QI (2003–…): Season 11, Episode 13 - Kitchen Sink - full transcript
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Goo-oo-od evening, good evening,
good evening, good evening,
good evening, good evening,
and welcome to QI,
where tonight we're looking
at everything in the kitchen
but the sink.
Joining me at the breakfast bar,
cooking with gas, Jason Manford.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Sharp as a knife, Victoria Wood.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Pointless as a spoon, Richard Osman.
Hiya.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
And I got this fork off Alan Davies.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Let's hear your pingers.
Jason goes...
BEEP-BEEP-BEEP
And Victoria goes...
TICK-TICK-TICK DING!
Richard goes...
DRING!
And Alan goes...
EXPLOSION AND ALARM
We're having
a kitchen supper tonight.
Which of the following do you fancy?
Take me through these...
lovely dishes.
They're all real.
Is the buttocktongue
Marks & Spencer's buttocktongue?
It's YOUR buttocktongue.
- Oh, right. - Yes, exactly.
Work on tongue.
Well, I'll have to be careful
when I say that...
if you just take the last
three letters off "tongue", you get?
Oh, so like, like a biltong?
Biltong is right.
It's a hindquarters tongue, which
sounds weird, but that's what it is.
- Biltong, have you ever had biltong?
- No, I'm a vegetarian. - Ah.
Meet Alan.
He's a vegetarian, too.
- Hold on, is biltong
not vegetarian? - No!
It's usually sold as
ostrich biltong or dik-dik biltong
or some other animal, but they found
in 2013, a very recent study,
that two-thirds
was incorrectly labelled.
So horse biltong turned out
to be biltong, can you believe?
Disgusting! A revolting idea!
I think, if you're eating that,
I don't think you have to worry
about what animal it's come from.
So what is it? The bottom?
It's dried...
Well, it's the dried hindquarters.
It's called "tongue", I think,
because it's the shape of a tongue
in the way that it's dried,
rather than it comes from a tongue.
"Biltong" - buttock.
So, does it have the actual...?
The hindquarters,
which are buttocks on an animal.
But does it have the arsehole in it?
- Not the...
- LAUGHTER
- I think not.
- That's in hot dogs, I think.
- Has it got a tube?
- Yeah, that's in...
- They save that for
hot dogs and pork pies. - Yeah.
So you can have beef, horse, impala,
wildebeest, eland, giraffe
and kangaroo biltong.
Apparently. Very nice.
So, that's a good one.
You've started.
- Any other thoughts?
- Kleftiko, that's...
That's on a menu
in a Greek restaurant, isn't it?
Yes, kleftiko, exactly, does exist.
And it was originally
called "kleptiko",
which might give you a hint.
Klept.
- Kleptomaniac? It's all stolen.
- Kleptomania, kleptos is a thief.
And it was anti-Ottoman empire
bandits who lived in the hills,
and they made up this dish,
so it was named after them,
it's a thieves' dish.
It's quite elaborate for
a bandit person to be doing.
They were... You should see their
souffles. They were extraordinary.
Actually, souffles
brings us on to nun's farts.
Well, it's... When you pop one...
Why specifically
a nun's, though? I mean...
Cos nun's farts
smell like souffle. Keep up!
He's just given you that,
- when he gives you one, for goodness'
sake, grab it. - Yes, take notice.
A lot of French dishes have -
or, indeed, European dishes -
have their... Pumpernickel is a
devil's fart, "pumpen", pump, fart,
"nickel", Old Nick. And that's
a bread, so they have rude names.
And there's a...
Isn't there a cheese which is, er,
angel's tits or something like that?
- You can tell which ones are farting
from their pained expressions. - Yeah.
That's like the cast
of Dad's Army on a...
fancy-dress party. I think out of
them all there, I'd go, I'd say...
- Which one? - She's definitely...
She's definitely farted,
and the rest don't know yet.
Look at the smile.
Look at the smile on her face.
That's a massive board and they
all just put their faces through.
Like on a pier. Yeah.
Nun's farts are little balls of
pastry deep-fried, and they puff up.
They're also called
whore's farts or Spanish farts,
in French, "pets-de-nonne".
"Pets" is "fart" in French.
These days, they've disappointingly
been renamed as nun's puffs.
Or possibly poofs, I don't know how
you would say it, it's hard to tell.
- Bishops, often, they're called that.
- Bishops, yes, exactly.
Well, pocket soup. How could you
put soup in your pocket?
- It's crazy, right? - It is! It's
insane. There must be a way. - Yeah.
This actually is soup
that has been...
- Solidified? - Yes. Reduced.
ALAN: Reduced.
- Into a sort of... Basically an early
version of a stock cube. - Oh, right.
And then you reconstituted them
by adding boiling water,
as you do with
your classic stock cube.
- Why would you put it
in your pocket? - To travel to work.
Keep your hands free.
But you know when you leave,
like, a fiver in your pocket
when you put it in the wash -
that would be awful
if you left some pocket soup
in your jeans.
Oh!
- Can you imagine?
- The whole wash would come back
as consomme of something.
Most unfortunate.
Treacle. Treacle.
The anti-venereal treacle?
Wouldn't want to lick it off.
You're right.
It sold much better than
pro-venereal treacle, didn't it?
- That didn't... - Yes!
- That didn't sell. - It really didn't.
- Yeah, they really...
- The two great treacles. - Yeah.
The word treacle has
had an interesting history.
It now means, of course...
Yeah, it used to mean
any sort of medicine, didn't it?
Or any sort of...
Even without a computer
in front of you, you're good.
That is very... Or have you
got one hidden under there?
No, I'm very impressed,
you're absolutely right.
A treacle was generally
any kind of specific
- against diseases and things.
- Or a term of endearment, weirdly.
"Treacle," yes, in EastEnders
and that sort of thing, isn't it?
"All right, Treacle?"
"All right, anti-venereal treacle?"
That's what they call
some of those characters.
- Auntie Venereal Treacle. - Yes.
"It's your Auntie Venereal,
Treacle."
"You come in for your tea,
Chlamydia."
Where was it...? There was...
- In America, Verruca's
quite a popular name. - Really?!
People copy it from...
BOTH: ..Charlie And
The Chocolate Factory.
They don't know... They don't call
verrucas "verrucas" in America.
- So they don't know it's actually...?
- They don't know it's an awful thing.
- Verruca Salt. - Yeah.
- Brilliant. I'm so pleased.
- So if they don't call chlamydia
"chlamydia"... - Yes...
..all you need to do is put it in
a popular children's book as a name.
- Brilliant. - Before you know it...
It would be one of
the most popular names.
- ..Barack Obama will have a daughter
called Chlamydia. - Called Chlamydia!
Chlamydia Obama.
Which brings us to Dog and Maggot.
- Does it?
- Well, it doesn't necessarily.
It sounds like rhyming slang for...
- someone of my persuasion. - Taggart.
Oh...
- I was going to go with
the ITV show Taggart. - Oh, right.
"There's been a murder,
Dog and Maggot."
- A Scotsman in the mist.
See what I did there? - Yeah.
If I was to say "hard tack" to you,
does that mean anything?
Ship's biscuits?
Very good. Ship's biscuits
were known as hard tack.
And there's a famous scene
in the Battleship Potemkin,
do you remember?
If you've ever seen it.
- No, I'm a vegetarian.
- The great Eisenstein movie...
LAUGHTER
That's going to be an answer
to a lot of questions, isn't it?
"No, I'm a vegetarian."
The Potemkin was a ship
in which there was a mutiny,
and there's a scene of them
cracking open a ship's biscuit
- and the maggots...
It's really horrible. - Eurgh.
And this is a British biscuit
called "Dog" because it was
the consistency of a dog biscuit
and "Maggot" cos it had
maggots in it, but it was...
In the First World War,
it was part of the rations.
God. I think I'd rather
eat the cutlery.
- I think you're right.
- If that choice came up.
"I'll just have a chew on this knife,
don't worry about it."
You know what I think
I'd like with a fork?
Rather than having
all the prongs in a line,
why can't they be in
a kind of a square shape,
so you've got a kind of...
- Do you know, hold that thought.
- That's a good idea.
- Because we might be coming on
to that later in the exam. - Really?
- Wow. - Yes.
It might come up.
"Sir said it wouldn't come up this
term, but it might have come up."
- I'll revise that. - Yeah. OK.
So that's your Dog and Maggot.
We're left with Kunga cake.
- Sounds African. - Very unlikely...
- It IS African, but you are very
unlikely to get this. - Is it a cake?
- Well... - Is it going to be dung?
- It's not dung, no.
- It sounded like dung. - It's animals,
but tiny, weeny animals.
Termites.
- Even smaller, actually. - Ants.
- Midges. - Oh, midges? - Midges.
They come out from the river
in their mating swarms
in such numbers that they gather
them and press them into a cake.
- How do they gather them?
- Well, I guess they...
Sort of with a net
or something like that.
Good. It's about time they got their
just desserts, those little sods.
They're always talking, these days,
about using all kinds
of insect and things
for the future of the human race,
for protein, insects...
- No? - No. - Do you remember,
I had an ant on this show once?
I do remember you having an ant.
I got a bit of
its sort of carapace and...
- HE CHOKES
- It was just...
For the whole show, I had it
caught in the back of my throat.
- It was disgusting.
- I was like that with Dec.
LAUGHTER
Naughty. That's very naughty indeed.
Anyway, there you are.
Here's some unusual cutlery.
I'd like you to tell me what kind
of thing you could eat with them.
You've all got some,
but I'll start off with
the one that you mentioned there.
- You said with tines, that were...
- You just invented that, a minute ago.
There you are. Isn't it incredible?
- You mentioned something like it.
- That's weird.
Isn't it? It's usage
is very, very specific.
You don't actually
handle it yourself,
cos you're so high-born that
somebody else feeds you using that.
With what on it, though?
- Some sort of fruit? - No.
Is it a testicle?
It might include a testicle.
- Ooh. - Is it a scrotum?
It might include a scrotum.
What else really includes
a testicle, Stephen?
The whole schmear.
A-A whole mammal.
Yes, a whole mammal. Let's just
imagine I'm talking to one.
Oh, God. A comedian?
No, a cannibal.
That's the point - a human being.
- Oh, human. - Oh...
Yours is a reproduction, sold
as a souvenir item on the island of?
- Or islands of? - Wight.
Man.
LAUGHTER
More accurate if you'd said the
Isle of Man, I would have thought.
- Oh, yeah. - Think of the...
