Dr. William Butler and Purging Ale

Hi everyone, welcome to this week's episode of No Such Thing as a Fish, where we were joined by the fantastic Angela Barnes. Yeah, she's absolutely amazing. She's been on fish before. I didn't get to be on the show with her, so I was very excited uh to sit down with her. Uh she's full of facts, she's full of jokes, and she's full of tour. She's on tour now. She's on tour twice, in fact. She is doing her own tour, which is called Angst. And she's also touring with a British iconic series. That's right, The Archers. Uh anyone who listens to Radio 4 will know that show and no other show. Um and Andy's The Naked Week is available as well. Um, and uh she's doing a live version of that. So if you go online, put in the archers tour, you'll find dates for that. But go see Angst, she's a brilliant stand-up, she's on tour right now. So on the 11th of April, she's gonna be in Chesham, and then there's places like Hastings and Hemel Hampstead and Ivy Bridge Hereford. A lot of these shows are nearly sold out, so get your tickets now. Hemel Hampstead is where all the hamsters live that used to live in Hemel Hampstead, isn't it? Oh, yes, that's an interesting fact. We should do that on the show . Or we should pronounce places properly. Anyway, if you want to go get those tickets, go to anglabarnescomedy.co.uk and uh go see her live now. One more thing, do join Clubfish, go to patreon.com slash clubfish if you want to get involved with that community, loads of extra stuff, merch, bonus material, you know all about it. If you don't know about it, go to patreon.com slash clubfish and you will find out more there. Okay, on with the podcast. On with the show . Hello and welcome to another episode of No Such Thing as a Fish, a weekly podcast coming to you from the QI offices in Hoburn. My name is Dan Schreiber. I am sitting here with James Harkin, Andrew Hunter Murray, and Angela Barnes, and once again we have gathered round the microphones with our four favorite facts from the last seven days. And in a particular order, here we go. Starting with fact number one, and that is Angela. Okay, so my fact is that the number four is orange and a lot kinder than number five, which has an attitude problem. I don't have children, so I don't know what we're talking about there, but I I'm assuming that's a C B B preference. Four is orange and it's kind of like number five is quite aggressive and has an attitude problem. Okay, so what are you talking about? Should I tell you what we're talking about? Okay. I'm talking about synesthesia. Oh yeah. So you may have heard of synesthesia. I'm a synesthete, so I was diagnosed with synesthesia when I was 19 at university and I've got several types, but the main one is uh graphene colour synesthesia. So that means that numbers, letters, days of the week, any abstract concepts have a colour. Okay. And I always say it doesn't mean I see auras. I know I'm from Bryson, but I'm not that person. It's just it's hard to explain when you are a sinister because the reason I didn't know I had it till I was nineteen is because we all just sort of assume everyone's brain works broadly the same as ours. Yeah. And so I don't know I don't understand how you don't have colours. Can I ask a question? You may. You have a sheet of paper in front of you. I do. It's black and white. Yes. When you look at that, is it like the coloured in the letters or is it more so some people have a sort of syndicatesia which is projected, they call it so they do exactly that. It sort of changes colour when they look at it. For me it's very internal, so it's in my mind's eye, if you like, one of a better word. Yes. So I'm currently part of a study at Sussex University. There's Professor Julia Sibner at Sussex Uni, and she specialises in perception and synesthesia. And I wrote to her a couple of years ago, because when I think every thought I have is in a physical location from the real world. So when I think about the number four, it's always in the sky, yeah. But it's orange, so it's all floating orange in the sky. And so I con tacted her to say, Is this a form of synesthesia? And she said, Well, I've never heard of it, but let's do a study. And so they found a handful of people that seemed to experience the same thing. And so she's studying it, she's calling it conception location synesthesia, is what she's calling it. But also have you heard of Adam Zieman? So he's the man who came up with the word aphantasia for people who have no internal images. Like me. I like it. Oh, do you have appetizer? So Julia's very interested in that as well. What a what a sandwich I'm sitting in between some C . It feels a bit greedy really , I'll be honest. Well, it there was a massive coincidence. So it's about two years ago I c I contacted Julia and around the same time Adam Zeeman contacted her and said I've had t someone get in touch to describe this phenomenon about location when they're thinking. And she said, Oh, that must be Angela. She contacted me as well. And he said, No, it's someone else entirely. And it just happened to be within the same two weeks. So they're now both doing studies on telekinesis. On telekinesis. If only it were that. It's morphic resonance, I think. Yeah, thank you. He's actually calling it it's quite an he's calling it topo fantasia, which makes sense. So there there is a thing of I mean I d I'm not I'm not um synesthesia A synes th inest theatrical But and I I don't have A fantasia, but I do have the I'm sure lots of people have the location specific um a sensory thing triggers a a spatial memory. Uh-huh. So if I smell green chilies roasting, I'm in New Mexico and it's autumn. You know? So that's That's very linked to memory. So that's really common that when we smell something but the thing with synesthesia is there isn't a link. You've just described memory, Andy. No, no, no, Angela's politely saying it's a really common thing. So for me it's if I smell baked beans cooking, I'm in my school canteen. Like that's kind of Andy. Yeah, just but it's not my myth. Say because it triggers a specific sensation, triggers a really specific memory. Yeah. So what they think is with people with synesthesia is what one of the there's lots of theories and they don't know exactly what causes synesthesia. They do, they have worked out that it's hereditary and then it's uh uh to do with the X chromosome. Um but what they think happens is that when you're a child, before you acquire language, you obviously have to interpret the world around you in a different way without words and so you have this extra uh white matter, extra connections in your brain to different parts of your brain. And that in most people they sort of get pruned away as you don't need them anymore. Right. And then but with people with synesthesia, those connections don't get pruned, they stay. And so what it means is that you get a sort of uh an odd reaction to a stimulus, and by odd, I just mean one that isn't typical. So for someone with synesthesia, a part of my brain gets triggered when I see a certain letter or I hear something or whatever that wouldn't normally be triggered in that situation. Yeah. And so it's just a it's a hyper connected brain. Yeah. What they call it. And so there's lots of things that go with it, like misophonia, misokinesia, all these things, people with synesthesia intention. So you hate it when people are chewing next to you? I hate it when people are chewing next to you. I have really strong misophonia. I am synesthesatical You can you can have misophonia and yeah, it's really What about people putting their feet on the seats on the train? Is that is that a special power that I have to find that annoying or is No, I think you're just bit old man. I don't think it could be that because I'm very young. I think you should be everyone should be angry with people being their feelings. I think that's perfect. But misocinesia is something that again, I only recently I had a meeting with Julia a couple of months ago um just to sort of see how the study was going and stuff, because I'm hoping to write a book about it. And um she told me about Mr. Kines ia, which really made me go, oh yes, I have that. My husband is what I'd call a jiggler, one of those people just doesn't stop moving constantly. If I can see a part of his body moving out of the corner of my eye, it drives me insane. If I can just see a movement, and they call it misokinesia. And she told me, which made me feel better about it, it might make you feel better about your misophonia is that apparently it's the salience network in your brain which is activated when you have misophonia. And it is the same reaction, basically, she described it to me as if a bear had walked in the room. Yeah. Right. So it's sort of that ancient part of your brain being triggered. I'm really interested, Angela. Okay, so that's the colours we've talked about a little bit, but what is this about them having personality? So that is something which is called um ordinal linguistic personification. Okay. So um some letters and numbers have personalities to people with synesthesia. So most of the numbers I find quite friendly apart from number five. Sorry, quick question. Um if there were a room of say twenty people who all had this particular type of synesthesia, would you all agree the colours? You've all got your own synthesis. are some trends if you like to to some colours are picked more often but they don't really know why. Yeah interest. So for example the the days of the week have very fixed colours for me. Most people, if you ask them what colours Monday will say blue. Blue, yeah. Because of the blue Mundane Association. So you can predict quite often what people will say. Yeah. But in synesthes they're random. And there's another which I find amazing. I didn't know about all these varieties. I knew that. Oh, there's there's over a hundred and fifty types of synesthesia that they know of now. So the one I love most is mirror touch synesthesia. That's why which is where you feel what someone else feels if you see it happening to them. And there are a couple of amazing case studies. There's a woman called Carolyn , she's a massage therapist, and she remembers very clearly being three years old seeing I think a dog break its leg and she immediately felt blinding pain in I guess one of her rear, left, rear or front, left I guess one of her legs. One of her legs. And she felt enormous pain. So she can't watch action movies because she just feels so much what's going on. But she's a massage therapist, so her job is terrific because it feels like she's constantly being run. Really? She's massaging herself as she doesn't feel so massive. And there's one other guy, a doctor called Joel Salinas, uh and he's a doctor . And this is a big problem in his line of work because if he sees a surgeon. He saw someone having a cardiac arrest and he felt very you know he obviously you don't feel exactly what they do, but you feel very strongly. Um the patient died and he did not. So clearly there is a There's a fudge that's a Sometimes they get I know people with min mirror syneshes get like just a tingling sensation. So if they see someone hurt their arm, they'll get like a tingling in their arm or so it's not always a complete mirror, but still in the same area. I think I have the opposite of that because I took my daughter to nursery this morning and she fell off a scooter and got a little scrape on her knee and I was like, come on, it doesn't hurt. That's called being an eighties dad. I think it's But we do I think we all experien like if you want to picture the experience of it, if you ever see someone kicked really hard in the genitals, that involuntary war you do yourself. That's that must be what it feels like for young people all the time. The only way I found out I had it is I was uh doing linguistics at Sussex University and there was a uh lecturer, Larry Trask, who's sadly no longer with us, but he um did a lecture about language acquisition in children and they were talking about this theory that well, I said earlier, you know, the connections die out, and then these people can and I remember sitting in that lecture going, but everyone's it has colours for what are you talking about? And then I I came home and I told my dad first, and he said, Well, surely everyone has I was like, Okay, well now I can see the there's a hereditary line. Yeah, and then when I told my mum , she said, Oh, that explains why you used to get so angry at the magnetic letters when you were a