QI (2003–…): Season 12, Episode 10 - Lying - full transcript
This programme contains
some strong language
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Hello!
Good evening, good evening,
good evening, good evening,
good evening, good evening,
good evening and welcome to QI,
which tonight is a tissue of lies.
Let's meet our perfidious panel -
the duke of deception, Adam Hills.
The duchess of dissembling,
Sara Pascoe.
The marquis of mendacity,
Jack Whitehall.
And with his pants on fire,
Alan Davies.
Our buzzers this evening are charged
with enigmatic mystery.
Adam goes...
MUSIC: THE X-FILES THEME
Sara goes...
MUSIC: TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED THEME
Jack goes...
MUSIC: THE TWILIGHT ZONE THEME
Alan goes...
'I don't believe it!'
So, before we start,
remember that I have hidden
a lavatory inside one
of the questions, all right?
CASH REGISTER RINGS
TOILET FLUSHES
Because it's the L series, one of
the questions involves a lavatory.
And if you think you've spotted
which it is,
you wave your penny and spend it.
- Ah. - You spend your penny. All right.
Let's start with a lark.
We like to do larks on the L series.
I'm going to show you
how your senses can deceive.
So, Alan and Jack,
you should each have a rubber hand
and a little grey wooden partition.
And Alan will explain
and Jack will explain it.
I'm not quite au fait
with prosthetics,
but I'll give it a crack(!)
Hold my hand here.
That's it.
You can stand up, Jack, if you like.
I've forgotten what
I'm doing here. This goes here.
Yeah, like that.
OK. What you've got here is
a perfectly obvious real hand,
your right hands,
and a perfectly obvious fake hand.
And you've each got a brush.
So, all I want you to do is brush
each hand sort of simultaneously,
and what you should feel,
Adam and Sara...
Excruciating pain!
Jab hard into the hand
until they roar!
Sara, scream!
- We'll come to that. For the moment,
just a gentle rubbing. - SARA: OK.
- Eventually...
- This hand will fall off.
Eventually, you will
feel in the rubber hand
the same sensation
you feel in your real hand.
- Which seems extraordinary...
- Yeah? - ..but you will.
- And let me know when you do.
- SARA: OK.
It may not have happened yet.
- Then you will urinate.
- You have to keep going. - I'm sorry.
- You have to keep going. - I'm keeping
going, I'm keeping going!
I am now starting to feel
that this is my hand.
That's it, that's what happens.
I'm having trouble distinguishing.
- Are you not, Sara? - No.
- Keep going, Alan.
- ADAM: Oh, that's nice.
- You like? - Yeah.
- So you can feel that in the rubber
hand? - Lower. Definitely. Lower.
You play your cards right,
might get a happy ending with this.
- You're not feeling anything, Sara?
- It feels very much like my hand...
- Oh, it now does feel like your hand?
- No, my hand feels like my hand.
- Well, that would do, yes. - Yeah.
My hand has never felt
more like it belongs to me.
- I'm going faster.
- I think that will help.
OK.
OK, I've got it, I've got it!
- You've got it.
- I've got it. I've got it.
Faster is better, keep up the speed.
Right.
It's happening now!
It's my hand! It's my hand!
- It really does feel like it.
- It's my hand now.
It's bizarre, isn't it?
It's genuinely bizarre.
- And now you can get out
the other brush. - What? What?
They've got...
SHE SHRIEKS
MUSIC: THE TWILIGHT ZONE THEME
That's amazing, isn't it?
It is amazing, because I didn't
believe it was going to happen.
That's what's so good -
you really didn't believe.
It doesn't matter how much
you know your hand is fake,
it doesn't matter how much you know
it's rubber, the effect works.
You see it, you see that
it's a clear fake,
but, extraordinary,
the brain overrides
what it knows with what it feels.
That is to say, the cognitive side.
That's not that he's just next to
a slightly mal-coordinated
man-child with a rubber hammer.
We can show you a replay
of Adam's reaction here,
because we've actually got it here.
If you watch this, here.
Oh, that shirt is awful.
That is...that is genuine.
It's made all the more extraordinary
by the fact, of course
you, as is well known,
have a prosthetic foot.
I do, I do indeed.
And so you are used to
all the cliches there are
about prosthesis and about phantom
limbs and all the rest of it.
- Indeed. I have a strict, can I take
this... - Yeah, you can put that away,
- do. No, I meant can I take it home?
I have a strange thing with my
prosthetic that I've found that I do,
if I'm, if I stub my toe, I will
still stop and go, "Ow!"
I will actually loudly say ouch.
And then realise, oh, it's the
prosthetic, it didn't actually hurt.
I'm conditioned that when you stub
your toe, you yell out.
And as you well know,
and from war time,
the screams of pain people had,
once they'd been amputated,
in the limbs that no longer existed,
they swore that their shins...
And having itches in them
you can't scratch.
I can't imagine anything
more agonising than having
an itch in something
you can't scratch.
I met this guy who...in America,
and he was a Vietnam veteran,
- and he knew someone
who'd lost both legs. - Yeah.
And he went to see him in hospital
and he said,
"I still haven't had sex
with my wife."
He said, "Why? Why not?"
He said, "Oh, I haven't got
any legs now, I feel awkward.
"I don't really, you know..."
He said,
"Well, you should just do it."
So he really encouraged him
to do it.
And then he went back to see him,
and he had a big smile on his face.
And he said, "So, did you do
the thing?" And he said, "Yeah.
"And with no legs,
you can get right on up there."
Well...
It's one of
the unexpected advantages.
- Talk about every cloud.
- There you go.
I am cutting off my legs
this evening.
Oh! Oh, goodness me.
But the point is, the brain has
a mental map of the body from birth
and even if that map is
distorted by an amputation,
it takes a lot for the brain to lose
its sense of where everything is.
It can be fooled,
as the rubber hand showed you.
I remember once being in bed
with my girlfriend
and doing that thing where
I fell asleep on my arm.
And of course your arm goes numb.
And I rolled then over onto my back
and my arm fell across my stomach.
But because it was numb, I actually
thought it was her arm on my stomach.
And I actually started stroking it.
Aww! How sweet.
And it was, but I then kind
of realised that it wasn't her arm,
it didn't feel like her arm.
It was...
"Who the hell's in the bed with me?"
I'm putting the light on!
Well that extraordinary rubber hand
illusion proves that even our own
senses can tell us porkies.
And speaking of porkies,
what's the point of pink?
Oh, you mean in terms of
like a gender colour?
This isn't to do with gender, it's
purely to do with the colour itself.
In printing, pink, or at least
a reddy pink, has a particular name.
If I was to say CYMK.
Magenta?
- Magenta is the right answer!
- Get in!
APPLAUSE
C is for Cyan, which is probably
the blue nearest us, as it were,
the six o'clock blue.
M for Magenta, Y for Yellow
and K is the Black, CMYK.
But magenta is between blue and red,
and that's to say between the lowest
wavelength of visible light
and the highest wavelength of
visible light, which is sort of not
possible.
- So it's a kind of
can't-really-exist colour,
and yet it does. - Yes, it does!
It's what you might call I suppose,
a pigment of the imagination!
- GROANS
- Which is nice. Which is nice.
- So, in terms of the senses lying...
- Yeah.
- Our eyes and colour is a bit like
that, because the world doesn't look
like this. - No. Not in the least.
- We have cones and rods in our eyes.
- Mm-hm. - And rods deal with darkness
and light, black to white,
and the cones deal with colour.
So dogs have two cones,
so they can, they're
not colour blind,
- but they see a lot less colour than
we do in the world, because we have
three. But birds have four! - Yes.
They can see ultraviolet rays.
Was it the Six Million...? Yeah,
the Six Million Dollar Man, when
Steve Austin, it would
obviously cost a lot more
now than six million...
Oh, I'd say.
Steve Austin got a bionic eye...
Lee Majors, yes.
And all they gave him,
really, was a zoom facility.
"Dun-dun-dun," exactly.
So he could see things further away.
That is pretty feeble.
If they'd given him about
eight extra cones...
That's true!
- He could have seen so much...
- How could they have shown
that to us? - X-rays.
Now we have the Instagram eye and
he could make it all sepia
and old-fashioned.
LAUGHTER
Our eyes still only have three cones
to watch him seeing something so
it would still look to our eyes...
Extremely good point.
He'd have needed a sidekick to say
"But what can you see?"
"Like a bird! I can see ultraviolet
light, which is where the villain
is revealed by this!"
"Let me run over there, fast."
And also, while we're
on the subject of the Bionic Man,
he had one leg that was really good
and yet they showed him
running at 70 when the reality
was he would have been
hopping at 70, because the other leg
would have just been destroyed by
the speed at which, biomechanically,
it would have been unable to cope.
It would have ruined my childhood.
They would have been better off if
they'd taken off both legs... Yeah!
Given him two bionic legs.
Given him wheels, Adam, wheels!
And the sex would have been amazing.
LAUGHTER
Bionic sex.
There was the Bionic Woman, Lindsay
Wagner, and she had ears, didn't
she?
She could hear anything.
- Lee Majors, Lindsay Wagner.
Well before anybody in this audience
was born. - Fictional people.
- Yes, they were totally madey-uppy.
- Yes, good.
Before your time as well, oh, God,
we feel so old, don't we?
- Yeah, but it was great being in the
'70s. - It was, yeah. We could go to
university for free.
MOCKING LAUGH
APPLAUSE
But anyway, the fact is, yeah,
magenta doesn't really exist
and yet it does, for our eyes.
There's also a special kind of pink
which is known as Baker-Miller Pink,
which is
you take a gallon of white paint
and a pint of red paint and you
come up with what's in the middle,
a sort of bubble-gum coloured pink.
It's pretty, isn't it?
