 No such thing as a fish. You never know such thing as a fish. No, seriously, it's like that first paragraph. No such thing as a fish. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the British Library. Please welcome to the stage, no such thing as a fish. That intro, yeah. Amazing. Well, thanks for coming. Just got to bring it down a little bit. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You've had your high point. Guys, this is a library. Shhh. Thanks so much, everyone, for coming. We're so excited. How many of you have been to a fish gig before? Out of curiosity. Wow. Oh, so how many of you are club fish members? It's a secret cult, everyone else. It's a very special cult. We'll see you in the caves after the gig. We should also say, by the way, so thank you all for coming here, being in the room with us. Very exciting, but also, over there, we've got you at home. We're live streaming this. So, hello. Hello, world. If you're at home and you've seen fish before, put your hand up. Wow. Wow. That's huge. I'd put some clothes back on, please. Amazing. We should say what we're here as part of. So, this is the British Library's Animals Exhibition, which opened, I think, today or yesterday, and it's running until August. So, if you in the room or you at home haven't seen it yet, check it out. It's a brilliant exhibition. It's about the science of animals, the art, their discovery. The animals which were or weren't believed in and then did or didn't turn out to be real, is really good. So, yeah, highly recommend it. Awesome. Yeah, and so, what we're gonna do today is we're gonna record, effectively, a British Library special for, and it's gonna go out, so you've paid for a free thing that will go out, and it'll be edited in much better. So, it's, you're paying for the shit bits, basically. Anna's very quiet today. Yeah, she's, I love, I've been given two wine glasses for some reason. I feel like it's the Chasinski Memorial Glass. She's not dead, she's got to start saying memorial. Sorry, every time. Sorry, she's very alive. Yeah, so what we're gonna do is we're gonna do the show. We'll do a recording of the app, and then afterwards, we've got some time that we've never really actually done this before. We're gonna do a Q and A. So, if anyone has facts or questions, you can ask them. There's microphones roaming around here. If you're watching at home, if you wanna get on Twitter and go to At No Such Thing, if you have a fact or a question, I think that's probably the best way. Or James, do you, James got a burner phone. Yeah, I got a burner phone. I got loads of questions here, so yeah. Do you know the number off the top of your head that we can tell? I can find it. Yes, it is 077-899-63721. And if you're outside the UK, 0-0-4-4. Yeah. Text cost four pounds a word. So, okay, why don't we introduce our guest? Oh, yeah. We're so excited to have our guest on tonight. This person is obviously one of the greats of British comedy, but on top of that, someone who clearly was meant to be a QIL, hopefully is going to abandon her career to become a QIL one day. You'll know her from literally every great comedy in the UK. Please put your hands together for Sally Phillips. Yeah! Thank you, thank you so much. Hi, Sally. Genuinely very excited to be here. Thank you very much. Oh, we're so excited. Ready to be an elf, finally. This is an interview, Sally. Yeah, I'm aware, that's why I wear my interview suit. So yeah, we should just quickly say that you'll notice we have lots of notes in front of us. This is not a script, we have not prepped anything, but the way that fish works generally is we send each other a headline fact and we all go away and we research it, but we have these notes just to make sure that we get the dates and names right. So if you see us reading it, we haven't told each other anything outside of the headline fact, it's just worth knowing that. Okay. I scripted that way better. That's basically all the questions answered there. So should we do it? Should we go for it? Let's do it. Okay, all right. Ling, if you could roll theme tune, please. Welcome to another episode of No Such Thing as a Fish, a weekly podcast this week, coming to you live from the British Library. My name is Dan Schreiber. I am sitting here with James Harkin, Andrew Hunter Murray and Sally Phillips. And once again, we, yes, and once again, we have gathered around the microphones with our four favorite facts from the last seven days and in no particular order here we go. Starting with fact number one, and that is my fact, my fact this week is that the British Library's Fantastic Beasts Collection originally included accounts of a nine foot dragon terrorizing Essex and an army of horses that teleported to rural Wales. And it was donated by the founder of the British Museum, Sir Hans Sloane. Wow. So he was a nutcase. Well, he, yeah. What do you mean the account was donated? Yeah, well, so here's the thing, right? He's, Hans Sloane, if you don't know who he is, he was one of the founders of the British Museum, an incredible guy. If you've ever been to London, Sloane Square. That's named after him, or Hans Crescent, as we, famous Hans Crescent. That's if you go online, that's what it says. All the time it's saying the two famous places in London that are named after him, Sloane Square, which we do all know. Yeah. And then this weird Hans Crescent. It's an upcoming Richard Kodas film, I think. It's gonna be huge. But yeah, so he was an amazing guy. He was a doctor. And at the top of being a doctor, he was obsessed with collecting. He collected everything. And that's what became the basis of the British Museum's collection. He was a hoarder. He was a hoarder, yeah. I mean, he was a serious hoarder. He had, he had like a separate apartment to hoard in because it got too much in his own. Yeah, and he. And how did he die? Did it all collapse on him? Yes, exactly. A museum pillar took him out. No, he was quite old, I think, when he died. I think he was in his nineties. He was 93. Is this the bringer of chocolate? The man I know is the bringer of the hot chocolate to the United Kingdom. Controversial. Controversial, you see? He was. And I think he kind of claims. Teleporting horses and hot chocolates. Yeah. Strong epitaph. Yeah, I think it's been claimed that that was something he nicked. It was ready in place. Yeah, I think he was in Jamaica, maybe. He was in Jamaica, yeah. Early. Okay. And then it was a practice there, sort of a grated cocoa with milk and cinnamon and stuff. But I think he probably... Sorry to shit on him in his own home. But... Well, the teleporting horse is better anyway. It's way better, isn't it? Yeah, so this is what I was about to say was, is, you know, all the collections that got handed over after he passed away in his will to be the basis of the British Museum's collection eventually became the British Library's collection as well. And there was lots of papers, there was lots of physical objects, and a part of it was a collection of things called Strange News. He was obsessed with Strange News. Stories that would come out from France and Scotland and Wales of odd things that, you know, like... Well, like dragons or like appearing horses in the middle of Wales. It was the artifact version of no such thing as a fish. Yes, exactly. Well, he's the, yeah, he's the old me, I guess. Yeah. You have fewer links to the slave trade, we should say, Dan. Just fewer, fewer. Yeah, so this big dragon that arrived in Essex, it was in a place called Hennem, which is just north of Stanstad. It's about two miles north of Stanstad. And so what I like to imagine is actually there was like a time travel portal that came in and it was actually an easy jet flight coming in. Maybe, I don't know, but there's loads of other things that he claimed. And the thing is he went out to collect things from around the world, but the reason he did that is because he thought it would help people to better understand God's design of the world. And so when he was finding this strange news, a lot of things he didn't believe in, but there were some things that he did. So he found a story from France where fist-sized hailstones came down and kind of battered everything and hurt a lot of people and killed a lot of crops. But the only thing that was saved was a Protestant church. Yeah. And he thought that this was proof that, you know, God was saving them. Yeah, this one's amazing. There was a story this is from Scotland and there was a guy who died and he was in his home. They laid him in state. Is it in state? What is it? When you lay someone? Sure. Yeah. So he's laid in the house. He's in a coffin for people to come and see. Like an open coffin. Like a way. Yeah. At state, it's pretty fancy. It's pretty queen-ish, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. You just said this guy. Was this the king of Scotland? No, no, no. How long was the queue? Here's what I'll ask you. Yeah, yeah. It was just a guy. And it was a town of Dumfries. Okay, Dumfries, yeah. So apparently people went to visit him and then it came the time where, okay, let's bury him now. And they tried to lift him and no one could lift him. He was really heavy. They just, they tried everything. So they brought cattle in and they tied ropes around him and tried to pull him and he didn't move. And then the house burnt down and he remained as the only thing that was still there. Wow. He's like Arthur's sword in the stone. He's the guy in the house. Yeah, the corpse in the house. Sorry, so he collected this story if he didn't collect the guy. No. You can't collect the guy as the point of the story. So he had, were these kept in diary form or like what kind of evidence were they? These were like weird pamphlets that used to get produced and so people would go and buy them on the street and it would just say strange news from Scotland and they weren't one particular magazine. So yeah, no, he collected them. So when he died, he donated them to the British man. Well, to, yeah, his museum. He's 1660s. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was really early. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We shouldn't say that none of, I know we don't need to say it. None of the stuff is true that we're described. I said, we keep saying apparently and then describing things which almost. People thought it was, some people thought it was true. Yeah, that's true. I'm just saying if in like 400 years they're discussing a copy of the Daily Star and saying apparently there was a. There is an infinitely heavy man. I think I remember that headline. Yeah, I didn't, actually weirdly, I found a star headline in the course of recent because I was researching things which don't. Crypto zoology, animals which are not proven to exist. Yes. And there was a headline in the Daily Star in 2008. Loch Ness Monster dies aged 3 million. That's a shame. Yeah, I know. That's completely brilliant. Global warming, very sad. Yeah, yeah. It's interesting the whole thing of fictional creatures, you know, cryptids. I did Italian, Dante, there were a lot of fictional the phoenixes in Dante. At only incense and cardamom pods in heaven. Cardamom pods. What's that? It's that bit of a curry that you see and you're like, oh, they've left it in. Oh, wow. No, it's the thing in the jazz version of a cinnamon bun. Right. Yeah, there were three types of phoenixes, three types of yetis. Yeah, you found a yeti that I've never heard of, which is what was it called? Yeah, there's three types. The Nielmo, which is black, has black fur and is the largest in the fetus, which is 15 foot tall. The Chuti, which is eight feet tall and lives 8,000 to 10,000 feet above sea level. And the Rangshin Bombo, which is only three to five feet tall. And I think must have been just the mistaken it's an orangutan or some kind of a boon. Yeah, I mean, the first one sounds like a gorilla. Rangshin Bombo, yeah, it does a bit. Yeah, yeah. The first one you're describing. The first one. It sounds like quite tall. Yeah, it's interesting, the abominable snowman. I mean, there was a, they had some fur, didn't they? They kept, various times over history, they would analyze the DNA of and occasionally find it to be a horse. Yeah, or a bear or a... They now think it is a kind of bear hybrid thing, don't they? How do they? I think so. That's interesting. Tibetan blue bear. Yes, that's what it's often mistaken for. Also, I've studied this a lot, actually, Sally. I'm trying to find the thing you haven't studied a lot. That's everything else. I can't believe we've hit on the one thing I've studied. This is the dream come true. But Brian Blessed, who is a very... Yeti. That's what he would say. He would go for the Yeti, looking for the Yeti, and then the locals that he would meet in the Himalayas would say, oh, it's a Yeti, and he realized that a lot of what all the stories are him. It's him. It's him. It's him. When he was like three foot tall, it was when he was a child. Yeah, exactly, yeah. Yes, exactly. I read about quite recently in Nepal, they had like these, I think they were models or badges or some kind of publicity of the Yeti and they sent them out and then all the locals were like, well, the Yeti looks nothing like that, what are you doing? And the thing is, the person who did it said... Sorry, I'm lost. You said they had models of badges, which they sent out. Did I say badges? Yes. I meant badges. Badges, yeah. So they were doing a sort of Yeti awareness campaign. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It was sort of a, but genuinely, what was the... Well, the problem was, they said, the locals said that it looked a bit like a sumo wrestler as opposed to a Yeti, because it didn't have any fur on. And the guy who did it said, well, no one knows what it looks like anyway, so that's one thing. And number two, fur is actually really difficult to draw. LAUGHTER And three, I just drew the sumo wrestler and no one wanted to buy it, so, wow. Oh, that's really funny. Just on, so King Kong, for example, not a cryptid, I know a fictional character. Character, yeah. Acrobar is what you're talking about. No, we're talking about large hairy fellas. And King Kong is all of these three things. But King Kong was originally based on a lizard. Was it? Oh, Godzilla, no. No, that's... I think Godzilla's a bit later. King Kong was based on the Komodo dragon. Really? Yeah. Really? So the filmmaker behind King Kong was Marion C. Cooper, and he was friends with an explorer called William Burden, who had got permission to collect some Komodo dragons from the Dutch East Indies, as they were then, now Indonesia. And until 1910, nobody from the West had seen a Komodo dragon, so they were cryptids. They weren't believed in, they had not been sighted, spotted, hunted, brought back, or no specimens. And one was brought back by William Burden to the USA. And in the course of the expedition, his wife was nearly eaten by a Komodo dragon. What? Really? And yeah, she'd finished sort of setting a, you know, a photography, you know, like a photo trap up or something for it, and was going back and came face to face with one and, you know, had a lucky escape. Wow. And so that image of this kind of glamorous woman faced with a terrifying beast, when William Burden brought back the sample that he got of a Komodo dragon, Marion C. Cooper saw it and thought, what if it was a monkey? And that, I mean, because gorillas were also new in the USA at the time. But when in the USA saw a gorilla until, I think, 1910, that was in the first, like actual physical gorilla was brought over. They'd heard about them, but I mean, that's quite late, isn't it? Yeah, feels like it. How old was, how old was his wife? Oh, I don't know. Because there is a thing when you sort of hit menopause, your maternal instinct goes really into overdrive and you start wanting to mother thing. A Komodo dragon? A lot of women run away from their husbands and mother primates and yeah, I can see that happening. Oh, it's so beautiful. Lots of women get into trouble that way. I don't know. Didn't like, who's Elsa the lion? Did she get, didn't she eat? What's her Facebook? Who's sorry? Born Free Woman, what's her name? Sigourney Weaver's wrong. Does anyone know? Joy Adams. Didn't she get eaten by the lion in the end, Joy-Adamsen? No? I feel like, is that a dream, I've had. Did you stop the movie just before? I'll tell you a fact that is true, though. A perfect, you've been taking lessons from Dan in the segue. Well, actually, I don't know that this is true. I'm going to tell you, I'm going to tell you a muck fact which you can check later. I think, a muck fact, there used to be a thing about McDonald's, you know, McDonald's nutrition muck facts which I used to love. Yeah, it's like a fact, but a muck fact. Jane Goodall's son, she did chimpanzees, that's right, isn't it? Yeah, that's right. She had a son and she used to keep him in a cage to protect him from the chimpanzees, which were aggressive. Guess what he does now for a job? A prison warden. Shark photographer. Shark cameraman, yeah. He just wants to be back in the cage. Well, I don't know. He feels safe. It's a safe place. I would love to interview him. Yeah. That is incredible. Isn't it? What a... Let's see, let's check it's true by the way. I'm pretty, I've definitely been told that in a product by someone who might know. I got a doll of Jane Goodall. It's like a Barbie doll of Jane Goodall, right? Really? Yeah. That's so weird. What's... What are the... Does it have accessories? Yeah, it has a little David Grey beard, which is the name of the chimpanzee who she loads after. It's got a little boy in a cage. But the thing is, like, I know Dan collects a lot of celebrity, you know, memorabilia, and almost all the people end up, you know, celebrities, they end up getting in trouble for something. I thought I was safe with Jane Goodall. Yeah. I thought there's no way that she could get cancelled. Well, let's start it tonight. No, she's not... What has she done? She kept such a cage. We all keep our kids in... So he didn't get killed by aggressive chimpanzees? Yeah, what is a cot but a weak cage? Exactly. A cage with air to top. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, that's amazing. You know, animals and show business is a marriage made in hell. Yeah, I remember meeting... We had an animal agent who came on to smack the pony quite a lot. Jackie, she had quite a lot of... represented a lot of animals that would come occasionally with need. And she had a Vietnamese pot-bellied pig on her business card. I went, oh, he's so cute. You know, Perry Menopoulos starting so cute. And do you still have him? She went, no, he won't bring in any work, so we hurt him. Wow. I hope she said that in ear shots of all the other animals. You'd better do your job. Yeah, apparently the hardest animals to train are owls. They just don't get it, apparently. It's really interesting, you'd think that an owl would be smart, but no. Dumb. Ravens are the dogs of the... Have you worked with an owl? No, I haven't. I was just... I'm obviously fascinated by animal agents. I just wanted to train an owl, supposedly. Ravens are the dogs of the sky. Penguins are aggressive, a bit of a nightmare. And they have explosive poo. Do you know this? Penguins. So very difficult to pick up. No, no, no. As you mean, the poo shoots out. It doesn't... They don't lay it, and then it just... Explodes. I'm not sure if dogs did that. Every time you'd be walking through the park, it'd be like walking through World War I, wouldn't it? They'd be like the end of Blackadder. Don't take your foot off it. Don't take your foot off it. Yeah. They have lots of animals obviously playing each part. The kestrel in Cares was played. Do you know this? You prove it. Played by three different kestrels called Freeman, Hardy and Willis after the shoe shop. No, that's amazing. Yeah. I presented the Palm Dog Award for best... The Palm Dog. The Palm Dog. There is, you know, in Cannes Film Festival, some British journalist 22 years ago now set up the Palm Dog rather than the Palm Door for the best canine performance. And I was lucky enough. Lucky enough to present the award with Ronnie Ancona to Quentin Tarantino on behalf of the dog in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Oh, so it's... It was played by three dogs, two male dogs and one female dog. Crosby stills. Yeah. Yes, yeah, yeah. So the dogs don't get to come to the ceremony or...? Well, they didn't... The dog didn't come to the... They found a similar breed and they brought that dog in. The dog didn't know what was happening. Oh, God, they ate the first dog, didn't they? Quentin urinated on the carpet. No, it was fine. But, yeah, yeah. So you have several. And they used different animals. So he was saying... Quentin. Quent. Quenti. Quent. Tar. Do you know? Yeah, my brother tried to license his image so I don't know why. Well, hang on. But he said they had three different dogs and one girl and two boys. And on the day, he thought the two male dogs were better, but then turned out the female dog was actually... When he got into the edit, he realised she was a much better actress. Do they do a take with each of the dogs? No, no, they just use... Cos they have limited hours. They're all three of them in one dog costume. Yeah. Your brother tried to... tried to license Quentin Tarantino's image, famously a man who makes 18 certificate films, for lunchboxes. What was he thinking the market? I didn't ask. It was only, like, a long time after he told me that that I realised that that was mad. Oh, so was it...? Or are they things that, you know, he says in passing? Was it on the day? So Tarantino's up there. He's accepting an award as a dog. There's, you know, the image... No, I get that bit. Like the Shea Guevara Tarantino picture. I think they were putting that on stuff. Oh, okay. Is that a famous picture of the Shea Guevara Tarantino? Do you know the one I mean, though? Don't you? Okay. So I feel like there's a very sort of known... I think you're too far into your brother's world with the lunchboxes there. I don't know if you remember. Dan knows everything about Yeti. He's nothing about anything else. Do you know, just going back to speaking of penguins exploding, poo out their buns, there's a mythological creature called... Smooth, by the way, smooth. Thank you. There's a thing called the Bonacan. Have you heard of the Bonacan? Bonacan's like a... It's like this beast which is like a half-horse. It's got curved horns. And the way that it would... If it was being hunted by humans, the way that it would deter the humans is to fire poisonous shit out of its bum, right? But it can make a distance. It's so aggressive about this thing that doesn't exist. Is it can shoot at three acres? That's great. That's a unit of area. Area, not distance, yeah. So does he cover the entire one and a half football pitch? I think it does cover three. I've also read about the Bonacan. Actually, interestingly, Brian Blessed told me... He could do that. He could do that. When he was on Everest, he said... Four acres. He was out of diarrhea on Everest. And the poo shot out. And he said... His thing he often says is, don't camp under the French, because the fuckers will shit on you. That's his like... That's like a t-shirt quote from him. But again, who's buying these obscene t-shirts and lunchboxes? Yeah, I need to meet your brother, actually. So anyway, the Bonacan. The Bonacan is a terrifying creature with three-acre poisonous poo. And everyone that's depicted trying to hunt it all faces the other way, basically facing as ready to run, because they want to escape the firing line. Poisonous poo? Yeah. It's like fighting Medusa. Have you come across, I'm sure you have, the fictitious creatures of lumberjack culture? No. That sounds amazing. No. Guys, settle in. There are a number of books about things like fearsome critters. About fictional creatures in lumberjack lore. Yeah. And they're things like... Well, my favourite one. Let me take my favourite one. It's a... Well, there's a splinter cat. It's a regular cat, but with no logic. Who's an indiscriminate destroyer of hollow trees, which was their explanation for lightning strikes. Oh. Yeah, there's one... Well, there's gumbaroos in Australia. I can't find my notes on one. Are they kind of made up for fun? No, there's one that's... I'm sorry, I haven't got the thing. But there was one that was... that the lumberjack hunter that hides behind trees, so you can't see it, but can only be deterred by loads of alcohol. So the lumberjacks must be drunk. To keep safe. That's good. That's good logic. We're going to have to move on. We've run way over. Should we move on? Give us one more, yeah. I was reading some stuff by Alien, the Roman writer and orator. What? Alien. I'm going to call him Alien. He's got loads of amazing creatures. He has the buprestis, which he believed existed, which is a creature which, by a cow, causes the cow to swell and burst. Okay. He had a smooth lobster, where if you saw it on the beach, and then you marked where it was and you drove it to anywhere in the world, when you got back to where it was, it would be back there. He sure wasn't teleporting. And he said also that if a snake is eating something that's a little bit too big for it to swallow, and it kind of gets it into the mouth it'll stand straight on its tail and jiggle itself, so the food will go down into its stomach. Amazing. Have you seen those videos of people hunting anacondas? Is it anacondas or is it just a python? Those are the big ones. One of the months to think, they put a leather trouser on and stick their entire leg into the snake's hole. Yeah, they get swallowed. Sorry, I'm a bit confused about what's... A snake hiding in a bank, isn't it? It's like a massive snake. Right. And they put on like leather trousers and stick their leg down the hole and then the snake... Oh, the snake comes out and then... starts to swallow their leg. Why would you do that? And then they have a lo... You're the worm for fishing, isn't it? I don't like this. And then they haul you out and then kill the snake. And the leather thing is so that the snake doesn't digest so all the juices doesn't digest the human body. Maybe the teeth can't go through it? Yeah, I think that as well. Did you see the guy? I think this is right. He was attempting to be swallowed by a snake as well and it was going to be like a world record. But... OK, go on, go on, just go on. I think I'm right in saying this. Again, this don't even accept, you know, heaviest cat anymore. I think unfortunately... Didn't they? No. They found an infinitely heavy one in Dumfries today. But this guy, it was big, it was big, it was set up, it was like a Nat Geo kind of thing. The snake started swallowing on the wrong end so he went head first and he wasn't ready for it and so they had to pull him out and cancel the... Did you not have his big leather hat? No, they do it. I mean, they catch fish like that sometimes and in the world record, it's catfish and they'll get the cat to grab hold of their fist and then when it's bitten, they pull it out. Really? It's called catfisting. Is it? Yes, yeah. I'd rather it be catfished, if anything. All right, we need to move on to our next fact. So it is time for fact number two and that is James. OK, my fact this week is that in real life, the very hungry caterpillar would have gone around headbutting his mates. There he is. So is that... It's beautiful. No, it's gorgeous. It's so beautifully drawn. It's a lovely book. But in real life, this is what would happen. So these days, you know, all of these children's books are getting rewritten, aren't they, like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and whatever, and I'm calling for the very hungry caterpillar to be rewritten to be more factually accurate because according to the people at Florida Atlantic University, whenever caterpillars get really, really hungry and they don't have enough food, they'll go around looking for other caterpillars and then they'll attack them, knock them off where they're eating and then they'll go in and eat their leaf. No way. And so that's what Eric Carl really should have been writing about. It's a tougher book. They don't eat strawberries, they don't eat ice cream, they don't eat lollipops, they don't eat salami. They only eat one kind of leaf. Any caterpillar. This is going to sell big, Jigs. On Monday, he got in one fight and he ate one of the same kind of leaf that he's going to eat for the rest of the week. They do occasionally they occasionally get a species which will eat fruit. So you might get one that would eat an apple but it would only eat apple and it would only eat the same apple and it would live inside the apple it was eating until it was ready to grow. It's a tough book. We used to call it the very hungry caterpillar but my partner Ian pointed out on the way here that Eric Carl was conscripted into he fought on the Siegfried line. I think it was. He was an American born with a German