No Such Thing As Elizabeth I's Burnt Umber

How am I going to figure this out? There's so many bills. His lunch is at school, there's nursery, they need any new clothes, an ass, an electric, 25 pounds, internet, 25 pounds, 35 nursery fees, 1,755 pounds. New government policies are making every day easier, like offering 30 hours funded childcare to help working families save on average £8,000 per year. This is just one of the ways the UK government is tackling the cost of living. See more at gov.uk slash costoflivinghelp. Oh, it's bad. What? What would the people do it? Mate. Thought you'd be into it, Sam. What, me? No, that's deeply offensive. Harry, you're wearing socks and sandals. In public. Come on, I travel in style. You don't. It's a new low. They're the mullet of footwear. And? What's wrong with mullets? LAUGHTER Sharing moments you'll never live down. On The Train, you can. Hi, everyone. Welcome to this week's episode of No, She's Singers of Fish, where we are joined by the fantastic Angela Barnes. Yeah, she's absolutely amazing. She's been on Fish before. I didn't get to be on the show with her, so I was very excited to sit down with her. She's full of facts, she's full of jokes, and she's full of tour. She's on tour now. She's on tour twice, in fact. She is doing her own tour, which is called Anxt, and she's also touring with a British iconic series. That's right, The Archers. Anyone who listens to Radio 4 will know that show and no other show. And... Andy's The Naked Week is available as well. And she's doing a live version of that. So if you go online, put in The Archers Tour, you'll find dates for that. But go see Anxt. She's a brilliant stand-up. She's on tour right now, so on the 11th of April, she's going to be in Cheshire, and then there's places like Hastings and Hemelhamstead and Ivy Bridge, Hereford. A lot of these shows are nearly sold out, so get your tickets now. Hemelhamstead is where all the hamsters used to live in. Oh, yes, that's an interesting fact. We should do that on the show, or we should pronounce places properly. Anyway, if you want to go get those tickets, go to Angela Barnes, comedy.co.uk, and go see her live now. One more thing, do join Clubfish. Go to patreon.com.com. If you want to get involved with that community, loads of extra stuff, merch, bonus material, you know all about it. If you don't know about it, go to patreon.com.com. And you will find out more there. OK, on with the podcast. On with the show. Hello and welcome to another episode of No Such Thing as a Fish, a weekly podcast coming to you from the QI offices in Hoburn. My name is Dan Schreiber. I am sitting here with James Harkin, Andrew Hunter Murray and Angela Barnes. And once again, we have gathered 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. And that is Angela. OK, so my fact is that the QI offices and my fact is that the number four is orange and a lot kinder than number five, which has an attitude problem. Wow, are we talking about number blocks? Yeah, I don't have children, so I don't know what we're talking about there. But I'm assuming that's a CBB preference. Four is orange and it's kind. And it's kind, but number five is quite aggressive and has an attitude problem. OK, so what are you talking about? I'm talking about synesthesia. So you may have heard of synesthesia. I'm a synesthetist, so I was diagnosed with synesthesia when I was 19 at university. And I've got several types, but the main one is graphene color synesthesia. So that means that numbers, letters, days of the week, any abstract concepts have a color. And I always say it doesn't mean I see auras. I know I'm from Bryson, but I'm not that person. It's just it's hard to explain when you are a synesthetist because the reason I didn't know I had it till I was 19 is because we all just sort of assume everyone's brain works broadly the same as ours. Yeah. And so I don't know. I don't understand how you don't have colors. Can I ask a question? You may. You have a sheet of paper in front of you. I do. It's black and white. Yes. When you look at that, is it like the colored in the letters? Or is it more of a. So some people have a sort of synesthesia which is projected. So they do exactly that. It sort of changes color when they look at it. For me, it's very internal. So it's in my mind's eye, if you like, one of a better word. So I'm currently part of a study at Sussex University. There's Professor Julia Simner at Sussex Uni, and she specializes in perception and synesthesia. And I wrote to her a couple of years ago because when I think every thought I have is in a physical location from the real world. So when I think about the number four, it's always in the sky. But it's orange. So it's all floating orange in the sky. And so I contacted her to say, is this a form of synesthesia? And she said, well, I've never heard of it, but let's do a study. And so they found a handful of people that seem to experience the same thing. And so she's studying it. She's calling it conception, location, synesthesia is what she's calling it. But also, have you heard of Adam Zeman? So he's the man who came up with the word aphentasia for people who have no internal images like me. Oh, do you have aphentasia? So Julia is very interested in that as well. What a sandwich I'm sitting in. It's an aphentasia and an aphentasia. I've got all the images that you don't have in my brain, basically. It feels a bit greedy, really, actually, I'll be honest. Well, there was a massive coincidence. So it's about two years ago I contacted Julia and around the same time Adam Zeman contacted her and said, I've had someone get in touch to describe this phenomenon about location when they're thinking. And she said, oh, that must be Angela. She contacted me as well. And he said, no, it's someone else entirely. And it just happened to be within the same two weeks. So they're now both doing studies on telekinesis. On telekinesis. It's morphic resonance, I think. Yeah, actually. Thank you. He's actually calling it. It's quite, he's calling it topophantasia, which makes sense. So there is a thing of, I mean, I don't, I'm not, I'm not synesthesiatic. A synesthe. A synesthesiatic. But I don't have aphentasia, but I do have the I'm sure lots of people have the location specific a sensory thing triggers a spatial memory. So if I smell green chilies roasting, I'm in New Mexico and it's autumn. Yes. So that's that's very linked to memory. So that's really common that when we smell something, the thing with synesthesia is there isn't a link. You've just described memory. No, no, no. Angela's politely saying it's a really common thing. So for me, it's if I smell baked beans cooking, I'm in my full canteen. Like that kind of. You're really common, Andy. Yeah. It's what I'm trying to say. Is it triggers a specific? Yeah. Like a specific sensation triggers a really specific memory. Prussian. Yeah. So what they think is with people with synesthesia is what one of the there's lots of theories and they don't know exactly what causes synesthesia. They do. They have worked out that it's hereditary and then it's to do with the X chromosome. And but what they think happens is that when you're a child before you acquire language, you obviously have to interpret the world around you in a different way without words. And so you have this extra white matter, extra connections in your brain to different parts of your brain. And in most people, they sort of get pruned away as you don't need them anymore. Right. And then but with people with synesthesia, those connections don't get pruned. They