wouldn't blame the turtle for not giving him a mouth to mouth.

What are we doing now, sir? 100 years old as well. Exactly, sir. That's a very old turtle.

It's a really old turtle and the barrel is in a museum now. It's held as a kind of piece of

Niagara Falls history, but where did Sonny go? No idea. Like the butcher, you know. Oh, we don't

know what happened to the turtle after that. Someone might know, but I couldn't find it.

Yeah, they... because they can live a lot longer than 100 years, can't they? Because it wasn't

there a turtle. I think I heard this on QI, but there was a... Clive of India's turtle.

I think that's a tortoise. Oh, no, that's a tortoise. Is it Lonesome George?

If I was American, that would be a turtle. Yeah, unfortunately, you're the least American person

on the planet. Is that a scientific fact? Yeah, yeah. The least American person. That's going on the

poster. Yeah, yeah. The Dalai Lama is slightly more American than me.

Okay, it is time for fact number three, and that is James. Okay, my fact this week is that in 1861,

there was one street musician for every 10 streets in London.

What a time to be alive. What a time. Noisy, noisy time. Sounds like it was a bit of a bad time

for quite a lot of Londoners. Yeah, so this is according to journalist Henry Mayhew, whose

article, admittedly, was relatively negative towards the street musicians, but he estimated

there are approximately 1,000 street musicians, 10,500 streets. Okay. And it was a real problem.

We've said before, I think that Babbage really hated them. He really got frustrated with them,

and he was actually him and the guy called Michael Bass, who ran the Bass Brewery.

They managed to get it regulated in 1864, but for probably the decade up until 1864,

London was just an unbelievably loud place to live, largely thanks to these. Yeah.

And what was their, what genre of music did they favour? Oh, it was all sorts. So Mayhew said there

were English violinists, Scottish pipers, German brass bandsmen, Italian grinders. So that's be

like, yeah. Organs, you know. And one French hurdy-gurdy player.

One out of all the thousand. Yeah. Here he comes. It was a she and the women.

Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. That's my prejudice, though. She had an instrument that, according to

Mayhew, had a battered, heavy look about it and was grievously harsh and out of tune.

And for 43 years, she had her regular rounds. 43. Yeah. So she went to Marleybone on a Monday,

Kentish Town on a Tuesday. So you knew how to avoid it.

I saw a hurdy-gurdy player recently. I was in Canterbury, and it's a very hurdy-gurdy.

It was the very old, old, old bit of Canterbury, you know, the cathedral. So you think he was a ghost?

No, he ran through a wall as soon as I started asking him questions, but he wasn't a ghost.

So can you remind me? There's a handle you wind, and he was doing something with

this at the hand as well. And it looks like a small violin with a handle.

How interesting. This is a really bad instrument. Is it a stringed instrument?

It is stringed. Okay, so the fingers are kind of on the frets, like a guitar.

This is sounding like the car that Homer Simpson designed. It has some strings,

but also a handle, a little keyboard on the bottom, and then you blow in the end.

I can't remember whether there were strings and frets or whether there were keys to play.

I think it might have been keys and a handle, but it was a very much a combo thing.

Yeah, that's great. I only know it as like a comedy word, really.

I know. I was staggered. That's why I said, what's that, this guy? And he just went,

That was the hurdy-gurdy, making the noise, wasn't it?

There was one other person, just while we're on it, described by Mayhew, who was an Italian fiddler

who would go around imitating all the farmyard animals with his fiddle.

He said he'd been doing it for 12 years, and he could imitate the bull, the calf,

the dog, the cock, the peacock, the ass, and the hen when she's laid an egg.

That's amazing, right? And he could do all that with his fiddle.

But what he couldn't do is play a tune.

What he found is that if you just bash at a fiddle, it makes this,

that is exactly the noise a hen makes. And it's just later, you might not be familiar that you

live in central London. But if you head out to the countryside and listen to it, it's exactly like

that. So isn't that, that's worth a pop or two. How come there was money to support them?

The people must have been paying for this. Yeah, but it was like just pennies here and there.

But they were doing it day and day out. And these people, they had their regulars,

so they would go to Miley Bono, to Kentish Town, because they knew there was someone there who

would give them a few hapenies here and there. And that's all they needed to live, really.

