Little Fish: Release The Naughty List

自動でお風呂を任します

Hello everyone, welcome to another episode of Little Fish. This is the show where we go through your incredible facts that you have sent to podcast at QI.com. And we chat about them for a little while and then we do some other stuff at the end. I am James Harkin. I am Sat Somewhere in the UK in my house. Uh and Andy and Dan are also elsewhere in the UK. And we're gonna chat right now. So guys, one of you, give me a fact. I go on here. This has been sent to us by Meg O'Connor.

who says, Perhaps you are already aware, but Santa Claus is not the mayor of the North Pole. I think we all assumed he didn't have a mayor maybe. Um wasn't there there was a politician called Santa Claus, and I think he lived in North Pole, but and I thought he was the mayor actually, so in fairness I would have fallen for this one. Well, you're almost he's a council member of the North Pole government. Um it's actually, of course, Larry Turch who is the mayor of the North Pole.

Um and this is North Pole, Alaska. I hadn't I hadn't heard of this before. I actually send my letters to Larry Turch when I want to get something for Christmas. If you want a dropped curb in the North Pole area. He's the man to go to. So there's as you say, James, there is a Santa Claus. And for all the kiddies listening, this is a different Santa Claus. This is someone who lives in a place called

North Pole Alaska. His real name was Thomas O'Connor. He legally changed it to Santa Claus in 2005. He, as well as being a politician, is an Anglican monk. Uh, he is a proponent of free healthcare, medical marijuana and wealth tax. And yeah, he lives in North Pole, Alaska, which has a population of about two and a half thousand. Uh Bob Ross used to live there. You know the painter in America, Bob Ross? Yeah. Yeah, it's it's big.

Don't you think? I would have thought someone who flies around the world giving things out for free once a year, to most boys and girls, it's not really means tested. There's a little bit of naughty or nice, but So do you think he's a socialist? Yeah. I was thinking he sees you when you're sleeping, he knows when you are woke. That's what I was leading up to with that whole thing. That's really good. That's really good. I think we're all thinking the same thing though. Release the naughty list.

Release a naughty list, Santa I have been on that naughty list, I have to admit, but it's just incidental. I never went on the sleigh. I want to make that very clear.

Um I've got one. Yeah, go on, Andy. Here's one from Andrew Lauwasser. I work in movie trailers. Brackets. The audiovisual medium, not the vehicles. Lovely. We're off the block. Uh and my fact is that the most prized award in the industry isn't best trailer or agency of the year, but it's an award for the best trailer for the worst movie, which is dubbed the Golden Fleece.

And I just absolutely love this. Basically there's this golden trailer award ceremony, which is all about the trailer movie trailers. Um confusingly, its logo is a little picture of a trailer, the vehicle. But it's about the advert it's about the two minute long adverts you get for films, right? Okay. Right. Golden trailer award. And there is this award, the Golden Fleece, where if you've made an absolute dog of a film but you turn in a really good trailer, you can win it.

That's what they say. I think coal trailers these days are a bit weak. I gotta say, I think the the golden age of the trailer is perhaps behind us. Well when was the last time you saw a really innovative trailer? There's a film called Free Fire. It's set in a single warehouse, it's a big shootout, you know, only one person can make off with the money.

Edgar Wright. Oh what's his name? Um it's a pretty big slam on Edgar Wright when you say someone cool do you happen to know if these award ceremonies Do they have categories like most misleading trailer? I think it's no, I think it's that's the only one where it's like best trailer for worst film. All the others are kind of other elements of the trailer process which are not the film is bad.

This award ceremony was set up by these two sisters, the Brady sisters, Evelyn and Monica. They just got out of film school in nineteen ninety-seven. They really wanted to make a feature film, but they couldn't get the money together for it, so they thought, let's make the trailer first.

And that'll get investors to put all the money into the film. But they didn't know anyone who made trailers either. I don't know what film school is for if you come out of it not knowing anyone who makes trailers, but whatever. So they made the awards show to try and lure in companies which make trailers so they could make the trailer and then get the money for their film. And they're still doing the awards. They haven't made they ha still haven't made the film.

That's so clever. Uh Ben Wheatley was free fire. Oh which to me him and Edgar Wright are the same person. Yeah, I think I think he's probably cool. I've got um another um a movie based

one here if you want to hear it. So this is a fact from Jesse Nell and it's about someone called Judith Love Cohen who helped create the abort guidance system which rescued the Apollo 13 astronaut. Now she worked on this system on the day she was in labor. So she was very heavily pregnant. She was in work. She took the papers with all of the maths home with her. Then she went to hospital, gave birth to a child, and then came back and said, Yeah, I've solved it. It's okay.

