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Chapter 1: Who is Nish Kumar and what makes him a notable guest?
Hey, did you see when Marja and Jussi went... Shh! Quiet! Top secret, you know! Or rather, their secret is the delicious fish master's gravy from Ruokatorri. Or delicious premium cake. And I mean, they're really good.
Every chef has his secret. Herkku Grill's products are only available at the Ruokatorri.
Salkku X. We meet again. Five numbers. Five wishes. Estimates. Decisions. Power. As a reward, the X-Pen G6 electric car is completely yours. For ten weeks, solve the code in the address power.fi.x. Don't miss it.
Hi, everyone. Welcome to this week's episode of No Such Thing As A Fish, where we were joined by the legendary, by the superstar, by the all-round top guy, who is Nish Kumar. And now anyone in the UK will know all about Nish.
Chapter 2: What interesting fact did Nish Kumar share about James Cameron?
He is very often seen on our televisions, and now he is on our podcast. If you are not from the UK and you're not familiar with Nish's work, then after listening to this episode, you will surely want to go to YouTube. If you search for Nish Kumar, you will find a full recording of one of his shows. And it's definitely worth checking out his stand up because it is brilliant.
If you are in the UK or in Ireland, then maybe you want to go and see Nish live. You can go to nishkumar.co.uk and you will find all the dates of his tour there. He is doing a work in progress at the Edinburgh Festival and then he is going on the road in September and he is very likely to be at a town near you. If you'd like to know more about us, then go to Patreon.
Patreon.com slash clubfish is the place to go. You can sign up there for free and get lots of little bits and pieces, or you can sign up to one of our tiers and get even more. In fact, if you go to the Plenty More Fish tier this week, you will get an extra long episode of this show. In fact, you always get one of those, but this show is about 20 minutes longer than this.
the actual episode and that is because nish kumar is so knowledgeable about so many different things especially the subjects we talked about today and so there are so many extra bits extra facts extra jokes extra anecdotes and it is all in there but if you don't want to do that do not worry just sit down and listen to this week's episode with nish kumar on with the podcast so
I'm going to take a bath automatically. For the bath,
Hello and welcome to another episode of No Such Thing as a Fish, a weekly podcast coming to you from the QI offices in Hoban. My name is Anna Dyszynski and I'm sitting here with James Harkin, Andrew Antomari and Nish Kumar. And we have gathered here today with our four favourite facts from the last seven days. In no particular order, here we go. Starting with you, Nish.
My favourite fact that I've gathered in the last seven days is after James Cameron was fired from the film Piranha 2, he broke into the studios multiple times in the dead of night to improve the edit. What a hero. Yeah, he cares that much about the craft. It's so funny to think of the word craft associated with the film Piranha 2. It's not Bong Joon-ho saying to me, this is cinema.
It doesn't quite feel like that. To give him his due, I think that is part of the reason why he is... I think he occupies... I think about maybe four or five of the 20 most profitable films. Maybe not profitable, but most financially successful films of all time. Because the common thread of all of his movies is this almost operatic grandeur being applied to very mainstream, conventional films.
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Chapter 3: What is the significance of 'The Man Who Talks With String' in comedy history?
They get elevated by his sociopathic commitment. So hang on, is Piranha 2 in the top 20 grossing films of all time? Because it's one of the Cameron Oeuvre that I haven't seen. Yeah, right. I don't think it's in the top two of the Piranha films. I think all of the avatars are floating around in there.
Oh, yeah. And certainly Titanic.
I think it's cheating when your sequels count, which people do it with Avatar. They count Avatar and its sequel. It's like lump them together. Because, yeah, if you know this one's grossed a lot, then the next one is probably... But then it'll just be Avatar Marvel. And then I think it'll have to be like... Police Academy. Police Academy. Yeah, I think that's it.
What I found mad about reading about Piranha 2 is how, like you say, it's surprising that James Cameron cared enough to break into the edit suite, but how seriously they all took it. Because you think, surely if you're working on these films, in any role, you know you're making a joke, don't you? Well, no, Piranha 1 was huge, right? It was a big movie that did really well.
That was Joe Dante of Gremlins fame, I believe. And then Piranha 2, Cameron had been hired to work on it. And we should say it's his first ever film he'd worked on as a director. And he was hired to work on it by the producer. And it sounds like it was a nightmare to work on. And he was fired quite quickly. Yeah.
They filmed in Jamaica the outdoor Piranha bits, and then they actually moved to Rome for the indoor bits. And he was fired at the end of the Jamaica bit. So that's why he was breaking in. He was breaking in because he'd been fired from the project, but his name was still on it. And he thought, this is so bad. I can't let it go out like it is.
