QI (2003–…): Season 2, Episode 7 - Biscuits - full transcript

(Theme music)

(Applause)

Well...hello, hello, hello, hello,
and welcome to QI,

the show that knows what's what
like I know the back of my onions.

So let's meet
tonight's men amongst men.

We have Rich Hall...
(Applause)

..Arthur Smith...

..Dara O'Briain, and Alan Davies.
(Applause)

Welcome one, welcome all.

Let's hear your manly sounds, please,
gentlemen. Rich goes...

(Handsaw cuts through wood)



..and Arthur...
(Nail is hammered)

..and Dara...
(Fierce Maori war cry)

..and Alan.
(Generic mobile phone ringtone)

So let's begin, with question one,
and that's for Rich.

What would you say
if I said to you

that the British Empire
was built of diarrhoea?

(Laughter)

I'd say you were full of shit.

Any word that ends in '-rea'
is just bad news, isn't it?

Diarrhoea...pyorrhea...
gonorrhoea...

- ..North Korea.
- North Korea. (Laughs)

- What about Chris Rea?
- Yeah.

To be fair, though,
speaking as someone, obviously,

whose antecedents were members
of the British Empire themselves -



uh, happily, of course -

diarrhoea was very much
the least of our problems.

while the English
were in the country.

Really, we'd have been glad
of a bit of diarrhoea.

I mean, there's very few
recorded conversations

between Irish peasants in the 1840s

that went,
'Paddy, you're looking very thin.'

'I know. The food is just
running through me at the moment.'

'This spicy British food
doesn't appeal to me at all.'

Well, yeah. Absolutely.

Well, of course,
the question is oddly framed,

because, actually,
the British Empire came about

because the British

were the first imperial power to
overcome the problem of diarrhoea.

Up until the 18th century,

almost every invading army
anywhere in the world

was laid low by diarrhoea -
particularly the French.

They kept having excrement
so close to their food, if not on it,

and it was not understood
that this was a bad idea.

- It's not a bad idea, Stephen.
- Isn't it?

- No, no, no.
- Someone's been leading me up.

I think you'll find
more faeces with your food

actually improves your health.

- (Silence)
- I've overstated it a touch.

I think you might have done.
(Laughter)

But I do think it's generally agreed
that children don't eat enough...

..you know...bad things, in a way.

Everything's sanitised,

and their bodies aren't used to it

when they have to
fight off infections.

I think it's absolutely right.

If everyone
lives in a plastic bubble,

the moment the bubble is removed,

they die of something or other
very fast.

Particularly if the bubble
is underwater, for example.

Exactly!

There's a very sudden pressure
change

that you just can't deal with
in that situation.

So the notion of an army
marching on its stomach

is more that
the army tends to march

on the contents of
a preceding soldier's stomach,

- as they were walking along.
- Absolutely.

There were
two eminent British figures,

one called Pringle,
who did it for the army,

another one called Lind,
who did it for the navy...

Presumably, Pringle had
a small moustache, just like that.

- Latrines. We invented latrines.
- Well, that's right.

But that's a French word.

- I know! - 'Latrine' must have been
French for 'kitchen' then.

Well, you're almost right. I mean,
the French did extraordinary things.

I mean, instead of
burying their bodies at sea,

they buried them
actually in the ship...

- In the ship?
- ..in the bilge part.

- The bottom, the ballast part.
- Brilliant idea.- Yeah.

- Except imagine the stench!
- Probably improved matters, though.

I remember reading
that on the approach to Moscow,

that the French soldiers

used to sleep inside the
dead bodies of horses at night...

- Wow
- ..'cause, obviously, it's warm.

So, I mean, that's not
a comfortable night, is it?

Even Travelodge
is better than that, you know?

Yes - for the wrong reasons, Lind
and Pringle thought the right thing.

In other words, they believed
that disease was all about smell,

and if something smelt bad,
you would be ill.

We had a maths teacher at school
who smelt disgusting.