Yes, this is ringing a bell. Because as you know, I'm a big Apollo thirteen connoisseur, but also the surname Um, well, her surname is not that important to the fact. The reason that it rings a bell, Dan, might be the reason that I said it was to do with movies. Yeah. Uh particular actor, which I know you're a big fan of. Uh Jack Black was the children. Come through Fender. Yeah, that's right. Um yeah, Jack Black was the child who came as a result of that birth.

when she disappeared when she was working on the Apollo thirteen. So were the terrible that would be quite exciting if you were in Labour and people were doing big countdowns all around you and you kept having to say, No, no, no, no, no, no don't don't stop counting down, you know,'cause you th there's a baby coming. I see what you mean. Yeah, she didn't give birth inside the center where all of the stuff she went to a hospital. And also j generally

There's no countdown in birth. I don't know if that's Different experience for you, Andy. But um Are you joking?'Cause when I when my wife gave birth, I was in charge of the music. Like they always gave the dads something to do. So they gave me this Bluetooth speaker that I had to work out how to do. And then I had to put the music on and I put my favourite track, which is the countdown theme tune. Wow. That's not true, Dad. Were you in trouble for the music?

Yeah, yeah. Like I genuinely think that they did that in order to give me something to do, otherwise I'm gonna be sat there fretting. So like you know how hard it is to get a Bluetooth speaker to attach to your phone. Yes, yeah. I was like... Struggling here guys, I'm struggling. Give me some air, give me some gas. I got to do the music as well for and on my third child it was a Bluetooth music system. But for the first child, the the few days before they said you've got to burn a C D.

And bring it in. Lovely. Is it 2017? There's no CDs to burn anymore. Like, where are you getting that from? And my uh father in law will He did it up in his office. Fennelella and I picked five songs that we were very happy for our son to be born to. And it got to the end of the CD. We thought it'd loop back round.

And suddenly this ten minute long Bob Dylan track comes on because he thought, I want my grandson being born to Dylan And we just had to sit through it. Anyway, and yours was just a a countdown. No, mine was Angel after whom my daughter was burned. Oh, lovely. The Belgian pop star. But anyway, enough about our lives. Yeah. Give us some facts.

I've got another one here. Um this is from Cherie Bluebond. When the Nazis ran a contest for a baby who exemplified the Aryan ideal, they picked A Jewish child. This is fascinating. Um this child. This child was called Hesi Levinson's Taft, and she was on the cover of Nazi magazine, and uh She appeared on it without her parents' consent or knowledge. What had happened was there was a competition to find a child who could

you know, have the look of an Aryan who who would seem to be the ultimate Aryan to be put on the front of this cover. And they went to this photographer who has a sort of Sinister little joke, he slipped in this photo of Hessy Levinson's Taft, knowing that she was Jewish. And this picture was picked supposedly personally by Goebbels. She had no idea about it. Obviously she's a baby. Her parents had no idea about it. And one day a cleaner was over at the house.

And she was dusting the mantelpiece and she saw that photo and she went, Isn't that the ultimate Aryan baby that I saw on the front cover of Nazi magazine? Was the magazine called Nazi magazine? That's what it says it's called here. If there's a free gift, because gift in German is poison. Oh very nice. Interesting. But also this cleaner after the war, she said, Oh, that reminds me of the Nazi magazine that I used to subscribe to, did she?

So I think the war was still going on. So this was this was while Hitler was in power. And um I think actually that might be the New York Times article title n on cover of Nazi magazine. So I'm sure it had a different title, but apparently there were five or six. magazines that were pro Nazi that you could get in the newsstands at the time. They all were at the time. I'm sure most magazines in the thirties had a pro Nazi line. Yeah.

So anyway, they saw her and they said, What is this doing here? They questioned the photographer, he gave his reasoning. And they were terrified for most of their life at that point because they thought if the Germans found out that this was a Jewish baby, they would actively hunt down the baby. And so they lived in fear. She barely went out for walk.

But she survived and the reason this story has been sent to us is as a part of an obituary. She died just this year, age ninety one. Wow. Very cool. Um I got another one here. Yeah.

You guys know I like uh transport infrastructure fact. We do, Andy, yeah. We're we're aware of that. Some of the iosyncrasy of your life. So I've been to two separate bus museums in the last month. It's amazing to wait for one bus to use the other. Fantastic. Anyway, uh this comes from Martin Kaiser. Who says one of my truly favourite facts is that the southernmost station on the London Underground is on the northern line and the northernmost station is not.

