Hello and welcome to another episode of No Such Thing as a Fish, a weekly podcast coming

from four undisclosed locations in the UK.

My name is Dan Schreiber, I'm sitting here with Anna Toshinsky, Andrew Hunter Murray,

and James Harkin, and once again we have gathered around the microphones with our four

favorite facts from the last seven days and in no particular order here we go. Starting

with my fact this week, my fact is that while working as a publisher, the poet T.S. Eliot

liked to sit his visiting authors on a woopy cushion before offering them an exploding cigar.

Did he do this for everybody? Yeah, I don't know if people were warned about it,

I think most people assumed it wouldn't happen. He was a very serious guy according to the

writings that he released. So the idea that you would enter the office of the great poet T.S. Eliot

and have a cigar explode in your face while making a loud fart seems out of place, doesn't it?

Do you think maybe the very grave serious persona he had throughout his life was all an act

so that he could do this, shape without people expecting it? That's a great idea. Could have

been all building up to this all the front. Yeah, yeah. It wasn't just his authors who came in who he

would turn these sort of practical jokes on to. He once broke up a board meeting as well by setting

off a bucket full of firecrackers underneath the chairman's legs. So he was all over the shop.

He was a nightmare to work with. Sounds like a maniac. That sounds dangerous as a fourth of July

prank. Yeah, you'd be fired if you weren't quite senior in the company or you weren't about to

become the greatest poet of the 20th century, you would be fired for that. But wait a minute,

wouldn't it be quite cool if you're about to be fired and they went, you're fired, don't you

went, no, you're fired, mate. And a lot of firecrackers are up. It's us. It's done. Maybe that's

what happened and it was such an event they completely forgot this accident. So T.S. Eliot,

...