QI (2003–…): Season 11, Episode 9 - Kinetic - full transcript

Gooooooood evening, good evening,
good evening, good evening

and welcome to QI,

where tonight we're on the move
with K for Kinetic.

Let's meet motor-mouth Danny Baker.

Thank you. Good evening.
Thank you.

Speed-freak Marcus Brigstocke.

Danny goes...

♪ I like to move it, move it... ♪

Yeah. It's too loud for me today.

Marcus goes...

♪ I've got the moves like Jagger... ♪



Jo goes...

♪ Moving on up
Nothing can stop me... ♪

And Alan goes...

♪ Saturday night at the movies
Who cares what picture you see... ♪

Movies.

Kinema was originally
what cinema was called.

From the same word as kinetic -
it was kinematic moving,

i.e. moving pictures.

Well, "kinetic" of course means
anything to do with movement,

so, for heaven's sake, let's get
moving. Where will this get me?

I'm going to find my broom here.

If I were to move my hands together
like this, what would happen?

Whether I did this one
a bit more than that one,

or that one a bit more
than that one.



What would happen, at the end,
when my hands met?

in your hand, Stephen.

But you've got one. Maybe it'll
look more natural in yours.

Yeah, I am a drudge.

You can ride it home tonight.

Here we go.
You've all got one, so try it.

Obviously... His fell apart!
..everybody except Alan.

Now try properly.

Obviously the left hand won't
move as far as the right one.

Is it working for you,
Marcus? Please, God!

Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Jo isn't even trying.

No, well, I can tell you, there are
women all over the country going,

"Look at the silly bastards. We've
got to clean the floor with it."

Oh, man, this is...
I've been trying this all afternoon

and I can't make it
do anything else. No!

It's like it's got the Uri Geller
touch about it, it's just...

Ohhh, cool.

That is bizarre.

Ah.
Well, that's really disappointing.

It's just like, I'm not doing it
on purpose, I promise I'm not...

Close your eyes. Look at that!

There, that's good. You've found the
centre of gravity perfectly there.

The thing is,
you're tilting it, Danny.

You've got to keep it straight.

No. I promise you, I'm trying to
tilt it. It's not...

No, you're tilting it.
That's working perfectly.

Well...

Physical comedy
so early in the show.

I know. You can't beat it.

Last time, last time, last time.
Last time. It's level, yes? Yeah.

Level. It's going,
I can feel it's going... Aah.

Hooray!

Phew!

Human error. And this -
now, that's interesting.

Why do you think you can balance it
with the centre of gravity so high?

Because we know where the centre of
gravity is. Because I am a genius!

LAUGHTER
That's right.

I'm just going to rip...

I think the show's broom techy might
need a word after the programme.

APPLAUSE

Well, thank you very much,
my science elves... Exactly.

..for all your moments of inertia
and your centres of mass.

I like this. This game's brilliant,
because you don't need to be clever.

No, exactly. You just need to know
a variety of broom-related tricks.

Well, the centre of gravity is
the issue there, isn't it? Yeah.

Discovered by Archimedes,
supposedly.

Could anyone hear him speak,
Archimedes? Was it just a...?

HE MAKES SQUEAKING NOISE

It did sound as if it was
coming through dense undergrowth.

There's a man in the bushes.
"No, it's me, it's me."

Behind you,
there's a man in the bush.

"No, I'm telling you,
it's me speaking."

Anyway, listen, the idea is
that you will always find

Oh, Christ.

I thought I had every copy of that.

Attack of the 50-foot Stephen.

Anyway, yes. Nice.

I am 6 ft 4? ins tall
and I weigh a little bit over 14st.

Between 14st and something more
than 14st.

So, how much would I weigh
if I was 44,000 miles tall?

Keeping the same ratios
and proportions? Yep, yep.
How much would I weigh?

Well, there would come a point
where the top part

of your extraordinary body
would no longer be affected
by earth's gravity,

so you'd weigh a bit less than
one might expect,

but still a fair amount,
I would think.

No, I'd actually be weightless,

cos my centre of gravity would be
outside... Beyond the halfway point.

If you were weightless,
but lying across the top,

then the penis could be affected
by gravity whilst you weren't.

