QI (2003–…): Season 10, Episode 9 - Jeopardy - full transcript

This programme contains
some strong language.

APPLAUSE

Goo-oo-oo-oo-ood evening,
good evening,

good evening, good evening, good
evening, good evening, and welcome,

welcome to an episode of QI
that is all about jeopardy.

Joining me to fight crime,
fear and disorder tonight,

Wonder Woman, Julia Zemiro.

Yes.

A Super Girl, Sue Perkins.

A Boy Wonder, Ross Noble.

And our own Danger Mouse,
Alan Davies.



So, buzzers, please. Julia goes...

PSYCHO STABBING THEME

Oh, that's jeopardy.

And Sue goes...

JAWS THEME

Ooh.

SHE PRESSES IT AGAIN

Yeah. Definitely worth doing twice.
Ross goes...

DRAMATIC SURPRISE MUSIC

And Alan goes...

VEHICLE REVERSE WARNING

LAUGHTER

Well, they are quite dangerous,
vehicles, yeah, good choice.

Yes, absolutely. Well, we must be
vigilant, because danger stalks us



from the moment
we wake up to the moment we retire.

How far can you go on a cup of Joe?
Hmm?

- Cup of Joe being an Americanism for?
- Java coffee? - Coffee?

- Coffee, a cup of coffee, yeah.
- I thought it was an insane cat.

That you could actually
ride on the back of Joe.

- That is a caffeine-crazed cat, yes.
- That's a flat white too many

- for that little kitty.
- It is rather, isn't it?

How far you can actually
go in terms of energy?

- Is that what you...? - It's actually,
it's more literal than that.

If you're carrying a cup of coffee,

how far can you go before
you spill it?

This is all down to a science.
What is the science of

- the movement of liquids called?
Do you know? - Wobble-ology.

Fluid...

- dynamics. - Yes.

- It's a whole science.
- Of course. - Oh, fluid dynamics!

It's a whole science
and a most important one

and much has been discovered
as a result of fluid dynamics.

It is a very useful
and fruitful area of discovery.

One of the things they've
discovered

is that the average
human stepping pace

happens to cause an oscillation,

which means that between
seven and ten steps,

you are going to spill the coffee.

You will set up a series
of wave movements that means

the furthest you can go is
probably about ten steps

before you will definitely
have spilled some coffee.

This is the Mrs Overall effect.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

So, a long jumper could still
perform and drink before it spilt

because that's only three?

- That's true, but... - Whoa, whoa! Hey!

I think they're talking about
a normal walking pace rather

than a hop, skip and a job,
or a long run

but it is a peculiar fact
and it's verifiable by trial.

Some scientists need some serious,
proper work to be getting on with.

It was probably from not
doing proper work.

They probably went down and just
went, "Shall we get a coffee?"

And they went, "Oh, I'm meant to be
working. Right, measure me. Hey!"

It is the University of California
and Santa Barbara,

which is known as the
surfers' university for slackers

in California, though I'm sure

that's deeply unfair on a highly
respectable academic institution.

They suggest a flexible container
to act as

a sloshing absorber,

with a series of
annular ring baffles.

So they're suggesting the...

Annular ring baffles!

That's a character in The Hobbit,
surely. Mr Ring Baffles.

That sounds like space.

I'll tell you what, the amount of
times my annular has been baffled.

- Oh, dear. I'm always down the
hospital. - Baffle your ring, sir?

Yeah.

- It's a bit of a tautology, because
annular means ring-like anyway. - Yes.

- So it's a bit silly.
- Annular ring baffle?

You used to take the baffle
out of your exhaust pipe to make it

- louder when I was a teenager.
- Baffling is sound muffling,

but it's also absorbing waves and
that's essentially the same thing.

Because if you're muffling sound,
you're absorbing the waves.

So if you put a baffle in your anus,
that'll make you have quiet farts.

An arse silencer.

I suppose so. I suppose it would.

Until pressure builds up
to such a stage...

- And then you're potentially lethal.
- You could have someone's eye out

in the aisle at Waitrose,
which you wouldn't want.

- No. - But there have been more
obviously useful...

Baffle your ring, sir?

There have been more useful
applications for this

business of whole... this whole
resonance business of building

up frequencies that cause
oscillations that can be dangerous.

And have you seen Albert Bridge
in London?

There's a sign leading from Chelsea.

There it is. It's a famous sign,
it's a rather beautiful one,

"All troops must break step
when marching over this bridge."

- Why would that be?
- Something to do with an oscillation.

Yeah, exactly.
If you're marching in rhythm,

"Chunk, chunk, chunk,
chunk, chunk,"

you might set up a resonance that
would cause the bridge to collapse.

The marching creates an oscillation,
which creates an unstable structure,

which means the bridge can act like
one of those pirate ship rides

- when the local fair comes. - Yeah.

That's why Michael Flatley can
never get north of the Thames.

LAUGHTER

That's a true, it's a true reason.
He's furious.

He's always wanted
to go to Madame Tussauds.

