QI (2003–…): Season 19, Episode 2 - Secrets, Spies & Sleuths - full transcript
Host Sandi Toksvig uncovers a stash of secrets with Alan Davies, Daliso Chaponda, Cariad Lloyd and James Acaster.
Cheering and applause
James Bond-style music plays
good evening, mr bond,
and welcome to the qi lair.
I see you are not alone.
Oh, it's a very lively cat!
Cat wails thank you. Lively.
Tonight's little, um, episode
is dedicated to secrets,
spies and sleuths.
Allow me to introduce my
associates on a need-to-know basis.
The hush-hush James acaster.
Cheering and applause
the highly classified
cariad Lloyd.
Cheering and applause
the top-secret daliso chaponda.
Cheering and applause
and the man with no
name - Alan Davies.
Cheering and applause
and their buzzers! James goes...
Music: Theme from
the pink panther
cariad goes...
Music: Theme from
mission: Impossible
daliso goes...
Music: Theme from James Bond
and Alan goes...
Music: Theme from Austin powers
laughter
that's my favourite ever.
It's good! I'll just...
Anyway, there we
go, ok. Cat squeals
I felt I couldn't spend the
entire show stroking my pussy.
No, not the whole show.
People think this show's smart.
Yeah. They're
wrong. They're wrong!
What might make you suspect
that someone was a spy?
Daliso gasps
ok, I've actually got to
say, I'm very overqualified
for this, right? Oh, are
you? Ok. Well, I've met a spy.
Have you? My father's an
African politician in Malawi.
A few years ago,
he was arrested.
His office blew up.
And, panicked, he asked me
and my brother to find him a spy,
essentially to
investigate stuff,
and all of this culminated
in us meeting a spy
at wetherspoons.
Was it shaken, not
stirred Saturdays?
Cariad: What was he wearing?
He did not look
like I expected -
he looked more like a
heavy-metal drummer,
like long-haired, big
guy, lots of tattoos.
Ok, so we're possibly going
a bit more trad than that. Ok.
So you've got a top-secret
briefcase right next to you, my darling.
If you pick that up, the
thing that has betrayed a spy
is in that briefcase.
So if you open that up...
Nobody has a proper
briefcase any more, do they?
No, sadly. I like
that noise, don't you?
Yeah. "Ker-chunk!" It
suggests business is afoot.
Right. What have we
got? I know I've gained
a lot of weight recently,
but is this an
intervention? It's a fitbit.
So, what happened was, in 2018,
they were tracking data from fitbits
and it made it possible to work out
where soldiers at American military
bases had been jogging.
So the data came from a
company called strava, and it's used
by fitbits and smartphones
and so on to log exercise,
and they released
this heat map of activity.
But it was a huge problem for
places like Afghanistan and Syria
because the army had given
away 2,500 of these fitbits
as part of an exercise
plan to get people moving.
And everybody could
work out where they were!
"Guys, you've got to stay
secret, absolutely secret."
Wow. "But here is this GPS."
Cariad, let's have a look.
You've got a briefcase as well.
See what's in yours. I feel
like the really cool kid at school.
"Brought my own briefcase,
guys." Oh! What have you got?
I have got some moustaches. Ooh.
Which one do you
think suits you?
Well, there's some here...
There's the smarty,
the rogue, the scoundrel,
Casanova, party boy.
I think I'm a party boy.
But then, what about the
Frida kahlo? Oh, Frida kahlo.
That's very good. Oh, nice.
The monobrow.
The top really sells it as well.
Yeah, that's what I thought.
Yeah. I'd seen a monkey.
You would not draw attention
to yourself at all if you had that.
A lot of people look like
that in wetherspoons.
So, this is a true story.
In 2008, an MI6 officer
appeared on the one show
to talk about recruitment, and he
was wearing a false moustache.
No! And it fell off
during the segment.
So the studio lights had weakened
the glue and the interviewer
eventually had to point
out that it was peeling off.
And he replied, "I was
worried that might happen."
And he put it in his pocket
for the rest of the interview.
They edited that bit out and it was
obscured in the final programme,
so the viewers
didn't know about it.
But don't you think
that's marvellous?
James, you've got a briefcase.
Let's have a look at your briefcase.
What have you got in there? I
genuinely can't open it out of it.
Cariad: Don't pretend you
didn't have a briefcase at school!
James has got
loads of briefcases!
Cariad: He's like, "oh, how
does this work?" Oh, yeah.
Hold on a sec.
I think I've changed
the combination.
I'm going for 007.
Yeah. Hold on. I'm
putting on gloves...
I'm not saying that your
career as a spy is over,
I just think... I
reckon this is broke.
Push it here. Yeah.
I've got gloves on now.
Ok. I really hope, I really
hope you can't do this first time.
Let's have a go.
Click!
Cheering and applause
laughter
and with rubber gloves on, James!
Rubber gloves! I know, right?!
What is it? Is it worth
it? What have you got?
It's empty.
I have... yes... A notebook.
Oh, no, a passport
and some staples. Ok.
Are the staples
meant to be in here?
Yes. They are. So, they go
together, the passport and the staples.
What do you reckon?
I think that if you're a spy...
Yes... And you don't want
people finding out your identity,
you staple your
passport together.
And then they can't open
it and find out who you are.
Genius! Well, here's the thing.
For years, the Soviet union was
able to catch spies due to staples.
So, American staples
are made of stainless steel,
they are not in
the Soviet union.
And that meant the Soviet
union ones rusted over time,
due to moisture in the air.
And so, official
Soviet passports
were stained around the staple,
brown. Wow! Passports forged
in the United States
by their agents
did not have rust stains, and
that would make people suspicious.
Ah! That's amazing!
It's very cool, isn't it? Really
cool! Right, Alan, your briefcase.
Do you need help or do you
think you'll be able to open it?
No, I don't! Really difficult,
Alan. Take your time.
Oh, straight away!
First time, James!
Laughter pretty easy!
Here's the really
annoying thing.
I can't close this
now...! Laughter
what have you got, darling?
I've got loads of fabric. It's laundry.
It's laundry. So
laundry and spying.
How would you think
that goes together?
Hide in the laundry basket,
like they do in cartoons.
You can sew things into things,
sandi, you could sew things
into garments. Secret
messages. You could. Yes.
