QI (2003–…): Season 10, Episode 3 - Journeys - full transcript
Quiz show. Stephen Fry looks at journeys with Cal Wilson, Rob Brydon, Phill Jupitus and Alan Davies.
Hello!
Good evening, good evening,
good evening, good evening,
and welcome to QI,
where tonight our topic is Journeys.
And let's see who's
in the arrivals hall today.
All the way up from Down Under,
it's Cal Wilson.
Hello!
The only way here is from Essex -
Phill Jupitus.
And... From Port Talbot Parkway,
stopping at Pyle, Bridgend, Pencoed,
Llanharan, Pontyclun, Ninian Park
and Cardiff Central -
Rob Brydon.
And bearing the label,
"Not Wanted On Voyage," Alan Davies.
And they all have little buzzer
noises and Cal goes...
And Rob goes...
Phill goes...
- Which you do, in fact, don't you?
- I do.
And Alan goes...
That's your chosen mode
of transport.
We've travelled a lot, Alan,
and one of the places we travelled
to a few months ago was Australia,
and that's where we found Cal,
who is New Zealand's perhaps
greatest stand-up comedian
and works mostly in Melbourne
- now, don't you?
- Yes, I do, I do.
- I've got the Antipodes covered!
- Yeah!
But we liked you so much
we smuggled you in our luggage
and we brought you back here,
so, welcome.
Thank you. I make a better souvenir
than an interesting keyring, I suppose.
Exactly, exactly!
- I did want a koala but...
- A stuffed koala?
- Not on, apparently.
- No.
The journey of 1,000 miles begins
with a single question:
Where the hell did
I leave my passport?
I lost mine on a plane once
and it had gone down,
- under the cushion of my seat.
- Yeah.
- The actual plane seat.
- Yeah.
I was on the plane for a...
I refused to get off the plane.
Yeah, you have to get your seat
disassembled. I've had that.
And, eventually, I found it.
That's the end of the story.
Oh, that's a beautiful story!
That is...
That is a lovely, lovely story.
Stephen, is that Alan Davies or is it...?
Hang on, is it Peter Ustinov?!
That was a hell of an anecdote!
If that is the level of the bar
this evening, I may go home.
Is it you? Specifically you?
Where did you leave YOUR passport?
No, it's this technique.
The University of Wisconsin,
when you lose something,
it actually helps to say the name
of the thing that you've lost,
or you are looking for.
- Dignity.
- Yes, for example!
Very good.
- Brilliant!
- You see?
Exactly.
For me, that would make it worse.
That would just draw attention to it.
- Your wallet has a name?!
- Well, no...
"Peregrine!"
"PEREGRINE!"
"Baaa!"
"Peregrine!"
That's how...
- It might work!
- It has now!
From now on it will be called Peregrine.
But anyway, that's not the point,
the point is, for example,
you open a cutlery drawer
and where the hell's the
garlic peeler, or whatever?
- If you just say garlic peeler.
- Yes, the garlic peeler. Again...
- It might be!
- "Andrew! Andrew!"
You're missing my point about names, here.
I just mean the word we give the thing.
Its normal description,
as found in a dictionary.
- Not from a list of given names.
- Okay.
It isn't Julian the cheese grater.
It isn't Barbara the corkscrew. Yes?
It'd put a different complexion on
Marlon Brando yelling "Stella!"
when it was just a pair of glasses
that he was after.
He lost his wallet!
His sunglasses are called Stella. Exactly.
So, what did you do?
You have to say,
- "Wallet, wallet, wallet"?
- "Keys, keys, keys, keys,
- "keys, keys."
- Yeah, exactly.
So, you say, sort of, you know,
"bottle opener, bottle opener."
You've got more chance of seeing it,
you're looking...
"Money, money, money..."
- You know that phrase...
- "Gold, gold!"
You know that phrase, "It was just
staring me in the face,"
and you somehow couldn't see it?
The act of speaking does
something in your brain
that actually allows your eyes
to see it more clearly.
- That's been demonstrated.
- Reminds me of that phrase, Stephen,
"Couldn't see the wood for the trees,"
have you ever come across
that phrase before?
I have, I have.
- I never used to understand it.
- What it basically means is
you're looking at... Wait.
- You're looking for wood.
- Yes, yes.
- Not in the way you might!
- No, not in that sense!
You're looking, you're looking for wood...
-...and you're looking at trees.
- Yes.
So, you are, in essence, looking at wood.
- They are wood, aren't they?
- But you're s... I've got it, Alan.
But you're seeing trees so you
can't see the wood for the trees
and, I think, in a funny old way,
it's a little bit like what
you're talking about, isn't it?
Almost exactly not.
- Yeah.
- Yeah.
It's nice you brought that up.
It's a good...
Now, the other thing,
before I finish,
the other thing I'd like to bring up is
this whole business now with passports.
They don't like you to smile
in the photograph.
Oh, no.
When I grew up, a smile was
always mandatory.
Like, if you're...
But now, you have to look like you're
suspected of having done something.
I look like a Russian prison
guard in my passport photo.
I can see that! I can see that!
Absolutely.
A hatchet-faced Silesian fish wife.
Every single photo booth I get into
appears to be set on "paedophile".
Why don't you try and recreate
that look for us now, could you?
Right, for a kick-off, what you have
to do in a photo-Me booth
is, they don't let you
wear glasses either,
and, also, because the camera lens
is behind the mirror
and you don't know where it is
you're always looking slightly off...
Oh, that's true.
Is it down...?
OK, this is the look.
Stay away from my children!
It gets you...
It gets you out of a lot of baby-sitting duties,
though, doesn't it? Let's be honest.
I bet our passports would look
quite good together
cos you're the paedophile
and I'm the prison guard.
Yeah, we should travel together.
I'm with my Kiwi handler.
Do kiwis have handlers?
- There's not, they're not very good...
- Are they edible?
- We're not allowed to eat them.
- Like swans?
I mean, the Queen's allowed them.
Is the Queen allowed kiwis?
I don't think she is, as a matter of fact.
I mean, could she just eat
anything cos she's the Queen?
I wouldn't be the one to tell her
not to but...
- I imagine not!
- No, no.
"Stop eating that kiwi,
you dreadful old woman!"
I imagine that you'd
be a bit more polite.
You are Stephen Fry off the telly.
You don't have to do
the "dreadful old woman."
No, I could just...
But it would be a dreadful
thing to do.
You could say, "Stop eating that
kiwi, ma'am, have some jam."
Exactly, exactly.
"Your Majesty, put the puffin down!"
Let's just have a load of situations
where we tell the Queen
- to stop eating...
- That sounds like a children's game.
"And now have a round of
'Your Majesty, Put The Puffin Down!'"
"You're the Queen,
- so, one...two...three..."
- Trousers off!
"Your Majesty, put the puffin
down!" Yes, very good."
Anyway, I don't know why
or how we got there,
but that's what journeys do to you.
Anyway, describe
the travel arrangements
of the Japanese flying snail.
Where is it going?
Er, it probably won't travel more
than 11 miles, but very fast.
Does it drop?
- Yes.
- Is it a fall?
Yes, but how would it get up?
They haven't got wings, have they,
you see?
- No, they haven't.
- They're flying.
They haven't, but we haven't got
wings and we fly, how do we do it?
- In an aeroplane.
- We get in an aeroplane.
We get in something...
- Oh, I've got the answer.
- ...a conveyance of flight.
They hop on a bird or a creature
with wings...
- Yes.
- A bird.
- Erm, they hop on...
- Could have been a bat?
Could've been a bat.
Could have been a bat or a bird.
Or a strange hybrid of bird bat.
They hop onto a creature
with the ability to fly.
But 11 miles, that's very, very high.
It's not the height, it's not the
altitude, they travel...
They are not going up into space!
I've got it in my head that
they're dropping 11 miles.
It's not a voluntary act,
they get eaten by birds.
There are two types of bird
on the little island of Hahajima.
Hahajima, it's one of the Ogasawara
Islands, south of Japan, as you can see,
and there is the Japanese White-eyed
and the Brown-eyed bulbul,
which are two types of bird.
There they are.
And they eat this particular snail...
and about 15% of them
survive the process
and are excreted out alive and so
they are, kind of, spreading their,
- spreading the genes further around.
- Is this to scale?
Yeah.
- Because that seems unlikely.
- No, it's not!
That'd be a seriously
weighed down bulbul.
That snail would eat that bird!
I'd back the snail!
Is the, is, the bird on the left,
is that a white ring around its eye
- or has it just excreted a full-size snail?
- Yeah! Oh!
"Whoa!"
It can be up to between 30 minutes
or two hours later
that it passes through
the bird's system, as it were,
and the bird can fly at about 11mph.
So, is the snail doing some of the work,
to pass through that quickly?
Is it trundling towards
the exit of the bird as well?
It's the normal peristaltic action
of the digestive system of the bird
is pushing it through its crop,
down into its tummy
- and then out of its little botty.
- Does the snail go into his own shell,
by which I don't mean get
a little self-conscious?
Does he retreat into his shell...
- I should imagine he would.
- ...to take shelter?
Don't they pick them from the shell,
anyway? Don't they...?
Like you do in a restaurant
with a little special fork?
- They've got a special fork!
- Which is called Arnold, by the way.
I'm writing it down.
Ice cream scoop called Vanessa.
Yes!
So, anyway...
What would you call one of those
pizza cutters? The rolly pizza cutter?
- Clement.
- Clement.
- Fair enough.
- Can we call it Dave?
Well, there you are.
Yes, good. So, the cry goes up,
"Abandon ship," now.
That's our next question,
"Abandon ship."
Now, we are proud Britons
and one proud Kiwi,
what do we say next?
What do we chaps say?
- Women and children first!
- Oh!
As far as we know,
that's only ever been cried twice.
It's called the Birkenhead Drill
and it happened on board a ship
called the Birkenhead
but that was cos the captain
pointed a gun at his crew
and said, "Women and children first."
This had not been an idea that
especially existed before
and, in fact, it's very un-British.
Women have a lesser chance
of surviving
if a British ship sinks than
a Continental one.
- That's good to know!
- Yup, so there you go.
So, we aren't the gallant creatures
that we thought we were, at all.
The Titanic was the other one in
which men were told to stand back
and there was,
we've had this on QI before,
there was one crew member
who survived,
went all the way home to Liverpool
and he had the door slammed
in his face by his mother
who was ashamed of him
for having survived.
