QI (2003–…): Season 11, Episode 8 - Keys - full transcript
Hello, good evening, good evening,
good evening, good evening,
good evening, good evening,
and welcome to QI, where tonight
we are looking for our keys.
To help us we have a key man,
Tim Minchin.
A key woman, Isy Suttie!
A key player, Bill Bailey.
And an allen key, Alan Davies!
Ah, you see what he did there.
So, they've all got their keyboards.
Tim, give us an A.
"A" NOTE PLAYS
That's an A.
Isy, in the great tradition of
Blockbusters, I'd like an E, please.
"E" NOTE PLAYS
Very nice. Bill, give us a G.
"G" NOTE PLAYS
And Alan, give us a B.
BEE BUZZES
LAUGHTER
Aaah. Aaaah.
We have given you
a musical instrument.
I have got the thing here, but...
BILL: Oh. A glockenspiel?
We didn't trust you with
anything electrical.
It's nice. It's something for you
to keep yourself occupied
if you don't know any answers.
Bill could teach me a couple of
tunes during the record.
I bet Bill will, too.
Here's a good one. There you go.
Here's a good one, look.
HE PLAYS TWO NOTES
There you are.
LAUGHTER
It's Airport Announcement.
Airport Announcement, by Ravel.
By Ravel, yes.
It's a beautiful piece.
Absolutely wonderful.
FRENCH ACCENT: "An
announcement aeroport," yes.
Exactly. Do know any, any tunes?
French? No. I don't know any tunes.
HE PLAYS TWO NOTES
Doorbell. Same, similar.
Oh, very good.
I don't know who wrote whose first,
I imagine doorbell came first.
ISY: They're always in a major third,
as if to herald good news.
Yes, exactly. Yeah.
TIM PLAYS TWO NOTES - MAJOR THIRD
"Your flight is
delayed by eight hours."
"I don't feel so bad!"
TIM PLAYS TWO NOTES - MINOR THIRD
"Boarding now." "Oh, no!"
BILL: The best doorbells always
frighten people away.
PLAYS NOTES FROM
"CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND"
LAUGHTER
Marvellous. You haven't played
anything for us yet, Isy,
just get your fingers warm.
SHE PLAYS JAUNTY PIANO TUNE
That was the jazz version.
Wow! Pretty good.
BILL: That was great.
Anyway, there we are.
So, I'll give you the keys
to the city, all right?
What's the first thing you'll do?
NOTE PLAYS
Yes?
I'd make a copy of them.
Clever. TIM: Yeah, good.
In case I lock myself out
when I'm drunk.
And I'd give a copy to my cleaner.
Very, very smart.
What else can you do with
the keys to the city?
Drive a sheep across a bridge.
KLAXON BLARES
Ah. What?!
No. I am a Freeman of the City
of London, as it happens.
Quite right. Oh, thank you.
Very disappointed if you weren't.
And I did drive, I did
drive a sheep over,
though in fact it was
flagrantly illegal.
It's just one of those myths.
Also that supposedly that you
can bear a sword in the city,
but that's not true, either.
Is there an actual door
that you can fit that in?
No. No, there really isn't.
What do you actually get?
Do you actually get a key
in a nice presentation case?
No, you get a long
sort of parchment,
wherein, heretofore,
let it be understood the City
and Corporation...
There've been mayors
since 1213 and I said
"You must feel pretty extraordinary
to be in a position that hasn't
changed for 800 years"
and there was a cough at my shoulder
and it was the sheriff of London.
He said "There were
sheriffs of London 500 years
before the first mayor."
He was in the 8th century,
the 700s.
Through plagues and fires
and all that. It's pretty amazing.
What does he do?
How does one sheriff these days?
You wear extraordinary shrieval -
it's the adjective of sheriff -
shrieval laces and wigs.
In London you're free to trade
without having to pay
a toll at the bridge.
Today, it's a purely symbolic
honour.
The City of London Police
do not permit sheep
to be taken across the bridge
aside from the occasional
publicity stunt.
The City of London Police are
so boring.
You can't do that there. Oh, come
on. Freedom.
BILL: Is there anything you can do?
I mean is there anything... You can
go naked, or something, or...?
No, no real rights.
I mean if you are poor,
you can access some
educational and charitable funds.
Dick Whittington, probably the most
famous London Lord Mayor,
in the early 15th century, left
money in trust for water troughs
and children's education, and that
charity is still giving out money.
Really? It's been wisely invested.
That's pretty amazing, isn't it?
There are other people to get
freedoms of cities.
To whom do you think Detroit gave
the key of their city in 1980?
Diana Ross.
No, it wasn't Diana Ross,
you'd think it would be a...
Someone off of Motown. Gary Numan.
It should be a Motown star.
Wasn't Gary Numan.
Gary Numan? No. What wrote Cars?
No. That would be good.
No, it wasn't.
It was actually Saddam Hussein.
AUDIENCE LAUGH AND MURMUR
What? Well, they're sick of him.
What?!
It's the usual pattern.
In 1980, he was our friend.
He was a friend. Yeah.
Of course.
The City of Toronto
has given the key to
Dalai Lama, Nelson Mandela
and Mickey Mouse.
LAUGHTER
Never seen in the same room.
Pathetic, the Dalai Lama?! Why him?
The Dalai Lama, what was it?
Nelson Mandela and Mickey Mouse.
Ah, my perfect Sunday.
LAUGHTER
Those three round for dinner.
Corona, California, gave a cat
the freedom of its city limits.
Oh, that's stupid, isn't it?
Because the cat had hit the
Guinness Book of Records
by being the tallest
cat in the world.
And, because we're QI, we rang up
the city of Corona, and it's true.
They were very pleased to have it
verified for us.
But Cher upset Australians in 2012,
when she sold her key
to Adelaide on eBay.
Oh. She got 96,000 dollars for it.
Wow! What?! Yeah.
Someone paid 96 grand for a
symbolic key to Adelaide?
To Adelaide,
not even Melbourne or Sydney!
I mean, I like Adelaide,
but that's...
BILL: It's a lot though, isn't it?
I don't want a key.
She responded to the inevitable
backlash on Twitter.
She said...
F'd up. Fudged.
Fudged up, yeah.
Friend. So, there you are.
Flowled. Flower-up.
Flagaba...
Keep guessing. I don't know.
Fruity. Flannel. Flannel up.
Flannel up and wait for me.
POSH VOICE: "Flannel up!
"Clean yourself and flannel up.
I'll be up in five minutes!
I have to flannel you down!
"And put on the special ointment!"
Bring me another one,
this one's flannelled-out.
Oh, dear. All right, OK.
I like a flannel.
What key part did bigots play in
the Second World War?
What do you mean...? You're
talking...
Not that kind of bigot. BIGOT being
a diversionary tactic.
That's a bit of a minor description.
I think it is.
This word is... Oh, he was a bigot,
was he? The more I hear about him...
Is it an acronym for something?
"Big-oh". No, it's British.
Churchill chose it. Oh, really?
Beware, I've Got One...Trouser.
Beware, I've Got One Trouser?
I'm Going Out Tomorrow.
Blimey, I've Got..Owls...Turned.
He's so shit at I Spy.
BIGOT stands for British Invasion
of German Occupied Territory.
So there's Monty and Winnie and
they're looking at a map and
planning... To flannel over there.
D-Day... Chaps, got your flannel?
Everybody got their flannel?
Churchill was the only person who
Monty would let smoke.
It was so secret that anyone
who knew any
details of the Normandy landings,
they were on the BIGOT list
and they were not allowed under any
circumstances to leave the country.
The only exception was
Churchill himself.
No-one on the BIGOT list was
allowed out of Britain.
Indeed, there was a rehearsal
for the invasion
and ten people on the BIGOT
list were killed accidentally.
All plans for the invasion
were put on hold
until they could account for every
single one of the bodies
just to be absolutely sure so the
secret didn't get out. Well...
It's got out now, yes.
It wasn't that it was unlikely, that
it wouldn't happen. England's there.
France is there.
I know but we did everything
we possibly could to
persuade them that it was going to
be further across towards Belgium
and they withheld divisions further
away from Normandy where we landed
precisely because... Fake landing.
..they fell for some
of the spies - the Zigzag man
and that poor old chap who
was a dead body
who was dressed as
though he was an important officer
and dropped in the sea
outside Gibraltar
with a chained briefcase with plans
and they gave him a whole life.
He was called the man who never was.
There was a film of it.
Who was he?
He was probably a very sad down and
out Welsh chap who died very young
and had been found sleeping rough
somewhere and they dressed him up
smartly to look like an officer.
You wouldn't have to do that now.
You would just get
someone from Big Brother.
People would volunteer for it.
Certainly the rest of us would.
The surprise is you're going to be
killed and you're a fake general.
OMG!
It's a good film. If you ever see it
coming round on Channel 4,
it's the sort of thing that pops up
now and again. Yes, I will.
It's funny he didn't know when he was
alive what a key part he'd play
when he was dead.
I know.
Operation Mincemeat, it was called.
You can sign up to this service
when you're alive which
monitors your Tweets and Facebook
and when you're dead, it
continues to Tweet as you
until an executor of the will who
you've nominated tells it to stop.
While you're alive, you give it
feedback as to how good it is. What?!
I'm starting this business... No!
It already exists. That's bizarre.
And you can set how long
it goes on till?
You give someone's name and say this
person makes the decision as to when
the virtual me dies.
You give it feedback so if it's
slightly funnier than you are,
you say, it's quite good,
but bring it down a notch.
So somebody's employed to be you
after you're dead.
Or just you going dead, dead,
dead, still dead?
Then your followers go up.
Ooh, he's dead, dead.