What's interesting about that is
that it was generally thought by
psychologists and others
to create a feeling of passivity,
and so was used in prisons and
mental asylums
and was known as "drunk tank pink".
That looks like a fun prison,
to be honest.
LAUGHTER
- I would definitely go there.
- Gay prison!
So, the other thing they did,
some American sporting teams thought
that, well, this is true about this
pink, they changed their visitors'
changing rooms to pink, in order
to make the visiting teams
more passive.
Which is kind of cheating, really,
isn't it?
- It is kind of cheating.
- It's not very sporting.
So university sporting rules in
America now mean you can change
any changing room's colour as long
as your own is the same colour,
to stop that advantage.
If it is an advantage.
It would be interesting to see how
much difference it makes,
because surely this is
an incremental thing.
You are completely right.
The fact is that apparently,
even after half an hour,
people get used to it, and
if they've been in a prison
or a drunk tank before
- it reminds them of the drunk tank
and they get angry and more
aggressive. - It's associative, OK.
So it is really of
no use whatsoever.
That's it, if you see pink elephants
they might not really be there,
it seems to be an imaginary colour.
Which room in the house
would you keep these in?
MUSIC: TWILIGHT ZONE THEME
Oh, just push it. In the library.
ALARM BLARES
Adam is about to score points, yes!
- Really? - Yeah.
Yeah!
Very good.
That's the penny well spent.
And can I just point out,
in Australia, that's 2.50.
- What is that game with the pennies,
odd and even... - Two up. - Two up.
Two up, that's right.
- It's a... - It's a betting game. - It's
a betting game but it's only played
one day a year. - That's right.
It's only played on ANZAC Day
- and it's played with pennies,
I think. - That's right.
- Real, old-fashioned pennies.
You flip them up in the air and you
bet on whether you get two heads,
two tails or a head and a tail.
If you win a lot of money you're
allowed to leave the room
and you have half an hour's grace
before someone would chase you,
club you over the head and
steal your winnings.
- It being Australia. - Yeah.
- In the nicest possible way.
- Yeah, and the only day that it's
allowed to be played now,
it's illegal any time of the year,
except on ANZAC Day.
Well, if we have a look
at the picture again,
those are actually English
literature books, and this,
I'm afraid, is a French chamber pot,
or commode if you prefer.
And they liked to shit on us
and our literature in one go.
Oh, just when you think
they can't do anything else.
When you open the lid,
does it go, "Ugh"?
"I shit on you." Exactly.
"Because I can't beat you in a war,
I will poo on your books."
You open the lid and it goes,
# Boy, boy for sale. #
But perhaps the most impressive
invention in recent times,
- for your lavatorial wants...
- The helicopter.
Um, well... The Gotta Go Briefcase.
It's Japanese, of course.
How much better
do you get than that?
It's just simply superb. It's got
everything you could possibly want,
including a newspaper
to leaf through
if your easement is taking time.
I've always felt really sad
when I leave a toilet, like,
"Oh, we've become such good friends."
I wish I could just pack it up
and carry it away(!)
- Now I can. - It's got
a generously equipped sealing lid.
You can quietly and discreetly
go about your personal business
anywhere you please, with
a fold-out leather privacy panel,
- which tucks away neatly to the side.
- Yeah, it looks like it hides you
completely, that panel.
- A small tray with... - "What's that
suitcase just sitting there?"
It's got a small tray
with a cup-holder.
- Oh, great, so I don't even have to
throw away my drink? - A cup-holder.
That's like Homer Simpson,
isn't it? Do you remember that
episode where he bought a huge RV?
And Marge said,
"Oh, Homer!" and he said,
"But, Marge,
it's got six cup-holders! SIX!"
Men like cup-holders.
There's just something
so great about them.
- It's got a vanity mirror.
- I like the leather finish.
Yeah, refillable
hand-sanitising dispenser.
Maximum weight capacity is 80 kilos.
"Exceeding the recommended weight
will void all warranties..."
80 kilos?! What are you going to
get, an elephant to shit in it?!
- I know. - How are you going to get
80 kilos?!
- I weigh less than 80 kilos.
- It does seem extraordinary.
"I really need to get the...
"I'm going to exceed the limit!"
"It may result in rupture
of waste tank,
"possible bacteria contamination
of briefcase contents
"and massive stench."
So you don't want to do that.
I'm assuming you haven't
emptied it for a year.
Also, you would have
two suitcases in meetings.
Everyone would be like, "Derek,
why have you got two suitcases?"
If you got it wrong...
"No reason." And then he just
hides behind the leather panel.
If you accidentally went, "I've been
through the figures and... Oops!"
Massive stench! Massive stench!
- Oh, dear. - "How did the meeting go?"
"Oh, it was going fine
until I got the bog out."
Alternatively, you go the other way.
"Thanks for letting me
use your toilet briefcase."
"Oh, I don't have
a toilet briefcase."
I ought to say that the 80 kilos
includes the person sitting on it.
Oh, right.
I would break it,
I've a horrible feeling.
That changes everything.
Maybe the sell it to
banker-wankers in the City,
with the boast of it has an amazing
surface to do cocaine off as well.
- When you open it up.
- It would be perfect.
Absolutely, with the little dimples,
you could snort out of the little
leather dimples.
Anyway,
that's the Gotta Go Briefcase.
And it's yours, I'm sure,
for a very reasonable price.
If that question
left a bad smell, why is
the noseless lemur so badly named?
MUSIC: X-FILES THEME TUNE
I am going to take a punt
and say it's not a lemur.
Oh! You're brilliant. We were hoping
you'd say it has, actually, got a
nose,
- in which case it's badly named, but
you're right. - What, ever? - Never was,
never will be. In fact it is a fish.
- It's pretty... - What?
Pretty difficult, you'd think to
confuse a lemur and a fish.
You'd think that was a map of
Madagascar, where lemurs come from,
but in fact that is the fossil, and
for a very long time it was
considered to be a lemur
and it was known as Scalabrini's
noseless lemur.
Pedro Scalabrini was an
Italian born Argentinian naturalist.
In 1898, he gave a fossil fragment
to a palaeontologist called
Florentino Ameghino,
who was so patriotic in his
Argentinian-ness, that he hated
the fact that particularly
Charles Darwin had said that all
primates originated in Africa.
Which we now know to be true.
And a lemur is a primate,
lemurs only come from Madagascar,
which was shaved
off from the mainland of Africa
many, many millions of years ago.
There's an aye-aye. Wonderful lemur.
That's an English footballer
just before a penalty shoot-out.
LAUGHTER
Desperately afraid.
"Who wants to take one?"
So he tried to prove, Ameghino,
that lemurs existed in South America
in pre-Columbian times,
which they didn't.
It turned out in 2012 that it was,
in fact, an extinct fish.
Do you know, that picture
of the lemur, the lemur's face there,
I'm assuming that's what I
would look like if I was using
the toilet briefcase.
Those perfectly round eyes
are so beautiful.
That's after the massive stench.
Yeah. They are marvellous creatures.
Well, talking of paleontological
things,
the first platypus that was ever
seen by Western man, nobody
believed. They thought it...
No. But we did have a habit of
explorers making up monsters
- and drawing pictures in the
16th and 17th century. - We
- certainly did. Yes.
And that was considered an example
of an obvious and ridiculous hoax.
How could that be?
And George Shaw,
who was the naturalist,
examined it minutely for stitch
marks around the beak,
because he could not believe that
such, no-one could believe...
But even when you see them
in real life,
- I went to see them in Melbourne,
and you just can't believe...
- They're hilarious.
You watch them for ages going
"You don't make any sense!"
- All the bits of you!
- Their mouths look like they
belong in a Japanese briefcase.
- They do. They're so charming.
- They're sweet. - And they're
smaller than I expected.
Egg-laying mammals.
It took 30 years from the first
specimen to arrive in Europe
for people to believe that it was
real. They were absolutely
convinced.
Oh, "We're not going to fall for
this, But there it is. The platypus.
And do you know the first, I'm pretty
sure the first kangaroo that was sent
back to one of the British museums,
they sent it back but they didn't
give an example of how it stood,
so it was mounted on all fours.
Oh, that's very believable.
With its tiny little paws, because
its front paws were like this,
and its massive bum sticking up.
Looks as if it's ready for action!
LAUGHTER
Now, what's this guy on about?
MAN SINGS GIBBERISH OVER RAP MUSIC
That was a 1972,
rather before its time,
piece of rap,
by an incredibly famous Italian
called Adriano Celentano,
who is not known here.
He had a huge hit with this,
which is
called Prisencolinensinainciusol.
- You can see it written up
and that will help you. - Oh, wow.
Prisencolinensinainciusol
in de col men seivuan
prisencolinensinainciusol ol rait.
Which is Italian
for "Gangnam Style".
Yeah, kind of.
What it is, it's just babble.
- Gibberish. - It's babble that is
supposed to sound like English.
To an Italian, it sounds
more or less like English sounds.
There's that famous clip of the
person on Malaysia's Got Talent,
where they're singing Mariah Carey,
Can't Live Without You,
which is possibly the greatest song
ever recorded,
but she's heard it,
clearly, through a second party
and doesn't know
what the lyrics are,
so she burst into the chorus
and she just goes...
♪ Ken Lee, Ken Lee
Boo, dee, boo, doutchu. ♪
And she thinks it's about
a guy called Ken Lee.
Aw...
Anyway, that was a huge hit
in 1972.
Number one in Italy
and it was in the top ten in France
and in Belgium and the Netherlands.
It's babble that is supposed to
sound like English,
but in 2011, London-based
film-makers Brian and Karl
produced a wonderful film
called Skwerl,
which used a similar technique -
the dialogue is actually gibberish
but sounds like English.
It's had over seven million viewers
and we can show you a bit of it
here. Run VT.
HE TALKS GIBBERISH
CUTLERY RATTLES
PLATES CRASH
SHE GASPS AND SOBS
FIZZING
You fucking asshole!