But, in fact, more...
- She sounds nice.
- Yeah, charming, innit?
Really extraordinary.
I mean, unbelievable!
But, obviously, you want a fair
number of fit, strong people
who know their way
around the waters, as it were,
once you're in the lifeboat
cos if it's women and children
there's not really going to be
that much, necessarily,
- use in being in the lifeboat.
- That's a bit sexist, Stephen!
You need at least one crew member
who can navigate by the stars
or who can operate the oars efficiently.
Or isn't going, "Oh, look,
there's a fish over there!
Let's go over there!"
Exactly! I wasn't going to be the one
to say that, I'm glad you did.
But, anyway. Known as the Birkenhead
Drill, it's not common.
Has anybody here ever had to muster?
Have you ever mustered, Stephen?
Not on a ship.
Well, I was filming something on a
cruise ship, and it hit a rock.
- Good gracious.
- And we had to genuinely muster.
And the important thing in
that situation is to stay calm.
I absolutely cacked myself.
I was terrified.
- Really?
- Yes!
Yeah, hard to believe(!) I was.
It was quite frightening. We were
filming a scene with James Corden.
It was a thing called
Cruise Of The Gods.
We'd blacked out the windows
of this cabin to simulate night.
All of a sudden, the boat tipped
at an incredible angle one way.
James Corden gone over to the...?
- Naughty!
- That's very naughty, Alan.
That's very naughty.
You know, a lot of people in Britain
struggle with their weight, Alan.
Yes, I do. Yeah.
I wasn't thinking of you!
Were you with him?
And we ended up
having to abandon ship that night,
- just like... Similar to Titanic.
- Wowser!
We're all being lead... I don't
want to say just like...
- Yeah. Yeah.
- It wasn't that bad.
It's a good enough story without
embellishing that much.
All right, yeah. But we get off,
and we're going away, watching
the ship lit up in the background...
And where was the nearest land?
We were close to land because
we were coming out of a port.
The captain was coming
out of port too fast,
and sure enough, we went...
So we were quite close.
But a very frightening experience.
I mean, with all due deference
to the captain of this vessel
going too fast out of port,
I mean, if he doesn't do that,
his kids can't water-ski.
Fair point.
- He's got to give them a treat, hasn't he?
- Yeah.
What's the point of being a captain
if you can't have a laugh with it?
Anyway, there you are, yes.
Who used to hang out with Richard Burton
and drive cabbies round the bend?
Yeah.
Elizabeth Hailer?
Oh, very good!
That is... No.
- Who is that? Go on.
- It's not OJ Simpson, is it?
It IS OJ Simpson!
Very good. With Burton,
of course, so,
now we're confusing you,
because this is a bit naughty of us.
This enemy of cabs was
a real enemy of cabs.
And oddly enough,
by mentioning Elizabeth Hailer,
for which, chapeau,
as they say in French,
you've got the right gender, because
the person who annoyed
this cabbie was in fact a woman.
And that's the Richard Burton
we're talking about.
- And who is that Richard Burton?
- Was he an English explorer?
He was an amazing man.
He went off for years at a time
and occasionally wrote
letters to his wife?
As seems to be...
No tweeting or Skypeing.
There was no tweeting. Absolutely.
He spoke 29 languages.
He was a quite remarkable man.
And he gave the English-speaking world
the unexpurgated translation
of the 1,001 Nights,
and indeed, the Kama Sutra.
So he was considered by Victorians
as absolutely
outrageous and scandalous.
But he was an extraordinary scholar
and adventurer, a remarkable man.
Truly remarkable man. But he had a
friend called Mrs Prodgers,
who I assume must have been...
That sounds like a Welsh surname,
presumably, is it?
Is Prodgers a name
you've come across before?
- No.
- It's a new one on me, I have to say.
I've never heard Prodgers.
Quite a nice name. Mrs Prodgers.
"Mrs Prodgers came in yesterday."
"What did she want?"
"Well, she wouldn't say.
She was looking for you."
You've built up a whole little
scenario in your head!
"She looked upset, though."
"I hear her Bronwyn is taking
her exams this week."
"Yes, she is. Mind you,
that glandular fever
has played hell with her revision."
And we'll look in next week for
Episode 2 of Life With The Prodgers!
But this woman,
whose name was Prodgers,
had conducted a life-long, insane,
very typically Victorian-ly
eccentric battle against cabbies,
for whom, for some reason,
she really had it in for them.
Seems they ply a harmless trade,
in those days, of course,
using horses rather than engines,
and she knew to within feet
the exact limits of the journeys
they could make for one shilling,
and she would make them make
the journey within a few yards
of the boundary which would then
allow them to charge more,
and then she would wait
precisely the amount of time
she was allowed to wait
without them charging
extra waiting time.
And then she gloried more
than anything else in them
trying to get more money off her,
and then she would take them
to court, and she would usually win.
It was a bizarre practice.
But it got to the stage...
She also travelled in some style,
so when she arrived
at King's Cross station,
she'd have five porters -
three for her luggage,
and two to carry her children.
And there'd be the line of cabs
outside just as there is today
at any major station,
and there would be a shout of,
"Mrs Prodgers! Mrs Prodgers!"
and they'd all bugger off.
They'd all disappear.
And in 1876, on Bonfire Night,
they made an effigy of her,
the cabbies, and burned her
in a huge bonfire,
and there were music hall
songs about it.
It was a very famous, sort of,
bizarre thing,
that this woman had it in for cabbies.
Who knows, one of them
may have tried to molest her
- or failed to molest her or whatever.
- What an awful moment,
when you realise that she's in your cab.
I know. "Oh, Mrs. Bloody Prodgers."
"Taxi!" And she jumps in...
"Oh, shit! Mrs Prodgers!"
Yeah. "I've got Mrs Prodgers."
Very extraordinary. Anyway.
But for some reason, she was
very friendly with Richard Burton,
and he helped her and gave her
advice, and considering he was,
as you rightly say, not considered
a particularly gallant man,
as far as his wife
was concerned, he was away a lot -
he was always helpful and kind to her.
The rest of the family
never understood it,
because he was usually rather
short-tempered with them.
The couldn't understand it. It was a
standing joke, his regard for Mrs Prodgers.
She wasn't his alter ego?
Wasn't like his...
- No, I don't think he...
- He'd dress up as Mrs Prodgers.
Interresting. Were they ever seen
together in the same room?
Because he goes off exploring,
thousands and thousands of miles,
but as Mrs Prodgers, he only goes
about 20 centimetres a time!
Interesting thought. Isn't it?
I got into a taxi once in London,
and the taxi driver saw me
in the mirror and went,
"Hello, mate. Can I say, we do enjoy,
the wife and I, watching you,"
and I thought,
"Oh, this is going to be lovely."
And he started
telling me what he liked.
But he was mistaking me
for Ben Miller.
A lot of them do that. I know.
And he started listing
lots of Ben's projects.
"I like that Primeval!"
Yeah, and he said
The Worst Week Of My Life,
so I just played along. I said,
"Thank you very much,"
and then he actually said,
"I'll tell you who
you must get confused for..."
"It's that Welsh one. It's that..."
- That awful man!
- And I said, "Oh, Rob Brydon?"
He said, "Yeah!"
I said, "Oh, he's good," I said.
I said, "I think he's fantastic."
And he said, "What, him?
The Welsh one? I think he's a twat."
So, there we are.
That was Richard Burton.
How long would it take you
to bicycle from Land's End
to the northernmost part of Britain?
What, John O'Groats, you mean?
Mean of me, wasn't it?
No, no, ask clear,
well-defined questions!
We just like to make you say things!
You can't buzz buzz me on chitchat!
No, that's the point, really. It's not
the northernmost part of Britain.
- Is it not?
- No, surprisingly.
It, sort of, advertises itself
as such and it has a little hut.
There's the last house in Scotland,
in John O'Groats.
There's one of those boys in callipers,
with a slot in its box.
- I haven't seen one for years.
- A long time ago, I know.
There was one on the high street
when I was a kid.
It used to be called the Spastic Society,
it's now Scope, isn't it, I think?
You put a penny in and he was
still there the next week.
Did you put the penny in
to make him go away?!
- I thought it would get him better, poor lad.
- Oh, bless!
Look at him, there, he's obviously
on his holidays, isn't he?
I used to like those ones
where you put the penny in
and it just rolled round
and round, and round...
We had a guide dog, you put
the penny in its head.
We had a lifeboat one where you put
the penny in and the lifeboat came out.
We were always putting pennies in things.
There's a brilliant model
of Queen Victoria's dog in Sydney,
outside the Queen Victoria building,
and it's like a, you know, you put
in your donation, but it talks.
So, it's a little, like, Highland terrier
and it says, in very beautiful
newsreader tones,
"During my lifetime
because of my good deeds,
after my death I was granted
the power of speech."
Like this. And then it goes,
"If you put a coin in the box
I will say thank you."
And then it pauses and then goes,
"Thank you."
"Woof."
That lad said nothing to me.
Not a word!
Every week, I put
something in his box.
Which...? Do you put it in the box
or is it his head?
It's got a slot in his box.
He might have two slots.
Some of them would have two slots.
Two slots in their box, yeah.
Women have... No, stop it!
- I never said that!
- I resign!
Yes, quite right. Absolutely shameful.
- We've established this is not your area.
- Yeah, exactly.
He looks, he looked a little bit like...
It's like you're talking about
Narnia or somewhere.
It's a fantastical land you've
only heard about.
Exactly.
"You make your way through
the fur coats and suddenly...!"
Whoa!
Whoa-ho-ho-ho! Dear, oh, dear!
Wielding a coin. A single coin.
For a while you have a magical time
but then you meet an ice maiden.
Yes. It's all... Oh, dear God!
Anyway, yes...
You're telling me there's somewhere
further than John O'Groats?
There is indeed - Dunnet Head.
That's the actual northernmost spot.
If you've got all the way to John O'Groats
and you haven't gone there...
You wouldn't cycle on there,
would you? It's a bit bumpy!
It's rather beautiful, isn't it?
It's about 603 miles, as the crow flies,
but by road it's about 800 miles.
Cyclists could take
10 to 14 days doing it.
The record for running the route,
what would you say, is...?
Have a guess.
You couldn't do
it in less than a week, could you?
No, no.