Right now he's at the Elephant
and Castle going, "I can't believe
it, I want to go and see the Queen

"and I just can't get over there.

"It's a bleedin' nightmare..."

Shocking state of affairs.
And the fact that...

Talking of crossing the Thames,

there's another bridge where that
problem arose -

the Millennium bridge between
St Paul's and Tate Modern,

the wibbly-wobbly bridge
as it was known,

closed for two years and it cost
?5 million to put right,

the fact that it was
twisting in the wind.

That was mainly cos Russell Watson
was making videos on it.

Every time you see any
Russell Watson video,

it's him by the Thames, looking out
into the distance.

There's nothing wrong with that
bridge, it was him singing.

You've got Flatley up one end,
you've got Watson up the other -

it's a nightmare.

Good, well, I think we've...

LAUGHTER

Now, what's smaller than the moon
and keeps moving the sea around?

Smaller than the moon.

Is it a seal on caffeine?

No.

Is it one of our other moons?

No, it's not a moon of any kind,
it's not a celestial body.

- It's a marine creature.
- Like a big whale?

This better be the blue whale.

It so is not the blue whale.

Is it an animal that
lives in the sea

that moves the sea
with its mass?

Yes, ultimately, with its combined
mass, not its individual mass.

Is it plankton?
PSYCHO STABBING THEME

Many, many, many fish,
like a school of, a school of...

Fish.

No, it actually accounts for 40%
of the biomass of the ocean.

Algae.

- No. It's, amazingly, not.
- Cola tins. - But it's not a fish.

No. We call it a fish,
but it isn't a fish. No.

- Jellyfish. - Jellyfish is the right
answer. - Ah, genius right here.

It's quite extraordinary.

Now, it used to be believed
that a jellyfish propelled

itself by squirting water
out of the back, as it were,

by jet propulsion, but it's been
discovered by the scientists

at Caltech that it's actually
slightly more complex.

And what these jellyfish do is,

they essentially cause an enormous
amount of the water at the top,

which is oxygen rich,
to go down to the bottom,

and a lot of the water
at the bottom,

which is full of nutrients,
to go to the top.

And they keep the circulation
of the water extremely healthy.

And they might contribute
a trillion watts of energy,

which is easily as much
as wind or tidal pull.

And they also mix the cold with
the deep warm water at the surface.

I've got one I put in the bath

- so I don't have to do that.
- Yeah, that would do it.

Just chuck it in the end...

Yeah. My God!

"Up your end, get back up your end,
I don't want stinging."

So they're like
the mixer tap of the ocean.

It's a very good way of putting it.

But they can be malign as well -
it so happened in 1982

that a ship had in its
bilge water a particular one called

the Mnemiopsis leidyi, which is
a comb jelly, from North America,

and they arrived
and had no local predator.

In less then a decade,
the population had reached

a biomass of one billion tonnes
in the Black Sea,

which is where they were.

And one billion tonnes is ten
times the weight of all the fish

we catch every year
around the world.

And it destroyed everything.

Fortunately, then an another
carnivorous jellyfish arrived,

and it only eats the Mnemiopsis
and so it ate them all,

and once it had eaten them all,

the balance was restored
and fish returned.

Just one of these things turned up?

- No, a few in the bilge water
of a ship. - And it ate the lot.

No, enough to breed,
but my God did they breed.

Isn't that extraordinary? Those just
little jellyfish that look so kind

of light and nothingness are 40%
of the biomass of the ocean.

I think that's quite interesting.
How many jellyfish are there here?

- In that picture? - Yeah.

What, is it one with
a very flamboyant hat on?

KLAXON

- Oh! - Ah, dear.

Sorry, where are the words
"with a flamboyant hat on"?

It was the one that was enough.
But it is a flamboyant hat.

The flamboyant hat gives
it its name.

Portuguese Conquistadors
wore hats like that.

They didn't have many in Croydon.

They didn't, no. But...

Is it a Man O' War?

A Portuguese Man O' War is
what it is, but it's not...

I'll give you a clue
that it's not a jellyfish.

And it isn't even a single creature.

A Portuguese Man O' War is not one
animal. It's a colony of animals.

- Oh, God. - Aaah. - That operate together
as one, with incredible...

- Like the Borg.
- Yes, we are Borg, exactly.

We are Borg. We are jellyfish.

Why isn't it called
the Men O' War then?

I know, because originally people
didn't understand that

and so they called it
the Portuguese Man O' War,

it looked like a
Portuguese helmet on the top.

The inflatable bladder along the top
is one creature,

which provides buoyancy,
and works as a sail.

The tentacles are separate
and carry the coiled, spring-loaded

harpoons, which have
the most incredible speed.

They explode in 700 billionths
of a second,

which is the fastest known
animal mechanism on earth.

And very painful.

And there are other creatures
that make part of this colony.

Gastrozooids, which digest the food,
and gonozooids,

which are the gonads,
the sexual reproduction part of it.

- They're separate? - They are.

The stomach floats along and then
you've got the gonads behind.

- Yeah. - So the stomach's looking
for its bollocks, essentially.

