No Such Thing As A Fish - 528: No Such Thing As A Toilet Haiku
Episode Date: April 25, 2024James, Anna, Andy and Dan discuss low lighting, deep diving, high kicks and haiku. Visit nosuchthingasafish.com for news about live shows, merchandise and more episodes. Join Club Fish for ad-free ...episodes and exclusive bonus content at apple.co/nosuchthingasafish or nosuchthingasafish.com/patreon
Transcript
Discussion (0)
Hey everyone, welcome to this week's episode of Fish. Before we get going, we have a very
exciting announcement. Anna?
Thanks Dan. Our announcement is that our esteemed colleague Andrew Hunter Murray, famous podcaster,
comedian galore, does one say that? He's also a published author. I'm sure you've read
his first two novels, which were brilliant thrillers. He's written a third, which is
so much fun so far.
I'm only about a quarter of the way through
because look he didn't send me the proof on time, but it is fantastic. It's called a beginner's guide to breaking and entering.
It's really fun. It's got elements of comedy. It's got elements of thriller in it so far.
I really love the main character because he's doing something that I can really imagine myself doing in life.
Don't Just Believe Us,
it's been complimented by The Guardian,
which says it has a propulsive plot,
an ingenious narrator and lashings of intrigue,
making it a genuine and thoroughly enjoyable page-turner.
The Sunday Times has called it hugely entertaining,
laugh out loud, funny and impossible to put down.
Dan Schreiber, what do you say?
Well, I actually am a third of the way through the book.
And I can say it absolutely gets better after the first quarter.
So if you want your books great in the first quarter
and then accelerating to an even better place,
you've got to get a beginner's guide to breaking and entering.
It is the story of a guy who breaks into the second homes of the wealthy.
He lives in them. They don't know it, he steals nothing,
but one day after he accidentally bumps into a group of people
who also do the same thing, they witness a murder
and they get embroiled in a thing that they can't escape.
And it's one of those comedy capers
that just gets further and further into the chaos of it.
If you've read Richard Osman's The Thursday Murder Club series,
this is the perfect accompaniment to it.
It's comedy, it's thriller, page-turner.
You're gonna love it.
So go to your local bookshop or any online bookseller
or Amazon, look up A Beginner's Guide to Breaking
and entering by Andrew Hunter Murray now.
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 Anna Tyshinsky, James Harkin,
and Andrew Hunter Murray. 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, that is James.
Okay, my fact this week is that children's author, Margaret Wise Brown, died from doing
an over enthusiastic can can kick I think now
having read up on her she would like that we laughed just then yeah I think so
definitely so is there an under enthusiastic can can kick is this oh
yeah yeah my money back you've got your protractor out in the front row.
That's disgusting Andy. They really looked down at that.
So Margaret Wise Brown is most famous for a children's book called Good Night Moon.
She's written lots of others, but this is the biggie. What I liked about this is in this podcast,
the number of times I've got a book out
because we've talked about that author and I've got about 25% of the way through it and never
finished that book. This is probably the first time I've got through the whole book. I managed
to finish it. All 140-ish words, right? I thought you were going to say pages then. I was going to say
no, that wasn't the book I read. Yeah, it's a very short book. Actually, maybe the first of those
board books that you give to children, apparently it was the first of those. But she,
unfortunately, died in 1952. She just had emergency surgery on either an ovarian cyst or an inflamed
appendix, depending on what you read. And she was ready to leave the hospital and be carried,
as she said, in a sedan chair by four of the
village boys to a hilltop estate where she would convalesce. But to show the medical
staff that she was in good health, she kicked up her leg, cancan style, and she had a blood
clot, dislodged it, blacked out and never wrote again.
Died? According to what I read, died instantly.
Yeah.
Like, cancan kicked and just out.
It's sad, obviously, but that's how can kick it just out. It's sad obviously
But that's how I would love to go out
It's a good way to go I think if you've got to go at that age
Yeah, I mean she was young 42. Yeah, she was the other cool thing about this. She was on her way to meet
I think her lover. Yeah, one of the junior Rockefellers
He's gonna pick her up in a boat and sail away to Tunisia with her Yeah, he was honest. He was on his way on the boat. Yeah. Yeah, one of the junior Rockefellers who's gonna pick her up in a boat and sail away to Tunisia with her
Yeah, he was honest. He was on his way on the boat. Yeah. Yeah, so sad
I think that was maybe the saddest thing is that she'd had a very unlucky love life and she'd met this guy
Sort of the year before I think and I was reading a bit of a biography of her that he wrote many many years later
And he was so obviously so in love with her and she had finally found love with her life.
And then, yeah, bam, he was nicknamed Pebble,
but it was a still James Stillman Rockefeller Jr.
And he was junior, he was 24.
Yeah, wow.
Toy boy.
He later married a descendant of the Carnegie's.
So it's a real powerhouse couple that the Rockefellers
and the Carnegie's.
Yeah.
Carnegie's. Carnegie's I would say. Carnegie's are the ones who come up to you in the bar and
say that's a shit shirt that's not how you beg the neg is a compliment and then
a backhanded compliment watch what should I be doing you should say I love
your shirt I saw six people wearing it earlier tonight
tonight. Oh, that's good. Yeah, Margaret Wise Brown was a absolute legend. What a gal she was. And she sort of the fact is, is that she's often referred to as
almost like a Hollywood dame. Like she was going around in high class parties.
She was doing the weirdest of stuff. Socially, she took on she had things
like the Birdbrain Club Club which it was a club where
the decision was anyone who was part of it if they said on the day it's Christmas you
have to go over and celebrate Christmas. It's a fun idea. It's a great idea. No it's a tiresome
idea. It's a fun idea the first two times you do it and even by the third time it's
annoying. I think it was used wisely. I'm sure some people were kicked out of the Christmas Club
Yeah, very bright side. It's her brain society. Yeah, and she could run as fast as a dog. There we go
Which dog?
Well, she was an avid I've written in my notes she was a lifelong beagle she was actually beagle er
which is where you chase hairs on foot and you have a load of beagle dogs with you and
Which is where you chase hairs on foot and you have a load of beagle dogs with you and
Supposedly she was noted for her ability to keep pace with running beagles her relationship with rabbits gets intense
When she's an author because she published a book which was called little fur family The illustrator is the same guy Gareth Williams who did the illustrations for Charlotte's web
She had a first print run of 75,000 copies for this book and And each edition of it was wrapped entirely in the fur
of a New Zealand rabbit.
No. Yeah.
I don't believe you.
