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Hi everybody, Andy here. Just before we start this week's show, we have two exciting announcements to make. The first is about who our special guest is this week. She is a brilliant Canadian writer, screenwriter, showrunner, now also a first time author. She is Monica Hisey, and her debut novel really good actually is out within the last few weeks, and it is unsurprisingly really good actually. It's all about the life and travails of a woman who has become a surprisingly young divalcy. It is extremely funny. It's kind of, you know, accidentally, it's like snot, milk, how do you know it's funny. It's great. Highly recommended, so we hope you enjoy the show. Monica was great as you will hear shortly. The second announcement we have to make is that we are doing a live show of no such thing as a fish. Very exciting, we are going to be at the hallowed British Library in London. They are having a season all about animals and as part of that, we are doing a show called Fantastic Beasts. It's going to be Dan, James, myself, and a special guest to be announced. It's going to be on the 21st of April, and if you don't live anywhere near the British Library, there is also going to be a streamed version of it. So just go to no such thing as a fish.com slash live. You will see there the tickets are available for our British Library show. So check it out. Okay, that's it. That's all of the announcements. I'll meet the show. Hello and welcome to another episode of no such thing as a fish, a weekly podcast coming to you from four undisclosed locations in the UK. My name is Dan Schreiber. I am sitting here with James Harkin, Andrew Hunter Murray, and Monica Hisee. And once again, we have gathered around the microphones with our four favorite facts from the last seven days. And in a particular order, here we go. Starting with fact number one, that is Monica. So my fact is that in ancient Hebrew times, men could get a divorce if their wife had been alone in a room with another man. And I was really interested in this fact because my divorce lawyer told me that this may still be true. I couldn't find anything about that. But she basically said if he could prove that a man and a woman had been alone together in a room for more than an hour, it could be reasonably assumed legally that adultery had occurred. I think we should just say that we're not all in the same room at the moment. I think that's very important. No. I think the people were a bit desperate because it used to be that you could only get divorced for five reasons, one of which was adultery. And so I think people just could stretch it a bit to prove you really just trying to get out. It's really the history of what you needed to say or alleged or agree that you had been doing to get divorced is absolutely mad. For a long time, it was only adultery or adultery was the only substantial grounds and then they introduced other ones a bit later on. But there was one rule where if one of you had committed adultery, then your partner could divorce you. But if you both had, they might not be able to because legally the divorce was kind of an acknowledgement that one person had committed wrong with the other was being like kind of like for an eye and a shag for a shag and yeah. And if you'd both done it, then you weren't allowed to lie saying, oh, I've committed adultery, sorry, that's a net flounder's version of adultery. You weren't allowed to lie saying you'd committed adultery, that's perjury. So they made it very, very difficult. Wow, that's religion for you. And also it was a very specific definition as well. Adultery legally is a married person having full sex with someone of the opposite gender. So if your husband had a gay affair and you were a woman, you couldn't sue him for divorce on grounds of adultery, but you could sue him for unreasonable behavior. Really? Yeah. Wow. This thing in the Jewish law, this is from the Mishnau, which is the oldest written question of Jewish oral traditions. And the thing is that because if the woman had been in a room with another man in theory, there can't be any other witnesses, right? Because it's basically one person's word against another person's word. And okay, you have the perjury thing. But what they would do is they would give you the ordeal of bitter water. And this was to tell if you were telling the truth or not. So they would give the woman some water with some dust in it. And it's not really clear what the dust is. It might be bits of barley, it might be bits of something else. And the idea is if the woman drinks it and the water is so bitter that she has to like spit it out, then that proves that she was in the wrong. Got it. Like which trials? Well, I feel like I'd give myself this test every morning when I try for one sip of the water. It's been out by my bedside table. I'll tell you the worst divorce situation I read about in this research was to do with if you were divorcing the king of Thailand. Oh yeah. The problem is is that if you go to divorce the king of Thailand, you have to obviously accuse the king of Thailand of reasons for the divorce. Unfortunately, by law in Thailand, you were not allowed to accuse the king of anything. So when the current king's divorce case was going on, I think he was the crown prince at the time. He went to court and he made all these accusations against the wife. And the wife had to just say, yeah, he was fine. Couldn't say anything. Couldn't defend himself. Yeah. So he obviously he obviously won. I've got facts about the king of Thailand. Do you remember the king and I that the play or musical play? Yeah. It's about someone called Anna Leon Owens who went to work for the king of Thailand. And the real life Anna Leon Owens was the great aunt of Boris Karloff who played. Was it Frankenstein or yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's just a fact. It's just two people you would expect to be related to each other. Are I could yes. Yeah. That's very true. Like Ben Elton and Luke Longley are brothers in law. You would mean nothing to what? No one except Australians. Yeah. I've never heard of Luke. Who's Luke Longley? One of the great Australian basketball players played with the Chicago Bulls in the Michael Jordan period. You know, he's a legend. One of the great Australian basketball players. How big is this cohort? There's three of them. And one of them is related by marriage, but not blood too. Ben Elton. Amazing. Gosh. Why didn't you pick out as your headline fact this week, don't you? I've been pitching it for nine years because swatting it away every week. I found a modern divorce story which I can't believe that this is true, but it was reported in a bunch of places. So this is to do with a Bosnian couple, Sanna Clarick and her husband Adnan. And Adnan had not been happy in the marriage and he started looking around for love and he went online. And so he started chatting to someone online. He used a fake name just to make sure that no one could clock on to who he was. He met someone. He said, I suddenly was in love again. It was beautiful. I thought I'd finally found someone who understands me in who's in a similar situation in a bad marriage like I am. So they decided to meet up. And they meet up. And he sees a city in the spot where his online love should be. His wife, who has also gone online, created a pseudonym, looked for love. They found each