#20 - James Harkin (No Such Thing As A Fish, QI)

This episode Tom & Dom are joined by the excellent James Harkin, renowned for his work on the popular podcast "No Such Thing as a Fish" and the esteemed BBC show "QI".

James joins "Manhood" to share his unique insights and experiences. As a researcher and writer, James has delved into the depths of knowledge, uncovering fascinating and quirky facts about the world. However, this time, he steps away from the trivia, sort of, and joins us to explore a different side of himself: his journey through manhood.

All of pur episodes can be watched over on our brand new YouTube channel. Just search 'Tom & Dom's Manhood'

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:14):
Man, Where are you in your house? You're normally in
the cellar, but you look like you've been promoted to
the salubrious living room.

Speaker 2 (00:26):
I've gone up afore to the tartan room, as we
call it. It's got a tartan carpet.

Speaker 1 (00:33):
Okay, cool, Right, Well, this is the twentieth episode of Manhood,
the last in series two, and you'll never guess what
we've gone and done. We've actually finally done it. We've
pulled our fingers out of our hairy bottoms and got
a guest. There is a guest coming up on this episode.
What we're doing is we're copying other really successful podcasters

(00:54):
by recording a little bit of an intro, a preamble,
if you will, with Tom we are.

Speaker 2 (01:00):
We're gonna have a little bit of a calm flap
about our week.

Speaker 1 (01:02):
Right, hang on a minute. Bite you're watching Telly, aren't you?

Speaker 2 (01:06):
No?

Speaker 1 (01:06):
Hell like you're watching what you're looking at? You've got
Babe Station on again. Abby's tucked up in bed. He's
got Babe station.

Speaker 2 (01:13):
Might not go bastation. Babs are just staid two thousand
and four. Basically, Abby is it Spain? And this is
quite interesting. She is good. I'm glad you brought it up.
So she finished spin and she rang me and asked
me permission if she could go to the pub.

Speaker 1 (01:25):
Oh oh with the spin instructor.

Speaker 2 (01:29):
Justin No, not even if she didn't go it just
and I won't be worried. He that's the other side.

Speaker 1 (01:36):
Is that still local to say it's homosexual?

Speaker 2 (01:38):
I don't know. I was to say it is he's gay.

Speaker 1 (01:40):
We don't like you don't fancy women, so he is
of no threat.

Speaker 2 (01:43):
Not that he defines him. I tell you what was
what does define him? His spin classes are ridiculous. He's
one of these ways goes, come on, le'll me go,
and anyone's dancing proper, nice good dance music. However, it's
a It's a class both me and Abby want to do,
but we can't do it together because we've got kids.
So I just let do it because I'm the better person.

Speaker 1 (02:02):
Good man, your legs are big enough anyway. The last
thing you need is Chris Chris hoy thighs.

Speaker 2 (02:06):
I know I've already gotten. So I was like, I
didn't really know what to say, like do you never know?

Speaker 1 (02:11):
Me?

Speaker 2 (02:11):
Asked permission? And I felt a bit guilty. I feel
like I have I made it like this.

Speaker 1 (02:15):
Yeah, because you don't ask permission? Do you absolutely drinking problem?

Speaker 2 (02:21):
I don't know. Anyway, we are tired out.

Speaker 1 (02:23):
Way, We're tired because we've had We've had a busy
week and I'm honestly at the point of I feel
like Michael Douglas in Downfall. Basically that's a great film.
I'm just gonna snap. I'm going to snap at any moment,
and it's really thick rim.

Speaker 2 (02:37):
What does he do when he snaps? Does he the people?

Speaker 1 (02:39):
Basically? Have you seen the board game Downfall where you
turn those those circle things and you've got to get
the counter down to the bottom. It's that, but in film,
I'm joking, it's not.

Speaker 2 (02:50):
It sounds like the worst film ever.

Speaker 1 (02:53):
No, Basically it is a normal man who snaps. It's
very relatable.

Speaker 2 (02:57):
I've often felt like that is in middle aged and
has he got children.

Speaker 1 (03:00):
I'm surprised you've not watched it. I've not watched it
for a while. I'm going to rewatch it.

Speaker 2 (03:03):
I will watch it. Do it like a vintage film.

Speaker 1 (03:05):
But yeah, I got back from London about an hour ago,
and there's something about train travel that absolutely takes it
out here.

Speaker 2 (03:11):
Did your sock it on your carriage? You go? Because
as went, did it.

Speaker 1 (03:13):
Work on my way down? It did? I had no
plug plug but no power that happened on my way down.
So basically we've had a really long week. But it
started with normal work, so we did our actual jobs
that pay our salaries. And then on the Tuesday we
were invited to the PFA Awards, Fans nominations, whatever it was.

(03:33):
The whole thing was a bloody shambles. I'm not gonna lie.
God knows what goes on. First, only that invited us
based on one of our previous podcasts Matter and didn't
realize there were two of us, So clearly they've just
gone see who's got the most followers as a Bradford
fan invite them down. That they had no idea that
we'd ever made content or anything like that.

Speaker 2 (03:50):
Fine ended a podcast for five years.

Speaker 1 (03:53):
But we get there and it's in the cellar of
a night club at two o'clock in Manchester, and the
guy produced in it is already fucking hammered.

Speaker 2 (04:04):
And it was clear that everyone else who had turned
up got the wrong idea as well, because one guy
turned up in his suit. I thought you were presenting
an award or something, receiving an award.

Speaker 1 (04:11):
I thought it'd been He thought he'd been invited to
the actual PFA award, the one that like all the
Premier League players go to. So he's turned up in
a suit, and then I can't imagine what was going
through his head when he had to go down cellar stairs.

Speaker 2 (04:24):
Me in shorts and T shirt for the people in
like joggers and casual.

Speaker 1 (04:29):
Tom and I had to have a little bit of
a like, oh, who's going to do what because there
were some proper cameras there, and then there was a
thirteen year old doing social media stuff just say.

Speaker 2 (04:40):
That video, right, So we both went and someone goes one,
you can do socials when you can do the panel,
and I couldn't be asked. I was tired or whatever.
So I'll do the socials and Dom did the whole
panel thing, which were fine. I'm not I've never I've
never won for like, I want to do more than Dom.

Speaker 1 (04:53):
Thank god, because it was it was, it was. It
was hard because they asked me questions I was not
comfortable with.

Speaker 2 (04:59):
First question to do was who's the player's season in league? One,
not even our lowe league, and don't like, I've got
to be honest. I'm not nothing.

Speaker 1 (05:07):
My brother absolutely no idea. And this was being filmed
on camera and the presenter and we want to say
she was just in case, but she was fucking livid.
She looked at me like, I just shat on the sofa.
But what am I? What am I gonna do?

Speaker 2 (05:21):
Be honest.

Speaker 1 (05:22):
When I was younger, I had a blagged it and
just got Josh Windass, had a picked a random name.
But now I'm a bit older, I'm not taking that.

Speaker 2 (05:29):
Now, you gotta be honest. And then I did a
social media video which never made it onto social media.

Speaker 1 (05:34):
Well that's because it was it was filming. You're right
in front of a loud speaker.

Speaker 2 (05:38):
He asked the question. I went, I can't hear what
you're saying. You're not going to use this video, And
he still did it anyway because he was thirteen and
he was nervous. He didn't know what we were doing. So
it was a complete worst of time. However, something did
happened in it, don which was incredibly awkward.

Speaker 1 (05:49):
It did Tom accidentally, I mean talked to himself into
bed with someone well, let's just tear up. I mean Tom,
Tom is an is an inserciable character. Basically, what had
happened is Tom's propping up the bar. He's not at
an alcoholic beverage. Tom's just on the on the what
we have in diet coke.

Speaker 2 (06:05):
Or something I can remember, yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 (06:07):
And then a lad comes over, a nice.

Speaker 2 (06:09):
Lad, lovely guy. We've known him for a few years, aren't.

