QI (2003–…): Season 19, Episode 7 - Spooky - full transcript

Applause

Voice echoing: Enter, I
have been expecting you.

Welcome to a seriously
spooky episode of qi,

where tonight we'll be
scaring ourselves silly.

Summon forth the polter-guests!

The skin-tingling
David Mitchell.

Applause

the spine-chilling
Zoe lyons. Applause

the sweat-soaked Richard osman.

Applause

and the spook-tacular
Alan Davies. Applause



and their noises of the
night are suitably spectral,

so David goes.. Creaky door

wow! Zoe goes...

Ghostly moan

frequently. Richard goes...

Evil laughter

oh, I might mime
that every time I do it.

What does it say about me that I
find it sexy? That's quite worrying.

Yeah, well listen, you in that hat
I also find powerfully erotic, so...

Thank you. And Alan has
the most terrifying sound of all.

This is the BBC news at
six o'clock. Good evening.

Big Ben bongs

blood-curdling! Right, let's
all join hands and begin.

Although I might
just take this off,



because it's actually
surprisingly heavy. Is it? Yes.

Oh, it was sandi toksvig!

Ok, let's kick off!

What smells like
ripe gorgonzola,

doesn't show up well in photos

and should not be touched
under any circumstances?

Boris Johnson.

Klaxon

my work here is done.

Is it a vampire's penis?

I'm amazed you haven't
got a klaxon for that. Yeah.

It's not the bit of the vampire
you worry most about, is it?

But the thing is, though, there's
going to be a penis under that opera

cloak somewhere and it might
have gone a bit cheesy. Wow!

I'm going to write an erotic
vampire book called ejacula.

I bet about £1,000
that's been done.

I want to say ectoplasm. Yes, you
do want to say ectoplasm! Do I want to

say ectoplasm? You do,
that is the correct answer. Is it?

Very well done, Zoe, yes.

Fantastic.

So, this is the
extraordinary thing,

so after world war I and
then the terrible Spanish flu,

lots of people had
lost their relatives

and they wanted to get
back in touch with them.

So spiritualism
became a massive thing.

And by 1930, you've got a quarter
of a million British people who are

a member of a
spiritualist church.

And then you get people
like Arthur conan Doyle,

and he decides to announce
that he's used a seance

to get hold of his son,
who he had lost in the war,

Kingsley. And all of a sudden,

all of these "mediums"
are incredibly famous.

And this is some of them
trying to produce ectoplasm, ok?

This is... yeah. It was
taken very seriously,

it was investigated by
all sorts of committees

and lots of
universities and so on.

Here is the convenient
thing for the mediums,

and I think inconvenient
for the sceptical investigator.

Ectoplasm's supposedly very
sensitive to light and to touch,

and it might cause serious

and undefined
damage to the toucher.

Wow. Like a vampire's penis.
Yeah. Sorry to gesture to you

as I say "like a
vampire's penis." Quite.

Just edit...

These are people, supposedly,
with ectoplasm coming out of them.

What do you think it's actually...?
What do you think it was made of?

It looks like a tissue.
Yeah, it's cheesecloth.

Oh, is that what...? Oh, ok. Yeah,
it's cheesecloth, or muslin, and

gelatine and egg white
and soap and so on.

And there was a famous
investigator called Harry price,

and he was the one who said
it smelled of ripe gorgonzola.

I'm not surprised. Wow.

Well, it could have
been worse, ok?

So there was a famous Danish
medium called einer Nielsen,

and he was investigated
by a committee from

a Norwegian university,

and they concluded that he
had been hiding it in his bottom.

Oh! Yes, before feeding it
up through a hole in his outfit...

In his outfit? ..To his mouth,
before pretending to vomit it out.

That's him on the left there.
And, I mean... it's still probably

not the worst thing
I've ever eaten.

No. But probably not something
out of your bottom, though,

I would imagine. What was...?

Being able to produce this cloth out
of your mouth, what did that prove?