So these like grinders, as they were called. And the particular thing that people got annoyed by

was people with barrel organs, because there was a bit of racism in it, because they were mostly

from Italy and quite poor. And the other thing that annoyed people was you just turn a handle.

There's no skill involved. There's no skill. You're the skill of making a violin sound like

a screech out, like a goat that's been surprised, but not badly. So you just buy a barrel,

slot it into the organ, turn the handle, the same tunes come out every time. So that was a

frustrating thing for a lot of people. So Charles Dickens, his illustrator called John Leach,

claimed that he died early. He said this is killing me and then he died and he said it's because of

this. His final words to fellow artist William Frith, were rather Frith to be tormented in this

way, I would prefer to go to the grave where there is no noise. There we go. There we go.

He really can't on his neck. They buried him under the bandstand at Captain Coleman's side.

I was looking into what was going on in 1861, London at the time. Just curious,

no, as in I've got the answer, the invention of the toast sandwich. Because Mrs. Beaton's book

of household management was first published 1861 and one of the recipes in there was toast

sandwich. Get two bits of bread, put your bit of toast inside. I've eaten that actually, tried it.

Have you? Well, we did mention it on QI once and I thought I'll see what it's like. Yeah.

And it's not as bad as you might think, I would say, because it gives you a little bit of texture

to what otherwise is quite boring piece of bread. So it's bread toast bread. Yeah. Well, people put

crisps in sandwiches for a bit of crunch, but there's usually something else. Although I think

actually a sandwich of just butter and crisps. I mean, flavor of choice. I mean, oh, I'm ready

salted. Oh, ready salted. I think that's probably right with that combo, I think. Yeah, something

I'm going to go wouldn't quite. It's a lot more about texture than taste. Yeah. But you still think

you might a little bit of something else. I think there was butter on it in Mrs. Beaton's version.

Yes. Yeah. So that was invented and that was what the book was published. And that was that was a

very notable, notable, very odd bit of recipe. Black velvet. You might have seen people walking

around the streets 1861 drinking black velvet. Oh, this is a Guinness with a glass of champagne.

That's right. Yeah. And that's from then. Yes, to commemorate a very big death of 1861. Albert.

That's right. Albert died December 1861. He invented a cocktail just before.

No, no, no. He said, this cocktail's going to kill me. And then he died. And then he said,

I told you. Can you think why they might have invented the cocktail?

I mean, to try and monetize it in general, you know, is it black for a morning?

Yep. So and then champagne for a royal celebration. So the Guinness would sit like a black band,

like mourners were hanging around their arms. The idea was it was a, it's like getting a top on

your beer. Is that a lager top? Is that what, which, what is a lager top? It's a normal pint

of lager, but they pour out the tiniest bit at the top and they give you a little dash of lemonade

just to take the edge off. So it's like a very, very strong shandy. Exactly. When you're shandy,

become a lager top. You're just telling yourself, that's just beer, mate. And particularly when

you say, and instead of the beer, use whiskey. Just two more things because it's quite fun to know.

It was the publication of Great Expectations. So Dickens obviously had been printing the stories

in serials, but it was the first full book bringing the chapters together. And then the last one that

I found was it was the introduction of Widow Twenky into pantomime. Yeah, 1861, the first ever

pantomime. Sounds like a good time to be alive. It's great. Yeah, music. Yeah. Have you guys heard

just on people being loud and other people being annoyed about that? Have you heard of the New York

Society for the Suppression of Unnecessary Noise? No. This is my kind of organisation, basically.

Yet you said David Mitchell is not very American. So this was a doctor called Julia Barnett Rice.

Okay, she was, she qualified in 1885, got a medical degree, but didn't practice. I think,

don't know if women were allowed to practice in the 1880s, 90s, not sure. But she really wanted

that street vendors not be allowed to shout. And she, like she made it her life's course. And she

and her husband, he was called Isaac Rice. He was an interesting guy in various ways. He invented a

chess opening that was called the Rice Gambit. And then spent about apparently the next 20 years

of his life researching, analysing and testing the soundness of his gambit. So what a thing to spend

your life doing. But the thing is that I've never heard of that. And I follow chess a little bit.

