QI (2003–…): Season 10, Episode 18 - Just the Job - full transcript

Gooooooooooood evening,
good evening, good evening,

good evening, good evening,
good evening

and welcome to an episode of QI
that's all about inventions

and discoveries, in fact
anything that's "just the job".

They say that the greatest
of all inventors is accident.

With that in mind, let's meet the
tremendously timely Jason Manford.

APPLAUSE

The consistently coincidental
Jeremy Clarkson.

APPLAUSE

The stupefyingly serendipitous
Sandi Toksvig.

APPLAUSE



And an accident waiting
to happen, Alan Davies.

APPLAUSE

So, let's hear your
Alexander Graham Bells.

Jason goes...

OLD-FASHIONED PHONE RINGS

- It's all right. - Jeremy goes...

Is it going to be a car horn?

MODERN PHONE RINGS

- No. - Surprising. Sandi goes...

I want something trim.

ELECTRONIC PHONE RINGS

Good guess. And Alan goes...

MUSIC: "Ride Of The Valkyries"
By Wagner

Oh.



Oh.

- I could listen to this for ever.
- He loves this one.

It's a 14-and-a-half hour...

- Orgasm. - It's a Wagner ring tone.

Isn't that wonderful?
I could listen to that for ever.

Anyway, so, let's begin with
an interesting question.

What were chainsaws
originally invented for?

Proctology.

- Wow! That's scary.
- SANDI: Yeah, that's a...

- Slicing an arse in half. - Yeah.

- Well, do you know, you were
in the right area. - SANDI: Really?

- I have to say. I mean...
- Circumcision.

What I mean is, you began
straight away with medicine.

You didn't say trees or, you know,
cutting down, you know, buildings.

Oh, cutting off legs.
So, like bones and...

Bones is the right answer.

Yes, in particular it was
a rather unpleasant procedure.

Oh, don't, it'll be a boy thing
against a girl thing. It will be.

- Well, not against, in order to...
- Well, no, no, but it...

It was doctors trying to help.

Oh, I know what it is.
I know what it is.

It'll be a boy thinking a woman's
taking far too long over labour

going, "Oh, I can't stand
all that panting, I know,

"we'll get a chainsaw and just cut
that baby out." That's what it is.

Do you know,
you're absolutely right.

APPLAUSE

Oh, my God!

It was in...it was in 1783.

That's no excuse.

It was two Scots doctors called
John Aitken and James Jeffrey,

and it was called a symphysiotomy
and it was a procedure

to widen the pelvis if the baby's
head was too large to pass through.

Oh, can you hear the high tone of
all those sighs in the audience?

- What I like about this picture...
- It's a bit eye-watering.

It's a ladies' ward, so of course
there is some baking going on

on the left-hand side. Yes.

Oh, that's right, there is.

A little cake display case
of buns in the oven, Stephen,

- you see what I did there.
- Buns in the oven!

- They didn't really, darling?
- I'm afraid they did.

When I say chainsaw,
it was literally a chain,

- it was like a watch chain in fact.
- Ah, right. - It was an up-and-down...

JASON: So it wasn't a full
lumberjack giving it...

IMITATES CHAINSAW NOISE
..it's a boy!

They hadn't yet invented
the internal combustion engine.

And Caesarean sections, they were...

- Caesarean sections have replaced
the same idea, that the... - Phew.

Yes, quite, exactly.
It's a bit of a relief.

It would have been easier to do
the Caesarean section, I think.

Sawing the pelvic bone in half
is not as easy as maybe just

- a small incision in... - I know,
you would have thought they have...

Pop it out of the sunroof.

But this was before
antiseptic surgery

and of course it was before
any kind of anaesthetic.

Was there not a meeting?
You know what I mean?

There was not a meeting where
someone goes, "I've got it."

And they go, "What?" And they go,
"Chainsaw, innit?"

Well, they looked at a watch chain
and they said, you know, if you can,

we could sort of ease away the bone
like that, rather than using a saw.

I know, everyone's wincing.

Have we got another question
that isn't about that?

Would it heal?
Presumably not very well.

Well, they then went on to use
the same thing, for example,

if someone had a bit of diseased
bone, they would do the same thing,

they would sort of take it
and they'd go up and down like that,

and then they'd do it lower down and
the two bits would fuse together,

and they'd have a stiff arm, but it
would get rid of the diseased bone.

It was called an osteotome.

It eventually became like a
chainsaw, you can see one here.

- That is more like a chainsaw.
- My God! You don't want that...

- But pretty unpleasant. - You
don't want that coming at you.

You really don't.
You really, really don't.

I remember my wife had a baby,
I remember it well...

- I was going to say. - Yeah...
- Kind of thing you wouldn't forget.

It was a grand day,
but when she had a baby,

and there's a point where
you go in to see the fella

- who's going to sort it out
on the day. - Obstetrician?

That's him, yeah,
he's got an official title.

And you go and see him,
and as the husband, he says,

"Right, you sit there on a chair."

And then he pulls the curtain across

while him and your wife
are in this thing,

while he has a little dabble,
or whatever he's doing.

- It's a bit intimate, isn't it?
- You go, "I've seen it, mate."

Do you know what I mean? There's
nothing...this is why we're here.

Well, you don't look
when that happens though, do you,

at the moment of conception?
Do you actually have a look?