Speaker 1 (06:11):
We, but we've never met him. And he was quite.

Speaker 2 (06:13):
Tall Tom, and big guy, bigger than me.

Speaker 1 (06:16):
Tom didn't realize that this this lad was was gay
openly gays come out on on social media fairly recently actually,
and Tom accidentally flirted with him. And because it's loud,
I think there was a little bit of a misunderstanding,
wasn't the Tom.

Speaker 2 (06:31):
I've got to explain it from my side.

Speaker 1 (06:33):
I'll let you explain in a second. But Tom's got
this weird thing where when he's trying to be funny,
when he's trying to make someone laugh, which is quite often,
and Tommy's a funny guy, but there are sometimes when
when Tom's like, not sure, he's merely a bit awkward
around people. He will just go really camp and that
that absolutely that absolutely backfired massively, did it, tom.

Speaker 2 (06:57):
So, You're totally right. You hit the nail on the head,
and I just went up. There was a bit of
an awkward silence, and I went, so, then, what does the
future hold for your blossoming career?

Speaker 1 (07:08):
What we should add is what we should add is
it was really loud. It was really loud in this salad.
So I think that there's been a bit of a misunderstanding,
a bit.

Speaker 2 (07:15):
Of mishearing, because he he So I was. I was
like leant on the bar in like a really like
a really sexual flirting way, like leaning into it as.

Speaker 1 (07:24):
You were saying it though you've not explained it very well.
You went, you went, so, what's going on in your
blossoming career?

Speaker 2 (07:30):
That's it?

Speaker 1 (07:31):
And against a bat and then put the straw in
your mouth.

Speaker 2 (07:36):
I don't know what we're doing, but I did that.

Speaker 1 (07:39):
What followed up was this lad saying, well, that remains
to be seen, doesn't it, Like winked.

Speaker 2 (07:46):
At me and give me a nod, and I'm like,
and I went, oh, right, okay, So then I went
into full flirt mode then and what did I say
after that? No, that's it? So I said, oh, with me.

Speaker 1 (08:02):
But Tom is that Tom didn't know to be Tom
didn't know it was gay.

Speaker 2 (08:07):
He's never And then so this all happened in flirting
with me and went, oh yeah, something like that, he
said back to me, whilst he was were basically sipping
our straws each other at this point, like winking and
nodgen and I'm like inside laughing because I'm just basically
pretending to be a bit cam for some reason. And
then he walks away, didn't he?

Speaker 1 (08:25):
So then he left because it was getting a bit weird,
and I said to Tom, what are you doing? You're
you're married, what are you?

Speaker 3 (08:33):
What are you doing?

Speaker 1 (08:34):
And you went what what? And I said, you're know
it's gay, don't you? And you were totally giving off
vibes there, that's what you're doing. And Tom was like,
he's what.

Speaker 2 (08:45):
I did not, And he came out on Twitter quite opening,
like a year ago, you know, bravely came out to it,
which is a massive thing to.

Speaker 1 (08:51):
Do, especially in a football environment.

Speaker 2 (08:53):
I mean, what a huge what a guy. And I
was like, no, I did not know that at all,
and I absolutely I didn't know how to feel like
I've leading down the Blody Garden PATHI here, so.

Speaker 1 (09:04):
That happened, and we were supposed to be there for
like six hours, but I'd done my bit with him
first fifteen minutes, so we were like, right, we're off,
So we went. And then I get to Manchester and
I look at my train ticket and it's not on
any time train ticket, So I had to kill four
hours in Manchester Piccadilly with a suitcase. So I didn't
want to walk into Manchester because I had a suitcase.

Speaker 2 (09:23):
What do you do?

Speaker 1 (09:24):
I had about twenty coffees. That's absolutely anxiety central back time.
I got on the train shaking, yeah.

Speaker 2 (09:31):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (09:31):
I walked around a few times, checked out Sainsbury's and.

Speaker 2 (09:36):
Sounds exhilarating.

Speaker 1 (09:37):
I went to see if I could get an ice
cream from Burger king but they don't do a mid
trains vision apparently, so that was a big disappointment. And
then anyway, I got on my train, got down to London,
meet some of my colleagues there, go to a great
pub called the Stuart Arms Lovely Public, a bit like
being in EastEnders. Nice, and then we went to the
podcast show, didn't we we did?

Speaker 2 (09:54):
I met you down there on the Wednesday, Din't I
Got Trained Down?

Speaker 1 (09:56):
And basically it's a show that you turn up there
thinking I've got a great podcast. Firstly, I've had a
successful podcast in the past, but now I've got this
new podcast. I'm going to go promote it. I'm going
to take business cards. And you get there and everybody's you. Basically,
everybody's got business cards, everybody's outing a podcast. I mean
the phrase that you hear the most is I actually

(10:19):
do a podcast. Basically what's happened is everyone like me
has come to this, which is like mecha for people
that are desperately trying to seek like a career in
podcasting or whatever. So then we do the show and
it's fine. Basically we're there for the freebies, and I
did a few talks and really interesting talks actually for work,
and then Tom arrives and genuinely this happens to Tom occasionally.

(10:43):
It was as if a toddler had arrived and I
had to chase him around like a baby, and he
was running up to event and going what's that. Then
he was going up to stores and saying, what's this booth?
It's a soundproof booth, like can get can I get?
In the soundproof booth and scream and the book's like yeah.
So Tom went in and screamed and it came back
out and he said to the book, could you aim me?

(11:04):
And the block went oh, yeah a little bit, and
I went, well, it's rubbish then in it And this
was the guy who had invented the booth.

Speaker 2 (11:11):
All I was saying, is it a scream booth, you know,
for screaming? Anyway, it's a recording podcasts. But the thing is, like,
the thing is with these exhibitions, and I've been before,
they really frustrate me because everyone is so like on
edge and nervous, and this is.

Speaker 1 (11:24):
Pod show, you frustrate me.

Speaker 2 (11:27):
So it's supposed to the pocket show. He's supposed to
be supposed to be beaming with characters and of podcasts
and people telling stories, and everyone's really wooded and nervous.
And if you feel like I can feel attention, and
I feel like I want to kill the attention. It's
really annoying.

Speaker 1 (11:42):
There's a lot of pretentious people, yeah, and I.

Speaker 2 (11:44):
Hate pretentious people. So I'm just trying to be normal. Probably.
I imagine I go Ultra and Northern.

Speaker 1 (11:51):
When you first got there, you went ultra annoying.

Speaker 2 (11:57):
And I was trying to make some waves. When business
cards for christ sake, I would sell the podcast in
a weird way.

Speaker 1 (12:04):
I put those business cards for Manhood everywhere I moved
seats on the train. A few times I was leaving
him in different train seats I put them in. I
went to the cricket simulator in London last night, there steaks.

Speaker 2 (12:17):
Do you think that's going to work? Do you think
like that gorilla put it on? Thenk people are going
to go up and go what's that? But I'm going
to listen to it. Like we gave one to a
YouTube with four million subscribers. This guy is like Don calfrasey.
I was like, Calfraser, that's abody carrying it. After every
had the chicken calphrasey once and do like, no, no,
it's not a crazy YouTuber. We looked on four and

(12:38):
a half million subscribers. So I went up to chatted
to a couple of rmbloaks. We give them a business
card and I guarantee that went straight in the bin. Yeah.
In fact, that's what we should have said. We should
have said to we should put it in been now
for you may got more of a laugh.

Speaker 1 (12:52):
So anyway, that that was. That was good one the
podcast show work. That was pretty decent.

Speaker 2 (12:55):
It it put it, it was for you. It's worth
it his work. But I think, yeah, I won't bother.

Speaker 1 (13:02):
I mean, if I lived in London, I'd be so slim.
Like the temptation to walk everywhere is really strong.

Speaker 2 (13:07):
We must about five mile get on the tube. That's
going to be delayed.

Speaker 1 (13:11):
I did twenty thousand steps yesterday.

Speaker 2 (13:13):
It's pretty good.

