QI (2003–…): Season 13, Episode 13 - Monster Mash - full transcript
Stephen Fry and guests Phill Jupitus, Josh Widdicombe, Sara Pascoe and Alan Davies hunt for marvelous monsters. Featuring a made-up creatures round and an appearance by "The Fiji Mermaid".
Goo-oo-oo-ood evening.
Good evening, good evening,
good evening, and welcome to QI,
where tonight we're doing
the Monster Mash.
Let's meet the nameless horrors
that lurk in our monstrous shadows.
The malformed Josh Widdicombe...
..the mutated Phill Jupitus...
..the misbegotten Sara Pascoe...
..and the complete monstrosity
Alan Davies.
Now, let's hear your scary noises.
Sarah goes...
Josh goes...
Phill goes...
And Alan goes...
Too terrible to contemplate.
Let's start with
a monster mix-and-match.
Here are some cards
you'll find under your desk.
The fronts and the backs. Oh!
And we want you
to see if you can make
some kind of monster -
and name it if you can.
Oh, right. Name it? Mm.
OK. You've got bottoms, Alan...
I'm a classic bottom.
I'm a classic top.
..and Josh has got tops.
What have you got there?
Alan Davies has got gorgeous legs.
Hey...
What you've created there
is a human.
I'd say it's borderline, Stephen.
Too terrible to contemplate. Yeah.
Here we go, here we go, all right...
You don't know what I've put,
then we'll look in a minute. OK.
Ooh. OK. There we go.
Ah, a lionfish.
Now, that's interesting,
cos the lionfish does exist.
Unlike the merlion
that we have created...
Ah, the merlion is a very good...
..which would sing on the rocks
by the coast of Africa
and lure deer to their deaths.
Well, Alan, there you've got
an ant...
An ant cow.
Yeah, we've got the...
Basically, what you've got there is
an ungulate that will ruin a picnic.
Well, we can go through
some of these.
Certainly a lionfish exists. OK.
There's a bounty on them,
if you catch them in the Caribbean.
They destroy the habitat -
they're so successful
there's almost nothing that can get
them, and they can eat everything.
Try making one to order.
See if you can make a Minotaur. OK.
Minotaur... Oh, Minotaur...
So, it's... Bull's head.
Bull's head's on there.
Chap's bottom, isn't it? A Minotaur.
Yeah. Rather than a lion?
There we go.
No-one's quite sure whether
it should have...
the human top with
a bull's bottom, but...
We've made a Minotaur.
Oh, yeah. He looks really muscly.
That's not as scary
as I thought it was going to be.
I'm going to say
pop your cards away. Oh.
I've just made a mermaid, Stephen.
You've done a lovely mermaid -
well done.
That's definitely one
that was available.
There are all kinds
of things available -
the myrmecoleon, which is also known
as a formicaleon.
This is a lion head and
an ant body. What?!
In medieval bestiaries, they
were very sure that that existed.
They held it to be bigger
than an ant.
Basically, it lived in a little pit
and pulled in things.
How big was it?
A bit like a large ant.
Oh, like a large ant.
I feel like someone who had a very
low pain threshold is the person
who was like, "No, promise you, it was a
lion what bit me but it was very small.
"It came out of a tiny hole."
Yeah, well, they do exist, antlions.
Americans call them doodlebugs.
They live in a pit and they pull in
anything that falls in. Wow!
Mermaids and mermen, obviously,
are the human body with a fish tail.
People think, you know,
sailors fall in love with mermaids
and how can they consummate
their relationship? You know...
Fertilise the eggs, Stephen.
Exactly, it's very simple.
She lays her eggs on a rock
or something
and you fertilise them -
what's the problem with that?
The sailor has to sail back to
his waters where he was spawned
and take the mermaid with him.
So, he has to go back to,
I don't know, Dorking...
Yes, that it might be.
..find a pond,
pop his new fishwife in there.
Fishwife!
She lays her eggs
and then he has to be arrested
for indecent public exposure
at a boating pond.
And one that you get points for
because it does exist, is the merlion.
Yeah, which you came up with -
a merlion -
which is the lion head and
a fish tail. Yeah. Really?
Yeah, the national symbol
of Singapore.
Is it? Oh... thank you, Singapore.
Yeah. They give you those points.
The hippocampus.
Hippopotamus.
Thank you for replying
with another animal.
You're doing very well.
Hip-po replacement.
But... hippocampus is...
The hipster campus is, it's...
runs coffee bars in Shoreditch...
..in a very effeminate way.
Well, as you probably know,
it's part of the brain,
the hippocampus,
but why is it called
the hippocampus?
The shape of it. Is...?
It's the shape of a seahorse.
But a hippocampus,
as a mythical beast,
had a horse front
and a fish tail. Oh...
And so did they think that
before they found the seahorse
or they thought there were
two separate seahorses?
No, there are seahorses in
the Mediterranean, so I suppose...
Let's find out sometime - not now.
That is surely the opposite of
what this show is about.
I panicked, all right?
I just panicked.
People love seahorses because
it's the male who gestates the
babies, isn't it, with seahorses?
Which is always so lovely.
I've dived amongst them and I was
just shocked by how small they are.
You must have...
They are tiny. Well, I've seen them
in the London Aquariums. Oh, right.
They have a very long thin tank
that they go up and down -
it's quite sweet.
I assume that's
what they want to do,
otherwise it feels a bit unfair.
Would be cruel.
They have to just go up and down.
They're very horse-like as well
in the way they feed... They race.
..they browse in the weeds.
They browse in the weeds, looking...
They have little stalls
and they all get in.
At the races.
There's always one that doesn't want
to go and they have to take him off.
So, no matter what monster
you imagine,
you can be pretty sure that
someone else made it first.
Here's a monster that someone
made earlier,
but what is it and
what's it made from?
Oh.... Oh, my gosh.
Is it carved? Mm...
Is it made from bone?
It's a type of mermaid that was
very popular in the 19th century.
It's called a Fiji mermaid. Ooh...
People would come from miles
to see it.
It was shown off at carnivals,
and it was made from fish
and household bits and pieces.
For a long time,
people thought it was made by
the addition of a monkey's head
with a fish.
And this particular one was acquired
by the Wellcome Collection in 1919,
and then later by the fabulous
Horniman Museum.
Do you know the Horniman Museum?
Yeah, I live near there.
Do you? It's in Forest Hill.
It's brilliant, yeah.
It is an incredible place.
A genuine museum of curiosities
of the most fascinating kind.
I've been there too - it's great.
It is good. It's a fine place.
You just saying that
cos I said I've been there?
I go every week. Largely, yeah.
Cos when you said you went to
the aquarium, I didn't jump on it.
Like, "Oh, yeah, I've been."
I let you have your time in the sun.
"Time in the sun."
When you say household bits and
pieces... Yeah.
..what, like...
..sticky-backed plastic?
Well... Fairy liquid bottle?
You'd be surprised to know that
recent CT scans
and DNA tests have been done
on this fellow, and they revealed
that no monkeys were harmed
in its making,
but it is a fish and the rest
is made from
fabric of a wooden frame
supporting a papier mache head
with a fish's jaw. Wow.
So, kind of household. Papier mache
is usually bits of newspaper
or paper, isn't it, mashed up?
Oh, wow!
There we go.
Now, look. You see, now...
So, were they
supposed to be scary creatures?
It is quite scary.
You can picture it scampering
in your bedroom or something.
They were a lot sexier once they
added the hair and the shell bras.
Exactly. But you'll be pleased
to know that
this is a result of the CT scans,
which were made by
the Horniman Museum for us,
and Dr James Moffatt
of St George's University in London
translated the CT scan data into
this 3-D printing
of the original. Wow!
So, this is a 3-D printing.
Isn't it good? Yeah!
Yeah, we like that.
And you can see how detailed it is.
Even the little holes and flaws
in the fish tail.
Have you been to
St George's Hospital?
It's really excellent.
Now...
I'm not going to play this game.
Ergh! Ergh!
I genuinely jumped.
You've seen them on Dartmoor,
haven't you, Widdicombe?
What are your monsters called?
We've got... On Dartmoor? Yeah.
We've got the Hairy Hand.
Are you aware of the Hairy Hand?
Which is a... No.
You get it
when you're about 15.
The Hairy Hand is a disembodied hand
that would appear from nowhere
if you were driving along
the B3021... Pissed.
..and it would steer you
off the road.
But there's... "Officer!" "Officer!"
"And it smelt of cider, didn't it?"
"It dropped its pint on me,
and then it drove me off the road."
One of the people that claimed
he'd been steered off the road
by the Hairy Hand,
he described it as invisible.
Oh, bless him for trying.
There's the old curse about
the Monkey Wishing Hand,
which it seems is
where that's coming from. Oh, yeah.
What's that? What's that?
It's a dead one of those.
What's that? What's that?
What's that? What's that?
It's a herd of those.
I've got loads of them.
Now, the Horniman Museum,
which gave us access to the original
of this...
Probably went there before Sara.
..it was all arranged by a man who's
in the audience tonight
from the Horniman Museum,
and it's Paolo Viscardi.
Can you give us a wave?
There you are.
Thank you very much, Paolo.
Grazie.
Who do you recognise more,
me or Alan?
Who's been more often? Yeah.
So, Jenny.
Do you know about Jenny Haniver?
No. Jenny Agutter.
Jenny Agutter you know about?
That's good.
Let me add another Jenny
to your list of Jennys.
Let's see some pictures
of Jenny Haniver.
Was she on the front of a boat?
