So what's the book about, Stevyn?

Warning! Long post! (Oo-er!)

As we're now so close to publication, I can finally let you all know precisely what my book Joined-Up Thinking is all about. Before I do, a quick apology to regular blog-chums Me, Chris Hale, John Soanes, Stu Peel and all you others who have seen the book. I hope that the taste of egg in your mouths won't last too long and that your cheeks don't get sore with all the sucking. Sorry. But, for those of you further away - across the sea even - here's the skinny.

Three years ago I was researching an entirely different book - about luck as it happens - and I was turning up all manner of interesting facts, many of which were unsuitable for the luck project so I put them to one side. But then, quite by chance, I noticed that a couple of these unused but fascinating little snippets had a kind of connection. The two that started the ball rolling were (a) that Robert the Bruce is now believed to have suffered from leprosy, and (b) that armadillos are the only mammals besides us that get full-blown leprosy. Then, in the back of my mind, I remembered something else about armadillos, namely that they normally give birth to genetically identical quads. And then ...

Well, all kinds of chains started to form. It was like six degrees of separation; the idea that everyone can be inked by a chain of six or fewer people (discussed in this previous post). But this was like six degrees of information - a line we ended up using on the cover copy. I started to build long chains of facts and then something even more extraordinary happened ... I noticed a link between the two ends of one chain. By pulling them together, all of a sudden I had a circle, a ring, or as I came to call it, a Round. I figured that I'd chanced upon a neat little gimmick so I set out to do it again. And several months later, I had 30 Rounds; each one a short journey through a series of weird and wonderful facts before arriving back where it started.

So that's how the book came together. And thanks to the involvement of Stephen Fry, John Lloyd and John Mitchinson at QI, my agent Ben Mason and my editor John Butler, the book is now a reality, just 12 months later.

So, here's a taster of how it works (this Round isn't in the book by the way). I hope you enjoy it. It took me ages to post it!

Holy Marsupials!

The city that Batman patrols and cares for is Gotham City, which is closely modelled upon New York. The name ‘Gotham City’ was coined by writer Washington Irving in the early 1800s as a nickname for New York. He intended it to mean ‘city of fools’ and his reasoning for this came from English folklore and the story of the Wise Men of Gotham. The ‘wise men’ were supposedly a village full of thickies whose legendary stupidity was captured in a series of popular humorous fables and the nursery rhyme:

Three wise men of Gotham

Went to sea in a bowl.

If the bowl had been stronger

My tale had been longer.

Among their supposed exploits were things like forming a circle of people around a bush to keep a cuckoo there all summer, cutting a notch on the side of a boat to show where they'd hidden a church bell underwater, and trying to catch the Moon (reflected in a pond) in a net. However, the 'Wise Men' may not have been so stupid after all. The tales are said to stem from an incident in which the villagers of Gotham feigned imbecility to frighten the hated King John away from living in the area.

Gotham is in Nottinghamshire, home of the legendary Robin Hood who, incidentally, also had no time for King John. It would certainly have been a village known to Robin (if he ever existed). So, with this Gotham/Robin Hood connection, is the name 'Robin' (as in Batman's sidekick)intentional? Well, yes and no. It does come from Robin Hood but from a different source.

Robin first appeared in DC Comics in 1940, a year after Batman's debut. When artist Bob Kane and writer Jerry Robinson were designing the character, Robinson remembered some illustrations of Robin Hood by N C Wyeth. Consequently, Robin's original costume had a kind of mediaeval look to it. As he explains himself, ‘I suggested [the name] Robin, which they seemed to like, and then showed them [my sketch of] the costume. And if you look at it, it's Wyeth's costume, from my memory, because I didn't have the book to look at.’

The first cinematic version of the Robin Hood story was made in 1922 and was silent. Douglas Fairbanks in Robin Hood (to give it its full and slightly double-entendred title) was the first ever film to have a Hollywood premiere. It cost around $1 million US dollars to make (one of the most expensive films ever made at that time) and featured a full-scale mediaeval village set. The film was produced by Fairbanks for United Artists, a company owned by him, his wife Mary Pickford, D W Griffith and Charlie Chaplin.