You're looking into...

Surely... Surely... Sorry.

I think I was watching...

Stephen doesn't need to know,
Jason, he doesn't need to know.

Well, I thought you were gazing
lovingly into her eyes while...

Gazing lovingly...gazing lovingly
at the Bourne Identity,

which is still on the television.

- As you reach for your drink.
- Oh, I'm...

What do you think, darling, that he's
got a periscope at the moment of...?

I'm sorry, I'm sorry, look...

I don't know why you and I
are having this conversation.

It's true.

APPLAUSE

After the invention of
the internal combustion engine,

where we're getting Jeremy
to his home territory now,

eventually by 1920
they were small enough

- to be able to have a hand-powered...
chain. - Cut down trees.

- And then they cut down trees.
Exactly. - Yes.

Well, anyway, there you are.

Chainsaws were originally
invented for midwives.

Staying in that general area,
unfortunately,

explain how an electric
jockstrap works.

Is there going to be
a demonstration?

- Do you know, I kind of wish there
were. - JASON: Is that what this is?

- No. - Argh, oh! That's what this is.

Is it a warming thing, or...?

An electric anything
takes us into a period of time.

- Galvanism. It's Victorian,
galvanism. - Galvan, exactly.

Everybody thought electricity
would cure everything,

stimulate everything
and achieve everything.

And so at the back of every
newspaper there was an electrical

something, a galvanic bath,
but these were electric jockstraps.

Well, presumably, because they had
all sorts of things to stop boys

playing with themselves,
it must have been...

That would stop you, wouldn't it?
It would stop you, wouldn't it?

- If you had a shock in your pants.
- No, I'm thinking it might be nice.

- Yes. - Oh, really?
- You're spot on. We men know that.

Because there are certain
code words in Victorian English.

"Nervous and general debility,
lost vigour, decline,

"and the whole train
of gloomy attendants,"

was standard code for impotence.

Enter the Heidelberg electric belt.

There it is.

- It's a bit high up, isn't it? - Yes.

Oh, I see, so actually
there's the thing down there.

That's really kind of buzzing away
in the important area.

And that is actually going
to cause you to, well, I'm afraid

the phrase is probably embarrassing,
they advise "seminal economy".

- They're advising against...
- Is that with easyJet? - Yeah.

They're advising against

"wantonly jettisoning
too much nervous substance."

- Which basically...
- Is that what they called it?

That's code for semen. In other
words, it's essentially a sex toy.

- "Wantonly jettisoning." - It is...

Don't wantonly jettison
your nervous substance.

I like the idea of nervous semen
just coming out going...

"Woaaah."

SANDI: He's quite camp.

Perhaps he's having problems
with his virility

- cos he's sleeping with the wrong sex.
- Well, it might be that.

But there genuinely was an item,
as you can see, hugely advertised,

there were lots of different...

So is it designed then to lift
the dormant chap or to de-nervify

- the semen? - It's basically
designed saying,

"Would you like to enjoy
the experience of a little bit

"of a tingling down there
that maybe has disappeared?"

But it probably was just like,

"That's a damn good thing
to take to a hotel room."

- Why have they gone out of fashion?
- I know.

Are these still for sale?

I feel like if Ann Summers
did them, you could see,

not in the upstairs bit, the
downstairs bit of Ann Summers...

Tell me about this, Jason,
because I...

Upstairs is like, just like
chocolate willies and that.

Downstairs...someone's going
to get hurt, Stephen.

Really? I've never been in an Ann
Summers. You'd think it would be

- the other way round, you'd have to
go upstairs... - No, you come in

at ground floor level. I'm only
going off our nearest 12 branches.

Yes, right.

But, yeah, that's the normal one.

And then you sort of pop downstairs,
you know, anniversary, or whatever...

Good gracious.

But the other thing about that
is you got ten days' free trial.

- Wow! - I don't know if you can see,
but it's actually printed there.

What if you send it back
and it goes to somebody else?

That's what I'm worried about
with the free trial.

I know, exactly.
You're using a used one.

It is going to get much more
acceptable and decent,

this programme,
I promise you, as we move on.

So anyway, unfortunately, we are
staying in the nether regions.

Why would you want to wear
your underpants inside-out?

And I'm not looking at you here,
I have to say, Sandi.

This is a male question.

A cameraman I used to work with
reckoned he could get five days

out of a single pair of underpants,

and I can't work out
what the fifth is.

We know inside-out
then back to front,

then back to front and inside-out
covers all the important parts.

- But the fifth is a mystery.
- He had a fifth day...

The fifth day,
he wore them as a hat.

LAUGHTER

- Never quite understood it. - Look,
he's got his glasses round his neck!

JASON: "I might do a bit of reading."

And a Martini! Yes, it's
a very peculiar photograph.

I don't really understand it.

- But what sort of pants
is he wearing? - Y-fronts.

Y-fronts, now,
all Y-fronts are the same.

What is it about them
that's the same?

Oh, is it because they've...one side?

- Yes, they're made for
right-handed people. - The aperture.

So you might say,
wear them inside-out

and then a left-handed person
would be able to use that,

but the weird thing is,
counter-intuitively,

and I have some Y-fronts for you...

- This may be your first time, Sandi!
- I couldn't be more thrilled.