That you were in touch with the
spirit world. But if you look at the

one on the right there, that's a
French medium called Eva carriere,

and she used to chew paper

and faces cut out of
magazines. And she got caught,

because that person in
the photograph is clearly

the king of Bulgaria.
And people went,

"no, no, you cannot have
regurgitated the king of Bulgaria,

"that's..." but there was one woman
called Helen Duncan, my goodness,

she was probably the most
famous ectoplasm producer.

And in fact, in... there she
is. Oh, wow. Look at her,

she's rather marvellous, isn't
she? Wow. She's really gone for that,

hasn't she? I very much like
the outfit, because can you see,

she's got her trousers
tied at the ankles,

and I don't know if there's
just, like, loads of muslin

and cheesecloth down there. Anyway,
she produced endless ectoplasm.

She was the very last
woman in britain convicted,

in 1944, under the
witchcraft act of 1735.

So she wasn't actually
convicted of witchcraft,

but of falsely claiming
to procure spirits,

so basically pretending to
be a witch when she wasn't.

Ok. Not real ectoplasm. No! Oh.

Apparently, Harry price,
the great investigator,

stole a sample and it was a mix
of wood pulp and egg white. Oh.

But apparently she could
produce yards at a time.

It would emanate
from... From her mouth,

her nostrils, her nipples
and between her legs. Wow!

Wow! She'd look like a
vampire's cock by the end of it.

I know. At what point in the
history of witchcraft laws...

Yeah.

..Did the crime of
being a witch give way to

the crime of pretending to be a
witch? Pretending to be a witch.

Yeah. Yeah. Was there a year,
like, everyone stopped? 1735.

Yeah. They all went.

1734, you'd better not be

a witch. 1735, you'd
better be a witch.

But the weird thing is, it was
to do with the second world war.

So she had a seance in
November of 1941, in Portsmouth,

at which she claimed
that the spirit of

a sailor had told her that
the hms barham had sunk.

Now, this was not public
knowledge that this boat had sunk.

But once she announced it,

obviously everybody
started to pay attention,

and then the Navy got very
anxious that maybe she could actually

announce things that people
shouldn't know about, from

the spirit world.

And Churchill was furious that
time was being wasted on this stupid

woman who was producing
muslin out of her... Whatnot,

and said it was just absurd.

She suffered from very heavy
nosebleeds and it's probably

because she kept some
ectoplasm up her... Sinuses.

"I think there might be

"a roll or nine of
cheesecloth still in my brain."

It's the ectoplasm coming
out of the nipples that I'd be

a bit more worried about. Yes, I
know. I mean, some severe chaffing,

I would have thought, would
have also been a side-effect.

Well, I want to show you
something else that is part of

the medium's repertoire.
This is a spirit trumpet,

and it's a device which was
supposed to amplify abnormal,

paranormal noises.
What I love about this,

ok, the woman sitting in

the chair is Harry
Houdini's wife, ok?

And the guy standing next
to her with the handcuffs,

he can't open them

because Harry Houdini
is the only person with

the combination, and
Harry's dead. Alan gasps

and they're trying,
through seance,

mrs Houdini and the
man with the handcuffs,

to get hold of Harry to ask
him how to unlock the handcuffs.

I think the woman on the
right is thinking, "that's Lenin!"

Yes.

Laughter

you know they still do this
every year? Do they? Hmm.

And I know because I went
to one of these seances.

Oh, my goodness! Harry Houdini
was obsessed with the spirit world,

he had a very close
relationship with his mother,

and he wanted to get
in touch with his mother.

He was always uncovering
people - charlatans and frauds -

and he said, "if I can
communicate with you,

"I will open a
pair of handcuffs."

And so we staged a
seance and we all sat around

and the handcuffs
were on the table

and we went through the
thing and they didn't open.

But it's quite exciting, it's the
only seance I've ever been to.

Where are they? In New York.
I went to one, I didn't enjoy it,

and it was ironically
almost impossible to get out.

Laughter

but the spirit trumpet,
which is the thing on the front,

it used to be connected,
in fact, to a sort of

a hidden rubber hose,

and then the assistant or somebody
would provide the vocals, going...

