QI (2003–…): Season 11, Episode 4 - Knits & Knots - full transcript
Ah, good evening, good evening,
good evening!
Good evening and welcome to QI,
where tonight the K is silent,
as in knits,
knots, knackers and knobs.
Let's meet a knitwit, Sue Perkins.
APPLAUSE
Knot a lot, Ross Noble.
APPLAUSE
Slightly knackered, David Mitchell.
APPLAUSE
And a complete kn...
say no more, Alan Davies.
APPLAUSE
Right. All the K's are quiet
and so are their k-noises.
Sue goes...
Sh!
Ross goes...
SHEEP BLEATING
David goes...
PIN DROPPING
That was a pin dropping.
You could hear it. Yeah.
And Alan goes:
♪ Silence is golden! ♪
Very nice. And how many knots
are there in this picture?
♪ Silence is... ♪
Yes? Two.
KLAXON
No.
Four?
KLAXON
It's a trap!
Well, you've got some options.
Oh, none.
KLAXON
David?
One? Yes!
APPLAUSE
Oh, you're such a swot!
Is it the noose,
is that the only one?
There are two hitches,
a bend and a knot.
The one on the right
is a k-noose. Yes.
A noose, but it is a knot.
Oh, a noose is a knot?
A noose is a type of knot.
A hangman's knot.
The hitches are the first one
and the third one.
Is correct, they are hitches,
and the second one
is what's known as a bend.
In everyday speech, of course, the
word knot is used for all of them
but this is QI where everyday speech
is completely...
MUMBO JUMBO
So the highwayman's hitch,
for example,
I have an example
of a highwayman's hitch.
That's where you hitch your horse
and the tighter you pull,
the tighter it goes but when
you want to get away quickly,
you pull the short one, da-dum! Oh,
that is good. Isn't that clever?
Does he not just run off
with the stick then?
It's a post in the ground.
Oh, I see, right. Sorry, yeah.
Because if you tied up your dog
to that and you went, right,
and then threw it and the dog ran
after it, a lot of confusion there.
Yeah. Another one was called
the European death knot,
the Euro death knot, or EDK.
Was that named by UKIP?
It's also a one sided overhand bend.
It's used for joining two ropes,
as you can see.
It's perfectly safe if used right,
but a lot of climbers thought
it wasn't safe
and it was invented in Europe,
so American climbers called it
the Euro death knot.
In fact it's very, very old
and the 5,300-year-old man, Otzi,
who was discovered in the Alps,
dead, obviously...
For a moment there I thought you...
He was preserved, preserved...
Been there for 5,000 years and
going, "Help, will somebody help!"
He had amongst his possessions
a knot tied exactly in that fashion,
so it shows we've been doing it
for a very long time.
And that would have been before rope
was invented, for sure.
How he pulled that off...
And the other hitch we saw
was called the snuggle hitch.
Which is a more secure version
of the better-known sailor's knot,
the clove hitch.
You look at me as if I would know
that. Sorry, I just...
"Come on, Susan,
you know the knots."
One of the surprising
things about it,
because it looks reasonably simple,
was that it was invented in 1987.
Or at least that's when it was
very first introduced into the
International Knot Tyers' Guild.
Didn't they think they had enough
knots, without inventing more?
Yeah, I know.
There are 3,800 in their...
We're not going to go through each
one of them, you'll be pleased
to know.
So that's a very specific '80s knot?
Did somebody go, we need a way
of tying down Bananarama. Now...
It was a man called Owen Nuttall,
anyway, who invented it
and he called it the snuggle hitch.
NASAL SPEECH: I imagine he speaks
like that. Well, he may.
"Nuttall here. I invented a knot."
The hangman's knot is named
after one of the most famous
hangmen in history,
Charles II's hangman.
Oh, Johnny... It's a French guy.
Johnny Noose.
No. Oddly enough, his surname
is a sailing vessel. Jack...?
Boat. Yacht.
Ketch. Jack Ketch.
Which if I'm not mistaken
has a tall mast at the front
and a small mast at the back.
Indeed, indeed, yes, the ketch.
Yeah, well, I just like to point
that out. Well done. Thank you.
This became pretty much the standard
hanging noose that was used
because it broke the neck
very quickly.
So, it was a very quick death
when you dropped.
The drop, as they called it.
So, in a way, it was humane.
It's good that you say
he was an effective hangman,
cos if you weren't,
you're essentially just a bloke
that opens a door. Yes.
Do you know what I mean?
Because where was it?
There was a place where the
prisoners built the gallows
and when you stood on a particular
plank it forced the wood out
and then the door didn't open
and no-one was getting...
Then they would test it and the door
would open and then they'd go,
all right.
And then they'd put the person there
and then it would push the wood
and then it wouldn't,
and they'd go, all right.
Take him away, test it again, fine.
That happened loads of times and...
And so they decided God didn't want
this person to die and let them off.
I think that's a real thing,
or I might have seen it in
a Scooby Doo episode.
I'm not sure. I'm not quite sure.
Do they do a lot of hanging
in Scooby Doo?
Now you come to mention it...
No more!
No, it's not.
How would that be Scooby Doo?
Like, like, like...
IMPERSONATES SCOOBY DOO
Shaggy!
That can't be Scooby Doo.
AMERICAN ACCENT: It was Mr Ketch,
the hangman, all the time.
So, now, I want you to take
one of those each,
and tie yourselves together,
as it were.
This has gone quite dark now.
It has, hasn't it?
Is it just me?
It's like a party game in the '70s.
So, put each one of those
around your wrist.
No, no, don't undo it.
Well, I can't get my hand through
that, can I? Oh, sorry.
Little cock grab, that is.
Cock ring! Try with this one.
Swap. You can give me that one back.
That's more like it!
There we are.
Put your wrists through.
That's it, and then do that,
so that you're tied together.
OK. Yes, is that right?
Is that good?
Without undoing the knots,
untie yourselves.
DAVID: Oh, I see.
Don't turn around, don't turn
around. That hasn't helped.
DAVID: No!
ROSS: No, that's it,
you go through there. Yes! Yes!
No!
Emphatically no!
Completely not.
I'm going back up.
I'm going back over.
Right, go, go through. Yes!
No!
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
I've got it, I've got it. Right.
Right. I've got it.
If I do a forward flip...
Now...
Right, let's see if we can get...
Oh, oh.
I think technically
you're now married.
You have let...
I'm coming down, I'm coming down.
You two hold it
for a second and watch,
because I think Sue
is onto something. OK.
This is what we did when we were
regularly handcuffed together
as children.
No, watch.
You mustn't untie the knot.
But...
Oh.
Yeah!
Well done. Brilliant!
Have a go. I actually,
I have no idea what you did.
Neither do I, but I feel alone now.
I liked it when we were together.
Show them, if you can remember it.
What's properly weird is, I've now
got a purple one round there.
It's a magician's trick, it's
a good... So what you have to do is,
you have to make a loop.
And then you feed the loop through.
What?! Then you go over your hand.
No way.
You are free.
No, you're not!
Is this your watch?
APPLAUSE
Oh, we've given up, we've given up.
Hang on,
if I take my trousers off...
I think we have to call
that a disaster.
But well done, Sue Perkins.
APPLAUSE
It was like playing S&M Twister.
It was rather, wasn't it?
It was a wonderful sight that will
never leave my memory bank.
You're now a shoo-in for the
50 Shades of Grey movie,
the pair of you.
You are. Absolutely.
So, if you want to tie the knot at a
knobstick wedding, what do you need?
A knobstick wedding.
A knobstick wedding?
I think I've been to a few of those.
That's not an offensive term
for gay marriage, is it? No!
I'd be very surprised
and disappointed to hear that
on this show.
It is now! It is now!
If you imagine a knobstick
as being some sort of weapon,
is there another type of weapon
followed by a wedding? A shotgun.
Exactly. Pretty similar
to a shotgun,
which is from a later era.
But a knobstick is a stick
with a knob on the end.
So you wave your knobstick
around and someone goes,
"All right, I'll marry you!"
It's a club. The club...
What used to be... LAUGHING: Sorry!
Sorry, I was about to go,
"That's what I did to my wife!"
But I thought, "No! No.
"No. No." No. She might be watching.
A knobstick is a type
of wooden club.
Now, if a woman was unmarried
and had a baby,
that baby was said to be on
the parish, like Oliver Twist.
And the parish paid for workhouses
and the parish had to pay for the
babies. And they didn't like that.
So, in smaller villages where
they knew who the father was,
they would force the marriage by
threatening them with a knobstick.
And that was what a knobstick
marriage was.
It was an enforced marriage
because the moment a man marries
a woman, he is responsible
for the baby and the wife.
Whereas if an unmarried woman
was in a parish, the parish was.
So it's that simple. There's a
description of one here, from 1829.
"One of those illegal celebrations
of matrimony which are termed by
"the peasantry 'knobstick weddings'
took lately place in Wirksworth.
"The parties forced into the
blessing state are William Saxton,
"a slender-witted man aged 24..."
Don't look at me when you said that!
The cheek of it!
"..and Lydia Brooks, some 15 years
older, who has a wooden leg."
Oh, dear. A marriage made in heaven.
Why did they need
the knobstick then?
Why didn't she just hop after him,
going, "Come on, marry me! Come on."
The word knot has been associated
with marriage for a very long time,
tying the knot was
first used in 1717,
at least that's the first record
we have of tying the knot.
And there have been
some very odd ones.
In 2005, American Kevin Nadal
married... A horse? A tree?
No, it was himself.
Oh. Can you do that?
He solemnly vowed,
I, Kevin Nadal, take me,
Kevin Nadal, to have and hold,
in sickness and in health.
His point was, if people are happy
to celebrate married life,
why shouldn't they celebrate
single life?
Did he take himself out on dates
and wonder when
he'd make the first move?
I bet he also said, "Why's it always
me who does the washing up?"
"Why am I always the bridesmaid?"
"It's not me, it's me!"
If he meets somebody,
is he unfaithful to himself?
He would be, presumably.
"I'm not going to tell myself..."
Would you have to divorce yourself?
"Where have you been?!"
"I'm not saying."
"After many years of thought,
"I decided to have an open
relationship with myself."
"And, you know, I don't mind
what I get up to."
"But I just wish...
"Don't do it behind my back."
"Don't tell me!"
"Don't tell me,
I don't want to know."
"Not in my bed!"
If he wanted to do a bit
of wife swapping,
he just goes the other
end of the bed. Oh, dear.
In 1979, a lady called Eija-Riitta
Berliner-Mauer,
a 57-year-old German woman,
married...
What do you think she married?
Is it a bridge? No, from her name.
Berliner-Mauer? So, Berlin Wall?
She married the Berlin Wall.
In 1979, when it was still up,
obviously.
Someone married the Eiffel Tower
or something. Did they?
They dated the Eiffel Tower for
a while and then they got married,
and it says that they had been
going steady with a bow
and they had had close relations
with a fence beforehand.
And they were obsessed with...
There's a word for it,
I don't know it,
for sleeping with inanimate objects.
Size isn't everything, but the
Eiffel Tower is pretty impressive.
As phalluses go...
And there's a gift shop. Yes!
You've got a restaurant.
"The view from the top
of my husband!"
None of these marriages, of course,
has any official standing.
So those are some of
the odder marriages.
The traditional way to make an
honest woman of someone is to use
a church warden's knob,
on the other hand.
Why would anyone ban knitting
patterns, flowers, hugs and kisses?
This is a real ban, that is to say,
a governmental ban.
It's got a war-time feeling
about it.
It has got a war-time feeling
about it. Code?
Code is the right word.
What, they knit in code? Yes.
So in World War II you were not
allowed to send abroad
any knitting pattern, just in case
there was code embedded in it.
So you couldn't send, you know,
socks to prisoners of war?
You could send socks,
but not anything with a knitting
pattern in it. Oh, right.
Because they could be used
as some sort of code.
Open out a blanket
and it says "June 6th, 1944."
Normandy.
Also postal chess was not allowed,
even kisses at the bottom
of letters,
in case they had some meaning.
Presumably messages saying where
the troops are moving...
Yes, those were obviously
pretty much banned.
Could you not have got like, you know
you get knitting machines,
could they not have made like
an enigma knitting machine?
Where it makes the jumper
and then scrambles it up,
so that they couldn't pass the
message. That would be very clever.
It's an opportunity missed.
It is an opportunity missed.
We have a Karen Templer, who is
a QI watcher, has knitted us...
Oh, look at that.
And this says, in Morse code...
"I wool always love you."
Oh, that's cute.
Aaah. Thank you, Karen. Bravo.
APPLAUSE
Isn't that nice?
You know what she was doing there?
She was indulging in a bit
of four-ply. Hey!
AUDIENCE LAUGH AND GROAN
Good night. Very good.
And let's hope that it is Morse code
and not Braille.
"You'll what? Get off me!"
You know the female knitters
at the guillotine? Did they knit?
Didn't they knit code? There was
something about them knitting code.
The most famous one is Madame
Defarge in A Tale of Two Cities
and they were known as tricoteurs,
which is French for knitting women.
But a lot of people now believe
they didn't really exist.
That they were sort of made up
by Carlyle,
the great historian of the
French Revolution, and by Dickens.
So they didn't knit, necessarily.
They didn't think that they actually
sat there watching heads roll.
Making bobble hats.
In the book, Madame Defarge knits
the names of all the aristocrats
who get their heads chopped off,
which is not really a code
as a sort of gleeful cackling joy.
The original woman
of the revolution,
the mothers of the revolution,
were much-loved but then,
during The Terror,
they became considered a nuisance
and so they were shut up or
they were forbad to wear trousers,
a law that wasn't repealed
until February, 2013,
in France.
Trouser suits had actually been
illegal in France for that time,
but obviously not enforced.
No!
To say the least.
Now, how can knitting be used to
reduce fear, crime and disorder?
Are you saying if he had
a tank top on, he'd go,
"OK, I'm putting the gun down"?
Well, you know, if he was knitting
he couldn't be holding a gun. Yeah.
Well, that's true.
It's harder to stab, shoot.
You can only really kick people
while you're knitting, can't you?
You can stab.
We'll come onto that,
there is something called
Extreme Knitting,
which we will come to.
But at the moment, we're looking
at this form of knitting,
which has different names.
It's called Guerrilla Knitting,
or sometimes Yarn Bombing.
And it is actually a way to make
a place more peaceful.
It's to deter crime.
And it was tried out in Leicester,
where they hung pompoms,
and put things round trees.
Oh, I feel calm already.
It's like a tree-warmer.
Well, they used cosies
for tree trunks, parking meters,
even buses, and tanks has been
suggested, in the military areas.
The Leicester experiment
has had mixed results.
Some locals don't think it works,
others do.
The fact is, the pompoms have
so embarrassed the Leicester police
that they have not allowed us
to show photographs of them.
Which was extremely mean of them,
but I'm sure
if you look it up, you'll be able
to see the Leicester pompoms.
They're embarrassed? Yes.
Embarrassed by the fact that they do
look rather comic.
We can easily sort that out.
Basically, if you're watching,
if you're in Leicester and you see
a policeman, just go, "Oi, where's
pompom?" That'll teach them.
It certainly will.
But as I say,
there's Guerrilla Knitting,
but I alluded to it earlier,
there's Extreme Knitting.
What do you think that might be?
Now I've got Gregg Wallace
in my head going,
"Knitting doesn't get more
extreme than this!"
"First you get a slip stitch,
then comes a taste of pearl."
Is it about doing knitting in places
where you wouldn't normally,
like driving
a Formula One car, or...
Well, sort of.
..parachuting or something.
The great heroine of this
is one Susie Hewer,
aged 55 at the moment
of going to press.
She has the world record
for knitting a scarf
while running a marathon.
Oh, that is good.
That is impressive.
And she's also crocheted
while running a marathon too,
and she's ridden a tandem,
and she does it to raise money
for Alzheimer's research.
So it's all pretty good in the end.
Yeah. I did a half marathon
when I was a student,
to raise money so that we could
go to the Edinburgh Festival.
Well, dear me. Do you know how much
I raised? Have a guess.
So that's what got you here.
50 quid. 70.
Oh, that's good. 70 quid.
For 13 miles.
And then we got two grand off the
Students' Union to top it up.
Well, it worked out all right
for you, didn't it? Yeah.
I would say.
Now, what about the biggest
knitted objects in the world,
how big are they? Massive.
Yes, is the answer. Give me a...
Thanks, I'll have a point,
thank you.
The biggest knitted object. Yeah.
Well, I've had my doubts about Venus
for a long time, you know.
Is it going to be like
a suspension bridge or something,
is a knitted object?
Inasmuch as it is, yes,
it is a physical object
on which people can live.
It's a house?
Is the internet knitted?
Does it count as
a huge knitted thing? No.
It's a series of man-made knitted
islands on the Peruvian side
of Lake Titicaca.
And there are 45 of them.
They're from totora reeds,
and there's a church on one of them.
There are buildings and houses,
people live on them.
But they're quite...
But the scariest thing is the size
of the nanas that built them.
Yes!
But several hundred people
live on them, they get so used to
this rather springy surface that
if they then go on land, they just,
they can't walk, it takes them ages
to get their land legs back.
I think that's where Bez
from the Happy Mondays,
he's from there, isn't he? Yeah.
Very good. Excellent.
Be a great excuse, wouldn't it,
if you turned up somewhere pissed
to say, "No, actually, I'm fine, I
just usually live somewhere knitted.
"And it's very odd, everything..."
Just used to a very
different surface.
"Everything feels very wobbly,
but honestly, I am a professional."
But the Lake Titicaca Olympic
team must be amazing. Bang!
Give me a statistic
about Lake Titicaca.
It is the biggest innuendo place
on the planet.
It's got titties and it's got caca.
Caca, exactly. Exactly.
Is it very, very high?
It's the highest navigable lake
in the world. Quite right.
Navigable means you can go
in one end and out the other.
Yes, you can get ships on it
and there are many ships on it,
and ports and things like that.
There are higher lakes which you
couldn't get a ship onto.
Not been made more navigable
by loads of knitted islands.
Yes, they get in the way. Yes.
So, anyway, now for a new round.
What Katydid.
Here are five creatures
and five names.
I want you to match
the creature to the name.
Oh, right, OK.
There's a dragon-headed,
a spike headed, a horned,
a mimicking snout-nosed and a small
hooded, and they're all called?
Sheila.
No, no, they're called katydids.
Why might they be called a katydid?
A "cat-idid?" No, it is
actually pronounced katydid.
It's because supposedly the sound
they make by stridulating their
wings as many of the cricket-y type
animals and katydid animals do...
Cricket-y type animals? Yes,
crickets, grasshoppers, locusts...
And we look to you! Do you
do it in your nature shows?
"Oh, these are the cricket-y
type ones."
"The cricket-y
and the footballish ones."
