Little Fish: Unencumbered By Any Knowledge

Hinzugefügt: 2026-05-18

[00:00:07][music] >> Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of Little Fish, the show where we put down our facts and we get the facts that [music] have been sent to [email protected] by you. Andy has gone through the mailbox. He's taken out the very, very best facts that you've sent and we're going to go through them today. I'm James Harkin. I'm joined by Daniel Schreiber, Andrew Hunter Murray, and a whole bunch of facts. Who's got one?

[00:00:38]I've got one. Go for it. This is actually a very nice, rare example of a double-headed fact.

[00:00:46]So it's the same It's one fact, but two people have sent it in.

[00:00:49]>> Oh, right. Okay. So there's a place near Chicago, the Argonne National Lab.

[00:00:55]>> Okay.

[00:00:55]>> Have you heard of it? It's a nuclear nuclear research US research laboratory.

[00:01:00]I I'm going to say it straight away.

[00:01:02]It's named by Mr. Argon. Oh, how did I not see that coming?

[00:01:07]It's named after a forest.

[00:01:09]The Argonne forest, not the chemical element. Anyway, that's Actually, that is not the main fact.

[00:01:15]>> Oh, really? Cuz my heckles are up for those at the moment. I'm looking out for them wherever [laughter] I'm going.

[00:01:21]So there's a forest surrounding the lab, which is called Waterfall Glen, right?

[00:01:26]Oh, that is. [laughter] Named after Mr. Waterfall or named after someone called Glen?

[00:01:32]Seymour Waterfall. Okay. [laughter] Was a local forest commissioner and apparently the waterfalls are truly rubbish. Like there is water going downwards, but they're not good waterfalls. And that's because they're not meant to be waterfalls cuz it's named after Seymour Waterfall. So we're off the blocks.

[00:01:47]>> Yeah. No, very good. You're going to have to do better than that, Andy, I'm afraid. First facts of the show.

[00:01:53]>> thought I'd get it nice and fast.

[00:01:54]>> Nah.

[00:01:55]>> No. It's It's It really is a whole new show that we're making now that you forced into our existing show. It's just I'm actually a bit worried cuz we're going to record a drop us a line after this. Genuinely, I'd say 30% of the content people have sent in is just [laughter] names of things that you think are named for an obvious reason, but they're not.

[00:02:11]I don't know what we're going to do cuz we've got too many to make it a good show.

[00:02:14]>> Well, if you want to spend your hard, hard-earned money hearing us discuss names, patreon.com/clubfish everyone.

[00:02:22]Can I do a fact?

[00:02:24]>> Yeah, please. Number one, please.

[00:02:25]>> This has been sent in by Steven Martinez who says in 2012 a man named Niles Gammons was arrested for drunk driving in Urbana, Ohio at 1:08 a.m. He was arrested and released on bail.

[00:02:40]An hour later at 1:08 a.m. the same cop arrested the same man for drunk driving. [laughter] Daylight savings. It must be, right?

[00:02:50]Daylight savings. It's always the criminal. It's >> [laughter] >> daylight savings. If it weren't for that Donald Trump Guys, daylight savings cop.

[00:02:57]>> [laughter] >> Yeah. He only comes out twice a year to deal with little things like this.

[00:03:03]That's really good. It's the longest hour is what it is the series name. The longest hour. The second series is the shortest hour. It doesn't [laughter] exist.

[00:03:11]He just doesn't do anything.

[00:03:12]Just him asleep. And you play the same episode twice right after each other.

[00:03:17]>> That's brilliant. On the hour, yeah.

[00:03:18]>> Is it shot from different angles like Rashomon? Oh, like Back to the Future II. Like does he see himself? Or Kurosawa's masterpiece Rashomon. Yeah, yeah. I mean [laughter] We've all got our cultural Overton window, haven't we? Wow. Yep. Okay, slam on Zemeckis who delivered one of the greatest series ever.

[00:03:34]>> It's a brilliant film, Back to the Future II. Thank you, and you're one as well, I'm sure.