- Green for you. - Please don't
pass me a pair of Y-fronts.

I'll take the pink one.

You'll take the pink one.

It's like Reservoir Dogs, isn't it?
Go on, and you can be Mr Blue.

Now, you may say, "OK, so the
right hand opens the flap there."

Turn them inside-out
and it's still the right hand.

Show the audience.
Those are inside-out.

And you would think, but they don't
reverse in that sense.

They're magic pants!

- They're magic pants.
- They're the same.

I'm actually left-handed, so...

You've got them on back to front.

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

No, it's there!
Look, it's there, there's the bit.

That's not helped me at all!

You would think that
turning them inside-out

would move the right to the left,
but it doesn't.

And you'd have to have a
really good topological brain

to map that in your head.

I have a photograph of
David Walliams on my telephone

in a pair of underpants.
He's got two Ys going on.

Oh! That's odd.

That explains a lot
about David Walliams.

LAUGHTER

As an individual,
he's certainly not none-too-wise.

Day Five.

LAUGHTER

- I didn't mention, Alan, that we had
to collect... - Oh, don't! Stop it!

..we had to collect these from the
crew, because we didn't have any.

No, they are of course
brand new and clean.

- They're rather good for a warm day.
- They are.

That's why they were developed.
And it started with the X-fronts,

which were in an X-shape.
And they were reasonably successful.

And then, a man in America
called Arthur Kneibler

came up with Y-fronts,
or jockey shorts.

And it just took off enormously.

AMERICAN ACCENT:
Jockey shawts! Jockeys!

- And they were an instant...
- Jockey shawts!

"I'm turning my
jockey shawts inside-out.

"But I still can't find my cock!"

LAUGHTER

Oh, dear.
This really has probably begun

about as low as any programme
we've ever done.

- It's going to rise, I promise you.
- It's going to rise?!

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

I swear, Stephen, it's a gift.

Your abilities for innuendo
astound me every year!

I don't mean to, I know,
I just have to whip it out

and stick a red pencil through it.

- Anyway... - I feel I've inadvertently
arrived on a boys' night.

And now we come to our Dubious
Theory, ladies and gentlemen.

- WHIMSICAL MUSIC PLAYS
- 'A Dubious Theory from Stephen Fry.'

Yes. People who
believe in "urotherapy"

claim that drinking your own urine
can cure everything

from cancer to the common cold,

not to mention boosting your libido
and generally pepping you up.

Others say,
"That's a load of old widdle."

and decide for yourself.

WHIMSICAL MUSIC
'A Dubious Theory from Stephen Fry.'

This is Hayley Mills' website,
is it?

- Not Hayley Mills.
- Sarah, wasn't it Sarah...?

- Sarah...? - Is it Miles? - Miles.

Sarah Miles is what I meant,
not Hayley Mills!

Yeah, Sarah Miles,
the actress, is a urinobibe.

She drinks her own urine.

What's the reason that it might make
you better? Surely it's full of...

Let me give you the theory
of a woman called Martha Christy.

She wrote,
"Your own perfect medicine.

"The very first
toilet visit of the day,"

she says,
"..is the most beneficial."

She recommends starting

"with five drops of fresh
morning urine under the tongue."

Urgh!

"Before gradually
increasing the dosage

"to as much as a cupful
morning and night."

Give over! Five drops,
that's remarkable control!

LAUGHTER

I think the idea is
to take a pipette.

A pipette! And put it in...?

Urgh!

No, not in your, no!
You pee into a bowl or something,

- and then, I don't know. - A bowl.

"Your first toilet visit of
the day," she likes to call it.

But Victorian women used to take
warm boys' urine for freckles.

- Really? - It was thought to be,
if you applied it to your face...

- It would give you freckles or
take them away? - Take them away.

JASON: It's a wonder why...!

You may have noticed I have a
completely freckle-free complexion.

- It's a wonder why we're still here
sometimes. - It is, isn't it?

You read stuff, you think,

"Victorian women pissing on
their own faces for freckles!"

SANDI: No, they didn't wee on their
own faces, they got a boy to do it!

You'd have to be a contortionist
to wee on your own face!

You really would, wouldn't you?

I'd have thought a headstand
would probably do it, wouldn't it?

LAUGHTER

Gravity would take its course.

I get sent very odd things by
members of the public. Thank you.

Erm, and, er, I got sent a thing
to stand up weeing. And I thought...

- Oh, a funnel?
- JASON: Oh, the She-Pee?

- It's the most marvellous thing.
- It's Japanese, isn't it?

Oh, darling, I piss in all sorts
of places now. I get out of the car,

I can't be bothered to pop into the
service station, on the back wheel!

It is mostly for driving,
I thought, the She-Wee.

Driving under the influence
of the need for a wee

is the most dangerous thing
a human being can do.

I have reached 170 miles an hour.

Disabled parking spaces outside
motorway service stations,

they're mine, because I am disabled
by the need...you are just...!

You become consumed with...!

JASON: I had a wee in a water bottle
once, driving about 100 mile an hour,

- and, er... - But then it won't stop.
- Well, I failed my driving test.

LAUGHTER AND CHEERING

Peeing in a bottle in a car
when you realise

there's more than will
fit in the bottle.

- Oh, that's the worst... - "No, no, no!
What am I going to do now?!

"I can't empty it out of the window,
you can't pinch it off!"