stay. And so what it means is that you get a sort of an odd reaction to a stimulus. And by odd, I just mean one that isn't typical. So for someone with synesthesia, a part of my brain gets triggered when I see a letter or I hear something or whatever that wouldn't normally be triggered in that situation. Yeah. And so it's just a it's a hyper connected brain. Yeah. That they call it. And so there's lots of things that go with it, like misophonia, misokinesia, all these things people with synesthesia tend to have. So you hate it when people are chewing next to you. I hate it when people are chewing next to you. I have really strong misophonia. I am synesthesiatic. You can have misophonia. And yeah, it's really. What about people putting their feet on the seats on the train? Is that a special power that I have to find that annoying? Or I think you're just a bit old man. I don't think it could be that. And I'm very young. I think it should be. Everyone should be angry people getting their feet on the seats. But misokinesia is something that again, I only recently had a meeting with Julia a couple of months ago, just to sort of see how the study was going and stuff. Because I'm hoping to write a book about it. And she told me about misokinesia, which really made me go, oh, yes, I have that. My husband is what I'd call a jiggler. One of those people just doesn't stop moving constantly. If I can see a part of his body moving out the corner of my eye, it drives me insane. If I can just see a movement and they call it misokinesia. And she told me, which made me feel better about it. It might make you feel better about your misophonia is that apparently it's the salience network in your brain, which is activated when you have misophonia and it is the same reaction. Basically, she described it to me as if a bear had walked in the room. So it's sort of that ancient part of your brain being triggered. Is that right? I'm really interested, Angela. OK, so that's the colours we talked about a little bit. But what is this about them having personality? So that is something which is called ordinal linguistic personification. So some letters and numbers have personalities to people with synesthesia. So most of the numbers I find quite friendly, apart from number five. Sorry, quick question. If there were a room of, say, 20 people who all had this particular type of synesthesia, would you all agree the colours? You've all got your own separate. Right, OK. I think there are some trends, if you like, to some colours a pick more often. But they don't really know why. Yeah. So, for example, the days of the week have very fixed colours for me. Most people, if you ask them what colours Monday will say blue. Yeah. Because of the Blue Monday Association. So you can predict quite often what people will say. But in synesthesia, they're random. There's another which I find amazing. I didn't know about all these varieties. I knew there's over 150 types of synesthesia that they know of now. So the one I love most is mirror touch synesthesia, which is where you feel what someone else feels if you see it happening to them. And there are a couple of amazing case studies. There's a woman called Carolyn. She's a massage therapist and she remembers very clearly being three years old, seeing, I think, a dog break its leg and she immediately felt blinding pain. And I guess one of her rear or front leg. One of her legs and she felt enormous pain. So she can't watch action movies because she just feels so much what's going on. But she's a massage therapist. Her job is terrific because it feels like she's constantly being rubbed. Really, she's massaging herself as she does. It feels so nice. I hope she doesn't make the noises. That'd be awkward too. And there's one other guy, a doctor called Joel Salinas, and he's a doctor. And this is a big problem in his line of work because if you see... Oh, God, he's got a surgeon. He saw someone having a cardiac arrest and he felt very, you know, obviously you don't feel exactly what they do, but you feel very strongly. The patient died and he did not. So clearly there is a... Yeah, that's a little... A cut of fudge. I know people with mirror synesthesia get like just a tingling sensation. So if they see someone hurt their arm, they'll get like a tingling in their arm or... OK. So it's not always a complete mirror, but still in the same area. I think I have the opposite of that because I took my daughter to nursery this morning and she fell off her scooter and got a little scrape on her knee and I was like, come on, it doesn't hurt. I think that's probably an 80s dad. But we do, I think we all experience... Like if you want to picture the experience of it, if you ever see someone kicked really hard in the genitals, that involuntary... Oh, you do yourself. That's that must be what it feels like for people. All the time. More so, yeah. The only way I found out I had it is I was doing linguistics at Sussex University and there was a lecturer, Larry Trask, who's sadly no longer with us, but he did a lecture about language acquisition in children and they were talking about this theory that I said earlier, you know, the connections die out and then these people can... And I remember sitting in that lecture going, put everyone's has colours of what you're talking about. And then I came home and I told my dad first and he said, well, surely everyone has... I was like, OK, now I can see there's a hereditary line. And then when I told my mum, she said, oh, that explains why you used to get so angry at the magnetic letters when you were a kid. You say, were the wrong colour. So there was a study in 2013 that looked at people in America with synesthesia and found that a lot of them associated the same colours with letters as those magnetic letters. Right. And a lot of people kind of pointed at that as saying, well, this is it's just made up, isn't it? It's just like the only reason you think A is red is because you have these magnets and you thought A is red. Right. And so James Wanaton, the UK Synesthesia Association, is quite annoyed by it. And he says, it's really annoying that people try and explain it away. But actually, it is interesting because these colours, are they always the same? Like you say, they're different for everyone. But for you in particular, are your colours always have they been the same your whole life because they do change for some people? So this is a really interesting point because up until recently, consistency was a way of sort of confirming whether someone had synesthesia. So what you would do, you would do the test and then six months later, you do it again and then you do it again. But the main reason they did that was because there have been periods in time when being a synesthesia has been fashionable. And so because lots of people self identified as synesthetes who weren't synesthetes, it was very difficult to do studies on synesthetes. So the way they did it was to use this consistency idea. But it doesn't necessarily mean that if it's not consistent, you're not a synesthe. It just means if it is a consistent, then you definitely are. I read a study of a woman just known as A B, who sees colours when she hears music. It's a different tones have different colours, right? But then the paper said to say she had a series of unfortunate events would be an understatement as a teenager. She sustained several concussions, had migraines, contracted viral meningitis and was struck by lightning. Oh, my God. She bought on a Friday the 13th. Tired luck, isn't it? But every time one of these