[00:03:38]>> [laughter] >> Okay, here is a fact from Eric. Eric says, "Despite the absurd difference in distances, it takes four times longer for a character to appear on your screen after you tap your keyboard than it takes to send that keystroke across the Atlantic. Oh, wow. So when you say character, I was thinking like >> Daylight saving cop.

[00:04:01]>> [laughter] >> Yeah. Yeah. No, no, a letter. Yeah, a letter. Like or a number in fact or a symbol. Okay. Yeah. Um so when I type that >> When you type that, it basically comes onto your screen in about 200 milliseconds. Okay. And that's because there's a load of like, according to Eric, invisible code that happens between your finger and the screen. So it has to basically It's not just you press that and your screen automatically knows what you're pressing. It has to turn the press into some zeros and ones which then goes into your computer which then turns it into the actual character itself.

[00:04:35]>> Yes.

[00:04:35]>> And you're saying that goes across the Atlantic? That goes from your finger to your computer in about 200 milliseconds.

[00:04:42]But just for the information to go across the Atlantic in an undersea cable, it takes about 50 milliseconds.

[00:04:49]Wow.

[00:04:50]>> [sighs] >> Stunning. Which is amazing. I've never noticed a lag after typing H. Well, the reason is your reaction time Yeah. is longer than 200 milliseconds. People have done like tests online where you kind of check people's reaction times and it seems like the average is about 273 milliseconds. So anything quicker than that is kind of pointless. Mhm.

[00:05:14]Okay. There's no point going faster than that because no one unless you're like a Formula 1 driver or an elite gamer. In which case your reaction time might be about 100 milliseconds. Admittedly, elite gamers do use computers quite a lot. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Are they better at responding to emails than Formula 1 drivers? They would be better They would notice the email arrived quicker. Yes, it does find me well, thank you. You know.

[00:05:36]>> [laughter] >> Uh do you want another one? Yeah. This one comes from Natalie from Toronto Uh-huh.

[00:05:42]who says, "I just paused in my work day because I came across this fantastic fact and I to send it your way.

[00:05:48]Uh there's a town in Ontario called Barry, right? Oh, this is not named after someone called Barry, is No, no, no.

[00:05:55]>> [laughter] >> You see what you've done to yourself?

[00:05:58]You see who you've become on this show?

[00:06:00]>> [laughter] >> And there it's got different council wards in it. You know, a ward is a little administrative area. And in Barry, there is just it looks like it's just ward 1 2 3 and 4. Okay, so anyway, there's a there's a ward called ward 4 in the town of Barry, and the former ward 4 counselor for Barry is a guy called Barry Ward.

[00:06:18]>> Yeah.

[00:06:18]>> [laughter] >> And I looked I looked up Mr. Ward, and he's a regular contributor to Barry Today.

[00:06:25]Barry Today?

[00:06:26]>> Yeah, it's about the town of Barry, not about people called Barry.

[00:06:29]What is Barry Today? Is it an online thing? It's a website about Barry. Oh, okay. Of the town of Barry. It's not a newspaper or anything like that. Well, I think it's a news website. Okay. What what's the difference these days?

[00:06:39]>> what I read about today? This is the reason I ask you.

[00:06:42]In America, they used to have a lot of newspapers where you could only buy them if you bought another newspaper which this newspaper was inside of.

[00:06:52]So, you know if you get like a Sunday broadsheet newspaper in the UK, it will have supplements in.

[00:06:57]>> Yeah. Well, in America for some of them, the supplement would be an actual different newspaper, and they wouldn't even be related to each other. You your normal newspaper that you buy might be a right-wing newspaper, and the supplement one might be a left-wing one.

[00:07:10]And it was because basically there was a problem with like newspapers were dying out in the '70s, and obviously they're still struggling. Um but in America, they came up with some new laws that meant that people would share printing presses and share printing costs. And so, one newspaper would print it, but they would be forced to print another newspaper as well and put it inside their paper.

[00:07:29]>> That's really clever. Cuz if you live in a little town, maybe all the copies of the Times that go here also have the Barry Gazette. For example.

[00:07:37]>> Yes, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. It's really clever, and it also for some people they liked it cuz it meant that you get different viewpoints. So if you get the Daily Mail and the Guardian at the same time then you can see different parts of it. But the last one of them which is in Las Vegas I think is about to shut down because of some legal thing going on right now. It's a shame.

[00:07:55]Um Natalie from Toronto has a bit of praise for you James. Thank you. Was it about that fact that I just said? It wasn't but it was about your Toronto knowledge. Toronto you mean? We do in fact pronounce the city Toronto. I was very impressed that he knew that. Yeah.

[00:08:10]Uh and my accent is so strong that I've had to change my pronunciation to Toronto when talking to British people in order for them to understand me. How interesting. I've never been to Toronto but I've just heard people Say yeah.

[00:08:22]You sound like you're born and bred there though.

[00:08:24]>> [laughter] >> All right. Well let's move away from praise for James. Let's get to another fact here. This is from Jonathan Hughes who writes, "This may be a good fact for James."

[00:08:33]>> [laughter] >> Thank you Jonathan.

[00:08:36]I don't actually like it what this show's become [laughter] now.

[00:08:39]>> [gasps] >> Uh this is a sort of complicated tennis fact um which I it is kind of interesting. Since 2021 Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner have played each other 16 times on tour. Alcaraz has won 10 of the matches and Sinner six. Alcaraz has won 26 sets and Sinner has won 23 sets.

[00:08:57]And in that time they played 3,302 points.

[00:09:00]>> [laughter] >> So who's won more points Andy? Uh if Alcaraz has won more games 10-6 I would presume Alcaraz has won more points.

[00:09:07]They're both tied on the exact same points 1,651.

[00:09:11]And it's exactly It's exactly. And it's the quirk of tennis that can happen.

[00:09:16]Like I I do You play tennis James and you play tennis Andy plays it more than I do.

[00:09:21]>> Yeah. And the other one. Yeah. Um the other Andy Murray. I was Yeah. I didn't mean Anna. And the other one.

[00:09:27]>> [laughter] >> She's really good at tennis yeah. But you can you could effectively have a very close game but lose it 6-love 6-love right? It's just that you you might have got down to a Yeah, exactly.

[00:09:41]>> happens in all sports, I would say. Like in snooker, for instance, you can lose lots of really close frames, but then win ones where you win by 100 points.

[00:09:49]Uh or in football even, your goal difference. You could be right at the top of the table, but have a negative goal difference because all the games you've won were 1-0, but all the ones that you've lost were nil-10.

[00:10:02]Sounds like that player center is the prisoner of Alcatraz.

[00:10:05]>> [laughter] >> Yeah? Yeah, that Yes, yes, yes. I don't know anymore what I cuz sometimes when I make a joke, it goes really badly.

[00:10:14]>> I actually think, Andy, that you would be perfect in like um a tabloid sports department.

[00:10:21]>> I would love Yeah, yeah.

[00:10:21]>> Because you're not going to get bogged down with knowledge.

[00:10:24]>> [laughter] >> You can just go for the puns without like worrying about whether they make sense or not.

[00:10:30]>> Absolutely. And in this case, it made perfect sense. It made perfect sense. I would be flipping immediately to your article in Barry today just to [laughter] get that Murray gold. Thank you. Well, that's very nice. Oh, thank you. Let's have Let's Let's have your question.

[00:10:43]>> [laughter] >> Uh Daniel Studenmund of Binghamton, New York, writes about the famous mathematician Harold Scott MacDonald Coxeter, who we've mentioned on the show before, actually. Uh but he said he was named so not to be mistaken for a ship.

[00:11:01]He was very nearly named Harold MacDonald Scott Coxeter, or HMS Coxeter, >> [laughter] >> but they decided to flip around his middle name, so he's not HMS, he's HSM.

[00:11:12]Uh and Daniel says he wanted to give Coxeter some love after you rudely mispronounced his name in the episode [laughter] of little fish. Oh, And I think I might have done it again, guys.

[00:11:23]>> [laughter] >> It must be Coxeter. Coxeter, I guess so.

[00:11:27]That's so weird. I had a fact about ship naming Oh, yeah? that I didn't mention just now, which is that Barry, the town, yeah, is named after an English general called Robert Barry who commanded a ship called HMS Cockburn. I suspect Coburn.

[00:11:42]And also HMS Brilliant. Which is a nice name for a naval ship, I think.

[00:11:47]>> That's a good name.

[00:11:48]>> good. HMS Brilliant. Yeah. Can I tell you more about Harold Scott MacDonald Coxeter?

[00:11:53]>> Yes. So, I went on to his entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

[00:11:59]And here is a paragraph from the end of his article.

[00:12:03]A gaunt, bird-like, ascetic-looking man, he attributed his longevity to his vegetarianism, standing on his head even at the age of 90 for 15 minutes each morning, a daily exercise regime of 50 press-ups, a nightly cocktail of Kahlua, peach schnapps, and soy milk, and an abiding fascination with his subject.

[00:12:25]How interesting.

[00:12:26]>> What a guy.

[00:12:27]>> What a guy.

[00:12:28]>> Kahlua peach schnapps >> liqueur, isn't it? Coffee peach and what kind of milk? Soy milk.

[00:12:34]>> I've got to say that feels like the one rogue element that would not keep you alive That's a toilet visit element, isn't it? Yeah. That could be why humans have never lived past like 120 because this is the trick, but no one can stomach the Kahlua, peach schnapps, and soy milk. Paul McCartney stands on his head for 5 minutes every day as well.

[00:12:54]Yeah.

[00:12:55]A lightweight.

[00:12:56]>> [laughter] >> I've never tried it. Is it the same Is it as good for you to stand on your head as it is to hang upside down, which I know is good for you? Is it? I think so.

[00:13:04]I think Dan Brown does it, doesn't he?

[00:13:05]>> He used to do it to alleviate the writer's block that he had, right?

[00:13:10]He would hang by upside down boots from a pole. I don't know if that was just author fluff to Might have been author fluff to make his interviews better. But you think Paul McCartney does do it?

[00:13:20]Yeah, he does it for at least 5 minutes.

[00:13:22]That's all I get to see before I'm dragged out of his garden, [laughter] but he He's definitely He's definitely clocked five.

[00:13:27]>> How he does >> he do it? Does he have like boots holding him upside down or does he use his wings?

[00:13:33]>> [laughter] >> See, I know the signs now. After 12 years, I've learned. Give James enough rope.

[00:13:40]>> [laughter] >> But also unencumbered by any knowledge about the Beatles.

[00:13:45]>> That's what's most surprising. You've made more Beatles [laughter] gags on our show than anyone else and you've never heard of them. James has [laughter] memorized a list of all the Beatles songs.

[00:13:55]I've done that for so many different subjects. Yeah. Just in case it comes up.

[00:13:59]>> Quite right. Quite [laughter] right. Uh should I give you another one?

[00:14:02]>> Yes. This is from Dan Gudgin. Over 90% of the UK's unique species don't live in the UK.

[00:14:11]>> What? Riddle me this. What do you mean by unique? As in endemic to here?

[00:14:16]>> 90%. Okay, so it's British territories?

[00:14:19]>> Yeah, it's just overseas territories >> [laughter] >> of the UK.

[00:14:24]Where have we still got Where is Britain still got?

[00:14:26]>> Oh, loads of places.

[00:14:28]>> List them. Give me one. Saint Helena.

[00:14:29]>> Isle of Man. Falklands.

[00:14:31]>> Yeah. Chagos still. Although we haven't we haven't signed the signed the deal yet, but like The Scilly Isles. Yeah. I don't know if these are all territories as opposed to dependencies or crown dependencies. Like there are all sorts of categories. But the UK's overseas territories are around the world and some of them are, you know, a tiny squib of land but then a huge bit of ocean around it. So you get Australia.

[00:14:49]Australia.

[00:14:50]>> [laughter] >> Hey. Commonwealth. Thank you for listening, everyone.

[00:14:56]>> [laughter] >> We are hoping to tour there again one day.

[00:14:59]>> We are. We are. [laughter] Um yeah, but it's from the um the government website the the biodiversity there. I just I found some species which exist um only in these overseas territories.

[00:15:10]Kangaroo.

[00:15:11]>> [laughter] >> Uh the Virgin Islands mute frog.

[00:15:17]>> [laughter] >> The broadnose seven-gill shark. The Ascension >> Named after Andrew Broad nose, of course. right. [laughter] And Stephanie Seven Gill, they were married a couple of >> name.

[00:15:33]Okay, I've got one more here. This is from Mr. Geeky.

[00:15:37]And Mr. Geeky says, "As you almost certainly know, many sea creatures have unihemispheric sleep. That is, one half of the brain sleeps while the other one remains awake." Okay. Yeah, we all knew that, right? Uh dolphins.

[00:15:50]It's dolphins. Come on, guys. Yeah. Most land mammals sleep with their whole brains at once. Humans. Yeah.

[00:15:56]>> For instance.

[00:15:56]>> Yeah.

[00:15:57]But, Mr. Geeky says, "Fur seals do unihemispheric sleep when in water and full brain sleep when on land." What? I Wow. That's so cool.

[00:16:10]>> Isn't it?

[00:16:10]>> So, they've got no predator Oh, they have predators.

[00:16:14]>> place. In the water. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:16:16]>> So, that's why they're hunted.

[00:16:17]>> Oh, killer whales eat them, don't they?

[00:16:18]>> Yeah, they do.

[00:16:19]>> they sleep on land, so they can have a full night's sleep. Gosh.

[00:16:22]>> And actually, like tourists in South Africa will go and see these fur sharks being eaten by great by great white sharks. Fur Can you say fur seals?

[00:16:32]>> Fur seals. What did I say?

[00:16:33]>> Fur sharks. Fur sharks. Fur sha- fur sharks.

[00:16:36]>> [laughter] >> Sound Kind of kind of cute, actually.

[00:16:39]Fur sharks. That's the trick, isn't it?

[00:16:41]You get close enough to stroke them and they'll have your hand off.

[00:16:45]Fur seals, yeah. If you go into South Africa, you can see the great white sharks eating them, and that's because it's the majesty of nature. People like to see this. Obviously, it's not great for the seals.

[00:16:55]>> Yeah. Uh but, they have come up with a new way of dealing with it called mobbing. And basically, a load of seals will harass this great white shark as it's coming up and say, "No, no, no, no, no." and kind of nibble around his face.

[00:17:09]>> Oh, cool. And it really works. They'll go away.

[00:17:12]>> Yeah.

[00:17:13]That's very brave. Yeah.

[00:17:14]>> It's amazing.

[00:17:15]>> Seals are braver than I thought they were. I think the thing is with them is like it's either that or you get eaten.

[00:17:19]Yeah. Yeah. I'd be tempted to just sort of distance myself from the group and say yeah that Hang out with a slower seal. Exactly. Yeah. But where are you?

[00:17:28]If you're away from the group, you're susceptible to have no one Oh yeah.

[00:17:32]Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You want to be in the middle of the group.

[00:17:34]>> Yeah. This is why I was fired from that union.

[00:17:36]>> [laughter] >> And Arthur Scargill has got himself another enormous pay rise.

[00:17:45]>> [laughter] >> More biting satire.

[00:17:50]Okay, that is enough of your facts. As amazing as they are, every I say this all the time, but your facts are so good we can't help but be excited when they come into the inbox. And so send us some more. Send them to [email protected] and Andy will winnow out the best for the next episode of little fish. But we must do one more thing and that is hand out custodianship of some of our facts to people who are members of the friend of the podcast tier on Patreon. So Dan, can you give us a fact, please? Okay, here we go. This fact is now under the custodianship of Laurel Evans and your fact is that in 1710, the boys of Winchester College rioted over insufficient beer rations.

[00:18:34]Very nice.

[00:18:35]>> Very good.

[00:18:37]And and it'll be it's presented as a nice story now but they'll probably have killed and eaten three teachers >> [laughter] >> and eight groundskeepers. Yes. I went to Winchester I visited Winchester College quite recently.

[00:18:47]>> You did?

[00:18:47]Yeah. [snorts] Well you I went past it.

[00:18:48]I didn't go in. Okay. Um but it's very it's obviously it's one of the oldest sort of poshest schools there is. It's right next to the house where I think Jane Austen died. Oh, I'm not believing you on any of these people who died in certain houses anymore. Not after Rod Hull gate. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. That's true.

[00:19:05]>> Did she definitely die there? I didn't even know that she definitely died. She might still be trading. Not [laughter] sure. So have another one.

[00:19:12]Well anyway, you so you drove past it. I walked past it. Great story.

[00:19:16]>> [laughter] >> You got to up your game now Anna's back Andy. She will not suffer these half anecdotes. Won't accept these >> [laughter] >> in the way that we do.

[00:19:28]That's fair.

[00:19:29]Let's have another fact.

[00:19:31]How about this one? This one goes out to Julie King Humphreys. Terrific name. And your fact now Julie forever is that the first man to discover the clitoris in 1559 was Colombo.

[00:19:44]>> [laughter] >> Was this your fact? This was my fact.

[00:19:48]Yeah, I think we did this at a live show. I feel like an up the creek memory coming into my head.

[00:19:53]Could have been >> [laughter] >> Could be so. How did you find it? Was it difficult to find?

[00:19:59]>> [laughter] >> I sometimes forget that when you ask me a question it's pointless what I'm saying in between. [laughter] I don't even listen to the answers. It's just fluff to get you to where you need to be. James is playing tennis against the wall here. He can't win. [laughter] Yeah. Yeah, good fact. He was a old scientist, wasn't he? Colombo.

[00:20:21]Yeah. Okay, here is another fact. This one now is under the custodianship of Matt Janaway. Matt, your fact is that for 200 years after the tomato reached England they were grown entirely for ornamental reasons. Funny. Yeah, because they're a member of the nightshade family. So we had nightshades in Europe which were very poisonous.

[00:20:46]The tomato came over and when it's growing it looks like it might be one of these poisonous plants. So we thought it might be poisonous as well. And no one really trusted it. I mean reasonably, right? Yeah, completely. Was the same true of potatoes as well? Yeah, the same family. So potato and potato and tomato and tomato were all thought to be unsafe. Well, just the two that are actual words. yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:21:06]>> [laughter] >> Yeah, yeah.

[00:21:07]You know those aren't four things, right?

[00:21:09]I I keep being up-sold at the supermarket. I'm just trying to buy tomatoes and they sell me tomatoes.

[00:21:14]They're twice the price, but they are imported from America, so >> [laughter] >> All right, uh let's get to another one.

[00:21:20]Congratulations, Sally Baker, cuz you are now the custodian of the fact that NASA is planning on giving the moon a moon.

[00:21:30]This was another one of my facts and I guess this was so long ago, I don't know if it's now got a new moon. I think we would have heard.

[00:21:36]>> We'd have heard.

[00:21:37]>> Yeah. NASA's been a bit quiet for a while, but they've come roaring back, so I imagine they're still working on it.

[00:21:42]When the um the astronauts went to the moon very recently, do we know which one they went to?

[00:21:48]>> [laughter] >> This one goes out to Mark Warry and it's that the man who played Sherlock Holmes, Basil Rathbone, spent the First World War dressed as a tree.

[00:21:59]>> [laughter] >> Basil Rathbone, very famous actor, most famous for being Sherlock Holmes, and during the First World War, he needed to be crawling towards enemy lines for reconnaissance >> purposes. So, I think he was a moving tree, which What is the point at that point?

[00:22:14]>> Well, no, cuz okay, so [laughter] if you go to the Imperial War Museum, I don't know if you've been, but they have a fantastic exhibition on all the ingenuity and all the amazing innovations for the wars and you can see that tree there. The idea was that during night, they went and cut down an existing tree and they'd remodeled it so that in the daylight, it was still there. Oh, that's clever. I like it. It's a hollow tree and they would have soldiers in there and yeah, so you can see a tree in that museum, which is very very clever. Okay, here is another fact. This one is now under the custodianship of Oliver Porter. Oliver, your fact is that Abraham Lincoln hid important documents in his stovepipe hat. I love this fact.