We've just done the calculations,

and my penis would be
3,384 miles long.

APPLAUSE

I thank you.

Which means if we do the division
again we can figure out
REALLY how big it is.

JO: Also, it would...

Too much information, I think.

It would be poking out
of your dress, as well.

You'd have to have a ball gown.
Literally.

There was... I think we've
talked about this before, Alan.

There was a proposal made
in the 19th century to build a tower

that went out into space
as a way of getting out there.

Which seems ridiculous,
but it would use the same principle.

If it was anchored to the ground
and then went up high enough,

Yeah. Because we don't know
up and down.

If a UFO approaches, there is no
particular reason it should approach
with the North Pole at the top.

I think, though, if they came
all this way they'd be fairly
unlikely to go to Australia.

This programme has been raised
in Australian Parliament. Yeah?!

Yeah. Someone said,

AUSTRALIAN ACCENT: "Why is the
Australian taxpayer not paying for
home-made Australian entertainment

"but playing for wall-to-wall
bloody Stephen bloody Fry?

"It's QI, QI, QI.
All the bloody time!"

I apologise.
You don't have to watch us.

No, we love it that we are so
popular in Australia, don't we? Yes.

Yeah, exactly. Very nice.

Cos they're doing repairs
on the outside of the craft,

and they have to keep listening
just for one message.

There's no talking backwards and
forwards because they have to say,
"Gentlemen, two minutes to sun up."

Because there's about eight
different sun-ups as they go round,

and he said it's like
a nuclear explosion.

He said it's the one thing you have
to remember. Visors down, every time.

There's nothing to filter it? Yeah.
There's nothing. It would come
straight at you.

And also, the spacesuit,
while we're here.

I couldn't help but ask
dumb questions.

Are they off-the-peg?
Cos they all look the same.

He said no. He said the suit itself
costs ?35 million. What?!

Each one is tailored...

I know a chap on Jermyn Street
that'll do it...

Or, you know, you can get them
in TK Maxx.

And he said, "No, you don't
go and pick them up.

"You are measured for it about
two years beforehand."

They'd be quite cross
if he suddenly stacked a load
of weight on just before...

Yes?

There's quite a few Greek men
I'd like to put in a hole
and hit with a stick.

From holidays. Oh, I see.
Do you know the one in the middle?

Do you know who that is? That Greek
man? I didn't go out with a boy.

As you can tell by the photograph,
he is now actually a man. Zorba.
Right. Prince Philip.

It is Prince Philip. Well done. Of
course it is! You're so surprised
when you get something right!

Phil the Greek.
Phil the Greek, exactly.

Where's his arms gone?

Arms were added later...

..when he became
the Duke of Edinburgh.

Alan, they put on
a royal coat of arms. Ah!

Thank you.

He's... He's nine years old there.

He's going, "I hate this headscarf.
I hate it." They certainly go for
national costume.

There is no hole big enough.
A very old Greek? Pretty old.

Eratosthenes, his name was.

Did he drop a stick down a hole?

He looked down a hole
at a particular time of year.

Was it at Christmas? Exact opposite.
Christmas is the winter solstice.

Right. Summer solstice.

If you looked at the bottom
of the well at exactly noon

on the solstice, he saw no shadows
whatsoever. Ah! There you go!

And he worked out with
extraordinary cunning,

he knew the distance from there
to another place 500 miles away.

At exactly the same time
he put a stick in the ground

and the sun was at an angle...
Gotcha.

..of 7.2 degrees from overhead.

So he worked out from
this information that

the Earth's circumference
had to be 25,000 miles.

He worked it out using
a stick in the ground.

In fact, we now know the actual
figure to be 24,859.

which is considered the greatest
repository of knowledge in
the ancient world.

And he was a musician,
an astronomer, a poet.

He invented the term "geography".
Mathematician, obviously.

He was known as Beta

because he was the second best
at every discipline in the world

that was known at the time. Which
is pretty astonishing. That is.

He was a great man. And his dates
were around about 200ish BC.

Anyway, that was the great
Eratosthenes,

who measured the Earth with a stick.

What would happen if
the Earth suddenly stopped spinning?

We'd all fly off it. Oh!
ALARM BLARES

Marcus-y, Marcus-y,
Marcus-y, Marcus.

Wouldn't we all fall off, then?
We wouldn't fall off, no. No.

Oh, there would be numerous
consequences, Stephen. There would.

Name a consequence?
Well, half of the world would be
plunged into eternal darkness...

That's a very good point.
..and they would all leave
and come and join the light side.

Or would some of them
go to the dark side? Ah.

What about on Daybreak,
when they start broadcasting?

That would be confusing. How do
they know when to start Daybreak
if they're on the light side?

The weather would be
substantially changed.

I imagine it'd be
enormously changed.

Would there be big floods?
The seas would come to...

Tsunamis, earthquakes. Famine,
pestilence. Pestilence, exactly.

Moans will be heard over
the face of the deep.

And your mobile wouldn't work.

You'd only be able to grow food
on half of the world.

The other half would have to come to
the light side for food.

They could have mushrooms and
rhubarb. They would only be able
to have fungi.

I'd live on that side. And what time
would the four horsemen of
the apocalypse turn up?

At the sound of the last trumpet.

Do you think they'd book an
appointment, the four horsemen?

"Yeah, we will be round, you'll have
to be in between eight and seven.

"He's at the lights."

Well, the point is, the Earth
spins at about 1,000 miles an hour,

the other bit that traps your
finger on the inside...

Yeah, it's going very, very slowly.
Absolutely right.

Get two children, put one there...
Less distance in the same time.

If it stopped, would you fall over?
You'd certainly fall over.

The point is, the Earth spins
at about 1,000 miles an hour
at the equator.

It would have to be almost
17 times more than that
to defeat the effect of gravity.

We would just scrape along
the ground at 1,000 miles an hour,

and we'd, you know...
Good to have shares in Savlon,

because we'd have
any number of bruises.

If I scraped along the ground
at 1,000 miles an hour,
I'd kill a load of old ladies.

It wouldn't be pleasant.
What we couldn't do

is have enough force
to go out of the atmosphere.

If it slowed down over a number
of years, we might not notice.

There is that.
That would be very interesting.

I started writing a book
about exactly this. And then...

Yeah, and then... Was it called
The Decade The Earth Stood Still?

It was called The 25th Hour,
and I was really thrilled with it
as an idea.

against greed, and when you
increased one, it all collapsed.

Anyway. The same thing got published
by someone else for a record fee

in the same month
I came up with it. How annoying!

At least, that's what my publisher
told me. Very trustworthy chap.

There we are. The fact is,
you wouldn't fly off, although
it's a compelling image.

You'd just scrape along the ground
and probably bump into things.

Now, what travels the wrong way
along a motorway

at 12mph?

♪ Moving... ♪ Yes, baby?

Is it an elderly man
in a Morris Minor?

No, it's one of those motorised
wheelchairs, normally. Oh!

KLAXON

Oh, no, I got half of that. No, you
were both going for the same thing.

Well, no, this is an effect we might
all have experienced on motorways,

and a deeply unpleasant one,
and yet a perplexing one.

Not been anything wrong. And you
think, "What was that about?"

And there's a science
which is like fluid dynamics,

but they use things called
"kinematic wave equations".

And what happens is,
a car will suddenly brake

and the car behind it will brake,

and the car behind it will brake,
and so on and so on,

and it sends a ripple effect
back through the traffic.

And the one ahead can
start off again quite cheerfully,

saying, "Oh, it was only a pigeon
diving at my windscreen."

But the other ones
are still slowing down.

And they continue to,
going backwards.

There you see them backing up.

And they continue to back up
for quite long distances,

while the ones ahead are free.

But they've discovered that
pulse backwards, of braking,

travels on average about 12mph
and can cause big jams.

Presumably you get the same effect

when there's a police car
in the slow lane doing 68 as well.

Oh, yes, that's so annoying,
you inch past it.

Everyone, doing 68, yeah.

If I just... I bet police love that.
Do you ever give them the look...?

They're going, "Oh, look,
he's going 71. Shall we? Shall we?"

and it moved on average
less than a kilometre a day.

I'm not kidding you -
that's how bad it was.

And they're so bad regularly,

that they now have
quite profitable services

where you call up this service

and they arrive on a motorbike,
two people on a motorbike.

One gets in and takes your place
in the traffic jam,

and you get on the back
and the other one drives you
through the traffic.

Do people bring you things?

Like, will you get a phone-a-pizza
and that kind of thing? Probably.

They're an enterprising people,
the Chinese, I should imagine so.

But it would be very difficult.
I suppose if you bought the pizza
on a motorbike, you'd be all right.

But it'd be quite frustrating
to order the pizza, you know,

"We're at the lights,
so we're four days away."

I was quite impressed.
I went to Las Vegas last year

and they have those billboard trucks

that say they can deliver
a hooker to your room in 25 minutes,

That's absolutely brilliant.

Oh, wonderful. Wonderful.

You still have to pay for
extra toppings. I was going to say.

Oh, heavens above. There are
all kinds of... Yes. Very fine.

They're called phantom traffic jams,

when they are waves that flow
backwards at 12mph.

So, you're a mosquito, it starts
raining heavily, what happens next?

Umbrellas, they put umbrellas up.

That's a lovely idea.

They're flying about going like
that, "Aah, I love it, aaah."

The problem they face is
that one rain drop

is 50 times heavier than they are,

so you'd imagine they're being
knocked sideways by them. Good.

But, yes... And frankly good bloody
riddance! I bloody hate them!

But this is what happens...

They just brush them aside. Oh. Oh.

And sometimes
they actually ride on them.

We actually annoyingly don't have
film of them riding on them,

and then they leap off just before
they hit the ground and burst.

if you're having a barbecue, to keep
the mosquitoes away from the food -

that's hang a big bag of blood
over by the neighbours' house,

and you'll find
they'll always go that way.

But I don't remember mosquitoes
being in this country...

Well, it's climate change.

..and I think the Daily Mail
should look into it. Yes.

You could obviously want to take
the Tube to stay nice and dry

and avoid the problem
of rain drops at all,

but there is, in fact,
a special sub-species of mosquito

that lives only on
the London Underground.

Yeah? Yeah, and it bites
rats, dogs and people,

and it's called
Culex pipiens molestus.

There it is.

It's not that big, don't worry.
Please.

But I promise you,
it is a horrible...

Would you like a seat?
Thanks very much.

I've bitten four rats
and I'm exhausted.

So, if it's raining
is it best to run into the dry,

And by the time I've stopped
and figured that out, I'm drenched.

Yes.

You run, but you run sideways...
Ah, yours is...

..in a very narrow shape.

You're absolutely on
the money here, Alan. Really?

Is that right?

If... Yeah. If you're thin.
So there are many, many variables.

Pull your tummy in,
pull your tummy in.

It's all been thought through
by a man called...

So, fat people get wet?
No, well... Fucking typical.

That's a good title for a book...
It is. Fat People...

Fat People Get Wet.

Isn't it a Randy Newman song?

♪ Fat people get wet... ♪

Professor Franco Bocci
actually wrote a paper

in the European Journal Of Physics.

He's a high-level physics man...
I love that journal.

Obviously it was sort of semi-jokey,

but it covered
all the points you've made.

It recommends that if the rain
is falling straight down,

Whereas very thin people
might be better off walking.

The maths behind it is
apparently fiendishly complex.

If it's from the side,
run as fast as you can. Yeah.

Be pretty galling
to be in that situation

and see a mosquito
surfing past. Wheee!

So, now then, do you remember
when snails were faster?

Yes.

Good. You probably do.
You probably do.

Incrementally, by such
a small amount. Yeah?

They're slowing down?

Snails are slowing down, yes.

It's like that awful joke
about the builder who turns round
and stamps on a snail and says,

"That bastard's been
following me round all day."

What about the bloke...?
The snail who knocks on the door

and the bloke picks it up
and he goes...throws it away.

Then about two days later,
he hears "bing-bong",

and he opens the door
and the snail goes, "What?"

Yes, yes.

You're thinking grandparents.
Grandparents!

No, I'm sure...
But you are right about snails,

and of course they're the easiest
animals on earth to mark, virtually.

I mean, because of the shell.

