QI (2003–…): Season 19, Episode 11 - Saints & Sinners - full transcript
Sandi Toksvig, Alan Davies, Bridget Christie, Mark Watson and Johnny Vegas attempt to sort the saints from the sinners.
*Q I*
Season 19 Episode 11
Episode Title: "Saints & Sinners"
Aired on: January 21, 2022.
Good evening and welcome to Ql,
where tonight,
we will be separating
the saints from the sinners.
I'm your heaven host and joining
me are the virtuous Johnny Vegas...
CHEERS AND APPLAUSE
...the blessed Bridget Christie...
CHEERS AND APPLAUSE
...the diabolical Mark Watson...
CHEERS AND APPLAUSE
...and the well wicked Alan Davies.
CHEERS AND APPLAUSE
Right, let's see if the devil real
has all the best tunes.
Bridget goes...
HEAVENLY HARP
- Wow! That... Not in the slightest.
- That doesn't suit me at all.
Mark goes...
CHOI R SI NGS HALLELUjAH
Johnny goes...
HEAVENLY CHOI R
And Alan goes...
THUNDERCLAP
MUSIC: O Fortuna
from Carmina Burana (The Omen)
- Finally!
- Is it going to do that every time?
Wouldn't it be great
if every time you opened a door,
- that music played?
- Every time you opened your fly.
Right, I think
we can take our halos off.
We begin with a question about
not shaving and soul saving.
Are beards go0d or evi♪
OPENl NG NOTES OF O FORTUNA
Oh, that's a bit disappointing!
I want the whole thing.
It's like you're not
the Devil after all.
I've no idea. I just wanted to
press my buzzer. Good. They're good.
Jesus had a beard, at least he's
depicted in all imagery as bearded.
- Yes, he is. Yes. Anybody else?
- He's famously good.
I... I would argue therets baristas.
- On the one hand, Jesus, on the other
hand coffee snobs. - Baristas, yeah.
- We're talking hipsters, aren't we?
- Yeah. Yeah.
So here's the thing, every major
religion at some point has
had a debate about whether beards
on men are good or evil.
And then there was a guy called
Bouchard in France in the 116Os
and he complicated things by talking
about the inner beard.
Yeah. Any thoughts?
You two have got actual beards.
Any thoughts on the inner beard?
We're not meant to talk
about the inner beard, are we?
Yeah, the whole point
of I nner Beard Club is you dontt
talk about I nner Beard Club.
Bouchard and his fellow monks,
they were all clean shaven, OK?
All the lay people had beards
and he inadvertent offended them
by writing a letter in which...
Frank, it was misinterpreted
as an anti-beard comment
and even, some people thought,
a threat to burn their beards off.
So he wrote...
Talk about overcompensating.
He wrote an entire treatise
called In Defence Of Beards,
the Apologia de barbis, in which
he wrote of the great strength
and wisdom beards denoted.
Now, he risks offending the monks
because they don't have beards
and he said,
"But they had an inner beard."
What about the inner
top of the head?
Yeah, the tonsure. So...
- You could do a lattice work... like a tart.
...have nuns got inner beards? Wel
some nuns had inner beards, some...
- Had outer beards.
- ..had outer beards, yes.
Why might a woman, a saint,
decide to grow a beard?
- For equal pay?
- A false beard? A fake beard? A disguise?
No, so there's lots of stories
in Christian tradition that
women want to ward off men,
so for example, St Wilgefortis, right.
St Wilgefortis, her dad was desperate for her
to marry a king
and she didn't want to,
so she prayed to be made repulsive
and she immediate sprouted a
beard, at which point her father...
Opened a circus.
- He should have done.
- Instead, he had her crucified.
- That is quite cross, isn't it? Yeah.
- That's an overreaction.
He could have just grounded her for
a bit. There she is, with her full beard.
Did you see that thing
with the lions,
where one of the lionesses
grew a mane?
- And shets running the pride.
- Well good for her.
She was like, ttWe dontt need
a bloke coming in here
- and messing things up...
- So I'll just grow a beard...
So they thought that she was...
A man.
- Yeah? There's presumably other stuff on a
male... On a female... - Yeah, but this was...
Anyway, St Wilgefortis
and St Paula the Bearded are two
of the most famous women who did
this in order to get men...
- St Paula the Bearded...
- To get men to go away.
My grandmother used to say, "A man
with a beard is a man to be feared."
But she also said to never
have mayonnaise
and that didn't really pan out.
What did she...? What did
she have against mayonnaise?
She told me it was horrible and
I was about 30 until I dared to have it.
- It's quite nice. Yeah.
- I love mayonnaise!
No disrespect to my late grandma,
but she was way off with that,
so makes you wonder
if she was right about beards.
Both your beards,
are they like short on purpose?
Is that as far as it goes?
If allowed, and currently
I tm not in a relationship,
I grow it as long as I can
and I go on picnics
and if the date doesntt go well,
I just sit at home, laughing,
picking out bits of lost food
and feeding mese♪.
Wow! I can't think why you're
single, darling!
- I've never seen you with a beard, Alan.
Have you had a beard? - No, me neither.
SANDl LAUGHS
A had a bit of growth
once for a role, but I found I was
fiddling on with it a bit and never
really wanted to go through with it.
When I was in Cinderella
at the Old Vic
and I played the storyteller
and it was a man,
so I had a fake moustache,
and I so quick got used to it.
I found myseff in the wings on the second
night, going, "Hm, it's going rather well!"
Itts day three when you find
yourse♪ tying someone to
railroad tracks and going...
♪ Da -da -da... ♪
So, what do
we think about moustaches?
Like them, don't like them? You can
do anything with a moustache, I think.
I don't think you can do
"anything" with a moustache.
Well, you can do that.
Yeah, you can do that. That is true.
Bouchard, the monk who was in such
trouble about beards,
argued that it's a monstrous
sign and should be avoided.
And in fact, it has caused
controversy in the past,
so in April 19O7, all waiters in
Paris' top restaurants
went on strike over the right
to grow moustaches.
And the strike cost
the industry 32, OOO francs a day,
it was quite a thing, and it led to
assaus on clean shaven
waiters who were still working.
Why do you think moustaches
were banned?
Hygiene? That's the only thing
I can think of.
It'd be a long moustache before it
dangled in the soup. I know.
This is around the time you first
get modern restaurants in Paris
and they wanted to recreate the
experience of dining in an upscale
home and domestic servants were not
allowed to have facial hair.
For a long time, I just associated
it with geography teachers.
That and corduroy. Yeah. I was...
They're all a bit
undernourished as well.
Everyone in the geography department
was a bit skinny and bearded
and in corduroy... Yeah... and they looked
like they were on the verge of orienteering
at the drop of a hat.
No, therets a real kind of moustache
on a teacher like that
when you walk in and you go,
tt Divorced. Tt
My housemate
when I was at university,
he had to shave twice a day.
He had just very rapid growth.
I could see
if you had extremely rapid growth,
you'd just give in and have a beard.
Yeah, just think, "Can't be arsed."
What did he shave twice a day?
Everything, or just one... Just his face.
Right. But was everything else
growing at the same...
I made no enquiries about it with
him. Therets certain blokes and here
looks like that and then the rest of
them lo0ks like an untamed gorilla.
Sometimes you get a surprise hairy
back. Someone you wouldn't expect.
Do you know what I do?
I just put loads of double-sided
tape against the wall
and throw mese♪ at it.
You go to throw the cat...
You peel her off
and there's a cat shape.
The worst thing is,
you realise you live alone,
youtve got to ring a friend...
ttCan you come and get me? Tt
Have a lo0k at this.
This is a very strange idea of a
possible method to improve shaving.
It's a satirical print,
I have to tell you, from 1749.
A horse-powered mass shaving device.
You put your face in a hole and the
razors whirr around the inside.
Thatts a lot of pressure on one
horse, isntt it? I know!
It says it can shave 6O men a minute
and ao oi
comb and powder their wigs.
There'd be some fatalities, I 'd
imagine, if you got it wrong. Yeah.
What a way to die, though! Being
shaved by a horse! Yeah.
Youtve got one bloke who thinks itts
a peep show and he loses a nose.
It's like YO! Sushi.
It IS like YO! Sushi!
Thatts where they got the idea from.
But if they...
So the blades are going to cut one
fellow and then cut...
Cos they're going round,
it's the same blades...
One cheek at a time, I imagine.
You'd end up with more hair if you
were at the end. Off the razor?
Yeah. I don't know, Bridget, if it's
possible you're overthinking it.
I... I have got that...
How would you learn how to shave
somebody ee, do you think?
They used to do it with
cutthroat razors,
but you don't want to
start on somebody's face.
On a dead person?
Wow! That's... dark.
No. Well, you know your...
It's worrying how quickly you came
up with that. Yeah.
Because there's... It's quite risky,
shaving somebody. Yes.
If they're already dead...
The stakes are low, yeah.
I want to go to barber school,
but it gives me nightmares.
I was going to say a ballo0n.
I know, a balloon or a corpse,
whatever.
Look at all those weird dead people.
It's a balloon. Do you know what?
They didn't pop along to the morgue and go,
"I need to practise me cutthroat razor."
I think it's much better...
I'm sorry if you're lost,
but I'm a barber in training. Yes.
Tt H i. Would you like to see the
body? Tt ttThat cantt be Daddy.
Tt He had a massive beard. Tt
It would be less frightening
cos those balloons,
they pop very easily.
I would have more nightmares popping
a balloon with a weird face
drawn on it... You don't
like popping balloons, do you?
Thatts your go-to
answer on anything.
Whatts the best way to lean
chiropody? On a dead person! Dead body!
Paula the Bearded grew facial hair
to save her sou
but what's the best way to
weigh arseholes?
No, sorry, I'll say it again -
what's the best way to
weigh our sou?
Someone did do an experiment
like this. They did, yeah.
The scientists in the old days
weighed people just before
and just after they died. 21...
21 grams. Yeah. Yes.
It's an interesting question. Does the human
soul have substance? Does it have mass?