She imitates sound

ectoplasm is the largest thing that
can be produced by a small medium.

Laughter

what was so scary it made
sailors soil themselves?

Oh. Dysentery?

It is to do with a
disease, it's to do with...

You don't want to get dysentery
on a ship, suddenly they've all

got dysentery. Yeah. A lot of
those cruises, it's all dysentery,

a great brown streak going
through the fjord, or whatever it is.

Oh.

It's a great name for a
yacht, isn't it? Dysentery?

"Do come aboard the dysentery."
"Do come aboard the dysentery."

I thought you said... I
thought the great brown streak.

Oh, the great brown streak is also,
is also good. Quite a nice name for

a yacht, isn't it? It's a good
name for a current. Yeah.

An ocean current. "Oh,
it's the great brown streak."

Yeah, brown streak.
Yeah, it attracts prawns,

but then you don't
want to eat them.

Do you know, I go scuba diving,

and the last time I went
scuba diving was in Mexico,

and I can tell you,

there's nothing more horrifying than
discovering 20 metres underwater

that you are going to suffer from
what can only be described as

catastrophic shits... oh!

..In a wet suit. Oh!

We were diving with sharks
and I didn't know how they'd react.

I think they're just going
to back off and go...

I think they probably will,
actually, yeah. Yeah. It' a disease,

it's a disease that you can get
at sea. It's an old disease, it's...

Scurvy. Scurvy. Scurvy,
what do we know about scurvy?

Citrus fruit. Lack of vitamin c.
Vitamin c. So what do you need?

Lemon juice. Lemons,
you need lemons. Lemons.

You need lots
and lots of lemons.

"Give me lemons and
I'll cure you of scurvy."

That's the expression,
isn't it? Oh, is it?

"When life gives you lemons,

"at least the scurvy
problem is on the way out."

So, before they discovered
that scurvy was due to

a lack of vitamin c,

they thought it was due to
being away from land, ok? Oh.

And so the treatment in the 18th
century, quite a common treatment,

it was to Bury the sufferers in
soil. That was the idea. Oh, no.

Oh. And it was called earth bathing.
I think it sounds rather pleasant.

Home soil was
thought to be best.

So the ship owners would
take boxes of English earth

with them, for
example, on voyages.

"Oh, it's the best type of earth
there is." "Best in the world."

"Yeah, you won't beat it, you
won't beat a bit of English earth,

"I tell you that." So there
was one convict ship captain,

called Thomas melville, and he
would Bury them just sort of up to

the neck like that, and then make
them eat vegetables, and probably

the vegetables were in fact the bit
that was doing them good. James

lind, the man who in the end
proved that citrus beat scurvy,

he also thought it was a wonderful
idea, and it became a thing that was

recommended on dry
land, earth bathing. Yeah.

There was a guy called James
Graham, he's one of my favourite,

rather notorious 18th-century
quacks. This is his gaff,

and it's possibly
him there in the blue.

Is this... Is this from
their website, or...?

Yeah. But he recommended
that you Bury yourself in

the earth, right
up to your lips,

and this would
cure not just scurvy,

but venereal disease,
rheumatism, leprosy,

cancer, all sorts of
extraordinary things.

And Graham himself
earth-bathed dozens of times.

He would do it as a public
spectacle. People would pay

to watch him be interred
naked, usually... in turd? In turd!

Well, I don't know what
else... Inearthed. Sorry, I...

In turd, yes. Usually next
to an equally naked female.

Oh, hello. "Watch me in turd."

I was in turd in Mexico.
Hey, hey, you were in turd!

But he doesn't look unhappy,
that man in the middle, does he?

I mean, slightly baffled, but
he only went in for a pedicure.

He's stepping in and that old
crone is giving him a nice brush.

Yes. It's a little bit of the...

She's just pulled that out
of his arse. "It was this!"

It's quite sound, you
know, they thought,

"ok, people only get
scurvy away from land,"

so it's quite sound
to say, a hypothesis.,

maybe it's the land. ..Might
be absence of land. Yeah.

