‘We reckon there’ll be enough new information to astonish, delight and fuel your conversations’
For five years Andrew Hunter Murray and three fellow QI Elves have been producing a spin-off podcast, No Such Thing As A Fish, using spare facts from the programme. Now they are coming to Scotland with a live show
Did you know that all the mice in Scotland are originally from Viking stock? Or that the Scottish town of Dull is twinned with the Oregon hamlet of Boring? Or that Scotland was using the word ‘wow’ 400 years before anyone else? You may well know all these things – particularly if you’ve been listening to No Such Thing As A Fish in the last few years.
We’re a group of four writers and comedians – Dan, James, Anna and Andrew – and for the last five years we’ve been turning up all sorts of unusual facts about life, the universe and everything and broadcasting them every week to an audience all around the world. We all started out as researchers for the BBC2 show QI: our job is to find the facts that make up the show, and pass them along to the host Sandi Toksvig so she can torment Alan Davies and the rotating cast of guests we have each week. Because each series of QI is themed around a single letter of the alphabet, we’ve just finished reading about things beginning with P (paintbrushes, Poland and parsnips, for example) and now we’re getting started on the Q series, which will feature quiffs, queens and quidditch.
Working at QI sounds like the perfect job – and all of us love spending our days reading about everything we can think of beginning with this year’s letter, which is why my desk is currently stacked with books about quacks and queasiness.
But a few years ago we noticed that something strange and unsettling was happening. Far from coming up with facts for the show and using them all up in the recording sessions, we found that after each series we had lots of facts left over – bonus facts we hadn’t quite managed to get on air. They had to be cut because they didn’t fit in the right letter of the alphabet, or for reasons of time (and, occasionally, decency).
These bonus facts may not have made it onto the show, but they weren’t bad, either. We found that a couple of million years ago, rats were the size of hippos. And that the first ever sandwich contained wine, and that during his time as Pope, John Paul II took over 100 skiing and mountainclimbing holidays. These facts were simply too good to leave by the wayside, so we thought we’d have a go at telling people about them ourselves.
We sat around a single microphone in QI’S offices, spent a couple of hours recording a pilot, and uploaded it online.
Since then, we’ve had five wonderful years of making a show each week full of all the most strange and wonderful facts we’ve found out. We were amazed that it’s been a success – but we think it proves our theory that there are millions of people around the world who love finding out bizarre, quirky, brilliant facts, and we’re thrilled that the podcast has started drawing together a huge global community of likeminded fact obsessives.
We’ve produced more than 250 shows, written two books (The Book of the Year and The Book of the Year 2018) stuffed with oddities from the year’s news, and we’ve even had two series of our own show, No Such Thing As The News, on BBC2. But the really exciting thing is that we’ve had several chances to go on the road and tour the world. Last year we played Australia and New Zealand, and this month we’re starting our new tour of the British Isles. We’ll be visiting Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen as part of that tour.
Anyone who has heard the show knows that they’ll be getting a brand new, live podcast recording on the night – and there’s nothing we like more than meeting the likeminded people who listen to the show. We also sometimes get people shouting out halfway through if it turns out we’ve got a fact wrong. There’s nothing like being corrected by a deep-sea biologist during a gig to reassure you that you’re in the right company.
We often try to work in facts about the places we’re visiting: and we’ve found a marvellous number of facts about Scotland over the years. They range from the mythical – that a triathlon taking place near Loch Ness took out insurance against the Loch Ness Monster – to the poetical – that Robert Burns never called himself ‘Rabbie’ or ‘Robbie’. (Although he did on occasion nickname himself ‘Spunkie’, or ‘The Rantin’ Rovin’ Robin’.)
Burns, of course, isn’t the only great Scottish bard. Many people will be familiar with the other national poet, William Topaz Mcgonagall, famed for his dreadful poetry and complete failure to realise how bad he was. Even with less famous characters like Mcgonagall, there are dozens of fabulous stories that turn up as soon as you start looking into them. When we read about Mcgonagall’s life we found that before he ever considered poetry he once played Macbeth in a play, and when he thought the actor playing Macduff was upstaging him, refused to die in the final swordfight. (Eventually he had to be rugbytackled off stage.) However, his name lives on – it’s believed that Professor Mcgonagall in the Harry Potter novels is named after William Topaz. So even if people haven’t read Mcgonagall’s brilliantly
We found that a couple of million years ago, rats were the size of hippos
terrible poems, he’s still making his mark on literature around the world.
We’ve found facts about Scottish contributions to language – like the revelation that Scotland has 421 words for snow (dialects from all over the country include sneezle – which means to start snowing; skelf – a large snowflake, and fuchtar – describing snow falling lightly). And Scotland has been a pioneer in the field of visual arts too: the first ever comic strip with speech bubbles originated in Glasgow in 1825. It wasn’t as exciting as modern superhero comics – the first strip was called The Adventures of A Coat – but from that humble origin, a global industry has sprouted.
The facts we’ve turned up about Scotland may even change your life – recently we discovered that the University of Glasgow offers a grant of up to £500 for any students studying in the area who have the surname Graham (the reason is that it was traditionally a name associated with poverty).
All these facts might have been written off as ‘trivia’ in the days before QI. But we don’t think they are. They’re the kind of information that sticks in the brain, and – with any luck – make you want to grab someone and tell them about it. They’re the glue of conversation and they help us to understand each other better, and to make the world a slightly smaller and friendlier place.
If you’re a fan of QI, we think you’ll love No Such Thing As A Fish. But even if you’ve never heard of QI or our podcast, we reckon there’ll be enough new information to astonish, delight and fuel your conversations. So if you’re amused by finding out that Highland Games used to include an event where you had to pull the legs off a cow, or that a footballer in Aberdeen once missed a shot at goal so badly the ball ended up in a river and eventually washed up in Norway…we think this might be the show for you.
● See No Such Thing As A Fish: In No Particular Order in Aberdeen tomorrow, Glasgow on Friday and Edinburgh on Sunday 24 March.
● For tickets and more information visit www. nosuchthingasafish.com