[00:22:56]>> It's such good storage space that you just no one would ever to think of. How did we not just naturally know that he did that?

[00:23:02]>> I think >> what's great about it is because we all associate him so much with that hat.

[00:23:06]>> Yeah. And just to learn that there was an extra thing that was happening under there is is really exciting. Yeah. But I think did he not always wear his hat or was it that he didn't always have a beard? That was the main thing.

[00:23:15]>> Beard. Yeah, he only had the beard in the last few years of his life.

[00:23:18]>> Some child wrote to him saying you'd look quite nice with a beard and he >> Yeah. grew it. I think that's it. But no, I think the hat was That was always there.

[00:23:26]>> And he was like 6 ft 5 or something. He was a tall man.

[00:23:30]>> And then he had the hat on top of it. So >> been about 7 ft tall with the hat.

[00:23:34]>> Yeah, it must have been awful.

[00:23:36]Do you think? Well, just getting through doors.

[00:23:39]Yeah.

[00:23:39]>> Yeah, you're the president, aren't you?

[00:23:40]So you can probably have a door rebuilt. I think instead of building the lintel of the door higher, I would make a little ditch at the bottom of the door so that you go lower.

[00:23:50]>> That's really good idea.

[00:23:52]Much cleverer. Um who's the most hatted world leader you can think of these days? Alive >> right now. Probably actually it's probably Trump in the baseball cap. Cuz he wears that he wears that a lot. Yeah.

[00:24:02]I've never seen Keir Starmer wearing a hat. No. Macron, no. No. Friedrich Merz, no. Narendra Modi, don't think so.

[00:24:12]No. No. Putin doesn't. Zelenskyy doesn't. Yasser Arafat was the first person who came into my head, which shows where my cultural timings come from. Yeah, you've been James, I'm going to say it. We've just done a main show and we've done this show. The number of references you've made to John Major I know. really really quite old school references.

[00:24:30]>> what? I've been out of the country for a few weeks and I think it's reset my timing. So I've forgotten about all of modern culture.

[00:24:38]>> It's like you've had a bonk on the head.

[00:24:39]I don't Well, you know is anyone answer for that? It's another bonk on the head.

[00:24:43]Come here. No, you see the problem is in my 1980s and 90s mindset, bonk means having sex with someone. Yeah, what do you think? [laughter] Yeah, yeah, what Yeah, that's Um another fact? Yes. Uh, this one is going out to Dayton Canely and your fact now is that monorails were originally horse-drawn.

[00:25:07]Very nice.

[00:25:07]>> Nice. All right, this was the, uh, my horse jobs period of No Such Thing As a Fish. What was that? I was obsessed over the number of jobs that horses used to have that slowly went out. They used to be They used to do everything, didn't They used to They used to carry vacuum cleaners everywhere. They used to, uh, they used to be used in theater, uh, when they would run on treadmills. You know, there was a lot of horse jobs back in the day. Yeah. And that's, uh, It's sad now.

[00:25:31]>> Yeah, now you just see them, if you go to like one of those, um, farms that children are allowed to feed the animals, you see them there. Yes.

[00:25:38]>> And occasionally in horse racing, but we don't really agree with that.

[00:25:41]>> No. Any more any more horse jobs you want to talk about?

[00:25:43]>> I can't remember. I I thought I had a lot of horse jobs, but I can't remember them now. I was just So wait, you've just mentioned the three that were in the archive. Oh, well, okay. You've got perfect recollection of headline fact and then supplementary facts coming off the back of it.

[00:25:54]>> I just remember my horse job period.

[00:25:56]>> No one else does. No one No [laughter] one thinks, "Oh, that classic bit of fish where Dad just talked about horse jobs for 18 months." That's not That didn't happen. I remember in the '80s we used to have horses >> [laughter] >> that we would bring around. Um, what do you call those people who would collect old bits of iron and stuff?

[00:26:12]>> Oh, um, rag and bone man. Rag and bone man, around where I used to live you used to have horses taking those guys around. You did?

[00:26:18]In your memory? In the '80s, yeah, yeah.

[00:26:20]Your living memory? Yes. [laughter] Rag and bone men?

