Interview: No Such Thing as a Fish

No Such Thing as a Fish is a weekly British podcast series produced and presented by the researchers behind the BBC2 panel game QI. In it each of the researchers, collectively known as The QI Elves” present their favourite fact that they have come across that week.

Join Dan Schreiber, Andrew Hunter Murray, Anna Ptaszynski and James Harkin on the first leg of their brand new UK tour as they serve up their pick of the most bizarre, extraordinary and hilarious facts known to man.

“Knowledge-packed and riotously funny” The Times

Here is the fact-laden quartet to tell us more.

How did you all meet?
We all met through our work at QI. We research the questions for the show, so we spend our whole week reading odd books and swapping facts with each other, while trying to make each other laugh.

When and how did you start the No Such Thing As A Fish podcast?
We started four years ago now, in 2014 – it came about because we kept finding facts for the TV show which we couldn’t manage to fit into a short half-hour. So, we thought we’d better get them out there some other way, and the podcast is the perfect medium.

Where do you find all the facts that you talk about?
We all have various secret sources – books, websites, cereal boxes, old newspaper archives. We don’t tell each other where we hunt, to keep it fresh, but we know Dan mostly reads websites about Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster and the Mongolian Death Worm.

What has been the most unusual fact that you’ve discovered so far this year?
We liked this one: after each Glastonbury Festival, founder Michael Eavis has to drive around his farm with a giant magnet pulling up tent pegs out from the field.

You have a huge amount of listeners now – what effect has that had on you all?
We are simultaneously delighted and nervous, because now the number of people who correct us when we make a mistake (or pronounce something wrong) has risen quite drastically. Thankfully our listeners are very forgiving.

Do you get fan mail?
Occasionally, yes. We’ve heard from people living at the other end of the earth, from sea captains, people driving across America… the best ones come with drawings. One fan even made us personalised badges, which was a high point, as were the fish-shaped biscuits made by another fan (they didn’t taste like fish. They were delicious).

Why did you decide to take the podcast on the road and do live shows?
We really started just as an experiment. It’s so much fun because you get to actually see the people who listen, and they often tell us extra facts (or tell us what we’ve got wrong). Our first show was three years ago in a basement with an audience of 40. We did not expect to be playing the Sydney Opera House this year (or Colston Hall!), so it’s been a crazy trip so far.

So, what can your live audiences expect?
A first half full of extra facts, bonus geekery and great comedy – and then, in the second half, a brand-new-live-podcast-recording-extravaganza, complete with all the bits which are too rude or too hilarious to put in the actual episode that goes out.

Give us five interesting facts about Bristol.
In 1993 an Army bomb disposal unit was called to detonate a suspicious package outside a TA unit in Bristol. It turned out to be a pack of leaflets saying what you should do with suspicious packages.

In the 19th century, a Bristol Hog was slang for a Bristol person. The ports gave the city a bad reputation – a ‘Bristol man’ was slang for a villain, and ‘Bristol Milk’ was slang for sherry. In Australia, a ‘Lady from Bristol’ used to be rhyming slang for a pistol.

When the ss Great Britain was built it was too large even for Bristol’s harbour – it had to stay in for an extra year until the fitting was completed. When it was launched, the first bottle of champagne missed by 10 feet and Prince Albert had to grab another one and throw it at the hull.

Bristol is the UK’s hot-air balloon capital – balloons at Bristol’s International Balloon Fiesta have been shaped like Rupert the Bear, a Scottish bagpiper, and a Kiwi from New Zealand.

And… soccer comes from Bristol! Possibly. Charles Wreford-Brown, who captained the England football team, is credited with coming up with the word ‘soccer’ as an abbreviation for association football, but some sources say it’s apocryphal!

No Such Thing As A Fish – Live UK Tour will be at the Colston Hall on Friday, March 9. For more info and to book tickets, visit www.colstonhall.org/shows/no-thing-fish