Distributing Facts to Clubfish Members

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Stay ahead of scams at gov.uk slash stopthink fraud . Hello, and welcome to another episode of Little Fish. This is the bonus Monday episode where Where we put down our favorite facts from the last seven days and we go through the facts that you have sent us via podcast at qi.com. Thank you everyone who has done so. We've had an amazing collection of facts sent in this week. Let's get to it. Who wants to get going? I've got one. Andy . This oney bring that energy. This is from Steven Turner and it's a very good email. It combines a good fact and then a bit of abuse and then a bit of praise. Right. Okay. A bit of everything. Do you want to miss out the middle bit? I think you need it. It's a views of me though, so don't worry. So it's always maybe miss the fact. I'm happy with just pure abuse. Okay, Stephen writes, Good Stevening Brackets. My name is Stephen, and although this is my standard chat up line, it barely works in real life as it is predicated on knowing my name beforehand. I think that's fair. And only meeting people at night. Honestly, I thought he meant I want to give you a good stephening. And I thought that's a bit too forward, I think. But at least applicable to daytime as well as night. I think we can all agree it's not one for the ages, chat up wise. Don't stop using it, Stephen. Um anyway. He says I've just learned an interesting fact and thought I'd share it with you guys as it can be reworded in that famous slightly irritating QI and fish way. And then he says the A three oh three was not built close to Stonehenge. Stonehenge was built close to the A303. Now, okay. I'm happy to put up with the abuse and the slightly dodgy chat up lines because that is a great That is fantastic. Yeah. He says it it turns out the A three A three follows an ancient trade route and has been in use for thousands of years. I recall a few years ago Andy buffoonishly repeated a fake fact about the motorway and Cornwall following the migration routes of Ice Age mammoths or something, so I thought I'd double check. I have checked it as well, Stephen. And I think it's about fifty fifty. 'Cause there is this ancient route. It was used several thousand years ago. Stonehenge was built about five thousand years a go. And it's quite hard to tell when a trade route was first used. Because it initially you'd just be following like a chalk path at the top of a ridge or something. Yeahah, ye. I mean who knows they could have been built around the same time. Like which was built first, the M6 or T Bay services? I think you naturally if you build the trade route you want to something to look at along the way. Basically Stonehenge might be that kind of service station one of those giant prawn statues they have in Australia for something to look at. Or like you know those um big billboards that ask you a questi Exactly. Yeah. If we look five miles down the road, there might be a sign, like an ancient sign, saying, How many stones do you think there are in Stonehenge? Well we've come we've covered Stonehenge and the theories of what it might be multiple times on this show. Like one one great one was that it was a giant Glockenspiel. Uh the other one is that it had nothing to do with ritualistic stuff, but that would have built as a sort of a team exercise on a business outing. You know what, Dan? I reckon that our theory that it's a giant motorway service station is as applicable as any of those other theories that you've just said. Absolutely. Yeah. Probably as much science behind it as well. Um it's but that's great. I'm kind of in love with Steven's email and tone. And I think we've I think I don't think we've done justice to his pickup line. I think he could probably sell it. No, we've all been given a good Stephening, haven't we? Okay, here is another fact. This one is from Kaziah Faving, and Kaziah tells us about Swindon Wildcats. So Sw Swindon Wildcats are a hockey team, an ice hockey team. And this year, not one, but two father and son duos played on the same roster. Two father and son duos. Absolutely. So it's completely unique. It's never happened before. There's an example of one father's son, uh Gordy Howe and his sons played in nineteen seventy nine, but like for this to happen twice in the same team has never really heard before. Now James, you know a lot about sports. Is it the case that a sporting team which has a father and son duo on it, is it the case that the sport in question is not enormously oversubscribed with people wanting to play it? Because normally sports have a very specific age range of players that they're going for need to be nineteen. But there are some like football players who play like Cristiano Ronaldo's still playing football and he's he might be like forty- orone something now, like he's around forty for sure. Uh and absolutely footballers tend to be a little bit promiscuous when they're younger men, so it's not impossible that he could have