kid. Because they were the wrong colour. Anesthesia and found that a lot of them associated the same colours with letters as those magnetic letters. Right. And a lot of people kind of pointed at that as saying, well, this is it's just made up, isn't it? It's just like the only reason you think A is red is cause you have these magnets and you thought A is red. Right. Um so James Wanaton at the UK Cynesthesia Association is quite annoyed by it . And he says it's really annoying that people try and explain it away. But actually it is interesting because these colours, are they always the same? Like you say, they're different for everyone. Yeah. But for you in particular, are your colours always have they been the same your whole life? Because they do change for some people. So this is a really interesting point because up until recently consistency was a way of sort of confirming whether someone had synesthesia. So what you would do you would do the test and then six months later you you' dod do it it aga againin and then . But the main reason they did that was because there have been periods in time when being a synesthete has been fashionable. And so because lots of people self-identified as synesthetes who weren't synesthetes, it was very difficult to do studies on synesthetes. So the way they did it was to use this consistency idea. But it doesn't necessarily mean that if it's not consistent, you're not a synesthetic. Right. It just means if it is a consistent, then you definitely are. Yeah, I read a study of a woman just known as A B who sees colours when she hears music. It's a different tones have different colours, right? Uh but then the paper said to say she had a series of unfortunate events would be an understatement. a As teenager, she sustained several concussions, had migraines, contracted viral meningitis, and was struck by lightning. Oh my god! She born on a Friday the third. But every time one of these things happened, like the colours changed. But by the end they all came back. So it would like change and then it would come back and then it would change and then come back. So I find like I do a lot of crosswords, I love cryptic crosswords and word puzzles and things and um particularly I don't know if you know the spelling bee on New York Times. Some days I can't do it because the letter is so arrogant in the middle that I just go That's my excuse when I don't manage to do a crossword as well. I'm sorry just please don't review any of our books, Angela. Just in case. What is the most arrogant letter? I've got three. A H M, but what is your Wow. It took me a minute, but I got there with letters. Um the most arrogant letter is probably X . Yeah. It's very yeah, snobby. Interesting. You know, it fixes himself. Well so you've got craftine colour, which is your type of syneshesia. So other people who supposedly had it was Richard Feynman, the great physicist, um, who used to see the equations in various different colours as he was writing them. Vladimir Nabokov also had that. Um and then there's another one which is called chromosthesia, which is where you pair color with sound. And a lot of musicians have this. So supposedly, I mean you get these lists online, um, and so some of these might have just made it through anecdotally but aren't necessarily true. But Stevie Wonder supposedly has it. So he sees colour when he's writing songs. Beyonce has it, Charlie XCX. Jimmy has very arrogant Charlie X . And Jimi Hendrix uh had it and apparently there was a chord which is known as the Hendrix chord, but it's also the purple chord, because he would see purple when he wrote it, and the song purple haze is the haze, and it's that chord is used a lot in that song. Yeah. Um this is the one I find most fascinating that I don't experience. Lexical gustatory, where people hear words and taste certain tastes. So they might hear a a trigger word and they sometimes So the guy who was it was it you James who mentioned James Wanaton, the president of the UK Synesthesia Association. He has this and he visited every tube, overground and Docklands Light Railway Station to find out what they tasted like. Oh nice. He sounds like one of us. Totalcourt Road, sausage and egg, King's Cross, Rich Fruitcake, and he produced a tube map with the flavours of it. It's really good. That's really good. That's sort of the one I wish I had. That's the cool one. I know. There are sexual synesthetes. Well, I will say I qu I don't mind saying this on a orgasms have colours. Ah. So depending on intensity or what and it's usually through the red spectrum, so it's usually red or orange. So I always say my husband knows it's been a good night if he says how was it for you? And I say burnt umber. Wow . Well that's a very that's very far on bowl as well. Elephant's breath. Very boutique. Wow. Wow . Okay, it is time for fact number two And that is Andy. My fact is, in 1577, there was only one man in England permitted to touch the Queen. Mm . The King? Yeah. It wasn't one name. So we're on Queen Elizabeth the First. Okay. Who for international listeners, kind of a big deal. Virgin Queen. Virgin Que the Virgin Queen. Did she ever see Burn Tumble? We don't know. We don't know. Her hair was quite Burnt on Post. It was, yeah, yeah. Um so I went to uh I went to a gallery recently which was uh it's uh it's in South London, it's a Greenwich, and they have a thing called the Queen's Gallery there. It's amazing, lots of amazing artworks, and there was one portrait of a courtier from the sixteenth century who was called Richard Drake, and the little you know information panel said this guy was the only person permitted to touch the Queen, and it's because he was the master of the Queen's horse, so helping her mount onto her horse, that kind of thing. And I think he was a cousin of Francis Drake. How did he did he sort of like go on all fours so she could walk on his back? That was exactly it. No, he would throw her on. It was amazing. Like do you do the hand thing where you sing on a hand? That's the thing I could absolutely imagine it being him on all fours as he steps on his back , yeah, yeah, yeah. Or piggyback Shoulder ride I think. Shoulder ride shoulder ride over to the horse and then yeah, like she's a transfer. Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Um but we've never really spoken about her before, and she was the most interesting woman and monarch, and just crazy. The last Tudor. That's interesting, you know, end of a house, because she she died without heirs, so obviously the whole royal system changes after her, and you know, we get uh James I of Scotland in as um as king next. But um daughter of Henry VIII daughter of Henry the Eighth not expected to become queen at all because she was the daughter of Anne Boleyn. Yeah. So her dad beheaded her mum. I mean, this is that's some therapy sessions there, isn't it? And also, she was never legitimized, was she in law? Like Henry VIII changed um the succession laws so that she could succeed, but he never officially changed it. He sort of declared it. So there was, I think throughout her reign there were questions on her legitimacy. Yeah. Wow. How interesting. Because it would because then her so her father, Henry VIII, obviously lots of wives, and then Amblin was the second wife, and with his third wife, Jane Seymour, he had Edward the Sixth, who was a m son, so became heir, but then Edward the Sixth died after only a few years on the throne. Then there was some Mary, uh Queen Mary, Catholic, all the religious stuff. But this so her childhood was crazy because she grew up in very, very rich circumstances. And then when her mother was executed, when she was under three years old, it all changed and it was all taken away. And supposedly after Anne Boleyn was beheaded, her mother, she uh the young Elizabeth asked her governor, why governor, how happened yesterday lady Prcessin and today but Lady Elizabeth? Supposedly this is when she was two years and eight months. That's like those people on Facebook, isn't it? You'll never guess what little Tommy said this morning No he didn't. Exactly. Interesting. I was looking at some other people in Queen Elizabeth's court. Um, so there was uh one of her favorites uh was a woman called Lettis Nollies. And Lettis Lettis was in Queen Elizabeth's court for fifteen to twenty years, uh which is 150 times longer than Liz Truss was Prime Minister. Um But she was like one of her absolute favourites and then she married Robert Dudley in secret and Robert Dudley was the bloke who Queen Elizabeth really fancied and when she married this guy, she was out. Queen Elizabeth said, I don't want to see you anymore. But he was also, I think, the master of the horse just before Richard Drake. He served a term. So he would have I don't know if he had the same privileges of being the only man to be able to touch her. He certainly touched her emotionally down. Did lettuce did was she she wasn't executed directly. She wasn't really Okay. Oh I can't believe I marked straight into that one. I had to I had to really force march my way into that. Oh my god. We actually know a um a descendant of lettuce. Do we? I think the four of us must know this descendant of Lettuce because we happen to know the thirteen times great grandson of Lettus . Lettuce. Do you know who it is? Nidicum, is it? Josh Whitakham. Yeah. Is it? Comedian Josh Whiticum. Who do you think you are? Yeah. That's great. Yeah. Exactly. Um we still have um you call them equer ries that look after the horses in the um in the royal household. Uh and the senior equiry to Queen Camilla is called Major Rob Treasure. Which I don't think you should have them in the royal family. It's a bit on the nose, isn't it? Something's gone missing for the Tower of London. Okay, bring in Rob Treasure. It's either gonna be Paul Barrel or Rob Treasure. And it was a big it was a big role the Master of the Horses back then. I to you know, if you think about oh you're in charge of the horses these days. You're just in charge of this sort of rich bit of your life, right? But back then that was that's like looking after the cars. That was looking after the transport to war. That was looking after your main line of soldier for so many things. Yes. Main man . That's what he should have been called. Master of the horses. Yeah. Um yeah, like so back then that was an incredibly important role. You were breeding, you were buying, you were purchasing. It was type of army, wasn't it? It was a whole bit of the army. Yeah. So um these days, less so. Now it's about maintenance, but still horses very big within the world of the royals, at least up until Queen Elizabeth II, who you know, she used to make sure that she was at all the all the horse races She she owned so many horses. She was obsessed with how her horses were being bred. She had I feel like she won the Grand National or something. She's won some how basis. Yeah. She I think she didn't she have a massive horse treadmill as well. She had a treadmill where eighteen horses could exercise at the same time. Wow. She might make something impressive like that. I once um did an after dinner at the guards polo club. Ooh. A spectacular piece of misbooking. Is there anyone else gonna describe that? It was one of the worst th and I Do they book you 'cause your name is Barnes? Maybe. Was Andrew Stable, not I got there, this is a true story. So this was fifteen years ago, so I was a brand new comedian and I didn't know to say no to something like that. And um and I turned up and for a start I I went and I thought am I gonna wear to this thing? It was black tie at Duke of Edinburgh's polo club. Right. And um so I went and bought a dress from Debonham's which I thought was good enough. And then I got there, went, oh this doesn't cut it at all. And um anyway I, did the the gig and it was you know as expected hard work and then as I was leaving a woman stopped me in the doorway and she literally said to me, I knew when I saw you arrive you, must be the entertain er. I knew you couldn't be married to a polo player, not with that hair. What? It was awful. But but with the money I made from that gig, I went on holiday to Cuba. So who got the last laugh? Very nice. Um gosh. Yeah, just one . What a bunch of kids. I mean it was funny because I also did the thing that I now know you don't do after dinners or corporates, but I was very green at the time. And that I sat and had dinner with them. When you say you were green, was that was Tuesday. I gotta say, like it is an elitist thing. I slightly give the Queen a pass because it is the queen. I feel like okay, you know, that's part of the job, having lots of horses. Um and I do like what a nerd she was about it, because she probably was. She she would even have CCTV cameras installed at Sandringham Stud Farm so that she could see the birth of horses. She'd get an alert. She was really invested in it. And also the names are so geeky. So the families of various horses that she had. So there was one called Hypotenuse who had foals that were called Geometrist, Equal Sum, Longside, Pythagorean, uh there was Wink of an Eye, who was the son of Momentary, and her mother was fleeting memory. So she they had all these names. But anyway, they're all being sold off because I think Charles is not as into it. Um and the Guardian has estimated that if all the horses are sold, it's going to be roughly twenty-seven million that they'll make off the back of the house. Wow. Yeah. Yeah, he still keeps horses like ceremonial hors es doesn't he but he just doesn't do the horse racing stuff. Uh he in twenty twenty four he appointed Captain Kat Anderson as the first female equerry to a sovereign in history. Wow. Progress . Progress. One step at a time, absolutely. Um something about not touching royals. Oh yeah. I read a newspaper article from the early twentieth century and it said that in eighteen ninety-four there was a footman of the king of Spain who was in the um palace and young Prince Alfonso was walking across and then fell down some stairs, and this footman caught him and was immediately fired for touching a member of the royal family. Let him die. That's the moral. Let him go. Apparently, the Queen Mother then rewarded him with a generous private pension, but he didn't get his job back because the rules were you're just not allowed to touch them. How many how many royals have you guys touched? Not one. I've met one, but I've not You didn't I didn't touch her. But I met the Queen. Oh well, I say I met the Queen. I I was a student nurse and I was working at the Homerson Hospital in Hackney. She came to open a new bit of the it was a stroke rehab unit I worked on. Right. And um she it was mad because that day Hackney got tidied up. I've never seen anything like it. There were street sweepers out of their work. And Right. Exactly. Well just the route that she was going, not all the family, obviously. Oh these buildings are orange. But there was a murder model's looking very pretty this morning. All this artwork appeared in the hospital the day before. Yeah. All went again the day after. Oh really? Yeah. Wherever wherever she went, that art went. Yeah. It's weird. Everywhere I go has the same paintings. It was like was it Catherine the Great who had the Potemkin villages that she thought wherever she went the the villages of Russia were so beautiful and stuff because wherever she went they just built but he was that was uh a sort of courtier called Potemkin right his name was Potemkin and he built these like five. But I wonder if the Queen thought that as well and the king thinks that it's just like oh London's lovely East London is gorgeous. The old joke is that everywhere she goes smells of fresh paint. So she thinks that was what the world smells like. There was a man came round from the palace uh cup like the week before she came to teach us how to curtsy if we wanted to curtsy. We didn't have to, but if you wanted to you could. Uh-huh. And to teach us that it was man rhyme with ham, not mum. But um none of us were allowed to take annual leave that day. So we all had to sort of line up. And she did the classic, she stopped in front of um there's me in my uniform and a physiotherapist next to me and she stopped and and looked at me and did the what do you do? And it's like Not with that hair. No, the entertainment's arrived. Um Dad, you wouldn't have asked the question if you hadn't touched a microphone. I was counting in my head. I'm I'm I'm on four. I'm on four. It was when you were on the island, wasn't it? Sorry, I've been touched by four. Let me point to the bits they touched. Um the no, the queen. I've I've touched the queen. I touched . No you're not allowed you're not allowed to touch the queen. It used to be royal equerry. We shook hands. That's touching. Are you allowed to shake a hands? That's very rare. What? That's very rare. No. Well Yeah. Okay. Well that's I mean She must have liked you. Yeah, she must have taken to me. I s I She only usually does fist bumps, doesn't she? Since COVID it's been everywhere. Yeah, yeah. No, so I shook hands with the Queen, gave Philip a high five, had a um a thumb wall with um Edward.. Yeah And the old um full body with Prince Andrew. Yeah . How much of that is true, any of it? I I shook the Queen's hand, I shook Philip's hand, I shook Edward's hand, and then I shook the former princess of Denmark's hand. Uh but when I was a kid she was um weirdly our neighbour in Hong Kong before before she was changed. You gotta say truth or lie. Okay, it is time for fact number three, and that is my fact. My fact this week is that the 10th best Formula One driver in the world, can't drive . When I say drive, I mean regular cars. He can't drive regular cars. Now this was Arvid Lindblad, and he is a very young Formula One driver. He's he's 18. And uh he was talking to Max Verstappen, who also started very young, in fact, will be forever the youngest Formula One driver because rules have changed, and you have to now be eighte anden older. And he was seventeen when he was r when he was driving. And they were having a chat and he said uh something about you driving. He said, No, I don't have a license. And so he can he can sit behind the wheel of a Formula One car, but he can't drive on a regular road. So do you get a s a different license for super license the uh Federation Internacional d'Automobile, the FIA has to uh they issue super licenses for Formula One racing. And so Arvid Limblad and uh Kimi Antonelli, who drives from Mercedes, uh he was issued uh uh an early super licence as well in twenty twenty four. No one's stopping you and s in the middle of a race and saying, excuse me, sir. Do you know do you know how fast you were going back there? But you can get points on your super license. And you can have it . Absolutely. So it's um it's a rolling twelve months. So there was a point where um oh who was it? There was a driver who almost got because you get a race ban . It might have been Max Verstappen actually who had almost 12 points within a 12 month period. And if you get that you get a race ban. And what is it for? So it can be um if you do something really dangerous essentially. So if it's something where uh because there's normal penalties during racing. So you've got stop go penalties, you've got uh like five second penalties, ten second penalties , um starting f uh grid place penalties, so you start the next race five grid places back from where you qualify and things like that. Right. Um but if you do something really bad you get points on your life. Interesting. You also get fined for swearing. You get you do get fined for swearing. Inside the car. There's so many weird inside the car. Um on the radio, because the radio message is all broadcast. So they're really and it's been because of um Mohammed bin Sulayam, who's the head of the uh of the F1 um he is a you know from a Muslim country etc so he's been really hot on and the drivers really had a backlash about against it because they're like well you try crash in at you know 200 miles an hour and not swear. It feels like it feels like swearing is one thing, but if you're going FAA I think you mean fli But they they um sorry they broadcast these broadcast where they play all the great like the best of the radio messages. Something even drier than Formula One. It's not dry, it's great. A Formula One isn't dry, but B the radio messages are so funny. But they're fighting back, so the dri they have like a dri ver's association and the driver's association are saying, you know, if we swear but it's to make a point as opposed to insulting someone, then that should be fine. So Max Verstappen, who we've mentioned, he was fined for saying his car was fucked during a press conference. Carl was fucked, but it's there you go. During a press conference, come on. Yeah. One thing I like about this super license is that you have to do a theory test to get it as well, just like a normal license. So yeah, there's a knowledge test uh which is on the international sporting code and F1 sporting regul ations, and then on top of that, the team has to show that you've driven at a certain speed for a certain number of kilometers in a one se ater car. Right. In order for you to get that. And you need to quite often you need to have done well in other races that are not Formula One. I see. I mean it all makes sense, doesn't it? Is that would I guess would there be a hazard perception test? There's an elderly lady crossing the road five miles ahead of you, but you're gonna be on her in three seconds. So what are you gonna do? Um so this is an interesting thing about the age. So this guy is very young that we're talking about. Yeah. Fernando Alonso, he's not that old just to see. Absolutely, absolutely. Lewis Hamilton's forty one now, I think. Yeah, but that's a's a it really big range within the sport. And I think the oldest ever Formula One champion was uh Juan Manuel Fangio of Argentina, and so he he was ages ago he was racing, it was in the fifties. Yeah. And he did his last one in nineteen fifty seven, age forty six years old, was I think his last victory. And when he started, I just love it, I mean the because obviously Formula One is so technical, it's amazing ly complicated. There are l the be incredibly clever teams working on you know how to make the cars more aerodynamic and all of this. When he was doing his racing, helmets were made of cloth until nineteen fifty two. Oh yeah. Uh and helmets were made compulsory that year and they were they were made of papier machet, I read. Oh. I know, the pie shaped helmets. You would get covered in soot inside your car because just the cars are much more basic and you weren't protected. And of course people died by the dozen every single year. Yeah. Well I love looking at the photographs from like nineteen fifties race because nineteen fifty, so it's seventy-five years of Formula One last year. And um there was a great exhibition that I went to and um i you look at the photos of the drivers from the fifties and they're fat. Like and since you know in modern Formula One cars with the monocoque chassis and things they're they're tiny drivers of F od,der you don't get big F oddry, jockeys. They 're a tiny space they have to sit in and you want them light because obviously you don't want them to weigh down the car. You've got a weight limit for the car . And um it's just these fat blokes with beer bellies and fags and I just like you just don't see that in Formula One now. It's brilliant. We look at those old pictures. I found a list of all the people who have ever raced in Formula One. Uh Paddy Driver. Brilliant. Brilliant. Participated in two races, scoring no points. Scott Speed uh was the first American driver to race in Formula One since Michael Andretti. That was in 2006. Uh Hans Stuck was a German guy. He was really interesting because he was friends with Hitler. Uh, and then after the war, if you were German, you weren't allowed to be in Formula One, and that's because you needed to be a member of a society and after the war you weren't allowed new clubs in Germany. No one was allowed to join a club and Formula One club, which you would need to join your international authority, you weren't allowed to have them. So he then went to Austria and became he said, Oh no, I'm Austrian. So I'm gonna try for them instead. That's very cool. That's very interesting. Um one thing I was reading about because I I do find it quite exciting to watch Formula One. Um but one thing I think I'd be more excited to watch is the pre-season testing of Formula One. Because this is where the cars are making, in some cases, their debut with new mechanics and new things, but they try and hide what that is before the actual start of the Formula One. Soundbagging. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so there's all these different methods that they use. So for example, you remember those ships that were supposedly um black and white and all those weird ships. They do that with Formula One cars so that you can't quite spot where they might have rearranged certain positions. Or they'll change all the stickers so you think the exhaust is in one spot, but actually it's in another. Um, they try as much as they can to disguise it just so you don't get what they've done to their new cars. But on top of that, if they've signed a new rookie or if someone's trying to make a comeback, what they'll often do is they'll have one of their existing drivers lend their helmet and so they'll I thought you're gonna say oh I thought you were gonna say Mission Impossible style rubber masks. That's a shame. Well they might be wearing for a helmet but a bit for just in case. No but, they'll go out in the helmet of another uh driver so that they think, Oh, it's just him doing his test, but actually it's someone. Lewis Hampton is six inches shorter this year, that's weird. You would have to find someone whose head was the same size though, right? Yeah. I don't know. Once you're in a monocoque though, uh like I I suppose or they just do the design. That's the sort of what you're sat in, the bit around you. But the the pre season testing was really interesting this year because there's been a big rule change in Formula One this year. So from 2022 up till 2025, they had uh ground effect cars, so with really high down force, low floors, and um there's been a complete rule change now. So basically the reason engine manufacturers put lots of money into Formula One is because it is a way of sort of testing things to for road cars and to advertise their road cars and everything in the future. So there's always Formula One car development has to sort of mirror in some ways what's happening on the road. Right. And like proper Formula One fans don't really want that 'cause we want big old stinking V8 engines that, you know, make that lovely noise that make your ears pop. You don't want the cars to have to plug in every forty five minutes. Exactly. But it's really tedious. Um so so but this year's rule check. Some of us enjoy watching fast chargers doing their thing, okay so the the cars this now have this sort of energy recovery system so it's all about um they can har vest energy when they're breaking and uh and then employ it because they've all straight they all got batteries they've all got batteries as well they've all got batteries so they've been the hybrid era era's been since twenty fourteen or so. so So they had before that from 2009, you had the KERS system, which was the kinetic energy recovery system. And then that sort of evolved. Because the thing is, if you make the car too efficient, you don't get overtakes, and that's boring. I see. Overtakes are the things you want. So they're constantly changing the rules to try and get more overtakes. There is a button now that they can press called the overtake button, which just means they can use that energy they've harvested to boost an overtake. So when they pr use that function, this Have they considered adding like shells and bananas? More people would want. I think even Andy would want that. The Kurs thing that you mentioned, obviously, that or not obviously, but that's now in all electric cars, basically. So the reason one of the reasons you get so far on your in your electric car without charging is because it can regain energy from the braking system. And that began in Formula One. Yes. The Formula One drivers, they do all the you know they do lots of training, obviously, because it's much more physical than it used to be. I didn't know this. What's the most important thing for a Formula One driver to practice? Their neck muscle. It's neck day. So when you're driving this car and you're going around the corners and you're whizzing along and all of that. Supposedly your head weighs five times what it normally does. Partly the helmet and partly the gravitational force is acting on you. And so often they can't buy normal clothes because they've got this whacking great neck basically. They're all neck and headbangers people who love metal music. Headbangers would make great Formula One drivers because they're doing all this training. So and the images of them training their necks are so funny because they'll release shots sometimes of them wearing this mad bra ce, you sort of big bri like a like one of those helmets you'd wear for a psychiatric experiment, you know, with sort of with that, but like with a thick rubber cord coming off it, and at the other end of the rubber cord is a trainer who is just hauling their neck over one direction and they're trying to resist it. That I get mirror touch synahesia. When I look at that, that makes my neck sad. Yeah, they're so strong and fit now. Like that and they sweat so much. They lose so much weight during a race. And particularly in the really like Singapore or places where they're it's really hot and they're so they have water to drink in the car, they have a water system. But what I think people don't realise is the water is right by the engine. And so it's after a couple of laps, it's basically like tea. It's like hot water. Damon Hill did once have tea in his famous ly. Um and another great Damon Hill fact, if you want it, uh played a guitar solo on a Def Leopard track. What? Damon Hill So I grew up at Brown's Hatch basically. I was there every week. Both my parents worked there and uh that's why I love motorsport, particularly Formula One. And um I can remember going in the Kentagan is the name of the pub at Brown's Hatch. So it's a uh Pentagon and it's in Kent. See what they've done. And I grew over after races going in there and him and his band play and then. Really? What's Deaf Leopard again? A band. No, no, as in a they what genre they Oh like sort of hair rock really. Probably some good headbang.ing Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Maybe that's why. Yeah. And and there's also I'm quite interested in female Formula One drivers. Oh yeah. There have been uh female drivers in Formula One. There's only ever been one female driver score points in a Formula One race, and that was Lella Lombardi. She was an Italian driver and it was in 1975 and she scored half a point. Oh. And that was because if a race is less than sixty percent complete, you only get half the points. Okay. And she uh and during the race there were fatal fatalities, unfortunately. There was a German driver who uh crashed