You know with one's contact list
when people die,
I never have the heart to cut them
out so I have
friends that have been dead 10, 12,
15 years who are still
in my address book.
Have they ever called?
They manifestly haven't called
and I haven't called them
but the act of going delete seems
so...
I've done the same thing
but the good thing is
if someone dead does call you,
you'll know it's them.
I'll know not to answer it.
Of course that number might be
reused. They do recycle them
so it is possible that one day...
That would be
the shock of one's life.
In fact it's probable that
coincidence will happen.
Someone who's got the old number
of a dead person will accidentally
ring a person who...
I can't wait till that happens.
Very exciting.
Now, secrecy,
in the least order upwards,
what's the word for the least
secret document?
For anyone's eyes only. Yes,
basically it's "unclassified".
Then "protect", then "restricted",
then up to... Up to look over there!
"Confidential" and then... I'm going
to have to kill you.
"Secret" then...
Top secret. Top secret. Yes.
It used to be, not top secret but...
Most secret. Most secret.
We're going to use this
Americanism now - top secret.
Most secret's so British, isn't it?
Most secret.
Totes secret.
NERDY VOICE: There are some UFO
conspiracy theorists
who will tell you that there are 38,
38 levels of secrecy above
top secret.
Why are you talking like this?
Because these are UFO conspiracy
theories. Is that how they talk?
They all talk like that.
NERDY VOICE: They all talk like that.
You can laugh. All right,
I will. Ha ha ha ha.
You'll be laughing on the other
side of your face
when you've been probed.
Yes.
The next level is "cosmic".
Even the President of the US
does not have cosmic clearance.
Really? Who does? Look it up. It's
all there. It's true. Totally true.
That's my favourite
thing about conspiracy theorists.
This is something that the president
doesn't know but I've figured it out!
Typing away.
Fantastic, isn't it?
What is CANUKUS' eyes only?
I beg your pardon?
CANUKUS' eyes only.
Is there a creature called a canukus
and it's the only thing that's
allowed to look at it?
But it can't speak
and therefore will never tell anyone.
United States? No. Not bad.
Canada, UK and the United States.
CANUKUS. CANUKUS.
There's AUSCANNZUKUS
which is known as the five eyes,
which is Australia, New Zealand,
Canada, US and UK.
There's also, basically,
don't tell the French.
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
BIGOTS were the key men in planning
the D-Day landings.
Now, what's the best way to keep
the Open Organisation
of Lockpickers
out of your homes?
Bucket of water over the door,
a rake on the floor,
two miniature beds of nails
and a very hungry tiger.
And you put all that outside
the potential lockpicker's door,
so that they can't even
leave their home.
Ah. You don't need to,
is the point, actually.
The fact is, they are
incredibly moral and ethical.
This organisation, which is
literally called TOOOL.
The Organisation - there it is.
The Open Organisation
of Lockpickers.
BILL: No, this is made-up.
It's Dutch. Is it?
It's a Dutch organisation
of recreational lockpickers.
LAUGHTER
They claim to have a good purpose,
they help spread
the word in security
and show how things can be picked,
but the point is, you're not allowed
ever, in this organisation, to pick
a lock that doesn't belong to you.
That's how moral they are.
Well, that's boring, isn't it?
Pick a lock...
That's when they're meeting,
but when they're
professionally being lockpickers...
DUTCH ACCENT: "Hey, what a crazy
bunch of guys.
"Let's go and pick some locks,
but not someone we don't know.
"OK. What a crazy time
we're going to have."
"How come it's only me today?"
LAUGHTER
"I am such a toool." Yeah.
Many of TOOOL's members
are obviously lock-makers
and locksmiths.
There they are,
tools of their trade. Wow.
It's incredible how you can have
such a specific skill in one area
and be so bad with fonts.
Yes. Very true.
It's non-overlapping magisteria.
It is not an overlapping
magisterian. Lock picking and fonts.
There's probably a fonts
organisation, as well. Yeah.
Let's be honest.
Who cannot get into their house.
That's right.
Do you know about Alfred C Hobbs?
He was a great American lockpicker
and lockmaker.
He came to Britain
for the Great Exhibition
Our great safemaker,
lockmaker was...
He was a nice stout-sounding name.
Chubb. Chubb.
Chubb safes and Chubb locks
and they had an amazing Chubb
detector lock which was so subtle
and clever in the mid-19th century
that if it detected someone
was trying to pick it, its tumblers
would all fall down and even
the key for it would no longer fit.
You'd have to destroy it to open it.
He picked that in seven minutes.
Wow. Astonishing everybody
and horrifying Chubb, of course,
because they had the Bank of England
account, apart from anything else.
The Bank of England then replaced
its Chubb locks with Hobbs locks.
Good old American huckstering
salesmanship and know-how.
It was a highly successful
visit for Mr Hobbs.
Yes, it was till
he got locked in a toilet somewhere.
Who in poetic law
laughs at locksmiths?
The Queen.
"Ha ha ha." No.
The first Tuesday of every month.
"The official laughing at
locksmiths.
"Locksmiths are lining up.
She is now braying in their faces,
"snorting derisively..." No.
"You can't open it. Ha ha ha!"
Audience, who laughs at locksmiths?
AUDIENCE MEMBERS: Love.
Love laughs at locksmiths.
Oh. You lock the girl up, you lock
the boy up, or you put locked
barriers between them and they'll
always find a way through to
each other. BILL: Aww.
Except they don't, do they? No.
If you lock...
They won't, will they?
No. That's the trouble with poetry.
It's bollocks. I hate it.
They just need a good lock.
It raises false hopes.
All you need is your lock to be
slightly smarter than the two
people in love and really
dumb people are in love,
and there are really good locks.
That's ridiculous!
You're right, you're right.
Oh, well.
Speaking of keys, what's the
key part of an arch?
BILL PLAYS NOTES
Yes, Bill?
Your light came on first.
Was that you, sorry?
That's the trouble
with these things.
You can't tell who it is.
Do that chord again and I'll know.
We only know the same chord.
We're both... We play in C.
The keystone is the...
KLAXON BLARES
I'm Alan Davies.
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
It is commonplace to use the word
keystone as being the thing
that makes the arch work,
but it isn't true.
It's not the most important.
All the arch stones, or
"voussoirs" are equally important.
But it is the last piece to
go in and finishes rather
beautifully the arrangement,
as it were. Yes.
In Roman times, they'd get
the constructor of the arch to
stand right under the arch when the
support scaffolding
was taken away,
just to show that he had
faith enough in his own...
Well, it's natural selection
of arch builders, isn't it?
"Is that guy any good?"
Well, he's still here. Exactly.
I like that idea of getting people
to test things. It's like going to a
barbecue and getting someone to try
the sausage before you'll eat it.
Oh, don't. BILL: Oh, yeah.
There are certain things
that you can only test by using.
So it's then useless.
I mean, a ring-pull, essentially,
you say, "I wonder
if this ring-pull will work."
Whoosh! "Oh, yes, it does.
Good, now... Oh, you can't..."
Same with air bags,
I suppose and other such things.
I've really tried to get the
air bag to come out, but it's...
No? No luck? No, if you drive,
really whack the dashboard
really hard with a mallet
or something and...
Well, you realise how much force
it is by just trying to
walk into a wall at two miles an
hour and your body won't let you.
It just won't.
LAUGHTER
Hands will go up.
No, no, no. I've done that.
By mistake when...
I did that after a night on here.
Yes, when drunk or
texting or something.
But, I mean, if you actually
consciously say,
"I'm going to
walk into this wall..."
Only two miles an hour,
not three miles an hour,
and you just, pah,
your hand goes up.
You can't stop it. It's a
reflex, it's so strong.
Is there a wall here?
I'd like to see you not do that.
LAUGHTER
I've got this image of you not being
able to walk at 2mph into a wall.
2mph, that's...
What's a normal walking pace? 4mph?
So that's half speed.
Half normal walking speed.
It's still enough to
break your nose.
It would break your nose.
Is it the theory that, if you're
walking at exactly 2mph, magic
happens?
You've got to get it exactly right.
I mean, just kind of slowly walk
into a wall.
Try it at home.
LAUGHTER
That's all I'm saying.
Maybe it's just me being a coward.
It will take more than
an hour to go two miles
if you keep walking into walls,
wouldn't it? It's true.
That's the interesting thing
about that. That's true.
So, the fact of the matter
is that keystones are no more
important than any of
the other stones in an arch.
Why were the keys in a QWERTY
keyboard arranged the way they are?
Ah, now, this is that it makes it
more difficult to type.
LAUGHTER
That's right.
And they wanted to slow...
KLAXON BLARES
"They wanted to slow..."
you were saying...
Typists down. Typists down. No.
What it is, is the ones that most
commonly are done together
in English were put furthest apart,
so they were less likely to jam.
So, in fact, it was in order
to allow you to type
more smoothly and speedily,
so that you didn't get the jamming
of the keys as they came up
and hit each other. Oh, I see.
Of course, these days, we don't use
mechanical typewriters in that
way, with the keys flopping up.
That's how I learnt to type.
Enormous typewriters. I was tiny.
LAUGHTER
I loved typewriters so much,
I was obsessed with them.
Really?
Absolutely adored them, yeah.
Stephen! Dinner's ready. Aaargh!
Do you know, it's true,
I once copied out a whole novel
on the typewriter.
Did you? Just to practise.
Yeah, because I enjoyed
the experience of typing so much.
Just to, yeah. While other people
were getting on with their lives,
you were doing that.
Yeah. What can I tell you?
It's the sort of man you are.
I'm sad. I'm so modest.
What, what novel was it?
It was Frozen Assets,
by PG Wodehouse.
