QI (2003–…): Season 13, Episode 18 - QI VG: Part Two - full transcript
Good evening, good evening, good
evening, good evening, good evening.
Welcome to QI.
- Now, you mentioned the gluteus maximus.
- Yeah.
The ass muscles there.
This a true thing, right?
It is physically impossible for the
human buttocks to break an egg.
That is true.
That is absolutely, 100% true
and I've tried it and...
And... the beautiful thing...
- You mean put it in the crack, in the cleavage?
- As much as you want.
He's not allowed to work
in kitchens any more.
Yeah, if you put the egg between
the buttocks and it doesn't matter
how hard you squeeze,
impossible to crack the egg.
Now, here's the thing, I
know that to be true.
There might be people watching
this who question that,
- and I'd like to think all over the country...
- People are now.
Introducing eggs into the area...
"Is Noble lying or not?"
I mean, if you got somebody laying
there, you put an egg there,
if somebody else is there
to go like that...
- But then that's not the muscle doing it.
- Ah, OK, yeah.
- That's the point.
- You can't...
- It's the muscle. Can you by a twitch, pulling in?
- Exactly.
- I'm doing it now.
The problem would be...
"Oh! That Cadbury's Creme Egg is gone."
That's probably melting rather than...
I think the worry is that you do
it, the egg could go right up.
- Is that a worry?
- You see, that's interesting.
Now, what mania was started
by a few myopic Merseysiders?
But weirdly...
No, keep going... Does this buzzer
stop Jimmy speaking? Try again.
I was just going to say...
There's some support for it.
I find the buzzers really disconcerting.
It does feel like somebody's
about to get murdered.
'Oh, go to bed.'
'Mice!'
Myopic Merseysiders. Myopic's
short-sighted, is it?
- Yes, short-sighted.
- Partially sighted.
So what M could help you
with partial sightedness?
My glasses?
Yes.
Any particular type of ophthalmic
instrument that would help the...
- Monocle.
- Monocle is the right answer.
There we go. Very good.
Yeah.
I only knew that cos there happens
to be a monocle next to me.
It was a bit of a giveaway. There you are.
Pop them in.
It was a fashion thing that
seemed to sweep Liverpool...
I can't imagine it taking
off again, to be honest.
You do look very...
"George, me old pal."
Jimmy, you have never looked more
like a ventriloquist's doll.
He really did look like Lord Charles there.
I now feel slightly haunted.
The word meteorology comes from
the Greek for things high up
and in terms of high up,
they used to use frogs
for telling weather forecasts.
They built them little ladders
and put them in a jar.
They thought if they went up the
ladder, it was going to be fine.
If they went down the ladder,
it was going to be a bit wet.
You are getting an idea here.
Did frogs even know what ladders were?
- I don't think they had to know what they are.
- Did they just...?
- Instinct to climb.
- It could've been anything,
- it didn't have to be ladders?
- It didn't have to be.
"Where's the frog?" "It's halfway up."
"Well, which way is he
looking?" "He's looking down."
"Just say scattered showers.
Scattered showers."
- I think you're right.
- "Sunny spells, sunny spells.
"Just do a cloud with a bit
of the sun, half of the sun."
What if it was foggy. "He's got
an escalator, it's foggy."
Maybe he's just trying to get out the top.
He's trying to escape.
One day, the ladder is right up to the top
and the frog has fucked off.
Then what's going to happen?
He's left a note, "I have no idea
what the weather is going to be.
"I'm out of here."
There we have it.
- I'll tell you an interesting thing about Queen Victoria.
- Yeah.
When she died,
towards the end of her life...
- Go on.
- I feel guilty about telling you.
She won't find out.
She was wider than she was tall.
- Really?
- So?
No, tell us more about old...
She was 59 inches tall
and she was 66 inches wide.
- Wow.
- Bless her.
- Really?
- But wide or...?
- Well, in circumference.
- Yeah, I was going to say.
- Sorry, not wide.
Couldn't have possibly been...
No, sorry.
No, circumference. Yeah.
- I don't mean width.
- Here she comes!
All the way round was 66 inches.
- "We're going to have to knock through."
- Yeah.
Can't get through any of the doors.
And that's how the Victoria line starts...
She needs a pew of her own.
The Albert Hall was just
a cast of her body.
This is her bust size
I'm talking about. 66.
- 66 bust?
- Wow.
- Yeah.
- Crikey.
- Good lord.
- She was very short.
- Ooh, yeah, some loving there.
Alaska's state motto is
"North to the Future".
Don't know what that means, but it's...
There it is.
They all have mottos, these states,
and my favourite one is Kentucky.
Kentucky's known, really, for two things.
It's called...
- Fried chicken.
- Well, yeah, apart from that.
It's called the Bluegrass State,
but it's bourbon and the
Kentucky Derby, the race.
And somebody came up with a
two-word phrase for Kentucky
which encapsulates both those things,
which I think is rather brilliant.
Pissed horses.
That would do it.
No, it's Unbridled Spirit.
- Ah!
- Isn't that clever?
- Very good.
- Genuinely clever.
- Yeah.
No, that's great.
That absolutely shits
on North to the Future.
It does, doesn't it? It's got to be said.
Because if there's one place you
do not want to head north from,
it's Alaska
cos there's fuck all of the world there.
You want to go south.
- You want to see stuff...
- South to the Future.
- Yeah.
North to the Future, maybe
you'd say from Argentina.
- Yes.
- Alaska, South...
North in Denial of the Rest of Humanity.
- Head into the Snow and Die.
- North to the Massive Tundra.
- Yeah.