And were they all ones that she caught herself
while peeing in the toilet?
Yeah, I have no idea.
It's amazing, isn't it?
Sorry, no.
Right?
Apparently it was because of a surrealist artist
called Marete Oppenheim, who you might know this like,
it's like a teacup with rabbit fur on the inside and
the outside actually. It's in the Museum of Modern Art in New York is it? I think
and it was the first surrealist thing that they bought but yeah she decided
she would do her own thing with books and make them really furry.
75,000! Yeah it's mad.
Dan you mentioned that you haven't read good night moon so you
won't be aware as i am as someone who reads it every single night to my daughter that the main
character in that is also a rabbit yeah in fact they're both rabbits so having read this about
her i look at that completely differently now every page where you see this old rabbit in a
rocking chair it's a fantastic book we should say it's's so good. It's pretty good. It's like one of the first ones that just was like slightly weird and just rhyming
stuff and yeah. It's just a little bunny going to bed and it's all the stuff in
the room you know goodnight clocks and goodnight socks. It's just very gentle sort of
lulling for child. I'm sure I was read it lots I think. But she also didn't like
children as well as not liking rabbits. It's kind of weird to make a book about rabbits for children if you don't like either of those things.
Yeah, because she also did another book which had a print run of 80,000 which was entirely wrapped in the skin of five-year-olds.
She said in an article for Life magazine, she said, I don't especially like children.
And in another note to someone she wrote, how many children have you got? I have 50 bucks.
I think she saw the bucks as her. They are less trouble.
Have you seen all the Easter eggs in Good Night Moon?
This is just what happens when you have read it
over a hundred times now.
You're gonna have to read it again.
You are.
There's so much new stuff to discover.
Don't tell me it's the same with Les Miserables
because I'm not reading that again.
As long as you got the illustrated version.
Well, I won't give it away so you can discover it,
but if you do have a copy, look at the clock on every page
and look at the moon.
Does it go backwards?
No, it doesn't.
Oh, like memento.
That would be so much better, why didn't you?
It just goes forwards.
Just goes forwards.
And so you know that it takes an hour and 10 minutes
to get this rabbit to sleep.
Oh, when you watch it go forwards,
which is actually a long time.
And look at the book on the bedside table. What do you think the book on the bedside table is?
Is it the book itself? It's the book itself. Is it? It doesn't matter.
Good night moon, still innovating all these years later. She wrote her books, she said,
in a sort of 15 to 20 minute period. That's the first draft. And then the second draft.
This is uncanny. We're talking about your books as well.
and then the second draft. We were talking about your books as well.
So it takes her 15 to 20 minutes for the first draft
and then it takes her between one and two years for the second draft.
Oh, that's why you're going wrong, no second draft.
Oh, the edit's hard, the edit's hard.
Can we talk about the great thing she did with the royalties?
Cesar. Margaret Weiss-Brown gave the royalties for every single one of her books
Basically in her entire estate. She said I leave it all to this little nine-year-old boy who lives next door
I'm friendly with and you know, I'm 40. Nothing's gonna happen to me
I'll probably change the world when I gain dependents or whatever
Anyway, she then dies two years later, right two years later
She dies so and also good night moon was the, it was not selling big anymore.
It was probably going to go out of print shortly.
Obviously it's never been out of print.
It's sold millions of copies.
And he was called Albert Clarke.
And by the time he was 21, there was $75,000 waiting for him.
Unfortunately, he had become a bit of a...
Tear away?
A bit of a...
Bit of a rogue.
Bit of a rogue.
Burglary, joyriding, vandalism. He was a very, very, a bit of a bit of a bit of a rogue bit of a rogue burglary joyriding vandalism
He's a very very very naughty boy kicked out of school for fights all that sort of yeah
And he had this bizarre life where he was always broke and getting into trouble and being arrested and banged up
And then every year publishers would say right. It's another two million quid waiting for you
It's like the lotto louts. Do you remember him?
Do you not remember him? He was like when the lottery first started. Okay, I'm sure he's a very nice guy
So apologies if you're listening
But he won a load of money on the lottery and then just spent it all within like two years or something
And he was in all the tabloids as being a bit of a rogue, right?
It's like that but then if then once he spent it all he won the lottery again
Yeah, exactly so the first
initial batch money that he got he gave a lot to his parents which was nice he gave 35 000 to his
parents he spent 4 000 on clothes for him and his two brothers he had two brothers and then he bought
a chevy impala as soon as he took it out of the the shop got smashed into immediately dented it
that's not his fault no no but i read an interview with him where he was sort of saying, look, yes, I've done
bad things, but also just like bad things just happen all the time that throw me into
situations.
There's such weird details.
It's like he had a dented car and 14 pairs of alligator shoes.
That's all he had in life.
And then the next check comes in and the only thing he's kept with him wherever he goes
is the will.
He keeps the will that she wrote.
And the alligator shoes.
It's a naked man wearing alligators on his feet,
clutching a will.
Isn't it weird? Like, she was putting rabbits on her books.
He was putting alligators on his feet.
This is like the least vegan fact we've ever done.
I just mentioned her love life earlier,
which was, again, not something you imagine when you're reading it
because you picture this old lady.
He's writing these books.
Also, her name sounds old, doesn't it? Margaret Wise Brown. It doesn't sound like Wise.
Yeah. I suppose in the 1920s that was a really sexy name.
Margaret is now a more old-fashioned name. I think that's fair. Is that fair to say?
Well my mum's a Margaret. There we go.
And she's very cool. Yeah.
Can come in every weekend. She had an interesting love life.
Oh yeah. Changed his mum.
She had an interesting love life, changed his mom, and so did Margaret Wise Brown. And she went out with a woman called Michael Strange, confusingly, who, I like the LA Times in 1992,
described Michael Strange as a writer and performer of limited gifts and voracious ego.
And she did seem to be not a great partner for Margaret Wise Brown But they got together in 1940 and pretty much lived together or lived in next door apartments until strange died in 1950
They they did share a butler
The two ladies. Yeah, so they had they had an apartment opposite each other
So in the corridor the butler would just sort of go out the door go through the next door and sort of did they know?
They know they know that they were sharing a butler or was he doing a sort of...
Yeah, take the mustache off.
You don't need to take the mustache off, you're the same butler.
Why would you do that?
Oh no, because they're dating.
Oh, you're right.
Oh yeah.
How's your butler?
Well, he's still without a mustache.
He must get one, mine looks dashing.
That's pretty fun.
That's a great thing to do.
I looked at a few other kids authors.