It's not one of his best-known
novels.
BILL SNIGGERS
Look, I'm sorry!
It's amazing you've come
so far, isn't it?
What should I have been doing?
Anything else!
Listening to Flink Poyd or
something?
Yes. Clearly I was just lying
somewhere wasting my life
when I should have been copying out
novels on some archaic old
bit of kit.
"Yes, what I like to do
in my spare time,
"I write out Proust, I use my nail
and I chip it into an old flint."
I can't help it. "No, get off,
Nanny, I haven't finished yet."
You're such a bully!
You're mean. Sir, sir,
Fry's copying out novels again.
Sir, he's chipping them,
he's using a hammer and a chisel,
he's chiselled out War And Peace
on the South Downs.
You really do live
a different life to all the rest,
you're not like us, are you?
You're another, you're not a mortal.
Clearly not.
You're like sent from
some other planet.
You are, the planet Aesthete,
that's what you are.
I have cosmic clearance. Yes, you
do. You know when it's all going to
end.
I always thought I was normal,
and now I... No, you're not.
Oh, well, anyway...
You're a freak.
You can reprieve my fury
at you by telling me
a word that can be
typed on the top line.
It's quite pleasing.
Twiquminator...
Typewriter.
Ah! It's nice, isn't it?
It's just a coincidence,
typewriter across the top?
Yes, I believe so. There are a lot
of people who believe...
A lot of conspiracy theory.
People who believe it was brought to
us by falcons from the planet
Bletch.
Now, what starts with K
and is killed by curiosity?
A kitten.
Oh! Oh, no. I'm sorry.
It's an animal species,
but not a cat.
A lot of these begin with Ks...
Kangaroo.
No, but you're in the right
hemisphere. Koala.
Again, right hemisphere,
not the right country. Kiwi.
Sorry? Kiwi? Kiwi.
You're the right type of animal.
Kora. A kea.
Kea is the right answer. Very good.
A kea is? A New Zealand parrot.
A flightless bird.
No, it's not flightless,
oddly enough, it's a parrot.
And there was a bounty put on them
some years ago.
Kea, which as you can see,
look quite ravenous,
they look almost like eagles,
but they are parrots,
would ride the sheep, peck at them
and eat the fat off the poor sheep.
And so there was a bounty
put on their heads
and New Zealanders found
keas were very curious animals.
It's partly a result of having grown
up in a country with no mammals
for millions of years.
Anyway, what you do is, you stand
behind a rock and wait for a kea
to come along, and then you drop
behind the rock and disappear.
And the kea thinks, that's odd.
And he wanders up
and he takes a look over,
and you just, with your club,
just go bang, like that.
Then, that's the beauty of it,
you've only just started,
because you don't have to move, you
take the kea and you put it down.
The kea's friend goes,
"Where's Kevin?"
Where's Kevin! Wanders round,
comes along like that.
Are they all called Kevin?
Then you drop down and disappear,
and he goes, "What happened there?
"There was someone, then there
wasn't. How does that happen?"
And he looks over, bash, like that.
"Where's Keith?"
And so on, all the way through.
All the Ks. You get a huge
swag bag of kea.
They're not the brightest of birds.
They're not the brightest.
But the point is,
they never needed to be.
Because New Zealand, just apart from
a few bats, never had any mammals...
That's true. All they needed to do
was mate and survive.
The kakapo, for example,
another type of parrot,
the only thing likely to predate
on it was a vast eagle
that used to live in New Zealand
called the Haast's eagle
and so the kakapo solved that
by becoming nocturnal like the kiwi.
So it could be afraid of nothing.
It developed this extraordinary
mating ritual which is
just beyond belief.
It's called the bowl and track.
It's the only example of this
particular version.
It would dig a bowl, a crater then a
path towards it, the track that it
would immaculately pick clean
and then it would
sit for months during the mating
season.
It has this huge booming sac.
It sounds like a giant blowing
across a beer bottle. Whoo noise.
It would boom and boom
and the females in the valley
below would listen to the boom
they most liked and waddle up.
If by some terrible chance,
a leaf had fallen on the track,
the female would turn and walk away.
The poor old male would have
to pick it clean
and go back to booming again.
Sometimes three years would pass,
booming away,
not getting his rocks off.
The only evolutionary pressure on
this bird is to get laid. That's it.
There's nothing else.
It's fat, stupid, nocturnal horny
bird and he couldn't even get laid.
That's like my life.
Kiwis aren't the most exciting
birds, I have seen kiwis.
Have you burrowed into one of their
dens? No, I haven't bothered
to do that.
I did. It's exciting.
There's one on YouTube
playing the piano.
Oh! No, no.
Falling down an escalator.
I've seen them in special areas,
you know.
I went out with this guide
and he found one, and he said,
"Get in there, get in there."
And so I burrowed and burrowed
and burrowed and burrowed.
And you just see this little eye
winking at you,
and that long wonderful beak,
and it just winked.
Aah. And I winked back
and then sort of...
With a little look that just says,
"you just destroyed my house."
Yeah. I was careful not to.
Aaah. Aah, lovely!
It took three years to make this.
The New Zealand government,
they were given two pandas by the
Chinese government in return for
two kiwis, and I just thought it was
a bit of a swiz, you know.
It's like New Zealand, you know,
the zoo in Auckland, all these
people going, aah, look at them,
look at the pandas, and aah!
Some zoo in Beijing,
people going, what?
What are they? These kiwis don't
even sneeze. They don't, nothing.
Very good, very good, very good.
Now, what is this woman doing,
though?
What the...? Is this Lady Gaga's
new album cover, is it?
She's wearing a...
It's an experiment.
No, she's using a device
that's for sale, or was for sale,
it was built in 1929.
A new device. Knitting jumpers?
Patented by Dr Kurt Johnen,
it records the motions
and bodily reactions.
A lady is pictured being
examined by the device.
A pneumatic belt records the change
of the circumference of her chest.
Pneumatic cuffs above the upper arms
control the changes of muscle
tension.
Through a hose is recorded
the rhythms of respiration,
and another hose transfers
the strength of touch.
It's a sex toy.
You would think, wouldn't you?
But what about her hands? That's
the clue, and our theme today?
Piano, she's learning piano.
Piano? A keyboard.
Yes, it's a piano teaching machine.
Oh. Oh. Extraordinary, isn't it?
Wow. It's supposed to help you
with your piano playing.
Your posture, your breathing.
There have been many others
along those lines.
There was the Chiroplast,
which was clamped to the piano
and trapped the player's arms,
that's the one on the left,
so you were forced to play using
only your wrist and finger action.
You were then crippled.
The one in the middle was the
Dactylion, from the Greek "dactyl",
meaning finger.
A contraption designed to
strengthen the fingers, because
they're springs that you're going
against in that middle picture.
And it's said that
Robert Schumann used that
and it actually hurt his fingers.
Though others say
that was syphilis.
It's a fine line, isn't it?
It is a fine line. Oh, always.
When you're into fingering,
syphilis is never far away.
Next to that is the Chiro,
or the Chirogymnaste,
which is a tiny finger gym,
which has got little finger events
and you can see them.
They still encourage you to do that.
There's little spring-loaded
strengthening things
that I was given in the brief time
I got someone to teach me the piano
and they said "You should
strengthen your fingers."
I thought "I might as well be
playing the piano."
My old piano teacher, she would be
much better than that cos she'd use a
ruler
and if you got it wrong, she'd whack
you on the top of the...
That is more of a powerful incentive
than any of this...
But if you do harm yourself
by using one of these things,
you can always use the bed piano,
for bedridden people.
Wow. Which is a rather splendid
device. I think you'll agree.
I hope that's securely attached.
That is the laziest keyboard
player in the world.
And as you see, it rolls up,
pushes away neatly.
That's fantastic. It's great,
isn't it? I want one.
You can slide pizzas
down from the back.
Yes. Bill's sitting there going
"I am going to get one of those."
I will, I'm going to get one.
Bill will have one of those.
That's the piano for the bedroom.
Ha-ha!
The upside-down piano, virtual.
That's magic.
Be easier to strap yourself into bed
and tilt the bed up to a normal
piano. Yeah.
How would a left-handed piano work?
It would be high notes
at the left.
There it is. And there it is.
That is a left-handed piano. Wow.
It would take a hell of a lot
of unlearning for you to play on
that, wouldn't it? Good God!
Can you imagine? It would
drive you mad. It would.
Transposing pianos, have you ever
played with one of those?
Well, there's a device on the
keyboard that will do that for you.
On an electric keyboard.
On an electric one.
There are pianos with a mechanism
that can... It's a lever on it.
It moves it across to the next
string. Oh, right.
Irving Berlin used one,
because he only composed in F sharp.
He's like Stevie Wonder,
who likes the black notes.
He couldn't read music,
but was the most successful
songwriter of his age.
Really? Yeah. He couldn't read
music, he was fantastically
talented,
He wrote White Christmas,
let alone Top Hat, White Tie.
He lived long enough to be
able to see his own songs go
out of copyright,
because his first hit was in 1911,
with Alexander's Ragtime Band.
You know, "Come on and hear, come on
and hear Alexander's Ragtime Band."
They only go out of copyright
after you're dead.
No, they do now, but in his day, it
was 75 years after it was written.
Right. So he lived long enough
to see some of his songs
go into the public domain. Now
it's 70 years after you've died.
How old was he when he wrote it?
Early twenties. But had this
extraordinary talent. Amazing.
There's a long list of things I have
to get after this show.
There's the upside-down piano,
the upside-down dinner, I mean,
everything, yeah.
It's funny you should say
a list of things cos that brings me
to Franz Liszt.
Ho ho! ♪ Accidental segue! ♪
How did he change the piano?
Did he have huge hands, Liszt?
He did. He could expand them,
long, long span.
There were pianos made
specifically for him.
Well, yes,
then they became the standard type.
He gave it so much bloody welly that
they made it out of an iron frame.
Before that,
they'd been a wooden frame.
In Jane Campion's film The Piano,
when the piano is thrown out to sea,
it should have floated.
instead of sinking
because the film's set in 1850.
It would have been
a pre-Lisztian piano.
Did that ruin it for you?
You won't be copying that film out.
What's this rubbish?!
Plainly not possible!
Right, so... Good.
So, what did the man who knew
everything think cats were good for?
Well...
Catching mice.
Catching mice. Isn't the man
who knew everything Thomas Young?
Well, there's various people
who were given
the title of the last man to know
everything there was to know.
Erasmus, Leibnitz, Von Humboldt, and
this man here, Kircher, his name is.
He was a German Jesuit,
Athanasius Kircher.
And he certainly was
very interested in lots of things.
He was lowered into Vesuvius.
He believed the bubonic plague
was caused by microbes,
well ahead of germ theory.
Claimed falsely to have interpreted
Egyptian hieroglyphics.
He regarded things like magnetism
and love as branches of the same
topic, attraction,
which is a very QI way of looking
at things, I like that. Yeah.
But what are the cats doing?
Well, we'll come to that.
Some things he got right.
He denied the possibility
of flying tortoises.
I don't know who'd raised
the possibility,
but he damn well squashed it
and said, no,
there won't be such a thing
as a flying tortoise.
Rubbish. But he did invent the
megaphone, and the Katzenklavier.
Klavier is in fact German for key,
from clavis, Latin, key,
but it's a keyboard instrument.
The cat playing the piano.
He invented You Tube.
I'm afraid, for cat-lovers, it's
a bit more disturbing than that.
Oh, cat string, gut string.
No, not cat gut, no, arrange
live cats in the right order,
according to their voice.
Oh. And you play... Drums.
And there you go.
Oh, brilliant.
That's awesome!
Oh, if only they had YouTube
back then.
The outrage on the comments page.
It's another thing for your list,
isn't it.
It's on the list.
Yes, right up there.
You've got to get one of those.
Their tails are fixed in place
underneath hammers.
When a key is pressed,
the hammer hits the corresponding...
you can even get chords
and of course there's dynamics.
The harder you hit,
it the more of a yowl.
It wouldn't necessarily have to be
cruel.
You could get the same mechanism,
but just have it sort of tickle
the bollocks of a cat.
So it's more like...YAAH!
As opposed to...YEAGHH!
For a trill.
Yeah.
MIMICS CATS PLAYING
"HOW MUCH IS THAT DOGGY
IN THE WINDOW?"
What do they think,
that you have an A cat and a B cat?
Yeah. And a C cat?
I guess you just go round.
But there are only six cats and there
are more than six keys, so...
Well, that's true,
that's a limited range, it's very...
Experimental music.
Experimental music.
All the other keys hit mice
inside the box.
It's doubtful he actually built it,
but he certainly wrote out
the plans for one.
There are reports for comparable
devices for Philip II of Spain
which had the additional layer of
hilarity by being played by a
bear(!)
There are comparable records
of pig organs,
that Louis XI of France,
had one made by the Abbot of Baigne.
There you are, getting ascending
order of pig, pig, pig.
That's fantastic.
I like the woman
singing along with them as well.
You think she's playing the pigs,
but the pigs are playing her.
And as late as the mid-19th century,
there was some instruments known
variously as the Pig Organ,
the Hog Harmonium, Pigano,
the Porkoforte,
or worst of all,
the Swineway Grand.
So there you are, yes,
several people have tried to make
musical instruments
out of live animals,
although it doesn't really work
very well in practice.
And now for the welcome
return of a keynote of QI,
a bit of General Ignorance
very quickly. Fingers on keypads.
Nicely flexed and name something
written by Winston Churchill?
Who was that?
Yes?
The Second World War.
Oh!
Have another go.
He won the Nobel Prize, didn't he?
He won the Nobel Prize
for Literature. Yes, he did.
He wrote so much.
Our Prime Minister won the Nobel
Prize for Literature, no question.
Can you out of interest name
the only person to have won
the Nobel Prize and an Oscar?
People wrongly say Al Gore because
there was an Oscar given
to An Inconvenient Truth and he was
given a Nobel Peace Prize,
but he didn't win the Oscar
personally.
Any offers, punters? Sean Connery.
Shaw is the answer.
George Bernard Shaw.
George Bernard Shaw came
through the door.
He had a ladies'
public conveniences built.
Yeah, he was very
interested in stuff like that.
People said it was outrageous and
disgusting
that there should be a public
convenience for women.
How appalling?
And he said,
"No, I think women need to go too."
The first ladies' loos in London.
Winston Churchill did not write
under the name Winston Churchill.
Our Prime Minister didn't.
Oh, that's right.
What did he write under the name of?
Anne Bronte.
The Gathering Storm,
by Anne Bronte.
Daphne du Maurier.
My early years.
Katie Price.
No, what's his full name?
Do you remember his full...?
Spencer.
William Leonard Spencer Churchill.
Oh, Leonard. So he wrote under the
name of Winston S Churchill.
Because when he started writing,
there was a very successful American
novelist called Winston Churchill.
And so out of politeness to him
he wrote to him
this very complicated letter,
which was sort of jokey, I think,
he says -
"Winston Churchill has no doubt that
Mr Winston Churchill will recognise
from this letter,
"if indeed by no other means,
"that there is grave danger
of his works being mistaken for
those of Mr Winston Churchill.
"He feels sure that
Mr Winston Churchill desires this
as little as he does himself.
"In future to avoid mistakes
as far as possible,
"Mr Winston Churchill has decided to
sign all published articles,
stories or other works,
"Winston Spencer Churchill and
not Winston Churchill as formerly.
"He trusts that this arrangement
will commend itself to
Mr Winston Churchill."
And Winston Churchill replied,
"Mr Winston Churchill appreciates
the courtesy of Mr Winston Churchill
"in adopting the name of
Winston Spencer Churchill
in his books, articles, etc.
"Mr Winston Churchill
makes haste to add that
had he possessed any other names,
"he would certainly have adopted
one of them."
There you go. So how polite.
That's so lovely.
I like the fact they refer to
themselves in the third person.
Mr Churchill all the time, I know.
Clement Freud had a very good story
he used to tell about
when he was an MP.
He went to China on a fact-finding
visit with other
parliamentarians including
Winston Churchill Jr,
i.e. the grandson
of Winston Spencer Churchill
who was a Tory MP.
One day Winston Churchill
invited him
back to his room at the hotel
for a nightcap.
Freud saw that his room was
so much better than his.
So the next day, Freud said to the
guide, "I'm not complaining.
"I just wondered why Mr Churchill's
room is so much bigger than mine."
And the Chinese person said,
"Because he has famous grandfather."
Clement Freud said "It's the only
time I've even been
out-grandfathered."
You'd think if your grandfather was
Sigmund Freud, you were safe.
No-one could out-grandfather you.
You'd have the executive suite.
You should have seen Steve Hitler's
room. It's enormous.
Now, what truly grim reading matter
was banned in Germany after the War?
Romantic comedies? Mills and Boon?
"Say what you hear.
The clue is in the question."
What was the question again?
Say the question again.
What truly grim reading
matter was...?
The Brothers Grimm.
Brothers Grimm.
Oh, right.
Because people believed that real
savagery of the Grimm fairy tales
had contributed to something that
had turned the German people nasty,
the perceived
barbarity of the people.
The argument they'd fostered
obedience, discipline,
authoritarianism, nationalism,
glorification of violence,
all that kind of thing, became part
of the national character.
According to a British Major,
TJ Leonard,
he said the fairytales had
helped teach German children
"all the varieties of
barbarousness."
Including light flannelling.
And it made them
easy to fit the role of hangman,
and so on and so forth.
One of the stories was called
How Children Played Butcher With
Each Other,
which was really savage.
That was removed from the second
edition.
And in the Frog King, the frog is
not kissed by the princess,
he's hurled against a wall with all
the strength she has,
to turn him into a prince.
A rather battered, bruised prince.
That'll do it.
Yeah. At two miles an hour.
Two miles an hour, against a...
And he goes like that...
Argh!
It was all he could do.
He's got little froggy arms.
Yeah.
On the other hand,
there is a lyrical quality.
The last in the collection,
you'll love this story.
There's a little poor boy goes
out into a wintry forest
to collect wood on a sled.
In the snow he finds a tiny key
and next to it, an iron box.
The boy inserts the key,
he turns it, he lifts the lid.
SUSPENSEFUL TUNE PLAYS
He lifts the lid...
TUNE CONTINUES
End of story.
Oh, really?
That's Pulp Fiction.
Exactly,
it's the suitcase in Pulp Fiction,
exactly what I thought of it.
The rest is up to your imagination,
boys and girls.
What do you think was in that box?
A frog. Porn.
I think it was a stash of porn.
Yeah. A flannel.
That's why I used to
go into the woods.
Well, we've ended on a sour,
bitter and very rude note.
Which is the way
we like to end on QI.
Once again.
Yes, hurrah.
Which brings us to the scores.
And let's have a look.
My word, my goodness, my gracious,
my goodness and my everything,
in first place, with plus three,
is Bill Bailey!
Wow. I've never won!
How did you end up with plus three?
Second place for a first timer,
with minus eight, it's Isy.
Oh, well done.
Third place, on his first
appearance, is really not bad,
it's Tim Minchin.
And yes,
in fourth place is Alan Davies!