So presumably it wasn't very useful after all those 20 years. No, he got to the end of the 20

years like, oh, it's not allowed to move that way. Oh, cancel that. I have never in my life

met a bishop that could only move diagonally. It's just not realistic. Whereas castles can't

move at all without an earthquake. And they just, they had a house on Broadway, way too noisy,

so they moved up to buy the river, right? On Riverside Drive, they built their own house,

had a basement vault dug so that they could have somewhere quiet. Because they had six

children, so the house was quite noisy. So he stayed in the basement a lot of the time doing his gambit.

That's actually what the Rice Gambit is.

Because they were by the river, the riverboats made so much noise blowing their horns all day.

So she, Julia, she hired students to count the number of toots per day. And it was about a

thousand toots per day. But if it was foggy, it was 3000. So she started a campaign saying, look,

this is very bad for people's health, particularly, and it was mostly because she didn't like it as

far as I can tell. But the tugboat captains found out about this campaign of hers, and they found

out where she lived, and they would gather outside on the river at night and all blast their horns.

But she genuinely got the law changed. And she got Mark Twain involved. Like she established

quiet zones around hospitals. How many boats sank then?

Very quiet ones, that was the key. Yeah, that's amazing. Another person who hated it was Thomas

Carlisle, just to go back to the 1850s in London and 1850s and 1860s in London. He once wrote that

he was considering to assassinate a vile Italian organ grinder who worked near his house. But I

think he might have built the first ever soundproof room in his house in London. This was an 1850

three. It had double walls. And it had a slated roof with a gap in between where he could get

like muffling chambers full of air so that the sound couldn't get in. And it cost him 170 pounds,

which according to one online calculator, I found said it was about 30,000 pounds today. It cost him

for a house extension. That's, you know, yeah, in those days. And yeah, I think, yeah, why didn't

they pay the annoying organ grinder to go away? Oh, you got I think you could do that. I think

that is how they earned quite a bit of their money, just extorting it from people.

That must be a, that's a glam profession, though, you know, ostensibly, you're there, you know,

we're here to entertain with our violin that sounds like a cow. The real money is the people

who desperately want you to go. It would be if we went doing live shows like we do and we got on

the stage and everyone had done a whip round for us not to do the show. I'm going to give you one

last set of buskers. This is in 2009 in Birmingham, two buskers who only knew two songs and have

been playing them in the same part of Birmingham for 18 months on end were given as boasts.

It was Wonderwall and Faith. They had a guitar and they had a bin lid and yeah, but they were playing

it to like four or five or six in the morning sometimes. One person said, to be fair, they

didn't do a bad rendition of the songs. If you lived in the area, that would become the main

version of the song to you and then you'd listen to Oasis doing it and go, no, they've got that bit wrong.

There's a few classic London ones. I think most tourists will probably remember if they've got

the tube, like the Henry the Hoover. What is that a person that a Henry the Hoover?

There was a guy I think next to it on a keyboard, but then he had accompanied by this Henry the

Hoover that had the saxophone that would shoot bubbles outside it. Yeah. So sorry, it's the,

where's the saxophone? In the nozzle, I guess? Of the Hoover? Yeah. Wait, the far end of the

nozzle, like the bit that does the hoovering or is it right? Is that, have you removed the Hoover's

trunk? I can't believe you. And you've found the saxophone. Quickly, what I thought was a solid

image in my head is collapsed. It sounds great. I just made that up. I just want a bit of doctrinal

reasoning. If you suck saxophone, does it make the same noise as if you blow a saxophone?

Wow, great question. Yeah. I don't know. I might stew me. No. You would make that, wouldn't you?

Yeah. Because you're sucking it into the, is it the horn, the mouth of the saxophone?

The bell end, actually. Is it called the bell? Yeah, yeah. Okay. So it presumably will make the

opposite, the opposite noise. Does it always have an opposite? Well, we know it's a quite

noise to February.

No, I like this. Yeah. I like the big, we're finally getting to the big question. That's

500 Eps in, finally. Does the noise have an opposite?

Doesn't noise have an opposite? You can have an opposite wave function. Well, they can do things,

can't they? Sometimes when, if there's a noise of air conditioning when you're recording something,

they can record that and in some way invert it and then, so it sucks that noise out.