other. And what's remarkable is that is how they found out that each of them were basically cheating on each other and divorced off the back of it despite falling back in love with each other in this online scenario. They looked at it as negative reverse pinnacle auto style. It's like a Richard Curtis film until the last sentence, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, yeah, super plot twist. There was a guy in New York. He was from New York anyway. And he divorced his wife in Dominican Republic. And she didn't find out for 22 years. So he filled in the form and got her to sign something which he didn't know she was signing. And he got an official divorce. And then she only found out when she got a letter through about the house that they owned. And her name wasn't on the deets. And she sort of rang her lawyer and said, what's going on? And then he said, well, it turns out you're not married. And you haven't been for 22 years. But they can't have been living together. Yeah. What? He just, he just didn't tell her that they weren't married anymore. And what she said in the case, and I couldn't find out what in the end happened. But she said that she thought that he'd done it deliberately so that he would own everything. If he left her in the future, she wouldn't have any rights. That's what she said. But then he stayed with her for decades? Yeah. Because apparently, I mean, I can't really speak for him. But what she said is that the marriage was kind of happy. But he just did it as a kind of backup in case he needed it in the future. Oh my god. That's about that. Yeah. He's so beautiful. I became really obsessed with unreasonable behavior as a category. So they changed the law in in 2022. And now you could have a no fault divorce in the UK, which means that you don't have to identify guilty party. You can just both agree that you want to dissolve your marriage. But prior to that, you had to pick one of these five categories, kind of whether or not there was something going on. And unreasonable behavior is such a very capacious category. And I think 51% of women filing for divorce in this country, that was their grounds. They're only 36% of men. And a lot of it has to do with gaming. People were divorcing because either their husbands were gaming too often, but a lot of them, like a non-negligible portion, or people who were having digital affairs. So you're basically meeting someone via not by fortnight. Your Sims avatar is having sex with someone else's Sim. So what are the other limits to this? What was it called again? Unreasonable behavior. Unreasonable behavior. What are you worried about, Dan? Excessive Ben Elton memorabilia purchases for VV? Is that, do I need to watch out? I do think it's a very bendy category. It basically is like a prolonged commitment to behavior that is a problem to the marriage. So that can include like actively building a life separate tier partner. If you're developing too many not shared interest, or you're really going hard on, I don't know, you have a new hobby and you're going away and pursuing rock climbing all the time and your partner is no interest in it whatsoever. Eventually, after a certain amount of rock climbing, I suppose it can be countered. Yeah. It's unreasonable. I think a reckless spending counts as well. Absolutely. If you're spending loads of money on Ben Elton memorabilia, Dan. Damn it! I'm done. Yeah. Did you guys ever hear of the Brighton Quikky? This is a divorce practice. I've done a fair bit of really well. I can't quite work out how real it was. Basically, in 1923, the law was changed, saying you could petition on adultery only. It was the only grounds for divorce. That led to this thing where it's kind of like Monica's original fact about being in a room together. You would go down as the husband, you would agree to be the adulterer. You'd book a hotel room in Brighton because it's easy on the train from London. You spend the night there with a woman you don't know. You don't have sex or anything, but there's a hotel receipt saying you've booked a room for two the next morning. Maybe you're witnessed by the chambermaid. Could two pairs of shoes outside the door? Exactly. There's then a small body of evidence that you can use to get your divorce. And then, tensling back. You haven't even got to commit adultery, but you will be divorced in due course. But I can't just tell how much it actually happened if at all. It's in a few novels and it's written about at the time, but it's not. Also, how important is the chambermaid in this? Are all the rooms in this hotel packed with people going for a Brighton quickie and she's got to be sort of witness. Yeah, she's the witness for like 40 things a day where she has to. Yeah, then I saw the shoes outside that door and then was at the pancakes. I took a tea and they were on top of the bed, but there was a pillow on the floor. So that's suggestive. I read that in Delaware and Colorado, you can get your marriage a knuld if you did it for a dare. But none of the other 48 states is that explicitly in the rules. Like, probably you still could get an annulment if you said that but it would have to go into something else. But in those two states explicitly says it is illegal to get married on a dare. I mean, all marriages are kind of a dare. That's a bit proposal is. It's a big dare. Yeah, I dare you to stay with me until one or both of us dies. I bet your life is wishing she shows truth that yeah, every day. I got a thing which is one of really classic Marvin Gay albums, which was called Here My Dear, was made within a divorce proceeding whereby Marvin Gay didn't quite have the alimony that he needed to pay for his child. And so the agreement was the next album that you do your wife who you're now divorcing is going to get half of the money royalties and the upfront money from the album itself. And he decided, well, I don't want her making any money. So I'm going to do a quickie album basically. I'm just going to not really do anything good. It's going to come out and it's just going to be panned by the critics. No one's going to like it. And then suddenly he got fascinated by the notion of this album and ended up putting more heart and soul into this album, possibly than any of his other albums. He was really hands on. He wrote the lyrics. He never writes lyrics for his songs according to the stuff that I was reading. He never really was hands on with playing the piano, but in this album he insisted on doing the lyrics, the piano. And it was panned at the time, but it's been it's one of those albums that's been reviewed by everyone since. You know, the Rolling Stone has named it one of the best 500 albums ever made three times in lists that they released. And it constantly appears on these lists now, but it's a pure divorce album. Pretty cool. That's the story of the producers, the film the producers don't. We've just done you've given us a fact which is the song Pina Collada, and they've given us the film the producers, but you've translated it to being about Marvin Gaye. No, no, no, no, can we see you? We see what you do. They made it bad. He made this good during the process. The producers was bad. I wonder what point he decided to start making it good. Like if he's a guy, I'm going to make it so bad. And then what day did he realize, oh, I'm actually very invested. I'm really trying quite hard now. Yeah, I don't know. I guess if you're an