mother. He was conscripted and he had to dig the trenches. In my head, that's a bit like a caterpillar to catapult. Catapult's dig? I just wondered if he was very hungry in his whole and that's what gave him the idea. He had a really because his family moved back to Germany. Then he got conscripted again. Born in Germany the family moved to America really soon and then his early years were in America certainly then the family moved back to Germany in 1935 when he was about six years old so at the end of the war he was conscripted to dig trenches and he was fired at he was 15 years old and then after the war obviously had a horrible time his father was in a prison camp and had an awful time then the family moved, he certainly moved back to America and then he was conscripted a second time to go to join the US Army and to go back to Germany again where he was involved in filling in the holes that he dug I actually feel quite bad that I'm shitting on his buck now. Is it any wonder that the follow up book was called The Very Grumpy Ladybird Hungry, Grumpy and there's another called Polar Bear, Polar Bear What Do You Hear I think. He wrote a lot What do you see? What do you hear? It's great, but great a great artist and also an amazing scheme off the back of this book because there was an Eric Carle Museum that you can go to in America and in the museum everything, there was a great article that was written online of someone taking photos everything has a hole in it No, everything's edible, that would be amazing so like if you go to the canteen you buy a cookie and the cookie has a massive hole in it, like so this guy is saving so much money in his, like there was, I remember reading that the New York Times when they removed the dot at the end of New York Times that little, on the headline they were saving $600 a year back in the day when they, like that little bit of ink cost them so much imagine how much that bit of cookie that's missing is saving the music What do they do with those little bits of cookie though? They sell, they sell their cookies They don't With Holzen But imagine how you could ruin that museum by having Eric Carle's experience of warfare like a room as you go in trench digging So I went onto his website because there is another problem in this book that is that towards the end the caterpillar goes into a cocoon and it becomes a butterfly but butterflies don't go into cocoons butterflies go into chrysalises Well caterpillars Butterflies don't go into anything No, they come from chrysalises and so some kids have written into him and said well why have you got a cocoon in your book and he replied saying well there is a rare genus that lives in Siberia North Korea and the northern islands of Japan called Parnassian which does pupate in a cocoon So he was hugely relieved when he found out I said that doesn't What's the difference? So a cocoon is made out of silk and the chrysalis isn't chrysalis is made out of nylon It's the difference between a cot and a cage It's what it's made out of But you get quite a lot of moths that make cocoons another insects but butterflies don't But he did then say actually you know caterpillars don't eat lollipops either This is a special caterpillar It's allowed to do what it wants It's a children's book Grow up Do grow up Another kid wrote in saying caterpillars don't have noses I'll get staffed I mean just And he said I know it has a nose on its face but this feature grew out of my imagination I don't have shoes either caterpillars Can I ask a potentially stupid question Sure It's one of the chrysalis and the cocoon It's one of the made and one of them grows out of the body of the One of them spun like a cocoon is spun I always think of it like almost like a bird covering itself in its wing I do I read an anecdote about him which I've only bring it up because I didn't understand it so I'm hoping that maybe you guys will So he said that he wrote all these books as you were saying where it was sort of like the next kind of spider, the very quiet cricket and in an interview he says that he found himself in the changing rooms after swimming and a satirical young fan suggested a book entitled The Very Slow Penis to the author's great amusement and I can't work out what's funny about that Satirical I didn't say it's funny What's a slow penis Sorry Was he married or what was his orientation He was Carl Does it also have a hole going through it this book I just can't work out where the slow penises Anyway, there's a slow loris That no such thing on Twitter if you want to let us know my wife is watching online at home Wow It got their hairs right anyway Butterflies and moths I discovered have nearly 10 billion hairs on them because these scientists have spent over a decade studying the surface area of animals Counting No the surface area of animals that's such a funny thing I think A cat surface area is actually like a ping pong table What the comparative The problem is when you cover your ping pong table in cat the ball doesn't bounce nearly as well And the RSPCA will Sea otter has the surface area of a professional hockey rink Because they've got so many different hairs and a honeybee has the same number of hairs as a squirrel Really? I know I know, is that mental Yeah, the Georgie Institute of Technology Not say mental sir, isn't that just astonishing That's amazing They were running calculations to find the true surface area of animals or the surface area that includes every location where dirt can be collected because they were trying to work out ways of keeping things clean Cool organisation, what a fun 10 years Yeah, that's gruelling Yeah, so dogs obviously shake Every animal has a different way of keeping clean, sometimes the fur helps them to stay clean, sometimes it doesn't You must never shave a dog I'm sure you haven't, but don't shave a dog even a really furry one Bees, bristles depend They do, yeah but you shouldn't really shave your dog's name No, it's not good for it You should get a number one My chow chow, do you have a number one? You shouldn't do that, that's bad That's what... Well, you told the chow chow needs to go and have a number one Did you go down to the hairdressers and say, short as you can mate? Yeah And watch out for the numbers twos, they will explode Yeah, the fruit flies use hairs on their head and thorax to catapult dust off themselves at accelerations of up to 500 times earth's gravity I don't even know what that means My mouth was desperately wanting to go wow and I was like, no idea what you just said to me Anyway, that's what they found I read the other day that there's a spider when they have sex, at the end Spider sex The male catapults himself away so that he doesn't get eaten But if we were the same size as that spider I worked out they would be the same as us having sex not me and you Andy, whoever us having sex in central London and then immediately catapulting ourselves to Thorpe Park Wow, what better way to celebrate Are you going to stay the night? OK Call me That's where he went The bus Just a load of blokes Thorpe Park Spider sex The idea of James this whole thing that you have about the incorrect facts about children's books This feels like a very QI thing so I'm sure a lot of people already know this I didn't though When you see a lot of kids books when there's a whale let's say a blue whale or any kind of whale that's surfacing there's always this beautiful spout of water and there's they don't do that I feel like I've seen that in real life Ah, you have What? Go on Ah, the riddler But his horse was called Thursday Yeah The doctor was his mum That's the So if you see any kind of thing where it's a whale with a huge Spout of water That is basically, according to experts, that's what would happen if a whale is drowning They don't spout water out of their blowhole That's their nostril, that's their breathing They don't put water out through there So they do breathe The breathing is moist air that's just collected inside and that's what's coming out So if you ever see a whale where there's spouts of water is coming down, it is drowning I've not seen the drowning whale, I've seen water vapor whale Exactly, you're seeing water vapor and it gives that misty kind of look Like a kettle Exactly, but if you see a fountain you're going to save that whale So basically what it means is every drawing of a whale in a child's book is a dying whale Very upsetting Can I tell you one more thing about animals in children's literature So the story of Peter Pan features a crocodile that swallowed a clock So in 2011 there was a crocodile which was in a zoo in Ukraine and it swallowed a mobile phone and the owner was a lady called Rima Golovko and the zookeepers didn't believe her they said the crocodile can't possibly have swallowed him up a phone and the crocodile started ringing and they realised he absolutely has swallowed that phone She was trying to take a really cool shot of the crocodile from just inside the enclosure and unfortunately and they really they didn't, there isn't an ending to the story because they were trying to pep him up because he was feeling a bit peaky The way to pep up a crocodile that's feeling a bit peaky it turns out is to feed it live quail rather than pork I suppose crocodiles they eat like stones don't they to help them digest things I think do they so they don't always have just food in the stomach so I'm just trying to put a good spin on this Even an early Anokia will trouble it Scientists, those weirdos I don't know they found out that crocodiles like classical music and they prefer classical music and they therefore think that dinosaurs would have enjoyed classical music as well