A cannibal island,
- it was part of the British Empire.
- Oh, Guernsey.
- Fiji. - Fiji. - Fiji.
- Oh, I might have known.
Yeah, you might have done.
Fiji is the answer.
These are Fijian human forks.
- Two cannibals are
eating someone... - Yes?
..and one says, "You start at
the toes, I'll start at the head."
He says, "All right."
Halfway through he says,
"You all right?"
He says, "Yeah, I'm having a ball."
He says, "You're going too fast!"
- There you go. - Excellent work.
- There you go. - Excellent work.
- A cannibal joke for you.
All right, Alan, can you look
- and see what other items of cutlery
you might have? - I've got this one.
That, you might recognise.
Once again, it's clearly
for testicles.
If you did eat meat, it's quite
common. Reasonably common.
- No. For fish? - Anyone know?
It looks like it's for
force-feeding a suffragette.
The foreskin of a suffragette?
No! For FORCE-FEEDING!
LAUGHTER
I'm so sorry!
I'm so sorry! For force-feeding
Emily Davison, as it were.
That's what Batman used to say,
"Within a foreskin
of a suffragette!"
"Foreskin of a suffragette, Batman!"
Or for clenching a nose.
I'm sure the audience knows.
Who'd like to shout out?
AUDIENCE: Snails!
- They all know that's for l'escargot,
it is for snails. - Oh, is it?
You clench the shell
and then you use a little
winkling fork to get the flesh out.
So there you are.
And what have you got, Victoria?
- I've got that. - Now that is
interesting. You've also got a bowl.
I'm sure there's, like, one of those
in my mum's drawer, one of them.
- I've seen that. That's the only one
I've seen. - Your mum's drawers!
On my mum's drawers! Is it a buffet
spoon? Does it rest on a...?
It rests on the side of the bowl.
The most useful thing...
- Brilliant. - Oh, that's clever.
Usually, things for
this substance are wooden
with a sort of dome on the end
and grooves around them.
- Honey? - Honey.
But this is even better for honey
cos you pour the honey
into the bowl,
keeping it on top of that other bowl
and where do you put the spoon
without stickiness?
- Yeah. - You just simply
put it back on.
I think other people
have got more cutlery than me.
- This, which is a strange...
- Very hard. If you guess that...
- A spoon with holes in it.
- I'll give you 100 points
if you guess what
that is specifically for.
Oh, it's for Coco Pops so
you get the milk at the bottom...
- that's turned chocolaty.
- It would work as that. - It would.
It's actually very specifically
for terrapins and turtles.
I don't usually eat them.
- You're a vegetarian. I know.
- Exactly. Oh, I see.
- The flesh is delicious,
apparently. - Oh, OK.
- The giant turtle, famously...
- Aren't they protected, Stephen?
You're not supposed to
be chomping away on them.
Oh, gosh, no, absolutely not.
No, the Ridleys and...
- Well, why are you saying we should
kill them and eat them? - No!
Why are you giving me cutlery
to damage terrapins?
- You said that. - We used to.
- Weird thing to say on television,
- that we should eat turtles.
- I take it back.
- We shouldn't be killing them.
- But they're delicious.
There is a special
piece of cutlery for them.
- And apparently they're delicious.
- We have some cutlery for them,
- and they're delicious. - Just in case.
And, Jason, what have you got?
Ahem...
Ooh. Now this is interesting.
Don't look at your reflection in it,
that'll only upset you.
I was seeing
if that's what was unusual.
- No. - Oh, my God, it's Tom Selleck.
That's weird, isn't it?
Of all the people.
Have a grip and a twist.
- OK. Oh! - Ah.
It turns. It turns like that.
- Yeah. - Is it supposed to...?
- All the way.
Oh, all the way, OK.
Oh, and then it just becomes, like...
- It's broken. - It's...
- It's a breakable spoon! - Brilliant.
No, but look in the spoon end.
The ladle end.
- It's hollow. - Yeah. Oh, inside there.
So you could fill it with something.
- A message. Hot water? - Hot water.
Oh, I was going to say turtle blood.
- Oh, I see. - You fill it with hot water
and it's a gravy spoon
that keeps the gravy nice and warm
to stop the fat congealing.
- Oh, I like that.
- Richard? - Great idea.
Are we going to have anything
that you can eat testicles with?
- They may be coming up.
- Eat them with that.
- Here we go, here we go.
- Yes, now what's that?
- Are they holes, in the end? - Ah!
- Yeah, it's got all perforations.
- You see, you've learnt
from your thing. - Yes.
There are perforations
in the ladle itself
and the spoon part itself, the bowl.
What about the other end?
- It's got a little hole in it.
- Ah. So what could you do?
- Well... - You could hang it...
- I'm going to insert it into the...
- Cheese. - ..backside of a turtle.
Just there. Literally just there.
And then, I think,
you tell me if I'm wrong,
you squeeze, is that right?
You squeeze down on the shell.
And out it comes, and then you've
essentially got yourself a smoothie
which comes out of the end.
Is it a turtle-blood smoothie maker?
It's so close.
If I said the word "mate" to you,
would that mean anything?
Have you ever travelled to an area
where you drink mate tea?
- Audience?
- AUDIENCE MEMBER: Argentina.
- Argentina and Peru,
and various other places. - Of course.
- It's called mate. - There we go.
We've got that sorted.
So, basically,
it does a marvellous job.
It stirs the leaves
and allows you to drink the tea all
in one without needing a strainer.
Oh, it's a straw.
- It's a straw, you suck it up.
- Ah, that's so good.
It's an Argentinian mate spoon.
Now, what attachment
would you expect to find
on a Swiss student knife?
- A Pot Noodle opener?
- That's very good.
How many attachments
you think...? How many...?
- 12. - 12. - 40?
- One. - Oh!
You win. It's two. Very good.
It only two, just two blades
on a student knife. There is one.
I suppose he doesn't
need a corkscrew, does he?
He doesn't really
need a corkscrew, no. No.
If it was a British child, yes.
And he'd need a little special
shot glass for a Jagerbomb.
The whole works, basically,
for your average British child.
Except QI viewers.
Pocket knives were originally
imported from Germany in the 1890s
but then a Swiss gentleman
called Karl Elsener
won the contract
to make them locally.
And every member of the Swiss Army
had to get one
and considering that was all men -
were members of the Swiss Army -
that was a very valuable contract
indeed, as you can imagine.
Did people actually
get killed by them?
Or were they just
for cutting ropes and wood?
I think they were
just for general use.
I don't think they were
for hand-to-hand combat.
Yeah, you wouldn't want that.
"Just wait there a sec,
got to get the right one!
"Argh! Corkscrew!
For God's sake! Wait there!"
It wasn't red, the original.
As you can see, it was black
with a wooden handle.
The screwdriver was so that soldiers
could actually dismantle their guns.
That's what that was for.
Then there was the schoolboy knife
and the farmer's knife.
But his big break came in 1897
with the officer's knife.
And that's really where we begin
to go into Swiss Army territory.
Now you're talking.
Now, you can see -
there's your classic formation.
They make up to 65 million a year.
It's huge. You see some shops
which just have a window
full of nothing else, don't you?
Including a big one that's slowly...
I've got one of those.
I bought one.
I bought one from a shop
that was going out of business,
one of those that just opens
and closes. It's really good fun.
Just plug it in.
I can sit and watch it for hours.
Have you not got a television?
Yes, but I'm always on it!
APPLAUSE
I don't have that channel.
Ah! Um...
- "And now...QI." - Argh!
Um, you...
LAUGHTER
So much better, believe me.
Did you know that they produce
a Swiss Army fragrance?
- Oh. - Do they?
You'll love the deception.
"The Classic is a fresh,
aromatic fragrance for men
"that stands for
refinement and vision.
"It has notes of yuzu,
geranium and lavender.
"It radiates..." You could
be talking about me here.
"It radiates
a disarming masculinity."
But you'll be pleased
to know, Victoria,
there is one for the ladies.
It's for "straightforward,
uncomplicated women
"who enjoy asserting
their femininity
- "alongside their athleticism."
- That is me. That's me.
- Exactly! Absolutely.
- Do we know what notes that's got?
Yes, I can tell you the notes.
- Paraguay tea, cedar and hay.
- Oh, all my favourites. Hay?!
- That's what it is.
- Why are you putting hay in it?
- Is hay common in...?
Is it common? - Yeah. - Yes?
Hay, grass, manure, compost -
love it all.
Oh, dear. But, as always,
the best in multi-bladed knives
comes from Norfolk.
- The best in everything comes from
Norfolk. - The Norfolk Army Knife?
The Norfolk Knife,
not the Norfolk Army Knife.
- They've got their own army?
- The Iceni Knife.
No, there is a Norfolk Knife,
which I think
will take your breath away
for its beauty
and uncomplicated design.
That's good to solve
most of your problems,
including the problem of
having fingers will be solved.
- That's amazing. - It's preposterous,
isn't it? But it is...
That's the Norfolk Knife.
Well, there you are.
So I hope I'm radiating
disarming masculinity
as we move on to the next question.
What's the quickest way
to cool down my kitchen?
I'm going to... Just because
I'd love to get a klaxon sound,
- is it opening the fridge? - Ah!
- KLAXON
- That would make it hotter. - Somehow
that makes it hotter, doesn't it?
- Turning on the oven. - Turning on
the oven would not cool...
- Turning on the top of the stove.
Put the gas on. - Right.
Because the coolest place in front
of a fire is right in front.
Oh, I see what you mean, but that
would still warm up the room.
- Yeah, all right,
it's just a thought. - No, don't...
Don't be cross, it's good
you didn't say turn on the fan,
- which would have got you a klaxon.
- I wasn't going to say that! - Exactly.
Can I just say turn on the fan?
- Oh, you've gone klaxon-mad!
- KLAXON
- It is... - Why...? So why
would opening the fridge...?
It's the second law
of thermodynamics.
The energy you need to create
the coolness creates work.
And energy and work are basically
congruent, in physics, to heat.
And so the back of a fridge...
But what if the motor
of my fridge is outside my...
- I'm thinking exactly that.
- Ah, if that were the case, yes.
- Cos you haven't
been to my kitchen. - No!
- I said MY kitchen, though, that
was in the question. - I'm so sorry.
We had it covered.
In the case of
an air-conditioner, of course,
the back is always outside.
So a fan that is
just cooling the air...?
Yeah, the motor of the fan
warms the room.
And what's up with them windows?
Do they not open?
Well, that would be
a good answer. Exactly.
What about opening the windows?!
- Yes, that's fine, you might
get a point for that. - Yes!
- Why's it so hot
in your kitchen? - I know.
What have you been doing?
Cooking.
What protected species have you been
slaughtering in your kitchen?
Boiling terrapins by the dozen.
"Open a window, Stephen!"
"No, I like it hot and sweaty!"
Scraping the froth off.
Oh, don't!
"Where's my mate spoon?"
Now, John Gori. John Gori of Florida
was one of the pioneers
of refrigeration
and he believed that heat was
one of the things that made you ill.
And so he would lower
huge bags of ice over patients,
and the cold air
would fall on their faces
and he thought that would help them.
Then he went so far as
to invent a refrigeration machine
and this outraged the huge industry
that towed and transported real ice
from Canada and other places
into New York and so on,
and they had a successful campaign,
saying that artificial ice
didn't work, it wasn't proper ice
and it would never work properly.
And he died in poverty.
In the supermarket,
there's a bag of...
- You know you can
buy bags of ice? - Yes.
- There's one I saw called
"Extra-slow-melting ice". - What?!
- I know! - Has it got salt
in it or something?
What can they possibly...?
And then, in the thing, it just says,
"Ingredients - water."
- That is dodgy. - That's dodgy.
- There's clearly someone there...
- It also has a Best Before on it,
legally. - Yeah! - I love that.
It's fantastic, isn't it?
So if you leave
the fridge door open,
the room will actually get warmer.
Which breed of dog
makes the best kebab?
You need one with an opposable digit
to make any kind of sandwich.
Hey, very good!
What about a sheep dog?
- KLAXON
- Whoa.
I was going to say sausage dog,
so I'm glad I went for that.
KLAXON
APPLAUSE
Oh, dear, oh, dear.
Yeah, what about a kebab dog?
There isn't such a dog, fortunately.
There's a shop near me, there's
a takeaway near me called Kebabish.
And I like it, cos it sort of
sounds like the guy who owns it,
even he doesn't know
what's in the meat.
"What is it?"
"I don't know, it's just kebabish,
it's just like a kebab."
Funny you should say that,
because doner kebabs
have come under scrutiny lately.
The average doner
has 1,000 calories,
- half a woman's recommended
daily allowance. - Wow.
Even a woman called Donna.
Even a woman called Donna, in fact.
The worst have
almost 2,000 calories.
An average has 98% of the
recommended daily allowance of salt,
and 148% of the recommended
daily allowance of saturated fat.
I know reading those out
is supposed to put us off,
but I could kill for one now.
It did sound... All the stuff about
saturated fat sounded delicious.
- Oh, yes. - It did, didn't it?
- That just sounds like a bargain,
if you're getting 98% of your salt,
means you don't have to
get it anywhere else, do you?
APPLAUSE
It's called a doner kebab... I mean,
because it's Turkish for a spit,
generally, a going-round thing,
a rotisserie.
Cos the standard kebab is,
like, on a skewer, isn't it?
- A shish. - A shish.
And I never knew you could pull them
off the skewer before you ate them,
when I was a boy,
I was going to go like that,
and then I'd go, "Argh..."
And then I saw someone just
pulling them all off. Exactly!
Ow!
- That's how the Queen eats them.
- Yeah, I'm sure she does.
So, do you have dogs?
No, I don't like things
that don't talk.
You don't like things that...?
I love that rule.
I don't like things
that don't make jokes.
That's a really good rule.
It excludes some men, obviously.
Yeah, I was going to say,
some men as well.
Because we are literally
speaking about a breed of dog
that has since
gone out of existence.
It's no longer bred and
it's become extinct as a breed.
But it used... But it used to talk?
No, no, sorry. We're conflating,
unfortunately, here.
It was a spit dog, a turnspit dog.
It was actually bred...
- Spit the Dog. - There is one.
- Oh, Spit the Dog!
- It's a really cute...
- Bob Carolgees...
It's a cute breed, look at it.
Isn't it cute?
It's not cute, it's weird.
No, it's not, it's horrible.
- It's like a Star Wars dog.
- Oh, I think it looks lovely.
It's... This is a stuffed one in
Abergavenny Museum, I ought to say.
- The taxidermist has
bollocksed that right up. - Well...
- The head's wrong. - It's stuffed
with feta and vine leaves.
Their job was to walk round,
keeping the roast meat
on a spit evenly cooked.
They were actually bred
for that job.
They were inside a wheel
and they turned the wheel.
Like a hamster in a Ferris wheel.
And it worked beautifully well.
And on their day off,
they would get taken to church
and used as foot warmers.
That was the life of...
It sounds like they went
into extinction through choice.
- "I've had enough of this.
Come on, lads." - Yes.
And Queen Victoria
kept retired ones as pets.
She actually liked them
rather a lot.
- It's a nice thought, isn't it?
- It looks sad. - Yeah. - Well, yeah.
- Probably cos it's dead. - It is dead.
- Because the box is too small. - Yes!
There were, in 1765, estimated to be
3,000 turnspit dogs in Bath alone.
Not everyone liked them.
William Cotesworth of Gateshead
wrote that he had
got rid of his turnspit,
"To keep the dog from the fire,
the wheel out of the way
"and the dog prevented from
shitting upon everything it could."
That's the problem,
you don't want poo.
That's Northerners for you, though.
Who wants to bath alone, anyway?
Yeah, nobody wants to do that.
- "Who wants to bath alone?" - Yeah.
- Oh, what a lovely saying. - I don't.
When did you last bath alone?
- I don't bath. - Ah.
Please tell me you shower.
- I shower. - Good. - If you insist!
I can tell you!
I know you do -
you smell of disarming
masculinity and hay.
Well, that's your answer.
Turnspit dogs. They got hot
during the working week
and on Sunday
were used as foot warmers.
Now, when Koreans went into space,
what did they take to chow down on?
- You've got a bowl, Victoria...
- I've got a bowl?
..and you can eat some.
- Phwoar, blimey!
- It is quite a strong smell.
- Oh, you really can. - It really is.
- They took that into space?
- Yeah. - Was that to get rid of it?
It is a bit smelly,
it's actually delicious.
- Let's hope there's pudding.
- Korean astronaut food?
Well, they developed a special
breed of it for astronauts.
I think it's got cabbage in it.
It has, it's mostly cabbage.
It's almost like
a kind of sauerkraut.
Sorry, I dropped my chopsticks.
You can't drop anything in space.
You merely release.
The point about this food
is it is generally reckoned
that this food is more celebrated
and loved by the Koreans
than any food in any other culture
is loved by any other culture.
It is absolutely their identity.
They've not... They've not
had a pie in the North.
No, well, believe me,
they talk about this food
far more even than
Northerners talk about pies.
In Wigan, you know,
on the back of bakers' vans,
they've got a sign that says, "No
pies are left in this van overnight."
APPLAUSE
It's true, that.
That's how important they are.
That is very good.
But if you can name this food,
I'd be very impressed,
because it really is
the essence of Korea.
They really are obsessed with it.
- Have you ever heard of it? - No.
- It begins with K, which is a help.
- AUDIENCE: Kimchi.
Kimchi is the right answer,
from the audience. K-I-M-C-H-I.
- Well, it's bloody lovely.
- It is really good, isn't it?
- It's pretty healthy. - Have you got
any more? Do you want my one?
It's mostly cabbage...
- I tell you what, I'm going
to Korea on holiday. - Yeah!
It is genuinely delicious, isn't it?
- It's quite piquant, it's quite hot,
it's got a bit of chilli. - Yeah.
It's mostly radish and cabbage,
and it's very, very simple.
But there are lots of different...
- I can feel myself
becoming more obedient. - Yeah.
APPLAUSE
Finally! At last.
- Do you know what, though? - Tell me.
- You know when you want
a second one... - Yeah.
- You don't, really.
- It's just too much. Yeah.
They eat two million tonnes
of this a year.
- Each?! - In South Korea on its own.
I think that would be...
Even that is too much.
Some make their own and bury it
in a sealed jar over winter.
Others have special
kimchi refrigerators.
- When you open the door of them,
they heat the room up. - Whooo!
- It is quite hot. - It's quite hot,
it's quite hot. - Yeah.
It's really HO-O-OT!
In 2010, they had a...
IN KOREAN ACCENT:
"You like kimchi, ha-ha-ha!
"You western fool! Afterburn!"
No racial stereotyping here, then.
Just cheap laughs,
cheap laughs, Stephen.
That is just... That's razy lacism,
and you know it.
Um, in 2010, they had
a cabbage crop failure
- and the price rose by 400%.
- Shut up! Oh!
And they spent millions
on the South Korean astronaut,
who went up into space.
And...so she could have a kimchi
that was bacterially more sound
and would survive in space better,
because it was absolutely crucial
to her wellbeing as a Korean.
And indeed, Chung Il-kwon,
when he was President,
during the Vietnam war,
said to President Johnson,
who asked, when he was away,
"What do you miss in Korea?"
He said, to be honest he missed
kimchi more than he missed his wife.
Is Kimchi the name of his mistress?
Possibly.
Anyway, for Koreans,
kimchi is literally
out of this world.
How could you get money
out of the king of Scotland?
That's a wonderful photograph,
isn't it?
Obviously, he's not
the king of Scotland.
This was a very early king
of Scotland, nearly 1,000 years ago.
- There he is. He was King David I.
- Oh, Dave, yeah, yeah.
- Old Dave. - Of course, yeah, you can
see with the beard now, yeah.
- Wee Davie. - Cos he didn't
always have the beard, did he?
- And then he grew it for Movember.
- When he was a baby...
He was a tiny, tiny King,
smaller than a thistle.
He was very, very small.
"Can we have some money,
King David?"
SMALL VOICE:
"No, you can't have any money!"
He would reward people,
give them a tax rebate
if they had good...?
Shortbread. Scones.
- Scones, shortbread...?
- Deep-fried Mars bars. - Table manners?
- Say it again. - Table manners?
- Is the right answer. - Hey!
He would reward people
for their table manners.
- STEPHEN LAUGHS
- Immediately took your elbows of!
- Whoa! - Never know. - Fantastic.
Plus five points
for good table manners.
The 12th-century King David I
of Scotland, yes.
According to William of Malmesbury,
he gave tax rebates
for good table manners.
Talking of table manners
and royalty,
which member of the Royal family
would you least expect to have had
terrible table manners?
- Queen Victoria. - Queen Victoria,
yeah. And she was, er...
- Jesus! - Was she still of a generation
who thought that blowing off at
the end of a meal was a compliment?
No! I don't think...
I've been using that one
for years, you know.
"It's a COMPLIMENT to the chef!"
- I think you are confusing it
with burping. - Oh, God, sorry!
All this time...
It's never a compliment
to blow off at the table,
- where there's food.
- Unless you're a nun.
Yeah, unless you're a nun.
♪ What are we going to do
about Maria? ♪
Pfffrrrrt!
It does look like rather
a joyless table, doesn't it?
Which one of those
is Queen Victoria?
VICTORIA: And which one of those
is Edward VIII?
That one like Winston Churchill
in drag.
- I think Edward - VII - is on the right.
No, one of the boys
would be Edward VIII.
Oh! I see what you mean. It would
be. His son, David. It would be.
- The second one.
- Which one is Colin Firth?
That would be the youngest one
on the left, I think.
That's Colin F-F-F-F-F-Firth.
Um... And in the middle
is Queen Victoria.
- Why is she so, you know...?
- Joyless? - Yeah.
She was not amused, if you remember,
since her husband died.
I know, but you'd have thought,
- once she's at the table with
her family, she'd bloody smile! - No.
The paparazzi are so annoying
when you're having your breakfast.
They're like that.
She was a large woman.
- She was only 4'11" high.
- Kylie Minogue. - Kylie Minogue.
- Is she stood up there? - No.
VICTORIA: She was about 12 stone,
wasn't she?
But she weighed 12 stone.
It's exactly what she wait.
She had a 50-inch waist.
Well, her bloomers were 50 inches.
As collected by
Norman St John-Stevas, the MP.
- I didn't know that. - Yes, he did.
He collected Victoria's underwear.
Literally.
Not VictoriAN but VictoriA'S
And he started the lingerie shop,
Victoria's Secret, didn't he?
- Very good! - That's what he sells.
I've never been in, but I presume
that's what they sell.
Presumably it is.
The fact is, because she was Queen,
she got served first at dinner
and she would start eating.
And she would get through
a 14-course dinner in half an hour.
- Wow. - And once she had finished,
- everyone else had their food
taken away. - Brilliant.
So, they'd go, "Ah."
And she would just gobble away
at incredible speed.
Lord Hartington,
who was one of her courtiers,
was heard to shout at a footman,
"BRING THAT BACK!"
He was so angry at the fact that...
By the time you'd just
got your soup spoon in,
she was going,
"Well, that was very lovely."
And her doctors became
concerned at her obesity
and they recommended Benger's Food,
which was one of these supplements.
This was a thick, milky gruel, often
given to invalids and the elderly,
so she agreed and she took it
on top of her normal diet.
Were they worried she wasn't
going to fit on the coins?
That's a brilliant idea!
Just get a little bit
of the middle of her, a big breast.
- The coins got bigger and bigger
and bigger. - Huge coins.
"A whole penny?"
Fwa-chang!
The lavatory doors
were vast to spend a penny.
Oh, lordy.
Now, here's the skull of
King Richard III,
but what can you tell me
about his table manners,
just by looking at it?
Well, he was very good
at eating Toblerone.
Anything else you can tell?
What's unusual about his teeth
compared to ours?
- Space for a straw, that would be...
- Space for a straw, yes!
Notice your teeth,
the top row and the bottom row.
Close your mouth, naturally.
- Yeah. - Your top row...
Overbite.
We've all got an overbite.
Cruelly called by Billy Crystal
in When Harry Met Sally,
"Dancing - white man's overbite."
But the actual overbite,
literally like that,
is a recent thing in human beings.
And it comes after forks,
because we cut up our food.
And in the days
when we wrenched our food,
the incisors would get
smoothed down more,
and the teeth would fit exactly.
And it shows that Richard III didn't
use a fork for cutting his food,
which we know,
cos forks were not used
for transferring food to your mouth.
Right up to Tudor times,
you would use...?
- Your hands. - Your hands.
So if we brought up children
without knives and forks,
- they wouldn't develop an overbite?
- No. - You know what?
I'm going to try.
I'll come back in 21 years' time.
- Call me a liar. - We'll see.
- It's true. - With a really
resentful-looking boy.
- I've got twins, so - one,
I'm going to give a fork. - Brilliant!
- Brilliant! - And one...
I'll have the perfect experiment.
- It is superb.
Unethical, but perfect. - Yeah.
And you can sort of show this
by the difference in civilisations
who've developed overbites.
And 1,000 years ago, you can see
where Chinese aristocratic skulls
have an overbite,
but peasants don't.
And it's when they started
to use chopsticks
and chop up their food, and then it
spread throughout the population.
So it really does...
It sounds weird,
but this overbite we have
is an acquired characteristic
because of our chopping-up of food.
You can just tell
by looking at skulls.
Just go through any graveyard,
dig people up,
- and you'll see I'm right, Jason.
- "Stephen Fry told me to do it."
- Yes, absolutely!
- While I'm chewing on a turtle.
- "Really bad influence." - Yeah.
So, anyway,
name the traditional
ingredients of kedgeree.
Well, now, there's some of them
on the screen.
Rice. Say rice.
Say eggs.
- I think Victoria wanted
to answer this one. - Yes.
Um...haddock.
- Oh, dear! Oh, dear!
- KLAXON
You wanted that, didn't you?
Er, what about egg? Rice?
Yes, egg. Well, rice...
It means "a mix-up".
And fish is a very recent thing
to be an absolute
essential of kedgeree.
In fact, the Hobson-Jobson
Dictionary Of Anglo-Indian Words,
which is one of the great
books of its time, says,
"In England, we find
the word is often applied
"to a mess of re-cooked fish
served for breakfast,
"but this is inaccurate.
"Fish is frequently eaten WITH
kedgeree but is no part of it."
So it's...
It now tends to be flaked haddock
and a bit of cream and curry powder
and rice and boiled egg
and is absolutely delicious.
But I'll give you 100 points
if you can name
two traditional Italian breads.
Oh, so tempting!
Well, now...ciabatta.
- KLAXON
- Oh!
- Er... - We're already there.
Ciabatta was invented in 1982,
can you believe? It's that recent.
- No, shut up.
- Yeah, it was an Italian baker
who was worried about
the threat of French baguettes,
and it's the Italian for...?
You can redeem yourself if you know.
Baguette.
That would be too easy, no.
It's not really the shape of it.
- Handbag?
- Well, that's closer, it's...
- Slipper. - Yes!
Brilliant, it was a slipper, yes.
It was... He was Arnaldo Cavallari,
was his name,
and it was a specific invention,
he called it "Ciabatta Polesano",
Polesine is a part
of Northern Italy.
So it really is very recent.
Some people claim that
it was around since the '40s,
but there doesn't seem
to be any proof of this,
the name doesn't appear before 1982.
Now, what can you see coming
out of your kettle as it boils?
VICTORIA: Vapour.
- Is the right answer. - Hooray!
Not steam.
- I wasn't going to say steam.
- No, as if you would(!)
- Because steam is...? - The stuff
that comes out of the kettle.
Oh! Steam is invisible.
- It does come out of
the kettle... - Oh, really?
..but sometimes
you see a gap, you know?
- you get the little gap and then
you see the vapour. - Oh, yeah.
And the gap is steam,
it's an invisible gas.
And as soon as it cools,
even slightly,
it turns to water vapour,
and that's the bit you see.
We call it steam, but it isn't.
Steam is actually invisible.
Isn't that interesting?
- Very interesting.
- Thank you. So it's "VI".
I tell my children
not to eat their food
till the steam's gone.
Now what am I going to say?
But I mean, yeah, in ordinary
everyday speech, things steam,
and "steamy" are...
You know, manure steams and...
Oh, I tell them
not to eat manure as well.
Not till the steam's gone off it.
I'm glad to hear it.
- Did you know that in 1784
there was a Kettle War? - Wow.
Between...?
Oh, it was between Morphy
and Richards, wasn't it?
And in the end...
- In the end, they joined together
and... - It was all fine.
It was between
the Dutch and the Austrians.
One shot took place
on the Austrian flagship -
a bullet was fired by the Dutch
and hit a kettle
and ricocheted off and the Austrians
immediately surrendered.
So it was known as
the Kettle War. There you are.
Well, we have to end now
with a Knick Knack,
which I sometimes end with.
This is...
Ooh, this is exciting.
This is a remarkable substance.
It's called polyethylene oxide,
and it's very gloopy,
and also it reacts rather excitedly
under ultraviolet light.
And, Alan and Victoria,
you've got ultraviolet torches
and you can point them at it.
I think we might have some
ultraviolet light in the studio.
- Shall I point them now, sir?
- Yes, please do.
Ooh, look. See?
- Wow! - Ooh!
Now, what I'm going to try and do,
I'm going to stand up to do this,
it's a very remarkable effect.
The effect is, when you pour it,
if I get it at the right angle,
it pulls itself out of the flask
and into here.
It flows uphill and out
and down again. All right.
There we go. Oh, it's pulling itself
up, it's pulling itself up...
You see what I mean? It's pulling
itself up from the bottom.
If you look at the top one,
it's actually flowing uphill there.
And then it thins out
into a little trail of snot.
I'll try that again,
so we'll just get a few takes.
That's like when...
It's like when you have a wee
after a Berocca, isn't it, that?
It is!
That's exactly what it's like.
Oh, goodness.
So disgusting. Polyethylene oxide.
I don't know what else...
What's it used for?
It's a very good
masturbatory lubricant.
- Particularly in the dark. - Yeah.
APPLAUSE
All right, we'll try again.
It's a little bit awkward
getting two friends
to hold the torch, though. Isn't it?
Yeah. There we go, that's pulling
itself up there nicely.
Excellent, there we go. Phew!
Thank you.
And thank you...
Thank you, my special
ultraviolet helpers.
Well, on that exciting note,
let's go to the scores.
Oh, my actual goodness.
It's really remarkable.
I'm afraid, possibly because
he was booby-trapped into it,
in last place, with -38
is Jason Manford.
How'd that happen?
APPLAUSE
In a highly creditable third place,
with -17, is Richard Osman.
- Oh, thank you.
- APPLAUSE
Which is very impressive.
And in second place
with -7 is Victoria Wood.
APPLAUSE
But, scraping into a lead by
one point, on -6, is Alan Davies!
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Well. Put that away.
I got points for eating that food.
And with thanks to
Victoria, Richard, Jason and Alan,
it's good night!
APPLAUSE
Goo-oo-od evening, good evening,
good evening, good evening,
good evening, good evening,
and welcome to QI,
where tonight we're looking
at everything in the kitchen
but the sink.
Joining me at the breakfast bar,
cooking with gas, Jason Manford.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Sharp as a knife, Victoria Wood.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Pointless as a spoon, Richard Osman.
Hiya.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
And I got this fork off Alan Davies.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Let's hear your pingers.
Jason goes...
BEEP-BEEP-BEEP
And Victoria goes...
TICK-TICK-TICK DING!
Richard goes...
DRING!
And Alan goes...
EXPLOSION AND ALARM
We're having
a kitchen supper tonight.
Which of the following do you fancy?
Take me through these...
lovely dishes.
They're all real.
Is the buttocktongue
Marks & Spencer's buttocktongue?
It's YOUR buttocktongue.
- Oh, right. - Yes, exactly.
Work on tongue.
Well, I'll have to be careful
when I say that...
if you just take the last
three letters off "tongue", you get?
Oh, so like, like a biltong?
Biltong is right.
It's a hindquarters tongue, which
sounds weird, but that's what it is.
- Biltong, have you ever had biltong?
- No, I'm a vegetarian. - Ah.
Meet Alan.
He's a vegetarian, too.
- Hold on, is biltong
not vegetarian? - No!
It's usually sold as
ostrich biltong or dik-dik biltong
or some other animal, but they found
in 2013, a very recent study,
that two-thirds
was incorrectly labelled.
So horse biltong turned out
to be biltong, can you believe?
Disgusting! A revolting idea!
I think, if you're eating that,
I don't think you have to worry
about what animal it's come from.
So what is it? The bottom?
It's dried...
Well, it's the dried hindquarters.
It's called "tongue", I think,
because it's the shape of a tongue
in the way that it's dried,
rather than it comes from a tongue.
"Biltong" - buttock.
So, does it have the actual...?
The hindquarters,
which are buttocks on an animal.
But does it have the arsehole in it?
- Not the...
- LAUGHTER
- I think not.
- That's in hot dogs, I think.
- Has it got a tube?
- Yeah, that's in...
- They save that for
hot dogs and pork pies. - Yeah.
So you can have beef, horse, impala,
wildebeest, eland, giraffe
and kangaroo biltong.
Apparently. Very nice.
So, that's a good one.
You've started.
- Any other thoughts?
- Kleftiko, that's...
That's on a menu
in a Greek restaurant, isn't it?
Yes, kleftiko, exactly, does exist.
And it was originally
called "kleptiko",
which might give you a hint.
Klept.
- Kleptomaniac? It's all stolen.
- Kleptomania, kleptos is a thief.
And it was anti-Ottoman empire
bandits who lived in the hills,
and they made up this dish,
so it was named after them,
it's a thieves' dish.
It's quite elaborate for
a bandit person to be doing.
They were... You should see their
souffles. They were extraordinary.
Actually, souffles
brings us on to nun's farts.
Well, it's... When you pop one...
Why specifically
a nun's, though? I mean...
Cos nun's farts
smell like souffle. Keep up!
He's just given you that,
- when he gives you one, for goodness'
sake, grab it. - Yes, take notice.
A lot of French dishes have -
or, indeed, European dishes -
have their... Pumpernickel is a
devil's fart, "pumpen", pump, fart,
"nickel", Old Nick. And that's
a bread, so they have rude names.
And there's a...
Isn't there a cheese which is, er,
angel's tits or something like that?
- You can tell which ones are farting
from their pained expressions. - Yeah.
That's like the cast
of Dad's Army on a...
fancy-dress party. I think out of
them all there, I'd go, I'd say...
- Which one? - She's definitely...
She's definitely farted,
and the rest don't know yet.
Look at the smile.
Look at the smile on her face.
That's a massive board and they
all just put their faces through.
Like on a pier. Yeah.
Nun's farts are little balls of
pastry deep-fried, and they puff up.
They're also called
whore's farts or Spanish farts,
in French, "pets-de-nonne".
"Pets" is "fart" in French.
These days, they've disappointingly
been renamed as nun's puffs.
Or possibly poofs, I don't know how
you would say it, it's hard to tell.
- Bishops, often, they're called that.
- Bishops, yes, exactly.
Well, pocket soup. How could you
put soup in your pocket?
- It's crazy, right? - It is! It's
insane. There must be a way. - Yeah.
This actually is soup
that has been...
- Solidified? - Yes. Reduced.
ALAN: Reduced.
- Into a sort of... Basically an early
version of a stock cube. - Oh, right.
And then you reconstituted them
by adding boiling water,
as you do with
your classic stock cube.
- Why would you put it
in your pocket? - To travel to work.
Keep your hands free.
But you know when you leave,
like, a fiver in your pocket
when you put it in the wash -
that would be awful
if you left some pocket soup
in your jeans.
Oh!
- Can you imagine?
- The whole wash would come back
as consomme of something.
Most unfortunate.
Treacle. Treacle.
The anti-venereal treacle?
Wouldn't want to lick it off.
You're right.
It sold much better than
pro-venereal treacle, didn't it?
- That didn't... - Yes!
- That didn't sell. - It really didn't.
- Yeah, they really...
- The two great treacles. - Yeah.
The word treacle has
had an interesting history.
It now means, of course...
Yeah, it used to mean
any sort of medicine, didn't it?
Or any sort of...
Even without a computer
in front of you, you're good.
That is very... Or have you
got one hidden under there?
No, I'm very impressed,
you're absolutely right.
A treacle was generally
any kind of specific
- against diseases and things.
- Or a term of endearment, weirdly.
"Treacle," yes, in EastEnders
and that sort of thing, isn't it?
"All right, Treacle?"
"All right, anti-venereal treacle?"
That's what they call
some of those characters.
- Auntie Venereal Treacle. - Yes.
"It's your Auntie Venereal,
Treacle."
"You come in for your tea,
Chlamydia."
Where was it...? There was...
- In America, Verruca's
quite a popular name. - Really?!
People copy it from...
BOTH: ..Charlie And
The Chocolate Factory.
They don't know... They don't call
verrucas "verrucas" in America.
- So they don't know it's actually...?
- They don't know it's an awful thing.
- Verruca Salt. - Yeah.
- Brilliant. I'm so pleased.
- So if they don't call chlamydia
"chlamydia"... - Yes...
..all you need to do is put it in
a popular children's book as a name.
- Brilliant. - Before you know it...
It would be one of
the most popular names.
- ..Barack Obama will have a daughter
called Chlamydia. - Called Chlamydia!
Chlamydia Obama.
Which brings us to Dog and Maggot.
- Does it?
- Well, it doesn't necessarily.
It sounds like rhyming slang for...
- someone of my persuasion. - Taggart.
Oh...
- I was going to go with
the ITV show Taggart. - Oh, right.
"There's been a murder,
Dog and Maggot."
- A Scotsman in the mist.
See what I did there? - Yeah.
If I was to say "hard tack" to you,
does that mean anything?
Ship's biscuits?
Very good. Ship's biscuits
were known as hard tack.
And there's a famous scene
in the Battleship Potemkin,
do you remember?
If you've ever seen it.
- No, I'm a vegetarian.
- The great Eisenstein movie...
LAUGHTER
That's going to be an answer
to a lot of questions, isn't it?
"No, I'm a vegetarian."
The Potemkin was a ship
in which there was a mutiny,
and there's a scene of them
cracking open a ship's biscuit
- and the maggots...
It's really horrible. - Eurgh.
And this is a British biscuit
called "Dog" because it was
the consistency of a dog biscuit
and "Maggot" cos it had
maggots in it, but it was...
In the First World War,
it was part of the rations.
God. I think I'd rather
eat the cutlery.
- I think you're right.
- If that choice came up.
"I'll just have a chew on this knife,
don't worry about it."
You know what I think
I'd like with a fork?
Rather than having
all the prongs in a line,
why can't they be in
a kind of a square shape,
so you've got a kind of...
- Do you know, hold that thought.
- That's a good idea.
- Because we might be coming on
to that later in the exam. - Really?
- Wow. - Yes.
It might come up.
"Sir said it wouldn't come up this
term, but it might have come up."
- I'll revise that. - Yeah. OK.
So that's your Dog and Maggot.
We're left with Kunga cake.
- Sounds African. - Very unlikely...
- It IS African, but you are very
unlikely to get this. - Is it a cake?
- Well... - Is it going to be dung?
- It's not dung, no.
- It sounded like dung. - It's animals,
but tiny, weeny animals.
Termites.
- Even smaller, actually. - Ants.
- Midges. - Oh, midges? - Midges.
They come out from the river
in their mating swarms
in such numbers that they gather
them and press them into a cake.
- How do they gather them?
- Well, I guess they...
Sort of with a net
or something like that.
Good. It's about time they got their
just desserts, those little sods.
They're always talking, these days,
about using all kinds
of insect and things
for the future of the human race,
for protein, insects...
- No? - No. - Do you remember,
I had an ant on this show once?
I do remember you having an ant.
I got a bit of
its sort of carapace and...
- HE CHOKES
- It was just...
For the whole show, I had it
caught in the back of my throat.
- It was disgusting.
- I was like that with Dec.
LAUGHTER
Naughty. That's very naughty indeed.
Anyway, there you are.
Here's some unusual cutlery.
I'd like you to tell me what kind
of thing you could eat with them.
You've all got some,
but I'll start off with
the one that you mentioned there.
- You said with tines, that were...
- You just invented that, a minute ago.
There you are. Isn't it incredible?
- You mentioned something like it.
- That's weird.
Isn't it? It's usage
is very, very specific.
You don't actually
handle it yourself,
cos you're so high-born that
somebody else feeds you using that.
With what on it, though?
- Some sort of fruit? - No.
Is it a testicle?
It might include a testicle.
- Ooh. - Is it a scrotum?
It might include a scrotum.
What else really includes
a testicle, Stephen?
The whole schmear.
A-A whole mammal.
Yes, a whole mammal. Let's just
imagine I'm talking to one.
Oh, God. A comedian?
No, a cannibal.
That's the point - a human being.
- Oh, human. - Oh...
Yours is a reproduction, sold
as a souvenir item on the island of?
- Or islands of? - Wight.
Man.
LAUGHTER
More accurate if you'd said the
Isle of Man, I would have thought.
- Oh, yeah. - Think of the...
A cannibal island,
- it was part of the British Empire.
- Oh, Guernsey.
- Fiji. - Fiji. - Fiji.
- Oh, I might have known.
Yeah, you might have done.
Fiji is the answer.
These are Fijian human forks.
- Two cannibals are
eating someone... - Yes?
..and one says, "You start at
the toes, I'll start at the head."
He says, "All right."
Halfway through he says,
"You all right?"
He says, "Yeah, I'm having a ball."
He says, "You're going too fast!"
- There you go. - Excellent work.
- There you go. - Excellent work.
- A cannibal joke for you.
All right, Alan, can you look
- and see what other items of cutlery
you might have? - I've got this one.
That, you might recognise.
Once again, it's clearly
for testicles.
If you did eat meat, it's quite
common. Reasonably common.
- No. For fish? - Anyone know?
It looks like it's for
force-feeding a suffragette.
The foreskin of a suffragette?
No! For FORCE-FEEDING!
LAUGHTER
I'm so sorry!
I'm so sorry! For force-feeding
Emily Davison, as it were.
That's what Batman used to say,
"Within a foreskin
of a suffragette!"
"Foreskin of a suffragette, Batman!"
Or for clenching a nose.
I'm sure the audience knows.
Who'd like to shout out?
AUDIENCE: Snails!
- They all know that's for l'escargot,
it is for snails. - Oh, is it?
You clench the shell
and then you use a little
winkling fork to get the flesh out.
So there you are.
And what have you got, Victoria?
- I've got that. - Now that is
interesting. You've also got a bowl.
I'm sure there's, like, one of those
in my mum's drawer, one of them.
- I've seen that. That's the only one
I've seen. - Your mum's drawers!
On my mum's drawers! Is it a buffet
spoon? Does it rest on a...?
It rests on the side of the bowl.
The most useful thing...
- Brilliant. - Oh, that's clever.
Usually, things for
this substance are wooden
with a sort of dome on the end
and grooves around them.
- Honey? - Honey.
But this is even better for honey
cos you pour the honey
into the bowl,
keeping it on top of that other bowl
and where do you put the spoon
without stickiness?
- Yeah. - You just simply
put it back on.
I think other people
have got more cutlery than me.
- This, which is a strange...
- Very hard. If you guess that...
- A spoon with holes in it.
- I'll give you 100 points
if you guess what
that is specifically for.
Oh, it's for Coco Pops so
you get the milk at the bottom...
- that's turned chocolaty.
- It would work as that. - It would.
It's actually very specifically
for terrapins and turtles.
I don't usually eat them.
- You're a vegetarian. I know.
- Exactly. Oh, I see.
- The flesh is delicious,
apparently. - Oh, OK.
- The giant turtle, famously...
- Aren't they protected, Stephen?
You're not supposed to
be chomping away on them.
Oh, gosh, no, absolutely not.
No, the Ridleys and...
- Well, why are you saying we should
kill them and eat them? - No!
Why are you giving me cutlery
to damage terrapins?
- You said that. - We used to.
- Weird thing to say on television,
- that we should eat turtles.
- I take it back.
- We shouldn't be killing them.
- But they're delicious.
There is a special
piece of cutlery for them.
- And apparently they're delicious.
- We have some cutlery for them,
- and they're delicious. - Just in case.
And, Jason, what have you got?
Ahem...
Ooh. Now this is interesting.
Don't look at your reflection in it,
that'll only upset you.
I was seeing
if that's what was unusual.
- No. - Oh, my God, it's Tom Selleck.
That's weird, isn't it?
Of all the people.
Have a grip and a twist.
- OK. Oh! - Ah.
It turns. It turns like that.
- Yeah. - Is it supposed to...?
- All the way.
Oh, all the way, OK.
Oh, and then it just becomes, like...
- It's broken. - It's...
- It's a breakable spoon! - Brilliant.
No, but look in the spoon end.
The ladle end.
- It's hollow. - Yeah. Oh, inside there.
So you could fill it with something.
- A message. Hot water? - Hot water.
Oh, I was going to say turtle blood.
- Oh, I see. - You fill it with hot water
and it's a gravy spoon
that keeps the gravy nice and warm
to stop the fat congealing.
- Oh, I like that.
- Richard? - Great idea.
Are we going to have anything
that you can eat testicles with?
- They may be coming up.
- Eat them with that.
- Here we go, here we go.
- Yes, now what's that?
- Are they holes, in the end? - Ah!
- Yeah, it's got all perforations.
- You see, you've learnt
from your thing. - Yes.
There are perforations
in the ladle itself
and the spoon part itself, the bowl.
What about the other end?
- It's got a little hole in it.
- Ah. So what could you do?
- Well... - You could hang it...
- I'm going to insert it into the...
- Cheese. - ..backside of a turtle.
Just there. Literally just there.
And then, I think,
you tell me if I'm wrong,
you squeeze, is that right?
You squeeze down on the shell.
And out it comes, and then you've
essentially got yourself a smoothie
which comes out of the end.
Is it a turtle-blood smoothie maker?
It's so close.
If I said the word "mate" to you,
would that mean anything?
Have you ever travelled to an area
where you drink mate tea?
- Audience?
- AUDIENCE MEMBER: Argentina.
- Argentina and Peru,
and various other places. - Of course.
- It's called mate. - There we go.
We've got that sorted.
So, basically,
it does a marvellous job.
It stirs the leaves
and allows you to drink the tea all
in one without needing a strainer.
Oh, it's a straw.
- It's a straw, you suck it up.
- Ah, that's so good.
It's an Argentinian mate spoon.
Now, what attachment
would you expect to find
on a Swiss student knife?
- A Pot Noodle opener?
- That's very good.
How many attachments
you think...? How many...?
- 12. - 12. - 40?
- One. - Oh!
You win. It's two. Very good.
It only two, just two blades
on a student knife. There is one.
I suppose he doesn't
need a corkscrew, does he?
He doesn't really
need a corkscrew, no. No.
If it was a British child, yes.
And he'd need a little special
shot glass for a Jagerbomb.
The whole works, basically,
for your average British child.
Except QI viewers.
Pocket knives were originally
imported from Germany in the 1890s
but then a Swiss gentleman
called Karl Elsener
won the contract
to make them locally.
And every member of the Swiss Army
had to get one
and considering that was all men -
were members of the Swiss Army -
that was a very valuable contract
indeed, as you can imagine.
Did people actually
get killed by them?
Or were they just
for cutting ropes and wood?
I think they were
just for general use.
I don't think they were
for hand-to-hand combat.
Yeah, you wouldn't want that.
"Just wait there a sec,
got to get the right one!
"Argh! Corkscrew!
For God's sake! Wait there!"
It wasn't red, the original.
As you can see, it was black
with a wooden handle.
The screwdriver was so that soldiers
could actually dismantle their guns.
That's what that was for.
Then there was the schoolboy knife
and the farmer's knife.
But his big break came in 1897
with the officer's knife.
And that's really where we begin
to go into Swiss Army territory.
Now you're talking.
Now, you can see -
there's your classic formation.
They make up to 65 million a year.
It's huge. You see some shops
which just have a window
full of nothing else, don't you?
Including a big one that's slowly...
I've got one of those.
I bought one.
I bought one from a shop
that was going out of business,
one of those that just opens
and closes. It's really good fun.
Just plug it in.
I can sit and watch it for hours.
Have you not got a television?
Yes, but I'm always on it!
APPLAUSE
I don't have that channel.
Ah! Um...
- "And now...QI." - Argh!
Um, you...
LAUGHTER
So much better, believe me.
Did you know that they produce
a Swiss Army fragrance?
- Oh. - Do they?
You'll love the deception.
"The Classic is a fresh,
aromatic fragrance for men
"that stands for
refinement and vision.
"It has notes of yuzu,
geranium and lavender.
"It radiates..." You could
be talking about me here.
"It radiates
a disarming masculinity."
But you'll be pleased
to know, Victoria,
there is one for the ladies.
It's for "straightforward,
uncomplicated women
"who enjoy asserting
their femininity
- "alongside their athleticism."
- That is me. That's me.
- Exactly! Absolutely.
- Do we know what notes that's got?
Yes, I can tell you the notes.
- Paraguay tea, cedar and hay.
- Oh, all my favourites. Hay?!
- That's what it is.
- Why are you putting hay in it?
- Is hay common in...?
Is it common? - Yeah. - Yes?
Hay, grass, manure, compost -
love it all.
Oh, dear. But, as always,
the best in multi-bladed knives
comes from Norfolk.
- The best in everything comes from
Norfolk. - The Norfolk Army Knife?
The Norfolk Knife,
not the Norfolk Army Knife.
- They've got their own army?
- The Iceni Knife.
No, there is a Norfolk Knife,
which I think
will take your breath away
for its beauty
and uncomplicated design.
That's good to solve
most of your problems,
including the problem of
having fingers will be solved.
- That's amazing. - It's preposterous,
isn't it? But it is...
That's the Norfolk Knife.
Well, there you are.
So I hope I'm radiating
disarming masculinity
as we move on to the next question.
What's the quickest way
to cool down my kitchen?
I'm going to... Just because
I'd love to get a klaxon sound,
- is it opening the fridge? - Ah!
- KLAXON
- That would make it hotter. - Somehow
that makes it hotter, doesn't it?
- Turning on the oven. - Turning on
the oven would not cool...
- Turning on the top of the stove.
Put the gas on. - Right.
Because the coolest place in front
of a fire is right in front.
Oh, I see what you mean, but that
would still warm up the room.
- Yeah, all right,
it's just a thought. - No, don't...
Don't be cross, it's good
you didn't say turn on the fan,
- which would have got you a klaxon.
- I wasn't going to say that! - Exactly.
Can I just say turn on the fan?
- Oh, you've gone klaxon-mad!
- KLAXON
- It is... - Why...? So why
would opening the fridge...?
It's the second law
of thermodynamics.
The energy you need to create
the coolness creates work.
And energy and work are basically
congruent, in physics, to heat.
And so the back of a fridge...
But what if the motor
of my fridge is outside my...
- I'm thinking exactly that.
- Ah, if that were the case, yes.
- Cos you haven't
been to my kitchen. - No!
- I said MY kitchen, though, that
was in the question. - I'm so sorry.
We had it covered.
In the case of
an air-conditioner, of course,
the back is always outside.
So a fan that is
just cooling the air...?
Yeah, the motor of the fan
warms the room.
And what's up with them windows?
Do they not open?
Well, that would be
a good answer. Exactly.
What about opening the windows?!
- Yes, that's fine, you might
get a point for that. - Yes!
- Why's it so hot
in your kitchen? - I know.
What have you been doing?
Cooking.
What protected species have you been
slaughtering in your kitchen?
Boiling terrapins by the dozen.
"Open a window, Stephen!"
"No, I like it hot and sweaty!"
Scraping the froth off.
Oh, don't!
"Where's my mate spoon?"
Now, John Gori. John Gori of Florida
was one of the pioneers
of refrigeration
and he believed that heat was
one of the things that made you ill.
And so he would lower
huge bags of ice over patients,
and the cold air
would fall on their faces
and he thought that would help them.
Then he went so far as
to invent a refrigeration machine
and this outraged the huge industry
that towed and transported real ice
from Canada and other places
into New York and so on,
and they had a successful campaign,
saying that artificial ice
didn't work, it wasn't proper ice
and it would never work properly.
And he died in poverty.
In the supermarket,
there's a bag of...
- You know you can
buy bags of ice? - Yes.
- There's one I saw called
"Extra-slow-melting ice". - What?!
- I know! - Has it got salt
in it or something?
What can they possibly...?
And then, in the thing, it just says,
"Ingredients - water."
- That is dodgy. - That's dodgy.
- There's clearly someone there...
- It also has a Best Before on it,
legally. - Yeah! - I love that.
It's fantastic, isn't it?
So if you leave
the fridge door open,
the room will actually get warmer.
Which breed of dog
makes the best kebab?
You need one with an opposable digit
to make any kind of sandwich.
Hey, very good!
What about a sheep dog?
- KLAXON
- Whoa.
I was going to say sausage dog,
so I'm glad I went for that.
KLAXON
APPLAUSE
Oh, dear, oh, dear.
Yeah, what about a kebab dog?
There isn't such a dog, fortunately.
There's a shop near me, there's
a takeaway near me called Kebabish.
And I like it, cos it sort of
sounds like the guy who owns it,
even he doesn't know
what's in the meat.
"What is it?"
"I don't know, it's just kebabish,
it's just like a kebab."
Funny you should say that,
because doner kebabs
have come under scrutiny lately.
The average doner
has 1,000 calories,
- half a woman's recommended
daily allowance. - Wow.
Even a woman called Donna.
Even a woman called Donna, in fact.
The worst have
almost 2,000 calories.
An average has 98% of the
recommended daily allowance of salt,
and 148% of the recommended
daily allowance of saturated fat.
I know reading those out
is supposed to put us off,
but I could kill for one now.
It did sound... All the stuff about
saturated fat sounded delicious.
- Oh, yes. - It did, didn't it?
- That just sounds like a bargain,
if you're getting 98% of your salt,
means you don't have to
get it anywhere else, do you?
APPLAUSE
It's called a doner kebab... I mean,
because it's Turkish for a spit,
generally, a going-round thing,
a rotisserie.
Cos the standard kebab is,
like, on a skewer, isn't it?
- A shish. - A shish.
And I never knew you could pull them
off the skewer before you ate them,
when I was a boy,
I was going to go like that,
and then I'd go, "Argh..."
And then I saw someone just
pulling them all off. Exactly!
Ow!
- That's how the Queen eats them.
- Yeah, I'm sure she does.
So, do you have dogs?
No, I don't like things
that don't talk.
You don't like things that...?
I love that rule.
I don't like things
that don't make jokes.
That's a really good rule.
It excludes some men, obviously.
Yeah, I was going to say,
some men as well.
Because we are literally
speaking about a breed of dog
that has since
gone out of existence.
It's no longer bred and
it's become extinct as a breed.
But it used... But it used to talk?
No, no, sorry. We're conflating,
unfortunately, here.
It was a spit dog, a turnspit dog.
It was actually bred...
- Spit the Dog. - There is one.
- Oh, Spit the Dog!
- It's a really cute...
- Bob Carolgees...
It's a cute breed, look at it.
Isn't it cute?
It's not cute, it's weird.
No, it's not, it's horrible.
- It's like a Star Wars dog.
- Oh, I think it looks lovely.
It's... This is a stuffed one in
Abergavenny Museum, I ought to say.
- The taxidermist has
bollocksed that right up. - Well...
- The head's wrong. - It's stuffed
with feta and vine leaves.
Their job was to walk round,
keeping the roast meat
on a spit evenly cooked.
They were actually bred
for that job.
They were inside a wheel
and they turned the wheel.
Like a hamster in a Ferris wheel.
And it worked beautifully well.
And on their day off,
they would get taken to church
and used as foot warmers.
That was the life of...
It sounds like they went
into extinction through choice.
- "I've had enough of this.
Come on, lads." - Yes.
And Queen Victoria
kept retired ones as pets.
She actually liked them
rather a lot.
- It's a nice thought, isn't it?
- It looks sad. - Yeah. - Well, yeah.
- Probably cos it's dead. - It is dead.
- Because the box is too small. - Yes!
There were, in 1765, estimated to be
3,000 turnspit dogs in Bath alone.
Not everyone liked them.
William Cotesworth of Gateshead
wrote that he had
got rid of his turnspit,
"To keep the dog from the fire,
the wheel out of the way
"and the dog prevented from
shitting upon everything it could."
That's the problem,
you don't want poo.
That's Northerners for you, though.
Who wants to bath alone, anyway?
Yeah, nobody wants to do that.
- "Who wants to bath alone?" - Yeah.
- Oh, what a lovely saying. - I don't.
When did you last bath alone?
- I don't bath. - Ah.
Please tell me you shower.
- I shower. - Good. - If you insist!
I can tell you!
I know you do -
you smell of disarming
masculinity and hay.
Well, that's your answer.
Turnspit dogs. They got hot
during the working week
and on Sunday
were used as foot warmers.
Now, when Koreans went into space,
what did they take to chow down on?
- You've got a bowl, Victoria...
- I've got a bowl?
..and you can eat some.
- Phwoar, blimey!
- It is quite a strong smell.
- Oh, you really can. - It really is.
- They took that into space?
- Yeah. - Was that to get rid of it?
It is a bit smelly,
it's actually delicious.
- Let's hope there's pudding.
- Korean astronaut food?
Well, they developed a special
breed of it for astronauts.
I think it's got cabbage in it.
It has, it's mostly cabbage.
It's almost like
a kind of sauerkraut.
Sorry, I dropped my chopsticks.
You can't drop anything in space.
You merely release.
The point about this food
is it is generally reckoned
that this food is more celebrated
and loved by the Koreans
than any food in any other culture
is loved by any other culture.
It is absolutely their identity.
They've not... They've not
had a pie in the North.
No, well, believe me,
they talk about this food
far more even than
Northerners talk about pies.
In Wigan, you know,
on the back of bakers' vans,
they've got a sign that says, "No
pies are left in this van overnight."
APPLAUSE
It's true, that.
That's how important they are.
That is very good.
But if you can name this food,
I'd be very impressed,
because it really is
the essence of Korea.
They really are obsessed with it.
- Have you ever heard of it? - No.
- It begins with K, which is a help.
- AUDIENCE: Kimchi.
Kimchi is the right answer,
from the audience. K-I-M-C-H-I.
- Well, it's bloody lovely.
- It is really good, isn't it?
- It's pretty healthy. - Have you got
any more? Do you want my one?
It's mostly cabbage...
- I tell you what, I'm going
to Korea on holiday. - Yeah!
It is genuinely delicious, isn't it?
- It's quite piquant, it's quite hot,
it's got a bit of chilli. - Yeah.
It's mostly radish and cabbage,
and it's very, very simple.
But there are lots of different...
- I can feel myself
becoming more obedient. - Yeah.
APPLAUSE
Finally! At last.
- Do you know what, though? - Tell me.
- You know when you want
a second one... - Yeah.
- You don't, really.
- It's just too much. Yeah.
They eat two million tonnes
of this a year.
- Each?! - In South Korea on its own.
I think that would be...
Even that is too much.
Some make their own and bury it
in a sealed jar over winter.
Others have special
kimchi refrigerators.
- When you open the door of them,
they heat the room up. - Whooo!
- It is quite hot. - It's quite hot,
it's quite hot. - Yeah.
It's really HO-O-OT!
In 2010, they had a...
IN KOREAN ACCENT:
"You like kimchi, ha-ha-ha!
"You western fool! Afterburn!"
No racial stereotyping here, then.
Just cheap laughs,
cheap laughs, Stephen.
That is just... That's razy lacism,
and you know it.
Um, in 2010, they had
a cabbage crop failure
- and the price rose by 400%.
- Shut up! Oh!
And they spent millions
on the South Korean astronaut,
who went up into space.
And...so she could have a kimchi
that was bacterially more sound
and would survive in space better,
because it was absolutely crucial
to her wellbeing as a Korean.
And indeed, Chung Il-kwon,
when he was President,
during the Vietnam war,
said to President Johnson,
who asked, when he was away,
"What do you miss in Korea?"
He said, to be honest he missed
kimchi more than he missed his wife.
Is Kimchi the name of his mistress?
Possibly.
Anyway, for Koreans,
kimchi is literally
out of this world.
How could you get money
out of the king of Scotland?
That's a wonderful photograph,
isn't it?
Obviously, he's not
the king of Scotland.
This was a very early king
of Scotland, nearly 1,000 years ago.
- There he is. He was King David I.
- Oh, Dave, yeah, yeah.
- Old Dave. - Of course, yeah, you can
see with the beard now, yeah.
- Wee Davie. - Cos he didn't
always have the beard, did he?
- And then he grew it for Movember.
- When he was a baby...
He was a tiny, tiny King,
smaller than a thistle.
He was very, very small.
"Can we have some money,
King David?"
SMALL VOICE:
"No, you can't have any money!"
He would reward people,
give them a tax rebate
if they had good...?
Shortbread. Scones.
- Scones, shortbread...?
- Deep-fried Mars bars. - Table manners?
- Say it again. - Table manners?
- Is the right answer. - Hey!
He would reward people
for their table manners.
- STEPHEN LAUGHS
- Immediately took your elbows of!
- Whoa! - Never know. - Fantastic.
Plus five points
for good table manners.
The 12th-century King David I
of Scotland, yes.
According to William of Malmesbury,
he gave tax rebates
for good table manners.
Talking of table manners
and royalty,
which member of the Royal family
would you least expect to have had
terrible table manners?
- Queen Victoria. - Queen Victoria,
yeah. And she was, er...
- Jesus! - Was she still of a generation
who thought that blowing off at
the end of a meal was a compliment?
No! I don't think...
I've been using that one
for years, you know.
"It's a COMPLIMENT to the chef!"
- I think you are confusing it
with burping. - Oh, God, sorry!
All this time...
It's never a compliment
to blow off at the table,
- where there's food.
- Unless you're a nun.
Yeah, unless you're a nun.
♪ What are we going to do
about Maria? ♪
Pfffrrrrt!
It does look like rather
a joyless table, doesn't it?
Which one of those
is Queen Victoria?
VICTORIA: And which one of those
is Edward VIII?
That one like Winston Churchill
in drag.
- I think Edward - VII - is on the right.
No, one of the boys
would be Edward VIII.
Oh! I see what you mean. It would
be. His son, David. It would be.
- The second one.
- Which one is Colin Firth?
That would be the youngest one
on the left, I think.
That's Colin F-F-F-F-F-Firth.
Um... And in the middle
is Queen Victoria.
- Why is she so, you know...?
- Joyless? - Yeah.
She was not amused, if you remember,
since her husband died.
I know, but you'd have thought,
- once she's at the table with
her family, she'd bloody smile! - No.
The paparazzi are so annoying
when you're having your breakfast.
They're like that.
She was a large woman.
- She was only 4'11" high.
- Kylie Minogue. - Kylie Minogue.
- Is she stood up there? - No.
VICTORIA: She was about 12 stone,
wasn't she?
But she weighed 12 stone.
It's exactly what she wait.
She had a 50-inch waist.
Well, her bloomers were 50 inches.
As collected by
Norman St John-Stevas, the MP.
- I didn't know that. - Yes, he did.
He collected Victoria's underwear.
Literally.
Not VictoriAN but VictoriA'S
And he started the lingerie shop,
Victoria's Secret, didn't he?
- Very good! - That's what he sells.
I've never been in, but I presume
that's what they sell.
Presumably it is.
The fact is, because she was Queen,
she got served first at dinner
and she would start eating.
And she would get through
a 14-course dinner in half an hour.
- Wow. - And once she had finished,
- everyone else had their food
taken away. - Brilliant.
So, they'd go, "Ah."
And she would just gobble away
at incredible speed.
Lord Hartington,
who was one of her courtiers,
was heard to shout at a footman,
"BRING THAT BACK!"
He was so angry at the fact that...
By the time you'd just
got your soup spoon in,
she was going,
"Well, that was very lovely."
And her doctors became
concerned at her obesity
and they recommended Benger's Food,
which was one of these supplements.
This was a thick, milky gruel, often
given to invalids and the elderly,
so she agreed and she took it
on top of her normal diet.
Were they worried she wasn't
going to fit on the coins?
That's a brilliant idea!
Just get a little bit
of the middle of her, a big breast.
- The coins got bigger and bigger
and bigger. - Huge coins.
"A whole penny?"
Fwa-chang!
The lavatory doors
were vast to spend a penny.
Oh, lordy.
Now, here's the skull of
King Richard III,
but what can you tell me
about his table manners,
just by looking at it?
Well, he was very good
at eating Toblerone.
Anything else you can tell?
What's unusual about his teeth
compared to ours?
- Space for a straw, that would be...
- Space for a straw, yes!
Notice your teeth,
the top row and the bottom row.
Close your mouth, naturally.
- Yeah. - Your top row...
Overbite.
We've all got an overbite.
Cruelly called by Billy Crystal
in When Harry Met Sally,
"Dancing - white man's overbite."
But the actual overbite,
literally like that,
is a recent thing in human beings.
And it comes after forks,
because we cut up our food.
And in the days
when we wrenched our food,
the incisors would get
smoothed down more,
and the teeth would fit exactly.
And it shows that Richard III didn't
use a fork for cutting his food,
which we know,
cos forks were not used
for transferring food to your mouth.
Right up to Tudor times,
you would use...?
- Your hands. - Your hands.
So if we brought up children
without knives and forks,
- they wouldn't develop an overbite?
- No. - You know what?
I'm going to try.
I'll come back in 21 years' time.
- Call me a liar. - We'll see.
- It's true. - With a really
resentful-looking boy.
- I've got twins, so - one,
I'm going to give a fork. - Brilliant!
- Brilliant! - And one...
I'll have the perfect experiment.
- It is superb.
Unethical, but perfect. - Yeah.
And you can sort of show this
by the difference in civilisations
who've developed overbites.
And 1,000 years ago, you can see
where Chinese aristocratic skulls
have an overbite,
but peasants don't.
And it's when they started
to use chopsticks
and chop up their food, and then it
spread throughout the population.
So it really does...
It sounds weird,
but this overbite we have
is an acquired characteristic
because of our chopping-up of food.
You can just tell
by looking at skulls.
Just go through any graveyard,
dig people up,
- and you'll see I'm right, Jason.
- "Stephen Fry told me to do it."
- Yes, absolutely!
- While I'm chewing on a turtle.
- "Really bad influence." - Yeah.
So, anyway,
name the traditional
ingredients of kedgeree.
Well, now, there's some of them
on the screen.
Rice. Say rice.
Say eggs.
- I think Victoria wanted
to answer this one. - Yes.
Um...haddock.
- Oh, dear! Oh, dear!
- KLAXON
You wanted that, didn't you?
Er, what about egg? Rice?
Yes, egg. Well, rice...
It means "a mix-up".
And fish is a very recent thing
to be an absolute
essential of kedgeree.
In fact, the Hobson-Jobson
Dictionary Of Anglo-Indian Words,
which is one of the great
books of its time, says,
"In England, we find
the word is often applied
"to a mess of re-cooked fish
served for breakfast,
"but this is inaccurate.
"Fish is frequently eaten WITH
kedgeree but is no part of it."
So it's...
It now tends to be flaked haddock
and a bit of cream and curry powder
and rice and boiled egg
and is absolutely delicious.
But I'll give you 100 points
if you can name
two traditional Italian breads.
Oh, so tempting!
Well, now...ciabatta.
- KLAXON
- Oh!
- Er... - We're already there.
Ciabatta was invented in 1982,
can you believe? It's that recent.
- No, shut up.
- Yeah, it was an Italian baker
who was worried about
the threat of French baguettes,
and it's the Italian for...?
You can redeem yourself if you know.
Baguette.
That would be too easy, no.
It's not really the shape of it.
- Handbag?
- Well, that's closer, it's...
- Slipper. - Yes!
Brilliant, it was a slipper, yes.
It was... He was Arnaldo Cavallari,
was his name,
and it was a specific invention,
he called it "Ciabatta Polesano",
Polesine is a part
of Northern Italy.
So it really is very recent.
Some people claim that
it was around since the '40s,
but there doesn't seem
to be any proof of this,
the name doesn't appear before 1982.
Now, what can you see coming
out of your kettle as it boils?
VICTORIA: Vapour.
- Is the right answer. - Hooray!
Not steam.
- I wasn't going to say steam.
- No, as if you would(!)
- Because steam is...? - The stuff
that comes out of the kettle.
Oh! Steam is invisible.
- It does come out of
the kettle... - Oh, really?
..but sometimes
you see a gap, you know?
- you get the little gap and then
you see the vapour. - Oh, yeah.
And the gap is steam,
it's an invisible gas.
And as soon as it cools,
even slightly,
it turns to water vapour,
and that's the bit you see.
We call it steam, but it isn't.
Steam is actually invisible.
Isn't that interesting?
- Very interesting.
- Thank you. So it's "VI".
I tell my children
not to eat their food
till the steam's gone.
Now what am I going to say?
But I mean, yeah, in ordinary
everyday speech, things steam,
and "steamy" are...
You know, manure steams and...
Oh, I tell them
not to eat manure as well.
Not till the steam's gone off it.
I'm glad to hear it.
- Did you know that in 1784
there was a Kettle War? - Wow.
Between...?
Oh, it was between Morphy
and Richards, wasn't it?
And in the end...
- In the end, they joined together
and... - It was all fine.
It was between
the Dutch and the Austrians.
One shot took place
on the Austrian flagship -
a bullet was fired by the Dutch
and hit a kettle
and ricocheted off and the Austrians
immediately surrendered.
So it was known as
the Kettle War. There you are.
Well, we have to end now
with a Knick Knack,
which I sometimes end with.
This is...
Ooh, this is exciting.
This is a remarkable substance.
It's called polyethylene oxide,
and it's very gloopy,
and also it reacts rather excitedly
under ultraviolet light.
And, Alan and Victoria,
you've got ultraviolet torches
and you can point them at it.
I think we might have some
ultraviolet light in the studio.
- Shall I point them now, sir?
- Yes, please do.
Ooh, look. See?
- Wow! - Ooh!
Now, what I'm going to try and do,
I'm going to stand up to do this,
it's a very remarkable effect.
The effect is, when you pour it,
if I get it at the right angle,
it pulls itself out of the flask
and into here.
It flows uphill and out
and down again. All right.
There we go. Oh, it's pulling itself
up, it's pulling itself up...
You see what I mean? It's pulling
itself up from the bottom.
If you look at the top one,
it's actually flowing uphill there.
And then it thins out
into a little trail of snot.
I'll try that again,
so we'll just get a few takes.
That's like when...
It's like when you have a wee
after a Berocca, isn't it, that?
It is!
That's exactly what it's like.
Oh, goodness.
So disgusting. Polyethylene oxide.
I don't know what else...
What's it used for?
It's a very good
masturbatory lubricant.
- Particularly in the dark. - Yeah.
APPLAUSE
All right, we'll try again.
It's a little bit awkward
getting two friends
to hold the torch, though. Isn't it?
Yeah. There we go, that's pulling
itself up there nicely.
Excellent, there we go. Phew!
Thank you.
And thank you...
Thank you, my special
ultraviolet helpers.
Well, on that exciting note,
let's go to the scores.
Oh, my actual goodness.
It's really remarkable.
I'm afraid, possibly because
he was booby-trapped into it,
in last place, with -38
is Jason Manford.
How'd that happen?
APPLAUSE
In a highly creditable third place,
with -17, is Richard Osman.
- Oh, thank you.
- APPLAUSE
Which is very impressive.
And in second place
with -7 is Victoria Wood.
APPLAUSE
But, scraping into a lead by
one point, on -6, is Alan Davies!
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Well. Put that away.
I got points for eating that food.
And with thanks to
Victoria, Richard, Jason and Alan,
it's good night!
APPLAUSE