That wasn't gibberish,
but we've got them here tonight,
Brian and Karl, thank you very much.
One of the hardest things
to do in the world
is to talk gibberish
without it becoming...
- Did you actually learn your
gibberish? - We did, yeah. - Yeah.
Did you imagine that
there was sense behind it?
He thinks she's forgotten
his birthday, is that what this...?
That's one interpretation.
I'm not an actor, but Fiona,
who's in the film, is an actress,
and so she needed to know
what this was about,
she needed the intentions.
But I think it was important
to kind of have a sort of a sense
- behind what we were saying. - It was a
lot like what you were talking about
with Mariah Carey,
Ken Lee and stuff.
We sort of had the sentences
and then kind of garbled them
and kind of wrote down
the garble as it came out.
I understood more words
in that clip,
though, than I did
in five series of The Wire.
- ADAM: Are you Australian? - Yeah,
I'm Australian. - Yeah, I thought so.
Because we have a similar thing that
we do where we don't use words...
AUSTRALIAN ACCENT: Do you think
I haven't noticed? - Yeah, exactly.
GASPING: You have another thing
you do,
which is sound as if
you've got heartburn.
For some bizarre reason.
I don't know why that is.
That's how they get
the actors on Home And Away
to do an emotional scene -
they just give them heartburn.
"Steven,
the cafe's burnt...down again."
Australians will make enough noises
that could be a sentence,
but there are no actual words in it.
I'll try it.
RUNNING WORDS TOGETHER: So, OK,
are you having a good night?
Yeah, right, it's all right, man.
Are you enjoying your time at QI?
HE TALKS GIBBERISH
There's also...
I have a similar thing that
I can do with posh people.
This gentleman
in the front row here...
with the blue trousers.
HE MUMBLES IN POSH VOICE
Anyway, sorry,
that's wonderful, Brian and Karl,
thank you very much indeed.
Thanks for joining us.
Magnificent.
So, time for some refreshment.
Here we go.
Let's have... You pass that there
to Sara, if you would, Alan.
There you go.
- There's one for you, Jack.
Pass one to Adam. - Is this carrot?
And I'll have one myself.
And there's one for you, Alan.
Thank you so much.
There you go.
Hmm. Hmm!
- You look as if you... - Who grew this?
- You've done this before.
- So...
- You've got to make it upright first.
Oh, right.
Come on. Will you talk to it?
Come here, you. Oh, you look lovely.
You're so huge(!)
I don't think I'm going to be
able to manage it.
Oh, there you are, yes...
Hey-hey! What do you think
these were once used for?
What were carrots used for, or
particularly these ones on sticks?
Ones on sticks.
Waving in tiny airplanes?
Is it like what Gwyneth Paltrow
gives her kids?
She probably does, yeah,
they probably are.
To see in the dark?
ALARM BLARES
Seeing in the dark, well,
you're in the right era.
When was it said that carrots could
help you see in the dark?
At night.
In which period of history
was it made known to people,
this idea, which is not really true?
The Dark Ages. Not the Dark Ages.
- When did people discover vitamins?
- SARA: Yeah.
That wasn't until the beginning
of the 20th century.
Because vitamin A is the key,
it helps your eyes, doesn't it?
Vitamin A does help your eyes.
So it must have
been around about then.
Well, it was really... It...
It must be so hard being a rabbit.
It really...
They would never get
any talking done.
No, they wouldn't, would they?
They'd be,
"Sorry, what are you saying?"
- "I've got a mouthful of
bloody carrot." - Good God!
The problem was, in the
Second World War, there was...
We would run out of...
Put it away.
Concentrate, Stephen.
Stop flapping... Oh, yes,
that's what I need to do.
You look like the world's worst
burlesque dancer.
SARA: I've seen worse.
So, in the Second World War,
there was a very great
shortage of sugar,
and there was a big surplus of
carrots,
and so they put it about that
carrots helped you see in the dark.
I bloody love carrots, me.
So they made
sort of ice creams, as it were,
- out of carrots, to try and make them
attractive to children. - OK.
There is a certain
amount of sugar in them.
- They tasted a little sweet,
didn't they? - Yeah, it was lovely.
And there was a Group Captain,
John Cunningham,
who was responsible for very daring
night raids over Germany,
and they gave it out that
what allowed him to do it
was the fact that he ate carrots.
In fact, what they were really
doing was disguising the fact
- that they had on-board aircraft...
- Rabbits. - ..radar.
They had radar on board.
They didn't want
the Germans to know.
The Germans knew
we had ground radar,
not that we had radar
on board airplanes.
So they sold the carrot story
to the Germans as well?
That was the idea, both to get
children to eat their carrots
and maybe to get the Germans
to believe that it was carrots
that allowed our bombers
to see over those...
Wouldn't it have been
more beneficial
if they'd said the reason our pilots
are so good at seeing at night
is because they eat
slightly undercooked chicken?
You should have been
working in British Intelligence.
POSH VOICE: "You're just the kind
of chap we need, Whitehall."
Now, how does the "what the hell"
effect work?
MUSIC: TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED THEME
- Yes? - This is relevant to people
who are dieting
or sometimes people who have
substance abuse problems
and things like that.
So it's when you are being quite
strict with yourself.
Stop talking about me
for a second, yes.
It's when you're being
very strict with yourself
and you think you've slipped up in a
slight way, so you're really hungry
and you have a biscuit
when you're on a diet
and then you go,
"I've ruined the diet now,
"I'm going to finish that packet of
biscuits and do some crack..."
Oh, tell me about it.
And they properly leap in
and start again tomorrow.
You're so right - you've
fallen off the wagon...
- I've done everything wrong now,
I'll get a tattoo... - Yeah.
Those people who say,
"I was very good yesterday,
"I've been good today, so tomorrow -
Black Forest gateau for breakfast."
Yeah, oh.
I mean, that is certainly
a "what the hell" effect,
there's no question about that.
There is another
"what the hell" effect,
but yours, I think, counts,
unquestionably.
This is used by Dan Ariely
and his partners at Duke University
in North Carolina.
And what it describes is how,
when someone has
overcome their initial
reluctance to cheat,
subsequent dishonest behaviour
gets easier.
And he tested this with college
students who were solving
maths problems for money,
and when his back was turned,
they could cheat, and the more
they saw they got away with it,
the more they cheated.
But what was interesting is,
the scores were not inflated
by a few students,
who were cheating a lot,
but many students cheating a little.
Cheating, in that sense,
is infectious.
You go, "What the hell,
I can do it," so you do it.
Is that like that thing
when you're telling a lie,
and you're telling a story about what
happened on the weekend and...
Oooh, and it gets further and
further...
And then you embellish it
a little bit. And then you
think, "I got away with that.
"I might just add
a little bit more to it."
And then suddenly it's this
big, fanciful story because
of that tiny, little...
The awful thing is, because it is
a lie it is stored in a different
part of your memory so when,
so when a week later someone says,
"Tell that marvellous story about
that time you," and you're going,
"Shit, what did I say?"
But animals, interestingly,
animals can cheat.
Koko, who is a wonderful
gorilla in California,
once tore a steel sink off a wall
and then used sign language
- to tell her handlers
that the cat had done it. - Yes.
A real child-like fib.
"It wasn't me, it was the cat."
The closer you get to human beings,
the more of a liar you become.
And perhaps an even more
famous chimp, Nim Chimpsky,
about whom a film was made, who has
a really developed sign language,
she used to duck out of
sign language lessons
by saying she needed to go
to the loo when she didn't.
She'd say, "I have to go for a pee,"
like that,
she'd go off and you'd see her not
going for a pee. Or him, rather.
So animals are capable of deception.
So maybe we should only eat
animals that can lie.
Well, lying seems to be
a sign of intelligence,
I'm glad to say,
as an inveterate liar myself.
Ariely, this man who did the work
on the "what the hell" effect,
he found people who score
higher on psychological tests
for creativity are more likely
to engage in dishonesty.
Anyway, there we are.
We are who we are because we cheat.
The "what the hell" effect describes
how, after the first lie,
the others just keep coming.
Be truthful, how do you rate your
own driving, generosity and ability
to conduct an adult relationship?
I was reading about how we all
over-estimate our input into things,
so they were asking couples
what percentage
of the housework do you do?
- And it would add up to about 130%.
- Yeah.
Because everyone, even if they know
they only do a little bit,
they still think that's more or its
worth more.
Everyone thinks they do more
than their partner.
- Everyone thinks they're a good
driver. - Everyone.
Everyone thinks they're better than
average.
I'll be a great driver, I'll be
a great dad. I don't.
- You don't think any of those things?
- No, I can't drive. I don't think
of myself as a good driver.
- You haven't passed your test? - No.
- Then that's fair enough. You
probably are a crap driver then.
Yeah. Do you think you're good in
bed?
I haven't passed that test either.
Failed on three minors and a major.
- With emergency stop. - Yeah.
Ah, that's the worst. That is
the worst.
I kept changing lanes
when I shouldn't.
LAUGHTER AND GROANS
Yeah. We all do have
a high view of ourselves...
Dear God almighty.
We tend to think we're better
at things like donating to charity,
voting, maintaining
a successful relationship,
volunteering for unpleasant lab
experiments.
But, I'm glad to tell you that
Institute for Child Study
at Toronto University
claims that toddlers who tell lies
early on are more likely to do
well in later life.
The complex brain processes
involved in formulating
a lie are an indicator of
a child's intelligence.
So it doesn't necessarily mean
if you lie your way through
life you'll do better.
- No. - It just means if you can lie
early, then you're quite creative and
you can get through life.
- Yes. - I'm saying this in case my
daughter is watching.
- Good point. - Don't want to get
the wrong idea, absolutely.
So, now I want you to be thoroughly
dishonest by pretending
you don't know you're going
to get a klaxon,
because it's General Ignorance time.
Fingers on buzzers, please.
What are deserts mostly from?
- MUSIC: TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED THEME
- Yes, Sara? - Sand.
- ALARM BLARES
- Oh, thank you.
What? What?
- You'd think, wouldn't you? - Yeah.
- Not the case. No.
Only one-third of the world's
land surface is desert
and only a small proportion
of that is sand.
North American deserts
are around 2% sand.
No more than that.
There's Monument Valley.
Globally, on average, only 20%
of all deserts are sand, a fifth.
The remainder is made of rock,
shingle, salt or even snow.
- And camels. - And camels.
- Yes, camel poo. - There's lots of
cigarettes all over the desert.
The driest desert in the world
is...?
- The Gobi Desert. - No.
- Any thoughts?
- AUDIENCE MEMBER: Antarctica.
There is an argument for saying
the Antarctic is a dry desert.
- It doesn't rain there.
- Yeah, it doesn't,
but the Atacama is considered
the driest land desert.
Some weather stations there
have recorded no rain whatsoever,
- not one. - What a boring job,
being in that weather station.
The largest desert on Earth
is Antarctica,
even though much
of it is under snow.
But the one area that is the driest,
man who shouts a lot,
are the McMurdo Dry Valleys.
Is that his Red Indian name?
Yeah. And they consist mostly of...
They consist...
Man Who Shout A Lot.
The McMurdo Dry Valleys are so dry
that dead animals mummify
rather than decay.
- What is that?
What animal is it? - A seal.
If it's dehydrated it might come
back to life if you get it wet.
Yeah, if you get it wet
and it rains...
- Like Knorr chicken soup. - Ball on the
tail. I'm doing ball on the tail. - I
can see.
It seems that if you want to
identify a desert,
the best way to do so involves
looking for the rain, not for sand.
How did the Vikings bury their dead?
On a boat. On fire.
- Oh, on a boat on fire.
- ALARM BLARES
Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack,
Jack, Jack. No.
In the ground...?
Yeah. More or less.
I feel a bit sad about how
tentative I was about that.
The myth of the burning longboat
is very, very recent - 19th century.
In fact, there is
one story of Baldur, a god,
who was apparently burned like that,
the rest of it is pretty much
Ladyboy...Ladybird book stuff.
- I love the Ladyboy books.
- Did I say "Ladyboy books"?
Ladybird books.
- They didn't have horns either,
did they? - No, they didn't have horns.
The late 19th century was a period
of enormous European rediscovery
of their ancient myths
and so on, or at least
not just rediscovery but making up.
In the case of Britain it was
Arthurian legend
and druidic legend,
a lot of which was totally nonsense.
And there was a Swedish illustrator
called Gustav Malmstrom, and he
did these horned helmets and
dragons' wings on the heroes'
headgear.
And his Saga became an international
hit and made the Vikings' name.
And a Vikingr was a pirate or
raider. A viking was a raiding
expedition.
A vikingr would go on a viking.
And Vik or Vike is old
Norse for a bay of a fjord.
And Reykjavik means a 'smoky bay',
for example.
Reyki, Auld Reekie is the old smoky
town, Edinburgh, in Scottish.
I've also heard once that
kind of socialist atmosphere that
pervades Sweden kind of also
came from the Vikings,
because there was just enough
alcohol to keep everyone happy,
so you were just,
there's a Swedish word called Largon,
which means not too much
and not too little.
And if you, when you gave out the
vodka to all of the people rowing on
the ships...
- The aquavit. - The aquavit, yes. Not
to much that someone down the back
wouldn't get enough,
and not too little that they'd be
unhappy that they didn't get enough.
So it was just evenly shared
out over everyone
that was rowing and that's pervaded
Swedish culture and that's why they
are now...
- Sharey people. - Pissed.
Lightly pissed, sharey people.
Yes, Vikings sometimes buried their
dead in a boat, but always on land.
Which bit of whale did they use
to make a whalebone corset?
- I'm going to take a punt
and say the jaw. - Not the jaw.
Penis?
Not the penis.
Is it not part of a whale?
The wishbone.
It is part of the whale.
Not the wish...
Did you say the wishbone?
- That's a huge tug of war.
- So for a corset... Is it the ribs?
MAN SHOUTS OUT
ALARM BLARES
Who said the ribs?
I did, I said it first.
- Oh, sorry about that, no,
not the ribs. - No worries.
I think Shouty Man had it again.
MAN SHOUTS OUT
SARA: That isn't how
you get on the show.
This is not that thing
with James Corden on Sky 1,
thank you very much indeed.
My show.
Oh, yes!
Whoops.
- More's the pity.
- The show now four series on.
More's the pity.
I wish it were, The Shouty Show.
- With the drunk cricketer.
- Yeah, that one, exactly.
No, as I think they were shouting,
"The baleen."
- Does that mean anything?
- The thing in the mouth.
- Yeah, the sieve in the mouth.
- That sieves the... Oh, I see.
There are two types of whale -
baleen whale and toothed whale -
and the blue whale is
an example of a baleen whale there.
The baleen is in fact keratin,
the same thing that our hair
is made of, our fingernails,
or rhinoceros horn is.
So it's wonderfully pliable.
It was the plastic of
the 19th century, essentially.
- Right. - There was a Mr JA Sevey
trading out of Boston
who offered 54 different
whalebone products.
Whips, parasols, umbrellas, fishing
rods, canes, hat, divining rods,
riding crops, ferrules, brushes,
mattress stuffing,
back-supporters, suspenders,
billiard cushion springs,
pen-holders, shoehorns, tongue
scrapers and policemen's clubs.
- All possible.
- That is a good Saturday night.
Empty your pockets out.
But real whalebone was
used for something else.
It was a cheap substitute for ivory.
And you probably know of the carving
that was done on it
that sailors used to do,
which had a particular name?
I do not know of the name of that.
Oh, we'll have to ask
Shouty Man again.
- AUDIENCE MEMBER: Scrimshaw!
- Scrimshaw is the right answer, yes.
- He's very clever, Shouty Man. - He is.
- He's a very smart shouty man.
- He's a smart shouty man.
It may be a whole series
of organised shouty men,
I don't know,
but we're very impressed by them.
They may have to get
a score at the end,
that's what's worrying me.
Yes, scrimshaw is...you know that
very carved whalebone effect?
It's sometimes done on horns.
I mean, amazing, some of it.
Even a whole desk was once
done out of whalebone,
because whales are big animals.
I'd love to think that there were
cases of people wearing
a whalebone corset.
And just being out at a party
and going... "I'm really hungry.
"Oh, there's a spare prawn in here."
Yes, it would be lovely,
wouldn't it?
Of course the baleen is used,
it's this huge sieved area, it sucks
in this huge amount of water, filled
with krill and plankton and so on.
Then the baleens sort
of mesh together
and it pushes all the water out
and all the food is left clinging
to this filter, which it
then sucks into its mouth.
And it's fantastically efficient.
So it would be the equivalent of
going up in your whalebone corset
to the buffet and just going...
SUCKING
Letting out the bits you don't want.
Yes, most whalebone
was not bone but baleen,
the 19th-century
equivalent of plastic.
Can you name a blue sea creature?
- MUSIC: THE TWILIGHT ZONE THEME
- Alan? Oh.
Yes, Jack?
Shouty Man, drop it like it's hot.
Mine!
Is he going to fall for our trap?
AUDIENCE MEMBER: A blue whale!
Is the right answer!
Yes, I love this guy!
That's the fastest I've ever
been on the draw as well.
- That was quick, and still wasn't...
- I broke my buzzer. - You did.
'I don't believe it!'
You've broken your carrot now.
We thought you might be so afraid
you'd say, "Not the blue whale."
- No, I was pretty
sure about that one. - It is blue.
It's not very blue,
but it's blue enough to call blue.
- It's bluer than most things,
innit? - It is. - It's all relative.
The colour spectrum is different
under water.
It's quite a common...
a common qualor...
It's quite a common colour
amongst...
The gibberish blokes can
understand all of that.
- Absolutely. - SARA: A dory is blue.
There's the blue marlin,
which is pretty blue.
- A dory is blue. - Yes. The blue
starfish you can see is jolly blue.
Blue marlin there.
Blue Man Group.
And the beautiful blue angel there,
the glaucus atlantica.
The blue angel, as well
as being a Marlene Dietrich film,
is a very interesting fish,
in as much as it's venomous,
but its venom is second hand.
It feeds on the
Portuguese Man of War,
and ingests its poison
so that it becomes venomous itself.
Isn't that clever?
- Cunning! - Very cunning, very cunning.
So the grey whale is pretty grey,
the humpback is pretty grey.
The sperm whale is dark grey/black,
but the blue whale,
as you can see, is jolly blue.
There it is, bottom right.
I see it.
Yeh-hey. Your favourite whale.
Would we lie to you?
Blue whales are blue, pretty much.
Well, that's our last tissue
in our box of lies.
It's time for the unvarnished
truth with the scores.
And it's pretty bally fascinating.
In last place, with minus...
Oh, dear. Minus 19,
but with a tremendous performance
and a wonderful last rally,
Jack Whitehall.
With minus 11,
an entirely creditable third place,
she knew so much, Sara, Sara Pascoe.
I get all the buzzers,
I got two. I got two.
On minus 8,
second place, Alan Davies.
Minus 8, pretty pleased.
And a staggeringly secure
first place,
- on plus 14, Adam Hills.
- Oh, my goodness.
And tonight, of course,
a special award of minus 39
for the shouty man in the audience!
Yes, it only remains for me
to thank Adam, Jack, Sara and Alan
and leave you with the last words
of Spanish Prime Minister
General Ramon Maria Narvaez.
"I do not have to forgive my
enemies,
"I have had them all shot."