It's called a Siphonophore,
that kind of a creature,

and because they drift passively,

they collect in vast herds
of thousands or so.

And that's why the appearance
of one is enough to

clear an Australian beach,
as you probably know,

because one tends to mean
there are going to be lots.

And the sting is very painful.

10,000 Australians a year,
on average,

receive a Portuguese Man O' War
sting. Not pleasant.

- Toughens you up though. - Exactly.

I mean, that's life, isn't it?

One day it'll toughen you up enough
to win a test match against us.

AUDIENCE GASPS AND APPLAUDS

- Sorry. Come on.
- Yeah, that's it.

How many times in history
have I been in a position

to be able to say that? Not many.

- Oh, I know, and I enjoyed it,
so much. - Exactly.

A Man O' War can hurt you,
but not kill you.

But what is Australia's deadliest
creature, in fact?

PSYCHO STABBING THEME

Rupert Murdoch.

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

- After Rupert Murdoch.
- So sorry about that.

And the fact he came here.
Yeah, sorry.

Yeah. Excluding a member of the
human race,

which I'm not sure whether that
does or not, but anyway.

Are we talking deadliest in terms of
its actual killing ability?

- Causes the most fatalities every
year. - I would say the kangaroo.

It's not the kangaroo.

Is it the spiders, the funnel web,
the red back?

KLAXON

It's not that. Spiders.

- It's going to be something on
the road. - It's the box jellyfish.

KLAXON
It's not, that is a nasty creature.

- But they stop your heart.
- Is it people? - Is it rabbits?

Is it rabbits
running in front of utes,

- or some sort of some sort of...
- You're right that most

of the deaths caused by animals in
Australia are caused on the road.

- The animal that is most
responsible... - Crocodile?

DRAMATICALLY: Is it man?

The most deadly of all
the creatures?

DRAMATIC SURPRISE MUSIC

- Snakes. - Shark. - No.

KLAXON

- I was not born there.
- Is it the domestic cat?

It's not the domestic cat,
though in the year under,

the sample year we're taking,

one human being in Australia
was killed by a cat that year.

But 128...

A cunning plan,
executed skilfully and quietly.

- Yeah. - It's the road,
the road's involved.

- Often the road is involved.
- Are the people in a car at the time?

- Sometimes yes, but...
- Oh, a kite, is it the...

But sometimes
they're on the animal involved.

- They're on the animal. - Horses?
- Oh, horse.

It's a horse, yes.

- A horse, more people are killed
by horses than... - Really?

- Oh, ho! - Oh, it's a very
angry horse there.

That is a very angry horse.

- He needs a dental hygiene
appointment ASAP. - It does.

Yeah, because they fall off
and break their neck or

indeed they cause car
crashes, and so on.

And horses kill three times more
than the ones you've mentioned.

Is it because people just don't ride
horses often then, all of a sudden,

they decide, "Oh, I did this once as
a kid," and they get on a horse?

I mean, they're incredible animals.
They're very powerful.

Incredibly powerful,

they're incredibly stupid
and incredibly nervous.

They shy, they rear,
they're frightened.

"Oh, what's that?"
It's a hedge.

"Oh!" It's a piece of paper!

When we lived in Australia,
my wife bought a horse

and she was desperate to try
and get me to ride, right.

She said, "I've bought a horse,
it's docile, you'll be fine."

- They never are. - Well, no, actually
the problem was it was too docile.

What happened was it ended up being
studied by Melbourne University

because, yeah, because it
was one of the few horses

that was...medically got narcolepsy.

So I swear to God, no...

It's one of the rare cases
of a narcoleptic horse.

So she buys this horse
and she says...

She couldn't work out why
every time,

when she was grooming it, it would
get heavier and it would just...

LAUGHTER

"Oh, oh, eh, woah!" Like that.

And so she couldn't groom it,
because it would fall on her.

So she says to me, "It's fine,
the horse is narcoleptic, get on it."

And so I got on it,
in full motorbike gear, because

I wasn't taking any chances, and
I sat on this horse and it started

to just, and you know normally
you kick a horse to make it go.

This one, you kicked it
and it would go, "What? Eh?"

Like that, to wake it up.

I had a friend, he never came to
visit us, unfortunately,

but I've a got a friend over here
who's got narcolepsy himself

and that would've been the funniest
thing. Can you imagine?

Cos he would've been on the back of
the horse and then, like,

if they got it in time - it would be
rubbish if he was awake

and the horse went - and he's like,
"Uh!" and the horse...

It's a waste of time.
Could you imagine

as a cowboy film, a narcoleptic...
Just the two of them.

It was a genuine narcoleptic horse.

And sometimes it would fall
asleep against the electric fence.

So it would go, it would
go like that, "Ha, hey, ha, ho, ho!"

It's like Jack Douglas
from the Carry On Films.

Yeah. It was amazing,
narcoleptic horse.

- Oh, well, that's my kind of horse,
frankly. - Yeah.

But it is the horse that turns out
to be the deadliest animal,

followed by the cow,

20 deaths are from cow,
those are mostly on the road again,

and then dog, 12 deaths from dogs.