artist, it's going to be really hard to go, I'll just put out a shit album. Like that's that must be a painful thing to do to make a decision on. I don't know. Some of them managed, don't they? But I think like I think if he didn't normally play piano and didn't normally write the lyrics and then he started doing it, he must have not normally done it because he didn't think he was as good as the people who were doing it, right? Originally. And then when he started doing it, he's like, oh, this is pretty good. It's also a little bit self-methmaking. I tried to make an award set and instead I made one of the 500 greatest of all time. Oh, that's just me. Stop the podcast. Stop the podcast. Hi, everyone. We'd like to let you know that this week we are sponsored by Bubble. Wee. And that's Clue's What Bubble Does. See, it was a clue to what Bubble does. Yeah, because Bubble is a brilliant language learning app and tool. It has over a dozen different languages on it and you can learn them in an easy, fun and frankly addictive way. It's absolutely brilliant. It does a lot more than just teaching you the word yes in various different languages. It teaches you all sides. It almost makes you think towards the summer. You're going to go on holiday in the summer. Who knows? You might be going to France, Spain or Germany. I want to learn a few words. It is the first step to your holiday and the first step on your new life of learning a new language. Exactly. And right now you can get three months free. If you buy a three month subscription, all you need to do is go to babblebabb.com.com.com. And whack in the offer code no fish. That's right. No fish. All one word. That is your offer code. And you use it by going to babbleba.com. forward slash podcast 23. The letters to three. Okay. I'm with a podcast. On with the show. Okay. It is time for fact number two. And that is Andy. My fact is that the same fingers are responsible for the clicks in the Adams family theme, the bongos in the mission impossible theme and the xylophone in the Simpsons theme. The same human fingers created three of the great artworks of the 20th century. I'm unbelievable. I think it's so great. Would you say that you are playing the xylophone with your fingers? I was going to question that. Yeah. His name was Woodfinger's Richard. And he was incredible. You know what fingers richards when he clipped his fingers for the Adams family himself on fire. Emile Richards. He was a hero of percussion. I should say where I got this is. Via a brilliant piece published each year by a guy called Tom Whitwell, which is a 52 things he learned each year. I think I may have mentioned him before either one or two or three years ago. But anyway, it's a brilliant list. And this is one of the facts. I just couldn't believe it. And Emile Richards, it turns out, born 1932, died 2019. In between those two dates, had the most amazing musical career. Yeah. He played with Frank Sinatra. He toured with George Harrison. He was one of the most amazing session musicians ever. The list of people who played with this just. He played with Charlie Mingus, you know. He was proper into the scene of jazz and blues. And and then yeah, as you say, he went on tour and also played on three George Harrison albums. He was inducted into the Procuse of Art Society Hall of Fame in 1994. That's a very hard hall of fame to get into. Is it harder to get into than the Australian basketball hall of fame? Yes. I imagine to get in. You have to do a special not to get into the Picasso. I'll affect that. But no, yeah. What an extraordinary guy. Yeah, it was amazing. Frank Zapp was Doris Day, the Beach Boys, the Bee Gees, Blondie, Elefits Gerald, Marvin Gaye. I don't know if it was on the VL. Oh, imagine what? I think Marvin did all his finger clicks on that album. Right, okay. He was just incredible. I love this. His autobiography was called My Life Behind Bars. Oh, very nice. Oh, you may have come across this in the course of your research. Do you, can you guess what kind of animal he wanted to come back as in the next life? Oh, I didn't see that. I did not see that. Something, some Picasso. So, woodpecker. Awesome. Yes. Such a good, so good guess. I wish it was that. Imagine it was just totally unrelated. No, no, no, it is related to his Picasso in his life. Oh, it is. Like an octopus. Oh, so he can have more experience of life. But woodpecker is better actually, yeah. Six of them are legs. He had the world's largest collection of Picasso instruments. Really? This guy, yeah, he had 700, oh, the 770. I don't know if that's 771, maybe you probably hear. He had an Ang clung, a bull bull terang, a chimter, a flapamber, a jango, a beer, and a puck have a edge. When I was looking here up, they said he plays the vibraphone, and I went to look up what a vibraphone was and the first thing that just said, not to be confused with the vibra slap. And what is that? Always getting that big stuff. A vibra slap is, I've ever seen that instrument. It's like a piece of wire vent into a U, and there's a wooden ball on the end, and it hits the ball. So that's a vibra slap. Cool. And a vibraphone is more looks like a xylophone. I don't know how you would confuse them. They don't look at all of them. And they're both so obscure that I feel like it's very unlikely you'll be talking about one and not know what the other one is. Either you're not talking about these at all, or there's no risk of you confusing the two. That's a good point. What a guy. So he did the Mission Impossible theme tune. The bond goes on that, and I was looking into the Mission Impossible theme tune generally. So there's this fact, which is that the beat of the song was written to the Morse code of M and I. So. Can you give us what it goes like for anyone who doesn't. Andy, you're a bigger fan. I always end up doing bond by accident. Can you do it quickly? Do you mean the bit that go? Bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam. Yeah. So it's, it's dash dash dot dot. It's the thing for it. That's great. But the guy who wrote it, Shifrin, he wrote that whole song, he says, in three minutes. Wow, really? Yeah. You often hear that with few musicians where they say, just bang that out and it just came to me as a fully formed piece. And that happened and that happened with Mission Impossible. So that's quite cool. And the same, the same with the James Bond theme. That wasn't written in a quick time. But if by guy called Monty Norman, and he actually, which is, I really like this, he was hired by the Bond people to come up specifically with this theme and they took him out to Jamaica on a holiday and he met Connery out there in Ursula and Dress. Because they were filming Doctor No. Yeah, they were filming Doctor No, the first one out there. And so he was brought to meet them all and get a vibe of it. And he ended up just using a previous tune that he had written for a completely different adaption that never got used. It was a stage production of VS Naples novel, a house for Mr. Biswas. That's the original James Bond theme. And it was played on Cittar. Is that the one that goes, oh, because I know the original lyrics of that, something like, I was born with an unfortunate sneeze. And yes, that's it. My parents said that I was made the runway round. Oh my god. This is a bigger repurposed than candle in the wind. This is a big ship. Yes, so straight. And I think at the end of the song, he sneezes so much that he falls into a lake or something of that tune. Oh, right. This guy, Monty Norman, he also wrote an autobiography. So life behind bars, very good title. Do you know, Andy, you look like you might know the title of his autobiography. No, I don't. Is it musical and James Bond theme? No, well, I'm not going to get it. No, it was called a walking stick full of bagels. Okay. Without knowing the context, that is not a good part. I think that must have been a classic phrase back in the day. You're like a walking stick full of bagels. And what does that mean? How would a stick be full of anything? There we go. Yeah. So many questions. I bet they were relancered in the unpublished autobiography and we are yet to find out. I think the best autobiography title I've ever heard was Tori Spellings' autobiography, Storytelling by Tori Spelling. Genius, really good. Really strong title. I got it. I got it off that title. That doesn't go down well in the divorce case. Tori Spellings' autobiography. Have you guys heard of the village of Kongthong in Northeastern India? This is a village where every child is given a theme tune. It's a little village. It's really cut off from the rest of India. I don't think you can get that by car. I think you can get that by boat. But it's in the middle of a jungle and people would forage for broomgrass, which they would sell on. And so a lot of the time you would spend in the jungle, sort of walking around probably alone. And the thing is, in the jungle is quite hard to hear people for long distances because it all gets soaked in by the trees. And so they came up with this different way of telling people you're around by having a different tune that you would whistle or you would shout or whatever. And so when you're born, you get your theme tune. And then for the rest of your life, whenever you're in the jungle, people will make this little dude. You'd be like, are that me? That was the Simpsons. I think lawyers will be in touch with that kid. He was from the Simpsons family of Kongthong. That is so cool. Isn't that? That's awesome. Unfortunately, it's kind of dying out because people now will connect with each other using mobile phones so they don't need these theme tunes so much. Yeah, the internet's ruined at all. I've had a quick think about songs that use the old Panda Rooz as a kind of iconic bit of it. And obviously, if you're thinking theme tunes, the Friends theme tune, I'll be there for you. Either Rembrandt's. There's like a clapping bit. Yeah, so it's four claps. Apparently, there's a bit of controversy because Courtney Cox did five claps on a TV show once and it sent the writers of the song, Mad. But the song I'll be there for you. It was actually a song composed specifically for the TV show and the Rembrandt's had very minimal input into the writing itself. It was the actual creators of Friends who wrote the song and it proved to be such a iconic theme tune that everyone was begging for it to be released in the. Yeah, I bought it in the charts when it came out. So what that was was they had to go into a studio and write a whole song because there wasn't a whole song. It was only the theme tune bit of the song. They needed two more verses to be added in. Yeah, so it was a backwards constructed full song that ended up coming out. That's so interesting. So it was 40 seconds. There was like a time in the 90s when all the themes you used to come out and you could buy them for the charts, like the ex files did around that time as well. Yes. And they all did quite well in the charts just because people thought, oh, like that's it. Yeah, I love the, I mean, the ex files is my favorite theme tune of all time. And it turns out to the guy who composed that's called Mark Snow. Yeah, well, and David DeColveney claims, I think this is tongue and cheek. I mean, it completely is tongue and cheek, but he says there were lyrics to the ex files theme tune by Mark Snow. And these are the lyrics. The ex files is a show, show, show, show, show. With music by Mark Snow, snow, snow, snow, snow. There's the only two lyrics that we know of according to DeColveney. Do you guys know what composers of TV theme tunes hate? I guess. Oh, when they, when on TV shows when the continuity announcer goes next up on BC3. Yeah. That's a really good point. I'm specifically talking about the skip intro button. Okay. Which is very controversial. Of course. They get furious. Those guys and girls about the skip intro because Netflix found out that users were frequently far forwarding a bit because they're watching three episodes in a night. You don't want to see the theme tune three times. So Netflix claims, I can't quite believe this. Skip intro is pressed 136 million times a day, which cumulatively saves 130 years of human time. We never, especially the shows where they've put some proper effort into the, into the intros. I think you lose quite a lot from not having those intros. Can you imagine watching Game of Thrones and not having that amazing finch in with all the stuff happening? And then just go straight into the shaggy nuts. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, really sets the vibe. I think grooving to the soprano's theme is like maybe 30% of what I like about watching the show. Obviously the rest of the other 70% is that it's groundbreaking, beautiful human drama. But the theme tune is also up there. It's a bob. I agree. We stand up in our house. We stand in silence for the everything. It's a huge respect in this household. Monica, aren't you a show running on a show at the moment? I just finished sure I know the show. Yes. Are you going to get to pick the theme tune? I think we're going to have like proper opening titles. So we're going to have to do a whole, you know, to figure a little thing. Yeah. I've really been shown my own limitations in this area because my description is like, I wanted to sound cool. I don't know. I don't have their feedback. Well, I got some advice for you, Monica. If you're working with the sound person, do a secret thing here, which is do actually write lyrics to whatever the theme tune is, but don't put them out because you could then claim 50% royalties on the song. This is what Jean Roddenberry did with Star Trek. He wrote lyrics for the Star Trek song. They never used them. And anytime a royalty check came in, he was a co-writer of the song. So he got 50% of everything. And the song Suicide is Painless, the mash theme tune. It was used in the Robert Altman movie, commissioned specifically for that movie by Robert Altman. And he tried to write the lyrics for it. Couldn't crack it. And so he asked his son, Michael, who was 15 years old at the time, to write the lyrics. So Michael did that. And as a result of that song not only being used in the movie, but then the long running TV show with Aladalda, he says, Altman says that he made $70,000 for directing that movie. And his son has earned more than a million dollars over the years, just from that being sold. Those lyrics are good though, aren't they, for Suicide's Painless. But Jean Roddenberry is he not just stealing half of the credit. It feels like the workers of the musicians who have done all this work. And he's just like, well, I'll pretend I've written some lyrics and take half the money. It's quite cheeky. It's very cheeky. Hey, that's the business we're in, guys. And Monica, that's Hollywood baby. Gosh, business, business. Just