QI (2003–…): Season 16, Episode 11 - Potpourri - full transcript

This programme contains
some strong language.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Welcome to QI, which tonight
is a bit of a potpourri -

pounds and pounds of pungently
perfumed petals of pertinent points

piled precariously in
a pot for your pleasure.

Mm, that's perfume.
That was very good!

Thank you, darling. Thank you!
Not bad for a foreigner.

Mm, that perfume is a clue,
just smell that panel-pourri.

The fragrant Cally Beaton.

The pungent Rhod Gilbert.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE



The fruity Phill Jupiter.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
DROWNS OUT SPEECH

And the unmistakable waft
of geranium, leather,

moss, coffee,
toasted cheese, Biro ink,

musk, ox, Johnson's baby powder
and football sock

that is Alan Davies!

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Right, let's hear their ringtones.

Cally goes...

TRADITIONAL TELEPHONE RING
Oh, very nice.

Rhod goes...

MORE MODERN PHONE RING

Phill goes...

NOKIA RINGTONE



And Alan goes...

PHONE DISCONNECT TONE

The number you have dialled
has not been recognised...

..you idiot!

Sorry about that. Wow.

OK, I've got a gift for you all now.

I've got your very own QI
periscopes. OK? Have a look.

What are you going to use them for?

OK, have a look through.

Oh, that's a good idea. Yeah...

It's very clever, because even
though you're down below,

you can still see the audience,
even though you're below the desk.

You have totally
understood periscopes!

I can't see the audience now!
I can't see the audience!

No, you need your periscope,
darling. It's the thing...

My periscope doesn't work.
PHILL: Where's Alan gone?!

Alan?!

I can see your periscope, Phill,
I can see your periscope!

I can see yours as well!

Are you under the desk?
I am under the desk, Alan!

I'm coming up! OK.

I'm now above the desk, Phill.

We toyed with the idea of having two
five-year-old boys on the panel...

..and then we thought, "No need!"

This is me going down the stairs.

I'm coming up now.

Oh, I've forgotten something.

He's having so much fun under there,
you should see his little face.

I really, really enjoyed that.

Phill, get up now. You're all right.

I'm going to be honest...
Yeah, do you need a hand?

..Getting up takes a bit
of a while...

I'll help you...
Come on. That's...

I'm coming, I'm on my way. Jesus!
I'm on my way.

OK, OK... Thank you. Thanks, Mum.

Can I have this?
Yes, you can have them.

Cos we've got quite
a high garden wall

and I've often wanted
to look over it.

Didn't you build
the high garden wall, Alan?

Uh, yes.

I could... It's true to say
I could have a lower one.

But really, I want to go like that.

The high garden wall does that for
you, to be honest.

Rhod, yours has got no mirrors in
it... Yes, we've established that.

..because I had yours made in
Scandinavia, because the last time

you were on, you said it's not
possible to see anything

in Scandinavia because
it's dark all the time.

So I have specially had a periscope
made for you

where it's just dark
all the time.

About two years ago, for a joke,

I said that there was no sunshine
in Denmark,

and you've been waiting there for
two years,

sitting there, biding your time...

Do you know, revenge...
served cold.

I mean, I say two years.
It's been two years for me.

It's probably the next day for you.
Yeah, that's true.

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
Oh, no!

I stand by it!

What would you use periscopes for?
Let's work out what...

They're to see difficult things,
aren't they? Like what?

It could very much show your
go-getting attitude

at an interview for the Navy,
bringing your own periscope.

I was thinking maybe submarines.

Yes. So submarines, but they don't
use the old-fashioned periscope

any more on a submarine.

Did the cardboard get soggy?
Is that why...?

Can I ask a question, Sandi?
Yes, Rhod.

Is your periscope bigger
than ours because you're the host?

Well, what can you do?

Or is it because of
your diminutive stature?

Yes, I think because I need
the extra help with the periscope.

Imagine how much easier shopping's
going to be for you now with that.

Do you know...
Alpen, they've got Alpen!

On submarines, you don't want just
one person seeing what's going on,

so they project the image
now onto monitors.

And here is a wonderful thing -
the control panel for the ones

you need on a submarine,
it normally costs 38,000,

and they did a survey of
younger sailors who went,

"Yeah, it's just exactly the same
as an Xbox controller,

"and they're 30."

And they now can be bought
in any world port.

The USS Colorado is now equipped
exclusively with Xbox controllers

and most modern submarines
are going to follow suit.

So are they playing games
against other submarines?

Is that how it works?

I think that is one way
of referring to warfare, but...