So if you're at home and you know what the opposite of the word February is, send it in.

It's the noise that you would play over the word February in order to induce silence. And all these

irritable Victorians needed was to have that on their own barrel and turn the handle and it would

go quiet. That would be amazing. The opposite of Wonderwall.

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Okay, it's time for our final fact of the show. And that is my fact. My fact is that in 1993,

a man in Brazil who robbed a factory of its glue was arrested 36 hours later still in the factory

he was robbing because he was stuck to the glue he was stealing. Didn't he think to steal the glue

in its containers? I think what happened? So this is a guy called Edilbert. He was just

putting it in his pocket. I'll just take the glue loose. It's so heavy. These cans. The police will

be looking for tubes of glue. They won't be looking for raw glue. So this is a 19 year old.

He's called Edilbert Guamaris. We don't have to name him. Yeah. The opposite of that noise.

I actually think he was probably called Edilberto because I googled it. I can't find anyone else

called Edilbert, but there's a lot of people called Edilberto where it runs over two lines and

there's a hyphen. That's interesting. So yeah, so I saw this story in the Washington Post. It was

part of a yearly roundup and it was a 19 year old and he did take two large cans and something

must have happened. They tipped over as he was trying to get out of the factory. Glue spilled

everywhere. He obviously tried to pick up the glue, put it back in, I don't know, and got stuck

to where he was. It is very easy. I had to do a minor glue job the other day and the amount of glue

on my hands at the end of it was... When you say glue job, is that like a bank job? Were you also

stealing glue? No. Yeah, it's just very easy even with a small... Does it dry that quickly? Oh god,

that dries so fast. Yeah. Sorry, this is now my personal... The glue is very, very annoying

because it either doesn't work like, you know, essentially Pritt Stick. There are other

brands of glue that don't work. You know, they sort of go in that... Okay, it sort of sticks

it a bit, but you know, so does Snot. Or it's just so incredibly effective and you can't be

angry with it, can you? Because, you know, yes, it's doing exactly what Snot wanted it to stick

things together. And yeah, I didn't say my fingers, but yes, I did apply my two fingers to each other

while there was glue on one. And now, you know, but it's like the glue is being facetious. You know,

I didn't want to stick my fingers, whenever, as anyone wanted to stick their fingers together.

Yeah. Yeah. I didn't... It was through researching this fact that I didn't realize how important

superglue is to the world of live music. Oh. For live shows. So take a band like the Red Hot Chili

Peppers, flee on the base, very aggressive with his playing, slapping and popping and all sorts,

and he'll get huge calluses during the gig. And sometimes with old wounds that he's got,

they'll be ripped open. So he's got missing bits of his hand. So he'll run off stage,

grab superglue, fill in the hole. Oh, no. Yeah. Yeah. And come back on John Froschanti,

does it? The guitarist of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Stevie Ray Vaughan, does it? There's

so many musicians that talk about... They've got to give it a minute or they're going to stick to

their instruments. I know I have someone else who glued their fingers together, actually,

for a specific use in film. Is it something you can guess? It's something you can guess.

Oh, okay. Yeah, I know it, so I won't say it because I... Oh, great show.

Here's the only thing I'd say is there's like an additional clue. I can't do this.

So if I was in the movie as this character, I would require the superglue as well.

I'm thinking of one of two things. Is it E.T.? Oh, weird fingers. That's good.

Or Spock. It's Spock. Well, you couldn't do it without glue. Mr Spock, Zachary Quinto,

in the new Star Trek film, couldn't do the Vulcan salute. So they glued his fingers together.

I can do it with one hand, but not with the other. Would you feel, if for that reason you

weren't cast as Spock in Star Trek, would you feel that that was okay? I think so.

Yeah, or would you feel you were being discriminated against? Well, he wasn't discriminated against.

I don't know if he showed up to the audition pre-glute. I would say if I was auditioning for

Spock, first thing, can you do that with your hand? If so, okay, let's look at the script.

In fairness, they don't only cast people with pointy ears, so they do add some kind of... Having

said that, though, if some people had pointy ears, they would have a legitimate grievance.