So that's it from Isy, Tim, Bill,
Alan and me.
And good night.
good evening, good evening,
good evening, good evening,
and welcome to QI, where tonight
we are looking for our keys.
To help us we have a key man,
Tim Minchin.
A key woman, Isy Suttie!
A key player, Bill Bailey.
And an allen key, Alan Davies!
Ah, you see what he did there.
So, they've all got their keyboards.
Tim, give us an A.
"A" NOTE PLAYS
That's an A.
Isy, in the great tradition of
Blockbusters, I'd like an E, please.
"E" NOTE PLAYS
Very nice. Bill, give us a G.
"G" NOTE PLAYS
And Alan, give us a B.
BEE BUZZES
LAUGHTER
Aaah. Aaaah.
We have given you
a musical instrument.
I have got the thing here, but...
BILL: Oh. A glockenspiel?
We didn't trust you with
anything electrical.
It's nice. It's something for you
to keep yourself occupied
if you don't know any answers.
Bill could teach me a couple of
tunes during the record.
I bet Bill will, too.
Here's a good one. There you go.
Here's a good one, look.
HE PLAYS TWO NOTES
There you are.
LAUGHTER
It's Airport Announcement.
Airport Announcement, by Ravel.
By Ravel, yes.
It's a beautiful piece.
Absolutely wonderful.
FRENCH ACCENT: "An
announcement aeroport," yes.
Exactly. Do know any, any tunes?
French? No. I don't know any tunes.
HE PLAYS TWO NOTES
Doorbell. Same, similar.
Oh, very good.
I don't know who wrote whose first,
I imagine doorbell came first.
ISY: They're always in a major third,
as if to herald good news.
Yes, exactly. Yeah.
TIM PLAYS TWO NOTES - MAJOR THIRD
"Your flight is
delayed by eight hours."
"I don't feel so bad!"
TIM PLAYS TWO NOTES - MINOR THIRD
"Boarding now." "Oh, no!"
BILL: The best doorbells always
frighten people away.
PLAYS NOTES FROM
"CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND"
LAUGHTER
Marvellous. You haven't played
anything for us yet, Isy,
just get your fingers warm.
SHE PLAYS JAUNTY PIANO TUNE
That was the jazz version.
Wow! Pretty good.
BILL: That was great.
Anyway, there we are.
So, I'll give you the keys
to the city, all right?
What's the first thing you'll do?
NOTE PLAYS
Yes?
I'd make a copy of them.
Clever. TIM: Yeah, good.
In case I lock myself out
when I'm drunk.
And I'd give a copy to my cleaner.
Very, very smart.
What else can you do with
the keys to the city?
Drive a sheep across a bridge.
KLAXON BLARES
Ah. What?!
No. I am a Freeman of the City
of London, as it happens.
Quite right. Oh, thank you.
Very disappointed if you weren't.
And I did drive, I did
drive a sheep over,
though in fact it was
flagrantly illegal.
It's just one of those myths.
Also that supposedly that you
can bear a sword in the city,
but that's not true, either.
Is there an actual door
that you can fit that in?
No. No, there really isn't.
What do you actually get?
Do you actually get a key
in a nice presentation case?
No, you get a long
sort of parchment,
wherein, heretofore,
let it be understood the City
and Corporation...
There've been mayors
since 1213 and I said
"You must feel pretty extraordinary
to be in a position that hasn't
changed for 800 years"
and there was a cough at my shoulder
and it was the sheriff of London.
He said "There were
sheriffs of London 500 years
before the first mayor."
He was in the 8th century,
the 700s.
Through plagues and fires
and all that. It's pretty amazing.
What does he do?
How does one sheriff these days?
You wear extraordinary shrieval -
it's the adjective of sheriff -
shrieval laces and wigs.
In London you're free to trade
without having to pay
a toll at the bridge.
Today, it's a purely symbolic
honour.
The City of London Police
do not permit sheep
to be taken across the bridge
aside from the occasional
publicity stunt.
The City of London Police are
so boring.
You can't do that there. Oh, come
on. Freedom.
BILL: Is there anything you can do?
I mean is there anything... You can
go naked, or something, or...?
No, no real rights.
I mean if you are poor,
you can access some
educational and charitable funds.
Dick Whittington, probably the most
famous London Lord Mayor,
in the early 15th century, left
money in trust for water troughs
and children's education, and that
charity is still giving out money.
Really? It's been wisely invested.
That's pretty amazing, isn't it?
There are other people to get
freedoms of cities.
To whom do you think Detroit gave
the key of their city in 1980?
Diana Ross.
No, it wasn't Diana Ross,
you'd think it would be a...
Someone off of Motown. Gary Numan.
It should be a Motown star.
Wasn't Gary Numan.
Gary Numan? No. What wrote Cars?
No. That would be good.
No, it wasn't.
It was actually Saddam Hussein.
AUDIENCE LAUGH AND MURMUR
What? Well, they're sick of him.
What?!
It's the usual pattern.
In 1980, he was our friend.
He was a friend. Yeah.
Of course.
The City of Toronto
has given the key to
Dalai Lama, Nelson Mandela
and Mickey Mouse.
LAUGHTER
Never seen in the same room.
Pathetic, the Dalai Lama?! Why him?
The Dalai Lama, what was it?
Nelson Mandela and Mickey Mouse.
Ah, my perfect Sunday.
LAUGHTER
Those three round for dinner.
Corona, California, gave a cat
the freedom of its city limits.
Oh, that's stupid, isn't it?
Because the cat had hit the
Guinness Book of Records
by being the tallest
cat in the world.
And, because we're QI, we rang up
the city of Corona, and it's true.
They were very pleased to have it
verified for us.
But Cher upset Australians in 2012,
when she sold her key
to Adelaide on eBay.
Oh. She got 96,000 dollars for it.
Wow! What?! Yeah.
Someone paid 96 grand for a
symbolic key to Adelaide?
To Adelaide,
not even Melbourne or Sydney!
I mean, I like Adelaide,
but that's...
BILL: It's a lot though, isn't it?
I don't want a key.
She responded to the inevitable
backlash on Twitter.
She said...
F'd up. Fudged.
Fudged up, yeah.
Friend. So, there you are.
Flowled. Flower-up.
Flagaba...
Keep guessing. I don't know.
Fruity. Flannel. Flannel up.
Flannel up and wait for me.
POSH VOICE: "Flannel up!
"Clean yourself and flannel up.
I'll be up in five minutes!
I have to flannel you down!
"And put on the special ointment!"
Bring me another one,
this one's flannelled-out.
Oh, dear. All right, OK.
I like a flannel.
What key part did bigots play in
the Second World War?
What do you mean...? You're
talking...
Not that kind of bigot. BIGOT being
a diversionary tactic.
That's a bit of a minor description.
I think it is.
This word is... Oh, he was a bigot,
was he? The more I hear about him...
Is it an acronym for something?
"Big-oh". No, it's British.
Churchill chose it. Oh, really?
Beware, I've Got One...Trouser.
Beware, I've Got One Trouser?
I'm Going Out Tomorrow.
Blimey, I've Got..Owls...Turned.
He's so shit at I Spy.
BIGOT stands for British Invasion
of German Occupied Territory.
So there's Monty and Winnie and
they're looking at a map and
planning... To flannel over there.
D-Day... Chaps, got your flannel?
Everybody got their flannel?
Churchill was the only person who
Monty would let smoke.
It was so secret that anyone
who knew any
details of the Normandy landings,
they were on the BIGOT list
and they were not allowed under any
circumstances to leave the country.
The only exception was
Churchill himself.
No-one on the BIGOT list was
allowed out of Britain.
Indeed, there was a rehearsal
for the invasion
and ten people on the BIGOT
list were killed accidentally.
All plans for the invasion
were put on hold
until they could account for every
single one of the bodies
just to be absolutely sure so the
secret didn't get out. Well...
It's got out now, yes.
It wasn't that it was unlikely, that
it wouldn't happen. England's there.
France is there.
I know but we did everything
we possibly could to
persuade them that it was going to
be further across towards Belgium
and they withheld divisions further
away from Normandy where we landed
precisely because... Fake landing.
..they fell for some
of the spies - the Zigzag man
and that poor old chap who
was a dead body
who was dressed as
though he was an important officer
and dropped in the sea
outside Gibraltar
with a chained briefcase with plans
and they gave him a whole life.
He was called the man who never was.
There was a film of it.
Who was he?
He was probably a very sad down and
out Welsh chap who died very young
and had been found sleeping rough
somewhere and they dressed him up
smartly to look like an officer.
You wouldn't have to do that now.
You would just get
someone from Big Brother.
People would volunteer for it.
Certainly the rest of us would.
The surprise is you're going to be
killed and you're a fake general.
OMG!
It's a good film. If you ever see it
coming round on Channel 4,
it's the sort of thing that pops up
now and again. Yes, I will.
It's funny he didn't know when he was
alive what a key part he'd play
when he was dead.
I know.
Operation Mincemeat, it was called.
You can sign up to this service
when you're alive which
monitors your Tweets and Facebook
and when you're dead, it
continues to Tweet as you
until an executor of the will who
you've nominated tells it to stop.
While you're alive, you give it
feedback as to how good it is. What?!
I'm starting this business... No!
It already exists. That's bizarre.
And you can set how long
it goes on till?
You give someone's name and say this
person makes the decision as to when
the virtual me dies.
You give it feedback so if it's
slightly funnier than you are,
you say, it's quite good,
but bring it down a notch.
So somebody's employed to be you
after you're dead.
Or just you going dead, dead,
dead, still dead?
Then your followers go up.
Ooh, he's dead, dead.
