No Such Thing As A Robotic Margaret Atwood
No Such Thing As A Fish
No Such Thing As A Fish
4.7 • 18.5K Ratings
🗓️ 19 June 2015
⏱️ 35 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Dan, James, Andy and Anne discuss the fate of London's bendy buses, lifts with toilets, and century-long book deals.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to another episode of no such thing as a fish, a weekly podcast coming |
| 0:18.7 | to you from the QI offices in Covron Garden. |
| 0:21.1 | My name is Dad Shriver, I'm sitting here with Andy Murray, James Harkin and Ann Miller, |
| 0:25.6 | and once again we have gathered around the microphone with our four favorite facts from |
| 0:29.0 | the last seven days and in no particular order here we go. |
| 0:33.3 | Starting with you, Harkin. |
| 0:35.6 | My fact this week is that in the 1840s London buses had straps attached to the driver's |
| 0:41.4 | arms that you would yank if you wanted to stop. |
| 0:44.5 | It just seems like the worst idea in the world. |
| 0:47.6 | In 1839 they invented the bell on buses and then they decided to go to the strap version |
| 0:53.8 | afterwards. |
| 0:54.8 | Oh wow. |
| 0:55.8 | But these are horse buses of course and in those days you didn't have to go on the |
| 1:00.8 | left hand side of the right hand side of the road and there were no bus stops or anything |
| 1:04.0 | like that. |
| 1:05.5 | When you wanted to stop you needed to tell the driver which direction you wanted to go |
| 1:09.5 | to the right hand side of the road or the left hand side. |
| 1:11.5 | So if you wanted to stop on the right hand side you would yank his right strap and that |
| 1:15.6 | would move his right arm which would move the horse to the side of the road and then he |
| 1:18.9 | would stop. |
| 1:19.9 | I read that they didn't have to even pull over to stop for 40 years after the whole |
| 1:25.1 | storm bus was invented. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from No Such Thing As A Fish, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of No Such Thing As A Fish and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.

