QI (2003–…): Season 2, Episode 5 - Bears - full transcript
Jimmy Carr, Bill Bailey, Jo Brand and Alan Davies answer questions on bears, bulbs and bamboo posed by host Stephen Fry. Featuring the memorable moment when Jimmy Carr arranges the letters on a board into a strange but true sentence.
(Applause)
Hello, hello, hello, hello, hello,
and welcome to Ql.
Once again, we trawl the trackless ocean
of knowledge
only to find that everything smells fishy.
l'm joined on the seafront of understanding
tonight
by three winkle-pickers
and a cockle-warmer.
Bill Bailey.
Jimmy Carr.
Jo Brand.
And Alan Davies.
Now, this evening's Ql brain-teaser
is on your little podium beside you,
er, year 5 Ql module,
and the theme is letters, letters.
- Show the boys and girls.
- (Bill) Oh, right.
Throughout the show,
you have the time, we hope,
to make up some interesting phrases
from your letters.
- lt's to keep you occupied.
- (Alan) Work on them as we go?
- That's right. To keep you occupied.
- (Alan) So when do we show them?
- Just whenever we've got one good?
- lf you like, or towards the end.
- All right.
- (Stephen) l've got one too,
and l'll show you
something l came up with earlier.
- (Alan) l'm trying to make vagina.
- There, you see.
- (Jo) That'll do.
- That came from my letters, you see.
- (Alan) Quim!
- lt's a little play on the initials.
(Jimmy) You've already got quim.
(Alan) Jo's done quim.
- (Stephen) Have you?
- (Scattered applause)
- (Jo) Thank you. That's...
- You put the Ql in quim.
- Very good.
- That's the first time my quim's got
a smattering.
(Alan) Look at that!
''Vagina doom''. Oh, Lord!
Might get in the way of the game,
but do ask a question anyway.
l will do.
- Fox!
- (Stephen) Very nice. Yeah, yeah.
l think we get the idea.
You must be a blast by the fridge.
Erm, but first we ought to do
an equipment test.
- Jo, how do you go?
- (Tugboat hooter)
Very good. Jimmy goes...
(Ship's horn)
- Bill goes...
- (Ocean liner's horn)
- Alan goes...
- (Woman) Ahoy. Hello, sailor.
(Stephen) There you are. To please you.
Well, we're going to start with...
Hang on, hang on, hang on. Who was that?
- (Woman) Ahoy. Hello, sailor.
- Hell's bells!
Anyway, let's start firmly on dry land.
Question one. Would anyone like
some koala soup?
- (Ship's horn)
- Jimmy.
- Presumably a hungry koala.
- Of course, it would be a hungry koala,
it would be a hungry baby koala,
because koalas are the only animals
to make what is called a soup or pap.
(Alan) What, in a bowl?
(Stephen) Mmm...
They make it in the bowl of their body
and it comes out of their...?
- Mouth?
- (Jo) Arse.
- Their bottom, yes, their arse.
- Do l get a point for that?
- You get a point for knowing arse, yes.
- Thank you.
(Jimmy) They make soup with their arse?
They make soup for their young
with their arse.
- l mean, that's careless parenting, isn't it?
- Well...
(Jo) l'd just quite like to ask,
why haven't they had that
on the bush-tucker trial in l'm A Celebrity?
A very good question.
They bring a koala out and hold it over you,
and go, ''Here's your koala soup, sir.''
(Squeezing noises)
lt lends a horrible new meaning
to ''Waiter, there's a hair in my soup.''
- A horrible prospect.
- There's a koala there!
- There you are.
- They're not koala bears, they're not bears.
- Well done. They're not bears, are they?
- They're marsupials.
Yes, what are they most closely related to?
- Kangaroos, other marsupials.
- (Bill) Fish.
- A wombat, in fact.
- A wombat.
- (Jimmy) Are they brothers and sisters?
- Wombats don't have soup,
- they have cubical faeces, oddly.
- Do they?
- Yes. Little dice.
- (Alan) Cubicular?
- Cubical.
- He can't get that leaf down, look,
he's been chewing it for ten minutes.
Well, no, isn't that because he's eating
the leaves of the eucalyptus tree...
- He is indeed.
- Which acts as a powerful hallucinogen
on the koala,
so a lot of the time they're just saying,
''Yeah, whoooaah,
what did l come up here for?''
ls that how they got the idea of
eating things out of their bums?
Well, it's an analgesic,
rather than a hallucinogen.
- (Bill) l've always got those two mixed up.
- They're sort of numb. A painkiller.
- A painkiller.
- (Alan) lt's poisonous.
They have an incredibly long intestine,
about a mile long,
to digest all that poison.
lt would kill a human.
Yes, what it is,
it's really quite interesting, is -
and that's what we're here for,
to be quite interesting -
they can tell, which scientists can't,
the age of a eucalyptus leaf.
lt has to be between a year and 18 months.
lf it's any younger,
it has no value whatsoever to them.
- They sleep for 20 to 22 hours a day.
- (Stephen) 22 hours a day.
l'm going to give you two points for that,
you're absolutely right.
l won a night out with a koala.
- Did you?
- Yeah, we were out all night.
- We went to a restaurant, then to a club.
- What did you have, soup of the day?
And then...
What do they drink?
What did your koala drink?
Beck's.
No, they don't drink.
ln the Dharuk language,
koala means ''no water''.
But the main thing we have to remember
about koala bears is that they are not bears.
So that leads us to where do bears
do their business in the winter?
- (Woman) Ahoy.
- ln the woods.
- ln the woods, did you say?
- (Alarm)
l'm afraid it is, that's minus 20 points,
Alan Davies.
- 20? You ****.
- Well, yes, but...
- (Ship's horn)
- Yes, Jimmy?
ls it the Cayman lslands, for tax purposes?
No. The fact is,
for the seven months of the year
that they're hibernating,
bears do not either urinate or defecate.
They must be busting to go
when they get up.
They have a very clever little device.
Firstly they recycle the urea as protein
in the body, so they don't need to pee,
and their body makes a little thing
called a tappet,
which is composed of sort of faeces
and hair and various other things,
and it's a sort of butt plug
that seals up their anus for the winter.
(Jo) Are they available in the shops yet?
She bears give birth
when they're hibernating.
- When they're asleep?
- Well, they sort of wake up, rather briefly,
- to give birth.
- ''Oh, Jesus.''
And apparently
they forget about it afterwards,
they go straight back to sleep again.
And they can give birth to up to four cubs,
from four different fathers.
Sounds like the royal family, doesn't it?
(Jimmy) Do they live on an estate,
by any chance?
Did you just say ''do they live on an estate''?
(Jimmy) Well, sounds like it, doesn't it?
(Bill) What, white-trash bears?
Yeah. They do sound
a little bit white-trash to me.
(Bill) Yeah.
(Stephen) So, now...
bear in your bathroom,
what shouldn't you squeeze?
- (Alan) Toothpaste.
- Yes!
- lt will make it crazy with desire.
- Crazy with desire, lust.
A sort of lust for the toothpaste.
You'd be safer
carrying a freshly butchered elk leg,
in terms of it would just...
There was a recent...
What, in the bathroom?
Marks & Spencer's
six butchered elk legs?
For some reason,
bears go crazy for toothpaste.