Okay, that's quite fun. It's quite fun. Right. The southernmost station is Morden, which is on the northern line. Yeah. And the northernmost station on the northern line is High Barnet, but there are three other lines that go further north. Uh and I believe it's Chesham Metropolitan Line does. Correct. Chesham is on the Metropolitan Line. And are we playing this game? Yep. Central the Northern West Station on the central line.

On the central line, yeah, it's gonna be the one that's just passed Daden Boys. Is it Epping? It's Epping. Very good. And what will the other one be? Piccadilly. Oh, what Copfasters? I guess it would be, yes. I didn't write that one down eccentrically. Right. Do you want to hear my this

You know how I did that really good joke earlier. Do you want me to really flush it right down the toilet with one of the worst jokes you ever heard? Yeah. Um I went on the Piccadilly line the other day to go to Copfoster's, but I got off one stop too early. Awkward. Ooh, really nice. So there's a place called Oakwood, uh for listeners overseas. Yeah. James, I've got a museum to go to with you and I can't wait. I'll see you there. You have to come along now. Uh here is a fact.

You know, um, guys, that I'm a big fan of sports. It's just one of those idiosyncrasies that I have. Okay. Um Grant Mitchell wrote in. I don't know if it's the fictional character from the East Enders. It's gotta be. Or not. Um but Grant wrote with a football fact and he said that in the twenty fifteen, sixteen and twenty sixteen seventeen seasons, there were two players in the Red Star FC team.

which is a French football team, named Pierrique Cro. They were born within nine months of each other and both left Red Star on july first, twenty seventeen. So they had the exact same name. Grant only knows this because He says he obsessively updated his pro evolution soccer game with new transfers every half season. Grant, welcome to the club. Beneath that hardman exterior on East Enders there lurks the soul of a real nerd. That's lovely. Um

So there you go. I've uh there's quite a few times in history where you've had players with the same name. So uh in the nineteen seventies Scarborough Football Club had two players called Harry Dunn, but they were called Harry Dunn and Harry A. Dunn. But Harry A. Dunn didn't have a middle name. They just added the A just so that people would know the difference between the two dunns. Lovely, lovely.

Uh Lokomotive Moscow between two thousand two and two thousand three, they had two players called Sergey Ovchinikov. So what would you do in a Russian team if you have two people with the same name? Uh make it all the other nine players. Change their names to Sergei or Jekov. No, that's not what happened. Really? Imagine imagine this football team um was in a uh Dostoevsky novel. How would you tell the difference between them? Do you add like a

Like a son? Like a Yeah, pretty much that. So um in Russia you have your normal surname, but you also have your patronymic. So these two players were known as Sergei Ivanovich. Orchinnikov and Sergey Vladimirovich Ovchinnikov. So they were known by their full sort of like Russian nineteenth century novel name. That's gonna be a very busy back of shirt. I mean that's

Yeah. I can see it's off Chinnikov, but which one? You wouldn't know this, Andy, but when you buy a football shirt if you want a name on. Um you have to pay for the number of letters. What a swiss. They are. And so if you like really like a player with a really long surname like Hunter Murray Oh is gonna cost you a fortune. But if you like a short name like Harkin, it's gonna be much cheaper. Yeah.

Interesting. That's very good to know. Course I'm just gonna say Hunter is my middle name, Murray is my surname, so Murray and Harkin would have the same price and Schreiber is the one who extracts the real cash.

from the Nevermind Tysinski. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Nightmare Shall I do another one? Yeah, go on. Here's one about Australia's second Prime Minister, Alfred Deakin. Ah yes. I know we're all thinking of the same fact, but I'm gonna read it out anyway. Um this fact is coming from Oliver Frederick, who writes that when he was Prime Minister, Deakin had a secret second job He had taken on a gig being a journalist writing secret political commentary on the Australian Parliament. He wrote

uh six hundred columns. It was nearly a million words he'd written, which was him slagging off his colleagues, slagging off the then Prime Minister. And he got paid, I think more than he got as an MP to be a journalist writing about MPs. And it continued after he was made Prime Minister. Really? He kept writing columns. So was he slagging himself off? He was slagging himself off at various points.

It's just inspired. It's so good. That's amazing. I think that's heroic. I think that's a Netflix series waiting to happen. It reminds me of that um do you remember they used to like the secret footballer and the secret whatever? Yes, I think. Really? I'm looking and it's off Chinikov, but which one? Uh I think it was Dave Kitson who like you have to be a pretty good football nerd to remember him, but he was a proper footballer, yeah. Wow. Yeah. Do you know other writing that Alfred Deakin did?