So there was a doctor
in Massachusetts called
Dr Duncan MacDougall in 19O1 and he
decided to fit a bed with weighing scales
and he got six dying patients to
lie in it in their final moments
and then he recorded their exact
weight just before they died
and then just afterwards.
What I like about this is first of all he
persuaded six dying... Six? Six, yeah.
He specifical chose people
who had got conditions
caused by physical exhaustion, so
things like TB, for example, because
he wanted them to remain stil
so he could get good measurements.
It wasn't a flawless experiment,
I have to say.
One patient was thoughtless
enough to expire
while he was calibrating the scales.
So he has to stand them
on the scales? No, no.
The bed is on scales.
This is quite an elaborate machine.
Yeah.
He measured on subject as losing
21.3 grams when he died
and he concluded that must be
the weight of the soul
and for a very long time, that is
what people thought.
People thought the soul
weighed about 21 grams.
So they carried on making more
experiments cos
he wanted to make sure,
so he got 15 dying dogs...
I mean, I don't know where
you get them from.
Is your dog dying? Can I weigh it?
Wel he believed that dogs didn't
have sou and sure enough,
none of them lost any weight
when they died.
Didn't lose the 21 grams. I dontt
know, what does 21 grams weigh like?
I know if you're making a macaroni
cheese for the family,
you need 40 grams of flour.
I magine the idea that your soul
weighs half as much as you
need of flour to make
a macaroni cheese.
It doesn't seem like a lot.
Wel the fact is two of his six subjects
didn't give any measurements at al
but ao, at the time, there was a
physician called Augustus P Clarke
and he noted that there's often
a sudden rise in body temperature
when people die because the lungs
stop cooling the blood
and there's a subsequent
rise in sweating
and that would account for the 21
grams. That makes more sense!
But he's not the very first person,
so in the 13th century, the Ho
Roman Emperor, Frederick I I,
took a condemned man
and he sealed him in a barrel and
he waited for him to die... Sorry!
The reasoning that when he did,
his soul wouldn't be able to get
out of the barrel.
Right? And then he could then open
the barrel up
and he'd see the sou
if the theory was true.
What do you think he found?
Had the man gone?
Just... A trick.
He trapped a magician.
He just found a dead guy.
Yeah. Yeah. There is a thing
though about the soul leaving
the body in Latin America.
Has anybody ever heard of susto,
it's Spanish for fright.
It's a sort of folk illness
and sufferers believe
that their soul leaves the body
while they're still alive.
So it's the belief that you've had
something so terrible happen
to you that your soul has actual
brief departed from your body.
I tve had that when I tve been
offered gym membership.
They have a tradition in Denmark,
in other Scandinavian
countries as wel which is
that when somebody dies,
you open the window to allow...
Yes... the soul to depart.
Let them go.
And cover the mirrors. Oh!
A♪ays cover the mirrors to prevent
the soul from becoming trapped inside.
I remember when my hamster died, that pivotal first
pet dying moment, and my mum tried to cheer me up,
saying, " I expect that pets can
go to heaven, wouldn't you, Chris?"
To my dad. And my dad said, " I
wouldn't have thought so." And...
He wasn't trying to upset me,
he was a science teacher
and he couldn't really see a way
that could happen.
Right, why should you never
envy sloth lust?
Oh, look at his little face!
Are these sins, or...? Well...
So it depends which way we're going.
Let's talk about sex with sloths
first, shall we? Yes, please.
It'd be weird
if we didn't talk about that.
I'm first in the queue for that one.
Isn't he the...? She?
I don't know.
There's a look on that face,
isn't there? I mean... Ready!
That come to bed nose.
I would not be kicking that out. Of
whatever tree you were hanging in.
That is definite a come hither
look, isn't it? Really.
So, sloth sex begins with
the female
screaming at the top of her lungs
that she's available. Oh! Wah!
And then the males...
Four years later... Yeah.
Slow, the man comes.
Did you hear that?
Before copulation takes place,
he comes slow towards her, then
it lasts as little as five seconds
and that includes the foreplay.
Well, I think she's probably sorted
herself out before he gets
there, hasn't she?
Do you reckon?
Well... And then... What a lovely turn
of phrase. I've been screaming... Yeah.
Sorted myself out before
you arrived.
Yes, you were too slow, I'm afraid.
I've had to sort myself out.
Stopped at the pub again? Up to haff
the females in the area can have children
from a single male because they just
think, "He's here, this one's here.
"I can't wait for another one."
He's on the branch.
"He's taking to0 long."
As they say in sloth world.
Was he on the branch?
He was. I tll be ready in a minute.
Just fix me wig. Yeah. Really
reminds me of somebody and I can't...
It's Ozzy Osbourne, it looks
just like Ozzy Osbourne. It does.
Do you say "sloth" or "sloath"?
Both are correct. I say "sloth".
I say "sloath". Yeah, I say
"sloath" as well. I don't know...
Anyway, so the sloth itseff was
named after the sin.
You see them in the trees,
obviously,
and they go along the telephone
wires,
kind of hanging upside down,
quite impressive, you know, the sort
of all-action, hanging upside down,
go from tree to tree like that.
You want to be careful though,
if they're above your head
because a sloth can po0 one-third
of its body weight in a single go.
Oh, that's so impressive!
That is amazing! That is
weight loss right there!
That's 25 to 30 kilos, for me.
You know... Woo-hoo!
If you look at that photograph,
the thing thatts intriguing me
is that eye there
lo0ks like I tm in the mo0d for love,
and then that one looks like -
did I leave the grill on?
It does!
It'd be a very different world
if animals could use appliances
like that, wouldn't it? That'd be great.
If they just picked up
appliances from dumps and things,
running cables up to trees
and rigging up Walkmans and stuff.
Take forever though,
if you asked a sloth to do it.
Well, theytd burn their shirts,
ironing, wouldntt they?
So let's have a quick
look at the Seven Dead Sins.
There's pride and wrath and envy,
lust, gluttony,
avarice or greed, and sloth.
Are they in order?
No, not particular.
They can put them up for you.
There you go.
Pride, wrath, lust...
So which one is the woman
brushing... Combing her hair, then?
Lust. She's getting ready for...
Yeah, she wants sex so much that
shets literally combing her hair.
Yeah. What, with herself?
What she's doing there, Bridget,
she's sorting herself out. Yeah.
Going to sort herseff out.
For herself. Yeah.
The original Greek list had eight
sins, including acedia,
so that was like melancho,
listlessness, that kind of thing.
Has saying tt I tm going to love you and
leave youtt ever been one of the deadly sins?
It should be, real. Yeah.
Or "it's not you, it's me".
Yeah, or having a mug that says
ttcoffee otclocktt.
Therets a lot thatts
missed out by this.
Tristitia is despondency as wel
on the first Christian list.
Why did they get rid of the eighth one?
They kind of folded them all in together.
Pope Gregory I decided to fold
lots of things in together.
Pope Pourri was the...
Pope Gregory I.
Pope Pourri. I cannot believe there
isn't a Pope called Pope Pourri.
The most fragrant Pope of them all.
There should be! Yeah.
But we have now some
breaking sin news.
NEWS-STYLE j I NGLE
Pope is about to add a new
sin to the Catechism.
Oh! This is true.
So that's the text listing
the beliefs of the Catholic Church.
Anybody know what the new
sin is going to be?
Is it to do with the modern world?
Yeah. Uh-oh, the modern world.
Uh-oh. Is it something to do
with social media?
No, it's ecological sin. Oh!
Thou shalt not litter.
Pretty much, yeah. Pretty much. It's going
to cover everything from dropping litter to
permanent destroying
parts of the environment.
That's going to be a new sin. Wow!
I td have gone with Thou shalt not
road rage. Yeah.
That's just annoying, isn't it?
Just dontt like road rage.
Itts become part of our daily
existence and it shouldntt.
And I shouldntt follow them
back to their houses
and burn their garages down.
Maybe the Pope will get on to that.
Yeah, that'll be the next thing.
Why did this guy get
so many column inches?
I know this. Yes, I'm willing to
wait. Saint blokes... Monks...
Saint blokes? ..Stood upon pillars.
Stylites? Yes! That's exactly...
They're called stylites. People who
deliberately live like that?
Yes, darling. Absolute. People who
deliberate lived like that.
The David Blaines of their time.
Wel so, we're
talking about a monk called Simeon.
He could suffer more than
anybody ee.
We're in Syria,
we're near what is Aleppo now.
423 AD and he decided,
Simeon, that he
wanted to live an incredib simple
life, so he was going to
decide to live on top of a pillar,
a 6Oft high pillar, 2ft square, OK?
He bui up to this.
You don't do this...
It's not the first thing you decide.
First, he entered into a monastery
and embarked on a lifetime
of austerity.
Even the other monks thought it
was a bit too extreme.
He dug a waist-deep
hole in the garden
and stayed in that for two years.
The monks threw him out.
He moved into an empty
cistern for a while.
And then, aged 20,
he had himseff chained
into a two-square-yard ro0fless
sort of enclosure.
♪1, o0o a week in London. Yes.
Eventual,
he climbed a column, 6Oft high,
and lived there and he became
known as Simeon Stylite,
or the Stylite,
and he stayed there for 40 years.
And unfortunately, he died the year
before Top Trumps was invented.
He sounds quite mad.
Quite bonkers, darling.
He was fed with parce of flatbread
and goat's milk.
We don't real know how,
either he lowered a bucket down or
small boys would climb up
and give it to him.
The thing is, it had the opposite
effect of what he'd intended.
He was trying to get away from the world...
Away from people... and everybody went,
"Oh, I want to go and see the crazy guy who lives
on top of a pillar!" Huge crowds used tocome
and then he would either stand
with his arms extended like that,
or he would repeated
touch his toes with his forehead.
As many as sort of 1,2OO times,
while the audience shouted out
the count from down below.
And then he would defecate
a third of his body weight.
I tm an avid collector.
I td turn up and go,
ttWhere did you get the column? Tt
Yeah, wel it's an interesting
thing about the column.