Wishful thinking, exactly.
But, in terms of anagrams...
This isn't an anagram,
it's actually a limerick
composed by someone,
- which I invite you to recite to me.
- Oh.
- Oh.
See if you can.
- Eh?
- Yes.
- Oh.
- That's a shock, isn't it?
- Yes.
- And you can do it.
- Can you?
- Yes, you can.
It is a limerick.
You have to ask yourself what
these numbers are, in fact.
- They have some other...
- A dozen and 12 dozen...
- Ah!
But 144 is also called a...?
A gross.
So, a dozen, a gross, a score
plus three times the square root of four.
SUSAN LAUGHS HYSTERICALLY Divided by seven.
You're all right. You're doing well.
That's five...
- Calm down. Do I have to slap you?
- Yes.
The episode of QI where
Stephen just slapped me.
- So, say it again as a limerick. You can do it now.
- Yes, yes.
- Go on.
- Go on, then, Susan.
- A dozen...
- A dozen...
- A dozen, a gross...
A dozen, a gross and a score...
Plus three times the square root of four.
Divided by seven plus five times
11 equals nine squared...
Plus not a bit more.
- There you are.
- Yeah!
- Well done.
Now, who would like to
see some milky magic?
Cos I want to show you...
Stranger danger!
I wish I hadn't put it like that.
If a man says this to
you in a park, say no.
Would you like to see my milky magic?
You know what I meant.
Would you like to see my milky magic?
OK. I've got some... Mm, yeah.
Mm, lovely milky things.
Stop saying it!
Well, now, because... Here we are.
Now, this is just a thing about milk -
- there's never enough, you always want more.
- Yeah. - But...
- Bear with me.
- Milky magic!
Here we have... here we have some milk.
Now, what I'd like you to do
is just transfer it along the way
from smaller to larger glasses,
as you can see.
And, well, this'll fill it
about halfway up, maybe.
Just checking the size, really.
Let's just see how much...
- Oh, well, that fills it up completely.
- Oh, that's weird.
That's all right, that's good,
because we've got more
than we started out with.
- and that's got to be a thing...
- Fast forward.
- ..with milk.
- We've got...
- No!
- What?!
- There we are.
- Oh, that's weird.
- Got to have that, haven't you?
- No!
- That makes sense.
And then see if we can get even more,
because what we're doing is earning
ourselves lots and lots of milk...
- Wow!
- Oh, man.
- ..which has good to be good, surely.
- There we are.
- Can you do this with wine?
- Here we are.
- Oh, no! You're Jesus!
- We've got even more.
That's it.
There. Do you like that?
After World War II, in America
they used surplus parachutes
to help repopulate beavers into the wild.
The idea was that they'd
shove them in a box.
They first thought, "We'll shove
them in a box, they'll fall,
"and they'll gnaw their
way out of the box."
This doesn't sound like sexy times to me.
"Shove them in a box."
They worried they'd eat through the
box while they were still in the air.
- Then they chucked them out of a plane?
- Yeah.
- To repopulate...?
- Yeah. Huge areas of wilderness.
- It's incredibly hard to get them out...
- Yes, makes total sense.
..give them their own territory.
Couldn't they have driven
them there, Stephen?
No, they... Wilderness,
huge areas of wilderness.
They're bigger than countries,
they're bigger than England...
- What, beavers?!
- No, the parks.
"Bring me some massive beavers."
In the parks in which
you wish to drop them.
And you want to sort of get
them disposed evenly around.
- Why have they been dying out?
- Oh, gosh...
- People have been throwing them out of planes.
- Yeah.
"If you don't fall out, you can
gnaw your way out of your crate."
You go, "Oh, thanks a lot.
"Well, this is the middle of f...
cking nowhere.
"I've got to go all the
way back to Ottawa."
Until another beaver lands on
your head at high velocity.
They had tried moving them into
new territories for them by mule,
and they just simply got too hot, and
they really didn't like it at all.
- They put a beaver on horseback, essentially?
- Yeah.
They've got to transport it somehow.
How would you transport...?
I don't understand why the beavers...
I don't understand any of this.
So they thought, "OK, there's no
way we can drop them into a park
"other than from the sky..."
Or by mule, which you found
also incomprehensible.
Is there a man with - or a lady
- with a beaver on horseback,
- or is it just a beaver on horseback?
- Well, no.
Of course there's a person.
I'm confused!
So, is it one beaver per mule?
Because, then, we're repopulating
the place with mules
as far as I can work out.
The beavers didn't want to stay.
The mules have forced the
beavers further along.
They're relying on the
mule to find its way back.
More complicated than you think,
this beaver transportation.
Yeah, it is.
Well, that was harder work than I expected.
Erm...
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 dynamite -
that's what I say.
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?
"First, let's just carry on as we were."
"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.
- Yeah.
"Why did you have that pube party?"
- "What? Why was it in...?"
- 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!
Meh!
It's true.
Oh, stop it. Don't.
Now, show me the symptoms of bicycle face.
- Bicycle face?
- Mm-hm.
That's with goggles.
No, these are wheels.
Oh, I see! Sorry. Of course they're wheels.
What is bicycle face? When you
get sucked off by your grifter?
Wow!
- Wow!
- I better go.
- Yes. No.
That's the right answer. That's
what I've got written on the card.
That's amazing.
On my card, in this universe,
on the other hand,
I've got something else.
The Literary Digest in 1895
warned women cyclists...
- Don't know why I'm looking at you.
- I'm a woman. That's OK.
You've identified me as a woman.
It's going to get worse,
I'm afraid, this thing is.
"Overexertion, the upright
position on the wheel
"and the unconscious effort
to maintain one's balance
"produces a wearied and
exhausted bicycle face."
- "No-one will marry you!"
- Yes!
"The main symptoms are a hard,
clenched jaw and bulging eyes..."
Wasn't sure where you were going to stop at
after "hard, clenched" there.
"as well as being flushed or pale."
- Either of those.
- Right.
- Yeah.
And, "Wearing a haggard,
anxious expression."
That's just the fear of
patriarchy - that's what that is.
"I'm under so much pressure."
Some doctors said that,
"Cycling would irritate the pelvic organs
"and stimulate women to disturbing lusts."
If you can't get it at home, you
get it on a bike, right, ladies?
Get your stimulated pelvic organs, right?
- Well, there's a downside, according to a French expert...
- Of course.
..who said, "It would
ruin the female organs
"of matrimonial necessity."
Now, Cariad, tell me, your organs
of matrimonial necessity...
- Excuse me? What are you asking me?
- I'm just hoping that...
"Hello, Wembley, we're the Female
Organs of Natural Necessity."
It's funny, cos the clitoris...
- I'm just going to draw a picture.
- La-la-la-la...
She said it! She said it! She said it!
I've drawn a rainbow,
everyone - it's all right.
Where's Sue Perkins when you need her?
The clitoris is actually
a very large organ...
Shush, Cariad!
..and... it's just literally
the tip of an iceberg.
When you say, "LITERALLY
the tip of an iceberg"...?
I knew I was looking for
it in the wrong place.
- There was an artist in New York...
- In the Arctic Ocean.
Yeah, an artist in New York?
..and she made, like, this,
obviously not to scale, clitoris,
and she got women to ride on it.
But it literally... it's huge.
It's like there's this bit
and then there's these two other
huge bits that are in the body...
- I was looking behind you.
- Yeah.
Behind me just here.
- Wow.
- It's way bigger.
But you have two, don't you?
It's one under each arm?
Have I... have I got this wrong?
- Alan, help me out.
- It's OK. I didn't bring mine with me today.
So to say it damages the
marital organs, is, again...
So, how much more of it
is there, then, going...?
Oh, my God. Guys, do we have to, like...?
Is this the bit where I tell you about...
explain it to you?
A woman, at some point in your life,
should've explained this
to you, but perhaps...
I've never seen such
fear in all your faces!
A man called Miura, who's
an aeronautical designer,
was doing solar panel foldings
and he came up with this way of doing it.
And you... all you have to
do is that, and it folds.
You just push the corners together.
- And it doesn't matter what...
- I bet...
What's more, it doesn't get,
it doesn't get... Sorry?
It wouldn't work if you gave it to me.
- Stephen, did you...?
- Well, I'll give you one.
The one that you've got
there, is that a map of Mars?
You've got one there.
And you just take the top
right and bottom left corners
or any other way.
- Is that, that way?
- It's so folded, it just does it by itself.
Take the corners and push them together.
JEREMY GASPS That's it! Jeremy, you did it.
- But this man is the greatest genius who ever lived.
- Isn't he?
I know. It's fantastic.
- Who is he?
- He's called Miura. He's a...
God.
Of course, what you don't realise,
he was trying to make a crane.
Koryo Miura, his name is,
and they are very handy.
I would've been so fucking pleased
if I'd invented that.
Well, there are other things
you can do with folding.
I've got some tissues here, and...
- Oh, what are we doing now?
- Oh, origami.
I'm going to give you each a tissue, right?
So, I'll pass...
There we are. Pass down. Oops.
- What are we doing with the tissue?
- What are we doing?
- I'll have one here.
- OK. So, what are we up to?
What you're trying to
do is scrunch it up...
- Oh, yeah. OK.
- ..like this in your hands.
You scrunch it up.
- And then...
- You stick it right up your bum.
- No.
You don't...
You try and think of an animal.
Then think of an animal.
I'm thinking of a swan or something.
- I've really scrunched mine up.
- Think of a swan.
You see? Like that. Can you see my swan?
- Do I have to think of a swan?
- There you are.
And we've heard the marsh warbler.
The monotonous lark is so-called
cos it's monotonous...
A monotonous lark.
"Come on, we're going
on a monotonous lark."
We're going on narrow
boat holiday in Norfolk.
- Hey!
- THAT is a monotonous lark.
I went on one of those.
"Oh, that'll be fun."
"Yeah, let's go on a narrow boat holiday,"
and everyone was taking
turns doing the engine.
Cut to a couple of hours later,
everyone downstairs drinking wine.
Me, upstairs...
..for three days! Three days!
There...
- Oh, golly.
- "Do you want a glass of wine, Bill?"
"No, no, I'm fine. I'm here, I'll be fine."
Worst weekend of my life.
It begins with M, this
particular life form.
- It got rid of all the oxygen...
- Mouse.
- Sorry?
- Mouse.
- It wasn't a mouse.
You've got the right consonants.
Consonants. All right.
M...m... m... m...
M and a S. M and a S.
It's wonderful how he's
coming on, isn't it?
- It's moss.
- Moss!
- Moss.
- Moss!
- Moss is the answer.
- Oh, how boring.
- Yeah, hard to believe. Moss.
- It was like a phage. It ate away at rocks...
- Right.
Hey, look, Cariad - there's an
iceberg like your clitoris.
You're learning!
I mean this, Alan, you can get more...
If you've just joined the show...
I can usually predict almost everything
that's going to be said on this show, but,
"There's an iceberg like your
clitoris," is a new one.
That's exactly what I was talking about.
Don't just work with what you see.
Now you've got to work
with more, underneath it.
- There's not moss on it, is there?
- Yes, mate. Keep the moss on.
What's wrong with you? Don't
want to look like a child.
- Wear your moss and be proud, ladies.
- You're right.
Interestingly, you only get moss
on the north side of a lady.
- That seems fair.
- Oh, Lord.
Depends how long she's
been at the bus stop.
I went on a bus once.
End of anecdote.
It wasn't a bus, it was a coach,
and it had a lavatory in the middle of it.
You know, you go down some stairs
into the bowels of the thing.
And the driver was a very,
very, very large man
who could barely get
behind the enormous wheel.
And he pulled the bus over,
and he prised himself out
from behind the wheel
and went down the aisle
- a bit of a squeeze -
went down the... stairs,
disappeared into this cupboard.
And we all waited.
Then when he came up, he said,
"No-one can use the toilet. It's full."
Charming!
And then he got behind
the wheel and drove off.
Where are most missionaries positioned?
GREGORIAN CHANTING Matt?
I'm going to guess that
most of them are in Utah,
where the Mormons tend
to kind of congregate,
because they haven't yet been
assigned their places to go to.
Interesting, interesting answer,
but I'm talking about which is the country
that receives the most incoming...
Well, I'm not talking about that.
No, no.
I'm talking about them before they've gone.
So, I'm not asking where the most
missionaries come from, I'm asking...
I know, but I am still
getting to that point.
This doesn't work by you answering
the question that I haven't asked.
- My guess is China.
- Yeah, it's a possibility. Well, it's not...
It is a possibility, but it's not a fact.
- Is it in Africa?
- It's not Africa, no.
- Is it England?
- No.
England's a much, much closer...
- South America?
- Not South America. Not SOUTH America.
- Central!
- North America?
- North!
- North America!
- America. United States.
- Really?
Well, I think you'll
find Utah is in America.
- Ooh!
- Yeah, impressive.
Ooh! Look.
It looks like a happy face
that's taken a lot of drugs.
- It does a bit, doesn't it?
- Yeah.
But what is it, Stephen?
Well, I just want to know
who first wrote the theorem
that this model demonstrates?
- Pythagoras.
- Pythagoras.
Oh!
My grandfather, who was from Hungary,
always pronounced it Peeta-goras.
"At school, doing the mathematics,
"are you studying Peeta-goras?"
And I thought this man, Peter Goras.
Who is Peter?
- No, it wasn't Peter Goras who first proved it.
- Ah.
What is it, the theorem that
needs to be discussed here?
A squared equals B squared plus C squared.
- Yeah. It's the...
- The sum of the two... the squared...
The sum of the two squares is equal
to the sum on the hypotenuse.
- You can see that.
- That big one should go into the other two.
So, you can see here, the
yellow, that's the triangle.
These are its two sides.
And these are the squares of the two sides.
They are literally geometrically
expressed as squares
rather than just mathematically
as if that was, say, X,
it's just not X squared, but
it's literally the square there.
Then there's Y squared
and it's supposedly equal to Z squared,
which is the longest side, the hypotenuse.
Cos here's the right angle. Here.
These are not right angles, obviously.
And... there's that...
How can we show they're equal?
Well, there are all kinds of
ways, but here's one way.
- Drumroll, please.
- Oh, yes.
All right, let's go.
Ooh!
Oh, that's very clever.
There it goes. Pouring
into the first square.
- Wow.
- Expensive.
- Is it going to fill it up?
- Oh! Well, it definitely equals X squared.
- Yes!
Does it equal Y squared as well?
I need to go to the toilet.
There's a Y squared. It's filling up.
It's filling up, it's filling up.
It's full. And there it is.
There it is.
Isn't that satisfactory?
Highly satisfactory.
Now time for a short interval.
Who wants an ice cream?
- There we are.
- Me, me, me, me. Pick me.
Yeah, go on. Take a couple.
We've got some leftover, of course.
- Wow.
- There you go.
- Johnny?
- Oh, yes, please. Thank you, my love.
I've got chocolate. I don't
really like chocolate.
I've got raisin. I don't like raisin.
- Do you want to swap?
- Yes. No, I'd like vanilla, please.
- Oh.
- Just swap.
- You can have another flavour.
- Yes!
- I've got strawberry.
- That'll do me.
- All right.
- Oh, you've already had a bit!
- Yes!
How else would I know I didn't like it?
Well, do what I did - just
sniff it and lick it.
Don't do that!
- People who sniff...
- Don't take a lump out.
You must have very warm hands
cos this is already melted.
I'm having a hot flush!
It's one of my superpowers!
- Mine's turned into a slushy!
- Yes!
You're going to a dinner party
and they've forgotten to get the
ice cream out of the freezer -
I just hold it against my neck...
and it's spoon-soft in seconds.
While there's barely any...
- Right...
- I don't want to do this in front of Stephen... - No.
..but the next time, we're
having ice cream. Just...
Don't have her on my team.
Do you have any HRT-flavoured ice cream?
- No, this is delicious. Thank you very much.
- Good.
This is what I think life would
be like in a nursing home.
Anyway...
- What flavour have you got?!
- Bingo!
- So what was the biggest nuisance in the Victorian theatre?
- I like peas!
- I've got a fly in mine.
- What was the biggest nuisance
- in the Victorian theatre?
- I've got to tell this.
- What was the biggest nuisance in the Victorian theatre?
- I've got to...
What was the biggest nuisance
in the Victorian theatre?
Please...
What was the biggest nuisance
in the Victorian theatre?!
Yes? Any thoughts?
Ice cream?
evening, good evening, good evening.
Welcome to QI.
- Now, you mentioned the gluteus maximus.
- Yeah.
The ass muscles there.
This a true thing, right?
It is physically impossible for the
human buttocks to break an egg.
That is true.
That is absolutely, 100% true
and I've tried it and...
And... the beautiful thing...
- You mean put it in the crack, in the cleavage?
- As much as you want.
He's not allowed to work
in kitchens any more.
Yeah, if you put the egg between
the buttocks and it doesn't matter
how hard you squeeze,
impossible to crack the egg.
Now, here's the thing, I
know that to be true.
There might be people watching
this who question that,
- and I'd like to think all over the country...
- People are now.
Introducing eggs into the area...
"Is Noble lying or not?"
I mean, if you got somebody laying
there, you put an egg there,
if somebody else is there
to go like that...
- But then that's not the muscle doing it.
- Ah, OK, yeah.
- That's the point.
- You can't...
- It's the muscle. Can you by a twitch, pulling in?
- Exactly.
- I'm doing it now.
The problem would be...
"Oh! That Cadbury's Creme Egg is gone."
That's probably melting rather than...
I think the worry is that you do
it, the egg could go right up.
- Is that a worry?
- You see, that's interesting.
Now, what mania was started
by a few myopic Merseysiders?
But weirdly...
No, keep going... Does this buzzer
stop Jimmy speaking? Try again.
I was just going to say...
There's some support for it.
I find the buzzers really disconcerting.
It does feel like somebody's
about to get murdered.
'Oh, go to bed.'
'Mice!'
Myopic Merseysiders. Myopic's
short-sighted, is it?
- Yes, short-sighted.
- Partially sighted.
So what M could help you
with partial sightedness?
My glasses?
Yes.
Any particular type of ophthalmic
instrument that would help the...
- Monocle.
- Monocle is the right answer.
There we go. Very good.
Yeah.
I only knew that cos there happens
to be a monocle next to me.
It was a bit of a giveaway. There you are.
Pop them in.
It was a fashion thing that
seemed to sweep Liverpool...
I can't imagine it taking
off again, to be honest.
You do look very...
"George, me old pal."
Jimmy, you have never looked more
like a ventriloquist's doll.
He really did look like Lord Charles there.
I now feel slightly haunted.
The word meteorology comes from
the Greek for things high up
and in terms of high up,
they used to use frogs
for telling weather forecasts.
They built them little ladders
and put them in a jar.
They thought if they went up the
ladder, it was going to be fine.
If they went down the ladder,
it was going to be a bit wet.
You are getting an idea here.
Did frogs even know what ladders were?
- I don't think they had to know what they are.
- Did they just...?
- Instinct to climb.
- It could've been anything,
- it didn't have to be ladders?
- It didn't have to be.
"Where's the frog?" "It's halfway up."
"Well, which way is he
looking?" "He's looking down."
"Just say scattered showers.
Scattered showers."
- I think you're right.
- "Sunny spells, sunny spells.
"Just do a cloud with a bit
of the sun, half of the sun."
What if it was foggy. "He's got
an escalator, it's foggy."
Maybe he's just trying to get out the top.
He's trying to escape.
One day, the ladder is right up to the top
and the frog has fucked off.
Then what's going to happen?
He's left a note, "I have no idea
what the weather is going to be.
"I'm out of here."
There we have it.
- I'll tell you an interesting thing about Queen Victoria.
- Yeah.
When she died,
towards the end of her life...
- Go on.
- I feel guilty about telling you.
She won't find out.
She was wider than she was tall.
- Really?
- So?
No, tell us more about old...
She was 59 inches tall
and she was 66 inches wide.
- Wow.
- Bless her.
- Really?
- But wide or...?
- Well, in circumference.
- Yeah, I was going to say.
- Sorry, not wide.
Couldn't have possibly been...
No, sorry.
No, circumference. Yeah.
- I don't mean width.
- Here she comes!
All the way round was 66 inches.
- "We're going to have to knock through."
- Yeah.
Can't get through any of the doors.
And that's how the Victoria line starts...
She needs a pew of her own.
The Albert Hall was just
a cast of her body.
This is her bust size
I'm talking about. 66.
- 66 bust?
- Wow.
- Yeah.
- Crikey.
- Good lord.
- She was very short.
- Ooh, yeah, some loving there.
Alaska's state motto is
"North to the Future".
Don't know what that means, but it's...
There it is.
They all have mottos, these states,
and my favourite one is Kentucky.
Kentucky's known, really, for two things.
It's called...
- Fried chicken.
- Well, yeah, apart from that.
It's called the Bluegrass State,
but it's bourbon and the
Kentucky Derby, the race.
And somebody came up with a
two-word phrase for Kentucky
which encapsulates both those things,
which I think is rather brilliant.
Pissed horses.
That would do it.
No, it's Unbridled Spirit.
- Ah!
- Isn't that clever?
- Very good.
- Genuinely clever.
- Yeah.
No, that's great.
That absolutely shits
on North to the Future.
It does, doesn't it? It's got to be said.
Because if there's one place you
do not want to head north from,
it's Alaska
cos there's fuck all of the world there.
You want to go south.
- You want to see stuff...
- South to the Future.
- Yeah.
North to the Future, maybe
you'd say from Argentina.
- Yes.
- Alaska, South...
North in Denial of the Rest of Humanity.
- Head into the Snow and Die.
- North to the Massive Tundra.
- Yeah.
Wishful thinking, exactly.
But, in terms of anagrams...
This isn't an anagram,
it's actually a limerick
composed by someone,
- which I invite you to recite to me.
- Oh.
- Oh.
See if you can.
- Eh?
- Yes.
- Oh.
- That's a shock, isn't it?
- Yes.
- And you can do it.
- Can you?
- Yes, you can.
It is a limerick.
You have to ask yourself what
these numbers are, in fact.
- They have some other...
- A dozen and 12 dozen...
- Ah!
But 144 is also called a...?
A gross.
So, a dozen, a gross, a score
plus three times the square root of four.
SUSAN LAUGHS HYSTERICALLY Divided by seven.
You're all right. You're doing well.
That's five...
- Calm down. Do I have to slap you?
- Yes.
The episode of QI where
Stephen just slapped me.
- So, say it again as a limerick. You can do it now.
- Yes, yes.
- Go on.
- Go on, then, Susan.
- A dozen...
- A dozen...
- A dozen, a gross...
A dozen, a gross and a score...
Plus three times the square root of four.
Divided by seven plus five times
11 equals nine squared...
Plus not a bit more.
- There you are.
- Yeah!
- Well done.
Now, who would like to
see some milky magic?
Cos I want to show you...
Stranger danger!
I wish I hadn't put it like that.
If a man says this to
you in a park, say no.
Would you like to see my milky magic?
You know what I meant.
Would you like to see my milky magic?
OK. I've got some... Mm, yeah.
Mm, lovely milky things.
Stop saying it!
Well, now, because... Here we are.
Now, this is just a thing about milk -
- there's never enough, you always want more.
- Yeah. - But...
- Bear with me.
- Milky magic!
Here we have... here we have some milk.
Now, what I'd like you to do
is just transfer it along the way
from smaller to larger glasses,
as you can see.
And, well, this'll fill it
about halfway up, maybe.
Just checking the size, really.
Let's just see how much...
- Oh, well, that fills it up completely.
- Oh, that's weird.
That's all right, that's good,
because we've got more
than we started out with.
- and that's got to be a thing...
- Fast forward.
- ..with milk.
- We've got...
- No!
- What?!
- There we are.
- Oh, that's weird.
- Got to have that, haven't you?
- No!
- That makes sense.
And then see if we can get even more,
because what we're doing is earning
ourselves lots and lots of milk...
- Wow!
- Oh, man.
- ..which has good to be good, surely.
- There we are.
- Can you do this with wine?
- Here we are.
- Oh, no! You're Jesus!
- We've got even more.
That's it.
There. Do you like that?
After World War II, in America
they used surplus parachutes
to help repopulate beavers into the wild.
The idea was that they'd
shove them in a box.
They first thought, "We'll shove
them in a box, they'll fall,
"and they'll gnaw their
way out of the box."
This doesn't sound like sexy times to me.
"Shove them in a box."
They worried they'd eat through the
box while they were still in the air.
- Then they chucked them out of a plane?
- Yeah.
- To repopulate...?
- Yeah. Huge areas of wilderness.
- It's incredibly hard to get them out...
- Yes, makes total sense.
..give them their own territory.
Couldn't they have driven
them there, Stephen?
No, they... Wilderness,
huge areas of wilderness.
They're bigger than countries,
they're bigger than England...
- What, beavers?!
- No, the parks.
"Bring me some massive beavers."
In the parks in which
you wish to drop them.
And you want to sort of get
them disposed evenly around.
- Why have they been dying out?
- Oh, gosh...
- People have been throwing them out of planes.
- Yeah.
"If you don't fall out, you can
gnaw your way out of your crate."
You go, "Oh, thanks a lot.
"Well, this is the middle of f...
cking nowhere.
"I've got to go all the
way back to Ottawa."
Until another beaver lands on
your head at high velocity.
They had tried moving them into
new territories for them by mule,
and they just simply got too hot, and
they really didn't like it at all.
- They put a beaver on horseback, essentially?
- Yeah.
They've got to transport it somehow.
How would you transport...?
I don't understand why the beavers...
I don't understand any of this.
So they thought, "OK, there's no
way we can drop them into a park
"other than from the sky..."
Or by mule, which you found
also incomprehensible.
Is there a man with - or a lady
- with a beaver on horseback,
- or is it just a beaver on horseback?
- Well, no.
Of course there's a person.
I'm confused!
So, is it one beaver per mule?
Because, then, we're repopulating
the place with mules
as far as I can work out.
The beavers didn't want to stay.
The mules have forced the
beavers further along.
They're relying on the
mule to find its way back.
More complicated than you think,
this beaver transportation.
Yeah, it is.
Well, that was harder work than I expected.
Erm...
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 dynamite -
that's what I say.
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?
"First, let's just carry on as we were."
"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.
- Yeah.
"Why did you have that pube party?"
- "What? Why was it in...?"
- 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!
Meh!
It's true.
Oh, stop it. Don't.
Now, show me the symptoms of bicycle face.
- Bicycle face?
- Mm-hm.
That's with goggles.
No, these are wheels.
Oh, I see! Sorry. Of course they're wheels.
What is bicycle face? When you
get sucked off by your grifter?
Wow!
- Wow!
- I better go.
- Yes. No.
That's the right answer. That's
what I've got written on the card.
That's amazing.
On my card, in this universe,
on the other hand,
I've got something else.
The Literary Digest in 1895
warned women cyclists...
- Don't know why I'm looking at you.
- I'm a woman. That's OK.
You've identified me as a woman.
It's going to get worse,
I'm afraid, this thing is.
"Overexertion, the upright
position on the wheel
"and the unconscious effort
to maintain one's balance
"produces a wearied and
exhausted bicycle face."
- "No-one will marry you!"
- Yes!
"The main symptoms are a hard,
clenched jaw and bulging eyes..."
Wasn't sure where you were going to stop at
after "hard, clenched" there.
"as well as being flushed or pale."
- Either of those.
- Right.
- Yeah.
And, "Wearing a haggard,
anxious expression."
That's just the fear of
patriarchy - that's what that is.
"I'm under so much pressure."
Some doctors said that,
"Cycling would irritate the pelvic organs
"and stimulate women to disturbing lusts."
If you can't get it at home, you
get it on a bike, right, ladies?
Get your stimulated pelvic organs, right?
- Well, there's a downside, according to a French expert...
- Of course.
..who said, "It would
ruin the female organs
"of matrimonial necessity."
Now, Cariad, tell me, your organs
of matrimonial necessity...
- Excuse me? What are you asking me?
- I'm just hoping that...
"Hello, Wembley, we're the Female
Organs of Natural Necessity."
It's funny, cos the clitoris...
- I'm just going to draw a picture.
- La-la-la-la...
She said it! She said it! She said it!
I've drawn a rainbow,
everyone - it's all right.
Where's Sue Perkins when you need her?
The clitoris is actually
a very large organ...
Shush, Cariad!
..and... it's just literally
the tip of an iceberg.
When you say, "LITERALLY
the tip of an iceberg"...?
I knew I was looking for
it in the wrong place.
- There was an artist in New York...
- In the Arctic Ocean.
Yeah, an artist in New York?
..and she made, like, this,
obviously not to scale, clitoris,
and she got women to ride on it.
But it literally... it's huge.
It's like there's this bit
and then there's these two other
huge bits that are in the body...
- I was looking behind you.
- Yeah.
Behind me just here.
- Wow.
- It's way bigger.
But you have two, don't you?
It's one under each arm?
Have I... have I got this wrong?
- Alan, help me out.
- It's OK. I didn't bring mine with me today.
So to say it damages the
marital organs, is, again...
So, how much more of it
is there, then, going...?
Oh, my God. Guys, do we have to, like...?
Is this the bit where I tell you about...
explain it to you?
A woman, at some point in your life,
should've explained this
to you, but perhaps...
I've never seen such
fear in all your faces!
A man called Miura, who's
an aeronautical designer,
was doing solar panel foldings
and he came up with this way of doing it.
And you... all you have to
do is that, and it folds.
You just push the corners together.
- And it doesn't matter what...
- I bet...
What's more, it doesn't get,
it doesn't get... Sorry?
It wouldn't work if you gave it to me.
- Stephen, did you...?
- Well, I'll give you one.
The one that you've got
there, is that a map of Mars?
You've got one there.
And you just take the top
right and bottom left corners
or any other way.
- Is that, that way?
- It's so folded, it just does it by itself.
Take the corners and push them together.
JEREMY GASPS That's it! Jeremy, you did it.
- But this man is the greatest genius who ever lived.
- Isn't he?
I know. It's fantastic.
- Who is he?
- He's called Miura. He's a...
God.
Of course, what you don't realise,
he was trying to make a crane.
Koryo Miura, his name is,
and they are very handy.
I would've been so fucking pleased
if I'd invented that.
Well, there are other things
you can do with folding.
I've got some tissues here, and...
- Oh, what are we doing now?
- Oh, origami.
I'm going to give you each a tissue, right?
So, I'll pass...
There we are. Pass down. Oops.
- What are we doing with the tissue?
- What are we doing?
- I'll have one here.
- OK. So, what are we up to?
What you're trying to
do is scrunch it up...
- Oh, yeah. OK.
- ..like this in your hands.
You scrunch it up.
- And then...
- You stick it right up your bum.
- No.
You don't...
You try and think of an animal.
Then think of an animal.
I'm thinking of a swan or something.
- I've really scrunched mine up.
- Think of a swan.
You see? Like that. Can you see my swan?
- Do I have to think of a swan?
- There you are.
And we've heard the marsh warbler.
The monotonous lark is so-called
cos it's monotonous...
A monotonous lark.
"Come on, we're going
on a monotonous lark."
We're going on narrow
boat holiday in Norfolk.
- Hey!
- THAT is a monotonous lark.
I went on one of those.
"Oh, that'll be fun."
"Yeah, let's go on a narrow boat holiday,"
and everyone was taking
turns doing the engine.
Cut to a couple of hours later,
everyone downstairs drinking wine.
Me, upstairs...
..for three days! Three days!
There...
- Oh, golly.
- "Do you want a glass of wine, Bill?"
"No, no, I'm fine. I'm here, I'll be fine."
Worst weekend of my life.
It begins with M, this
particular life form.
- It got rid of all the oxygen...
- Mouse.
- Sorry?
- Mouse.
- It wasn't a mouse.
You've got the right consonants.
Consonants. All right.
M...m... m... m...
M and a S. M and a S.
It's wonderful how he's
coming on, isn't it?
- It's moss.
- Moss!
- Moss.
- Moss!
- Moss is the answer.
- Oh, how boring.
- Yeah, hard to believe. Moss.
- It was like a phage. It ate away at rocks...
- Right.
Hey, look, Cariad - there's an
iceberg like your clitoris.
You're learning!
I mean this, Alan, you can get more...
If you've just joined the show...
I can usually predict almost everything
that's going to be said on this show, but,
"There's an iceberg like your
clitoris," is a new one.
That's exactly what I was talking about.
Don't just work with what you see.