Just have a little sip!

LAUGHTER

Well, I feel better!

A coach full of schoolchildren
just moves alongside,

they look down on you
and you're going, "A-a-agh!"

What you need is a straw, see?
Take it out as it goes in.

- Straight back in again.
- And it'll cure your cancer as well.

And your freckles.

Do you know of any other urinobibes?

- SANDI: Er, no I don't.
- JD Salinger, apparently.

And of course, Jennifer Saunders,
not Jennifer Saunders herself,

but her character,
Eddie Monsoon in Ab Fab.

"It's urine therapy, darling. It's
not to be sniffed at," as she says.

The prime minister, Morarji Desai,
of India, he was a urinobibe.

He was elected
when he was 80 years old,

so it obviously didn't do any harm.

Helen Andrews of the British
Dietetic Association says,

"There are no health benefits.
In fact, it could be detrimental.

"Each time you put it back,
it'll come out more concentrated."

And that's not good for health.

That first toilet visit
in the morning,

sometimes you don't want to be
in the same room as that!

Never mind putting it
under your tongue!

Imagine if you've had asparagus
the night before.

JASON: But sometimes it's got
that Sugar Puff smell, hasn't it?

You know, on that day you might go,
"All right, I'll risk it."

Anyway, that's probably
enough about pee.

So, what was your great-grandmother
doing down the back of the sofa?

Was she, was she a Borrower?

Was she a Borrower?
No, she wasn't a Borrower.

I come from a particularly
small family,

and we lost many, in various
pieces of furniture.

I had an aunt went through
a cane chair, we never saw her again.

JASON: Was she dead and been
cremated and you spilt it?

What was happening around the time
of one's great-grandmother,

- what sort of...? - They were using
the elderly to stuff sofas.

About a hundred years ago families
began to do a thing in order to

register their lives and formalise
their existences, after weddings.

- Photographs. - Photographs, exactly.
- So Victorian...

And particularly their babies,

they liked to have their
babies photographed,

but exposure times were quite long
and how do you keep a baby still?

- Oh, I've seen this! This is
this weird thing. - Heroin.

There's loads of pictures of them.

- They've got like sheets
over their head. - Yes.

- And they're sort of holding
the child in place. - Exactly.

They're called
"hidden mother photographs".

- They're terrifying, there's
a website of them. - Yes.

- And they're terrifying, yeah. Look at
that. - Look, there's one. - Oh, wow!

- That's horrible!
- It's like a woman in a burqa.

Yes. It's horrible. Extraordinary.

There's the mother pretending to be
a sofa or an item of furniture,

keeping her baby quiet
and still enough

for the exposure time
of the photograph.

We've got another one where the
mother looks a bit like a carpet.

I mean it's really. There...

- That's not even a baby!
- I know, it's a young girl.

- There is a whole class of these.
- Yeah.

"Don't move, you bitch, don't move."

And you, Jason, definitely
get the points there

- for having known about them. - It's
terrifying. - They are rather peculiar.

It's brilliant though,
there's hundreds

and they're all sinister, like,
rather than just let the kid

- stand by itself, you've gone,
"Go and stand with that ghost." - Yes.

- It's weird. - Well, the mother
will be talking to the child,

saying, "It's all right, darling,
sit still, I'm going to hold you."

The chair's talking!

"I am a sofa, ha-ha-ha!"

I'm afraid there's an even more
macabre class of photograph.

Obviously, back in those days,
infant mortality was very high

and families decided that
it would be a good idea

to have a photograph of their
dead child. And so they would be

as if asleep. We're not
going to show them to you,

but there are lots of
photographs of dead babies

made to look as if they're asleep.

- The Victorians were weird!
- They were.

"I want to put a picture of
my dead child on my mantelpiece.

"Then I'm going to drink some urine

"and pop my penis into
this electrical thing."

Come to think of it,
we beat ourselves up

for being a sort of
morally corrupt generation.

SANDI: They used to take
the hair of dead people

- and turn it into jewellery,
didn't they? - Yes, they certainly did.

There was certainly a melancholy,
macabre obsession with death.

Maybe it's not so much
an obsession with death.

It's just that death was
more present in people's lives.

You're quite right.
We are probably amongst

the first generations
of human beings ever,

most of whom have never
seen a dead human body.

As it happens, I went to
the body farm in Tennessee,

where I suddenly saw 200,
never having seen a single one.

- SANDI: Sorry, the body farm?
- It's called the body farm, yes.

Wow, we have the Body Shop,
it's not quite the same thing.

No, it's forensic pathology,
and they take bodies who volunteer,

and they're burnt and hidden
in the trunks of cars.

- It's a study of decomposition.
- They decompose.

A lot of murderers have been
brought to book because of it,

because you've been able to prove
they've been dead that long.

- SANDI: Where is this place?
- In Tennessee.

You have the best holidays, honestly.

Did you hear about the auctioneer
summoned to the big Scottish castle?

This is not a joke, by the way.
But he was summoned

to a big Scottish castle,
the lord had just died

and the family were
selling off all the contents.

And he was looking around
trying to find this hat stand,

and then finally he came across it
and it was a German soldier.

And what had happened was that

the lord, or his ancestors,
had been in the First World War

with his batman,
who it was always supposed

- was a little more
than his batman... - Right.