There are lots of stories actually
to do with laundry and spying.
So during world war I, frieda
Lawrence, who was married
to dh Lawrence, she lived with
her husband on the cornish coast,
and she came under suspicion
because she was rather exacting
about hanging her laundry out.
And it was thought that she was
hanging it on the line in a specific
way to give messages to u-boats.
It didn't help that
she was German, ok?
Her father was baron Von
richthofen. Not the famous one,
but another baron Von
richthofen. There's so many.
And she received deliveries of
German newspapers every day,
so they were just a little
bit, you know, suspicious.
They were given a military exclusion
order and made to leave the area.
Was she hanging
up, like, duvet covers
with "attack at midnight"
written on them?
Well... "The base",
and an arrow!
"Go that way!" It's not
a completely ludicrous
suspicion, James, because
during the American civil war,
there was an African-American called
dabney, and he got a job as a cook
at the union headquarters.
And at the same time, his
wife worked as a laundress
for a confederate general,
and she would listen
to the confederate plans
and then she would signal
to her husband
using the washing line.
So, you know, that
grey shirt is "long street",
and when she takes it off, it
means he's gone down here.
So it absolutely has
form, people using laundry.
But poor old frieda Lawrence.
Phone rings oh, sorry, I'll
just get out my handkerchief.
Er, hello? Yes?
No, no, Moneypenny, I've
told you not to ring me at work.
Yeah.
Ok. The banker?
Laughter
who would use a
secure phone like this?
Commissioner Gordon.
Commissioner Gordon!
That's such a good reference.
Anybody else? Who would use...?
Again, this is a totally
unnecessary chaponda back story!
But we needed one of those
because we were always bugged.
Right. And the reason I know this
is, in Kenya, the Malawi ambassador
happened to be a
high-school friend of my mum,
and gave my mum a
bunch of my dad's secrets.
Really?! Yeah.
When you say secrets, like...
He's been "calling this woman",
what's going on. Oh, secrets!
Yes. Wow!
Have you ever had
therapy, because...?
Is it too late to bring up? My
dad is the mayor of kettering.
On numerous occasions,
people have tried
to push him over,
and I had to meet a
spy in a harvester once.
And, let me tell you, he looked
more like a bass
player in a prog band,
this man.
You were ok, though? And I do
go to therapy, just so you know.
So, who might have had a
red telephone? A head of state?
Yeah. President?
So, the one that we normally
think of is the us and Russia hotline.
It was often called
the red telephone.
It was neither red nor a
telephone. What?! Yeah, I know.
I'm destroying things for you!
So June 1963, we'd just
had the Cuban missile crisis,
and it took 12 hours at
that time to get messages
backwards and forwards.
They agreed to establish a sort
of direct form of communication.
The very first message sent
by the Americans in August 1963
read, "the quick brown fox
jumped over the lazy dog's back.
"1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 0."
Why would they send that?
Because it has every letter
in the world. Uses every letter!
Yeah. What's it called? Oh!
The alphabet.
They were trying to show that
they could send all the letters
and that they could actually
communicate directly, because,
in fact, the system
consisted not
of telephones, but
of teletype machines.
So there were four teletype
machines in Moscow, four more in
the Soviet embassy in Washington,
and the message was sent over
a 10,000 mile long
transatlantic cable.
Why is it called the red telephone,
if there's no red telephone?!
It maybe just sounds better.
The 1971 system updated
the use of a satellite connection,
and, most recently, they've
upgraded to a fibre optic link
allowing both email and finally
talking, but only recently. Wow.
There were red secure telephones
in the UK. They were introduced
in the 1950s. Oh! This, and that's
why I was so careful touching it,
is a real pickwick phone. It's
been lent to us by gchq. Wow!
So the pickwick
system was in place
and used during the Cuban missile
crisis for secure communication,
but it was between
the then prime minister, Harold
MacMillan and president Kennedy.
And basically this would attach
to the Cypher unit and that sort of
mashed up the speech and
prevented eavesdroppers from
understanding what was going
on. What I like is the British army,
they thought this
is the way to do it.
They used to hire operators
with strong regional accents
so that if anybody was
eavesdropping, they thought,
"well, they'll never understand
what they bloody said!"
In Welsh accent: Listen, we're
going to invade at 20 past 5, ok?
And it's going to be, oh, it's
going to go mad, I tell you!
Everyone's going to be kicking
off, you're not going to believe it!
Understand? All right? Ta,
bye. All right, all right, bye.
You wouldn't know. You'd
have no idea what was going on.
Even Welsh people! We do have,
and I think this is seriously cool,
we have another secure phone.
It's just over on the table
cos I don't want to touch it.
It's also incredibly heavy.
It's called brahms, and it is a
portable, secure line that comes
in a suitcase.
And this is the one that was
used by Margaret Thatcher
during the falklands war.
Wow. Wow. This
is very cool, isn't it?
She was able to open it,
James, which was nice.
We are joined virtually
now by dr David abrutat,
gchq's departmental historian.
Dr David is one of a very few number
of gchq employees to be avowed.
What does that mean,
David, you are avowed?
Essentially it means
I'm publicly known,
and, as the department's
historian, my role's to tell the story
of our organisation's history
over the last 100 years.
So, tell me, the one I want
to hear about is, there was
a secret line called sigsaly.
Can you tell me about sigsaly?
During the second world war, the
British and American governments
needed to talk frequently
on a secure line.
And in November 1942, gchq's
Alan turing went over on a liaison
visit to the states, to the bell
laboratories, who were researching
and developing a new secure
communications system,
which was called sigsaly.
And it was an absolute
monster, it weighed 50 tonnes.
It included 40
racks of equipment
and drew something
like 30 kilowatts of power.
And it was certainly known by
the users as the green hornet
because of its irritating
buzzing noise on the line.
And the first sigsaly was installed
in the Pentagon in the states,
and the second was installed
in the basement of selfridges
in Oxford street,
so certainly on the first trial run on
July 15th 1943, Winston Churchill
was using this piece of
equipment in the basement
of selfridges before
they put in extension lines
to 10 downing street,
if the rumours are true.
Fantastic. Alan, did you
want to ask anything?
Well, I've seen Thatcher's
briefcase, and I just wondered,
did she take it on holiday?
Did she carry it herself?
Dr abrutat: Did Margaret
Thatcher ever go on holiday?
Alan: Perhaps not!
Dr abrutat: The briefcase
phone you've got is called brahms,
which was developed in the
early 1980s, and it was used
by the British prime minister
Margaret Thatcher, at the time,
during the falklands conflict,
to communicate securely
with her cabinet and to the
senior military officers of the time.
Well, it's been fascinating.
I don't know if you send
love to everybody at gchq!
I send love to everyone at gchq.
And thank you very
much, dr David abrutat.
Cheering and applause thank you.
Now, complete this sentence.
If you're invited to a penetration
party, it's best to practise safe...
Safe words.
In case things get
hairy. That's very...
And I'm worried
that you know that!
What are they penetrating?
That's the question.
Is it a person? No, no, it
isn't. Thank goodness for that.
You are best to
practise safe cracking.
Penetration party is a
perfectly innocent phrase
used by safe
crackers to describe
an all-night event where
they practise opening safes.
Wow! And it was
invented by accident,
so there was a safe cracker
who was called Dave mcomie.
He's a bit of a legend,
this guy, ok, he edits
the international
safecracker magazine.
Wow. He looks exactly
like I thought he would.
That's not even him.
That's a general look, frankly.
Can we talk about the
guy in the background
with the orange back support?
Yeah, that is
worrying, isn't it?
I really want to be in the shot
where he was buying
that back support, going,
"I'm going to a
penetration party later.
"I'm going to need
a back support for it.
"Just the best one you've
got. It's a big penetration party.
"A lot of guys." "This one
comes with a free matching cap."
"Oh, perfect!"
He's the only one with the
headphones on! Who's he talking to?
There's someone in the safe.
In muffled voice: "I'm inside now.
Are wearing the back support? Over."
"Yeah, but I'm the only
one. I'm standing out."
So they were at a convention
in Philadelphia and one
of the attendees mentioned
that he had a warehouse
filled with about 80 safes,
which all needed opening.
So they decided to do a
masterclass with these 80 things.
Everybody got their equipment.
They spent all night, all
night working on the safes.
They managed to open
every single one of them.
And now it's become a thing.
People have penetration parties.
But how would you open the safe?
Do you know the different ways?
No idea. Twice I've moved house,
and there's been a safe, big
safe, in the house I couldn't get in.
And the second time it
happened to me, I thought,
"I want to get rid of that." It took
six men. I wasn't one of them -
I didn't have a back support.
No. Incredibly heavy thing.
And to this day, I don't
know what was in it.
Oh, wow. I mean, the weight
of it, presumably loads of gold.
Oops!
The best thing, if the mechanism
has slipped a bit, you can work
on the dial. The easiest thing is
what these guys are doing here,
which is to drill
a hole. I love this.
Just use a sledgehammer,
it says. That's it.
Just get in and biff it.
I might go to a penetration
party and ask if they run
a course for briefcases.
"I've been struggling lately
and I'm working my way up
"to safe, but first
of all, I'm only
"halfway there
with the briefcase.
"I'll just sit in the corner
while you do the safe stuff."
In American accent: James,
put on the back support,
strap in and watch.
There are other ways to
break into secure buildings
if you think outside the
box. This is a wonderful story.
In 1971, there was
an activist group, called
the citizens' commission
to investigate the FBI,
and they targeted a draft board
in Delaware, and to gain access,
all they did was they left a
note on the door that read,
"please don't lock
this door tonight."
No! Yeah. And nobody did.
So it completely worked.
They went in and stole
everything that they needed.
That's genius!
Isn't that brilliant?
And it revealed evidence of
massive wrongdoing and spying
and criminal activity
by Edgar hoover's FBI,
which was then
sent to journalists.
And 200 agents went on a
manhunt to try and find out who did it.
And they never did find
the people. Cariad gasps
anyway, moving on. How
do you kick-start a spitfire?
Hm. Oh, does it have a crank?
Do you get a glamorous lady,
to get in and sort it out for you?
Well, she's probably one of the
amazing women who delivered
spitfires once they had been built.
They were delivered by volunteers,
and about a fifth of
them were women. Wow.
What do we talk about
kick-starting now?
Oh, like, you go online and
you say, "please give me money."
"Please give me money. I
want to go to drama school."
Yes, yes. What, and
then rival me in my career?
I think not. Not happening.
It's crowdfunding.
It's exactly. No. Yeah.
So they needed to raise
the money for the planes.
And if you raised a certain amount,
you were allowed to name the plane.
What? So crowdfunded
spitfires were called things
like all the fun of the fair,
and carnivals and circuses
people put that together.
This is the early boaty
mcboatface, basically. Yeah.
The dogfighter
was the kennel club.
Unshackled spirit was
funded by British pows
while they were
being held in Germany.
So what happened was
they crowdfunded via a series
of coded letters that were
sent in and out of prison,
and the prisoners would instruct
that army pay be redirected
to the Swedish red cross,
and the red cross sent it
to the British army
to fund spitfires.
So they were still getting funds
when they were pows in Germany?
You still got paid even
though you were being held.
They redirected it,
yeah. That's incredible.
The spitfire project as a whole owes
everything to one woman who I think
most people won't know about,
but she is one of my heroines.
She's called lady Lucy
Houston. She's fantastic.
She knew that britain would
need a really strong air force.
She knew this after world war I,
and the government refused to pay
for the development
of aircraft, so she did.
She personally paid the
amounts of money that was needed
for Rolls-Royce and
vickers supermarine to create
the engine and the aircraft
that became the spitfire.
And I think most people won't
know about her. She died in 1936.
She never knew the impact of
what she did, but she looked forward.
Without her, we simply
would not have had the spitfire.
I think she's amazing and I think
she's really worth knowing about,
as indeed, do you know
about Hazel hill? No.
Hazel hill was 13 years
old when her father, Fred hill,
was working for the air
ministry, and she helped him do
the calculations that eventually
showed a spitfire could be armed
with eight machineguns
and not four.
And they did the sums at
the kitchen table. And she,
a 13-year-old, thought to have
helped with the battle of britain.
And later in life, she
was saved by a spitfire
that she had helped to create.
There was a German plane overhead,
and then when she turned to look,
a spitfire was chasing
it off. So that's nice.
And the pilot was
like, "thanks, Hazel!
"Keep doing your maths!"
At 13, she fixed spitfires
and then we're like,
"James, can you open
this briefcase?" Yeah.
Er...
Anyway, it's time to
slip surreptitiously into
the enemy territory
of general ignorance.
Fingers on buzzers, please.
When you see ss, as
you see here in this picture,
what does the first s stand for?
Mission: Impossible
theme plays cariad.
Steam?
Aw!
James claps once
that's general ignorance!
Laughter
I don't know why they
don't do that on this show.
Every time someone gets it, they
could look at the camera and go,
"that's general ignorance!"
I'm going to cry that from now
on! I'm going to give that a go.
That's general ignorance!
That's so good.
So good, sandi!
Right. It stands for screw. People
used to distinguish between ships
driven by paddles and ships that
were driven by propellers or screws,
and when paddleships started
to be phased out, the ss seemed
to stick around.
And can I just say, to pre-empt
any letters we might receive from,
I don't know, say there was a
pedant watching, it is true to say that
two ships normally referred to
these days as ss great western
and ss great eastern both
had paddles, but the ss prefix
has only been attached
to them in modern times.
So, in their day, they were
known... This is entirely different
from the German ss, which
is much more, much more...
More problematic.
More problematic.
We didn't name our ships
after them, as, like, a little joke!
"Ss - remember those
guys? That was crazy!"
Those so-and-sos!
Also, the way you said,
"in case there's a
pedant watching,"
made me think there is just
one guy who writes in all the time,
and it's Stephen fry.
"I think you'll find..." And
he just addresses it to you.
"Dear sandi..."
"Dear, oh, dear, oh, dear."
Right. Where are sudokus from?
Pink panther theme plays
James.
The newspaper.
I can't do them. I can
do them. I can do them.
I'm number dyslexic. Is
there number dyslexia?
Yeah, it's called
dyscal... Calc...
I can't even say
it! Dyscalculus?
Count duckula!
So, numbers switch round when
you're looking at them, and do this.
So sudoku is a nightmare.
I think I need to
borrow money from you.
I'll meet you in wetherspoons!
So newspapers,
yes, but... Japan?
Klaxon
I was sure I was right! Come on!
Are they actually American?
So, invented in the United
States, 1979, by a puzzle magazine
in Manhattan, and they were
originally called number place.
I'm scared already.
There was a Japanese games
manufacturer called maki kaji,
who brought them to Japan, and
they wanted to give it a new name.
And he said, "my staff are
pushing me to give it a new name,
"and I wanted to
go horse racing.
"So I just created a name really
quickly in about 25 seconds."
Now, I'm going to say it all
wrong, so I think we've written it out.
What that means is numbers
should be single, unmarried,
but it was too long and they
decided to shorten it to sudoku.
Wow.
And if you want to feel really dumb,
they've got now these rubik's cubes,
which are also sudoku.
Oh, my god. Really?
Look at that. I've
never seen someone
want something
so badly, so quickly!
It was like, as soon
as you heard about it,
I was like, sandi's going to
buy one as soon as this finishes!
There's a kick-starter,
she's already signed up.
Pledge £500 - done.
I had no idea!
Nightmare. It's heaven.
But what about when you get
to the last box, and you realise
you've got two
eights in it? Yeah.
Yeah. And somewhere, right in
the depths of it, there's a mistake,
you'll never find it, and you've
been doing it for four weeks.
You get your pencil
and repeatedly
stab yourself in
the palm of the hand
and then smear
blood on your face.
You'd only do that
in a lockdown. Yeah.
It's all right. Would you
like to stroke my pussy?
I'm serious. There you go.
Have a stroke of my
pussy. You'll feel better.
Cat squeals agh!
Whoever is on sound duty is
on the top of their game.
Because you...
You riffed that on the spot, and
as soon as it went towards you,
they were like "bam"!
And they were... Give
that person a bafta.
People don't appreciate
how good that was!
Brilliant.
It was Lizzie, in
sound. Lizzie, in sound.
She's got a real
cat, that she's...
Cat squeals
sorry.
Come here, quick,
stay in the room!
And a very sharp pencil!
Right, in homage to one of
the most-famous fictional spies,
I think we should
end with a Martini.
Ok? So, how would
anybody like this?
Shaken, not stirred. No?
Klaxon what?! Oh.
So, the thing is that
shaking a Martini will ruin it,
and I know this
cos I'm a Martini fan.
Ok? So drinks like
daiquiris, they're shaken.
And the reason for that is that
the ice dilutes the sweetness.
Martinis are not sweet, so
they don't need to be shaken.
They're supposed to be served
as concentrated as possible.
Unfortunately we can't
drink the original martinis
that James Bond is
supposed to have had
because one of the key
ingredients is no longer available.
It's known as a vesper Martini. It
was named after the first bond girl,
she was called vesper lynd.
Vesper's Italian for wasp.
Did you know that? I didn't.
Yes, hence the scooter.
The scooter, the Vespa.
It sounds like a wasp.
Bzzzzzz. Wasp. You see?
The vesper Martini
contained gin and vodka
and something
called Kina lillet.
Doesn't sound pleasant.
It would absorb a lot.
You don't want
that in your Martini.
Anyway, the trick is to stir it.
Have you got drinks
there for yourselves?
Yes. Yes.
Ok. Just, um, pour
out... To tribute here.
Oo-hoo! Ok.
Do you know that dick Van dyke
was once asked by cubby broccoli
if he wanted to take over
from Sean Connery in the role,
and dick Van dyke reminded
him of his British accent as Bert,
the cockney chimney
sweep in Mary poppins!
And was generally thought
not to be a very good idea.
Well, here we go.
Cheers. Cheers.
As Sean Connery: Martinis
are better shtirred than shaken,
and underpants
are better shilk than shatin.
Laughter
applause
and, with that, it's the final
dash towards the scores!
Top of the pack
with nine points,
it's Alan! What?!
Cheering and applause
second, with eight points,
it's James! Cheering
and applause
I couldn't even open a briefcase,
and who got beat by me?!
Yes!
Third with -2, daliso!
Cheering and applause
cariad: Oh, no!
And in last place
with -15, it's cariad!
Cheering and applause
My thanks to James, cariad,
daliso and Alan, and I leave you
with this secret
sign-off from Lucille ball.