things happened, like the colours changed. But by the end, they all came back. So it would like change and then it would come back and then it would change and then come back. So I find I do a lot of crosswords. I love cryptic crosswords and word puzzles and things. And particularly, I don't know if you know the spelling bee or New York Times. Some days I can't do it because the letter is so arrogant in the middle that I just go. That's my excuse when I don't manage to do a crossword as well. I'm sorry. Please don't review any of our books. Angela, just in case. What is the most arrogant letter? I've got three, A H M, but what is your house? Wow. It took me a minute, but I've got those letters. No, the most arrogant letter is probably X. Yeah, I see that. It's very, yeah, snobby. Interesting. You know, it's your biggest special. Keeps himself to himself, yeah. So you've got grapheme color, which is your type of synesthesia. So other people who supposedly had it was Richard Feynman, the great physicist who used to see the equations in various different colors as he was writing them. Vladimir Nabokov also had that. And then there's another one, which is called Chromesthesia, which is where you pair color with sound. And a lot of musicians have this. So supposedly, I mean, you get these lists online. And so some of these might have just made it through anecdotally, but aren't necessarily true. But Stevie Wonder supposedly has it. So he sees color when he's writing songs. Beyonce has it. Charlie XCX. Jimmy Henry. Very arrogant. And Jimmy Hendrix had it. And apparently there was a chord, which is known as the Hendrix chord. It's also the purple chord, because he would see purple when he wrote it. And the song Purple Haze is the haze. And it's that chord is used a lot in that song. Nice. This is one I find most fascinating that I don't experience. Lexical gustatory, where people hear words and taste certain tastes. So they might hear a trigger word and they suddenly can taste licorice or strawberry. So the guy who was it was it you, James, you mentioned James Wanlton, the president of the UK Synesthesia Association. He has this and he visited every tube, overground and docklands like Railway Station to find out what they tasted like. He sounds like one of us. Tottenham Court Road, Sausage and Egg, Kings Cross, Rich Fruitcake. And he produced a tube map. Wow. With the flavours. It's really good. That's sort of the one I wish I had. That's the cool one. There are sexual synesthetes. Well, I will say, I don't mind saying this on air, orgasms have colours. So depending on intensity or what, and it's usually through the red spectrum. So it's usually red or orange. So we say my husband knows it's been a good night if he says how was it for you? And I say burnt umber. Wow. Well, that's a very, that's very pharaoh and ball as well. Elephant's breath. Very beauti. Wow. Wow. How am I going to figure this out this month? So many bills. His lunch is at school. It's nursery. They need any new clothes and gas and electric. 25 pounds. New 30 internet. 25 bills. 25 nursery fees. 1,755 pounds. New government policies are making every day easier. Like offering 30 hours funded childcare to help working families save on average 8,000 pounds per year. This is just one of the ways the UK government is tackling the cost of living. See more at gov.uk slash cost of living help. OK, it is time for fact number two and that is Andy. My fact is in 1577 there was only one man in England permitted to touch the Queen. The King? Yeah. I wasn't one then. We're on Queen Elizabeth I who for international listeners kind of a big deal. Virgin Queen. The Virgin Queen. Did she ever see Burnt Umber? We don't know. The hair was quite Burnt Umber. That was. So I went to a gallery recently which was in South London. It's a Greenwich and they have a thing called the Queen's Gallery there. It's amazing. Lots of amazing artworks and there was one portrait of a courtier from the 16th century who was called Richard Drake and the little information panel said this guy was the only person permitted to touch the Queen and it's because he was the master of the Queen's horse so helping her mount onto her horse that kind of thing. And I think he was a cousin of Francis Dray. Did they say was he related to Francis Dray? Yeah, he was quite a posh family and had all sorts of connections and built all sorts of indefrees. How did he go on all falls so she could walk on his back? That was it. That was exactly it. Really? No, he would throw her on. Swing around by the house. Like do you do the hand thing where you stand on a hand? Leg up. It must be that. That's the classic. Yeah, I think that is the classic. When did we get... I could absolutely imagine it being him on all falls as she steps on his back. True. Or piggyback. Shoulder ride I think. Shoulder ride over to the horse and then yeah. Like she's a transfer. Yeah. Is it only me who whenever they think of Elizabeth I only has Miranda Richland on her side? It's all I can. Yeah, absolutely. But we've never really spoken about it before and she was the most interesting woman and monarch and just crazy. The last Tudor. That's interesting. End of a house because she died without hairs so obviously the whole royal system changes after her and we get James I of Scotland in as King next. But daughter of Henry VIII. Daughter of Henry VIII. Not expected to become Queen at all because she was the daughter of Anne Boleyn. Her dad beheaded her mum. That's some therapy sessions there isn't she. And also she was never legitimised was she in law. Like Henry VIII changed the succession laws so that she could succeed but he never officially changed it. He sort of declared it. So there was I think throughout her reign there were questions on her legitimacy. Yeah. How interesting. Because then her father Henry VIII obviously lots of wives and then Anne Boleyn was the second wife and with his third wife Jane Seymour he had Edward VI who was a son so became heir but then never VI died after only a few years on the throne. Then there was some Mary. Catholic. All the religious stuff. But this so her childhood was crazy because she grew up in very very rich circumstances and then when her mother was executed when she was under three years old it all changed and it was all taken away. And supposedly after Anne Boleyn was beheaded her mother the young Elizabeth asked her governor why governor how happy it yesterday lady princess and today but lady Elizabeth. Supposedly this is when she was two years and eight months. I was trying to find a bit. I thought those people on Facebook isn't it? You'll never guess what little Tommy said this morning. No he didn't. Exactly. Interesting. I was looking at some other people in Queen Elizabeth's court. So there was one of her favorites was a woman called Lettuce Nollies and Lettuce was in Queen Elizabeth's court for 15 to 20 years which is 150 times longer than Liz Truss was prime minister. But she was like one of her absolute favorites and then she married Robert Dudley in secret. Robert Dudley was the bloke who Queen Elizabeth really fancied and when she married this guy she was out. Queen Elizabeth said I don't want to see you anymore. But he was also I think the master of the horse just before Richard Drake. He served a term so he would have I don't know if he had the same privileges of being the only man to be able to touch him. He certainly touched her emotionally down. Did Lettuce did was she he wasn't executed? She wasn't executed. We didn't end up with the head of Lettuce. I can't believe