Well, hello there, Chris Evans here, bringing you a special edition of The Best of the Breakfast

Show podcast with Sky from Virgin Radio in this episode. We're speaking to the impeccably dressed

font of knowledge that is Stephen Fry. It's a special one-off pop-up, so do enjoy. He's written a book

about ties called Fry's Ties. It's absolutely fascinating. Without further ado, let's send it over

to Dapper Day for the big intro.

Whether we're talking half-winds is a Trinity, a Kelvin or a Pratt Shelby, our next guest

is The Man in the Know.

His new book celebrating the humble tie, Fry's Ties, is out now, so please welcome.

A man well versed in, well, pretty much everything, to be honest.

It's the superb Stephen Fry.

Hello, Stephen. Oh, what a welcome. Thank you so much, Chris.

Right. Now, what was he gassing onto you about, whilst that record was playing?

Well, like over here. We're talking about the book. He was kind enough to say pleasant things about it,

because it does, on the face of it, seem an extraordinary, extraordinary indeed a preposterous idea to write a book

about ties but um on one page and this is i suppose typical of the book there's a tie which is

playing cards it's a beautiful silk playing card tie and and in it i mentioned that on q i performed

this unique trick that had never been performed before.

I shuffled the cards and produced an order in the pack that had never been seen in the history of playing cards.

And that seems like a weird boast and how can you prove it.

But the numbers are so bizarre with cards that the order of a pack of 52 cards is expressed by mathematicians

as 52 with an exclamation mark next to it, sometimes called 52 shriek. And it means 52 times

51 times 50 times 49 times 48, etc. Or the other way around 1 times 2 times 3 times 4 all the way up to 52.

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