..who had looked over the trench
and was shot by the Germans

on the other side, and this enraged
the Scottish chap so much,

he ran across No-Man's Land,
killed the German,

dragged him back to
the British trenches,

sent him home with instructions

he be stuffed and used as
a hat stand for the rest of time.

Only 80 years had elapsed,
so it was as though,

his ancestors would still be
around in Germany and they would...

and they had to go
find them and say,

"Oh, did he have a dignified death?"
"Not really, no."

LAUGHTER

- JASON: Umbrella in his mouth.
- He's stood since 1917

in the hall of a Scottish castle,
a stuffed German soldier.

That's not a bad idea when you die,

just to say,
"Right, I'll be a hat stand now."

I'd do that, stand around the house.

SANDI: You could get a job in
a photographer's, holding babies.

LAUGHTER

We have for you probably the first
ever photograph of a human being,

which is rather exciting.

It's from the 1840s and it's
by Louis Daguerre himself.

He took a photograph, in those days
very long exposure,

and all the people who were there
would have moved through as a blur,

you wouldn't have seen,
but there is a boot boy

with a customer with his leg up
as it were, and you can see that

and we can probably circle it for
you and give it a little bit of a...

And that is the first human being,

or pair of human beings,
ever photographed.

- It's rather wonderful, isn't it? - How
long's he take doing them shoes then?

Yeah, I know. It's surprising.

- It was a ten-minute exposure,
in fact. - Oh, OK.

That's not too bad then.

- It was in 1838,
that's how long ago it was. - Wow.

And we have a photograph for you
and you have to identify

who the person is in the photograph,
which... Who's that?

Is that Bruce Forsyth?

- It's not Bruce Forsyth, no.
- SANDI: In the early years.

It's quite surprising,

it's someone you would not imagine
there would be a photograph of.

- OK. Can you give us a country?
- He's British.

He was Prime Minister
of the United Kingdom.

Oh, Prime Minister of Britain.

But he was from an Irish family.
Actually the Duke of Wellington.

- Wow! Duke of Wellington.
- Yeah. The victor of Waterloo.

As an old man. He looks surprisingly
benign, considering his reputation.

- But isn't it amazing there is a
photograph of him? - I had no idea.

- Yeah. It's rather fabulous.
- That's a great picture.

- It is actually a lovely picture,
isn't it? - It is, yeah.

Anyway, let's move onto something
very, very different.

Name something interesting
you can do with a Slinky.

- Well, it's a...
- Well, you can't untangle it.

That's certainly... Oh, God,
I got through so many as a child.

- They're the most, it is the most...
- Wasn't it? Oh.

You go to the top of the stairs, and
go, "Look at this, it's, oh, no!"

- And then that would be it, and your
toy. - We've given you some stairs,

you can take your stairs and your
Slinky out and demonstrate.

- Oh, wow. - There may be young people
in the audience

- who've never had the excitement.
- You're going to love this.

- You can attach it to your... - This is,
I'm going back, look at that!

Yeah!

- Isn't that fun?
- They're the best things.

Oh, dear, you may have pointed it
in the wrong direction.

- I'm literally the happiest man
in the world. - Brilliant.

Hey! That was a beauty.

But he invented this out of, he was
a suspension designer, wasn't he?

He was a naval officer,
his name is Richard James.

And it was in 194...

It's called the Alan Effect.

No! You don't do it like that.

You lift the top.

Somebody go and get him
a Raleigh trike.

How can you not work a Slinky?!

How can you not do that?

Yeah!

APPLAUSE

Can you imagine giving this
to a child now and going,

"That's it, that's your gift.
Have a toy, happy Christmas."

JASON: Whatever you do, don't attach
it to your electric jockstrap.

- No, absolutely. - Didn't he
invent it by accident? - Yes.

He was making coiled springs
and he invented...

He was an American naval officer
and he literally knocked over

a spring, and it went for a walk,
and he thought,

"Oh, that's interesting." And so he
developed and he experimented

- and he came up with the Slinky.
And more than... - Look, to be fair,

- it was his wife who thought it would
make a good toy. - Yes, it's true.

Let us remember that sometimes women
get overlooked in these things.

More than 300 million were sold,
which is an incredible number.

All to me, because
I kept breaking them.

Yeah, I know, because they tangle
up. Now if you'll put them away...

Do you mind if I keep the stairs?

Because there's a few shelves in the
kitchen that I still can't reach.

You're very welcome.

But what we do have is a very
extraordinary effect that happens

if you drop a Slinky, which
is that when you let go of it,

the bottom does not move.

Watch the film and you'll see
what I mean.

It's actually really astonishing.

It's a very peculiar effect.

Watch the bottom of the Slinky,
as it actually happens,

in very high speed camera.

- The bottom is completely still.
Isn't that amazing? - Oh, wow.

- Wow! - That is a really bizarre effect.

And they can't really explain
quite why that happens.

Oh, I bet James May could.

LAUGHTER

APPLAUSE

"No, no, you see,
the thing is..." Oh, God!

Is there a use for this discovery?

Maybe Jason's idea
of crossing it with

the Heidelberg electric jockstrap

may result in a really quite
remarkable experience.

- You'll see me on the next series
of Dragons' Den. - Yeah.

"I have jettisoned wantonly,
but it hasn't hit the floor."