For a time, Chaplin was a clown in Fred Karno's Fun Factory slapstick comedy troupe and toured America from 1910 to 1912. On their second tour, starting late in 1912, Chaplin ended up sharing a boarding house room with his understudy, another British member of the Fred Karno troupe called Arthur Stanley Jefferson. In 1913, Chaplin was spotted by film producer Mack Sennett, who hired him to work for his Keystone Film Company. Arthur Jefferson, meanwhile, had adopted a new stage name and had got himself some film roles with Hal Roach’s studio. He appeared in several silent comedies with another of Roach’s actors, Babe Hardy, and the chemistry between them was soon spotted by supervising director Leo McCarey who suggested that they be teamed up. As Laurel and Hardy, the two actors went on to become arguably the best comedy double act of all time.

Stan Laurel’s last film was the 1951 French/Italian film Atoll K. The film was a poor swansong for Laurel and Hardy. It had a poor script, low budget, and many of the cast and crew spoke different languages (but not English). Stan Laurel was very ill with diabetes throughout filming (and looks it) and Oliver Hardy had a heart problem that affected his performance. In the USA, the film was released under the title of Utopia. In the UK, it was issued under the title Robinson Crusoeland.

Robinson Crusoe is a fictional character created by Daniel Defoe. He joins an expedition to bring slaves from Africa, but is shipwrecked by a storm on an island near the mouth of the Orinoco river in 1659. His companions all die and he is left alone … until the arrival of cannibals who use the island as a place to execute and eat their prisoners. He helps one prisoner to escape and names him ‘Friday’.

The name Friday comes from the Old English frigedæg, meaning the ‘Day of Frigg’. Frigg was the Norse Goddess of love, peace and relaxation. She is also associated with the Goddess Venus and in many languages, Friday is derived from the name e.g. vendredi (French), Venerdi (Italian), Viernes (Spanish) etc. Frigg was the highest ranking female Norse God. She was married to boss God Odin and is said to have spun the clouds on her celestial spinning wheel. The constellation that we know as Orion was known to the Norse peoples as Frigg’s Spinning Wheel and the row of stars we call Orion’s Belt was Frigg’s distaff; the straight bit of wood upon which the unspun yarn sits.

The Orion was a model of saloon car made for the European market by the Ford Motor Company. It went on sale in 1983 and stayed in production for 10 years – a total of 534,239 Orions were sold. Ford motor company has named several of its cars after astronomical phenomena. There is the Orion, the Galaxy, the Scorpio and, in the 1950s, they produced the Comète for the French market.

The Ford Motor Company was founded by Henry Ford (1863-1947). Ford was a brilliant businessman; he invented the modern system of manufacture using assembly lines, he offered good wages and working packages for his staff – so-called ‘Welfare capitalism’ – as long as they worked hard and kept production running high. He is credited with creating the concepts of the 40 hour working week and minimum wage. He was a philanthropist, a donor to various charities, and set up the Ford Foundation to fund programs that promote democracy, reduce poverty, promote international understanding, and advance human achievement. He was also involved in aviation design, improving the railroads and invented the charcoal briquette!

However, there was a darker side to Henry Ford. He had bought a newspaper called The Dearborn Independent that held extremely anti-Semitic views. Ford never directly contributed to the newspaper’s articles. Nor did he ever publicly espouse any anti-Jewish sentiment. However, his association with the inflammatory paper and his failure to condemn it made it appear that he supported its extreme right-wing views.

Hitler kept a framed photograph of Henry Ford in his study and welcomed Ford's views and contributions to the Nazi movement. He even used some of Ford’s supposed anti-Semitic views when writing his 1925-1926 two-volume book Mein Kampf (My Struggle). Ford apparently reciprocated by keeping a photo of Hitler on his desk … although possibly not after 1939 and the outbreak of war. Hitler was voted Time magazine’s Man of the Year in 1938.

Contrary to popular belief (and a rather bawdy old Music Hall song), Adolf Hitler did not have a missing testicle. He had a full complement of two, but they didn’t produce any sperm due to venereal disease that he contracted during the First World War. Another myth was that Hitler was a total vegetarian. While it is true that his diet mostly consisted of fruit and veg, he regularly ate pigs' knuckles and was known to eat up to 2 lbs of chocolate per day. His diet was very heavy in carbohydrates and sugars, which may have been responsible for the depression he suffered.

Before World War II, the New York phone book boasted 22 people named ‘Hitler’. By the end of the war, all of them had disappeared. The Hitler family, keen to disassociate themselves from the Führer, simply disappeared by changing their names. One such was Adolf’s nephew, William Patrick Hitler. William was the son of Adolf’s half-brother, Alois, and his Irish wife Bridget Dowling. They had met in Dublin in 1909 and eloped to Liverpool where William was born in 1911. Anecdotal stories tell of the young boy being known as Billy or Paddy Hitler.

After the outbreak of World War II, the Hitlers moved to America where William served in the US Navy and the Naval Medical Corps. He was used in several US propaganda films where he was seen berating and taunting his uncle. After the war, and with the Hitler name forever stained with the blood of millions, William became William Stuart-Houston. He married, had four sons and moved to Long Island, New York, where he set up a business analysing blood samples for hospitals. He died in 1987 and is buried alongside his mother, Bridget, at Holy Sepulchre Cemetery in Coram, New York.

One of New York City’s more famous streets is Wall Street, which takes its name from the fact that it once formed the northern boundary of New Amsterdam (as the city was then called). By 1653, it had grown to become a fortified 12 foot high wall made of timber and earth and was intended to keep the native Americans out. The wall was eventually pulled down by the British in 1699. The street became associated with finance during the late 18th century when traders and speculators would informally meet by a buttonwood tree on Wall Street. In 1792, these meetings were formalised by The Buttonwood Agreement – the forerunner of the New York Stock Exchange.

The Oscar-winning Oliver Stone movie Wall Street starring Michael Douglas as red braces-wearing Gordon Gekko, was one of the hit films of 1987. Music for the film was by Stewart Copeland who also wrote the soundtracks to the films See no evil, hear no evil, Highlander II, Rumble Fish, She’s all that and many others. He is better known as the drummer of rock band the Police. The other members are guitarist Andy Summers and multi-instrumentalist and lead singer Gordon Sumner – better known as Sting.

Sting recently released a classical album called Songs from the Labyrinth in which he and lute player Edin Karamazov perform songs written by John Dowland. Dowland (1563 –1626) is best known for his ‘melancholy songs’ which bear such depressing titles as Flow my tears, I saw my lady weepe and In darkness let me dwell. Melancholia was a popular musical movement at the time and Dowland was the Morrissey of his day. While a popular writer and performer, it appears that Dowland’s Catholic leanings didn’t ingratiate him with the court of Elizabeth I and he failed to be offered a post at her court. Instead, he worked for Christian IV of Denmark. However, he did return to England in 1606 and, in 1612, was appointed as a royal lutenist to the court of King James I. It has been noted that no new compositions exist after this time.

The late American science fiction author Philip K Dick (1928-1982) was a fan of Dowland's music and commemorated the composer in several ways. He often assumed the pen-name of Jack Dowland. And he also incorporated the title of one of Dowland’s best known pieces into the title of his novel Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said. Dick (whose middle name was Kindred) died on March the 2nd 1982 following a stroke but his fans brought him back by creating a life-sized remote-controlled look-alike android for the San Diego Comic Convention. However, in February 2006, an airline lost the android, and it has not yet been found.

Philip K Dick’s work has been frequently used as the starting point for making feature films. Total Recall (1990), was based on Dick’s short story We Can Remember It for You Wholesale. Other films include Minority Report (2002), Paycheck (2003), A Scanner Darkly (2006), Screamers (1995), Next (based on the story The Golden Man) in 2007 and, most famously Blade Runner (1982).

The film is often described as ‘loosely based on Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep but no mention of the phrase ‘Blade Runner’ exists in Dick’s book. That’s because film director Ridley Scott had bought the rights to a screenplay by William S Boroughs called The Bladerunner, based upon a book of the same name by Alan Nourse. The ‘blade runners’ of the book were people who sold illegal surgical tools. Ridley Scott didn’t make the film but liked the name and therefore used it as the title of his other project. Before this, he had considered the alternative titles of Android, Animal, Dangerous Days and Mechanismo.

Mechanismo was the title of a major plot-line in the long-running British comic strip Judge Dredd. Published in 1992 in Judge Dredd Megazine it told the story of a project to build robot Judges to police the streets of Mega-City One. It also covered Chief Judge McGruder's slow descent into mental instability and desperate attempts to cling to power.

If you’re not familiar with Judge Dredd … where have you been? He began life in issue two of the UK’s 2000AD comic back in 1977 and has been the top strip ever since, spawning spin-off comics and a dreadful (sorry) feature film starring Sylvester Stallone. In the 1970s, certain tabloid newspapers expressed concerns that young fans of 2000AD might buy albums by reggae artist Judge Dread by mistake. Their ‘concern’ (bearing in mind we are talking tabloids here) was that children would then be exposed to the music and lyrics of the most frequently banned artist in UK chart history.

Judge Dread – real name Alexander Minto Hughes (1945-1998) - was the first white recording artist to have a reggae hit (called 'Big Six') in Jamaica. He is also mentioned in the Guinness Book of Records as having had the most banned singles – 11 in all – all of which charted. This means that Dread had more UK chart reggae hits than anyone else in the 1970s – including Bob Marley – despite his songs never being played on the radio and him never appearing on Top of the Pops.

But while he is most famous for his obscene lyrics and rude reggae parodies of famous nursery rhymes, he was also a philanthropist; he organised benefit reggae concerts (some starring greats like The Wailers and Desmond Dekker) and a charity single called ‘Molly’ for famine relief in Ethiopia. Sadly, however, his past caught up with him and no one would play the record on air even though it was perfectly clean. Even recording under pseudonyms failed to get him any airplay from wary radio execs.

In 1977, things started to look up. Dread was a serious songwriter as well as a bawdy reggae star and his song ‘A Child’s Prayer’ came to the attention of Elvis Presley. Elvis planned to record it as a Christmas gift to his daughter Lisa Marie, which would have helped to raise Dread’s profile out of the gutter. However, Elvis died before doing so.

Dread’s last show was at a Canterbury club, on the 13th of March 1998. As the set finished, he turned to the audience and said, ‘Let's hear it for the band.’ Then as he walked off-stage, he suffered a fatal heart attack.

Elvis Presley (1935-1977) was one of a pair of identical twins. Tragically, his twin – named Jesse Garon Presley - was stillborn on January the 8th 1935. Had Jesse lived, it’s interesting to speculate whether he would have followed the same career path as his younger brother. Two Kings of Rock and Roll? That would have been extraordinary. There is some evidence that they would have shared similar talents. You only have to look at Craig and Charlie Reid of the Proclaimers fame. Or Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen. Or Ross and Norris McWhirter, compilers of the Guinness Book of Records. Then of course, there were the nefarious talents of Albert Ebenezer and Ebeneezer Albert Fox.

The Twin Foxes, as they were known, were born in 1857 and became notorious poachers around the area of Stevenage in Hertfordshire, England. They were as wily as their namesake and made sure never to go poaching together, and often escaped prosecution by providing alibis for each other. And, as no one could tell them apart, it was impossible to prove the alibis wrong. Eventually, they attracted the attention of police Commissioner Sir Edward Henry who believed that all fingerprints – even those of identical twins – were unique. Using the Fox brothers and several other twins, he was able to prove his concept and, in doing so, put the Twin Foxes in prison.

Fingerprints are only found in the primates – particularly in man, apes and monkeys. But there is one notable exception – the Koala. In fact, Koala fingerprints are so similar to human fingerprints that it is very hard to tell them apart.

Early European settlers to Australia called the Koala (Phascolarctos cinereus) the 'Native Bear' and it is still often erroneously called a Koala Bear. Of course, it is not related to true bears at all. Bears are placental mammals like we are; they give birth to live, fully-developed young. Koalas and their closest relative, the Wombats, are marsupials. Interestingly, the Koala has an unusually small brain. Approximately 40% of its cranial cavity is full of fluid with the tiny brain floating in the middle. This is unique to the Koala and no one really knows why it evolved this way.

Marsupials are so named because the female typically has a pouch, or marsupium, in which it rears its young from birth. For many years, scientists believed that they were an inferior earlier form of mammal. However, it now appears that they were simply a different design that co-evolved and coexisted alongside us placental mammals. Certainly, the earliest known marsupial is Sinodelphys szalayi, which lived around 125 million years ago – about the same time as the earliest placentals.

In many ways, the marsupials seem to be better designed than the placentals. Firstly, their reproductive and excretion systems are kept separate, waste being disposed of via an orifice called a cloaca. But there’s more … female marsupials have three vaginas, one for birth and two which lead to different compartments within the uterus. And males usually have a two-pronged penis. However, evolutionary scientists point to the fact that while placental mammals have diversified into forms as extreme as whales, bats and moles, most marsupials are remarkably similar. Current theories for this revolve around a marsupial’s front limbs. Because a newborn marsupial must climb up to its mother's nipples inside the pouch, its limbs develop much more quickly than the rest of its body. Consequently, these vital limbs could never evolve into hooves, wings or flippers without endangering the future of the species.

Possibly the most famous Marsupial of all time was Skippy, the bouncing star of 91 TV episodes made between 1966 and 1969 in Australia. Skippy the Bush Kangaroo was set within Waratah National Park and featured the adventures of park ranger’s son, Sonny Hammond, and the eponymous kangaroo. Famously, Skippy spoke in a kind of tutting, clicking noise – a noise that kangaroos cannot actually make in real life. Other characters were Matt Hammond (Sonny's Dad), his brother Mark, helicopter Pilot Jerry King and Clarissa ‘Clancy’ Merrick. This was an early role for popular 1970s and 1980s actress Liza Goddard.

Liza Goddard was born on the 20th of January 1950, in Smethwick, West Midlands, England but moved to Australia when she was 15. Later she returned to the UK and enjoyed great success in series such as The Brothers, Take Three Girls, Take Three Women, Give us a clue, Bergerac, Woof and That’s love. These days, she is married to producer and director David Cobham (Tarka the Otter) but before that she was married to 70’s glam rock star Alvin Stardust and, prior to that, actor Colin Baker who played the sixth Doctor Who. Goddard appeared in the series in 1983 during Peter Davison’s era (Doctor Number Five) in a story called Terminus.

Veteran British actor Michael Gough has appeared several times in Doctor Who. His most recent appearance was in 1983 in the Peter Davison era story Arc of Infinity. In this he played the wily Time Lord Councillor Hedin whose misplaced loylaties put the Doctor at risk and allowed the anti-matter renegade Time Lord Omega back into our universe. But as long ago as 1966, Gough played the eponymous Celestial Toymaker whose demonic toys were set against the first Doctor, played by William Hartnell and his assistants Dodo Chaplet (Jackie Lane) and Steven Taylor (Peter Purves). Gough was married for a few years to Dutch-born Anneke Wills who played Doctor Who assistant Polly in 1966-67 where she oversaw the Doctor’s metamorphosis into Patrick Troughton.

Gough was born in 1914 in Malaya and is one of our finer character actors . He has appeared in over 100 feature films and a great many TV series and stage shows. His first film was Blanche Fury in 1947. Since then he has appeared in such classics as Dracula (1958), The Phantom of the Opera (1962), Out of Africa (1986), Sleepy Hollow (1999) and The Corpse Bride (2005). He was a fixture of the many Hammer Horror movies and it is criminal that he is not mentioned in the same hushed tones as his contemporaries, Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, as his performances were equally as exciting and powerful. However, he is perhaps best known to modern audiences for his four screen appearances as Alfred Pennyworth …

Alfred Pennyworth or Alfred Thaddeus Crane Pennyworth - to give him his full name is a fictional supporting character in DC Comics' Batman series. First appearing in 1943, Alfred is Bruce Wayne’s butler and confidante and has been with the Wayne family since before Bruce was born. He now acts as a manservant, protector, father-figure and advisor and is one of the few people aware of Batman’s secret identity.

Michael Gough was chosen to play Alfred in Tim Burton’s re-invention of the Batman franchise in 1989. He subsequently went on to play the character in Batman Returns (1992) and was returned by director Joel Schumacher for Batman Forever (1995) and Batman & Robin (1997). With the exception of Pat Hingle who played Commissioner Gordon, Gough is the only actor to have appeared in all four films. The lead, Batman himself, was played by three actors – Michael Keaton, Val Kilmer and George Clooney. For the new run of Batman films, starting with 2006’s Batman Begins (with Christian Bale as Batman) and this year’s The Dark Knight, Alfred is played by Sir Michael Caine.

The city that Batman patrols ...

So there you go … a complete Round from Batman to Batman taking in, along the way, Robin Hood, New York City, The Wise Men of Gotham, Laurel and Hardy, the goddess Frigg, Orion, Skippy the Bush Kangaroo, Charlie Chaplin, Adolf Hitler, Sting and the Police, Robinson Crusoe, Henry Ford, Bladerunner, John Dowland, Philip K Dick, Elvis Presley, Judge Dread, Koalas, Fingerprints, The Twin Foxes, Liza Goddard, Judge Dredd and Alfred Pennyworth.

You see? Everything in the world can be connected to everything else if you know what the connections are.

Batman and Alfred images by Brian Bolland and DC Comics. Judge Dredd image by Dermot Power and 2000AD. Doctor Who, Lisa Goddard and Michael Gough images courtesy of the BBC. Robinson Crusoe image by N C Wyeth. All other images trawled from the internet and remain the copyright of the copyright holders.