Sharks killed 11 in this particular
period we're looking at,

though last year was a very bad year
for shark deaths, particularly in

Western Australia, I know in Perth.

Eight by snakes, which is amazing
because Australia has something like

80 or 90% of all the deadly snakes
on earth.

Crocodiles, alligators only four,
spiders only three, and one person

killed by cat.

- But what a cat. - Yes.

- Did you see that woman... She had her
bum bitten off by a shark... - Ow.

..and they did, you know how they do
face transplants?

- They did a bum-otomy? - They didn't
put a face on it.

They did that to Ann Widdecombe.

So she actually had a bum transplant.

Who donates their bum?!

"Not my organs, but if you could
just..."

I could do with one buttock, like
a kidney, you could do with one.

A bum, that's just a bit of flesh,
you could get that from anywhere.

I don't see that as amazing.

You could harvest that off somebody
while queuing at the supermarket.

But one buttock? That's how
you'd create the fart,

that would be... Where's the joy in
life of going, "Oh, here it comes"?

HE SIGHS

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

Someone must go and measure
our felicity by flatulence,

it has to be said.

I'm not sure that it's the vibrating
of the buttocks that

makes the noise.

You want to get it baffled.

Yeah. Indeed.

We discovered in series G that
spiders are not deadly as such,

but they are aggressive and they're
certainly cannibalistic.

If put 10,000 spiders in one room,

you'd eventually end up with one
enormously fat spider.

And the works of Shakespeare.

Yes! Anyway, horses kill
twice as many Australians

as any other creature.

How would you defend yourself
against this beast?

- Oi! - Oh. - What the hell is that? - Yeah.

- What is it, Stephen? I can't...
- It's a dinosaur. - Yeah.

It's a dinosaur called
Fruitadens haagororum.

- It's a weird-looking dinosaur.
- It is a weird-looking one.

It's a friendly-looking one,
strangely.

Well, if you ignore the massive
great spear its got for a tail.

- That is pretty big.
- It's got a lovely fringe though.

- It's got a mohawk.
- It's actually feathered, in fact.

- Oh, feathered fringe. - And it has
front fangs upwards, very unusual.

- Front fangs and a feathered fringe?
- Front fangs and a feathered fringe.

Are you Ronnie Barker?

The surprising thing about it,
I suppose, is that we have this

view of dinosaurs, which is
largely to do with their size.

The way to deal with that would be

just to squash it with your foot,
because it's tiny.

It's absolutely... It's basically
about four inches tall.

It's the smallest dinosaur
we know about.

Tiny-winy little dinosaur.
Absolutely, four inches, that's it.

- So was it a herbivore? An omnivore?
Aaah. - Aah.

Paris Hilton would have
that in a flash.

Yeah, exactly. It's about the size
of a Chihuahua. A tiny Chihuahua.

It ate plants and worms and
some people think frogs, possibly.

It lived in the late
Jurassic period,

150 million years ago,

dodging between the legs of all the
Allosauruses and Brachiosauruses.

It's called "Fruitadens"

because the first fossilised
remains of one were found in Fruita,

which you may remember is a town
in Colorado, which gave the world

Mike the Headless Chicken, who was a
hero of a QI episode some years ago.

Oh yes, Mike the Headless Chicken.

- Though it's a bit of a coincidence.
- He lived for years.

So it's probably a scavenger.

It was the dinosaur
equivalent of a rat, probably.

- Four inches, that thing's
four inches? - Four inches, yeah.

Ornithischia is the name of its
family, "bird-hipped" that means.

Its closest living relative
is a bird.

As you probably know,
a lot of people think that all
dinosaurs were ancestors of birds,

and it's certainly true that recent
experiments have been able to

trigger ancient dinosaur genes.

They've managed to produce chicken
embryo that grew

curved dinosaur fangs by triggering

dormant genes that are not usually
triggered in the birth of a chicken.

I bet Colonel Sanders
is shitting himself!

And then they grew one with a small
tail, not a feathery tail,

but a real tail.

And palaeontologist Jack Horner,
who wrote a book called

How To Build A Dinosaur, predicts
the imminent arrival of the world's

first chicken-osaurus, basically a
chicken with fangs, tails and arms.

- You're talking crazy stuff.
- I know it is crazy stuff, isn't it?

It would have scared
the living daylights...

They'll still make the KFC
fang-o-saurus burger.

Nothing will stop them.

But no dinosaur was
bigger than what?

What is the biggest living creature
that has ever existed on the planet?

The T-Rex?
Or that giant tall one there.

No, I said no dinosaur was ever
bigger than the biggest living...

- Oh, I see. - The whale.
- The blue whale,

it was your chance to be right
with the blue whale, Alan!

The blue whale is bigger
than any dinosaur. I know.

Ooh. Bummeroony. I'm so sorry.

But there still are
very small reptiles.

I've been to Madagascar and had one,
a brookesia chameleon,
a pygmy chameleon,

and I've had one right on my
finger and you can see that.