That's quite reasonable.
It's the person that feeds

the vegetables as well as
burying them in earth that's

the poor scientist. Yeah. Because
he's changed two variables.

You're right, darling.
Yeah, idiot. Yeah.

"You've changed two
variables, you terrible captain."

"You absolute imbecile." Yeah,
fool. But it was a huge thing, scurvy.

So during what's
called the age of sail,

so we're talking
about 1570s to 1860s,

scurvy killed over 2
million sailors. Wow.

So it's more than storms
and shipwrecks and battles

and all the other diseases
combined. And for long voyages,

ship owners would
assume that about 50% of

the crew were
going to go with it.

So what happens without vitamin
c? What happens to the body?

Doesn't it...? Do your teeth
fall out? Like, your skin decays?

Yeah, it's a particular thing,

we can't carry out the
reactions that produce collagen.

So collagen is like the glue
that holds our tissues together.

You literally start falling apart.
Yeah. You feel weak, you get ulcers,

you bruise at the gentlest
touch. Your gums putrefy,

your teeth loosen. Old wounds
reopen. I mean, eventually...

You need a wet suit, don't you? Well...
yeah, you need to hold yourself together.

Yeah. Zzzzip! Sploop!

"Ectoplasm!"

Eventually you bleed internally
and die. Other than that... oh.

Yeah. All for the want
of a lemon! I know, right?

Was it a rented wet suit? It was
my own wet suit. Thank god...

Yeah... In many ways. What
did the sharks make of it?

They didn't come anywhere
near me, I'll be honest with you.

What's a shark that's
holding its nose look like?

Yeah, yeah. It was... Laughter

that's why they call me
Jacques poosteau, mate!

Right, what's this
guy's problem?

"Argh!"

Oh, well, that is edvard
munch's the scream.

Yes.

He's been told that if you cross
this bridge your ears will fall off,

and then halfway
across his eyes fell out.

And the two people behind
are pissing themselves. Yeah.

"Hold on to your ears
whatever you do! Ha-ha-ha."

It sold for hundreds of millions

and it's literally just a
rip-off of one of the emojis.

What is the main problem that
this painting is currently having,

or has had?

It keeps getting stolen.
Copies. Is it copies?

No. The real problem
is us, or human beings,

is the truth of it. So visitors
to the munch museum in

Oslo are damaging the scream
by breathing too close to it.

They need to put some
sort of rail, don't they?

Yeah. They need
a two-metre rule.

I'm amazed it's got
to us as an issue,

I think there's something
they could have sorted out

for themselves with just
really like a moment's thought.

But, you know. But what it
is, darling, it's excess humidity.

So you were right about
the copies, there are four.

There's scream, scream
2, scream 3. Yeah.

Laughter

scream 3's the one where
Courtney Cox dies, right?

Yeah. They're all on cardboard,

but two are pastels
and two are painted.

The one you saw earlier was the
painted one. That one looks less

sincere. Hmm. That looks...
It's putting it on a bit there.

And did you say about it being
stolen? Yes, it's been stolen many

times. It has been stolen
many times. In 1994,

the very first version was stolen
from Norway's national gallery.

It took 50 seconds for
two men to pull up in a Van,

prop a ladder up
against a wall and climb in

and climb out again. And
they left a little note saying,

"thanks for the
poor security." Wow!

When the version from
1910 was stolen in 2004...

This is less smooth, I have to
say, than the 50-second one.

..The robbers had to ask
to be shown their target,

because they weren't
entirely sure which one it was.

What other paintings
must there be there for you

to know that the painting's
called the scream and not think,

"oh, I bet it's that one."
Yeah. "I don't know."

We now think that munch's
figure was in fact inspired by

a Peruvian mummy which
he saw when he went to visit

the ethnographic
exchange museum in Paris.

It's a chachapoya
warrior who lived in

the Amazon maybe around
1,000 years ago. So up in the...

He's just got his
orthodontist's bill.

Yes, and went, "argh!" The
teeth aren't bad for 1,000 years.

They're not bad, are
they? No. No, that's all right.