- (Bill) Why?
- They trashed a tourist camp in the Arctic,
some polar bears, recently.
But toothpaste does something
to dogs as well, gets them going.
You're absolutely right.
So even though they're close relations,
there are dog toothpastes
to look after their teeth,
but they're flavoured in
all kinds of odd ways.
- Peanut butter, beef, things like that.
- Cat.
- (Bill) Trouser leg.
- So there you are.
Don't go round with toothpaste near a bear.
What has huge teeth
and only one facial expression?
- (Ocean liner's horn)
- Janet Street-Porter.
- (Alan) lt's Janet Street-Porter!
- (Alarm)
Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.
Oh dear, oh dear.
We've got that written up somewhere.
Oh, l knew it was, l took a fall,
but it was worth it.
- No, it's an animal.
- (Bill) Oh.
- Huge teeth and one facial expression?
- Yeah.
A shark that's just had quite a bad stroke.
(Stephen) On both sides of the brain.
All down one side,
so it swims in a circle like that.
- Or a Botox panther.
- That would do it.
That would qualify.
(Alan) What about a beaver?
Beavers have big teeth
and they don't vary their face much.
This has the biggest teeth
of any mammal actually.
lt's recently been discovered to be a bear.
lt was thought for many years to be
a member of the racoon family,
but it's not, it's a member of the bear family.
lt's a giant panda.
And the giant panda's teeth are
so enormous, and it constricts its face,
which is as stiff as a board.
You can see one there, giant panda.
lt was only in 1996 it was discovered
to be a bear.
lt was a cat in a bear suit.
And this is where science goes very odd,
because it was designated a carnivore,
- although everybody knows it only eats...
- (Alan) lt doesn't eat meat.
So, most living pandas
are actually vegetarian, by choice.
- Yes.
- They should be eating meat.
They eat bamboo, as we know,
bamboo shoots.
And they have to do that
for 12 hours a day,
because it's so lacking
in any nutritive quality.
So therefore, they're the only bears
that don't hibernate,
because they can't afford it,
sort of calorifically.
Why are they so cute?
They are cute, aren't they?
They're absolutely adorable.
You know, aesthetically, what's going on
there that makes it so, is it....
Look at the eyes, they're just piss-holes
in the snow, aren't they?
Have they ever been sort of successfully
bred with other bears?
Why are they so unlibidinous?
Well, l don't know.
Do you want to know about their penises?
Are they those barbed ones
that lock in and don't come out again?
- No, they point backwards.
- They point backwards? lnto themselves?
- Which may be...
- So they're ejaculating up into themselves?
''Oh, sorry love.''
Hence the old joke about
eats, shoots and leaves, l suppose.
But it's, er, yeah, l don't know
whether that is the reason.
ln-growing genitals,
that won't help breeding.
- lt won't help with breeding, will it?
- That's obviously...
Surely that must be such a turn-off.
''Do you fancy a...?''
''No, not really, no.
l really don't fancy it at all.''
- ''lsn't my species.''
- What can you tell me about bamboo?
(Man) Ahoy!
- (Stephen) Alan?
- Hang on.
You've attracted someone else.
ln Hong Kong, and probably elsewhere
in Southeast Asia,
- they use bamboo as scaffolding.
- You're quite right.
lt's incredibly lightweight,
and incredibly, extraordinarily strong.
And they use it over vast buildings.
You're right, it has a tensile strength
greater than steel.
ln fact, over 5,000 uses of bamboo
have been recorded, including
- desalination uses, diesel fuel.
- Tarzan uses it
- for swimming away from people.
- (Stephen) Exactly right, yes.
(Stephen) Breathing underwater.
As a cane to give people
a damn good thrashing.
(Alan) Have you been caned?
Bamboo caned?
Certainly, at prep school,
l was caned almost daily.
Two uses of bamboo cane.
- And that was just by yourself!
- Never did me any harm!
Are we going through all 5,000 uses?
- (Alan) Yeah.
- No, we're not, no.
lt grows incredibly fast.
Some species grow up to four foot a day.
You can actually watch it grow.
Quite astonishing.
- lt was used as a torture by the Chinese.
- Four foot a day?
- Yes.
- (Jo) A torture in the sense that
they would make someone sit on it
while it's growing?
And it would be a torture, yes.
They'd tie you down over a bamboo cane
and it would grow into you?
Yes. But what is bamboo?
- What sort of...?
- lt's a plant.
Which is used for growing runner beans,
feeding pandas.
- What class of plant?
- (Jo) A tree.
- (Alan) Bark.
- No, it's a grass.
- lt's a type of a grass.
- lt is a type of a grass. Well done.
Well done.
They flower... Some of them flower only...
- You know, it takes them 120 years.
- (Jo) Well done!
- Bill used to have a cactus.
- Yep.
A huge cactus, a huge cactus thing
that was all knobbly,
and it flowered, how often?
Once every 25 years?
- Once every 25 years.
- And he'd only had it two weeks
- and it flowered.
- Yeah.
(Stephen) Ah, you are a blessed man.
A blessed man.
- l know. We took it....
- (Alan) l remember.
We didn't take it off an old couple,
we bought it off an old couple.
- You left them laying in the passage.
- You swine!
Gareth, quick, get it away,
they're coming round. Quick!
''You bastards,
it's gonna flower any minute!''
(Stephen) ''We've waited 23 years!''
And speaking of bamboo,
how many Edisons does it take
to change a light bulb?
- (Tugboat hooter)
- Yes, Jo.
(Stephen) Thank you. Very good.
Great joy. Erm, well,
the answer's very peculiar.
He had a belief that in the human mind
there were little people,
- 15 to 20.
- Oh, for God's sake.
- He really believed that.
- He did not.
And he believed when you die
they move into someone else.
When you were a psychiatric nurse,
if someone came in to you and said,
''l believe there are little people
living in me,'' what would you do?
Punch them to the ground.
Very good.
What a loss to the profession you were.
Yeah. Edison did use bamboo as a
filament...
- (Bill) Did he?
- ..in his light bulb.
(Stephen) Very good, very good.
Middle Earth tabloids.
So Edison believed there were little people
in a part of the brain called
the convolutions of Broca
where memory, amongst other things,
was housed.
And he believed that this is where
15 tiny little people were.
l'm sorry, the 15 tiny little people,
did they have 15 tiny little people in them?
That's a very good question.
l don't think Edison had got that far.
Edison, you know, was reckoned to be
one of the great inventors,
and there are 1, 093 patents
filed to his name.
What did he invent?
l'm so ashamed, l don't know anything
he invented. l thought the light bulb.
- No, that's a...
- They give off more heat than light.
The first light bulb was actually
a long-forgotten German
- called Walter Globel.
- (Jo) Does Alan not get a point for that?
- For what, gives off more heat than light?
- Yes.
- (Bill) That was a guess, though, wasn't it?
- No, it was not a guess.
(Man) Hello, sailor!
l learnt that in physics.
(Jo) What, ''hello, sailor''?
No, the point about Edison,
which is quite interesting,
- l think is that he was like a...
- (Alan) Typewriter!
- He developed the typewriter.
- (Jo) Phonograph.
- (Alan) He developed the typewriter.
- The phonograph is, again, he is credited
with inventing the phonograph.