Pringle laid down rules for the army

about how far faeces, and everything
to do with it, should be from food.

And, as a result, we had far less
diarrhoea, far less enteric fever

than any other army around the world.

He also said, for the navy,
that they should eat lemons,

because of scurvy - vitamins
weren't known about until 1912.

But, because almost every country
that grew lemons hated Britain,

the only countries
we could get anything close to it

was the Caribbean,
where there were limes,

which are actually half as effective.

And hence, British, of course,
were called 'limeys',

where we should, really,
have been called 'lemonies'.

Yeah.

Because the navy did realise
that lemons were twice as effective.

Vitamin C tablets, obviously,
seem very effective.

Multi-vitamins. MultiVits.
If they'd had a few of them...

I mean, if you'd just gone to Boots,
really, at the start of the trip...

You know, they say that the wheel
is the greatest invention ever.

But I think it's probably
the second wheel, because...

(Laughter)

(Applause)
Very good.

Have you ever
seen a guy on a unicycle?

What an asshole.

In the Battle of El Alamein,

there's a strong historical argument
that it was won

because more than 50% of the German
Army in North Africa at the time

had diarrhoea,

and Rommel himself was in hospital

on the first day of the Battle
of El Alamein, with the squits.

My father, actually,
was genuinely at El Alamein,

and he was the only soldier,
according to him,

who didn't have the runs.

And he was actually constipated.

- That's what he said.
- Just bloody-minded, is he?

This was one of his great lines -

'I had to dig it out with a stick.'

(Laughter)

And it is to such great men
that we owe our freedom,

and we thank them. There you are.

That's really
put me off going to war.

I was alright
with the killing, and the mayhem,

- but the shits...
- Exactly.

You don't see it in war films,

and yet it is something that
absolutely drives humans everywhere.

I mean, it is...it's a thing
we do all the time.

Do you know, I feel, though,
that in many ways,

- we've pretty well done diarrhoea.
- I think we have.

We're ready to move on, in fact.

We'll move on
to a question for Dara.

Now, what begins with B...

I thought
we were done with diarrhoea.

You...(Chuckles). Alright.

It is nearly an anagram, your name,
isn't it?

Well,
it's quite possibly an anagram,

- but what anagram...?
- For diarrhoea.

No, it's not. There's only
four letters in my name.

(Laughter)

It's an anagram
of the great drama school, RADA.

That's what it's an anagram of.

No, no. With all the rest of it,
there's an O, isn't there?

There's an O, yeah.
There's a B, there's an N.

As if my name is, roughly,
'NB Diarrhoea.'

- Yes. 'Da-ra'.
- Da-ra!- Da-ra!

So, Dara, what begins with a B,
and is illegal in Turkmenistan?

Begins with a B,
and is illegal in Turkmenistan?

- Um...
- Begins with a B, yes.

Well, presumably a plague of bees
would be...

Would begin with one bee.

There is a town in Turkmenistan
called Mary.

- Mary's an odd name for a town.
- Is there a Mary there?

- There is a Mary, yeah.
- Yeah.

Oh, my God. You're absolutely right.

There's also
a large region called Mary, as well,

- in Turkmenistan.
- Mary, Mary.

And there's
a little town called Quite Contrary.

- Buggery? Is it buggery?
- It's not.

Well, actually, as far as I know, it
may be illegal, buggery, in...

- Bestiality?
- No. It's something weird. I mean...

- Bear-baiting? Ballet?
- Ballet is the right answer.

- Is it?!
- Ballet is illegal.

- Illegal?! - In a country that used to
be part of the Soviet Union.

- 'Arrest that man. That man...'
- Exactly, exactly.

- Is that a man?
- It could be a man.

There is a very, very odd man
indeed, called Saparmurat Niyazov,

who is the head of this country,
Turkmenistan.

- And there he is.
- Is he from Mary?

- He doesn't look like he is.
- No, he's not.

He's actually from Ashgabat,
which is the capital.

(Guttural) Ashgabad!