They are absolutely, they are
perfect, perfect chameleons.

Was it tasty?

Aaah.

Here's a question,
if you ate a chameleon...

It was just the most
beautiful thing.

Went for a night walk in the woods
and came across it.

Obviously incredibly easy to miss.

And they sit there
quite happily on your finger.

They are perfect chameleons,
their eyes do the thing of
swivelling in all directions.

Right. So, if you're threatened
by a Fruitadens dinosaur,

the best thing is probably to
squish it with your foot.

How did blind King John of Bohemia
find his way round the battlefield?

Like that.

- By saying, "Where are we?!"
- He must have had helpers.

- Somebody must have helped him.
- They did in the most particular way.

He became King of Bohemia in Poland
as a teenager and he loved war

and that was his undoing,
because he developed ophthalmia

and became blind but that didn't
stop him from wanting to fight.

He joined up with
Philip IV of France

and made the big mistake of taking
on Britain.

Oh, you don't do that. Oh, no.

We get the dusty old cane out
of the cupboard

and we give Johnny and the Frenchman
a damn good slapping.

- So this is the Hundred Years' War?
- It was indeed.

In 1346, 30,000 troops of Philip,
including blind John of Bohemia,

died at the battle
and 200 English died.

- That is embarrassing. - That is a bit
embarrassing.

It is a bit of a whitewash.

But many people regard that battle
as the end of chivalry

because we cheated by using longbows
and canon.

- You see! - The French were used to
hand-to-hand combat

- and they just couldn't cope.
- "I spit on your face!"

"Let's have a little wine
before we begin. Just a little."

We had a technological advantage.

You'd think after 20,000 the other
10,000 think, "You know, I'm going
to jack this in."

Actually, John of Bohemia's son
Charles did run away, very sensibly,

and had a very successful life.
He became a highly creditable
holy Roman emperor

and presided over a golden age of
Bohemia.

Who goes in and cleans up this mess?

Oh, there's a lot of scavenging, I'm
afraid, of the dead bodies.

It's a pretty nasty business those
battles,

but importantly John did fight.
What he would do was, as it were,

he would have a rider to the left of
him and rider to the right of him

and he would be lashed to them
and they pointed him

in the right direction and he would
just wield away.

The two of them surely would just
ride well away from the battle

saying, "You've got him, sir,
you've got him!

"There's another one. Well done,
sir!" And bash swords together.

Unfortunately...

- With sound effects. - The whistle of
arrows. - "That was a close one!

"Oh, I'm hit, sir! I'm hit!"

That's what you and I would do, but
unfortunately they were too stupid

and they did indeed dart
into the fray.

Is this what they wore?

One's got one of those perfume
bottles and a pineapple on his head.

The other one's wearing those things
that you squeeze an orange with.

Oh, yes! That's right. It is.

A lemon juicer kind of thing.

Did he ask for that costume or was
it cos he was blind and went,

- "Stick a pineapple on his head.
That'll be a laugh."? - No.

How would they choose who would
flank?

I guess he just gave orders,
"You will go one side of me
and you will go the other."

That'd be a great idea
for blind people nowadays
with the white stick.

Some people don't get out their way
and don't pay them respect.

I say we get rid of the white stick,
give them a sword,

down the street like that.

People in wheelchairs, the old
Boadicea things out the side.

- Or a light sabre. - Exactly.
Now we're talking.

Can you get those?
Are they real then?

Oh, yeah.

They are real. They
are absolutely real.

IMITATES MOVING LIGHT SABRE

If you strike me down now, I will
become more powerful than ever.

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

Alec Guinness spoke of a story when
he became Catholic

and when his son Matthew
was about eight,

he decided to give him a crucifix
for his birthday.

"You may not appreciate it now, but
one day you will find

"this extremely important."

And Matthew picked it up
and just went...

IMITATES AN AEROPLANE

Well, blind King John of Bohemia did
die in the Battle of Crecy,

but so brave was he considered by
the victor of Crecy,

the Black Prince,

that he took blind King John
of Bohemia's motto,

which was German for "I serve."
Do you know what that is?

- Where the bloody hell am I? - Ich...
Ich...

- Yes, the Prince of Wales. - Ich...
- Ich dien,

which is still the motto of the
Prince of Wales, "I serve".

Also, this is more controversial,
the three ostrich feathers that were

the symbol of Bohemian Prince

and it all comes from blind King
John of Bohemia.

Anyway, so that was the Battle of
Crecy - the end of the days

of chivalry, the beginning of
machine wars if you like,

- longbows and canons and so on.
- And cheating.

And cheating, if you want to put it
that way.

Speaking of riding into danger,

which fairground ride is most
dangerous - the Wall of Death,

the Wheel of Death, the Death Slide

or the Euthanasia Coaster?

Well, I'd go for the latter,
but that's just,

- I've been on a Wall of Death.
- Yes, what is a Wall of Death?

That's the bike where you go
up and there's a...

- What keeps you from
falling? - Sticky tape.

LAUGHTER

Audience? Centripetal,
centripetal force.

- Like a salad spinner. - Yeah, if you
like, exactly. - Was it fun?

It's a lot of fun,
my dad detached his retina.

- Woah, seriously? - Yeah.
- No! - Yeah, on the...

What, before he got on, he went,
"Right, here we go, hey!"

- He wanted to be like blind King
John of Bohemia. - Yes, and you stick.

My sister went on one
of those, right,

at the Cramlington Carnival
and as it was going around,

there was a kid next to her with a
goldfish in a bag and it exploded.

- Ah. - Oh, no!

But the trouble is,
he couldn't do anything about it,

she couldn't do anything about it,
so they're on there like that,

"Wey hey!" and it went,
"Boof!" like that.

And the two of them just sort of go,
"Woah!" like that.

As it slowed down, "Blurgh,"
and then, yeah.

Poor little goldfish.

The Wall of Death is also an
expression

at heavy metal concerts.

- Yes. - Just before some amazing song
that's going to go off,

all the fans move out into two
lines and leave a passageway

and before the most violent sort of
song reaches some crescendo,

- they all go, "Boom!"
- Absolutely right.

It's a kind of moshing wall,
exactly, in which they fight,

and there has been a death at one of
those in fact.

Well done for naming that.
Definite points there.

The Wall of Death was first
seen in Coney Island in 1915.

There have been a few reported
accidents but no fatalities,

- and we can add to that list,
two detached retinae. - Yeah.

There was one guy with a bear on.
Have you seen that?

A car on a Wall of Death and there's
a bear in the car.

- Poor bear. - Just putting it out
there. - Not nice!

The Wheel of Death is slightly
harder to describe,

it's a circus apparatus, a beam
attached to a tower.

The tower rotates about its centre
and there's a hoop

and the acrobat stands inside
and they're inside something

that's also rotating so it's a kind
of double rotation thing.

- With no safety cables? - No, it was
invented in 1933 as the space wheel

and there were fatalities and then
it was brought back in 1970

as the Wheel of Death and,
ironically, since then

there have been no deaths.
It's been safer.

- Have you seen the Globe of Death?
- Oh, no. What's that?

It's like a mesh ball, like that,

and one motorbike goes round,
like this,

- and the other one goes like that.
- Oh, my God!

- The timing has to be so good. - Yeah.

The Death Slide is really
better known as a zip wire.

But you are right that in theory
the most deadly of them

all is the Euthanasia Coaster.

It's a project of an art student
in London called

Julijonas Urbonas,
a Lithuanian PHD student.

It exists as a 1:500 scale model,
and you can see there,

the idea is that the ride
would last three minutes.

A two minute ascent to the very,
very top, it's 1,600 foot.

- Oh, God! - So very, very high.

You then have
a minute's 223mph plunge

down into those rolls like that,
during which you're

pulling ten G's, and that would kill
the rider through what's called

cerebral hypoxia, in other words,
deprivation of oxygen to the brain.

- Have Chessington World of Adventure
bought it? - No, they haven't.

He believes his design offers
a humane and meaningful death.

I don't know quite why
it's meaningful.

- Die like a screaming clown.
- That would be amazing,

- because you could actually
build a chapel at the end. - Yes.

- And the family could just sit there.
- Absolutely.

And then the best thing of all
is, after the funeral,

you get a picture of
your loved one, like that.

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

- On a handy key ring.
- Have it on mugs, anything you want.

Well, he believes that the ascent
offers the chance for reflection

and the riders can still pull out
once they've reached the top.

If not, death is painless, quick
and apparently euphoric.

Though how they know, I don't know.

There's one in Auckland,
one of those ball things that you

sit in and you have the bungee
straps and they fire you up the top.

- Oh, my goodness.
- But they make you wear like

one of those surgical mask things.

And I said, "Why are they
wearing the surgical masks?"

And apparently, because it's
right next to an office building,

people are trying to work
and you hear, "Arrrgh!"

Like this. And it was putting them
off. So now it's kind of, "Wargh."

So some bloke's going, "Well,
our predicted sales over the next..."

"Waaargh!"

Vomit on the windows.

I went to Alton Towers once
and they had this ride

where you just go along and then you
get to the edge of a vertical drop

and it goes like that and everyone
goes, "Aargh!"

And then it just drops you straight
down a hole in the ground.

- Good God! - And if you sit in the
cafe next to it,

you can see it out the window. So
while you're having your sandwiches,

about every 60 seconds, "Aargh!"

LAUGHTER
"Aargh!"

- All day long. - Why do people...
I couldn't bear it.

I'm always fascinated why people
love that feeling.

I mean, roller coasters
when I was a kid,

it was like, "Argh," and that was
it. But now they're so extreme.

- Yeah. They really are. - I don't get
the kind of exhilaration of it.

No. I've bungee jumped and that was
so exciting,

I immediately had to do it again,
I absolutely loved it.

What about the guy
who made his own bungee jump?

That was stupid.

- I think he won a Darwin Award.
- Oh, dear.

He made his own bungee jump
with a rope.

LAUGHTER

So, just hung himself.

Well, no, it took his foot off.