The secret of staying
young is to live honestly,
eat slowly and
lie about your age.
Goodnight.
Cheering and applause
James Bond-style music plays
good evening, mr bond,
and welcome to the qi lair.
I see you are not alone.
Oh, it's a very lively cat!
Cat wails thank you. Lively.
Tonight's little, um, episode
is dedicated to secrets,
spies and sleuths.
Allow me to introduce my
associates on a need-to-know basis.
The hush-hush James acaster.
Cheering and applause
the highly classified
cariad Lloyd.
Cheering and applause
the top-secret daliso chaponda.
Cheering and applause
and the man with no
name - Alan Davies.
Cheering and applause
and their buzzers! James goes...
Music: Theme from
the pink panther
cariad goes...
Music: Theme from
mission: Impossible
daliso goes...
Music: Theme from James Bond
and Alan goes...
Music: Theme from Austin powers
laughter
that's my favourite ever.
It's good! I'll just...
Anyway, there we
go, ok. Cat squeals
I felt I couldn't spend the
entire show stroking my pussy.
No, not the whole show.
People think this show's smart.
Yeah. They're
wrong. They're wrong!
What might make you suspect
that someone was a spy?
Daliso gasps
ok, I've actually got to
say, I'm very overqualified
for this, right? Oh, are
you? Ok. Well, I've met a spy.
Have you? My father's an
African politician in Malawi.
A few years ago,
he was arrested.
His office blew up.
And, panicked, he asked me
and my brother to find him a spy,
essentially to
investigate stuff,
and all of this culminated
in us meeting a spy
at wetherspoons.
Was it shaken, not
stirred Saturdays?
Cariad: What was he wearing?
He did not look
like I expected -
he looked more like a
heavy-metal drummer,
like long-haired, big
guy, lots of tattoos.
Ok, so we're possibly going
a bit more trad than that. Ok.
So you've got a top-secret
briefcase right next to you, my darling.
If you pick that up, the
thing that has betrayed a spy
is in that briefcase.
So if you open that up...
Nobody has a proper
briefcase any more, do they?
No, sadly. I like
that noise, don't you?
Yeah. "Ker-chunk!" It
suggests business is afoot.
Right. What have we
got? I know I've gained
a lot of weight recently,
but is this an
intervention? It's a fitbit.
So, what happened was, in 2018,
they were tracking data from fitbits
and it made it possible to work out
where soldiers at American military
bases had been jogging.
So the data came from a
company called strava, and it's used
by fitbits and smartphones
and so on to log exercise,
and they released
this heat map of activity.
But it was a huge problem for
places like Afghanistan and Syria
because the army had given
away 2,500 of these fitbits
as part of an exercise
plan to get people moving.
And everybody could
work out where they were!
"Guys, you've got to stay
secret, absolutely secret."
Wow. "But here is this GPS."
Cariad, let's have a look.
You've got a briefcase as well.
See what's in yours. I feel
like the really cool kid at school.
"Brought my own briefcase,
guys." Oh! What have you got?
I have got some moustaches. Ooh.
Which one do you
think suits you?
Well, there's some here...
There's the smarty,
the rogue, the scoundrel,
Casanova, party boy.
I think I'm a party boy.
But then, what about the
Frida kahlo? Oh, Frida kahlo.
That's very good. Oh, nice.
The monobrow.
The top really sells it as well.
Yeah, that's what I thought.
Yeah. I'd seen a monkey.
You would not draw attention
to yourself at all if you had that.
A lot of people look like
that in wetherspoons.
So, this is a true story.
In 2008, an MI6 officer
appeared on the one show
to talk about recruitment, and he
was wearing a false moustache.
No! And it fell off
during the segment.
So the studio lights had weakened
the glue and the interviewer
eventually had to point
out that it was peeling off.
And he replied, "I was
worried that might happen."
And he put it in his pocket
for the rest of the interview.
They edited that bit out and it was
obscured in the final programme,
so the viewers
didn't know about it.
But don't you think
that's marvellous?
James, you've got a briefcase.
Let's have a look at your briefcase.
What have you got in there? I
genuinely can't open it out of it.
Cariad: Don't pretend you
didn't have a briefcase at school!
James has got
loads of briefcases!
Cariad: He's like, "oh, how
does this work?" Oh, yeah.
Hold on a sec.
I think I've changed
the combination.
I'm going for 007.
Yeah. Hold on. I'm
putting on gloves...
I'm not saying that your
career as a spy is over,
I just think... I
reckon this is broke.
Push it here. Yeah.
I've got gloves on now.
Ok. I really hope, I really
hope you can't do this first time.
Let's have a go.
Click!
Cheering and applause
laughter
and with rubber gloves on, James!
Rubber gloves! I know, right?!
What is it? Is it worth
it? What have you got?
It's empty.
I have... yes... A notebook.
Oh, no, a passport
and some staples. Ok.
Are the staples
meant to be in here?
Yes. They are. So, they go
together, the passport and the staples.
What do you reckon?
I think that if you're a spy...
Yes... And you don't want
people finding out your identity,
you staple your
passport together.
And then they can't open
it and find out who you are.
Genius! Well, here's the thing.
For years, the Soviet union was
able to catch spies due to staples.
So, American staples
are made of stainless steel,
they are not in
the Soviet union.
And that meant the Soviet
union ones rusted over time,
due to moisture in the air.
And so, official
Soviet passports
were stained around the staple,
brown. Wow! Passports forged
in the United States
by their agents
did not have rust stains, and
that would make people suspicious.
Ah! That's amazing!
It's very cool, isn't it? Really
cool! Right, Alan, your briefcase.
Do you need help or do you
think you'll be able to open it?
No, I don't! Really difficult,
Alan. Take your time.
Oh, straight away!
First time, James!
Laughter pretty easy!
Here's the really
annoying thing.
I can't close this
now...! Laughter
what have you got, darling?
I've got loads of fabric. It's laundry.
It's laundry. So
laundry and spying.
How would you think
that goes together?
Hide in the laundry basket,
like they do in cartoons.
You can sew things into things,
sandi, you could sew things
into garments. Secret
messages. You could. Yes.
There are lots of stories actually
to do with laundry and spying.
So during world war I, frieda
Lawrence, who was married
to dh Lawrence, she lived with
her husband on the cornish coast,
and she came under suspicion
because she was rather exacting
about hanging her laundry out.
And it was thought that she was
hanging it on the line in a specific
way to give messages to u-boats.
It didn't help that
she was German, ok?
Her father was baron Von
richthofen. Not the famous one,
but another baron Von
richthofen. There's so many.
And she received deliveries of
German newspapers every day,
so they were just a little
bit, you know, suspicious.
They were given a military exclusion
order and made to leave the area.
Was she hanging
up, like, duvet covers
with "attack at midnight"
written on them?
Well... "The base",
and an arrow!
"Go that way!" It's not
a completely ludicrous
suspicion, James, because
during the American civil war,
there was an African-American called
dabney, and he got a job as a cook
at the union headquarters.
And at the same time, his
wife worked as a laundress
for a confederate general,
and she would listen
to the confederate plans
and then she would signal
to her husband
using the washing line.
So, you know, that
grey shirt is "long street",
and when she takes it off, it
means he's gone down here.
So it absolutely has
form, people using laundry.
But poor old frieda Lawrence.
Phone rings oh, sorry, I'll
just get out my handkerchief.
Er, hello? Yes?
No, no, Moneypenny, I've
told you not to ring me at work.
Yeah.
Ok. The banker?
Laughter
who would use a
secure phone like this?
Commissioner Gordon.
Commissioner Gordon!
That's such a good reference.
Anybody else? Who would use...?
Again, this is a totally
unnecessary chaponda back story!
But we needed one of those
because we were always bugged.
Right. And the reason I know this
is, in Kenya, the Malawi ambassador
happened to be a
high-school friend of my mum,
and gave my mum a
bunch of my dad's secrets.
Really?! Yeah.
When you say secrets, like...
He's been "calling this woman",
what's going on. Oh, secrets!
Yes. Wow!
Have you ever had
therapy, because...?
Is it too late to bring up? My
dad is the mayor of kettering.
On numerous occasions,
people have tried
to push him over,
and I had to meet a
spy in a harvester once.
And, let me tell you, he looked
more like a bass
player in a prog band,
this man.
You were ok, though? And I do
go to therapy, just so you know.
So, who might have had a
red telephone? A head of state?
Yeah. President?
So, the one that we normally
think of is the us and Russia hotline.
It was often called
the red telephone.
It was neither red nor a
telephone. What?! Yeah, I know.
I'm destroying things for you!
So June 1963, we'd just
had the Cuban missile crisis,
and it took 12 hours at
that time to get messages
backwards and forwards.
They agreed to establish a sort
of direct form of communication.
The very first message sent
by the Americans in August 1963
read, "the quick brown fox
jumped over the lazy dog's back.
"1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 0."
Why would they send that?
Because it has every letter
in the world. Uses every letter!
Yeah. What's it called? Oh!
The alphabet.
They were trying to show that
they could send all the letters
and that they could actually
communicate directly, because,
in fact, the system
consisted not
of telephones, but
of teletype machines.
So there were four teletype
machines in Moscow, four more in
the Soviet embassy in Washington,
and the message was sent over
a 10,000 mile long
transatlantic cable.
Why is it called the red telephone,
if there's no red telephone?!
It maybe just sounds better.
The 1971 system updated
the use of a satellite connection,
and, most recently, they've
upgraded to a fibre optic link
allowing both email and finally
talking, but only recently. Wow.
There were red secure telephones
in the UK. They were introduced
in the 1950s. Oh! This, and that's
why I was so careful touching it,
is a real pickwick phone. It's
been lent to us by gchq. Wow!
So the pickwick
system was in place
and used during the Cuban missile
crisis for secure communication,
but it was between
the then prime minister, Harold
MacMillan and president Kennedy.
And basically this would attach
to the Cypher unit and that sort of
mashed up the speech and
prevented eavesdroppers from
understanding what was going
on. What I like is the British army,
they thought this
is the way to do it.
They used to hire operators
with strong regional accents
so that if anybody was
eavesdropping, they thought,
"well, they'll never understand
what they bloody said!"
In Welsh accent: Listen, we're
going to invade at 20 past 5, ok?
And it's going to be, oh, it's
going to go mad, I tell you!
Everyone's going to be kicking
off, you're not going to believe it!
Understand? All right? Ta,
bye. All right, all right, bye.
You wouldn't know. You'd
have no idea what was going on.
Even Welsh people! We do have,
and I think this is seriously cool,
we have another secure phone.
It's just over on the table
cos I don't want to touch it.
It's also incredibly heavy.
It's called brahms, and it is a
portable, secure line that comes
in a suitcase.
And this is the one that was
used by Margaret Thatcher
during the falklands war.
Wow. Wow. This
is very cool, isn't it?
She was able to open it,
James, which was nice.
We are joined virtually
now by dr David abrutat,
gchq's departmental historian.
Dr David is one of a very few number
of gchq employees to be avowed.
What does that mean,
David, you are avowed?
Essentially it means
I'm publicly known,
and, as the department's
historian, my role's to tell the story
of our organisation's history
over the last 100 years.
So, tell me, the one I want
to hear about is, there was
a secret line called sigsaly.
Can you tell me about sigsaly?
During the second world war, the
British and American governments
needed to talk frequently
on a secure line.
And in November 1942, gchq's
Alan turing went over on a liaison
visit to the states, to the bell
laboratories, who were researching
and developing a new secure
communications system,
which was called sigsaly.
And it was an absolute
monster, it weighed 50 tonnes.
It included 40
racks of equipment
and drew something
like 30 kilowatts of power.
And it was certainly known by
the users as the green hornet
because of its irritating
buzzing noise on the line.
And the first sigsaly was installed
in the Pentagon in the states,
and the second was installed
in the basement of selfridges
in Oxford street,
so certainly on the first trial run on
July 15th 1943, Winston Churchill
was using this piece of
equipment in the basement
of selfridges before
they put in extension lines
to 10 downing street,
if the rumours are true.
Fantastic. Alan, did you
want to ask anything?
Well, I've seen Thatcher's
briefcase, and I just wondered,
did she take it on holiday?
Did she carry it herself?
Dr abrutat: Did Margaret
Thatcher ever go on holiday?
Alan: Perhaps not!
Dr abrutat: The briefcase
phone you've got is called brahms,
which was developed in the
early 1980s, and it was used
by the British prime minister
Margaret Thatcher, at the time,
during the falklands conflict,
to communicate securely
with her cabinet and to the
senior military officers of the time.
Well, it's been fascinating.
I don't know if you send
love to everybody at gchq!
I send love to everyone at gchq.
And thank you very
much, dr David abrutat.
Cheering and applause thank you.
Now, complete this sentence.
If you're invited to a penetration
party, it's best to practise safe...
Safe words.
In case things get
hairy. That's very...
And I'm worried
that you know that!
What are they penetrating?
That's the question.
Is it a person? No, no, it
isn't. Thank goodness for that.
You are best to
practise safe cracking.
Penetration party is a
perfectly innocent phrase
used by safe
crackers to describe
an all-night event where
they practise opening safes.
Wow! And it was
invented by accident,
so there was a safe cracker
who was called Dave mcomie.
He's a bit of a legend,
this guy, ok, he edits
the international
safecracker magazine.
Wow. He looks exactly
like I thought he would.
That's not even him.
That's a general look, frankly.
Can we talk about the
guy in the background
with the orange back support?
Yeah, that is
worrying, isn't it?
I really want to be in the shot
where he was buying
that back support, going,
"I'm going to a
penetration party later.
"I'm going to need
a back support for it.
"Just the best one you've
got. It's a big penetration party.
"A lot of guys." "This one
comes with a free matching cap."
"Oh, perfect!"
He's the only one with the
headphones on! Who's he talking to?
There's someone in the safe.
In muffled voice: "I'm inside now.
Are wearing the back support? Over."
"Yeah, but I'm the only
one. I'm standing out."
So they were at a convention
in Philadelphia and one
of the attendees mentioned
that he had a warehouse
filled with about 80 safes,
which all needed opening.
So they decided to do a
masterclass with these 80 things.
Everybody got their equipment.
They spent all night, all
night working on the safes.
They managed to open
every single one of them.
And now it's become a thing.
People have penetration parties.
But how would you open the safe?
Do you know the different ways?
No idea. Twice I've moved house,
and there's been a safe, big
safe, in the house I couldn't get in.
And the second time it
happened to me, I thought,
"I want to get rid of that." It took
six men. I wasn't one of them -
I didn't have a back support.
No. Incredibly heavy thing.
And to this day, I don't
know what was in it.
Oh, wow. I mean, the weight
of it, presumably loads of gold.
Oops!
The best thing, if the mechanism
has slipped a bit, you can work
on the dial. The easiest thing is
what these guys are doing here,
which is to drill
a hole. I love this.
Just use a sledgehammer,
it says. That's it.
Just get in and biff it.
I might go to a penetration
party and ask if they run
a course for briefcases.
"I've been struggling lately
and I'm working my way up
"to safe, but first
of all, I'm only
"halfway there
with the briefcase.
"I'll just sit in the corner
while you do the safe stuff."
In American accent: James,
put on the back support,
strap in and watch.
There are other ways to
break into secure buildings
if you think outside the
box. This is a wonderful story.
In 1971, there was
an activist group, called
the citizens' commission
to investigate the FBI,
and they targeted a draft board
in Delaware, and to gain access,
all they did was they left a
note on the door that read,
"please don't lock
this door tonight."
No! Yeah. And nobody did.
So it completely worked.
They went in and stole
everything that they needed.
That's genius!
Isn't that brilliant?
And it revealed evidence of
massive wrongdoing and spying
and criminal activity
by Edgar hoover's FBI,
which was then
sent to journalists.
And 200 agents went on a
manhunt to try and find out who did it.
And they never did find
the people. Cariad gasps
anyway, moving on. How
do you kick-start a spitfire?
Hm. Oh, does it have a crank?
Do you get a glamorous lady,
to get in and sort it out for you?
Well, she's probably one of the
amazing women who delivered
spitfires once they had been built.
They were delivered by volunteers,
and about a fifth of
them were women. Wow.
What do we talk about
kick-starting now?
Oh, like, you go online and
you say, "please give me money."
"Please give me money. I
want to go to drama school."
Yes, yes. What, and
then rival me in my career?
I think not. Not happening.
It's crowdfunding.
It's exactly. No. Yeah.
So they needed to raise
the money for the planes.
And if you raised a certain amount,
you were allowed to name the plane.
What? So crowdfunded
spitfires were called things
like all the fun of the fair,
and carnivals and circuses
people put that together.
This is the early boaty
mcboatface, basically. Yeah.
The dogfighter
was the kennel club.
Unshackled spirit was
funded by British pows
while they were
being held in Germany.
So what happened was
they crowdfunded via a series
of coded letters that were
sent in and out of prison,
and the prisoners would instruct
that army pay be redirected
to the Swedish red cross,
and the red cross sent it
to the British army
to fund spitfires.
So they were still getting funds
when they were pows in Germany?
You still got paid even
though you were being held.
They redirected it,
yeah. That's incredible.
The spitfire project as a whole owes
everything to one woman who I think
most people won't know about,
but she is one of my heroines.
She's called lady Lucy
Houston. She's fantastic.
She knew that britain would
need a really strong air force.
She knew this after world war I,
and the government refused to pay
for the development
of aircraft, so she did.
She personally paid the
amounts of money that was needed
for Rolls-Royce and
vickers supermarine to create
the engine and the aircraft
that became the spitfire.
And I think most people won't
know about her. She died in 1936.
She never knew the impact of
what she did, but she looked forward.
Without her, we simply
would not have had the spitfire.
I think she's amazing and I think
she's really worth knowing about,
as indeed, do you know
about Hazel hill? No.
Hazel hill was 13 years
old when her father, Fred hill,
was working for the air
ministry, and she helped him do
the calculations that eventually
showed a spitfire could be armed
with eight machineguns
and not four.
And they did the sums at
the kitchen table. And she,
a 13-year-old, thought to have
helped with the battle of britain.
And later in life, she
was saved by a spitfire
that she had helped to create.
There was a German plane overhead,
and then when she turned to look,
a spitfire was chasing
it off. So that's nice.
And the pilot was
like, "thanks, Hazel!
"Keep doing your maths!"
At 13, she fixed spitfires
and then we're like,
"James, can you open
this briefcase?" Yeah.
Er...
Anyway, it's time to
slip surreptitiously into
the enemy territory
of general ignorance.
Fingers on buzzers, please.
When you see ss, as
you see here in this picture,
what does the first s stand for?
Mission: Impossible
theme plays cariad.
Steam?
Aw!
James claps once
that's general ignorance!
Laughter
I don't know why they
don't do that on this show.
Every time someone gets it, they
could look at the camera and go,
"that's general ignorance!"
I'm going to cry that from now
on! I'm going to give that a go.
That's general ignorance!
That's so good.
So good, sandi!
Right. It stands for screw. People
used to distinguish between ships
driven by paddles and ships that
were driven by propellers or screws,
and when paddleships started
to be phased out, the ss seemed
to stick around.
And can I just say, to pre-empt
any letters we might receive from,
I don't know, say there was a
pedant watching, it is true to say that
two ships normally referred to
these days as ss great western
and ss great eastern both
had paddles, but the ss prefix
has only been attached
to them in modern times.
So, in their day, they were
known... This is entirely different
from the German ss, which
is much more, much more...
More problematic.
More problematic.
We didn't name our ships
after them, as, like, a little joke!
"Ss - remember those
guys? That was crazy!"
Those so-and-sos!
Also, the way you said,
"in case there's a
pedant watching,"
made me think there is just
one guy who writes in all the time,
and it's Stephen fry.
"I think you'll find..." And
he just addresses it to you.
"Dear sandi..."
"Dear, oh, dear, oh, dear."
Right. Where are sudokus from?
Pink panther theme plays
James.
The newspaper.
I can't do them. I can
do them. I can do them.
I'm number dyslexic. Is
there number dyslexia?
Yeah, it's called
dyscal... Calc...
I can't even say
it! Dyscalculus?
Count duckula!
So, numbers switch round when
you're looking at them, and do this.
So sudoku is a nightmare.
I think I need to
borrow money from you.
I'll meet you in wetherspoons!
So newspapers,
yes, but... Japan?
Klaxon
I was sure I was right! Come on!
Are they actually American?
So, invented in the United
States, 1979, by a puzzle magazine
in Manhattan, and they were
originally called number place.
I'm scared already.
There was a Japanese games
manufacturer called maki kaji,
who brought them to Japan, and
they wanted to give it a new name.
And he said, "my staff are
pushing me to give it a new name,
"and I wanted to
go horse racing.
"So I just created a name really
quickly in about 25 seconds."
Now, I'm going to say it all
wrong, so I think we've written it out.
What that means is numbers
should be single, unmarried,
but it was too long and they
decided to shorten it to sudoku.
Wow.
And if you want to feel really dumb,
they've got now these rubik's cubes,
which are also sudoku.
Oh, my god. Really?
Look at that. I've
never seen someone
want something
so badly, so quickly!
It was like, as soon
as you heard about it,
I was like, sandi's going to
buy one as soon as this finishes!
There's a kick-starter,
she's already signed up.
Pledge £500 - done.
I had no idea!
Nightmare. It's heaven.
But what about when you get
to the last box, and you realise
you've got two
eights in it? Yeah.
Yeah. And somewhere, right in
the depths of it, there's a mistake,
you'll never find it, and you've
been doing it for four weeks.
You get your pencil
and repeatedly
stab yourself in
the palm of the hand
and then smear
blood on your face.
You'd only do that
in a lockdown. Yeah.
It's all right. Would you
like to stroke my pussy?
I'm serious. There you go.
Have a stroke of my
pussy. You'll feel better.
Cat squeals agh!
Whoever is on sound duty is
on the top of their game.
Because you...
You riffed that on the spot, and
as soon as it went towards you,
they were like "bam"!
And they were... Give
that person a bafta.
People don't appreciate
how good that was!
Brilliant.
It was Lizzie, in
sound. Lizzie, in sound.
She's got a real
cat, that she's...
Cat squeals
sorry.
Come here, quick,
stay in the room!
And a very sharp pencil!
Right, in homage to one of
the most-famous fictional spies,
I think we should
end with a Martini.
Ok? So, how would
anybody like this?
Shaken, not stirred. No?
Klaxon what?! Oh.
So, the thing is that
shaking a Martini will ruin it,
and I know this
cos I'm a Martini fan.
Ok? So drinks like
daiquiris, they're shaken.
And the reason for that is that
the ice dilutes the sweetness.
Martinis are not sweet, so
they don't need to be shaken.
They're supposed to be served
as concentrated as possible.
Unfortunately we can't
drink the original martinis
that James Bond is
supposed to have had
because one of the key
ingredients is no longer available.
It's known as a vesper Martini. It
was named after the first bond girl,
she was called vesper lynd.
Vesper's Italian for wasp.
Did you know that? I didn't.
Yes, hence the scooter.
The scooter, the Vespa.
It sounds like a wasp.
Bzzzzzz. Wasp. You see?
The vesper Martini
contained gin and vodka
and something
called Kina lillet.
Doesn't sound pleasant.
It would absorb a lot.
You don't want
that in your Martini.
Anyway, the trick is to stir it.
Have you got drinks
there for yourselves?
Yes. Yes.
Ok. Just, um, pour
out... To tribute here.
Oo-hoo! Ok.
Do you know that dick Van dyke
was once asked by cubby broccoli
if he wanted to take over
from Sean Connery in the role,
and dick Van dyke reminded
him of his British accent as Bert,
the cockney chimney
sweep in Mary poppins!
And was generally thought
not to be a very good idea.
Well, here we go.
Cheers. Cheers.
As Sean Connery: Martinis
are better shtirred than shaken,
and underpants
are better shilk than shatin.
Laughter
applause
and, with that, it's the final
dash towards the scores!
Top of the pack
with nine points,
it's Alan! What?!
Cheering and applause
second, with eight points,
it's James! Cheering
and applause
I couldn't even open a briefcase,
and who got beat by me?!
Yes!
Third with -2, daliso!
Cheering and applause
cariad: Oh, no!
And in last place
with -15, it's cariad!
Cheering and applause
My thanks to James, cariad,
daliso and Alan, and I leave you
with this secret
sign-off from Lucille ball.
The secret of staying
young is to live honestly,
eat slowly and
lie about your age.
Goodnight.
Cheering and applause