But one thing Edison did invent,
for a hundred per cent genuine
Edison invention
that we use every day probably, most of us.
- (Jimmy) ls it nasal hair clippers?
- No, it's not even an object.
- (Jo) lt's not an object?
- No.
So it's a way of being. Sarcasm.
- Yeah, he invented sarcasm!
- Yeah!
Sure! Oh, yeah!
Erm, it's actually a word.
- (Alan) Really?
- Yeah.
- (Jo) ls it Zugswang?
- No.
The Germans have that,
but very good for remembering Zugswang.
- (Jimmy) l don't know use that every day.
- You wouldn't use Zugswang every day
- unless you're a chess player.
- l've used it four times today.
- (Stephen) Yeah.
- Well, you're fine till Thursday, then.
(Alan) Crikey.
(Bill) Crikey?
No, not crikey, no. lt's...
Floccinaucinihilipilification.
He didn't invent that word,
but well done for knowing it. Which means?
The act of assessing something
as worthless.
- Very correct, yeah.
- Ooh!
The word, it's a simple word of greeting.
- Hello.
- That's the word.
- He invented hello?
- He invented hello.
H-E-L-L-O.
The word that existed before is ''hullo'',
H-U-L-L-O,
which never meant a greeting,
it just meant expression of surprise.
''Hullo, what have we got here?
Hullo, what's this?''
- We still use it in that sense.
- Do we?
''Hullo, what's that?'' Don't we, Bill?
Yes, when we live our life
like 1950s detective films, yes.
l often go to my fridge,
''Hello, we're out of milk.''
''l say, Mother, where's the milk?''
You beast, you beast, you utter, utter beast!
When they went round
Jeffrey Dahmer's house,
and they found a human head in the fridge,
they went, '''Ello!''
- Maybe just a little camp, l think.
- ls it camp?
- ''Ooh, 'ello.''
- (Alan) '''Ello.''
Not like that!
That's hello as a greeting,
you say, ''Hello, dear. Hello, sailor.''
- No, l think it's a bit of surprise as well.
- ''Ooh, 'ello.''
- There's more surprise than greeting.
- lt's been appropriated by the gays
- as one of those... (Tuts) ''Ooh, 'ello.''
- Yeah, anyway, anyway.
- (Woman) Ahoy, sailor. Ahoy, sailor.
- There you are.
- But originally it was the word ''halloo''.
- 'Ello. Ooh, 'ello.
Originally... All right, very good.
(Jimmy) There was a story about hello,
though.
There was a competition
in the Evening Standard and they said,
we want to find out what's the thing
that you're going to say
when you answer the phone.
And they had a competition, people voted
on it, and hello came out number one.
And what came second was ''ahoy hoy''.
Which if you watch the Simpsons
is how Mr Burns answers the phone.
(Stephen) Yes, absolutely.
Actually, what it is,
is that was Alexander Graham Bell's
favoured method of answering the phone,
was to go ''ahoy hoy''.
- Which l still use.
- Do you? Good for you.
Whereas l get mocked
for using ''hullo'', like that.
(Bill) Not on the phone,
that's perfectly acceptable.
(Stephen) No... But on the...
- (Jimmy) lt's when smoking a pipe...
- No, it's surprise.
- (Stephen) ''Hullo, what's going on here?''
- ''Good Lord!''
Stephen, what was the last thing
that made you go ''Hullo!''?
- lt was a genital wart.
- Was it a genital... l knew!
l knew it would be something to do
with genitals. l knew it! You see?
''Hello'' happened to be one of Edison's
favourite words.
When he first recorded sound,
he shouted, ''Halloo!''
which is actually a cry from the hunting field,
of ''yoo-halloo''.
So ''halloo'' was the first recorded word.
And he reckoned, Edison,
that it sounded very clear.
He discovered this while testing
Alexander Graham Bell's prototype.
So the first written use of hello, spelt with
an E, is in a letter from Edison in 1887,
and Alexander Graham Bell preferred
''ahoy, ahoy''.
ln our house, if you ring my dad,
he answers the phone like that.
''What?''
''Yes.'' Like that.
Well, a telephone is
a fantastically rude thing.
lt's like going, ''Speak to me now,
speak to me now, speak to me now!''
lf you went into someone's office
and banged on their desk and said,
''l will make a noise until you speak to me,''
it would be considered unbelievably rude.
Yes, and of course that's what they had
before the telephone, wasn't it?
- (Alan) ''Give it to me now!''
- ''Speak to me now!''
Exactly.
And then you got, ''Call waiting, call waiting!''
Exactly. Oh...
So there we are, Edison's really useful
invention, the word hello.
Now how do you know...
lt's like, l don't know, it's like occupational
therapy in an old people's home,
it's just extraordinary.
- Oh, hello, what have we got here?
- ''Put Smarties tubes on cats legs,
''make them walk like a robot.''
(Stephen) Brilliant!
(Stephen) That is absolutely wonderful.
He's used all his letters.
- That is unbe-****ing-leivable!
- (Bill) No, that is good.
- lt makes sense.
- (Stephen) Yes.
- They would walk like a robot.
- lt doesn't make a lot of sense.
- lt's an idea, it's like giving people an idea.
- (Stephen) Yeah.
(Stephen) lt's got everything.
(Bill) lt's fantastic.
l don't know if you saw,
l was on Countdown last week.
- (Bill) lt puts this completely to shame.
- What?
But l can't even imagine
how you managed to do that.
No, l'm sure you can't, Alan.
lt does work, actually. lt's a lovely way to
spend an afternoon.
Yes.
lf you make them go down the stairs,
it's especially good.
lt would make a very good splint
for a broken cat's leg, wouldn't it?
Sometimes it's how they break their legs,
so you just leave it on.
(Bill) ''Hullo, the cat's broken its leg!''
''l say! Mother, have you got
any empty Smartie tubes?''
- Why's he putting a biro in the mouth?
- l don't know!
He's given up smoking, the bloke,
he needs a substitute.
lt is one of my proudest fancies,
that l am possibly the last ever
- Pipe Smoker of the Year.
- That's right, because l saw...
Because new Government rules have
meant it unlikely there'll be another one.
l saw a very interesting article, l think
you were in it, in the Chap Magazine,
and you were talking about pipe smokers,
and the fact that actually the act of having a
pipe does bestow a certain trustworthiness.
Out of two builders, you would choose
the builder who smokes a pipe.
They're kind of placid,
they don't look so edgy.
(Muttered explanation) Like that. Or like...
(Muttered explanation)
(Stephen) You're absolutely right.
Brilliant.
- You brought it alive in a little tableau.
- Thank you.
Now, our weekly report
from the frontiers of knowledge,
the round that those who ought to
know better call General lgnorance.
So, fingers on buzzers.
Name a dinosaur beginning with B.
- (Woman) Ahoy.
- Alan.
- Brontosaurus.
- Oh!
- (Alarm)
- Allany-wallany-wallany!
- Brontosaurus.
- ls a dinosaur.
- No, it isn't.
- Was a dinosaur.
Never was. Never was, misnomer,
there has never been a category
of dinosaur called brontosaurus.
Well, where does brontosaurus
come from, then?
Well, it's a complicated story.
l'll try and take you through it.
There was a skeleton that was once
labelled with the name brontosaurus,
but it turns out to have been
a misidentified apatosaurus.
The mistake arose in part because
the apatosaurus body was mixed up with
the skull of a camarasaurus.
What, you mean they just got
a load of bones in a crate?
Yeah. lt was the apatosaurus
that had been named first.
''Tiberius can look mad.'' Very good.
- (Tugboat hooter)
- Oh, hello.
Er, pterodactyl.
- A ''bteradactyl''. l've got one here.
- (Alan) Btyrannosaurus rex.
- This is the property of...
- (Alan) That's a brontosaurus!
- (Bill) A brachiosaurus.
- That's a brachiosaurus,
- five points for you, young master Bailey.
- Thank you very much.
- You've brought your toys in to class.
- lt belongs to young Luke Fletcher,
who's the son of one of our researchers
and script writers,
and we thank him very much for lending it.
Thank you, Luke.
- lsn't Barney a dinosaur?
- Barney, very good,
l'll give you two points for Barney.
Very good indeed.
Barney the purple dinosaur on the play mat.
You could have had barosaurus,
barapasaurus, bagaceratops, obviously.
We didn't want to go for
the obvious ones, did we?
Becklespinax, byronosaurus,
and my personal favourite,
which is bambiraptor.
- (Alan) Ahh. A savage baby deer.
- Bambiraptor.
Yes, it's a sweet idea. Bambiraptor.
All right, fingers again
on your mushroomoids.
How long can a chicken live
without its head?
- (All sirens and hooters sounding)
- Alan?
Er, 15 to 30 seconds.
- No.
- Does it have private medical cover?
- (Tugboat hooter)
- As long as it takes it to cross the road.
- The answer will surprise you.
- l know how long it takes
a live chicken to become a
Pret A Manger sandwich. Do you know that?
- No, tell.
- 55 minutes.
- (Stephen) Good Lord. That's fresh.
- lt is, isn't it?
- That is fresh.
- That is.
- That's a fresh sandwich.
- Don't you mean...''Hullo?''
- Not always, though.
- They run around for up to half an hour.
- No, you'll be amazed at the answer.
- 48 hours.
- ls it about a week or two?
- No, much longer.
(Bill) Seven years.
- Two years. Two years.
- (Bill) Two years?!
(Jo) Two years?!
(Alan) Oh, Stephen Fry.
No, no, it's famous.
l give you Mike, the headless chicken...
- Where is he? Mike?
- From the town of Fruita,
the town of Fruita in Colorado.
He was in Time magazine, Life magazine,
he travelled America.
- (Jo) ls it a really big six-foot chicken...
- No, no, no, that's...
- ..that's a bit like a bloke, you know?
- His.. No. His head was chopped off,
but enough jugular vein and brain stem
remained for him to stay alive.
And he trotted around.
There is still a website
- l promise you. You must check it out.
- l'm going to check that out.
Have a look, do.
He was fed with an eye dropper.
- Why didn't they just cook him?
- Well...
he lived a happy and famous life.
Where Colonel Sanders was after him
all the time.
ln Mike the headless chicken, the very first
thing to come up in the search engine
and it's ''Mike the headless chicken
for president''.
There you are, he is a cult.
There's a song, there's
a Mike the Headless Chicken song.
- Mike the Headless Chicken...
- (Bill) d Lived by the sea d
..a legend of the West.
No farmer's axe could stop his heart
a-beating in his breast.
Fingers on buzzers.
Who discovered penicillin?
- (All sirens and hooters sounding)
- Alan.
- Fleming.
- Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear!
- (Alarm)
- Obviously. l mean, he did.
- No, he didn't. No he didn't.
- He did! He did.
On mouldy bread, which you rub in your cuts
in the outback.
- No. Alexander Fleming...
- (Tugboat hooter)
- Yes?
- Was it Bob Fleming from the Fast Show?
lt wasn't... (Coughs) lt wasn't... (Coughs)
Bob Fleming, nor was it lan Fleming.
- (Alan) Alexander The Great.
- Nor was it any other Alexander, no.
l want you to think of young Arab stable boys
rubbing things into their inner thighs.
Mouldy bread.
Lumberjacks, when they cut their fingers,
mouldy bread.
Yeah...
Ernest Duchesne, who was a Frenchman,
who liked watching Arab stable boys
rubbing things into their inner thighs...
But how would we have known that?
..he noticed that what they rubbed,
to get rid of saddle sores,
was the mould on the side of the saddle.
The nomadic Bedouin of Arabia
had been doing this for a thousand years,
they were observed by Ernest Duchesne,
who wrote a very lengthy paper about it,
submitted it to the lnstitut Pasteur in Paris,
who didn't even acknowledge receipt of it,
and he died completely uncelebrated.
But it was only in 1949,
five years after Alexander Fleming,
that he was posthumously awarded
with rediscovering it.
So Alexander Fleming can only be said
really to have re-rediscovered it.
- What did he die of? Do you know?
- lronically, he died of TB,
which would have saved him
had he had penicillin.
- Ah.
- So it's just one of those sad things.
There we are.
Now, here are some pictures for us,
boys and girls, and ladies and gentlemen.
Four famous brainboxes.
Which is the odd one out?
We have, reading left to right,
Arthur Conan Doyle,
creator of Sherlock Holmes, of course,
Niels Bohr, Nobel Prize-winning physicist,
Dimitri Shostakovich, Russian composer,
and another Nobel Prize winner,
Albert Camus, the novelist.
- Who's the odd one out?
- (Tugboat hooter)
- Yes, Jo.
- There's only one with glasses on.
Camus is the only one smoking.
(Jo) No, there's two smoking.
ls he the only one
that played in goal for Algeria?
Ah, now you're in the right area,
not the only one.
He was the only one who played
for the University of Algiers.
Did Shostakovich play in goal
for Algeria as well?
No, he didn't. We'll forget Algeria.
They were all first-team goalkeepers,
- three of them were.
- Conan Doyle was the only one
- who believed in fairies.
- He also played in goal for Portsmouth.
- Did he?
- (Jo) Did he?
Yes, he did. He was a proper goalkeeper.
And his stance was like that.
Niels Bohr played in the
University of Copenhagen first team.
Albert Camus, as you rightly said,
was goalkeeper as well,
for University of Algiers, national.
Could that just be acknowledged,
that l got that?
- l'm giving you five points.
- Shostakovich was a centre forward.
- No, he wasn't.
- Banged in 40 a season
- with Spartak Moscow.
- No, he didn't.
- He was an official official.
- A cricketer.
- A referee.
- He was a qualified referee.
There he is, imposed onto the body of...
- He's got tubes going round his head.
- ..of Pierluigi Collina, l think.
Who knows a Shostakovich tune?
Bill, l bet you do.
l could give you one
of his goalkeeping moves.
- Even though he was a referee?
- Oh, sorry, yes.
(Drowned out by audience laughter)
That's all right, just keep up.
And so to the final whistle.
lnnnn...last place...
- (Bill) Any reason for that intonation?
- ..with minus 35...
Alan Davies.
- ln...
- (Applause)
- (Bill) Sterling effort.
- ln third place, with minus five,
it's Bill Bailey.
ln second place, with eight points,
it's Jo Brand.
But thanks to his way with an anagram,
in first place, with 15 points,
Jimmy Carr. Well, there we are.
And that's it from Ql, this week at least.