Speaker 1 (13:14):
I also ate about a billion calories though, yeah.

Speaker 2 (13:18):
Direct.

Speaker 1 (13:18):
The reason that we were in London was because of
our guest. And here he is. This is episode twenty
of Manhood, and this is James HARKing from No such
thing as a Fish QUI writer basically way cleverer and
more successful than us. But he's northern and he's lovely here.

Speaker 2 (13:35):
He is proper block.

Speaker 3 (13:41):
We just did no such thing as a fish here.
And then after the show we had a little chat
in the corner all off Mike. We just went in
the corner and we forgot that we were still recording,
were like, oh fuck, brilliant deleted immediately.

Speaker 2 (13:56):
They're the best moments that we find, like when we
start podcasting were like three two months at the mic,
and I'm like, let's just start when we got on
zoom because we'll have like an innocent chat about something
like something he's done it, and sometimes they're the golden
nuggets that you can't always recreate or even remember.

Speaker 1 (14:11):
Yeah, yeah, well that's that's what always worked best for
us when we were doing Bantam's Banter is that we
never spoke about the football. It just so happened that
there was a match going on. Yeah. Yeah, that kind
of kept the podcast going. But the best stuff for
us was the stuff that we didn't think about, the
stuff that just happened.

Speaker 3 (14:26):
That's good because who gives a fuck about Bradford City.

Speaker 1 (14:32):
James.

Speaker 3 (14:34):
But I got to say, like, I mean, I support
football team in the same division as you guys, traveling Rovers,
so I do care. But like when I listened to
Banson's Banter, it was not never about the football, really
it was.

Speaker 2 (14:47):
We found that when we had the Cup run and
we gained a load of listeners, a lot of them
bothered really about what we're going on the pitch. They
did a bit of an inkling about, like you know,
if perhaps were doing well or not. But it was
really random one it those days.

Speaker 1 (15:00):
Because obviously after we had that that Cup run, and
this is how bizarre podcast that after the Cup run
most of our listeners weren't Brafit fans. Yeah, in fact,
the vast majority were not Bradford fans, which I just
I don't know. It's a podcast. Is such an interesting
dynamic that a podcast that started as something so niche
about one football club attracted a weird audience. And I

(15:20):
think that maybe it's the same with with Fish, that
it's maybe something that you wouldn't necessarily thought you'd listen to,
but then it's incredibly interesting and that the information that
you're giving out is accessible. You know, it's interesting and
things that make me sound clever when I go into
the office and I'm regurgitating the fact which I was
worried about coming in today because all the interesting facts

(15:42):
I know come from you and I can't give them back.

Speaker 2 (15:44):
You don't like, if you've got a good fact for James,
or like Grigause where I'm from as a really famous
brass band, what.

Speaker 3 (15:53):
I told you that wasn't interesting and they're not from,
Like there was a movie Brassed Off that was about actually,
wasn't it.

Speaker 2 (15:59):
Was York, but he wasn't so specifically where I'm from.
The only thing Brigouts has ever been famous for, and
they've built a roundabout because of this is this brass
band called the Briagout and Rationalist Band. Who and Don's like, well,
it's not famous, but they were world champions, were they?
Brass bandy and I don't know what you call it.
So they won the yearly competition year on you and
I think about a few years ago before covered they
just lost the first one in it in a few

(16:21):
years like the Man City of the brass band world.

Speaker 3 (16:23):
I'm sorry, James, this is this is I find I
didn't know it of course because it's extremely tedious, but
like the thing is, like I actually do find interesting,
like and obviously because of my background, I find it
interesting when people from the North of England kind of
get into showbiz for no reason, that like just randomly

(16:44):
get into it and then what they do, which it
sounds like it's kind of I'm not sure brass bandis showbiz,
but it was because we were talking about Bradford. What
was the name of that guy, Gilbert something hot Hardman.
I can't remember his surname. Hard something. But he was
when TV started. He was from Bradford. He was like
a policeman and he was also a radio DJ and

(17:06):
he was a real People loved him as a radio DJ.
He one like DJ of the Year. And then TV
started and they needed people on TV and they DJ's
with the obvious people. But he was really not suited
for TV. He absolutely hated it and he got known
as like the grumpiest man in England. And he was
on a TV show I think it's called What's My Line?
Is quite famous right where someone came on and they

(17:26):
had something y had to guess what it was about them,
like what their job was or something like that. And
he used to just slag people off all the time.
And then like they did an interview with him when
he was a lot older and he's just like, well,
I never wanted to be famous. I never really wanted
to do this. I was just a radio DJ. And
then you know, and then I got known for being
really grumpy and not really doing anything, and I just

(17:47):
like really kind of hurts.

Speaker 2 (17:52):
I'll say a word to you. You can, Jonathan Pinfield,
it's the exact same thing I'm do him. So he's
a community radio guy quite knew character in it. What
happened to him Roland Garros.

Speaker 1 (18:02):
I can't remember the player's name now, but he built
a relationship with him, the tennis players because the player
couldn't understand what he was saying. He's got the thickest
bras and through along gaos and the whole pressure came
fascinated by this guy who worked for community radio.

Speaker 3 (18:15):
But was that Roland Garrett or was he? Like he
managed to get in the press.

Speaker 2 (18:19):
Self funded, self funded, He made his own sports company
through the community radio, think whether it was separate or whatever.
And he got to the French Ship Open and he
goes right then what we called the tennis player anyway,
right than whatever? He goes, tell me about that far
and smash, how do you feel about that? And then
and the guy were like where are you from a
bit of a viral clip and then he played on
that for a year on you go back to French

(18:41):
Shi Open, he'd be part of the press and that'd
be his thing. And then it was he changes Twitter
handle to like the French Open.

Speaker 1 (18:47):
Guy and yeah, tried to capitalize.

Speaker 2 (18:49):
That's the perfect example of what you just said.

Speaker 3 (18:50):
It really because like when I was a kid when
I was at school primary school, we had a guy
who was like a supply teacher and he was an
umpire at right, and we were in Bolton in this primary,
tiny primary school with the hundred kids in it, and
we thought this was the most showbized thing in the
whole of history. Like this guy, he's been on our

(19:11):
television because like, you didn't think it was even possible
to do this kind of stuff from that part, coming
from that part of the world, would you, And then
like yeah, so that I just find the whole thing
really interesting when you see people coming from our kind
of areas. I'm kind of conflating, like sure in Yorkshire.

Speaker 2 (19:27):
Now, don't.

Speaker 1 (19:32):
The weird thing is about London is well, we're kind
of a curiosity down here. People hear your voice and
oh my god, look at that alien. What was he
talking about? And we're too friendly? I feel too friendly
in the pub just on the way, Yeah, Tom tried
to have a bit of banter with people.

Speaker 2 (19:46):
Yeah, well we went into publical Yorkshire Grey. So I
tried in the first pub and it went down like
a l balloon, And then went into another pub called
the Yorchy Green and I'm like, that is dumbs from
great and.

Speaker 1 (19:56):
I asked if I could have a discount and the
block said no, it is named after a horse.

Speaker 2 (20:02):
No discounts would you?

Speaker 1 (20:05):
After that?

Speaker 2 (20:06):
It was just choking, but yeah, and then it would
cost me thirteen pound ninety for a bottle of Heineken
and a pine. God, I'm just going to try to
work out the the maths on there.

Speaker 1 (20:16):
Are you used to the pricing down here?

Speaker 3 (20:18):
I am now?

Speaker 1 (20:19):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (20:19):
And six pounds for bottle of Heineken?

Speaker 3 (20:21):
Yeah, yeah, I think you don't. You can't even think
about it. But like, I'm not from Yorkshire, so I'm
not quite I'm not as thrifty as you guys get well,
I mean we haven't got a bottan anyway, by the way,
quite a long time ago. So like I moved to
London probably about over ten years ago, now maybe twelve
years ago, and before that I lived in Silverdale in Lancashire,

(20:44):
in the Lake District, near the Lake District. Before that
in Bolton, so I've not been in Bolton for like
fifteen years. I wouldn't say.

Speaker 1 (20:50):
I'll tell you what before we get into that, we've
not actually introduced James. It was a nice. It was
a lovely organic start, which is what all the podcast experts,
so you need to do. James King is head off,
head writer.

Speaker 3 (21:03):
Yeah, both of those things.

Speaker 1 (21:05):
QI. You must have heard of QI massive BBC show.
Alan Davies, of course, friend of the show, is a
key figure on the show. But more importantly, Jim's is
found a member of No Such Thing as a Fish?

Speaker 2 (21:18):
Is that right?

Speaker 3 (21:18):
That's right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, of the form myself,
Dan Shreiber, Andrew Hans Mari and Ana Tashinski.

Speaker 1 (21:24):
I was one of those four, and No Such Thing
as a Fish is regularly the top podcast on iTunes,
much to our jealousy.

Speaker 2 (21:34):
I was just looking at that the LP over your shoulder,
thinking LP.

Speaker 3 (21:38):
So we're recording this in the q I offices. We
in the top floor weld On Games, Thank you for that.
That's where we record FISH. And when we know we've
got guest coming, we make sure we put some of
our awards up in the.

Speaker 1 (21:51):
Saw the YouTube plaque. I've not seen one of those
in real life. Oh yeah, subscribers.

Speaker 3 (21:55):
Yeah, that's for QI rather than FISH.

Speaker 1 (21:57):
I think.

Speaker 3 (21:57):
Yeah, we have a national television over there. We've got
a few podcasts, but the record that you point out
that wasn't it looks like a gold disc, doesn't it.
But it's yellow rather than gold because that's one of
our colors. And it was just our one hundredth episode.
We kind of did this as a publicity thing. We
did a special episode that you could only get on vinyl.

(22:20):
We sold it and we have a little there's like
a hidden track where Corey from slip Knot does a
fact for us at the end.

Speaker 1 (22:28):
How cool is that?

Speaker 2 (22:29):
Do you know what?

Speaker 1 (22:29):
We did that for our one hundred episode of What Was?
That's got a special jingle from Rachel Riley That is
pretty cool.

Speaker 2 (22:38):
This is don't remember that. I don't remember anything. I
don't remember that at all. Sounds like you made it up.

Speaker 1 (22:44):
I don't want to make the show about us. But
Adam Richmond, the guy from Man Versus Food, he also did.
And the reason for that is we knew somebody on
Fighting Talk at the BBC, and they were they just
happened to be.

Speaker 2 (22:55):
We need to get back on that getting furious people
to do jingles through us. Maybe we'll get James to
do it.

Speaker 3 (22:59):
And I don't feel I'm in the same league Rachel
that the person.

Speaker 2 (23:04):
Fore you as you definitely a because we were just
saying that when we started doing the Bannons Banner podcast
in twenty nine and ten, and then you guys came
on the scene and you were absolutely massive. You wire
literally podcast right.

Speaker 1 (23:13):
What you want and you can still really half a
million downloads, half a million, half a million downs no, sorry,
half a billion Downoa.

Speaker 3 (23:21):
Yeah, we're coming up to half a billion, so it'll
be it'll be our tenth birthday next year, and we
were hoping to hit half a billion by then, but
we're over like, we're well over four hundred million for sure.

Speaker 2 (23:33):
Do you love it? You still love it?

Speaker 3 (23:35):
Yeah? I really do. It's really fun and it's funny.

Speaker 1 (23:38):
Look absolutely lovely it. I mean I listened to it
every week and.

Speaker 3 (23:43):
I ad my, you've listened to it four hundred million times.

Speaker 1 (23:47):
I've listened to it from the first episode. Obviously we
were in touch before then because you listened to and
then when you start doing a podcast and then got
better than us, I was you would.

Speaker 3 (23:57):
Let's not say better, let's say different.

Speaker 2 (23:59):
It is different.

Speaker 1 (24:00):
I mean, it was a clever, incredible success. So where
did the idea to do a podcast come from?

Speaker 3 (24:07):
We'd had the idea for quite a lot a lot
of time. It had kind of always come up, like
we should do a podcast, we should do a podcast.
We used to have another office in Covent Garden which
was really open plan, like I was saying before the
mites came on, and it was very collaborative and we
would kind of chat a lot, and we realized that
one we had loads of extra material from QI that

(24:28):
we weren't using, and two that we love to share
facts with us. And quite often we'd have a meeting
and it would just descend into us just saying fact
and whatever, and we probably, you know, maybe slightly up ourselves.
We were like, I wonder if people would like to
listen to this. And actually we had a friend called
Mark Mason, who I don't know if you guys know.

(24:49):
He writes lots of trivia books and stuff. He's really
really good guy, a friend of ours, and he said,
you guys should do a podcast, and we're like, yeah,
we've been thinking about that, and he it came up
with an idea and we're like, oh, that doesn't quite work.
So we tried out loads and loads of different things,
and really we tried out things where like people would
send us questions and we would answer them a bit

(25:09):
like Helen Saltzman doesn't answer me this. We tried a
few different things and we just found that really just
picking a subject and just going with it was what
really worked for us. And we recorded maybe you know
twelve thirteen, fourteen practices and then we put one together.
We did an episode which we sent to our bosses

(25:33):
and they didn't really know how to use computers so well,
so we put it onto SoundCloud and said here's the
SoundCloud link, and the link got out somehow and quite
a few people listened to it. And at the start
of the podcast we said it was a weekly podcast,
so people were emailing us going away for next week's episode,
and we were like, oh shit, we're gonna have to

(25:53):
do another one. And then, you know, five hundred weeks later,
we've never missed one.

Speaker 2 (25:57):
And do you think you've got a good time? I
think Do you think if you did it now, James,
if you started like last week, do you think you'd
have had I'm not taken anything away from products, by
the way, do you think you've had the same traction
as you did back then or do you think it
was kind of like this medium was relative than you
when people were.

Speaker 3 (26:12):
Yeah, we got super lucky for lots of reasons, like,
for instance, these days, all the new podcasts tend to
have celebs on, like you know, you know, Robin Chosh
and whoever have got their podcasts, and obviously we're behind
the scenes people. Traditionally we're not celebrities. We had QI
behind us, which was really good because that gave us

(26:34):
a big push at the start, and Stephen Fry tweeted
us in the day when Stephen Fry was the king
of Twitter, you know, so that gave us a big
push at the start. But really we came in at
a time when people who weren't that well known could
get near the top of the charts. But also at
a time when Dan and I were making Radio four shows,

(26:54):
so we were producers on that, and we knew how
to edit, we knew how to make shows, so we
could make shows that were really polished and really you know,
tightly edited and whatever. And that was in a time
when podcasts were really quite ramboly and and you know,
it might be two guys in America and they might
do two hours before they get to the point of
what they're trying to say, do you know what I mean?

(27:15):
I realized halfway through that when I was why do
you think I put the word of America in there?
But yeah, we started making like real proper almost like
Radio four shows that were really really polished, which were
different than everything else that was out there. And then thirdly,
Cereal came along and Cereal sort of boosted podcasts and

(27:35):
made podcasts really cool and made loads of people start
listening to podcasts. And when that came out, we were
already at the top of the charts, and so people
would listen to Cereal and then go into Apple and say, well,
what else is out there? We'd been right there at
the top of the charts, so we picked up loads
and loads from them, and yeah, and then before we
knew it, we were like, we were getting really big
numbers really quickly.

Speaker 2 (27:55):
Wat the future is of like fishing the podcast and
podcasting in general. And the only reason I want to
ask you this is because you are You came in
very early, obviously very experienced, and it'd be good to.

Speaker 1 (28:05):
Get your peeping and we're starting again like this is
we're trying.

Speaker 2 (28:08):
To convert people from this football thing, which we want
really football, but it wore to this new sort of podcast.

Speaker 1 (28:14):
We're still find I mean, what we're talking about on
this podcast now it's no different to what we're talking
about on Bantams Banto. It's just the environments different. And
we had a few years off and we've come back
and podcasting is massively different.

Speaker 3 (28:24):
I don't know. I mean with Fish, we're just going
to carry on going. You know, we've had a lot
of changes in our lives, right so I've had a
baby and Anazon maternity leave at the moment, and she'll
be back in the autumn and we'll have to see,
you know, what the dynamic is there about whether we
can go touring and what we want to do next.
But we'll just keep going. As long as people listen.

Speaker 2 (28:43):
We'll just ask part of the journey as well. I
suppose Yeah mentioned things like that, and it'll show that
the audiencey's growing with you. That's what we're quite keen on.

Speaker 3 (28:50):
Yeah, that's the dream that we'll just keep going and
keep always the new things. So like the record that
we just talked about, you know what's we've done three books,
we did a TV show was the next kind of
cool thing. That we can do that, we can use
this platform. Yeah, we'll do the live shows, hopefully do
more of those. But for podcasting in general, it's hard
to say, because you kind of get the feeling that

(29:12):
there's loads of people who aren't necessarily creators who want
it to grow because they have a dog in the game,
do you know what I mean. They're like, we really
want podcasting to become bigger and bigger and bigger because
we're going to make more and more and more money.
And so they're like, well, maybe everyone's gonna record them,
so we'll become the new YouTube. And you're like, well,
YouTube already exists, and they're like, well, maybe they'll become

(29:34):
much shorter, so with the new tektalk and you're like, well,
TikTok is doing fine as it is, and it kind
of feels like podcasting will continue to be kind of
as it is and hopefully grow as more and more people,
you know, find it.

Speaker 1 (29:47):
So you mentioned there that you've recently become a father,
and how old are you if you have forty.

Speaker 3 (29:53):
I am over forty, I'm forty three or forty four.
We've got a forty four.

Speaker 2 (30:00):
When you get you get older, you really got to
think about your I'm afraid.

Speaker 3 (30:02):
Yeah, you start working it out, especially after COVID. I
feel like I feel like we should all have three
years off just because of COVID.

Speaker 2 (30:11):
How is that?

Speaker 1 (30:11):
I'm the thought of having a baby at thirty six
makes me feel this is my first baby.

Speaker 3 (30:18):
This is my first and last child, right that question.
It's a she she's called Angel, but everyone calls her jelly.
And yeah, it's just exhausting. It's like older, she is
fifteen months yeh. Yeah, like I found it kind of
gotten easier as we've gone on. But really, when you're

(30:40):
in your forties, you're always tired anyway.

Speaker 1 (30:42):
Yeah, I got to look forward to well, like non
stop tired and like.

Speaker 3 (30:47):
To add a baby to that. But also to add
the lack of the lack of sleep is what does
it for me? Like I really struggle not sleeping, and
yeah I do.

Speaker 2 (30:55):
I have got to have like early mornings as well.
She got sleep raw, she's.

Speaker 3 (30:59):
Not a good sleeper. No, I'll tell you what if
you like you size?

Speaker 2 (31:04):
Sorry, I mean it's really cut.

Speaker 3 (31:07):
Yeah, yeah, there's lots of good bits about him. Well,
don't get me wrong. Let me show you this. So
while I'm talking. I'm getting my fitbit stats out, which
tells you how often you.

Speaker 2 (31:16):
Sleep steps at three am.

Speaker 3 (31:19):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, let me get from when she was born.

Speaker 2 (31:22):
I'm a terrible I remember when when we had hours
and my wife had to do with the night stuff
because I just couldn't do it. I couldn't physically move.
If I got up at five am, I feel sick,
physically sick. I loved it, and I can't change that.
I can't. Yeah, yeah, I love that. I've got Anyhd've.

Speaker 1 (31:40):
Was like a godsend.

Speaker 3 (31:42):
So like, this is the week before she was born.
I had six hours fifty five, seven hours forty one,
seven hours twenty seven, this is before. This is the
week before eight hours fourteen, eight hours seven brilliant, one
hour twenty nine or one hour twenty one, two hours,
fifteen fifty three minutes. It's it's just I look back

(32:04):
at that and I'm like, oh my god, like.

Speaker 1 (32:06):
It just makes you feel.

Speaker 3 (32:09):
Now then I'm back to between just over six hours
to night. So it's not let's do a ball, isn't it?

Speaker 1 (32:14):
But how did how did that fit in there? And
with a with I mean making a show like QI
and then no sort of thing as a Fish is,
there's pressure to make the show good and watchable. How
does that? How did that time with your life when
your brain is working on an hour sleep?

Speaker 3 (32:29):
Yeah, well, let me tell you what happened with Dan,
because it's easier to slag off other people who aren't
here than yourself, right, So so that's Dan Shribb, But
then Shreiber, who's on Fish. The year he had his
first child, we had a book called The Book of
the Year that came out and we had to do
an audio book for it, and we all kind of
went to this studio to read the audio book. And

(32:51):
Dan had literally like maybe one week in with his
first child, and he forgot how to read, Like, he
just literally forgot how to read any He just couldn't
get to the end of a sentence. And there was
one moment in particular where he had to say, you know,
in early February this year, such such thing happened, and
he went in early January this year, such such a

(33:13):
thing happened. We had dad, dad, Dad, Dad, It says February,
not January. And then oh yeah, sorry, sorry, yeah, okay, yeah, sorry.
In early January that he just kept it and we
had to ask him again and again and again to
say it, and he couldn't say February, and every time
he tried to say February said January.

Speaker 1 (33:29):
Fascinates me. What happens to the brain when you tried babies?

Speaker 2 (33:33):
Honestly toddlers like.

Speaker 1 (33:35):
Yeah, it's amazing that the human race is carried on.

Speaker 3 (33:38):
I had it. So it's like I had it. Like
after a couple of weeks of no sleep, I had
a thing where I was laying in bed and I
had like really bad pins and needles in both my
hands and both my feet at the same time, and
I thought, I'm going to die, right, I'm dying here.
So I rang up what's the number you ring?

Speaker 1 (33:54):
Is?

Speaker 3 (33:54):
Like one more more, whatever it is, and I rang
them up and he said I had neurological exhaust you know,
or something like that, and the only thing to do
was to sleep. I'm like, do I have to sleep?

Speaker 2 (34:10):
What was your wife like, then? Can she cut with
lack of sleep?

Speaker 3 (34:13):
She actually, well, she's quite a bit younger than I am,
so she is good on lack of sleep. Generally speaking,
she doesn't need to sleep.

Speaker 1 (34:22):
Yeah, you go without sleeping all of a sudden you
feel like a grandfather.

Speaker 3 (34:27):
But I think also like some some people like she's
just like Superman. She's yeah, amazing.

Speaker 1 (34:35):
You should be listening. I hope get the compliments in.
But the thing about no such thing as a fit
You first made me realize how big podcast could be.
When you got us tickets to come see you in
Leads and it was packed. I thought, ship, this is
a podcast and the arena is full, and then my

(34:56):
mind is worming thinking how do you know that you're
big enough? How do you risk it?

Speaker 3 (34:58):
How do you know what that was? That was really
what it was, And that was one of our first
big tours, I think, and it was really interesting because,
like I say, you put this stuff on the internet
and you see the numbers click up, but you don't
really believe them, and you kind of see that supposedly
lots of people are listening, and it's only when you
go on tour and you can fill out these rooms
and you're like, wow, shit, these people actually are. And

(35:19):
when they come and meet you afterwards and say.

Speaker 2 (35:20):
Is it tough to do a live? Sure, no much diffence.
What's going on now?