But when it was
brought to Paris,

it did have a big effect
on a lot of people,

because Paul Gauguin is thought

to have been inspired by
exactly the same mummy.

There's a marvellous painting of
his called where do we come from,

what are we, where are we going?

And if you look down in the bottom
left hand, you can see. Oh, yeah.

It's thought that he was inspired
by the same 1,000-year-old figure.

Hmm. That's someone saying,
"nine, ten, coming, ready or not."

"I'm on my way, on my way."

"Put your top on!"

Oh! "Too naked, too naked!"

"I don't want to, I like being
like this. I like being free,

"I like being outside."
"Put your top on!"

"What's the problem?" "Mum!"

Laughter

"I've put a bit of
ectoplasm over my groin."

"You're the only one with your
top off! The only one on the beach!"

Now for a question on
screams and screens.

How can you make a
scary movie even scarier?

Screaming

oh. Ooh. Oh, it's awful.

Did that help? Was it quite...?
No, darkness? Being in the dark?

Did you like that? Where
do you get your clues from?

I don't know. I took my daughter,
when she was two, to a pantomime.

It started in black-out,
lots and lots of little kids,

and it's Jack and the beanstalk,

and all the lights went out,

and I could feel her little
hands just gripping hold

of my arm. And
then over the tannoy,

"fee fi fo fum!"

And they all burst into tears,
she absolutely shat herself.

They had no idea
what was going on.

There hadn't even been a
bean yet, never mind a stalk,

never mind the climbing
up, never mind the giant.

And then the lights came on

and someone from EastEnders
went, "hello, boys and girls," and that...

I had to take her home.
She was inconsolable,

and she still gets anxious whenever
she sees an auditorium of any sort.

Orr EastEnders. Yeah.

I took my, my godson, Joe, when
he was three, to a pantomime,

and there was a character in it
who turned to the audience and went,

"I'm going to eat all the
children!" And Joe shouted,

"he's just kidding, but
let's go home anyway!" Oh!

Laughter

so, scary movies, we're talking
about a very celebrated showman

called William castle. He used to be
known as the abominable showman.

And he was a b-movie director in
the days when there were b-movies,

sort of, he's the guy on the right
there, with his friend. Oh, yeah.

Not the guy in the middle.
No, not the guy in the middle.

And he was famous for films
like house on the haunted hill

and the tingler and so on.

And he had the most
fantastic gimmicks.

So, in 1958 he produced
a film called macabre,

and every single member
of the audience was given

a life insurance policy. So
you signed it as you entered,

and if you died of
fright in your seat,

your family got given
$1,000. That's very good.

Very sadly, nobody...
Nobody did die from this.

He kept... "Come on, Nana,
let's get you to the cinema."

Yes. Well, he used to
keep nurses on standby

in case there was
something terrible.

He would have hearses lining
the street outside special showings.

He often arrived at a
premiere in a coffin himself.

And he would employ
women to sit in the audience

and scream at
specific scary moments.

So there was a marvellous
moment in the tingler

when a character
breaks the fourth wall

and turns to the audience and
says a sort of deadly parasite

has escaped into the cinema.

And then the people
that he'd paid were trained

to collapse into screaming
hysterics. "Aaaarrrgh!"

And hid buzzers in seats

to give vibrations at sort
of key moments in the film.

It feels like if you googled
"the tingler"... yeah.

..Something else would come up.
Definitely. You know what I mean?

These days, yes. Yeah.

Yeah, that's probably true.

He had a film in
1961 called homicidal

and it had a fright break in it.

You were allowed to leave
and get a full refund before

the terrifying sort of
denouement of the entire thing.

You had to leave your seat

and follow a yellow streak
before the entire audience

to a special booth
called coward's corner.

And a light shone on you
with a recording intoning,

"watch the chicken. Watch
him shiver in coward's corner."

Laughter

right, moving on,

where would you find the
UK's largest collection of spirits?

Hmm.

It's currently under my bed.

Klaxon

hey! Hey!

Are they all empties,
darling? Oh, some of the...