Good night.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
some strong language
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Hello!
Good evening, good evening,
good evening, good evening,
good evening, good evening,
good evening and welcome to QI,
which tonight is a tissue of lies.
Let's meet our perfidious panel -
the duke of deception, Adam Hills.
The duchess of dissembling,
Sara Pascoe.
The marquis of mendacity,
Jack Whitehall.
And with his pants on fire,
Alan Davies.
Our buzzers this evening are charged
with enigmatic mystery.
Adam goes...
MUSIC: THE X-FILES THEME
Sara goes...
MUSIC: TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED THEME
Jack goes...
MUSIC: THE TWILIGHT ZONE THEME
Alan goes...
'I don't believe it!'
So, before we start,
remember that I have hidden
a lavatory inside one
of the questions, all right?
CASH REGISTER RINGS
TOILET FLUSHES
Because it's the L series, one of
the questions involves a lavatory.
And if you think you've spotted
which it is,
you wave your penny and spend it.
- Ah. - You spend your penny. All right.
Let's start with a lark.
We like to do larks on the L series.
I'm going to show you
how your senses can deceive.
So, Alan and Jack,
you should each have a rubber hand
and a little grey wooden partition.
And Alan will explain
and Jack will explain it.
I'm not quite au fait
with prosthetics,
but I'll give it a crack(!)
Hold my hand here.
That's it.
You can stand up, Jack, if you like.
I've forgotten what
I'm doing here. This goes here.
Yeah, like that.
OK. What you've got here is
a perfectly obvious real hand,
your right hands,
and a perfectly obvious fake hand.
And you've each got a brush.
So, all I want you to do is brush
each hand sort of simultaneously,
and what you should feel,
Adam and Sara...
Excruciating pain!
Jab hard into the hand
until they roar!
Sara, scream!
- We'll come to that. For the moment,
just a gentle rubbing. - SARA: OK.
- Eventually...
- This hand will fall off.
Eventually, you will
feel in the rubber hand
the same sensation
you feel in your real hand.
- Which seems extraordinary...
- Yeah? - ..but you will.
- And let me know when you do.
- SARA: OK.
It may not have happened yet.
- Then you will urinate.
- You have to keep going. - I'm sorry.
- You have to keep going. - I'm keeping
going, I'm keeping going!
I am now starting to feel
that this is my hand.
That's it, that's what happens.
I'm having trouble distinguishing.
- Are you not, Sara? - No.
- Keep going, Alan.
- ADAM: Oh, that's nice.
- You like? - Yeah.
- So you can feel that in the rubber
hand? - Lower. Definitely. Lower.
You play your cards right,
might get a happy ending with this.
- You're not feeling anything, Sara?
- It feels very much like my hand...
- Oh, it now does feel like your hand?
- No, my hand feels like my hand.
- Well, that would do, yes. - Yeah.
My hand has never felt
more like it belongs to me.
- I'm going faster.
- I think that will help.
OK.
OK, I've got it, I've got it!
- You've got it.
- I've got it. I've got it.
Faster is better, keep up the speed.
Right.
It's happening now!
It's my hand! It's my hand!
- It really does feel like it.
- It's my hand now.
It's bizarre, isn't it?
It's genuinely bizarre.
- And now you can get out
the other brush. - What? What?
They've got...
SHE SHRIEKS
MUSIC: THE TWILIGHT ZONE THEME
That's amazing, isn't it?
It is amazing, because I didn't
believe it was going to happen.
That's what's so good -
you really didn't believe.
It doesn't matter how much
you know your hand is fake,
it doesn't matter how much you know
it's rubber, the effect works.
You see it, you see that
it's a clear fake,
but, extraordinary,
the brain overrides
what it knows with what it feels.
That is to say, the cognitive side.
That's not that he's just next to
a slightly mal-coordinated
man-child with a rubber hammer.
We can show you a replay
of Adam's reaction here,
because we've actually got it here.
If you watch this, here.
Oh, that shirt is awful.
That is...that is genuine.
It's made all the more extraordinary
by the fact, of course
you, as is well known,
have a prosthetic foot.
I do, I do indeed.
And so you are used to
all the cliches there are
about prosthesis and about phantom
limbs and all the rest of it.
- Indeed. I have a strict, can I take
this... - Yeah, you can put that away,
- do. No, I meant can I take it home?
I have a strange thing with my
prosthetic that I've found that I do,
if I'm, if I stub my toe, I will
still stop and go, "Ow!"
I will actually loudly say ouch.
And then realise, oh, it's the
prosthetic, it didn't actually hurt.
I'm conditioned that when you stub
your toe, you yell out.
And as you well know,
and from war time,
the screams of pain people had,
once they'd been amputated,
in the limbs that no longer existed,
they swore that their shins...
And having itches in them
you can't scratch.
I can't imagine anything
more agonising than having
an itch in something
you can't scratch.
I met this guy who...in America,
and he was a Vietnam veteran,
- and he knew someone
who'd lost both legs. - Yeah.
And he went to see him in hospital
and he said,
"I still haven't had sex
with my wife."
He said, "Why? Why not?"
He said, "Oh, I haven't got
any legs now, I feel awkward.
"I don't really, you know..."
He said,
"Well, you should just do it."
So he really encouraged him
to do it.
And then he went back to see him,
and he had a big smile on his face.
And he said, "So, did you do
the thing?" And he said, "Yeah.
"And with no legs,
you can get right on up there."
Well...
It's one of
the unexpected advantages.
- Talk about every cloud.
- There you go.
I am cutting off my legs
this evening.
Oh! Oh, goodness me.
But the point is, the brain has
a mental map of the body from birth
and even if that map is
distorted by an amputation,
it takes a lot for the brain to lose
its sense of where everything is.
It can be fooled,
as the rubber hand showed you.
I remember once being in bed
with my girlfriend
and doing that thing where
I fell asleep on my arm.
And of course your arm goes numb.
And I rolled then over onto my back
and my arm fell across my stomach.
But because it was numb, I actually
thought it was her arm on my stomach.
And I actually started stroking it.
Aww! How sweet.
And it was, but I then kind
of realised that it wasn't her arm,
it didn't feel like her arm.
It was...
"Who the hell's in the bed with me?"
I'm putting the light on!
Well that extraordinary rubber hand
illusion proves that even our own
senses can tell us porkies.
And speaking of porkies,
what's the point of pink?
Oh, you mean in terms of
like a gender colour?
This isn't to do with gender, it's
purely to do with the colour itself.
In printing, pink, or at least
a reddy pink, has a particular name.
If I was to say CYMK.
Magenta?
- Magenta is the right answer!
- Get in!
APPLAUSE
C is for Cyan, which is probably
the blue nearest us, as it were,
the six o'clock blue.
M for Magenta, Y for Yellow
and K is the Black, CMYK.
But magenta is between blue and red,
and that's to say between the lowest
wavelength of visible light
and the highest wavelength of
visible light, which is sort of not
possible.
- So it's a kind of
can't-really-exist colour,
and yet it does. - Yes, it does!
It's what you might call I suppose,
a pigment of the imagination!
- GROANS
- Which is nice. Which is nice.
- So, in terms of the senses lying...
- Yeah.
- Our eyes and colour is a bit like
that, because the world doesn't look
like this. - No. Not in the least.
- We have cones and rods in our eyes.
- Mm-hm. - And rods deal with darkness
and light, black to white,
and the cones deal with colour.
So dogs have two cones,
so they can, they're
not colour blind,
- but they see a lot less colour than
we do in the world, because we have
three. But birds have four! - Yes.
They can see ultraviolet rays.
Was it the Six Million...? Yeah,
the Six Million Dollar Man, when
Steve Austin, it would
obviously cost a lot more
now than six million...
Oh, I'd say.
Steve Austin got a bionic eye...
Lee Majors, yes.
And all they gave him,
really, was a zoom facility.
"Dun-dun-dun," exactly.
So he could see things further away.
That is pretty feeble.
If they'd given him about
eight extra cones...
That's true!
- He could have seen so much...
- How could they have shown
that to us? - X-rays.
Now we have the Instagram eye and
he could make it all sepia
and old-fashioned.
LAUGHTER
Our eyes still only have three cones
to watch him seeing something so
it would still look to our eyes...
Extremely good point.
He'd have needed a sidekick to say
"But what can you see?"
"Like a bird! I can see ultraviolet
light, which is where the villain
is revealed by this!"
"Let me run over there, fast."
And also, while we're
on the subject of the Bionic Man,
he had one leg that was really good
and yet they showed him
running at 70 when the reality
was he would have been
hopping at 70, because the other leg
would have just been destroyed by
the speed at which, biomechanically,
it would have been unable to cope.
It would have ruined my childhood.
They would have been better off if
they'd taken off both legs... Yeah!
Given him two bionic legs.
Given him wheels, Adam, wheels!
And the sex would have been amazing.
LAUGHTER
Bionic sex.
There was the Bionic Woman, Lindsay
Wagner, and she had ears, didn't
she?
She could hear anything.
- Lee Majors, Lindsay Wagner.
Well before anybody in this audience
was born. - Fictional people.
- Yes, they were totally madey-uppy.
- Yes, good.
Before your time as well, oh, God,
we feel so old, don't we?
- Yeah, but it was great being in the
'70s. - It was, yeah. We could go to
university for free.
MOCKING LAUGH
APPLAUSE
But anyway, the fact is, yeah,
magenta doesn't really exist
and yet it does, for our eyes.
There's also a special kind of pink
which is known as Baker-Miller Pink,
which is
you take a gallon of white paint
and a pint of red paint and you
come up with what's in the middle,
a sort of bubble-gum coloured pink.
It's pretty, isn't it?
What's interesting about that is
that it was generally thought by
psychologists and others
to create a feeling of passivity,
and so was used in prisons and
mental asylums
and was known as "drunk tank pink".
That looks like a fun prison,
to be honest.
LAUGHTER
- I would definitely go there.
- Gay prison!
So, the other thing they did,
some American sporting teams thought
that, well, this is true about this
pink, they changed their visitors'
changing rooms to pink, in order
to make the visiting teams
more passive.
Which is kind of cheating, really,
isn't it?
- It is kind of cheating.
- It's not very sporting.
So university sporting rules in
America now mean you can change
any changing room's colour as long
as your own is the same colour,
to stop that advantage.
If it is an advantage.
It would be interesting to see how
much difference it makes,
because surely this is
an incremental thing.
You are completely right.
The fact is that apparently,
even after half an hour,
people get used to it, and
if they've been in a prison
or a drunk tank before
- it reminds them of the drunk tank
and they get angry and more
aggressive. - It's associative, OK.
So it is really of
no use whatsoever.
That's it, if you see pink elephants
they might not really be there,
it seems to be an imaginary colour.
Which room in the house
would you keep these in?
MUSIC: TWILIGHT ZONE THEME
Oh, just push it. In the library.
ALARM BLARES
Adam is about to score points, yes!
- Really? - Yeah.
Yeah!
Very good.
That's the penny well spent.
And can I just point out,
in Australia, that's 2.50.
- What is that game with the pennies,
odd and even... - Two up. - Two up.
Two up, that's right.
- It's a... - It's a betting game. - It's
a betting game but it's only played
one day a year. - That's right.
It's only played on ANZAC Day
- and it's played with pennies,
I think. - That's right.
- Real, old-fashioned pennies.
You flip them up in the air and you
bet on whether you get two heads,
two tails or a head and a tail.
If you win a lot of money you're
allowed to leave the room
and you have half an hour's grace
before someone would chase you,
club you over the head and
steal your winnings.
- It being Australia. - Yeah.
- In the nicest possible way.
- Yeah, and the only day that it's
allowed to be played now,
it's illegal any time of the year,
except on ANZAC Day.
Well, if we have a look
at the picture again,
those are actually English
literature books, and this,
I'm afraid, is a French chamber pot,
or commode if you prefer.
And they liked to shit on us
and our literature in one go.
Oh, just when you think
they can't do anything else.
When you open the lid,
does it go, "Ugh"?
"I shit on you." Exactly.
"Because I can't beat you in a war,
I will poo on your books."
You open the lid and it goes,
# Boy, boy for sale. #
But perhaps the most impressive
invention in recent times,
- for your lavatorial wants...
- The helicopter.
Um, well... The Gotta Go Briefcase.
It's Japanese, of course.
How much better
do you get than that?
It's just simply superb. It's got
everything you could possibly want,
including a newspaper
to leaf through
if your easement is taking time.
I've always felt really sad
when I leave a toilet, like,
"Oh, we've become such good friends."
I wish I could just pack it up
and carry it away(!)
- Now I can. - It's got
a generously equipped sealing lid.
You can quietly and discreetly
go about your personal business
anywhere you please, with
a fold-out leather privacy panel,
- which tucks away neatly to the side.
- Yeah, it looks like it hides you
completely, that panel.
- A small tray with... - "What's that
suitcase just sitting there?"
It's got a small tray
with a cup-holder.
- Oh, great, so I don't even have to
throw away my drink? - A cup-holder.
That's like Homer Simpson,
isn't it? Do you remember that
episode where he bought a huge RV?
And Marge said,
"Oh, Homer!" and he said,
"But, Marge,
it's got six cup-holders! SIX!"
Men like cup-holders.
There's just something
so great about them.
- It's got a vanity mirror.
- I like the leather finish.
Yeah, refillable
hand-sanitising dispenser.
Maximum weight capacity is 80 kilos.
"Exceeding the recommended weight
will void all warranties..."
80 kilos?! What are you going to
get, an elephant to shit in it?!
- I know. - How are you going to get
80 kilos?!
- I weigh less than 80 kilos.
- It does seem extraordinary.
"I really need to get the...
"I'm going to exceed the limit!"
"It may result in rupture
of waste tank,
"possible bacteria contamination
of briefcase contents
"and massive stench."
So you don't want to do that.
I'm assuming you haven't
emptied it for a year.
Also, you would have
two suitcases in meetings.
Everyone would be like, "Derek,
why have you got two suitcases?"
If you got it wrong...
"No reason." And then he just
hides behind the leather panel.
If you accidentally went, "I've been
through the figures and... Oops!"
Massive stench! Massive stench!
- Oh, dear. - "How did the meeting go?"
"Oh, it was going fine
until I got the bog out."
Alternatively, you go the other way.
"Thanks for letting me
use your toilet briefcase."
"Oh, I don't have
a toilet briefcase."
I ought to say that the 80 kilos
includes the person sitting on it.
Oh, right.
I would break it,
I've a horrible feeling.
That changes everything.
Maybe the sell it to
banker-wankers in the City,
with the boast of it has an amazing
surface to do cocaine off as well.
- When you open it up.
- It would be perfect.
Absolutely, with the little dimples,
you could snort out of the little
leather dimples.
Anyway,
that's the Gotta Go Briefcase.
And it's yours, I'm sure,
for a very reasonable price.
If that question
left a bad smell, why is
the noseless lemur so badly named?
MUSIC: X-FILES THEME TUNE
I am going to take a punt
and say it's not a lemur.
Oh! You're brilliant. We were hoping
you'd say it has, actually, got a
nose,
- in which case it's badly named, but
you're right. - What, ever? - Never was,
never will be. In fact it is a fish.
- It's pretty... - What?
Pretty difficult, you'd think to
confuse a lemur and a fish.
You'd think that was a map of
Madagascar, where lemurs come from,
but in fact that is the fossil, and
for a very long time it was
considered to be a lemur
and it was known as Scalabrini's
noseless lemur.
Pedro Scalabrini was an
Italian born Argentinian naturalist.
In 1898, he gave a fossil fragment
to a palaeontologist called
Florentino Ameghino,
who was so patriotic in his
Argentinian-ness, that he hated
the fact that particularly
Charles Darwin had said that all
primates originated in Africa.
Which we now know to be true.
And a lemur is a primate,
lemurs only come from Madagascar,
which was shaved
off from the mainland of Africa
many, many millions of years ago.
There's an aye-aye. Wonderful lemur.
That's an English footballer
just before a penalty shoot-out.
LAUGHTER
Desperately afraid.
"Who wants to take one?"
So he tried to prove, Ameghino,
that lemurs existed in South America
in pre-Columbian times,
which they didn't.
It turned out in 2012 that it was,
in fact, an extinct fish.
Do you know, that picture
of the lemur, the lemur's face there,
I'm assuming that's what I
would look like if I was using
the toilet briefcase.
Those perfectly round eyes
are so beautiful.
That's after the massive stench.
Yeah. They are marvellous creatures.
Well, talking of paleontological
things,
the first platypus that was ever
seen by Western man, nobody
believed. They thought it...
No. But we did have a habit of
explorers making up monsters
- and drawing pictures in the
16th and 17th century. - We
- certainly did. Yes.
And that was considered an example
of an obvious and ridiculous hoax.
How could that be?
And George Shaw,
who was the naturalist,
examined it minutely for stitch
marks around the beak,
because he could not believe that
such, no-one could believe...
But even when you see them
in real life,
- I went to see them in Melbourne,
and you just can't believe...
- They're hilarious.
You watch them for ages going
"You don't make any sense!"
- All the bits of you!
- Their mouths look like they
belong in a Japanese briefcase.
- They do. They're so charming.
- They're sweet. - And they're
smaller than I expected.
Egg-laying mammals.
It took 30 years from the first
specimen to arrive in Europe
for people to believe that it was
real. They were absolutely
convinced.
Oh, "We're not going to fall for
this, But there it is. The platypus.
And do you know the first, I'm pretty
sure the first kangaroo that was sent
back to one of the British museums,
they sent it back but they didn't
give an example of how it stood,
so it was mounted on all fours.
Oh, that's very believable.
With its tiny little paws, because
its front paws were like this,
and its massive bum sticking up.
Looks as if it's ready for action!
LAUGHTER
Now, what's this guy on about?
MAN SINGS GIBBERISH OVER RAP MUSIC
That was a 1972,
rather before its time,
piece of rap,
by an incredibly famous Italian
called Adriano Celentano,
who is not known here.
He had a huge hit with this,
which is
called Prisencolinensinainciusol.
- You can see it written up
and that will help you. - Oh, wow.
Prisencolinensinainciusol
in de col men seivuan
prisencolinensinainciusol ol rait.
Which is Italian
for "Gangnam Style".
Yeah, kind of.
What it is, it's just babble.
- Gibberish. - It's babble that is
supposed to sound like English.
To an Italian, it sounds
more or less like English sounds.
There's that famous clip of the
person on Malaysia's Got Talent,
where they're singing Mariah Carey,
Can't Live Without You,
which is possibly the greatest song
ever recorded,
but she's heard it,
clearly, through a second party
and doesn't know
what the lyrics are,
so she burst into the chorus
and she just goes...
♪ Ken Lee, Ken Lee
Boo, dee, boo, doutchu. ♪
And she thinks it's about
a guy called Ken Lee.
Aw...
Anyway, that was a huge hit
in 1972.
Number one in Italy
and it was in the top ten in France
and in Belgium and the Netherlands.
It's babble that is supposed to
sound like English,
but in 2011, London-based
film-makers Brian and Karl
produced a wonderful film
called Skwerl,
which used a similar technique -
the dialogue is actually gibberish
but sounds like English.
It's had over seven million viewers
and we can show you a bit of it
here. Run VT.
HE TALKS GIBBERISH
CUTLERY RATTLES
PLATES CRASH
SHE GASPS AND SOBS
FIZZING
You fucking asshole!
That wasn't gibberish,
but we've got them here tonight,
Brian and Karl, thank you very much.
One of the hardest things
to do in the world
is to talk gibberish
without it becoming...
- Did you actually learn your
gibberish? - We did, yeah. - Yeah.
Did you imagine that
there was sense behind it?
He thinks she's forgotten
his birthday, is that what this...?
That's one interpretation.
I'm not an actor, but Fiona,
who's in the film, is an actress,
and so she needed to know
what this was about,
she needed the intentions.
But I think it was important
to kind of have a sort of a sense
- behind what we were saying. - It was a
lot like what you were talking about
with Mariah Carey,
Ken Lee and stuff.
We sort of had the sentences
and then kind of garbled them
and kind of wrote down
the garble as it came out.
I understood more words
in that clip,
though, than I did
in five series of The Wire.
- ADAM: Are you Australian? - Yeah,
I'm Australian. - Yeah, I thought so.
Because we have a similar thing that
we do where we don't use words...
AUSTRALIAN ACCENT: Do you think
I haven't noticed? - Yeah, exactly.
GASPING: You have another thing
you do,
which is sound as if
you've got heartburn.
For some bizarre reason.
I don't know why that is.
That's how they get
the actors on Home And Away
to do an emotional scene -
they just give them heartburn.
"Steven,
the cafe's burnt...down again."
Australians will make enough noises
that could be a sentence,
but there are no actual words in it.
I'll try it.
RUNNING WORDS TOGETHER: So, OK,
are you having a good night?
Yeah, right, it's all right, man.
Are you enjoying your time at QI?
HE TALKS GIBBERISH
There's also...
I have a similar thing that
I can do with posh people.
This gentleman
in the front row here...
with the blue trousers.
HE MUMBLES IN POSH VOICE
Anyway, sorry,
that's wonderful, Brian and Karl,
thank you very much indeed.
Thanks for joining us.
Magnificent.
So, time for some refreshment.
Here we go.
Let's have... You pass that there
to Sara, if you would, Alan.
There you go.
- There's one for you, Jack.
Pass one to Adam. - Is this carrot?
And I'll have one myself.
And there's one for you, Alan.
Thank you so much.
There you go.
Hmm. Hmm!
- You look as if you... - Who grew this?
- You've done this before.
- So...
- You've got to make it upright first.
Oh, right.
Come on. Will you talk to it?
Come here, you. Oh, you look lovely.
You're so huge(!)
I don't think I'm going to be
able to manage it.
Oh, there you are, yes...
Hey-hey! What do you think
these were once used for?
What were carrots used for, or
particularly these ones on sticks?
Ones on sticks.
Waving in tiny airplanes?
Is it like what Gwyneth Paltrow
gives her kids?
She probably does, yeah,
they probably are.
To see in the dark?
ALARM BLARES
Seeing in the dark, well,
you're in the right era.
When was it said that carrots could
help you see in the dark?
At night.
In which period of history
was it made known to people,
this idea, which is not really true?
The Dark Ages. Not the Dark Ages.
- When did people discover vitamins?
- SARA: Yeah.
That wasn't until the beginning
of the 20th century.
Because vitamin A is the key,
it helps your eyes, doesn't it?
Vitamin A does help your eyes.
So it must have
been around about then.
Well, it was really... It...
It must be so hard being a rabbit.
It really...
They would never get
any talking done.
No, they wouldn't, would they?
They'd be,
"Sorry, what are you saying?"
- "I've got a mouthful of
bloody carrot." - Good God!
The problem was, in the
Second World War, there was...
We would run out of...
Put it away.
Concentrate, Stephen.
Stop flapping... Oh, yes,
that's what I need to do.
You look like the world's worst
burlesque dancer.
SARA: I've seen worse.
So, in the Second World War,
there was a very great
shortage of sugar,
and there was a big surplus of
carrots,
and so they put it about that
carrots helped you see in the dark.
I bloody love carrots, me.
So they made
sort of ice creams, as it were,
- out of carrots, to try and make them
attractive to children. - OK.
There is a certain
amount of sugar in them.
- They tasted a little sweet,
didn't they? - Yeah, it was lovely.
And there was a Group Captain,
John Cunningham,
who was responsible for very daring
night raids over Germany,
and they gave it out that
what allowed him to do it
was the fact that he ate carrots.
In fact, what they were really
doing was disguising the fact
- that they had on-board aircraft...
- Rabbits. - ..radar.
They had radar on board.
They didn't want
the Germans to know.
The Germans knew
we had ground radar,
not that we had radar
on board airplanes.
So they sold the carrot story
to the Germans as well?
That was the idea, both to get
children to eat their carrots
and maybe to get the Germans
to believe that it was carrots
that allowed our bombers
to see over those...
Wouldn't it have been
more beneficial
if they'd said the reason our pilots
are so good at seeing at night
is because they eat
slightly undercooked chicken?
You should have been
working in British Intelligence.
POSH VOICE: "You're just the kind
of chap we need, Whitehall."
Now, how does the "what the hell"
effect work?
MUSIC: TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED THEME
- Yes? - This is relevant to people
who are dieting
or sometimes people who have
substance abuse problems
and things like that.
So it's when you are being quite
strict with yourself.
Stop talking about me
for a second, yes.
It's when you're being
very strict with yourself
and you think you've slipped up in a
slight way, so you're really hungry
and you have a biscuit
when you're on a diet
and then you go,
"I've ruined the diet now,
"I'm going to finish that packet of
biscuits and do some crack..."
Oh, tell me about it.
And they properly leap in
and start again tomorrow.
You're so right - you've
fallen off the wagon...
- I've done everything wrong now,
I'll get a tattoo... - Yeah.
Those people who say,
"I was very good yesterday,
"I've been good today, so tomorrow -
Black Forest gateau for breakfast."
Yeah, oh.
I mean, that is certainly
a "what the hell" effect,
there's no question about that.
There is another
"what the hell" effect,
but yours, I think, counts,
unquestionably.
This is used by Dan Ariely
and his partners at Duke University
in North Carolina.
And what it describes is how,
when someone has
overcome their initial
reluctance to cheat,
subsequent dishonest behaviour
gets easier.
And he tested this with college
students who were solving
maths problems for money,
and when his back was turned,
they could cheat, and the more
they saw they got away with it,
the more they cheated.
But what was interesting is,
the scores were not inflated
by a few students,
who were cheating a lot,
but many students cheating a little.
Cheating, in that sense,
is infectious.
You go, "What the hell,
I can do it," so you do it.
Is that like that thing
when you're telling a lie,
and you're telling a story about what
happened on the weekend and...
Oooh, and it gets further and
further...
And then you embellish it
a little bit. And then you
think, "I got away with that.
"I might just add
a little bit more to it."
And then suddenly it's this
big, fanciful story because
of that tiny, little...
The awful thing is, because it is
a lie it is stored in a different
part of your memory so when,
so when a week later someone says,
"Tell that marvellous story about
that time you," and you're going,
"Shit, what did I say?"
But animals, interestingly,
animals can cheat.
Koko, who is a wonderful
gorilla in California,
once tore a steel sink off a wall
and then used sign language
- to tell her handlers
that the cat had done it. - Yes.
A real child-like fib.
"It wasn't me, it was the cat."
The closer you get to human beings,
the more of a liar you become.
And perhaps an even more
famous chimp, Nim Chimpsky,
about whom a film was made, who has
a really developed sign language,
she used to duck out of
sign language lessons
by saying she needed to go
to the loo when she didn't.
She'd say, "I have to go for a pee,"
like that,
she'd go off and you'd see her not
going for a pee. Or him, rather.
So animals are capable of deception.
So maybe we should only eat
animals that can lie.
Well, lying seems to be
a sign of intelligence,
I'm glad to say,
as an inveterate liar myself.
Ariely, this man who did the work
on the "what the hell" effect,
he found people who score
higher on psychological tests
for creativity are more likely
to engage in dishonesty.
Anyway, there we are.
We are who we are because we cheat.
The "what the hell" effect describes
how, after the first lie,
the others just keep coming.
Be truthful, how do you rate your
own driving, generosity and ability
to conduct an adult relationship?
I was reading about how we all
over-estimate our input into things,
so they were asking couples
what percentage
of the housework do you do?
- And it would add up to about 130%.
- Yeah.
Because everyone, even if they know
they only do a little bit,
they still think that's more or its
worth more.
Everyone thinks they do more
than their partner.
- Everyone thinks they're a good
driver. - Everyone.
Everyone thinks they're better than
average.
I'll be a great driver, I'll be
a great dad. I don't.
- You don't think any of those things?
- No, I can't drive. I don't think
of myself as a good driver.
- You haven't passed your test? - No.
- Then that's fair enough. You
probably are a crap driver then.
Yeah. Do you think you're good in
bed?
I haven't passed that test either.
Failed on three minors and a major.
- With emergency stop. - Yeah.
Ah, that's the worst. That is
the worst.
I kept changing lanes
when I shouldn't.
LAUGHTER AND GROANS
Yeah. We all do have
a high view of ourselves...
Dear God almighty.
We tend to think we're better
at things like donating to charity,
voting, maintaining
a successful relationship,
volunteering for unpleasant lab
experiments.
But, I'm glad to tell you that
Institute for Child Study
at Toronto University
claims that toddlers who tell lies
early on are more likely to do
well in later life.
The complex brain processes
involved in formulating
a lie are an indicator of
a child's intelligence.
So it doesn't necessarily mean
if you lie your way through
life you'll do better.
- No. - It just means if you can lie
early, then you're quite creative and
you can get through life.
- Yes. - I'm saying this in case my
daughter is watching.
- Good point. - Don't want to get
the wrong idea, absolutely.
So, now I want you to be thoroughly
dishonest by pretending
you don't know you're going
to get a klaxon,
because it's General Ignorance time.