[00:26:23]>> Absolutely. I'll tell you what as well, we had rag and bone men when I was in my 20s in Bolton. What?

[00:26:29]>> Yeah, yeah. They were mostly like when the traveling community would come in and they would come around again holes and just ask if we had any any bits, but they would shout rag and bone. Um, that's stunning. I didn't think rag and bone was still trading that late. As I said, it was the '40s, '50s. Yeah, I mean, they were definitely they were on the way out in the '80s.

[00:26:48]>> They weren't recruiting heavily, were they?

[00:26:50]>> [laughter] >> And then of course there's Rag'n'Bone Man, the the singer. Oh yeah.

[00:26:56]>> he's not That's just a name, isn't it?

[00:26:58]No, that was his original job.

[00:27:00]>> GET OUT.

[00:27:01]>> [laughter] >> NO, IT'S NOT.

[00:27:08]THAT WAS VERY GOOD.

[00:27:09]>> Have you been on a horse, Andy? I know James has.

[00:27:11]>> been on a horse. [laughter] Have you?

[00:27:12]>> what? I've been on a horse the same number of times James has, which is once.

[00:27:15]>> Same here.

[00:27:16]>> [laughter] >> All right. Guys, just don't go on about it all the time. That's One last one, Andy. Yes. This one goes out to Marco Anderson. The Great Smog of 1952 was so bad that blind people led sighted people home from the train station. Really good.

[00:27:35]>> Amazing. Because the air used to be so filthy in London and there were these increasingly severe smogs over the '40s and '50s. I think 1952 was when it got so bad that no one could see anything for about 3 days.

[00:27:46]>> He supers. He supers, exactly. Yeah.

[00:27:48]>> And just like people were going falling into the Thames and being I mean it was really bad, you know, people were People were having a horrible time of it. And I think that's when they thought maybe we shouldn't burn coal in right in the middle of the city. Maybe we should move it out. I was reading Michael Palin's diaries recently, and while they were doing Python, there was huge electricity cuts due to union things.

[00:28:08]And so it's all these tales of while they're writing that everyone would be writing by candlelight in 1969/70.

[00:28:15]Yeah. While Can I just say there was a lot of power cuts when I was a kid as [laughter] well?

[00:28:19]Yeah, but I I don't know, for some reason if that feels weird to me that London would be going through that in the '70s as a decision as opposed to a genuine power cut. They were turning it off as a matter of action.

[00:28:29]>> I see. When they did the three-day week, maybe. Yeah. Mhm. James, what was the general strike like?

[00:28:34]>> [laughter] >> There was definitely strikes going on when I was a kid. I remember like all the kids TV shows, they would stop being shown during the the the summer holidays because there was industrial action and they just show other crap instead. What?

[00:28:51]As in children also have to suffer through this industrial There's no reason why you guys should get to watch Rainbow while we're having a hard time.

[00:28:57]>> I just remember I just have a really solid memories of not being able to watch cartoons cuz there was industrial action happening in the country. Mr. Benn, he was in the union. Yeah, he was in all the unions. [laughter] That's the best Mr. Benn joke you hear on a modern British podcast.

[00:29:13]>> [laughter] >> I have no idea what that means, but >> It's about You're in the presence of greatness, I assure you. It sounded awesome. Okay, guys, that is enough.

[00:29:21]That is enough of our facts and of course enough of your facts for the day.

[00:29:25]We have one more thing to say and that is thank you so much to Mark Dayton, Oliver, Mark, Sally, Matt, Julie, Laurel, and Katie. Thank you so much for becoming custodians and thank you for becoming friends of the podcast. We really do appreciate anyone who goes onto our Patreon and joins on any level and even the people who come and join up for free. It's really good way to support the podcast, but another way to support the podcast is listening and coming back on Friday for a new episode.

[00:29:53]So, for now it's goodbye from me, it's goodbye from Andy. Bye. And it's goodbye from Dan Schreiber.

[00:29:58]>> goodbye. We will see you again on Friday. Bye.

[00:30:02]A lovely tribute to the two Ronnies there, who [laughter] you will remember very well, James. I do remember them well.