This is 423 AD when he decides to...
When do you think the column
was destroyed?
How long do you think it survived
for? If it's near Aleppo,
it makes me think it was in one
of those recent antiquity...
2O16, it was destroyed by a missile.
Oh! I know! Really? Wow!
Yeah, it stayed there for all
that time. Oh!
And he then had lots of imitators,
called Stylites,
so literal
pillar-dweller in Greek.
There was a guy called
St Simeon Stylite the Younger.
He spent 69 of his 76 years
up a pillar.
So that means he had to decide
to do that when he was seven.
He'd come down
and someone would say,
"Have you ever been to the cinema?" And
he'd be like, "Oh, shit." Aw, what a shame!
But if youtre chasing humility,
hets actually built just
a very tall pulpit.
He gave sermons from up there. The
Emperor asked his advice on things.
He was hard ever left alone.
I tve never felt closer to God.
Ah... Oh!
I think it became like a thing
in America as well.
Wel there is a sort of spiritual
descendent of it, which is
the flagpole sitting craze.
I n New York.
I n the United States, so there was a
guy called A♪in Shipwreck Kel...
Yes, that I rish guy! I rish guy. This
is him, sitting on top of a pole.
It was a big craze in the 192Os
and '3Os
and you see how long you could
stay on top of a public flagpole.
He was called A♪in Shipwreck Kel
because he claimed to have
been in 62 shipwrecks in his life.
But have a lo0k at this next
picture.
He didn't just go
and sit on a flagpole.
This is him on the Chanin Building, opposite the
Empire State Building... Oh, that makes me sick.
Oh my...
..having doughnuts and coffee.
That's really extreme.
How long did he do that for?
Wel on this particular occasion,
I don't know exact,
but he spent over two decades doing
this, 20,613 hours in tota
he sat on top of a flagpole.
The thing we do know, which is very
sweet, he met his wife, Frances...
Whilst falling from a pole.
She was an elevator operator,
so clear, didn't mind going up,
and she went up the pole to
shake his hand and they fell in love
and he married her
because she went up to say hello.
And then she plummeted to her death.
It is an extraordinary picture,
isn't it?
The thing you have to think about the
photograph is someone was higher up than him.
Right, what's transparent,
consistent thick,
a bit of a pain
and comes from St Helens?
Hello, mate.
Is it a piece of glass?
It is glass, absolute.
It is the second best thing to ever
come out of St Helens
after our very own Johnny. And we
invented... Two things we invented.
Go on, then. Float glass. Yeah.
Which was floating
the glass on hot tin,
so you didntt have to polish
the other side of the glass.
And we gave the world porn, because
we came up with fibre optics.
You're absolute
right about float glass.
It used to be very expensive to make
perfect flat glass and this guy,
Alastair Pilkington,
in the 195Os, he realised
if you pour moen glass onto moen
tin, then it lies complete
flat and it co0 and hardens
and it made it so much cheaper.
Other heroes of St Helens, the first
photographs clear showing
a human face were taken by a son
of St Helens. Really? Mm.
John William Draper
and his sister Dorothy.
They worked out new ways of making
what we call daguerreotypes,
they put flour on women's faces to try and
get more contrast before taking the shot.
He was ao the very first person
to take a picture of the Moon.
I never knew this! Did you know
that the largest bug hotel in the world is
in your former scho0♪
They have a bug hotel more
than 80 cubic metres in size.
It's the largest one in the world.
Oh, wow! You must be proud.
I tve always been proud.
I tm just dead chuffed with this!
What's the bug hotel? A bug hote♪
You build them
and itts where bugs hide in winter.
Yes, if you have any outdo0r
space of any kind, it's a
real go0d idea to try
and create a bug hotel.
Can you charge them,
like a normal hotel? Yes.
It depends on what services
you're offering.
If you turn down the beds at night,
that kind of thing, that kind of service.
A chocolate on the pillow.
I tm just dead happy wetre
talking about St Helens on telly!
How love! Thank you!
No, it's a pleasure. It is.
We were innovators back in the day.
And then Thatcher!
Bloody hell! If you're as close
to him as I am, that...
That was quite frightening. Sorry,
sorry. One answer to everything.
That would have come out a different
question and it wouldntt have been apt.
I thought he was going to
deck me for a second.
I'm glad you're all right now.
But is there a theatre there?
Yeah, Theatre Royal and the Citadel,
where I cut me teeth, basically.
I went and I heckled. And they asked
me to come back and compere.
We had a verbal agreement,
they couldntt afford to pay me,
but me drinks were free
and the second gig, theytre going,
ttWetll give you 30 quid. Tt
And you have to buy your own drinks!
True. You can buy your own drink!
My first gigs at the Comedy Store,
I was paid in beer. We all got...
Yeah, I know,
but I turned up at 6am. Ah!
Fair enough. No, it was great.
It was great. I love me home town.
Youtve really... Ooh! Oh, I'm so...
I cantt... I tm lost for words.
Itts lovely. Anyway, moving on, why does
nobody respect the Spanish I nquisition?
The Spanish I nquisition,
I didn't realise this,
went on for about 35o years.
Yeah, it went on for an extreme
long time.
The thing about it is that it
wasn't anywhere near as bad as
they had suggested. It's kind of a
low level... Yeah... polite inquiry.
Well, there are lots of...
More like a pub quiz, really. Yeah!
Optional form filling.
Multiple choice.
Yeah, it was exaggerated. The Catholic
Church has looked into it and said,
"We're real happy to say sorry
for all the things we've done,"
and there's a few, you know,
"but we didn't do this."
Torture was very much a last resort.
They had rules.
You could on do15 minutes and
there had to be a doctor there and
you couldn't give anybody permanent
injury and you couldn't draw blood.
Like Joe Wicks' thing really.
Yes, it is like a workout, isn't it?
Yeah. If youtre going to
waterboard them, use Evian.
Ask if they want sparkling, yeah.
Most sentences were prayers and
fasts and lots of punishments were
commuted - the life sentence,
which was known as perpetual
imprisonment,
lasted for three years.
The on people they executed real
were what they called relapsers,
people who has said I'm sorry
and gone off and done it again.
Secular prisoners sometimes
blasphemed in prison in order
to get themse♪es transferred
to an I nquisition prison
because they thought they'd get
a fairer trial. Oh!
Have you got any examples of what
any of them said?
"Ooh, blast! "" He's rubbish,
that God! ""Ooh, I say!"
Tt Ruddy Catholics! Tt Yes.
They were rather meticulous.
There was an inquisitor called
Salazar Frias and he did
a meticulous investigation
of the Basque Witch Panic...
Is that J ude Law? It does
look like jude Law, doesn't it?
But he did a meticulous
investigation of the Basque Witch
thing and determined in the end it
was all made up by the accusers.
And the actual conviction rate was incredib
low. It was about 6ofo, on average.
And from 156O to17OO,
they put 3,687 people on trial
for witchcraft
and on 1O1 were found guiy.
It just is not quite the thing that
maybe we all thought it was.
Almost as if there weren't that
many witches. I know!
That's the weird thing,
isn't it, Mark? Yes. Hm...
And being unpopular was very handy
because I nquisitors realised that
lots of people were using the
I nquisition as a way to
settle local scores
and all you pretty much had to do
if you went
up on a charge of something was
to say, "Nobody likes me."
The accused were allowed to provide
a list of anybody who had
a grudge against them.
One judge just produced a list
of people that he had sentenced.
He said, "All these people hate me.
"It's not possible that
I wouldn't be fae accused."
That was the end of that.
Now, who was younger than
james the Younger?
James the Even Younger.
KLAXON
James the Tiny Little... Yeah.
Who was james the Younger?
A Disciple, is it?
He's a Disciple, yes.
Ao known as St james the Less,
which is not as go0d, is it?
I magine being called "the Less"!
This is him sitting...
Who's this on the end?
Is that Simon with his hand going
like... Oh! "Shut up, James!" Shush!
"Listen, I'm not Less, I'm very much
the same size as the other James."
"Don't you ever
talk about anything else?"
"Simon, look at me. Look at me!"
"There's something
weird on your left."
Don't look now...
So St james the Younger,
some people think he's
identified as one of jesus' brothers
and...
I love a relic, OK?
And for more than 1,5OO years,
the Saint Apostoli Church in Rome
had had fragments of a thigh bone
that belonged to james the Younger.
I mean, who wouldn't want to go
and see that, right?
Fantastic!
And then, 2O2O, it was
radiocarbon dated
by the University of
Southern Denmark.
Those spoilsports. Yep.
And they showed the bone belonged
to the body of someone born
between 214 and 34OAD. So,
the body, the thigh bone
was younger than james the Younger.
James the Younger shouldn't be
confused with james the Great.
See, there was james the Less and
james the Great. Right.
Both apostles. There must have been
a rivalry between those guys.
They must not have got on,
I would have thought.
What I like about james the Great,
is he was the son of Zebedee.
Anyway, the hand of james was the
sort of star relic at Reading Abbey,
founded in 1121 by Henry I,
and they ao had fragments
of the true cross, which is...
Of course. Yeah.
One of Christ's sanda.
Oh! James' hand disappeared
at the dissolution
of the monasteries that
Henry VI I I instituted,
and then it was rediscovered, wel
rather, a left hand was
rediscovered in 1786.
And now it is in the Roman Catholic
Church in Marlow in Buckinghamshire,
but it's ao been carbon dated and
I'm sorry to tell you
it's about 9OO years off.
Ah. Hm. Thought to be.
So that's ho hands and ho legs,
but why might you come home
from a pilgrimage with a vagina?
So, just like today, medieval ho
sites did a roaring trade
in souvenirs, and people
brought back badges as tokens
of the journey, and they were often
in the likeness of saints,
but sometimes they were much,
much weirder
and I have a replica here.
Let me show you this one.
This is a replica of a 14th century
Dutch vagina shooting
an arrow on horseback.
Oh! You dontt often see them
do that. You don't. You don't.
I can ao offer you,
I have here a phallus.
I... A phallus...
where the... I don't know if
it's a man or a woman pushing
a wheelbarrow of phalluses.
I didntt think you could top
St Helens,
but this is really... Replicas
of the various badges.
What ee have I got here? I've got,
I've got a penis on a boat.
I don't know why.
I know, I know...
We've all met those.
Tell me...
the guy on the, on the,
the phalluses.
Yes, the phallus. There, on
the top one, to the left.
Oh, this one, here. Yeah, it looks
like hets got a penis puppy farm.
He looks like he's
selling fireworks.
LAUGHTER
I...
They could be like little
Monopoly, erm... Yep.
Oh, that would be a good idea.
Do you want to be the penis
or the vagina?
Can I... Youtve not been buying
fireworks off that bloke
with a massive cock again, have you?
Now, why might you do this?
Why might you have phalluses?
Why might you have vaginas?
What is the reason for them?
Light entertainment.
Are they little fertility,
good luck charm things?
Oh, yeah. It's protection
from the evil eye possib. OK.
OK, so if somebody's sick, you do
not want to look them in the eye.
Is that a penis you're wearing?
I say! Don't lo0k him in the eye!
And then, the other thing is that
the tourist trade has not changed,
people have not changed. People
buy bawdy and humorous objects,
and they sell well.
Was it ever called a vadge
badge, Sandi? A vadge badge?
Yeah, I like that.
Yeah. I just, I think this is
a thing that can be monetized,
I might as well copyright that
now. I think vadge badge is good.
Right. Now, prepare for
judgment Day as we enter
the limbo of General lgnorance.
Fingers on buzzers, please.
All right.
Who designed this staircase?
Oh, what's his name?
Ahhh...
Yes, darling?
What you're thinking of is Escher...
KLAXON
..but it could be a trap. Oh!
It is a bloody trap.
It's a bloody trip.
So he is the one most famous
associated
with the impossible lo0ped staircase
that you would climb for eternity,
but these are the Penrose stairs
figure, and they were created
by a British psychiatrist
and mathematician called
Lionel Sharples Penrose -
marvellous name -
and his son, Sir Roger Penrose,
first published in 1958.
I magine calling your son Sir Roger.
Yeah, that's ridiculous, isn't it?
It's aspirational. What are you
going to call him? Sir Roger.
Sir Roger. What happened is,
the Penroses had been inspired
by Escher's earlier work on
impossible figures.
They sent a copy of their staircase
to him to see if he liked it.
He liked it so much that he decided
to make a staircase of his own.
So, the Penroses, the British
Penroses, were the ones
who inspired Escher to do
his drawing.
Richard Penrose is a real
interesting guy.
First of al he won the Nobel Prize
in Physics for work on black holes.
The other thing he's famous for -
this seems real unlike,
you win the Nobel Prize
for Physics -
he's ao famous for tiling.
So he created a mathematical
revolutionary way of arranging flo0r
tiles so you could cover an infinite
plane without the pattern
ever repeating.
Ooh! Which is amazing.
So, more than 20 years after he came
up with this pattern, Penrose sued
Kleenex for using it
on toilet paper.
Why might they have decided
to recreate this never repeating
pattern on toiler paper? Hallelujah!
Angles of grip when you're removing.
That's exact right, darling.
The toilet paper would not stick
together.
That's brilliant!
You get an extra point.
Yeah, and so the sheets were less
like to stick together.
And he sued them, and the case
was settled out of court.
I magine winning the Nobel Prize,
but also,
suing a toilet paper manufacturer.
I know! It's great, isn't it?
That seems like the full portfolio
career. Thatts everything.
Now, where would you find the
largest body of water in Africa?
It's not going to be that massive,
massive lake.
Is it going to be the Nile?
Is the Nile the largest body...
KLAXON
Oh!
Is it, therefore, that massive,
massive lake?
That massive, massive lake.
What lake are we talking about?
Is it not Victoria?
KLAXON
Is it a river that goes into a lake
that never ends from one, to the top
of the continent to the bottom or
something? Are these all traps
and it's just someone with a massive
paddling pool or something?
Yeah. No. None of those things.
Is it underground? Yes.
Oh... It's underground!
It's underground! A reservoir.
Underground.
It's the most unlike place.
Sahara Desert. It is exact right.
50 points.
Yes, well done, Alan.
Very well done.
Underneath the eastern end
of the Sahara lies around 15O, OOO
cubic kilometres of water.
That is three-quarters of the total
amount of water held in all lakes
in the world. It's basical a huge
mass of very wet rock
and every single crevice,
every nook, every cranny
is filled with fossil water, so
water that's been trapped
deep underground, rather than it's
part of the water cycle.
And the Nubian Sandstone Aquifer
System is the largest known fossil
water aquifer system in the world.
It spans a land area of two million
square kilometres, ing under much
of Egypt, Sudan, Chad and Libya.
Africa was once home to the largest
freshwater lake in the world.
It was known as Mega Chad
and it covered an incredible area
of central Africa, more than
the whole of the British Isles.
So if we superimpose the British
Isles on top, this will give
you some idea of how big
this water mass was.
And then, a thousand years
ago, it sudden shrank.
I had an idea for a
television series once,
where you would move Britain
to a different part of the world
and then discuss the consequences.
You know, with climate, neighbours,
nearest war zones. It feels like
quite high-budget stuff. Yeah.
I was told by quite
a well-known producer
that it might work as a segment,
but not as a whole show.
Looks like I might have to podcast
the bastard!
I mean, what you'd have to deal with
is all the people on the island
who didn't want to move.
Yeah. "Come on. We could go to the
I ndian Ocean for a couple of years."
"No, this is where we are."
"But you hate Europe! You don't want
to be in... We can move you!"
I think it's definite a segment,
darling, I do.
Or a podcast.
Lake Chad is tautological.
Does anybody know what that...?
Does it mean Chad means lake?
Yes, Chad means lake
in the Kanuri language.
I love things like that.
Sahara Desert is another one,
tautological. Canvey lsland,
Wo0key Hole cave.
Pendle Hil this is Lancashire,
"Pen" means "hill",
"dle" means "hill",
and Hill means hil
so it basical means
Hill Hill Hill. Hill Hill Hill!
All right, I heard you. Was it,
was it named by someone
who fell down it?
Yeah!
"Mind that Hill Hill Hill!"
Hill Hill Hill!
"You fell down the what?"
"The Pen." "The what?"
"The dle." "What?" "The hill."
" Pendle Hill?"
"What happened?"
SHOUTS: " I fell down it!"
Which country's air force
did this plane belong to?
This is a trick. You can see
a klaxon here.
Oh! Itts a trick. The Germans
didn't have the swastika
on their, on their plane,
the Luftwaffe.
Whose do you think it is?
It's going to be a Buddhist
airforce. Yes! I love that!
So the great Sanskrit symbol
of good luck found in many ancient
cuures, the swastika.
The Nazis adopted it as a
party emblem in 192O
and then as a national symbol
for Germany in 1933,
but it had already been in use
for two years by the Finnish people.
Really?! I was just about to buzz in
with Ryanair.
I n 1918, a Swedish nobleman, Count
Eric von Rosen, had donated a plane
decorated with one to the new
formed Finnish Air Force,
and they carried on using it
until 1945.
Maybe it was just getting
a bit awkward.
"Shall we change the badge?"
"What should we have instead?"
"I've seen this brilliant thing.
You won't believe it.
"It's like a penis with feet."
The Cross of Freedom, which is
a variant of the swastika,
still features today in the top
left-hand corner of the official
flag of the Finnish president. And
the Danish brewery Carberg used
swastika as a logo from the
19th century to the mid-193Os.
They dropped it, obvious,
with the Nazis taking it on.
But you can still see it in the
carved stone I ndian elephants
that stand at the gates
of the company's headquarters.
Now, what does this stand for?
RHYTHMIC BEEPl NG
Hallelujah!
It's not SOS.
Oh, OK. What does it stand for?
No, wetre just going to, wetre going
to rule that out.
Just things that it's not. It's...
It's not my home address.
Itts not RSVP either.
It's not RSVP. Thank you.
Well, it is dot, dot, dot,
dash, dash, dash, dot, dot, dot.
Yes. Are we confused?
Does that mean O-S-O?
The thing is, it doesn't
stand for SOS.
Oh. If it was going to be the
letters, you'd have them with a gap.
So you'd have, dot, dot, dot, gap.
Dash, dash, dash, gap.
Dot, dot, dot.
It's a continuous stream.
We say SOS as a convenient way
of remembering what the signal is,
but it could just as easi be
rendered as V-T-B and remembered
as Vacate The Boat. The thing is,
the distress is universa
it doesn't depend on language.
You don't need to know what the SOS
stands for.
We just know that that is
the signal.
Before that, they used to signal
C-Q-D.
And then it was agreed in 19O6
that they would make it simpler.
There was a big international
wireless telegraph convention
in Berlin and that's where we get
the SOS from.
But it doesn't actual
stand to Save Our Sou.
And then they invented texting.
It to0k a while to catch on,
actual. When the Titanic went
down, they still transmitted C-Q-D.
They might just think it was SOS,
but it was not.
And so it's time for another SOS,
Sandi's 'Orrible Scores. Let's see
who's on cloud nine and who's
in the sin bin. I n fourth place,
languishing in the pits of eternal
damnation with minus 22.
Oh, Alan!
HE CHUCKLES, APPLAUSE
Thank you. Thank you.
I n third place with minus 8,
it's Mark! I'll take that.
CHEERl NG AND APPLAUSE
I n second place with seven whole
points, Bridget!
CHEERl NG AND APPLAUSE
Johnny!
Ho mackerel.
I n first place...
Take your time with this!
HE LAUGHS HYSTERICALLY
...the man from St Helens, Johnny,
with 13!
CHEERl NG AND APPLAUSE
All that remains is we thank Mark,
Johnny, Bridget and Alan,
and I leave you with a sagacious
sign off from Audrey Hepburn.