And he is one of
the oddest world leaders there is.

- 'You! Ballerina!'
- Yeah, exactly.

- In 2001...
- 'No, no!'

Not only that, he's named January
after himself, so...

His face appears
on millions of yoghurt pots.

If you buy yoghurt pots
in Turkmenistan,

his face will be on it.

- What's the point of that?
- Well, exactly.

I mean, power has gone to his head.

He looks like
a face that would curdle milk.

He does! That's probably right.

Is it on the inside
of the yoghurt pot, his face?

- At the bottom...
- Scoop, scoop.

What happens if you are caught
performing ballet? You're arrested?

Presumably, you would be arrested.

Even for a small plie?

Are there signs, like, with tutus,
and big Xs through them?

(Laughs) 'No ballet here.'

There must be some kind of
underground ballet-dancing clubs.

- Absolutely.
- Yeah - Ballet Club, with Brad Pitt.

Yeah. (Laughs)

Well, he also fired 15,000 nurses
in Turkmenistan, Niyazov,

and replaced them
with army conscripts.

There's something odd about him.

This sounds like
a place where Bush needs to go in,

and kick some more arse.

(Laughter)

Now it's time
for a question for Arthur.

What's quite interesting
about digestive biscuits?

Well, it's a hardworking biscuit,
the digestive, you know.

You put cheese on it,
and, as it goes, chocolate on it.

It's a base for cheesecake.

It really is
a sort of Renaissance biscuit.

- It is!
- It's a great dunker.

- Yeah. - It's a very,
very hardworking biscuit.

But have you ever noticed

that there is a slightly fishy taste
about a digestive?

Is there?
What have you been dunking them in?

- Good heavens. - Or
who have you been dunking them in?

Good Lord!

We're in the world of misnomers -
things that are wrongly called.

Do they give you wind?

They were called 'digestives'

because they were supposed to be
an anti-flatulent biscuit,

when they were designed
in the 19th century.

- You're joking!
- No! That's right.

'You'd better have one of these.'
'Sorry.'

Maybe you stuffed it up,
I don't know.

I'd like to see an advert
for this flatulence biscuit.

(Mimics fart)
'Hey, try a digestive!'

We're heading right back down
the diarrhoea highway here.

Welcome to the United Kingdom,
Mr Hall.

The fact is,
they are not aids to digestion.

In America, it is illegal
to call them 'digestives'.

Of course, in America...do you know
what we're talking about?

- Cookies.
- Yeah, yeah.- Yes.

That's quite right...which is from
the Dutch - 'koek', meaning a cake,

- which is why you call them 'cookies'.
- Right.

'Cause what you call a biscuit,

it's more like what we would
call a scone-y thing.

You have biscuits and gravy.

Explain to the ladies and gentlemen
what that is.

Oh, traveller from an arcane land.

(Laughter)
Yes!

What...do...your people...eat?!

(Laughter, applause)

Everything!

No, biscuits...biscuits
are made from self-rising flour,

and then they just
slop gravy over it,

and it
just takes up room on the plate.

Right. And it's a breakfast-y thing,
or a lunch-y thing, or...?

Uh, depends on
what trailer park you live in.

Sometimes it's three meals a day.

Fair enough, fair enough.

Well, 450 digestive biscuits
are baked every second

- in the United Kingdom.
- Really?

- They are truly the mule of biscuits.
- They certainly are.

- And, Alan, it brings me onto
a question for you. - For me?

What is the difference
between a cake and a biscuit?

- Oh, that's easy!
- Tell.

Well, a cake is soft,
and a biscuit's hard.

Cakes are soft, and squidgy,
and spongy,

and biscuits, you can snap them.

ARTHUR: What's a Jaffa cake, then?

Very interesting you should say that.

Well...quite interesting, I think.

Well, quite interesting.
Exactly, exactly.

Let's stick to our brief.

Jaffa cake is the exception
that proves the rule.

Well, no, it isn't an exception.