I've got one of the... I
stole it from my mum,

she had a hip replacement
a few years ago,

one of those grippy arm things,

so I don't even have to
get out of bed and I just,

"there we go. Ah, there
we go. Gin, that'll do." Ok.

Can you siphon it
with a tube? Yeah!

You shouldn't steal from your
mum just cos she can't run after you!

That's not... I know,
yeah. It's not kind.

Laughter

so there's a museum, it's in
London, the spirit collection.

23 million objects.

Alan: Cos it's a gin museum?

Is there a gin museum? No, it's
the natural history museum. Oh. Oh.

Is it preserving things? Yeah.

Ethanol and formaldehyde.

So the whole collection takes
over 27km of shelving. Wow.

There's an alcohol supply system

that runs all the way
through the museum's walls

and it's linked to two
1,000 litre tanks of ethanol.

Richard: Just like
your house, Zoe.

Just like my house! Yes,
exactly like Zoe's house.

It's pumped around the
museum with compressed air

and every single lab has got
a tap that you can draw from

and preserve a specimen.

But why do they not drink it?

Because it kills you.

That is correct. It's
highly toxic. Yes. Yeah.

And it's got a
snake in it. Yeah.

We... we'll see
about that! Yeah.

Yes. So ethanol is not a...

It's not a drinking
alcohol, is it? No.

It's a killing alcohol.
Yeah. So it's not good.

Has anybody been to
the hunterian museum

that's in Lincoln's inn in
London? Yes. It's got a...

This is one of my favourite
things, it's got a jar of moles,

and by that I mean...

..The creatures, not people's
moles, you know. Yeah.

And the bishop of
durham's rectum.

Richard: No! Yes!

Alan: Can't take
your eyes off it!

Richard: I've been...
I've been looking for that!

Yeah, there you go.
Yeah. Well, my question is,

is it always the rectum of
the current bishop of durham?

Or, is it...? Yeah, no.

Cos I wouldn't want to...

..I don't want to see the rectum of
a former bishop of durham! Yeah.

I want to see the
current bishop's rectum.

One of the conditions of accepting
the post is to give up your rectum.

Because what... What self-respecting
bishop will be using his rectum?

And the bishop's going, "I'm
sorry. I thought you said rector."

No, it's Thomas... Thomas thurlow,
who died of bowel cancer in 1791.

So he called in John hunter,

dr John hunter, for whom
the museum is named,

and he correctly diagnosed
that he had an incurable thing.

And when he did the autopsy,

he wrote out a technical
detailed description of the disease

and then preserved
the rectum for posterity,

and you can see
it at the hunterian.

Laughter

now, strap in and
prepare for a scare

as we board the ghost
train of general ignorance.

What's the fastest
mammal on the planet?

David's buzzer

yes?

A cheetah?

Klaxon

they can do 0 to
60mph in three seconds,

but they are not the fastest.
Not as quick at filing as humans.

No, that's true.

Is it across the ground,

or is it going to be
a mammal that can

drop out of a tree
and live or something?

It's nothing to do with the...

Or a swimming one? ..With
diving, but it is in the air.

So like a flying fox,
or something like that?

Well, it's the Mexican
free-tailed bat.

It is the fastest
mammal on earth,

and I love this,
researchers at Tennessee,

they strapped tiny
little backpacks to them.

Can you imagine how small they must have
been? That's got to slow them down. Yeah.

And then they monitored
them from a low flying plane,

which must have been annoying.

They routinely reach
100mph with wing-power alone.

So we're not talking
about a tail wind,

we're not talking about diving,

with just on their own
ability. Pure flapping.

Yeah. So your cheetah, darling,
75mph. It's nothing. Nothing.

But to what end would they go?

They're terrified by an
aeroplane that's following them.

Bats form the largest
mammal colony in the world.

It's a place called
bracken cave in Texas.

There are over 15
million of them, ok.

Every night they leave in
what's known as a "batnado".

It's... like, rhymes
with tornado, ok.

So numerous... "It's
a batnado!" Batnado.

Can I say, it's slightly
disturbing to watch,

because it sort of flashes at
you. Let's have a quick look.

And nearby planes have been
instructed to avoid them. Oh, wow.

Ahh! Isn't that amazing?

And they eat...
This colony alone

eats more than 80,000
tonnes of insects a year.

Wow. Wow. So that's...

To help you Alan, that's
500 blue whales that they...

Phwoar. Thank you! Imagine if
they want after a blue whale. Yeah.

Oh, that's a film I'd watch!

They're also known as guano bats.
Does anybody know what guano is?

Poo, isn't it? Poo. Bat poo.

They drop about 50 tonnes of guano
on the floor of their cave every year,

and in the 19th century
they thought they'd dig down

and see how far
it had laid down.

They got down to 60 feet and they
gave up, they thought... wow. Yeah.

I would have stopped
before 60 feet. Yeah.

I would have gone, like,
eight feet and then gone,

"it's... it's really...
It's really deep."

Let's just say
there's lots of bat-shit.

They're at 59 feet and someone's
going, "honestly, just a bit more.

"Honestly, let's just
keep... Keep going..."

Alan: They're going,
"I'm losing my mind!

"He's gone bat-shit crazy!"

There are birds that can
move faster than these bats,

but only when they're diving.

So a peregrine falcon can
exceed 180mph in a dive. Wow.

In fact, there was one
measured in 2005 at 242mph.

How fast do you think
blue whales go, Alan?

12 knots.

Oh, knots, good!

They can do 30mph,
but only in short bursts.

It's usually about
5mph. 30? Can they?

That's quite fast,
isn't it, 30mph? Yeah.

Yeah, that's shifting.

Richard: That's why you
never see them in city centres.

No. They're always
getting speeding tickets.

Speed bumps. Yeah.

Now, what kind of beast is this?

Alan: It's a sphinx, sandi. I...

Klaxon

no!

I was going to say,
I've done cheetah. Yeah!

So the thing we know
is the great sphinx,

it was carved in about 2550 bc,

technically not a sphinx

because the word sphinx
doesn't appear until 2,000 years

after the statue was
built. And the fact is,

we don't know for sure what it
was originally meant to represent.

So it might have been built for

a sun god called horus of
the horizon, or horemakhet.

Or it may represent a
particular pharaoh called khafre,

who ruled during
the old kingdom.

His father built the
nearby great pyramid.

Well, let's have a
look at an actual s...

..What is known as a sphinx,

which is the sphinx
of Greek myth.

It had a lion's body, a woman's
head and an eagle's wings.

And the statue that we saw at
giza does not fit those criteria.

The one in giza
doesn't have wings

and it's got a man's head, and
the reason that we know that

is because it used to
have a beard, which fell off.

No! Yes. Oh. The British museum,

this is a marvellous thing,

has got sphinx stubble in its
collection. Ah! Wow. I know.

It was already in a state
of disrepair by 1400 bc,

when the earliest attempts were
made to restore it by the pharaoh.

The rendering's gone on that,
hasn't it? It's gone, hasn't it? Yeah.

You want to pebble-dash
that. Yeah. And it kept being...

I don't know a lot about
diy, but the plaster's blown.

You're going to have to
take that all the way back.

Anyway, it keeps
getting buried in sand

and it was only
excavated to look like this,

its current glory, in the 1920s.

Alan: Really? Wow. Mm.

It was buried in
sand for centuries?

That's extraordinary. I know.

Why did I not know this before?

Because that's my job.

All of which leaves us with the
haunting matter of the scores.

And in first place,
with one point,

it's Richard!

Oh, thank you. Thank
you everybody. Applause

hanging around in purgatory
in second place with -5,

it's Zoe! Applause

clanking their chains and
wandering the earth forever with -6,

David! Applause

oh, and banished to the deepest
nether-dimensions with -23,

it's Alan! Applause

-23?

So if you hadn't said
cheetah, you'd have won.

I'd have said it for you.

And I leave you with this
sepulchral sign-off from Seinfeld.

"According to most studies,

"people's number one
fear is public speaking.

"Number two is death.
That means at a funeral,

"you're better off in the
casket than doing the eulogy."

Goodnight.