a child who was playing footb Yeah. Are you suggesting there's a footballer out there who could have his own squad? Yes. Or at least a five a side team. There is a footballer whose progeny are on the same team. Okay. And that is Hazanna Parnell and her daughter Ramiah Osborne, who played in the same team in this year's FA Cup. They played for Hensford in the FA Cup second round qualifying match against Bromsgrove Sporting. Uh, and not only were this mother and daughter on the same team, but the uh mother provided an assist for the daughters to score. So kind of the mother crossed it in and the daughter scored it. Uh and the daughter Ramaya said, uh we're both so connected, I see her visions and she can see mine. Which feels like cheating to me actually. Yeah, that is cheating. You're not allowed to use telepathy on the pitch from my limited knowledge of the game. But there you go. So that's and that is not an under subscribed sport, football. No exactly. You know we recently had Melanie Bracewell on the podcast. Yeah. If you go to her Wikipedia page, it's just absolutely riddled with New Zealand cricketers. Her whole family. What her right notable relatives are including two uncles who both play test match cricket for New Zealand, or at least one of them did and played like forty matches. Two of her cousins are current cricketers in New Zealand. That that should have been her world. And she does play netball and volleyball and things like that. But Imagine the disappointment in the family when they found out that she was gonna be like coming on QI and stuff instead of playing in the World Cup. Um hey, why don't I move us on to another fact? We've got a fantastic one here from Tanya Thamku Fat. It's a surname that I've definitely butchered, Tanya. Canadians have special crisps to eat during storms. This is so good. Yeah, okay, so uh she she sent the fact which says I learnt that in Canada there's a tradition of eating storm crisps, and it's such a popular tradition that there are chips made specifically to eat while hunkering down at home during these storms. So I looked into it. This is true. This originates back in 2014 when there was a radio broadcaster called Stephanie Domit, who was on the radio talking about an incoming storm, and she said she had an intention to purchase certain chips and dips to prepare for the storm. And they started talking about this as storm chips, and this has become an actual thing. I don't think that's a proper tradition. I'm sorry to cut across you, Dad. I just think that's a growing thing. It's a growing thing. Are they especially strong crisps? The tradition is that you would buy crisps, but there is now a company that has trademarked storm chips and produces storm chip bags that you can buy in the shop. So it's very specifically for it. Now I asked a Canadian friend of mine whether or not he had done it or heard of it. He said no, but he looked into it and he can see it's very predominant in a different bit of Canada. Okay, guys, guys, what's everyone's storm crisp? This is like my version of Desert Island Discs. You're gonna be you're gonna be trapped in a never-ending storm in your home. And it's never ever going to end and you can only have one kind of crisp. Um Okay, shall I tell you mine? Yes, please. Um hula hoops. Original, uh salted barbecue. Oh, the um flavor doesn't really matter. Uh and that's because um if you have like a tube it has a very special sort of aerodynamic uh signature which will you know like one of the best paper error pages you can make is like just a circle of paper and when the air rushes through it it keeps it up in the air and so I think that I could like make these hula hoops sort of hover in front of my mouth and then eat them like a Pac-Man. Right. That's impeccable reasoning. That's incredi it's such good reasoning that I cannot think you have not thought about this before. I I like all the aerodynamic properties that you give a hooling storm outside your house. We've been doing this show for like over ten years. Yeah. All this says is that you have no trust in my sense of whimsy that you think I can't just make this up on the spot. Did you like cheat and look at the notes for this before then? I just feel like there's no way that whimsy is coming up on the spur of the moment. I feel like it's who's under your desk? Is there a writer under your desk handing you up bits of whimsy? Have you got Michael McIntyre down there? Um I just like sensations, Thai sweet chili. I just want to eat it. I'm not trying to make it float. I would use those um pickled onion monster munch and gear together the teeth or the claws on each one and build a rudimentary clock. That's what I'd Very good, Andy, yeah. Thank you. You saw the padding he did, James, earlier trying to work out how you were writing. He was writing that in his head while he was doing all that. I've got Jasper Carrot here and he's been wrapping his brains. Here is a fact from Siddhartha Basso, uh, who gives us a little bit more grist