I think the thing was, there was this guy called Ovidio Asinaitis. It's like to video, it's almost his first thing. He really wanted to be the director, but because he was half Italian and half Egyptian, the American movie industry wouldn't let him be director. So he had to bring someone in and his idea was, we'll bring a new person in. They won't do anything, but I'll be the real director.
But then he brought James Cameron in who kind of took it a bit seriously. It was so unlucky to hire one of the most dementedly single-minded people in cinema. Because as far as he knew, he was a 28-year-old nobody, right? He was like, good, I'm getting an intern on. And he was obsessive. Is he a Roger Corman guy?
I think he comes out of that sort of... Cameron comes out of that stable where they were just sort of all being trained... to do everything in film and then sort of thrown out into the wider world. A couple of years ago, I went to the Academy Museum in LA where they sort of have various bits of
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Chapter 4: How did James Cameron's early career influence his later success?
He is the Terminator. In a way.
I bet he thought he was the hero of that, but he was the villain. He was telling you about Terminator 2, but that's another matter. I watched those movies so many hundreds of times when I was palpably too young to be watching them. Because my parents didn't, my parents would stop us from watching things like, I remember my parents saw Pulp Fiction.
And it's kind of the worst thing they could possibly have said to me. Because I said, how was it? And they said, really brilliant. And I said, oh, great. Can I watch it? And they went, no. But why would you say that the movie was good? I was like 10 years old. I was like, why would you say the film is good? But they saw the Terminator box. They thought, yeah, it's robots and lasers. Who cares?
And then, you know, meanwhile, they walk in the room and a guy's using a fountain pen to dig his eye out. I do think my mum at that point was like, oh, OK, I think we might have misread the situation. I mean, some people still aren't really sure what Terminator is about. Look, I was impressed by what I learned. I'm just going to get a message out on my phone that we received from Anna.
What's embarrassing about this is my first serious relationship was with a guy. It was for three years and he was obsessed with the Terminator films. Anna, please, we need to read out the evidence before we have your response to it. Anna Tijinsky. The concept of Terminator is absolutely mental. I just thought it was about a metal bloke killing people. Which at the most basic level, it is.
Nothing you've said there is incorrect. I suppose it had more layers than I expected. Yeah, you've not disproved your initial assumption.
No.
Metal bloke is actually the perfect description of Terminator. Between Terminator and Robocop, my childhood was defined by metal bloke. Yes. We have Piranha 2 to thank for Terminator. I didn't know about this. So basically, Piranha 2 happens and it's a disaster.
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Chapter 5: What are the themes explored in 'The Man Who Sold The World'?
He develops a high fever. He's in Rome. Yes. So at this stage, he's not being paid anymore. Is that right?
No, he's off the clock.
Yeah, this is the story. This is the crazy inception of Terminator. He goes into... He's hospitalized with this really high fever. Yeah. But while he's in hospital, probably because of the Piranha 2 stressful and sacking and all that, he has this vision of a skeleton robot coming out of a fire. A metal bloke. And crawling. That's the only bit of Terminator I've seen.
That scene where he's crawling at the top of him. I don't know what's happened to the bottom, but he's crawling towards that woman. I couldn't work out whose side I was on. So in the Piranha 2 debacle, Asonitis, sounded like a bit of a douchebag as well, the producer. But I mean, he did talk about James Cameron and like he is obviously a massive control freak.
And he said, so Asonitis, I don't know if I'm pronouncing his name right, but Asonitis, that's better. And that was much better. What in the name of Super Mario Brothers was that? He did say Cameron was very arrogant.
And he said at one point he just came out of his office and he saw his crew, the entire crew, and set way out in the distance out to sea on a bunch of boats when they were meant to be on the beach filming. And the first assistant director was fully clothed, swimming towards the shore.
And he got to the shore and he pulled himself up onto the beach and he shouted at Astinaitis, that guy is a maniac, as in James Cameron's a maniac. I'm out of here. And James, so Astinaitis is like, what's he done? Why are you all out at sea? He was like, James Cameron saw the perfect shaped cloud. And you knew we had to film it.
So the entire crew and set is now on a series of boats out at sea chasing a cloud.
I'm just following.
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Chapter 6: What humorous anecdotes were shared about film directors?
The other thing that I always like to bring to this, this is actually something that James Acaster introduced me to, and it's a real obsession of his. So in the book, The Futurist, The Life and Films of James Cameron by Rebecca Keegan, she narrates a story about the shoe of aliens. And Aliens shot at Pinewood and I think Star Wars shot at Elstree.