It's nine days and two hours,
which is pretty damn good going.
I'll say!
In 2005, a golfer named David Sullivan
hit a golf ball all the way.
Took him seven weeks.
I don't know what his score was.
Be awful if he didn't fill his card
correctly at the end. Disqualified.
Was it a putter?
Did he mean to do it?
Did he mean to do it?
Was he just trying to get it in...
"Wait a minute!"
- Just playing it where it lies...
- "Oh, I've lost it again!"
It would land in the back of a lorry
going the other direction -
"Oh, Christ!"
I feel sorry for the bloke that was
standing waiting for him
holding the flag.
So, people have done it in all
kinds of different ways.
In 1911 there was a motorcycle
record of 29 hours and 12 minutes,
which led to a ban
on further attempts
because the time necessarily proved
that they had been breaking the
speed limit, which was 20mph.
Now, here's a bird you might see
near John O'Groats. What is it?
- Well...
- Gannet!
- Fulmar.
- Not a gannet, it's not a falcon.
Is it the one puffin
the Queen hasn't eaten?
It is a puffin, well done!
- It's a puffin?
- It is a puffin.
Yes, we usually think of puffins as
looking more like this, don't we?
- There, that's, exactly. Well...
- Photoshop. Photoshop.
- ...when they've had sex...
- It's a ninja puffin.
...and it's winter they don't need
to look all bright like that,
- and so they go all dull.
- But its beak is...?
- I suppose its beak has shrunk enough...
- The beak actually falls off.
- It falls off?!
- Yes.
What?!
Yeah. I know. It's just there
to attract a mate and then once...
The dirty, dirty puffins!
Is it the equivalent of a woman
losing her figure after she's got married?
The minute the ring goes on, they
just go to pieces.
Oh, now, behave!
To me, it looks more like the equivilent
of a woman taking her padded bra off.
- That's what it looks like.
- Yes, I'm afraid there is...
She's just not making an effort
any more, is she?
The eye, there, has just been
stuck on? The other eye? Is that...?
Yeah, again, it's a colour, there.
It's all to, kind of...
- Just blind. I look great.
- Brighter, sexy...
"Oh, hello, it's worked!"
They rather sweetly pair for life,
male and female puffins,
and they make together one egg a year.
So once they've mated, they don't
need to attract each other any more.
So, you know, for the winter season,
when they're busy feeding
and then they just, sort of,
- put on their spring make-up...
- "I remember when you cared about me!"
- Exactly.
- "You used to have a pink beak!"
- But then it comes back?
- "You should put the eye make-up on!"
- It comes back again.
- It comes back?!
Yes, but they are lovely little
creatures, aren't they?
Do you know what a baby
puffin is called?
A puff.
No, it's a puffling. Isn't that lovely?
Exactly, ah!
- That's like something out of Harry Potter.
- They loved that!
- Say it again, they loved it!
- Puffling.
How many people now have a new
nickname for their partner?
- Exactly. Puffling.
- "For their partner," did you say?
For a moment I thought you were
going to say their penis.
- For some people, that is their partner.
- Puffling.
Aren't they like those party hats
you can get with a bit of elastic?
Handy.
The one on the left, he looks
like "whoa"! He could easily...
Honestly, a toucan could do great
on that puffin island.
- Can you imagine?
- He'd score big-time.
- Oh, Nelly!
- Oh-ho-ho-ho, yeah!
- "Hey, ladies, yeah."
- Well, they spend the time...
"From the tropics."
"This doesn't fall off after."
"No, I'm keeping this. Yeah,
I've still got the Guinness money."
They are...
He'd be freezing cold,
though, wouldn't he, after a while?
- "Ahhh! How'd you do this up here?"
- It's true.
Would his beak gets smaller
in the winter?
Are these just Arctic toucans?
Right, no, they're not, actually,
they're a kind of auk, in fact.
Most of those, you'll find
in the north Atlantic.
These, indeed, John O'Groats would
be a very good place to see them.
- Not Auckland?
- Not Auckland, oddly enough.
That's spelt with a C,
a little redundant C, A-U-C-K.
- Oh, of course it is.
- Yeah. But out to sea,
they are pelagic and they
have little backward,
sort of like barbed rows of things,
to, basically, to store fish in their mouth
but they are lovely, lovely creatures.
Of course, the Catholic Church
counted them as fish,
so you could
eat them on Fridays. Good.
So, for evolutionary reasons,
puffins' beaks fall off after sex,
assuming you believe
in evolution, that is.
Like that, what was the name of the
naturalist on board the Beagle?
- Charles Darwin, you mean?
- Oh!
Oh, drat!
This is a whole new tactic he's doing!
He wasn't the naturalist on board
the Beagle. Oddly enough.
There was an official naturalist
on board the Beagle
and it wasn't Charles Darwin.
He was the...?
- I don't care any more!
- Oh, you're angry, I'm sorry.
- Phillip, I wish it hadn't happened to you.
- He was the cook.
He wasn't the cook, no.
He was the figurehead on the prow.
He wasn't that either!
He was, in fact, the geologist.
The geologist.
He took four times
as many notes on geology
than he did on zoology, oddly enough.
It was the doctor, whose name was McCormack,
who was the official naturalist,
and he really resented
Darwin being there.
It was for rather snobbish
British 19th century reasons
that FitzRoy, whose voyage it was,
wanted a gentleman companion
and Charles Darwin fitted the bill
rather more than the doctor.
Was there an advert
in The Telegraph?
"Wanted - puffling"?
Yes, "to accompany on long voyage."
The doctor resented Darwin because he
took his place at the captain's table,
and was treated as an equal. Fitzroy
was an independently rich gentleman,
as they called him then.
Darwin writes in his diary, in fact,
"My friend the doctor is an ass,
but we jog along very amicably.
"At present, he is
in great tribulation
whether his cabin should be
painted French grey or dead white."
"I hear little,
excepting this subject, from him."
So he was obviously a man to go,
"How shall I paint my cabin?"
That's all he ever talked about!
But Christmas Day in 1835,
there's the young Darwin before
he grew that massive beard,
they went to Tierra del Fuego,
the land of the fire, right
down below South America,
and there, Darwin was very
astonished to note what happened
when the local people had a famine.
What they turned to eat.
Can you imagine what it is that they
ate when times were difficult?
- Guinea pigs?
- Penguins?
No, guinea pigs are eaten generally
- around South America quite commonly.
- They're just a snack!
- One another?
- One another is right,
but a particular type of person was chosen.
- Elderly people.
- And the particular type of...?
- Elderly women?
- Elderly women is the answer.
The elderly women ran for the hills when
there was any kind of famine on
- because they were the ones...
- "Mmm-mm! That's some good old lady!"
"I've got the GILF cookbook!"
That's terrible!
That's just awful, Phillip Jupitus.
- Erm, but the reason being that...
- "Their arms are so tender!"
Well, they explained to the crew
of the Beagle that the reason was,
I'm afraid to say,
that the old women were the least
useful members of the tribe
because old men and children,
and others could otter hunt
but the old women couldn't hunt for otters.
- What about the knitting?!
- I'm sorry?
- What about the knitting and crochet?
- Well, exactly.
- Exactly, I know.
- And who is going to teach you rummy?
That's a very good point. Yes.
They can make dumplings. All these
things, only old ladies can do.
How does their society evolve
with nobody to say, "Oh, I know!"
"Oh, I know!"
The thing is, they'd still be able
to make dumplings.
"Hello!"
Completely devoid of that.
I know. They could make
dumplings out of them.
- Yes, exactly.
- That's true.
Very, very good point.
Anyway. There we are. That's one of
the exciting things that Charles Darwin,
who was not the naturalist
on the Beagle, discovered.
So we travel to a more exotic place
where they had jackal-headed gods.
Where would I be?
Egypt.
"What, Egypt, you mean?"
- You didn't quite say that, did you?
- Sorry, I didn't quite say...
- "What, Egypt, you mean?"
- Thank you!
Not Egypt, in fact.
Those have been known
as jackal-headed gods.
That particular God, extra points
if you know that.
- Anubis.
- Well done!
Anubis is the right answer.
Anubis who was, do you know
what the duty of Anubis was?
Something to do with death.
- Didn't he guide you into the spirit world?
- Yes. He conducted you into...
Brilliant! Another five points,
I think, there.
There's a rather wonderful technical name
for a god that guides
you into the underworld,
like Mercury, who guided you
as far as the River Styx,
and that's a psychopomp.
That's a good word!
- A psychopomp?
- A psychopomp.
Sounds like something you'd find in
a medical examination. Doesn't it?
"I'm sorry, Mrs. Wilson,
you've got psychopomps."
"It may be benign."
- It may be malignant."
- Yes, "We're going to have to operate."
A malignant psychopomp,
you wouldn't want.
Erm, but, in fact,
what has been discovered,
and this is, you won't find
this on Egyptological websites
where they will continue to call Anubis
and other Egyptian deities
jackal-headed,
but the animals that existed
at the time of ancient Egypt
were, we now know from DNA,
wolves, not jackals.
So, from a zoological point of view,
if not from an Egyptological
point of view,
they are in fact the wolf-headed,
not jackal-headed.
You heard it here first.
A very recent discovery.
So, that's exciting, isn't it?
But now we come to a very special
part of the programme here.
In this series,
we're occasionally featuring
theories which are interesting,
but which we don't necessarily
believe, 100%, at least.
We call them Dubious Theories.
'A Dubious Theory from Stephen Fry.'
Yeah, thank you. Yes.
The years between 614 and 911 AD
didn't exist.
The Holy Roman Emperor Otto III
got his chroniclers to fake
nearly 300 years of history,
so there was no such person
as Charlemagne,
and we're currently actually living
in the year 1715 AD.
This is called the
Phantom Time Hypothesis.
and decide for yourself.
That's like the earliest version of
Wikipedia, then, isn't it?
Like someone's just gone in and
changed the pages to make it...
Yeah. The theory is that this
emperor wanted to be on the throne
in the year 1000 AD,
but in fact it was only 700 AD,
so he basically got the chroniclers
to pretend these 300 years existed.
It was one Heribert Illig who
started this argument in 1990,
and his evidence is
the apparent stagnation
in the development of architecture,
ceramics and thought at this time.
It is, after all, the beginning
of the age known as The Dark Ages.
And there's very little
archaeological evidence
which can be reliably dated
to this period.
