QI (2003–…): Season 15, Episode 5 - Odorous and Odious - full transcript

Why is the world's second-smallest man so frustrated? will be among the topics as Sandi and Alan discuss all things Odorous and Odious with Sally Phillips, Nish Kumar and Ross Noble.

Good evening and welcome to QI,

where tonight we'll be suffering
all things odorous and odious -

and joining me
on our olfactory odyssey

are the fragrant Nish Kumar...

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

..the aromatic Sally Phillips...

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

..the musky Ross Noble...

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

..and...
SHE SNIFFS

..the unmistakable
essence of Alan Davies.



CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

And their buzzers are
particularly odorous. Sally goes...

♪ You've got to stop

♪ And smell the roses. ♪

Oh, I love that. Nish goes...

♪ Oh, I think I smell a rat

♪ Oh, I think I smell a rat. ♪

Oh, I wanted more of that.
Ross goes...

♪ I can smell it, baby

♪ Can you smell it too? ♪

Drinks half price. And Alan goes...

FART

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

Now... Even on a show as
high-brow as this... I know.



..that is still funny.

The whole show is about smell, OK,
so I've got these -

scratch-and-sniff stickers
that they often give out in schools

for good work.

So I've got strawberry,
lemon meringue and grape,

and if you do good work
and are particularly clever,

you could have a scratch-and-sniff
sticker, OK? Ooh!

So which would you want to go for -
strawberry, lemon or grape?

I've got a cold, I can't smell
anything at the moment,

so, really, I'm easy.

You're lucky cos you're next
to Ross - it's the best thing.

How dare you?!
These pants were fresh on last week.

I don't think, Sally... Can I just
say, no woman should ever say,

"I can't smell anything, I'm easy."
I don't think that's...

Every man's dream is
a woman with no sense of smell!

OK, let's start with some smells.

What scent should you wear
to attract a cougar?

Oooh!

Is it John Cougar Mellencamp?

Is that from...?

If you're camping... Yeah.
..and you're eating some melon,

and a cougar appears... Yes.

..you hear the music of the '80s.

LAUGHTER

I've really missed you, Ross.
LAUGHTER

There's a double meaning
at work here.

Ah, you know me well...
You see... Yes.

..the... the vampy older lady...
Yes. Bonjour... the cougar.

Hi. An excellent example.

You're calling Sally old?

I'm fine with that.
Easy, no sense of smell...

It's a hell of a Tinder profile.

Are you swiping left or right
at the moment, Nish?

100% left.

I don't even know
what I just asked you. Um...

Well, in 2003, the Wildlife
Conservation Society

tested a variety of scents to see
which ones big cats find attractive.

Wow! Now, why would they do this?

Was it too busy in the perfume
department of Boots? Yeah.

Cos the thing about those women,
you know in the make-up...

They're terrifying.
..they've got those faces... I know.

..and a wild cat can rip
at their face and have no effect.

That's how deep the make-up is.

No, what it is, you want
to lure the big cats in

towards camera traps for filming.

So they discovered that
there's a clear winner -

Calvin Klein's Obsession kept big
cats interested for 11 minutes.

Wow! Yeah.

By comparison, Nina Ricci's
L'air du Temps, ten minutes.

The effects of Revlon's Charlie -

15 and a half seconds.

And some mild blistering. Yeah!

I thought they attracted
wild cats with...

piss... of other wild cats.

Well, that's a hell of a night out.

Grrr!

How did you come to think this?

I thought that they made ointments

of the urine of other...

..of male...

Yeah, they do, but it's called Lynx.

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

Here's the thing - so, the smell
matters with wild animals.

In 2003, the Manitoba government,

they had a terrible issue
with polar bears,

and the issue was, there were
orphaned polar bears,

but the adult females did not want
to adopt them,

cos they could smell them and tell
it wasn't their baby,

so, they put them both to sleep

and then they rubbed the baby
all over with Vicks VapoRub

and then they put Vicks VapoRub
on the muzzle of the female,

and when she woke up, she sniffed
the cub that was next to her,

she thought it was her baby
and she adopted it, and that was...

AUDIENCE: Aww. I know!

And neither of them got a cold.

LAUGHTER

When you said
they put them to sleep...

Yeah... No... Oh!
LAUGHTER

So, there's a scientist
injects this thing,

there's a dead polar bear, they just
tied it to the leg of the mum,

and she just...

"I think we need to do
more research on this, lads."

"This mother is
not adopting this cub."

"Kill them both."

"Next."

"What about the Vicks VapoRub?"
"Don't be absurd."

Right, we're going
to play a game now.

Time to play On The Scent. Ooh.

SAMBA MUSIC

OK, I've got some descriptions
of perfumes,

and I want you to guess which
celebrity they come from, OK?

So, "Focused on the topic
of decisiveness and persistence",

"its composition is based
on sophisticated shades of spices"

"which are blended with citruses
over a masculine, elegant heart"

"and a woody, leathery base."

♪ Smell the roses... ♪

Is it David Beckham?

It is! What?! Wow!

APPLAUSE
Unbelievable.

Wait a minute...
It was the word "leathery." Yeah!

Grape, lemon or strawberry? I'll
have grape, please. There you go.

That was amazing. Thank you.
That's amazing, the way you did it.

Do you smell that and you go...

HE SNIFFS
.. "Beckham's coming"?

You have to smell it. There's
no point just putting it on you.

I can't smell anything -
I've told you, I've got a cold.

I never thought I'd say this to a
woman, just scratch it and sniff...

Ross can sniff it.

Sorry, do you just want to carry on
while we do this?!

He can't smell anything, either!

I have a terrible, terrible...
Look at me!

Terrible sense of smell.
That's why you're at the end.

So, it's called Beyond Forever.

I love it. By David Beckham.

OK, here's the next one. Ready?

"The perfect accessory
for the confident man"

"determined to make his mark with
passion, perseverance and drive."

"For those who aspire to create
their own empire"

"through personal achievement, this
dynamic scent is both compelling"

"and leaves a lasting impression."

"Bold notes..."

♪ ..smell it too... ♪
Ross?

Is it Rory Bremner?

Rory could probably do this person,
I would imagine.

Donald Trump.
FART

Yes! Yes!

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

I'm actually...

I'm very, very pleased
to actually have a...

FART
..a trump sound.

And it's called Empire
by Donald Trump.

You wanted lemon meringue,
didn't you? Lemon meringue, yeah.

You want them with sunglasses,
or without?

There you go. I gave you
sunglasses... Thank you so much.

..if that's OK. I'm going
to scratch quite hard. Right.

Are you getting lemon meringue?

LAUGHTER

Quite a lot on my finger.

No, hang on, that's not lemon...

Oh, you're doing
your own jokes there. "Eurgh!"

Right, last one. Uh... Ready?

"Bass notes on a leather, peat fire,
highland mud, burned rubber"

"and white truffle."

♪ ..smell a rat... ♪
Yes, Nish?

Is it Ross?!

They do call me
the Highland Truffle.

Because of that dance I invented.

Oh, yeah. Dressed as a pig
in a kilt.

Have you not got your own perfume
in the...?

I've released many scents...

..but... but not one
that people would pay for.

I quite like the idea of
a perfume called Noble Gas.

I think that's...

Oh, yeah. Yeah.

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

OK...

Although, I have to say... Yeah.
..that I think a lady's perfume

that had two-stroke mix...

That... That would just get me...

Oh, that does smell nice,
doesn't it? Isn't it?

Just that two... That what?
Two-stroke mix. Oil and petrol.

The stuff you put in lawnmowers.
It just...

I did once see Ann Summers

were releasing
lager-flavoured Booby Drops.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, hang on!
Are you serious?

Yeah. Make women smell like things
that men like,

like petrol, and...

Whoa, whoa, whoa, no, no, no.
..and lager.

I don't want just petrol.

It's a... It's a fine two-stroke mix.

Because if she dabs a bit of
two-stroke on,

I think, "Oh, it's beautiful,
it's..."

Do you want notes
of two-stroke? Yeah.

I'm going to carry on with this one.

"Heart notes are sharp and tempting
with cigar, heather, fir and rubber."

"Top notes complete the fragrance
with fresh, spiced notes"

"of bergamot, black pepper,
pine and whisky."

♪ ..smell it too... ♪

David Dickinson?

It would have to say "creosote"
if it was David Dickinson.

It's a boy...
Is it George Clooney?

No, it's the best name
for a perfume ever, I think.

It is Cumming
by Alan Cumming.

LAUGHTER

Right. Now, what will
the Apocalypse smell like?

Ooh...

Well, there's four horses,
so there's a start. Yeah.

A massive barbecue?
A barbecued horse.

Kind of. What other sort of smells
might you find?

Well, there's pestilence.
That's got to be a bit...

Pestilence is very bad. A touch
of... That's going to be odorous.

I can't imagine plague's going
to be a barrel of laughs, as well.

No, that's whiffy.

Well, here's the thing - there
is a perfume specifically designed

to smell like the Apocalypse.

What?! And I have it here.

Two artists, Jon Thomson and
Alison Craighead, they went through

the Book of Revelation
in the 1611 King James Bible

and they put together everything
that has a recognisable smell.

So it's blood, rocks of
the mountains, incense, wormwood,

rod of iron, creatures of the sea,
hail and fire, animal horns...

HE COUGHS VIOLENTLY

LAUGHTER

Augh! ..Flesh... brimstone.

Eurgh, it smells like racism!

That's a good name for a perfume -
"Racism".

So they passed this list to
an Edinburgh-based perfume maker,

Euan McCall,
and he turned it into a scent.

A reporter for
The Guardian newspaper had a sniff

and described it as "digestive".

What do you think it smells like?

Well, it smells... It smells
of the Apocalypse.

It tastes of...

GROANS

Weirdly, it tastes of Romford.

I think it smells of
Glow by Jennifer Lopez.

How do you have such an
encyclopaedic knowledge

of all celebrities' fragrances?
Very impressive!

Is it unpleasant?
I haven't actually smelled it.

I can't smell anything.

VOICE STRAINED: It gets right
to the back of your brain.

According to Anna Williams,

who's the associate professor
in forensic anthropology

at the University of Huddersfield,

the smell of death
is very, very complicated.

There's about 480 individual odours,

and, apparently, death,
to begin with, rather pleasant -

it smells of sort
of freshly-mown grass,

that sort of thing, leaf litter.

A few days later,
it smells of paint thinner -

so, it's not quite so bad.

Once decomposition sets in... Oh...

..we're getting towards
rotting cabbage.

Then old fish, vomit and eventually
sweet burning rubber.

That's just taken you through the
whole smell, there, of the thing.

That's like me
after a big night out.

I went for a walk, once,
with Caroline Quentin,

and we found a dead horse...

LAUGHTER

..and it was in a sort of a pit,
and it was...

Actually, I think it was a donkey -
and the stench was unbelievable.

It is, it's very high,
isn't it? Unbelievable.

Is this a real thing, or is this
an episode of Jonathan Creek?

Are you now starting to think
that scenes are real?

"And then - and then we were
in this windmill, right?"

"Hang on, no..."

The thing was, obviously
we were filming Jonathan Creek,

and then we were having
a break between scenes

and we stumbled upon
our own mystery. Yeah!

I think that was probably a real
life game of Buckaroo gone wrong.

I love Buckaroo! Not with
a real donkey, you don't. No.

I mean, it's all fun and games till
you put the chest on its back,

and then it snaps the spine,
RSPCA are called,

you have to drag it into a pit...

It's a nightmare. And then just as
you're covering it up,

bloody film crew turn up.

"This looks like
real life Buckaroo."

HE HUMS JONATHAN CREEK THEME

Trying to do an impression
of myself, then!

It's as bad as all my
other impressions.

I can't even do myself!

There are dead things
that smell nice.

Dead saints apparently
smell beautiful.

The odour of sanctity,
which is known as osmogenesia,

apparently, saints smell of lilies.

It's one of the ways
you know they're saints.

Padre Pio,
who was a famous Italian priest...

Oh! ..Who became a saint...

Who looks exactly the same
as Obi-Wan Kenobi.

He does look just like
Obi-Wan Kenobi! He...

Here's a tip for you, right?

If you're ever at a holy shrine
and there's a Padre Pio there,

he's got the white hair,
he's got the white beard,

he's got the long, brown robes...
Yeah... and he stands like this...

MIMICS ALEC GUINNESS: These are not
the droids you're looking for.

Save a fortune - half the price of
a Star Wars figure at Toys R Us,

give it to your kids. Yeah.
Save at Christmas.

You're welcome.
And smells of lilies.

Yeah. Anyway, there you are.

Now, who won
the battle of the smellies?

I know something where you have
to make yourself smelly -

Turkish wrestling.

Oh, yes? Is that the point of it?

They make themselves smelly
to be appalling to their opponent,

so they don't wash for days
and they...

Or maybe it isn't Turkish wrestling!

ROSS: Are you think...?
You're thinking of fencing, mate.

No, are you thinking of Turkish
delight? That's the opposite.

Is it big on Sky Sports?

No. No, it's not. OK, so we're
going to go to the 1950s.

What happened in entertainment
in the 1950s?

Television. Television happened.

Smell-O-Vision. Yeah,
the cinemas were worried,

because television
was becoming so huge,

and they thought
they needed a gimmick,

and so they began to pipe
smells into films

and there were two
different systems.

There was Smell-O-Vision
and there was AromaRama,

and they both released films within
a couple of weeks of each other,

and it became known as
the battle of the smellies.

And neither one of them
was hugely successful.

So, Smell-O-Vision
was delivered by a device

which was called the smell brain

that was kept under
the viewer's seat.

But the technology was...
Let's call it imperfect.

So, some aromas were delivered
with a bit of a delay,

so they didn't match the images,

which was quite bad.

Other smells made people nauseous,

and the delivery mechanism
apparently hissed really loudly,

so that interfered with the
viewers' enjoyment of the film.

And then there was AromaRama,

and that used the cinema's
air conditioning system

to deliver the smells from above,
also very unpopular.

There's a review in
the New York Times in 1959

that said that "when this viewer
emerged from the theatre",

"he happily filled his lungs"

"with that lovely fume-laden
New York ozone."

"It never has smelled so good."

And the American
singer-songwriter Melanie,

she released an album in 1972
called Garden In The City,

and it's got, you can see down here,

a scratch and sniff label
on the cover,

and the instruction said,

"Rub gently to release the magic
of Melanie's garden." You could...

LAUGHTER

I think we'll move on.

Like all wars,
the battle of the smellies

resulted in no winners,
and only losers.

Why is the second smelliest man
in the world so frustrated?

Is he frustrated because
everyone's like,

"You must be the smelliest
person in the world.

And he's like, "Yeah,
you'd think..." You'd think...

"Do I have a certificate? No."

Is it Boris Johnson?

It's a cattle herder from India
called Kailash Singh. Oh.

He stopped washing in 1974

because a priest told him
that he would have a son

if he didn't bathe or cut his hair.

So, it's 40 years later, he hasn't
had a single bath or a shower.

He's got six-foot-long dreadlocks.

He's father to seven daughters,
and, no...

GROANS

What, can you believe he's had
sex at all? It's... breath-taking.

There's the lovely place
of Varanasi,

on the banks of the Ganges,
there, where he lives.

His family did once try and
force him to bathe in the river,

but he fought them off
and said he would rather die.

So they killed him. Yeah.

But he now says he's going
to wash in the next life.

Oh... That's his plan.

But he's only the second
smelliest man in the world.

The person currently believed
to be the most unwashed man

in the world is Amou Haji.

We don't have a picture of him.

I think it would be too much
for the cameraman to get...

No photographer can get near enough.

"Use the zoom!"

"It's too much!"

"The lens is fogging!"

"Run, run!"

He hasn't washed for over 60 years.

He lives, not surprisingly,
in a remote village.

You'd have to do it like
the cheetahs -

you'd have to set up a camera

and then try and attract him
towards it. Yeah, lure him.

Where's his village?

He lives in southern Iran
and he lives on roadkill.

He gets more and more attractive
as you go through.

He particularly likes porcupine and
he smokes animal dung in his pipe.

And if he needs a haircut,
he burns his hair off with fire.

Hey, stop looking at me.

We've been talking a lot
about smell.

How do you measure
the unpleasantness of a smell?

How might you decide?

I mean, I don't know, but I once did
a fart that was so bad, my dad...

I didn't own up to it, and my dad
went and got the Yellow Pages out,

and he was looking for
the number of a plumber

because he thought
a sewage pipe had leaked.

LAUGHTER

Did you not have
a Labrador you could blame?

Yeah, dogs' farts are bad.
Dogs, they're very bad.

My dog used to get up...

The only time she ever left the room
was if she'd farted.

She'd be lying there
by the sofa asleep,

and I'd be watching Morse
or something...

..and then she'd just get up
and go in the hall.

And then immediately, I'd have
to pause Morse and get up and go.

We both would have to stand
in the hall...

..for a period of time
until it would clear.

There was only the two of us
in the flat.

Anyway, here's a thing -

there's a Danish engineer called
Professor Povl Ole Fanger,

and he wants to create a new unit
of measurement called an olf, OK?

So one olf would be
the emission of air pollutants

given off by a standard person.

And the idea is that any unpleasant
smell could then be expressed

by the number of people
it would take

to cause that level
of unpleasantness.

So you have
an average person is an olf,

and then, say that your fart,

you know, well, "Wow, that's
like 150 olfs", that it would be.

Yeah. That was a lot of olfs.
That's a lot of olfs.

My wife, her horses...
Our bedroom has got a window,

and the horses are out there,
and they fart so loudly

that sometimes
I have to turn the telly up.

So, on a summer's evening,
just lying in bed, there,

put the telly on, and just hear...

HE MAKES FART NOISE
..like that.

What, they're eating,
or are horses particularly...?

They have to or they die.

But are they particularly
gassy, horses?

Oh, God, yeah, horses,
they're shocking.

I don't know how the Queen stands it
in that carriage.

Unbelievable.

Honestly.

Just buy a car. Yeah.

That's why the hat's always
at a jaunty angle.

Anyway, moving on...

What do the UK's stink pipes do?

It sounds like a barber shop
quartet, doesn't it?

The Stink Pipes.

Oh, that's a great title
for a band, yeah.

"And now The Stink Pipes."
It's an actual thing.

Indeed, you may have passed one
on the way to the studio.

I think the nearest one to
this studio is at Southwark Bridge.

Are they letting out odours
from... the sewers?

Absolutely right, yes.

You can have another sticker. Ooh!
You can have another sticker.

Very well done.

There you are. Purple one.

Yes, you're absolutely right.

They're sort of tall,
hollow, cast iron pipes.

They stand at quite often
six to eight metres tall,

and their purpose is to ventilate
the potentially explosive...

Is it smelling? Oh, yes,
that one has, that smells,

doesn't it, Nish? Yeah, yeah,
that's a very strong smell!

But do they still work?
Yes, they still absolutely work,

and they follow the routes of
the main sewers.

Lots of them are still in operation.

How cheap is that flat?

Yeah, that's not nice, is it?

You do have to update sewers

because sewer explosions are
not uncommon if they are not

properly looked after and the gas
isn't released and so on.

So the River Fleet at King's Cross
exploded in 1846.

It destroyed
a Clerkenwell poorhouse,

and it smashed a Thames steam boat
against Blackfriars Bridge.

Can we do anything with it yet?

Has some scientist managed to,
you know, like create...

With the sewage?
..create power or something?

Well, the gas, they used to burn

the gas off sometimes
at the top of the stink pipes.

In fact, in Sheffield,
you can still see that,

some of the gas being burnt off.

But whether they could actually
power things with sewage,

that would be fantastic.
I mean, they can use...

It's normally animal faeces, but
very popular for making houses.

Wattle and daub.

NISH: Yeah, that's right!
Yes, it's fantastic stuff.

And in the pioneer days,
in the United States,

when they were heading west
across Nevada and places like that,

there was no... nothing to burn,
they used to burn buffalo dung,

so it always used to be known
as buffalo chips,

so there are uses and perhaps we're
just not being sensible about it.

All I'm saying is that we've got

all this sewage
that isn't being used,

we've got a housing crisis...

New flats!

Don't you think
they are rather beautiful?

This is the thing I love about
the Victorians,

they made things to be beautiful,
even sort of rubbish things,

so the interior of
Crossness sewer pump station,

which is in Belvedere in Kent...

There it is, look at that. Wow!

..is known as the Cathedral
on the Marsh for its ornate design

and it's just
breathtakingly beautiful.

Listen, while we're speaking
of beauty combined with bowels -

and who hasn't started
a conversation like that

on a hot date -
I just want to show you something

which is one of my
favourite buildings,

and it is called the Rundetaarn

and it is a 17th-century tower
in Copenhagen

and it's breathtakingly
beautiful inside,

it is one of the world's
first observatories.

There's the inside.
Isn't that stunning?

And it was designed so that the king
could ride his horse up

so that he didn't have
to walk up the stairs,

but what is extraordinary about it,
it has a toilet at the top,

which consists of a seat and a shaft
straight down to the bottom

and there was no way of emptying it,
so it just filled up.

It's one of the world's largest
and earliest septic tanks.

Today it's got a glass plate over it
so you can't smell anything,

but it was point zero, used by

the famous Danish astronomer
Thomas Bugge in the 1760s

as the starting point
for his calculations

for the measuring of Denmark,
so he started the whole of

the measuring and mapping of
Denmark from that toilet seat.

I have a lot of my best ideas
while I'm taking a number two.

I can only imagine one day
I'll be like, "Denmark!"

If you go, it's really beautiful,

and at the very top is a kissing
bench designed for couples.

How close to the toilet is it?

Now, whose social media is little
more than an odious pile of crap?

Is that a trick question,
because isn't it everyone's?

No, it's the white rhino.

They use their poo
as a kind of social media.

Look at that, magnificent creature!

They did a study by the University
of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa

and they found that they have
sort of communal latrines,

places where they all get together
and have a defecation

and there are chemical clues

and you can tell the age, the sex,
the general health,

the reproductive condition
of the other rhinos.

It gives away, basically,
their profile,

how they're feeling,
what their relationship status...

I don't think there are any videos
of cats or anything like that,

but through their dung, they can
communicate with other rhinos.

The Canadians used to have
a political party, actually,

called the Rhinoceros Party

and part of their policy proposal
was to abolish the environment

because it caused too much trouble.

That's just annoying!

They named the party after Cacareco,

a black rhino who was put up
as a candidate in 1958 in Sao Paulo,

in the elections in Brazil, and won!

She got 100,000 votes before
her election was nullified.

And there are other animals.
In 1954, a goat called Smelly

was voted in as a city councillor
in Brazil

and, at the time of recording,
there's a cat called Stubbs

who is still the mayor
of Talkeetna, Alaska.

There he is, been mayor since 1997.

Right, time for a little food.

I want you to smell this oil and
tell me what has been added to it.

There you go.

Is it truffle?

Well...
KLAXON BLARES

Idiot. I'm an idiot.

That's the thing with being

a worldwide international
restaurant critic...

..when I get a taste of
the truffle, I can't... Yeah.

Here is the thing -

almost all truffle oil on the market
has never seen a truffle.

It's a mixture of olive oil
and chemicals

which gives it its truffle aroma.

So what you do is you take
methyl mercaptan,

which is the main compound
in bad breath and smelly feet,

and you add it to some formaldehyde.

I love the smell of truffle.

The Epicureans said
the scent smelled like

the tussled sheets on a brothel bed.

And medieval monks were not allowed
to have truffles, because it

was believed that it would make them
forget their calling.

I don't know...
These are unbelievably expensive.

We have some actual truffles there.

Is it nice?

Is it nice like that?

It's totally wasted on me.

Do not like it, darling?

My idea of a really nice taste
is a Bourbon.

We're not talking French royalty,
are we?

No, we're talking you can get
a packet of 100 in Tesco's for 40p.

There's some surprising stuff

in the world of food
that you wouldn't know.

So you wouldn't know mostly
when you buy truffle oil

that it's never been anywhere
near a truffle.

And also, can I recommend
a book to you called

Extra Virginity: The Sublime And
Scandalous World Of Olive Oil, OK?

And it turns out that
there's a huge amount of

fraudulent mislabelling
in the olive oil world.

Apparently, over 50% of olive oil
sold in Italy is adulterated,

and 75-80% in the United States
is completely adulterated.

You'd think you're getting that...
Well, this is...

They should have, on
the extra virgin olive oil,

just have, like, in brackets,
"May contain slag."

LAUGHTER

APPLAUSE

Definitely, possibly a double
sticker on that one, I think.

There's a double, so I think
that was definitely... Excellent.

So the truffle oil that doesn't
contain the truffles... Yes.

..if I was to take
a highly trained truffle pig,

would it sniff out the truffle oil,
even though it smells a bit...

it SMELLS like a truffle,
but it doesn't have truffle in?

Could you check? Yes.

The exact sensitivity of a truffle
pig is not my specialist area.

Sally, can I just thank you
for coming on and being so...?

I mean, once I dressed up
as a wolf, right?

He's only built his house
out of straw - idiot!

So...

LAUGHTER

So they're not... Honestly, it
feels like charity work sometimes!

So, what I'm saying is,

if you dipped a non-truffle
in the artificial truffle oil

and then it would be sold
as a truffle and nobody...

We're on to a moneymaking scheme!

And there, I think...

If you dipped a real truffle
in some fake truffle smell?

That's what you just said, isn't it?

No, no, no, it's all about
fooling pigs. OK. So...

No, you get something that
looks like a truffle... Right, OK.

Goat shit. Goat shit, Alan's right.

If you tune in and you see
Gloria Hunniford on Rip-Off Britain

and a picture of me and a pig...

I'll be in the Bahamas!
Oh, yeah! I'm on Easy Street!

If I see a picture of you and a pig
with Gloria Hunniford,

I won't be the least bit surprised.

Now, do you have the ability
to sniff out crime?

Depends what kind of crime.

He who smelt it dealt it -
that is legally binding.

Today I probably couldn't
sniff out a crime,

because of the cold, aforementioned.

But, I mean, I guess you could
smell certain types of crime?

Well, they did some research in
the Karolinska Institute in Sweden,

a Professor Mats Olsson,

and people can tell a criminal
by smell as well as by sight.

So they showed some video clips
to people of crimes being committed,

and asked them to smell,
at the same time,

the body odour of the person
who was committing it.

And when there was a line-up,
just by the smell of the person,

they were able to work out, 70% of
the time, which is exactly the same

as a visual line-up, they were able
to work out which person it was.

If the shirt don't whiff,
you must... acquit.

That is the law.

I cannot wait to see
the Swedish version of Sherlock,

cos it's just him going...
HE SNIFFS

"Smell-a-mentory, my dear Watson."

LAUGHTER AND GROANS
Hey, come on!

APPLAUSE
Yes!

Oh, no. You've blown it.

Has he got any stickers? Uh...

Have you got any stickers, Nish?
No. He hasn't got any.

No, cos I was going to ask
for them back. Take one back.

If the five of us committed a crime

and somebody was allowed to sniff
our clothes immediately,

then they would be able,
by sniffing,

to work out again
which one of us it was.

Is that where the term
"smell a rat" comes from?

"I smell a rat!"

No. OK.

But there are places...
So in Alaska, Florida, New York,

they use scent line-ups.

But to fair, they use dogs,
rather than human beings,

because the human can smell with...

We have about five or six million
odour-detecting cells.

A dog, how many do you reckon?
10 million.

220 million.

And actually, even rabbits
have more than us -

they have 100 million.

What I don't understand about that
is why they don't just

continually wince and cry out
at the stenches that they encounter.

They must be able to
turn it on and off.

It's a bit like owls.

An owl, because it's got its concave
face and can amplify sound...

I think this was on QI
I learned this.

LAUGHTER

..can hear a vole's heartbeat
underground,

but how could it not be driven
mad by constant noise?

I mean, if a car backfires,
it would blow its brains out.

Well, what we're going to do now
is we're going to test out

how a dog does on
sniffing things out.

I have here some contraband, which
I am going to give to you, Alan.

OK.

And what I would like you to do
is put it in your pocket...

Put it in my...
..and go and hide in the audience.

Go and hide in Croydon!

So the audience have got
special masks to put on.

So if they could put... those who've
got masks could put them on.

NISH: Oh, my God! It's terrifying.

Urgh, it's like a sea of...
It's awful. Completely terrifying.

Now this is a very special episode
of Jonathan Creek.

I never thought I'd be involved
in a live game of Where's Wally?

OK. We now welcome, please, to
the studio, from the RAF Police,

Corporal Sam Robson-Rodriguez
and Rex.

APPLAUSE

Sam, thank you so much
for coming in and supplying us

with the dummy contraband.

Tell me about Rex
and what his job is.

Well, Rex is
a five-year-old black Lab.

His main job is to search for drugs

anywhere we want to put him,
basically. And how's he trained?

How do you make him
be able to do that?

Well, we start searching for, like,
their toys, and then we just

associate the toys with the drugs,
so then they think they're searching

for their toy, whereas in fact, we
want them to search for the drugs.

And how many scents can
Rex recognise, do you think?

He's trained on all the main scents,

and basically anything that
you can make out of that.

So, he looks keen to get going.
He does.

Right, Sam, please, over to you,
my lovely. Thank you very much.

Rex. Come here.

I do hope nobody in the audience
has got anything...

Do you know what? I really hope
somebody does. NISH: Yeah.

That would be... Wouldn't that just
be the best bit of telly ever?

If you just... If he dragged
someone to the floor and just,

just dragged them out.

A live drug bust on QI. Brilliant.

He's so far... ignoring everybody.
So that's good for that side.

How will he...?
How will he show if he knows?

They have either a stand indication
or a sit indication. Oh.

Is he sniffing your crotch, Alan?

Is it in your left pocket?
Oh, my God!

Let's have a round of applause,
please, for Rex and Sam.

APPLAUSE

Sam and Rex, very good.
Thank you very much.

And thank you to all my Alans. What
a very, very spooky sight that was.

That was very, very spooky.
It was extremely unpleasant.

Right, it's time for the stinking
miasma that is General Ignorance.

Fingers on buzzers, please.

In which country was
the full bikini wax invented?

♪ Smell the roses... ♪
Sally?

I think I'm going to fall into
a hole. I'm going to say Brazil.

It's not right, is it?

KLAXON
No. Argh!

It's not Brazil. Croydon.

It's not Croydon.
Any more for any more?

Australia? America?

It is America.
It is in the United States.

So, there's a woman
called Jonice Padilha

of J Sisters salon in Manhattan.

They pioneered the Brazilian
bikini wax in the early 1990s,

and Playboy tried to patent it
as an idea.

And in order to stop them
doing that, she said, "Oh, no, no",

"you can't do that, it's
tremendously popular throughout"

"my entire home country
and therefore it is unpatentable."

And that is...
You have to use proper wax there.

Never just think you can use honey.

You speak from experience, then?

Oh, it stings in
so many different ways.

The salon still exists
and it's opposite Trump Tower.

So you can actually have a Brazilian

and avoid being grabbed
by the pussy at the same time.

They came up with the process
after other salons refused to wax

that area, apparently. Oh, wow.

Apparently one of
the world's most expensive car waxes

is also Brazilian.

It is called Carnauba wax,
made from a palm tree

that only grows
in north-east Brazil.

Handy if you've got
a hairy car. Yeah.

You can get a French wax as well,

but it only waxes a strip down
the middle of the bonnet.

Why should you be worried about
how you store your toothbrush?

Is it to do with things
that crawl around at night

and crawl about your brushes?

LAUGHTER

Do you think there are things
crawling about your bathroom? Yeah.

If you put your toothbrush
in the wrong place,

it's more susceptible
to interference from... from...

..night-time creatures.

Are you worried about the Wombles?

There is a common belief that
if you keep your toothbrush

in the same room as the toilet,

it will get covered
in faecal matter.

So, here is the good news...

Well, to be fair, that is true,

but that's only after my wife
and I had a bit of an argument.

She told me two or three days later,
so, you know...

It's true. Your whole house
has got faecal matter,

but it has no effect on you
whatsoever. It's fine.

According to the American Dental
Association, there's "insufficient"

"clinical evidence to support that
bacterial growth on toothbrushes"

"will lead to specific adverse
oral or systemic health effects."

It's good, it's good to know,
now I can use my toothbrush to just

buff me downstairs. Free from worry.

It's good to know you don't have
to worry about creatures

crawling around your toothbrush.

Really, really small cougars
at night.

Can you name an animal
well known for playing possum?

Is this a trick question? Yes.

I've been playing this game
for 15 years now...

and I smell a rat!
FART

Ah. A possum. Possum.

KLAXON
A possum, yay!

It isn't. Feigning death, right,
is that what that is?

It is, it's called thanatosis.

But it isn't the possum
that does it,

it is the expression that we use -
it is the opossum.

So it's one of those great
confusions. Irish possum.

IN IRISH ACCENT: It is an
O'possum. An O'possum.

The opossum is on the right there,
the little white-faced one.

And the possum is on the left.
They're both marsupials.

The possum actually
lives in Australia,

the opossum lives
in the United States.

And apart from them both being
marsupials,

there's not really much
that they have in common.

The similarity between the name

stems from Captain's Cook's voyage
to Australia.

The naturalist Joseph Banks,
he mistook the animals

that he saw for American opossums.

We were in Australia when
my daughter was very little, and

we used to go... The only way she'd
go to sleep at night is if we

could go out in the street and find
a possum, and then she could rest.

Aw. And they used to walk along
the telephone wires -

that was the best place
to find them.

We had possums that lived in
our roof, and they used to sigh.

So you'd be watching the telly, and
you would, you'd hear in the roof,

you'd hear, "Oh..."

They do it quite a lot, and you'd be
sort of like, "They're off again."

And then, "Oh..." There was one day,
I was in the house by myself...

What were you watching?

Well, this was the thing -
I was watching documentaries,

and there was a "Oh... Oh..."

Did they want you
to change channels? Yeah.

I put it onto the music channel -
not a peep out of them.

There are lots of animals that react
to a threat, so the turkey vulture,

they regurgitate their last meal,
usually rotting carrion.

Always attractive!

The king ratsnake,
also known as the stinking goddess,

it empties its anal glands
when it's attacked.

The stinking goddess!
That's a hell of a takeaway! OK.

"I'm going for it,
I'm going to do it."

"I'll have a stinking goddess,
bring it on!"

"You only have one
stag night, right?"

The honey badger, who's got
a bit of the Donald Trump look,

I think, about it,
can turn its anal pouch inside out.

It's a most extraordinary thing.

Apparently, it puts off predators

but it has a calming effect on bees.

I mean, that's a good thing.

Honey forms a major part of
their diet, but the bees go,

"Oh, look
an anal pouch turned inside out..."

According to the Guinness Book
of Animal Records,

the smelliest animal on Earth is
the zorilla, or striped polecat.

You're going to love this.

The emissions from their anal glands
not only stink, but can temporarily

blind predators and cause painful
burning sensations on the skin.

So that is a seriously
stinky creature.

Yeah, and you can't get it
out of your jeans.

The smell or the animal?

"So sorry, officer, er..."

Just have a look at this VT,
which I really love.

The karaftohelix snail, it does the
complete opposite of playing possum.

Have a look. Rather than retreat
into its shell,

it goes on the offensive.

It uses its shell - look at that -
as a battering ram to hit.

Oh, that's very cool.
Isn't that wonderful?

That is very cool,
to be able to do that.

If I could swing my arse
like that...

You wouldn't be wasting your time
sat here, would you? No.

If you think you see
a possum playing possum,

then they're probably dead.

So, let's check it out.

In first place, coming up smelling
of roses with three points,

it's Nish.
APPLAUSE

I still haven't got a sticker.

In second place,
with minus two, Alan!

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

In third place,
with minus three, Ross.

APPLAUSE

In last place, stinking the place
up, with minus five, it's Sally!

APPLAUSE

So, we like to give a prize.

Taking home tonight's prize,
a truly odious odour -

the actual scent of the Apocalypse
goes to Sally. There you go.

It only remains for me to thank
Sally, Ross, Nish and Alan.

And I leave you with
this tall tale from a toilet.

Tallulah Bankhead was in a cubicle
in the ladies'.

"Do you have any toilet paper?"

she asked the occupant
of the next stall.

"No," came the reply.

"Then, do you have any Kleenex?"
she asked.

"Sorry, no," the lady said again.

"Then, can you change
a ten for two fives?"

Thank you, goodnight!