into a spectator pit and there was a fireman and a couple of journalists in a spectator were killed, so it was you know pretty um, but she scored half a point, so you know um so she's the only person to ever score points, but um yeah, there's loads of really there's um a little shout out to Alicia Pomovsky at the moment who's a Red Bull driver. She just got a full first poll last week um in the uh F1 Academy. So there's lots of women drivers coming through now. So hopefully in the next ten years we'll see another exciting 'cause also you think like smaller in general, on average. So like you get lots of female jockeys for instance. Yeah. Yeah. I think part of the problem is, which is always part of the problem with Formula One, is money because you have different types, you know, some people get their seats in Formula One on merit purely, and some get their seats in Formula One because they also bring money. So Lance Strahl, for example, who drives to Aston Martin, a pretty terrible Formula One driver and there's lots of people much more deserving of that seat, but his dad owns the team. What are you gonna do? He basically bought the team for his son to have a seat in Formula One. The thing is you want a nice egalitarian sport like Polo. That's what I'm saying, that's what it is. Okay, it is time for our final fact of the show, and that is James. Okay, my fact this week is that in sixteenth century London there was a chain of pubs that sold laxatives on tap . Um Any questions? Ah so many. So the sixty seven. So this is Queen Elizabeth could have gone to one of these . Oh yeah. Well, in fact, um this person who made them, Dr. William Butler, he was a physician to James the First. Oh really? Um so only just after her, in fact. Wow. Uh and he was definitely around at that time. I'm not sure how often Queen Elizabeth went to the pub. Probably not much. Probably not much. Not that much. Yeah yeah. Uh but he was a physician and he became famous for various reasons we might go into. But one of the things he did was make this thing called Purging Ale , which had aniseed, caraway, licorice, and beer. And if you went to quite a lot of pub s in London, you would be able to get it on tap and it was good for you 'cause you would purge your body. It was medicinal, less than it. It was in a beer. It was it was it was like beer but with all this. Imagine um a nice cask pail ale that you would get today but with a few what's the opposite of a modium? He's like a he's like a original hipster brewery kind of character, isn't he? Um now I'd rather that than syrup a figs. I think he sounds quite nice. Yeah, yeah. Uh and actually there's still a pub in London called Old Doctor Butler's Head in Morgate. Uh which claims to be associated with him and that he sold his beer in that pub. Right. Now the actual truth is we're not even certain if he made the beer himself. It was definitely named after him and he was definitely a physician, but it could be that he was just so famous that they called it his spear. Yeah. So we're not sure about that. Some pubs had his portrait hung up, but again it might have been just associated with a famous doctor. Sort of license his name as , yeah. He's a really interesting chap, this guy. So he went to Clare College, Cambridge and did a an arts degree and then for some reason managed to get a physician's license, and it's not it's not certain how he got it. They seem to have just given it to him. And he just worked at an apothecary shop for ages in Cambridge, and then one day a local clergyman had fallen into an opium induced coma and been given up for dead. And Butler killed a cow, put the priest inside the cow, and the priest was cured. And from that moment he became famous as quite a wake you up being put in a cow, isn't it I think? Or it's gonna make the the opium induced trip even wil der. Um what's it cut the cow open? He cut a cow open and like is it the reven ant where he kind of lives inside a bell ? Yes, he does. He's a bit like that. My dog on the beach once she was running towards something, she's a little cockapoo. We're like, what's she running? And she climbed inside a The smell I can still smell it now and I think that's a bath. That's a big thing. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. She was so proud of herself, you know. That's amazing. Um a real career defining moment, I think, the uh placing a patient's inside account. He was sixty eight at that stage and and we see basically nothing of him throughout the whole of history from his birth until this moment. And then suddenly at the age of sixty-eight he becomes nationally famous and so much so that King James I had a hunting injury and he said, Get me the cow guy Because if if the clergyman had died , I don't think you can recover from that going But what's but what's he got to lose? It sounds like he's not made a big success of his career so far. Yeah. If he died, wouldn't you just take him out the cow and pretend you never did it. I think he's crap. Yeah. I read somewhere they they called him an empiric physician. Oh yeah. Which meant he based his treatments not on any theory but purely on reasoning and experience. I guess ideally. He had a few weird things. If someone came to him with epilepsy, he would shoot a couple of firearms close to their heads to Yep. It's like getting rid of the hiccups, isn't it ? If someone had ague , which I guess is what is agu? Malaria kind of thing. But he would push them into the Thames because like cold water therapy. I mean, you still do cold water therapy today. Wim Hoff method, he was finished. Butler was there before the mall. I did read I read one thing he did where there was a a patient who had Qatar, severe Qatar. What's that? Uh flat nose but heavy heavy sort of matter on the lungs, that metal thing. No, it's it's more it's sort of a heavy heavy chasty, a really chasty thick congestion, right? Okay. And Butler said, Right, you've got to smoke an ounce of tobacco, which is a lot. And it took the patient twenty five pipes of tobacco one after the other. Very much like you a parent catching you smoking one cigarette and making you but apparently that completely cured the patient. I mean some some citation needed, I think. Didn't come back for seventeen years, didn't it?