There's a very limited number of
written sources,
which could be
faked or just wrong.
I know it's just mad, but anyway,
there are a range of achievements
that are given to Charlemagne
that make you think he must
have been a mythical creature
rather than a real one.
His size, his warrior,
his scholarship,
his inventions,
his brilliance, and so on.
Anyway, it's worth looking up,
and you can decide for yourself
whether or not it is true.
It's an amazing thought
that this could be the year 1715.
I like it. I'm all for it.
In which case, we'll have a Jacobite
rebellion any minute.
There you go.
Now, name two interesting things
you can do with a coconut in Hawaii.
Do you get different coconuts
in Hawaii from other places?
It's a very touristy thing
which is frowned upon
by the officials who do,
nonetheless, do it.
Thousands and thousands of these
are done every year.
Some kind of... You throw them
from a moving vehicle?
You use it as a postcard.
Postcard.
Yeah, and you can see,
there they are.
You buy them like that, and they
will help you decorate it.
You can see the writing
on one of them there.
"Just nuts about...",
"See you some time..."
You put a stamp on. 10 dollars
it costs, something like that,
to send it to
the mainland of America.
It'd be annoying
to get one of those.
It really would, wouldn't it?
"Where's the coconut I sent you?
Where is it, then?"
"Oh, well, there was a fire."
It was a fire that I threw it into!
A bit of rationality,
and I threw it in a bin.
I had a friend who was nearly
killed by a coconut.
And, I've known him for 20 years,
and I was furious with him,
because he only told me
a couple of months ago,
and if I had nearly been
killed by a coconut,
- I would be...
- Everyone would know about it.
Every conversation. "Hello, I'm Cal.
I survived a coconut."
But he said he was just
standing on a beach,
and a coconut fell from a tree, and
he said it was such a good shot -
it hit him directly on the head -
such a good shot, he could hear other
coconuts high-fiving each other.
Other things you can do
with a coconut,
not necessarily in Hawaii...
- Get the coconut milk out.
- Well, yes, the water, the milk.
You can use it as
a rehydration drip, which they did
during World War II, both
the Japanese and Americans,
cos it's sterile, but
it's perfectly serviceable
for rehydration to use it as a drip.
Have a little coconut into you,
dripping into you.
The other thing to do,
if you have a tooth knocked out,
immersion in coconut water
will keep it viable
for reinsertion better than milk.
So there you are. Little things
you can do with coconuts.
Now, why did JFK keep
a coconut on his desk?
And there he did, you can see.
He did!
- No question about it.
- Was he missing a tooth?
No, that wasn't it.
Was it a recording device
of some sort?
- Some CIA nut?
- No, it isn't.
- No, it isn't.
- Postcard from a friend?
It's memento and not a postcard from a friend.
It's a very rather important memento.
Amongst JFK's achievements,
obviously he was a youngish and...
He was on a torpedo boat during the war.
A torpedo boat, PT109, yeah.
- Famously, he was heroic.
- Is it from then?
Yes. His torpedo boat
was sunk by the enemy,
and he found himself stranded
on the Solomon Islands,
completely isolated,
and there were local islanders
and he had no pen or paper,
so he carved onto a coconut,
which he gave to some
of the local native islanders,
and asked them to take it
to the capital, Rendova,
and he carved on it,
"Nauro Island. Commander.
Native knows position.
"He can pilot. 11 alive.
Need small boat. Kennedy."
The natives took it,
and eventually he was rescued.
"Hurry up and pick us up. We are
eating the old women here."
So it was a postcard?
It was indeed! You're kind of right.
He started the whole fashion, and of
course, they gave it back to him
as a memento and
he kept it on his desk.
Didn't bring him much luck, but...
- Bit dark!
- I'm sorry.
Sorry! That's awful.
I can remember it. You're too old.
I mean... Hang on.
I think I may actually
be getting dementia.
- Can you really remember it?
- Yes, I can.
"I was standing on
a grassy knoll with a rifle..."
And a voice told me...
Yeah. I was six years old, I think.
Something like that.
I can remember
Ronald Reagan being shot,
and my dad was in the kitchen,
and I said "Reagan's been shot."
And he went, "Oh."
That's a bit blase! And he thought
I meant Regan in The Sweeney.
Oh!
In 1981, they had this premiere of
a British movie, Chariots Of Fire.
And they asked our comedy troupe, me
and Hugh and Emma and Tony Slattery,
if we would perform a little cabaret
at the Dorchester Hotel after the premiere.
And I'd spoken to my mother.
I'd said to her,
"I'm very excited. We're going to
the Dorchester." She said,
"Do you know, the last time
I went to the Dorchester,
it all broke up very early because
it was the night Kennedy got shot."
In 1962. I said, "Oh, gosh, blimey."
Anyway, so I'm doing
the sketch with Emma, and suddenly
we notice the audience going...
and everyone's disappeared,
all these executives from Fox
and everything.
And Reagan had been shot.
So I rang my mother up and said,
"What happened?" She said,
"No member of this family is ever
allowed to go to the Dorchester again."
"It's not safe for Western democracy."
Which is why,
during W Bush's administration,
Stephen dined there on a daily basis!
- Anyway...
- "Waiter, any news?"
Dear me. Still.
Which travel organisation
includes a mandatory fee
for the repatriation of your corpse?
Er, the AA? Thomas Cook?
No, this is a very particular event
that you can subscribe to,
which, er, they sort out your travel
and your participation in this event,
but included in it is a fee for
the repatriation of your corpse.
It's not expected you'll die,
but there is a chance.
It's not running the bulls
at Pamplona, is it?
No, not the bulls at Pamplona.
I was going to say dining with you
at the Dorchester!
That might do it. Exactly!
It's not one of these Ironman races, is it?
It's that sort of thing. It's an
incredibly difficult marathon.
It's called the
Marathon des Sables,
which your French will tell you means...?
Marathon of the sable.
These little black furry
creatures... Yes.
- Sand is sable in French.
- Oh, sable. Sorry, sorry.
It's the Marathon of the Sands,
and it's an extraordinarily
enduring and gruelling event
in which you have to carry your own
food, although there are water stops,
and it's six-day... Each day you run a
whole marathon in the Sahara Desert.
- People are very weird, aren't they?
- I know!
I have a friend who does it and she's
done it twice, which is extraordinary.
Did she have to go back because
she had forgotten something?
- On two separate years!
- They'd better not tell Izzard about it.
"Really? Er... OK!"
"How many? How many
do they do? OK."
"Er, I'm going to do 120 Desert
marathons a week, for a year."
"Yes, true story."
Very good Eddie, I have to say!
I'm going to the pub
every night for 27 years.
- This...
- In tribute to Nelson Mandela.
Consider the case
of Mauro Prosperi,
who was a very experienced runner,
an Italian policeman, in fact,
who, in 1994, was doing
the Marathon des Sables
and there was a sandstorm, and
he disobeyed the official instructions
that if you are in a sandstorm, you
hunker down and wait till it passes.
I guess he wanted to win, or something,
so he carried on running and he got lost.
And this is a bad thing in the
Sahara, as I'm sure you can imagine.
By the second day he was drinking
his urine, naturally.
On the third he found
an abandoned shrine,
managed to kill a couple of bats,
whose blood he drank.
He then decided to kill himself
with a penknife,
but he was so
dehydrated, the blood didn't flow.
He was rather surprised
and encouraged
to wake up the next morning,
and so he ran for the next five
days, drinking urine and dew,
and eating the occasional lizard
that he found and managed
to kill on the way.
After nine days, he encountered some
nomads who got him back to safety.
He'd lost three stone and was
130 miles off course in Algeria.
So, and then he did it again for six years.
He went back and did it again.
Amazing.
I mean, bizarre, but there you go.
It's... Sheesh!
No-one gives the nomads much credit
in that story, do they?
"He was out there for nine days".
"Oh, my whole life!"
Yeah, exactly.
"He walked for six days."
"Oh, get over yourself!"
I was doing that when I was three.
"Drinking your own piss? Luxury."
But his description of it is really
a very good ode to life, isn't it?
He said, "I didn't panic,
I just despaired."
There you are.
Anyway, what did Napoleon say to Josephine
on his way back from a journey?
Ah, I sense a trap!
The only thing I know about Napoleon
to Josephine was he said,
what was it? Rob, what was it?
Phill?
Cal?
I'm, I'm going to do it!
"I'm coming back, don't wash!"
No, that is one of the two things
that people know that Napoleon said.
"Yeah, I shall be home soon, don't
wash." Cos he liked them dirty!
There is no evidence
of that whatsoever.
The earliest place this quotation
can be sourced is 1981.
I only know the other one.
The other one, which might be...?
What?
It's the one... Rob?
Phill, you know it.
- Cal, it's... Really?
- I'm still stuck on the no washing.
- "Pas ce soir, Josephine."
- Ah, got away with it!
Josephine, on the right, there,
she's got the same black eyes
that all the people in my pictures
have got on my computer
when I try and get rid
of the red eye.
- Yes, that's so true!
- They end up with massive black dots
and they look like something
from a zombie film.
Anyway, I'm sorry you fell into our trap,
but you managed to avoid the trap
of, "Not tonight, Josephine,"
which is the other thing
he was supposed to have said.
- That's the one!
- That appears in a play,
WG Willsplay called The Royal Divorce,
which didn't come out until 1891,
some 70 years after
the death of the Emperor.
- "An army marches on its stomach."
- Yes, well, indeed, yes.
Did he say that?
Unlikely to have said that to
Josephine, but he might have done.
I think he meant it more as a, sort
of, you know, point about logistics.
Maybe he discussed
all sorts of battle stuff?
He might have done.
He said, "I prefer a lucky general
to a skilled one," as well.
So, we don't know anything particular
that Josephine and Napoleon
might have said to each other,
but we do know one thing,
"Journeys end in lovers meeting,"
That's Shakespeare...
...and in fourth place.
In fourth place, we have,
I'm sorry to say
but he did fall into some of our
honeytraps rather cumbrously,
Phill Jupitus with minus 16!
And...
Our little kiwi fruit
is third with minus eight!
Cal Wilson!
But hold the front page...
Second, with minus three,
Rob Brydon!
With an astonishing plus four,
Alan Davies is the winner!
So, that's all from Rob, Phill,
Cal, Alan and me.
