Prime Minister Alfred Deakin's Secrets

Amazing deals on package holidays. Pay now. I've got tickets to that sold-out show. Message now. Your subscription's been suspended. Update your payment details. Final warning. To receive your package, pay the fee immediately. Mum I've had an accident. Please send money. There's been suspicious activity on your bank account. And I need a few personal details. Fraud is getting more sophisticated. Always stop, think, and check . Stay ahead of scams at gov.uk slash stop think fraud . 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. And And andy the and done uh 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 mayorial role. And 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. 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. Bob Ross used to live there. You know the painter in America, Bob Ross. Yeah. Yeah, it's it's big. Santa Claus. 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 the body. 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 the 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 Lawwasser. I work in movie trailers. Brackets, the audiovisual medium, not the vehicles. Lovely. We're off the blocks. 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 awards ceremony, which is all about the trailer the movie trailers. Um, confusingly, its logo is a little picture of a trailer, the vehicle. But it's about the aver it's about the two minute long adverts you get for films, right? Okay. Right. The Golden Trailer Awards. 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 I said. I think cold trailers these days are a bit weak. I gotta say. I think the the golden age of the trailer is perhaps behind us. Really? 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 anyway. Like someone like Edgar Wright do it or like some Edgar Wright. Or was it um what's his name? Um as someone cool. Well it's pretty big slam on Edgar Wright when you say that someone cool. Um Andy, 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 1997. 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 write at 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 thirteen astronauts. 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. Wow. 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 Black was a few panda. Yes, 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 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, no, don't stop counting down, you know, 'cause you the 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 a different experience for you, Andy. But um when my wife gave birth, I was in charge of the music. Like they always gave the dad 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 faviteour track, which is the countdown theme tune. Wow. That's not true, Dad. I thought it might have been on the list. Were you enjoying it? 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, I'm I'm 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 with the first child the the few days before they said you've got to burn a CD 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. Fennella and I pick 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 around. And suddenly this 10 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 countdown. No, mine was Angelle, after whom my daughter was born. 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 Arian who who would seem to be the ultimate Arian 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 Hesi 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? It's that's what it says it's called here. You have to be careful about 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. 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 walks, 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 91. 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 asyncrasy of your life. So I've been to two separate bus museums in the last month. It's amazing you wait for one bus museum. 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. It's um 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 past Daden Boys. Is it Epping? It's Epping. Very good. And what will the other one be? Piccadilly. Oh, what? Cockfasters? 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 Copfosters, but I got off one stop too early. Oakwo od. Ooh really nice. So there's a place called Oakwood uh for this is overseas. Yeah. James I've got a museum to go to with you and, I I can't wait.'ll see you there. You have to come along now. Stop the podcast. Stop the podcast. Hello, everybody. Just let you know, this episode of Fish is sponsored by TV licensing. Yes, your TV license covers you for over 400 TV channels and everything on BBC iPlayer on any device. So, Andy, tell me, what have you been watching recently? I am glad you asked, James. I have been watching a new show called Small Profits. Uh I don't know if you've heard of this. It's on the beep and it's kind of. Is it is it about investing in Bitcoin. It's no, you're thinking of massive losses. A completely different show. It's really nice. It's uh Mackenzie Crook of uh of The Office ages ago and uh Detecturist and all sorts of other really really nice shows. And it's him it',s Michael Palin. Well, he's riding the wave of publicity he got from being on Fish, uh, and he's turned that into an appearance on this sitcom. And it's so good. I've been eating it up with a spoon, it's been brilliant. Highly recommended. Amazing. I'm definitely going to check that out because I have a T V license. Ah Um so I am covered. And if you would like to know more about television licensing, then get more information by visiting TVL.co.uk forward slash pod. That's right. A TV license covers you to watch over four hundred TV channels and everything or BBC iPlayer. To find out more, as James says, go to TVL.co.uk slash pod. Okay, on with the podcast. On with the show. Amazing deals on package holidays. Pay now. I've got tickets to that sold-out show. Message now. Your subscription's been suspended. Update your payment details. Final warning. rece Toive your package, pay the fee immediately. Mum have had an accident. Please send money. There's been suspicious activity on your bank account, and I need a few personal details. Fraud is getting more sophisticated. Always stop, think and check . Stay ahead of scams at gov.uk slash stop think fra ud. Uh here is a fact. You know, um guys that I'm a big fan of sport. It's just one of those idiosyncrasies that I have. Okay. Um Grant Mitchell wrote in. I don't know if it's the the fictional character from the East Enders. It's gotta be. Or not. But Grant wrote with a football fact and he said that in the 2015-16 and 2016-17 seasons, there were two players in the Red Star FC team, which is a French football team, named Pierrique Crow. They were born within nine months of each other and both left Red Star on July the 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. There's quite a few times in history where you've had players with the same name. So uh in the 1970s 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 dunks. Lovely, lovely. Uh Locomotive Moscow between two thousand two and two thousand three, they had two players called Sergey Ofchinikov. So what would you do in a Russian team if you have two people with the same name. Make it all the other nine players changed 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 Sergey Ivanovich Ochinikov and Sergey Vladimirovich Ovchinikov. So they were known by their full sort of like Russian 19th-century novel name. That's going to be a very busy back of shirt. I mean that's yeah small font, I think. And I'm looking through my binoculars, I can see it's of Chinikov, 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. Well a swiss uh expensive already I gather if they are and so if you like really like a player with a really long surname like Hunter Murray 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. Of course I 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 customer. 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 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 do like the secret footballer and the secret whatever? Yes, secret banker and the secret estate agent and yes. Like literally got revealed yesterday or something. I'm looking and it's off Chinikov, but which one? 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 600 years since people were just saying, Where's PP2? So that he had 49 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 on the benefits of his political party. And then it would be this 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 book 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 fac thets, 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 Beat les. 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 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 Vatican Daily. Very embarrassing when they had the Catholic child of the year and it turned out to be a Wiccan. Lovely. And so that was voted number one. Very cool. Very nice. 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 metre sprint. That's just a good what a what a nice Olympics that would be. Brisk over quickly. Yes. Good for the Jamaican team, like because they're just gonna win every year. Yes, absolutely. And they were rather unfairly excluded from the ancient Olympics for some time. I've run on the um track where they took place. So have I. The two hundred meter 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, 14. Do you know time slows down at the speeds I was doing? So 14 did go on for a long time, actually. Okay, here is another one. Uh 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 fact. That's from uh Levin Skilla. 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. Yeah. 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. 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're 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 Krung 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 us many men as she likes until she finds the right one. Do you think Anna's listened to a single episode since she went off on Matt Leaf? Absolutely not. No, she did actually. She has definitely listened to the Merry Beard one. Mmm. The first one. She missed basically. I think there was like two two before Mary's. And she she asked me to isolate Mary's microphone and just listen to her bit. She didn't listen to us. 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 thirte en. Wow. Just mental. Where is it? 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 Um That's 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 dozen 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 uh champagne breakfast. Which is the 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 n I don't know if anyone's ever tried to have a full English on a helicopter, but I'm not gonna make it my my mission to do that. Yeah? Could you reckon you could like chuck a sausage up and then the blades will chop it into perfect circles. Absolutely. That's 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 going to make another, which makes another, which makes another, and eventually we'd be wading through the printers. I think that's definitely what's happened.