So I actually wrote about him in my Theory of Everything Else book because he, prior to becoming Prime Minister, was a spiritualist. And ghostwritten with John Bunyan, wrote the sequel to The Pilgrim's Progress. Brilliant. A book that was going out for a sequel. Yeah. In the six hundred years since. People were just saying, Where's PP two? So that he had forty nine sessions contacting his spirit and taking down dictation for the sequel which he published.

And used to go around all of Australia doing spiritual um acts and he used to book people who claimed that they were possessed by other great dead historical characters. Imagine a TED conference. But instead of a living celebrity walking on stage, I walk on stage and say, I will now inhabit the spirit of Abraham Lincoln, who will give you a talk.

chat going on. He used to run all that sort of stuff. That feels like a good idea for a chat show. That's like the new Alan Carr sort of chat show, but with the spirit of people, you only need to bug one guest. And it's hosted by the spirit of Michael Parkinson. Yes. Through Alan Carr, yeah. Yes. It's a very nice idea.

Okay, well, what an amazing fact and what an amazing bunch of facts we've had this week. Absolutely fantastic. But we can't let you go, dear listener, until we have given away some of our facts. to friends of the podcast on Patreon. This is what we do. If you are of the top tier on Patreon, then you get to become a custodian of facts. And it is right here that we bestow those custodianships. So Dan, why don't you give us the first one today?

Yeah, sure. So congratulations to Jamie Breeze because you are now the custodian of the fact that, according to the Vatican, the greatest album of all time is Revolver by the Beatles. Rubbish. Ridiculous. It's obviously Abbey Road. I don't know what the Vatican's playing out there. To be honest, this was before Lily Allen's latest album came out, so Yes. Yeah, they couldn't have predicted that unfortunately. Yeah, this was a fact by me and it was uh released through one of the Vatican's

Newspapers. Um much like how the Nazi will have Nazi magazine. They've got the Vatican Daily. Very embarrassing when they had the Catholic child of the year and it turned out to be a Wiccan. Ha ha ha ha ha. Lovely. And so that was voted number one. Very cool. Very nice. Uh Andy, let's have another one. Yeah, here's a fact, this one goes out to Mileen Pentland, and it's that for the first fifty years of the Olympics, the only event was the two hundred meter sprint.

That's just a good what a what a nice Olympics that would be. Brisk over quickly. Good for the Jamaican team, like'cause they're just gonna win every year. Yes, absolutely. And they were rather unfairly excluded from the ancient Olympics. Um for some time. I've run on the um track where they took place. So have I. The two hundred metre track. Yes. You and I have b but at different times. Yeah, well, we we didn't we didn't actually say what our times were.

No, I that's very good. I remember holidays. No, I know that my time will have been'cause they started off sprinting and then two hundred meters is a lot further than you think it's gonna be. Yeah. I think I did it in about I think it was either fifteen or sixteen seconds. Oh, so the world record. Yeah. Yeah. So the current world record will be about nineteen seconds. Well

Yeah, and I that's pretty good. Andy. That's pretty good. Well, I feel silly. I should have timed it, really. Did you get your wife to time you, Andy, and she was just being really generous? She was like Fourteen. Fourteen and a half Yeah fourteen See that you put time slows down at the speeds I was doing, so fourteen did go on for a long time actually. Um

Here is another one. This fact is now under the custodianship of David Bravos. And David, your fact is that ants' nests can be infested by smaller ants. Lovely. Lovely fat. That's from uh Levin Skala. A good friend. Was this a live show that we did? Maybe the one we did in the Atomium? It was exactly that I think. It's so weird how you can remember a very specific location from effect. And that I have such a clear memory. It's this amazing

structure in uh in Brussels that's shaped like is it an iron atom? It's one of the atoms. And uh there are these huge balls connected by pipes and the balls are big enough that they can host a a small theatre and uh that's where we played a gig. That's probably still one of the coolest gigs we've ever played.

And it was our first overseas gig, so it's sort of quite memorable for us in that respect as well. But yeah, that was an extraordinary one. I remember coming off stage thinking that the audience hadn't enjoyed themselves very much. Uh and being told, Oh no, that's just what Belgian audiences are like. They you know, they they just don't like to interrupt you by laughing.

Yes. W was it my wife who told you that, James? Because she's she's I can confirm she's very good at softening the blow of things like this. Of course you were going that speed. Okay, uh I've got one here. This is now going out. To Melissa. Congratulations. Your fact is that in Cambodia, a teenage Kung girl's parents might build her a love hut. Where she can sleep with as many men as she likes until she finds the right one. Okay. Which one of you two came up with this fact?