The last word on journeys comes
from Erma Bombeck, who said,
"Seize the moment. Remember
all those women on the Titanic
who waved away the dessert cart."
Have a safe trip. Good night.
Good evening, good evening,
good evening, good evening,
and welcome to QI,
where tonight our topic is Journeys.
And let's see who's
in the arrivals hall today.
All the way up from Down Under,
it's Cal Wilson.
Hello!
The only way here is from Essex -
Phill Jupitus.
And... From Port Talbot Parkway,
stopping at Pyle, Bridgend, Pencoed,
Llanharan, Pontyclun, Ninian Park
and Cardiff Central -
Rob Brydon.
And bearing the label,
"Not Wanted On Voyage," Alan Davies.
And they all have little buzzer
noises and Cal goes...
And Rob goes...
Phill goes...
- Which you do, in fact, don't you?
- I do.
And Alan goes...
That's your chosen mode
of transport.
We've travelled a lot, Alan,
and one of the places we travelled
to a few months ago was Australia,
and that's where we found Cal,
who is New Zealand's perhaps
greatest stand-up comedian
and works mostly in Melbourne
- now, don't you?
- Yes, I do, I do.
- I've got the Antipodes covered!
- Yeah!
But we liked you so much
we smuggled you in our luggage
and we brought you back here,
so, welcome.
Thank you. I make a better souvenir
than an interesting keyring, I suppose.
Exactly, exactly!
- I did want a koala but...
- A stuffed koala?
- Not on, apparently.
- No.
The journey of 1,000 miles begins
with a single question:
Where the hell did
I leave my passport?
I lost mine on a plane once
and it had gone down,
- under the cushion of my seat.
- Yeah.
- The actual plane seat.
- Yeah.
I was on the plane for a...
I refused to get off the plane.
Yeah, you have to get your seat
disassembled. I've had that.
And, eventually, I found it.
That's the end of the story.
Oh, that's a beautiful story!
That is...
That is a lovely, lovely story.
Stephen, is that Alan Davies or is it...?
Hang on, is it Peter Ustinov?!
That was a hell of an anecdote!
If that is the level of the bar
this evening, I may go home.
Is it you? Specifically you?
Where did you leave YOUR passport?
No, it's this technique.
The University of Wisconsin,
when you lose something,
it actually helps to say the name
of the thing that you've lost,
or you are looking for.
- Dignity.
- Yes, for example!
Very good.
- Brilliant!
- You see?
Exactly.
For me, that would make it worse.
That would just draw attention to it.
- Your wallet has a name?!
- Well, no...
"Peregrine!"
"PEREGRINE!"
"Baaa!"
"Peregrine!"
That's how...
- It might work!
- It has now!
From now on it will be called Peregrine.
But anyway, that's not the point,
the point is, for example,
you open a cutlery drawer
and where the hell's the
garlic peeler, or whatever?
- If you just say garlic peeler.
- Yes, the garlic peeler. Again...
- It might be!
- "Andrew! Andrew!"
You're missing my point about names, here.
I just mean the word we give the thing.
Its normal description,
as found in a dictionary.
- Not from a list of given names.
- Okay.
It isn't Julian the cheese grater.
It isn't Barbara the corkscrew. Yes?
It'd put a different complexion on
Marlon Brando yelling "Stella!"
when it was just a pair of glasses
that he was after.
He lost his wallet!
His sunglasses are called Stella. Exactly.
So, what did you do?
You have to say,
- "Wallet, wallet, wallet"?
- "Keys, keys, keys, keys,
- "keys, keys."
- Yeah, exactly.
So, you say, sort of, you know,
"bottle opener, bottle opener."
You've got more chance of seeing it,
you're looking...
"Money, money, money..."
- You know that phrase...
- "Gold, gold!"
You know that phrase, "It was just
staring me in the face,"
and you somehow couldn't see it?
The act of speaking does
something in your brain
that actually allows your eyes
to see it more clearly.
- That's been demonstrated.
- Reminds me of that phrase, Stephen,
"Couldn't see the wood for the trees,"
have you ever come across
that phrase before?
I have, I have.
- I never used to understand it.
- What it basically means is
you're looking at... Wait.
- You're looking for wood.
- Yes, yes.
- Not in the way you might!
- No, not in that sense!
You're looking, you're looking for wood...
-...and you're looking at trees.
- Yes.
So, you are, in essence, looking at wood.
- They are wood, aren't they?
- But you're s... I've got it, Alan.
But you're seeing trees so you
can't see the wood for the trees
and, I think, in a funny old way,
it's a little bit like what
you're talking about, isn't it?
Almost exactly not.
- Yeah.
- Yeah.
It's nice you brought that up.
It's a good...
Now, the other thing,
before I finish,
the other thing I'd like to bring up is
this whole business now with passports.
They don't like you to smile
in the photograph.
Oh, no.
When I grew up, a smile was
always mandatory.
Like, if you're...
But now, you have to look like you're
suspected of having done something.
I look like a Russian prison
guard in my passport photo.
I can see that! I can see that!
Absolutely.
A hatchet-faced Silesian fish wife.
Every single photo booth I get into
appears to be set on "paedophile".
Why don't you try and recreate
that look for us now, could you?
Right, for a kick-off, what you have
to do in a photo-Me booth
is, they don't let you
wear glasses either,
and, also, because the camera lens
is behind the mirror
and you don't know where it is
you're always looking slightly off...
Oh, that's true.
Is it down...?
OK, this is the look.
Stay away from my children!
It gets you...
It gets you out of a lot of baby-sitting duties,
though, doesn't it? Let's be honest.
I bet our passports would look
quite good together
cos you're the paedophile
and I'm the prison guard.
Yeah, we should travel together.
I'm with my Kiwi handler.
Do kiwis have handlers?
- There's not, they're not very good...
- Are they edible?
- We're not allowed to eat them.
- Like swans?
I mean, the Queen's allowed them.
Is the Queen allowed kiwis?
I don't think she is, as a matter of fact.
I mean, could she just eat
anything cos she's the Queen?
I wouldn't be the one to tell her
not to but...
- I imagine not!
- No, no.
"Stop eating that kiwi,
you dreadful old woman!"
I imagine that you'd
be a bit more polite.
You are Stephen Fry off the telly.
You don't have to do
the "dreadful old woman."
No, I could just...
But it would be a dreadful
thing to do.
You could say, "Stop eating that
kiwi, ma'am, have some jam."
Exactly, exactly.
"Your Majesty, put the puffin down!"
Let's just have a load of situations
where we tell the Queen
- to stop eating...
- That sounds like a children's game.
"And now have a round of
'Your Majesty, Put The Puffin Down!'"
"You're the Queen,
- so, one...two...three..."
- Trousers off!
"Your Majesty, put the puffin
down!" Yes, very good."
Anyway, I don't know why
or how we got there,
but that's what journeys do to you.
Anyway, describe
the travel arrangements
of the Japanese flying snail.
Where is it going?
Er, it probably won't travel more
than 11 miles, but very fast.
Does it drop?
- Yes.
- Is it a fall?
Yes, but how would it get up?
They haven't got wings, have they,
you see?
- No, they haven't.
- They're flying.
They haven't, but we haven't got
wings and we fly, how do we do it?
- In an aeroplane.
- We get in an aeroplane.
We get in something...
- Oh, I've got the answer.
- ...a conveyance of flight.
They hop on a bird or a creature
with wings...
- Yes.
- A bird.
- Erm, they hop on...
- Could have been a bat?
Could've been a bat.
Could have been a bat or a bird.
Or a strange hybrid of bird bat.
They hop onto a creature
with the ability to fly.
But 11 miles, that's very, very high.
It's not the height, it's not the
altitude, they travel...
They are not going up into space!
I've got it in my head that
they're dropping 11 miles.
It's not a voluntary act,
they get eaten by birds.
There are two types of bird
on the little island of Hahajima.
Hahajima, it's one of the Ogasawara
Islands, south of Japan, as you can see,
and there is the Japanese White-eyed
and the Brown-eyed bulbul,
which are two types of bird.
There they are.
And they eat this particular snail...
and about 15% of them
survive the process
and are excreted out alive and so
they are, kind of, spreading their,
- spreading the genes further around.
- Is this to scale?
Yeah.
- Because that seems unlikely.
- No, it's not!
That'd be a seriously
weighed down bulbul.
That snail would eat that bird!
I'd back the snail!
Is the, is, the bird on the left,
is that a white ring around its eye
- or has it just excreted a full-size snail?
- Yeah! Oh!
"Whoa!"
It can be up to between 30 minutes
or two hours later
that it passes through
the bird's system, as it were,
and the bird can fly at about 11mph.
So, is the snail doing some of the work,
to pass through that quickly?
Is it trundling towards
the exit of the bird as well?
It's the normal peristaltic action
of the digestive system of the bird
is pushing it through its crop,
down into its tummy
- and then out of its little botty.
- Does the snail go into his own shell,
by which I don't mean get
a little self-conscious?
Does he retreat into his shell...
- I should imagine he would.
- ...to take shelter?
Don't they pick them from the shell,
anyway? Don't they...?
Like you do in a restaurant
with a little special fork?
- They've got a special fork!
- Which is called Arnold, by the way.
I'm writing it down.
Ice cream scoop called Vanessa.
Yes!
So, anyway...
What would you call one of those
pizza cutters? The rolly pizza cutter?
- Clement.
- Clement.
- Fair enough.
- Can we call it Dave?
Well, there you are.
Yes, good. So, the cry goes up,
"Abandon ship," now.
That's our next question,
"Abandon ship."
Now, we are proud Britons
and one proud Kiwi,
what do we say next?
What do we chaps say?
- Women and children first!
- Oh!
As far as we know,
that's only ever been cried twice.
It's called the Birkenhead Drill
and it happened on board a ship
called the Birkenhead
but that was cos the captain
pointed a gun at his crew
and said, "Women and children first."
This had not been an idea that
especially existed before
and, in fact, it's very un-British.
Women have a lesser chance
of surviving
if a British ship sinks than
a Continental one.
- That's good to know!
- Yup, so there you go.
So, we aren't the gallant creatures
that we thought we were, at all.
The Titanic was the other one in
which men were told to stand back
and there was,
we've had this on QI before,
there was one crew member
who survived,
went all the way home to Liverpool
and he had the door slammed
in his face by his mother
who was ashamed of him
for having survived.
But, in fact, more...
- She sounds nice.