You know with one's contact list
when people die,
I never have the heart to cut them
out so I have
friends that have been dead 10, 12,
15 years who are still
in my address book.
Have they ever called?
They manifestly haven't called
and I haven't called them
but the act of going delete seems
so...
I've done the same thing
but the good thing is
if someone dead does call you,
you'll know it's them.
I'll know not to answer it.
Of course that number might be
reused. They do recycle them
so it is possible that one day...
That would be
the shock of one's life.
In fact it's probable that
coincidence will happen.
Someone who's got the old number
of a dead person will accidentally
ring a person who...
I can't wait till that happens.
Very exciting.
Now, secrecy,
in the least order upwards,
what's the word for the least
secret document?
For anyone's eyes only. Yes,
basically it's "unclassified".
Then "protect", then "restricted",
then up to... Up to look over there!
"Confidential" and then... I'm going
to have to kill you.
"Secret" then...
Top secret. Top secret. Yes.
It used to be, not top secret but...
Most secret. Most secret.
We're going to use this
Americanism now - top secret.
Most secret's so British, isn't it?
Most secret.
Totes secret.
NERDY VOICE: There are some UFO
conspiracy theorists
who will tell you that there are 38,
38 levels of secrecy above
top secret.
Why are you talking like this?
Because these are UFO conspiracy
theories. Is that how they talk?
They all talk like that.
NERDY VOICE: They all talk like that.
You can laugh. All right,
I will. Ha ha ha ha.
You'll be laughing on the other
side of your face
when you've been probed.
Yes.
The next level is "cosmic".
Even the President of the US
does not have cosmic clearance.
Really? Who does? Look it up. It's
all there. It's true. Totally true.
That's my favourite
thing about conspiracy theorists.
This is something that the president
doesn't know but I've figured it out!
Typing away.
Fantastic, isn't it?
What is CANUKUS' eyes only?
I beg your pardon?
CANUKUS' eyes only.
Is there a creature called a canukus
and it's the only thing that's
allowed to look at it?
But it can't speak
and therefore will never tell anyone.
United States? No. Not bad.
Canada, UK and the United States.
CANUKUS. CANUKUS.
There's AUSCANNZUKUS
which is known as the five eyes,
which is Australia, New Zealand,
Canada, US and UK.
There's also, basically,
don't tell the French.
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
BIGOTS were the key men in planning
the D-Day landings.
Now, what's the best way to keep
the Open Organisation
of Lockpickers
out of your homes?
Bucket of water over the door,
a rake on the floor,
two miniature beds of nails
and a very hungry tiger.
And you put all that outside
the potential lockpicker's door,
so that they can't even
leave their home.
Ah. You don't need to,
is the point, actually.
The fact is, they are
incredibly moral and ethical.
This organisation, which is
literally called TOOOL.
The Organisation - there it is.
The Open Organisation
of Lockpickers.
BILL: No, this is made-up.
It's Dutch. Is it?
It's a Dutch organisation
of recreational lockpickers.
LAUGHTER
They claim to have a good purpose,
they help spread
the word in security
and show how things can be picked,
but the point is, you're not allowed
ever, in this organisation, to pick
a lock that doesn't belong to you.
That's how moral they are.
Well, that's boring, isn't it?
Pick a lock...
That's when they're meeting,
but when they're
professionally being lockpickers...
DUTCH ACCENT: "Hey, what a crazy
bunch of guys.
"Let's go and pick some locks,
but not someone we don't know.
"OK. What a crazy time
we're going to have."
"How come it's only me today?"
LAUGHTER
"I am such a toool." Yeah.
Many of TOOOL's members
are obviously lock-makers
and locksmiths.
There they are,
tools of their trade. Wow.
It's incredible how you can have
such a specific skill in one area
and be so bad with fonts.
Yes. Very true.
It's non-overlapping magisteria.
It is not an overlapping
magisterian. Lock picking and fonts.
There's probably a fonts
organisation, as well. Yeah.
Let's be honest.
Who cannot get into their house.
That's right.
Do you know about Alfred C Hobbs?
He was a great American lockpicker
and lockmaker.
He came to Britain
for the Great Exhibition
Our great safemaker,
lockmaker was...
He was a nice stout-sounding name.
Chubb. Chubb.
Chubb safes and Chubb locks
and they had an amazing Chubb
detector lock which was so subtle
and clever in the mid-19th century
that if it detected someone
was trying to pick it, its tumblers
would all fall down and even
the key for it would no longer fit.
You'd have to destroy it to open it.
He picked that in seven minutes.
Wow. Astonishing everybody
and horrifying Chubb, of course,
because they had the Bank of England
account, apart from anything else.
The Bank of England then replaced
its Chubb locks with Hobbs locks.
Good old American huckstering
salesmanship and know-how.
It was a highly successful
visit for Mr Hobbs.
Yes, it was till
he got locked in a toilet somewhere.
Who in poetic law
laughs at locksmiths?
The Queen.
"Ha ha ha." No.
The first Tuesday of every month.
"The official laughing at
locksmiths.
"Locksmiths are lining up.
She is now braying in their faces,
"snorting derisively..." No.
"You can't open it. Ha ha ha!"
Audience, who laughs at locksmiths?
AUDIENCE MEMBERS: Love.
Love laughs at locksmiths.
Oh. You lock the girl up, you lock
the boy up, or you put locked
barriers between them and they'll
always find a way through to
each other. BILL: Aww.
Except they don't, do they? No.
If you lock...
They won't, will they?
No. That's the trouble with poetry.
It's bollocks. I hate it.
They just need a good lock.
It raises false hopes.
All you need is your lock to be
slightly smarter than the two
people in love and really
dumb people are in love,
and there are really good locks.
That's ridiculous!
You're right, you're right.
Oh, well.
Speaking of keys, what's the
key part of an arch?
BILL PLAYS NOTES
Yes, Bill?
Your light came on first.
Was that you, sorry?
That's the trouble
with these things.
You can't tell who it is.
Do that chord again and I'll know.
We only know the same chord.
We're both... We play in C.
The keystone is the...
KLAXON BLARES
I'm Alan Davies.
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
It is commonplace to use the word
keystone as being the thing
that makes the arch work,
but it isn't true.
It's not the most important.
All the arch stones, or
"voussoirs" are equally important.
But it is the last piece to
go in and finishes rather
beautifully the arrangement,
as it were. Yes.
In Roman times, they'd get
the constructor of the arch to
stand right under the arch when the
support scaffolding
was taken away,
just to show that he had
faith enough in his own...
Well, it's natural selection
of arch builders, isn't it?
"Is that guy any good?"
Well, he's still here. Exactly.
I like that idea of getting people
to test things. It's like going to a
barbecue and getting someone to try
the sausage before you'll eat it.
Oh, don't. BILL: Oh, yeah.
There are certain things
that you can only test by using.
So it's then useless.
I mean, a ring-pull, essentially,
you say, "I wonder
if this ring-pull will work."
Whoosh! "Oh, yes, it does.
Good, now... Oh, you can't..."
Same with air bags,
I suppose and other such things.
I've really tried to get the
air bag to come out, but it's...
No? No luck? No, if you drive,
really whack the dashboard
really hard with a mallet
or something and...
Well, you realise how much force
it is by just trying to
walk into a wall at two miles an
hour and your body won't let you.
It just won't.
LAUGHTER
Hands will go up.
No, no, no. I've done that.
By mistake when...
I did that after a night on here.
Yes, when drunk or
texting or something.
But, I mean, if you actually
consciously say,
"I'm going to
walk into this wall..."
Only two miles an hour,
not three miles an hour,
and you just, pah,
your hand goes up.
You can't stop it. It's a
reflex, it's so strong.
Is there a wall here?
I'd like to see you not do that.
LAUGHTER
I've got this image of you not being
able to walk at 2mph into a wall.
2mph, that's...
What's a normal walking pace? 4mph?
So that's half speed.
Half normal walking speed.
It's still enough to
break your nose.
It would break your nose.
Is it the theory that, if you're
walking at exactly 2mph, magic
happens?
You've got to get it exactly right.
I mean, just kind of slowly walk
into a wall.
Try it at home.
LAUGHTER
That's all I'm saying.
Maybe it's just me being a coward.
It will take more than
an hour to go two miles
if you keep walking into walls,
wouldn't it? It's true.
That's the interesting thing
about that. That's true.
So, the fact of the matter
is that keystones are no more
important than any of
the other stones in an arch.
Why were the keys in a QWERTY
keyboard arranged the way they are?
Ah, now, this is that it makes it
more difficult to type.
LAUGHTER
That's right.
And they wanted to slow...
KLAXON BLARES
"They wanted to slow..."
you were saying...
Typists down. Typists down. No.
What it is, is the ones that most
commonly are done together
in English were put furthest apart,
so they were less likely to jam.
So, in fact, it was in order
to allow you to type
more smoothly and speedily,
so that you didn't get the jamming
of the keys as they came up
and hit each other. Oh, I see.
Of course, these days, we don't use
mechanical typewriters in that
way, with the keys flopping up.
That's how I learnt to type.
Enormous typewriters. I was tiny.
LAUGHTER
I loved typewriters so much,
I was obsessed with them.
Really?
Absolutely adored them, yeah.
Stephen! Dinner's ready. Aaargh!
Do you know, it's true,
I once copied out a whole novel
on the typewriter.
Did you? Just to practise.
Yeah, because I enjoyed
the experience of typing so much.
Just to, yeah. While other people
were getting on with their lives,
you were doing that.
Yeah. What can I tell you?
It's the sort of man you are.
I'm sad. I'm so modest.
What, what novel was it?
It was Frozen Assets,
by PG Wodehouse.
It's not one of his best-known
novels.
BILL SNIGGERS
Look, I'm sorry!