quickly, Ed Sheeran has written a theme tune to James Bond, despite no one having requested that he do that, which I think is quite sweet. Well, that's a very Ed Sheeran thing to do. But that's, isn't that, I would say that when a new bond comes out, people submit songs. That's how that's always worked. No, it's not. You don't send in. There were so many songs that are out that are rejected bond songs by bands that submitted a song that didn't get used, which they then use. Is there a process? Is there an open process by which, I mean, could we submit one? Yeah, that's what I was thinking. Did they accept anything? Yeah, that can't be true. I thought that they would commission a cool art. It can't be like a bakeoff. The last film, they asked Billy Eilish to do. Yeah. No, she just got lucky. She just happens to have the best one. They said in a million. And her's just happened to be the best one. They listened to them blind as well. They know that they don't. It's like the voice. It's like the voice. Could be anyone. That can't be true, Dan. Because they always pick the trendiest person in the world that's I'm not there. No, I mean, Ed Sheeran has consistently been the second trendiest person in the world. He just keeps missing it. The reason I say it is I know that Radiohead had a rejected bond song. So I'm trying to work back from from there. And I'm pretty sure Johnny Cash had one as well. And I think this is a thing. Yeah, but I can't say for sure. Maybe they asked people to tend for it, rather than anyone being able to sense stuff. Oh, yeah. I think they sent I think they asked like a group of people. I don't think it is open. It's not quite as open as that open season. Because you'd see there'd be a thing every three years. If you guys heard of DoSan Cestich, he's a composer of the Bosnian National Anthem. We spoke about Bosnia earlier. He entered the competition to do the Bosnian National Anthem. He did really want to win. He just wanted to get like second or third place. There was money for it. He like was quite into the old Yugoslavia. He didn't really care about the new Bosnia. But he thought I'll get some money out of it because I'm a decent composer. Anyway, he won and he wrote the National Anthem for Bosnia. And then in 2009, someone noticed that it was remarkably similar to the theme tune of National Anthem's Animal House, the 1978 movie. And when you listen to the both, they are almost identical. Like there's no difference whatsoever. But Flesin, he went on TV and they were all like, well, how come you made our National Anthem the thing? She said, National Anthem's Animal House. And he said, oh, maybe as a young man, I heard it and it kind of stuck in my head. And I didn't deliberately plagiarize it. It just so happened. That is brilliant. This is the problem with big national policies being decided by right in contest. This is why Canadian legal tender is called the loony and the tunic. Oh, what? The one dollar coin has a loon on it. So it's called a loony. And then they had a contest to name the $2 coin which has a polar bear on it. And the winning entry was the tunic. And now that is actually the call it. And it just makes us sound like a joke country. Without knowing the other options, Monica, I do think tuni is quite good. Sorry. I think there's a bit of body Macbolt face to it. Yeah, we can't speak. Haven't they also the loony at the tuni at the end of the ceremony? Haven't they recently just while we're talking about money and having mentioned Star Trek? There was the thing where you would spockify your Canadian dollar, right? The guy who was on the picture looked so similar to Leonardo Nimoy from Star Trek that you would draw spockiers on him and you would draw the hair basically. Yes, it was called spocking. Spocking. And the Bank of Canada had to issue a statement saying that it was legal to do but inappropriate. And I think from what I read, they've changed his image now on the bill. Is that right? There's a new version of the same guy. So it's less spockable. I think if you draw that spock on any note, then she rodents and buries her own half your money. Yeah, and then a spock spock spurs for another agency in Canada, Vangel, agency said to the Bank of Canada, this is fine as you say it's perfectly legal and I'm sure Sir Will for the Laurier would get it. Who is the man pictured off who will be guided in 1919? I've just got one more theme tuno quickly want to bring up, which is the fresh Prince of Belair. So we all know that theme tune. It's a crack in song by Will Smith and it was a song that he wrote despite not being necessarily asked to write it at the time. He kind of just did it and he showed it to I believe it was Quincy Jones who was doing the music for the show and they said, yeah, you can go and do it. Obviously it's a massive hit and when it was released in 1992 was a single. But here's the thing, I don't know if James, you bought singles as you were saying back in the day. Yeah, 1992 the fresh Prince of Belair theme tune was only released exclusively in the Netherlands and Spain and that's where it charted. That's it. That's really because when you said that, I thought to myself, how come I didn't buy that? Like I was so sure that I was around at the time I would have bought it because I bought wiki wiki while while West or whenever it was by Will Smith. So yeah, I bought all his other crap so I was really surprised. James, did you buy Willenium? That was a great album. Oh, an album now. I was more of a singles by I really. Yeah, it's not a good album then. I'm sorry, I think enough time was passed that I'm able to have a pop up Willenium. Keep the name of that album out of your dash. Okay, it is time for fact number three and that is my fact. My fact this week is that in 2024 the first ever theater production of Dracula will celebrate its hundredth anniversary. Unfortunately, fans can't celebrate it in the venue it was performed in because it's currently occupied by an over 18's adult themed crazy golf course called The House of Holes. This is in Derby, a city in the UK and I was there recently on the weekend. For a game of pretty golf. That was your quick round. I was there doing a ghost story festival and afterwards I was hanging out with this really cool guy called Chris Horton and he said I've got a fish fact for you and he told me he'd passed the house of holes and made him laugh and so yeah, so it is a very well-known theater as well it was called the Grand Theater. Then it just got repurposed over the years to be something new and there was restaurants in its place and so on and now there is this amazing crazy goal. The House of Holes. Yeah. Can I just, I'm sure we'll talk more about crazy old. Can I talk specifically about The House of Holes and Derby? Yeah, sure. I don't mean to cast any expressions on it. I don't think it's terribly erotic. It doesn't seem to be from the west side. It seems like a lot of it just seems to be novelty. Because I think that people at home, some people at home will have an image in their heads. Smurf. Yeah. What it is. Yeah. But let's sort of give context then through images. One of the holes you have to hit the ball through a bunch of standing dildos for example. I'm not saying it's totally erotic. There's another one. For some reason there's a lot of blow-up dolls that are uninflated hanging on washing lines just hanging in the vicinity of the hole itself. Yeah, the area where you play pool because you know these places in doorplaces have like you can play arcades and stuff. The way you play pool is called anal butt. What? Yeah, an anal has a four instead of the second A in anal. So A and four L. But well, so I got to do a pool. What's that mean? Not quite sure. I couldn't get to the bottom of that one. But it's it's there. Surely the phrase anal and butt are sort of achieving the same. It's feeling a little redundant to me personally. It's definitely a redundant adjective. Is there? How's your butt? Well, it's very anal. But I don't know what's in the water in Derby. But there was a newspaper piece a couple of months ago. Derby is now about to get its second erotic mini golf venue. It's really popular. The new Glory Hall's golf venue. Will apparently include risqué items and decor and some Derby themed holes as well. So that's nice. That's good. Can I quickly just because let's give this fact just a tiny bit of substance before we get into erotic golf. I just want to quickly say that the production just for context was the first ever Dracula production and it was put on in the early 1920s and it was a show that was sanctioned and approved by Florence Stoker who was the widow of Bram Stoker. And this was the production that became the sort of official theater production that as it traveled around the UK and then went international cast in its lead Bella Legosi who became as we all know the iconic Dracula in film. And weirdly the final performance that Bella Legosi ever did as Dracula on stage was back in Derby at another theater just around the corner from the grand some 20 odd years later. So Derby does have a real Dracula connection as a result of this. Very interesting. And Legosi, so he got the role in 1927 when the play moved to the USA. That's when Legosi entered the scene. And then in the 50s it was when he toured again and came back to Derby and did a big English tour of this show. And he got really upset because apparently the audiences were laughing sometimes because Dracula was no longer the big scary thing. It had been it was the only 50s you know people have been through a bit since the 20s they they're not as scared and yeah it seems to have prompted the end of his career which is very sad. And it was also this play was also very important for the image of Dracula. The guy who wrote it a guy called Hamilton Dean. He made Dracula appear as that more modern swath sort of coat wearing cocktail drinking kind of character rather than brands just all out vampire chaos energies on be like sir. Does it he drink cocktails? Does he? Is it passion fruit martini? Sorry he does. Yeah. There was actually one earlier theatre production of Dracula which came out eight days before the novel came out. This was if you did a novel someone else could make a play of it and there's not much you can do about it unless you put on your own play. And so what Ram Stoker did was he had a dramatic reading of his book on stage. They had to have it open for the pain public so they would put a bills up half an hour before it started saying Dracula on in half an hour add two people bought tickets for it and sat in the audience while a couple of actors sort of just read through the book and from them doing that it meant that no one else could play on because he owed copyright on the theatre production. How amazing. Yeah. Monica if you done that would really good actually. I should do just stop someone doing a bootleg play. Yeah. And I was basically what my experience of doing the Edinburgh fringe was just going out half an hour before the show being like anybody with somebody and then you know wildly entertaining two people. Chills, actual chills remembering that. That's everyone's Edinburgh. Yeah. Okay Dan we've done the Dracula thing. Can we go back to the erotic er mini golf. Let's do it. I just remembered when you were talking about that that I have played not played golf but I've used a golf club shaped like a penis at the penis museum in Reykjavik. They have one and you can sort of pick it up and play with it. And yeah it's like it's just the head part of the golf club is shaped like a penis. But it's not it's not for a serious golfer right? As in it's not built for proper play you know master's conditions. I don't think it adheres to the official USPJ rules. It's like a walking stick full of bagels you're not going to use it as an actual assist as a walking stick. I think there's a link between the original boom in crazy golf and the current Darby based boom in erotic golf. Okay. So when was the original boom? 20s and 30s. Some lots of sources say that it completely went out when the Great Depression happened but actually it didn't really it actually boomed during the early 30s. During that period apparently the USA built 25,000 mini golf courses. It was described as a devastating craze in the times in in 1930. And I think the theory behind it is that property value had collapsed and the value of lots of things had collapsed and people started their own tiny businesses to generate small amounts of income. You know it doesn't have to be anything huge but it's a small local thing on or whatever kind of waste ground or land you've got. You know some restaurants turned it like half the restaurant became a mini golf course and the rest of it stayed a restaurant. So maybe times of financial hardship or when you get a lot more mini golf because you get shops that are closed or empty. So the new glory hole golf is the site of the old gap store in Darby. You know you've got retail space available. What is a glory hole I thought I'd get? So no that's my economic gear. No it's a really yeah it's a really good theory. It's almost a thesis rather than a podcast isn't it. But yeah. Mini golf doesn't use golf balls. Yes I do. There are no. There are there are special mini golf balls. They're kind of more rubbery. They're more rubbery. They bounce more. I find this mad. There's the world crazy golf championships. I mean there are a few world crazy golf championships. One is in Hastings and normally apparently they're only got about three overseas players each year so the extent to which is world is a bit debatable. But they don't tell you at the world crazy golf championships what the ball is until the day before it starts. Okay but it's always going to be spherical. It's always going to be spherical. I'm pretty sure about that. And then other championships they will they'll let you play a different ball on every hole. And the only rule is that once you've started a hole you have to play the same ball all the way through. Like normal golf. Is that true? How about local if I was playing mini golf like we play in Narabean in Australia they're using special balls. I think they'll be more rubbery for sure if you check them. Yeah. Who would have thought this would be the fact that blue in my mind most whole round of nine years. Golf again. I'm going. This is I'm afraid it's back to the it's back to it. Attangent from the original erotic mini golf thing. Oh yeah. Just that it was on you know this new place opening up is going to be called glory holes golf. And we got an email in the fish in box recently subject line given glory hole action. Oh my god. I know this started. This is incredible. This is a given in a zoo or a sanctuary. This is a female given and she was living on her own and she got pregnant and it was it was basically a virgin birth and it was it was so exciting that the scientists they thought I can't believe this. Anyway they did a bit of an investigation and it turned out obviously it was not a virgin birth. In between her enclosure and the next door neighbor male given enclosure was a nine millimeter hole through which they had managed to successfully breed. Wow. I have to come parents. Nine. They were just sort of both mushing up against the wall. I'm afraid so. Life finds a way. Life is a way. Wow. That's a scene. I don't want to see Jurassic Park. I would like to hear David Attenborough do one of his little jokes about that. You know when he's sort of makes the animals a fool or he's like, uh, nest is there's good a place as any. Stop the podcast. Hi everybody. Just wanted to let you know we are sponsored this week by Express VPN. Absolutely Express VPN is a what is it? It's a sink plunge for content. It's a sink plunge. That's you know what I was just about to say exactly the same thing. Yeah. It's a thing that allows you to trick your computer into thinking that you're in a completely different country. Yeah. Like Belize or French Guiana. Oh, I'm trying to think of anywhere that's that's in a different bit of the world. Angola Kenya. Nairobi Kazakhstan. It might figure in any of those places and perhaps Kazakhstan Netflix has an incredible documentary about the origin of the apple. And if you want to watch that, you might not be able to get it on British Netflix. But thanks to Express VPN, you can. Exactly. Our computers have been tricking us for too many years, get one over on your computer and trick it back. And then watch fantastic content from all over the world by using Express VPN. It works fast. It's compatible with all your devices. There are servers in dozens and dozens of countries. I think about 94 countries. And if you want to give it a go, just go to expressvpn.com slash fish. And if you sign up for a subscription, it will give you a bonus three months on top of that for free. That's absolutely right. So be smart. Go to expressvpn.com slash fish. And when you do that, you'll get an extra three months of Express VPN for free. Okay, on with the podcast. Home of the show. Okay, it's time for our final fact of the show. And that is James. Okay, my fat this week is that in 2009, an eight to the Canadian Prime Minister called 10 Downing Street to offer condolences for the death of Margaret Thatcher. In fact, she wasn't dead. It was a misunderstanding due to the death of the Canadian Transport Minister's cat, who was also called Thatcher. Superb. Yeah. What a cool one. A car. A fly in the wall at that call. Yeah. Muggy. Not a Maggie. Oh, brilliant. Really? Does that you don't know someone else? No, no, that's the headline of the Guardian article. That's amazing. So yeah, this was a black tident in Toronto. 2,000 Canadian Conservatives were there. And many of them got a text message saying simply Thatcher has died. And the Michy Sudas, who was the eight to the Prime Minister, who was Stephen Harper at the time, he was sent to write a letter of condolence. And he ran booking in palace in 10 Downing Street to kind of work out what they should say and, you know, an offer condolences as well. And then he found out that they hadn't died. And it turned out that Transport Minister John Baird had a 16 year old grey cat called Thatcher. And sadly that cat had died. But he denied sending the text later on. But there definitely was a text that was sent to all these people about the cat. This is like international incident version of David's dead on Big Brother. Yes. That's the greatest TV moment ever. What there was a famous David who died. David Bowie. Yeah. Bowie. So someone in the building know who I don't know why I'm telling a story. Everyone knows it better than me. Monica, you can tell it. Mono. No, no, you're pleased you tell it. I've actually only seen the clip. Okay. So in the Big Brother household that year was Angie Bowie, the first wife of David Bowie. And also in the house that year was David Guest, who was lives in Manalee's ex-husband. Right. Angie gets called in while David Guest is having a sleep in his bed. Everyone knows he's having a sleep. So he's not around. And she gets told that David Bowie has died. So she is obviously she didn't like her ex-husband, but she's also very distressed because he was a huge part of her life. She comes out. She's trying to keep it secret. And one of the other Americans who's staying in the house comes up and says, you okay. And she says, you can't tell anyone, but David's dead. And this other woman immediately freaks out because she thinks that David Guest who's died. But Angie hasn't made the connection. So Angie's kind of going, God, I didn't think you were that big a Bowie fan. I can't see how this is corrupted. And it causes chaos in the house for five minutes. It's TV at its finest. Well, imagine that with 2000 Canadian conservatives. Yeah. What a scene it must have been. The true Patriot love tribute dinner. I was wondering what it was. It was cool. Military family is honoring thing, but Canadian politics moniker is is fabulous. Is it? Well, I feel like there is I feel like there is a list of political scandals in Canada on Wikipedia. And you know, some of them are pretty dry. Like the usual grift, you know, or or or bribery or slightly dodgy dealings, but there are some there are some fun ones. Tunigate might be my favorite. We're you were you were you involved in tunigate, Monica? Not to my knowledge, but I'll never admit it if so. You'll never catch me. Tunigate actually think about it now. Tunigate way too long ago. You're clear, you're clear, you're clear. Basically, there were a million cans of decomposing tuna. That was that was the central problem, right? And it wasn't really really really unsafe, but it had started to go off before it was put in the cans. The firm involved was called starkest. And they said, no, you just these inspectors, they just don't like fish. That's their problem. And they said, and we'll close down our plant and you'll lose all these jobs. And you know, and that's when it becomes a political thing because then the fisheries minister said, Oh, yes, probably it's fine. Yeah, all this stuff. It's great. It's actually good. And he got a panel together. It's just like, look, can you just assess this tuna please? And they said, yeah, this is rotting tuna in these cans. And he says, okay, I think we need to a different panel. And he got a different panel together who eventually said, yes, these million tens of rotting tuna are fine. And then he resigned. Yeah. And I don't think much of the tune was eaten in the end. And then the firm went bust anyway. So that's a very classic Canadian scandal where it's like if Fred and to really kick off and ultimately they just nobody really consumes the tuna. And it was sort of fine. That's like the other great Canadian political scandal, the Fuddle Duttle incident. What's this? Fuddle Duttle incident in 1971 happened to the first prime minister, Trudeau, our current prime minister's father, who was accused of having spoken or at least mowed unparliamentary language of the House of Commons. He seemed to have been caught mowling the words fuck off. But when pressed by television reporters would only admit to having moved his lips. They were like, what were you thinking when you moved your lips? And his response was, what is the nature of your thoughts when you say, Fuddle Duttle or something like that? Implying that he had said Fuddle Duttle instead of fuck off. That's good. How much heard you? You know, you're across the room from them. Well then in 2015, his son actually stated on the record that his dad had not said Fuddle Duttle. And this is a big scandal. Miner scandal. But that's sort of the scale. It's like someone, someone, that's always the scale. It's always a little bit funny. Like someone threw a pie in John Cretchian's face in the 90s. And that was quite, quite, yeah. The pies were actually coordinated ongoing assault. And I remember on Tartese, who are Canadian satirical political group. And they even released a hit list of people they wanted to get with pies, including Celine Dion and Konga Black and Cretchian. And then they were successful in pying Cretchian twice. Oh, that's got a stink. The pies were they, were they the kind of clown pies where it's like just custard or is it actual like apple pies? Cream pies. Like, oh, it's just cream pies. It's amazing. I've been shaving cream or just like what you guys would unfortunately call squirty cream. Yeah, it's not a nice thing to say. And I'm sorry to say speaking of shaving cream. I can't believe we got out of shaving cream. William Lyon McKenzie King, who was Prime Minister of Canada for 22 years. Well, I'm not surprised because he did say else's stuff right then. But he also used to see symbols in his shaving cream in the morning, which he thought would predict the future. Yeah, why extraordinary guy. I mean, he was, he was Prime Minister for 21 years, which possibly is still the record length or anyone to do it. He had quite a tragic family life. He'd lost all of his family during the war. And so as a result, turned like many people did to spirituality as a thing. But what many people didn't realize at the time was he was taking that spirituality into the into the office with him as a Prime Minister and getting guidance from the spirits of Leonardo da Vinci and his deceased dogs. The shaving phone thing, he was shaving. And then the shaving film would go into the water on the in the sink kind of thing. And at one stage, he saw a polar bear and an eagle. And the polar bear was supposed to represent like Russia or Soviet Union, I should say. And the eagle supposed to represent America. And they were kind of fighting in shaving cream. And then a dog appeared in the shaving cream, which he thought symbolized Canada and then it came and helped to push the bear off the eagle. And that was kind of him thinking that he what side he needs to be in the cold war. He needs to be on the air. As if he didn't know what side he should probably be on in the cold war. Not probably just confirmed his dismissions. I do feel like a polar bear would be fairly easy to see in shaving cream. Like I'm wondering if the shapes he was seeing were sort of like, you know, I saw a vision in my shaving cream of a cloud meeting sort of a fog. Yeah. Oh my god. What a guy. Amazing guys. I was having a look through the old the old fish inbox podcast at qi.com. Really good fact. We got in from from John Ford. So thank you, John. This is something maybe you've done at Monica. It's the Canada flies a new flag over its parliament every single day. Every single day there's a new flag and they give the used one to a Canadian and you can apply to get your own flag. And you think I have done this? Guess it's possible. I feel like you haven't anymore. I haven't quite know, but it's best if I have the option. Well, you have the option, but unfortunately you won't get the flag. So this is a matter of thing. The current waiting time is a hundred years. It's more than a century because so many people in the play. So and they mentioned this on the website. Like it's a totally normal thing. They say the current waiting time is more than a hundred years. And so you can either log on and make a request. Why would you? Or you can change your details if you made a request, you know, five years ago and you're moving house now. Just to keep it updated. But why would you do that either? Are you allowed to do it for your next generation? Can you exactly? Can it go to the descendants? I don't think I'll know any of my hundred year from now descendants well enough to care whether they're not they got a flag. It's also like not hard to get. Like it's not very special. It's only been up over prelude for one day. Yep. You could just get your own flag. It's the kind of shit I buy on eBay. I don't know if this is a little part of my divorce. Not giving unreasonable behavior to me actually. Have you been reading about William Amos from the Liberal Party in the last few months? Very recently he was on a Zoom call, parliamentary Zoom call. And he had to apologize because he said you're in a state without realizing I was on camera. And the amazing thing was is that the month earlier he'd also been recorded in the nude during the virtual session of the Canadian Parliament. So twice in two months. The first time he'd been out for a jug and he was kind of getting changed while the session was going on and they could see it all. See the right Honourable member. See as Lunean is Tuni. So yeah. I can see myself not falling for that. I can see myself doing that. Twice in a row? You quickly check. Maybe not twice in a row. I think Mod's bitter in this case. I would definitely get a post it for the camera after the first time. What do I? I don't know. You would think I couldn't possibly do that again. That's what you think. That's what you think. Oh my god. That was the stupidest day of my life. You know what mistakes on that front. And then you just go along and you know, do you say it was urinating into a couple something? I don't know. As far as I can tell because this kind of thing has now happened, you know, we're pretty deep in the pandemic. It's not happened a number of times. It's some fairly high profile people and it has as far as I'm aware never happened to a woman. It's just men who I don't know haven't thought it through or aren't worried enough. Yeah. I can't even believe that you're saying that you think this could happen to you. This would never happen to me. There's no world in which I would be like, okay, I'm doing work zoom. I'm going to quickly get fully new. No one has to know. 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 things that we have said over the course of this podcast, we can be found on our Twitter accounts. I'm on at Shriberland Andy. At Andrew Hunter M James James Harkin and Monica. At Monica Hivey. Yep, or if you'd like to book a round of golf at the House of Holes, you can head to at House of Holes UK. It genuinely has amazing reviews. Do check it out. Everyone loved it there. Everyone loved it. Or you can go to atnosuchthing, which is our actual Twitter handle and you can get through to us there. Or you can email us at podcastatqy.com. Also, do check out our website. No such thing as a fish.com. All of the previous episodes are up there. But the main thing that you need to do is get to a bookshop or an online bookshop and get really good actually by Monica Hivey. It is storming the charts here. As we speak, it's been in the Sunday Times bestseller's list for four weeks. It is an absolute rock and book. It's incredibly funny. So do get it now. And otherwise come back because we're going to be back with another episode next week and we'll see you then. Goodbye.