Make-up can on make you lo0k
pretty on the outside,
but it doesn't help if you're ug
on the inside...
unless you eat the make-up.
Goodnight.
Season 19 Episode 11
Episode Title: "Saints & Sinners"
Aired on: January 21, 2022.
Good evening and welcome to Ql,
where tonight,
we will be separating
the saints from the sinners.
I'm your heaven host and joining
me are the virtuous Johnny Vegas...
CHEERS AND APPLAUSE
...the blessed Bridget Christie...
CHEERS AND APPLAUSE
...the diabolical Mark Watson...
CHEERS AND APPLAUSE
...and the well wicked Alan Davies.
CHEERS AND APPLAUSE
Right, let's see if the devil real
has all the best tunes.
Bridget goes...
HEAVENLY HARP
- Wow! That... Not in the slightest.
- That doesn't suit me at all.
Mark goes...
CHOI R SI NGS HALLELUjAH
Johnny goes...
HEAVENLY CHOI R
And Alan goes...
THUNDERCLAP
MUSIC: O Fortuna
from Carmina Burana (The Omen)
- Finally!
- Is it going to do that every time?
Wouldn't it be great
if every time you opened a door,
- that music played?
- Every time you opened your fly.
Right, I think
we can take our halos off.
We begin with a question about
not shaving and soul saving.
Are beards go0d or evi♪
OPENl NG NOTES OF O FORTUNA
Oh, that's a bit disappointing!
I want the whole thing.
It's like you're not
the Devil after all.
I've no idea. I just wanted to
press my buzzer. Good. They're good.
Jesus had a beard, at least he's
depicted in all imagery as bearded.
- Yes, he is. Yes. Anybody else?
- He's famously good.
I... I would argue therets baristas.
- On the one hand, Jesus, on the other
hand coffee snobs. - Baristas, yeah.
- We're talking hipsters, aren't we?
- Yeah. Yeah.
So here's the thing, every major
religion at some point has
had a debate about whether beards
on men are good or evil.
And then there was a guy called
Bouchard in France in the 116Os
and he complicated things by talking
about the inner beard.
Yeah. Any thoughts?
You two have got actual beards.
Any thoughts on the inner beard?
We're not meant to talk
about the inner beard, are we?
Yeah, the whole point
of I nner Beard Club is you dontt
talk about I nner Beard Club.
Bouchard and his fellow monks,
they were all clean shaven, OK?
All the lay people had beards
and he inadvertent offended them
by writing a letter in which...
Frank, it was misinterpreted
as an anti-beard comment
and even, some people thought,
a threat to burn their beards off.
So he wrote...
Talk about overcompensating.
He wrote an entire treatise
called In Defence Of Beards,
the Apologia de barbis, in which
he wrote of the great strength
and wisdom beards denoted.
Now, he risks offending the monks
because they don't have beards
and he said,
"But they had an inner beard."
What about the inner
top of the head?
Yeah, the tonsure. So...
- You could do a lattice work... like a tart.
...have nuns got inner beards? Wel
some nuns had inner beards, some...
- Had outer beards.
- ..had outer beards, yes.
Why might a woman, a saint,
decide to grow a beard?
- For equal pay?
- A false beard? A fake beard? A disguise?
No, so there's lots of stories
in Christian tradition that
women want to ward off men,
so for example, St Wilgefortis, right.
St Wilgefortis, her dad was desperate for her
to marry a king
and she didn't want to,
so she prayed to be made repulsive
and she immediate sprouted a
beard, at which point her father...
Opened a circus.
- He should have done.
- Instead, he had her crucified.
- That is quite cross, isn't it? Yeah.
- That's an overreaction.
He could have just grounded her for
a bit. There she is, with her full beard.
Did you see that thing
with the lions,
where one of the lionesses
grew a mane?
- And shets running the pride.
- Well good for her.
She was like, ttWe dontt need
a bloke coming in here
- and messing things up...
- So I'll just grow a beard...
So they thought that she was...
A man.
- Yeah? There's presumably other stuff on a
male... On a female... - Yeah, but this was...
Anyway, St Wilgefortis
and St Paula the Bearded are two
of the most famous women who did
this in order to get men...
- St Paula the Bearded...
- To get men to go away.
My grandmother used to say, "A man
with a beard is a man to be feared."
But she also said to never
have mayonnaise
and that didn't really pan out.
What did she...? What did
she have against mayonnaise?
She told me it was horrible and
I was about 30 until I dared to have it.
- It's quite nice. Yeah.
- I love mayonnaise!
No disrespect to my late grandma,
but she was way off with that,
so makes you wonder
if she was right about beards.
Both your beards,
are they like short on purpose?
Is that as far as it goes?
If allowed, and currently
I tm not in a relationship,
I grow it as long as I can
and I go on picnics
and if the date doesntt go well,
I just sit at home, laughing,
picking out bits of lost food
and feeding mese♪.
Wow! I can't think why you're
single, darling!
- I've never seen you with a beard, Alan.
Have you had a beard? - No, me neither.
SANDl LAUGHS
A had a bit of growth
once for a role, but I found I was
fiddling on with it a bit and never
really wanted to go through with it.
When I was in Cinderella
at the Old Vic
and I played the storyteller
and it was a man,
so I had a fake moustache,
and I so quick got used to it.
I found myseff in the wings on the second
night, going, "Hm, it's going rather well!"
Itts day three when you find
yourse♪ tying someone to
railroad tracks and going...
♪ Da -da -da... ♪
So, what do
we think about moustaches?
Like them, don't like them? You can
do anything with a moustache, I think.
I don't think you can do
"anything" with a moustache.
Well, you can do that.
Yeah, you can do that. That is true.
Bouchard, the monk who was in such
trouble about beards,
argued that it's a monstrous
sign and should be avoided.
And in fact, it has caused
controversy in the past,
so in April 19O7, all waiters in
Paris' top restaurants
went on strike over the right
to grow moustaches.
And the strike cost
the industry 32, OOO francs a day,
it was quite a thing, and it led to
assaus on clean shaven
waiters who were still working.
Why do you think moustaches
were banned?
Hygiene? That's the only thing
I can think of.
It'd be a long moustache before it
dangled in the soup. I know.
This is around the time you first
get modern restaurants in Paris
and they wanted to recreate the
experience of dining in an upscale
home and domestic servants were not
allowed to have facial hair.
For a long time, I just associated
it with geography teachers.
That and corduroy. Yeah. I was...
They're all a bit
undernourished as well.
Everyone in the geography department
was a bit skinny and bearded
and in corduroy... Yeah... and they looked
like they were on the verge of orienteering
at the drop of a hat.
No, therets a real kind of moustache
on a teacher like that
when you walk in and you go,
tt Divorced. Tt
My housemate
when I was at university,
he had to shave twice a day.
He had just very rapid growth.
I could see
if you had extremely rapid growth,
you'd just give in and have a beard.
Yeah, just think, "Can't be arsed."
What did he shave twice a day?
Everything, or just one... Just his face.
Right. But was everything else
growing at the same...
I made no enquiries about it with
him. Therets certain blokes and here
looks like that and then the rest of
them lo0ks like an untamed gorilla.
Sometimes you get a surprise hairy
back. Someone you wouldn't expect.
Do you know what I do?
I just put loads of double-sided
tape against the wall
and throw mese♪ at it.
You go to throw the cat...
You peel her off
and there's a cat shape.
The worst thing is,
you realise you live alone,
youtve got to ring a friend...
ttCan you come and get me? Tt
Have a lo0k at this.
This is a very strange idea of a
possible method to improve shaving.
It's a satirical print,
I have to tell you, from 1749.
A horse-powered mass shaving device.
You put your face in a hole and the
razors whirr around the inside.
Thatts a lot of pressure on one
horse, isntt it? I know!
It says it can shave 6O men a minute
and ao oi
comb and powder their wigs.
There'd be some fatalities, I 'd
imagine, if you got it wrong. Yeah.
What a way to die, though! Being
shaved by a horse! Yeah.
Youtve got one bloke who thinks itts
a peep show and he loses a nose.
It's like YO! Sushi.
It IS like YO! Sushi!
Thatts where they got the idea from.
But if they...
So the blades are going to cut one
fellow and then cut...
Cos they're going round,
it's the same blades...
One cheek at a time, I imagine.
You'd end up with more hair if you
were at the end. Off the razor?
Yeah. I don't know, Bridget, if it's
possible you're overthinking it.
I... I have got that...
How would you learn how to shave
somebody ee, do you think?
They used to do it with
cutthroat razors,
but you don't want to
start on somebody's face.
On a dead person?
Wow! That's... dark.
No. Well, you know your...
It's worrying how quickly you came
up with that. Yeah.
Because there's... It's quite risky,
shaving somebody. Yes.
If they're already dead...
The stakes are low, yeah.
I want to go to barber school,
but it gives me nightmares.
I was going to say a ballo0n.
I know, a balloon or a corpse,
whatever.
Look at all those weird dead people.
It's a balloon. Do you know what?
They didn't pop along to the morgue and go,
"I need to practise me cutthroat razor."
I think it's much better...
I'm sorry if you're lost,
but I'm a barber in training. Yes.
Tt H i. Would you like to see the
body? Tt ttThat cantt be Daddy.
Tt He had a massive beard. Tt
It would be less frightening
cos those balloons,
they pop very easily.
I would have more nightmares popping
a balloon with a weird face
drawn on it... You don't
like popping balloons, do you?
Thatts your go-to
answer on anything.
Whatts the best way to lean
chiropody? On a dead person! Dead body!
Paula the Bearded grew facial hair
to save her sou
but what's the best way to
weigh arseholes?
No, sorry, I'll say it again -
what's the best way to
weigh our sou?
Someone did do an experiment
like this. They did, yeah.
The scientists in the old days
weighed people just before
and just after they died. 21...
21 grams. Yeah. Yes.
It's an interesting question. Does the human
soul have substance? Does it have mass?
So there was a doctor
in Massachusetts called
Dr Duncan MacDougall in 19O1 and he
decided to fit a bed with weighing scales
and he got six dying patients to
lie in it in their final moments
and then he recorded their exact
weight just before they died
and then just afterwards.
What I like about this is first of all he
persuaded six dying... Six? Six, yeah.
He specifical chose people
who had got conditions
caused by physical exhaustion, so
things like TB, for example, because
he wanted them to remain stil
so he could get good measurements.
It wasn't a flawless experiment,
I have to say.
One patient was thoughtless
enough to expire
while he was calibrating the scales.
So he has to stand them
on the scales? No, no.
The bed is on scales.
This is quite an elaborate machine.
Yeah.
He measured on subject as losing
21.3 grams when he died
and he concluded that must be
the weight of the soul
and for a very long time, that is
what people thought.
People thought the soul
weighed about 21 grams.
So they carried on making more
experiments cos
he wanted to make sure,
so he got 15 dying dogs...
I mean, I don't know where
you get them from.
Is your dog dying? Can I weigh it?
Wel he believed that dogs didn't
have sou and sure enough,
none of them lost any weight
when they died.
Didn't lose the 21 grams. I dontt
know, what does 21 grams weigh like?
I know if you're making a macaroni
cheese for the family,
you need 40 grams of flour.
I magine the idea that your soul
weighs half as much as you
need of flour to make
a macaroni cheese.
It doesn't seem like a lot.
Wel the fact is two of his six subjects
didn't give any measurements at al
but ao, at the time, there was a
physician called Augustus P Clarke
and he noted that there's often
a sudden rise in body temperature
when people die because the lungs
stop cooling the blood
and there's a subsequent
rise in sweating
and that would account for the 21
grams. That makes more sense!
But he's not the very first person,
so in the 13th century, the Ho
Roman Emperor, Frederick I I,
took a condemned man
and he sealed him in a barrel and
he waited for him to die... Sorry!
The reasoning that when he did,
his soul wouldn't be able to get
out of the barrel.
Right? And then he could then open
the barrel up
and he'd see the sou
if the theory was true.
What do you think he found?
Had the man gone?
Just... A trick.
He trapped a magician.
He just found a dead guy.
Yeah. Yeah. There is a thing
though about the soul leaving
the body in Latin America.
Has anybody ever heard of susto,
it's Spanish for fright.
It's a sort of folk illness
and sufferers believe
that their soul leaves the body
while they're still alive.
So it's the belief that you've had
something so terrible happen
to you that your soul has actual
brief departed from your body.
I tve had that when I tve been
offered gym membership.
They have a tradition in Denmark,
in other Scandinavian
countries as wel which is
that when somebody dies,
you open the window to allow...
Yes... the soul to depart.
Let them go.
And cover the mirrors. Oh!
A♪ays cover the mirrors to prevent
the soul from becoming trapped inside.
I remember when my hamster died, that pivotal first
pet dying moment, and my mum tried to cheer me up,
saying, " I expect that pets can
go to heaven, wouldn't you, Chris?"
To my dad. And my dad said, " I
wouldn't have thought so." And...
He wasn't trying to upset me,
he was a science teacher
and he couldn't really see a way
that could happen.
Right, why should you never
envy sloth lust?
Oh, look at his little face!
Are these sins, or...? Well...
So it depends which way we're going.
Let's talk about sex with sloths
first, shall we? Yes, please.
It'd be weird
if we didn't talk about that.
I'm first in the queue for that one.
Isn't he the...? She?
I don't know.
There's a look on that face,
isn't there? I mean... Ready!
That come to bed nose.
I would not be kicking that out. Of
whatever tree you were hanging in.
That is definite a come hither
look, isn't it? Really.
So, sloth sex begins with
the female
screaming at the top of her lungs
that she's available. Oh! Wah!
And then the males...
Four years later... Yeah.
Slow, the man comes.
Did you hear that?
Before copulation takes place,
he comes slow towards her, then
it lasts as little as five seconds
and that includes the foreplay.
Well, I think she's probably sorted
herself out before he gets
there, hasn't she?
Do you reckon?
Well... And then... What a lovely turn
of phrase. I've been screaming... Yeah.
Sorted myself out before
you arrived.
Yes, you were too slow, I'm afraid.
I've had to sort myself out.
Stopped at the pub again? Up to haff
the females in the area can have children
from a single male because they just
think, "He's here, this one's here.
"I can't wait for another one."
He's on the branch.
"He's taking to0 long."
As they say in sloth world.
Was he on the branch?
He was. I tll be ready in a minute.
Just fix me wig. Yeah. Really
reminds me of somebody and I can't...
It's Ozzy Osbourne, it looks
just like Ozzy Osbourne. It does.
Do you say "sloth" or "sloath"?
Both are correct. I say "sloth".
I say "sloath". Yeah, I say
"sloath" as well. I don't know...
Anyway, so the sloth itseff was
named after the sin.
You see them in the trees,
obviously,
and they go along the telephone
wires,
kind of hanging upside down,
quite impressive, you know, the sort
of all-action, hanging upside down,
go from tree to tree like that.
You want to be careful though,
if they're above your head
because a sloth can po0 one-third
of its body weight in a single go.
Oh, that's so impressive!
That is amazing! That is
weight loss right there!
That's 25 to 30 kilos, for me.
You know... Woo-hoo!
If you look at that photograph,
the thing thatts intriguing me
is that eye there
lo0ks like I tm in the mo0d for love,
and then that one looks like -
did I leave the grill on?
It does!
It'd be a very different world
if animals could use appliances
like that, wouldn't it? That'd be great.
If they just picked up
appliances from dumps and things,
running cables up to trees
and rigging up Walkmans and stuff.
Take forever though,
if you asked a sloth to do it.
Well, theytd burn their shirts,
ironing, wouldntt they?
So let's have a quick
look at the Seven Dead Sins.
There's pride and wrath and envy,
lust, gluttony,
avarice or greed, and sloth.
Are they in order?
No, not particular.
They can put them up for you.
There you go.
Pride, wrath, lust...
So which one is the woman
brushing... Combing her hair, then?
Lust. She's getting ready for...
Yeah, she wants sex so much that
shets literally combing her hair.
Yeah. What, with herself?
What she's doing there, Bridget,
she's sorting herself out. Yeah.
Going to sort herseff out.
For herself. Yeah.
The original Greek list had eight
sins, including acedia,
so that was like melancho,
listlessness, that kind of thing.
Has saying tt I tm going to love you and
leave youtt ever been one of the deadly sins?
It should be, real. Yeah.
Or "it's not you, it's me".
Yeah, or having a mug that says
ttcoffee otclocktt.
Therets a lot thatts
missed out by this.
Tristitia is despondency as wel
on the first Christian list.
Why did they get rid of the eighth one?
They kind of folded them all in together.
Pope Gregory I decided to fold
lots of things in together.
Pope Pourri was the...
Pope Gregory I.
Pope Pourri. I cannot believe there
isn't a Pope called Pope Pourri.
The most fragrant Pope of them all.
There should be! Yeah.
But we have now some
breaking sin news.
NEWS-STYLE j I NGLE
Pope is about to add a new
sin to the Catechism.
Oh! This is true.
So that's the text listing
the beliefs of the Catholic Church.
Anybody know what the new
sin is going to be?
Is it to do with the modern world?
Yeah. Uh-oh, the modern world.
Uh-oh. Is it something to do
with social media?
No, it's ecological sin. Oh!
Thou shalt not litter.
Pretty much, yeah. Pretty much. It's going
to cover everything from dropping litter to
permanent destroying
parts of the environment.
That's going to be a new sin. Wow!
I td have gone with Thou shalt not
road rage. Yeah.
That's just annoying, isn't it?
Just dontt like road rage.
Itts become part of our daily
existence and it shouldntt.
And I shouldntt follow them
back to their houses
and burn their garages down.
Maybe the Pope will get on to that.
Yeah, that'll be the next thing.
Why did this guy get
so many column inches?
I know this. Yes, I'm willing to
wait. Saint blokes... Monks...
Saint blokes? ..Stood upon pillars.
Stylites? Yes! That's exactly...
They're called stylites. People who
deliberately live like that?
Yes, darling. Absolute. People who
deliberate lived like that.
The David Blaines of their time.
Wel so, we're
talking about a monk called Simeon.
He could suffer more than
anybody ee.
We're in Syria,
we're near what is Aleppo now.
423 AD and he decided,
Simeon, that he
wanted to live an incredib simple
life, so he was going to
decide to live on top of a pillar,
a 6Oft high pillar, 2ft square, OK?
He bui up to this.
You don't do this...
It's not the first thing you decide.
First, he entered into a monastery
and embarked on a lifetime
of austerity.
Even the other monks thought it
was a bit too extreme.
He dug a waist-deep
hole in the garden
and stayed in that for two years.
The monks threw him out.
He moved into an empty
cistern for a while.
And then, aged 20,
he had himseff chained
into a two-square-yard ro0fless
sort of enclosure.
♪1, o0o a week in London. Yes.
Eventual,
he climbed a column, 6Oft high,
and lived there and he became
known as Simeon Stylite,
or the Stylite,
and he stayed there for 40 years.
And unfortunately, he died the year
before Top Trumps was invented.
He sounds quite mad.
Quite bonkers, darling.
He was fed with parce of flatbread
and goat's milk.
We don't real know how,
either he lowered a bucket down or
small boys would climb up
and give it to him.
The thing is, it had the opposite
effect of what he'd intended.
He was trying to get away from the world...
Away from people... and everybody went,
"Oh, I want to go and see the crazy guy who lives
on top of a pillar!" Huge crowds used tocome
and then he would either stand
with his arms extended like that,
or he would repeated
touch his toes with his forehead.
As many as sort of 1,2OO times,
while the audience shouted out
the count from down below.
And then he would defecate
a third of his body weight.
I tm an avid collector.
I td turn up and go,
ttWhere did you get the column? Tt
Yeah, wel it's an interesting
thing about the column.
This is 423 AD when he decides to...
When do you think the column
was destroyed?
How long do you think it survived
for? If it's near Aleppo,
it makes me think it was in one
of those recent antiquity...
2O16, it was destroyed by a missile.
Oh! I know! Really? Wow!
Yeah, it stayed there for all
that time. Oh!
And he then had lots of imitators,
called Stylites,
so literal
pillar-dweller in Greek.
There was a guy called
St Simeon Stylite the Younger.
He spent 69 of his 76 years
up a pillar.
So that means he had to decide
to do that when he was seven.
He'd come down
and someone would say,
"Have you ever been to the cinema?" And
he'd be like, "Oh, shit." Aw, what a shame!
But if youtre chasing humility,
hets actually built just
a very tall pulpit.
He gave sermons from up there. The
Emperor asked his advice on things.
He was hard ever left alone.
I tve never felt closer to God.
Ah... Oh!
I think it became like a thing
in America as well.
Wel there is a sort of spiritual
descendent of it, which is
the flagpole sitting craze.
I n New York.
I n the United States, so there was a
guy called A♪in Shipwreck Kel...
Yes, that I rish guy! I rish guy. This
is him, sitting on top of a pole.
It was a big craze in the 192Os
and '3Os
and you see how long you could
stay on top of a public flagpole.
He was called A♪in Shipwreck Kel
because he claimed to have
been in 62 shipwrecks in his life.
But have a lo0k at this next
picture.
He didn't just go
and sit on a flagpole.
This is him on the Chanin Building, opposite the
Empire State Building... Oh, that makes me sick.
Oh my...
..having doughnuts and coffee.
That's really extreme.
How long did he do that for?
Wel on this particular occasion,
I don't know exact,
but he spent over two decades doing
this, 20,613 hours in tota
he sat on top of a flagpole.
The thing we do know, which is very
sweet, he met his wife, Frances...
Whilst falling from a pole.
She was an elevator operator,
so clear, didn't mind going up,
and she went up the pole to
shake his hand and they fell in love
and he married her
because she went up to say hello.
And then she plummeted to her death.
It is an extraordinary picture,
isn't it?
The thing you have to think about the
photograph is someone was higher up than him.
Right, what's transparent,
consistent thick,
a bit of a pain
and comes from St Helens?
Hello, mate.
Is it a piece of glass?
It is glass, absolute.
It is the second best thing to ever
come out of St Helens
after our very own Johnny. And we
invented... Two things we invented.
Go on, then. Float glass. Yeah.
Which was floating
the glass on hot tin,
so you didntt have to polish
the other side of the glass.
And we gave the world porn, because
we came up with fibre optics.
You're absolute
right about float glass.
It used to be very expensive to make
perfect flat glass and this guy,
Alastair Pilkington,
in the 195Os, he realised
if you pour moen glass onto moen
tin, then it lies complete
flat and it co0 and hardens
and it made it so much cheaper.
Other heroes of St Helens, the first
photographs clear showing
a human face were taken by a son
of St Helens. Really? Mm.
John William Draper
and his sister Dorothy.
They worked out new ways of making
what we call daguerreotypes,
they put flour on women's faces to try and
get more contrast before taking the shot.
He was ao the very first person
to take a picture of the Moon.
I never knew this! Did you know
that the largest bug hotel in the world is
in your former scho0♪
They have a bug hotel more
than 80 cubic metres in size.
It's the largest one in the world.
Oh, wow! You must be proud.
I tve always been proud.
I tm just dead chuffed with this!
What's the bug hotel? A bug hote♪
You build them
and itts where bugs hide in winter.
Yes, if you have any outdo0r
space of any kind, it's a
real go0d idea to try
and create a bug hotel.
Can you charge them,
like a normal hotel? Yes.
It depends on what services
you're offering.
If you turn down the beds at night,
that kind of thing, that kind of service.
A chocolate on the pillow.
I tm just dead happy wetre
talking about St Helens on telly!
How love! Thank you!
No, it's a pleasure. It is.
We were innovators back in the day.
And then Thatcher!
Bloody hell! If you're as close
to him as I am, that...
That was quite frightening. Sorry,
sorry. One answer to everything.
That would have come out a different
question and it wouldntt have been apt.
I thought he was going to
deck me for a second.
I'm glad you're all right now.
But is there a theatre there?
Yeah, Theatre Royal and the Citadel,
where I cut me teeth, basically.
I went and I heckled. And they asked
me to come back and compere.
We had a verbal agreement,
they couldntt afford to pay me,
but me drinks were free
and the second gig, theytre going,
ttWetll give you 30 quid. Tt
And you have to buy your own drinks!
True. You can buy your own drink!
My first gigs at the Comedy Store,
I was paid in beer. We all got...
Yeah, I know,
but I turned up at 6am. Ah!
Fair enough. No, it was great.
It was great. I love me home town.
Youtve really... Ooh! Oh, I'm so...
I cantt... I tm lost for words.
Itts lovely. Anyway, moving on, why does
nobody respect the Spanish I nquisition?
The Spanish I nquisition,
I didn't realise this,
went on for about 35o years.
Yeah, it went on for an extreme
long time.
The thing about it is that it
wasn't anywhere near as bad as
they had suggested. It's kind of a
low level... Yeah... polite inquiry.
Well, there are lots of...
More like a pub quiz, really. Yeah!
Optional form filling.
Multiple choice.
Yeah, it was exaggerated. The Catholic
Church has looked into it and said,
"We're real happy to say sorry
for all the things we've done,"
and there's a few, you know,
"but we didn't do this."
Torture was very much a last resort.
They had rules.
You could on do15 minutes and
there had to be a doctor there and
you couldn't give anybody permanent
injury and you couldn't draw blood.
Like Joe Wicks' thing really.
Yes, it is like a workout, isn't it?
Yeah. If youtre going to
waterboard them, use Evian.
Ask if they want sparkling, yeah.
Most sentences were prayers and
fasts and lots of punishments were
commuted - the life sentence,
which was known as perpetual
imprisonment,
lasted for three years.
The on people they executed real
were what they called relapsers,
people who has said I'm sorry
and gone off and done it again.
Secular prisoners sometimes
blasphemed in prison in order
to get themse♪es transferred
to an I nquisition prison
because they thought they'd get
a fairer trial. Oh!
Have you got any examples of what
any of them said?
"Ooh, blast! "" He's rubbish,
that God! ""Ooh, I say!"
Tt Ruddy Catholics! Tt Yes.
They were rather meticulous.
There was an inquisitor called
Salazar Frias and he did
a meticulous investigation
of the Basque Witch Panic...
Is that J ude Law? It does
look like jude Law, doesn't it?
But he did a meticulous
investigation of the Basque Witch
thing and determined in the end it
was all made up by the accusers.
And the actual conviction rate was incredib
low. It was about 6ofo, on average.
And from 156O to17OO,
they put 3,687 people on trial
for witchcraft
and on 1O1 were found guiy.
It just is not quite the thing that
maybe we all thought it was.
Almost as if there weren't that
many witches. I know!
That's the weird thing,
isn't it, Mark? Yes. Hm...
And being unpopular was very handy
because I nquisitors realised that
lots of people were using the
I nquisition as a way to
settle local scores
and all you pretty much had to do
if you went
up on a charge of something was
to say, "Nobody likes me."
The accused were allowed to provide
a list of anybody who had
a grudge against them.
One judge just produced a list
of people that he had sentenced.
He said, "All these people hate me.
"It's not possible that
I wouldn't be fae accused."
That was the end of that.
Now, who was younger than
james the Younger?
James the Even Younger.
KLAXON
James the Tiny Little... Yeah.
Who was james the Younger?
A Disciple, is it?
He's a Disciple, yes.
Ao known as St james the Less,
which is not as go0d, is it?
I magine being called "the Less"!
This is him sitting...
Who's this on the end?
Is that Simon with his hand going
like... Oh! "Shut up, James!" Shush!
"Listen, I'm not Less, I'm very much
the same size as the other James."
"Don't you ever
talk about anything else?"
"Simon, look at me. Look at me!"
"There's something
weird on your left."
Don't look now...
So St james the Younger,
some people think he's
identified as one of jesus' brothers
and...
I love a relic, OK?
And for more than 1,5OO years,
the Saint Apostoli Church in Rome
had had fragments of a thigh bone
that belonged to james the Younger.
I mean, who wouldn't want to go
and see that, right?
Fantastic!
And then, 2O2O, it was
radiocarbon dated
by the University of
Southern Denmark.
Those spoilsports. Yep.
And they showed the bone belonged
to the body of someone born
between 214 and 34OAD. So,
the body, the thigh bone
was younger than james the Younger.
James the Younger shouldn't be
confused with james the Great.
See, there was james the Less and
james the Great. Right.
Both apostles. There must have been
a rivalry between those guys.
They must not have got on,
I would have thought.
What I like about james the Great,
is he was the son of Zebedee.
Anyway, the hand of james was the
sort of star relic at Reading Abbey,
founded in 1121 by Henry I,
and they ao had fragments
of the true cross, which is...
Of course. Yeah.
One of Christ's sanda.
Oh! James' hand disappeared
at the dissolution
of the monasteries that
Henry VI I I instituted,
and then it was rediscovered, wel
rather, a left hand was
rediscovered in 1786.
And now it is in the Roman Catholic
Church in Marlow in Buckinghamshire,
but it's ao been carbon dated and
I'm sorry to tell you
it's about 9OO years off.
Ah. Hm. Thought to be.
So that's ho hands and ho legs,
but why might you come home
from a pilgrimage with a vagina?
So, just like today, medieval ho
sites did a roaring trade
in souvenirs, and people
brought back badges as tokens
of the journey, and they were often
in the likeness of saints,
but sometimes they were much,
much weirder
and I have a replica here.
Let me show you this one.
This is a replica of a 14th century
Dutch vagina shooting
an arrow on horseback.
Oh! You dontt often see them
do that. You don't. You don't.
I can ao offer you,
I have here a phallus.
I... A phallus...
where the... I don't know if
it's a man or a woman pushing
a wheelbarrow of phalluses.
I didntt think you could top
St Helens,
but this is really... Replicas
of the various badges.
What ee have I got here? I've got,
I've got a penis on a boat.
I don't know why.
I know, I know...
We've all met those.
Tell me...
the guy on the, on the,
the phalluses.
Yes, the phallus. There, on
the top one, to the left.
Oh, this one, here. Yeah, it looks
like hets got a penis puppy farm.
He looks like he's
selling fireworks.
LAUGHTER
I...
They could be like little
Monopoly, erm... Yep.
Oh, that would be a good idea.
Do you want to be the penis
or the vagina?
Can I... Youtve not been buying
fireworks off that bloke
with a massive cock again, have you?
Now, why might you do this?
Why might you have phalluses?
Why might you have vaginas?
What is the reason for them?
Light entertainment.
Are they little fertility,
good luck charm things?
Oh, yeah. It's protection
from the evil eye possib. OK.
OK, so if somebody's sick, you do
not want to look them in the eye.
Is that a penis you're wearing?
I say! Don't lo0k him in the eye!
And then, the other thing is that
the tourist trade has not changed,
people have not changed. People
buy bawdy and humorous objects,
and they sell well.
Was it ever called a vadge
badge, Sandi? A vadge badge?
Yeah, I like that.
Yeah. I just, I think this is
a thing that can be monetized,
I might as well copyright that
now. I think vadge badge is good.
Right. Now, prepare for
judgment Day as we enter
the limbo of General lgnorance.
Fingers on buzzers, please.
All right.
Who designed this staircase?
Oh, what's his name?
Ahhh...
Yes, darling?
What you're thinking of is Escher...
KLAXON
..but it could be a trap. Oh!
It is a bloody trap.
It's a bloody trip.
So he is the one most famous
associated
with the impossible lo0ped staircase
that you would climb for eternity,
but these are the Penrose stairs
figure, and they were created
by a British psychiatrist
and mathematician called
Lionel Sharples Penrose -
marvellous name -
and his son, Sir Roger Penrose,
first published in 1958.
I magine calling your son Sir Roger.
Yeah, that's ridiculous, isn't it?
It's aspirational. What are you
going to call him? Sir Roger.
Sir Roger. What happened is,
the Penroses had been inspired
by Escher's earlier work on
impossible figures.
They sent a copy of their staircase
to him to see if he liked it.
He liked it so much that he decided
to make a staircase of his own.
So, the Penroses, the British
Penroses, were the ones
who inspired Escher to do
his drawing.
Richard Penrose is a real
interesting guy.
First of al he won the Nobel Prize
in Physics for work on black holes.
The other thing he's famous for -
this seems real unlike,
you win the Nobel Prize
for Physics -
he's ao famous for tiling.
So he created a mathematical
revolutionary way of arranging flo0r
tiles so you could cover an infinite
plane without the pattern
ever repeating.
Ooh! Which is amazing.
So, more than 20 years after he came
up with this pattern, Penrose sued
Kleenex for using it
on toilet paper.
Why might they have decided
to recreate this never repeating
pattern on toiler paper? Hallelujah!
Angles of grip when you're removing.
That's exact right, darling.
The toilet paper would not stick
together.
That's brilliant!
You get an extra point.
Yeah, and so the sheets were less
like to stick together.
And he sued them, and the case
was settled out of court.
I magine winning the Nobel Prize,
but also,
suing a toilet paper manufacturer.
I know! It's great, isn't it?
That seems like the full portfolio
career. Thatts everything.
Now, where would you find the
largest body of water in Africa?
It's not going to be that massive,
massive lake.
Is it going to be the Nile?
Is the Nile the largest body...
KLAXON
Oh!
Is it, therefore, that massive,
massive lake?
That massive, massive lake.
What lake are we talking about?
Is it not Victoria?
KLAXON
Is it a river that goes into a lake
that never ends from one, to the top
of the continent to the bottom or
something? Are these all traps
and it's just someone with a massive
paddling pool or something?
Yeah. No. None of those things.
Is it underground? Yes.
Oh... It's underground!
It's underground! A reservoir.
Underground.
It's the most unlike place.
Sahara Desert. It is exact right.
50 points.
Yes, well done, Alan.
Very well done.
Underneath the eastern end
of the Sahara lies around 15O, OOO
cubic kilometres of water.
That is three-quarters of the total
amount of water held in all lakes
in the world. It's basical a huge
mass of very wet rock
and every single crevice,
every nook, every cranny
is filled with fossil water, so
water that's been trapped
deep underground, rather than it's
part of the water cycle.
And the Nubian Sandstone Aquifer
System is the largest known fossil
water aquifer system in the world.
It spans a land area of two million
square kilometres, ing under much
of Egypt, Sudan, Chad and Libya.
Africa was once home to the largest
freshwater lake in the world.
It was known as Mega Chad
and it covered an incredible area
of central Africa, more than
the whole of the British Isles.
So if we superimpose the British
Isles on top, this will give
you some idea of how big
this water mass was.
And then, a thousand years
ago, it sudden shrank.
I had an idea for a
television series once,
where you would move Britain
to a different part of the world
and then discuss the consequences.
You know, with climate, neighbours,
nearest war zones. It feels like
quite high-budget stuff. Yeah.
I was told by quite
a well-known producer
that it might work as a segment,
but not as a whole show.
Looks like I might have to podcast
the bastard!
I mean, what you'd have to deal with
is all the people on the island
who didn't want to move.
Yeah. "Come on. We could go to the
I ndian Ocean for a couple of years."
"No, this is where we are."
"But you hate Europe! You don't want
to be in... We can move you!"
I think it's definite a segment,
darling, I do.
Or a podcast.
Lake Chad is tautological.
Does anybody know what that...?
Does it mean Chad means lake?
Yes, Chad means lake
in the Kanuri language.
I love things like that.
Sahara Desert is another one,
tautological. Canvey lsland,
Wo0key Hole cave.
Pendle Hil this is Lancashire,
"Pen" means "hill",
"dle" means "hill",
and Hill means hil
so it basical means
Hill Hill Hill. Hill Hill Hill!
All right, I heard you. Was it,
was it named by someone
who fell down it?
Yeah!
"Mind that Hill Hill Hill!"
Hill Hill Hill!
"You fell down the what?"
"The Pen." "The what?"
"The dle." "What?" "The hill."
" Pendle Hill?"
"What happened?"
SHOUTS: " I fell down it!"
Which country's air force
did this plane belong to?
This is a trick. You can see
a klaxon here.
Oh! Itts a trick. The Germans
didn't have the swastika
on their, on their plane,
the Luftwaffe.
Whose do you think it is?
It's going to be a Buddhist
airforce. Yes! I love that!
So the great Sanskrit symbol
of good luck found in many ancient
cuures, the swastika.
The Nazis adopted it as a
party emblem in 192O
and then as a national symbol
for Germany in 1933,
but it had already been in use
for two years by the Finnish people.
Really?! I was just about to buzz in
with Ryanair.
I n 1918, a Swedish nobleman, Count
Eric von Rosen, had donated a plane
decorated with one to the new
formed Finnish Air Force,
and they carried on using it
until 1945.
Maybe it was just getting
a bit awkward.
"Shall we change the badge?"
"What should we have instead?"
"I've seen this brilliant thing.
You won't believe it.
"It's like a penis with feet."
The Cross of Freedom, which is
a variant of the swastika,
still features today in the top
left-hand corner of the official
flag of the Finnish president. And
the Danish brewery Carberg used
swastika as a logo from the
19th century to the mid-193Os.
They dropped it, obvious,
with the Nazis taking it on.
But you can still see it in the
carved stone I ndian elephants
that stand at the gates
of the company's headquarters.
Now, what does this stand for?
RHYTHMIC BEEPl NG
Hallelujah!
It's not SOS.
Oh, OK. What does it stand for?
No, wetre just going to, wetre going
to rule that out.
Just things that it's not. It's...
It's not my home address.
Itts not RSVP either.
It's not RSVP. Thank you.
Well, it is dot, dot, dot,
dash, dash, dash, dot, dot, dot.
Yes. Are we confused?
Does that mean O-S-O?
The thing is, it doesn't
stand for SOS.
Oh. If it was going to be the
letters, you'd have them with a gap.
So you'd have, dot, dot, dot, gap.
Dash, dash, dash, gap.
Dot, dot, dot.
It's a continuous stream.
We say SOS as a convenient way
of remembering what the signal is,
but it could just as easi be
rendered as V-T-B and remembered
as Vacate The Boat. The thing is,
the distress is universa
it doesn't depend on language.
You don't need to know what the SOS
stands for.
We just know that that is
the signal.
Before that, they used to signal
C-Q-D.
And then it was agreed in 19O6
that they would make it simpler.
There was a big international
wireless telegraph convention
in Berlin and that's where we get
the SOS from.
But it doesn't actual
stand to Save Our Sou.
And then they invented texting.
It to0k a while to catch on,
actual. When the Titanic went
down, they still transmitted C-Q-D.
They might just think it was SOS,
but it was not.
And so it's time for another SOS,
Sandi's 'Orrible Scores. Let's see
who's on cloud nine and who's
in the sin bin. I n fourth place,
languishing in the pits of eternal
damnation with minus 22.
Oh, Alan!
HE CHUCKLES, APPLAUSE
Thank you. Thank you.
I n third place with minus 8,
it's Mark! I'll take that.
CHEERl NG AND APPLAUSE
I n second place with seven whole
points, Bridget!
CHEERl NG AND APPLAUSE
Johnny!
Ho mackerel.
I n first place...
Take your time with this!
HE LAUGHS HYSTERICALLY
...the man from St Helens, Johnny,
with 13!
CHEERl NG AND APPLAUSE
All that remains is we thank Mark,
Johnny, Bridget and Alan,
and I leave you with a sagacious
sign off from Audrey Hepburn.
Make-up can on make you lo0k
pretty on the outside,
but it doesn't help if you're ug
on the inside...
unless you eat the make-up.
Goodnight.