It is a great phrase, wantonly
to jettison, isn't it?

It really is marvellous. Anyway.

Now, we've got more toys to play
with, so put the Slinky away.

I'm going to ask you, basically
this simple question -

- why are jerries
better than flimsies? - Jerry?

- When we say a jerry, there are
jerries, jerry...? - Jerry cans.

Jerry cans. Jerry cans.

- And what were jerry cans?
- Well, it's for petrol.

- It's a thing that was used
in the war, wasn't it? - By whom?

Well, presumably by the Germans.

That's... We eventually used them,
but firstly by the Germans.

And we had something else
called the flimsy.

And unfortunately, the flimsy
was absolutely cack.

But didn't the name give it away?

We only won the war
by nicking all their ideas.

Yeah. On the left is a jerry can.

And there on the right is a flimsy.

And General Auchinleck, who was
the predecessor of Montgomery

in the Eighth Army, actually said
this about the flimsy. He said,

"The flimsy is an ill-constructed
container for carrying fuel,"

he said, "leaked 30%
of its fuel between base

"and consumer, with huge
consequences in lost lives,

"battles and shipping."

So British soldiers basically
spent their life

trying to steal the jerry can.

To the extent the Germans started
booby-trapping them,

cos they knew that the British
wanted to steal them,

cos they were the most desirable
object, the jerry can.

I have two of them for you.

They are absolutely astonishing,
incredible inventions.

Basically they're a single weld,
like this.

They have this fabulous cap,
they have an inner lining,

which means they can carry
water or petrol.

This thing opens and what's called
a "donkey dick" comes out.

- It was nicknamed the donkey dick.
But rather cleverly... - So similar.

It's been a hell of a show
for me, I tell you.

But even, I mean they have
this little indentation here.

- What do you think that does?
- Strength. - It strengthens it,

- but also in heat, it... - It allows it
to expand. - It allows it to expand.

And the handles are absolute genius,
because if you have two empty ones,

you can hold them together
using the handles.

- One here... I'm going to stand up
like so... - Standing.

So you simply hold them like that,
using that, but also,

when you're holding it, you hand it
to someone else, there's a handle.

- You simply take it, like that.
- Oh, I see. - And they are...

Getting the donkey's dick out now,
sir.

You won't be able to,
it's really, really stiff.

APPLAUSE

God!

It's amazing! It's a real talent.

- I'm so sorry. How do I do it?
- I don't know how you do it.

It's amazing. I love it.

But that is genuinely one of the
most brilliant designs ever made.

- It's never been improved. - But they
still lost. - They still did lose.

One of the reasons they lost
is that by the end of the war,

we produced 21 million of
the jerry cans, and I will quote

President Roosevelt, who said,
"Without these cans, it would

"have been impossible for our armies
to cut their way across France

"at a lightning pace which exceeded
even the German blitzkrieg of 1940."

So basically we won the war by
stealing the Germans' jerry can,

because the movement of vehicles

and therefore of petrol,
is absolutely essential in war.

- So is that where the word, so the
word flimsy has come from that? - No.

- No. Flimsy existed as a word. - OK.

They were called flimsies
because they were just so shite.

Oh, I see, right.

They were just square metal boxes
that rotted and leaked

- and were useless. - OK.

And these designs were, I mean
almost every aspect of them...

and not only that, they floated,
which the British ones didn't do.

So the Germans could drop them
at sea or in rivers,

I mean, they were kind of
the iPod of the day,

they were just the most
perfect design imaginable.

Anyway, can you name an everyday
object that was invented in a jail?

- Not a glider. - You don't really
use a glider every day, do you?

- Oh, you use one every day?
- Yes, that's the point.

You're told to use it every day.

- Toothbrush.
- Yes! Is the right answer.

I will be very impressed if you get
the name of the man who invented it.

Mr Toothbrush.

- No, because... - Mr Oral B.

- Toothbrushes...!
- LAUGHTER

- You're on the right lines.
- Mr Wisdom.

- There are still toothbrushes...
- Gibbs. - ..under this name.

- Addis. - Yes, Addis!
Addis is the right answer.

- He was in prison? - He was in prison,
it goes all the way back to 1780.

He was in prison for rioting, and
he was expected to clean his teeth

using a piece of rag and some soot
scraped off the back of a chimney.

So he decided a scaled down broom
would be better.

So he got some pieces
of bone from the food

and he drilled little holes in it

and managed to blag some
horse hair off a warder

and made a toothbrush. And then...

You open the door and go,

"Warder, you haven't got
any horse hair, have you?"

In those days, those prisons,

you were allowed to have your
own money in prison and so on.

They often had horses
working as warders. Ah.

"Do you have any horse hair?"
HE SNORTS

There is that possibility.

On his release,
he decided to market it,

it coincided with the arrival
of sugar from the West Indies

and the rise of tooth decay
and was a gigantic success.

And to this very day,
toothbrushes are marketed

under the name of Addis,
as you know.

SANDI: There's a connection
between toothbrushes and prison,

because the great Dame Ethel Smyth,
the wonderful composer...

- Who wrote... - ..who wrote The March
of the Women for the suffragettes,

she was arrested, also for rioting,
and she was taken to Holloway Prison.

And in order to support her,
all the suffragettes came

and stood below her window
and sang The March of the Women.