Fingers on buzzers, please.
What are deserts mostly from?
- MUSIC: TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED THEME
- Yes, Sara? - Sand.
- ALARM BLARES
- Oh, thank you.
What? What?
- You'd think, wouldn't you? - Yeah.
- Not the case. No.
Only one-third of the world's
land surface is desert
and only a small proportion
of that is sand.
North American deserts
are around 2% sand.
No more than that.
There's Monument Valley.
Globally, on average, only 20%
of all deserts are sand, a fifth.
The remainder is made of rock,
shingle, salt or even snow.
- And camels. - And camels.
- Yes, camel poo. - There's lots of
cigarettes all over the desert.
The driest desert in the world
is...?
- The Gobi Desert. - No.
- Any thoughts?
- AUDIENCE MEMBER: Antarctica.
There is an argument for saying
the Antarctic is a dry desert.
- It doesn't rain there.
- Yeah, it doesn't,
but the Atacama is considered
the driest land desert.
Some weather stations there
have recorded no rain whatsoever,
- not one. - What a boring job,
being in that weather station.
The largest desert on Earth
is Antarctica,
even though much
of it is under snow.
But the one area that is the driest,
man who shouts a lot,
are the McMurdo Dry Valleys.
Is that his Red Indian name?
Yeah. And they consist mostly of...
They consist...
Man Who Shout A Lot.
The McMurdo Dry Valleys are so dry
that dead animals mummify
rather than decay.
- What is that?
What animal is it? - A seal.
If it's dehydrated it might come
back to life if you get it wet.
Yeah, if you get it wet
and it rains...
- Like Knorr chicken soup. - Ball on the
tail. I'm doing ball on the tail. - I
can see.
It seems that if you want to
identify a desert,
the best way to do so involves
looking for the rain, not for sand.
How did the Vikings bury their dead?
On a boat. On fire.
- Oh, on a boat on fire.
- ALARM BLARES
Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack,
Jack, Jack. No.
In the ground...?
Yeah. More or less.
I feel a bit sad about how
tentative I was about that.
The myth of the burning longboat
is very, very recent - 19th century.
In fact, there is
one story of Baldur, a god,
who was apparently burned like that,
the rest of it is pretty much
Ladyboy...Ladybird book stuff.
- I love the Ladyboy books.
- Did I say "Ladyboy books"?
Ladybird books.
- They didn't have horns either,
did they? - No, they didn't have horns.
The late 19th century was a period
of enormous European rediscovery
of their ancient myths
and so on, or at least
not just rediscovery but making up.
In the case of Britain it was
Arthurian legend
and druidic legend,
a lot of which was totally nonsense.
And there was a Swedish illustrator
called Gustav Malmstrom, and he
did these horned helmets and
dragons' wings on the heroes'
headgear.
And his Saga became an international
hit and made the Vikings' name.
And a Vikingr was a pirate or
raider. A viking was a raiding
expedition.
A vikingr would go on a viking.
And Vik or Vike is old
Norse for a bay of a fjord.
And Reykjavik means a 'smoky bay',
for example.
Reyki, Auld Reekie is the old smoky
town, Edinburgh, in Scottish.
I've also heard once that
kind of socialist atmosphere that
pervades Sweden kind of also
came from the Vikings,
because there was just enough
alcohol to keep everyone happy,
so you were just,
there's a Swedish word called Largon,
which means not too much
and not too little.
And if you, when you gave out the
vodka to all of the people rowing on
the ships...
- The aquavit. - The aquavit, yes. Not
to much that someone down the back
wouldn't get enough,
and not too little that they'd be
unhappy that they didn't get enough.
So it was just evenly shared
out over everyone
that was rowing and that's pervaded
Swedish culture and that's why they
are now...
- Sharey people. - Pissed.
Lightly pissed, sharey people.
Yes, Vikings sometimes buried their
dead in a boat, but always on land.
Which bit of whale did they use
to make a whalebone corset?
- I'm going to take a punt
and say the jaw. - Not the jaw.
Penis?
Not the penis.
Is it not part of a whale?
The wishbone.
It is part of the whale.
Not the wish...
Did you say the wishbone?
- That's a huge tug of war.
- So for a corset... Is it the ribs?
MAN SHOUTS OUT
ALARM BLARES
Who said the ribs?
I did, I said it first.
- Oh, sorry about that, no,
not the ribs. - No worries.
I think Shouty Man had it again.
MAN SHOUTS OUT
SARA: That isn't how
you get on the show.
This is not that thing
with James Corden on Sky 1,
thank you very much indeed.
My show.
Oh, yes!
Whoops.
- More's the pity.
- The show now four series on.
More's the pity.
I wish it were, The Shouty Show.
- With the drunk cricketer.
- Yeah, that one, exactly.
No, as I think they were shouting,
"The baleen."
- Does that mean anything?
- The thing in the mouth.
- Yeah, the sieve in the mouth.
- That sieves the... Oh, I see.
There are two types of whale -
baleen whale and toothed whale -
and the blue whale is
an example of a baleen whale there.
The baleen is in fact keratin,
the same thing that our hair
is made of, our fingernails,
or rhinoceros horn is.
So it's wonderfully pliable.
It was the plastic of
the 19th century, essentially.
- Right. - There was a Mr JA Sevey
trading out of Boston
who offered 54 different
whalebone products.
Whips, parasols, umbrellas, fishing
rods, canes, hat, divining rods,
riding crops, ferrules, brushes,
mattress stuffing,
back-supporters, suspenders,
billiard cushion springs,
pen-holders, shoehorns, tongue
scrapers and policemen's clubs.
- All possible.
- That is a good Saturday night.
Empty your pockets out.
But real whalebone was
used for something else.
It was a cheap substitute for ivory.
And you probably know of the carving
that was done on it
that sailors used to do,
which had a particular name?
I do not know of the name of that.
Oh, we'll have to ask
Shouty Man again.
- AUDIENCE MEMBER: Scrimshaw!
- Scrimshaw is the right answer, yes.
- He's very clever, Shouty Man. - He is.
- He's a very smart shouty man.
- He's a smart shouty man.
It may be a whole series
of organised shouty men,
I don't know,
but we're very impressed by them.
They may have to get
a score at the end,
that's what's worrying me.
Yes, scrimshaw is...you know that
very carved whalebone effect?
It's sometimes done on horns.
I mean, amazing, some of it.
Even a whole desk was once
done out of whalebone,
because whales are big animals.
I'd love to think that there were
cases of people wearing
a whalebone corset.
And just being out at a party
and going... "I'm really hungry.
"Oh, there's a spare prawn in here."
Yes, it would be lovely,
wouldn't it?
Of course the baleen is used,
it's this huge sieved area, it sucks
in this huge amount of water, filled
with krill and plankton and so on.
Then the baleens sort
of mesh together
and it pushes all the water out
and all the food is left clinging
to this filter, which it
then sucks into its mouth.
And it's fantastically efficient.
So it would be the equivalent of
going up in your whalebone corset
to the buffet and just going...
SUCKING
Letting out the bits you don't want.
Yes, most whalebone
was not bone but baleen,
the 19th-century
equivalent of plastic.
Can you name a blue sea creature?
- MUSIC: THE TWILIGHT ZONE THEME
- Alan? Oh.
Yes, Jack?
Shouty Man, drop it like it's hot.
Mine!
Is he going to fall for our trap?
AUDIENCE MEMBER: A blue whale!
Is the right answer!
Yes, I love this guy!
That's the fastest I've ever
been on the draw as well.
- That was quick, and still wasn't...
- I broke my buzzer. - You did.
'I don't believe it!'
You've broken your carrot now.
We thought you might be so afraid
you'd say, "Not the blue whale."
- No, I was pretty
sure about that one. - It is blue.
It's not very blue,
but it's blue enough to call blue.
- It's bluer than most things,
innit? - It is. - It's all relative.
The colour spectrum is different
under water.
It's quite a common...
a common qualor...
It's quite a common colour
amongst...
The gibberish blokes can
understand all of that.
- Absolutely. - SARA: A dory is blue.
There's the blue marlin,
which is pretty blue.
- A dory is blue. - Yes. The blue
starfish you can see is jolly blue.
Blue marlin there.
Blue Man Group.
And the beautiful blue angel there,
the glaucus atlantica.
The blue angel, as well
as being a Marlene Dietrich film,
is a very interesting fish,
in as much as it's venomous,
but its venom is second hand.
It feeds on the
Portuguese Man of War,
and ingests its poison
so that it becomes venomous itself.
Isn't that clever?
- Cunning! - Very cunning, very cunning.
So the grey whale is pretty grey,
the humpback is pretty grey.
The sperm whale is dark grey/black,
but the blue whale,
as you can see, is jolly blue.
There it is, bottom right.
I see it.
Yeh-hey. Your favourite whale.
Would we lie to you?
Blue whales are blue, pretty much.
Well, that's our last tissue
in our box of lies.
It's time for the unvarnished
truth with the scores.
And it's pretty bally fascinating.
In last place, with minus...
Oh, dear. Minus 19,
but with a tremendous performance
and a wonderful last rally,
Jack Whitehall.
With minus 11,
an entirely creditable third place,
she knew so much, Sara, Sara Pascoe.
I get all the buzzers,
I got two. I got two.
On minus 8,
second place, Alan Davies.
Minus 8, pretty pleased.
And a staggeringly secure
first place,
- on plus 14, Adam Hills.
- Oh, my goodness.
And tonight, of course,
a special award of minus 39
for the shouty man in the audience!
Yes, it only remains for me
to thank Adam, Jack, Sara and Alan
and leave you with the last words
of Spanish Prime Minister
General Ramon Maria Narvaez.
"I do not have to forgive my
enemies,
"I have had them all shot."
Good night.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE