QI (2003–…): Season 17, Episode 4 - Queasy Quacks - full transcript

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Good evening!

Welcome to QI.

Tonight we are sawing bones and
de-oiling snakes

in a show all about quackery.

Joining me on Queasy Street

are the miraculous and rejuvenating

Claudia Winkleman.

Guaranteed to take years off
your life,

it's Victoria Coren Mitchell.

Good for anything that ails you,



it's Stephen K Amos.

And the late Alan Davies.

And their buzzers don't sound well
at all.

Claudia goes...

LOUD SNEEZE

Wow. I like!

Victoria goes...

WOMAN CRIES OUT IN PAIN

It's someone literally dying.

Stephen goes...

COUGHING

COUGHING DIES DOWN

COUGHING CONTINUES LOUDLY

It's my dad's car.



And Alan goes...

WET FLATULENCE

Anybody else feel the need for a
mop?

I've given you all some quack
medicines.

I would like you to persuade me
to buy them.

So, we're going to start with
Stephen.

What is your quack medicine?

It's a jar of...

..Princess Lotus Blossom's Vital
Sparks.

Marvellous. And what do you suppose
it does?

The lotus blossoms, of course,

one of the most famous flowering
flowers, er... Hm.

I love a flowering flower.
Don't you?

..from Japan.
gives you vital sparks, energy.

Right. Basically, a modern-day
superhero supplement.

Right. Yeah.

There is a wave of superhero films
at the moment.

We should all embrace those.
Yeah. Right.

One of the biggest ones for me last
year was, of course, Black Panther.

The Black Panther gets
his superpowers by consuming

a special herb. OK.

Why don't we just go the whole hog

and just call him "Ganjaman"?

These were actually sold at
the World Fair in 1904

by somebody pretending to be
Princess Lotus Blossom

and she was trying to give men
a vital spark.

What might be the idea behind the
pill that men might want to...?

Oh! Like a...

..prop to action?

Yes, exactly that.

She was actually a woman
called Violet McNeal.

She was from the Midwest and
she had nothing to do

with being a princess but
she claimed to be Chinese.

And does anybody know why she could
claim to be Chinese

and nobody would know?
She used to put on a bit of

what they used to call
"yellowface".

STEPHEN SNORTS

I know! That's what it was called -
it was called "yellowface".

Because the Americans had banned
all Chinese people in 1882,

so people didn't know what
a Chinese person looked like.

They just banned them?
They just banned them.

The Chinese Exclusion Act. It's
a pretty clear name for an act,

isn't it? They just got rid of them.
On what grounds?

Well, that there were too many
of them working

and what they wanted to do was
to have jobs for, you know,

"Americans", who were not Chinese.

And so they got rid of them.

In fact, they got rid of them
until 1943,

when they allowed in 105.

That was... That's extraordinary!

Yeah. So they didn't know
if she was Chinese?

No, they didn't know
she wasn't Chinese. She was this
woman from the Midwest.

FAUX AMERICAN ACCENT:
"Hell, that's Violet!

"She ain't Chinese! That's Violet!

"Violet, what are you doing?!"

They're basically boiled sweets,

but she told everybody that
this was something that had

come from a pouch in the turtle
brain called the "Quali Quah".

FAUX AMERICAN ACCENT: "Violet,
where'd you get them pills?"

There it is, the Quali Quah.

And she would say, "A man who takes
these pills will shout out,

"'Pong-Woo-Kee!'" -

which is, she claimed,
Chinese for "Eureka".

So, are these from that era?

If I take a couple,
will the desk rise?

You might just...

You might just come through it,
like that.

Like that tunnelling thing,
you know, in Thunderbirds.

I suddenly really want them to work.

I kind of... yeah.

Right, let's try another one.
Alan, you've got some medicine.

What have you got?

Oh, well,
it's Dr Brinkley's Formula 1020.

And what do you think's in it?

I think something drawn from
an animal of some sort.

A bodily fluid.

Hm. And then you add it
to your own self.

Cheaply priced and almost odourless.

I'm describing myself there.

It was a distillation of
goat glands.

Oh, for God's sake! What?! Yeah.

Well, it wasn't actually,
it was just coloured water.

The temptation to fire it at the
audience is almost...

Oh! Oh!

