QI (2003–…): Season 16, Episode 16 - Episode #16.16 - full transcript
This programme contains
some strong language
APPLAUSE
Good evening!
Welcome to QI where, tonight,
we're going positively postal.
And what's landed on my doormat
tonight is absolutely first class.
Registered mail - it's Matt Lucas.
Hello, everyone. Thank you.
APPLAUSE AND WHISTLING
Thank you.
Handle with care - it's Holly Walsh.
APPLAUSE AND CHEERING
This way up - it's Susan Calman.
APPLAUSE AND CHEERING
And please do not leave unattended,
he may be removed and destroyed
without warning - it's Alan Davies.
APPLAUSE AND CHEERING
Right, let's hear your buzzers
post-haste.
Matt goes...
# Please Mr Postman,
look and see... #
Like that.
Holly goes...
# I'm gonna sit right down
and write myself a letter... #
This is all very mellow, isn't it?
Susan goes...
# I gave a letter
to the postman... #
And Alan goes...
# Postman Pat, Postman Pat
LAUGHTER
# Postman Pat and
his black-and-white cat... #
APPLAUSE
ALAN HUMS ALONG
Oh, dear, and straight away
some letters have gone missing.
Can you fill in the blanks here?
Who is that, first of all?
That's Tony Blackburn.
It is Tony Blackburn.
Is this like a game of hangman?
Do we guess letters?
You can if you like.
OK. A.
Er...yes.
LAUGHTER
But I'm not going to tell you where!
You won't tell me where?
Right, er... I'll use P...
Po... Po...is good.
Postcodes!
Postcodes!
But there's not enough letters
but postcodes! Yes, I use
W1... Oh! Oh!
W, and do you use your postcode?
Postcode. W1A. Yes.
When did we start having postcodes?
Anybody have any idea?
'60s. '60s, no.
It's earlier than that.
'20s? '30s? So, a man called...
'40s?
LAUGHTER
'50s?
This guy is Sir Rowland Hill,
he first had the idea, 1857.
What? I know! He divided London
into postal districts,
but the actual postcodes
that we have
were not generally introduced
in the UK until,
in fact, the year I was born, 1958.
Shut up, Sandi! What, me being born?
'58? Shut up! Why?
You're the '70s at least,
if ever I saw you!
And tonight's winner is...
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
But people didn't use them,
so, Tony Blackburn...
That dates from 1980s,
that's 22 years after they'd
been officially introduced.
Why did people not use them?
Because they didn't know them?
Er, no, it wasn't.
Well, sometimes,
I don't know my own postcode.
You don't know your postcode?
You know the way your mind works
when you get older
that you think of a different
postcode where you once lived?
No.
LAUGHTER
Sometimes you get mixed up.
How do you fare with passwords?
Well, I've got a document called
"Passwords" on my computer!
LAUGHTER
And in that document
are all my passwords.
Yes, but presumably your computer
is password protected...
Yes, but I know that one. ..so you
can't get into that document.
I know the password to that one
because it's my name!
LAUGHTER
So, anybody breaking into your home
cos you're on QI at the moment...
..just put your name in and
there's a file marked Passwords
and you're off and running.
She can't remember where she lives,
so... That's true.
Maybe we could get the burglar to
ring you and tell you where it is.
Right, OK, I want you, please,
to tell me
what three words
describe exactly
Alan's current position.
Is it - full of regret?
That's very good - full of regret.
Any other thoughts? Three words.
Is what you're doing there
deliberate,
or is that just the way you sit?
I was just sitting
on my hands, that's all.
Oh, is it - sitting on hands?
So, it could be.
So, in terms of where he is,
his exact location,
the only correct words are,
in this exact order,
joke, proof, value.
It's Alan's precise current address
according to one of the most
exciting things I've ever heard of,
called what3words.
This is a British company, and they
have divided the Earth's surface
into squares which are
three metres by three metres,
so there's 57 trillion squares
in total,
and they have assigned each one
a unique three-word code.
Now, what's amazing about it,
you only need
40,000 words
in order to make the system work.
It was launched in 2013.
It operates in 25 languages
and it has already been adopted
by actual countries.
So, in Mongolia and the Ivory Coast,
they're the first to adopt it
as the official address system.
So, if you have a look here,
Bingerville in Cote d'Ivoire -
glitter.drummers.stepping
is exactly that point.
San Francisco - actors.asking.print
is exactly that point.
But what about all the floors of
the building? How does that work?
It would just be the square
that you are in.
So, the square goes all the way up?
Yeah.
But what it means is that,
for example,
if an ambulance is called
or something,
you can be pretty specific about
exactly where you need to go.
The front doorstep of Buckingham
Palace - sound.manual.lungs.
The top of Ayers Rock or Uluru -
snake.removes.gymnast!
Sorry, I, I...
I, I..er...
Is the air being let out of you?
I can... I can see the fascination.
Could you just put the little thing
in the side again now?
It's popped out.
The kids have been playing with it.
Oh, no. Just stick it back in.
I don't mean to be old-fashioned...
ALAN IMITATES POPPING
Yeah? This seems to be
overcomplicating things.
It's just...
You wouldn't need the 25, even.
The thing about it is that
you couldn't confuse it
with anywhere else in the world.
You say that,
but people pissed in a cab...
"What's your address?"
And then, next thing you know
you're dropped off at, like,
an airport in Nigeria.
We have actually written,
using the what3words system,
to the British Embassy in Mongolia,
and we sent them out some time ago.
I have to tell you,
they've not arrived yet, so...
"The fuck's that?"
"I don't know."
I think the.fucks.that
is just outside of, um...
OK. Now, why would you give
your postie...a rocket?
To get your letters into space?
OK, that's nice. I like that.
Are you allowed to post a rocket?
Are you allowed to post a rocket?
Yeah.
I suppose, if it's not combustible
in any manner.
I know you're allowed
to send a gun
but you can't send it
with ammunition.
Same thing as PIN numbers,
you can send a credit card
but you can't send the PIN number
with it. That's true.
And, in fact, you can send a toilet
but not with a poo in it!
LAUGHTER
This is one of my favourite
dinner-party questions. OK, go.
If you had to get a gun by midnight
tonight, who would you ask?
No, it's really good way...
Seriously, what kind of
dinner parties do you...?
You have to work out who of your
friends would have the contacts
to get you a gun
by midnight tonight.
So, well, I mean,
I have friends who hunt.
Could it be a hunting gun?
Yeah, just got to kill someone.
Sandi would just have someone
killed. She wouldn't...
She'd keep her hands clean.
Yeah, you're right.
I would have people for that. Yes.
You'd never be... Like, if something
happened, you'd be like,
"Oh, have you read in the papers?
What a tragedy."
Yes. Yeah!
It's never occurred to me
that I might want a gun at all.
It's a bit like asking me where
I'd score...do...scores...drugs?
Is it scoring?
OK, which friends would be able
to score drugs for you by midnight
tonight? Again, I've got no-one.
I've got a few friends on HRT,
then I run out!
LAUGHTER
All right, well,
who would you shoot, then?
It's not who I'd want to shoot -
that's a completely
different dinner party!
Does no-one else just sit down
with a Nigella Lawson cookbook
and a silky dressing gown,
and make some squid? OK?
That's what I do when
I have a dinner party.
She could get you a gun, Nigella.
She'd get you a gun.
In a heartbeat.
It'd be like a musket...
..made out of icing sugar.
Try that at a dinner party. Someone
goes, where would you get a gun?
Just go, "Nigella Lawson."
Like, a literal rocket,
or a telling off?
Thank you for getting
back to the point.
Why would you give
your postie a rocket?
So you were heading
in the right direction
about sending it into space.
The idea is to send the post very,
very quickly. Very fast indeed.
In about 1824, Sir William Congreve,
he invented the Congreve rocket,
which was a form of
military artillery.
He attempted to deliver mail
from Tonga to Samoa by rocket.
He looks remarkably stoical
considering he's been shot eight
times. Not looking good for him.
He looks actually like he's standing
behind that costume.
Yes, it does, doesn't he?
You know who he looks like?
He looks exactly like
this guy off Grindr, and...
I don't fancy him, but he is nearby.
Ah, the romance of it!
He tried to send mail
from Tonga to Samoa.
It had limited success.
There's possibly a few letters...
With a rocket?
..still in the taller trees
in Tonga. Yeah.
So people forgot about sending post
by rocket for 100 years.
Then, in the 1930s, a German
engineer called Gerhard Zucker -
and there he is, Gerhard -
and he toured Germany
demonstrating his rocket post.
It sends a single grape.
"We will get these grapes...
"..to ze other end of Germany
in record time!
"Bring the grape forward.
One grape only!"
So the whole thing was billed
as a fantastic rocket.
It was going to be five metres long,
it could travel 400km
at a height of 1,000 metres,
speed of 1,000 metres per second.
In fact, it was just
a huge metal container
attached to eight fireworks.
And weirdly, nobody
in Germany was interested.
So he came to Britain in 1934,
and he announced he was going
to do a one-minute rocket post
between Dover and Calais.
And so the British Government
thought this was marvellous
and they went to the Outer Hebrides
to test the idea.
And he loaded his rocket
with 1,200 letters,
including one to the King,
King George V.
This would never get past
health and safety now, would it?
It was between the two islands
of Harris and Scalpay.
The whole thing blew up.
And government officials
stood and watched
burning parcels rain down
on the beach.
He was deported back to Germany...
..as a threat to the income
of the Post Office
and the security of the country.
He was then detained by the Germans
for co-operating with the British.
It has a happy ending, he served
with the Luftwaffe in World War II.
So there's a happy ending.
That's nice.
For centuries, people have
tried to send mail by rocket,
but it's never taken off.
GROANING
LAUGHTER
Now, what is the most useful thing
you can do with this?
These are some pieces of the...
Oh! Toilet paper from the '70s.
Do you remember this?
Izal toilet paper. Medicated. Ugh.
Oh, yeah.
We had that in our primary school.
We had it at school.
It didn't so much wipe
as just move the poo, didn't it?
To redistribute it.
It was like having your arse
sandpapered. It was unbelievable.
So, postal service, we're doing.
What is the most useful thing that
you might be able to do with this?
Wrap up a parcel in it?
Can you send it to a prisoner and
they can use it to roll drugs in?
I feel you are so close
to a life of crime.
It's true, man. You could make
a Camberwell carrot
out of one of these.
Can you eat it?
No. Why would you want to eat it?
Well, I was just thinking
it was more...
Let me try, let me try,
I've never tried.
You've never tried weed?
Have a bung on that, man.
Do I breathe it in? Breathe it in,
keep it in. Hold it in, hold it in.
Don't breathe out!
Don't breathe out!
It'll start coming out
of your eyes.
APPLAUSE
Yeah, man. Yeah.
Now you'll see pixies.
Has anybody got any chocolate?
Come on - post, people.
Can you write on it?
You can. It has a shiny side
and it has a flat side.
And you could use it.
Why might you want paper like this?
Very lightweight. Air mail.
Airmail, exactly right.
It was a terrific substitute
for airmail paper.
And indeed,
when I was at boarding school,
I couldn't afford airmail letters.
My parents lived in New York
and I was in England,
which was as far as
they were able to send me.
And we all used to write home
on Izal paper
because it was cheaper
than airmail paper.
We used to use loo roll
at my boarding school.
On a Saturday night,
when everyone came in from a rave,
they used to get a loo roll
and roll it out to
the length of the corridor,
and then, if they thought
you were pissed, they'd make you
walk along it to see if
you could walk in a straight line.
And if you couldn't,
you'd get in serious trouble.
Where did you get the drink from?
I was really happy
if I got an Ovaltine.
That's astonishing.
Drugs, drink, guns.
Why did they do this
to us as children?
Because this scarred me. Yeah.
Every visit to the toilet
was painful and horrific.
Why did they do that to us?
Was it to deter us
from doing number twos at school?
Because almost everyone
I know was like,
"I'm not doing that at school."
You'd wait till you get home.
But if you didn't go home for
three months, it was a bit tricky.
APPLAUSE
Now, this is nothing really
to do with the show,
except that I thought
it was entertaining.
Susan, what is one of the tricks
you can do because of your height?
I can stand up completely straight
in the back of a black cab.
Yes. So...
LAUGHTER
I thought we'd see
if you can fit in a pillar box.
APPLAUSE
Just want to see if you can stand up
inside a pillar... I'm way too tall!
Can you fit in there?
I'm standing up completely straight.
APPLAUSE
Right, carrying on!
LAUGHTER
You've got to get in one of those
and just do it...
That would be a very,
very funny Candid Camera.
OK, so, here is my question.
Could I...
What would happen...
SUSAN GIGGLES
..if you posted yourself
to Number 10 Downing Street?
I'll let you out now.
SUSAN GIBBERS
Are you all right?
Well done, Susan, well done.
APPLAUSE
Would you get delivered to Number 11
and a card put through the door
saying there's a parcel?
Yeah, get left on the porch.
Do you think anybody's ever tried
posting yourself to Number 10?
People must have done.
Gordon Brown used to,
in the old days.
In 1909, two suffragettes
posted themselves
to Number 10 Downing Street because
they could not get an appointment
to see the Prime Minister,
Mr Asquith.
They posted themselves from
the East Strand post office
and they were escorted
by a messenger boy,
you can see him on the left,
there, AS Palmer.
But the gentleman
who's come out from Number 10
has refused to sign for
the human letters,
and so the two women,
Miss McClelland and Mrs Solomon,
were returned to their office at the
Women's Social And Political Union.
But, obviously, they got
the photographs.
The Post Office played a huge part
in the suffrage movement.
So, members of the Women's
Social And Political Union,
including the Pankhursts, they
would smash windows in post offices,
they poured acid into pillar boxes,
they set fire to postboxes.
They put pepper into letters,
sent them to anti-suffrage MPs.
And in tribute to them, you locked
a woman in a letterbox. I did!
But you did not pour acid in the
postbox. There was no acid at all.
Now, then, give me
your best impression
of a 19th-century poster girl.
Susan's is rather good.
Is it this? Is it this?
So, they were called banner ladies,
they were late 19th-century
human billboards.
She's covered in food!
Yes, well, so, she's
obviously from a bakery.
She's even got bread on her head.
Everything she's doing
is advertising
the bakery that she's involved with.
The one on the left there is all
household goods. I love her hat.
Are you sure she's not
advertising magnets?
Look at that hat!
It's a loaf as a hat. I know.
That is the best thing
I've ever seen in my life.
There were people who had
light bulbs hanging off them,
dolls, bed springs.
They could be covered in pretzels,
like that woman there.
What about pet shops?
Did they advertise
with all sorts of cats and dogs?
Sometimes, advertising
can be just "wearing".
LAUGHTER
Now, for one in the posterior.
Who gave Hitler
a kick in the backside?
Have you ever actually kicked
someone up the arse?
I can't reach.
No. Have you? I once kicked
my brother up the arse.
And it was... It's so pleasing.
Do you know what? You look so nice,
and there's a streak,
a streak of violence a mile wide.
A kick up the arse is a very
pure thing when it goes right.
OK.
Anyway, who gave Hitler
a kick in the backside?
Himmler? Goering? Goebbels?
Was it Hitler, Himmler,
Himnler, Hivler, Hickler?
Er, no.
So, his personal physician
was called Dr Theodor Morell,
and he gave him daily injections
in his bottom
throughout the course of his career.
So it started with just, you know,
your basic vitamin supplements.
But over the years
a cocktail of drugs -
in fact, he became
unbelievably reliant
on a very complex
and potent cocktail.
One of the substances he was given,
it came in little
gold-foiled packets,
and was called Vitamultin.
And Hitler gave a packet to Himmler,
and he secretly ordered
one of the SS physicians,
Ernst Gunther Schenck,
to have it tested in the lab,
and it contained methamphetamine -
crystal meth.
Dr Morell kept a record of
the drugs that he gave to Hitler -
it included belladonna,
caffeine, cocaine,
adrenaline, morphine,
testosterone
and E-coli bacteria
extracted from human faeces.
Did they all have to have their hair
just cut up a little bit higher
than him, so they'd look a little
bit more stupid? A little bit.
Very strange.
"Your hair's a bit too low.
"I think you should go
higher with your hair."
"Yes, Fuhrer."
ALAN IMITATES BUZZING
I don't have a medical degree.
But I have watched a lot of
Casualty, but I am not qualified.
But even I know that injecting
bacteria from human faeces
into someone
is not a positive thing.
Well, apparently, it kept Hitler
fresh, alert, active
and immediately ready for the day.
Cheerful, talkative,
physically active
and tending to stay awake
for long hours into the night.
You could do that with
a simple Mars bar.
Then the Allied forces bombed
the factories
that produced Morell's drugs,
so not only was Hitler
losing the war,
he was coming off drugs
at the same time.
That is a Mosquito, that's
a twin-engined fighter bomber
made entirely of wood.
Is that right? I think so.
You were so confident there!
That was brilliant.
I think it had a wooden frame
or something unusual about it.
I remember, because we had
an Airfix one in our house.
Well, maybe just the Airfix one
was made of wood!
Did you know the Titanic
was completely made of tin?!
Weirdly, him taking these drugs was
inspired by the 1936 Olympic Games.
So you would think that's a lovely
thing about unbelievable fitness.
But the successful use of the
American amphetamine Benzedrine
at the 1936 Olympics
encouraged Germany to develop
its own methylamphetamin.
Pervitin.
Pervitin. I got a pervy-tin.
It was a...
It's a tin of perverts.
35 million tablets were ordered
and given to the German troops
before the advance on France
in the spring of 1940.
It even made its way
into confectionery.
There was a brand of chocolate
called Hildebrand chocolates,
and women were recommended
to eat two or three a day.
You would be able to get through
your housework in no time at all.
With the added effect
that you would lose weight.
The thing is, they're not wrong.
If you do housework on speed,
you will do it quicker.
Not very well, though.
You'll be done by 9.30,
but the house'll be a wreck.
My favourite Daily Mail headline
from 2017 was -
"Doing less housework
is making women fat."
GASPING
It had everything going for it!
A source of Hitler's power was,
frankly, a pain in the arse.
Now, it's time to queue
at the last window
to pick up the oddly-shaped package
that is General Ignorance.
Fingers on buzzers, please.
Which country invented the queue?
GASPS, MURMURS
Now, you see... No, no!
No-one's going to say... Susan?
I'm going to say Belgium.
Because?
LAUGHTER
Because why, darling?
I went to Belgium. Yeah.
And they all seemed very polite.
No, the first written example
we have of queueing comes from
the bread lines in the French
Revolution. So the French.
Oh! I was going to say French,
because "queue" sounds French.
It is, indeed.
I was really close with Belgium,
though. It's wrong. Yes.
Close, but wrong, that's what
we're going to say about it.
It's closer than China.
Susan Calman, close but wrong. Yeah.
It was an Irish revolutionary
known as Wolfe Tone,
and in his 1796 diaries,
he is basically the father
of Irish republicanism,
and he talked about
the petty princes of Italy are,
as the French say,
"en queue pour faire la paix."
It is an excellent metaphor
taken from a crowd
who stand one behind another in
order to be served in their turn
as the poor of Paris, for
example, are at the bakers.
My favourite story about a queue -
2018, Amazon opened
its first queue-free shop.
So, the idea, you scan
your phone as you walk in,
and there are video cameras
and sensors which watch
as you take items off the shelves.
They charge you automatically
and you don't have to wait
in line to check out.
On the very first day
that people went to visit,
they queued for two blocks
to get into the shop.
Fantastic.
OK.
What's the most unrealistic
thing about this picture?
Yes?
That...bra.
That is a pointless bra.
I don't know what that's
doing for her, really.
She's done a pump
out of her front bottom.
LAUGHTER
APPLAUSE
Only a man with children
would call it a pump.
Or, indeed, a front bottom. Yes.
What is the most unrealistic
thing about this picture?
She's got her eyes open.
OK.
People are allowed to have
their eyes open underwater.
But if she's in the sea,
you wouldn't have your eyes open.
Yeah, but she's a merlady.
She's a merperson.
Well, she's not a merperson.
I mean, it's a woman
dressed up as a merperson.
OK, I need you to imagine
it's a merperson.
Well, you didn't say that! OK.
So, the most unrealistic thing
for you is that
it doesn't seem like
a real merperson?
We don't have a picture
of a real merperson.
So, if you think about the classic
depictions of mermaids,
try and think about how fish swim.
So, when fish swim,
they have their tail
in the same plane as their body
and they move their tails from left
to right to propel themselves.
Most depictions of merfolk
show them just like that,
with the tail fin perpendicular
to the plane of the body.
A lot of whales have that,
don't they?
Well, this is the thing.
If mermaids swam like fish,
then they would have to swim
on their sides.
They'd swim like a mammal,
a mermaid, wouldn't they?
Right, so, if they're going
to swim like a whale or a dolphin,
they're mammals, not fish.
However, most merpeople are depicted
with scaly and shimmery
lower halves,
which is a fish characteristic. Yes.
And not the smooth skin of a
cetacean - so, a whale or a dolphin.
And so either -
this is what really irritates me -
the tail orientation is wrong
and a merperson is half fish,
or the scales are wrong,
and the merperson is half cetacean.
You can't have it both ways.
APPLAUSE
I am not going to invite you
to my dinner parties.
So, your point is, just to be clear,
that they shouldn't have scales
if their tail's like that?
You can't have it both ways.
You can't have it both ways.
You can't have it both ways? Well...
That's not what were talking about!
And this has really upset you,
hasn't it? Yeah.
It's my show, I thought
we'd talk about it. Yeah.
They've got to be mammals
for the singing
and the luring
on to the rocks, right?
That's not true, I've been seduced
by a couple of fish in my time.
The point, though,
as I understand it... Uh-oh!
..in order for...
SNIGGERING
What?
Well, your understanding of things
has been lacking tonight.
They were sirens, the mermaids.
Sirens, weren't they? Right?
The more attractive part
of the person...
Nee-naw-nee-naw!
The most attractive part of
a person is this bit. Yeah.
So the key is that I've always
been looking at the top bit.
And nobody's paid attention
to how wrong the bottom half is.
OK, um...
Mermaids are completely unrealistic
unless they're half whale
or they're bottom feeders.
Right!
LAUGHTER
Which brings us to the scores.
Wow.
First past the post with 10 points,
it's Matt!
Thank you very much. Thank you.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Very proud, thank you.
Posting an excellent
8-points score, in second place,
it's Alan!
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
In need of a bit of a postmortem,
with minus 5, it's Holly.
APPLAUSE AND CHEERING
Sounding the Last Post -
minus 5.5 - so close, so close,
Susan!
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
So, it's thanks to
Holly, Matt, Susan and Alan,
and it's time to leave you
with a final postscript.
These comforting words
from Gracie Allen -
"The President of today is just
the postage stamp of tomorrow."
Goodnight.
APPLAUSE
some strong language
APPLAUSE
Good evening!
Welcome to QI where, tonight,
we're going positively postal.
And what's landed on my doormat
tonight is absolutely first class.
Registered mail - it's Matt Lucas.
Hello, everyone. Thank you.
APPLAUSE AND WHISTLING
Thank you.
Handle with care - it's Holly Walsh.
APPLAUSE AND CHEERING
This way up - it's Susan Calman.
APPLAUSE AND CHEERING
And please do not leave unattended,
he may be removed and destroyed
without warning - it's Alan Davies.
APPLAUSE AND CHEERING
Right, let's hear your buzzers
post-haste.
Matt goes...
# Please Mr Postman,
look and see... #
Like that.
Holly goes...
# I'm gonna sit right down
and write myself a letter... #
This is all very mellow, isn't it?
Susan goes...
# I gave a letter
to the postman... #
And Alan goes...
# Postman Pat, Postman Pat
LAUGHTER
# Postman Pat and
his black-and-white cat... #
APPLAUSE
ALAN HUMS ALONG
Oh, dear, and straight away
some letters have gone missing.
Can you fill in the blanks here?
Who is that, first of all?
That's Tony Blackburn.
It is Tony Blackburn.
Is this like a game of hangman?
Do we guess letters?
You can if you like.
OK. A.
Er...yes.
LAUGHTER
But I'm not going to tell you where!
You won't tell me where?
Right, er... I'll use P...
Po... Po...is good.
Postcodes!
Postcodes!
But there's not enough letters
but postcodes! Yes, I use
W1... Oh! Oh!
W, and do you use your postcode?
Postcode. W1A. Yes.
When did we start having postcodes?
Anybody have any idea?
'60s. '60s, no.
It's earlier than that.
'20s? '30s? So, a man called...
'40s?
LAUGHTER
'50s?
This guy is Sir Rowland Hill,
he first had the idea, 1857.
What? I know! He divided London
into postal districts,
but the actual postcodes
that we have
were not generally introduced
in the UK until,
in fact, the year I was born, 1958.
Shut up, Sandi! What, me being born?
'58? Shut up! Why?
You're the '70s at least,
if ever I saw you!
And tonight's winner is...
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
But people didn't use them,
so, Tony Blackburn...
That dates from 1980s,
that's 22 years after they'd
been officially introduced.
Why did people not use them?
Because they didn't know them?
Er, no, it wasn't.
Well, sometimes,
I don't know my own postcode.
You don't know your postcode?
You know the way your mind works
when you get older
that you think of a different
postcode where you once lived?
No.
LAUGHTER
Sometimes you get mixed up.
How do you fare with passwords?
Well, I've got a document called
"Passwords" on my computer!
LAUGHTER
And in that document
are all my passwords.
Yes, but presumably your computer
is password protected...
Yes, but I know that one. ..so you
can't get into that document.
I know the password to that one
because it's my name!
LAUGHTER
So, anybody breaking into your home
cos you're on QI at the moment...
..just put your name in and
there's a file marked Passwords
and you're off and running.
She can't remember where she lives,
so... That's true.
Maybe we could get the burglar to
ring you and tell you where it is.
Right, OK, I want you, please,
to tell me
what three words
describe exactly
Alan's current position.
Is it - full of regret?
That's very good - full of regret.
Any other thoughts? Three words.
Is what you're doing there
deliberate,
or is that just the way you sit?
I was just sitting
on my hands, that's all.
Oh, is it - sitting on hands?
So, it could be.
So, in terms of where he is,
his exact location,
the only correct words are,
in this exact order,
joke, proof, value.
It's Alan's precise current address
according to one of the most
exciting things I've ever heard of,
called what3words.
This is a British company, and they
have divided the Earth's surface
into squares which are
three metres by three metres,
so there's 57 trillion squares
in total,
and they have assigned each one
a unique three-word code.
Now, what's amazing about it,
you only need
40,000 words
in order to make the system work.
It was launched in 2013.
It operates in 25 languages
and it has already been adopted
by actual countries.
So, in Mongolia and the Ivory Coast,
they're the first to adopt it
as the official address system.
So, if you have a look here,
Bingerville in Cote d'Ivoire -
glitter.drummers.stepping
is exactly that point.
San Francisco - actors.asking.print
is exactly that point.
But what about all the floors of
the building? How does that work?
It would just be the square
that you are in.
So, the square goes all the way up?
Yeah.
But what it means is that,
for example,
if an ambulance is called
or something,
you can be pretty specific about
exactly where you need to go.
The front doorstep of Buckingham
Palace - sound.manual.lungs.
The top of Ayers Rock or Uluru -
snake.removes.gymnast!
Sorry, I, I...
I, I..er...
Is the air being let out of you?
I can... I can see the fascination.
Could you just put the little thing
in the side again now?
It's popped out.
The kids have been playing with it.
Oh, no. Just stick it back in.
I don't mean to be old-fashioned...
ALAN IMITATES POPPING
Yeah? This seems to be
overcomplicating things.
It's just...
You wouldn't need the 25, even.
The thing about it is that
you couldn't confuse it
with anywhere else in the world.
You say that,
but people pissed in a cab...
"What's your address?"
And then, next thing you know
you're dropped off at, like,
an airport in Nigeria.
We have actually written,
using the what3words system,
to the British Embassy in Mongolia,
and we sent them out some time ago.
I have to tell you,
they've not arrived yet, so...
"The fuck's that?"
"I don't know."
I think the.fucks.that
is just outside of, um...
OK. Now, why would you give
your postie...a rocket?
To get your letters into space?
OK, that's nice. I like that.
Are you allowed to post a rocket?
Are you allowed to post a rocket?
Yeah.
I suppose, if it's not combustible
in any manner.
I know you're allowed
to send a gun
but you can't send it
with ammunition.
Same thing as PIN numbers,
you can send a credit card
but you can't send the PIN number
with it. That's true.
And, in fact, you can send a toilet
but not with a poo in it!
LAUGHTER
This is one of my favourite
dinner-party questions. OK, go.
If you had to get a gun by midnight
tonight, who would you ask?
No, it's really good way...
Seriously, what kind of
dinner parties do you...?
You have to work out who of your
friends would have the contacts
to get you a gun
by midnight tonight.
So, well, I mean,
I have friends who hunt.
Could it be a hunting gun?
Yeah, just got to kill someone.
Sandi would just have someone
killed. She wouldn't...
She'd keep her hands clean.
Yeah, you're right.
I would have people for that. Yes.
You'd never be... Like, if something
happened, you'd be like,
"Oh, have you read in the papers?
What a tragedy."
Yes. Yeah!
It's never occurred to me
that I might want a gun at all.
It's a bit like asking me where
I'd score...do...scores...drugs?
Is it scoring?
OK, which friends would be able
to score drugs for you by midnight
tonight? Again, I've got no-one.
I've got a few friends on HRT,
then I run out!
LAUGHTER
All right, well,
who would you shoot, then?
It's not who I'd want to shoot -
that's a completely
different dinner party!
Does no-one else just sit down
with a Nigella Lawson cookbook
and a silky dressing gown,
and make some squid? OK?
That's what I do when
I have a dinner party.
She could get you a gun, Nigella.
She'd get you a gun.
In a heartbeat.
It'd be like a musket...
..made out of icing sugar.
Try that at a dinner party. Someone
goes, where would you get a gun?
Just go, "Nigella Lawson."
Like, a literal rocket,
or a telling off?
Thank you for getting
back to the point.
Why would you give
your postie a rocket?
So you were heading
in the right direction
about sending it into space.
The idea is to send the post very,
very quickly. Very fast indeed.
In about 1824, Sir William Congreve,
he invented the Congreve rocket,
which was a form of
military artillery.
He attempted to deliver mail
from Tonga to Samoa by rocket.
He looks remarkably stoical
considering he's been shot eight
times. Not looking good for him.
He looks actually like he's standing
behind that costume.
Yes, it does, doesn't he?
You know who he looks like?
He looks exactly like
this guy off Grindr, and...
I don't fancy him, but he is nearby.
Ah, the romance of it!
He tried to send mail
from Tonga to Samoa.
It had limited success.
There's possibly a few letters...
With a rocket?
..still in the taller trees
in Tonga. Yeah.
So people forgot about sending post
by rocket for 100 years.
Then, in the 1930s, a German
engineer called Gerhard Zucker -
and there he is, Gerhard -
and he toured Germany
demonstrating his rocket post.
It sends a single grape.
"We will get these grapes...
"..to ze other end of Germany
in record time!
"Bring the grape forward.
One grape only!"
So the whole thing was billed
as a fantastic rocket.
It was going to be five metres long,
it could travel 400km
at a height of 1,000 metres,
speed of 1,000 metres per second.
In fact, it was just
a huge metal container
attached to eight fireworks.
And weirdly, nobody
in Germany was interested.
So he came to Britain in 1934,
and he announced he was going
to do a one-minute rocket post
between Dover and Calais.
And so the British Government
thought this was marvellous
and they went to the Outer Hebrides
to test the idea.
And he loaded his rocket
with 1,200 letters,
including one to the King,
King George V.
This would never get past
health and safety now, would it?
It was between the two islands
of Harris and Scalpay.
The whole thing blew up.
And government officials
stood and watched
burning parcels rain down
on the beach.
He was deported back to Germany...
..as a threat to the income
of the Post Office
and the security of the country.
He was then detained by the Germans
for co-operating with the British.
It has a happy ending, he served
with the Luftwaffe in World War II.
So there's a happy ending.
That's nice.
For centuries, people have
tried to send mail by rocket,
but it's never taken off.
GROANING
LAUGHTER
Now, what is the most useful thing
you can do with this?
These are some pieces of the...
Oh! Toilet paper from the '70s.
Do you remember this?
Izal toilet paper. Medicated. Ugh.
Oh, yeah.
We had that in our primary school.
We had it at school.
It didn't so much wipe
as just move the poo, didn't it?
To redistribute it.
It was like having your arse
sandpapered. It was unbelievable.
So, postal service, we're doing.
What is the most useful thing that
you might be able to do with this?
Wrap up a parcel in it?
Can you send it to a prisoner and
they can use it to roll drugs in?
I feel you are so close
to a life of crime.
It's true, man. You could make
a Camberwell carrot
out of one of these.
Can you eat it?
No. Why would you want to eat it?
Well, I was just thinking
it was more...
Let me try, let me try,
I've never tried.
You've never tried weed?
Have a bung on that, man.
Do I breathe it in? Breathe it in,
keep it in. Hold it in, hold it in.
Don't breathe out!
Don't breathe out!
It'll start coming out
of your eyes.
APPLAUSE
Yeah, man. Yeah.
Now you'll see pixies.
Has anybody got any chocolate?
Come on - post, people.
Can you write on it?
You can. It has a shiny side
and it has a flat side.
And you could use it.
Why might you want paper like this?
Very lightweight. Air mail.
Airmail, exactly right.
It was a terrific substitute
for airmail paper.
And indeed,
when I was at boarding school,
I couldn't afford airmail letters.
My parents lived in New York
and I was in England,
which was as far as
they were able to send me.
And we all used to write home
on Izal paper
because it was cheaper
than airmail paper.
We used to use loo roll
at my boarding school.
On a Saturday night,
when everyone came in from a rave,
they used to get a loo roll
and roll it out to
the length of the corridor,
and then, if they thought
you were pissed, they'd make you
walk along it to see if
you could walk in a straight line.
And if you couldn't,
you'd get in serious trouble.
Where did you get the drink from?
I was really happy
if I got an Ovaltine.
That's astonishing.
Drugs, drink, guns.
Why did they do this
to us as children?
Because this scarred me. Yeah.
Every visit to the toilet
was painful and horrific.
Why did they do that to us?
Was it to deter us
from doing number twos at school?
Because almost everyone
I know was like,
"I'm not doing that at school."
You'd wait till you get home.
But if you didn't go home for
three months, it was a bit tricky.
APPLAUSE
Now, this is nothing really
to do with the show,
except that I thought
it was entertaining.
Susan, what is one of the tricks
you can do because of your height?
I can stand up completely straight
in the back of a black cab.
Yes. So...
LAUGHTER
I thought we'd see
if you can fit in a pillar box.
APPLAUSE
Just want to see if you can stand up
inside a pillar... I'm way too tall!
Can you fit in there?
I'm standing up completely straight.
APPLAUSE
Right, carrying on!
LAUGHTER
You've got to get in one of those
and just do it...
That would be a very,
very funny Candid Camera.
OK, so, here is my question.
Could I...
What would happen...
SUSAN GIGGLES
..if you posted yourself
to Number 10 Downing Street?
I'll let you out now.
SUSAN GIBBERS
Are you all right?
Well done, Susan, well done.
APPLAUSE
Would you get delivered to Number 11
and a card put through the door
saying there's a parcel?
Yeah, get left on the porch.
Do you think anybody's ever tried
posting yourself to Number 10?
People must have done.
Gordon Brown used to,
in the old days.
In 1909, two suffragettes
posted themselves
to Number 10 Downing Street because
they could not get an appointment
to see the Prime Minister,
Mr Asquith.
They posted themselves from
the East Strand post office
and they were escorted
by a messenger boy,
you can see him on the left,
there, AS Palmer.
But the gentleman
who's come out from Number 10
has refused to sign for
the human letters,
and so the two women,
Miss McClelland and Mrs Solomon,
were returned to their office at the
Women's Social And Political Union.
But, obviously, they got
the photographs.
The Post Office played a huge part
in the suffrage movement.
So, members of the Women's
Social And Political Union,
including the Pankhursts, they
would smash windows in post offices,
they poured acid into pillar boxes,
they set fire to postboxes.
They put pepper into letters,
sent them to anti-suffrage MPs.
And in tribute to them, you locked
a woman in a letterbox. I did!
But you did not pour acid in the
postbox. There was no acid at all.
Now, then, give me
your best impression
of a 19th-century poster girl.
Susan's is rather good.
Is it this? Is it this?
So, they were called banner ladies,
they were late 19th-century
human billboards.
She's covered in food!
Yes, well, so, she's
obviously from a bakery.
She's even got bread on her head.
Everything she's doing
is advertising
the bakery that she's involved with.
The one on the left there is all
household goods. I love her hat.
Are you sure she's not
advertising magnets?
Look at that hat!
It's a loaf as a hat. I know.
That is the best thing
I've ever seen in my life.
There were people who had
light bulbs hanging off them,
dolls, bed springs.
They could be covered in pretzels,
like that woman there.
What about pet shops?
Did they advertise
with all sorts of cats and dogs?
Sometimes, advertising
can be just "wearing".
LAUGHTER
Now, for one in the posterior.
Who gave Hitler
a kick in the backside?
Have you ever actually kicked
someone up the arse?
I can't reach.
No. Have you? I once kicked
my brother up the arse.
And it was... It's so pleasing.
Do you know what? You look so nice,
and there's a streak,
a streak of violence a mile wide.
A kick up the arse is a very
pure thing when it goes right.
OK.
Anyway, who gave Hitler
a kick in the backside?
Himmler? Goering? Goebbels?
Was it Hitler, Himmler,
Himnler, Hivler, Hickler?
Er, no.
So, his personal physician
was called Dr Theodor Morell,
and he gave him daily injections
in his bottom
throughout the course of his career.
So it started with just, you know,
your basic vitamin supplements.
But over the years
a cocktail of drugs -
in fact, he became
unbelievably reliant
on a very complex
and potent cocktail.
One of the substances he was given,
it came in little
gold-foiled packets,
and was called Vitamultin.
And Hitler gave a packet to Himmler,
and he secretly ordered
one of the SS physicians,
Ernst Gunther Schenck,
to have it tested in the lab,
and it contained methamphetamine -
crystal meth.
Dr Morell kept a record of
the drugs that he gave to Hitler -
it included belladonna,
caffeine, cocaine,
adrenaline, morphine,
testosterone
and E-coli bacteria
extracted from human faeces.
Did they all have to have their hair
just cut up a little bit higher
than him, so they'd look a little
bit more stupid? A little bit.
Very strange.
"Your hair's a bit too low.
"I think you should go
higher with your hair."
"Yes, Fuhrer."
ALAN IMITATES BUZZING
I don't have a medical degree.
But I have watched a lot of
Casualty, but I am not qualified.
But even I know that injecting
bacteria from human faeces
into someone
is not a positive thing.
Well, apparently, it kept Hitler
fresh, alert, active
and immediately ready for the day.
Cheerful, talkative,
physically active
and tending to stay awake
for long hours into the night.
You could do that with
a simple Mars bar.
Then the Allied forces bombed
the factories
that produced Morell's drugs,
so not only was Hitler
losing the war,
he was coming off drugs
at the same time.
That is a Mosquito, that's
a twin-engined fighter bomber
made entirely of wood.
Is that right? I think so.
You were so confident there!
That was brilliant.
I think it had a wooden frame
or something unusual about it.
I remember, because we had
an Airfix one in our house.
Well, maybe just the Airfix one
was made of wood!
Did you know the Titanic
was completely made of tin?!
Weirdly, him taking these drugs was
inspired by the 1936 Olympic Games.
So you would think that's a lovely
thing about unbelievable fitness.
But the successful use of the
American amphetamine Benzedrine
at the 1936 Olympics
encouraged Germany to develop
its own methylamphetamin.
Pervitin.
Pervitin. I got a pervy-tin.
It was a...
It's a tin of perverts.
35 million tablets were ordered
and given to the German troops
before the advance on France
in the spring of 1940.
It even made its way
into confectionery.
There was a brand of chocolate
called Hildebrand chocolates,
and women were recommended
to eat two or three a day.
You would be able to get through
your housework in no time at all.
With the added effect
that you would lose weight.
The thing is, they're not wrong.
If you do housework on speed,
you will do it quicker.
Not very well, though.
You'll be done by 9.30,
but the house'll be a wreck.
My favourite Daily Mail headline
from 2017 was -
"Doing less housework
is making women fat."
GASPING
It had everything going for it!
A source of Hitler's power was,
frankly, a pain in the arse.
Now, it's time to queue
at the last window
to pick up the oddly-shaped package
that is General Ignorance.
Fingers on buzzers, please.
Which country invented the queue?
GASPS, MURMURS
Now, you see... No, no!
No-one's going to say... Susan?
I'm going to say Belgium.
Because?
LAUGHTER
Because why, darling?
I went to Belgium. Yeah.
And they all seemed very polite.
No, the first written example
we have of queueing comes from
the bread lines in the French
Revolution. So the French.
Oh! I was going to say French,
because "queue" sounds French.
It is, indeed.
I was really close with Belgium,
though. It's wrong. Yes.
Close, but wrong, that's what
we're going to say about it.
It's closer than China.
Susan Calman, close but wrong. Yeah.
It was an Irish revolutionary
known as Wolfe Tone,
and in his 1796 diaries,
he is basically the father
of Irish republicanism,
and he talked about
the petty princes of Italy are,
as the French say,
"en queue pour faire la paix."
It is an excellent metaphor
taken from a crowd
who stand one behind another in
order to be served in their turn
as the poor of Paris, for
example, are at the bakers.
My favourite story about a queue -
2018, Amazon opened
its first queue-free shop.
So, the idea, you scan
your phone as you walk in,
and there are video cameras
and sensors which watch
as you take items off the shelves.
They charge you automatically
and you don't have to wait
in line to check out.
On the very first day
that people went to visit,
they queued for two blocks
to get into the shop.
Fantastic.
OK.
What's the most unrealistic
thing about this picture?
Yes?
That...bra.
That is a pointless bra.
I don't know what that's
doing for her, really.
She's done a pump
out of her front bottom.
LAUGHTER
APPLAUSE
Only a man with children
would call it a pump.
Or, indeed, a front bottom. Yes.
What is the most unrealistic
thing about this picture?
She's got her eyes open.
OK.
People are allowed to have
their eyes open underwater.
But if she's in the sea,
you wouldn't have your eyes open.
Yeah, but she's a merlady.
She's a merperson.
Well, she's not a merperson.
I mean, it's a woman
dressed up as a merperson.
OK, I need you to imagine
it's a merperson.
Well, you didn't say that! OK.
So, the most unrealistic thing
for you is that
it doesn't seem like
a real merperson?
We don't have a picture
of a real merperson.
So, if you think about the classic
depictions of mermaids,
try and think about how fish swim.
So, when fish swim,
they have their tail
in the same plane as their body
and they move their tails from left
to right to propel themselves.
Most depictions of merfolk
show them just like that,
with the tail fin perpendicular
to the plane of the body.
A lot of whales have that,
don't they?
Well, this is the thing.
If mermaids swam like fish,
then they would have to swim
on their sides.
They'd swim like a mammal,
a mermaid, wouldn't they?
Right, so, if they're going
to swim like a whale or a dolphin,
they're mammals, not fish.
However, most merpeople are depicted
with scaly and shimmery
lower halves,
which is a fish characteristic. Yes.
And not the smooth skin of a
cetacean - so, a whale or a dolphin.
And so either -
this is what really irritates me -
the tail orientation is wrong
and a merperson is half fish,
or the scales are wrong,
and the merperson is half cetacean.
You can't have it both ways.
APPLAUSE
I am not going to invite you
to my dinner parties.
So, your point is, just to be clear,
that they shouldn't have scales
if their tail's like that?
You can't have it both ways.
You can't have it both ways.
You can't have it both ways? Well...
That's not what were talking about!
And this has really upset you,
hasn't it? Yeah.
It's my show, I thought
we'd talk about it. Yeah.
They've got to be mammals
for the singing
and the luring
on to the rocks, right?
That's not true, I've been seduced
by a couple of fish in my time.
The point, though,
as I understand it... Uh-oh!
..in order for...
SNIGGERING
What?
Well, your understanding of things
has been lacking tonight.
They were sirens, the mermaids.
Sirens, weren't they? Right?
The more attractive part
of the person...
Nee-naw-nee-naw!
The most attractive part of
a person is this bit. Yeah.
So the key is that I've always
been looking at the top bit.
And nobody's paid attention
to how wrong the bottom half is.
OK, um...
Mermaids are completely unrealistic
unless they're half whale
or they're bottom feeders.
Right!
LAUGHTER
Which brings us to the scores.
Wow.
First past the post with 10 points,
it's Matt!
Thank you very much. Thank you.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Very proud, thank you.
Posting an excellent
8-points score, in second place,
it's Alan!
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
In need of a bit of a postmortem,
with minus 5, it's Holly.
APPLAUSE AND CHEERING
Sounding the Last Post -
minus 5.5 - so close, so close,
Susan!
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
So, it's thanks to
Holly, Matt, Susan and Alan,
and it's time to leave you
with a final postscript.
These comforting words
from Gracie Allen -
"The President of today is just
the postage stamp of tomorrow."
Goodnight.
APPLAUSE