- Yeah, charming, innit?
Really extraordinary.
I mean, unbelievable!
But, obviously, you want a fair
number of fit, strong people
who know their way
around the waters, as it were,
once you're in the lifeboat
cos if it's women and children
there's not really going to be
that much, necessarily,
- use in being in the lifeboat.
- That's a bit sexist, Stephen!
You need at least one crew member
who can navigate by the stars
or who can operate the oars efficiently.
Or isn't going, "Oh, look,
there's a fish over there!
Let's go over there!"
Exactly! I wasn't going to be the one
to say that, I'm glad you did.
But, anyway. Known as the Birkenhead
Drill, it's not common.
Has anybody here ever had to muster?
Have you ever mustered, Stephen?
Not on a ship.
Well, I was filming something on a
cruise ship, and it hit a rock.
- Good gracious.
- And we had to genuinely muster.
And the important thing in
that situation is to stay calm.
I absolutely cacked myself.
I was terrified.
- Really?
- Yes!
Yeah, hard to believe(!) I was.
It was quite frightening. We were
filming a scene with James Corden.
It was a thing called
Cruise Of The Gods.
We'd blacked out the windows
of this cabin to simulate night.
All of a sudden, the boat tipped
at an incredible angle one way.
James Corden gone over to the...?
- Naughty!
- That's very naughty, Alan.
That's very naughty.
You know, a lot of people in Britain
struggle with their weight, Alan.
Yes, I do. Yeah.
I wasn't thinking of you!
Were you with him?
And we ended up
having to abandon ship that night,
- just like... Similar to Titanic.
- Wowser!
We're all being lead... I don't
want to say just like...
- Yeah. Yeah.
- It wasn't that bad.
It's a good enough story without
embellishing that much.
All right, yeah. But we get off,
and we're going away, watching
the ship lit up in the background...
And where was the nearest land?
We were close to land because
we were coming out of a port.
The captain was coming
out of port too fast,
and sure enough, we went...
So we were quite close.
But a very frightening experience.
I mean, with all due deference
to the captain of this vessel
going too fast out of port,
I mean, if he doesn't do that,
his kids can't water-ski.
Fair point.
- He's got to give them a treat, hasn't he?
- Yeah.
What's the point of being a captain
if you can't have a laugh with it?
Anyway, there you are, yes.
Who used to hang out with Richard Burton
and drive cabbies round the bend?
Yeah.
Elizabeth Hailer?
Oh, very good!
That is... No.
- Who is that? Go on.
- It's not OJ Simpson, is it?
It IS OJ Simpson!
Very good. With Burton,
of course, so,
now we're confusing you,
because this is a bit naughty of us.
This enemy of cabs was
a real enemy of cabs.
And oddly enough,
by mentioning Elizabeth Hailer,
for which, chapeau,
as they say in French,
you've got the right gender, because
the person who annoyed
this cabbie was in fact a woman.
And that's the Richard Burton
we're talking about.
- And who is that Richard Burton?
- Was he an English explorer?
He was an amazing man.
He went off for years at a time
and occasionally wrote
letters to his wife?
As seems to be...
No tweeting or Skypeing.
There was no tweeting. Absolutely.
He spoke 29 languages.
He was a quite remarkable man.
And he gave the English-speaking world
the unexpurgated translation
of the 1,001 Nights,
and indeed, the Kama Sutra.
So he was considered by Victorians
as absolutely
outrageous and scandalous.
But he was an extraordinary scholar
and adventurer, a remarkable man.
Truly remarkable man. But he had a
friend called Mrs Prodgers,
who I assume must have been...
That sounds like a Welsh surname,
presumably, is it?
Is Prodgers a name
you've come across before?
- No.
- It's a new one on me, I have to say.
I've never heard Prodgers.
Quite a nice name. Mrs Prodgers.
"Mrs Prodgers came in yesterday."
"What did she want?"
"Well, she wouldn't say.
She was looking for you."
You've built up a whole little
scenario in your head!
"She looked upset, though."
"I hear her Bronwyn is taking
her exams this week."
"Yes, she is. Mind you,
that glandular fever
has played hell with her revision."
And we'll look in next week for
Episode 2 of Life With The Prodgers!
But this woman,
whose name was Prodgers,
had conducted a life-long, insane,
very typically Victorian-ly
eccentric battle against cabbies,
for whom, for some reason,
she really had it in for them.
Seems they ply a harmless trade,
in those days, of course,
using horses rather than engines,
and she knew to within feet
the exact limits of the journeys
they could make for one shilling,
and she would make them make
the journey within a few yards
of the boundary which would then
allow them to charge more,
and then she would wait
precisely the amount of time
she was allowed to wait
without them charging
extra waiting time.
And then she gloried more
than anything else in them
trying to get more money off her,
and then she would take them
to court, and she would usually win.
It was a bizarre practice.
But it got to the stage...
She also travelled in some style,
so when she arrived
at King's Cross station,
she'd have five porters -
three for her luggage,
and two to carry her children.
And there'd be the line of cabs
outside just as there is today
at any major station,
and there would be a shout of,
"Mrs Prodgers! Mrs Prodgers!"
and they'd all bugger off.
They'd all disappear.
And in 1876, on Bonfire Night,
they made an effigy of her,
the cabbies, and burned her
in a huge bonfire,
and there were music hall
songs about it.
It was a very famous, sort of,
bizarre thing,
that this woman had it in for cabbies.
Who knows, one of them
may have tried to molest her
- or failed to molest her or whatever.
- What an awful moment,
when you realise that she's in your cab.
I know. "Oh, Mrs. Bloody Prodgers."
"Taxi!" And she jumps in...
"Oh, shit! Mrs Prodgers!"
Yeah. "I've got Mrs Prodgers."
Very extraordinary. Anyway.
But for some reason, she was
very friendly with Richard Burton,
and he helped her and gave her
advice, and considering he was,
as you rightly say, not considered
a particularly gallant man,
as far as his wife
was concerned, he was away a lot -
he was always helpful and kind to her.
The rest of the family
never understood it,
because he was usually rather
short-tempered with them.
The couldn't understand it. It was a
standing joke, his regard for Mrs Prodgers.
She wasn't his alter ego?
Wasn't like his...
- No, I don't think he...
- He'd dress up as Mrs Prodgers.
Interresting. Were they ever seen
together in the same room?
Because he goes off exploring,
thousands and thousands of miles,
but as Mrs Prodgers, he only goes
about 20 centimetres a time!
Interesting thought. Isn't it?
I got into a taxi once in London,
and the taxi driver saw me
in the mirror and went,
"Hello, mate. Can I say, we do enjoy,
the wife and I, watching you,"
and I thought,
"Oh, this is going to be lovely."
And he started
telling me what he liked.
But he was mistaking me
for Ben Miller.
A lot of them do that. I know.
And he started listing
lots of Ben's projects.
"I like that Primeval!"
Yeah, and he said
The Worst Week Of My Life,
so I just played along. I said,
"Thank you very much,"
and then he actually said,
"I'll tell you who
you must get confused for..."
"It's that Welsh one. It's that..."
- That awful man!
- And I said, "Oh, Rob Brydon?"
He said, "Yeah!"
I said, "Oh, he's good," I said.
I said, "I think he's fantastic."
And he said, "What, him?
The Welsh one? I think he's a twat."
So, there we are.
That was Richard Burton.
How long would it take you
to bicycle from Land's End
to the northernmost part of Britain?
What, John O'Groats, you mean?
Mean of me, wasn't it?
No, no, ask clear,
well-defined questions!
We just like to make you say things!
You can't buzz buzz me on chitchat!
No, that's the point, really. It's not
the northernmost part of Britain.
- Is it not?
- No, surprisingly.
It, sort of, advertises itself
as such and it has a little hut.
There's the last house in Scotland,
in John O'Groats.
There's one of those boys in callipers,
with a slot in its box.
- I haven't seen one for years.
- A long time ago, I know.
There was one on the high street
when I was a kid.
It used to be called the Spastic Society,
it's now Scope, isn't it, I think?
You put a penny in and he was
still there the next week.
Did you put the penny in
to make him go away?!
- I thought it would get him better, poor lad.
- Oh, bless!
Look at him, there, he's obviously
on his holidays, isn't he?
I used to like those ones
where you put the penny in
and it just rolled round
and round, and round...
We had a guide dog, you put
the penny in its head.
We had a lifeboat one where you put
the penny in and the lifeboat came out.
We were always putting pennies in things.
There's a brilliant model
of Queen Victoria's dog in Sydney,
outside the Queen Victoria building,
and it's like a, you know, you put
in your donation, but it talks.
So, it's a little, like, Highland terrier
and it says, in very beautiful
newsreader tones,
"During my lifetime
because of my good deeds,
after my death I was granted
the power of speech."
Like this. And then it goes,
"If you put a coin in the box
I will say thank you."
And then it pauses and then goes,
"Thank you."
"Woof."
That lad said nothing to me.
Not a word!
Every week, I put
something in his box.
Which...? Do you put it in the box
or is it his head?
It's got a slot in his box.
He might have two slots.
Some of them would have two slots.
Two slots in their box, yeah.
Women have... No, stop it!
- I never said that!
- I resign!
Yes, quite right. Absolutely shameful.
- We've established this is not your area.
- Yeah, exactly.
He looks, he looked a little bit like...
It's like you're talking about
Narnia or somewhere.
It's a fantastical land you've
only heard about.
Exactly.
"You make your way through
the fur coats and suddenly...!"
Whoa!
Whoa-ho-ho-ho! Dear, oh, dear!
Wielding a coin. A single coin.
For a while you have a magical time
but then you meet an ice maiden.
Yes. It's all... Oh, dear God!
Anyway, yes...
You're telling me there's somewhere
further than John O'Groats?
There is indeed - Dunnet Head.
That's the actual northernmost spot.
If you've got all the way to John O'Groats
and you haven't gone there...
You wouldn't cycle on there,
would you? It's a bit bumpy!
It's rather beautiful, isn't it?
It's about 603 miles, as the crow flies,
but by road it's about 800 miles.
Cyclists could take
10 to 14 days doing it.
The record for running the route,
what would you say, is...?
Have a guess.
You couldn't do
it in less than a week, could you?
No, no.
It's nine days and two hours,
which is pretty damn good going.
I'll say!
In 2005, a golfer named David Sullivan
hit a golf ball all the way.