So their bingo wings sort of rub
and they let off...
And it makes a chirping noise.
Yes. I think mine do that.
Which puts them in common
with locusts and grasshoppers
and cicadas and so on.
They're called kaydids because
apparently the sound is,
"Katydid, katydidn't."
I don't know, we haven't got
a recording of it,
so I can't help you.
Katydid, katydidn't.
Let's show the answers
in a colour-coded sort of way.
There you can see...
The dragon-head.
But they're strange creatures.
And the most impressive,
in some ways, is the small hooded,
which as you see is the purple one,
which looks like a leaf.
We're looking at it very closely
and it's moving, but it wasn't
discovered till 2010. It lived for
millennia and it's not even rare.
It's in Australia.
It's because its camouflage
is so astonishing, the mottling
of the leaves and everything else is
such that people just don't see it.
That's the longest game
of hide and seek.
Yes, that's ever been ever played.
Finally!
Eventually someone, "Look, what's
that little blighter in there?
"That's an animal, it's alive."
"Oh, you got me, you got me!"
It would be a terrifying thing,
actually suddenly to, you know, that
things that we've been looking at
for ages turn out to be animals.
Yes. You know, that you're suddenly
looking at four trees
and suddenly realise,
"Oh, no, they're legs." Yes.
There's another katydid which does
a really extraordinary thing,
it's a record in the animal kingdom,
as far as we know,
it's the male Tuberous bush cricket.
It has the largest testicles
for their weight of any animal.
ALL: Oh!
That's 14% of their body mass.
14%? 14%.
Gonads. It enables them to fertilise
as many females as possible.
They do this by inserting
a jelly-like package, called...
Why are you looking at me?
I'm sorry, called a spermatophore,
into the female.
But the back end of this
spermatophore,
this bulging packet
of spermatazoic jelly,
there's too much of it,
it bulges out
and the female reaches back
and eats it for lunch.
LAUGHTER
So it's a romantic dinner for one,
so it's a double little present.
Only a man could say that!
The thing about that...
40%...yes?
The thing about that
as a creature, though,
cos it's got such massive balls,
like when you film it close up,
it must go like,
it must leap and go, oh!
Quick, oh!
Oh, the agony.
Every time it lands, it's just, ooh.
Where's the penis?
Is the penis massive?
I don't think it's as massive
as the testes.
Just a little thing like that,
and then two great melons.
Yeah. It's really...
Quite a powerful squirt,
you'd have thought.
She could be a mile away. Yeah!
Well, there you are,
there's your katydid.
What's the longest distance
of mating in the animal kingdom?
What is? Yeah.
Gosh, I don't know.
Some fish put the eggs and then
the male fish comes along later...
By post. They don't even meet.
That's true.
You could send by post, I suppose.
Can you?
Well, there's the ninja slug.
No, this is a real thing.
A ninja slug?
The ninja slug, and
when it's doing the loving,
it, er... Yeah, I'm like a proper
expert. The slug loving.
Wax on, wax off.
Yeah, slug loving.
And then instead of
getting involved,
it comes up and then it fires
like all the necessaries towards
the lady slug, and she "hoof", and
then, I don't know what it's called.
Catches it? Sort of, yeah.
But she leans backward to catch it?
I don't think she's got hands,
but she, she sort of...
That's the thing with a slug,
if you rush a slug like that,
they don't go, "Urgh," they just,
"Oh." And then, yeah. Go like that.
Oh, it's that bit, on the... yes.
Wah!
And then, yeah. Are you saying it's
like the meat and two veg detach?
Yeah. Takes it off... And fires,
takes it off and fires it at a...
Takes it off and it... Again,
I'm not sure where I found this out.
Scooby Doo.
That is definitely Scooby Doo.
It sort of, its bits go, and then
it, woo, like that. Then it...
I definitely seen that
on Scooby Doo.
And then I think she's like that,
"Wey!"
And she's basically like a
goalkeeper, just readying herself.
Exactly. Yeah, honestly, it's like
an explosion in an Ann Summers.
Well, that's terrific, well done.
There's nothing worse, though,
when this slug comes towards the lady
and she dives the wrong way.
That is, oh!
Nightmare.
Moving on, moving on from the
enormous knackers of the katydid.
What can you tell me
about the royal knackers?
Well, I imagine they're pretty
toastie right now.
Is it where royal horses are killed?
The Royal Knacker's Yard?
Yes, they don't any longer
have a Royal Knacker's yard,
but they used to.
There was of course, in the
Victorian age, and earlier,
a great need to get rid of horses
who had died,
and to make the most of them.
And they went to knacker's yards.
And there was...
And thence into lasagne.
And they were made into
all kinds of things.
And the royal knacker
was one John Atcheler,
who had the royal warrant from Queen
Victoria, to knacker her horses.
And he was the official horse
slaughterer.
He's buried in Highgate Cemetery,
where there is
a tomb with a prancing horse on top
of it, like a Ferrari mascot.
Is it prancing the other way up?
Maybe prancing is a sign of revenge.
"We got you at last, you bastard."
He had two knacker's yards.
The first was in Sharp's Alley
near Smithfield
and then later near Kings Cross,
at Belle Isle.
And they were famously malodorous,
you wouldn't want to live near them.
Huge, huge copper vats filled
with horses being rendered down.
But here from 1844 is an extract
from Bentley's Miscellany,
"The knacker's cart arrives
in double quick,
"The mob admires the cart,
the royal arms and the inscription:
"'Knacker to Her Majesty.'
"The royal knacker, a swell knacker
in cords and tops,
"with a bit of butcher's apron,
just as big as a bishop's,
"merely to distinguish
his profession,
"pole-axe in hand, descends
from his vehicle."
Well, that's pageantry.
That's pageantry, isn't it? Exactly.
That's what I want to see televised,
David Dimbleby doing
the commentary, "The slaughtering
of the royal horse."
Absolutely.
It wouldn't be David Dimbleby
though, it'd be Fearne Cotton.
I'm afraid it would.
People would say, "They've ruined
the horse slaughtering this year."
"They've trivialised
the knackering."
"It used to be so respectful."
So much pomp and circumstance.
Explain what bit of the horse
was bubbling up to the top now,
is it a bollock, is it an eye?
Yes. But they don't know now,
these new presenters.
Football clubs used horse oil to...?
To stop chaffing?
Lubricate something.
Their boots, actually, oddly enough,
to keep their boots supple.
Cricket teams rubbed it into
their bats,
much as they then used to do
with linseed oil.
Doctors used neatsfoot oil
to massage a patient's joints
after coming out of plaster,
they would use that.
Selected bones were sent to knife
manufacturers for the handles.
There you are, look. See, "Horse
meat for sale, this store only.
"With beef, lamb,
pork also available."
He's thinking,
"I won't have the horse."
The horse looks a bit worried!
The horse is deciding which to have.
But by strange, I don't know
if coincidence or irony is the word,
but in 1824 the RSPCA was founded
and there's a plaque to show
where it was founded.
Old Slaughters Coffee House.
That's what you want to do after
you've had a good old night
slaughtering, is have a latte. Yeah.
I fed horse meat to a lion once.
Did you?
That was a pony trick gone wrong!
No, I was in Namibia... Yeah.
..doing a documentary about this
place where they
rehabilitate big cats.
They had three lions
a bit like Clarence, the Boss-Eyed
Lion from Daktari.
I remember him well.
They were kind of semi-tame
and they fed them horse meat,
so if a horse died anywhere
within about 300 miles,
they'd try and get hold of it.
And they'd chop it up
and you'd put it...
They'd lift a bit of the fence
and you shove this metal bowl
underneath and a lion would come
over, put its tongue in.
And lions have got these barbs
on their tongue that can pick up
a piece of horse meat
and dangle it, and then they look
at you through the bar like that.
Still got the hair on the side.
Oh...
Quite a flimsy fence. Yes.
We're lucky still to have you.
Well done, you. Quite a sight.
Quite an impressive sight.
Well, if anyone from Leeds tells you
to eat kicker, what should you do?
Run away,
because that's Kicker there.
You can see we're still
in the world of meat.
Is it horse?
It is actually just plain horse,
yes, it's horse.
And Yorkshire was the last place
really to eat horse
on a major scale in Britain.
Until quite recently.
Well...
But of course recently there have
been a few scandals
which mean we've probably
all been eating horse.
That dark brown horse has
the hair of Tina Turner.
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
You're spot-on.
What you're looking at here is the
entire line-up of Horse Kajagoogoo.
You're absolutely right.
It's really spooky, that.
Well, horse was very popular right
up until the first millennium,
until Gregory III, the Pope,
deemed it too pagan.
But the Scandinavians had always
loved eating horse
and the greatest Scandinavian,
as it were,
presence in Britain
was in Yorkshire.
And so it remained
as a tradition to eat horse
right up until really the '30s.
And the last butcher selling horse
in the county was Arnold Drury
in Doncaster, who died in 1951.
He proudly advertised
"Viande Cheval,"
meat horse,
"of super quality horseflesh."
And other butchers called it kicker,
more euphemistically.
And in the 19th century, rural
Yorkshire folk who moved to the city
were known as kicker eaters.
I've eaten horse.
Well, most of us have, apparently,
without knowing it. Yes.
I ate it consciously. How was it?
To... Very lean.
No fat on it at all. Wow.
Just basically like eating,
I don't know, wall installation.
Just no succulence to it. Yeah.
Isn't it odd how we rebel
at the idea of things
that we're not used to?
You know, we are totally used
to drinking the proteinous
fatty stuff that comes out
of an alien animal,
that is designed to make its calf
double in weight every week,
and we're perfectly happy,
skull it back and go, that's all
right, I'm eating a cow's milk.
But even more so... But someone says
eat a horse's milk, you go, "Ugh!"
Even more so than that,
when my sister-in-law
expressed some breast milk
and kept it in the fridge... Ah.
and her brother came in
and drank it...
It made everyone feel a bit unwell,
but no-one quite knows why.
Well, exactly,
because it's a lot more...
Clearly it's designed for human
consumption. Precisely,
much more than cow or horse milk is.
I tell you what,
it makes a lovely rice pudding.
It really does. But wasn't there
a shop selling...
Breast milk ice cream. Yeah.
We should all try lots
of different animals' milk.
I'm very happy to try horse milk.
I had some of that breast milk
ice cream. Did you?
Yeah. I was on a television programme
and they brought it round
as a gimmick, I didn't seek it out.
No.
And it tasted completely
like normal ice cream.
I thought you were going to say
completely like tits.
Yeah, it tasted very, very strongly
of tits. Very breasty.
No, it tasted very much like
dog or horse milk, in fact.
Well, the most famous 19th century
Royal Knacker was Jack Atcheler,
responsible for dealing
with 26,000 horses a year.
Talking of being knackered,
describe the world's
oldest mattress.
I'll have to think,
it's got springs sticking out,
it's a bit tatty, it's stained...
It's a lot older than that.
It's very, very, very, very old.
39,000 years old, we think.
It's in KwaZulu-Natal, in a cave,
and it's made of rushes and reeds.
And it was used by humans for
thousands and thousands of years.
And they would add top layers
of insect-repelling plants,
so that they wouldn't get
bitten during the night.
So it's a really extraordinary...
What was it, king, super king?
I think probably wider. Californian
double king, probably. Oh. Yeah.
Absolutely. I think I've stayed
at that hotel.
Compared to apes, of course,
humans are relatively hairless.
We have two major areas of hair,
don't we?
We have our little top knot
and we have our little
lower down area of hair.
Both of which can be
susceptible to lice.
There's the head louse. Ah!
And there's the public louse.
Which is actually on the decline.
The crab. Is it? Yes, it is. Yeah.
Not so many pubes about these days,
are there?
Because of Brazilians, you think?
That's exactly why.
The Brazilian has... Because of the,
you know... Shaving downstairs.
I'm not sure how I know this, but it
is true. Scooby Doo again. Probably.
HE IMITATES SCOOBY
And if it hadn't been
for you pesky kids,
I'd have gotten away with it,
as well.
Apparently their numbers are... Yeah.
They have had to actually start
sanctuaries now. Special...
Special pube sanctuaries and I donate
every month. Little crabberies.
To provide a natural habitat because
their natural habitat is shrinking.
It would be awful, actually,
if you found you had pubic lice
and then there was some sort
of environment agency order on it
that you couldn't get rid of it.
"I'm so sorry, they're important
to the ecosystem."
They are restricted, they are zoned.
They are like bats.
It was assumed that,
when we were hairier beings,
we had various lice on our bodies
and that some of them specialised
in the head and began to evolve
into head lice
and the others specialised in the
pubes and began to evolve into pubic
lice, but it has been discovered
that they are not related at all.
And that our pubic lice are actually
related to lice that live
on gorillas, which asks a rather
interesting question as to...
who was it? Who made that...
David Attenborough!
SILENCE!
Yeah? David Attenborough.
No, it was 3.3 million years ago
that the jump was made.
I think that still works,
David Attenborough.
So down there and up there, no...
They're not related. You see, I've
got a sort of nature corridor. Ah!
Well, I think you will find
they will try down there
and not like it,
they'll stay up there.
How dare you! How dare you!
That's an area of outstanding
natural beauty, down there!
But it's an immense distance.
Let's just say an area of special
scientific interest.
I've had a picnic area put in.
I've got a gift shop down there.
Coach party. Oh, my God. Jesus.
There must have been louse meetings,
though, somewhere in people's
chest hair. The more...
The more adventurous of the head
lice meet the more adventurous
of the pube lice and they must
have tried mating.
To make chest lice. They created
a new species - tit lice.
Just live around the tit area.
Tit louse, that is a nice thought,
I like that.
It's almost Beatrix Potter,
isn't it? Yes!
This is a children's book
waiting to happen. It is.
You're going to do
the audio recording.
Anyway. Moving on.
What's the oldest profession?
Oh, get that one.
We are all terribly frightened
of the obvious one.
Prostitute, prostitute!
Prostitute! I'm just shouting
prostitute like I usually do.
Must be due.
It must be five o'clock!
If I walk past, in Soho,
you see models upstairs, it would
be amazing if you went in there and
it was like a Hornby Model Railway,
just loads of women in their pants
just going, "Come on, it's brilliant.
"We've got a station box."
But, it's not prostitution.
Is it knitting?
No, but you're right,
it begins with a silent K.
When we made early tools,
what did we make them out of? Flint.
Knapping. Knapping.
Yes. Flintknapping.
Seems to be the oldest profession,
from archaeological digs
we see a homo habilis handyman.
He was an early,
smaller version of us
and he knapped away at flint
to make spearheads and so on.
It seems to have been
the first job that we know of.
But logically, if that's...
Someone has tried hunting just with
a normal stick, before he's asked
someone to have a go at knapping
some flint to make his stick sharper.
So I reckon hunter has got to be
a job pre-knapper. Yeah.
But you were self-employ...
Well, mmm, you...
I reckon they were all probably...
None of them were on PAYE.
I was going to say. As if P45...
Even before hunter,
there was surely spear caddy.
Spear caddy. The fella who hands
the spear to the hunter.
"Spear caddy, could I have
the number four, please?"
Of course, you'd have to have
a wood chopper, woodcutter.
You've got to have one of those.
You're right.
Anyway, flintknapping was
certainly an old profession.
All of this is before prostitutes.
Certainly the oldest one
with a silent K. Yes.
Is there a word for prostitute that
begins with a silent K? Probably.
Knob-gobbler.
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
Wow, that was quick! That was fast.
The oldest human occupation
we have evidence for is
flintknapping.
Now, what should you watch out for
when handling these?
It's roses, rose stems.
Oh, is it, is it old women
with secateurs?
Yeah, well, that's one thing.
What else might harm you
if you try to pick them?
The thorny bit?
KLAXON SOUNDS
No, roses don't have thorns.
Not a thorn?
Well, they do, it's a known...
Thorn bushes have,
thorn bushes have roses, is that it?
Is it a trick?
No, on roses they're called?
Prickles. Prickles, well done.
Absolutely right...
They prick you. They're not thorns.
A thorn is a very specific thing,
botanically.
Thorns are modified
branches or stems,
and prickles are part of a plant's
skin, which is what those are.
They come out from it.
So when Bon Jovi sang
Every Rose Has A Thorn...
They were lying. He's made an
absolute fool of himself.
They did.
♪ Every rose has a prickle! ♪
That would be great, wouldn't it,
if you went to a Bon Jovi gig, and
♪ Every rose has a... ♪
Whoop! Whoop! Whoop!
And the QI thing went off...
We've got to invite him on the show,
absolutely right.
So let's see if we've learned
something tonight.
I'm going to show you something
and tell me,
is there a thorn in this picture?
Er, there's not one on the rose. No.
KLAXON SOUNDS
Oh, God!
Well, you said no, didn't you?
But you were more accurate. You said
there's not one on the rose.
But isn't there one on the crown?
No, there isn't one on the crown
either. One on the grass?
Oh, Alan, you were the only person
on the programme
when we covered this.
There is no such thing
as Ye Olde Rose and Crown,
it's THE Old Rose and Crown,
and the letter Y is called a...?
Thorn. Thorn.
The letter is the thorn.
So the Y is called? A thorn, yes.
A thorn. It's a "th" sound.
When you see that,
you don't say YE, you say THE.
THE. So when people say ye olde,
they're completely wrong,
it's THE.
I will never get it wrong again.
So you no longer have to say Ye Olde
Tea Shop, it's The Olde Tea Shop.
What if you open a new one?
How does that...?
Then just call it The New Tea Shop.
Now, who fancies one of
my Knick Knacks to celebrate
the beauty of chemistry?
I've got a bottle here of alcohol,
but this is not drinking alcohol.
I'm just going to... That was full
at the start of tonight.
What I'm going to do is,
I'm going to make a cloud,
which I think you'll find is
rather exciting.
I've got a pump here, and Alan,
I'm going to ask you to pump for me,
would you? Every Monday.
That's it.
By doing this I'm just making it
evaporate a little, and I'm going
to stick the plunger in as soon as
I can, so I don't get too much.
Now, by pumping it in, you're
applying pressure to this,
there you go. Shall I pump?
About ten.
Two, three, four, five,
six, seven, eight, nine, ten.
That'll do.
Is it going to blow up?
Is it going to explode?
And... Oh! Cloud.
Oh, look at that.
I've made a cloud.
But, pop it in.
APPLAUSE
We can now make it disappear.
Gone cloud.
Come back, cloud!
Oh, isn't that exciting?
All of which brings us
to the scores,
and our winner tonight on minus six
is David Mitchell.
HE MOUTHS: Minus six.
In a very respectable second place
on minus nine, is Ross Noble.
Who knew?
Improving all the time,
in third place, with minus 17,
Alan Davies.
But tonight's frayed knicker elastic
is Sue Perkins on minus 22.
Well, that's all from Sue, David,
Ross, Alan and me.
Good night.
good evening!
Good evening and welcome to QI,
where tonight the K is silent,
as in knits,
knots, knackers and knobs.
Let's meet a knitwit, Sue Perkins.
APPLAUSE
Knot a lot, Ross Noble.
APPLAUSE
Slightly knackered, David Mitchell.
APPLAUSE
And a complete kn...
say no more, Alan Davies.
APPLAUSE
Right. All the K's are quiet
and so are their k-noises.
Sue goes...
Sh!
Ross goes...
SHEEP BLEATING
David goes...
PIN DROPPING
That was a pin dropping.
You could hear it. Yeah.
And Alan goes:
♪ Silence is golden! ♪
Very nice. And how many knots
are there in this picture?
♪ Silence is... ♪
Yes? Two.
KLAXON
No.
Four?
KLAXON
It's a trap!
Well, you've got some options.
Oh, none.
KLAXON
David?
One? Yes!
APPLAUSE
Oh, you're such a swot!
Is it the noose,
is that the only one?
There are two hitches,
a bend and a knot.
The one on the right
is a k-noose. Yes.
A noose, but it is a knot.
Oh, a noose is a knot?
A noose is a type of knot.
A hangman's knot.
The hitches are the first one
and the third one.
Is correct, they are hitches,
and the second one
is what's known as a bend.
In everyday speech, of course, the
word knot is used for all of them
but this is QI where everyday speech
is completely...
MUMBO JUMBO
So the highwayman's hitch,
for example,
I have an example
of a highwayman's hitch.
That's where you hitch your horse
and the tighter you pull,
the tighter it goes but when
you want to get away quickly,
you pull the short one, da-dum! Oh,
that is good. Isn't that clever?
Does he not just run off
with the stick then?
It's a post in the ground.
Oh, I see, right. Sorry, yeah.
Because if you tied up your dog
to that and you went, right,
and then threw it and the dog ran
after it, a lot of confusion there.
Yeah. Another one was called
the European death knot,
the Euro death knot, or EDK.
Was that named by UKIP?
It's also a one sided overhand bend.
It's used for joining two ropes,
as you can see.
It's perfectly safe if used right,
but a lot of climbers thought
it wasn't safe
and it was invented in Europe,
so American climbers called it
the Euro death knot.
In fact it's very, very old
and the 5,300-year-old man, Otzi,
who was discovered in the Alps,
dead, obviously...
For a moment there I thought you...
He was preserved, preserved...
Been there for 5,000 years and
going, "Help, will somebody help!"
He had amongst his possessions
a knot tied exactly in that fashion,
so it shows we've been doing it
for a very long time.
And that would have been before rope
was invented, for sure.
How he pulled that off...
And the other hitch we saw
was called the snuggle hitch.
Which is a more secure version
of the better-known sailor's knot,
the clove hitch.
You look at me as if I would know
that. Sorry, I just...
"Come on, Susan,
you know the knots."
One of the surprising
things about it,
because it looks reasonably simple,
was that it was invented in 1987.
Or at least that's when it was
very first introduced into the
International Knot Tyers' Guild.
Didn't they think they had enough
knots, without inventing more?
Yeah, I know.
There are 3,800 in their...
We're not going to go through each
one of them, you'll be pleased
to know.
So that's a very specific '80s knot?
Did somebody go, we need a way
of tying down Bananarama. Now...
It was a man called Owen Nuttall,
anyway, who invented it
and he called it the snuggle hitch.
NASAL SPEECH: I imagine he speaks
like that. Well, he may.
"Nuttall here. I invented a knot."
The hangman's knot is named
after one of the most famous
hangmen in history,
Charles II's hangman.
Oh, Johnny... It's a French guy.
Johnny Noose.
No. Oddly enough, his surname
is a sailing vessel. Jack...?
Boat. Yacht.
Ketch. Jack Ketch.
Which if I'm not mistaken
has a tall mast at the front
and a small mast at the back.
Indeed, indeed, yes, the ketch.
Yeah, well, I just like to point
that out. Well done. Thank you.
This became pretty much the standard
hanging noose that was used
because it broke the neck
very quickly.
So, it was a very quick death
when you dropped.
The drop, as they called it.
So, in a way, it was humane.
It's good that you say
he was an effective hangman,
cos if you weren't,
you're essentially just a bloke
that opens a door. Yes.
Do you know what I mean?
Because where was it?
There was a place where the
prisoners built the gallows
and when you stood on a particular
plank it forced the wood out
and then the door didn't open
and no-one was getting...
Then they would test it and the door
would open and then they'd go,
all right.
And then they'd put the person there
and then it would push the wood
and then it wouldn't,
and they'd go, all right.
Take him away, test it again, fine.
That happened loads of times and...
And so they decided God didn't want
this person to die and let them off.
I think that's a real thing,
or I might have seen it in
a Scooby Doo episode.
I'm not sure. I'm not quite sure.
Do they do a lot of hanging
in Scooby Doo?
Now you come to mention it...
No more!
No, it's not.
How would that be Scooby Doo?
Like, like, like...
IMPERSONATES SCOOBY DOO
Shaggy!
That can't be Scooby Doo.
AMERICAN ACCENT: It was Mr Ketch,
the hangman, all the time.
So, now, I want you to take
one of those each,
and tie yourselves together,
as it were.
This has gone quite dark now.
It has, hasn't it?
Is it just me?
It's like a party game in the '70s.
So, put each one of those
around your wrist.
No, no, don't undo it.
Well, I can't get my hand through
that, can I? Oh, sorry.
Little cock grab, that is.
Cock ring! Try with this one.
Swap. You can give me that one back.
That's more like it!
There we are.
Put your wrists through.
That's it, and then do that,
so that you're tied together.
OK. Yes, is that right?
Is that good?
Without undoing the knots,
untie yourselves.
DAVID: Oh, I see.
Don't turn around, don't turn
around. That hasn't helped.
DAVID: No!
ROSS: No, that's it,
you go through there. Yes! Yes!
No!
Emphatically no!
Completely not.
I'm going back up.
I'm going back over.
Right, go, go through. Yes!
No!
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
I've got it, I've got it. Right.
Right. I've got it.
If I do a forward flip...
Now...
Right, let's see if we can get...
Oh, oh.
I think technically
you're now married.
You have let...
I'm coming down, I'm coming down.
You two hold it
for a second and watch,
because I think Sue
is onto something. OK.
This is what we did when we were
regularly handcuffed together
as children.
No, watch.
You mustn't untie the knot.
But...
Oh.
Yeah!
Well done. Brilliant!
Have a go. I actually,
I have no idea what you did.
Neither do I, but I feel alone now.
I liked it when we were together.
Show them, if you can remember it.
What's properly weird is, I've now
got a purple one round there.
It's a magician's trick, it's
a good... So what you have to do is,
you have to make a loop.
And then you feed the loop through.
What?! Then you go over your hand.
No way.
You are free.
No, you're not!
Is this your watch?
APPLAUSE
Oh, we've given up, we've given up.
Hang on,
if I take my trousers off...
I think we have to call
that a disaster.
But well done, Sue Perkins.
APPLAUSE
It was like playing S&M Twister.
It was rather, wasn't it?
It was a wonderful sight that will
never leave my memory bank.
You're now a shoo-in for the
50 Shades of Grey movie,
the pair of you.
You are. Absolutely.
So, if you want to tie the knot at a
knobstick wedding, what do you need?
A knobstick wedding.
A knobstick wedding?
I think I've been to a few of those.
That's not an offensive term
for gay marriage, is it? No!
I'd be very surprised
and disappointed to hear that
on this show.
It is now! It is now!
If you imagine a knobstick
as being some sort of weapon,
is there another type of weapon
followed by a wedding? A shotgun.
Exactly. Pretty similar
to a shotgun,
which is from a later era.
But a knobstick is a stick
with a knob on the end.
So you wave your knobstick
around and someone goes,
"All right, I'll marry you!"
It's a club. The club...
What used to be... LAUGHING: Sorry!
Sorry, I was about to go,
"That's what I did to my wife!"
But I thought, "No! No.
"No. No." No. She might be watching.
A knobstick is a type
of wooden club.
Now, if a woman was unmarried
and had a baby,
that baby was said to be on
the parish, like Oliver Twist.
And the parish paid for workhouses
and the parish had to pay for the
babies. And they didn't like that.
So, in smaller villages where
they knew who the father was,
they would force the marriage by
threatening them with a knobstick.
And that was what a knobstick
marriage was.
It was an enforced marriage
because the moment a man marries
a woman, he is responsible
for the baby and the wife.
Whereas if an unmarried woman
was in a parish, the parish was.
So it's that simple. There's a
description of one here, from 1829.
"One of those illegal celebrations
of matrimony which are termed by
"the peasantry 'knobstick weddings'
took lately place in Wirksworth.
"The parties forced into the
blessing state are William Saxton,
"a slender-witted man aged 24..."
Don't look at me when you said that!
The cheek of it!
"..and Lydia Brooks, some 15 years
older, who has a wooden leg."
Oh, dear. A marriage made in heaven.
Why did they need
the knobstick then?
Why didn't she just hop after him,
going, "Come on, marry me! Come on."
The word knot has been associated
with marriage for a very long time,
tying the knot was
first used in 1717,
at least that's the first record
we have of tying the knot.
And there have been
some very odd ones.
In 2005, American Kevin Nadal
married... A horse? A tree?
No, it was himself.
Oh. Can you do that?
He solemnly vowed,
I, Kevin Nadal, take me,
Kevin Nadal, to have and hold,
in sickness and in health.
His point was, if people are happy
to celebrate married life,
why shouldn't they celebrate
single life?
Did he take himself out on dates
and wonder when
he'd make the first move?
I bet he also said, "Why's it always
me who does the washing up?"
"Why am I always the bridesmaid?"
"It's not me, it's me!"
If he meets somebody,
is he unfaithful to himself?
He would be, presumably.
"I'm not going to tell myself..."
Would you have to divorce yourself?
"Where have you been?!"
"I'm not saying."
"After many years of thought,
"I decided to have an open
relationship with myself."
"And, you know, I don't mind
what I get up to."
"But I just wish...
"Don't do it behind my back."
"Don't tell me!"
"Don't tell me,
I don't want to know."
"Not in my bed!"
If he wanted to do a bit
of wife swapping,
he just goes the other
end of the bed. Oh, dear.
In 1979, a lady called Eija-Riitta
Berliner-Mauer,
a 57-year-old German woman,
married...
What do you think she married?
Is it a bridge? No, from her name.
Berliner-Mauer? So, Berlin Wall?
She married the Berlin Wall.
In 1979, when it was still up,
obviously.
Someone married the Eiffel Tower
or something. Did they?
They dated the Eiffel Tower for
a while and then they got married,
and it says that they had been
going steady with a bow
and they had had close relations
with a fence beforehand.
And they were obsessed with...
There's a word for it,
I don't know it,
for sleeping with inanimate objects.
Size isn't everything, but the
Eiffel Tower is pretty impressive.
As phalluses go...
And there's a gift shop. Yes!
You've got a restaurant.
"The view from the top
of my husband!"
None of these marriages, of course,
has any official standing.
So those are some of
the odder marriages.
The traditional way to make an
honest woman of someone is to use
a church warden's knob,
on the other hand.
Why would anyone ban knitting
patterns, flowers, hugs and kisses?
This is a real ban, that is to say,
a governmental ban.
It's got a war-time feeling
about it.
It has got a war-time feeling
about it. Code?
Code is the right word.
What, they knit in code? Yes.
So in World War II you were not
allowed to send abroad
any knitting pattern, just in case
there was code embedded in it.
So you couldn't send, you know,
socks to prisoners of war?
You could send socks,
but not anything with a knitting
pattern in it. Oh, right.
Because they could be used
as some sort of code.
Open out a blanket
and it says "June 6th, 1944."
Normandy.
Also postal chess was not allowed,
even kisses at the bottom
of letters,
in case they had some meaning.
Presumably messages saying where
the troops are moving...
Yes, those were obviously
pretty much banned.
Could you not have got like, you know
you get knitting machines,
could they not have made like
an enigma knitting machine?
Where it makes the jumper
and then scrambles it up,
so that they couldn't pass the
message. That would be very clever.
It's an opportunity missed.
It is an opportunity missed.
We have a Karen Templer, who is
a QI watcher, has knitted us...
Oh, look at that.
And this says, in Morse code...
"I wool always love you."
Oh, that's cute.
Aaah. Thank you, Karen. Bravo.
APPLAUSE
Isn't that nice?
You know what she was doing there?
She was indulging in a bit
of four-ply. Hey!
AUDIENCE LAUGH AND GROAN
Good night. Very good.
And let's hope that it is Morse code
and not Braille.
"You'll what? Get off me!"
You know the female knitters
at the guillotine? Did they knit?
Didn't they knit code? There was
something about them knitting code.
The most famous one is Madame
Defarge in A Tale of Two Cities
and they were known as tricoteurs,
which is French for knitting women.
But a lot of people now believe
they didn't really exist.
That they were sort of made up
by Carlyle,
the great historian of the
French Revolution, and by Dickens.
So they didn't knit, necessarily.
They didn't think that they actually
sat there watching heads roll.
Making bobble hats.
In the book, Madame Defarge knits
the names of all the aristocrats
who get their heads chopped off,
which is not really a code
as a sort of gleeful cackling joy.
The original woman
of the revolution,
the mothers of the revolution,
were much-loved but then,
during The Terror,
they became considered a nuisance
and so they were shut up or
they were forbad to wear trousers,
a law that wasn't repealed
until February, 2013,
in France.
Trouser suits had actually been
illegal in France for that time,
but obviously not enforced.
No!
To say the least.
Now, how can knitting be used to
reduce fear, crime and disorder?
Are you saying if he had
a tank top on, he'd go,
"OK, I'm putting the gun down"?
Well, you know, if he was knitting
he couldn't be holding a gun. Yeah.
Well, that's true.
It's harder to stab, shoot.
You can only really kick people
while you're knitting, can't you?
You can stab.
We'll come onto that,
there is something called
Extreme Knitting,
which we will come to.
But at the moment, we're looking
at this form of knitting,
which has different names.
It's called Guerrilla Knitting,
or sometimes Yarn Bombing.
And it is actually a way to make
a place more peaceful.
It's to deter crime.
And it was tried out in Leicester,
where they hung pompoms,
and put things round trees.
Oh, I feel calm already.
It's like a tree-warmer.
Well, they used cosies
for tree trunks, parking meters,
even buses, and tanks has been
suggested, in the military areas.
The Leicester experiment
has had mixed results.
Some locals don't think it works,
others do.
The fact is, the pompoms have
so embarrassed the Leicester police
that they have not allowed us
to show photographs of them.
Which was extremely mean of them,
but I'm sure
if you look it up, you'll be able
to see the Leicester pompoms.
They're embarrassed? Yes.
Embarrassed by the fact that they do
look rather comic.
We can easily sort that out.
Basically, if you're watching,
if you're in Leicester and you see
a policeman, just go, "Oi, where's
pompom?" That'll teach them.
It certainly will.
But as I say,
there's Guerrilla Knitting,
but I alluded to it earlier,
there's Extreme Knitting.
What do you think that might be?
Now I've got Gregg Wallace
in my head going,
"Knitting doesn't get more
extreme than this!"
"First you get a slip stitch,
then comes a taste of pearl."
Is it about doing knitting in places
where you wouldn't normally,
like driving
a Formula One car, or...
Well, sort of.
..parachuting or something.
The great heroine of this
is one Susie Hewer,
aged 55 at the moment
of going to press.
She has the world record
for knitting a scarf
while running a marathon.
Oh, that is good.
That is impressive.
And she's also crocheted
while running a marathon too,
and she's ridden a tandem,
and she does it to raise money
for Alzheimer's research.
So it's all pretty good in the end.
Yeah. I did a half marathon
when I was a student,
to raise money so that we could
go to the Edinburgh Festival.
Well, dear me. Do you know how much
I raised? Have a guess.
So that's what got you here.
50 quid. 70.
Oh, that's good. 70 quid.
For 13 miles.
And then we got two grand off the
Students' Union to top it up.
Well, it worked out all right
for you, didn't it? Yeah.
I would say.
Now, what about the biggest
knitted objects in the world,
how big are they? Massive.
Yes, is the answer. Give me a...
Thanks, I'll have a point,
thank you.
The biggest knitted object. Yeah.
Well, I've had my doubts about Venus
for a long time, you know.
Is it going to be like
a suspension bridge or something,
is a knitted object?
Inasmuch as it is, yes,
it is a physical object
on which people can live.
It's a house?
Is the internet knitted?
Does it count as
a huge knitted thing? No.
It's a series of man-made knitted
islands on the Peruvian side
of Lake Titicaca.
And there are 45 of them.
They're from totora reeds,
and there's a church on one of them.
There are buildings and houses,
people live on them.
But they're quite...
But the scariest thing is the size
of the nanas that built them.
Yes!
But several hundred people
live on them, they get so used to
this rather springy surface that
if they then go on land, they just,
they can't walk, it takes them ages
to get their land legs back.
I think that's where Bez
from the Happy Mondays,
he's from there, isn't he? Yeah.
Very good. Excellent.
Be a great excuse, wouldn't it,
if you turned up somewhere pissed
to say, "No, actually, I'm fine, I
just usually live somewhere knitted.
"And it's very odd, everything..."
Just used to a very
different surface.
"Everything feels very wobbly,
but honestly, I am a professional."
But the Lake Titicaca Olympic
team must be amazing. Bang!
Give me a statistic
about Lake Titicaca.
It is the biggest innuendo place
on the planet.
It's got titties and it's got caca.
Caca, exactly. Exactly.
Is it very, very high?
It's the highest navigable lake
in the world. Quite right.
Navigable means you can go
in one end and out the other.
Yes, you can get ships on it
and there are many ships on it,
and ports and things like that.
There are higher lakes which you
couldn't get a ship onto.
Not been made more navigable
by loads of knitted islands.
Yes, they get in the way. Yes.
So, anyway, now for a new round.
What Katydid.
Here are five creatures
and five names.
I want you to match
the creature to the name.
Oh, right, OK.
There's a dragon-headed,
a spike headed, a horned,
a mimicking snout-nosed and a small
hooded, and they're all called?
Sheila.
No, no, they're called katydids.
Why might they be called a katydid?
A "cat-idid?" No, it is
actually pronounced katydid.
It's because supposedly the sound
they make by stridulating their
wings as many of the cricket-y type
animals and katydid animals do...
Cricket-y type animals? Yes,
crickets, grasshoppers, locusts...
And we look to you! Do you
do it in your nature shows?
"Oh, these are the cricket-y
type ones."
"The cricket-y
and the footballish ones."
So their bingo wings sort of rub
and they let off...
And it makes a chirping noise.
Yes. I think mine do that.
Which puts them in common
with locusts and grasshoppers
and cicadas and so on.
They're called kaydids because
apparently the sound is,
"Katydid, katydidn't."
I don't know, we haven't got
a recording of it,
so I can't help you.
Katydid, katydidn't.
Let's show the answers
in a colour-coded sort of way.
There you can see...
The dragon-head.
But they're strange creatures.
And the most impressive,
in some ways, is the small hooded,
which as you see is the purple one,
which looks like a leaf.
We're looking at it very closely
and it's moving, but it wasn't
discovered till 2010. It lived for
millennia and it's not even rare.
It's in Australia.
It's because its camouflage
is so astonishing, the mottling
of the leaves and everything else is
such that people just don't see it.
That's the longest game
of hide and seek.
Yes, that's ever been ever played.
Finally!
Eventually someone, "Look, what's
that little blighter in there?
"That's an animal, it's alive."
"Oh, you got me, you got me!"
It would be a terrifying thing,
actually suddenly to, you know, that
things that we've been looking at
for ages turn out to be animals.
Yes. You know, that you're suddenly
looking at four trees
and suddenly realise,
"Oh, no, they're legs." Yes.
There's another katydid which does
a really extraordinary thing,
it's a record in the animal kingdom,
as far as we know,
it's the male Tuberous bush cricket.
It has the largest testicles
for their weight of any animal.
ALL: Oh!
That's 14% of their body mass.
14%? 14%.
Gonads. It enables them to fertilise
as many females as possible.
They do this by inserting
a jelly-like package, called...
Why are you looking at me?
I'm sorry, called a spermatophore,
into the female.
But the back end of this
spermatophore,
this bulging packet
of spermatazoic jelly,
there's too much of it,
it bulges out
and the female reaches back
and eats it for lunch.
LAUGHTER
So it's a romantic dinner for one,
so it's a double little present.
Only a man could say that!
The thing about that...
40%...yes?
The thing about that
as a creature, though,
cos it's got such massive balls,
like when you film it close up,
it must go like,
it must leap and go, oh!
Quick, oh!
Oh, the agony.
Every time it lands, it's just, ooh.
Where's the penis?
Is the penis massive?
I don't think it's as massive
as the testes.
Just a little thing like that,
and then two great melons.
Yeah. It's really...
Quite a powerful squirt,
you'd have thought.
She could be a mile away. Yeah!
Well, there you are,
there's your katydid.
What's the longest distance
of mating in the animal kingdom?
What is? Yeah.
Gosh, I don't know.
Some fish put the eggs and then
the male fish comes along later...
By post. They don't even meet.
That's true.
You could send by post, I suppose.
Can you?
Well, there's the ninja slug.
No, this is a real thing.
A ninja slug?
The ninja slug, and
when it's doing the loving,
it, er... Yeah, I'm like a proper
expert. The slug loving.
Wax on, wax off.
Yeah, slug loving.
And then instead of
getting involved,
it comes up and then it fires
like all the necessaries towards
the lady slug, and she "hoof", and
then, I don't know what it's called.
Catches it? Sort of, yeah.
But she leans backward to catch it?
I don't think she's got hands,
but she, she sort of...
That's the thing with a slug,
if you rush a slug like that,
they don't go, "Urgh," they just,
"Oh." And then, yeah. Go like that.
Oh, it's that bit, on the... yes.
Wah!
And then, yeah. Are you saying it's
like the meat and two veg detach?
Yeah. Takes it off... And fires,
takes it off and fires it at a...
Takes it off and it... Again,
I'm not sure where I found this out.
Scooby Doo.
That is definitely Scooby Doo.
It sort of, its bits go, and then
it, woo, like that. Then it...
I definitely seen that
on Scooby Doo.
And then I think she's like that,
"Wey!"
And she's basically like a
goalkeeper, just readying herself.
Exactly. Yeah, honestly, it's like
an explosion in an Ann Summers.
Well, that's terrific, well done.
There's nothing worse, though,
when this slug comes towards the lady
and she dives the wrong way.
That is, oh!
Nightmare.
Moving on, moving on from the
enormous knackers of the katydid.
What can you tell me
about the royal knackers?
Well, I imagine they're pretty
toastie right now.
Is it where royal horses are killed?
The Royal Knacker's Yard?
Yes, they don't any longer
have a Royal Knacker's yard,
but they used to.
There was of course, in the
Victorian age, and earlier,
a great need to get rid of horses
who had died,
and to make the most of them.
And they went to knacker's yards.
And there was...
And thence into lasagne.
And they were made into
all kinds of things.
And the royal knacker
was one John Atcheler,
who had the royal warrant from Queen
Victoria, to knacker her horses.
And he was the official horse
slaughterer.
He's buried in Highgate Cemetery,
where there is
a tomb with a prancing horse on top
of it, like a Ferrari mascot.
Is it prancing the other way up?
Maybe prancing is a sign of revenge.
"We got you at last, you bastard."
He had two knacker's yards.
The first was in Sharp's Alley
near Smithfield
and then later near Kings Cross,
at Belle Isle.
And they were famously malodorous,
you wouldn't want to live near them.
Huge, huge copper vats filled
with horses being rendered down.
But here from 1844 is an extract
from Bentley's Miscellany,
"The knacker's cart arrives
in double quick,
"The mob admires the cart,
the royal arms and the inscription:
"'Knacker to Her Majesty.'
"The royal knacker, a swell knacker
in cords and tops,
"with a bit of butcher's apron,
just as big as a bishop's,
"merely to distinguish
his profession,
"pole-axe in hand, descends
from his vehicle."
Well, that's pageantry.
That's pageantry, isn't it? Exactly.
That's what I want to see televised,
David Dimbleby doing
the commentary, "The slaughtering
of the royal horse."
Absolutely.
It wouldn't be David Dimbleby
though, it'd be Fearne Cotton.
I'm afraid it would.
People would say, "They've ruined
the horse slaughtering this year."
"They've trivialised
the knackering."
"It used to be so respectful."
So much pomp and circumstance.
Explain what bit of the horse
was bubbling up to the top now,
is it a bollock, is it an eye?
Yes. But they don't know now,
these new presenters.
Football clubs used horse oil to...?
To stop chaffing?
Lubricate something.
Their boots, actually, oddly enough,
to keep their boots supple.
Cricket teams rubbed it into
their bats,
much as they then used to do
with linseed oil.
Doctors used neatsfoot oil
to massage a patient's joints
after coming out of plaster,
they would use that.
Selected bones were sent to knife
manufacturers for the handles.
There you are, look. See, "Horse
meat for sale, this store only.
"With beef, lamb,
pork also available."
He's thinking,
"I won't have the horse."
The horse looks a bit worried!
The horse is deciding which to have.
But by strange, I don't know
if coincidence or irony is the word,
but in 1824 the RSPCA was founded
and there's a plaque to show
where it was founded.
Old Slaughters Coffee House.
That's what you want to do after
you've had a good old night
slaughtering, is have a latte. Yeah.
I fed horse meat to a lion once.
Did you?
That was a pony trick gone wrong!
No, I was in Namibia... Yeah.
..doing a documentary about this
place where they
rehabilitate big cats.
They had three lions
a bit like Clarence, the Boss-Eyed
Lion from Daktari.
I remember him well.
They were kind of semi-tame
and they fed them horse meat,
so if a horse died anywhere
within about 300 miles,
they'd try and get hold of it.
And they'd chop it up
and you'd put it...
They'd lift a bit of the fence
and you shove this metal bowl
underneath and a lion would come
over, put its tongue in.
And lions have got these barbs
on their tongue that can pick up
a piece of horse meat
and dangle it, and then they look
at you through the bar like that.
Still got the hair on the side.
Oh...
Quite a flimsy fence. Yes.
We're lucky still to have you.
Well done, you. Quite a sight.
Quite an impressive sight.
Well, if anyone from Leeds tells you
to eat kicker, what should you do?
Run away,
because that's Kicker there.
You can see we're still
in the world of meat.
Is it horse?
It is actually just plain horse,
yes, it's horse.
And Yorkshire was the last place
really to eat horse
on a major scale in Britain.
Until quite recently.
Well...
But of course recently there have
been a few scandals
which mean we've probably
all been eating horse.
That dark brown horse has
the hair of Tina Turner.
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
You're spot-on.
What you're looking at here is the
entire line-up of Horse Kajagoogoo.
You're absolutely right.
It's really spooky, that.
Well, horse was very popular right
up until the first millennium,
until Gregory III, the Pope,
deemed it too pagan.
But the Scandinavians had always
loved eating horse
and the greatest Scandinavian,
as it were,
presence in Britain
was in Yorkshire.
And so it remained
as a tradition to eat horse
right up until really the '30s.
And the last butcher selling horse
in the county was Arnold Drury
in Doncaster, who died in 1951.
He proudly advertised
"Viande Cheval,"
meat horse,
"of super quality horseflesh."
And other butchers called it kicker,
more euphemistically.
And in the 19th century, rural
Yorkshire folk who moved to the city
were known as kicker eaters.
I've eaten horse.
Well, most of us have, apparently,
without knowing it. Yes.
I ate it consciously. How was it?
To... Very lean.
No fat on it at all. Wow.
Just basically like eating,
I don't know, wall installation.
Just no succulence to it. Yeah.
Isn't it odd how we rebel
at the idea of things
that we're not used to?
You know, we are totally used
to drinking the proteinous
fatty stuff that comes out
of an alien animal,
that is designed to make its calf
double in weight every week,
and we're perfectly happy,
skull it back and go, that's all
right, I'm eating a cow's milk.
But even more so... But someone says
eat a horse's milk, you go, "Ugh!"
Even more so than that,
when my sister-in-law
expressed some breast milk
and kept it in the fridge... Ah.
and her brother came in
and drank it...
It made everyone feel a bit unwell,
but no-one quite knows why.
Well, exactly,
because it's a lot more...
Clearly it's designed for human
consumption. Precisely,
much more than cow or horse milk is.
I tell you what,
it makes a lovely rice pudding.
It really does. But wasn't there
a shop selling...
Breast milk ice cream. Yeah.
We should all try lots
of different animals' milk.
I'm very happy to try horse milk.
I had some of that breast milk
ice cream. Did you?
Yeah. I was on a television programme
and they brought it round
as a gimmick, I didn't seek it out.
No.
And it tasted completely
like normal ice cream.
I thought you were going to say
completely like tits.
Yeah, it tasted very, very strongly
of tits. Very breasty.
No, it tasted very much like
dog or horse milk, in fact.
Well, the most famous 19th century
Royal Knacker was Jack Atcheler,
responsible for dealing
with 26,000 horses a year.
Talking of being knackered,
describe the world's
oldest mattress.
I'll have to think,
it's got springs sticking out,
it's a bit tatty, it's stained...
It's a lot older than that.
It's very, very, very, very old.
39,000 years old, we think.
It's in KwaZulu-Natal, in a cave,
and it's made of rushes and reeds.
And it was used by humans for
thousands and thousands of years.
And they would add top layers
of insect-repelling plants,
so that they wouldn't get
bitten during the night.
So it's a really extraordinary...
What was it, king, super king?
I think probably wider. Californian
double king, probably. Oh. Yeah.
Absolutely. I think I've stayed
at that hotel.
Compared to apes, of course,
humans are relatively hairless.
We have two major areas of hair,
don't we?
We have our little top knot
and we have our little
lower down area of hair.
Both of which can be
susceptible to lice.
There's the head louse. Ah!
And there's the public louse.
Which is actually on the decline.
The crab. Is it? Yes, it is. Yeah.
Not so many pubes about these days,
are there?
Because of Brazilians, you think?
That's exactly why.
The Brazilian has... Because of the,
you know... Shaving downstairs.
I'm not sure how I know this, but it
is true. Scooby Doo again. Probably.
HE IMITATES SCOOBY
And if it hadn't been
for you pesky kids,
I'd have gotten away with it,
as well.
Apparently their numbers are... Yeah.
They have had to actually start
sanctuaries now. Special...
Special pube sanctuaries and I donate
every month. Little crabberies.
To provide a natural habitat because
their natural habitat is shrinking.
It would be awful, actually,
if you found you had pubic lice
and then there was some sort
of environment agency order on it
that you couldn't get rid of it.
"I'm so sorry, they're important
to the ecosystem."
They are restricted, they are zoned.
They are like bats.
It was assumed that,
when we were hairier beings,
we had various lice on our bodies
and that some of them specialised
in the head and began to evolve
into head lice
and the others specialised in the
pubes and began to evolve into pubic
lice, but it has been discovered
that they are not related at all.
And that our pubic lice are actually
related to lice that live
on gorillas, which asks a rather
interesting question as to...
who was it? Who made that...
David Attenborough!
SILENCE!
Yeah? David Attenborough.
No, it was 3.3 million years ago
that the jump was made.
I think that still works,
David Attenborough.
So down there and up there, no...
They're not related. You see, I've
got a sort of nature corridor. Ah!
Well, I think you will find
they will try down there
and not like it,
they'll stay up there.
How dare you! How dare you!
That's an area of outstanding
natural beauty, down there!
But it's an immense distance.
Let's just say an area of special
scientific interest.
I've had a picnic area put in.
I've got a gift shop down there.
Coach party. Oh, my God. Jesus.
There must have been louse meetings,
though, somewhere in people's
chest hair. The more...
The more adventurous of the head
lice meet the more adventurous
of the pube lice and they must
have tried mating.
To make chest lice. They created
a new species - tit lice.
Just live around the tit area.
Tit louse, that is a nice thought,
I like that.
It's almost Beatrix Potter,
isn't it? Yes!
This is a children's book
waiting to happen. It is.
You're going to do
the audio recording.
Anyway. Moving on.
What's the oldest profession?
Oh, get that one.
We are all terribly frightened
of the obvious one.
Prostitute, prostitute!
Prostitute! I'm just shouting
prostitute like I usually do.
Must be due.
It must be five o'clock!
If I walk past, in Soho,
you see models upstairs, it would
be amazing if you went in there and
it was like a Hornby Model Railway,
just loads of women in their pants
just going, "Come on, it's brilliant.
"We've got a station box."
But, it's not prostitution.
Is it knitting?
No, but you're right,
it begins with a silent K.
When we made early tools,
what did we make them out of? Flint.
Knapping. Knapping.
Yes. Flintknapping.
Seems to be the oldest profession,
from archaeological digs
we see a homo habilis handyman.
He was an early,
smaller version of us
and he knapped away at flint
to make spearheads and so on.
It seems to have been
the first job that we know of.
But logically, if that's...
Someone has tried hunting just with
a normal stick, before he's asked
someone to have a go at knapping
some flint to make his stick sharper.
So I reckon hunter has got to be
a job pre-knapper. Yeah.
But you were self-employ...
Well, mmm, you...
I reckon they were all probably...
None of them were on PAYE.
I was going to say. As if P45...
Even before hunter,
there was surely spear caddy.
Spear caddy. The fella who hands
the spear to the hunter.
"Spear caddy, could I have
the number four, please?"
Of course, you'd have to have
a wood chopper, woodcutter.
You've got to have one of those.
You're right.
Anyway, flintknapping was
certainly an old profession.
All of this is before prostitutes.
Certainly the oldest one
with a silent K. Yes.
Is there a word for prostitute that
begins with a silent K? Probably.
Knob-gobbler.
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
Wow, that was quick! That was fast.
The oldest human occupation
we have evidence for is
flintknapping.
Now, what should you watch out for
when handling these?
It's roses, rose stems.
Oh, is it, is it old women
with secateurs?
Yeah, well, that's one thing.
What else might harm you
if you try to pick them?
The thorny bit?
KLAXON SOUNDS
No, roses don't have thorns.
Not a thorn?
Well, they do, it's a known...
Thorn bushes have,
thorn bushes have roses, is that it?
Is it a trick?
No, on roses they're called?
Prickles. Prickles, well done.
Absolutely right...
They prick you. They're not thorns.
A thorn is a very specific thing,
botanically.
Thorns are modified
branches or stems,
and prickles are part of a plant's
skin, which is what those are.
They come out from it.
So when Bon Jovi sang
Every Rose Has A Thorn...
They were lying. He's made an
absolute fool of himself.
They did.
♪ Every rose has a prickle! ♪
That would be great, wouldn't it,
if you went to a Bon Jovi gig, and
♪ Every rose has a... ♪
Whoop! Whoop! Whoop!
And the QI thing went off...
We've got to invite him on the show,
absolutely right.
So let's see if we've learned
something tonight.
I'm going to show you something
and tell me,
is there a thorn in this picture?
Er, there's not one on the rose. No.
KLAXON SOUNDS
Oh, God!
Well, you said no, didn't you?
But you were more accurate. You said
there's not one on the rose.
But isn't there one on the crown?
No, there isn't one on the crown
either. One on the grass?
Oh, Alan, you were the only person
on the programme
when we covered this.
There is no such thing
as Ye Olde Rose and Crown,
it's THE Old Rose and Crown,
and the letter Y is called a...?
Thorn. Thorn.
The letter is the thorn.
So the Y is called? A thorn, yes.
A thorn. It's a "th" sound.
When you see that,
you don't say YE, you say THE.
THE. So when people say ye olde,
they're completely wrong,
it's THE.
I will never get it wrong again.
So you no longer have to say Ye Olde
Tea Shop, it's The Olde Tea Shop.
What if you open a new one?
How does that...?
Then just call it The New Tea Shop.
Now, who fancies one of
my Knick Knacks to celebrate
the beauty of chemistry?
I've got a bottle here of alcohol,
but this is not drinking alcohol.
I'm just going to... That was full
at the start of tonight.
What I'm going to do is,
I'm going to make a cloud,
which I think you'll find is
rather exciting.
I've got a pump here, and Alan,
I'm going to ask you to pump for me,
would you? Every Monday.
That's it.
By doing this I'm just making it
evaporate a little, and I'm going
to stick the plunger in as soon as
I can, so I don't get too much.
Now, by pumping it in, you're
applying pressure to this,
there you go. Shall I pump?
About ten.
Two, three, four, five,
six, seven, eight, nine, ten.
That'll do.
Is it going to blow up?
Is it going to explode?
And... Oh! Cloud.
Oh, look at that.
I've made a cloud.
But, pop it in.
APPLAUSE
We can now make it disappear.
Gone cloud.
Come back, cloud!
Oh, isn't that exciting?
All of which brings us
to the scores,
and our winner tonight on minus six
is David Mitchell.
HE MOUTHS: Minus six.
In a very respectable second place
on minus nine, is Ross Noble.
Who knew?
Improving all the time,
in third place, with minus 17,
Alan Davies.
But tonight's frayed knicker elastic
is Sue Perkins on minus 22.
Well, that's all from Sue, David,
Ross, Alan and me.
Good night.