AUDIENCE GASPS

When the rope went taut,
his foot came off.

- That's just horrific. - That's what
the Darwin Awards are all about.

Yeah, it certainly is.

What's the biggest dead body
in the world?

'Vehicle reversing.'

Blue whale.

KLAXON

- I'll give you a hint, it's a body of
water. - The Dead Sea.

KLAXON

- No, it isn't the Dead Sea. - The Black
Sea cos of the jellyfish. - Yes!

Not because of the jellyfish.
They certainly didn't help,

but the Black Sea only the very top
has any living things growing.

90% of it is absolutely dead

and it is much, much, much, much,
much, much bigger

than the Dead Sea, and much, much
deader,

90% as I say
is just simply nothing.

It's been dead for millennia so
it's not our fault for once.

It's a very steep basin into which
the upper and lower layers don't mix

and the bacteria use up all the
oxygen and you take the oxygen
out of a sulphate,

you're left with hydrogen sulphide,
which is the rotten eggs' smell

the Black Sea is the largest
reservoir of hydrogen sulphide

on the planet and it's deadly.

Is there any use for that? Someone
can devise a use for that,

some scientist who isn't measuring
how long it takes to spill

his coffee on the way back
from the machine.

They have already devised a use
for it

- and that is as a poison to kill
people. - Great(!)

If the euthanasia rollercoaster
doesn't takeoff.

It's a hell of a Butlins.

In Japan, in particular, it's very,
very popular

because you can use various
household cleaners and pesticides

to make it and 2,000
detergent suicides

as they're called have been recorded
in Japan since 2005.

A single breath is enough to
kill a human being.

It's almost as deadly
as hydrogen cyanide.

It's a lot, isn't it? I know,
it's pretty disturbing.

One of the dangers is that
after the first sniff

it does not smell anything,
it kills the olfactory system

and so 80% of people who turn up at
the scene

of a detergent suicide
are themselves poisoned
by the gas remaining

because they can't smell it.
So it's really most unfortunate.

So there's not much cheerful about
that, I have to say,

I'm sorry about that.
So we can cheer ourselves up.

What isn't a blue whale,

but floats around in the sea
and weighs as much as a blue whale?

Is it an elephant on holiday?

An elephant doesn't weigh as much
as a blue whale.

- No, it's really... - A ship?

- No. - Submarine.

No, it's something that
the blue whale consumes.

- A massive lilo. - Plankton.

The blue whale can
consume its own weight in?

- Plankton. - Well, actually in water.
It dives all the way down

and then dives up again with
its mouth open

and it swells, and swells,
and swells.

And it literally can
take on 90 tonnes of water.

Quite a staggering sum.

Got to love a blue whale.

- That's right, we do love them.
- That's one thirsty mother.

They can actually take in
something their size.

Not to swallow, as you know,
because,

- as we've discussed...
- The grapefruit issue.

A grapefruit is the biggest thing
they can get down their gullet.

But they get this gigantic amount of
water inside them. Really amazing.

And they go really deep
and no one's been able to go

deep enough to find out what
they do until very recently.

- Just gossiping. - Just gossiping.
That's right.

"Ooh, kaa." "Really?"

Having quizzes in which people say,
"Is the answer Alan Davies?"

Yeah.

The water in a blue whale's mouth
weighs as much as a blue whale does.

Why shouldn't you mess with
the maxillofacial death pyramid?

Is it cos it's got
the word "death" in it?

That is a hint,
the maxillofacial death pyramid.

- Call it the fun pyramid.
- Maxillofacial means?

Maxillofacial is who you go to see
when you get a broken cheekbone.

- Yeah, exactly. it is the maxillary
area, the jaw. - It's the top jaw.

But it's, the maxillary, the pyramid
is actually sort of there,

from the bridge of the nose
down through...

It's like a facial
Bermuda Triangle.

There it is, yeah, yeah.

And it's basically about
blood flow from the brain down,

if you've got little infections
and things, it goes down through

there and then gets sorted out by
the immune system.

What can happen if you pick
your nose and your spots

and things, is you can get
bacteria in it that sort of block it

and force it all the way
back up into the brain.

Meningitis is an example of that,
and syphilis indeed is.

- From picking your nose?!
- Not from picking your nose...

- Good God!!
- Yeah, that's how you get syphilis.

It does, it slightly depends on what
you're picking it with!

LAUGHTER

That's how you explain it
to the wife.

"No, I was just picking my nose,
love. Must have spread."

There is actually a DIY hard-core
punk band from Sheffield

- called the Maxillofacial Death
Pyramid. - Really?

- I like the sound of that. - It's quite
a mouthful when asking for a ticket,

but they're probably excellent and,
if you're watching, you know,

I'm coming to your next concert.
I absolutely guarantee it.

The internationally recognised symbol
for death meal bands.

- Yeah. - So you've got to be a little
bit careful about picking your nose,

pleasurable an activity as it is.

You can die from it!

Yeah. That's something
to tell the children.

Well, there you are.
Now, making hydrogen with nails

and drain cleaner would be a very
jolly jape indeed, don't you think?