Now you've got to work
with more, underneath it.
- There's not moss on it, is there?
- Yes, mate. Keep the moss on.
What's wrong with you? Don't
want to look like a child.
- Wear your moss and be proud, ladies.
- You're right.
Interestingly, you only get moss
on the north side of a lady.
- That seems fair.
- Oh, Lord.
Depends how long she's
been at the bus stop.
I went on a bus once.
End of anecdote.
It wasn't a bus, it was a coach,
and it had a lavatory in the middle of it.
You know, you go down some stairs
into the bowels of the thing.
And the driver was a very,
very, very large man
who could barely get
behind the enormous wheel.
And he pulled the bus over,
and he prised himself out
from behind the wheel
and went down the aisle
- a bit of a squeeze -
went down the... stairs,
disappeared into this cupboard.
And we all waited.
Then when he came up, he said,
"No-one can use the toilet. It's full."
Charming!
And then he got behind
the wheel and drove off.
Where are most missionaries positioned?
GREGORIAN CHANTING Matt?
I'm going to guess that
most of them are in Utah,
where the Mormons tend
to kind of congregate,
because they haven't yet been
assigned their places to go to.
Interesting, interesting answer,
but I'm talking about which is the country
that receives the most incoming...
Well, I'm not talking about that.
No, no.
I'm talking about them before they've gone.
So, I'm not asking where the most
missionaries come from, I'm asking...
I know, but I am still
getting to that point.
This doesn't work by you answering
the question that I haven't asked.
- My guess is China.
- Yeah, it's a possibility. Well, it's not...
It is a possibility, but it's not a fact.
- Is it in Africa?
- It's not Africa, no.
- Is it England?
- No.
England's a much, much closer...
- South America?
- Not South America. Not SOUTH America.
- Central!
- North America?
- North!
- North America!
- America. United States.
- Really?
Well, I think you'll
find Utah is in America.
- Ooh!
- Yeah, impressive.
Ooh! Look.
It looks like a happy face
that's taken a lot of drugs.
- It does a bit, doesn't it?
- Yeah.
But what is it, Stephen?
Well, I just want to know
who first wrote the theorem
that this model demonstrates?
- Pythagoras.
- Pythagoras.
Oh!
My grandfather, who was from Hungary,
always pronounced it Peeta-goras.
"At school, doing the mathematics,
"are you studying Peeta-goras?"
And I thought this man, Peter Goras.
Who is Peter?
- No, it wasn't Peter Goras who first proved it.
- Ah.
What is it, the theorem that
needs to be discussed here?
A squared equals B squared plus C squared.
- Yeah. It's the...
- The sum of the two... the squared...
The sum of the two squares is equal
to the sum on the hypotenuse.
- You can see that.
- That big one should go into the other two.
So, you can see here, the
yellow, that's the triangle.
These are its two sides.
And these are the squares of the two sides.
They are literally geometrically
expressed as squares
rather than just mathematically
as if that was, say, X,
it's just not X squared, but
it's literally the square there.
Then there's Y squared
and it's supposedly equal to Z squared,
which is the longest side, the hypotenuse.
Cos here's the right angle. Here.
These are not right angles, obviously.
And... there's that...
How can we show they're equal?
Well, there are all kinds of
ways, but here's one way.
- Drumroll, please.
- Oh, yes.
All right, let's go.
Ooh!
Oh, that's very clever.
There it goes. Pouring
into the first square.
- Wow.
- Expensive.
- Is it going to fill it up?
- Oh! Well, it definitely equals X squared.
- Yes!
Does it equal Y squared as well?
I need to go to the toilet.
There's a Y squared. It's filling up.
It's filling up, it's filling up.
It's full. And there it is.
There it is.
Isn't that satisfactory?
Highly satisfactory.
Now time for a short interval.
Who wants an ice cream?
- There we are.
- Me, me, me, me. Pick me.
Yeah, go on. Take a couple.
We've got some leftover, of course.
- Wow.
- There you go.
- Johnny?
- Oh, yes, please. Thank you, my love.
I've got chocolate. I don't
really like chocolate.
I've got raisin. I don't like raisin.
- Do you want to swap?
- Yes. No, I'd like vanilla, please.
- Oh.
- Just swap.
- You can have another flavour.
- Yes!
- I've got strawberry.
- That'll do me.
- All right.
- Oh, you've already had a bit!
- Yes!
How else would I know I didn't like it?
Well, do what I did - just
sniff it and lick it.
Don't do that!
- People who sniff...
- Don't take a lump out.
You must have very warm hands
cos this is already melted.
I'm having a hot flush!
It's one of my superpowers!
- Mine's turned into a slushy!
- Yes!
You're going to a dinner party
and they've forgotten to get the
ice cream out of the freezer -
I just hold it against my neck...
and it's spoon-soft in seconds.
While there's barely any...
- Right...
- I don't want to do this in front of Stephen... - No.
..but the next time, we're
having ice cream. Just...
Don't have her on my team.
Do you have any HRT-flavoured ice cream?
- No, this is delicious. Thank you very much.
- Good.
This is what I think life would
be like in a nursing home.
Anyway...
- What flavour have you got?!
- Bingo!
- So what was the biggest nuisance in the Victorian theatre?
- I like peas!
- I've got a fly in mine.
- What was the biggest nuisance
- in the Victorian theatre?
- I've got to tell this.
- What was the biggest nuisance in the Victorian theatre?
- I've got to...
What was the biggest nuisance
in the Victorian theatre?
Please...
What was the biggest nuisance
in the Victorian theatre?!
Yes? Any thoughts?
Ice cream?