This was Anna's Yeah. Classic Anna. Yeah classic Anna. Classic Anna. Yeah. Why is it why is it classic Anna? Well because Anthropology Anthropology and also she just likes to sleep with as many men as she likes until she finds the right God. Mm. Do you think Hannah's listened to a single episode since she went off on Matt Leave? Absolutely not. No, she did actually. She has listened to the definitely listen to the Merry Beard one. Mmm.

The first one that she missed basically. I think there was like two two before Mary. And she she asked me to isolate Mary's microphone and just listen to her bit. She didn't listen to us. That's great. Give us one more. Here's one that goes out to Tim Johnston. Tim, your fact from now and forever is that the longest canyon in the world is fifty percent longer than the Grand Canyon, and we didn't know about it until August twenty thirteen.

Wow. Just wrestly mental. Where is it? I I think it's in Gre I think it's in Greenland. I think it's under the enormous ice sheet in Greenland, which is why You wouldn't know about it unless you develop the technology to look under the ice sheet without disturbing it. It's under about a mile or two of ice. So interestingly, it's soon gonna be the longest canyon in the US as well as the long Yeah.

Um actually I don't think the Grand Canyon it might be the biggest, but it's definitely not the deepest canyon in America. There's a few canyons that yeah, there's a few canyons that are quite a lot deeper than the Grand Canyon. But it's very broad, isn't it? Is it so broad that you can hardly see across it? I I believe. I've never been. Uh have you been, James? I have been, yeah. We flew a helicopter through

Through the Canyon. Um and it was absolutely awesome and had like a champagne breakfast. Which is a thing they do, you know, it wasn't a special thing for us, it's a thing they do but On the helicopter. No, the helicopter drops you down and then you have... What they call is a champagne breakfast, but it's actually a plastic glass with a little bit of champagne in and a turned up sandwich.

And then you get back on the helicopter again. But it is pretty cool. I was just saying, you couldn't serve a full breakfast on a helicopter. I've I don't know if anyone's ever tried to have full English on a helicopter, but I'm not gonna make it my my mission to do that. Yeah. Good. Do you reckon you could like chuck a sausage up and then the blades will chop it into perfect circles? Absolutely. That's it. If you lived in a cartoon, that's exactly what would happen.

Okay, here is another fact. This one now belongs to Hattie Farrell. And Hattie, your fact is that in 2008, the University of Bath invented a 3D printer which could copy itself. Nobody knows how many there are now.

And I think my this was one of my facts and I think my implication was that once you've come up with a machine that can make another machine, presumably that machine is just gonna make another, which makes another, which makes another, and eventually we'd be wading through no doubt D printers. I think that's definitely what's happened. I think what actually happened is they did make millions and millions and millions of these, but each one was used to make checkers bug.

There we go. Sorry, it took me a while to catch up with that one. We're on Zoom, so I thought that was a delay, but it was just a bit slow getting the joke. Brilliant facts. Brilliant. All right. Here's another one. It goes out to James Ralph. The fact is, to avoid hitting electric wires, the San Francisco Fire Department's ladders are made of wood. Interesting.

That's quite I would say that that is not true, right? Well it's your fact, mate. I know it is, I know, but now that I read it, they're not gonna hit the electric wires any less. They're just gonna conduct the electricity less, right? What you m should have said is to avoid electrocuting firefighters. Yeah. I'm just dishing myself out a harkening.

Should we do another one? Yeah. Here's one last one. This one goes out to Meryl McQueen. Congratulations, Meryl, friend of the podcast. Your fact is that astronauts don't snore. They don't snore. They're just not they don't I think it's that they they hi they only hire people who don't snore.

I think that's part of the process of getting who's going to space if you're a big snorer they don't have to clear you have to clear all the other stages. You have to become like a navy pilot, then you have to become this other kind of pilot, then you have to do the training, then you have to go in the swimming pool for like six weeks. Then finally the sleepover. And if you if you snore at the sleepover, you're straight out on the street. So funny. Yeah. Oh, great fact.

Great, great facts. She's facts without mine. Great. Okay. Okay, enough of uh facts uh given to you. And enough of your facts given to us. It is time to end the show. So please, if you have some more facts, do send them to podcast qi.com. And they will go through that inbox and you will pluck out the very, very best and we will use them in a future episode.

If you'd like to become a friend of the podcast, you can go to patreon.com. There's all sorts of fun stuff. Or you can even just join up for free and you'll get some news about no such thing as a fish and some little freebies. That is it for us. Goodbye from me. Goodbye from Andy. Bye! Goodbye from Dan. So long. We'll see you on Friday.