See, what happens on this show,
Dara,

is that he thinks I'm an idiot.

Well, you think my name
is an anagram of 'diarrhoea', so...

Yes, exactly.
(Laughter)

I'm really on their side
at the moment.

Well, actually, I mean,
you use the right words.

Technically, the difference is
that when they go stale,

a cake goes hard
and a biscuit goes soft.

And a biscuit goes soft. Does it?

In 1991, the British government,
and Customs and Excise,

decided they wanted to reclassify
the Jaffa cake as a biscuit.

The weird thing is, there is 0 VAT
on cake and biscuit,

but there is VAT on chocolate
biscuits, as a luxury item.

So McVitie's went out of their way

to try and prove that Jaffa cakes
are not chocolate biscuits,

they are cakes.

And they did so by demonstrating,

in front of the VAT review board,

that they went hard
when they were stale.

And they also
cooked a great, big 12-inch one

to show that it really was
a cake that they had baked.

I always think, King Alfred...
you know, he was a great man, who...

Is that a cock-ring?

- (Laughter)
- No, that's a really early cock-ring.

Made of stone.

Oh, they had big knobs, they did.
Yeah.

But King Alfred,
who, I believe, invented...

- (Laughs)
- (Laughs)

- I'm determined to carry on.
- Yes. No, please do. Absolutely.

Carry on. I've got
a big, stone cock-ring in my head.

He invented the navy.
He made all sorts of differences.

He was
an important political figure.

But all we remember him for
is some business involving cakes.

Yeah.

You, for example, may yet, Stephen,

be remembered for something
pathetically insignificant.

Absolutely. I once
dropped a pack of Abbey Crunch.

- You're so posh.
- They're not posh!

You really...they are posh biscuits!

Oh, stop it.

Posh biscuits are ones that are
cooked for you by your pastry chef.

Actually, there's a true story

about...I think it was the Duke of
Devonshire, but it may not have been.

Oh...I can't believe you.

In the Second World War,

they would have people
from the Ministry of Labour

going round, checking on everybody,

and particularly
on the big estates,

to see if some all these
people...some could be released

for essential war work.

And they went to Chatsworth, one
of the Duke of Devonshire's estates.

They had a stopwatch, and clipboard,
and they checked everybody.

And, eventually,
they had an interview with the Duke.

And they said, 'Well, Your Grace,

we can understand
that you need 47 gardeners,

and 13 other gardeners. And you need
grooms, and you need chauffeurs,

and you need upstairs maids,
and downstairs maids,

and in between maids, and laundry
room maids, and stillroom maids,

and kitchen maids, and nurse maids,
and house maids.

And we can understand

that you need the boy
to scrape the knives and boots,

and you need the butler, and the
four footmen, and the under-butler.

But we wonder
if a man economy might be made.

Does Your Grace necessarily
need two pastry cooks?'

To which he apparently replied,
'Oh, damn it.

Can't a man have a biscuit?'

(Laughter)
Which is...I mean, you know,

we're all prepared
to make sacrifices to beat the Hun,

but, I mean, really!
That's going a bit far, isn't it?

Peter Ustinov
had rather a good story about...

..he said he was at school,
it was so posh

that on school sports day,
they had a chauffeurs' race.

Of course, we call posh cake
'gateur', don't we?

And the French
call posh cake 'le cake'.

Yes, that's true.

Do you know what 'biscuit' means?
What its derivation is?

- 'Bis-' meaning...
- Chew, Eat. Bit.

- ..twice...
- Sweet, hard, coffee cup.

'Sweet, hard coffee cup'?!

Sweet, hard
coffee cup accompaniment.

No, it is 'twice-cooked'.
'Biscotti', in Italian...

Oh, biscotti's a biscuit.
They're horrible, though.

- They're like bits of shrapnel.
- Yes.

But it's fun
to do that game with the wrapper,

that it flies up in the air.

Here's a quite interesting fact.