Took him seven weeks.
I don't know what his score was.
Be awful if he didn't fill his card
correctly at the end. Disqualified.
Was it a putter?
Did he mean to do it?
Did he mean to do it?
Was he just trying to get it in...
"Wait a minute!"
- Just playing it where it lies...
- "Oh, I've lost it again!"
It would land in the back of a lorry
going the other direction -
"Oh, Christ!"
I feel sorry for the bloke that was
standing waiting for him
holding the flag.
So, people have done it in all
kinds of different ways.
In 1911 there was a motorcycle
record of 29 hours and 12 minutes,
which led to a ban
on further attempts
because the time necessarily proved
that they had been breaking the
speed limit, which was 20mph.
Now, here's a bird you might see
near John O'Groats. What is it?
- Well...
- Gannet!
- Fulmar.
- Not a gannet, it's not a falcon.
Is it the one puffin
the Queen hasn't eaten?
It is a puffin, well done!
- It's a puffin?
- It is a puffin.
Yes, we usually think of puffins as
looking more like this, don't we?
- There, that's, exactly. Well...
- Photoshop. Photoshop.
- ...when they've had sex...
- It's a ninja puffin.
...and it's winter they don't need
to look all bright like that,
- and so they go all dull.
- But its beak is...?
- I suppose its beak has shrunk enough...
- The beak actually falls off.
- It falls off?!
- Yes.
What?!
Yeah. I know. It's just there
to attract a mate and then once...
The dirty, dirty puffins!
Is it the equivalent of a woman
losing her figure after she's got married?
The minute the ring goes on, they
just go to pieces.
Oh, now, behave!
To me, it looks more like the equivilent
of a woman taking her padded bra off.
- That's what it looks like.
- Yes, I'm afraid there is...
She's just not making an effort
any more, is she?
The eye, there, has just been
stuck on? The other eye? Is that...?
Yeah, again, it's a colour, there.
It's all to, kind of...
- Just blind. I look great.
- Brighter, sexy...
"Oh, hello, it's worked!"
They rather sweetly pair for life,
male and female puffins,
and they make together one egg a year.
So once they've mated, they don't
need to attract each other any more.
So, you know, for the winter season,
when they're busy feeding
and then they just, sort of,
- put on their spring make-up...
- "I remember when you cared about me!"
- Exactly.
- "You used to have a pink beak!"
- But then it comes back?
- "You should put the eye make-up on!"
- It comes back again.
- It comes back?!
Yes, but they are lovely little
creatures, aren't they?
Do you know what a baby
puffin is called?
A puff.
No, it's a puffling. Isn't that lovely?
Exactly, ah!
- That's like something out of Harry Potter.
- They loved that!
- Say it again, they loved it!
- Puffling.
How many people now have a new
nickname for their partner?
- Exactly. Puffling.
- "For their partner," did you say?
For a moment I thought you were
going to say their penis.
- For some people, that is their partner.
- Puffling.
Aren't they like those party hats
you can get with a bit of elastic?
Handy.
The one on the left, he looks
like "whoa"! He could easily...
Honestly, a toucan could do great
on that puffin island.
- Can you imagine?
- He'd score big-time.
- Oh, Nelly!
- Oh-ho-ho-ho, yeah!
- "Hey, ladies, yeah."
- Well, they spend the time...
"From the tropics."
"This doesn't fall off after."
"No, I'm keeping this. Yeah,
I've still got the Guinness money."
They are...
He'd be freezing cold,
though, wouldn't he, after a while?
- "Ahhh! How'd you do this up here?"
- It's true.
Would his beak gets smaller
in the winter?
Are these just Arctic toucans?
Right, no, they're not, actually,
they're a kind of auk, in fact.
Most of those, you'll find
in the north Atlantic.
These, indeed, John O'Groats would
be a very good place to see them.
- Not Auckland?
- Not Auckland, oddly enough.
That's spelt with a C,
a little redundant C, A-U-C-K.
- Oh, of course it is.
- Yeah. But out to sea,
they are pelagic and they
have little backward,
sort of like barbed rows of things,
to, basically, to store fish in their mouth
but they are lovely, lovely creatures.
Of course, the Catholic Church
counted them as fish,
so you could
eat them on Fridays. Good.
So, for evolutionary reasons,
puffins' beaks fall off after sex,
assuming you believe
in evolution, that is.
Like that, what was the name of the
naturalist on board the Beagle?
- Charles Darwin, you mean?
- Oh!
Oh, drat!
This is a whole new tactic he's doing!
He wasn't the naturalist on board
the Beagle. Oddly enough.
There was an official naturalist
on board the Beagle
and it wasn't Charles Darwin.
He was the...?
- I don't care any more!
- Oh, you're angry, I'm sorry.
- Phillip, I wish it hadn't happened to you.
- He was the cook.
He wasn't the cook, no.
He was the figurehead on the prow.
He wasn't that either!
He was, in fact, the geologist.
The geologist.
He took four times
as many notes on geology
than he did on zoology, oddly enough.
It was the doctor, whose name was McCormack,
who was the official naturalist,
and he really resented
Darwin being there.
It was for rather snobbish
British 19th century reasons
that FitzRoy, whose voyage it was,
wanted a gentleman companion
and Charles Darwin fitted the bill
rather more than the doctor.
Was there an advert
in The Telegraph?
"Wanted - puffling"?
Yes, "to accompany on long voyage."
The doctor resented Darwin because he
took his place at the captain's table,
and was treated as an equal. Fitzroy
was an independently rich gentleman,
as they called him then.
Darwin writes in his diary, in fact,
"My friend the doctor is an ass,
but we jog along very amicably.
"At present, he is
in great tribulation
whether his cabin should be
painted French grey or dead white."
"I hear little,
excepting this subject, from him."
So he was obviously a man to go,
"How shall I paint my cabin?"
That's all he ever talked about!
But Christmas Day in 1835,
there's the young Darwin before
he grew that massive beard,
they went to Tierra del Fuego,
the land of the fire, right
down below South America,
and there, Darwin was very
astonished to note what happened
when the local people had a famine.
What they turned to eat.
Can you imagine what it is that they
ate when times were difficult?
- Guinea pigs?
- Penguins?
No, guinea pigs are eaten generally
- around South America quite commonly.
- They're just a snack!
- One another?
- One another is right,
but a particular type of person was chosen.
- Elderly people.
- And the particular type of...?
- Elderly women?
- Elderly women is the answer.
The elderly women ran for the hills when
there was any kind of famine on
- because they were the ones...
- "Mmm-mm! That's some good old lady!"
"I've got the GILF cookbook!"
That's terrible!
That's just awful, Phillip Jupitus.
- Erm, but the reason being that...
- "Their arms are so tender!"
Well, they explained to the crew
of the Beagle that the reason was,
I'm afraid to say,
that the old women were the least
useful members of the tribe
because old men and children,
and others could otter hunt
but the old women couldn't hunt for otters.
- What about the knitting?!
- I'm sorry?
- What about the knitting and crochet?
- Well, exactly.
- Exactly, I know.
- And who is going to teach you rummy?
That's a very good point. Yes.
They can make dumplings. All these
things, only old ladies can do.
How does their society evolve
with nobody to say, "Oh, I know!"
"Oh, I know!"
The thing is, they'd still be able
to make dumplings.
"Hello!"
Completely devoid of that.
I know. They could make
dumplings out of them.
- Yes, exactly.
- That's true.
Very, very good point.
Anyway. There we are. That's one of
the exciting things that Charles Darwin,
who was not the naturalist
on the Beagle, discovered.
So we travel to a more exotic place
where they had jackal-headed gods.
Where would I be?
Egypt.
"What, Egypt, you mean?"
- You didn't quite say that, did you?
- Sorry, I didn't quite say...
- "What, Egypt, you mean?"
- Thank you!
Not Egypt, in fact.
Those have been known
as jackal-headed gods.
That particular God, extra points
if you know that.
- Anubis.
- Well done!
Anubis is the right answer.
Anubis who was, do you know
what the duty of Anubis was?
Something to do with death.
- Didn't he guide you into the spirit world?
- Yes. He conducted you into...
Brilliant! Another five points,
I think, there.
There's a rather wonderful technical name
for a god that guides
you into the underworld,
like Mercury, who guided you
as far as the River Styx,
and that's a psychopomp.
That's a good word!
- A psychopomp?
- A psychopomp.
Sounds like something you'd find in
a medical examination. Doesn't it?
"I'm sorry, Mrs. Wilson,
you've got psychopomps."
"It may be benign."
- It may be malignant."
- Yes, "We're going to have to operate."
A malignant psychopomp,
you wouldn't want.
Erm, but, in fact,
what has been discovered,
and this is, you won't find
this on Egyptological websites
where they will continue to call Anubis
and other Egyptian deities
jackal-headed,
but the animals that existed
at the time of ancient Egypt
were, we now know from DNA,
wolves, not jackals.
So, from a zoological point of view,
if not from an Egyptological
point of view,
they are in fact the wolf-headed,
not jackal-headed.
You heard it here first.
A very recent discovery.
So, that's exciting, isn't it?
But now we come to a very special
part of the programme here.
In this series,
we're occasionally featuring
theories which are interesting,
but which we don't necessarily
believe, 100%, at least.
We call them Dubious Theories.
'A Dubious Theory from Stephen Fry.'
Yeah, thank you. Yes.
The years between 614 and 911 AD
didn't exist.
The Holy Roman Emperor Otto III
got his chroniclers to fake
nearly 300 years of history,
so there was no such person
as Charlemagne,
and we're currently actually living
in the year 1715 AD.
This is called the
Phantom Time Hypothesis.
and decide for yourself.
That's like the earliest version of
Wikipedia, then, isn't it?
Like someone's just gone in and
changed the pages to make it...
Yeah. The theory is that this
emperor wanted to be on the throne
in the year 1000 AD,
but in fact it was only 700 AD,
so he basically got the chroniclers
to pretend these 300 years existed.
It was one Heribert Illig who
started this argument in 1990,
and his evidence is
the apparent stagnation
in the development of architecture,
ceramics and thought at this time.
It is, after all, the beginning
of the age known as The Dark Ages.
And there's very little
archaeological evidence
which can be reliably dated
to this period.
There's a very limited number of
written sources,
which could be
faked or just wrong.