And she leant out
and conducted with her toothbrush.

Oh, there you are. That is a
very good connection. I like that.

APPLAUSE

What's the least promising
invention in history?

Something that people thought
wasn't going to be a success?

Yeah, least welcomed and then
turned out to be most successful.

It wasn't the energy-saving
light bulb?

Because that's one,
that's an invention that for me...

- Yeah, but that's been forced
upon us, hasn't it? - Yes.

And it's the worst invention.

- "I need this room to be light
in about an hour." - Yeah.

I leave them on 24 hours a day
so that I can read a book

when I go to bed at night.

This was invented by a man
called Sylvan Goldberg,

but you wouldn't think of it
as an invention

and yet I suppose it is,
and it's the shopping trolley.

And men thought it was effeminate
to walk around a shop

pushing a trolley, and women
thought it was an insult

to their ability to carry a basket.

"Perfectly capable of carrying
baskets, I don't need you to do it."

So he invented it in 1938,
and for two years

he paid people basically just
to wander round supermarkets.

Or the early shops wheeling them, so
people got used to the sight of it.

- And then he died in 1984. - Did he
pay them to wear those clothes?

Someone must have paid her
to wear that outfit.

Sylvan Goldberg died in 1984
worth 400 million.

- That's a lot of pound coins.
- So, he kept the...yes.

- Very good. - It's a lot of clogged
canals, is what it is.

It's a lot of clogged canals
as well, yes. So it did work.

Another example was bubble gum,

which was invented by a man
called Frank Fleer in 1906.

He called it "Blibber-Blubber."

But unfortunately, his particular
recipe meant that once

the bubble had burst, you had to
use turpentine to get it off.

- Which is in itself toxic anyway.
- JASON: That's brilliant.

So if you've ever got any form of
gum, particularly nicotine gum...

- In your hair? - No, on the screen
of an iPhone. - Oh, no. Is that...?

That's what I want an invention for,
I've just decided.

If you get the gum on
the front of an iPhone,

there is no way of removing it.
Hammer, chisel.

There must be an app.

APPLAUSE

- The nicotine gum removal app.
- Very good. Very good.

And I think Sandi
will approve of this as well,

we ought to hear it for
Mary Anderson. 1903.

- Ah, Mary Anderson. - Do you know
about Mary Anderson? - I do.

- Tell me about her. - She invented
the windscreen wiper.

You're absolutely,
you are a fountain of...

Well, what I love about that is
that it had to be a woman

who invented the windscreen wiper,
because up until then

men had been going, "Don't be silly,
dear, I can see perfectly well."

So, of course it was
a woman who invented it.

Unfortunately, yes,
she noticed tram drivers,

street car drivers, having to stop
and move snow away

and she invented it in 1903,

and really there just
weren't enough cars.

And by the time it was useful,
her patent had elapsed,

- so she made not a cent from it. - Oh.

It's the same as Dorothy Levitt,
who invented the rear-view mirror.

So women enabled you to see where
you were going and where you'd been.

Oh, they did it to do
their lipstick, come on.

Dorothy Levitt recommended that
you take your compact mirror

and place it on the dash
so that you could see behind you,

and she was the person who invented
the rear-view mirror.

But again, she didn't make any money
out of it,

because there was no patent
available for it.

- I'm very impressed you knew about
Mary Anderson. - Thank you very much.

And we should indeed pay
due courtesy to her.

Anyway, you know how they
used to have men with red flags

walking in front of cars?

- Well, yes. - Yes?
- I've heard of such a thing.

- KLAXON BLARES
- Oh!

LAUGHTER

- JASON: What a trick.
- Because they never did.

No, they had a Red Flag Act,
which was a little bit earlier.

And it meant,
if you were in a steam...

See, he tricks you now. It
doesn't feel like it's a question.

It feels like it's
in the conversation.

It was a trap, it was a wicked trap,
I'm very ashamed of myself.

So nobody ever had to follow a car?

I've seen a drawing
of somebody doing it.

I know drawings
aren't necessarily real.

I saw a drawing of a unicorn once.

The Red Flag Act of 1865

required men known as "stalkers" to
walk 60 yards in front of a vehicle.

- 60 yards?! - Yes, carrying a red flag.

That's miles in front!
"It's back there, it's coming."

- It lasted till 1878. - Any minute now.

So it was only relevant to
traction engines and steam buses.

From 1878 to 1896
the flag was optional,

and in 1896 it was abolished.

By then there were no more
than 80 cars in the UK.

So there was never a time when cars

were preceded by
red flags in the UK.

There was never a time, yeah.
But talking of useless inventions,

What about the dry-ear ear dryer?

It's a machine to
dry your ears. OK.

"Drying your ears has never been
simpler or more effective,

"the device blows hot air
into your ear."

Although the instructions advise you
to dry your ears first with a towel.

- Is this contemporary, this is
modern? - Yes, it's a real invention.

- All you need is a tube, don't you?
- But it's modern? - Modern, yeah.

- You just need a tube. - Yeah.
Or a hairdryer would do the job.

You don't even need that, Stephen,
you just need a tube.

- But most people have hairdryers.
- Yeah, but a tube, just a tube!

A tube would do it.
I know, you're right.

JASON: Have you ever invented
something that's already invented?

I've done that a few times.
I invented the bike once.

