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No Such Thing As The Gordon Ramsay Songbook

December 4, 2025·51 min·4 clips

A Venezuelan ice cream parlor once sold 860 flavors, from trout to garlic, before losing its world record.

This episode of the No Such Thing As A Fish podcast features the hosts Dan Schreiber, Andrew Hunter Murray, James Harkin, and their special guest, the celebrated comedian and travel documentarian Michael Palin. Palin discusses his travels and his new book, "Michael Palin in Venezuela," which chronicles his visit to his 100th country. The conversation begins with a fact about Mérida, Venezuela, home to the world's tallest cable car and an ice cream parlor, Heladería Coromoto, which once sold 860 varieties including garlic, trout, and a five-scoop dish representing a traditional meal. Palin describes the cable car's hour-long ascent to an altitude half that of Mount Everest and notes the recent disappearance of the local glacier. The hosts mention unique Venezuelan wildlife, like the Mérida cable car frog and oil birds, which were historically used as candles due to their high fat content. A discussion of historical censorship reveals the BBC's "Green Book," which banned jokes about topics like honeymoon couples and baskets, and Palin recounts the BBC cutting the word "masturbating" from a Monty Python sketch. The episode covers banned songs, including The Who's "My Generation" for its stammer and David Bowie's "Space Oddity" during the Apollo 11 mission, and explores the risqué "dirty blues" genre of the 1920s and 30s. It is noted that a young King Charles III performed with the Cambridge Footlights, and performances could not joke about the royal family. The hosts examine the failed 1840s Franklin Expedition to find the Northwest Passage, detailing the many search parties funded by Lady Franklin. One search involved placing collars with coordinates on arctic foxes, while another used the ship HMS Resolution, whose captain's desk now resides in the White House. The conversation covers the expedition's lead poisoning, the 8,000 tins of food they carried, and the well-preserved bodies discovered over a century later. The tone is consistently conversational, humorous, and educational, with the hosts and guest exchanging bizarre facts and personal anecdotes with ease. Listeners who enjoy comedic deep dives into obscure history, travel trivia, and behind-the-scenes stories of classic comedy will love this episode. Those seeking a highly structured, single-topic narrative might find the rapid-fire fact-switching less engaging.

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