I mean, talk about if there were real Vulcans among us, and then suddenly we're getting people to

Vulcan up. That's not appropriate, is it? But because Vulcans don't happen to exist,

it's okay to point a ear up non-Vulcans. But similarly, the hand thing. I do feel like Zachary

Quinto is taking jobs away from people like me who can do it. Yeah, you can do it. I can do it with

one and just about with the other, and you can't do it at all. I can't do it at all. No. Well, you

can play Kirk. That's fine. There's plenty of parts. Was William Shatner Kirk? Yeah. So he

couldn't do it either, and they tied his fingers... No, no, but he apparently has to do it at one

point. They tied his fingers together with fishing line. No, yeah. Oh, my God. That makes sense.

That's really cool. That's lovely. You say I'm the least American person, but you add,

was William Shatner Kirk? I mean, I have to say, I really knew that as a piece of popular culture

has gotten through to me. Was Elvis Presley a singer? Speaking of body parts and glue, do you

know what butt glue is? Oh, butt glue. I have a product at home called Butt Clean, but it's

it's for my... I have a water butt. So you must be disappointed when you bought that

off the internet. The amount of capsules I wasted for real, like saying they had to be just dropped

in the water butt. So that cleans the water butt there. Yeah, you just pop it in and it fizzes a

bit. It's kind of like turtles just float to the surface. This is actually more to do with the

Americans. So what's it called? Butt glue. That's a terrible bud remake.

Butt glue. That's not for repairing water butts. No, it's not. It's for the bottoms and it's for

people who compete in pageants. If you're wearing a very tight bikini, you want it to be exactly

straight on your cheeks. You don't want it to ride up or anything like that. You put it

between the bikini and the bottom. So it sort of goes on the bikini to get it positioned.

I was thinking it goes on the bum, but it sort of lifts the bum. Well, Andrew, you would be good

in the pageant world, according to the Bravo show. I think that as well. I'm amazed that is his line

of work. You would be an innovator because according to the Bravo show Game of Crowns,

which is quite recent, some people are using butt glue to actually hold the butt cheeks together

to kind of make them seem very pert. Because it's not very strongly, but it's what's soluble.

So you can put some water down there and it'll open them up again. You just need a thank goodness.

So do not use super glue instead of butt glue. You're doing your airfix with butt glue. It's

not it. Oh my God. Is that a common complaint in beauty pageant terms that the buttocks are too

far apart as a side of a criminal disposition? I don't think they all do this just to say if

you're a beauty pageant person. Of course not. No, no, no. I think but just some people do it too.

But I thought there was glue. There's all sorts of bits of glue for sticking bits of makeup to

people's faces that surely this is the same as butt glue. There's no need to say that this glue

it's skin glue. It doesn't need to be specifically for the butt. I think there might be some marketing

going on there. Like I have something called nerd wax, which you use to keep your sunglasses on,

right? Because my nose is quite small. So my sunglasses slip down my nose and you can kind of

put it on your nose and it kind of keeps it there. But really it's just wax. But they put it in a

nice tube that says nerd wax on and it made me want to buy it. So I think it's a bit of that.

Yeah, you could use it wherever you go. Bugger glue. Anyone heard of bugger glue?

Okay, bugger as in the Americans? Yeah, sorry, I should explain what bugger is to the

non-American here. No, I've heard the expression despite being so un-American,

as in for a unit of snot, isn't it? A unit of dry snot. Oh, yeah. Like a bogey.

Like a bogey. Is it used in beauty pageants to hold the nostrils together because they are considered

to be more beautiful? Too far apart nostrils. It's the, remember when I used to get a card,

bank card through the post and when you would take it off, there would be a little bit of glue

underneath. That's a very snotty bugger glue. That's bugger glue. Yeah, that's great.

Satisfying though, because when that comes away, it's gone completely, which is actually not the

case for snot. I'd say snot leaves more of a sort of residue. Better than snot. Better than snot.

We've invented a better snot. Now all we need to do is get it to somehow come out of our noses.

Because at the moment, it only manifests some credit card rather than a bank or two,

so you've got a cold. Come on, AI. I need to wrap us up in a sec.

Oh, should we do some bungling criminals? Yeah, why not a couple of bungling criminals?

There was a man who stole a parcel from Reading.

Was it to contain Henry the first to remain?

This is in 1994. It was in the early 90s.