- Yes, I think so. - So, let's try it.

To prove that it's hydrogen,
I'm going to have to set fire it.

And I'm going to set fire
to it on my own hand,

first of all I'm going to have

a basin of water,
I'm going to put here,

to dip my hand in, to wet it so
I don't burn myself too badly.

And then I have my
really...

Oh, hello.

Made a mistake, sorry,
man in my ear furious with me.

"What are you fucking doing?!
Put the water down!

"Do this properly or you will die,
do you understand?!"

- No...
- "Start again, for fuck's sake!"

LAUGHTER

He was much gentler, very sweet.
So, anyway.

I've been told to tell you
not to try this at home.

- Try it in someone else's home.
- Yeah.

The fire exits are there, and there.

What I've got here is
I've got some ordinary

green-coloured washing-up liquid.

We're not allowed to mention
it's Fairy. Its name.

And I've got a little chemical lab,
I don't know what you call

- this little... - Flask.
- Flask, I think is the word.

Oh, this is like going on a picnic
with Heston Blumenthal.

LAUGHTER
It's got some nails in it
and I'm going to add a few more,

a little bit of zinc.

And I've got here, this is
the hydrochloric acid, very strong.

When are you going to
put on the safety goggles, Stephen?

Now, cos I'm about to open
the bottle of acid.

"Put the fucking safety goggles on!"

Not only that, but I've also got,
I've also got a...

- I've also got a mask.
Here we go. - What about us?!

Sorry, can I just ask,
YOU'RE putting on safety goggles?

- Yeah!
- YOU'RE putting on a mask.

What's the story here?

Yeah, you're fine,
you're expendable.

I may have the mask upside down.

It does tell you to put the mask on
your children

before putting it on yourself,
as on an aeroplane.

"Got the fucking mask upside down!"

Right, OK. I've got the goggles,
I've got this.

Now what I'm going to do, all right,
is I'm going to pour this acid.

Jesus, onto some nails?!

- Into the nails, that's right. - Why?

The zinc and the
hydrochloric acid will react.

- Has he been drinking?
- Yeah. He's been drinking that.

Oh, there we go. And that's,
that's going to produce quite a lot.

- It's going towards me!
- It's blowing our way!

I now have to put this,
I have to put this cork in it.

- Geez! - If I put the cork in it
tight enough,

it will come out of here, and I put
this in here and it will bubble up.

Right, that's important.

- If you say so. - The bubbles
are made of hydrogen.

And the only way to prove it
is to grasp the bubbles,

I'm going to wet my hand now, to be
safer. And grasp these bubbles.

What the hell is that?
It looks like a sex cactus.

And I'm going to go...

Oh, God!

APPLAUSE AND CHEERING

Really exciting.
Really exciting.

We can try that again.

Oh, yeah.

- Let's get even more bubbles.
- That is great.

Stephen's goggles are
so steamed up, he's completely blind!

- Even more bubbles here. Here we go.
- Blind King John of Bohemia.

- Oh, come on, oh, work, lighter.
- Anyone got a light?

Oh the lighter's stopped working.
APPLAUSE

Let's try it again, one more.

Wet your hand again!
You didn't wet it!

- You didn't wet the hand!
- Come on. Bloody lighter!

- Expelliarmus! - Oh.
Oh there we go.

- We'll take that off now.
- Wow!

- I've made hydrogen,
ladies and gentlemen. - Wow.

APPLAUSE

- Wow. - How very exciting.
- Pretty exciting. Let's cover that.

"Put the lid on the acid!"

There we are. We can let all
the hydrogen disappear.

And our wonderful science elf said,
he said, he's so scientific,

he said, "And don't touch that
because it's exothermic."

- It just means it's hot.
- Hot, it's hot.

- Had to say "exothermic." - That's the
smell, that's quite the...

- Can you smell? - Pretty whiffy.
- Yes. - Pretty eggy whiffy.

Well, a bit of hydrogen sulphide
probably in there,

that might kill you, of course.
But let's hope not.

Let's hope at least you survive
until we get to the scores.

Well, I have to say,
sadly, in last place...

Is it that bad?

It's down wind.

Well, especially now I know it's
potentially fatal. Yes, it is!

No, it's not hydrogen sulphide.
It's just hydrogen.

So, I'm afraid in last place, but
it's a very creditable last place,

and only just, with minus 16,
is Julia Zemiro. Oh!

APPLAUSE
Thank you.

And through some extraordinary good
fortune, avoiding final place,

third place with minus 14,
Alan Davies.

- Thank you very much.
- Highly respectable.

APPLAUSE AND CHEERING

And, my goodness,
it's tight at the top,

with minus seven,
in second place, Ross Noble.

APPLAUSE

So, that can only mean
that our winner,

with a magnificent minus six,
is Sue Perkins.

APPLAUSE AND CHEERING

So, it's goodnight
from Sue, Ross, Julia, Alan and me.

Now, you come back soon now,
you hear?

Do that thing and be lovely
to each other. Goodnight.