Whoa. Oh!
Lord, that's Doctor Who.
That's a box of props
from Doctor Who.
It does look like it, doesn't it?
It's the Ku Klux Klams.
Can you guess what they are?
You burn one cross...
Fish. They're fish.
They are flatfish.
They're skates. Skate. Oh, skate.
Rays or skates would be carved
in these shapes -
it was known as Jenny Hanivers.
Mostly sailors from Antwerp
who seemed to do this -
it was their specialist art.
Other sailors did scrimshaw,
you know,
and they did Jenny Haniver.
Very odd, but they exist,
and you can see that they exist,
because they're there in a box.
Discarded, unwanted.
The ones in the middle that look
like they're wearing glasses
are the best ones. They are.
If they started singing,
you'd shit yourself.
♪ Doo-doo doo-doo dum... ♪
Now, describe the mammoth
moles of Siberia.
They're huge and they live
underground. Right... Yeah. Next.
Consider the word mammoth. Woolly.
Mammoth. Where is it from?
What language might it be from?
Welsh. Russian?
No, but it's that... Almost...
Cornish? Is it kind of Celtic?
Baltic/Nordic. They consider
themselves Nordic people.
Norway.
They really, really ARE Nordic.
These people, most people wouldn't
think of them immediately as Nordic.
They'd think of them as Baltic.
Latvia, Estonia... Yeah, Estonia.
Is it? OK. The wonderful country
of Estonia. I've never been there.
Sara, have you?
I've got a lifetime membership card.
I can go for free as many
times as I like.
Lovely gardens.
Well, they have a language
that is very
separate from the languages
of their neighbours.
It's Finno-Ugric. It's related to
Finnish and Hungarian.
And the word "mammoth" is one of the
theirs and it means "earth mole".
Does it?
It means "earth mole".
And the reason is that
it was thought...
When mammoths were discovered
they were always underground,
and they thought they lived
underground and were killed
by breathing air by coming up
and maybe that's what killed them.
And so that's why
they got the name mammoth.
But when were the last mammoths,
do you think, in thousands of years?
1940s. Very cold. 1940s!
200,000 years ago. 10,000 years ago.
I would say three million years ago.
It's more recent than you might
think. It's 4,000 years ago.
Really? There was a herd of them
in... Essex.
..Wrangel Island in the Arctic.
So when they were there in a herd
the Great Pyramid of Cheops
was already 1,000 years old.
So it was civilisation?
So they overlapped with man,
very much so, yeah. Wow.
But there is a company called Revive
and Restore
that is looking to
re-introduce mammoths.
They think they can take some genes,
do some gene juggling with Asian
elephants and create a mammoth.
It's a very extraordinary thought.
Aw! Bless. Asian elephants with
the small ears.
Yes, just before
they have their genes juggled.
"Aw! Come into the lab now. I've
just got to cut your ovaries open."
It's genome editing
is what they call it.
We're hoping they would need
to live in the tundra
and one of the reasons we hope
that is that they'll reintroduce
certain grasses, the way they eat
and the way they move.
They move the seeds around.
Yeah, and the permafrost there where
they used to roam is really,
really beneficial to
the environment.
It contains two to three times as much
carbon as the world's rainforests.
That would be amazing. Yeah.
That could be good aside from the fact it
would be delightful to think of them anyway.
If they're free and out on
the tundra that's amazing.
I thought they would just be breeding
them to put them in captivity,
so we could go, "Oh, you're back."
They're going to put them in one of
those tubes like the London Aquarium.
They could swim up and down.
No, there's a man called Sergey
Zimov who has created
an experimental preserve in Siberia
that he's called Pleistocene Park.
Wow. So could you do that with
other...?
Is it possible that this will
become a thing that will happen?
T Rex. I guess it is, yeah.
I think it's a question of when
rather than if.
I think it would be a foolish person
to say it could never happen.
If there's human will behind it,
and it's not illegal,
and it's not...
Maybe not velociraptors.
No, we've got a warning there
cos you see what they do in
a kitchen. Yeah.
Less bother in a kitchen than
Gordon Ramsay. Well, that's true.
Do you reckon in 4,000 years they'll
be trying to recreate Gordon Ramsay?
- Wow!
- For a dare.
- They'll think...
- Imagine herds of them
sweeping across. Hear their cry.
"Fuck!"
"Why don't you grow some balls?"
"What's this? It's a stupid person
sandwich."
Lawks!
Now, what kind of animal does
this skull belong to?
Toothy. Well... He's very toothy.
..looks dinosaur-y to me.
Well, you can certainly tell
that it's not herbivore,
it's not vegetarian, can't you?
Is it... a killer rabbit?
Sabre-toothed tiger?
Is it a sabre-toothed tiger?
No, it's a bit smaller than that.
Is it a tiny mouse?
It's a little bit bigger than that.
It's a species we've mentioned
already...
Is it a mole? It's a mole!
A mole! Is it?
That's a mole. Well done.
Well done.
The species, not surprisingly, is
called the star-nosed mole, and...
It looks like that guy from
Futurama, doesn't it?
It does. Zoidberg. Zoidberg. Yeah.
Well, when you look like Zoidberg...
It's a wonderful mole.
They live underground, and we don't
have much to do with them,
but they're equipped
with special powers.
For example,
they can smell in stereo,
so they can tell when something
is coming, from which direction.
So they'd be very useful in a lift,
wouldn't they?
They'd be able to say,
"It was you. It was you.
"Don't lie - it was you."
And they have toxins
with which they paralyse
and stun the worms that they eat.
Why would they want to do that
if they've got the worm anyway?
So they can eat it later.
So they can eat it later.
So they find it and go...
They have larders.
.. "tasty, but lunchtime."
Exactly. Deferred pleasure.
Pop it in their larder. Eurgh...
But they're...
That's amazing. PHILL: Christ!
Yeah. They need a lot of sustenance
because they do a lot of work.
They do extraordinary tunnelling.
They can dig 150 feet
of new tunnels a day.
Now, given their size and weight
that is the equivalent of a human
moving four tonnes -
about 1,000 shovel loads -
every 20 minutes.
Why didn't we get them
to do the Channel Tunnel?
It would've been amazing - and cute.
Yeah, about 400 of them -
Crossrail, done in a fortnight.
We're missing something. Huh?
They're very territorial
and solitary, though,
and the females mate...
and as soon as they've mated, germinated,
ovulated, whatever things females do,
erm...
It's complicated!
It's complicated.
Once they've done that,
their gonads then put out
enormous quantities of testosterone,
so that they become very aggressive
and territorial. That's amazing.
And they then go back to a solitary life
like a male. So they become sort of male.
Did you know that hyenas...
female hyenas have penises... Yes.
..that they have to give birth
through.
Ooh... Yes.
Oh, an audible gasp!
They're fake penises, though...
What ARE they laughing at?! They're not
real penises. They don't work like one.
So their body has to basically
put them to sleep to give birth,
they have to release so many
relaxants to be able to do it. Oh...
I know. Incredible. Isn't that
amazing, though? Yeah. Phenomenal.
Anyway, now, name all the members
of the Monstrous Regiment of Women.
Beryl?
Linda... Jean.
..Shirley. Angry Sue.
She's the leader.
Have you heard of
The Monstrous Regiment Of Women?
The First Blast Of The Trumpet
Against The Monstrous... Oh!
John Knox. Yes, John Knox.
I knew you would've...
The First Blast Of
The Trumpet Against
The "Monstrous", notice,
Regiment Of Women.
So, I've read that, and it's bad
that I couldn't remember
the Monstrous Regiment... It seems
like it's kind of the main part.
It seems like...
Actually, what it is
is a slight change in the language,
and "monstrous" doesn't mean
"monstrous" as we would say it -
it means unnatural. Mm.
And "regiment" doesn't mean
the whole load of them marching on,
these women -
it means "regime". Right.
And he was a Protestant,
and he was angry at the fact
there were two Catholic women
on the thrones...
Oh, of course... of England.
Who might they have been? Mary...
Which Mary?
They were both called Mary.
The Two Marys... The Two Marys.
Exactly.
This has now turned into a story
from the Bunty - The Two Marys.
There was our Mary, Bloody Mary.
Bloody Mary - Mary Tudor. Yeah.
The one who burned the Protestants.
And in Scotland,
it wasn't Mary Queen of Scots,
it was her regent,
who was Mary of Guise.
Cheery bunch. Yeah, a cheery bunch.
I feel like that's the same Mary
in different outfits. Yeah.
You know when they do, like, those
style challenges on This Morning
and it's before and after?
It is, isn't it?
"She used to just wear monochrome,
but look at her now!"
So, Knox, who was
a very keen Protestant,
didn't like these women
on the throne.
He was angry about it
and wrote this thing.
But on the subject
of Mary Queen of Scots,
do you remember who her husband was,
by any chance?
Darnley, his name was, her husband.
He was murdered.
He was actually blown up.
This is a very extraordinary story.
One of the presumed architects
of the explosion
was a fellow
called Archibald Douglas -
a pair of his shoes were found
at the scene of the crime.
"Where's your shoes, Archibald?"
"Oh!"
You've always got to take your shoes off
before a dynamiting. He got away with it.
But he later gave
an account of Mary's reaction.
So, this is Mary, her husband
has been blown up. Mm-hm.
"She sent for a number of
light ladies and women
"to come to Holyroodhouse
"and participate stark naked
in a ball."
"Then they had cut off
their pubic hair
"and had put it in puddings
to be eaten by the male guests,
"who were sick."
Is that what you do
when your husband's blown up?
Was she just trying to,
you know, like,
trying to get back to normal life?
"Let's just carry on as we were."
That's right.
"Get your pubes
and put them in that pie."
"It's what he would have wanted."
Actually, I think this might be
quite clever.
Probably, if your partner
is killed in a horrific way,
all anyone is ever going to
talk to you about is,
"Aw, what happened to your husband?"
But now, no -
"Why did you have that pube party?"
What? Why? Are you joking?
It's all the detail we have.
"Two things, Mary - number one,
condolences. Number two..."
It's all the detail we have, sadly,
but the actual person who took
the rap for the murder -
he was hanged, drawn and quartered
on the basis that he was the one
who discovered the scene,
which seems a bit unfair -
his name was William Blackadder.
Oh...
It's true.
Oh, stop it. Don't.
There you are.
The Monstrous Regiment Of Women
was just a couple of Marys.
Which is nastier -
a Foetid Parachute
or a Hairy Nuts Disco?
OK... I'll tell you who doesn't
like a hairy nuts disco - Mary.
Exactly. It's so true.
Presumably, she has that
sort of in bowls...
You have hairy nuts
as a sort of amuse-bouche.
Basically that would be a party
with people just walking around,
going...
Making a PUBIC nuisance of yourself.
They ARE cocktails?
Are these cocktails?
They're not cocktails.
They look exactly as
if they would be...
In Japan, there is a disco where
the women don't wear underwear
and they are on a floor above,
and it's glass,
and they dance and the men
pay more to be underneath.
And I was telling my friend this
and she went,
"They couldn't do it with men cos it would
look like everyone was waving at you."
Isn't that romantic -
people like, "Oh... Don't worry."
"No, no, it's OK, carry on."
Foetid Parachute might be
a slight clue
inasmuch as the shape of
a parachute might be.
Oh! Oh, jellyfish! Jellyfish!
That's the one thing
it could've been... Mushrooms!
..the other one is mushrooms.
Yeah, these are fungi or fun-gee.
Extraordinary names for new species
that occur all the time,
and there are some incredible names.
Pink Disco - that's normal and nice.
Greasy Bracket...
"Punched him in the greasy bracket."
I don't know.
Powdery Piggyback.
Shall we play powdery piggyback?
White Brain, Jelly Ear,
Verdigris Navel,
Fragrant Funnel...
I'm sorry. I'm sorry!
Cinnamon Jellybaby, Witches' Butter,
Slimy Earth Tongue.
Alan Rickman's Fridge Gunk. Let's
just start making up mushroom names.
These are also all bands that have
had a John Peel session as well.
Hot Lips, Twisted Deceiver...
Barbara Cartland's Shoe Tree.
..Bog Cannon, Gassy Night...
I've had one of them.
..and the Hairy Nuts Disco.
So how often are they finding
new fungi?
Amazingly, amazingly.
Let me tell you a remarkable story.
This is in September 2014 -
not very long ago.
A couple of mycologists -
as they call fungus experts -
from Kew Gardens
analysed the DNA of a supermarket
packet of porcini mushrooms.
They found three species
unknown to science.
Perfectly edible...
Was there any horse in it?
The scientists named them in Latin
White Beef Liver, Delicious cattle
Liver Fungus and Edible.
Wow.
Do you know, the worst thing is
throughout that I was thinking,
"I wonder who's been to
Kew Gardens more - Sara or Alan?"
So in terms of fungi as a whole,
1,200 new species are added a year.
Wow. 1,200 a year?
Amazing, isn't it?
They may account for up to 25%
of the Earth's biomass. Wow.
So are they really adaptive?
Is that's what's happening? Very.
And can be aggressive -
that's why we've... Like moles!
We should get them in a fight. Yes!
Mushrooms versus moles!
They can be very aggressive.
Although they don't exactly move,
they do spread themselves
huge distances underground.
I still think I could beat one
in a fight.
Some would beat you in a fight
if you tried to EAT them. Yes...
which is how I fight.
Well, there you are, you see?
The Trichoderma fungus
bumps into another species
and grasps it with its hyphae,
its thin tubes,
and squeezes the food out of it.
So it basically takes
the food from another species.
"Meanwhile,
in the Swan Vesta reject room...!
Other fungi launch gas warfare -
the Sulphur Tuft
produces chemical agents...
Chemical warfare?!
Yeah. Against each other.
Oh, my God. Yeah.
Mushrooms are quite small.
They used to be huge.
They used to be the biggest kinds
of non-animal there were.
When trees and plants
were just three foot tall,
they were much, much bigger -
and much more phallic.
Really? Apparently.
Planet of the Cocks.
Anyway, if Frankenstein's
Monster came to dinner,
what would you give him to eat?
Electricity, I would give him.
Electricity? To keep him alive?
That's what he was brought
to life with,
so that's what I would feed him.
Just finger in the plug socket,
or...
Have you got an adaptor?
In the novel, Frankenstein,
Or The Modern Prometheus,
the Monster speaks and is
intelligent, and brave, and kind.
And also eats.
Who wrote it? Mary Shelley.
Mary Shelley, who was the wife of...
She was very, very young...
Percy. Percy Shelley.
..when she wrote it.
She was young. Percy Shelley
and she were two of the most
notable pioneering vegetarians.
Ahh.
And they wanted to express that
feeling in the creature,
in the Monster, as it's called.
A simple humble diet of carrots,
vegetables,
and gallons of laudanum.
So Frankenstein's Monster
didn't eat any meat?
He actually has
a speech in the novel,
"My food is not that of Man.
"I do not destroy the lamb
and the kid to glut my appetite.
"Acorns and berries accord me
sufficient nourishment."
Aw, that's amazing. He could do
better than acorns and berries.
He could have a quiche, for example.
It's weird to think of Frankenstein's Monster
having that in common with Piglet.
"I like haycorns."
But that's how we know he was such
a kind, empathetic character.
Because he lived with a bear.
I was talking
about Frankenstein's Monster.
When Shelley died... Do you know how
Shelley died? He was very young,
as Keats was. On a boat?
He died in Italy, didn't he?
On a boat, quite right.
I was right, yeah.
It sank, the Arial, and his friend,
Captain John Trelawny,
scoured the Italian coast
to find his body.
And when they burnt his body
at the cremation,
the heart seemed to stay whole,
and so Trelawny grabbed it,
pulled it out,
burned his hand terribly,
and gave the heart to Mary,
who kept it for 30 years.
Some people now think it was
probably the liver, not the heart,
and it...
Who knows? But it's rather touching.
Byron's liver would have
gone off like a bomb.
Right, yeah, Frankenstein's Monster
was a vegetarian, fair play to him.
Alan,
what horrors are under your bed
and how can you get rid of them?
Be honest with us. Share.
Don't over share,
but just share enough.
The Bogeyman,
everyone's always scared of.
The Bogeyman.
And how do you get rid of it?
Is there a way?
Er, fire. Burn him, smoke him out.
A futon.
Well, there is...
Yeah,
we have a divan base with drawers.
No Bogeyman.
The point is you can buy a spray
that you tell your child
will get rid of the Bogeyman.
Oh, really. Great, lies in a can.
So, yeah, you can get the spray.
And we've got some, I think it's
under there somewhere.
You can spray away the monsters.
Yours is...
Yes, that's the loud...
That's another way.
What if you like monsters?
If you like them, don't...
I'm not going to.
You like monsters?
I think I'm open to them.
I remember being a bit afraid of
what was down the bottom of the bed.
Indeed, and there are evolutionary
psychologists
who believe that the child's
resistance to bed
is actually very sensible
and is part of the in-built
thing of not wanting to sleep
alone in the dark where there are
genuine monsters,
animals and all kinds of things,
and it's been inherited.
But in Hungary, they have a monster
which is most peculiar.
It's called Rezfaszu bagoly,
though I'm sure it's not
pronounced like that.
But what it means, in English,
is "the copper-penised owl."
He is a giant owl...
I'm glad you've shown me his face.
He's a giant owl
and he has a copper penis,
and he'll get you...
When you say "copper penis"...
Yeah, I mean a penis made of copper.
Thank you.
Not a tiny policeman with balls.
That would be scary, though.
"Evenin', all."
The really scary part is he's
a threat to children, this creature.
Oh. That's the point.
This is what's disturbing,
is that the copper-penised owl
will get you if you don't do
what your mother tells you.
What does it mean, "get you"?
Oh, my gosh.
What sort of mother would say
that to a child?
If you don't behave,
the copper-penised owl
will come and get you.
Imagine that, you're lying in bed
at night and you hear...
Oh, my God, it's tarnished!
There is some research to show
that people who play
a lot of computer games
can sometimes develop the ability to
take control of their nightmares
and fight back within them.
Wow. Yeah, it's rather good,
isn't it?
Take it to the next level.
Take it to the next level.
Now, how do you keep
a blue man happy?
I once auditioned
for the Blue Man Group.
Did you? I auditioned for everything
that was in The Stage,
which is a newspaper
for out-of-work actors,
and I did not read that
advert properly.
And not only do you need to be a man
to be in the Blue Man Group,
but you also need to be over 6'5".
Seriously?
And I was in the queue thinking...
"I think I've got this."
"I'm really special amongst
all these people."
So is it...
What is the Blue Man Group?
Like that, completely painted blue.
They're a huge success,
enormous. There they are!
They started in New York. I didn't
get it, if anyone was wondering.
They have five running just
in the United States.
And whenever you're in any
city in the world, you see
a poster for the Blue Man Group.
Tourist fodder, because they're not
dependent on language. Exactly.
That's a very good point.
But these blue men are monsters
in the world that we're in.
Not the Smurfs, then.
These are the Blue Men of the Minch,
Between the north-west coast
of Scotland and the Hebrides.
And the Blue Men of Minch,
they're also known as Sea Kelpies.
Oooh. Ooh, he's a charmer.
Yeah, isn't he?
And they used to lure sea folk.
They're always luring,
aren't they, monsters?
It creates storms.
But they had a really unique line
in allowing you to be saved.
And that is they would shout out
two lines of poetry
and if you could shout back two
which rhymed, that pleased them,
they would let your ship go.
There was a young man from Dunoon...
Like an improv game.
That's right. We have one
example from Scottish mythology.
Perhaps you could supply the reply.
The chief of the Blue Men called out
thus to a ship's captain -
"My men are eager, my men are ready
To drag you below the waves."
"One's called Steve,
one called Zeddy..."
"The other three are all Daves."
Very pleasing!
I think they would have been insane
not to let you off with that.
In fact, the rather dull one that
saved the skippers of that ship
that was attacked was,
"My ship is speedy,
my ship is steady
If it sank,
it would wreck your caves."
Rubbish. I like to think that it was
like a proto version of The Voice.
They were all in chairs
the other way around
and they shouted the rhymes.
And, like, "Yeah, that rhymes."
If they just said to me,
"My men are eager, my men are ready
"To drag you below the waves",
I'd never have thought,
"They want me to rhyme with this."
I'd see that as a threat.
Maybe that's what hecklers have
been wanting all along.
What, a rhyme... Yeah, rhyme back.
The theory is they were blue
because they'd painted themselves.
And Latin for to paint is pictum,
as in picture and depict...
and... Picts.
Picts, exactly. They were Picts.
The Picts and the Scots.
There were Picts in woad,
possibly on kayaks,
who were aggressive and did indeed
colonise Scotland,
so maybe that's who they were.
"Angus, can you hear lions singing?"
"Sounds awfully nice."
Wellll, if you don't want to
sink in the Minch,
think of something that rhymes...
..at a pinch.
Um, yeah.
Ah, it's a cinch.
So, now it's time
to descend into the dark
and fetid nest of nasties
that is General Ignorance.
First, some real sea monsters.
Fingers on buzzers.
Why do great white sharks
bite people?
Yes?
It's to keep themselves in the news.
That's probably why.
It's so good and so true.
Is it cos they think
they're something else?
It's a pretty good answer, yes...
People say it's because
the shadow of a person,
especially if they're surfing,
looks like a seal.
No, you see, the thing is when...
They do eat seals,
but when they eat seals,
it's a frenzy, it's a torpedo -
they dive in,
and there's nothing left.
But when they attack people,
they just take a bite,
and they usually then go off.
So it's generally believed that
it's a kind of curiosity.
"What is this?" Oh, God.
So it's like at a party
with a vol-au-vent?
Yeah, basically.
They just think, "I'll just take
a little bit off it..."
Oh, no, no. "..and see if I like it,
see what it is."
That's generally believed by...
Going over to his mates going,
"Don't try that - it's horrible."
"Don't put it back on the tray.
Don't put it back on the tray.
"Put it over there."
"You've started it now."
Curious rather than predatory
is the way their behaviour is.
Wrap it in a napkin,
put it in your pocket.
If you're a human and
you lose half your leg,
you don't, obviously,
think of it like that. No, no.
But the point is if they wanted to kill you,
- they are such ferocious...
"I hope that's sated
your curiosity!"
So, yeah, sharks like to have
a nibble
before they decide whether or not
we're worth munching.
Who has the biggest face in America?
Oh, is it...
..one of Mount Rushmore?
Ah... Dang nabbit.
No, I said "one of".
Is it a clock?
No, it's not a clock.
Good, good... Very smart. OK.
Where's Mount Rushmore? Dakota.
South Dakota is right, yeah.
And this particular huge face
which is bigger by far than either
of the four Presidents there...
But you can get a point
for naming them.
Washington...
Washington... Lincoln...
and the other two.
McKinley, no? And...
Jefferson... Jefferson and...
..and Teddy Roosevelt. Oh! Oh! Oh!
Oh, we can all do that
at the end, Josh.
I knew all of them! Just on the...
Oh, Horniman Museum!
I'm not going to lie -
I was going to go Obama, so...
15 miles away from Mount Rushmore
is the biggest face in America.
15 miles? Which is an ongoing work,
also sculpting a face.
Oh, it's the Indian head thing.
Yes, it's the head of
a Lakota Sioux Indian chief
who was a hero to his people.
It's being done by one person who's
been doing it for about 20 years.
Ancient Polish guy - I've met him.
He's extraordinary, yeah.
It's going to be much, much bigger
than them, isn't it? Yes.
87 feet high, is the face.
And do you know the name of
the Indian brave?
He won, for his people, the battle,
of which was only a battle -
they lost the war...
Sitting Bull. Sitting Bull.
Crazy Horse.
Steve. ♪ Ow! ♪ "Steve!"
Crazy Horse.
There it is - there's the face.
Oh, he's beautiful.
He beat Custer in
the Battle of Little Bighorn.
Yeah, but they never found Roobarb.
Lordy, lord.
But if you go sideways on,
he's on his horse.
Look out,
there's a big Indian after you.
So, there's one guy who's done this?
Yeah. Amazing.
And he's still doing it.
That's why it's taking so long.
When did he start?
Do you have to buy the mountain
first, or do you just do it
on somebody else's?
Cos I'd be pretty angry
if that was in my garden.
You know,
the really impressive thing is
that he's done it with sandpaper.
Is he going to get to the end and then they're
going to realise he hasn't got planning permission?
"Put it all back, my friend."
"You have to rebuild
the original mountain as it was.
"We want it all back."
There you can see
how it should look. Oh, wow.
That's the real thing
in the background.
It's a noble endeavour,
but, goodness me,
it's taking him a long time.
I don't know if he's using dynamite,
cos that's what they used
in Mount Rushmore.
They used dynamite to
four inches' worth of accuracy.
Really?
You know, all the little features -
the nose and everything else.
Unbelievable.
It was going to be Lewis and Clark,
the explorers, you know,
who opened up the West, and it was going
to be Chief Red Cloud and Buffalo Bill,
but then they decided
it should be presidents
just to get on the right side
of politics, I suppose.
There's Buffalo Bill. Obviously,
Lewis and Clark on the right.
And you know what you do
after a good dynamite?
Pube party.
That must have been
the biggest pube party of all time.
It was massive.
Anyway, name the largest single
man-made structure on the planet.
Oh... Oh, yeah.
Not falling for that one.
No way. No way!
Is it going to be
a 50-mile long tunnel or a bridge
or something like that?
What we've got out of the way,
cos it's hanging here like a worry,
is it's not the Great Wall of China.
Oh, OK. Yeah.
Try a continent where it might be.
Europe. OK.
Europe is not where it is.
Asia. Australia.
Nor Asia, nor Australia.
North America. Nor North America.
South America. Nor South America.
Antarctica. Antarctica.
Nor Antarctica. Arctic.
Africa. Africa! Thank you.
Hey! Bloody hell, I'm glad...
I really, really hope Ban Ki-moon
isn't watching this.
"Africa! Africa!"
So, is it Egyptian? Is it North...?
It's Nigeria, in fact. Oh.
It's the Great Earthworks of Benin.
The Great Earthworks of Benin!
It's also called the Walls of Benin.
The Walls, of course, Benin!
Defensive earthworks...
The Earthen Walls of Benin in...
..dug by the Edo people.
10,000 miles in length. Miles of it.
10,000 miles... 10,000 miles?
..of defensive earthworks
by the Edos.
- 10,000 miles in length.
- How could I forget
Four times longer than
the Great Wall of China. OK.
Puny little wall.
Consumed 100 times more material
than the Great Pyramid of Cheops.
Took 700 years and an estimated
150 million hours of digging.
Severely damaged by...
..the British... when we sacked
and burned Benin in 1897.
Aren't the British brilliant?
"Yes. Well, they just wouldn't do
as they were told."
"There's only so much gentle
persuasion we've got time for.
"Sack and burn them.
Fuck the earthworks."
More or less exactly what happened.
And then we twisted the knife
by not remembering Africa existed.
What did they build it for?
Defences.
Keep out the British, I'd imagine.
Keep out the British!
Didn't work very well,
unfortunately.
"Here come the white folks.
Dig, dig!"
Of course, you could argue that
the Eurasian road network
is a bigger thing,
cos it covers Portugal
all the way to Siberia.
You can drive across the whole lot.
It's all connected by road.
You know...
So, who do we take this up with?
The Guinness Book Of Records?
Or do we go to Nigeria?
They'll go, "I think in fact
we got something bigger, actually."
And further twist the knife again.
The monstrous Walls of Benin
were the biggest thing ever built
until we monstrously
knocked them down.
All of which brings us
to the monstrous scores.
It's remarkable.
I'm going to start...
You've all done, may I say,
remarkably well.
In last place, with a score that
sometimes could be a winning score
of minus seven is Josh Widdicombe.
In third place, with minus two...
Ooh! It's Sara Pascoe.
No! Tell me it ain't so!
In second place, with plus five,
Alan Davies!
How close it was,
because the winner by a whisker
on six points is Phill Jupitus.
I don't understand it.
That's all from Sara, Phill,
Josh, Alan and me,
and I leave you with these words
from Andre Breton.
"The man who can't visualise
a horse galloping on a tomato
"is an idiot."
Thank you.
Good evening, good evening,
good evening, and welcome to QI,
where tonight we're doing
the Monster Mash.
Let's meet the nameless horrors
that lurk in our monstrous shadows.
The malformed Josh Widdicombe...
..the mutated Phill Jupitus...
..the misbegotten Sara Pascoe...
..and the complete monstrosity
Alan Davies.
Now, let's hear your scary noises.
Sarah goes...
Josh goes...
Phill goes...
And Alan goes...
Too terrible to contemplate.
Let's start with
a monster mix-and-match.
Here are some cards
you'll find under your desk.
The fronts and the backs. Oh!
And we want you
to see if you can make
some kind of monster -
and name it if you can.
Oh, right. Name it? Mm.
OK. You've got bottoms, Alan...
I'm a classic bottom.
I'm a classic top.
..and Josh has got tops.
What have you got there?
Alan Davies has got gorgeous legs.
Hey...
What you've created there
is a human.
I'd say it's borderline, Stephen.
Too terrible to contemplate. Yeah.
Here we go, here we go, all right...
You don't know what I've put,
then we'll look in a minute. OK.
Ooh. OK. There we go.
Ah, a lionfish.
Now, that's interesting,
cos the lionfish does exist.
Unlike the merlion
that we have created...
Ah, the merlion is a very good...
..which would sing on the rocks
by the coast of Africa
and lure deer to their deaths.
Well, Alan, there you've got
an ant...
An ant cow.
Yeah, we've got the...
Basically, what you've got there is
an ungulate that will ruin a picnic.
Well, we can go through
some of these.
Certainly a lionfish exists. OK.
There's a bounty on them,
if you catch them in the Caribbean.
They destroy the habitat -
they're so successful
there's almost nothing that can get
them, and they can eat everything.
Try making one to order.
See if you can make a Minotaur. OK.
Minotaur... Oh, Minotaur...
So, it's... Bull's head.
Bull's head's on there.
Chap's bottom, isn't it? A Minotaur.
Yeah. Rather than a lion?
There we go.
No-one's quite sure whether
it should have...
the human top with
a bull's bottom, but...
We've made a Minotaur.
Oh, yeah. He looks really muscly.
That's not as scary
as I thought it was going to be.
I'm going to say
pop your cards away. Oh.
I've just made a mermaid, Stephen.
You've done a lovely mermaid -
well done.
That's definitely one
that was available.
There are all kinds
of things available -
the myrmecoleon, which is also known
as a formicaleon.
This is a lion head and
an ant body. What?!
In medieval bestiaries, they
were very sure that that existed.
They held it to be bigger
than an ant.
Basically, it lived in a little pit
and pulled in things.
How big was it?
A bit like a large ant.
Oh, like a large ant.
I feel like someone who had a very
low pain threshold is the person
who was like, "No, promise you, it was a
lion what bit me but it was very small.
"It came out of a tiny hole."
Yeah, well, they do exist, antlions.
Americans call them doodlebugs.
They live in a pit and they pull in
anything that falls in. Wow!
Mermaids and mermen, obviously,
are the human body with a fish tail.
People think, you know,
sailors fall in love with mermaids
and how can they consummate
their relationship? You know...
Fertilise the eggs, Stephen.
Exactly, it's very simple.
She lays her eggs on a rock
or something
and you fertilise them -
what's the problem with that?
The sailor has to sail back to
his waters where he was spawned
and take the mermaid with him.
So, he has to go back to,
I don't know, Dorking...
Yes, that it might be.
..find a pond,
pop his new fishwife in there.
Fishwife!
She lays her eggs
and then he has to be arrested
for indecent public exposure
at a boating pond.
And one that you get points for
because it does exist, is the merlion.
Yeah, which you came up with -
a merlion -
which is the lion head and
a fish tail. Yeah. Really?
Yeah, the national symbol
of Singapore.
Is it? Oh... thank you, Singapore.
Yeah. They give you those points.
The hippocampus.
Hippopotamus.
Thank you for replying
with another animal.
You're doing very well.
Hip-po replacement.
But... hippocampus is...
The hipster campus is, it's...
runs coffee bars in Shoreditch...
..in a very effeminate way.
Well, as you probably know,
it's part of the brain,
the hippocampus,
but why is it called
the hippocampus?
The shape of it. Is...?
It's the shape of a seahorse.
But a hippocampus,
as a mythical beast,
had a horse front
and a fish tail. Oh...
And so did they think that
before they found the seahorse
or they thought there were
two separate seahorses?
No, there are seahorses in
the Mediterranean, so I suppose...
Let's find out sometime - not now.
That is surely the opposite of
what this show is about.
I panicked, all right?
I just panicked.
People love seahorses because
it's the male who gestates the
babies, isn't it, with seahorses?
Which is always so lovely.
I've dived amongst them and I was
just shocked by how small they are.
You must have...
They are tiny. Well, I've seen them
in the London Aquariums. Oh, right.
They have a very long thin tank
that they go up and down -
it's quite sweet.
I assume that's
what they want to do,
otherwise it feels a bit unfair.
Would be cruel.
They have to just go up and down.
They're very horse-like as well
in the way they feed... They race.
..they browse in the weeds.
They browse in the weeds, looking...
They have little stalls
and they all get in.
At the races.
There's always one that doesn't want
to go and they have to take him off.
So, no matter what monster
you imagine,
you can be pretty sure that
someone else made it first.
Here's a monster that someone
made earlier,
but what is it and
what's it made from?
Oh.... Oh, my gosh.
Is it carved? Mm...
Is it made from bone?
It's a type of mermaid that was
very popular in the 19th century.
It's called a Fiji mermaid. Ooh...
People would come from miles
to see it.
It was shown off at carnivals,
and it was made from fish
and household bits and pieces.
For a long time,
people thought it was made by
the addition of a monkey's head
with a fish.
And this particular one was acquired
by the Wellcome Collection in 1919,
and then later by the fabulous
Horniman Museum.
Do you know the Horniman Museum?
Yeah, I live near there.
Do you? It's in Forest Hill.
It's brilliant, yeah.
It is an incredible place.
A genuine museum of curiosities
of the most fascinating kind.
I've been there too - it's great.
It is good. It's a fine place.
You just saying that
cos I said I've been there?
I go every week. Largely, yeah.
Cos when you said you went to
the aquarium, I didn't jump on it.
Like, "Oh, yeah, I've been."
I let you have your time in the sun.
"Time in the sun."
When you say household bits and
pieces... Yeah.
..what, like...
..sticky-backed plastic?
Well... Fairy liquid bottle?
You'd be surprised to know that
recent CT scans
and DNA tests have been done
on this fellow, and they revealed
that no monkeys were harmed
in its making,
but it is a fish and the rest
is made from
fabric of a wooden frame
supporting a papier mache head
with a fish's jaw. Wow.
So, kind of household. Papier mache
is usually bits of newspaper
or paper, isn't it, mashed up?
Oh, wow!
There we go.
Now, look. You see, now...
So, were they
supposed to be scary creatures?
It is quite scary.
You can picture it scampering
in your bedroom or something.
They were a lot sexier once they
added the hair and the shell bras.
Exactly. But you'll be pleased
to know that
this is a result of the CT scans,
which were made by
the Horniman Museum for us,
and Dr James Moffatt
of St George's University in London
translated the CT scan data into
this 3-D printing
of the original. Wow!
So, this is a 3-D printing.
Isn't it good? Yeah!
Yeah, we like that.
And you can see how detailed it is.
Even the little holes and flaws
in the fish tail.
Have you been to
St George's Hospital?
It's really excellent.
Now...
I'm not going to play this game.
Ergh! Ergh!
I genuinely jumped.
You've seen them on Dartmoor,
haven't you, Widdicombe?
What are your monsters called?
We've got... On Dartmoor? Yeah.
We've got the Hairy Hand.
Are you aware of the Hairy Hand?
Which is a... No.
You get it
when you're about 15.
The Hairy Hand is a disembodied hand
that would appear from nowhere
if you were driving along
the B3021... Pissed.
..and it would steer you
off the road.
But there's... "Officer!" "Officer!"
"And it smelt of cider, didn't it?"
"It dropped its pint on me,
and then it drove me off the road."
One of the people that claimed
he'd been steered off the road
by the Hairy Hand,
he described it as invisible.
Oh, bless him for trying.
There's the old curse about
the Monkey Wishing Hand,
which it seems is
where that's coming from. Oh, yeah.
What's that? What's that?
It's a dead one of those.
What's that? What's that?
What's that? What's that?
It's a herd of those.
I've got loads of them.
Now, the Horniman Museum,
which gave us access to the original
of this...
Probably went there before Sara.
..it was all arranged by a man who's
in the audience tonight
from the Horniman Museum,
and it's Paolo Viscardi.
Can you give us a wave?
There you are.
Thank you very much, Paolo.
Grazie.
Who do you recognise more,
me or Alan?
Who's been more often? Yeah.
So, Jenny.
Do you know about Jenny Haniver?
No. Jenny Agutter.
Jenny Agutter you know about?
That's good.
Let me add another Jenny
to your list of Jennys.
Let's see some pictures
of Jenny Haniver.
Was she on the front of a boat?
Whoa. Oh!
Lord, that's Doctor Who.
That's a box of props
from Doctor Who.
It does look like it, doesn't it?
It's the Ku Klux Klams.
Can you guess what they are?
You burn one cross...
Fish. They're fish.
They are flatfish.
They're skates. Skate. Oh, skate.
Rays or skates would be carved
in these shapes -
it was known as Jenny Hanivers.
Mostly sailors from Antwerp
who seemed to do this -
it was their specialist art.
Other sailors did scrimshaw,
you know,
and they did Jenny Haniver.
Very odd, but they exist,
and you can see that they exist,
because they're there in a box.
Discarded, unwanted.
The ones in the middle that look
like they're wearing glasses
are the best ones. They are.
If they started singing,
you'd shit yourself.
♪ Doo-doo doo-doo dum... ♪
Now, describe the mammoth
moles of Siberia.
They're huge and they live
underground. Right... Yeah. Next.
Consider the word mammoth. Woolly.
Mammoth. Where is it from?
What language might it be from?
Welsh. Russian?
No, but it's that... Almost...
Cornish? Is it kind of Celtic?
Baltic/Nordic. They consider
themselves Nordic people.
Norway.
They really, really ARE Nordic.
These people, most people wouldn't
think of them immediately as Nordic.
They'd think of them as Baltic.
Latvia, Estonia... Yeah, Estonia.
Is it? OK. The wonderful country
of Estonia. I've never been there.
Sara, have you?
I've got a lifetime membership card.
I can go for free as many
times as I like.
Lovely gardens.
Well, they have a language
that is very
separate from the languages
of their neighbours.
It's Finno-Ugric. It's related to
Finnish and Hungarian.
And the word "mammoth" is one of the
theirs and it means "earth mole".
Does it?
It means "earth mole".
And the reason is that
it was thought...
When mammoths were discovered
they were always underground,
and they thought they lived
underground and were killed
by breathing air by coming up
and maybe that's what killed them.
And so that's why
they got the name mammoth.
But when were the last mammoths,
do you think, in thousands of years?
1940s. Very cold. 1940s!
200,000 years ago. 10,000 years ago.
I would say three million years ago.
It's more recent than you might
think. It's 4,000 years ago.
Really? There was a herd of them
in... Essex.
..Wrangel Island in the Arctic.
So when they were there in a herd
the Great Pyramid of Cheops
was already 1,000 years old.
So it was civilisation?
So they overlapped with man,
very much so, yeah. Wow.
But there is a company called Revive
and Restore
that is looking to
re-introduce mammoths.
They think they can take some genes,
do some gene juggling with Asian
elephants and create a mammoth.
It's a very extraordinary thought.
Aw! Bless. Asian elephants with
the small ears.
Yes, just before
they have their genes juggled.
"Aw! Come into the lab now. I've
just got to cut your ovaries open."
It's genome editing
is what they call it.
We're hoping they would need
to live in the tundra
and one of the reasons we hope
that is that they'll reintroduce
certain grasses, the way they eat
and the way they move.
They move the seeds around.
Yeah, and the permafrost there where
they used to roam is really,
really beneficial to
the environment.
It contains two to three times as much
carbon as the world's rainforests.
That would be amazing. Yeah.
That could be good aside from the fact it
would be delightful to think of them anyway.
If they're free and out on
the tundra that's amazing.
I thought they would just be breeding
them to put them in captivity,
so we could go, "Oh, you're back."
They're going to put them in one of
those tubes like the London Aquarium.
They could swim up and down.
No, there's a man called Sergey
Zimov who has created
an experimental preserve in Siberia
that he's called Pleistocene Park.
Wow. So could you do that with
other...?
Is it possible that this will
become a thing that will happen?
T Rex. I guess it is, yeah.
I think it's a question of when
rather than if.
I think it would be a foolish person
to say it could never happen.
If there's human will behind it,
and it's not illegal,
and it's not...
Maybe not velociraptors.
No, we've got a warning there
cos you see what they do in
a kitchen. Yeah.
Less bother in a kitchen than
Gordon Ramsay. Well, that's true.
Do you reckon in 4,000 years they'll
be trying to recreate Gordon Ramsay?
- Wow!
- For a dare.
- They'll think...
- Imagine herds of them
sweeping across. Hear their cry.
"Fuck!"
"Why don't you grow some balls?"
"What's this? It's a stupid person
sandwich."
Lawks!
Now, what kind of animal does
this skull belong to?
Toothy. Well... He's very toothy.
..looks dinosaur-y to me.
Well, you can certainly tell
that it's not herbivore,
it's not vegetarian, can't you?
Is it... a killer rabbit?
Sabre-toothed tiger?
Is it a sabre-toothed tiger?
No, it's a bit smaller than that.
Is it a tiny mouse?
It's a little bit bigger than that.
It's a species we've mentioned
already...
Is it a mole? It's a mole!
A mole! Is it?
That's a mole. Well done.
Well done.
The species, not surprisingly, is
called the star-nosed mole, and...
It looks like that guy from
Futurama, doesn't it?
It does. Zoidberg. Zoidberg. Yeah.
Well, when you look like Zoidberg...
It's a wonderful mole.
They live underground, and we don't
have much to do with them,
but they're equipped
with special powers.
For example,
they can smell in stereo,
so they can tell when something
is coming, from which direction.
So they'd be very useful in a lift,
wouldn't they?
They'd be able to say,
"It was you. It was you.
"Don't lie - it was you."
And they have toxins
with which they paralyse
and stun the worms that they eat.
Why would they want to do that
if they've got the worm anyway?
So they can eat it later.
So they can eat it later.
So they find it and go...
They have larders.
.. "tasty, but lunchtime."
Exactly. Deferred pleasure.
Pop it in their larder. Eurgh...
But they're...
That's amazing. PHILL: Christ!
Yeah. They need a lot of sustenance
because they do a lot of work.
They do extraordinary tunnelling.
They can dig 150 feet
of new tunnels a day.
Now, given their size and weight
that is the equivalent of a human
moving four tonnes -
about 1,000 shovel loads -
every 20 minutes.
Why didn't we get them
to do the Channel Tunnel?
It would've been amazing - and cute.
Yeah, about 400 of them -
Crossrail, done in a fortnight.
We're missing something. Huh?
They're very territorial
and solitary, though,
and the females mate...
and as soon as they've mated, germinated,
ovulated, whatever things females do,
erm...
It's complicated!
It's complicated.
Once they've done that,
their gonads then put out
enormous quantities of testosterone,
so that they become very aggressive
and territorial. That's amazing.
And they then go back to a solitary life
like a male. So they become sort of male.
Did you know that hyenas...
female hyenas have penises... Yes.
..that they have to give birth
through.
Ooh... Yes.
Oh, an audible gasp!
They're fake penises, though...
What ARE they laughing at?! They're not
real penises. They don't work like one.
So their body has to basically
put them to sleep to give birth,
they have to release so many
relaxants to be able to do it. Oh...
I know. Incredible. Isn't that
amazing, though? Yeah. Phenomenal.
Anyway, now, name all the members
of the Monstrous Regiment of Women.
Beryl?
Linda... Jean.
..Shirley. Angry Sue.
She's the leader.
Have you heard of
The Monstrous Regiment Of Women?
The First Blast Of The Trumpet
Against The Monstrous... Oh!
John Knox. Yes, John Knox.
I knew you would've...
The First Blast Of
The Trumpet Against
The "Monstrous", notice,
Regiment Of Women.
So, I've read that, and it's bad
that I couldn't remember
the Monstrous Regiment... It seems
like it's kind of the main part.
It seems like...
Actually, what it is
is a slight change in the language,
and "monstrous" doesn't mean
"monstrous" as we would say it -
it means unnatural. Mm.
And "regiment" doesn't mean
the whole load of them marching on,
these women -
it means "regime". Right.
And he was a Protestant,
and he was angry at the fact
there were two Catholic women
on the thrones...
Oh, of course... of England.
Who might they have been? Mary...
Which Mary?
They were both called Mary.
The Two Marys... The Two Marys.
Exactly.
This has now turned into a story
from the Bunty - The Two Marys.
There was our Mary, Bloody Mary.
Bloody Mary - Mary Tudor. Yeah.
The one who burned the Protestants.
And in Scotland,
it wasn't Mary Queen of Scots,
it was her regent,
who was Mary of Guise.
Cheery bunch. Yeah, a cheery bunch.
I feel like that's the same Mary
in different outfits. Yeah.
You know when they do, like, those
style challenges on This Morning
and it's before and after?
It is, isn't it?
"She used to just wear monochrome,
but look at her now!"
So, Knox, who was
a very keen Protestant,
didn't like these women
on the throne.
He was angry about it
and wrote this thing.
But on the subject
of Mary Queen of Scots,
do you remember who her husband was,
by any chance?
Darnley, his name was, her husband.
He was murdered.
He was actually blown up.
This is a very extraordinary story.
One of the presumed architects
of the explosion
was a fellow
called Archibald Douglas -
a pair of his shoes were found
at the scene of the crime.
"Where's your shoes, Archibald?"
"Oh!"
You've always got to take your shoes off
before a dynamiting. He got away with it.
But he later gave
an account of Mary's reaction.
So, this is Mary, her husband
has been blown up. Mm-hm.
"She sent for a number of
light ladies and women
"to come to Holyroodhouse
"and participate stark naked
in a ball."
"Then they had cut off
their pubic hair
"and had put it in puddings
to be eaten by the male guests,
"who were sick."
Is that what you do
when your husband's blown up?
Was she just trying to,
you know, like,
trying to get back to normal life?
"Let's just carry on as we were."
That's right.
"Get your pubes
and put them in that pie."
"It's what he would have wanted."
Actually, I think this might be
quite clever.
Probably, if your partner
is killed in a horrific way,
all anyone is ever going to
talk to you about is,
"Aw, what happened to your husband?"
But now, no -
"Why did you have that pube party?"
What? Why? Are you joking?
It's all the detail we have.
"Two things, Mary - number one,
condolences. Number two..."
It's all the detail we have, sadly,
but the actual person who took
the rap for the murder -
he was hanged, drawn and quartered
on the basis that he was the one
who discovered the scene,
which seems a bit unfair -
his name was William Blackadder.
Oh...
It's true.
Oh, stop it. Don't.
There you are.
The Monstrous Regiment Of Women
was just a couple of Marys.
Which is nastier -
a Foetid Parachute
or a Hairy Nuts Disco?
OK... I'll tell you who doesn't
like a hairy nuts disco - Mary.
Exactly. It's so true.
Presumably, she has that
sort of in bowls...
You have hairy nuts
as a sort of amuse-bouche.
Basically that would be a party
with people just walking around,
going...
Making a PUBIC nuisance of yourself.
They ARE cocktails?
Are these cocktails?
They're not cocktails.
They look exactly as
if they would be...
In Japan, there is a disco where
the women don't wear underwear
and they are on a floor above,
and it's glass,
and they dance and the men
pay more to be underneath.
And I was telling my friend this
and she went,
"They couldn't do it with men cos it would
look like everyone was waving at you."
Isn't that romantic -
people like, "Oh... Don't worry."
"No, no, it's OK, carry on."
Foetid Parachute might be
a slight clue
inasmuch as the shape of
a parachute might be.
Oh! Oh, jellyfish! Jellyfish!
That's the one thing
it could've been... Mushrooms!
..the other one is mushrooms.
Yeah, these are fungi or fun-gee.
Extraordinary names for new species
that occur all the time,
and there are some incredible names.
Pink Disco - that's normal and nice.
Greasy Bracket...
"Punched him in the greasy bracket."
I don't know.
Powdery Piggyback.
Shall we play powdery piggyback?
White Brain, Jelly Ear,
Verdigris Navel,
Fragrant Funnel...
I'm sorry. I'm sorry!
Cinnamon Jellybaby, Witches' Butter,
Slimy Earth Tongue.
Alan Rickman's Fridge Gunk. Let's
just start making up mushroom names.
These are also all bands that have
had a John Peel session as well.
Hot Lips, Twisted Deceiver...
Barbara Cartland's Shoe Tree.
..Bog Cannon, Gassy Night...
I've had one of them.
..and the Hairy Nuts Disco.
So how often are they finding
new fungi?
Amazingly, amazingly.
Let me tell you a remarkable story.
This is in September 2014 -
not very long ago.
A couple of mycologists -
as they call fungus experts -
from Kew Gardens
analysed the DNA of a supermarket
packet of porcini mushrooms.
They found three species
unknown to science.
Perfectly edible...
Was there any horse in it?
The scientists named them in Latin
White Beef Liver, Delicious cattle
Liver Fungus and Edible.
Wow.
Do you know, the worst thing is
throughout that I was thinking,
"I wonder who's been to
Kew Gardens more - Sara or Alan?"
So in terms of fungi as a whole,
1,200 new species are added a year.
Wow. 1,200 a year?
Amazing, isn't it?
They may account for up to 25%
of the Earth's biomass. Wow.
So are they really adaptive?
Is that's what's happening? Very.
And can be aggressive -
that's why we've... Like moles!
We should get them in a fight. Yes!
Mushrooms versus moles!
They can be very aggressive.
Although they don't exactly move,
they do spread themselves
huge distances underground.
I still think I could beat one
in a fight.
Some would beat you in a fight
if you tried to EAT them. Yes...
which is how I fight.
Well, there you are, you see?
The Trichoderma fungus
bumps into another species
and grasps it with its hyphae,
its thin tubes,
and squeezes the food out of it.
So it basically takes
the food from another species.
"Meanwhile,
in the Swan Vesta reject room...!
Other fungi launch gas warfare -
the Sulphur Tuft
produces chemical agents...
Chemical warfare?!
Yeah. Against each other.
Oh, my God. Yeah.
Mushrooms are quite small.
They used to be huge.
They used to be the biggest kinds
of non-animal there were.
When trees and plants
were just three foot tall,
they were much, much bigger -
and much more phallic.
Really? Apparently.
Planet of the Cocks.
Anyway, if Frankenstein's
Monster came to dinner,
what would you give him to eat?
Electricity, I would give him.
Electricity? To keep him alive?
That's what he was brought
to life with,
so that's what I would feed him.
Just finger in the plug socket,
or...
Have you got an adaptor?
In the novel, Frankenstein,
Or The Modern Prometheus,
the Monster speaks and is
intelligent, and brave, and kind.
And also eats.
Who wrote it? Mary Shelley.
Mary Shelley, who was the wife of...
She was very, very young...
Percy. Percy Shelley.
..when she wrote it.
She was young. Percy Shelley
and she were two of the most
notable pioneering vegetarians.
Ahh.
And they wanted to express that
feeling in the creature,
in the Monster, as it's called.
A simple humble diet of carrots,
vegetables,
and gallons of laudanum.
So Frankenstein's Monster
didn't eat any meat?
He actually has
a speech in the novel,
"My food is not that of Man.
"I do not destroy the lamb
and the kid to glut my appetite.
"Acorns and berries accord me
sufficient nourishment."
Aw, that's amazing. He could do
better than acorns and berries.
He could have a quiche, for example.
It's weird to think of Frankenstein's Monster
having that in common with Piglet.
"I like haycorns."
But that's how we know he was such
a kind, empathetic character.
Because he lived with a bear.
I was talking
about Frankenstein's Monster.
When Shelley died... Do you know how
Shelley died? He was very young,
as Keats was. On a boat?
He died in Italy, didn't he?
On a boat, quite right.
I was right, yeah.
It sank, the Arial, and his friend,
Captain John Trelawny,
scoured the Italian coast
to find his body.
And when they burnt his body
at the cremation,
the heart seemed to stay whole,
and so Trelawny grabbed it,
pulled it out,
burned his hand terribly,
and gave the heart to Mary,
who kept it for 30 years.
Some people now think it was
probably the liver, not the heart,
and it...
Who knows? But it's rather touching.
Byron's liver would have
gone off like a bomb.
Right, yeah, Frankenstein's Monster
was a vegetarian, fair play to him.
Alan,
what horrors are under your bed
and how can you get rid of them?
Be honest with us. Share.
Don't over share,
but just share enough.
The Bogeyman,
everyone's always scared of.
The Bogeyman.
And how do you get rid of it?
Is there a way?
Er, fire. Burn him, smoke him out.
A futon.
Well, there is...
Yeah,
we have a divan base with drawers.
No Bogeyman.
The point is you can buy a spray
that you tell your child
will get rid of the Bogeyman.
Oh, really. Great, lies in a can.
So, yeah, you can get the spray.
And we've got some, I think it's
under there somewhere.
You can spray away the monsters.
Yours is...
Yes, that's the loud...
That's another way.
What if you like monsters?
If you like them, don't...
I'm not going to.
You like monsters?
I think I'm open to them.
I remember being a bit afraid of
what was down the bottom of the bed.
Indeed, and there are evolutionary
psychologists
who believe that the child's
resistance to bed
is actually very sensible
and is part of the in-built
thing of not wanting to sleep
alone in the dark where there are
genuine monsters,
animals and all kinds of things,
and it's been inherited.
But in Hungary, they have a monster
which is most peculiar.
It's called Rezfaszu bagoly,
though I'm sure it's not
pronounced like that.
But what it means, in English,
is "the copper-penised owl."
He is a giant owl...
I'm glad you've shown me his face.
He's a giant owl
and he has a copper penis,
and he'll get you...
When you say "copper penis"...
Yeah, I mean a penis made of copper.
Thank you.
Not a tiny policeman with balls.
That would be scary, though.
"Evenin', all."
The really scary part is he's
a threat to children, this creature.
Oh. That's the point.
This is what's disturbing,
is that the copper-penised owl
will get you if you don't do
what your mother tells you.
What does it mean, "get you"?
Oh, my gosh.
What sort of mother would say
that to a child?
If you don't behave,
the copper-penised owl
will come and get you.
Imagine that, you're lying in bed
at night and you hear...
Oh, my God, it's tarnished!
There is some research to show
that people who play
a lot of computer games
can sometimes develop the ability to
take control of their nightmares
and fight back within them.
Wow. Yeah, it's rather good,
isn't it?
Take it to the next level.
Take it to the next level.
Now, how do you keep
a blue man happy?
I once auditioned
for the Blue Man Group.
Did you? I auditioned for everything
that was in The Stage,
which is a newspaper
for out-of-work actors,
and I did not read that
advert properly.
And not only do you need to be a man
to be in the Blue Man Group,
but you also need to be over 6'5".
Seriously?
And I was in the queue thinking...
"I think I've got this."
"I'm really special amongst
all these people."
So is it...
What is the Blue Man Group?
Like that, completely painted blue.
They're a huge success,
enormous. There they are!
They started in New York. I didn't
get it, if anyone was wondering.
They have five running just
in the United States.
And whenever you're in any
city in the world, you see
a poster for the Blue Man Group.
Tourist fodder, because they're not
dependent on language. Exactly.
That's a very good point.
But these blue men are monsters
in the world that we're in.
Not the Smurfs, then.
These are the Blue Men of the Minch,
Between the north-west coast
of Scotland and the Hebrides.
And the Blue Men of Minch,
they're also known as Sea Kelpies.
Oooh. Ooh, he's a charmer.
Yeah, isn't he?
And they used to lure sea folk.
They're always luring,
aren't they, monsters?
It creates storms.
But they had a really unique line
in allowing you to be saved.
And that is they would shout out
two lines of poetry
and if you could shout back two
which rhymed, that pleased them,
they would let your ship go.
There was a young man from Dunoon...
Like an improv game.
That's right. We have one
example from Scottish mythology.
Perhaps you could supply the reply.
The chief of the Blue Men called out
thus to a ship's captain -
"My men are eager, my men are ready
To drag you below the waves."
"One's called Steve,
one called Zeddy..."
"The other three are all Daves."
Very pleasing!
I think they would have been insane
not to let you off with that.
In fact, the rather dull one that
saved the skippers of that ship
that was attacked was,
"My ship is speedy,
my ship is steady
If it sank,
it would wreck your caves."
Rubbish. I like to think that it was
like a proto version of The Voice.
They were all in chairs
the other way around
and they shouted the rhymes.
And, like, "Yeah, that rhymes."
If they just said to me,
"My men are eager, my men are ready
"To drag you below the waves",
I'd never have thought,
"They want me to rhyme with this."
I'd see that as a threat.
Maybe that's what hecklers have
been wanting all along.
What, a rhyme... Yeah, rhyme back.
The theory is they were blue
because they'd painted themselves.
And Latin for to paint is pictum,
as in picture and depict...
and... Picts.
Picts, exactly. They were Picts.
The Picts and the Scots.
There were Picts in woad,
possibly on kayaks,
who were aggressive and did indeed
colonise Scotland,
so maybe that's who they were.
"Angus, can you hear lions singing?"
"Sounds awfully nice."
Wellll, if you don't want to
sink in the Minch,
think of something that rhymes...
..at a pinch.
Um, yeah.
Ah, it's a cinch.
So, now it's time
to descend into the dark
and fetid nest of nasties
that is General Ignorance.
First, some real sea monsters.
Fingers on buzzers.
Why do great white sharks
bite people?
Yes?
It's to keep themselves in the news.
That's probably why.
It's so good and so true.
Is it cos they think
they're something else?
It's a pretty good answer, yes...
People say it's because
the shadow of a person,
especially if they're surfing,
looks like a seal.
No, you see, the thing is when...
They do eat seals,
but when they eat seals,
it's a frenzy, it's a torpedo -
they dive in,
and there's nothing left.
But when they attack people,
they just take a bite,
and they usually then go off.
So it's generally believed that
it's a kind of curiosity.
"What is this?" Oh, God.
So it's like at a party
with a vol-au-vent?
Yeah, basically.
They just think, "I'll just take
a little bit off it..."
Oh, no, no. "..and see if I like it,
see what it is."
That's generally believed by...
Going over to his mates going,
"Don't try that - it's horrible."
"Don't put it back on the tray.
Don't put it back on the tray.
"Put it over there."
"You've started it now."
Curious rather than predatory
is the way their behaviour is.
Wrap it in a napkin,
put it in your pocket.
If you're a human and
you lose half your leg,
you don't, obviously,
think of it like that. No, no.
But the point is if they wanted to kill you,
- they are such ferocious...
"I hope that's sated
your curiosity!"
So, yeah, sharks like to have
a nibble
before they decide whether or not
we're worth munching.
Who has the biggest face in America?
Oh, is it...
..one of Mount Rushmore?
Ah... Dang nabbit.
No, I said "one of".
Is it a clock?
No, it's not a clock.
Good, good... Very smart. OK.
Where's Mount Rushmore? Dakota.
South Dakota is right, yeah.
And this particular huge face
which is bigger by far than either
of the four Presidents there...
But you can get a point
for naming them.
Washington...
Washington... Lincoln...
and the other two.
McKinley, no? And...
Jefferson... Jefferson and...
..and Teddy Roosevelt. Oh! Oh! Oh!
Oh, we can all do that
at the end, Josh.
I knew all of them! Just on the...
Oh, Horniman Museum!
I'm not going to lie -
I was going to go Obama, so...
15 miles away from Mount Rushmore
is the biggest face in America.
15 miles? Which is an ongoing work,
also sculpting a face.
Oh, it's the Indian head thing.
Yes, it's the head of
a Lakota Sioux Indian chief
who was a hero to his people.
It's being done by one person who's
been doing it for about 20 years.
Ancient Polish guy - I've met him.
He's extraordinary, yeah.
It's going to be much, much bigger
than them, isn't it? Yes.
87 feet high, is the face.
And do you know the name of
the Indian brave?
He won, for his people, the battle,
of which was only a battle -
they lost the war...
Sitting Bull. Sitting Bull.
Crazy Horse.
Steve. ♪ Ow! ♪ "Steve!"
Crazy Horse.
There it is - there's the face.
Oh, he's beautiful.
He beat Custer in
the Battle of Little Bighorn.
Yeah, but they never found Roobarb.
Lordy, lord.
But if you go sideways on,
he's on his horse.
Look out,
there's a big Indian after you.
So, there's one guy who's done this?
Yeah. Amazing.
And he's still doing it.
That's why it's taking so long.
When did he start?
Do you have to buy the mountain
first, or do you just do it
on somebody else's?
Cos I'd be pretty angry
if that was in my garden.
You know,
the really impressive thing is
that he's done it with sandpaper.
Is he going to get to the end and then they're
going to realise he hasn't got planning permission?
"Put it all back, my friend."
"You have to rebuild
the original mountain as it was.
"We want it all back."
There you can see
how it should look. Oh, wow.
That's the real thing
in the background.
It's a noble endeavour,
but, goodness me,
it's taking him a long time.
I don't know if he's using dynamite,
cos that's what they used
in Mount Rushmore.
They used dynamite to
four inches' worth of accuracy.
Really?
You know, all the little features -
the nose and everything else.
Unbelievable.
It was going to be Lewis and Clark,
the explorers, you know,
who opened up the West, and it was going
to be Chief Red Cloud and Buffalo Bill,
but then they decided
it should be presidents
just to get on the right side
of politics, I suppose.
There's Buffalo Bill. Obviously,
Lewis and Clark on the right.
And you know what you do
after a good dynamite?
Pube party.
That must have been
the biggest pube party of all time.
It was massive.
Anyway, name the largest single
man-made structure on the planet.
Oh... Oh, yeah.
Not falling for that one.
No way. No way!
Is it going to be
a 50-mile long tunnel or a bridge
or something like that?
What we've got out of the way,
cos it's hanging here like a worry,
is it's not the Great Wall of China.
Oh, OK. Yeah.
Try a continent where it might be.
Europe. OK.
Europe is not where it is.
Asia. Australia.
Nor Asia, nor Australia.
North America. Nor North America.
South America. Nor South America.
Antarctica. Antarctica.
Nor Antarctica. Arctic.
Africa. Africa! Thank you.
Hey! Bloody hell, I'm glad...
I really, really hope Ban Ki-moon
isn't watching this.
"Africa! Africa!"
So, is it Egyptian? Is it North...?
It's Nigeria, in fact. Oh.
It's the Great Earthworks of Benin.
The Great Earthworks of Benin!
It's also called the Walls of Benin.
The Walls, of course, Benin!
Defensive earthworks...
The Earthen Walls of Benin in...
..dug by the Edo people.
10,000 miles in length. Miles of it.
10,000 miles... 10,000 miles?
..of defensive earthworks
by the Edos.
- 10,000 miles in length.
- How could I forget
Four times longer than
the Great Wall of China. OK.
Puny little wall.
Consumed 100 times more material
than the Great Pyramid of Cheops.
Took 700 years and an estimated
150 million hours of digging.
Severely damaged by...
..the British... when we sacked
and burned Benin in 1897.
Aren't the British brilliant?
"Yes. Well, they just wouldn't do
as they were told."
"There's only so much gentle
persuasion we've got time for.
"Sack and burn them.
Fuck the earthworks."
More or less exactly what happened.
And then we twisted the knife
by not remembering Africa existed.
What did they build it for?
Defences.
Keep out the British, I'd imagine.
Keep out the British!
Didn't work very well,
unfortunately.
"Here come the white folks.
Dig, dig!"
Of course, you could argue that
the Eurasian road network
is a bigger thing,
cos it covers Portugal
all the way to Siberia.
You can drive across the whole lot.
It's all connected by road.
You know...
So, who do we take this up with?
The Guinness Book Of Records?
Or do we go to Nigeria?
They'll go, "I think in fact
we got something bigger, actually."
And further twist the knife again.
The monstrous Walls of Benin
were the biggest thing ever built
until we monstrously
knocked them down.
All of which brings us
to the monstrous scores.
It's remarkable.
I'm going to start...
You've all done, may I say,
remarkably well.
In last place, with a score that
sometimes could be a winning score
of minus seven is Josh Widdicombe.
In third place, with minus two...
Ooh! It's Sara Pascoe.
No! Tell me it ain't so!
In second place, with plus five,
Alan Davies!
How close it was,
because the winner by a whisker
on six points is Phill Jupitus.
I don't understand it.
That's all from Sara, Phill,
Josh, Alan and me,
and I leave you with these words
from Andre Breton.
"The man who can't visualise
a horse galloping on a tomato
"is an idiot."
Thank you.