for Andy's book of things that sound like they're named after the thing they are, but actually are named after a person or the other way around. Very nice. We're still working on the title. Uh but this this is a a bit of news from the last few weeks, uh, because Marco Rubio, the American politician, tweeted today another transformer explosion at the German dam in Bolivar State caused another massive blackout. Uh, and he was complaining about what he thought was a problem in Venezuela due to the government. To which he got a reply saying Senator Marco Rubio, an important transformer exploded in Bolivar, of that you're correct. However, it was not in a dam. And it was not German. My name is German Dam. I am one of the journalists who published the information. Wow. What he had done was seen the name Herman, I suppose you pronounce it, Herman Dam, and thought that it was an actual dam, but actually it was just the name of this reporter. Beautiful. So it doesn't quite fit in your book, but maybe as part of the intro or uh like a an appendix. I think we can have a chapter for for that. But like unusual cases. I d I I don't know if you guys I don't told you this. I've actually made a document on my desktop now. Have you? Yeah, and I it's got is now, thanks to your uh contribution there, James, got six entries in it. Oh my gosh. Have we heard all five other ones on the show over the years? Yeah you have French's mustard, German chocolate cake. Oh, German chocolate cake and German dam. That could they can go together. Uh the children's python, the outer bridge bridge, which is named after someone called Outer Bridge, uh and Valentine's Meat Juice. You know um how you have pitched about 200,000 different sitcoms on this show, and none of them has yet to be made. Yeah. Do you have a document open for each one of those? Uh and if so, what is your memory storage plan? I've not written them down because I assume maybe this is naive, but I assume that someone's gonna get in touch. I know that we get big shots listening to us. I can tell that from the state of the inbox, and I just assume that one day a Spielberg or maybe a Nolan will get in touch. Maybe Christopher Nolan, having done the Odyssey, will say, actually I think we should do Clown Priest the series and I reckon what happened is Edgar Wright was writing that email to you and he heard the episode when you said he wasn't cool and he just went, Nah, I'm gonna I'm gonna get McIntyre instead. You're absolutely right. What was the one? Cause he would be perfect for that one. What was it? Was something cop. Do you remember that? They were all something cop. They were all cop. Tiberius cop was one. That's it. Type there was the Tetris cop or something like that. I just know that these are good ideas. That's the terrible thing. I don't know why they're not being made. I think maybe it's because we're not in the era of the cop drama right now. Like many of your ideas are like Balloon Cop or Candle Cop or whatever, right? But it's there's not many of those shows being made right now. It's more like like line of duty is procedural. Yeah. And this is very much more what if there was a cop who was also the Emperor Tiberius and there's no procedure there. Yeah. You're right. That's what people like. People like a crime and it's solved, but we see all the workings going on in the background. It's not so much about the cop having a wacky personality trait these days. I want to see a series about a struggling author who's been trying to sell multiple cop TV shows. Whoa, struggling is loaded language, Dan. Loaded like the gun of struggle car . Whether it's day one or you've been applying for jobs for months, one thing's for sure. You just need that one shot to show the world what you can do. If you don't know where to start, you've been dealing with rejections, or you could use a little help, get government support on our website. From tailoring your CV, to matching skills with employers, job help is full of little tips for every stage of your job hunt. Because small changes can make all the difference. Get help with your job search. Search job help today. 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 stopthink fraud . This is from Stav Berman who writes, and this give let give it a chance, let it breathe. On October 21st, 1988, a falling poodle caused the death of three people in Buenos Aires. The poodle, who ironically was called Catchy, uh fell 13 stories, landing on and instantly killing a seventy-five year old. Oh no. In the ensuing commotion, a forty-six year old onlooker got hit by a bus that they didn't see coming. And then uh an unidentified man who witnessed all of this uh suffered a heart attack from the stress and died on the way to hospital. So it was a a poodle led to three very different deaths in one guy. It really feels like it. Um, and I tried to look it up. I tried to debunk it. You know, I looked into Snopes and 'cause this does it does smell of it, right? And uh no nowhere as far as I can see has debunked it, but it has appeared in multiple places. Uh Reuters and the the Canberra Times newspaper. That that big newspaper. Uh I'm sure it's massive in Canberra. But do we know why it was falling? They don't know anything more. No. No, no, no, no. They they say we have absolutely no idea. Um it fell off a thirteenth floor balcony, so maybe it was something to do with superstition and bad luck. That can often make you fall off a building on a thirteenth floor. That's why buildings often don't have a thirteenth floor to avoid this kind of situation. I mean that's quite sad, yeah. Can I give you a more whimsical animal one? Oh yeah. Uh this one came from Stephen Corcoran and it's just the sentence that in twenty twenty four a Portuguese plane was grounded for four days after one hundred and thirty hamsters escaped on board. As far as I could see there were no deaths involved in this one. Basically they were in the cargo hold and they managed to escape and they ran riot and it took them days to get them all out because they had to find a hundred and thirty two hsters inside this aeroplane and the aeroplanes holds are pretty big and eventually they managed to get them uh on the fourth day. It's bloody hard to get a hamster out from a a tight place. Okay. Okay. All right, Richard Geer. What other Where have you e which type place have you experienced a hamster in? I just I just mean they they like they like narrow dar there's nothing I can say now there's nothing I can say that makes it sound like I haven't been indulging in unnatural practices. I simply mean they like narrow constricted spaces, they crawl into tunnels and holes and I used to have hamsters when I was little and and they would get if they got loose around the house and they got under the dishwasher or behind a bookcase or something it was Yeah. Right. Okay. Okay. It was just very hard to get them out. You had to lure them out. And of course they were labelled they were labeled, weren't they, James? They were labelled one to seventy and then seventy two to one three three. So everybody thought there was one hamster left. That would be genius. Cool. We should uh we should wrap up here on this side. That is it for your fact. Sorry, one second guys. The cat is banging on the door, it might need a shit. Right . Sorry, could you just trying to get in the room because I closed the door, so uh I thought there was a chance it could be a proper emergency, but she just went for her food and now she's looking at me like I'm a dick. The cat is banging on the door is quite a good way of saying that you need a poo . Yes. The flap cannot hold the cat for long. Okay. Can you yeah, I'm just there's a gardener outside chopping and can you guys hear it? Do you need a poo as well? No The gardener is chopping . The log is about to tumble to the ground. Oh dear. Excuse me. Allh we go. Okay, that is all of your facts for this episode. However, before we wrap up, we need to hand out some facts. That's right. If you are a member of Clubfish, the highest tier, which is friend of the podcast, you will become owner of one of the facts from our archive. That's 12 years of headline facts and you will be the custodian of one of them. As well as that, you're going to be sent a digital certificate. So check it out. But for now, let's hand some out. So who wants to go first? I go first. Uh this fact now belongs to Elliot. And Elliot, your fact this week is that male turkeys blush when they see female turkeys. Oh Christmas E one. Romantic. Yep. Romantic, so Valentine's Day E as well. Thanksgiving E because of turkeys as well. It's quite an all-rounder this fact, isn't it? But I think what it is is um like turkeys they have the wattle, which is like the reddish bit of skin that's um below the chin, and they also have a red sort of what what's it called? The comb. Oh yeah yeah yeah. Uh but these things uh they get darker in colour uh when the blood rushes to them and for turkeys that happens when a male feet sees a female. Very cool. I've got one that goes out to Andrew and it's that, the composer of Jingle Bells, also wrote the song We Conquer or Die. I think this was a guy called James uh Lord Pierpont and um I believe fought uh in the US Civil War for the South and wrote various punchy battle hymns, and that was that was his sort of light relief, I suppose, uh was jingle bells. Unless there's like an underlying meaning behind jingle bells that we don't know about. Jingle bells, jingle bells, the South has been betrayed. Uh that kind of stuff. Yeah, yeah. The original lyrics. That Franz Kafka once convinced his whole family that Einstein's theory of relativity would cure his tuberculosis. Wow. Right. I love Kafka, he's one of my favorite authors. And he like um he just worked in like a bureaucratic office, didn't he, which he really hated, and then he would just go home and write these incredible stories. And then didn't really become famous from them, I think, in life? No, I don't think it's published a huge amount. When he asked for his papers to be burned after his death, but the person who was given that task went, nah, I'm gonna publish them. So we we actually found out a lot about his writings against his wishes. I especially loved reading them when I was working in offices. Like I reckon for anyone who works in like an office job, reading Kafka is just it really sort of makes you think, well, maybe this is not so bad. That's very high end, James. I gotta say, other people would recommend watching The Oiceff. Maybe the American version of The Office if you want a bit of cultural diversity. But for you, straight in, no no no, read Kafka, that's great. I actually think Ricky Gervais is like a modern day Franz Kafka. Interesting. As yet unafflicted with tuberculosis . And we pray that continues. Okay, here's another fact. This one now belongs to Sean Belton. Sean, your fact is that dead geckos still stick to walls for at least half an hour. That's a nice fact. And you can print out the certificate we send you, Sean, and you can stick this to your wall. With a gecko. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, but I remember that I remember this fact. It was so exciting at the time. It was a really exciting new scientific finding. Uh here's another one. This goes out to Cara Chrysostomol. And the fact is in 2013, a group of people tried to crowdfund London's first UFO museum. Their target was one million dollars. They only managed to raise, however, three hundred and seventy dollars. That's not good. It's a big gap uh in the fundraising, yeah. When did we do this fact? Would this have been probably twenty fifteen maybe or I reckon? It was just I think it was just about then, yeah. But we wouldn't have known then what we know now, which is that aliens do exist and Trump is about to release all of the information. Imagine if he releases all of the UFO data and it turns out that the aliens have just been sending each other emails about Epstein's Island I don't remember too much about this other than it was a it was a big attempt and they they just had to pull out of it. I don't think London has a UFO museum since this uh since this happened. No, I think we would know about it if there was one. No, there was there was a big thing where Blackpool was almost turned into a Eric von Daneken chariots of the gods theme park, basically. The whole huge pool dam. Such a huge section of Blackpool's workforce were gonna be working for this theme park and it got pulled at the end because they thought this is nuts. Not at the end. Not at the end. Right near the beginning, I bet it got pulled. It wasn't like they'd nearly turned all of Blackpool into an Eric von Daniken chariot. If you pull something and stop doing it, then that is the end. Right? That's true. It's like whenever you have lost an object, you always find it in the last place you look, because then you stop looking. Yep. Yeah. When was it then that they did this? It was only a few years ago. Um Blackpool as a kid all the time and I would have dreamed of seeing that kind of theme park there. Oh my god that's it's a perfect what's that Andy? Chariots of the Gods ditched at Blackpool Central. The developers behind the three hundred million pound visitor attraction have decided not to name the showcase Indoor Theme Park after the nineteen sixty eight pseudoscience book. Oh sorry Dan, that's devastating for you. I I know it's pseudoscience. Okay. Sorry, listener, he just winked when he said that. Um so actually so it sounds like they did make it, but they just didn't name it after him. Yes, and listen to this, the contents of the venue and its attractions, which include a flying theatre, will still be based on Von Daniken's book. S is there an apology coming my way from you, Andy, or are we just gonna ignore the takedown you gave me before verifying I was right. I think we'll just press on. Okay, so this fact is now in the custodianship of Finn. Finn, your fact is that cows have friends and they get sad if you separate them. Or Alex Bell facts from when he was on the show. Do you remember on Torah we got to meet the scientist who discovered that cows with names give more milk than cows without names. Oh that was a very exciting moment. It feels like this is in the same territory as study. Yeah, I think it was. Here's one more, and this goes out to Webb Jedi. What a great name. Um and the fact is it's illegal to take a selfie with a tiger in New York City. Wow. Bit surprised about that. Yeah. But we must have found the actual ordinance because um online you do get a lot of these things where it's like it's illegal to do this in this town or whatever and often they're made up. Personal tiger ownership is quite big in the States, right? Yeah. Like I think Mike Tyson had one. New York City does feel like an odd place, particularly Manhattan, to have a tiger. Yeah, yeah. Um obviously between this show going out and this moment we've had the whole Tiger King and Yes. Um yeah, interesting. Don't take selfies with the tigers.