QI (2003–…): Season 16, Episode 12 - Episode #16.12 - full transcript
Hello and welcome to QI
where tonight's show is one, long
exercise in procrastination.
Struggling to meet their deadlines,
we have the purposeless
Holly Walsh...
..the prevaricating Nikki Bedi...
..the postponing Aisling Bea...
..and that never knowingly
premature Alan Davis.
Right, their buzzers. Holly goes...
TICKING CLOCK
Nikki goes...
FAST-TICKING CLOCK
Oh, yeah.
Aisling goes...
FASTER-TICKING CLOCK
And Alan goes...
SNORING
LOUD ALARM
I do dream that noise.
Question one, of course, is all
about procrastination itself.
So, I just... I'm sorry, hang
on... ah, the elves are telling me
that they haven't got around to
writing
the procrastination questions yet.
So, we're going to have to use the
emergency back-up questions
that I've got here, just a second.
I don't think these have ever been
used.
Wow, OK.
Ah! Here we are. Ooh!
Got some questions... Oh!
What else is in here?
Oh, Alan, it's a picture of Arsenal
winning the Premier League.
AUDIENCE LAUGH AND APPLAUSE
It won't be a picture of
Tottenham Hotspurs winning it.
AUDIENCE "OOH"
I have no idea why that's funny.
I'm pleased with my small
footballing joke, there.
OK, so, instead, a question
on parenting.
What's the best thing to do
about a crying baby?
If it's on a plane, put it in a
soundproof box.
What we started doing was my son had
quite bad nappy rash...
You clean it, just clean the baby.
All right, Supernanny.
So, what we started doing was,
before we put him back
in his nappy, we'd get our
hairdryer and we'd just blow dry
his naked bum like this.
And then that started to work too
well.
Yeah, burns? No, it wasn't...
Then we realised that if we just
blow-dried his balls with
a hairdryer, he would go to sleep
like that.
The trouble is now I...
It sound like a very good idea.
You could rig it up on a sort of a
hook at the end of the bed...
..I'm thinking by myself, now.
I am saying this out loud, aren't I?
You realise when he is grown-up,
darling, there's going
to be so much trouble.
I think we have almost certainly
given him a fetish.
He's going to be unable to walk past
the hairdressers.
He'll be standing over... You know
those Marilyn Monroe grates?
You'll never get him off!
Did you go full hairdresser, Holly?
Were you like, "So, are you going
anywhere nice on your holidays?"
I have to say that things have
changed very much in terms
of how we actually approach the
whole thing.
There was an American paediatrician
called Dr Walter J Sackett Junior,
and he basically suggested that you
should ignore crying babies.
He wrote a bestseller in 1962 called
Bringing Up Babies,
A Family Doctor's Practical Approach
To Child Care.
And he said if you didn't ignore
crying babies,
they would grow up to be socialists.
"If we teach our offspring to expect
everything to be provided on demand,
"we must admit the possibility
of sowing the seeds of socialism."
And, as a parent, that is your
worst nightmare.
So, it was 1962, it was the year of
the Cuban missile crisis,
America was paranoid about
the communist threat
from around the world.
And their solution was leave all the
babies crying on their own.
But he also prescribed early
feeding.
He recommended that you give
babies cereals at two days,
vegetables at ten days,
meat at 14 and finally,
at nine weeks,
"Bacon and eggs, just like Dad."
Can a baby digest all that? No,
darling. No, it's a terrible idea.
I don't have any children so I'm
just checking.
Anyway, he disliked milk intensely.
He said, "To my mind, the dairies of
America constitute
"the number one health hazard."
He recommended giving babies black
coffee from six months.
That's all you want, right?
A child that won't sleep.
Did he have any children, I wonder?
He did have children, he did, yeah.
And where are they now?
They're all communists.
There are other books that are even
worse.
1916, A Mother And Her Child by
doctors Leena and William Sadler,
they advised avoiding physical
contact with infants
except when spanking.
Crying, again, should be ignored
unless the baby cried hard enough
to go black in the face or burst a
blood vessel.
Black? Yeah. In the face? Yeah.
At which point, a sound spanking
should be administered.
Marvellously titled, The Science Of
Eugenics,
who doesn't want to read that?
Written in 1920 by a Doctor
BJ Jeffries and JL Nichols,
warned pregnant women not to look at
or think about ugly
things or people or their child
would turn out ugly.
And the best way to quiet
a crying baby?
Gin.
You have the gin, or the baby?
The baby.
The heir to the Budweiser dynasty
or whatever you'd call it,
every time a baby's born the first
thing they have is five
drops of Bud dropped on their
tongue.
That's the first thing they consume.
Really?
My nanny used to put whisky on my
gums when I was teething
and holy water,
that classic cocktail combo.
Looking forward to the drinks
at the weekend.
And used to rub it on our gums,
and I told that to a dentist
recently, and they were like,
"It's not actually good."
Because loads of people are like,
"Oh, yeah, it's a great pain
"reliever." It's that it burns your
gums more so that you forget
about the pain in your teeth and you
focus on the burn in your gums.
So...
MUMBLES: But it hasn't had any
effect on me, so...
AUDIENCE LAUGH
Right, now, Alan, I would like you
to put this on, please.
Oh! Why, certainly, Sandi.
Thank you very much. Is it a hat?
It is a hat, yes.
Put that on.
Now, my question is what activity
is Alan now perfectly dressed to do?
Is it a taco hat?
At parties, sometimes they get
people
to walk around, put a dip in the
centre and some tacos
and then you dip the them into the
man's head.
Feels like a bicycle tyre.
When you do know what it is,
you'll be horrified at the thought
of serving dip from this.
Is it a contraceptive?
It's exactly the reverse
of a contraceptive.
It's an erection hat.
It is kind of an erection hat.
OK. Yes. So, this is...
It's not working.
Patience, everyone, I'm 52.
I am very pleased because it's for
a falcon.