I know it's just mad, but anyway,
there are a range of achievements
that are given to Charlemagne
that make you think he must
have been a mythical creature
rather than a real one.
His size, his warrior,
his scholarship,
his inventions,
his brilliance, and so on.
Anyway, it's worth looking up,
and you can decide for yourself
whether or not it is true.
It's an amazing thought
that this could be the year 1715.
I like it. I'm all for it.
In which case, we'll have a Jacobite
rebellion any minute.
There you go.
Now, name two interesting things
you can do with a coconut in Hawaii.
Do you get different coconuts
in Hawaii from other places?
It's a very touristy thing
which is frowned upon
by the officials who do,
nonetheless, do it.
Thousands and thousands of these
are done every year.
Some kind of... You throw them
from a moving vehicle?
You use it as a postcard.
Postcard.
Yeah, and you can see,
there they are.
You buy them like that, and they
will help you decorate it.
You can see the writing
on one of them there.
"Just nuts about...",
"See you some time..."
You put a stamp on. 10 dollars
it costs, something like that,
to send it to
the mainland of America.
It'd be annoying
to get one of those.
It really would, wouldn't it?
"Where's the coconut I sent you?
Where is it, then?"
"Oh, well, there was a fire."
It was a fire that I threw it into!
A bit of rationality,
and I threw it in a bin.
I had a friend who was nearly
killed by a coconut.
And, I've known him for 20 years,
and I was furious with him,
because he only told me
a couple of months ago,
and if I had nearly been
killed by a coconut,
- I would be...
- Everyone would know about it.
Every conversation. "Hello, I'm Cal.
I survived a coconut."
But he said he was just
standing on a beach,
and a coconut fell from a tree, and
he said it was such a good shot -
it hit him directly on the head -
such a good shot, he could hear other
coconuts high-fiving each other.
Other things you can do
with a coconut,
not necessarily in Hawaii...
- Get the coconut milk out.
- Well, yes, the water, the milk.
You can use it as
a rehydration drip, which they did
during World War II, both
the Japanese and Americans,
cos it's sterile, but
it's perfectly serviceable
for rehydration to use it as a drip.
Have a little coconut into you,
dripping into you.
The other thing to do,
if you have a tooth knocked out,
immersion in coconut water
will keep it viable
for reinsertion better than milk.
So there you are. Little things
you can do with coconuts.
Now, why did JFK keep
a coconut on his desk?
And there he did, you can see.
He did!
- No question about it.
- Was he missing a tooth?
No, that wasn't it.
Was it a recording device
of some sort?
- Some CIA nut?
- No, it isn't.
- No, it isn't.
- Postcard from a friend?
It's memento and not a postcard from a friend.
It's a very rather important memento.
Amongst JFK's achievements,
obviously he was a youngish and...
He was on a torpedo boat during the war.
A torpedo boat, PT109, yeah.
- Famously, he was heroic.
- Is it from then?
Yes. His torpedo boat
was sunk by the enemy,
and he found himself stranded
on the Solomon Islands,
completely isolated,
and there were local islanders
and he had no pen or paper,
so he carved onto a coconut,
which he gave to some
of the local native islanders,
and asked them to take it
to the capital, Rendova,
and he carved on it,
"Nauro Island. Commander.
Native knows position.
"He can pilot. 11 alive.
Need small boat. Kennedy."
The natives took it,
and eventually he was rescued.
"Hurry up and pick us up. We are
eating the old women here."
So it was a postcard?
It was indeed! You're kind of right.
He started the whole fashion, and of
course, they gave it back to him
as a memento and
he kept it on his desk.
Didn't bring him much luck, but...
- Bit dark!
- I'm sorry.
Sorry! That's awful.
I can remember it. You're too old.
I mean... Hang on.
I think I may actually
be getting dementia.
- Can you really remember it?
- Yes, I can.
"I was standing on
a grassy knoll with a rifle..."
And a voice told me...
Yeah. I was six years old, I think.
Something like that.
I can remember
Ronald Reagan being shot,
and my dad was in the kitchen,
and I said "Reagan's been shot."
And he went, "Oh."
That's a bit blase! And he thought
I meant Regan in The Sweeney.
Oh!
In 1981, they had this premiere of
a British movie, Chariots Of Fire.
And they asked our comedy troupe, me
and Hugh and Emma and Tony Slattery,
if we would perform a little cabaret
at the Dorchester Hotel after the premiere.
And I'd spoken to my mother.
I'd said to her,
"I'm very excited. We're going to
the Dorchester." She said,
"Do you know, the last time
I went to the Dorchester,
it all broke up very early because
it was the night Kennedy got shot."
In 1962. I said, "Oh, gosh, blimey."
Anyway, so I'm doing
the sketch with Emma, and suddenly
we notice the audience going...
and everyone's disappeared,
all these executives from Fox
and everything.
And Reagan had been shot.
So I rang my mother up and said,
"What happened?" She said,
"No member of this family is ever
allowed to go to the Dorchester again."
"It's not safe for Western democracy."
Which is why,
during W Bush's administration,
Stephen dined there on a daily basis!
- Anyway...
- "Waiter, any news?"
Dear me. Still.
Which travel organisation
includes a mandatory fee
for the repatriation of your corpse?
Er, the AA? Thomas Cook?
No, this is a very particular event
that you can subscribe to,
which, er, they sort out your travel
and your participation in this event,
but included in it is a fee for
the repatriation of your corpse.
It's not expected you'll die,
but there is a chance.
It's not running the bulls
at Pamplona, is it?
No, not the bulls at Pamplona.
I was going to say dining with you
at the Dorchester!
That might do it. Exactly!
It's not one of these Ironman races, is it?
It's that sort of thing. It's an
incredibly difficult marathon.
It's called the
Marathon des Sables,
which your French will tell you means...?
Marathon of the sable.
These little black furry
creatures... Yes.
- Sand is sable in French.
- Oh, sable. Sorry, sorry.
It's the Marathon of the Sands,
and it's an extraordinarily
enduring and gruelling event
in which you have to carry your own
food, although there are water stops,
and it's six-day... Each day you run a
whole marathon in the Sahara Desert.
- People are very weird, aren't they?
- I know!
I have a friend who does it and she's
done it twice, which is extraordinary.
Did she have to go back because
she had forgotten something?
- On two separate years!
- They'd better not tell Izzard about it.
"Really? Er... OK!"
"How many? How many
do they do? OK."
"Er, I'm going to do 120 Desert
marathons a week, for a year."
"Yes, true story."
Very good Eddie, I have to say!
I'm going to the pub
every night for 27 years.
- This...
- In tribute to Nelson Mandela.
Consider the case
of Mauro Prosperi,
who was a very experienced runner,
an Italian policeman, in fact,
who, in 1994, was doing
the Marathon des Sables
and there was a sandstorm, and
he disobeyed the official instructions
that if you are in a sandstorm, you
hunker down and wait till it passes.
I guess he wanted to win, or something,
so he carried on running and he got lost.
And this is a bad thing in the
Sahara, as I'm sure you can imagine.
By the second day he was drinking
his urine, naturally.
On the third he found
an abandoned shrine,
managed to kill a couple of bats,
whose blood he drank.
He then decided to kill himself
with a penknife,
but he was so
dehydrated, the blood didn't flow.
He was rather surprised
and encouraged
to wake up the next morning,
and so he ran for the next five
days, drinking urine and dew,
and eating the occasional lizard
that he found and managed
to kill on the way.
After nine days, he encountered some
nomads who got him back to safety.
He'd lost three stone and was
130 miles off course in Algeria.
So, and then he did it again for six years.
He went back and did it again.
Amazing.
I mean, bizarre, but there you go.
It's... Sheesh!
No-one gives the nomads much credit
in that story, do they?
"He was out there for nine days".
"Oh, my whole life!"
Yeah, exactly.
"He walked for six days."
"Oh, get over yourself!"
I was doing that when I was three.
"Drinking your own piss? Luxury."
But his description of it is really
a very good ode to life, isn't it?
He said, "I didn't panic,
I just despaired."
There you are.
Anyway, what did Napoleon say to Josephine
on his way back from a journey?
Ah, I sense a trap!
The only thing I know about Napoleon
to Josephine was he said,
what was it? Rob, what was it?
Phill?
Cal?
I'm, I'm going to do it!
"I'm coming back, don't wash!"
No, that is one of the two things
that people know that Napoleon said.
"Yeah, I shall be home soon, don't
wash." Cos he liked them dirty!
There is no evidence
of that whatsoever.
The earliest place this quotation
can be sourced is 1981.
I only know the other one.
The other one, which might be...?
What?
It's the one... Rob?
Phill, you know it.
- Cal, it's... Really?
- I'm still stuck on the no washing.
- "Pas ce soir, Josephine."
- Ah, got away with it!
Josephine, on the right, there,
she's got the same black eyes
that all the people in my pictures
have got on my computer
when I try and get rid
of the red eye.
- Yes, that's so true!
- They end up with massive black dots
and they look like something
from a zombie film.
Anyway, I'm sorry you fell into our trap,
but you managed to avoid the trap
of, "Not tonight, Josephine,"
which is the other thing
he was supposed to have said.
- That's the one!
- That appears in a play,
WG Willsplay called The Royal Divorce,
which didn't come out until 1891,
some 70 years after
the death of the Emperor.
- "An army marches on its stomach."
- Yes, well, indeed, yes.
Did he say that?
Unlikely to have said that to
Josephine, but he might have done.
I think he meant it more as a, sort
of, you know, point about logistics.
Maybe he discussed
all sorts of battle stuff?
He might have done.
He said, "I prefer a lucky general
to a skilled one," as well.
So, we don't know anything particular
that Josephine and Napoleon
might have said to each other,
but we do know one thing,
"Journeys end in lovers meeting,"
That's Shakespeare...
...and in fourth place.
In fourth place, we have,
I'm sorry to say
but he did fall into some of our
honeytraps rather cumbrously,
Phill Jupitus with minus 16!
And...
Our little kiwi fruit
is third with minus eight!
Cal Wilson!
But hold the front page...
Second, with minus three,
Rob Brydon!
With an astonishing plus four,
Alan Davies is the winner!
So, that's all from Rob, Phill,
Cal, Alan and me.
The last word on journeys comes
from Erma Bombeck, who said,
"Seize the moment. Remember
all those women on the Titanic
who waved away the dessert cart."
Have a safe trip. Good night.