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No Such Thing As A Fish
No Such Thing As A Fish

No Such Thing As Going To Spoiler Prison

October 08, 2026 • 57m

Summary

⏱️ 8 min read

Overview

Russell T. Davis, the acclaimed British TV writer-producer, joins the podcast to discuss his career and shares fascinating anecdotes about creating shows like Doctor Who and Casanova. The conversation ranges from Casanova's extensive autobiography and sexual exploits to Welsh marriage customs, TV production secrets, and the challenges of protecting intellectual property in the entertainment industry.

Casanova's Memoir and Its Hidden Details

Russell T. Davis discusses his deep dive into Casanova's 12-volume autobiography while researching for his TV series starring David Tennant. The conversation reveals surprising details about the famous lover's life, including that some pages feature watermarked love hearts and that his sexual exploits, while extensive, weren't unusual for the time period. The group debates whether Casanova's legendary status is deserved or simply the result of him being one of the few people to write everything down.

  • Some pages of Casanova's memoir are watermarked with love hearts, likely unnoticed for centuries because they're only visible when held up to light
  • Casanova's sexual count was between 120-135 women, which Russell suggests wasn't exceptional for the highly sexualized 18th century society
  • Everyone in that era was 'at it' - nuns, priests, everyone - Casanova just happened to write it all down
  • The autobiography includes extreme content by modern standards, including a relationship with his own daughter
  • Casanova's famous prison escape from Venice is historically verified with physical evidence of the hole he made in the ceiling
" Everyone was at it. He's not the great lover. Everyone was having sex at the rate that Casanova was. Nuns, priests, everyone. And he just happened to write it down. "
" I had to read all 12 volumes of that autobiography, which was long. It didn't keep me young, kept me old. I was exhausted by the end of it. "

Peter O'Toole's Explosive Meeting

Russell recounts a memorable and profanity-laden meeting with Peter O'Toole three days before filming Casanova, where the legendary actor unleashed a tirade about script rewrites. The story reveals the reality behind working with demanding actors and the eventual realization that O'Toole's anger stemmed from having already memorized his lines and panicking about the changes, not from the quality of the rewrites themselves.

  • Peter O'Toole summoned Russell and the director to his hotel suite and launched into an expletive-filled rant calling them 'c***s' for issuing rewrites
  • The director bore the brunt of O'Toole's anger because, coming from film, he had no concept that writers existed separately from directors
  • Russell realized O'Toole had already learned his lines and was panicking about the changes, so they simply withdrew the rewrites
" You c***s. You absolute f***ing c***s. I'm like, whoa. Hello? "

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