And it turned out to be a bomb. It turned out to be an IRA bomb.

And he ran down the road pointing to the suitcase that he'd stolen shouting,

it's a bomb, it's a bomb. And passersby thought that he was high on drugs,

but he dumped the suitcase outside a shop and 200 homes in Reading had to be evacuated

while the bomb squad made it safe. I thought you were going to say blew up.

How safely put it outside a shop? I'll be honest, I think he was panicking.

Because there must have been a, there's a moment of realisation of that story.

He's opened the suitcase. He's stolen the suitcase.

It's labels, IRA bomb. It's ticking or there's a fuse or something.

The truth is, like you would think it probably wasn't a bomb, right?

But they did, you know, they did make it safe.

So the newspaper report did say that it was a bomb.

Yeah, okay. Yeah, could have been a hero butcher.

You want to hear about a hero butcher? Another one.

This was a man who stole six pounds from a butcher,

but the butcher was also an amateur magician.

And rather than raising the alarm because he thought the guy would run away if he said,

stop thief, he decided to do a trick where he pretended that 50p had gone missing.

And he said, oh, let me find it. It might be about your person.

And he searched the person and found the six pounds that he'd stolen.

And yeah. That's brilliant.

This is in 1976. How did he, people were more willing to stand still then?

Yeah, exactly. The butcher suddenly, you know, I have just stolen six pounds

and now the butcher is coming round the counter and doing a bit of a trick

about coins. This is an eerie coincidence.

And how can the butcher prove, unless the butcher has already written

his initials on the six pounds, which he might have done as part of the magic trick.

Just saying that's my six pounds. What are you going to do?

Maybe it was a coincidence and the butcher always basically stole all the money of the people who

came in. But on this occasion, it was just money that, you know, he was nicking back.

The reason we know about it is because actually the butcher let the guy go

and even gave him some sausages for his tea because he could see that he was in need of this

stuff. That's really nice.

But that when the guy was caught for a different robbery, he was caught in Newcastle and he asked

for this and a few other crimes to be taken into account. And then they brought the butcher

in to corroborate it. So that's how we know it happened.

Right. Why did he mention that when he was being done for something else?

We know.

The butcher wasn't taking it any further and he said,

fine, have some sausage.

Guess how I got these sausages?

It's a funny story actually.

I can't tell you what I should tell you.

You know what? I did think that, but it is a thing that they asked for other things to be

taken into account, don't they?

But that, I think, is what they're saying is it precludes future prosecution.

I think that might be it.

Yes.

But I think on this, I suppose maybe, but on this, there's no way the butcher's going to go.

Actually, I've thought about it.

That was out of order and I want the sausage.

Do you think it might make the judge look more kindly on you to say,

all right, I've turned over a new leaf.

By the way, here are some other things.

Right, yeah.

I don't know.

Maybe.

I think if you said to the judge, I've never done anything wrong before.

That's fine.

But the difference between saying, talking about five previous robberies,

rather than four, I don't think that's going to meaningfully change the judge's view.

I think because it's such a funny story.

The judge must get a lot of quite grim cases of theft and burglary and stuff.

And actually, this funny thing that happened in a butcher's shop would make me look more kindly

Now I know you're a bungling crumb.

Let's say you got the butcher anyway, the butcher saw the funny side.

Yeah.

And then I mugged an old lady.

Okay, that's it.

That is all of our facts.

Thank you so much for listening.

If you'd like to get in contact with any of us about the things that we've said

over the course of this podcast, we can be found on our Twitter accounts.

I'm on at Shriverland.

James.

James Harkin.

Andy.

Andrew Hunter M.

And David.

At RealD Mitchell.

Nice.

But I don't actually look at any of the replies because it's so poisonous on there.

So, you know, you won't be hearing back from me.

Tweeting you abuse for years.

You mean you haven't read it?

I'm well aware.

Yeah, or you can go to our group account, which is at no such thing, or go to our website,

no such thing as a fish.com.

All of our previous episodes are up there, so do check them out.

But most importantly of all, get David's new book.

It's called Unruly, A History of England's Kings and Queens.

It's out now in all shops and online.

That's it for us.

We'll be back again next week, and we'll see you then.

Goodbye.

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.