Well, basically, I went through my daughter's books and Googled all of their authors.
And I was looking at The Tiger Who Came to Tea,
which is by Judith Kerr and Michael Rosen,
who was the children's laureate and the writer and stuff.
He has drawn parallels between The Tiger Who came to tea and Judith Kerr's early life.
Because Judith Kerr's father was on a death list from the Nazis.
And they had to leave Nazi Germany when she was nine years old.
And Michael Rosen said that maybe the tiger is based on the threat that they faced when they
were children children because it
disrupted their life so much they took everything that the family owned like
the tiger who came to tea drinks all of their water and eats everything in the
cupboards and stuff like that and Judith Kerr has said that the tiger represents
nothing more than a tiger. Well I believe Michael. Yeah, me too.
It's got a very weird ending, the tiger who came to tea.
Yeah, well...
Doesn't the tiger just leave?
No, I think Daddy comes home and it's really annoying because, you know, the tiger's had
all his...
Drunk all his beer.
Drunk all his beer and had all the food for tea.
So then...
He says, I've got a very good idea.
We'll go to the cafe and have sausage and chips and ice cream.
Oh, yeah.
Daddy takes them all out for...
Meanwhile there's a drunk tiger sticking their house.
The toilet goes unaddressed, exactly, yeah.
No, because then the next morning they buy loads of food to fill the pantry up and they
buy a tin of tiger food in case he comes back and he never did.
Oh really?
Interesting.
I think if I was a dad walking back home, I open the door, I see my three kids and my wife sitting by a table, no no just like in my story.
And in the corner is a drunk tiger. I do think my first instinct is to not make a deal of it and say kids, we're going out now.
Okay so then the tiger's already left when daddy comes home.
Oh I thought you said he was drunk in the- No, so daddy comes home and all the food's gone.
All the water's gone.
There's no water in the taps.
Oh yeah, wow.
And mummy and Sophie tell daddy what's happened
and said the tiger came in and ate all of the food
and drank all of the drinks and all of your beer
and took all the water out of the taps.
And then daddy goes, let's go to a cafe.
That's how it works.
It sounds like daddy doesn't believe a word of this.
It sounds like it's happened before.
Yeah.
And all the beer's gone, has it?
Oh, the tiger.
Right.
Someone's turned the water off, have they?
And the water bill over here, that's not been paid.
But the interesting thing about that
is when they walk to the cafe, it's nighttime,
so all the streetlights are on, and all the cars
have their headlights on.
But there's a little cat that's walking by near where they live that looks exactly like a tiger, but in the cat form.
It's acknowledged as a...
No, it's not acknowledged, but it's obviously like what inspired her lies.
This drunken reprobate lady's lies as she boozers up on her husband's drinks.
I wish.
It's what we're going to tell daddy now, right?
Tiger.
He's never going to believe it, Mum.
I wish I'd been able to, because I was on a sofa with Michael Rosen yesterday.
Were you?
Yeah, but it was such a long sofa that I couldn't ask him about this.
It was an enormously long sofa.
Well, he wouldn't have heard you.
Honestly, he wouldn't. I would have had to get him to walk to the other end of the sofa.
Oh, wait, did you genuinely think, oh, I'd love to talk to this man this legend of of literature now the sofa's too long
He had picked the absolute opposite. He had picked the furthest other part of the sofa
It was very clear to me that he wasn't looking for a pal. All right, well you did the FS
It was a corner sofa as well, so I could have walked the hypotenuse
Hot news. Stop the podcast.
Stop the podcast.
Hey everyone, this week's episode of fish is sponsored by HelloFresh.
Yes, indeed.
HelloFresh is the service that brings a million times more to your kitchen if you're me and
not very good at cooking and at least a hundred times more to your kitchen even if you're good at cooking. They deliver you
meal ingredients in perfectly proportioned amounts so there's no waste and they deliver
the recipes to go with them.
That's right. HelloFresh basically guarantees you're always going to have an amazing meal
option in your house for you and your family. Do you know what I had last night, Anna?
What did you have last night, Dan?
Two-minute noodles. If only I had a HelloFresh box sitting in my house ready for a perfect
meal for me and my family to eat.
If only you had Dan.
This week I have sampled creamy gochujang,
spinach and ricotta ravioli,
Cormor style spiced prawn, pea laugh.
There's so many good options to choose from.
And if you go to hellofresh.co.uk slash new fish,
you can use that link to get 60% off your first order and 25% off the next two months.
That's right. So head to hellofresh.co.uk slash new fish and unlock more in your kitchen.
You'll get 60% off your first order and 25% off the next two months.
OK, on with the show.
On with the podcast.
Okay, on with the show. On with the podcast.
Okay, it is time for fact number two, and that is Anna.
My fact this week is that the city of Matsuyama has over 90 post boxes specifically for mailing
haiku.
Hmm.
Lovely.
Or, as you could say, Matsuyama has over 90 post boxes for mailing haiku.
Brilliant. Is that right? It's right. It's right. Amazing. Well done. Why, why, why? Why did you bother making that haiku?
They're bloody easy to make aren't they? This is the capital city of Shikoku Island, which is one of Japan's islands.
And it's because the city sort of calls itself the home of haiku because very famous haiku
poets lived there.
And so the first post box was installed in 1968 to commemorate one of these poets' births.
And now they're all over the place.
They're like monuments and baths, public baths,
and they're really beautiful as well
and lots of different designs.
And every three months,
the local haiku poets go to the post boxes
or they send an envoy and they empty them out
and then they judge all the entries.
Oh, the winner gets published on the city's website.
It's so good.
Yeah, it's really nice.
I hope there's a walking trail between them,
which is called the Take a Haiku.
Lovely.
That would be good.
But there is a walking trail.
Sorry to jump in on your joke.
No, no.
I didn't see it coming.
You should be able to see by now that long,
that distant look in my eyes,
which shows something's brewing.
The fact he's been silent for two minutes
doesn't actually have been a clue.
Yeah, no, they do in this place as well, the Matsuyama area, they have certain haiku bars
that you go into and you go up to the counter and you write a haiku and the cocktail they
make you is based on your haiku.
No.
It's just, you know, they love a haiku, they love a novelty thing to do there, yeah.
What do you say?
Gin and tonic, please.
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah sort of died, it was really dying, and he lit a fire under its arse.
And gave it its name.
It was called like Hoku or something before.
And then he was-
It didn't change it much.
No, he just put a stamp on it.
He just, and this is, yeah, this is the Shiki stamp.
It's really interesting what Shiki did,
because he was obsessed with Haiku.
He failed his exams at university,
partly because he was writing so many Haiku and reading haiku and you know
he was engrossed in the world of haiku. He sort of added to the rules about haiku and
the first the most important thing about haiku as we know them is that it's an observation
of what's around you. It's an observation of nature. So that's that's a key element
to haiku.
So actually what Hannah did at the start was not ha haiku. No. It had the right number of syllables in, but it has to have something to do with nature
or something to do...
It has to have a word that has something to do with one of the seasons.
So for instance, there's a really famous one by Basho who I mentioned earlier, which goes
an ancient pond, a frog jumps in the splash of water.
In Japanese it works as a haiku,
but for him it's the word frog refers to spring.
It's a spring word.
And so you need one of those.
And so unless you're using the word post box to refer to.
Yeah, it's a classic autumnal word, post box.
It's in the glossaries.
I get it now.
So I read that earlier, that one,
and I thought, you know, it was like,
this was one that he published and became famous and he was like dining off it for years
I'm wearing that haiku was insane and I didn't find it impressive at all. I didn't make the spring and the frog connection
That's wonderful. Now you wowed by it. I do like the I do like the punnery and the way of double meaning
Are we saying it because frogs jump?
Then I just like it again
That wouldn't work at all in Japanese.
I mean, it's fine.
No, it's just the frogs come out in spring, as in they're born in spring, so they're
associated with springtime.
And it's supposed to, you read it and it just puts you in that position of being in a garden
in spring.
The frog jumps in, you know exactly where you are, you know what's happening, you're
one with nature.
That's it.
Do you get it now?
I get it now.
Listen, it's no good night moon.
It's like, it's...
But what it's meant to be is like,
it's like a shot in a film almost.
Yeah, yeah.
It's a shot that crystallises something
and expresses something.
I really like them.
I did not know they don't have to be 5'7'5".
No!
You can be a bit flexible, you know.
And actually, I was very interested to message
my Japanese friend after I'd read about this
because yeah, people who write about haiku properly and who know about it say,
look, the syllables thing, it's a misinterpretation in English anyway,
because it's not syllables, it's sounds.
And she wrote me a few haikus at random, I think, while she was sitting on the toilet.
And none of them had the right number of syllables.
And I was like, sorry, I don't know if she would have wanted me to share that, but I have. And she said, an ancient toilet, and her jugs in the splash of water.
And she said, the only thing I think a haiku needs is the seasonal reference.
And it is, they have down these glossaries that you have to stick to, don't they?
You can buy a glossary, a haiku glossary.
Dan, could you maybe say some words that you think might be summer words?'t they? You can buy a glossary, a hygr glossary. Dan, could you maybe say some words
that you think might be summer words?
Summer words?
Yeah, like a word.
Sun.
That might do it.
I reckon.
Although you do get sun in the other, you know,
true.
A nice bright winter sun.
You sort of get it all year round, don't you,
the old sun?
Harvest.
Sorry, that would be an autumn one.
Bikini.
Beach, yeah.
Bikini. Yeah, yeah, that's a classic. It's in the list of autumn one bikini beach. Yeah
Buster
So summer could be insects autumn scarecrows
Winter tangled twigs empty fields lovely. I really like can I show you the prop I brought along? Yeah, I like a related prop
I don't know if you guys know this you got Michael Rosen in your back
The sofa um, okay, so there's a British haiku society. Oh, yeah, I don't you guys find that yeah Yeah, you're research. Well, I'm very proud to announce they've gained a new member this week
Yeah, have you stopped your subscription to the Lighthouse
Society?
The Association of Lighthouse Keepers have lost a member.
Is it like having citizenship? You're only allowed to be a
member of one or the other?
I think it's lapsed now because I haven't received a copy of
Lamp Magazine for a while. And I was a big fan of that.
I am now a member of the BHS.
Yeah.
British Home Stars.
That's right.
And look, I've got the journal here which is called Blythe Spirit.
So Andy's holding an A5 white book with Blythe Spirit written on it.
Does it have a lot of haiku in it?
It's absolutely jam-packed with really good haiku.
Can you just randomly pick one?
Yeah, give us a good haiku.
A spring one if you can.
You're not gonna believe this.
This is by Philip Murrell.
Called home, I scrape away moss to find his name.
And you can see why I signed up,
because he was full of this.
I like the way you pretended that was just random,
but actually-
It's fallen open to this page
because the spine is so cracked.
All right. A baby shower immersed by cherubs, Botticelli.
What do you guys, I have to, I admire the idea of haikus.
I really like them.
It doesn't do anything for me.
Certainly something like reading through a book like that.
Just, I imagine if I was sitting in nature
and then someone sent me a haiku about the area that
would be really nice and poignant but do you guys get something from haiku? I have done having done
research for this I'd say until that I hadn't until I understood what it was I didn't really
get anything out of it but I like the idea they have these clubs where you know 100 people will
go to a beautiful place in nature and they'll all just write as many haiku.
I get that.
And you're just kind of like, you're trying to capture one moment where you're with nature
in just this kind of slightly formulaic, but you can go out of the rules if you want to
way.
I kind of, I do.
It's a lovely conceit.
Definitely.
I like it.
I really like it.
As James says, reading about it and the analysis of it as with any kind of poetry or art, because
I'm not smart enough to understand it face-on but when
you read the analysis I think you get it and maybe you could be lured in by the
punchline element you know often often you'll do a comedy set where at the end
it's got a big reveal and all haikus have them haikus exactly there's supposed
to be this moment of realization so that's why I thought the spring with the frog thing was a...
Sorry, not that kind of thing.
More like the one I read that I really liked was bass picking bugs off the moon.
And the way it was explained was your bass, it's a type of fish, it's plucking bugs,
and then it's off the moon, because suddenly you realize to them,
they think they're picking bugs off the surface of the moon because they're always looking up at the moon
All of the haikus would have like a word in it which is kind of hard to translate into English
But they're like a surprise or a cut they call them a cutting word
online a lot and it might be aha
Sorry, yeah, it's just like it's an, it's almost like an exclamation point.
Do you know what I mean?
My favorite haiku that I found, um, is,
and I hadn't heard of this, and I really think this is beautiful,
the idea of the death poem.
Oh yeah.
So the death poem is a Japanese tradition whereby,
if you know that you're about to die,
let's say an execution is going to happen,
because this has been going from centuries and centuries, this death poem idea, you are
encouraged to write your final poem. And that can be presented in sometimes as a haiku. So there was
one that was written by a guy called Moriya Senan. And his was, bury me when I die beneath a wine
barrel in a tavern. With luck, the cask will leak." Okay, so that's his thing.
What's really nice is the line,
hopefully the cask will leak or the cask will leak,
the Japanese wording for that is
Mori Yasen Nan, which is his name.
Lovely.
Oh, that's clever.
Isn't that wonderful?
Yeah.
That is clever.
No one else can do that, can they?
No one else took a chance in that competition.
Hey doctor, watch this.
I'm doing a big can-can.
Uh-oh.
Oh, shit, shit.
Yeah.
Beautiful.
Yeah.
Really good.
Where's the seasonal reference?
Did you guys hear tell of...
This is now he's a member of the Haiku Society, this is how Andy speaks.
Everything has to scan.
Did you hear tell of the 2014 Haiku artist who operated out of Sainsbury's in North London?
This was the Bord Baker who smuggled complaint poems into the Sainsbury's treats
that he was bagging up.
So for example, enjoy your cookies, each bite is a minute, I'll never get back.
Anyway, he was identified and immediately fired.
Sainsbury's pomp drives to customers and said it should never have happened.
I love it.
Come on, I'm all Come on. I liked it.
You'd be absolutely delighted if you got it.
It's like a fortune cookie, isn't it?
But instead of your future, you get some abuse.
This city is Matsuyama, which led me to read about Hideki Matsuyama,
who was the first ever Japanese professional golfer to win a men's major golf championship.
What year are we talking?
2021.
What? Wow. That's the first time.
First time a Japanese man
at least has won a major golf
championship.
And he was once disqualified
from a competition due to Tipex.
Riddle me this.
Yeah, OK.
Just qualified for the competition.
Famous in the golfing world.
Painting his balls.
Painting his balls with Tipex,
but they're already white.
Yeah, but does it add weight to it
or some kind of grip that you wouldn't have?
You're getting really close.
Okay.
But it's not the balls.
Did he tip his over his score on the board
and then bring a different score?
It's the club.
He would put it onto the club itself on the...
So he put like a little target on the club so that he could see where he wanted to hit
the ball with tippex and that's allowed, you're allowed to do that.
But he put too much tippex on it which made it slightly raised which would change the
grip that when the club hit the ball it would change the way that the ball flew and they
measured it and it was like a millionth of a millimeter too thick.
How amazing is that amazing from a competition
the
forensic down to the
Dant someone said yes, you are allowed to put tippex on your club, but only a bit
Yeah
Wow, so that's just me shoe honing some golf
There was an exciting thing in the world. This is sort of he was the first Japanese
golfer to do this. There was an exciting thing in the world of haiku in 2017 when a very prestigious
competition was won for the first time by a non-Japanese person. Really? And it was
Gracie Starkey, who was a 14 year old school girl from Gloucestershire. Wow.
Really? And she was learning Japanese at the time and her teacher encouraged her to enter it.
I think there were 18,000 entries.
It doesn't say much for the entire population of Japan, does it?
It doesn't.
This girl who I'm sure is great but has only just started learning the language.
Yeah, it shows that the Bato entry is low for Haikyuu, I suppose.
Like I can't imagine her winning the Japanese Open Golf, for instance.
And her poem was printed on millions of... there's a green tea drink company that was
sponsoring it, so her poem was printed on millions of these bottles.
And the code of the story is that Gracie then decided to drop Japanese for GCSE, saying
the Japanese language is so hard. Okay. It is time for fact number three and that is Andy.
My fact is that in the early 1900s, there was a debate over whether cinemas should be dark or fully lit.
Do we think they got it right?
I think they did get it right.
For me, yes, I think dark is better.
For the screening purpose, yes. For the rest of society, maybe not.
Mmm, go on. Well, this is, this was the brainchild of a guy called Roxy Rotherfell, early cinema entrepreneur, and he announced in 1910 that he had perfected what he called daylight pictures.
He said they were absolutely flickerless, they wouldn't tire the sensitive eyes of the audience out,
and you could see everything in the room.
And that was a kind of crucial point,
because he was a big part of making cinema
socially acceptable, whereas, you know,
before it was fairgrounds and peep shows,
and it was a bit raucous, and it was dark,
and you couldn't see what was going on,
and people might be getting up to hanky panky,
and men and women were sitting next to each other
in the dark, you know, why have we allowed this to happen? And he basically said, look, here's a lovely, bright,
nicely lit screen. And he said, you can see the picture perfectly, but you can also see the room.
And it's just a nice, more sociable way of watching. But actually, even the very, very, very, very
earliest cinemas. So when Edison's Motion Picture Patents Company was first sending out
projectors, they said that you should install ambient lighting to deter misbehavior. So even
from the very first moment of cinemas they were saying let's not have it too dark because you
never know what's gonna happen. Imagine if they stuck to it, I wonder how many children wouldn't
have been conceived in the back row of a cinema
It could have done damage to the population of the world
Conceived?
I know, it would have ruined a lot of people's cinema experiences, wouldn't it?
In their youth
There's a cinema that's reopened in Leeds recently called the Hyde Park Picture House and they are gas lamp lit and
They basically were saying that the reason that there were gas lamps in there was to stop the groping.
Not necessarily hanky panky, but actually attacking women in the dark sitting in the cinema.
And so as they were restoring it, they've been putting up photos online of all the things that they're finding,
like sort of under the floorboards and the seats and stuff.
And one thing they're finding is giant hatpins.
And this used to be a suffragette thing where it suffra-
Hatpins?
Yeah, you would have- they had to legislate the length of hat pins
because they were being used as weapons.
But in the cinemas, women would bring hat pins with them
because guys would come and lech onto them
and no one could see it.
And they would start poking them with the old hat pin.
Yeah.
Because there was a thing that you had on you anyway.
Like you could say, oh no, this hat pin,
it's not for stabbing people, it's for keeping my hat on.
But you knew if you were a pervert
and the woman you were perving on's hat fell off,
you knew you were in trouble.
Yeah.
Get out of there, that's my advice.
It's really cool.
If we ever get back to Leeds for a live show or whatever,
the cinema's back open.
It's the only gas lit cinema in the world now.
It's pretty cool.
One of the thing about the darkness in cinemas
is that you know how if you go to the theatre
or the opera or you know whatever it's dark, well that wasn't always the case either and it mostly
came through Gustav Mahler who decided everything should be dark and he was probably inspired by
the cinemas. So I think it seems that in the early 20th century,
he insisted on dimming the auditorium.
And actually when he did so, the audience were protesting
because if you go to the opera in Vienna
in the early 20th century,
you're wearing all your best clothes.
You want everyone to see you.
Oh yeah, you didn't go to see the opera.
You went to see your rivals, didn't you?
And the box over the other side of the audience.
What you didn't want was it to be dark
and you have to concentrate on the opera because
as we all know opera is incredibly dull.
It's literally just a filler.
That's great. I'd love to have visited back then just to watch the social situation. I
didn't realize it was literally social gazing basically.
People went sort of every night of the season
and they were not concentrating on the play beyond night one.
Yeah. Wow.
There's a thing now where there's a lot of controversy about when the lights should come back up in a cinema.
Oh, yeah.
At the end of a movie.
Well, I think it's useful, right? Because if the lights haven't come up and the credits are starting,
that's probably because there's an end Marvel thing at the end, right?
Yeah.
That's usually what happens. What do they do? Do they do like a little scene at the end?
Yeah, like all the Marvel movies would have a little scene at the very end
But they wouldn't put the lights up so you kind of knew that was coming
What's this red hot debate about?
Is that it's a health and safety thing, right?
Most people when the credits start rolling
want to get out of the cinema as quick as possible
maybe they need to be somewhere.
I just hate seeing the names of people who work
because that thing's just not serious.
Fuck's sake guys, you've done the job
I don't need to know about who's the best boy.
Oh it's the bragging.
So they want to get out of there, that can be very dangerous
they can fall over, trip hazards, all that sort of stuff.
The issue is modern cinema uses its credit sequence now
as part of the film.
So there's one film where basically the final scene
is happening as the credits are rolling.
But you don't have the old day projectionists
in most cinemas these days.
Let's say a modern cinema, they get a hard drive
and it has stamped throughout the hard drive.
This is when the credits arrive.
So they'll pre-program the lights to come up, right?
So a lot of people are missing the end of movies in terms of the atmosphere
Because lights are coming up and so yeah, it's a raging how many films are running the credits over the final scene that?
You're very on guard to me. Yeah. Yeah, um Dan. Have you ever been I ask you this because you're Australian
Uh-huh. Have you ever been to broom?
No haven't actually no Because it's a very long
way away from the rest of Australia. It's in the northwest and it's got a cinema called Sun Pictures
and it's one of the first, it's a very early cinema, I don't know if it's Australia's first,
but it's very old, 1916. It was, I just like it so much because every night the cinema at Broome was
much because every night the cinema at Broome was flooded by the tide. It was on the coast and there was tidal flooding and most nights the street would be submerged and apparently
some old timers who remembered it back in the early days said you would be able to catch
a fish during the screening under your feet. That's so good. Great if you're watching
Titanic or something
It was more fun when projectionists had a bit more control on the day wasn't it because people you almost had a relationship with your projectionist and actually even I
Think momentarily when you're in the cinema, you could say, you know put the music on louder and old Nickelodeon's or whatever
Oh, yeah in 1939 newspaper in Newcastle
or whatever. Or in 1939, a newspaper in Newcastle
reported on a really exciting innovation
that it said is gonna take off in cinemas,
where in musical films, of which there were quite a lot
back in the day, like Singing in the Rain or whatever,
after one of the good songs,
they'd bring the lights down to black,
and then that was the cue for the audience to shout encore.
And if they shouted encore long enough,
then you rewound the song and you played it again.
That's great.
Oh, that is good.
That's really good.
Could you say, I didn't quite. Who's this?
Can you play that bit again?
Is she married to him?
Yeah, it would be incredibly annoying watching it with a granny or a child or me.
You mentioned Nickelodeon's.
So that was in America, right?
And it was you paid a nickel to
get in and it was like usually the shop or something like that. And they would pull all
the blinds down, make it really, really dark. And you'd be able to watch one of these old movies.
And obviously very dark and it was very cheap. So they attracted the poorer classes. And so it
was worried by higher class people that they'd get pickpocketed or whatever, as soon as they went in.
So again, the darkness was was thought to be a problem.
But in the UK, we had our own version of the Nickelodeons
and they were called Penny Gaffs.
And obviously the difference being that in the UK,
there were one penny to go in,
whereas in America it was a nickel.
But the problem was a nickel was worth 2.5 pennies.
And so the people who were making the penny gaffes
were making two and a half times less
than the Nickelodeon people.
They just did it for the catchy title.
Call them topny gaffes.
I guess it was like the smallest,
although they did have pennies in America, didn't they?
So they could have done pennies as well.
But yeah, it was just, I suppose they thought
that it was the only price they could charge.
But there was a worry at the time.
I read some newspaper articles saying that young children were robbing from their parents
So they'd be able to attend the the penny gaffes
Always always social worries any new technology. It's so interesting. Just how is this going to ruin the youth?
Yeah, and the other thing that they did is because these penny gaffes were in shops
So it's a normal shop and they'd be like, okay, we'll put a load of chairs up
We'll charge people a penny to come in
But there was people tried to shut them down
And one way they did it was saying you don't have a music hall license because there's no cinema licenses because cinemas didn't exist
And so loads of them would play the movies in complete silence
And so you would go in it was completely dark and it was completely silent.
You'd be watching the moving pictures,
but there'd be no music.
And that, because usually you'd have a piano or something,
wouldn't you, being played live along with it.
But they couldn't do that because if they did,
they'd get closed down for being a musical.
To be fair, I think that's fine.
I mean, most of you're watching a silent film,
you're not watching it for the piano music, are you?
No, the music was composed specifically for the reels.
So they'd be handed this sheet music.
Ambience matters.
But I don't think it matters as much as with a film with dialogue, for instance, where
you wouldn't know what was happening.
If you're watching a silent film, you still know what's happening.
I would like more ambience in my movies, you know.
If you think Star Wars, which has dialogue, would be as good without the score, then let
us experiment and have a completely music that. Have it completely music free,
or Indiana Drones or whatever.
Also, I need something to drown out James going,
who's that?
Is that his wife?
When did they marry?
What?
Okay, it's time for our final fact of the show,
and that is my fact.
My fact this week is that one of the oldest diving clubs
in Ireland is the Muff Diving Club.
And? What's so funny about that?
Nothing. It's interesting because it's how old it is. It's one of the oldest.
Wow. How old is it?
We're talking a good three decades.
Yeah, no, this is the Muff Diving Club. Yeah, it was just set up by a group
of guys who obviously spotted a good gag and they wanted to do it and they've not only been pushing
for it to be an old long lasting diving club, but they want it to be the largest, the biggest
membership of any diving club in the world. And so you go to their site, you can buy t shirts,
you can buy you can get a membership card. There is a lot more t-shirt selling than actual diving in this club, I think.
I'm finding it so hard when I'm looking into it, and I still haven't got to the bottom
of it if any diving happens at all.
What is a diving club?
What is a diving club?
What do you get?
Diving instructors teach you how to dive?
Scuba diving.
Scuba diving.
Yeah.
Oh, I thought it was high diving.
Did you not even see the logo?
Did you research this?
I did not follow the link you sent. I tried, but I've got a child lock on my computer.
How interesting. I mean, you could have a high diving club as well. People who like to high dive
might get together and practice together.
Yeah.
I guess so.
But if all your facts are about high diving, then you are going to be lost for the next half an hour.
I've gone purely muff, actually. Muff directional.
Well, me too. I went to the Irish sort of version
of companies house to see how many other muff companies there are in Ireland. Muff engineering,
muff service station, muff soap, muff direct. Is this all in in muff? These are all real,
they're all in muff. Muff after school and... No, you can you call it as a parent and send your kids to that.
It's just like an after school place where kids go to, like, while the parents are still
working at the Muff Liquor Company.
No.
The Muff Liquor Company, this is really interesting.
I went on their website and it doesn't seem to be a joke at all.
In fact, if you go to the website, it looks like they haven't realized that Muff Liquor
could be quite rude because it's a proper, proper like it's a vodka company and they've got a history of this guy the
grandfather of the owner who started it all these years ago and it's a so there are no
there's no sort of sly wink at the fact that this is an amusing phrase like that salad
company called tossed no unless i've completely missed it i think they've just gone deadpan
no i think you're right i think it's just we're in muff We make a liquor. Let's put it out
Yeah, just they do know but they've gone we're above that these fucking muff divers next door
We don't need to stoop to that level. We'll put it out there
We'll let people chuckle to themselves and we'll sell them some vodka. No t-shirt necessary
I was reading an interview where a lady called Caitlin was over in Australia and she was on a TV show like a family
Fortunes kind of thing and she wasuff. Like, you know, it's not
got a big population, Muff, but she was from there. And the guy couldn't believe that she
was from there. And she said she went to a school that was called Holly Bush. So that
was a nice, another connection. And she says that when you come, when you're driving in,
that there is a sign that says you are now entering Muff and I've not seen that online.
I've been looking seems plausible. It does seem plausible. You can say you see welcome
to Muff, but I haven't seen a you are now entering Muff house prices are struggling
in Muff. Yeah, apparently the prices are lower than you might imagine. I'm just waiting for
the other shoe to drop on this joke. Well, it's for a slightly different reason you might think.
So you would find like people who live on shit house lane or whatever.
They're always complaining in the newspapers, like I can't sell my house.
But in actual fact, the reason that they can't sell them very well is because they're on the border
between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland.
And Brexit has meant that the bottom has dropped out
of the muff market.
There we go.
I knew I knew something was coming.
Was it worth it?
It was worth it.
Mortgage news from muff.
That was not a written joke.
I bet you were on the phone to a local estate agent going,
so if I say this, am I technically right?
Do you want to buy the house or not, Mr. Harkin?
Oh dear.
Shall we talk about muffs themselves?
Let's talk about muffs.
Fur muffs that people would wear.
OK.
Hand muffs, as it were, how you keep your hands warm.
They used to be completely gender neutral.
Men and women alike would wear muffs.
It was just a thing because it was really cold.
It used to be a lot colder.
Some of you...
What?
What?
It used to be a bit colder, but also they were more common.
In the 16th century, you know, people did not have well insulated homes and clothes weren't, you know, you didn't have lovely puffer jackets, you know, people needed to
keep warmer and wearing fur muffs to cover your hands were really useful.
Furry muff.
Furry muff.
And I think it came from muffuli, which is a medieval Latin term, which describes these
big leather winter mitts that you'd wear.
And there was a great article all about the history of the word muff
Yeah on the Oxford University Press website by Anatoly Lieberman, and it's all these different words come from muff so
Danish muff means clown and
Dickens uses muff to mean something like an annoying person or a fool or whatever. German has muffeln which means sulk
Miff might come from muff like an annoying person or a fool or whatever. German has Muffeln, which means sulk.
Miff might come from muff.
Miff.
I'm feeling a bit miffed.
Oh, miffed, right.
You might really be actually muffed.
You say muff, we use muff in American football.
It's a term.
Oh, you've muffed it?
Yeah, that's what it means basically.
As in someone kicks the ball to you
and you try and catch it and you don't quite catch it,
but the ball's still in place so someone else can get it.
That's a muff. Oh yeah. That's quite a technical term. Because I would say, yeah, you've and catch it and you don't quite catch it, but the ball's still in place so someone else can get it, that's a muff.
Oh yeah, that's quite a technical term.
Cause I would say, yeah, you've muffed it to mean sort of,
oh, you just messed it up.
You do say that.
And I actually checked all my WhatsApp messages
and you're the only person who's ever WhatsApped me
the word muff.
No. Really?
Yes.
To mean muffed it up?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, wow.
That is interesting.
I'm gonna search my WhatsApp.
Well, no, not now.
Oh, okay, yeah, I'll do it later. So, yeah. Yeah, wow. That is interesting. I'm gonna search my WhatsApp. Well, no, not now. Oh, okay, yeah, I'll do it later.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Sorry.
Sorry, yeah.
For a what?
But muff is also slang for a woman's vulva.
No.
What?
Yeah.
No.
I know, it's so weird.
What?
Wait a minute.
So what about the muff diving club?
That would be-
So I think that could be,
that should be a euphemism.
Wait a minute.
It sounds like Cunningham, doesn't it? What about the thing that James said about the bottom dropping out of the muff diving club? That would be... So I think that could be a... That should be a euphemism. It sounds like Cunninghendis, doesn't it?
What about the thing that James said about the bottom dropping out of the muff market?
That's even funnier than it was originally.
I think it's just funny because James said the word bottom, which is a bit funny.
No, it's actually true.
But also it's been...
But it has been slang for that for so long.
I like how quickly we turn this into slang.
So it started meaning a hand warmer in the 1590s.
And by the 1690s, it meant a woman's pubic area.
Because I suppose you carried it down there.
It's big hairy things around your crotch.
So of course.
It's a hundred years.
That's a long time for it to make the leap.
Well, it's first written down there.
I mean, I bet they've been saying it for decades.
Yeah.
You can get muff warmers.
Is that to warm your muff or?
Yeah, I thought muff warmers.
Muff are to warm you.
Yes, but the muff warmers warm the muff.
I think you've put your hand in that.
But who warms the muff warmer?
They were little ceramic things
that you would fill up with hot water.
And I imagine actually that you'd leave them in the muff.
Yeah, you would.
And then when you're going out.
That's clever. You warm the muff up, maybe you're going out in an hour, you say, well, put the muff them in the muff. Yeah, you would. And then when you're going out. That's clever.
You warm the muff up, maybe you're going out in an hour,
you say, well, put the muff warmer in the muff.
Then you come to go out,
you just get your muff, it's lovely and warm.
Andy, idea.
Have you got any money to invest?
Yeah.
Good.
Okay, so a mannequin, but it's heated,
and you put your coat on the mannequin,
and then when you go out you can
take a nice warm coat and put it on.
Oh yes.
Ring the dragons.
Ring the dragons.
That's great.
Or if you're really wealthy you just have a human coat warmer.
Someone who wears your coat for half an hour before you go out.
Yeah I see that.
Oh yeah.
Mine is just a one-off purchase whereas yours is more of a subscription one. Very much so yes. Yeah I do see that. Mine is just a one-off purchase, whereas yours is more of a subscription.
I mean, when you get into bed, it might be nice to, I mean, a warmer bed is not, I know
you two are sort of weirdos, you like cold beds, but I like getting into a bed that's
slightly warm on a winter's night.
Yeah.
Do you do like they used to do on the Grand Tour where they would put a live pig in their
bed before they went to bed to warm it up and to get rid of bedbugs.
Is that a real thing? Yeah, that's what they used to do. On the Grand Tour. You saw the Clarkson show.
Wait, what were you talking about? That's what I thought you were talking about.
I was talking about in the, when would it have been in the like 18th century when you would go around Europe. Yeah, yeah.
Have you heard of Muff Boutiques? This is great.
Uh huh. Okay. Not a company in muff? No this was a thing it's
from a book by a 19th century dandy called Octave Housanne and he was an
admirer of ladies accessories and he wrote a book which was called l'ombre
le gant le manchon which means the parasol the glove the muff and he said
that in Renaissance Italy there were muff boutiques where you could either go
in and buy a muff or in the off season when it were muff boutiques where you could either go in and buy a muff
or in the off season when it gets nicer more,
we don't need your muff anymore,
you go and you store it in the muff boutique
and they delouse them.
I mean, if true, that's very funny.
It's a brilliant book that, isn't it?
It does sound great.
I've only read secondhand about it.
There was a, it's actually quite,
it's all available online and it's quite short.
So I did read it and yeah, it's the sun shade the Glove, the Muff and it was published by this guy in response to the previous year's incredibly successful The Fan, which was his history of The Fan.
Oh, that was great. Yeah, yeah. I know that book.
Really? Published in 1881. Were you there for the first printing?
No, I know a modern one. Someone wrote a whole book about it.
Are you a fan? Uh. No, it's great.
The Sunshade, the Glove, the Muff.
And he tells, my favorite story from it was,
he says there's an account in the late 1500s
of towers being besieged,
and at the front line of defenders
who are defending themselves from this siege
is a woman with muffs and a halberd in hand,
a halberd being a sort of poker, pokey, sticky thing.
Spear?
Spear, thank you.
Wow.
A woman with a muff defending the city.
Cool.
For a reason.
Keeping her hands warm.
Keeping her hands warm while, because you've got to be quite dexterous to operate a spear,
I suppose.
Absolutely.
You can't prod a Haldane with cold hands, can you?
Very difficult, yeah.
There were muff chains, which were to hang your muff i think when you're not using it
your hands out of your mouth you just put it on your muff chain around your neck oh right right
muff pistols okay i don't think to shoot your muff to shoot from your muff if you're approached
by foot pads oh i see they weren't like the sex pistols it was like a female sex pistols
no that was just a tiny gun for ladies to protect yourself if you were out and about and someone approaches you to rob you.
Um, one place in Ireland that would have used the muff divers, I think quite usefully is a town where the first
uh transatlantic telegraph cable was laid
In the 1880s. Oh, yeah, so that was in Ireland. It was a little place called Spunkane.
That's where the first transatlantic cable was made. Spunkane. Spunkane. So it's great.
Okay, here's another fact. The word spunk also can mean ejaculate. No. What?
That's a really funny name for a place to start the cable. I thought they were just like a good-looking dude, you know, Spunky, you know.
That's disgusting now.
Spunkane.
The town of Muff, where the original fact was, is where Amelia Earhart landed
when she did her first solo flight.
Cool.
Not our last one.
No, unfortunately we don't know exactly where she landed that time.
Right.
But her first one she landed just outside the village of Muff.
Oh wow.
The man who composed the theme music for Gladiators is called Muff Murfin.
Gladiators is a TV show?
Yeah.
That's a good name.
Muff Murfin. Muff is a name. It's a man's name.
Muff. I don't know any Muffs.
Maybe it's a nickname as well.
Yeah. I don't know any Muffs.
I'm not familiar with the name Muff.
The brother of Spencer Davis, who obviously founded the Spencer Davis group.
Obviously.
It's called Muff.
You know the Spencer Davis group.
Give Me Some Lovin'.
Is that a band?
Oh, it's a band?
Yeah, it's a band.
Give me some lovin', that one.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Okay.
Oh, hang on.
I've always thought it was Give Me Summer Loving.
No.
I thought it was Give Me Some M, I have so give me some muffin
Inserted a muffin there and I thought it was a haiku
Okay, that's 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 show,
you can find us on various bits of social media.
I'm on Instagram. You can get me on at Shriverland.
Andy.
I'm on Twitter at Andrew Hunter.
James.
I now have 400 followers on TikTok.
I'm not saying there's James Harkin, despite the fact that I have no intention of posting anything on that.
Yeah. And if you want to get to us as a group, Anna, where do they go? No Such Thing As A Fish, which is No Such Thing As A Fish, or Twitter at No Such Thing, or you can email podcast at qi.com.
Yep.
If you want to find anything else out about us, go to our website, nosuchthingasafish.com.
There is the links to get you into the world of Club Fish which is our secret members group and there's a great discord that you can join and lots of bonus
content that we put out through Club Fish or you can just get access to all of our previous episodes
as well as bits of merchandise so you can get your hands on there otherwise just come back
here next week we're gonna be back with another episode and we'll see you then, goodbye!