I walked straight into that one. I had to really force Mark my way into that. We actually know a descendant of Lettuce. Do we? I think the four of us must know this descendant of Lettuce because we happen to know the 13 times great grandson of Lettuce. Do you know who it is? It's not Whitticombe is it? It's Josh Whitticombe. Yeah. It's it. Comedian Josh Whitticombe. Was that from his suit? Who do you think you are? Yeah. That's great. Yeah. Exactly. We still have you call them equaries that look after the horses in the in the royal household and the senior equary to Queen Camilla is called Major Rob Treasure, which I don't think you should have them in the Royal Family. It's a bit on the nose, isn't it? Something's gone missing for the Tower of London. Okay, bringing Rob Treasure. I'm either going to be Paul Burrell or Rob Treasure. And it was a big it was a big role, the master of the horses back then. You know, if you think about, oh, you're in charge of the horses these days, just in charge of this sort of rich bit of your life, right? But back then that was that's like looking after the cars. That was looking after the the transport to war. That was looking after your main line of soldier. Main. So many things. Does it have mains? Yes. Yes. That's what you should have been called. Master of the horses. Yeah. Yeah, like so back then that was an incredibly important role. You would breeding, you were buying, you were purchasing. It was type of army, wasn't it? It was a whole bit of the army. So these days less so. Now it's about maintenance, but still horses very big within the world of the Royals, at least up until Queen Elizabeth II, who, you know, she used to make sure that she was at all the all the horse races. Yeah, she's got racing. Yeah. She she owned so many horses. She was obsessed with how her horses were being bred. She had, I feel like she won the Grand National or something. I think she won some horses. Yeah, I think. Yeah. Yeah. I think she didn't have a massive horse treadmill as well. Oh yeah. She had a treadmill where 18 horses could exercise at the same time. Wow. Something impressive like that. She once did an after dinner at the Guards Polo Club. Oh. It's a spectacular piece of miss booking. It's the only one I was going to describe that. It was one of the worst. Did they book you because your name is Barnes? Maybe. Was Andrew Stable not available? I got there. This is a true story. So this was 15 years ago, so I was a brand new comedian and I didn't know to say no to something like that. I turned up and for a start, I went, I thought I'm not going to wear to this thing. It was black tie at Duke of Edinburgh's Polo Club. Right. So I went and bought a dress from Debenham's, which I thought was good enough. And then I got there with, oh, this doesn't count it at all. And then anyway, I did the gig and it was, you know, as expected, hard work. And then as I was leaving, a woman stopped me in the doorway and she literally said to me, I knew when I saw you arrive, you must be the entertainer. Wow. I knew you could have been married to a polo player, not with that hair. Wow. What? It was awful. But with the money I made from that gig, I went on holiday to Cuba. So who got the last laugh? Very nice. Yeah, just one. What a bunch of. It was funny because I also did the thing that I now know you don't do after dinners or corporates, but I was very green at the time and I sat and had dinner with them. When you say you were green. Was it Tuesday? Yeah. I go say like it is an elite of saying I slightly give the queen a pass because it is the queen. I feel like, OK, you know, that's part of the job and having lots of horses. And I do like what a nerd she was about it because she properly was. She would even have CCTV cameras installed at Sandringham Stud Farm so that she could see the birth of horses. She'd get an alert. She was really invested in it. And also the names are so geeky. So the families of various horses that she had. So there was one called Hypotenuse who had foals that were called geometrist, equal sum, long side Pythagorean. There was Wink of an Eye who was the son of momentary and her mother was fleeting memory. So she had all these names. But anyway, they're all being sold off because I think Charles is not as into it. And the Guardian has estimated that if all the horses are sold, it's going to be roughly twenty seven million that they'll make off the back. Wow. Yeah. He still keeps horses like ceremonial horses, doesn't he? But he just doesn't do the horse races. He in 2024, he appointed Captain Kat Anderson as the first female equity to a sovereign in history. Wow. Progress. Progress. One step at a time. Something about not touching royals. Yeah. I read a newspaper article from the early 20th century and it said that in 1894, there was a footman of the King of Spain who was in the palace and young Prince Alfonso was walking across and then fell down some stairs and this footman caught him and was immediately fired for touching a member of the royal family. Oh really? Let them die. The moral is let them go. Apparently the Queen Mother then rewarded him with the generous private pension, but he didn't get his job back. It was where you just now allowed to touch them. How many how many royals have you guys touched? Not one. I've met one, but I've not. You didn't touch? I didn't touch her, but I met the Queen. Well, I say I met the Queen. I was a student nurse and I was working at the Homsdon Hospital in Hackney. She came to open a new bit of the stroke rehab unit I worked on. Right. And she it was mad because that day Hackney got tidied up. I've never seen anything like it. There were street sweepers out. There were. And that's like right. Or just the route that she was going. Not all of Hackney obviously. All these buildings are orange. Murder miles looking very pretty this morning. All this artwork appeared in the hospital the day before. Yeah. All went again the day after. I really wherever she went that art went. Yeah. It's weird everywhere I go. It's the same painting. It was like was it Catherine the Great who had the Potemkin villages that she thought wherever she went the villages of Russia were so beautiful and stuff because wherever she went they just built the ones. That was sort of caught her called Potemkin. His name was Potemkin and he built these like. But I wonder if the Queen thought that as well. And the King thinks that it's just like London's lovely. Lovely. Yeah. East London is gorgeous. Yeah. The old joke is that everywhere she goes smells of fresh paint. So she thinks that's what the world smells like. There was a man came round from the palace like the week before she came to teach us how to curtsy if we wanted to curtsy we didn't have to but if you wanted to you could. And to teach us that it was man rhyme with him not mom but none of us were allowed to take annual leave that day so we all had to sort of line up. And she did the classics she stopped in front of there's me in my uniform and a physiotherapist next to me and she stopped and looked at me and did the what do you do. It's like I'm. I'm. Not with that. Oh the entertainments are out. Dad you would have asked the question if you hadn't touched him. I just realized he was counting on my head. I'm on four. I'm on four. You've touched four Royals. Yeah. It was when you were on the island. Sorry I've been touched by four. Let me point to the bits they touched. The no the queen I've touched the queen. I thought you were. What no you're not allowed to touch the queen. You can't touch her. He's been