To Bill, Jimmy, Jo and Alan,
there's nothing left to say
but the words of the immortal Swedes,
the winner takes it all,
the loser standing small. Good night.
Hello, hello, hello, hello, hello,
and welcome to Ql.
Once again, we trawl the trackless ocean
of knowledge
only to find that everything smells fishy.
l'm joined on the seafront of understanding
tonight
by three winkle-pickers
and a cockle-warmer.
Bill Bailey.
Jimmy Carr.
Jo Brand.
And Alan Davies.
Now, this evening's Ql brain-teaser
is on your little podium beside you,
er, year 5 Ql module,
and the theme is letters, letters.
- Show the boys and girls.
- (Bill) Oh, right.
Throughout the show,
you have the time, we hope,
to make up some interesting phrases
from your letters.
- lt's to keep you occupied.
- (Alan) Work on them as we go?
- That's right. To keep you occupied.
- (Alan) So when do we show them?
- Just whenever we've got one good?
- lf you like, or towards the end.
- All right.
- (Stephen) l've got one too,
and l'll show you
something l came up with earlier.
- (Alan) l'm trying to make vagina.
- There, you see.
- (Jo) That'll do.
- That came from my letters, you see.
- (Alan) Quim!
- lt's a little play on the initials.
(Jimmy) You've already got quim.
(Alan) Jo's done quim.
- (Stephen) Have you?
- (Scattered applause)
- (Jo) Thank you. That's...
- You put the Ql in quim.
- Very good.
- That's the first time my quim's got
a smattering.
(Alan) Look at that!
''Vagina doom''. Oh, Lord!
Might get in the way of the game,
but do ask a question anyway.
l will do.
- Fox!
- (Stephen) Very nice. Yeah, yeah.
l think we get the idea.
You must be a blast by the fridge.
Erm, but first we ought to do
an equipment test.
- Jo, how do you go?
- (Tugboat hooter)
Very good. Jimmy goes...
(Ship's horn)
- Bill goes...
- (Ocean liner's horn)
- Alan goes...
- (Woman) Ahoy. Hello, sailor.
(Stephen) There you are. To please you.
Well, we're going to start with...
Hang on, hang on, hang on. Who was that?
- (Woman) Ahoy. Hello, sailor.
- Hell's bells!
Anyway, let's start firmly on dry land.
Question one. Would anyone like
some koala soup?
- (Ship's horn)
- Jimmy.
- Presumably a hungry koala.
- Of course, it would be a hungry koala,
it would be a hungry baby koala,
because koalas are the only animals
to make what is called a soup or pap.
(Alan) What, in a bowl?
(Stephen) Mmm...
They make it in the bowl of their body
and it comes out of their...?
- Mouth?
- (Jo) Arse.
- Their bottom, yes, their arse.
- Do l get a point for that?
- You get a point for knowing arse, yes.
- Thank you.
(Jimmy) They make soup with their arse?
They make soup for their young
with their arse.
- l mean, that's careless parenting, isn't it?
- Well...
(Jo) l'd just quite like to ask,
why haven't they had that
on the bush-tucker trial in l'm A Celebrity?
A very good question.
They bring a koala out and hold it over you,
and go, ''Here's your koala soup, sir.''
(Squeezing noises)
lt lends a horrible new meaning
to ''Waiter, there's a hair in my soup.''
- A horrible prospect.
- There's a koala there!
- There you are.
- They're not koala bears, they're not bears.
- Well done. They're not bears, are they?
- They're marsupials.
Yes, what are they most closely related to?
- Kangaroos, other marsupials.
- (Bill) Fish.
- A wombat, in fact.
- A wombat.
- (Jimmy) Are they brothers and sisters?
- Wombats don't have soup,
- they have cubical faeces, oddly.
- Do they?
- Yes. Little dice.
- (Alan) Cubicular?
- Cubical.
- He can't get that leaf down, look,
he's been chewing it for ten minutes.
Well, no, isn't that because he's eating
the leaves of the eucalyptus tree...
- He is indeed.
- Which acts as a powerful hallucinogen
on the koala,
so a lot of the time they're just saying,
''Yeah, whoooaah,
what did l come up here for?''
ls that how they got the idea of
eating things out of their bums?
Well, it's an analgesic,
rather than a hallucinogen.
- (Bill) l've always got those two mixed up.
- They're sort of numb. A painkiller.
- A painkiller.
- (Alan) lt's poisonous.
They have an incredibly long intestine,
about a mile long,
to digest all that poison.
lt would kill a human.
Yes, what it is,
it's really quite interesting, is -
and that's what we're here for,
to be quite interesting -
they can tell, which scientists can't,
the age of a eucalyptus leaf.
lt has to be between a year and 18 months.
lf it's any younger,
it has no value whatsoever to them.
- They sleep for 20 to 22 hours a day.
- (Stephen) 22 hours a day.
l'm going to give you two points for that,
you're absolutely right.
l won a night out with a koala.
- Did you?
- Yeah, we were out all night.
- We went to a restaurant, then to a club.
- What did you have, soup of the day?
And then...
What do they drink?
What did your koala drink?
Beck's.
No, they don't drink.
ln the Dharuk language,
koala means ''no water''.
But the main thing we have to remember
about koala bears is that they are not bears.
So that leads us to where do bears
do their business in the winter?
- (Woman) Ahoy.
- ln the woods.
- ln the woods, did you say?
- (Alarm)
l'm afraid it is, that's minus 20 points,
Alan Davies.
- 20? You ****.
- Well, yes, but...
- (Ship's horn)
- Yes, Jimmy?
ls it the Cayman lslands, for tax purposes?
No. The fact is,
for the seven months of the year
that they're hibernating,
bears do not either urinate or defecate.
They must be busting to go
when they get up.
They have a very clever little device.
Firstly they recycle the urea as protein
in the body, so they don't need to pee,
and their body makes a little thing
called a tappet,
which is composed of sort of faeces
and hair and various other things,
and it's a sort of butt plug
that seals up their anus for the winter.
(Jo) Are they available in the shops yet?
She bears give birth
when they're hibernating.
- When they're asleep?
- Well, they sort of wake up, rather briefly,
- to give birth.
- ''Oh, Jesus.''
And apparently
they forget about it afterwards,
they go straight back to sleep again.
And they can give birth to up to four cubs,
from four different fathers.
Sounds like the royal family, doesn't it?
(Jimmy) Do they live on an estate,
by any chance?
Did you just say ''do they live on an estate''?
(Jimmy) Well, sounds like it, doesn't it?
(Bill) What, white-trash bears?
Yeah. They do sound
a little bit white-trash to me.
(Bill) Yeah.
(Stephen) So, now...
bear in your bathroom,
what shouldn't you squeeze?
- (Alan) Toothpaste.
- Yes!
- lt will make it crazy with desire.
- Crazy with desire, lust.
A sort of lust for the toothpaste.
You'd be safer
carrying a freshly butchered elk leg,
in terms of it would just...
There was a recent...
What, in the bathroom?
Marks & Spencer's
six butchered elk legs?
For some reason,
bears go crazy for toothpaste.
- (Bill) Why?
- They trashed a tourist camp in the Arctic,
some polar bears, recently.
But toothpaste does something
to dogs as well, gets them going.
You're absolutely right.
So even though they're close relations,
there are dog toothpastes
to look after their teeth,
but they're flavoured in
all kinds of odd ways.
- Peanut butter, beef, things like that.
- Cat.
- (Bill) Trouser leg.
- So there you are.
Don't go round with toothpaste near a bear.
What has huge teeth
and only one facial expression?
- (Ocean liner's horn)
- Janet Street-Porter.
- (Alan) lt's Janet Street-Porter!
- (Alarm)
Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.
Oh dear, oh dear.
We've got that written up somewhere.
Oh, l knew it was, l took a fall,
but it was worth it.
- No, it's an animal.
- (Bill) Oh.
- Huge teeth and one facial expression?
- Yeah.
A shark that's just had quite a bad stroke.
(Stephen) On both sides of the brain.
All down one side,
so it swims in a circle like that.
- Or a Botox panther.
- That would do it.
That would qualify.
(Alan) What about a beaver?
Beavers have big teeth
and they don't vary their face much.
This has the biggest teeth
of any mammal actually.
lt's recently been discovered to be a bear.
lt was thought for many years to be
a member of the racoon family,
but it's not, it's a member of the bear family.
lt's a giant panda.
And the giant panda's teeth are
so enormous, and it constricts its face,
which is as stiff as a board.
You can see one there, giant panda.
lt was only in 1996 it was discovered
to be a bear.
lt was a cat in a bear suit.
And this is where science goes very odd,
because it was designated a carnivore,
- although everybody knows it only eats...
- (Alan) lt doesn't eat meat.
So, most living pandas
are actually vegetarian, by choice.
- Yes.
- They should be eating meat.
They eat bamboo, as we know,
bamboo shoots.
And they have to do that
for 12 hours a day,
because it's so lacking
in any nutritive quality.
So therefore, they're the only bears
that don't hibernate,
because they can't afford it,
sort of calorifically.
Why are they so cute?
They are cute, aren't they?
They're absolutely adorable.
You know, aesthetically, what's going on
there that makes it so, is it....
Look at the eyes, they're just piss-holes
in the snow, aren't they?
Have they ever been sort of successfully
bred with other bears?
Why are they so unlibidinous?
Well, l don't know.
Do you want to know about their penises?
Are they those barbed ones
that lock in and don't come out again?
- No, they point backwards.
- They point backwards? lnto themselves?
- Which may be...
- So they're ejaculating up into themselves?
''Oh, sorry love.''
Hence the old joke about
eats, shoots and leaves, l suppose.
But it's, er, yeah, l don't know
whether that is the reason.
ln-growing genitals,
that won't help breeding.
- lt won't help with breeding, will it?
- That's obviously...
Surely that must be such a turn-off.
''Do you fancy a...?''
''No, not really, no.
l really don't fancy it at all.''
- ''lsn't my species.''
- What can you tell me about bamboo?
(Man) Ahoy!
- (Stephen) Alan?
- Hang on.
You've attracted someone else.
ln Hong Kong, and probably elsewhere
in Southeast Asia,
- they use bamboo as scaffolding.
- You're quite right.
lt's incredibly lightweight,
and incredibly, extraordinarily strong.
And they use it over vast buildings.
You're right, it has a tensile strength
greater than steel.
ln fact, over 5,000 uses of bamboo
have been recorded, including
- desalination uses, diesel fuel.
- Tarzan uses it
- for swimming away from people.
- (Stephen) Exactly right, yes.
(Stephen) Breathing underwater.
As a cane to give people
a damn good thrashing.
(Alan) Have you been caned?
Bamboo caned?
Certainly, at prep school,
l was caned almost daily.
Two uses of bamboo cane.
- And that was just by yourself!
- Never did me any harm!
Are we going through all 5,000 uses?
- (Alan) Yeah.
- No, we're not, no.
lt grows incredibly fast.
Some species grow up to four foot a day.
You can actually watch it grow.
Quite astonishing.
- lt was used as a torture by the Chinese.
- Four foot a day?
- Yes.
- (Jo) A torture in the sense that
they would make someone sit on it
while it's growing?
And it would be a torture, yes.
They'd tie you down over a bamboo cane
and it would grow into you?
Yes. But what is bamboo?
- What sort of...?
- lt's a plant.
Which is used for growing runner beans,
feeding pandas.
- What class of plant?
- (Jo) A tree.
- (Alan) Bark.
- No, it's a grass.
- lt's a type of a grass.
- lt is a type of a grass. Well done.
Well done.
They flower... Some of them flower only...
- You know, it takes them 120 years.
- (Jo) Well done!
- Bill used to have a cactus.
- Yep.
A huge cactus, a huge cactus thing
that was all knobbly,
and it flowered, how often?
Once every 25 years?
- Once every 25 years.
- And he'd only had it two weeks
- and it flowered.
- Yeah.
(Stephen) Ah, you are a blessed man.
A blessed man.
- l know. We took it....
- (Alan) l remember.
We didn't take it off an old couple,
we bought it off an old couple.
- You left them laying in the passage.
- You swine!
Gareth, quick, get it away,
they're coming round. Quick!
''You bastards,
it's gonna flower any minute!''
(Stephen) ''We've waited 23 years!''
And speaking of bamboo,
how many Edisons does it take
to change a light bulb?
- (Tugboat hooter)
- Yes, Jo.
(Stephen) Thank you. Very good.
Great joy. Erm, well,
the answer's very peculiar.
He had a belief that in the human mind
there were little people,
- 15 to 20.
- Oh, for God's sake.
- He really believed that.
- He did not.
And he believed when you die
they move into someone else.
When you were a psychiatric nurse,
if someone came in to you and said,
''l believe there are little people
living in me,'' what would you do?
Punch them to the ground.
Very good.
What a loss to the profession you were.
Yeah. Edison did use bamboo as a
filament...
- (Bill) Did he?
- ..in his light bulb.
(Stephen) Very good, very good.
Middle Earth tabloids.
So Edison believed there were little people
in a part of the brain called
the convolutions of Broca
where memory, amongst other things,
was housed.
And he believed that this is where
15 tiny little people were.
l'm sorry, the 15 tiny little people,
did they have 15 tiny little people in them?
That's a very good question.
l don't think Edison had got that far.
Edison, you know, was reckoned to be
one of the great inventors,
and there are 1, 093 patents
filed to his name.
What did he invent?
l'm so ashamed, l don't know anything
he invented. l thought the light bulb.
- No, that's a...
- They give off more heat than light.
The first light bulb was actually
a long-forgotten German
- called Walter Globel.
- (Jo) Does Alan not get a point for that?
- For what, gives off more heat than light?
- Yes.
- (Bill) That was a guess, though, wasn't it?
- No, it was not a guess.
(Man) Hello, sailor!
l learnt that in physics.
(Jo) What, ''hello, sailor''?
No, the point about Edison,
which is quite interesting,
- l think is that he was like a...
- (Alan) Typewriter!
- He developed the typewriter.
- (Jo) Phonograph.
- (Alan) He developed the typewriter.
- The phonograph is, again, he is credited
with inventing the phonograph.
But one thing Edison did invent,
for a hundred per cent genuine
Edison invention
that we use every day probably, most of us.
- (Jimmy) ls it nasal hair clippers?
- No, it's not even an object.
- (Jo) lt's not an object?
- No.
So it's a way of being. Sarcasm.
- Yeah, he invented sarcasm!
- Yeah!
Sure! Oh, yeah!
Erm, it's actually a word.
- (Alan) Really?
- Yeah.
- (Jo) ls it Zugswang?
- No.
The Germans have that,
but very good for remembering Zugswang.
- (Jimmy) l don't know use that every day.
- You wouldn't use Zugswang every day
- unless you're a chess player.
- l've used it four times today.
- (Stephen) Yeah.
- Well, you're fine till Thursday, then.
(Alan) Crikey.
(Bill) Crikey?
No, not crikey, no. lt's...
Floccinaucinihilipilification.
He didn't invent that word,
but well done for knowing it. Which means?
The act of assessing something
as worthless.
- Very correct, yeah.
- Ooh!
The word, it's a simple word of greeting.
- Hello.
- That's the word.
- He invented hello?
- He invented hello.
H-E-L-L-O.
The word that existed before is ''hullo'',
H-U-L-L-O,
which never meant a greeting,
it just meant expression of surprise.
''Hullo, what have we got here?
Hullo, what's this?''
- We still use it in that sense.
- Do we?
''Hullo, what's that?'' Don't we, Bill?
Yes, when we live our life
like 1950s detective films, yes.
l often go to my fridge,
''Hello, we're out of milk.''
''l say, Mother, where's the milk?''
You beast, you beast, you utter, utter beast!
When they went round
Jeffrey Dahmer's house,
and they found a human head in the fridge,
they went, '''Ello!''
- Maybe just a little camp, l think.
- ls it camp?
- ''Ooh, 'ello.''
- (Alan) '''Ello.''
Not like that!
That's hello as a greeting,
you say, ''Hello, dear. Hello, sailor.''
- No, l think it's a bit of surprise as well.
- ''Ooh, 'ello.''
- There's more surprise than greeting.
- lt's been appropriated by the gays
- as one of those... (Tuts) ''Ooh, 'ello.''
- Yeah, anyway, anyway.
- (Woman) Ahoy, sailor. Ahoy, sailor.
- There you are.
- But originally it was the word ''halloo''.
- 'Ello. Ooh, 'ello.
Originally... All right, very good.
(Jimmy) There was a story about hello,
though.
There was a competition
in the Evening Standard and they said,
we want to find out what's the thing
that you're going to say
when you answer the phone.
And they had a competition, people voted
on it, and hello came out number one.
And what came second was ''ahoy hoy''.
Which if you watch the Simpsons
is how Mr Burns answers the phone.
(Stephen) Yes, absolutely.
Actually, what it is,
is that was Alexander Graham Bell's
favoured method of answering the phone,
was to go ''ahoy hoy''.
- Which l still use.
- Do you? Good for you.
Whereas l get mocked
for using ''hullo'', like that.
(Bill) Not on the phone,
that's perfectly acceptable.
(Stephen) No... But on the...
- (Jimmy) lt's when smoking a pipe...
- No, it's surprise.
- (Stephen) ''Hullo, what's going on here?''
- ''Good Lord!''
Stephen, what was the last thing
that made you go ''Hullo!''?
- lt was a genital wart.
- Was it a genital... l knew!
l knew it would be something to do
with genitals. l knew it! You see?
''Hello'' happened to be one of Edison's
favourite words.
When he first recorded sound,
he shouted, ''Halloo!''
which is actually a cry from the hunting field,
of ''yoo-halloo''.
So ''halloo'' was the first recorded word.
And he reckoned, Edison,
that it sounded very clear.
He discovered this while testing
Alexander Graham Bell's prototype.
So the first written use of hello, spelt with
an E, is in a letter from Edison in 1887,
and Alexander Graham Bell preferred
''ahoy, ahoy''.
ln our house, if you ring my dad,
he answers the phone like that.
''What?''
''Yes.'' Like that.
Well, a telephone is
a fantastically rude thing.
lt's like going, ''Speak to me now,
speak to me now, speak to me now!''
lf you went into someone's office
and banged on their desk and said,
''l will make a noise until you speak to me,''
it would be considered unbelievably rude.
Yes, and of course that's what they had
before the telephone, wasn't it?
- (Alan) ''Give it to me now!''
- ''Speak to me now!''
Exactly.
And then you got, ''Call waiting, call waiting!''
Exactly. Oh...
So there we are, Edison's really useful
invention, the word hello.
Now how do you know...
lt's like, l don't know, it's like occupational
therapy in an old people's home,
it's just extraordinary.
- Oh, hello, what have we got here?
- ''Put Smarties tubes on cats legs,
''make them walk like a robot.''
(Stephen) Brilliant!
(Stephen) That is absolutely wonderful.
He's used all his letters.
- That is unbe-****ing-leivable!
- (Bill) No, that is good.
- lt makes sense.
- (Stephen) Yes.
- They would walk like a robot.
- lt doesn't make a lot of sense.
- lt's an idea, it's like giving people an idea.
- (Stephen) Yeah.
(Stephen) lt's got everything.
(Bill) lt's fantastic.
l don't know if you saw,
l was on Countdown last week.
- (Bill) lt puts this completely to shame.
- What?
But l can't even imagine
how you managed to do that.
No, l'm sure you can't, Alan.
lt does work, actually. lt's a lovely way to
spend an afternoon.
Yes.
lf you make them go down the stairs,
it's especially good.
lt would make a very good splint
for a broken cat's leg, wouldn't it?
Sometimes it's how they break their legs,
so you just leave it on.
(Bill) ''Hullo, the cat's broken its leg!''
''l say! Mother, have you got
any empty Smartie tubes?''
- Why's he putting a biro in the mouth?
- l don't know!
He's given up smoking, the bloke,
he needs a substitute.
lt is one of my proudest fancies,
that l am possibly the last ever
- Pipe Smoker of the Year.
- That's right, because l saw...
Because new Government rules have
meant it unlikely there'll be another one.
l saw a very interesting article, l think
you were in it, in the Chap Magazine,
and you were talking about pipe smokers,
and the fact that actually the act of having a
pipe does bestow a certain trustworthiness.
Out of two builders, you would choose
the builder who smokes a pipe.
They're kind of placid,
they don't look so edgy.
(Muttered explanation) Like that. Or like...
(Muttered explanation)
(Stephen) You're absolutely right.
Brilliant.
- You brought it alive in a little tableau.
- Thank you.
Now, our weekly report
from the frontiers of knowledge,
the round that those who ought to
know better call General lgnorance.
So, fingers on buzzers.
Name a dinosaur beginning with B.
- (Woman) Ahoy.
- Alan.
- Brontosaurus.
- Oh!
- (Alarm)
- Allany-wallany-wallany!
- Brontosaurus.
- ls a dinosaur.
- No, it isn't.
- Was a dinosaur.
Never was. Never was, misnomer,
there has never been a category
of dinosaur called brontosaurus.
Well, where does brontosaurus
come from, then?
Well, it's a complicated story.
l'll try and take you through it.
There was a skeleton that was once
labelled with the name brontosaurus,
but it turns out to have been
a misidentified apatosaurus.
The mistake arose in part because
the apatosaurus body was mixed up with
the skull of a camarasaurus.
What, you mean they just got
a load of bones in a crate?
Yeah. lt was the apatosaurus
that had been named first.
''Tiberius can look mad.'' Very good.
- (Tugboat hooter)
- Oh, hello.
Er, pterodactyl.
- A ''bteradactyl''. l've got one here.
- (Alan) Btyrannosaurus rex.
- This is the property of...
- (Alan) That's a brontosaurus!
- (Bill) A brachiosaurus.
- That's a brachiosaurus,
- five points for you, young master Bailey.
- Thank you very much.
- You've brought your toys in to class.
- lt belongs to young Luke Fletcher,
who's the son of one of our researchers
and script writers,
and we thank him very much for lending it.
Thank you, Luke.
- lsn't Barney a dinosaur?
- Barney, very good,
l'll give you two points for Barney.
Very good indeed.
Barney the purple dinosaur on the play mat.
You could have had barosaurus,
barapasaurus, bagaceratops, obviously.
We didn't want to go for
the obvious ones, did we?
Becklespinax, byronosaurus,
and my personal favourite,
which is bambiraptor.
- (Alan) Ahh. A savage baby deer.
- Bambiraptor.
Yes, it's a sweet idea. Bambiraptor.
All right, fingers again
on your mushroomoids.
How long can a chicken live
without its head?
- (All sirens and hooters sounding)
- Alan?
Er, 15 to 30 seconds.
- No.
- Does it have private medical cover?
- (Tugboat hooter)
- As long as it takes it to cross the road.
- The answer will surprise you.
- l know how long it takes
a live chicken to become a
Pret A Manger sandwich. Do you know that?
- No, tell.
- 55 minutes.
- (Stephen) Good Lord. That's fresh.
- lt is, isn't it?
- That is fresh.
- That is.
- That's a fresh sandwich.
- Don't you mean...''Hullo?''
- Not always, though.
- They run around for up to half an hour.
- No, you'll be amazed at the answer.
- 48 hours.
- ls it about a week or two?
- No, much longer.
(Bill) Seven years.
- Two years. Two years.
- (Bill) Two years?!
(Jo) Two years?!
(Alan) Oh, Stephen Fry.
No, no, it's famous.
l give you Mike, the headless chicken...
- Where is he? Mike?
- From the town of Fruita,
the town of Fruita in Colorado.
He was in Time magazine, Life magazine,
he travelled America.
- (Jo) ls it a really big six-foot chicken...
- No, no, no, that's...
- ..that's a bit like a bloke, you know?
- His.. No. His head was chopped off,
but enough jugular vein and brain stem
remained for him to stay alive.
And he trotted around.
There is still a website
- l promise you. You must check it out.
- l'm going to check that out.
Have a look, do.
He was fed with an eye dropper.
- Why didn't they just cook him?
- Well...
he lived a happy and famous life.
Where Colonel Sanders was after him
all the time.
ln Mike the headless chicken, the very first
thing to come up in the search engine
and it's ''Mike the headless chicken
for president''.
There you are, he is a cult.
There's a song, there's
a Mike the Headless Chicken song.
- Mike the Headless Chicken...
- (Bill) d Lived by the sea d
..a legend of the West.
No farmer's axe could stop his heart
a-beating in his breast.
Fingers on buzzers.
Who discovered penicillin?
- (All sirens and hooters sounding)
- Alan.
- Fleming.
- Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear!
- (Alarm)
- Obviously. l mean, he did.
- No, he didn't. No he didn't.
- He did! He did.
On mouldy bread, which you rub in your cuts
in the outback.
- No. Alexander Fleming...
- (Tugboat hooter)
- Yes?
- Was it Bob Fleming from the Fast Show?
lt wasn't... (Coughs) lt wasn't... (Coughs)
Bob Fleming, nor was it lan Fleming.
- (Alan) Alexander The Great.
- Nor was it any other Alexander, no.
l want you to think of young Arab stable boys
rubbing things into their inner thighs.
Mouldy bread.
Lumberjacks, when they cut their fingers,
mouldy bread.
Yeah...
Ernest Duchesne, who was a Frenchman,
who liked watching Arab stable boys
rubbing things into their inner thighs...
But how would we have known that?
..he noticed that what they rubbed,
to get rid of saddle sores,
was the mould on the side of the saddle.
The nomadic Bedouin of Arabia
had been doing this for a thousand years,
they were observed by Ernest Duchesne,
who wrote a very lengthy paper about it,
submitted it to the lnstitut Pasteur in Paris,
who didn't even acknowledge receipt of it,
and he died completely uncelebrated.
But it was only in 1949,
five years after Alexander Fleming,
that he was posthumously awarded
with rediscovering it.
So Alexander Fleming can only be said
really to have re-rediscovered it.
- What did he die of? Do you know?
- lronically, he died of TB,
which would have saved him
had he had penicillin.
- Ah.
- So it's just one of those sad things.
There we are.
Now, here are some pictures for us,
boys and girls, and ladies and gentlemen.
Four famous brainboxes.
Which is the odd one out?
We have, reading left to right,
Arthur Conan Doyle,
creator of Sherlock Holmes, of course,
Niels Bohr, Nobel Prize-winning physicist,
Dimitri Shostakovich, Russian composer,
and another Nobel Prize winner,
Albert Camus, the novelist.
- Who's the odd one out?
- (Tugboat hooter)
- Yes, Jo.
- There's only one with glasses on.
Camus is the only one smoking.
(Jo) No, there's two smoking.
ls he the only one
that played in goal for Algeria?
Ah, now you're in the right area,
not the only one.
He was the only one who played
for the University of Algiers.
Did Shostakovich play in goal
for Algeria as well?
No, he didn't. We'll forget Algeria.
They were all first-team goalkeepers,
- three of them were.
- Conan Doyle was the only one
- who believed in fairies.
- He also played in goal for Portsmouth.
- Did he?
- (Jo) Did he?
Yes, he did. He was a proper goalkeeper.
And his stance was like that.
Niels Bohr played in the
University of Copenhagen first team.
Albert Camus, as you rightly said,
was goalkeeper as well,
for University of Algiers, national.
Could that just be acknowledged,
that l got that?
- l'm giving you five points.
- Shostakovich was a centre forward.
- No, he wasn't.
- Banged in 40 a season
- with Spartak Moscow.
- No, he didn't.
- He was an official official.
- A cricketer.
- A referee.
- He was a qualified referee.
There he is, imposed onto the body of...
- He's got tubes going round his head.
- ..of Pierluigi Collina, l think.
Who knows a Shostakovich tune?
Bill, l bet you do.
l could give you one
of his goalkeeping moves.
- Even though he was a referee?
- Oh, sorry, yes.
(Drowned out by audience laughter)
That's all right, just keep up.
And so to the final whistle.
lnnnn...last place...
- (Bill) Any reason for that intonation?
- ..with minus 35...
Alan Davies.
- ln...
- (Applause)
- (Bill) Sterling effort.
- ln third place, with minus five,
it's Bill Bailey.
ln second place, with eight points,
it's Jo Brand.
But thanks to his way with an anagram,
in first place, with 15 points,
Jimmy Carr. Well, there we are.
And that's it from Ql, this week at least.
To Bill, Jimmy, Jo and Alan,
there's nothing left to say
but the words of the immortal Swedes,
the winner takes it all,
the loser standing small. Good night.