It's amazing you've come
so far, isn't it?
What should I have been doing?
Anything else!
Listening to Flink Poyd or
something?
Yes. Clearly I was just lying
somewhere wasting my life
when I should have been copying out
novels on some archaic old
bit of kit.
"Yes, what I like to do
in my spare time,
"I write out Proust, I use my nail
and I chip it into an old flint."
I can't help it. "No, get off,
Nanny, I haven't finished yet."
You're such a bully!
You're mean. Sir, sir,
Fry's copying out novels again.
Sir, he's chipping them,
he's using a hammer and a chisel,
he's chiselled out War And Peace
on the South Downs.
You really do live
a different life to all the rest,
you're not like us, are you?
You're another, you're not a mortal.
Clearly not.
You're like sent from
some other planet.
You are, the planet Aesthete,
that's what you are.
I have cosmic clearance. Yes, you
do. You know when it's all going to
end.
I always thought I was normal,
and now I... No, you're not.
Oh, well, anyway...
You're a freak.
You can reprieve my fury
at you by telling me
a word that can be
typed on the top line.
It's quite pleasing.
Twiquminator...
Typewriter.
Ah! It's nice, isn't it?
It's just a coincidence,
typewriter across the top?
Yes, I believe so. There are a lot
of people who believe...
A lot of conspiracy theory.
People who believe it was brought to
us by falcons from the planet
Bletch.
Now, what starts with K
and is killed by curiosity?
A kitten.
Oh! Oh, no. I'm sorry.
It's an animal species,
but not a cat.
A lot of these begin with Ks...
Kangaroo.
No, but you're in the right
hemisphere. Koala.
Again, right hemisphere,
not the right country. Kiwi.
Sorry? Kiwi? Kiwi.
You're the right type of animal.
Kora. A kea.
Kea is the right answer. Very good.
A kea is? A New Zealand parrot.
A flightless bird.
No, it's not flightless,
oddly enough, it's a parrot.
And there was a bounty put on them
some years ago.
Kea, which as you can see,
look quite ravenous,
they look almost like eagles,
but they are parrots,
would ride the sheep, peck at them
and eat the fat off the poor sheep.
And so there was a bounty
put on their heads
and New Zealanders found
keas were very curious animals.
It's partly a result of having grown
up in a country with no mammals
for millions of years.
Anyway, what you do is, you stand
behind a rock and wait for a kea
to come along, and then you drop
behind the rock and disappear.
And the kea thinks, that's odd.
And he wanders up
and he takes a look over,
and you just, with your club,
just go bang, like that.
Then, that's the beauty of it,
you've only just started,
because you don't have to move, you
take the kea and you put it down.
The kea's friend goes,
"Where's Kevin?"
Where's Kevin! Wanders round,
comes along like that.
Are they all called Kevin?
Then you drop down and disappear,
and he goes, "What happened there?
"There was someone, then there
wasn't. How does that happen?"
And he looks over, bash, like that.
"Where's Keith?"
And so on, all the way through.
All the Ks. You get a huge
swag bag of kea.
They're not the brightest of birds.
They're not the brightest.
But the point is,
they never needed to be.
Because New Zealand, just apart from
a few bats, never had any mammals...
That's true. All they needed to do
was mate and survive.
The kakapo, for example,
another type of parrot,
the only thing likely to predate
on it was a vast eagle
that used to live in New Zealand
called the Haast's eagle
and so the kakapo solved that
by becoming nocturnal like the kiwi.
So it could be afraid of nothing.
It developed this extraordinary
mating ritual which is
just beyond belief.
It's called the bowl and track.
It's the only example of this
particular version.
It would dig a bowl, a crater then a
path towards it, the track that it
would immaculately pick clean
and then it would
sit for months during the mating
season.
It has this huge booming sac.
It sounds like a giant blowing
across a beer bottle. Whoo noise.
It would boom and boom
and the females in the valley
below would listen to the boom
they most liked and waddle up.
If by some terrible chance,
a leaf had fallen on the track,
the female would turn and walk away.
The poor old male would have
to pick it clean
and go back to booming again.
Sometimes three years would pass,
booming away,
not getting his rocks off.
The only evolutionary pressure on
this bird is to get laid. That's it.
There's nothing else.
It's fat, stupid, nocturnal horny
bird and he couldn't even get laid.
That's like my life.
Kiwis aren't the most exciting
birds, I have seen kiwis.
Have you burrowed into one of their
dens? No, I haven't bothered
to do that.
I did. It's exciting.
There's one on YouTube
playing the piano.
Oh! No, no.
Falling down an escalator.
I've seen them in special areas,
you know.
I went out with this guide
and he found one, and he said,
"Get in there, get in there."
And so I burrowed and burrowed
and burrowed and burrowed.
And you just see this little eye
winking at you,
and that long wonderful beak,
and it just winked.
Aah. And I winked back
and then sort of...
With a little look that just says,
"you just destroyed my house."
Yeah. I was careful not to.
Aaah. Aah, lovely!
It took three years to make this.
The New Zealand government,
they were given two pandas by the
Chinese government in return for
two kiwis, and I just thought it was
a bit of a swiz, you know.
It's like New Zealand, you know,
the zoo in Auckland, all these
people going, aah, look at them,
look at the pandas, and aah!
Some zoo in Beijing,
people going, what?
What are they? These kiwis don't
even sneeze. They don't, nothing.
Very good, very good, very good.
Now, what is this woman doing,
though?
What the...? Is this Lady Gaga's
new album cover, is it?
She's wearing a...
It's an experiment.
No, she's using a device
that's for sale, or was for sale,
it was built in 1929.
A new device. Knitting jumpers?
Patented by Dr Kurt Johnen,
it records the motions
and bodily reactions.
A lady is pictured being
examined by the device.
A pneumatic belt records the change
of the circumference of her chest.
Pneumatic cuffs above the upper arms
control the changes of muscle
tension.
Through a hose is recorded
the rhythms of respiration,
and another hose transfers
the strength of touch.
It's a sex toy.
You would think, wouldn't you?
But what about her hands? That's
the clue, and our theme today?
Piano, she's learning piano.
Piano? A keyboard.
Yes, it's a piano teaching machine.
Oh. Oh. Extraordinary, isn't it?
Wow. It's supposed to help you
with your piano playing.
Your posture, your breathing.
There have been many others
along those lines.
There was the Chiroplast,
which was clamped to the piano
and trapped the player's arms,
that's the one on the left,
so you were forced to play using
only your wrist and finger action.
You were then crippled.
The one in the middle was the
Dactylion, from the Greek "dactyl",
meaning finger.
A contraption designed to
strengthen the fingers, because
they're springs that you're going
against in that middle picture.
And it's said that
Robert Schumann used that
and it actually hurt his fingers.
Though others say
that was syphilis.
It's a fine line, isn't it?
It is a fine line. Oh, always.
When you're into fingering,
syphilis is never far away.
Next to that is the Chiro,
or the Chirogymnaste,
which is a tiny finger gym,
which has got little finger events
and you can see them.
They still encourage you to do that.
There's little spring-loaded
strengthening things
that I was given in the brief time
I got someone to teach me the piano
and they said "You should
strengthen your fingers."
I thought "I might as well be
playing the piano."
My old piano teacher, she would be
much better than that cos she'd use a
ruler
and if you got it wrong, she'd whack
you on the top of the...
That is more of a powerful incentive
than any of this...
But if you do harm yourself
by using one of these things,
you can always use the bed piano,
for bedridden people.
Wow. Which is a rather splendid
device. I think you'll agree.
I hope that's securely attached.
That is the laziest keyboard
player in the world.
And as you see, it rolls up,
pushes away neatly.
That's fantastic. It's great,
isn't it? I want one.
You can slide pizzas
down from the back.
Yes. Bill's sitting there going
"I am going to get one of those."
I will, I'm going to get one.
Bill will have one of those.
That's the piano for the bedroom.
Ha-ha!
The upside-down piano, virtual.
That's magic.
Be easier to strap yourself into bed
and tilt the bed up to a normal
piano. Yeah.
How would a left-handed piano work?
It would be high notes
at the left.
There it is. And there it is.
That is a left-handed piano. Wow.
It would take a hell of a lot
of unlearning for you to play on
that, wouldn't it? Good God!
Can you imagine? It would
drive you mad. It would.
Transposing pianos, have you ever
played with one of those?
Well, there's a device on the
keyboard that will do that for you.
On an electric keyboard.
On an electric one.
There are pianos with a mechanism
that can... It's a lever on it.
It moves it across to the next
string. Oh, right.
Irving Berlin used one,
because he only composed in F sharp.
He's like Stevie Wonder,
who likes the black notes.
He couldn't read music,
but was the most successful
songwriter of his age.
Really? Yeah. He couldn't read
music, he was fantastically
talented,
He wrote White Christmas,
let alone Top Hat, White Tie.
He lived long enough to be
able to see his own songs go
out of copyright,
because his first hit was in 1911,
with Alexander's Ragtime Band.
You know, "Come on and hear, come on
and hear Alexander's Ragtime Band."
They only go out of copyright
after you're dead.
No, they do now, but in his day, it
was 75 years after it was written.
Right. So he lived long enough
to see some of his songs
go into the public domain. Now
it's 70 years after you've died.
How old was he when he wrote it?
Early twenties. But had this
extraordinary talent. Amazing.
There's a long list of things I have
to get after this show.
There's the upside-down piano,
the upside-down dinner, I mean,
everything, yeah.
It's funny you should say
a list of things cos that brings me
to Franz Liszt.
Ho ho! ♪ Accidental segue! ♪
How did he change the piano?
Did he have huge hands, Liszt?
He did. He could expand them,
long, long span.
There were pianos made
specifically for him.
Well, yes,
then they became the standard type.
He gave it so much bloody welly that
they made it out of an iron frame.
Before that,
they'd been a wooden frame.
In Jane Campion's film The Piano,
when the piano is thrown out to sea,
it should have floated.
instead of sinking
because the film's set in 1850.
It would have been
a pre-Lisztian piano.
Did that ruin it for you?
You won't be copying that film out.
What's this rubbish?!
Plainly not possible!
Right, so... Good.
So, what did the man who knew
everything think cats were good for?
Well...
Catching mice.
Catching mice. Isn't the man
who knew everything Thomas Young?
Well, there's various people
who were given
the title of the last man to know
everything there was to know.
Erasmus, Leibnitz, Von Humboldt, and
this man here, Kircher, his name is.
He was a German Jesuit,
Athanasius Kircher.
And he certainly was
very interested in lots of things.
He was lowered into Vesuvius.
He believed the bubonic plague
was caused by microbes,
well ahead of germ theory.
Claimed falsely to have interpreted
Egyptian hieroglyphics.
He regarded things like magnetism
and love as branches of the same
topic, attraction,
which is a very QI way of looking
at things, I like that. Yeah.
But what are the cats doing?
Well, we'll come to that.
Some things he got right.
He denied the possibility
of flying tortoises.
I don't know who'd raised
the possibility,
but he damn well squashed it
and said, no,
there won't be such a thing
as a flying tortoise.
Rubbish. But he did invent the
megaphone, and the Katzenklavier.
Klavier is in fact German for key,
from clavis, Latin, key,
but it's a keyboard instrument.
The cat playing the piano.
He invented You Tube.
I'm afraid, for cat-lovers, it's
a bit more disturbing than that.
Oh, cat string, gut string.
No, not cat gut, no, arrange
live cats in the right order,
according to their voice.
Oh. And you play... Drums.
And there you go.
Oh, brilliant.
That's awesome!
Oh, if only they had YouTube
back then.
The outrage on the comments page.
It's another thing for your list,
isn't it.
It's on the list.
Yes, right up there.
You've got to get one of those.
Their tails are fixed in place
underneath hammers.
When a key is pressed,
the hammer hits the corresponding...
you can even get chords
and of course there's dynamics.
The harder you hit,
it the more of a yowl.
It wouldn't necessarily have to be
cruel.
You could get the same mechanism,
but just have it sort of tickle
the bollocks of a cat.
So it's more like...YAAH!
As opposed to...YEAGHH!
For a trill.
Yeah.
MIMICS CATS PLAYING
"HOW MUCH IS THAT DOGGY
IN THE WINDOW?"
What do they think,
that you have an A cat and a B cat?
Yeah. And a C cat?
I guess you just go round.
But there are only six cats and there
are more than six keys, so...
Well, that's true,
that's a limited range, it's very...
Experimental music.
Experimental music.
All the other keys hit mice
inside the box.
It's doubtful he actually built it,
but he certainly wrote out
the plans for one.
There are reports for comparable
devices for Philip II of Spain
which had the additional layer of
hilarity by being played by a
bear(!)
There are comparable records
of pig organs,
that Louis XI of France,
had one made by the Abbot of Baigne.
There you are, getting ascending
order of pig, pig, pig.
That's fantastic.
I like the woman
singing along with them as well.
You think she's playing the pigs,
but the pigs are playing her.
And as late as the mid-19th century,
there was some instruments known
variously as the Pig Organ,
the Hog Harmonium, Pigano,
the Porkoforte,
or worst of all,
the Swineway Grand.
So there you are, yes,
several people have tried to make
musical instruments
out of live animals,
although it doesn't really work
very well in practice.
And now for the welcome
return of a keynote of QI,
a bit of General Ignorance
very quickly. Fingers on keypads.
Nicely flexed and name something
written by Winston Churchill?
Who was that?
Yes?
The Second World War.
Oh!
Have another go.
He won the Nobel Prize, didn't he?
He won the Nobel Prize
for Literature. Yes, he did.
He wrote so much.
Our Prime Minister won the Nobel
Prize for Literature, no question.
Can you out of interest name
the only person to have won
the Nobel Prize and an Oscar?
People wrongly say Al Gore because
there was an Oscar given
to An Inconvenient Truth and he was
given a Nobel Peace Prize,
but he didn't win the Oscar
personally.
Any offers, punters? Sean Connery.
Shaw is the answer.
George Bernard Shaw.
George Bernard Shaw came
through the door.
He had a ladies'
public conveniences built.
Yeah, he was very
interested in stuff like that.
People said it was outrageous and
disgusting
that there should be a public
convenience for women.
How appalling?
And he said,
"No, I think women need to go too."
The first ladies' loos in London.
Winston Churchill did not write
under the name Winston Churchill.
Our Prime Minister didn't.
Oh, that's right.
What did he write under the name of?
Anne Bronte.
The Gathering Storm,
by Anne Bronte.
Daphne du Maurier.
My early years.
Katie Price.
No, what's his full name?
Do you remember his full...?
Spencer.
William Leonard Spencer Churchill.
Oh, Leonard. So he wrote under the
name of Winston S Churchill.
Because when he started writing,
there was a very successful American
novelist called Winston Churchill.
And so out of politeness to him
he wrote to him
this very complicated letter,
which was sort of jokey, I think,
he says -
"Winston Churchill has no doubt that
Mr Winston Churchill will recognise
from this letter,
"if indeed by no other means,
"that there is grave danger
of his works being mistaken for
those of Mr Winston Churchill.
"He feels sure that
Mr Winston Churchill desires this
as little as he does himself.
"In future to avoid mistakes
as far as possible,
"Mr Winston Churchill has decided to
sign all published articles,
stories or other works,
"Winston Spencer Churchill and
not Winston Churchill as formerly.
"He trusts that this arrangement
will commend itself to
Mr Winston Churchill."
And Winston Churchill replied,
"Mr Winston Churchill appreciates
the courtesy of Mr Winston Churchill
"in adopting the name of
Winston Spencer Churchill
in his books, articles, etc.
"Mr Winston Churchill
makes haste to add that
had he possessed any other names,
"he would certainly have adopted
one of them."
There you go. So how polite.
That's so lovely.
I like the fact they refer to
themselves in the third person.
Mr Churchill all the time, I know.
Clement Freud had a very good story
he used to tell about
when he was an MP.
He went to China on a fact-finding
visit with other
parliamentarians including
Winston Churchill Jr,
i.e. the grandson
of Winston Spencer Churchill
who was a Tory MP.
One day Winston Churchill
invited him
back to his room at the hotel
for a nightcap.
Freud saw that his room was
so much better than his.
So the next day, Freud said to the
guide, "I'm not complaining.
"I just wondered why Mr Churchill's
room is so much bigger than mine."
And the Chinese person said,
"Because he has famous grandfather."
Clement Freud said "It's the only
time I've even been
out-grandfathered."
You'd think if your grandfather was
Sigmund Freud, you were safe.
No-one could out-grandfather you.
You'd have the executive suite.
You should have seen Steve Hitler's
room. It's enormous.
Now, what truly grim reading matter
was banned in Germany after the War?
Romantic comedies? Mills and Boon?
"Say what you hear.
The clue is in the question."
What was the question again?
Say the question again.
What truly grim reading
matter was...?
The Brothers Grimm.
Brothers Grimm.
Oh, right.
Because people believed that real
savagery of the Grimm fairy tales
had contributed to something that
had turned the German people nasty,
the perceived
barbarity of the people.
The argument they'd fostered
obedience, discipline,
authoritarianism, nationalism,
glorification of violence,
all that kind of thing, became part
of the national character.
According to a British Major,
TJ Leonard,
he said the fairytales had
helped teach German children
"all the varieties of
barbarousness."
Including light flannelling.
And it made them
easy to fit the role of hangman,
and so on and so forth.
One of the stories was called
How Children Played Butcher With
Each Other,
which was really savage.
That was removed from the second
edition.
And in the Frog King, the frog is
not kissed by the princess,
he's hurled against a wall with all
the strength she has,
to turn him into a prince.
A rather battered, bruised prince.
That'll do it.
Yeah. At two miles an hour.
Two miles an hour, against a...
And he goes like that...
Argh!
It was all he could do.
He's got little froggy arms.
Yeah.
On the other hand,
there is a lyrical quality.
The last in the collection,
you'll love this story.
There's a little poor boy goes
out into a wintry forest
to collect wood on a sled.
In the snow he finds a tiny key
and next to it, an iron box.
The boy inserts the key,
he turns it, he lifts the lid.
SUSPENSEFUL TUNE PLAYS
He lifts the lid...
TUNE CONTINUES
End of story.
Oh, really?
That's Pulp Fiction.
Exactly,
it's the suitcase in Pulp Fiction,
exactly what I thought of it.
The rest is up to your imagination,
boys and girls.
What do you think was in that box?
A frog. Porn.
I think it was a stash of porn.
Yeah. A flannel.
That's why I used to
go into the woods.
Well, we've ended on a sour,
bitter and very rude note.
Which is the way
we like to end on QI.
Once again.
Yes, hurrah.
Which brings us to the scores.
And let's have a look.
My word, my goodness, my gracious,
my goodness and my everything,
in first place, with plus three,
is Bill Bailey!
Wow. I've never won!
How did you end up with plus three?
Second place for a first timer,
with minus eight, it's Isy.
Oh, well done.
Third place, on his first
appearance, is really not bad,
it's Tim Minchin.
And yes,
in fourth place is Alan Davies!
So that's it from Isy, Tim, Bill,
Alan and me.
And good night.