LAUGHTER

I'm glad I was looking at you.
I would have thought it was Stephen.

APPLAUSE AND LAUGHTER

He promoted this as a distillation

that would cure anything from
emphysema to flatulence.

What?!
isn't it, of diseases? Yes.

So, I was quite close!
"Cure anything", a cure-all?

Yes, but he also looked part goat,
I think.

Yes! Goatee. Yes, exactly.

And goats were a big thing for him
because,

after the coloured water,

he thought, "Something more
significant is needed."

And he started transplanting goats'
testicles into men's scrotums

as a... Wait a min... Yeah?

You can't put a goat's testicle
into a man's scrotum.

Well, as they discovered.
And, God knows, I've tried.

He was the Goat Gland Doctor

and you would select your goat

and the goat would then be castrated

and the testicles inserted into
the patient's scrotum.

But no, no, that didn't happen. Yes!

No, it did happen.

And lots and lots of people did it

without checking whether he was
medically qualified to do this.

Well, these people, were they
maybe impotent and concerned

with whether they could or could not
have kids?

A-ha! Ah!

Baby goats. Yeah. Yeah.

It's better when you explain it.

When they castrate...

..sheep and goats... Yeah.

..then the testicles just drop off

and shrivel up in the sac,
don't they?

Actually, that's not true,

because I have held a pair of
ram's testicles and...

Ram's testicles? Yes, they weren't
attached to the ram at the time.

I was making a series about
the dictionary

and we were investigating the
origins of the word "codswallop"...

Yep.

..because nobody quite knows where
it comes from, and one theory was

that it's related to "cods", which
is slang for "testicles".

And, you know, television being
what it is,

apparently I had to explain this
on camera

while holding a pair
of ram's testicles.

So, as in "codpiece"? Yeah, cods,
knackers, it's sort of common slang.

No! Yes.

And we went to a butcher's shop...

This is good!

No, but they're enormous!

Describe... Like that?

I mean...

Can I just say,

this is not the direction I thought
this was going to go?

Right, Claudia, your medicine. Yes?

What are you going to sell to us?

OK. Let's come away, shall we,
from virility?

Oh, this is excellent.

Theodore Roosevelt's Baldness Salve.

Ah! Yeah.

It might not be your head, just
an area of your body where

you want some more hair!
Forearms, legs...

"Hot, cool. Check me out!"

Yeah. You use this. Right.

I... I use this.

Yeah, before this, I didn't have
hair and now... yeah.

Well, it was sold by something
called the Scholder Institute

and it was sold as something that
had been used

by both Roosevelt and Houdini.

As it happens, both of them had
recently died just before this

product came out, so they couldn't
say whether it was true or not.

You sent samples of your hair
through the post

for an "individual diagnosis" by
Professor Scholder

and he got his diagnosis from
a Dominican friar.

It was rather a complicated process.

But a guy called Arthur J Cramp,
who was a rather tenacious member

of the American Medical Association,

he sent in hairs from
a fox fur coat,

from a Japanese wolf dog,

and then a woman with
extremely long, lustrous hair,

and finally a piece
of wrapping twine,

and each time he got the same
response, which was that the hair

was severely undernourished and
needed Dr Scholder's cure.

It's actually just Vaseline.

Yeah, but good. Good, excellent.

But I think I did... I mean,
we all want some, right? Yes.

You've sold that to us.

People have asked me whether I have
experienced hair loss

due to the fact that I'm wearing
what is called a "do-rag".

I thought I'd wear it tonight...
Right.

..to bring attention to the Great
British public that that is

what this is. OK.

It's not a hat, it's not a hairnet.

It's a do-rag.

I get confused. People at the
airport, immigration -

"Excuse me, sir,

"can you take off your...

"..bonnet?"

And I get quite defensive, I say,
"It's actually a do-rag."

I long... It is a hat.

Yeah. I...

I mean, not to get too existential,
but... Please do.

What is a hat?

Well, where do we draw the line?

A plastic bag?

If you put it on your head,

it's a hat.

Right, Victoria. A cure, please.

Yes, OK. I have...

Oh! Tupperware.

Do-Nothing Mitchell's Rest Cure.

Yeah.

My guess is going to be that it's
just fresh air in some way.

Well, it used to be known as Dr Diet
And Dr Quiet.

And, actually, this guy...

That's him there holding a clinic,
Dr Silas Mitchell.

He's not really a quack

but sometimes good doctors come up
with kind of quacky ideas.

Look at the do-rags on them three!

Said no-one ever.

He's the father of neurology.

But he also came up with this idea,

women in particular,

that it was incredibly good for them
to lie down,

do absolutely nothing for six weeks.

And they were not allowed to do
anything except be spoon-fed,

maybe get up and go to the loo. They
had to drink pint after pint of milk

and they were banned from reading
and writing.

So, Virginia Woolf did the cure.

Her doctor prescribed it when
she'd had a nervous breakdown.

She writes about it in Mrs Dalloway.

Charlotte Gilman wrote
The Yellow Wallpaper,

which is a book about a woman going
mad because of this rest cure.

But it was particularly given
to women

and it was thought that this would
cure them of, I don't know,

the hysterical idea that they wanted
to work.

Or read a book. Or read a book.

Think of all the laundry that's
mounted up after six weeks.

But he was also a good doctor.

He coined the term "phantom limb
syndrome".

He in fact was the first reported
case of something called

"Mitchell's Disease". We've all been
there.

Right, this next question makes me
all of aquiver.

Why might you invest in a vibratory
chair?

VICTORIA'S BUZZER

Perfect noise for it.

Because you're furnishing your
vibratory?

Oh! I want a vibratory!

Yes!

It's a new room in Sexy Cluedo.

Go in there, you get beaten to death

by an Art Deco vibrator. Yes.

It's a good place to go if you're
mixing something in a bowl.

Well, there is an entire museum in
the United States

called the Museum Of Questionable
Medical Devices.

It's in the Science Museum in
Minnesota.

It was called the Battle Creek
Vibratory Chair

and it's from 1900.

There it is there.

It shook the patient violently

to help waste pass through the
intestines.

It also cured headaches, apparently.

It was installed in John Harvey
Kellogg's sanatorium

in Battle Creek.

Kellogg... famous for?

Cornflakes. Cornflakes, absolutely.

He was an odd fellow.

He believed that all sex was bad.

I mean, everything. All sex?
All sex, yeah.

He was married for a long time but
it's said it was never consummated.

And he produced huge quantities of
semen.

I can't look at that now!

"I just shook this in my chair."

There's also, in this Museum Of
Questionable Medical Devices,

there's a 1970s foot-operated
breast-enlarging pump,

which looks completely...

There it is! Yeah.

Oh, is that so you can be discreet
under the desk?

LAUGHTER

Psshhh!

Pfffft!

Do you mean, to pump milk out?

Nope! The idea was it would
make your breasts larger

if you pumped at them.

Now, to a different kind of quack.

What am I saying here?

SHE BLOWS A BIRD CALLER

Oh, adorable. Thank you.

I mean, "It's time for tea!

"Get all your mallard friends.
I've laid out the area."

"But do not bring bread!"

Yes, no, bread is very bad for
ducks, that's a very good point. Hm.

But you mentioned mallards.

Most ducks don't quack.

But it is predominately
female mallards who make

this particular noise. And why
do you think they make it?

Is it a duck rape alarm?

Because isn't that a famous...?

Consent is not big in the duck
world? No, not at all.

They're nasty to each other
sometimes, yeah. Yes.

And I think the mating thing
is pretty horrible -

hashtag quack-quack.

They mate for life and
they're in love.

I believe that. I saw it
on a Valentine's card.

Oh, no, that's swans.

Yeah. Yes, the sex act is
a forced one for ducks.

Yeah, and they chase them down
and then they keep their face

out of the water by holding
their neck up with their beak.

It's very unpleasant.

And then they impose themselves
upon the female.

In the middle of Hampstead Heath!

It's not right.

So, the females give these bouts
of loud monotonous quacks,

particularly during their pre-laying
period. Why might they do that?

So... but is it because
they're fertile?

It is because they're fertile
but it isn't what you might think,

which is that they are looking for
a mate.

Because they quite often will do it
when the mate is right there.

Weirdly, we now think it's because
they're drawing

the attention of any predatory
mammals who might be in the area.

So, what they want to do is,
if the predators come,

they think, "Not going to stay here
and nest, it's not safe."

And so they're actually trying
to attract the very thing

that might have a go at them.

Gosh, that's clever, isn't it?

Yes, like leaving your car doors
unlocked

if you go to look round a house.

Yeah, exactly that, yeah.

Exactly.

OK, I hadn't thought of doing that,

but that's very clever.

The other possibility, of course,

is that there's already a pair
of ducks there

and they're sending out a message
saying, "We've moved in.

"Don't any other ducks come, because
this is our... this is our place.

"So go away." Now, let's all have a
go. You've all got a duck caller.

There is a human sport
of duck calling,

so trying to get the water fowl
to come in order to be shot,

and the best duck callers take part

in a World Championship Duck Calling
Contest, which is in Arkansas

in every Thanksgiving.

Well, why don't we all go?

I don't know!

Why aren't we there? I know!

Let's see if we're good enough.

THEY BLOW ON THEIR BIRD CALLERS

LAUGHTER

Victorian children used to make
their bird callers

by cutting the larynx from
a recently dead goose.

AUDIENCE: Urgh.
Yeah. And blowing through it.

Oh, thank God television was
invented. I know.

But look what they used to do

if a child had no legs!

You just had to muck in.

Yeah.

Anyway, in 1850 there was a
12-year-old who accidentally

swallowed his goose's larynx that
he was blowing through

and he started honking like
a goose every...

..every time he breathed.

And there was a German doctor
who eventually performed

a tracheotomy on him

and there's a medical paper entitled

On The Removal Of A Larynx Of
A Goose From That Of A Child.

Mallards quack to check for
predators

and avoid becoming a sitting duck.

AUDIENCE GROANS

Ugh!

Would you like to meet
Vomiting Larry?

No.

What? Have you got a thing about
vomit?

I'm just closing my eyes.
You continue.

No, we're not actually going
to show vomit. OK.

We're just going to talk about it
a lot.

Oh, I thought somebody called Larry
was just going to come and be sick.

Yeah, it's going to be a volcano

or some kind of weird beetle...

It's not a volcano, it is a humanoid
simulated vomiting system

developed by a UK's Health and
Safety Laboratory in Derbyshire

by researcher Dr Cat Makison Booth.

And there is Cat and there is
Vomiting Larry. Sorry.

Hello. Sorry!

Sorry. It's fine.

Cat, I believe that Larry can
vomit on command.

He can. But why would you invent
such a thing?

So we're looking at infection
transmission,

so we want to identify how far vomit
spreads so that we can help

clear it all back up again
and prevent transmission of fluid.

I kind of wish he was full,
though, now,

so we could get Alan back for
earlier on. Yes, for shooting you

with goat gland.
Presumably, I'm going to guess,

it's further than we think
the little pool of vomit...?

Yeah, it would kind of fill,
with all the droplets and splash,

most of this bit of the studio.

No! Wow! Yeah, but you wouldn't be
able to see it, so when you come to

clean up the main bulk, you'd
stand in it, spread it everywhere.

So you're just carrying on
spreading, even when you think

you've cleaned it all up?
Yeah, yeah.

Can I...?
Why is he called Larry?

Because the head of the system
is called Airway Larry.

So it's for when medical students
are practising laryngoscopies.

Yeah, obviously. So that's where
the Larry came from. Oh!

Do the medical students not
provide enough vomit? I mean...

But they can't do it on command,
so, you know...

I think it has to be one,
two, three, go. Yeah. Like that.

OK, so now,
we can't have Larry actually vomit,

you'll be very pleased to know.

However... Vomit! Vomit! Vomit!

Come on, Laurence.

We do have a film of Larry.

We're going to have the
film without sound,

but if any of you lovely people
would like to join in and create

the sounds that you imagine Larry
might make, then help yourselves.

Why, of course.
Yeah, let's have a look.

You only have to ask once!
Here we go.

ALAN: Urrrgh.

LAUGHTER

Urrgh, God, I'm dying!

Arrrrrgh!

It's coming out of my arse as well!

LAUGHTER

APPLAUSE

You know when you're being sick

and you can't turn round
quick enough,

because you know it's going to...

"Oh no, oh no! No!"

Pffft!

"Argh, argh, God!
Flush it, flush, flush it."

Cat, I'm so sorry, darling.

The norovirus, presumably
one of the things that you've been

looking at, is that right?

Yeah, that's the key thing
we're looking at.
So it's really infectious,

can be infected with ten viruses

and you can have kind of a thousand
million in a litre of fluid.

So, highly transmissible. Wow! It's
like the Ferrari of the virus world,

isn't it? Definitely. This is
actually the norovirus here.

Oh. I mean, it looks like
candied popcorn.

But it's actually the norovirus.
Yeah. Well, thank you so much

for bringing Larry in.
Dr Cat Makison Booth.

Here's another question to
make you queasy.

What happened when Michelangelo
took his socks off?

Oh, don't say
some of his foot came away.

Oh, no. Oh!

Apparently, he didn't wash,

but his skin used to come off
if he took his clothes off.

So, this is thought to be
a portrait of him by Raphael.

It's sort of having a go at him.
Raphael was a kind of young buck

and Michelangelo was quite old
by then.

And he has Michelangelo playing
Heraclitus, sort of the weeping,

grumpy philosopher, because
Michelangelo was incredibly grumpy.

But according to Michelangelo's
biographer, "He wore stockings

"of dog skin constantly
for months together,

"so that when he took them off,

"the skin of the leg often came away
with them."

AUDIENCE GROANS

I know. Actually, there's
a really fascinating thing

about Michelangelo that they've
fairly recently discovered,

that you can probably tell
a Michelangelo sculpture.

So if you take something like the
Rothschild Bronzes,

there are three ways, in fact,
the experts now say

you can find that
it's a Michelangelo.

The first thing is that the first
and second toes are splayed

in the figure. And he always depicts
the abdomen as not having a six-pack

but an eight-pack.

And he gives his sculptures
unruly pubic hair.

And the suggestion is that
one of his favourite models must

have had all of those attributes.

The toes and the eight-pack
and the unruly pubic hair.

I wouldn't say that's unruly.

Well, it's not had a comb, has it?

I like that that's now what
we're all looking at.

Yeah.

It was what we were all
looking at anyway.

I'll tell you what, the Milk Tray
man's let himself go.

Alan, why might I syphon four
gallons of gas up your bottom?

How did you get
a photograph of that, you swine?

I'm talking about hydrogen.

Is it going to have an enema effect?

Is it a colon cleanser?

It is a... It is a medical thing,
so... Is it flammable?

It is exactly flammable
and that is why it matters.

Oh, ho, ho!

This is not exactly... Wow!

Oh, are you actually going to do it?
Yeah.

There was an American military
surgeon who was called

Nicholas Senn, and he came up with
a system for checking

whether you'd been shot in the guts.

So one of the things they would do
is, they would pump hydrogen

up your backside and then set
fire to the gas as it escaped

from the wound in your stomach.

So we're talking
about the late 19th century.

It was a huge problem for surgeons

to work out whether a wounded
patient had their intestinal canal

pierced by a bullet.

Can't you just put them under water,
like an inner tube? Yes.

If you did the surgery and it wasn't
necessary, it could kill somebody.

So they needed to work it out.

And so he came up with this system.

It was called Rectal Insufflation
of Hydrogen Gas.

And it's a bit like a plumber
looking for a leak in a gas pipe.

If it had gone in, it would
escape through the hole.

And he did try it.

And if there was no hole,
they would just explode.

Yes, well, he did try
it on several dogs first,

to the point where their intestines
ruptured. Oh, God!

I know.

HE HOWLS

Pfft! But then he decided to try
it on himself

and he had his assistant pump
six litres of gas up his bottom.

Can I just read this,
cos it's awful?

"He found that the escape of air
or gas from the rectum

"was prevented by an assistant
pressing the margins of the anus

"firmly above the rectal tube."

He tried it on two patients.
It never really caught on.

He's quite clear that the entire
thing was devised

because he fancied his assistant.

Also, sometimes I think
with these stories about research,

they just get to the end
of a long day

and they think, "Let's see what
happens if you stick a load of

"hydrogen up their arse."

I think that's enough
from the ANALS of medical history.

AUDIENCE GROANS

It's time to move on to that sick
puppy that is General Ignorance.

So tell me, what's the technical
name of the first patient

in a disease outbreak?

Keith.

Oh, the audience will know.
Who... What is it?

AUDIENCE: Patient Zero.

KLAXON

Ha-ha-ha!

See, you fell into that trap
immediately.

No, it's the Index Case,
or Index Patient.

People do think that it's Patient
Zero and actually it's based

on a mistake. The very first time
that was given was to a man

called Gaetan Dugas and he was
a French Canadian flight attendant,

who allegedly contracted
HIV in Haiti.

And he spread it, allegedly,
to lots of men during his lifetime.

And he wasn't referred to
as Patient Zero, he was Patient O,

and the O stood
for Outside California.

But people now think that
it was Patient Zero.

Which is cleaner,
the gents or the ladies?

CLAUDIA'S BUZZER
Yeah?

I mean, I haven't used that enough.

Yeah, that's a very good noise,
isn't it?

Ladies.
KLAXON

I know!

I mean, come on!

So there was a study
at the University of Arizona,

and apparently
ladies' loos are germier.

Why might that be, do you think?

Cos we chat in there
for quite a long time.

We spend longer in there,
but also we take children in. Ah.

You know, crazy germ-carriers.

How are those two floating
through the doors like that?

That is slightly disturbing,
isn't it?

Women wash their hands
a lot more than men.

Men less likely to
wash their hands at sporting venues.

They had a study at Turner Field
Baseball Stadium in Atlanta -

men wash their hands
just 65% of the time

when they're at a sporting venue.

I don't know how this works.
It says here the study involved

"researchers discreetly observing."

I would say it's considerably less
than 65% of men...

Oh, would you say? ..wash their
hands after they've had a wee

at the Arsenal.

I think there's about five of us
who use those sinks.

In fact, at the old Wembley Stadium,
you'd go to wash your hands

and then usually there'd be about
six blokes pissing in the sink.

Either of you ladies think that
it's worth putting down

toilet paper on the seat?
No. No, why?

No, because you slide off,
don't you?

I don't have the time. Yeah.

Can't go, "I'll be out in a minute,

"to have fun with my friends."

"Don't worry, we'll see

"the fireworks another time."

Every time I've ever used a public
loo, I've always stood there going,

"What are they doing in there?!"
That's that. Yeah.

Is that what it is?
Sort of crocheting their own seats?

No, but here's the good news -
it's a complete waste of time.

The toilet seat is designed
to not keep bacteria on it,

whereas toilet paper -
unbelievably absorbent.

And squatting? Well, I'm more
inclined to hover myself.

Yeah, so hovering, hmm,
also a bad idea.

The pelvic floor muscles can't relax

and so your bladder doesn't
fully empty.

It's also a waste of a superpower.

I mean, if you can hover... Yeah.

APPLAUSE

It turns out that
the gentlemen's lavs

are cleaner than the ladies',
despite the smell.

After you've been drawn,
hanged and quartered,

how many parts do you end up in?

Hmm, quartered would suggest, um,
what, is it?

Is it four?

KLAXON
No!

Five. It is five.
Why is it five?

Do they put your head somewhere
else? Head, yeah, absolutely.

So it's your head plus the four
quarters of your body.

What used to happen sometimes
is that the various body parts

could be spread all over
the country.

So, William Wallace, after
his execution, his four quarters

were sent to Newcastle, Berwick,
Perth and Stirling.

But his head
remained on London Bridge.

And there used to be a thing called
the Keeper of the Heads.

So about 300 years,
the London Bridge Gatehouse

was home to the Keeper of the
Heads, and his job was to display

the traitors' heads to good effect.
Take down the old ones.

You know, "Oh, that one's
looking a bit tired."

I'll take that one down.
A bit maggoty.

All of which brings us to the cruel
and unusual punishment

of the scores.

Coming in first, with surgical
precision, oh, my goodness,

with eight points, it's Stephen.

Oh, my goodness.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

In second place, it's Alan.

Seven actual points.

And in third place,
with minus five, Victoria.

Minus six, it's Claudia.

But Claudia is not last.
In last place, with minus ten,

it's the audience!

Which means I only have to thank
Claudia, Stephen, Victoria and Alan.

And I leave you with this quirky
quotation from George Carlin.

"Isn't it a bit unnerving
that doctors call
what they do 'practise'?"

Thank you and goodnight.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE