QI (2003–…): Season 18, Episode 15 - Rogue - full transcript
*Q I*
Season 18 Episode 15 IMDB
S18E14 Video release
Episode Title: "Rogue"
Aired on: January 14, 2021
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Good evening and welcome to QI,
where tonight we've gone rogue,
and we'll be ripping up
the rule book
in the company of this rowdy,
rough-hewn rabble.
A right ruffian, Jack Carroll!
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Russkaya rabotnitsa Olga Koch!
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Reckless reprobate Bill Bailey!
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
And a ruddy rapscallion -
Alan Davies!
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Their ringtones relate to
some right rascals of rare renown.
Olga's got a Russian.
♪ Ra-Ra-Rasputin,
lover of the Russian queen... ♪
There we go!
Jack's got a robber.
♪ They say the great train robbery,
he was the mastermind... ♪
I'm enjoying these ones.
Bill's got a Robert.
♪ Robert De Niro's waiting,
talking Italian... ♪
And Alan goes...
♪ Rosie and Jim, Rosie and Jim
♪ Chugging along
on the old Ragdoll... ♪
I mean, that's just creepy,
isn't it? OK.
Right, here are some words
from the reign of Elizabeth I.
What do you think that they mean?
Well, number two's Bill.
LAUGHTER
A baretop trickster? How dare you?
Hedge Priest sounds like
a '70s rock band, doesn't it?
I like the idea of a hedge priest.
Yeah. Just jumps out.
"Want a bit of absolution?
Bit of absolution?
"You want a bit of absolution?
And cider. Cider, absolution..."
You're not far off, actually.
Really?Weirdly, I know.
It's quite close to the truth.
Any idea, Olga, all those words?
Oh, I've seen all of them on Grindr.
Really?
LAUGHTER
Which one is Grindr, darling?
The gay one.Oh, right.
I don't know, it's a dating app?
Yeah.
I mean, "dating".
Dating's a loose term.Oh, really?
Yes, I don't think dating.
Oh, really?
I don't think it's like,
"Would you like to go
take a turn around the park?"
Yes, yes, it's... No...
Are you saying
they are kind of wrong 'uns?Yes.
Are they rascals?
It's a collective of Tudor rogues...
Ah!..is the thing.
So they were recorded by a
marvellous man called Robert Greene.
He wrote a book called
A Notable Discovery Of Cozenage.
Oh!Yes, and it kicked off
an absolute craze
of people having guides to beggars
and other sort of vagabonds.
It became known
as rogue literature.
We don't really know
why it was called "cozenage",
but "cozen" seemed to be
a word for a wrong' un. A rascal?
So somebody trying to illicit money
from you under false pretences.
It's a con man, basically.
A con man.Yeah.
So let's go back to the list
and have a quick look.
Now, you mentioned hedge priest.
So medieval priests were paid
by tithes,
but supposing you couldn't afford
to pay the priest... Yes.
this would be
an itinerant preacher
who was willing to do the ceremonies
that you might want,
was willing to marry you,
was willing to bury you.
What I like is that they
re-interpreted the vow,
"Till death us do part",
and a couple could separate
if they just stood
over a dead animal in the road.
LAUGHTER
"Step lightly over this badger
and all will be well."
Yeah, exactly that. Oh.
I think, if I was a trickster,
though,
I'd pick a more subtle name
than counterfeit crank.
What do you think
a counterfeit crank might do?
Oof... Well, a crank starts
the engine, doesn't it?
Although they didn't have engines.
Yeah, they didn't have engines...
LAUGHTER
Yeah, no engines, so, no, not that.
Not crank.No.
Well, crank like cranky,
so he's, like, doing crimes,
but he's not happy about it.
Well, he certainly is not happy
in his look, because...
A little bit crazy?
Yeah, so commonly...
A crazy counterfeiter?
A pretend crank?
It's a pretend crank,
so it's somebody who pretends
that they've got something wrong
with them. Oh, right.
There was a particular one
called a clapperdudgeon,
and they used to -
this is very unpleasant -
create superficial wounds
by rubbing a mix of lime and soda
and iron rust,
and it caused sort of blisters
and sores,
and then you would trick people.
The other way of tricking them,
of course,
was to cut the festering arm
or leg off a corpse.
You know,
perhaps from a handy gibbet.
Yes.And then pretend it was yours.
What, just sort of
have it stuck to your arm?
You could lie on the ground with
a blanket and stick the nasty...
And to what end, Sandi,
would you do this?
To get people to give you money feel
sorry for you. Get money.
"I'm dying one limb at a time."
Yeah.Yeah.
And you'd have to remember
to not just
pick it up with your good hand
as well,
like, "Oh, thanks very much...
Oh! Blown it!"
"Can you put it
right into the hand?"
What else?
Come on, Jack, you pick one.
Well, nips and foists sound like
something a plumber would
overcharge you to fix. Yeah. Yes.
"Oh, that's your nips and foists,
right there."
"Ooh, that's going to set you back
a bit. All right, nip."
£40 a nip, isn't it, really? Yeah.
Nips and foists -
names for pickpockets.
So a nip used a knife to cut open
a purse and catch the contents.
And a foist dips their hand into
the...
Surely that's a cutpurse.
Is another name for it.
In fact there's a very famous play
called Moll Cutpurse.
Olga, you pick one.
What have we got left?
Crossbiter. Do you want to have that
one? A crossbiter.
I mean, who would, like,
eat like a vampire?
It's a vampire? Perhaps somebody
pretending to be a vampire? Yeah.
They hate... Jesus? LAUGHTER
So they're like,
"Oh, let's get rid of this."
It was a common con.
People who pretended to be vampires
and hate Jesus, it was a...
Yeah.
LAUGHTER
No. So it's a rogue, obviously...
Yes.
...who poses as a prostitute's
drunken husband.
So... Oh, that old one!
Yeah, that one.
Bursts into the room,
"What are you doing?"
"Oh, no,
it's the prostitute's husband!"
The sex worker's husband, Sandi.
Sorry.
Yeah, we're Tudor times, darling.
Prostitute is absolutely fine.
And the last one
is baretop trickster.
Baretop trickster.
Someone without a hat?
Someone who does sort of...
Yeah, again, like a... Nipple act?
What are you doing? Nipple...
I mean a...
Somebody with their top off...Yes?
..Doing tricks.
LAUGHTER
With their...Like juggling?
Juggling.
THEY SING
Whoo! Whoo! Hey!
Yeah! Uh... No.
Oh, it's like, "Look here!"
And then his partner
goes and does some bad stuff.
Yes, is exactly right! Yeah!
Yes!
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
What?!
Yes, so a woman would flash her...
Tits...bare top
and then possibly lure
a man into a house
and then a gang of men
would do robbing, robbing of him.
Really?Yes!
But how long is that going to
bamboozle a man, though?
I mean... I mean, how much...
How much bamboozlement
is there in, "Wahey"?
I mean, hour, an hour? Just...
"Yeah, keep going, that's great."
Or just a couple of...
I mean, ten seconds?
I think you'd be surprised...
Really?
...how easy some men are, darling.
LAUGHTER
What do you mean?Moving on!
Now, a good criminal
needs to work on their getaway,
so I want you guys
to reinvent... the run.
What ideas could you suggest
to make life easier
for runners?
Well, as someone with
cerebral palsy...
Yes, darling.
..I have spent a lot of time
thinking about how I would
rework my running style,
and I think it goes beyond
a simple matter of technique,
to be honest.Does it?
I think there's something deeper,
something deeper at work there.
Yes, something more philosophical.
Yeah, yeah!
But has anybody got any thoughts
about...?
We know how you run normally.
Can anybody sort of mime
how you run normally?
You run...Wow!
LAUGHTER
It's like you've turned
into a cartoon.
What?!Do you run, Olga?
Alan, you're doing it all...
I mean, there is no problem
a Russian athlete hasn't tried
to solve with steroids, so...
Yeah.
LAUGHTER
At school, I won the 400 metres
back-running.
I run backwards
faster than I can run forwards.
LAUGHTER
This was an event
he staged entirely alone.
Would you like to show us?
All right, yes.
Can you do it down there?
Yes, I will.
Can you do it in the front there?
OK.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Hang on. Right.
So this is me running normally
forwards in the traditional style.
LAUGHTER
Bill, that's surprisingly camp.
All right? Surprisingly camp.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
You see?OK!
So there was a study done
at Harvard University,
a man called Andrew Yegian,
and what he found was
that walking with
completely straight arms
was more efficient
than walking... like this.
What, like this?Yes.
LAUGHTER
It looks like I've got
some live animals in my pocket!
LAUGHTER
Try running with straight arms.
Running with straight arms?
All right, OK.Try that, yeah.
Here we go!Yeah.
LAUGHTER
I feel I'm...
There's a slight penguin vibe.
Yeah, I'll do the "penguin
going round the corner" gag.
OK. You'll love this.
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
How's that?
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
So that's marvellous.
So this study, which was in 2019,
what he discovered
is that running with straight arms
instead of them bent
makes no difference, actually,
to the speed or the efficiency.
So they gave everybody oxygen masks
and asked them to walk and run on
treadmills, trying these things,
cos obviously if you use more
energy, you're going to
need more oxygen. Yes.
Walking with straight arms,
actually more efficient.
Uses 11% less oxygen
than walking with bent arms.
And when it came to running,
it made no difference, really,
in terms of oxygen consumption.
Oh, I see.
So the truth is we don't really
know why we run with bent arms.
It's just that
everybody seems to think
it's harder to run with
straight arms.
It's possible it feels like
your head is more stable.
Possibly you get less fatigued
cos your shoulders are moving?
They are constantly trying to find
new ways of running.
So Alphabet/Google's AI company,
DeepMind... Yes.
...they tried
to challenge the computer
to see if it could learn
a different way of running.
And they used sort of
virtual rewards and punishments
to get the computer to see if
there was a better way of moving.
I have to say, it's very bizarre,
and if this was how you run,
well, I think I would have fallen
over immediately, but this was...
LAUGHTER
This is... The computer reckoned...
LAUGHTER
This is how the computer reckoned...
I mean, I run like...
It just fell over!
In the middle of...
He's fallen over again! That is...
Well, the idea...
The idea was that
you're training the computer,
and every time it fails,
it has to start again.
Anyway, the video looks very odd,
but it is apparently
the computer trying to find
the most efficient way of moving.
How extraordinary.
Right, since we're giving everybody
the run-around,
here is a question for you.
How did Olga use a pigeon...
...to wreak her revenge?
Hm?
Do you know this? Me?Yes.
Well, not you, but a namesake.
Oh. I have... an idea.
OK.
The only other Olga I'm competing
with on Google search,
which I check every
day... LAUGHTER
..is the woman who brought
Christianity to Russia.
OK, and what can you tell me
about her?
I know how her husband was killed,
and that wasn't pretty.
OK, go on, then.
So they took two birch trees
and they bent them,
and then they tied his legs
to each tree,
and then they let the trees
go. AUDIENCE GASPS
Yeah, that is correct. I'm so sorry.
Oh, my God.Yeah.
He was attached?Yeah.
To both...? And then the trees...?
I mean, not for long. No.No.
So he was rent, rent asunder.Yes,
by a neighbouring tribe,
the Drevlians,
and she was terribly unhappy, so she
decided to get revenge. Terrible.
So this is the Russian saint, Olga.
She came from the city...
Is it P-S-K-O-V?
Pskov.Pskov.
That's too many consonants in a row.
It is, isn't it? Yeah, yeah.
Anyway,
she decided to get her revenge,
so what she did was,
she laid siege to the capital
of the Drevlian people, Iskorosten?
Iskorosten.
Shall I just say it quickly?
Oh, just go for it.Yeah.
Iskorosten! Uh, which...
Totally nailed it!
Which is now in the Ukraine.
So, what she did,
she laid siege to the town,
and she said she would only
accept surrender
in the form of a tribute of a pigeon
and some sparrows
from every single household.
So everybody thought,
"That's not too bad."
So the Drevlians,
they all sent these birds out,
and she ordered a piece of sulphur
to be tied to each bird's leg
and ignited,
and the birds were released,
they all flew home,
and burnt the city to the ground
in moments.
AUDIENCE GASPS
Good Lord!
I know. As a bird lover, you're
horrified. I am horrified by that.
I know! And fascinated at the same
time.Yeah, yeah.
They obviously weren't
brave modern-day pigeons,
otherwise they'd have gone, "No, I'm
not doing that, give me some chips."
Yeah, that's true. Yeah!
I've seen a few London pigeons
who would have just run that off.
LAUGHTER
"Yeah, sulphur?
Nah, I'll just run that off."
"That's all right."
"Bit of sulphur, innit?"
"I'll just dip it in Trafalgar
Square fountain, there we go."
Sssss!
"Right, OK, where's that Nando's?"
LAUGHTER
One group that pigeons are
best to avoid are hairdressers.
This is a bizarre thing.
So they did another study,
at the University of Lyon.
Pigeons who live near hairdressers
have fewer toes. Huh?
I know! It's probably the only thing
you'll remember when you go home!
LAUGHTER
Hold on!Yeah. Why is that?
So pigeons landing on people's heads
while they're having their hair cut.
"Something off the pigeon, sir?"
"Yes, please, just the toes."
No, it's that they're...
Apparently, they get them
entangled in human hair
that has been
incorrectly disposed of,
and it causes them to lose toes.
Good Lord!
And where was this again
that we mustn't go?
Hairdressers. Oh, yes.I think
you're fine. I'm fine.Yeah.
LAUGHTER
Remaining in Russia, what's the most
powerful drink in history?
I'm going to go...
I'm going to just...
MUSIC PLAYS
Yes?
Vodka.
BUZZER SOUNDS
Aw!
APPLAUSE
I love vodka, actually.
Do you like...? Are you...? Yes.
I like vodka because it says so much
about Russian people.
Like, Russian people bit into a raw
potato and really were like,
"This is amazing, but can we make it
liquid AND ruin our lives?"