(Laughter)

As we know, at the end
of a marvellous performance,

when we see a live show,

when you think it's fabulous, and
you want more, you shout, 'Encore!'

- Yes. - But do you know
what the French shout?

- 'Bis'? - Oh, yeah.
You do know.- Yes, yes.

(Laughter)
Sorry.

It means 'twice'. Yeah.

So they're asking
to see the whole damn thing again?

Well, on from biscuits. Fingers on
buzzers now, for our next question.

Who invented straight roads?

(Generic mobile phone ringtone)

- Alan.
- The Romans.

(Siren sounds, alarm bells ring)
Oh, dear, oh, dear, oh, dear.

- I knew it!
- Yeah, I'm afraid not.

You haven't caught me, or anything,
'cause I knew that was gonna happen.

Did you, did you? Yes.

And I'll have you know
that they did.

No, they didn't.

They did!

They rebuilt a lot of straight roads
that were already there.

The Romans would make a road
that would go 50, 100 miles.

- Yes. - Stane Street, that goes
from Chichester to London

is 60 or 70 miles long.

No-one thought to go that far
in a straight line until they did.

I think, in terms of distance,
you may well be right -

that they probably built
the longest straight roads...

People would come across
a Roman road, and go, 'Blimey!

This must be a Roman road.

They invented going really,
really far in a straight line.

Yes. Which wasn't the question,
sadly.

(Laughter)

Oh, would that it had been.

But the Romans, presumably, never,
in the end, really got anywhere.

because all roads lead to Rome.

- Indeed.
- (Mock laughs)

No. There was a dense network
of roads in the pre-Roman Iron Age,

of very straight roads. But you're
quite right - they weren't as vast.

Do you know that in America,

some of the roads in the Midwest
are so straight,

and go on straight for so long

that then,
they have to make a right turn,

- and then go straight again.
- Really?

Because people go loopy, is it?

No, no - to account for
the curvature of the earth,

so that it conforms to the map.

Good God.

That's fantastic.
Well, there you are.

And do you know that in Montana,

a policeman will pull you over
because he's lonely?

(Laughter)
Oh!

It's happened to me all the time.

Why do the Americans
drive on the right?

Well, I guess because
we invented the (BLEEP) car.

(Laughter)

I'm awfully sorry
to put you right on that,

but you didn't even come close
to inventing the car.

We invented the first...

There were at least two Germans
who got there way before you!

Another proof, of course,

is that in Ireland, there were
many, many straight roads,

and the Irish were never
invaded by the Romans, were you?

No. They never got as far as us.
Absolutely not.

Which we actually do regret
to this day,

'cause we have no great architecture
that dates back to then.

We have a lack of...

You've got Cromlix.

Well, we have our own little,
you know, mounds, and stuff,

that we're quite happy with,

that I had to drag my sorry arse
around at school trips

- for a few years. - 'Boys, we're off
to see a mound today.'

Yeah. And our imagination
ran riot -

but it was never what we expected.

And do you know why the grass is greener
in Ireland than over here?

Is it because of
limestone in the ground?

No - it's 'cause you're all
over here, walking on ours.

(Laughter, applause)

Which brings us, neatly,
to the point where fools rush in,

and Alans fear to tread,

which is our dose
of General Ignorance round, now.

So fingers on buzzers again,
if you would, please.

What is the collective noun
for a group of baboons?

(Saw cuts through wood)

- Yay.
- The Pentagon.

Fantastic! (Laughs)

Funnily enough, American politics
has a lot to do with it.

And not only is the Pentagon
an organ of American power,

- but so is their house...
- Capitol Hill. The White House.

- The House of Representatives.
- The House of Baboons?

- It's the Congress.
- The Congress.

- It's 'a congress of baboons'?
- Yeah.

But the reason we ask the question...
(Mobile phone ringtone)

- Congress of baboons.
- Very good.

But there is a quite interesting fact
about a new word

that is
beginning to replace 'congress'.

And it has a very odd history,
this word.

It comes from a comedy sketch
on BBC Television,

in a series
called Not the Nine O'Clock News.

There was a sketch
called Gerald the Gorilla...

- Oh, yeah.
- ..in which Rowan Atkinson played...

- 'Wild?' - He makes mention...
that's right.

'Wild? I was furious.' Exactly.
'The production on that album...'

But there's a point

where he talks about a group,

'or "flange",
as we call them, of gorillas'.

And this was just made up by Richard
Curtis, or whoever wrote the sketch,

for that particular sketch.
But it's now on the Net.

And there is...I can quote you here,

from a book called Sex and Friendship
in Baboons, by Barbara B Smuts.

This is a review...
(Laughter)

- He's read every book in the world.
- Yeah. (Laughs)

And it says,
'In this marvellous book,

Smuts draws from years
of painstaking field research,

in which she followed around
a flange of Chacma baboons

in the Matetsi Game Reserve,
in Zimbabwe.

And there, a word has migrated from
a comedy sketch into the internet

is now being used by academics
as the official word.

And, while on the subject of animals,

who can tell me which mammals
have the most bones in their noses?

(Mobile phone ringtone)
Yep, Alan.

- Crocodiles.
- It isn't crocodiles, as it happens.

I was gonna say elephants,
but I think that's really stupid.

(Siren sounds, alarm bells ring,
laughter)

- Thank you. Oh, bless you.
Most obliged. - Anteaters.

Yes, I did it
to please the researcher.

- Did you say 'anteaters'?
- Yes.

Well, the answer is an anteater,
so you should have some points.

A particular kind. Probably
the most famous kind of anteater,

- in some ways.
- Aardvark.

Aardvark is the right answer.
It has nine or ten.

Do you know, I can say, in Danish,

'I have
spilt coffee on the anteater'?

(Laughter)

I would like
you to do that for us now.

Jeg har spildt kaffe pa Myresluger!

(Applause)

Elephants, of course, have
no bones in their noses whatsoever.

So our next question is, according
to the inventor of Centigrade,

- what's the boiling point of water?
- I'm not gonna fall for that.

- (Hammer strikes nail)
Yes? - Oh, dear, no.

I'm gonna say something stupid,
aren't I?

100 degrees.

- (Siren sounds, alarm bells ring)
Oh, dear. - (Cheers)

Yeah...it's so obvious.

It's obvious, and you'd think
it's a reasonable thing to say.

The inventor Centigrade
was a man called Anders...

- Celcius.
- Celcius is quite right.

From 1701 to 1744, he lived.
A short but fruitful life.

He spent all that time
going, 'Ooh, that's hot.'

'That's hot, that's cold,
and that's hot.'

'But that's quite chilly.'

'I should call that "one"'.

He decided that water should boil
at zero degrees,

and that ice would melt at 100.

Of course, nought is actually, now -
of course, it's the other way round.

Nought is not the point at which
water freezes, in Centigrade.

It's the point at which ice melts.
Yeah.

Zero is actually more than that.

And I'm giving you
a scientific fact,

because I don't wish
to be associated with diarrhoea

for the rest of the show.

Zero's actually
the triple point of water.

It's the first temperature at which
water can exist in all three states,

because you can actually get water
vapour, which is at zero, as well.

Oh, very good.
You must have some points for that.

- and this round of applause.
- Thank you very much.

(Applause)
You'll like that.

That was a consolation point.

And, in particular, because it's for
the private moment I had there,

where I remembered when
I was told that, in school, at 16,

and went,
'When the (BLEEP)

am I ever gonna use
that piece of information?'

Oh! Hooray! It happened. You see?

But here's one - which is colder,
minus 40 Centigrade,

or minus 40 Fahrenheit?

Minus 40 Centigrade.

- No, they're both actually exactly
the same. - They're both the same.

The one point
at which they're the same.

It's where they meet.

So which came first,
Celcius, or Fahrenheit?

Fahrenheit came first.

The interesting thing
about the British

is, what we do is, we use Centigrade
when it's cold,

- and we use Fahrenheit when it's hot.
- Yes.

So we go, 'Ooh!'
when it's hot in summer,

and goes to the 90s, it's '92'.

But when it's really cold, we go,
'God, it's minus three! Minus five!'

You don't say, 'It's 28,' which
is what it would be in Fahrenheit.

We do.
We're very consistent, aren't we?

Well, from that, to,
what did Mussolini do?

(Generic mobile phone ringtone)

- Made the trains run on time.
- (Siren sounds, alarm bells ring)

(Laughter)

No, he didn't.

You could argue he made
one particular train run on time.

In 1922,
there was a general strike in Italy,

much to the annoyance
of many Italian people,

and certainly to the annoyance
of the king, Umberto.

And the Fascists,
who were led by Mussolini,

were gathered in Naples,

and Mussolini
made this ferocious speech,

saying, 'We shall march on Rome,
and we shall sort this out.

We shall seize power
if we are not offered it,

and we shall end this strike.'

And 'Roma, Roma, Roma, we shouted.'
And the famous march on Rome began.

Mussolini himself went to Milan.
(Chuckles)

Didn't go on the march,
'cause he was rather scared.

He was quaking in his jackboots.

But it turned out
to be a great success.

And the king offered him power,

and said he must get on the train
from Milan, where he was, to Rome.

and I will
offer you the prime ministership.

So he rang up
the stationmaster at Milan,

and said,
'This train has to run on time.'

And it was the one train
he definitely made run on time.

But all the other improvements
in the Italian transport system

were actually made
before he came to power.

Garibaldi -
that's a type of biscuit.

It certainly is a type of biscuit.

And it cracks.
That's the difference.

- You can't crack a cake.
- (Laughs) No.

Good. Well, that's all very
exciting. That's Mussolini for you.

No evidence that he made the Italian
trains run on time at all.

Let's have another question.

Which eye
did Nelson wear his eye-patch on?

Anybody have a thought?
(Generic mobile phone ringtone)

- Yes?
- The right eye.

(Siren sounds, alarm bells ring)

- It was a little unfair...
- He didn't wear one.

- He didn't wear one, ever.
- Oh.

He never wore an eye-patch.

Never wore an eye-patch -
he just went like that.

Yes. Only in Ladybird books
did he wear an eye-patch.

He was a very strange man, Nelson.

He bought, for about 25 shillings,
these silver stars.

He was given all kinds of titles
by the King of Naples,

and he bought them all,
and put them on a sash,

and stood on the quarterdeck
of the Victory like this,

covered in shining stars.

And, from 50 feet away,
the French shot him,

not surprisingly.
(Laughter)

He never actually lost an eye.
He just lost the sight of his eye.

Did you know that Lady Hamilton
was vastly overweight,

and had a Lancashire accent?

I thought
you were gonna say 'overrated' then.

I'll give her a six,
or, you know...

It seems a bit unfair
on anyone watching from Lancashire

that you seem to yoke together fat
with 'and a Lancashire accent'.

I'm only trying to make the point
that it's surprising.

It's not what you think.

If you watch Vivian Leigh play her
opposite Laurence Olivier,

in the film...

She doesn't
talk like Liam Gallagher.

She doesn't say,

'Ooh, I wouldn't 'ave him
if he came in a nest of tables.'

(Laughter)

You know,
it's not that kind of thing.

So that's all from us.
Let's look at the scores.

In last place, we have Alan,
with minus 20, I'm sorry to say.

(Applause)

Just ahead is Arthur Smith,
with minus 18.

(Applause)

On plus two points,
it's Rich Hall, on 2,

and our runaway winner, on 4 points,
is Dara O'Briain.

(Cheers, applause)

Well, there you are. So that's all
from Rich, Arthur, Dara, Alan and me.

As they say in Ireland,

may you get to heaven a half-hour
before the devil knows you're dead.

Goodnight.

(Applause)

Closed Captions by CSI