Speaker 3 (35:27):
I would say it's different because let's say when we're
doing a podcast our podcast here, and we're talking about facts. Okay,
if we say something that's not that funny, it doesn't
really matter because you just say it, and like you
might say, you might do a big long chat about
something that's really interesting but not funny, and you're like, well,
if it works, it works. If it doesn't work, it
doesn't matter. When you're on sat in front of an

(35:49):
audience and you say something and you don't get a response,
you feel really under pressure because you think everyone hates it.
You think, oh my god, everyone hated that, now they
hate me. Or the next thing I say better be funny.
And the other thing is like there's no response for
interesting things right by say an interesting fact, like in
the game of Gender, all the blocks are completely different exactly,

(36:11):
but no one does that. It's that true, well, because
if they were identical, then they wouldn't they would stack perfectly.
You won't be able to push them out. So this
was in the original Gender. I'm not sure if it's
still the case, but that was definitely originally.

Speaker 2 (36:23):
You know what, that is better than my prespective just
about the.

Speaker 3 (36:28):
Only because I read that to it. I haven't even
checked it, but I think that's true. Anyway, So you
say that, right, and people they might go. And but
even if you've got three thousand people in the opera
house going h it doesn't. It doesn't work as people laughing,
as twenty people laughing, and.

Speaker 2 (36:45):
I suppose your pocket is it doesn't like we won't
see Robin Josh dip with Parent Hell Live. It was
an arena. It was a freaking arena. How does that?

Speaker 1 (36:53):
I just don't know how it was in.

Speaker 2 (36:55):
Obviously it's a good podcast, you know that. Again, they
came in. It seems to be timing a lot of
popular podcasts. They came in at COVID when people are
at home struggling to be a parent, homeschooling and all that.
They came at that exact time. Yes, they've got their
own massive follow themselves, that they are both very funny comedians,
but the sellout and a readA was just such as
we'll watch it going this is a freaking podcast.

Speaker 1 (37:16):
You yeah, yeah, it is.

Speaker 3 (37:18):
It's crazy how One thing that's interesting is when we
first started Fish is that Dan Schreiber had this kind
of idea that we were going to be absolutely huge
because he'd seen huge podcasts in America being really really big,
and he was like, no one in Britain has quite
done that yet. Maybe Ricky Face did, but not many
other people did. And he was like, but there is
a market out there, we can be big. And the

(37:40):
rest of us were like, well, we'll come along for
the right. You know, we don't really believe it. And
I was looking at some old emails the other day
and it was when we were coming up with the
name of the show, and we kind of got it
down to two. It was going to be called no
such thing as a fish or Advanced Banter, and advanced
Banter was the name of our book book I've Got
a q I Book, which was like a book of right.

(38:01):
And Dan said, well, I don't think we should call
it that because this sound might sound funny, but I
think we could write our own book in the future
and we don't want to use a name which is
already taken by a book.

Speaker 1 (38:10):
I thought you were going to say the word BANTERSH. Well, absolutely.
The second insult you've weathed.

Speaker 3 (38:17):
In this whole thing is just.

Speaker 1 (38:23):
Show a part to guys you need to direct should
But basically James has got us down here because we're
another podcast coming to try to compete where we belong,
put us in our place.

Speaker 2 (38:34):
When we started Banter, we did it from the community
radio station in Bradford and it was a section of
a show called the Tom and Dumb Show was the
back end, and banter was literally a word used by
our granddad's wann't it it really doesn't. I'm sure we've
got a quote of it, and me going why banter?
I've never really heard that words when my granddad says,
you know when when we were the old army guys
or whatever.

Speaker 3 (38:55):
From the war, So did you guys bring back banter?

Speaker 1 (38:59):
Well, we think so. I think it was Joey Essex.

Speaker 2 (39:03):
And then then and then it came full circle to
us and the like and were like and when people
tweets were saying it's just a horrible word, is about it, like, yeah,
we completely agree.

Speaker 1 (39:11):
But at the time, so there might be people listening
who maybe are thinking about a career in TV or
how did you get into it?

Speaker 3 (39:23):
Well, I wouldn't follow my route route route too much
American football like.

Speaker 1 (39:30):
Should we tee this up? That you're you're very clever guy, and.

Speaker 3 (39:34):
Well in some ways in some respects as in I
have a really good memory for facts.

Speaker 2 (39:38):
Yeah, I've got terrible moment. What you watch your memory
like the general stuff.

Speaker 3 (39:45):
Yeah, pretty good. Like I don't have any visual memory. Okay,
so I can't remember what people look like. I can't
remember what things look like, places, maybe places. I can't
do any of that. I've got something called a fantasia,
which means when I close my eyes, I can't imagine stuff.
So I can't imagine an apple, I can't imagine a lamp.

Speaker 2 (40:02):
It's an actual thing.

Speaker 1 (40:04):
Yeah, it's not just gonna make it.

Speaker 3 (40:06):
So I don't know if you got like it's something
like it's something like one in a hundred or two
and one hundred people have it. It's it's relatively common. Yeah,
but a lot of people don't know they have it
until they hear someone else talk about it.

Speaker 2 (40:17):
So you can't visualize the image of it in when
you close your eyes in your head.

Speaker 3 (40:21):
I can't visualize a square. I can't visualize my wife,
I can't visualize anything like. It's so when soon as
you guys leave, like, I can't remember what you look like?
That now I remember. I have different ways of remember it.
I have different ways of remembering stuff, right, So I
remember that you have a beard, and now I remember
that you have slightly gray hair. Just mentioned you, So

(40:44):
I remember bits and pieces like that.

Speaker 1 (40:46):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (40:46):
Same, But you know, so I have different ways of
remembering people's faces, but I can't imagine them.

Speaker 1 (40:52):
So if next time we just send I just send
another graying bearded man up the stairs. When you think
that would make I'm afraid. So, yeah, that's amazing, that's insane.

Speaker 3 (41:02):
Yeah, it was a line up.

Speaker 2 (41:05):
It's dependent or not.

Speaker 3 (41:07):
It depends. If I've known you for a long time
then it would be okay, but really it would have
to be. But it has to be in context as well.
Like if I I once walk past my wife in
the street, not expecting her to be in the street,
and walk.

Speaker 1 (41:20):
Straight past her.

Speaker 3 (41:23):
Do you know when people say, because I wasn't expecting
that to be there, why don't remember faces?

Speaker 2 (41:26):
And they're coughkedin You'll go, do you remember it? I
used to work with you the sorry and you know
it's Tom, oh Tom. Yeah, but then I'm really I'm
quite good at facing places.

Speaker 3 (41:36):
So they might have this, Yeah, definitely for sure. But
the other thing, of course is I don't know many
people from Bradford, so I would recognize your accents as well,
so lots of different ways. Yeah. Yeah, So the thing
is I don't remember things in that way, but I
kind of had have to make I've realized later in
life when I realized I had this, that I have
to find other ways of learning stuff and remembering stuff.

(41:57):
And it turns out I got a really really good
memory or you know, lists of facts and stuff like that.
And apparently it's quite common in people with a fantasia
that they do remember stuff like that.

Speaker 1 (42:08):
So those two bits of the memory are not linked.
I don't know the visual and the.

Speaker 3 (42:12):
I'm not sure anyone completely understands.

Speaker 1 (42:15):
Yeah, I don't, get to be honest.

Speaker 3 (42:16):
Yeah, I mean it's quite new research, like in fact,
it was only named in the last twenty years a fantasia,
and I only learned about it. We did a radio
show with a guy whose name I forget unfortunately for yeah,
I definitely forget. But he was a he was a
neuroscientist and he mentioned this new thing that people were
talking about, and he said, do you know that some

(42:37):
people can't visualize things? And I'm like, some people can
visualize things. That's absolutely bizarre. How old were you when
I was in the last ten years, for sure.

Speaker 2 (42:46):
That's absolutely what was the same.

Speaker 3 (42:49):
Well, like you do, you you experience what the world
in the way that you experience It is called unvelt
in German, and it's like it's the way that you
experienced well, but you can't imagine how anyone else experienced
the world, let alone how animals experience the world, or
how you.

Speaker 1 (43:06):
Know that's true. I think about that quite a lot,
how an insect experiences the world. I was walking past
the field the other day and I thought, if there's
an ant in the middle of that field telling me
he thinks that field is the world, that's his world.
He's got an idea that people have PlayStations and the
cars exist.

Speaker 3 (43:20):
He doesn't even know he's an ant.

Speaker 2 (43:22):
He's not aware of that. I didn't argue cover that.
We never we had an argument with guy were colorldy did?
Were color blind and were on a football pitch and
the ball was red and the picture was green and
it was fire excited and he said, I can't tell
them to you ready green. I said, well, how do
you know what ready? Were born that way? Yeah? I said, well,
how do you know what ready is?

Speaker 1 (43:43):
Like?

Speaker 2 (43:43):
You're already is not my red? How do you know
that that you're colobam with red and green if you
don't know already is and you just call me an idiot?
And what.

Speaker 1 (43:52):
I thought you were going to say? I get that,
and you were going to leave that.

Speaker 2 (43:57):
But did you know anything about color blindness? You must
covered it?

Speaker 3 (44:00):
Yeah, I do. I don't know the answer to that though,
whether whether everyone whether there's any way to say that
red is objective?

Speaker 1 (44:09):
Ask a blind person, or if you tell a blind
person that something's red, there was what's red? Yeah, yeah,
they don't know.

Speaker 2 (44:15):
It was sure, that's the equivalent. So that's red to me,
But I think color blind that could be blue.

Speaker 1 (44:20):
I think, I know. I think that in there they
will call red red without knowing that it's to us,
it's different what we say.

Speaker 2 (44:29):
So if we if the majority of saying that's red,
they taking that color as they're red.

Speaker 1 (44:33):
We're going down a real rabbit hole. We don't understand it.

Speaker 3 (44:35):
So the question the question was how did I get
to TV? The sub question was I do I have
a good am? I good at facts and stuff? Sub
question was am I smart? And I think in some
ways they am. I was in a quiz team before
either of us got into TV with Jenny Ryan from
The Chase.

Speaker 1 (44:54):
Sure, so we're in the Bolton quizz League.

Speaker 2 (44:56):
She's called them the fixen Vi.

Speaker 1 (45:00):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (45:01):
Yeah, So.

Speaker 3 (45:03):
We were both really into quizzes and stuff. And I
worked as an accountant in Manchester in a in a
pot cabin in Eccles. Yeah, proper job for like a
pub company. And I my job was quite easy and
they won't give me any more work and no one
could see my laptop. So I just started going on

(45:24):
the Internet and messing around and just someone told me
this new show QUI had come out. Knew I love quizzes,
maybe I should try and you know, send them some ideas,
and so I started just doing all my work for
the first three months, three days of every month, and
the rest of the month I would just do QI research,
just trying to learn stuff. And they did a lot

(45:45):
of quizzes and I would win all the quizzes and
I sent them material which they would use on the
TV show and my Yeah, it was just like on
the forum. It was in the old days of internet forums,
so there was no Wikipedia in those days. I don't
think it was like the early days then my job
got a bit busier, so I had to give up.
And also my boss called me in and said, we've

(46:06):
looked at your Internet usage and you're the second highest
Internet user in the company, and the highest is our
entire email system, and you're catching up. That's what they said.
And why I said to them is I was like,
oh that the Ashes had just been on. I was
always watching the Ashes. That's why I blamed it. Yeah,

(46:27):
And so I had to stop doing QI stuff because
I had a proper job and I had a mortgage,
and you know, I couldn't afford not to. And then
QI said, well, why don't you come and work for
us full time? An eat jack in your job and
come and work for us.

Speaker 1 (46:38):
That must have been an amazing feeling getting that email.

Speaker 3 (46:40):
Well, I said no obviously at the start, because TV
is so seasonal and I had a mortgage and I
couldn't just do a job that was three or four
months of the year.

Speaker 1 (46:49):
See, you're sensible. I would have been like yes.

Speaker 3 (46:52):
But the thing was that they let me do their
accounts for half the year and then I did QI
for the other half of the year.

Speaker 2 (46:58):
That was a big move then, So that was the
move to London.

Speaker 3 (47:00):
No, I could do it remotely for a while.

Speaker 2 (47:02):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (47:02):
I did it remotely for a while, and then eventually
I moved to London because split up my ex and
you know, wanted to get out of Bolton and that
was you know, I either go and live in the
middle of the countryside or I'm move in the second
biggest city or one of the biggest cities in the world. Yeah,
so I just decided to move here and give it
a go. The Dow accounts, it's been a long time.

Speaker 1 (47:22):
Tom's looking for a new account.

Speaker 3 (47:24):
I do my own.

Speaker 1 (47:25):
Accounts, but I've got dog Jellenny Wike.

Speaker 3 (47:29):
That's his that's his business name.

Speaker 2 (47:33):
And everything.

Speaker 1 (47:36):
So James, that the plan the plan. Obviously, it was
originally that you were going to come play golf with us.
You're no, you get to play much golf.

Speaker 3 (47:43):
Unfortunately, not in London because it's well it's London and
there's no golf courses. I did join the golf course
a couple of years ago and played a little bit
that year, but then the baby came and I've played
three times.

Speaker 2 (47:57):
Just about to say it, if you've got a fifteen
month old bitch, you're getting four hours of golf.

Speaker 1 (48:01):
Well the baby interrupted the trip. James was supposed come
up for beers and golf.

Speaker 2 (48:05):
Well we've got I've got a golf simulator business and
another one, you know whatever, a little bit of brick
house and it's it's it was so bits of a
winter and it's totally dead now because it happened last year.
Like why is it quiet? We've got a seasonal business
and now we understand why it's quare because nobody plays golf.
But I got into it a little bit of business.

(48:26):
Partner was mad on golf. But it'll be great to
get you up sometimes.

Speaker 3 (48:29):
Yeah, I love to. I mean I do. I used
to play a lot when I was learned when I
was a kid.

Speaker 2 (48:34):
Be quite good.

Speaker 3 (48:34):
Then I'm not.

Speaker 2 (48:36):
Ship.

Speaker 3 (48:37):
I can't say I'm quite good. I got down to
nine when I was playing in Silverdale.

Speaker 1 (48:42):
How do you feel about playing golf with two people?

Speaker 2 (48:45):
Very ship, We're terrible.

Speaker 3 (48:46):
I would love to.

Speaker 2 (48:49):
He's good at driving, I'm good at the short game.
Played some sort of scramble game.

Speaker 3 (48:55):
That's all right, we can play you two scrambling against me.

Speaker 1 (48:58):
Yeah, probably the biggest employment you've ever given me.

Speaker 3 (49:01):
This is like, how insane my life is at the
moment is I played three games of golf this year,
two in Italy and one was in.

Speaker 1 (49:07):
Dubai Flex holiday.

Speaker 3 (49:11):
It was the Dubai one was Yeah, it was part
holiday and part like to get have a bit of
a break because of the last twelve months. So I
went there for just to play golf really, and then
got norovirus and only managed one round. Oh but then
in Italy we played the Marcos Simone golf Course, which
is where the Ryder Cups.

Speaker 1 (49:32):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (49:32):
Yeah, in digital form.

Speaker 1 (49:39):
Back to Q I, let's keep the listeners interested. Not interesting.

Speaker 3 (49:44):
This is like literally on fish every week and trying
to bring it round to gold Golf.

Speaker 1 (49:50):
For those of us that don't get to work in TV,
what's it? What's it like working on a show as
successful as QI.

Speaker 3 (49:56):
Well, on a successful show like QI, it's really easy
because we've done the show for twenty years and a
lot of the same people have been doing it for
that whole time, or at least for ten of those years,
and so everyone knows what they're doing. And you turn
up on a day for the first show of the
of the run and you see a lot of people

(50:17):
you haven't seen for a year, and it's great because
you like them all and you just kind of sit
there and you have your own spot with your own
groove and you kind of do what you do and
then you go home and you've made in the gallery.
Then yeah, I'm in the gallery.

Speaker 1 (50:30):
Actually we Tom and I did ones come down to
the green room at QR years ago to you. Was
I there when you were there sitting on the sofa
with us? We didn't know each other then you were,
you were It was like a corner surfa, a big one.
You were sitting over here and Tom and I were.
But yeah, I can remember that.

Speaker 2 (50:45):
Who else was on that show at that time because
it was really weird for.

Speaker 3 (50:47):
Tim She was on it, Yeah, and Bill then Bill
Bailey was Yeah, Bill Bailey. J I think Tim's only
done it once maybe or really I think so?

Speaker 1 (50:56):
Yeah, Yeah, So that was That was a bizarre experience.
Was and it really I don't know, you feel like
you have something series. Yeah, it was, I remember because
this is how bizarre, This is how bizarre my memory is.
I can remember one of the cares was the Kellogg's
care that was in there.

Speaker 2 (51:11):
Oh is it?

Speaker 1 (51:11):
Yeah, on the back and it's Stephen Fry was still hostly.
He was yeah, yeah, yeah, it seems such a big operation.

Speaker 2 (51:17):
I remember that distinctly because it's how many shows what
we're doing in a recording, Is it like four or five?

Speaker 3 (51:23):
No, we don't. Actually we do so we do fifteen
or sixteen in a year, but the most we do
is two in a day.

Speaker 1 (51:30):
Yeah, so we saw two and for the first half
we really wanted to be out watching it from the audience.
But the seats were the most uncomfortable seats I've ever
been in.

Speaker 2 (51:39):
They and we.

Speaker 1 (51:41):
Were called a divay fit and text Alan and I
can just get someone to take us down to the.

Speaker 3 (51:45):
Greening is like, if they're comfortable, you might enjoy the
seats too much and fall asleep. Well hopefully not on
q I.

Speaker 1 (51:52):
But yeah, yeah, it's not on purpose, is it.

Speaker 3 (51:56):
I don't know why like that. But we're in a
new studio now.

Speaker 1 (51:59):
All right, so it's not eat used to be in
the ITV studios.

Speaker 3 (52:01):
Yeah, they've actually closed down, so they've built by property developers,
I think, So yeah, we're back up in the BBC
and White City. But yeah, I sit in the gallery
and basically these days just kind of I know all
the scripts because I'm the script editor, So you know,
we have an ELF who brings the scripts together of

(52:21):
other everyone's research, and then it comes to me or
Anna Tashinsky and we do an edit of it all.
So we are completely across all the facts, all the scripts, everything,
and we sit there during the show and make sure
that everything's right, and if it's not right, we either
make a note of it for the edit or we
message down to Sandy to say can you can you
say this or can you do this?

Speaker 1 (52:43):
So as the recordings happening, that's as the recording happened.

Speaker 2 (52:47):
How scripted is obviously sandys alscripped. Is anyone else is
Alan scripted? No?

Speaker 3 (52:51):
No one else is scripted at all. No one else,
no one else's.

Speaker 2 (52:55):
They prepped what the top is going to be?

Speaker 1 (52:57):
No, I'm going to get you don't watch q I.
If you watched it, you know it's not scripted.

Speaker 2 (53:03):
I knew, I knew. I'm won't sure if Alan had
points the.

Speaker 3 (53:08):
Stand ups and it could work even if like let's
say we had someone who came on and who was
really nervous and we were like, oh fine, we'll tell
you some of the questions. First of all, it would
be no use because the questions are really cryptic and
you never know what we're going to talk about. Even
if you see the question, you don't know what it's
going to be about. Secondly, the whole point is you
don't know the answer, so there's no point looking up

(53:29):
the answers because it will just look dumb. If we
asked you a question and you answer it right, it's
going to be obvious you've cheated. And then secondly, you
know Alan would just never take them even if we
offered them. He wouldn't because he's an improviser, and you know,
I don't think he would. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (53:45):
Is it getting harder to do these facts the more?
Especially with AI. We've got to talk about AI the
way it's going about and chat GP and I was
about that, because harder to get these unique facts or
not because.

Speaker 1 (53:56):
You're working through the alphabet. Yeah, it kind of keeps
itself fresh.

Speaker 3 (54:00):
Well, it means we're doing new subjects that we've never
done before. Is it harder? Probably not really. Sometimes it's
harder to get the general ignorance ones, which is like
the trick questions at the end of the show, because
you kind of feel like there's only going to be
so many of those, but we seem to find them
every year. And the thing is, like we've done let's
say we've done one hundred and fifty or two hundred
episodes of QI, We've done five hundred episodes of Fish,

(54:22):
and we're still not run out of those, So you know,
we're never It feels like we're never gonna happen.

Speaker 1 (54:27):
Can you ever run out of fact?

Speaker 2 (54:28):
That's what I mean. I kind of thought like if
they did know what was going on. I suppose if
you told them, they could google, come there, do you
know what I mean? And like, I assume these guys
are googling in the meeting.

Speaker 3 (54:39):
Well, I think there's always new stuff coming up, right,
So I read this was one I read today which
we were going to do for our next show, but
it didn't get chosen because I sent for Fish. I
send like three or four options to the guys and
they choose which one they want, and it was that
there there's a new tablet for als which was funded

(54:59):
by the Ice Pocket Challenge, but it always has to
be taken with room temperature water. Okay, it's a fact,
and that only happened last week. So that's a new
fact that well.

Speaker 1 (55:13):
Don't you get the joke. The joke is the ice
bucket challenge.

Speaker 3 (55:18):
This is why they didn't choose it, right. But the
thing is like that that medicine was invented last week,
and so that fact is just a joke that I
made up because I read about it and that was
a thing in there. So that is that you're never
going to run out while you can still be making
up about what's happening.

Speaker 1 (55:38):
I've just been distracted by there's a book there called
Sex in the Sea abs thrown me.

Speaker 2 (55:44):
Who is it?

Speaker 3 (55:44):
By?

Speaker 2 (55:45):
What's marriage?

Speaker 1 (55:49):
Oh?

Speaker 3 (55:49):
Oh gosh? No, I mean I will have read it,
but I don't I don't really.

Speaker 1 (55:53):
Recall our intimate connection with sex changing fish, romantic lobsters,
kinky squid and other salty erotica the d what sort of.

Speaker 2 (56:02):
Establishment is No?

Speaker 1 (56:04):
It does?

Speaker 2 (56:05):
It does?

Speaker 1 (56:05):
See. It does seem like an incredible job. And I
am very envious of the success you have with the
podcast obviously, I mean, I'm glad that we were able
to inspire you into doing a podcast.

Speaker 3 (56:15):
Well, we wouldn't be here without you, of course.

Speaker 2 (56:17):
Yeah, what's to find our fee in our new podcast?

Speaker 1 (56:20):
And we thank you for the help.

Speaker 2 (56:23):
We don't know for an hour.

Speaker 1 (56:24):
Yeah, James, thank you so much.

Speaker 3 (56:26):
It's been having anytime. And we'll come up and we'll
have a game of golf sometime and do it.

Speaker 2 (56:31):
We're gonna do swinging manhood. Are we going to call it?

Speaker 1 (56:34):
Yeah, so the golf it total be called swinging manhood. Brilliant,
of course it is.

Speaker 3 (56:38):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (56:38):
We came up with the title first, Eliot Alan Partridge and.

Speaker 3 (56:41):
That's how we've got to play the game, have we Yeah, yeah, okay,
naked naked swinging our manhood.

Speaker 1 (56:47):
It is the North. I don't think they'll be much
swinging going on and on that though. Thank you very
much for listening to the twentieth episode of Manhood. This
is the last in this series. We'll be back whenever
we fancy.

Speaker 2 (57:01):
Doing forth tis from doing forth, tals.

Speaker 1 (57:04):
From doing forth, tals from doing forth, from bing forth.

Speaker 2 (57:10):
The b