royal equiri. We shook hands. That's touching. Are you allowed to shake hands. That's very rare. What? That's very rare. Wow. Yeah. Okay well that's I mean. She must have liked you. Yeah she must have taken to me. She only usually does fist bumps does it. Since COVID it's been a long time. Yeah I know. So I shook hands with the queen. Gave Philippa high five. I had a thumb war with Edward. And the old full body with Prince Andrew. How much of that is true Eddie of it? Well no I shook the queen's hand. I shook Phillip's hand. I shook Edward's hand. And then I shook the former princess at Denmark's hand. But when I was a kid she was weirdly our neighbor in Hong Kong. Before she was changed. We come from very different backgrounds. Truth or lie. Okay it is time for fact number three. And that is my fact. My fact this week is that the 10th best Formula One driver in the world can't drive. When I say drive I mean regular cars. He can't drive regular cars. Now this was Arvid Lindblad. And he is a very young Formula One driver. He's 18 and he was talking to Max Verstappen who also started very young. In fact will be forever the youngest Formula One driver because rules have changed. And you have to now be 18 and older. And he was 17 when he was driving. And they were having a chat and he said something about you driving. He said no I don't have a license. And so he can sit behind the wheel of a Formula One car. But he can't drive on a regular road. So do you get a different license for Formula One? A super license for Formula One. Yeah so the FIA, the Federacion Internacional d'Automobile, the FIA, as to they issue super licenses for Formula One racing. And so Arvid Lindblad and Kimmy Antonelli who drives from Mercedes. He was issued an early super license as well in 2024. What's the point? No one's stopping you in the middle of a race and saying excuse me sir. Do you know how fast you were going back there? But you can get points on your super license. And you can have it. Absolutely. So it's a rolling 12 months. So there was a point where oh who was it? There was a driver who almost got, because you get a race ban. It might be Max Verstappen actually who had almost 12 points within a 12 month period. And if you get that you get a race ban. And what is it for? So it can be if you do something really dangerous essentially. So if it's something where, because there's normal penalties during racing. She's got stop go penalties. She's got like five second penalties, 10 second penalties. Starting for a grid place penalties. So you start the next race five grid places back from where you qualify and things like that. But if you do something really bad you get points on your license. Interesting. You also get fined for swearing. Do you get fined for swearing? There's so many weirds. Inside the car. On the radio, because the radio messages were broadcast. And so they're really, and it's been because of Muhammad bin Suleyam who's the head of the F1. He is from a Muslim country etc. So he's been really hot on that. And the drivers really got a backlash about it against him. Because they're like, well you try crashing at 200 miles an hour and not swearing. Yeah. It feels like swearing is one thing. But if you're going, No. I think you can turn a blind eye to that. I think you mean flip. But they, they, so they, sorry, they broadcast these things. You can hear them talking to the radio. And they actually now have a show you can watch after the broadcast where they play all the, Oh, just like the best of the radio messages. Something even drier than Formula One. It's not dry, it's great. A Formula One isn't dry, but B the radio messages are so funny sometimes. But they're fighting back. So they have like a drivers association and the drive association are saying, you know, if we swear, but it's to make a point, as opposed to insulting someone, then that should be fine. So Max Verstappen who we've mentioned, he was fine for saying his car was fucked during a press conference. I mean his car was fucked. But there you go. During a press conference, come on. Yeah. One thing I like about this super license is that you have to do a theory test to get it as well, just like a normal license. So yeah, there's a knowledge test, which is on the International Sporting Code and F1 Sporting Regulations. And then on top of that, the team has to show that you've driven at a certain speed for a certain number of kilometres in a one-seater car. Right. In order for you to get that. And you need to, quite often, you need to have done well in other races that are not Formula One. I see. I mean, all makes sense, doesn't it? Is that, I guess, would there be a hazard perception test? There's an elderly lady crossing the road five miles ahead of you, but you're going to be on her in three seconds. So what are you going to do? So this is an interesting thing about the age. So this guy is very young that we're talking about. Yes. The first guy. So there, but there are also, they're very young and there are very old drivers at the moment. Is that right? Somewhere in the 14th. Fernando Alonso, he's 40. Not that old, just to say. If I think. Absolutely, absolutely. Luis Hamilton's 41 now, I think. Yeah. But that's a really big range within the sport. And I think the oldest ever Formula One champion was Juan Manuel Fangio of Argentina. And so he was, ages ago, he was racing. It was in the 50s. And he did his last one in 1957, age 46 years old was, I think, his last victory. And when he started, I just love, I mean, the, because obviously Formula One is so technical, it's amazingly complicated. There are the incredibly clever teams working on, you know, how to make the cars more aerodynamic and all of this. When he was doing his racing, helmets were made of cloth until 1952. Oh yeah. And helmets were made compulsory that year. And they were, they were made of papier-mache, I read. I know, the pie shaped helmets. You would get covered in soot inside your car because just the cars are much more basic and you weren't protected. And of course, people died by the dozen every single year. Yeah. But I love looking at the photographs from like 1950s race, 1950s, 75 years of Formula One last year. And there was a great exhibition I went to. And you look at the photos of the drivers from the 50s and they're fat. Like, and since, you know, in modern Formula One cars with the monocoque chassis and they're tiny drivers. I don't know, they're like jockeys. They're like jockeys. They're, because it's a tiny space they have to sit in and you want them light because obviously you don't want them to weigh down the car. You've got a weight limit for the car. And it's just these fat blokes with beer bellies and fags. I just like, you just don't see that in Formula One now. It's brilliant. We look at those old pictures. I found a list of all the people who have ever raced in Formula One. Paddy Driver. Brilliant. Participated in two races. Scoring no points. Scott Speed was the first American driver to race in Formula One since Michael Andretti. That was in 2006. Hans Stuck. Was a German guy. He was really interesting because he was friends with Hitler. And then after the war, if you were German, you weren't allowed to be in Formula One. And that's because you needed to be a member of a society. And after the war, you weren't allowed new clubs in Germany. No one was allowed to join a club. And Formula One club, which you would enjoy your international authority. You weren't allowed to have them. So he then went to Austria and he said, oh no, I'm Austrian. So then instead. Instead. That's very interesting. One thing I was reading about, because I do find it quite exciting to watch Formula One. But one thing I think I'd be more excited to watch is the pre-season testing of Formula One. Because this is where the cars are making, in some cases, their debut with new mechanics and new things. But they try and hide what that is before the actual start of the Formula One. Sandbagging. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And so there's all these different methods that they use. So for example, you remember those ships that were supposedly black and white and all those. The Dazzle. The Dazzle ships. They do that with Formula One cars so that you can't quite spot where they might have rearranged certain positions. Or they'll change all the stickers. So you think the exhaust is in one spot, but actually it's in another. They try as much as they can to disguise it just so you don't get what they've done to their new cars. But on top of that, if they've signed a new rookie, or if someone's trying to make a comeback, what they'll often do is they'll have one of their existing drivers lend their helmet. And so they'll walk out. I thought you were going to say, oh, I thought you were going to say Mission Impossible style rubber masks. That's a shame. Well, they might be wearing full. They might be under the helmet, but a bit pointless. Just in case. No, but they'll go out in the helmet of another driver so that they think, oh, it's just him doing his test. I think. But actually it's someone. Lewis Hamilton is six inches shorter this year, that's good. I don't know what he's done by that. You would have to find someone whose head was the same size though, right? Yeah. I don't know. Once you're in a monoclock though, like I suppose not. Which is a little. They just do the design. That's the sort of what you're sat in, the bit around you. But the pre-season testing was really interesting this year because there's been a big rule change in Formula One this year. So from 2022 up till 2025, they had ground effect cars. So we're really high downforce, low floors. And there's been a complete rule change now. So basically the reason NG manufacturers put lots of money into Formula One is because it is a way of sort of testing things for road cars and to advertise their road cars and everything in the future. So there's always Formula One car development has to sort of mirror in some ways what's happening on the road. And like proper Formula One fans don't really want that because we want big old stinking VA engines that make that lovely noise that make your ears pop. You don't want the cars to have to plug in every 45 miles a year. Exactly. I mean, I don't know if you've watched Formula E, but it's really tedious. So but this year's rule change. And you calve down, calve down, and you fall. Some of us enjoy watching fast chargers doing their thing. The cars this now have this sort of energy recovery system. So it's all about they can harvest energy when they're breaking and then employ it on straight. They've all got batteries as well. They've all got batteries. So the hybrid era has been since 2014 or so. So they had before that from 2009, you had the Curse system, which was the kinetic energy recovery system. And then that sort of involves because the thing is if you make the car too efficient, you don't get overtakes and that's boring. I see. Overtakes are the things you want. So they're constantly changing the rules to try and get more overtakes. There is a button now that they can press called the overtake button, which just means they can use that energy they've harvested to boost and overtake. So when they use that function, it's over to the person. Like a nitro button. Basically, yeah. Like it's like Mario Kart. Like your bullet in Mario Kart. You just bloop all the way. And it looks like that. It just when they press it and it just overtakes, it looks like they're completely different formulas. Like they're just, oh, okay. Have they considered adding like shells and bananas? What people would want. I think even Andy would want to do this. The Curse thing that you mentioned, obviously that or not obviously, but that's now in all electric cars basically. So the reason, one of the reasons you get so far on your in your electric car without charging is because it can regain energy from the braking system and that began in Formula One. Yes. The Formula One drivers, they do all the, you know, they do lots of training obviously, because it's much more physical than it used to be. I didn't know this. What's the most important thing for a Formula One driver to practice? Their neck muscles. It's neck day. So when you're driving this car and you're going around the corners and you're whizzing along and all of that, supposedly your head weighs five times what it normally does. Partly the helmet and partly the gravitational forces acting on you. And so often they can't buy normal clothes because they've got this wacking great neck basically. To build looks to form like, yeah. Formula One drivers, they're small with these massive neck. They're all neck. And head bangers, people who love metal music. Head bangers would make great Formula One drivers because they do all this training. So and the images of them training their necks are so funny because they'll release shots sometimes of them wearing this mad brace. Sort of big like one of those helmets you'd wear for a psychiatric experiment, you know, with sort of with that, but like with a thick rubber cord coming off it. And at the other end of the rubber cord is a trainer who is just hauling their neck over one direction and they're trying to resist it. That I get mirror touched in a seizure. When I look at that, that makes my neck. It's really hard. Yeah, they're so strong and fit now. Like they sweat so much. They lose so much weight during a race. And particularly in the really like Singapore or places where they're, it's really hot. And they're sort of, they have water to drink in the car. They have a water system. But what I think people don't realize is the water is right by the engine. And so it's after a couple of laps, it's basically like tea. It's like water. They don't drink tea. Damon Hill did once have tea in his famously. And another great Damon Hill fact, if you want it, that played a guitar solo on a Death Leopard track. What? So I grew up at Brands Hatch basically. I was there every week. Both of my parents work there. And that's why I love motorsport, particularly Formula One. And I can remember going, the Kentigan is the name of the pub at Brands Hatch. So it's a Pentagon and it's in Kent. See what they've done. Brilliant. And then, and I can remember after races going in there and hearing his band play. Really? Yeah. What's Death Leopard again? A band. No, no, what genre? They, Oh, like sort of hair rock, really. Yeah. Probably some good head banging. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Maybe that's why. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And there's also, I'm quite interested in female Formula One drivers. Oh yeah. There have been, female drivers in Formula One. There's only ever been one female driver score points in a Formula One race. And that was Lela Lombardi. She was an Italian driver and it was in 1975 and she scored half a point. And that was because if a race is less than 60% complete, you only get half a point. And she, during the race there were fatalities. Unfortunately, there was a German driver who crashed into a spectator pit and there was a fireman and a couple of journalists in the spectator were killed. So it was pretty, but she scored half a point. So, you know, so she's the only person to have a score point. But yeah, there's loads of really, there's a little shout out to Alicia Pomoski at the moment who's a Red Bull driver. She's got her first poll last week in the F1 Academy. So there's lots of women drivers coming through now. So hopefully in the next 10 years we'll see another. Very exciting. There's also, you think like smaller in general, on average. So like you get lots of female jockeys for instance. Yeah. Yeah. So it just makes sense. I think part of the problem is, which is always part of the problem with Formula One is money. Because you have different types, you know, some people get their seats in Formula One on Merritt, purely, and some get their seats in Formula One because they also bring money. So Lance Stroll, for example, who drives to Aston Martin, a pretty terrible Formula One driver. And there's lots of people much more deserving of that seat. But his dad owns the team. What are you going to do? He basically bought the team for his son to have a seat and Formula One. The thing is, you want a nicer Galliterian sport like Polo. That's what you really need to do. How am I going to figure this out? This moment, so many bills. His lunch is at school, that's really, they need any new friends. And ask an electorate. Twenty five pounds. Twenty eight years old. Thirty internet. Twenty five bills. Twenty fifty plus. Twenty fifty thousand. Seventy hundred fifty five pounds. New government policies are making every day easier. Like offering 30 hours funded childcare to help working families save on average 8,000 pounds per year. This is just one of the ways the UK government is tackling the cost of living. See more at gov.uk slash cost of living help. It is time for our final fact of the show. And that is James. Okay, my fact this week is that in 16th century London, there was a chain of pubs that sold laxatives on tap. Any questions? Ah, so many. So this is, Queen Elizabeth could have gone to one of these pubs. Oh, yeah. Well, in fact, this person who made them, Dr William Butler, he was a physician to James the first. And really? So only just after her. And he was definitely around at that time. I'm not sure how often Queen Elizabeth went to the pub. Probably not that much. Probably not that much. Yeah, yeah. But he was a physician and he became famous for various reasons we might go into. But one of the things he did was make this thing called Purging Ale, which had aniseed, caraway, licorice and beer. And if you went to quite a lot of pubs in London, you would be able to get it on tap. And it was good for you because you would purge your body. It was medicinal, let's say. So it wasn't in a beer? It was, it was, it was like beer, but with all this extra stuff in it to make you shit yourself. Imagine a nice cask pale ale that you would get today, but with a few, what's the opposite of a modium? He's like a, he's like a original hipster brewery kind of character. Now, I'd rather that than syrupa figs. I think it sounds quite nice. And actually there's still a pub in London called Old Doctor Butler's Head in Morgate, which claims to be associated with him and that he sold his beer in that pub. Now the actual truth is we're not even certain if he made the beer himself. It was definitely named after him and he was definitely a physician, but it could be that he was just so famous that they called it his beer. Yeah. And so we're not sure about that. Some pubs had his portrait hung up, but again, it might have been just associated with a famous doctor. Sort of license his name. Kind of, yeah, yeah. He's a really interesting chap, this guy. So he went to Claire College, Cambridge and did an arts degree. And then for some reason managed to get a physician's license. And it's not certain how he got it. They seem to have just given it to him. And he just worked at an apothecary shop for ages in Cambridge. And then one day a local clergyman had fallen into an opium-induced coma and been given up for dead. And Butler killed a cow, put the priest inside the cow, and the priest was cured. And from that moment he became famous. It's going to wake you up being put in a cow, isn't it? I think. Or it's going to make the opium-induced trip even wilder. What's it? Cut the cow open? He cut a cow open and like, is it the refinent where he kind of lives inside a barrel? Yes, he does. He's a bit like that. My dog on the beach once, she was running towards something. She's a little cockapoo. I'm like, well, she run it and she climbed inside a seal carcass. The smell, I can still smell it now and I think. Oh my God, that's a bath. Yeah, absolutely. She was so proud of herself. That's amazing. A real career-defining moment, I think, the placing of patients inside a cow. He was 68 at that stage and we see basically nothing of him throughout the whole of history from his birth until this moment. And then suddenly at the age of 68, he becomes nationally famous. And so much so that King James I had a hunting injury. And he said, get me the cow guy. Because if the clergyman had died, I don't think you can recover from that. But what's he got to lose? It sounds like he's not made a big success of his career so far. He's doing fine. Yeah, but yeah, okay. If he died, would you just take him out the cow and pretend you never did it? I think you'd have to. Stop. Yeah, it was like that when I got here. I read somewhere they called him an empiric physician. Oh yeah. Which meant he based his treatments not on any theory but purely on reasoning and experience. That's not what you want from Dr. Insik. You want them to have read some books. I guess. I do. He had a few weird things. If someone came to him with epilepsy, he would shoot a couple of firearms close to their heads to scare the condition out of them. Yep, it's like angry to the hiccups, isn't it? If someone had aegyo, which I guess is, what is aegyo? Steve Valeria kind of thing? Yeah. But he would push them into the Thames because like cold water therapy. I mean, you still do cold water therapy today. Wim Hof method. He was quiet in here. Butler was there before the mall. I did read, I read one thing he did where there was a patient who had guitar, severe guitar. What's that? Nose. Heavy sort of matter on the lungs. A sniffle thing. A sniffle. No, it's more, it's sort of a heavy, a really chesty thing of condition, right? And Butler said, right, you've got to smoke an ounce of tobacco, which is a lot. And it took the patient 25 pipes of tobacco, one after the other. Very much like a parent catching you smoking one cigarette and making you, but apparently that completely cured the patient. I mean, some citation needed, I think. Didn't come back for 17 years, didn't it? I mean, he died of lung disease, but didn't have a cold anymore. That was the most important thing. This is the 1500s. I mean, we are, it's probably in line with what? A lot of, yeah. Doctors were practicing or trying or testing at the time. I got this new method with the cow. Oh, great. He was a spicy fellow when you disagreed with him. He was quite something, Butler. So he got involved in a gold clipping affair. So that is where, you know, coins are made of gold. And if you clip off a little bit of the edge, you've suddenly got this, you've still got the coin, but you've got the gold as well. Fantastic, you know? If you do that, you can make it big. And that's why we have the edges on a pound coin. Exactly. Is it Newton supposedly put those on? Exactly. Yeah, yeah. Like to stop people from clipping them. Exactly. So someone from, he was in Cambridge, he was practicing in Cambridge, wasn't he? And someone from Trinity College, Cambridge, a senior called Paul Thompson was sentenced to death for this crime. Because it was incredibly serious at the time, interfering with the currency, big no, no. Butler wrote to him, I just love this. Okay, this is the quote he sent to him. He just wrote to him saying, oh, you've been sentenced to death and you've been caught doing this. Well, I've got a letter from Butler. Maybe that'll cheer me up. Butler wrote, You're giddy headed, fantastic fiddling fingers and scribbling pen directed by the motion of your quick silver brain without penitency, pretending piety, practicing policy will bring you to a violent end. As you have always lived a conceited wizard, so now you will die a niny hammer fool. Oh, wow. Yes. It's the next Hamilton. Burn. Yeah. Yeah. A niny hammer fool. Nimi, niny hammer. I love that there was lots of plosives at the top. Oh, yeah. That's very good to touch for your mic. Absolutely. It's quite nice that there's a pub still named after him because the connection it seems is that you could buy this laxative on tap there, but actually he was known to basically be in the pub all the time getting pissed. And he had an assistant called Nell, and Nells did a few things, but Nells' chief job was to go and collect him at the end of the night, drunk from the pub, and sort of wheel him home in a wheelbarrow or carry him or whatever method he needed. How many pints of laxative ale have you had? Not many. Well, haven't you? The spouses tell a different story. Oh, dear. This, I've got about, because I was really fascinated by the fact it was laxative ale. And the whole sort of brewing, because you know it was women who first brewed beer, so you had your alewifes would. And there's something called groaning ale. I don't know if you've heard of this. Groaning ale, so when a woman was pregnant, a local alewife, so one of these local brewing women, would brew a batch of really strong ale for when she went into labour. And when she went into labour, both her and the midwife would drink the really strong ale to help the whole process. Wow. I think that's something they should bring. Yeah, really? Yeah. Had the midwife though, I'm not sure about that. It's true. Well, this was a thing, so beer at the time, and we're talking like ages ago now, I mean sort of medieval, was home brewed and you might put a poll above your door just saying you've got ale. I like that, you've got ale. Oh my God, that's it. That's a rom-com we need to make. That's really good. That's really good. Until the bar starts, you've got ale. I'm gay, bring somebody right now though. And so there were there were bride ales as well as the groaning ales, you know, an ale was almost an event as well as an actual drink itself. And then the Black Death happened and a third of the population died. I mean, just absolutely devastating for everybody. But it led to this big labour shortage. Peasants got suddenly got much better paid because they were so much scarier. So you know, they worked their way to much. You needed someone to work on your farm, but everyone was dead, so you could like... So in union terms and labour terms, it was a brilliant thing, the Black Death. And you know, standards of living went up and that led to more permanent ale houses because there was a bit more surplus suppliers of work. And that led to kind of better food and better drink and more leisure. And that was kind of the beginning of pub culture. Yeah, right. It's really this idea of the whole Binge Britain thing I find quite interesting because we've always been known as a nation of drinkers. Yes. So from the... In the eighth century, St Boniface, the missionary from Devon, travelled Europe and he wrote to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Cuthbert, and he says, In your diocese, the vice of drunkenness is too frequent. This is an evil peculiar to pagans and to our race. And neither the Franks nor the Gauls nor the Lombars nor the Romans nor the Greeks commit it. So we've always been... Oh, come on, the Greeks... Right? They had other things to say. More kiss-able than the Greeks. I love it. And I read some really good stuff. I can't remember when this was now. I should have written it down. But it was St Bartholomew's Hospital. Their records show that at one point, six children averaged three points of beer a day. Wow. For the six children. How similar is beer now as it was then? So it was weaker at the time, right? It would have been weaker. So was it... And it changed when hops came along. Yeah. So that was a bit later. I think it was the idea that it had been through a brewing process and it was safer. Safer than just drinking straight out of the river. Don't water it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that's the idea. So it is... There's a good reason behind it, basically. Yeah. Small beer, they call it. Small beer, that's the idea. Yeah. In 2020, Pennsylvania designated beer distributors as a life-sustaining service. I could carry. And the idea is that because the people who take the beer around also often provide water, soda and some food slash snacks. So in some areas of the state, according to communications director Casey Smith, in some areas of the state, there might be the only place where you can move water around is by moving beer at the same time. Absolutely. Pork scratching is actually one of the four food groups. It's very important. Does anyone else really want a beer? Yeah. Or anyone want a beer now? Let's do it. Well, let's wrap up and grab a beer. 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 podcast, we can all be found online. I'm on at Shrybeland on Instagram. James. My Instagram is no such thing as James Harkin. Andy. At Andrew Hunter M. Angela, wherever you find me. I'm at Angela underscore Barmzy on Instagram. Nice. And you're on tour now, not with one show, but two. Two shows. So I'm finishing off my tour angst, which finishes at the end of May. And then from June to the end of the year, I'm hosting the arches live at 75, which I'm so excited about. Because I'm such an archers nerd. That's a radio show in the UK for international listeners. And it's brilliant. Yeah. If you want to get through to us as a group, podcast at qi.com, send all of your emails there. If you want to send us your favorite facts, Andy will go through the inbox, cherry pick the best, and bring them to our bonus episode, which goes out every Monday called Little Fish. So send them in there. But if you've got general feedback that you want us to know about, also send that because Andy picks the best of those for our behind the scenes mailbag episode, which is called Drop Us a Line. And that's part of Club Fish, which is our private members club. You'll find it on Patreon. So just head to patreon.com. Slash Club Fish. And there's multiple tiers there of things that you can do. So you can join the Drop Us a Line as an audio. There's also a higher tier where you can get it as a video. And then at the highest tier, you become custodian of one of our headline facts from the last 12 years of Fish. So much stuff there. Check it all out. We've also got a quiz coming up. That's April the 14th. And if you become a member of the highest tier of Club Fish, you can get access to that too. And just a reminder, that's patreon.com. Slash Club Fish. Otherwise, hey, come back next week because we're going to be back with another episode and we will see you then. Goodbye.