And both of those films have the kind of same experience, which is an American director doing a science fiction film that a British crew of, you know, pretty hardened union guys cannot have any respect for whatsoever. And like they used to call when they were shooting Star Wars, they used to just refer to the Chewbacca costume as the dog costume.
and so on the final day of shooting Aliens so this according to Rebecca King's book this is what James Cameron says to the crew this has been a long and difficult shoot fraught by many problems but the one thing that kept me going through it all was the certain knowledge that one day I would drive out of the gates of Pinewood and never come back here and that you sorry bastards would all still be here that's
That's his like rousing end of shoot speech. That's what Dan Schreiber says to us every episode of this show.
Before he goes on holiday. Yeah.
I thought there were huge problems with tea breaks.
Yeah. Yeah.
Star Wars and aliens alike. Basically the crew know very clearly when they get the tea break. Yeah. You get a union tea break and Cameron is there being an auteur and saying but we need to film for 28 hours to get this perfect shot in the perfect way and they're saying well we can't. We're going for our tea break.
Yeah.
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Chapter 7: How do political party names reflect cultural sentiments?
Jaws 2. Was Jaws 2 this time it's personal? Was that not first Jaws? First Jaws, it's business. Third Jaws, this time it's pleasure. About the shark and Brody going on a lads holiday. Do you know what? We have Jaws to thank for the Terminator. Oh, really? Because we have Piranha 2 to thank for Terminator. Yeah. Piranha 1 to thank for Piranha 2.
And Piranha 1 only existed because it was like a ripoff of Jaws. Yeah. And Steven Spielberg went to watch it and they were going to sue and say, you can't make this. And Steven Spielberg enjoyed it so much. He was like, oh, don't sue them. This is really great. And is that why? Because then he, Joe Dante, then... Yeah, exactly. Spielberg produced Gremlins?
Yeah, so then they worked together afterwards. Wow, that's amazing. That's really cool. We have so many things I haven't seen to thank for so many other things I haven't seen. I'm really grateful today. We're the same age. What were you doing? I didn't know. What were you doing? I was going out. LAUGHTER
Hey, did you see when Marja and Jussi went... Shh, quiet. Top secret, you know. Or rather, their secret is the delicious fish master's gravilohi from Ruokator. Or the delicious premium cake. And I mean, they're really good.
Every cook has their secret. Delicious Grills products are only available at Hock Elannon Food Stores from Ruokator.
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Chapter 8: What are the surprising connections between David Bowie and political history?
Salkku X. We meet again. Five numbers. Five wishes. Estimates. Conclusions. Power. As a reward, the X-Pen G6 electric car is completely yours. For ten weeks, solve the code in the address power.fi. Don't miss it.
We should move on to fact number two. That's my fact. My fact this week is that the inventor of stand-up comedy was known as the man who talks with string because he was never, well, I will tell you what, because he was never seen anywhere without his lucky string. Consider yourself admonished. That's what. The fact that I've said what is if you weren't going to clarify.
That was just going to be the end of the discussion. Moving on, fact number three. The inventor of sound of comedy was known as the man of string. Okay, anyway, who's got a fact about Roger Corman? I just also want to clarify, he's not a man of string, he's not made of string, he just carries string. So we've got metal men, we've got string men. Metal men, sure.
So the man who talks with string, as in he talks but he's holding string? Exactly, yes. This is a guy called Charlie Case. He tends to be referred to as the person who invented stand-up comedy, although obviously there's a lot of facets to stand-up, so lots of rivals in that claim. But he was born in 1858, so it was late 19th century.
And this is in a book called The Legacy of the Wisecrack, which I mentioned because it had some other interesting bits in it. And he was basically the first person who took to the stage, as it says, with the explicit purpose of telling jokes to make people laugh. No props. No, well, no costume, they say. Although at the time, almost everyone did blackface on stage. And he did do that.
But I read he was mixed race, right? Well, it's very unclear. It's not sure. Yeah. The records are a bit... His obituaries say they think he was mixed race, but black people and white people at the time would go in blackface. Yes. And black performers blacked up sort of his way into the industry.
Yeah.
Because of the white performers. Yeah. Is that it? Yeah. Very strange. And we really don't know with him. I think he probably was, but people didn't mention it in his life. And then in his obituaries, everyone was like, he had a black parent. Yeah. And he had this string that he always carried on stage and he fiddled with it constantly. He couldn't be without it.
A couple of times he forgot it and if no replacement could be found, he just fully, you know, broke down. He said, I might as well be without my hand. And he explained it. He said when he first went into business, he wore a pair of black gloves and he would fiddle with them and toy with one of them, pick at the fingers. And eventually, a bit like when you give a baby a rag.
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