So, some scientists from Chile
took the common garden snail,

and what they did on each one is
they measured their metabolism

by the amount of CO2
they emitted at rest.

And then they released them
into the wild,

and then later they went out

and found some dead ones
and some still-living ones.

And they found that
the size of the snails

had no effect on their
survival and thriving rates,

but the metabolic rate did.

The lower the snail's
metabolic rate,

the greater the chance of survival.

It seems that nature is selecting
for snails with a slower metabolism,

giving it more time
to do that kind of thing.

Oh, yeah, look at him. Yeah.
Now that's lazy. That is lazy.

I mean, say what you want.

Are they slowing down
because they've taken up smoking?

I mean, it's a quiet day
for a snail shepherd, you know.

I would think,
but they found evidence

from very, very early man that...

That we'd farmed them, yeah.
You're absolutely right.

In fact, we covered this,
didn't we, Alan? Do you remember?

Is your memory stirring?
Yes, we did.

That's what's happened with QI now.
You'll have people like me

coming on and going,
"I'm sure I heard somewhere..."

I can't think where the hell it was.

So, if you want to catch a snail,
there's no hurry.

The longer you leave it,
the slower it'll be going.

Who are Europe's biggest swingers?

The Germans. The Germans?

ALARM WAILS
Oh, dear. Here we go.

Could be a long ride. The Dutch.

Dutch, that's an interesting one.
Ah, haha!

Damn and curses.

I don't know anything about that.

People who use swings
in a sporting way. They have...

I do about the other.
Yes, of course.

They have a national pastime,
which is called kiiking,

or kiiking, K-I-I-K. Hungarians.

Oddly enough, it's one of only
two other countries

that has a language which is based
on the same language as Hungary.

Iceland. No. Finland.

No, though Finland is one of them.

It's Estonia, bizarrely. Estonia.

Yeah, it's Estonia,
Finland and Hungary

are part of the
Finno-ugric linguistic family.

I had a UKIP leaflet
came through the door

saying that's how they're going to
get in, using big swings.

All of them, apparently,
the whole lot -

they're all just going to
swing in in one day.

Well, they will take up space
in our parks... That's right.

Swinging in a way that we've
never seen before. Behold kiiking.

They can swing better than we can.

You'll see something
that we thought was impossible
when we were children.

Ah, now he's higher. Come on, baby!

There he goes! Yes!

Wowzeroonie!
And then nearly up then.

So, that's the sport.
That's tremendous.

The interesting thing is,
those arms, they are adjustable,

so everyone has a go. When they've
all done it at that height,

you then extend the arms
telescopically,

you bracket them up, and it's a bit
like the high jump or something.

All those who can't do it drop out

until you've got a winner
who's got the longest arm setting

and has done a complete
360 degree turn.

You'd have to raise the height
of the axis though, wouldn't you?

That would be very important.
Yes. Otherwise...

Oh, heavens, yes. I mean,
it's good, it's nice to win, but...

No. Exactly.

Well put. They look
obviously immensely strong,

the thighs are very strong,
getting that real sort of kick in

because they haven't
got Daddy pushing.
I'm imagining the thighs now.

Oh, stop it! Picture...

Yeah? Oh. Oh, my word.

It is one of those, you can't look,
but you also can't look away.

They start going and they are like,
"Ah, this is... Aaargh!"

And then come flying off.
Oh, my God!

The thing happens that you thought
would happen with the Earth.
Exactly, yeah, yeah.

And they say kids don't get out
enough these days,

but there they are, on YouTube,
being brilliant.

Developing new forms
of torture for their fellows.

I think the thing about taking kids
to the swings is that it is such

a weird mixture of
incredibly stressful and
really boring at the same time.

They could break their neck,
but most of the time they don't,

and so you're just standing
there going,

"God, I've been here half an hour,
and it seems like, you know, a year."

The other thing is,
if they fall over, is the dog poo.

If they transfer it to their eyes,
they go blind.

Because now people pick it up
and put it in a bag

and then put the bag back
where the poo was anyway.

Who...? Who is doing that?
Who are they?

Who are those people?
Or hang it from a tree.

My children believe that
bagged poo grows on trees.

I had to explain it to them. No
wonder ash trees have surrendered.

Yes! Dear, oh, dear!
Most unfortunate.

Anyway, the Estonians have taken
swinging right over the top.

What happened to most of the people
in Pompeii when Vesuvius erupted?

♪ Moves like Jagger... ♪
Yes, Marcus?

They choked on the dust and gases,

but they were sort of set in dust
before anything else touched them.

Mmmm... No?

If we got all my patronising
rounds of applause,

added them together...

Yes! It would probably tilt
the earth off its axis.

Around 1,100 bodies
were found at Pompeii.

But at least 15,000 people, which is
83% of the population, escaped.

But we know one person who did not
escape, don't we, Alan?

Who, out of his natural curiosity,
sat down on a chair and

tied a pillow to his head with
a napkin and watched it and then
suffocated.

Yes. And his name was...? Your old
friend. Pliny. Pliny! Hooray!

It's always Pliny.
It's always Pliny. The elder?

The elder. Yes, not
Pliny the Younger.

Certainly not Pliny the Wise.

Yes. Most of the ones you've seen
of those bodies frozen,
as it were, by the ash,

actually had holes in them
as their flesh corrupted within,

Ha ha! Very good!
Very good! Fabulous. Very good.

Now, what's the world's
highest waterfall?

That is to say,
has the longest drop.

Is it in South America? No.

It's not Angel Falls? Angel.

KLAXON

Oh, no. I've...soiled my clean sheet.

Oh, Jo!

What a tragedy. It is.

Its drop is 11,500 feet.

Angel Falls is only 3,212 feet.

But you think, "Well,
what is it called, then?

"What's its name?" The weird thing
is, it doesn't have a name. Oh.

It's actually underwater...
Underwater.

..between Greenland and Iceland.

Why does it count
as a waterfall, though,

when there's loads
of water there anyway?

Because it's a huge current
of cold water dropping down,

and it is a waterfall within water.

If that process stops, then instead
of being two or three degrees warmer
and having peach trees on our lawn,

we will actually probably sink back
into an ice age.

Have you been talking to
David Attenborough?

No, I've been there.
I went with a research vessel.

One of the best things that
happened on that trip,

we reached the east coast of
Greenland and went into a fjord,

and they wanted to film me
floating between icebergs.

I got in this survival suit,
got in the sea,

and as I was climbing down the
ladder, this guy says,

"Oh, there's a seal in the water."

And I thought, "That's good,
it'll make the film really exciting.
Brilliant."

And as I let go of the ladder,
like this, you can hear him say,

"Hang on, that's not a seal,
it's a bear."

And you can see this mother bear,

mercifully with two cubs
on her back, otherwise

she'd have been a lot quicker,
is going across the bay like this.

up and down into the next fjord to
find that one isn't frozen either.

So, yes, very bleak and very
beautiful and amazing. Poignant.

But this...
This doesn't have a name, right?

No, weirdly, it doesn't.
The QI Waterfall.

The QI Waterfall, yes.
The Alan Davies Waterfall.

The Alan Davies Cascade.

That would be a good name, wouldn't
it? Now you're talking. Yeah.

That's a haircut as well, isn't it?

LAUGHTER
Very good.

It's also a position.

Oh, dear. Oh, dear.

Can't do it any more -
I need support.

The unnamed QI Waterfall

carries at least 175 million cubic
feet of cold water per second.

It's the equivalent of 2,000
Niagaras at peak flow. Wow.

Hang on. There you go. Nile.
Nile? Well, you just...

KLAXON

When you said biggest? Yeah.
What do you mean? Widest, longest?

Carries the most water.
Carries the most water.

Well, you're going to be
so angry. It's in the sky.

They're called
atmospheric rivers. Oh!

Oh, now, I've got to say,

sometimes, on behalf of the audience,
I hate this programme.

APPLAUSE

I agree.

I agree and I'm really...

This is hurting you
far more than it hurts me. No...

They're known as atmospheric rivers.

They're vast ribbons of water vapour
moving water around the world.

They appear in different places,
different times.

2,000 km long.

Are they the ones
that are perfectly timed

to coincide with bank holidays?

Yes, absolutely. In fact
you're right. They're the ones.

2,000 kilometres long and only
a few kilometres wide,

Go on, Alan. Go on, Al.

An actual river this time?

That isn't in the sky. No, that
isn't in the sky. Yes, but...

Is it one of those ones
that Alan's mentioned already?

Do you think, maybe? No.

There is a river under the Amazon
called the Rio Hamza,

and it is actually bigger
than the Amazon itself.

It was only discovered in 2011.
The Rio Hamza?

Yes, exactly, the Abu Hamza.
Is it sort of hook-shaped?

It is a really sad
coincidence, I'm afraid.

A river hated by the tabloids.
It's hated by the tabloids.

Yes, they collected data
from 241 abandoned deep wells

and it runs 6,000 km,
like the Amazon above it,

but is up to four times wider.

And that's 200 to 400 km wide.

How far down is it?
4km beneath the Amazon itself.

"..something very stupid..."
Then something comes past going...

"..has built its house."

..like the Muppets.
Yeah. He'll go anywhere, won't he?

The organism Muppet. Yeah, yeah.
He's got a little light on his head.

It's true.

And here they are mating.

It's absolutely true.

So, the biggest river that
isn't in the sky is underground.

So, what's the world's
biggest animal? Alan?

Oh, don't, get me started.
Oh, it's...whatever you say...

♪ I've got the moves... ♪

It's the blue whale. Is the
right answer! Oh, you bastard!

APPLAUSE

Poor Alan.

Oh, it's so unfair. No-one's allowed
to say "blue whale" except me.

It's the biggest animal
that's ever lived on the Earth,

Yes, exactly. Their tongue
is the size of a Mini Cooper.

Or is it their heart?

Oh, poor Alan, everyone's
feeling so sorry for you.

But they are... No, they are
mysterious and extraordinary

and beautiful animals.

And they're huge. Oh, fuck off!

You tried. It's been
waiting for me for years.

You tried, is all I can say.

And it is of course the blue whale.
Don't you listen to anything?

Now we're going to end.

How can you knock a building down
with a feather?

Like the Shard, for example.

You could knock it down -
I could knock it down,

if I prepared things correctly -
with a whisk of a feather.

Not using any electronics.
A very, very large feather.

No, using... I've actually got the
feather here that I'm going to use.

It's nice and pink,
so it stands out.

That would be
the feather I would use.

Do you tickle the architect
while he's doing...

Coming up with the plans,
so that they're all off? Like that.

This is my little template
to show me where I have to go.

You see, I've got them down here
and here's my big...
Oh! My big load.

Oops. Steady. There we go.

Now, what we've got here is,

in varying sizes, kind of dominos.

You can see. And the idea is

that each one is just 1? times
bigger than the one before it.

And it may seem like
a very little amount,

but what we're going to do is
make a really loud bang with this.

What, is that meant to be
like the Shard?

Dominos, it's the domino effect.

You would aim this
at the Shard... Yes.

..and you would only
need 24 of these.

Each one just 1? times bigger
than the one before it -

that's the point.

You'd only need 24 and the last one
would utterly destroy it.

Really? Blimey. It's the
exponential increase of mass,

just by going 1? times bigger.

Who needs to hijack aircraft
any more? QI's given it away.

So you imagine this
increasing up to just 24

and you'd start with
one movement of a feather,

and all the potential energy
stored in these

and all the mass of them like that,

and you just have
that effect, like wow...

Wow! There you go.

Excellent. That's pretty good,
isn't it? Yeah.

That's brilliant. Bravo.

Where did you come by
such a camp feather?

The awful thing was,
I was asked to choose a colour

and I immediately went,
"I think this one stands out."

It is a lovely feather.

There's a bird of paradise somewhere

having a very problematic
flirting season.

Well, we've run out of energy
for this week.

Let's see the movement
on the scoreboard.

And oh, my word, isn't it fantastic?

Clear winner - I want to say
"as always", cos he's so brilliant.

A very close third,
with minus eight, Jo Brand.

You must have minus 47, I think.

But poor wee soul, with minus 56,
in fourth place, it's Alan Davies.

Whoo!

Well, my thanks to Marcus,
Danny, Jo and Alan.

And it's goodbye from me,
and adore each other. Good night.