There was a woman in the 1930s,
a Californian woman called

Dorothy Beck, and she wanted
to draw fish under water.

So she used an inverted periscope,
so she got, I think,

a local man to hold it.

And he held it into the water,
and she sat by the water with a...

This is not one of her pictures...

And she would sit by the water,

and using the periscope down
into the water,

she was able to paint and draw fish
in their natural habitat.

Periscopes, like telescopes,
only... peri-er.

Now...

..everybody likes a bit of
potpourri, even though, you know,

it's both smelly and useless,

and that's also true of something
else these days - phone boxes.

So, can you suggest something useful
to do

with a phone box, please?

You could put a couple of mirrors
in it and get some poor bugger

to hold it while you paint fish
all day, couldn't you?

I like your thinking. Yeah. Yeah.

They're shower cubicles
in California, aren't they?

The Calis love to buy them.

The Callys? I've never bought one
in my life. Wahey!

You're absolutely right,
they can be bought by anybody.

You can buy a phone box for 2,750.

If you're a community or a village,
you can adopt one for 1

if you wanted to look after it.

But they have been repurposed
in about,

well, more than 3,000 ways
that we know of.

There's one near us
that's a coffee shop.

That's not a lot of customers
they get...

No, well, the guy who runs it
has to stand outside the phone box.

He hasn't thought it through.

They've been turned
into defibrillator stores,

they're art galleries, libraries,

an unattended grocery store
in Draughton in Yorkshire.

There was one made into an aquarium.
That's a Welsh one, that.

How can you tell that, darling?
"Dim arian..."

Oh, "Dim arian, dim problem."
"Dim arian, dim problem."

Do they not have
a Welsh word for "problem"?

No, it's the English that don't have
a word for...

HEAVILY ACCENTED WELSH: ..problem.

They didn't have any problems
till the English turned up!

Tom Jones bought one, presumably,

and then had it exported to LA.

I met Tom Jones once. I was
producing a play, which Tom Jones

was going to be in, and I was due to
meet him at the Dorchester Hotel.

When I arrived, they said,

"Mr Jones would like you to go up to
his suite."

I said, "Fair enough..."
So she went up there...

I went up... That was the press
outside the window!

And I knocked on the door,
and he opened the door,

and he was wearing the SHORTEST
dressing gown I've ever seen

in my life. It just came to here.

Did you see little Tom? No!

Anyway...

You were about eye level
with little Tom, I imagine...

He's actually charming,
we got on very well.

It was also, which you might like,
the world's smallest pub

for a single day, The Dog And Bone,

in the Cambridgeshire village
of Shepreth.

They dispensed everything
in very small quantities,

but unfortunately, they ran out
at 10:30 and had to call time.

Dog and Bone, rhyming slang -
I see what they've done there.

Yeah, you see what they've done.

For flyering in Edinburgh
and postering,

we put them all up in
the phone boxes, don't we?

Well, you guys have people to do it.
I put my own up...

I enlist my kids to help me put
posters up, and this year,

I was saying to my daughter,
I was like,

"Just get in there and
put the bloody poster up."

She was like, "I can't, Mum.
I said, "Will you just do it?!"

She said, "There's people having sex
in there, Mum - I can't."

Anybody know who designed
the classic phone box?

Phoney Box o' the Box family.
Mr Phone Box.

Did all the boxes.

His brother Pill did the pillbox.

Sir Giles...
Gilbert, there's a Gilbert in it!

Sir Giles Gilbert Scott.

That's why I knew.
Very, very good.

The man who also had a hand in
the design of

the Battersea and Bankside Power
Station, so currently Tate Modern.

Supposedly, he was inspired by
the mausoleum that was designed

by the neoclassical architect
Sir John Soane

for his own tomb,
which you can see...

Oh, you could put a phone in there!

Yeah, well, it looks exactly
just like it, doesn't it? Yeah!

It's at St Pancras Old Church
in London, and the different...

Is that why every time you pick up
the phone, it was dead?

CROWD GROANS

Shut up, shut up!

LAUGHTER

So there are lots of worthwhile
things you can do with a phone box,

but what about something
that isn't worthwhile?

What pointless and puerile
phone box prank

propagated prolifically
from place to place?

It was people stuffing themselves
in, wasn't it?

Yeah, you're absolutely right.

1959, the year of the great
phone booth stuffing fad.

It began in Durban in South Africa.

25 students were crammed
into a phone box.

It's a world record that has still
not been beaten.

I take a very dim view of that.

Some of those guys have only got
a toe in. You're absolutely right.

There was a Canadian school who
claimed that they'd got

40 students in, but they had
an outsized fraternity hall booth,

they laid it on its side.

So, just like you, they decided to
bring in some rules. Right.

So the rules were...
About time.

..the booth had to be upright,
it had to be a normal size,

everybody had to have at least
half a body inside it.

Only half a body? Half a body.

The stuffing fad spread
to lots of other objects -

cars, outdoor lavatories,

there was a hollow tree
at the University of Maine.

Then the next phase was hunkering.
Anybody know what that is?

I've heard the phrase
hunkering down - that's it.

CALLY: Do you go into holes? No, you
literally go down onto your haunches

for as long as possible.
Is that to hunker, is it?

To hunker, yes. To hunker down?

Yeah, so this was apparently a fad -
how long could you hunker for?

That was a fad?! Yes.

Some people hunkered
in phone booths.

That was a thing. On car roofs...

Like sitting like this -
has this ever been a big thing?

Well... Anybody else ever done other
student pranks?

Things like a Chinese fire drill?

I grew up in New York -
we used to do it all the time.

So you turn up at the lights.
You need a full car of people.

As soon as the lights turn red,
you open all the doors

and you have to run all
the way around the car,

and whoever's not in the car
when the lights turn green

is left behind.

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

Why is it called
the Chinese fire drill?

I have absolutely no idea.
We had Chinese burns, didn't we?

Oh, yeah, they were very...
Yeah, do you remember those? Yeah...

But I like a prank!

So there was a Harvard-Yale football
match in 2004,

and some Yale supporters disguised
themselves in Harvard colours,

and they gave out red-and-white
cards to spectators

on the Harvard side of the stadium.

And they said, "If you hold them
up above your heads,

"it'll say, 'Go Harvard!'"

And in fact, it spelled out,
"We suck".

Possibly the greatest prankster
of all was a Roman emperor.

He was called Elagabalus, and he was
only emperor for four years -

from 14 to 18 -

and he was unbelievably eccentric,
decadent,

even by standards of the time,

and he was a very keen
practical joker.

So he once filled a full ceiling
above a banqueting hall

entirely with flowers,

and then had them dumped
onto the diners below.

And some of them smothered to death.

It is the only death by potpourri
that we know of.

Elagabalus, he was amazing,
so he would...

Quite often, people
were having dinner,

he would let in lions and bears

and leopards while they're
eating, and...

LAUGHTER

And not tell anybody
they'd been defanged and declawed

and it was perfectly fine,
and some people died of fright.

He would also let the same animals
into people's bedrooms

while they were sleeping.

And he was particularly fond
of inviting poor people to dinner

and giving them paintings of food.

If you were one of those
wild animals, though,

and you'd been defanged
and declawed,

your heart wouldn't be in the prank,
would it? No, not...

Stuffing phone boxes was the
ice bucket challenge of its day.

Did anybody do the ice
bucket challenge? No. No.

I had the weirdest
experience with that.

So I didn't know anything about it,
and my son phoned me up and he said,

"Mum, Daniel Craig has
just challenged you

"to the ice bucket challenge."
Now, I've never met Daniel...

Daniel Craig?! Yeah.

Anyway, as chance would have it,
that evening,

I was at a party and there he was.

So, I went up to him
and I said, "You bastard.

"Why have you challenged
me to this thing?"

I said, "The chances of us
ever meeting again, very slight,

"let's do it straight away."

So, we were backstage
at the Royal Festival Hall,

we went into my dressing room
and into the shower,

and I have a video of me and
Daniel Craig in the shower

doing the ice bucket challenge.

Do you spend your
whole time with showbiz men,

semi-naked, in...?

Did he come out wearing
a very short dressing gown?

Sandi, I thought I
understood you, but I'm...

I don't... I'm like a magnet.

He was perfectly charming.

Now, to give the show
a bit of a "Philip",

there have been two
King Philips of Macedon,

six King Philips of Spain,

six King Philips of France,

and of course,
one King Phillip of QI.

Yay!

But when...?

When will we get a
King Philip of England?

We're not.

Not never.
Never say never.

In the future.

No, not in the future.
We've had one.

We've had one, but he
is not normally taught

in the school monarchs.

King Philip of England,

he reigned for four years
15541558.

He was actually King
Philip II of Spain,

but he was king of England
and Ireland by virtue

of his marriage to Queen Mary,

so not a consort like Queen
Elizabeth's Prince Philip,

but actually crowned king
in his own right.

So both their faces
were on the coins.

Parliament was called
under their joint authority,

and he actually lived in England,

just under a year,
July 1554-1555.

He married her, he was 27,
she was 37.

It's kind of an odd thing.

He only spoke Castilian Spanish,

so the whole marriage must've been
conducted through an interpreter.

I wonder what attracted her to him
at 27 when she was 37. Who knows?

It's rather sweet,
when she died, he wrote,

"I felt a reasonable
regret for her death."

Maybe it's better in Spanish.

He proposed marriage to her
half-sister, of course, Elizabeth.

Classy, classy move.
Classy, classy.

The Philippines are named after him,
he ruled the Spanish Empire.

He had very slim legs!

It does look like they've
photoshopped his head

onto the body of a child. Yeah.

In the potpourri show,

it's finally time for a
bit of Popery.

Ooh. Potpourri?

Potpourri, potpourri,
potpourri show... Potpurri, yes.

..and time for a bit of Popery.
Popery, ah...

Yes, do you see?

Why would you say the
Pope's name three times

and then whack his ring
with a hammer?

His ring?

Because...

Because he forgot the safe word.

APPLAUSE

Bloody marvellous.

I live for those moments.

He doesn't say a lot, but when
he says it, it lands.

Are you talking about the Pope now?

The answer is because he's...

A nail?

Oh... Francis, Francis, Francis!
Bang.

Because he's dead? Because he's
dead, you're absolutely right.

Why do you have to hit
his ring with a hammer?

OK, so, there's a thing called
the Apostolic Camera.

So it's an office of
the Roman Curia

that is a largely ceremonial
office, until the Pope dies.

At this point, the camerlengo,

he's the cardinal in charge
of the Apostolic Camera.

IN POOR ITALIAN ACCENT:
Cardinal in charge.

And he comes.

I'm in charge of it.

His duty is to
ceremonially verify...

And whack you with
a fucking hammer.

Bang, bang, bang!

Francis, Francis, Francis. Boom!

Right in the ring hole.

Well, kind of.

So he has to call the Pope by
his baptismal name three times,

so the Pope's baptismal name
is Jorge, so he says...

"Jorge, dormisne?" Jorge!

"George, are you sleeping?"

And then he has to destroy
his Fisherman's ring,

so that is the signet ring that
he wears of the picture

of St Peter fishing,
along with the papal's seal.

It is sometimes said that they also
have to hit the Pope on the head

with the hammer.

I think this seems very improbable,

but the Vatican will
neither confirm nor deny.

We have asked.

Sticking with priests
for the moment,

who was the Mad Monk of Russia?

Here it comes. Rasputin is...

I thought I'd take that
for the team.

Take one for the team,
thank you, Cally.

Why was he not the mad
Monk of Russia?

He wasn't mad and he wasn't a monk.

He wasn't a monk,
is the truth of it,

he was never a monk.

The guy who referred to himself
as the Mad Monk

was a one-time friend of Rasputin's,
he was called Sergei Trufanov,

also known as Iliodor, there he is.

And he wrote his memoirs, they were
published in New York in 1918,

and he published them as
the Mad Monk of Russia.

And that book is one
of the primary sources

that we have for
the life of Rasputin.

So the Mad Monk is the less famous
Iliodor and not Rasputin,

but because we know so much
about Rasputin from this book,

The Mad Monk of Russia,
that is why we associate him.

I think everybody knows
that Rasputin was a faith healer,

and he parlayed his claim to be
able to help the son of the Tsar

into a position of
tremendous influence

in the Russian Imperial court.

There's a theory, a sort of rogue
theory about Putin being

the reincarnation of Rasputin, and
there was a thing that was about,

they took some of Putin's pubic hair
and then they took some

of Rasputin's residual
testicular fluid,

and the DNA was exactly the same.

I'm struggling with the whole of
that story, so... Yeah.

I do like the phrase
"residual testicular fluid". Yeah.

I'm going to need...

I shall be using that again,
I'm not sure when.

Can I have a vodka residual
testicular fluid, please?

So they're going to need
an unwashed sheet of some kind?

Yeah, Putin left his
pubic hairs everywhere.

Yeah, they scraped it
off the back of a tiger.

The Mad Monk of Russia
wasn't Rasputin,

it was some bloke
you've never heard of.

Now, we know that Rasputin
was a massive player,

but who is the most dangerous
football player of all time?

Stanley Knife Matthews.

Are we talking about offences
committed on the field

or in another life as an assassin
or carpet bombing?

No, I'm talking about actually
on the football pitch.

Does it have something
to do with the early,

very early origins of football?