It's a falcon sex hat.
It was invented to save the
peregrine falcon from extinction.
So, the peregrine trainer wears this
hat and encourages the birds to mate
with his head. Come on.
Come on, you, you know you want to.
Agh! Well, it's that!
So, in the 1970s, the whole species
was threatened to be wiped out.
The pesticides were damaging their
eggs and so a captive...
Oh, look, it works!
It does absolutely work.
A captive breeding programme
was set up.
So, here is the problem.
Falcons are usually more attracted
to their owners than they are to
other birds.
It's a phenomenon called imprinting.
So, when a young falcon comes out of
its egg, it gets attached
to the very first thing it sees.
It could be a rubber boot
or it could be an electric train,
it could be anything. How about a
hairdryer?
Yes.
But, quite often, it is the owner.
So, they want to mate...
They want to mate with their carers,
and the hat is invented to catch
the resulting semen.
Oh, God. It can be collected...
I know, the thing you're wearing,
it's why I said you don't
want to eat dip out of it,
the thing you're wearing... It's not
falcon ejaculate, is it?
..it's got little tiny pockets in
it.
The falcon wants to mate, and it
goes onto the hat because it likes
the owner, and you can
catch the semen
from those little tiny pockets. Wow!
HE MIMICS AN EJACULATING BIRD
It totally works! The 1970s, the
population...
HE MAKES SNORING NOISES
..the population...
LAUGHTER
APPLAUSE
The population in the 1970s
was down to 324, over 6,000
peregrine falcons have now been
released into the US
through this programme.
Let's have a quick look at an actual
video of the hat working.
So, that noise has been made by the
owner.
I'd say this is the most niche
pornography.
I love how bored the guy looks!
It looks like he's knobbing
a potato waffle.
That hat has seen a lot of action
because it is practically
worn out in places.
It copulates into one of the
indentations, the same as
you've got on your hat. It comes in
a range of colours, the hat.
Comes in a range of colours? Yes.
One of the best things
about a falcon.
It's one of those things
where I congratulate the person
who invented it, but I never want to
meet them in a pub.
Well, how'd you come up with that?
I'm going to come up with, frankly,
a jizz hat for falcons.
Why don't you just get a job,
Barry?!
You have two degrees, and you're
living with me, I'm 84!
Who's wearing the crotchless pants
in this relationship?
Oh, sorry, I thought we had to buzz
in because it was us.
No, no, in this relationship.
I'm going to go the one
on the right. Albert?
Oh, is it Victoria and Albert?
It is Victoria and Albert, yes.
Well, maybe it's Victoria, then.
It is Victoria. When do we think
underwear began?
When people first started
wearing underwear?
The loincloth, the early loincloth.
Certainly in Roman times,
people had underwear.
But it fell out of favour
for centuries and in Britain
men got underwear, so you're talking
about drawers,
knickerbockers, but for centuries
women did not wear it at all.
And, when they did, finally,
so we're talking 19th century,
it was crotchless.
So, two separate legs
hanging open underneath and held
together by a belt around the waist.
And you don't get them sewn together
until 1876.
I have no idea
what happened that year.
Someone went, "I am not having this
breeze."
But it didn't become the norm
to have a crotch in your underwear
until 1910.
But it wasn't someone's sexual
peccadillo to have crotchless
panties at that point? No, it was
practical, really, as well.
Going to the toilet was very
difficult when you had
multiple layers of clothing, and it
would have been
considered very unhygienic.
There's very early evidence about
the Roman underwear.
So, there's a fourth-century mosaic
which is found
in the Villa Romana del Casale
in Sicily.
I'd say I think it looks more like
a bikini, don't you think? Yeah.
There's a possibly even earlier one,
which is from Upper Egypt.
6,000 or 7,000 years ago,
it is called the Badari figure.
Do you think it looks more like
it's just got a big bush?
Some sort of a brick wall,
by the looks of it.
Do you want a dry-stone wall
round there, madam?
It must be tight.
Look at her eyes.
In 2015, a pair of Queen Victoria's
underpants sold
for £12,000 and they were exactly
able to date these pants.
How do you think
they could date them?
So, here's one of the extraordinary
things about Victoria,
is the detailed photographic record
of her life.
And, so, they could work out
by the waistband when it was
cos she just got fatter and
fatter and fatter.
She got bigger and bigger, and she
got massive hips again.
Yes, so these are nearly 45 inches.
So, this is a waistband
in this kind of region
which means it was definitely
towards the end. The waist was 45?
Yes, so, we're talking
1890s by then.
Albert was dead, she didn't care,
she's just having cake.
She's just eating.
All those lovely puddings, though.
You wouldn't regret a minute of it,
would you?
What would you like for breakfast?
Jam roly-poly and custard.
Victoria sponge, please, again.
And a larger pair of briefs.
Now, a question on pronunciation.
Who would like to hear my
Katharine Hepburn impression?
Yes, please. Yes, please.
AS HEPBURN IN ON GOLDEN POND: Listen
to me, mister, you're my knight
in shining armour, and you're going
to get back on that horse,
and I'll be right behind you.
APPLAUSE
Where is that accent from?
The south in America?
Oh, no, not from America at all.
Is it going to be Danish?
No, but if you were somewhere
between Denmark and
the United States?
Mid-Atlantic!
Yes, absolutely right, Nikki!
It is the Mid-Atlantic.
That's not a country! No, it is not.
So, the point is it's not from
anywhere.
It was so named because it was
halfway between the US
and the British accent, and it was
the accent in Hollywood films
before, sort of, 1950.
It was designed to be vaguely sort
of British and aristocratic,
and it was thought that it sounded
appropriately posh.
They used to, in drama schools,
train accents out of people.
Like, when I went to drama school,
they didn't.
Though I still have this strong
English accent now.
LAUGHTER
Yeah, but they used to, like, knock
off all the edges so people ended...
FAUX POSH ENGLISH: ..up speaking
all of the time like this.
That's how British people spoke.
It was a thing in Hollywood films.
There was a voice coach
called Edith Skinner.
She was actually a Canadian.
And, in the 1930s, she taught this
is good speech
or Eastern standard speech. You're
talking about Katharine Hepburn,
you're talking about Betty Davis,
Vincent Price,
and they all learned
to speak that way.
Probably my favourite movie of all
time, Some Like It Hot,
Tony Curtis in that movie,
he pretends doing a sort of
Cary Grant impression.
It still occasionally
surfaces today.
So, Kelsey Grammer
used it in Frasier.
That was one of his things.
I got told that I had the worst
Hindi accent that an English person
had had on film. I am half-Indian,
by the way.
I am not going to be racist
right now.
But I was doing films and TV
in Bombay,
and I was told that my accent was...
IN HINDI ACCENT:
..totally the EP-i-tome
of a Britisher's bad Hindi accent.
And that's from somebody who used
the word "EP-i-tome,"
and it's like, get your
em-PHA-sis right,
and then we can talk.
Yeah.
You can't record synced sound cos
there's too much noise in Bombay.
So, it would all be done
in the dubbing.
So, if you make a mistake,
they just go...
SPEAKS HINDI
So, it'll be done in the dubbing.
Actually, you could pretty much do
anything if you could lip sync,
but I had somebody sitting there
who would deliver me
the dialogue and I was told to look
into middle distance
and say things like...
SHE SPEAKS HINDI
..which means "his steel sword
is very strong."
God knows what that actually meant.
And then I'd wait and stare a little
bit longer,
listen to the next dialogue and
deliver it, that's how I acted.
What kind of things were you in?
Don't you want to see them?
I want to see them.
I want to see the rushes
with the other person.
Well, the Mid-Atlantic accent
was used by lots of villains,
so you got Jafar in Aladdin,
Cruella de Vil has it,
Darth Vader has it, the evil queen
in Snow White,
anyway, there we are.
This is Pickering's Harem.
What huge discovery
did they help make?
Is it Braille?
Is it Braille?
No, a very interesting choice. Well,
because they're all working
very closely. They're definitely
researching something.
It is one of the most astonishing
discoveries.
It is thanks to these women
the universe was discovered
less than a century ago.
So, 1923, Edwin Hubble found
evidence that a universe existed
outside the Milky Way, but he
couldn't have done it without
Henrietta Swan Leavitt,
and that is her at the back.
She was a member of a group
of astronomers known
as Pickering's Harem.
So, basically what she did,
she worked out how to measure
distance from the Earth
with pulsating stars,
and when Hubble spotted one of those
stars, he used her methods
to calculate how far away it was
and he learned it was much
too distant to be part of the Milky
Way. It's unbelievable.
It's less than a century ago
he discovered the universe,
but he couldn't have done it
without her.
So, when does she get co-credit
on that?
OK, so that is one of the
extraordinary things.
So, Leavitt was employed by a man
called Charles Pickering.
There's Charles Pickering. He was
the director
of the Harvard Observatory
from 1877 and, originally,
he hired male staff in order
to analyse all of the data
that was being collected from the
observed sky and he got so angry
with the staff because
he found them incompetent
and he said, "My maid
could do it better."
And, so, they said,
"Yeah, go on, then."
So, he brought his maid in
and she could do it better.
In fact, she did it so well
he hired other
what were known as female computers,
or, more insultingly,
Pickering's Harem.
And it's a classic thing in science,
the harem effect.
It's a phenomenon whereby a male
scientist in a position of power
predominately hires
female assistants,
probably because he has to pay them
less, so you get more assistance.
That's why this episode
was so cheap to make.
Alan Davis' QI.
Actually, Hubble himself,
odd character.
He claimed he'd fought a bear,
he claimed
he'd saved two women from drowning,
he claimed
he'd set up a successful
law practise in Kentucky.
No evidence for any of these things.
He smoked a pipe because
he thought it looked British.
He had a, sort of, fake British
accent.
He had a Mid-Atlantic accent
as well, then?
He did. Yeah.
I have totally run out of questions,
but I've been told that my elves
have finally finished
the procrastination questions.
So, there is my elf, Anna.
Anna, thank you very much. No, no,
it is fine. Better late than never.
Thank you, Anna.
APPLAUSE
When should we celebrate
Procrastination Week?
Umm... Well, erm, we could do,
I mean, I would say...
I need to clean my house, so...
..after that? After that, yeah.
It is celebrated every year by the
Philadelphia-based
Procrastinators' Club of America.
It takes place at slightly different
times each year.
Usually the first couple
of weeks in March,
depends, you know, how long
he gets put off for.
The club was formed in 1956.
It's 20 membership, if you're
interested.
This buys you a licence
to procrastinate and access
to the monthly publication called
Last Month's Newsletter,
Lists upcoming events that have
already taken place.
They celebrate Christmas in June,
the 4th of July in January
and they have a Be Late for
Something Day on September 5th.
Their motto is
"Behind you all the way."
In 1966, they went on a bus tour,
brandishing a banner,
Excursion To The New York
World Fair,
which had closed a year and a half
earlier.
They recently ran a campaign to get
the late President James Buchanan
re-elected. He died in 1868.
There are lots of famous
procrastinators.
The playwright, this is one of my
favourite, Richard Sheridan
who wrote The School For Scandal.
He finished writing it as it was
being performed
on the opening night...
..in 1777, bringing down lines to
the actors
as they were on the stage.
That is quite late. Isn't it?
That is leaving it a bit late.
Where does it come from?
I really suffer from it.
I just always clean the house or
do whatever it is.
Where does it come from
in the brain, or why do we do it?
Well, it's interesting because lots
of people suffer terrible shame
and anxiety about it, and
one of the things that they now
think is that they're often
perfectionists.
They find it psychologically more
acceptable never to tackle
the task rather than to face the
possibility of falling short.
To try and fail. Yeah, you don't
want to fall short on a performance.
They have looked into ways to try
and improve people's habits on this.
So, they did a report on
the effectiveness of internet-based
cognitive behavioural therapy
in improving procrastination.
The main problem with the study
was that people kept putting
off doing the treatment.
Leonardo da Vinci,
ultimate Renaissance man,
he took 25 years to finish
the Virgin Of The Rocks.
Is that a painting or is
that an actual woman?
It's the one in the Louvre.
There's another one
in the National Gallery.
The Mona Lisa took 15 years
and he lived to be 67.
He actually only completed
15 paintings and a handful
of architectural designs.
And patrons going mad had to call in
other people to come and finish.
I have to say,
this is absolutely true.
We wrote to the Procrastinators'
Club because we were
doing this question
and they haven't got back to us.
Now, if you're feeling clueless, we
won't postpone it any longer.
It's time for
the soul-destroying chore
that we call general ignorance.
Fingers on buzzers, please.
If you are settling something
mano a mano,
how are you doing it?
FAST TICKING CLOCK
Yes? Man-to-man.
No, it's not man-to-man.
Ah, yes.
Hand-to-hand. It is hand-to-hand.
That is the literal Spanish
translation.
So, that dates back to the 1950s,
but in fact it used to refer to a
very particular Spanish sport.
FASTER TICKING CLOCK
Er, arm wrestling.
Is that a very particular
Spanish sport?
Oh, sorry.
FAUX SPANISH ACCENT:
It is arm wrestling.
Would it be bullfighting?
It would be bullfighting,
absolutely.
It used to refer to two bullfighters
in a rink competing
for the audience's attention
by killing three bulls each,
and it was used to imply that they
were on equal footing to each other.
Wait, so they had to kill three each
before the audience
would even start watching?
I mean, I've never been to a bull...
..that wouldn't be my thing,
to go to a bullfighting thing.
Don't go in that top,
whatever you do!
Can you imagine? It does look
terrifying.
Well, his trousers look terrifying.
Do you think his arse
is always that tight?
I think it's the sight of the bull.
I think his arse is acting on those
trousers even as we speak.
Now, here's a brainteaser.
What am I describing?
Known as the Great War,
the poppy is used to represent...?
FAST TICKING CLOCK
Yes?
World War I?
No, just let me finish.
The main combatants were France on
one side and the UK on the other.
Was it the World Cup in 1982?
It's Napoleonic.
The Napoleonic Wars
were the original Great War,
and the poppy was the emblem
of that war.
Before battle, so, in the case
of the Napoleonic ones,
particularly the land was often
empty and barren.
And, afterwards, these blood red
flowers would flourish.
The reason that scarlet corn poppies
do so well on battlefields
is because their seeds rely on light
in order to grow.
So, if the soil is disturbed
tremendously, they emerge
out of the dark earth and are
exposed to the Sun's light
and poppies abound. So, there was an
American professor
and humanitarian
called Moina Belle Michael.
She was the one who conceived of
using the poppy as a symbol
of remembrance for World War I.
She taught disabled servicemen
at the University of Georgia.
She began to sell poppies
to raise funds for them.
And, then, in 1921, her idea was
adopted by the American Legion
and later in that same year
by the British Legion.
So, the poppy is an American idea
from the Napoleonic Wars.
Which is not what you
would think. Right!
We'll end on a question
about love and partnership.
What do opposites do?
SHYLY: Attract.
Nope. They did a survey. There's 80%
of people who believe
that to be true. But they examined
the digital footprints
of over 45,000 people,
and it's really rare
that opposites attract.
On the contrary, it's people
with similar personalities.
So, based on likes and word choices
in posts, you're much more likely
to be become friends and much more
likely to be romantic partners.
That's why your partner's more
likely to shag your friends,
cos they like you.
That didn't come up in the study,
but I think that'll do.
It's fine. We've all had
an experience like that.
And he was my best mate!
So, here's bad news.
Dating apps are terrible
at pairing up people.
No shit. No! What?
I know, it's shocking
to be attracted to each other...
They can pair up murderers
and victims though, can't they?
AUDIENCE GROAN
Sorry, is that...
..is that an app?
It might as well be.
Are you a murderer or a victim?
I'm sort of a victim.
What are you? Murderer. Oh!
We have a house deep in the woods in
Denmark and I've been splitting
some wood for the stove,
and I'd left the axe outside,
and my mother said to me, she said,
"You better bring the axe in."
I said, "Why?" She said, "What if an
axe-murderer happens to pass by?"
I said, "I'm going to guess
by his job description
"he's got his own axe."
He's coming in with a butter knife
and he's like, "Wait a minute."
He's already like, "I'm going to
leave the axe because
"I'm a butter knife murderer.
"I'm going to spread you to death."
They did a study and they asked
participants to answer
100 questions about their own
personalities and what they were
looking for in a partner, and then
they sent them on a series
of speed dates, and they did a sort
of algorithm based
on the answers they'd given
to predict how well the dates
would go romantically.
And it was no better than chance
at predicting whether two people
would be attracted to each other.
Opposites don't attract,
so, if you're a procrastinator,
best to date another procrastinator,
er, you know,
when you get round to it.
Well, we've been putting it off,
but it's time for
the off-putting matter
of the scores.
Busy on the deadlines
this week with -4,
in first place, it's Holly!
APPLAUSE
In the nick of time
in second place, with -12,
Alan!
APPLAUSE
Just a tad too late with -13,
it's Nikki!
APPLAUSE
And watching the last bus
disappearing over the horizon,
in last place, at -14,
it's Aisling!
APPLAUSE
That's it from Nikki, Aisling,
Holly, Alan and me.
I'm going to end on a wise and
witty quotation just as soon as
the elves get round
to giving me one.
In the meantime, in the words of
Mark Twain,
"Never put off till tomorrow
what you can do the day
"after tomorrow just as well."
Goodnight.
where tonight's show is one, long
exercise in procrastination.
Struggling to meet their deadlines,
we have the purposeless
Holly Walsh...
..the prevaricating Nikki Bedi...
..the postponing Aisling Bea...
..and that never knowingly
premature Alan Davis.
Right, their buzzers. Holly goes...
TICKING CLOCK
Nikki goes...
FAST-TICKING CLOCK
Oh, yeah.
Aisling goes...
FASTER-TICKING CLOCK
And Alan goes...
SNORING
LOUD ALARM
I do dream that noise.
Question one, of course, is all
about procrastination itself.
So, I just... I'm sorry, hang
on... ah, the elves are telling me
that they haven't got around to
writing
the procrastination questions yet.
So, we're going to have to use the
emergency back-up questions
that I've got here, just a second.
I don't think these have ever been
used.
Wow, OK.
Ah! Here we are. Ooh!
Got some questions... Oh!
What else is in here?
Oh, Alan, it's a picture of Arsenal
winning the Premier League.
AUDIENCE LAUGH AND APPLAUSE
It won't be a picture of
Tottenham Hotspurs winning it.
AUDIENCE "OOH"
I have no idea why that's funny.
I'm pleased with my small
footballing joke, there.
OK, so, instead, a question
on parenting.
What's the best thing to do
about a crying baby?
If it's on a plane, put it in a
soundproof box.
What we started doing was my son had
quite bad nappy rash...
You clean it, just clean the baby.
All right, Supernanny.
So, what we started doing was,
before we put him back
in his nappy, we'd get our
hairdryer and we'd just blow dry
his naked bum like this.
And then that started to work too
well.
Yeah, burns? No, it wasn't...
Then we realised that if we just
blow-dried his balls with
a hairdryer, he would go to sleep
like that.
The trouble is now I...
It sound like a very good idea.
You could rig it up on a sort of a
hook at the end of the bed...
..I'm thinking by myself, now.
I am saying this out loud, aren't I?
You realise when he is grown-up,
darling, there's going
to be so much trouble.
I think we have almost certainly
given him a fetish.
He's going to be unable to walk past
the hairdressers.
He'll be standing over... You know
those Marilyn Monroe grates?
You'll never get him off!
Did you go full hairdresser, Holly?
Were you like, "So, are you going
anywhere nice on your holidays?"
I have to say that things have
changed very much in terms
of how we actually approach the
whole thing.
There was an American paediatrician
called Dr Walter J Sackett Junior,
and he basically suggested that you
should ignore crying babies.
He wrote a bestseller in 1962 called
Bringing Up Babies,
A Family Doctor's Practical Approach
To Child Care.
And he said if you didn't ignore
crying babies,
they would grow up to be socialists.
"If we teach our offspring to expect
everything to be provided on demand,
"we must admit the possibility
of sowing the seeds of socialism."
And, as a parent, that is your
worst nightmare.
So, it was 1962, it was the year of
the Cuban missile crisis,
America was paranoid about
the communist threat
from around the world.
And their solution was leave all the
babies crying on their own.
But he also prescribed early
feeding.
He recommended that you give
babies cereals at two days,
vegetables at ten days,
meat at 14 and finally,
at nine weeks,
"Bacon and eggs, just like Dad."
Can a baby digest all that? No,
darling. No, it's a terrible idea.
I don't have any children so I'm
just checking.
Anyway, he disliked milk intensely.
He said, "To my mind, the dairies of
America constitute
"the number one health hazard."
He recommended giving babies black
coffee from six months.
That's all you want, right?
A child that won't sleep.
Did he have any children, I wonder?
He did have children, he did, yeah.
And where are they now?
They're all communists.
There are other books that are even
worse.
1916, A Mother And Her Child by
doctors Leena and William Sadler,
they advised avoiding physical
contact with infants
except when spanking.
Crying, again, should be ignored
unless the baby cried hard enough
to go black in the face or burst a
blood vessel.
Black? Yeah. In the face? Yeah.
At which point, a sound spanking
should be administered.
Marvellously titled, The Science Of
Eugenics,
who doesn't want to read that?
Written in 1920 by a Doctor
BJ Jeffries and JL Nichols,
warned pregnant women not to look at
or think about ugly
things or people or their child
would turn out ugly.
And the best way to quiet
a crying baby?
Gin.
You have the gin, or the baby?
The baby.
The heir to the Budweiser dynasty
or whatever you'd call it,
every time a baby's born the first
thing they have is five
drops of Bud dropped on their
tongue.
That's the first thing they consume.
Really?
My nanny used to put whisky on my
gums when I was teething
and holy water,
that classic cocktail combo.
Looking forward to the drinks
at the weekend.
And used to rub it on our gums,
and I told that to a dentist
recently, and they were like,
"It's not actually good."
Because loads of people are like,
"Oh, yeah, it's a great pain
"reliever." It's that it burns your
gums more so that you forget
about the pain in your teeth and you
focus on the burn in your gums.
So...
MUMBLES: But it hasn't had any
effect on me, so...
AUDIENCE LAUGH
Right, now, Alan, I would like you
to put this on, please.
Oh! Why, certainly, Sandi.
Thank you very much. Is it a hat?
It is a hat, yes.
Put that on.
Now, my question is what activity
is Alan now perfectly dressed to do?
Is it a taco hat?
At parties, sometimes they get
people
to walk around, put a dip in the
centre and some tacos
and then you dip the them into the
man's head.
Feels like a bicycle tyre.
When you do know what it is,
you'll be horrified at the thought
of serving dip from this.
Is it a contraceptive?
It's exactly the reverse
of a contraceptive.
It's an erection hat.
It is kind of an erection hat.
OK. Yes. So, this is...
It's not working.
Patience, everyone, I'm 52.
I am very pleased because it's for
a falcon.
It's a falcon sex hat.
It was invented to save the
peregrine falcon from extinction.
So, the peregrine trainer wears this
hat and encourages the birds to mate
with his head. Come on.
Come on, you, you know you want to.
Agh! Well, it's that!
So, in the 1970s, the whole species
was threatened to be wiped out.
The pesticides were damaging their
eggs and so a captive...
Oh, look, it works!
It does absolutely work.
A captive breeding programme
was set up.
So, here is the problem.
Falcons are usually more attracted
to their owners than they are to
other birds.
It's a phenomenon called imprinting.
So, when a young falcon comes out of
its egg, it gets attached
to the very first thing it sees.
It could be a rubber boot
or it could be an electric train,
it could be anything. How about a
hairdryer?
Yes.
But, quite often, it is the owner.
So, they want to mate...
They want to mate with their carers,
and the hat is invented to catch
the resulting semen.
Oh, God. It can be collected...
I know, the thing you're wearing,
it's why I said you don't
want to eat dip out of it,
the thing you're wearing... It's not
falcon ejaculate, is it?
..it's got little tiny pockets in
it.
The falcon wants to mate, and it
goes onto the hat because it likes
the owner, and you can
catch the semen
from those little tiny pockets. Wow!
HE MIMICS AN EJACULATING BIRD
It totally works! The 1970s, the
population...
HE MAKES SNORING NOISES
..the population...
LAUGHTER
APPLAUSE
The population in the 1970s
was down to 324, over 6,000
peregrine falcons have now been
released into the US
through this programme.
Let's have a quick look at an actual
video of the hat working.
So, that noise has been made by the
owner.
I'd say this is the most niche
pornography.
I love how bored the guy looks!
It looks like he's knobbing
a potato waffle.
That hat has seen a lot of action
because it is practically
worn out in places.
It copulates into one of the
indentations, the same as
you've got on your hat. It comes in
a range of colours, the hat.
Comes in a range of colours? Yes.
One of the best things
about a falcon.
It's one of those things
where I congratulate the person
who invented it, but I never want to
meet them in a pub.
Well, how'd you come up with that?
I'm going to come up with, frankly,
a jizz hat for falcons.
Why don't you just get a job,
Barry?!
You have two degrees, and you're
living with me, I'm 84!
Who's wearing the crotchless pants
in this relationship?
Oh, sorry, I thought we had to buzz
in because it was us.
No, no, in this relationship.
I'm going to go the one
on the right. Albert?
Oh, is it Victoria and Albert?
It is Victoria and Albert, yes.
Well, maybe it's Victoria, then.
It is Victoria. When do we think
underwear began?
When people first started
wearing underwear?
The loincloth, the early loincloth.
Certainly in Roman times,
people had underwear.
But it fell out of favour
for centuries and in Britain
men got underwear, so you're talking
about drawers,
knickerbockers, but for centuries
women did not wear it at all.
And, when they did, finally,
so we're talking 19th century,
it was crotchless.
So, two separate legs
hanging open underneath and held
together by a belt around the waist.
And you don't get them sewn together
until 1876.
I have no idea
what happened that year.
Someone went, "I am not having this
breeze."
But it didn't become the norm
to have a crotch in your underwear
until 1910.
But it wasn't someone's sexual
peccadillo to have crotchless
panties at that point? No, it was
practical, really, as well.
Going to the toilet was very
difficult when you had
multiple layers of clothing, and it
would have been
considered very unhygienic.
There's very early evidence about
the Roman underwear.
So, there's a fourth-century mosaic
which is found
in the Villa Romana del Casale
in Sicily.
I'd say I think it looks more like
a bikini, don't you think? Yeah.
There's a possibly even earlier one,
which is from Upper Egypt.
6,000 or 7,000 years ago,
it is called the Badari figure.
Do you think it looks more like
it's just got a big bush?
Some sort of a brick wall,
by the looks of it.
Do you want a dry-stone wall
round there, madam?
It must be tight.
Look at her eyes.
In 2015, a pair of Queen Victoria's
underpants sold
for £12,000 and they were exactly
able to date these pants.
How do you think
they could date them?
So, here's one of the extraordinary
things about Victoria,
is the detailed photographic record
of her life.
And, so, they could work out
by the waistband when it was
cos she just got fatter and
fatter and fatter.
She got bigger and bigger, and she
got massive hips again.
Yes, so these are nearly 45 inches.
So, this is a waistband
in this kind of region
which means it was definitely
towards the end. The waist was 45?
Yes, so, we're talking
1890s by then.
Albert was dead, she didn't care,
she's just having cake.
She's just eating.
All those lovely puddings, though.
You wouldn't regret a minute of it,
would you?
What would you like for breakfast?
Jam roly-poly and custard.
Victoria sponge, please, again.
And a larger pair of briefs.
Now, a question on pronunciation.
Who would like to hear my
Katharine Hepburn impression?
Yes, please. Yes, please.
AS HEPBURN IN ON GOLDEN POND: Listen
to me, mister, you're my knight
in shining armour, and you're going
to get back on that horse,
and I'll be right behind you.
APPLAUSE
Where is that accent from?
The south in America?
Oh, no, not from America at all.
Is it going to be Danish?
No, but if you were somewhere
between Denmark and
the United States?
Mid-Atlantic!
Yes, absolutely right, Nikki!
It is the Mid-Atlantic.
That's not a country! No, it is not.
So, the point is it's not from
anywhere.
It was so named because it was
halfway between the US
and the British accent, and it was
the accent in Hollywood films
before, sort of, 1950.
It was designed to be vaguely sort
of British and aristocratic,
and it was thought that it sounded
appropriately posh.
They used to, in drama schools,
train accents out of people.
Like, when I went to drama school,
they didn't.
Though I still have this strong
English accent now.
LAUGHTER
Yeah, but they used to, like, knock
off all the edges so people ended...
FAUX POSH ENGLISH: ..up speaking
all of the time like this.
That's how British people spoke.
It was a thing in Hollywood films.
There was a voice coach
called Edith Skinner.
She was actually a Canadian.
And, in the 1930s, she taught this
is good speech
or Eastern standard speech. You're
talking about Katharine Hepburn,
you're talking about Betty Davis,
Vincent Price,
and they all learned
to speak that way.
Probably my favourite movie of all
time, Some Like It Hot,
Tony Curtis in that movie,
he pretends doing a sort of
Cary Grant impression.
It still occasionally
surfaces today.
So, Kelsey Grammer
used it in Frasier.
That was one of his things.
I got told that I had the worst
Hindi accent that an English person
had had on film. I am half-Indian,
by the way.
I am not going to be racist
right now.
But I was doing films and TV
in Bombay,
and I was told that my accent was...
IN HINDI ACCENT:
..totally the EP-i-tome
of a Britisher's bad Hindi accent.
And that's from somebody who used
the word "EP-i-tome,"
and it's like, get your
em-PHA-sis right,
and then we can talk.
Yeah.
You can't record synced sound cos
there's too much noise in Bombay.
So, it would all be done
in the dubbing.
So, if you make a mistake,
they just go...
SPEAKS HINDI
So, it'll be done in the dubbing.
Actually, you could pretty much do
anything if you could lip sync,
but I had somebody sitting there
who would deliver me
the dialogue and I was told to look
into middle distance
and say things like...
SHE SPEAKS HINDI
..which means "his steel sword
is very strong."
God knows what that actually meant.
And then I'd wait and stare a little
bit longer,
listen to the next dialogue and
deliver it, that's how I acted.
What kind of things were you in?
Don't you want to see them?
I want to see them.
I want to see the rushes
with the other person.
Well, the Mid-Atlantic accent
was used by lots of villains,
so you got Jafar in Aladdin,
Cruella de Vil has it,
Darth Vader has it, the evil queen
in Snow White,
anyway, there we are.
This is Pickering's Harem.
What huge discovery
did they help make?
Is it Braille?
Is it Braille?
No, a very interesting choice. Well,
because they're all working
very closely. They're definitely
researching something.
It is one of the most astonishing
discoveries.
It is thanks to these women
the universe was discovered
less than a century ago.
So, 1923, Edwin Hubble found
evidence that a universe existed
outside the Milky Way, but he
couldn't have done it without
Henrietta Swan Leavitt,
and that is her at the back.
She was a member of a group
of astronomers known
as Pickering's Harem.
So, basically what she did,
she worked out how to measure
distance from the Earth
with pulsating stars,
and when Hubble spotted one of those
stars, he used her methods
to calculate how far away it was
and he learned it was much
too distant to be part of the Milky
Way. It's unbelievable.
It's less than a century ago
he discovered the universe,
but he couldn't have done it
without her.
So, when does she get co-credit
on that?
OK, so that is one of the
extraordinary things.
So, Leavitt was employed by a man
called Charles Pickering.
There's Charles Pickering. He was
the director
of the Harvard Observatory
from 1877 and, originally,
he hired male staff in order
to analyse all of the data
that was being collected from the
observed sky and he got so angry
with the staff because
he found them incompetent
and he said, "My maid
could do it better."
And, so, they said,
"Yeah, go on, then."
So, he brought his maid in
and she could do it better.
In fact, she did it so well
he hired other
what were known as female computers,
or, more insultingly,
Pickering's Harem.
And it's a classic thing in science,
the harem effect.
It's a phenomenon whereby a male
scientist in a position of power
predominately hires
female assistants,
probably because he has to pay them
less, so you get more assistance.
That's why this episode
was so cheap to make.
Alan Davis' QI.
Actually, Hubble himself,
odd character.
He claimed he'd fought a bear,
he claimed
he'd saved two women from drowning,
he claimed
he'd set up a successful
law practise in Kentucky.
No evidence for any of these things.
He smoked a pipe because
he thought it looked British.
He had a, sort of, fake British
accent.
He had a Mid-Atlantic accent
as well, then?
He did. Yeah.
I have totally run out of questions,
but I've been told that my elves
have finally finished
the procrastination questions.
So, there is my elf, Anna.
Anna, thank you very much. No, no,
it is fine. Better late than never.
Thank you, Anna.
APPLAUSE
When should we celebrate
Procrastination Week?
Umm... Well, erm, we could do,
I mean, I would say...
I need to clean my house, so...
..after that? After that, yeah.
It is celebrated every year by the
Philadelphia-based
Procrastinators' Club of America.
It takes place at slightly different
times each year.
Usually the first couple
of weeks in March,
depends, you know, how long
he gets put off for.
The club was formed in 1956.
It's 20 membership, if you're
interested.
This buys you a licence
to procrastinate and access
to the monthly publication called
Last Month's Newsletter,
Lists upcoming events that have
already taken place.
They celebrate Christmas in June,
the 4th of July in January
and they have a Be Late for
Something Day on September 5th.
Their motto is
"Behind you all the way."
In 1966, they went on a bus tour,
brandishing a banner,
Excursion To The New York
World Fair,
which had closed a year and a half
earlier.
They recently ran a campaign to get
the late President James Buchanan
re-elected. He died in 1868.
There are lots of famous
procrastinators.
The playwright, this is one of my
favourite, Richard Sheridan
who wrote The School For Scandal.
He finished writing it as it was
being performed
on the opening night...
..in 1777, bringing down lines to
the actors
as they were on the stage.
That is quite late. Isn't it?
That is leaving it a bit late.
Where does it come from?
I really suffer from it.
I just always clean the house or
do whatever it is.
Where does it come from
in the brain, or why do we do it?
Well, it's interesting because lots
of people suffer terrible shame
and anxiety about it, and
one of the things that they now
think is that they're often
perfectionists.
They find it psychologically more
acceptable never to tackle
the task rather than to face the
possibility of falling short.
To try and fail. Yeah, you don't
want to fall short on a performance.
They have looked into ways to try
and improve people's habits on this.
So, they did a report on
the effectiveness of internet-based
cognitive behavioural therapy
in improving procrastination.
The main problem with the study
was that people kept putting
off doing the treatment.
Leonardo da Vinci,
ultimate Renaissance man,
he took 25 years to finish
the Virgin Of The Rocks.
Is that a painting or is
that an actual woman?
It's the one in the Louvre.
There's another one
in the National Gallery.
The Mona Lisa took 15 years
and he lived to be 67.
He actually only completed
15 paintings and a handful
of architectural designs.
And patrons going mad had to call in
other people to come and finish.
I have to say,
this is absolutely true.
We wrote to the Procrastinators'
Club because we were
doing this question
and they haven't got back to us.
Now, if you're feeling clueless, we
won't postpone it any longer.
It's time for
the soul-destroying chore
that we call general ignorance.
Fingers on buzzers, please.
If you are settling something
mano a mano,
how are you doing it?
FAST TICKING CLOCK
Yes? Man-to-man.
No, it's not man-to-man.
Ah, yes.
Hand-to-hand. It is hand-to-hand.
That is the literal Spanish
translation.
So, that dates back to the 1950s,
but in fact it used to refer to a
very particular Spanish sport.
FASTER TICKING CLOCK
Er, arm wrestling.
Is that a very particular
Spanish sport?
Oh, sorry.
FAUX SPANISH ACCENT:
It is arm wrestling.
Would it be bullfighting?
It would be bullfighting,
absolutely.
It used to refer to two bullfighters
in a rink competing
for the audience's attention
by killing three bulls each,
and it was used to imply that they
were on equal footing to each other.
Wait, so they had to kill three each
before the audience
would even start watching?
I mean, I've never been to a bull...
..that wouldn't be my thing,
to go to a bullfighting thing.
Don't go in that top,
whatever you do!
Can you imagine? It does look
terrifying.
Well, his trousers look terrifying.
Do you think his arse
is always that tight?
I think it's the sight of the bull.
I think his arse is acting on those
trousers even as we speak.
Now, here's a brainteaser.
What am I describing?
Known as the Great War,
the poppy is used to represent...?
FAST TICKING CLOCK
Yes?
World War I?
No, just let me finish.
The main combatants were France on
one side and the UK on the other.
Was it the World Cup in 1982?
It's Napoleonic.
The Napoleonic Wars
were the original Great War,
and the poppy was the emblem
of that war.
Before battle, so, in the case
of the Napoleonic ones,
particularly the land was often
empty and barren.
And, afterwards, these blood red
flowers would flourish.
The reason that scarlet corn poppies
do so well on battlefields
is because their seeds rely on light
in order to grow.
So, if the soil is disturbed
tremendously, they emerge
out of the dark earth and are
exposed to the Sun's light
and poppies abound. So, there was an
American professor
and humanitarian
called Moina Belle Michael.
She was the one who conceived of
using the poppy as a symbol
of remembrance for World War I.
She taught disabled servicemen
at the University of Georgia.
She began to sell poppies
to raise funds for them.
And, then, in 1921, her idea was
adopted by the American Legion
and later in that same year
by the British Legion.
So, the poppy is an American idea
from the Napoleonic Wars.
Which is not what you
would think. Right!
We'll end on a question
about love and partnership.
What do opposites do?
SHYLY: Attract.
Nope. They did a survey. There's 80%
of people who believe
that to be true. But they examined
the digital footprints
of over 45,000 people,
and it's really rare
that opposites attract.
On the contrary, it's people
with similar personalities.
So, based on likes and word choices
in posts, you're much more likely
to be become friends and much more
likely to be romantic partners.
That's why your partner's more
likely to shag your friends,
cos they like you.
That didn't come up in the study,
but I think that'll do.
It's fine. We've all had
an experience like that.
And he was my best mate!
So, here's bad news.
Dating apps are terrible
at pairing up people.
No shit. No! What?
I know, it's shocking
to be attracted to each other...
They can pair up murderers
and victims though, can't they?
AUDIENCE GROAN
Sorry, is that...
..is that an app?
It might as well be.
Are you a murderer or a victim?
I'm sort of a victim.
What are you? Murderer. Oh!
We have a house deep in the woods in
Denmark and I've been splitting
some wood for the stove,
and I'd left the axe outside,
and my mother said to me, she said,
"You better bring the axe in."
I said, "Why?" She said, "What if an
axe-murderer happens to pass by?"
I said, "I'm going to guess
by his job description
"he's got his own axe."
He's coming in with a butter knife
and he's like, "Wait a minute."
He's already like, "I'm going to
leave the axe because
"I'm a butter knife murderer.
"I'm going to spread you to death."
They did a study and they asked
participants to answer
100 questions about their own
personalities and what they were
looking for in a partner, and then
they sent them on a series
of speed dates, and they did a sort
of algorithm based
on the answers they'd given
to predict how well the dates
would go romantically.
And it was no better than chance
at predicting whether two people
would be attracted to each other.
Opposites don't attract,
so, if you're a procrastinator,
best to date another procrastinator,
er, you know,
when you get round to it.
Well, we've been putting it off,
but it's time for
the off-putting matter
of the scores.
Busy on the deadlines
this week with -4,
in first place, it's Holly!
APPLAUSE
In the nick of time
in second place, with -12,
Alan!
APPLAUSE
Just a tad too late with -13,
it's Nikki!
APPLAUSE
And watching the last bus
disappearing over the horizon,
in last place, at -14,
it's Aisling!
APPLAUSE
That's it from Nikki, Aisling,
Holly, Alan and me.
I'm going to end on a wise and
witty quotation just as soon as
the elves get round
to giving me one.
In the meantime, in the words of
Mark Twain,
"Never put off till tomorrow
what you can do the day
"after tomorrow just as well."
Goodnight.