and the way they did that was they got a crocodile into an MRI scan and the report says with some technical difficulty it was quite hard to get the crocodile into the scanner because you need it to be awake to listen to the music isn't it very loud in an MRI scanner I imagine it was horrifying for the crocodile yeah exactly at least it had a bit of Mozart to listen to it's quite interesting the effect of music on animals shall I hit you with some more of those facts yeah yeah I investigated that a tiny bit and went down the deepest of rabbit holes I discovered that mosquitoes who are listening to dubstep eat less and have less sex is it because they're dancing I think they're going let's make it stop yeah they found that female mosquitoes that were entertained by the song scary monsters and nice sprites landed on their host less frequently and attacked much later the mosquitoes who weren't listening to that music the mosquitoes had far less sex when dubstep was playing so they think that that's partly because male mosquitoes identify females by the characteristically lower buzzing of their wings and the male and raise they do a courtship ritual and raise the frequency of the sounds they produce until they match and that process is disrupted by playing dubstep so they think that researchers think that electronic music could provide a new method of personal protection oh no what if you don't like dubstep either well exactly what do you think you've got a real choice to make there not a bad plan though dubstep homilaria that's amazing yes more we've got to move on in a second one was a bit dumb sharks appear scarier if accompanied by ominous music you say it's a bit dumb but I think it's a bit dumb but they were encouraging documentary makers to be very very careful of the soundtracks that they use because how animals are seen in documentaries has a direct impact on how much money you can raise for that particular breeding conservation I was watching a TV show yesterday which featured some sharks and earlier in the show there was some ominous music and at the end there was some rather majestic music and it does change the way you feel how much money did you give it I wonder how many sharks have been drawn towards a documentary maker and gone such a good old son at least one we need to move on to our next fact sorry just one super quick thing I didn't realise Shrek was based on a book Shrek the cartoon Mike Myers it's a German story it was a short like it was a short book and then I was reading into Shrek and it turns out that there were a lot of people that tried to jump off the famous Shrek by literally ripping it off and there was a movie that was called Donkey Yoti and it was literally Donkey from Shrek that was the main character in it and the tagline of the poster they said from the producers who saw Shrek just went for it doesn't Sancho Panza write a donkey all the way through that that must be a weird book alright let's move on to our next fact it is time for fact number three and that is Andy my fact is that the false gecko which has the Latin name pseudo gecko is a gecko there are ten species of false gecko they're all geckos not one of them is not a gecko it's just a name it's just a really really bad name couldn't find why they're called false geckos I think maybe they were found and assumed to be something different geckos are wonderful they are really wonderful is that a false gecko that is it's hard to say we can say for sure it's a gecko can I tell you something just based on this picture which you won't be seeing if you're listening at home the gecko and in fact if you're at the back of the room it's going to be hard but the thing here the gecko's eye here its pupil is vertical so the eye is in two halves left and right so it undulates though there are these four spots top to bottom and the gecko can crunch the halves of its eye together to focus in its eye but when it's all crunched together obviously there's not much light entering the eye and that's a problem because they're largely nocturnal so the four dots up and down the pupil of the eye they act as four separate pinhole cameras and they all focus the light the little light they get on the same part of the retina so it is able to get four times the light entering its eye and see quite well full four point eye pupil brilliant that is incredible are you telling us that because you don't know why it's called a false gecko but there are geckos that don't have legs that look like snakes I would have thought that would have been the false gecko there are geckos without legs and they are gecko from the family gecki wow I didn't know that yes geckota there's six families of geckos with no legs they're all endemic to Australia and New Guinea right they've got vestigial hind limbs apparently they look a tiny bit like flaps you can see these little bumps that come out and that means it's a lizard no eyelids either almost every gecko has no eyelids there are 1500 species of gecko and all bar 43 have no eyelids and the ublepharidae which literally means good eyelids in ancient greek they have eyelids but even they also lick their eyes like all the other geckos do despite having eyelids amazing have you heard of the fuck you lizard no this is a lizard which it's not its official name it was a lizard when americans were over in vietnam during the war they kept noticing they just kept hearing a little voice and they're like what is going on and they'd be walking up fuck you and so they all discovered that it's just this lizard that just makes a noise fuck you so it became known as the fuck you lizard why do we not all have one of those the noises I was surprised that gecko noises they bark they're the only lizard that makes a noise there you go if you think what noises a lizard make you wouldn't have thought it was but that sort of sounds more like a sort of electric buzzer ring sally do you think a gecko could ever win the palm dog no fuck you we covered a few years ago I think we covered not the palm dog there's an award called the hero dog of the year and a few years ago it was won by a cat that's true I presented hero dog of the year hero dog of the year I don't know last year or the year before not this year but anyway quite recently and this is going to sound a bit mean now but one of the finalist dogs this is just my problem it was a finalist dog and it wasn't a two hour but it was similar it was very very small and his owner slash mommy whatever you prefer to call it said that the dog had saved her partner's life by giving him CPR that's her she's got home and her husband is kissing the dog that's what's happened there the dog was very very small I don't know why the dog was trained in CPR anyway it was all a bit of a problem for me having to silence the questions in my brain that kept coming cause there's so many stages you've got to lay the head back a bit you've got to you just want to go you're shitting me right was that one of the finalists didn't win didn't win top that as a dog the winners were amazing there were these water dogs who did open heart surgery yeah it's a dog with SpaceX in mission control hey animals have done some amazing things before we move on from gecko Zoe did you know that in January last year German Hans Kurt Kubus was caught at Christchurch Airport New Zealand with 44 geckos concealed in his pants I don't know how they got there they were doing a small incision he's just walking through immigration fuck you there's a massive market in gecko smuggling really gecko because they're diurnal like most geckos are nocturnal New Zealand gecko is diurnal very very pretty and they can go for about $22,000 what's diurnal sorry diurnal oh is that the wrong word just wait until the day I'm diurnal is that the right word don't question yourself Sally I'm sorry you'll get used to this my ignorance questions dad do you want to know diurnal awake in the day nocturnal awake at night for a puscular dusky you're awake in dusk from dusk till dawn well not from dusk till dawn at dusk but then again at dawn what happened to the terminal bit of the word why did they lose that I don't know speaking of latin I was reading about alien the roman writer he said he said that if a dead gecko lands in your wine then it's fine but if it lands in your olive oil it will taste terrible and when you eat it it will immediately give you lice wow they've got lots of symbolic there's lots of superstition around geckos and lizards aren't there if you find a lizard tail in your left shoe it is very lucky do not take it out that's a real one just the tail because obviously their tails come off and they can regrow them do you know starfish though if you take its leg off it can regrow a whole starfish from the leg that's nuts that's crazy though do they have they store all the nutrients in the leg until they can grow a mouth do they have any kind of I don't know what a starfish is or any kind of thing probably doesn't know it's a starfish is the truth they have neurons but that's crazy though because you'd figured that's the bit that you would need and then you grow back the limb but what if you cut all five off do they grow into five different starfish don't know probably can I tell you about a guy called Ben Barr sure okay I want to know about Ben Barr he's a New Zealand lizard expert herpetologist I guess and he was looking for a particular gecko called the capola gecko which was spotted for the first time in 1968 and then once again in 2007 and that was it no specimen had ever been observed or collected apart from those two occasions no one knew if it was still extinct or alive or if it was a teleporting horse exactly he led three trips to search for it and basically the process of searching for this capola gecko is just to turn over rocks and he's turned over so many thousands of rocks he spent two years turning over rocks he left no stone unturned he didn't even know for sure what it looked like because exactly not exactly no scientist had ever held one in their hand and after two years and three expeditions he found one he was so excited he said it was very similar to having a baby the euphoria and if he bought the movie rights it's just lovely yeah and he found four he found four on the same expeditions I imagine under the same rock but still imagine that determination to keep on it's like your surface area measuring scientists yeah you do admire it I got addicted to watching conservation tv at one point like the presentations of all the scientists all the conservation scientists zoologists I guess they're called because it was so funny like the Argentinian wolfman he had long long hair and he really appeared to be having an affair with the British cheetah lady and there was this really adorable couple I think from Chile, from Chile who had been looking for the onion wildcat and they said we have not ever seen the onion wildcat they've spent five years and they showed all these photos of slides of the Landrave in different places where they had looked for the onion wildcat and not seen it and they were so charming and like oh well it's been interesting don't need but we think there is wildcat we think this is a wildcat poo poo whatever they say and then they went off and then this really arrogant tall American thin American guy came in from the rare wildcat conservation society and he went wildcat, wildcat and he just had 50 slides of wildcats wait were you presenting him with an award I was just depressed I was in bed watching them on YouTube I became very interested in the women who run sloth sanctuaries because they seem to have absolutely no theological training whatsoever I know nothing about sloths so there's one woman who goes sloth orphanage in Costa Rica who you know people would find she was like I was here she's gone on a cruise with her husband and a baby sloth had fallen out of a tree and she'd known right then she needed to abandon her life in the States and start a sloth orphanage which she did and the problem she had she has to stop the sloths having sex where is it sloths how do you say it she's not having sex with each other she doesn't have room for any more and people get bringing them so they were kept strictly segregated that's a slow penis that is a slow penis there we go very nice but one of them got mained and she just shaved it and she didn't know whether this was right and she shaved them she didn't shave a sloth I'm sure and then smothered them in sulfur butter and wrapped them up in the bandages and naturally they died what is going on I was like this woman needs to go to vet school to know if that's and there was a PhD student and I ended up watching the documentary series about them and getting absolutely obsessed with a PhD student there called Becky who was I think we've mentioned Becky on the podcast have you? like no she hasn't been, we can get her no but I mean I feel she was northern she was quite lethargic herself she said I couldn't decide what to do for my PhD and I went to see my tutor and I said I can't decide between jaguar and sloths and he said what about sloths so here I am and then the cheetah lady went past and she went that's really good Andy when did we when was she mentioned we did a fact about sloths a few years ago and I think I just remember her Becky did you say that? she's probably a professor she's one of the most knowledgeable people about sloths in the world she just went over there and decided to start not very many people know very much about sloths it turns out I remember watching her throwing two sloths in a swimming pool one of them can swim and one type of sloth can swim I can't it feels like you're watching sloth torture videos I'm sorry that's what I thought have you seen the video where a sloth mistaken its own arm for a tree branch and then can't do anything about it because it's so slow it just falls from the tree not even sloths know anything about sloths that's the problem they can be quite fast they can't they swim really fast if you put them in a fast current they're just drugged aren't they there's leaves that's just drugs I did think about writing a film about this sloth sanctuary which is why obviously you can get the sloths out of Costa Rica their agents will never get back to you that's the problem with a sloth you can't transport them one of the sloth sanctuary owners was arrested by police trying to smuggle a pygmy sloth without for an exotic private zoo just speaking of so this lady ran a sloth sanctuary I was reading about a woman who runs a hospital for Hawaiian monk seals I read about her amazing she runs this monk seal place and she was out and she was getting lunch or something like that she gets a missed call she picks it up no one's there what's going on she's out it's the crocodile from the zoo somebody's been swallowed by the crocodile going let me out she gets back to the monk seal hospital and she's called the phone people she's like is there like anything wrong with the line it looks all fine gets back to the hospital and she looks and on the phone is a little gecko just pressing its finger on the call button and it's calling her and that was it they've been calling loads of other people as well the newspaper said a bazillion phones that was the official number yeah just little gecko feet can I do a quick quiz before we move on so this was a weirdly named animal pseudo gecko is it a gecko is it not I've got some more like this so the coffin fish can the coffin fish cough or are you tricking us with pronunciation it does float it's coughing fish but can it cough I'll say no it can't I don't think fish can well you're wrong fish can expel air through their gills if things get stuck in there and we call that coughing can the swallowtail butterfly swallow its own tail yes no I'm going to say no no obviously not but the only fact I know about it is it has an eye on its penis so it can see where it's going really that is not true it is true the swallowtail butterfly you've read the very hungry caterpillar that's the final scene and finally does the bloody nose beetle often have a bloody nose I'll say yes Andy I've told you insects don't have noses will you please listen I fell right into it no it expels blood from its mouth that's why it's called that it expels blood from its mouth we're going to need to move on to our final fact of the show the show right with you I want to talk about the penguin who got a knighthood and I want to talk about the Welsh corgi he's got a PhD never mind just keep those facts to myself explode with them someone ask about the PhD corgi please ok it is time for our final fact of the show and that is Sally the band the super furry animals wore Yeti costumes for a year on their phantom power tour and they said it really changed their personalities wearing costumes with them becoming much hairier changed how they performed what was the surface area it was the surface area of Wales wow so I don't know much about the super furry animals to be honest until yesterday but the Welsh the Welsh they're like the centrepiece of the cool Cymru Welsh resurgence with Gorky's psychotic minky you're a super fan you're a super furry fan Gorky's I got it minky as well you're wearing a t-shirt it's just they are very cool they did loads of yeah they did loads of crazy stuff they had lots of costumes and all that kind of stuff they bought a tank and drove it into the national they used all their they bought it for £10,000 from a one-eyed arms dealer with a limp was the eye on the penis or where was that and then they sold it on to Don Henley from the Eagles really? arms dealing band circuit it wasn't the only contact they had with arms dealers either they used to they sampled lots of sounds and they got some real guns for one of their they had a Scottish engineer they sampled some gun sounds and I can't find that fact but what's with the Yeti thing? so the Yeti thing they experimented on the album before they'd had some snow monsters they were really into having complete chaos on stage they got some snow monsters on stage in Glastonbury during the Northern Lights song and they were volunteers who were there they were members of Mogwai Mogwai, yeah and unfortunately Mogwai had just dropped an E before putting the very hot suits on and it became quite dangerous so they had to have people running around giving them water but they did want they were really into different kinds of creatures and then they came across a sculptor called Peter Gray who made loads of sculptures out of hair and he suggested just making these Yeti costumes for them, for a video for Golden Retriever and they thought this was brilliant and Peter Gray said I'll tell you what it needs to be, you need to shoot this on a glacier in Iceland next to a giant fire which all the Yetis are worshipping but they'd recently signed with Sony who said that was an uninsurable concept so they did it in a studio in North London and it sort of looks like the Yetis are playing inside a cardboard box which is being sniffed at and then urinated on by a dog but it's really, really cool So how did it change the personalities? Change the personalities, they said they're none of them exhibitionists really they're quite political and love music, very creative and non-conformist and the rest of it they released an entirely Welsh language, LP and then only tooled it in America and Australia it went into the top 20 but they said that it was like being transformed they said none of them were exhibitionists in reality it's an actual quote but we were able to put these costumes on and become 70s rock monsters and it drove the audience nuts so it's kind of interesting the impact of hairiness or hairlessness has incredible power I think it's a costume fit so my son's fifth birthday was late last year and he was dressed up as Mr Potato Head and I honestly felt Did you buy that or make it? I bought it online I saw it Did it inflate itself? It was just you wore it as like a fabric big piece of brown big piece of fabric and then you could stick on the eyes and the ears and stuff like that Do you know what? It was a hit Andy despite you cut I'm saying it was good for their birthday parties We haven't even got it at the moment Did your wife go as Mrs Potato Head? No, she dressed normally You had a bit of potato head Nocky in the evening, didn't you? How many eyes does Mr Potato Head have? Two that you can see Good question but here's the thing the confidence it gave me with the audience five year olds who would have worshipped you anyway No, I honestly Really? I felt like a superhero That's interesting School had just started My son was going to a new school I went up to all the parents Hey, what's up? You went to school? You did take him to school dressed as a potato No, this is the party I don't think it's the hair You must know this as an actor When you have a different persona that suddenly comes over you there's a weird confidence that makes you a bit unstoppable It can go both ways I'm thinking very vivid memories of it going the other way It's weird, when you play a bride in a film people on set treat you as if you're getting married Even though they know your acting We all know your acting They open doors and they smile at you and go Giles Brandrith was telling me that he was due to do an event with Diana Princess of Wales shortly turns out the event was after she had died and she was replaced on the day by Liz Hurley Not that similar But apparently she treated Liz Hurley as if she were the Princess of Wales They handed her posies and they all curtsied It's interesting, isn't it? There is a thing with autistic kids where if you put them in a mask you can't generalise but lots of people have found that theatre can really help people who are very introverted to speak Interestingly, just on topics what they were doing there they were dressing as yetis not being a furry but that's a lot of people dress up as furries, right? I think we should say what a furry is So a furry is someone who feels more comfortable when they're wearing a costume that has been designed where it's an animal to be multiple I think a furry is just someone who's a fan of the culture of anthropomorphic animals and some of them do like to work They're very keen, they feel like a bad press and over 60% of furries feel that they are bullied and get negative people have negative concepts but it's weird things, only around 25% of all furries own a suit Really? So I don't know how you classify yourself as a furry I guess you go to the cons and you like reading in your home clothes I thought it was all about the suit So did I, but we're wrong Maybe you can't afford it, but on the point of autism there was one of these cons autism panel with furries and there was a lady there who said that it really helps if you're autistic so she said for three days I am not autistic for three days I am a giant anthropomorphic version of the Titanic And she feels... It helps break the ice Oh God There we go The first furry convention The first furry convention was almost all people in normal clothes or in human clothes and you can still see videos of it online, it was in Holiday Inn in California and there's basically only one person who dresses up in a costume It was a guy called Robert Hill who came dressed as a giant S&M deer called Hilda the Bambioid Crikey I know But it's amazing and they chose that place because it's so close to Disneyland and they thought that everyone who's kind of anthropomorphic animals would also be into Disneyland and they went there and if you go online you can see the history of all these conferences that they've had called Conference and the first time they had a problem with the hotel was in 1994 and the problem was the hotel All the bathrooms got clogged drains That was the problem That was the only problem and breakfast buffet was no Apparently it was too big the hotel couldn't fill it up with just their people so there was a lot of other people there as well and you know they weren't so understanding and there was lots of complaints and then a maid found a costume in a room by a person who had a costume of veteran of the psychotic wars and it was a unicorn who carried a big sort of cartoon cherry bomb you know like it's like a big black bomb I mean you've got a nightmare t-shirt on in the front row I can tell like that so they would have like this big sort of black bomb shape like you'd have it with like the wick coming out so they found this the maid found this costume in the room and they called the bomb squad because there was a bomb in the room but a cartoon bomb although what's the best place to hide a bomb I guess so the bomb squad didn't see it the right way and they find the hotel for making a prank call so when the bomb squad came and they saw it was just cherry bomb and there was a unicorn costume next to us they're like you're wasting our time and they find them and they never were allowed to go back to that hotel again I don't think anyone's favourite reason to be there what what about this guy he's just got a costume it's not his fault it did amuse me that quote in the article we've probably both read where they said most furries it's not an erotic thing it just gets too hot the other astonishing fact was that there's 10,000 people in the UK who live as dogs that's what it said on google living as dogs dogs have a very broad spectrum of wanting to be referred to or dress up as dogs or have handlers and that seemed to be a different kind of outfit that seemed to be a kind of white unitard with little spots feels like you might have read live on the Isle of Dogs I go for a walk every day am I one of your 10,000 it may be a furry muck fact or it may be true just a broad spectrum of dogs though some dogs live in the house some dogs might live in a kennel some dogs are pampered house dogs there is a BDSM thing of pups being a pup yeah yeah you've got I did not know that I said you had to kind of gloss over it rather than to fully endorse but you know dogs divide into hound, pooch and mutt those are the three those are the three broad categories of dog broad category of dog that you can choose to dress up as if you see a dog normally you'll know within a second whether it's a hound, pooch or a mutt unless it's a Labrador in which case it's just a dog the Labrador is the kind of classic dog does no one else play hound, pooch or mutt no extraordinary introduction to Hero Dog of the Year because I think I could qualify I do just on dressing up as animals so a lot of people who have to dress as animals a lot and not sort of relaxation for their work are zookeepers and football mascots why do zookeepers have to dress as animals because either because they are interacting with animals who can't be exposed to too much human behaviour so baby gorillas for example if you have a baby gorilla that's been rejected by its mother there are zookeepers in Cincinnati who had to spend all of their time dressed as gorillas I'll tell you what they had to do I thought the animal just thought you were there as parent whatever you looked like but that's the problem they had a baby gorilla who had been rejected by its mother and they had a couple of other gorillas who were willing to look after it but weren't free yet and so they had to bridge the gap of looking after this baby gorilla because humans pretending to be gorillas so it didn't get too used to humans and sort of stopped being a gorilla and so they had to do 24 hour shifts they had to wear dark colours, they had to grunt while holding it they had to play with it like a gorilla mum would and they had to carry it on their backs wearing fuzzy vests so that it could get used to clanging on for support I think it's quite nice and then there were the zookeepers who have to dress as animals when they're pretending there's an animal that's escaped and so they have to dress as an animal and then run around and people have to catch them and then not be shot with a tranquilizer dart unless it has happened once but there was a brilliant photo from 2004 there's a Japanese party of school children they're all about I'd say four or five years old and they are being approached by a life size rhinoceros which is a pantomime rhinoceros with two zookeepers in it front and back they're approaching the school children the teachers have to get the children away from the rhino it looks genuinely terrifying but how realistic is the costume? it's pretty good if I was five I would be very nervous I don't think so because I once did a I once did a kids show a long time ago I did a kids show with Sue Perkins in fact called Lucy and the Dinosaurs and a friend of ours was playing a Tyrannosaurus Rex and Ben Moore Ben Moore was Tyrannosaurus Rex he had a big costume and Sue Perkins very irresponsibly said to the kids hey let's beat up Tyrannosaurus Rex and the stage was stormed with upwards of 55 year olds just kicking the living daylights out of Ben Moore who looks like an early Mr. Muscle Mr. Muscle's got muscly recently have you noticed that but anyway Mr. Muscle used to be in the advert he was in the recovery position crying and shaking well I've been beaten up in a chicken costume by Alan Davis on QI you have? beaten up by who? by Alan Davis and he properly I think he was taken out a lot of frustration from the previous ten years but yeah I was in a costume and he decided as a joke I think was this during the show or you guys in a hotel? it was for a Christmas special QI and the thing is because the kind of slot that you look through is quite small it's a big sort of costume the one that I had and I assume it was the same it very easily goes in the wrong place and suddenly you can't see anything and it's boiling hot you're sweating and everything and all you can do is go fetal it's like literally the only thing and you did on set like while filming it was very weird you stayed there for half an hour it was incredibly I wanted to talk you down I once got asked if I wanted to be an alien in a film like a low budget the Roman orator I've got the look I was playing basically I would have been playing the beast that sort of landed in a meteorite and then crashed but the guy my friend who was casting the film said you will just have to lie in a field in a rubber suit for a week and I said hello and I regret it now I wish I'd done it now what was the movie? I don't know it wasn't a big movie I remember talking to some extras about playing aliens playing aliens is quite easy you just wear silver wellies we kept the home clothes on and just had silver wellies just like alien feet going through a spaceship apparently going back to Furries the conventions are a nightmare for exactly the reason that you were saying about everyone's too hot yeah everyone's too hot they can't see anything so anyone who's in a costume is just bumping into each other the article says inevitably you're going to smack a child in the head because your arms are just wapping about you can't see them at the level you got a big tail sorry you got a big tail maybe oh yeah I was just trying to help I was trying to contribute to the was it going that badly? take the life take the life rogue dad hey by the way we are going to have to wrap up really soon and we've gone really far over the whole we've only just started can I give you some furry vocab and see if you can guess what they mean oh cool yeah so what do you think is a furry tan furry tan F U R I T A N oh a puritan it's like a puritan it's someone who only wears the costume it's a furry fan who is not interested in any sexual content that's really good to scratch do you know what to scratch means oh you can't scratch yourself through the fur oh that's good so what do you do I don't know it's not that but that would be good it is to do scratching it's to scratch someone gently often as a friendly gesture or greeting just do a little don't do that can you guess what a fur pile is is that where they all a bundle a carpet is like a carpet you would say it has a shag pile so is it broadly similar it's pretty much that it's a gathering of fully costume participants who roll around on the floor scratching each other scratching got quite sexy all of a sudden cool this is an easy one but for a sonar when you're working out what your fur is you find your first sonar the other thing is that Andy mentioned tails earlier and there could be an idea in the future that maybe we give all old people tails for balance you're good at this game the idea is you get these sort of mechanical tails and you put them on old people and they can tell if an old person with their consent and support just stop them falling over is it yeah so the tail can tell when they're about to fall over and it can move itself so it will give them more balance it will stop people from falling over I think that's brilliant I think we should give them gecko feet instead I think we should give them gecko feet instead because you don't want to come brown that what you doing up there that's one of the reasons that's one of the reasons that such a trade in geckos apparently is they're being studied for the space program did you read that because their feet can stick to anything except Teflon is that weird gecko feet will stick to absolutely anything at all except dry Teflon it's alright if it's wet isn't Teflon what we largely use in space though yeah so it's a problem yeah no fuck but they did an experiment where they thought like the cling ability we've made you exactly as good as a gecko now get onto that space station whoa they did this experiment where they got a load of geckos and they stuck them on stuff and then they euthanized them all and then they put them back up and they stayed exactly the same stuck dead as alive so wow yep um always good to go out on a big laugh that is it that is all of our facts thank you so much for listening if you'd like to get in contact with any of us about the things that we've said over the course of this podcast we can be found on our twitter accounts I'm on at Shriverland at James Harkin and Sally I've just given it up yeah but you're on instagram though I am on instagram I think I'm Sally smack on instagram Sally smack okay smack the pony and uh yeah we are also on um twitter as a group as no such thing or you can email us at podcast at qi.com or go to our website no such thing as a fish dot com all of our previous episodes are up there thank you so much for joining us tonight thank you so much for being here it's been awesome and we'll see everyone okay all right yeah um that's goodbye um so if we can play the music a bit this is the shows over now um we're Brett are we okay to do a bit of a bit of uh chatting and are we all good or are we run over time five minutes five minutes so sorry everyone there was just so much in there you sent me a message saying the newest species in lizard in New Zealand was discovered by me are you lying wow that's not evidence it's so substantial but also that wasn't the bit he was asking were you lying about are you Ben Barre are you Ben what is it what's your name can we get a mic over actually let's quickly get a mic tell us your name first of all I'm Lockie he's definitely from New Zealand we've established I named a hoplodactylus tohu after working with some of the indigenous Maori communities in New Zealand because it was important to their tribes that lived in the area that the species was in you named it what a hoplodactylus it's called hoplodactylus tohu what is it it's a gecko which is the odds of that happening you must have been sitting at the whole show just doing a fucking thing I was going to wait till the end I wasn't going to be that's amazing so you found a new species of gecko or a very old species of gecko yeah it's always been there but no one knew it existed that's amazing using DNA stuff we found it I got a message just today from someone saying because we did a fact about stick insects on a previous fish episode it's this week's episode isn't it with John Lloyd John Lloyd the creator of QI and black adder and spitting image John are you here John? that's our founder black adder spitting image not the 9 o'clock news guys the legend so we did this fact and someone messaged me saying just in case you're not completely sick of stick insects check out the lord how Eileen Fasmid Fasmid and then she wrote full disclosure it was my dad who found it when he went climbing Balls Pyramid with Dick Smith Balls and Dick found a new stick that's the love it that's wonderful oh thank you very much Locky that's brilliant are we going to do some more? yeah one or two more so we'll have to be really quick I guess just saying what is the one disgusting fact that you've learned that you wish you'd never learned oh there's a frog called the horror frog oh no there's a frog there's a frog fertility thing it's really horrible we were in Wales when we did it on the show it was in Cardiff in the Glee Club and the audience physically just were all repulsed but I can't remember the details of the fact now so if you go back 300 episodes and listen to that have you got one? I've got one there are orangutan brothels there are where what do you want me not just to say it I'll tell you how I found this out because the story is quite funny I was filming Death in Paradise I really didn't want to go I don't like this show if you don't do this show I'll turn it down three times because if you don't do it I'm going to drop you you just don't want to be on telly you wouldn't be hosting dog award ceremonies that's your thing so I got on the plane actually I'm going to the Caribbean for 10 days it's not that bad and I got out there and I had a really great time had the most amazing cast a brilliant gang of renegades and one of the people Francis had a who's telling us about house he had in Borneo and he said oh you know it was a very small house and there were a reed roof and snakes used to fall in when it rained and I said oh that's awful I couldn't handle that he said it wasn't the worst thing though the worst thing was the sex tourists going through the jungle to have sex with the orangutans and I was like no way and we said the orangutans are threatened and I said because of the logging and he went no because of the sex tourists going in and I said oh that's awful and Nick Moran from what's it called lock stock he said oh that's disgusting he said they have sex with the orangutans he said I wouldn't fuck a ginger human he said like the problem like the problem was that the orangutan was orange sorry Andy I know your parents are in I'm sorry sorry Andy's mum and dad any other questions yeah well once again Sally's brought us to the end of a show thank you so much everyone love it thank you have a good night