LAUGHTER
So, the most powerful drink in
history is not vodka. It is Pepsi.
So, for a very brief time, in 1990,
the sixth largest military
fleet in the world was owned
and commanded by Pepsi.
AUDIENCE MEMBER GASPS
I know.
So, 1972, Pepsi executive...
There he is, Donald Kendall.
He successfully negotiated an entire
monopoly of cola
in the Soviet Union.
So, Coca-Cola were out and it was
only going to be Pepsi.
Is he trying to get that can off
his face?
Yes.
LAUGHTER
Yes.
ALAN GROANS
His eyebrows are going...
LAUGHTER
So, the rouble wasn't worth very
much money
internationally at the time,
and anyway the Kremlin forbid
the foreign sale of roubles,
so a deal was struck initially
where Pepsi Cola syrup was swapped
for mountains of Soviet vodka.
That deal lasted until 1990,
when Pepsi decided that vodka was
not enough payment.
So, Russia agreed a
$3 billion deal that
everything would be paid in
Soviet warships.
The official units in Russia are
mountains of vodka and warships.
And warships, yes. That's it.
LAUGHTER
They got 17 submarines,
a frigate, a cruiser
and a destroyer for their drink,
and they briefly became the sixth
most powerful navy in
the entire world.
LAUGHTER
And then eBayed the lot? Yeah.
They sold it to a Swedish company
for scrap. Did they?
For scrap?I love there's a little
Swede going,
"Erm hello, yes? Scrap merchant.
How many?
"17 submarines? Just a moment."
Yes. "We can do this."
But apparently it's a thing
in Russia.
So, they once offered New Zealand
MiG fighter jets
and tanks and a nuclear submarine to
wipe out $100 million debt
for dairy imports.
Oh, I'm not surprised at all.
You're not? No.
They sold ME off. LAUGHTER
And here I am.
I mean, also, Coca-Cola must be
shitting themselves, just going...
They've got that silly truck
that goes around...
Yeah!
LAUGHTER
..with Santa on it.
Yeah. Pepsi have got a nuke.
LAUGHTER
Do you know what vodka means,
literally? It has a literal meaning.
No. Small water?
Yes, yeah.
Yeah. Little water.
What is water?
"Voda."Voda.
And so vodka is just, like,
slightly harder.
Am I right that the Russians
sometimes will keep some
in the house, like bathroom vodka,
like for
just kind of cleaning and...?
Is that true? I mean, that's what my
mum used to say.
"It's for cleaning, Olga."
LAUGHTER
Wonderful, this picture.
It's like one of my old
Christmases when I was a kid.
LAUGHTER
Some of my West Country relatives.
It is a mildly offensive picture.
"Oh, this is the West's idea
of Russia."
I'd say it's offensive, but
that's literally my dad.OK.
LAUGHTER
But I like their attitude,
because it wasn't until
January the 1st in 2013 that beer
was classified
as an alcoholic beverage.
Really?No, no, no.
Anything under 10% alcohol
was characterised...
Was baby formula!
Was a foodstuff.
Foodstuff! LAUGHTER
The strongest beer ever made,
according to
the Guinness World Records, was
a beer called The End Of History.
It was made by the Scottish
company BrewDog.
It was 55% alcohol.
So, if you think vodka mostly
is 40%...
What the hell?!
When you've had a pint of that, this
is what you see.
This is what you see!
They sent ten...
This is like some of my
lockdown dreams!
LAUGHTER
They sent ten of their investors
a bottle of this particular
beer mounted inside a taxidermy
roadkill squirrel.
And someone got divorced over it.
I think, yes.
It's not drunk as a beer, though,
is it?
It's drunk in a shot glass.
It says it should be drunk in small
servings. That is entirely correct.
I bet this is in the inside
locker of every RSPCA warden.
LAUGHTER
"Yeah, that's right, yeah.
"You care for them on the outside.
Inside - yeah, go on.
"Turn them into a bottle,
that's what I say.
"Bloody vermin!
"You're bloody vermin, that's
what you are!
"That's the best you can hope for,
you miserable little git."
LAUGHTER
"Turn them into an optic,
that's what I say."
APPLAUSE
All the taxidermy ideas.
Yeah. All the legs turned
into utensils. That's right.
Somebody tried to sell me a theremin
made out of a badger, right?
Sorry. A what made out of a badger?
A badger. You know a badger?
I know what a badger is! I didn't
know what the first word was.
A theremin. You know it was invented
by the Russian radio engineer
Leon Theremin in 1918?
What is it?
It's a thing that goes, "Wooo-ooo."
It's like a pole and when you go
near it, it senses you
and makes a noise. Yeah.OK.
Bill's got... He can play it. He was
trying to invent an alarm,
a motion sensor.
He inadvertently invented an
instrument which had,
you know, as you go closer, it goes,
"Wooo-ooo."
And then he sort of calibrated it
into an instrument.
Leon Theremin.And there's one
shaped like a badger?
Well, somebody... People give me
these things.
People give me all kinds of
strange things.
"We're never going to sell this.
"Hang on."
I've been given strange things, but
it usually results in Penicillin.
Well...
LAUGHTER
No, it was a gift.
We know you love the weasel
ukulele.
I love the weasel ukulele.
That's given me ideas.
No, somebody knitted me a praying
mantis once.
That was the strangest thing.
LAUGHTER
But, no.Thetheremin? The theremin
was a stuffed badger on a pole,
and you moved your hand closer,
it went "Ooo-ooh."
It was one of the most disturbing
things I've ever seen.
That just reminded me of it there.
I totally want a beaver that
does that. Do you not?
Well, you have...
LAUGHTER
"Wahey!"
"Whoa!" Calm down, calm down!
Just behave yourselves!
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
"I want a beaver that does that."
"I want a beaver that does that."
"Woo-ooh, oooh." "Woo." "Back off."
"Woo-ooh." "All right."
"I can't help it,
you'll have to wear ear plugs!"
"Woo-ooh."
LAUGHTER
I mean, that sort of sound
is directly
out of a Carry On film as well.
That "woo-ooh." That thing.Yeah.
Be careful if you're ever doing
a deal in Russia,
as they might add shipping.
LAUGHTER
Come on!
Now, what is the most extreme way
anyone's ever avoided having sex?
Any kind of
self-mutilation involved?
Are you saying that you
take one testicle
and strap it to one sapling,
and then you take the other testicle
and you strap it to another sapling?
APPLAUSE
And then...
Boing!
We're talking about creatures,
rather than... Oh, creatures.
Animals. OK.Yeah. So, it's
something that animals do
to prevent having sex...
To avoid, yeah.
..With other animals.So, we are in
the world of dragonflies.
I don't know if any of you have
noticed, there has been a huge
influx of dragonflies in the UK
this last year. Yes.
Is that a 69?That...
LAUGHTER
No, not strictly.
It's quite difficult. It's quite
a high number.Yeah.
LAUGHTER
It's quite hard to work out who's
doing what to who there.
It's a beautiful heart.Yeah.
It's...
One of them's saying, "Get off me,
you bastard."Yeah. Yeah.
Well, that is in fact correct,
because that is one of the things
that the female dragonfly will do.
So, this is a study by a man
called Rassim Khelifa,
a zoologist from the University
of Zurich.
So, female dragonflies, the ones
that are known as the common hawker,
pretend to be dead while being
pursued by a male,
in order to avoid amorous attention.
Well, this is something that
I've seen frequently.
LAUGHTER
It's called thanatosis. It's Greek
for "putting to death".
And it is a way of avoiding sex,
is to pretend that you are dead.
To be dead?Yeah.
It might not put everyone off.
I knew there was a word for it.
I knew it!
So, what usually happens is,
after mating,
most male dragonflies will
guard their partner, but
this particular species, which is
known as the Aeshna juncea,
they just fly off and they allow
the female to be harassed
by other males. But if another male
tries to mate with her
at that point, as she's had
sex already,
her reproductive tract might be
damaged or she could even be drowned
by an aggressive male, cos they
spend a lot of time on the water,
and so to avoid this, they go into
the undergrowth
and lie motionless on their backs,
and the amorous male gives up
and goes away.
Ah!I know. That is an extraordinary
picture, isn't it? It is.
It's beautiful, actually.Yeah.
It's stunning.
It is astonishing, the whole
insect world.
Years ago we talked about a male
arachnid who gives a gift to
a female to allow him to mate with
her, but the gift is often fake
and she doesn't realise until he's
had his way and scarpered.
The baretop prankster spider.
Yes, the baretop trickster.
Well, there is a spider species
called the Pisaura mirabilis,
and these males go one even further.
The male initiates sex by presenting
the larger female, OK,
with a tasty snack. Yes.
Like, I don't know, a fly maybe
would be a tasty snack.
Of course.And while she
distractedly tucks into it,
he begins copulation.
And then if she tries to make off
with the gift, he plays dead
and holds on to the present, so
that she has to drag him with it.
And... I know!
And then, when she stops, he springs
back to life
and has another go at it.
LAUGHTER
I've seen a version of that on a
very late night near a bus stop
with a kebab.
LAUGHTER
"Come back! I bloody love you!"
Now, we venture into the roguish
round that's really good
for nothing - General Ignorance.
Fingers on buzzers, please.
Why is the River Thames brown?
MUSIC PLAYS
Is it because of silt?
Absolutely right.
APPLAUSE
Yeah. Tidal currents.
So, it's nothing to do with
pollution, which you might think.
It's silt and sand.
There was a time when a lot of waste
flowed directly into the Thames.
In fact, in 1957 the Natural History
Museum declared the Thames was
biologically dead and it had become
a sort of foul-smelling drain.
Hm.But a new modern system of
sewage was put in in the 1960s,
and today it's said to be one
of the cleanest rivers in the world.
It certainly is.
138 seal pups counted in 2018.
Sharks. You wouldn't want to drink a
cup of it, though.You wouldn't. No.
But I had to do some filming
and I was standing on the very top
of the O2, which we can see there.
I took a photograph. There was
a seal... I mean, it's not
a very good photograph because it
was miles and miles away,
but I could see about six seals from
where I was at the top of the O2.
There's a colony of seals living at
Teddington Lock.
Is there? Yes.
There's porpoise, dolphin and whale,
I've seen in the Thames,
when I've been paddle-boarding.
I mean, that's not to say there
isn't shed-loads of rubbish
in the Thames. Corpses.Yep.
Well, they reckon about a corpse
a week in the Thames.
Oh, I... They were just trying to
avoid sex.
I know. Yes.
LAUGHTER
The Port of London Authority removes
about 200 tonnes of rubbish
from the river every year.
In just one day in 2019, the PLA
removed 70 tangled trolleys
that were spotted clumped together
at low tide.
I mean, look at that. Oof.
I know. That's beautiful.
And 60% of the rubbish is
single-use plastic.
You know... Yes.
Please, use a re-usable bottle,
people. OK. Boo!
The colour of the Thames is
mostly down to silt.
There is still some pollution
in there,
but mentioning that just
muddies the water.
AUDIENCE GROANS
Right. Erm...
Uh, what is this wave called?
Big. Freak. It's a freak wave.
It's not a tidal wave. A massive
wave. Big wave. Storm wave.
Wall of water. Look out.
A "look out". A buttock-clench.
A shit... A butt...
A trouser-filler. A surfer-drowner.
A boat-smasher. An absolute bloody
shit-stormer.
It begins with R!
Rascally rogue.
A rogue wave. Oh, a rogue wave. Oh!
A rogue wave. Well, why didn't
you say?
So, tidal waves occur in shallow
water, right? Yes.They're caused by
gravitational interactions between
the sun and the moon and the Earth.
Tsunamis are giant waves
caused by...?
Tectonic shifts under the sea.
Yeah, undersea earthquakes
and volcanic eruptions and so on.
The thing here, this is
a rogue wave.
They are sometimes called freak
waves. They are mountainous swells.
We just don't know why.
Is it one of those?
We don't really know why.
What defines them - they have to be
twice the height of more than
a third of the waves in the area.
Of Richard Osman.
And they appear really suddenly.
I mean, they are unbelievably
dangerous for shipping.
And for centuries people thought it
was an exaggeration by sailors,
that no such thing really existed.
Then on New Year's Day in 1995,
an enormous wave smashed into
the Draupner oil platform, which is
just off the coast of Norway,
and it was recorded at an
astonishing 85 feet
from trough to peak.
And it was... The standard
assumption was that
these waves maybe happened once
every 10,000 years or something.
Did it knock it over? Were they
all right?No, no!
Everybody was absolutely fine, yeah.
But they analysed about 30,000
satellite images over a three-week
period in 2003 and they discovered
ten waves around the world that
had reached that height, so it is
not quite as freaky as you thought.
And nobody knows how
they're created. Oh.
According to Peter Challenor
of the National Oceanographic Centre
in Southampton, "People have been
working actively on this
"for the past 50 years at least.
"We don't even have
the start of a theory." Oh.
I'm just imagining a load of
scientists on surf boards going,
"Oh, shit!"
LAUGHTER
"This is one!"
"Definitely one. Argh!"
It reminds me of one of those
Japanese prints. You know
those sort of prints of this?
Beautiful.
And that's... My phone case,
actually, is that painting,
that Japanese painting of the wave.
Is it really? Yeah, yeah.
So, that's consumerism for
you.Yeah.
Right there. Yeah.
It turns out rogue waves aren't tall
stories, but are storeys tall.
All of which brings us to
the final scores.
In fourth place, the villain of
tonight's piece,
with -29, is Alan.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
In third place, with -8,
it's Bill. Yay!
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
In second place, with -6,
it's Olga!
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Boom!
But sneaking into first place,
an absolutely quizzy rascal,
with four plus points, it's Jack.
Wow!
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
It only remains for me to thank
Olga and Bill, and Jack and Alan.
And I leave you with this impish
tip from Steve Martin.
"For sincere advice
and the correct time,
"call any number at random at 3am."
LAUGHTER
Goodnight.
APPLAUSE AND CHEERING
Season 18 Episode 15 IMDB
S18E14 Video release
Episode Title: "Rogue"
Aired on: January 14, 2021
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Good evening and welcome to QI,
where tonight we've gone rogue,
and we'll be ripping up
the rule book
in the company of this rowdy,
rough-hewn rabble.
A right ruffian, Jack Carroll!
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Russkaya rabotnitsa Olga Koch!
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Reckless reprobate Bill Bailey!
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
And a ruddy rapscallion -
Alan Davies!
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Their ringtones relate to
some right rascals of rare renown.
Olga's got a Russian.
♪ Ra-Ra-Rasputin,
lover of the Russian queen... ♪
There we go!
Jack's got a robber.
♪ They say the great train robbery,
he was the mastermind... ♪
I'm enjoying these ones.
Bill's got a Robert.
♪ Robert De Niro's waiting,
talking Italian... ♪
And Alan goes...
♪ Rosie and Jim, Rosie and Jim
♪ Chugging along
on the old Ragdoll... ♪
I mean, that's just creepy,
isn't it? OK.
Right, here are some words
from the reign of Elizabeth I.
What do you think that they mean?
Well, number two's Bill.
LAUGHTER
A baretop trickster? How dare you?
Hedge Priest sounds like
a '70s rock band, doesn't it?
I like the idea of a hedge priest.
Yeah. Just jumps out.
"Want a bit of absolution?
Bit of absolution?
"You want a bit of absolution?
And cider. Cider, absolution..."
You're not far off, actually.
Really?Weirdly, I know.
It's quite close to the truth.
Any idea, Olga, all those words?
Oh, I've seen all of them on Grindr.
Really?
LAUGHTER
Which one is Grindr, darling?
The gay one.Oh, right.
I don't know, it's a dating app?
Yeah.
I mean, "dating".
Dating's a loose term.Oh, really?
Yes, I don't think dating.
Oh, really?
I don't think it's like,
"Would you like to go
take a turn around the park?"
Yes, yes, it's... No...
Are you saying
they are kind of wrong 'uns?Yes.
Are they rascals?
It's a collective of Tudor rogues...
Ah!..is the thing.
So they were recorded by a
marvellous man called Robert Greene.
He wrote a book called
A Notable Discovery Of Cozenage.
Oh!Yes, and it kicked off
an absolute craze
of people having guides to beggars
and other sort of vagabonds.
It became known
as rogue literature.
We don't really know
why it was called "cozenage",
but "cozen" seemed to be
a word for a wrong' un. A rascal?
So somebody trying to illicit money
from you under false pretences.
It's a con man, basically.
A con man.Yeah.
So let's go back to the list
and have a quick look.
Now, you mentioned hedge priest.
So medieval priests were paid
by tithes,
but supposing you couldn't afford
to pay the priest... Yes.
this would be
an itinerant preacher
who was willing to do the ceremonies
that you might want,
was willing to marry you,
was willing to bury you.
What I like is that they
re-interpreted the vow,
"Till death us do part",
and a couple could separate
if they just stood
over a dead animal in the road.
LAUGHTER
"Step lightly over this badger
and all will be well."
Yeah, exactly that. Oh.
I think, if I was a trickster,
though,
I'd pick a more subtle name
than counterfeit crank.
What do you think
a counterfeit crank might do?
Oof... Well, a crank starts
the engine, doesn't it?
Although they didn't have engines.
Yeah, they didn't have engines...
LAUGHTER
Yeah, no engines, so, no, not that.
Not crank.No.
Well, crank like cranky,
so he's, like, doing crimes,
but he's not happy about it.
Well, he certainly is not happy
in his look, because...
A little bit crazy?
Yeah, so commonly...
A crazy counterfeiter?
A pretend crank?
It's a pretend crank,
so it's somebody who pretends
that they've got something wrong
with them. Oh, right.
There was a particular one
called a clapperdudgeon,
and they used to -
this is very unpleasant -
create superficial wounds
by rubbing a mix of lime and soda
and iron rust,
and it caused sort of blisters
and sores,
and then you would trick people.
The other way of tricking them,
of course,
was to cut the festering arm
or leg off a corpse.
You know,
perhaps from a handy gibbet.
Yes.And then pretend it was yours.
What, just sort of
have it stuck to your arm?
You could lie on the ground with
a blanket and stick the nasty...
And to what end, Sandi,
would you do this?
To get people to give you money feel
sorry for you. Get money.
"I'm dying one limb at a time."
Yeah.Yeah.
And you'd have to remember
to not just
pick it up with your good hand
as well,
like, "Oh, thanks very much...
Oh! Blown it!"
"Can you put it
right into the hand?"
What else?
Come on, Jack, you pick one.
Well, nips and foists sound like
something a plumber would
overcharge you to fix. Yeah. Yes.
"Oh, that's your nips and foists,
right there."
"Ooh, that's going to set you back
a bit. All right, nip."
£40 a nip, isn't it, really? Yeah.
Nips and foists -
names for pickpockets.
So a nip used a knife to cut open
a purse and catch the contents.
And a foist dips their hand into
the...
Surely that's a cutpurse.
Is another name for it.
In fact there's a very famous play
called Moll Cutpurse.
Olga, you pick one.
What have we got left?
Crossbiter. Do you want to have that
one? A crossbiter.
I mean, who would, like,
eat like a vampire?
It's a vampire? Perhaps somebody
pretending to be a vampire? Yeah.
They hate... Jesus? LAUGHTER
So they're like,
"Oh, let's get rid of this."
It was a common con.
People who pretended to be vampires
and hate Jesus, it was a...
Yeah.
LAUGHTER
No. So it's a rogue, obviously...
Yes.
...who poses as a prostitute's
drunken husband.
So... Oh, that old one!
Yeah, that one.
Bursts into the room,
"What are you doing?"
"Oh, no,
it's the prostitute's husband!"
The sex worker's husband, Sandi.
Sorry.
Yeah, we're Tudor times, darling.
Prostitute is absolutely fine.
And the last one
is baretop trickster.
Baretop trickster.
Someone without a hat?
Someone who does sort of...
Yeah, again, like a... Nipple act?
What are you doing? Nipple...
I mean a...
Somebody with their top off...Yes?
..Doing tricks.
LAUGHTER
With their...Like juggling?
Juggling.
THEY SING
Whoo! Whoo! Hey!
Yeah! Uh... No.
Oh, it's like, "Look here!"
And then his partner
goes and does some bad stuff.
Yes, is exactly right! Yeah!
Yes!
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
What?!
Yes, so a woman would flash her...
Tits...bare top
and then possibly lure
a man into a house
and then a gang of men
would do robbing, robbing of him.
Really?Yes!
But how long is that going to
bamboozle a man, though?
I mean... I mean, how much...
How much bamboozlement
is there in, "Wahey"?
I mean, hour, an hour? Just...
"Yeah, keep going, that's great."
Or just a couple of...
I mean, ten seconds?
I think you'd be surprised...
Really?
...how easy some men are, darling.
LAUGHTER
What do you mean?Moving on!
Now, a good criminal
needs to work on their getaway,
so I want you guys
to reinvent... the run.
What ideas could you suggest
to make life easier
for runners?
Well, as someone with
cerebral palsy...
Yes, darling.
..I have spent a lot of time
thinking about how I would
rework my running style,
and I think it goes beyond
a simple matter of technique,
to be honest.Does it?
I think there's something deeper,
something deeper at work there.
Yes, something more philosophical.
Yeah, yeah!
But has anybody got any thoughts
about...?
We know how you run normally.
Can anybody sort of mime
how you run normally?
You run...Wow!
LAUGHTER
It's like you've turned
into a cartoon.
What?!Do you run, Olga?
Alan, you're doing it all...
I mean, there is no problem
a Russian athlete hasn't tried
to solve with steroids, so...
Yeah.
LAUGHTER
At school, I won the 400 metres
back-running.
I run backwards
faster than I can run forwards.
LAUGHTER
This was an event
he staged entirely alone.
Would you like to show us?
All right, yes.
Can you do it down there?
Yes, I will.
Can you do it in the front there?
OK.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Hang on. Right.
So this is me running normally
forwards in the traditional style.
LAUGHTER
Bill, that's surprisingly camp.
All right? Surprisingly camp.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
You see?OK!
So there was a study done
at Harvard University,
a man called Andrew Yegian,
and what he found was
that walking with
completely straight arms
was more efficient
than walking... like this.
What, like this?Yes.
LAUGHTER
It looks like I've got
some live animals in my pocket!
LAUGHTER
Try running with straight arms.
Running with straight arms?
All right, OK.Try that, yeah.
Here we go!Yeah.
LAUGHTER
I feel I'm...
There's a slight penguin vibe.
Yeah, I'll do the "penguin
going round the corner" gag.
OK. You'll love this.
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
How's that?
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
So that's marvellous.
So this study, which was in 2019,
what he discovered
is that running with straight arms
instead of them bent
makes no difference, actually,
to the speed or the efficiency.
So they gave everybody oxygen masks
and asked them to walk and run on
treadmills, trying these things,
cos obviously if you use more
energy, you're going to
need more oxygen. Yes.
Walking with straight arms,
actually more efficient.
Uses 11% less oxygen
than walking with bent arms.
And when it came to running,
it made no difference, really,
in terms of oxygen consumption.
Oh, I see.
So the truth is we don't really
know why we run with bent arms.
It's just that
everybody seems to think
it's harder to run with
straight arms.
It's possible it feels like
your head is more stable.
Possibly you get less fatigued
cos your shoulders are moving?
They are constantly trying to find
new ways of running.
So Alphabet/Google's AI company,
DeepMind... Yes.
...they tried
to challenge the computer
to see if it could learn
a different way of running.
And they used sort of
virtual rewards and punishments
to get the computer to see if
there was a better way of moving.
I have to say, it's very bizarre,
and if this was how you run,
well, I think I would have fallen
over immediately, but this was...
LAUGHTER
This is... The computer reckoned...
LAUGHTER
This is how the computer reckoned...
I mean, I run like...
It just fell over!
In the middle of...
He's fallen over again! That is...
Well, the idea...
The idea was that
you're training the computer,
and every time it fails,
it has to start again.
Anyway, the video looks very odd,
but it is apparently
the computer trying to find
the most efficient way of moving.
How extraordinary.
Right, since we're giving everybody
the run-around,
here is a question for you.
How did Olga use a pigeon...
...to wreak her revenge?
Hm?
Do you know this? Me?Yes.
Well, not you, but a namesake.
Oh. I have... an idea.
OK.
The only other Olga I'm competing
with on Google search,
which I check every
day... LAUGHTER
..is the woman who brought
Christianity to Russia.
OK, and what can you tell me
about her?
I know how her husband was killed,
and that wasn't pretty.
OK, go on, then.
So they took two birch trees
and they bent them,
and then they tied his legs
to each tree,
and then they let the trees
go. AUDIENCE GASPS
Yeah, that is correct. I'm so sorry.
Oh, my God.Yeah.
He was attached?Yeah.
To both...? And then the trees...?
I mean, not for long. No.No.
So he was rent, rent asunder.Yes,
by a neighbouring tribe,
the Drevlians,
and she was terribly unhappy, so she
decided to get revenge. Terrible.
So this is the Russian saint, Olga.
She came from the city...
Is it P-S-K-O-V?
Pskov.Pskov.
That's too many consonants in a row.
It is, isn't it? Yeah, yeah.
Anyway,
she decided to get her revenge,
so what she did was,
she laid siege to the capital
of the Drevlian people, Iskorosten?
Iskorosten.
Shall I just say it quickly?
Oh, just go for it.Yeah.
Iskorosten! Uh, which...
Totally nailed it!
Which is now in the Ukraine.
So, what she did,
she laid siege to the town,
and she said she would only
accept surrender
in the form of a tribute of a pigeon
and some sparrows
from every single household.
So everybody thought,
"That's not too bad."
So the Drevlians,
they all sent these birds out,
and she ordered a piece of sulphur
to be tied to each bird's leg
and ignited,
and the birds were released,
they all flew home,
and burnt the city to the ground
in moments.
AUDIENCE GASPS
Good Lord!
I know. As a bird lover, you're
horrified. I am horrified by that.
I know! And fascinated at the same
time.Yeah, yeah.
They obviously weren't
brave modern-day pigeons,
otherwise they'd have gone, "No, I'm
not doing that, give me some chips."
Yeah, that's true. Yeah!
I've seen a few London pigeons
who would have just run that off.
LAUGHTER
"Yeah, sulphur?
Nah, I'll just run that off."
"That's all right."
"Bit of sulphur, innit?"
"I'll just dip it in Trafalgar
Square fountain, there we go."
Sssss!
"Right, OK, where's that Nando's?"
LAUGHTER
One group that pigeons are
best to avoid are hairdressers.
This is a bizarre thing.
So they did another study,
at the University of Lyon.
Pigeons who live near hairdressers
have fewer toes. Huh?
I know! It's probably the only thing
you'll remember when you go home!
LAUGHTER
Hold on!Yeah. Why is that?
So pigeons landing on people's heads
while they're having their hair cut.
"Something off the pigeon, sir?"
"Yes, please, just the toes."
No, it's that they're...
Apparently, they get them
entangled in human hair
that has been
incorrectly disposed of,
and it causes them to lose toes.
Good Lord!
And where was this again
that we mustn't go?
Hairdressers. Oh, yes.I think
you're fine. I'm fine.Yeah.
LAUGHTER
Remaining in Russia, what's the most
powerful drink in history?
I'm going to go...
I'm going to just...
MUSIC PLAYS
Yes?
Vodka.
BUZZER SOUNDS
Aw!
APPLAUSE
I love vodka, actually.
Do you like...? Are you...? Yes.
I like vodka because it says so much
about Russian people.
Like, Russian people bit into a raw
potato and really were like,
"This is amazing, but can we make it
liquid AND ruin our lives?"
LAUGHTER
So, the most powerful drink in
history is not vodka. It is Pepsi.
So, for a very brief time, in 1990,
the sixth largest military
fleet in the world was owned
and commanded by Pepsi.
AUDIENCE MEMBER GASPS
I know.
So, 1972, Pepsi executive...
There he is, Donald Kendall.
He successfully negotiated an entire
monopoly of cola
in the Soviet Union.
So, Coca-Cola were out and it was
only going to be Pepsi.
Is he trying to get that can off
his face?
Yes.
LAUGHTER
Yes.
ALAN GROANS
His eyebrows are going...
LAUGHTER
So, the rouble wasn't worth very
much money
internationally at the time,
and anyway the Kremlin forbid
the foreign sale of roubles,
so a deal was struck initially
where Pepsi Cola syrup was swapped
for mountains of Soviet vodka.
That deal lasted until 1990,
when Pepsi decided that vodka was
not enough payment.
So, Russia agreed a
$3 billion deal that
everything would be paid in
Soviet warships.
The official units in Russia are
mountains of vodka and warships.
And warships, yes. That's it.
LAUGHTER
They got 17 submarines,
a frigate, a cruiser
and a destroyer for their drink,
and they briefly became the sixth
most powerful navy in
the entire world.
LAUGHTER
And then eBayed the lot? Yeah.
They sold it to a Swedish company
for scrap. Did they?
For scrap?I love there's a little
Swede going,
"Erm hello, yes? Scrap merchant.
How many?
"17 submarines? Just a moment."
Yes. "We can do this."
But apparently it's a thing
in Russia.
So, they once offered New Zealand
MiG fighter jets
and tanks and a nuclear submarine to
wipe out $100 million debt
for dairy imports.
Oh, I'm not surprised at all.
You're not? No.
They sold ME off. LAUGHTER
And here I am.
I mean, also, Coca-Cola must be
shitting themselves, just going...
They've got that silly truck
that goes around...
Yeah!
LAUGHTER
..with Santa on it.
Yeah. Pepsi have got a nuke.
LAUGHTER
Do you know what vodka means,
literally? It has a literal meaning.
No. Small water?
Yes, yeah.
Yeah. Little water.
What is water?
"Voda."Voda.
And so vodka is just, like,
slightly harder.
Am I right that the Russians
sometimes will keep some
in the house, like bathroom vodka,
like for
just kind of cleaning and...?
Is that true? I mean, that's what my
mum used to say.
"It's for cleaning, Olga."
LAUGHTER
Wonderful, this picture.
It's like one of my old
Christmases when I was a kid.
LAUGHTER
Some of my West Country relatives.
It is a mildly offensive picture.
"Oh, this is the West's idea
of Russia."
I'd say it's offensive, but
that's literally my dad.OK.
LAUGHTER
But I like their attitude,
because it wasn't until
January the 1st in 2013 that beer
was classified
as an alcoholic beverage.
Really?No, no, no.
Anything under 10% alcohol
was characterised...
Was baby formula!
Was a foodstuff.
Foodstuff! LAUGHTER
The strongest beer ever made,
according to
the Guinness World Records, was
a beer called The End Of History.
It was made by the Scottish
company BrewDog.
It was 55% alcohol.
So, if you think vodka mostly
is 40%...
What the hell?!
When you've had a pint of that, this
is what you see.
This is what you see!
They sent ten...
This is like some of my
lockdown dreams!
LAUGHTER
They sent ten of their investors
a bottle of this particular
beer mounted inside a taxidermy
roadkill squirrel.
And someone got divorced over it.
I think, yes.
It's not drunk as a beer, though,
is it?
It's drunk in a shot glass.
It says it should be drunk in small
servings. That is entirely correct.
I bet this is in the inside
locker of every RSPCA warden.
LAUGHTER
"Yeah, that's right, yeah.
"You care for them on the outside.
Inside - yeah, go on.
"Turn them into a bottle,
that's what I say.
"Bloody vermin!
"You're bloody vermin, that's
what you are!
"That's the best you can hope for,
you miserable little git."
LAUGHTER
"Turn them into an optic,
that's what I say."
APPLAUSE
All the taxidermy ideas.
Yeah. All the legs turned
into utensils. That's right.
Somebody tried to sell me a theremin
made out of a badger, right?
Sorry. A what made out of a badger?
A badger. You know a badger?
I know what a badger is! I didn't
know what the first word was.
A theremin. You know it was invented
by the Russian radio engineer
Leon Theremin in 1918?
What is it?
It's a thing that goes, "Wooo-ooo."
It's like a pole and when you go
near it, it senses you
and makes a noise. Yeah.OK.
Bill's got... He can play it. He was
trying to invent an alarm,
a motion sensor.
He inadvertently invented an
instrument which had,
you know, as you go closer, it goes,
"Wooo-ooo."
And then he sort of calibrated it
into an instrument.
Leon Theremin.And there's one
shaped like a badger?
Well, somebody... People give me
these things.
People give me all kinds of
strange things.
"We're never going to sell this.
"Hang on."
I've been given strange things, but
it usually results in Penicillin.
Well...
LAUGHTER
No, it was a gift.
We know you love the weasel
ukulele.
I love the weasel ukulele.
That's given me ideas.
No, somebody knitted me a praying
mantis once.
That was the strangest thing.
LAUGHTER
But, no.Thetheremin? The theremin
was a stuffed badger on a pole,
and you moved your hand closer,
it went "Ooo-ooh."
It was one of the most disturbing
things I've ever seen.
That just reminded me of it there.
I totally want a beaver that
does that. Do you not?
Well, you have...
LAUGHTER
"Wahey!"
"Whoa!" Calm down, calm down!
Just behave yourselves!
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
"I want a beaver that does that."
"I want a beaver that does that."
"Woo-ooh, oooh." "Woo." "Back off."
"Woo-ooh." "All right."
"I can't help it,
you'll have to wear ear plugs!"
"Woo-ooh."
LAUGHTER
I mean, that sort of sound
is directly
out of a Carry On film as well.
That "woo-ooh." That thing.Yeah.
Be careful if you're ever doing
a deal in Russia,
as they might add shipping.
LAUGHTER
Come on!
Now, what is the most extreme way
anyone's ever avoided having sex?
Any kind of
self-mutilation involved?
Are you saying that you
take one testicle
and strap it to one sapling,
and then you take the other testicle
and you strap it to another sapling?
APPLAUSE
And then...
Boing!
We're talking about creatures,
rather than... Oh, creatures.
Animals. OK.Yeah. So, it's
something that animals do
to prevent having sex...
To avoid, yeah.
..With other animals.So, we are in
the world of dragonflies.
I don't know if any of you have
noticed, there has been a huge
influx of dragonflies in the UK
this last year. Yes.
Is that a 69?That...
LAUGHTER
No, not strictly.
It's quite difficult. It's quite
a high number.Yeah.
LAUGHTER
It's quite hard to work out who's
doing what to who there.
It's a beautiful heart.Yeah.
It's...
One of them's saying, "Get off me,
you bastard."Yeah. Yeah.
Well, that is in fact correct,
because that is one of the things
that the female dragonfly will do.
So, this is a study by a man
called Rassim Khelifa,
a zoologist from the University
of Zurich.
So, female dragonflies, the ones
that are known as the common hawker,
pretend to be dead while being
pursued by a male,
in order to avoid amorous attention.
Well, this is something that
I've seen frequently.
LAUGHTER
It's called thanatosis. It's Greek
for "putting to death".
And it is a way of avoiding sex,
is to pretend that you are dead.
To be dead?Yeah.
It might not put everyone off.
I knew there was a word for it.
I knew it!
So, what usually happens is,
after mating,
most male dragonflies will
guard their partner, but
this particular species, which is
known as the Aeshna juncea,
they just fly off and they allow
the female to be harassed
by other males. But if another male
tries to mate with her
at that point, as she's had
sex already,
her reproductive tract might be
damaged or she could even be drowned
by an aggressive male, cos they
spend a lot of time on the water,
and so to avoid this, they go into
the undergrowth
and lie motionless on their backs,
and the amorous male gives up
and goes away.
Ah!I know. That is an extraordinary
picture, isn't it? It is.
It's beautiful, actually.Yeah.
It's stunning.
It is astonishing, the whole
insect world.
Years ago we talked about a male
arachnid who gives a gift to
a female to allow him to mate with
her, but the gift is often fake
and she doesn't realise until he's
had his way and scarpered.
The baretop prankster spider.
Yes, the baretop trickster.
Well, there is a spider species
called the Pisaura mirabilis,
and these males go one even further.
The male initiates sex by presenting
the larger female, OK,
with a tasty snack. Yes.
Like, I don't know, a fly maybe
would be a tasty snack.
Of course.And while she
distractedly tucks into it,
he begins copulation.
And then if she tries to make off
with the gift, he plays dead
and holds on to the present, so
that she has to drag him with it.
And... I know!
And then, when she stops, he springs
back to life
and has another go at it.
LAUGHTER
I've seen a version of that on a
very late night near a bus stop
with a kebab.
LAUGHTER
"Come back! I bloody love you!"
Now, we venture into the roguish
round that's really good
for nothing - General Ignorance.
Fingers on buzzers, please.
Why is the River Thames brown?
MUSIC PLAYS
Is it because of silt?
Absolutely right.
APPLAUSE
Yeah. Tidal currents.
So, it's nothing to do with
pollution, which you might think.
It's silt and sand.
There was a time when a lot of waste
flowed directly into the Thames.
In fact, in 1957 the Natural History
Museum declared the Thames was
biologically dead and it had become
a sort of foul-smelling drain.
Hm.But a new modern system of
sewage was put in in the 1960s,
and today it's said to be one
of the cleanest rivers in the world.
It certainly is.
138 seal pups counted in 2018.
Sharks. You wouldn't want to drink a
cup of it, though.You wouldn't. No.
But I had to do some filming
and I was standing on the very top
of the O2, which we can see there.
I took a photograph. There was
a seal... I mean, it's not
a very good photograph because it
was miles and miles away,
but I could see about six seals from
where I was at the top of the O2.
There's a colony of seals living at
Teddington Lock.
Is there? Yes.
There's porpoise, dolphin and whale,
I've seen in the Thames,
when I've been paddle-boarding.
I mean, that's not to say there
isn't shed-loads of rubbish
in the Thames. Corpses.Yep.
Well, they reckon about a corpse
a week in the Thames.
Oh, I... They were just trying to
avoid sex.
I know. Yes.
LAUGHTER
The Port of London Authority removes
about 200 tonnes of rubbish
from the river every year.
In just one day in 2019, the PLA
removed 70 tangled trolleys
that were spotted clumped together
at low tide.
I mean, look at that. Oof.
I know. That's beautiful.
And 60% of the rubbish is
single-use plastic.
You know... Yes.
Please, use a re-usable bottle,
people. OK. Boo!
The colour of the Thames is
mostly down to silt.
There is still some pollution
in there,
but mentioning that just
muddies the water.
AUDIENCE GROANS
Right. Erm...
Uh, what is this wave called?
Big. Freak. It's a freak wave.
It's not a tidal wave. A massive
wave. Big wave. Storm wave.
Wall of water. Look out.
A "look out". A buttock-clench.
A shit... A butt...
A trouser-filler. A surfer-drowner.
A boat-smasher. An absolute bloody
shit-stormer.
It begins with R!
Rascally rogue.
A rogue wave. Oh, a rogue wave. Oh!
A rogue wave. Well, why didn't
you say?
So, tidal waves occur in shallow
water, right? Yes.They're caused by
gravitational interactions between
the sun and the moon and the Earth.
Tsunamis are giant waves
caused by...?
Tectonic shifts under the sea.
Yeah, undersea earthquakes
and volcanic eruptions and so on.
The thing here, this is
a rogue wave.
They are sometimes called freak
waves. They are mountainous swells.
We just don't know why.
Is it one of those?
We don't really know why.
What defines them - they have to be
twice the height of more than
a third of the waves in the area.
Of Richard Osman.
And they appear really suddenly.
I mean, they are unbelievably
dangerous for shipping.
And for centuries people thought it
was an exaggeration by sailors,
that no such thing really existed.
Then on New Year's Day in 1995,
an enormous wave smashed into
the Draupner oil platform, which is
just off the coast of Norway,
and it was recorded at an
astonishing 85 feet
from trough to peak.
And it was... The standard
assumption was that
these waves maybe happened once
every 10,000 years or something.
Did it knock it over? Were they
all right?No, no!
Everybody was absolutely fine, yeah.
But they analysed about 30,000
satellite images over a three-week
period in 2003 and they discovered
ten waves around the world that
had reached that height, so it is
not quite as freaky as you thought.
And nobody knows how
they're created. Oh.
According to Peter Challenor
of the National Oceanographic Centre
in Southampton, "People have been
working actively on this
"for the past 50 years at least.
"We don't even have
the start of a theory." Oh.
I'm just imagining a load of
scientists on surf boards going,
"Oh, shit!"
LAUGHTER
"This is one!"
"Definitely one. Argh!"
It reminds me of one of those
Japanese prints. You know
those sort of prints of this?
Beautiful.
And that's... My phone case,
actually, is that painting,
that Japanese painting of the wave.
Is it really? Yeah, yeah.
So, that's consumerism for
you.Yeah.
Right there. Yeah.
It turns out rogue waves aren't tall
stories, but are storeys tall.
All of which brings us to
the final scores.
In fourth place, the villain of
tonight's piece,
with -29, is Alan.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
In third place, with -8,
it's Bill. Yay!
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
In second place, with -6,
it's Olga!
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Boom!
But sneaking into first place,
an absolutely quizzy rascal,
with four plus points, it's Jack.
Wow!
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
It only remains for me to thank
Olga and Bill, and Jack and Alan.
And I leave you with this impish
tip from Steve Martin.
"For sincere advice
and the correct time,
"call any number at random at 3am."
LAUGHTER
Goodnight.
APPLAUSE AND CHEERING