And, erm, yeah, I saw someone
on a unicycle and genuinely went,

"That'd be brilliant
with two wheels."

I also invented glasses
as well when I was at school.

- Really? - Yeah, I was doing some
geography and so I had the map out.

I had a ruler and a pencil and
I had to have a magnifying glass,

and I couldn't do all three
at the same time. I was thinking,

"What'd be really good is
some sort of magnifying device,

"but attached to your face."

It was a genuine "Eureka" moment, and
I thought, "Oh, no, that's glasses."

Anyway, here's
a marvellous question,

what was wrong with the first
sound recording device?

Didn't work?
Didn't have any speakers?

Well, it was that it recorded
sound perfectly well...

- But you couldn't play it back.
- Yes. - Play it back.

You couldn't play it back.
A man called Martinville,

he was a Frenchman,

he used burnt soot and it
registered sound waves on it.

But they sort of scratched it out,
didn't they?

But recently it was reverse
engineered and engineers

managed to get the sound back
of him singing Au Clair de la Lune.

Is that the thing they played on
Radio 4 and Charlotte Green

- cried with laughter, was it?
- Would you like to hear that moment?

It was one of my favourite
moments of all time.

Unfortunately, she had to announce
the death of Abby Mann

and she couldn't help corpsing,
bless her.

So listen to this, because you'll
hear the oldest-ever sound recording

plus the unfortunate event
that followed.

CHARLOTTE GREEN: 'American historians
have discovered what they think

'is the earliest recording of
the human voice, made on a device

'which scratched sound waves
onto paper blackened by smoke.

'It was made in 1860, 17 years before
Thomas Edison first demonstrated

'the gramophone, and featured
an excerpt from a French song,

'Au Clair de la Lune.'

DISTORTED WARBLING

WARBLING CONTINUES

SUPPRESSING LAUGHTER: 'The...
the award-winning screenwriter,

'Abby Mann, has died
at the age of 80.' Oh, no.

'He won an Academy award in 1961
for Judgment at Nuremberg.

'Excuse me, sorry.

'Abby Mann also won several Emmys,
including...'

SUPPRESSING LAUGHTER:
'Including one in 1973 for...

'For a film which featured a...'

SUPPRESSING LAUGHTER:
'A police detective called...'

SHE LAUGHS UNCONTROLLABLY

'The character, on whom
a long-running TV series

'was eventually based.'

Charlotte Green's
great contribution.

There's somebody in the corner
of the room going...

HE WARBLES

"We haven't got it, we're going to
have to go with the item anyway.

"I'll do it, I'll do it, I'll do it,
I know what it sounds like."

HE WARBLES

"They'll never know, they'll
never know. Don't laugh."

HE WARBLES

- So this one you could record into it,
but then nobody could hear it? - Yes.

Could you not just get that for
Jedward, like, for their next album?

- They have a lovely day out, that's
fine. - Everything would be perfect.

- Nobody has to suffer. - You're right.
You're absolutely right.

OK, so now we're going
to go for a jolly jape,

and I have an extraordinary
pendulum swing that my friends here

are going to bring on and I'm going
to show you a remarkable action.

It's handmade by our chief
science elf, Will Bowen,

who's a bit of a genius, and it's
an effect that was first noted

by Galileo, that's how old it is.
But you don't see many of these

and I think it would make
a great executive toy.

So I'm going to lay this down here,

and push it and let go.

And it will start to go
in this rather beautiful...

- Look at that, isn't that lovely?
- Oh, wow.

But, it's better than that, because
then it starts to get a bit,

get a bit ordinary.

And then it starts to move into
a different sort of rhythm

and then they start to
get in step, like that.

Ooh, look at that, they're
starting to move together again.

But then something really
amazing happens as well,

which is they go back
into their wave formation,

which is about to happen.

It's a whole long process,
but it's utterly predictable

and it follows very specific
laws of physics.

And here it goes
back into its waves again.

Look at that.

I think that's pretty
amazing, isn't it?

APPLAUSE

And it will carry on doing that,
and as you can see,

it will carry on going through
those cycles behind us,

and it's a principle, as I say,
that Galileo worked out.

The central bob makes
60 swings in a minute.

The one to its left does 59
in 60 seconds, and so on.

And it means after one minute
they're back to where they started.

It doesn't matter how far
you push a pendulum,

it still takes
the same amount of time

to swing from one side to the other.

And it's using that that makes
it go in and out of sync

in these different ways. There it
is. It's the Galileo Pendulum

and wouldn't it make
a great executive toy?

Well, that's all the inventions
we've got time for this week,

except of course for the scores.

And believe me,
these are not invented,

much as though people may believe
it, the scores are rigorously

and scientifically worked out.

And in first place,
with an extraordinary plus 13,

is Sandi Toksvig.

Wow!

APPLAUSE

And only ten points behind
in second place with plus three,

- Jeremy Clarkson. - A plus!

APPLAUSE

Why am I clapping?

And very impressive from
Jason Manford, with plus two! Wow!

I don't know how I got that.

APPLAUSE

And I'm afraid the smallest swing
of the pendulum, minus eight,

Alan Davies.

APPLAUSE

And that's all from Jason,
Jeremy, Sandi, Alan and me.

Thank you, be extremely kind to
each other for ever and good night.