QI (2003–…): Season 20, Episode 13 - Tubular - full transcript
Sandi Toksvig takes a look at tubes and tubas in a totally tubular edition of the show with her guests Bridget Christie, Sara Pascoe, Deborah Frances White and Alan Davies.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Hello and welcome to QI,
where tonight
we've gone totally tubular.
Let's see who's around.
Firing on all cylinders,
it's Sara Pascoe.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Channelling her inner tube,
it's Bridget Christie.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
The light at the end of my tunnel,
it's Deborah Frances-White.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
And in the conservatory
with the lead piping,
it's Alan Davies.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Please mind the gap between the
train and the platform.
This service will be stopping
at the following stations.
Sara goes...
# Winding your way down on
Baker Street... #
Bridget goes...
# When I get to Warwick Avenue... #
Deborah goes...
# Waterloo, I was defeated
You won the war... #
And Alan goes...
# Ealing Broadway, Fulham Broadway,
Tooting Broadway, Arsenal
# Stockwell, Chigwell, Seven Sisters
# Blackhorse Road, Blackfriars,
Temple
# East Acton, Oval, Bow Road... #
RECORDING SPEEDS UP RAPIDLY
MIMICS TAPE BEING CHEWED UP
EXPLOSION
Right, question one - what can you
do on the London Underground
in summer that a cow can't?
Find the Central line,
cos they can't see red.
Oh! So, inadvertently, you're
heading in the right direction.
Central line is the clue.
Central line is the clue?
Central line is the hottest
of the lines.
Yes, that is correct.
What people do on a really hot
Tube in the summer
is say, "They wouldn't even
treat livestock like this."
You couldn't say that if you're a
cow, cos you are livestock.
LAUGHTER
That is actually, weirdly,
the correct answer.
So...
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
The Central line is the hottest line
on the Tube.
It regularly reaches
temperatures in the summer
that exceed the legal limit
for transporting cattle. Oh!
In 2019, a journalist recorded
a temperature of 36.6 Centigrade,
100 degrees Fahrenheit,
in old money,
on a Central line carriage when
leaving Mile End.
So one of the problems is, it's one
of the early lines.
And those early engineers,
they didn't leave any space
around the trains for ventilation
or air conditioning and so on.
So it's snugly wrapped
in the surrounding clay,
a bit like a blanket.
But here's a really good thing.
What do you think they do now
with the abandoned stations,
of which there are several?
Do they put big air conditioners in?
Well, that'd be pointless. It's
abandoned. I don't know quite how...
Listen, I don't know a lot about air
conditioning, as is apparent. Yeah.
But I wondered if they could use
it at the next station
and somehow puff it down the line.
You're right. You don't know very
much...
I'm going to give you a point
for not knowing very much.
In fact, they use them as
heat reservoirs,
which warm homes in the winter.
So City Road,
in the Old Street area,
currently heats 1,000
homes in Islington.
So it's almost what I said, only
the opposite of what I said.
I live in Islington.
How do I know if it's my house?
I would ring up and ask.
My house does smell like the Tube,
though.
That may be just you need to throw
some of those nappies away.
Some of them have beds in,
don't they?
Yeah, Down Street has got baths
and showers. Nice!
You wouldn't mind living in an
underground station. It'd be nice.
I wouldn't like it. Oh, why?
I need a window.
You can probably have a window
but there's nothing to see.
That's the only thing. Yeah, just a
window propped up on the side.
That's Bridget's window.
Before the Tube, first tunnel in
London, any thoughts?
Under the Thames? Yes, under the
Thames. Greenwich Foot Tunnel?
No, the Thames Tunnel.
The Thames Tunnel? Yes.
Where's that one?
So, it was started in 1825 and it
still has trains going through it.
That is a picture of it, entitled
A Correct View of the Thames Tunnel.
It was the first time engineers
had tunnelled under a major river.
Sir Marc Brunel, Isambard's father.
He said he worked out how to do it
by watching shipworms pooing.
Yeah. So, when a shipworm,
technically called a Teredo,
burrows into wood, its head is
protected
by a sort of tough, helmet-like
shell,
and it digests the wood
and then it excretes it out behind
itself as a sort of hard residue
that lines the tunnel and
strengthens it - it's really clever.
So clever. Isn't it brilliant,
right?
And he imitated this
with a tunnelling shield.
So it was an iron grid, right?
And it pressed against the face
of the tunnel when the workers
were digging out the earth
between the grid squares.
And as they did that,
others followed behind
and reinforced the tunnel
that they were creating.
It took about 16 years to complete.
They progressed about four inches
every day.
Who hasn't been there?
LAUGHTER
And it was never really suitable
for horse-drawn vehicles.
In the end, it was just filled
by souvenir sellers.
And that Correct View,
passive-aggressive labelling
of that picture. Yeah?
Was that one illustrator having...
..throwing some shade
at another illustrator?
No, it was throwing shade
at the fact that it should
have been just nice ladies
and gentlemen walking up and down.
And in fact, it was full of vagrants
and acrobats and ne'er-do-wells.
Acrobats? Yeah.
People used to go down
and entertain... Street entertainers.
They love a tunnel.
LAUGHTER
The past is a very odd place,
isn't it? Yeah.
I don't know if you remember
the 580-tonne
Channel Tunnel boring machine.
Do you remember that?
Yeah, I do. I do remember it.
I pitched a novel, which was
about some people who wanted
to save the remaining
endangered species. Mm?
So, what they did was
they wiped out humanity
by using that boring machine to...
So, anyway, it didn't get
commissioned.
LAUGHTER
"No, thank you."
For a while, the machine,
once they'd finished
the Channel Tunnel, it was for sale.
It was sold in 2004 for just under
£40,000 to a bidder on eBay.
No. Yeah.
Price did not include delivery.
No returns.
That's the thing.
Would you have bought such a thing?
I'd like to have just had it,
put it in the garden.
It'd be quite interesting.
I think... How big is your garden?
Quite a lot bigger, if you had that.
Yeah, that's so true.
LAUGHTER
If your normal amount of...
You know, you have money,
you have a debit card, occasionally
you do go on eBay.
You're drunk.
You think, "I don't have
any roller-skates."
You buy them, you forget about it.
Next Wednesday, the postman comes,
"Oh, my gosh, who got me these?"
Um...
LAUGHTER
But it would be good
if you bought that, right?
And there was never any use for it,
ever. Yeah.
And then, like,
some natural disaster happened
or something. Yeah. So, you go,
"I've got..." And you go,
"I've got the thing for the job."
Yeah.
"And everyone laughed at me
when I bought it." Mm.
"And now who's laughing?" Yeah.
LAUGHTER
"Cos you can't use it..." No.
"..unless you give me
loads of money."
Oh. A similar thing happened to me
at an auction... OK.
..which is that I bought a painting
of a cat that was dressed
in human clothes, and it was £50.
And at the auction, I expected
everyone to go,
"Oh," you know, and for it to go
up to hundreds of pounds.
But it was... I think it
was...started at 50 or something.
And I went like that,
and the auctioneer went,
"Thank God that's gone.
It gives me the creeps."
SANDI GASPS
Oh. Oh, unkind.
And then everyone else laughed
at me. But who's laughing now?
Yeah. Cos it's in my living room.
LAUGHTER
And there will be a natural disaster
involving cats, and I'll have...
Yeah. You'll have the very thing.
..the thing.
You're laughing now, but, you know,
something's going to happen.
I know what it's going to be. Yeah?
Yeah?
I think it's going to be, like,
the cat revolution... Yeah?
..when they finally make
human beings subservient to them.
That's exactly... And you'll be
the only one they forgive
cos they'll go,
"She was respectful."
They'll come into my house
to arrest me. Right.
And... The cats? Yeah, the cats.
And they'll be wearing
human clothes by then.
They'll be standing up, going...
Do you want to make some notes
for your novel, darling.
Sara will come in
in a tunnelling machine.
I'm really worried about this,
because all I've got
is a bumper sticker that says,
"So many cats, so few recipes."
And I just think...
LAUGHTER
You are not long for this world.
After the glorious revolution...
Meow!
It's a terrible thing, though,
buying at auction.
I was at Epsom Racecourse once,
and I was asked if I would
auction off a racehorse.
And they used to do it in guineas,
apparently.
So, I said, "Go on, who'll start me
off at 1,000 guineas?"
And nobody moved. And I said, "I'll
start us off at 1,000 guineas."
I was the last person that bid.
Oh, no!
And I've come in the sports car.
I have no idea how
I'm going to get it home.
Did you actually have
to take the racehorse?
No, very nicely, the man
who sold it to me bought it back.
Sorry, guinea...? Not guinea pigs?
Guineas.
LAUGHTER
APPLAUSE
I actually think 1,000 guinea pigs
is a really good...
It's a good buy, isn't it?
It's a good buy. That's a good...
For one horse?! Yeah. I feel...
That's a lot of guinea pigs.
I think that's too many guinea pigs
for one horse. For one horse?
I think you should get two horses.
Two horses for 1,000....
I can't believe we're having
this conversation.
But when there's a guinea pig
revolution... Guinea pig revolution.
Bridget? Yes. Enough now.
What's as long as a telephone pole,
and comes out of a person?
Oh, I know this guy.
It's not true. No.
It's just what he puts in his bio.
I think it's got to be something
communicated, hasn't it?
OK, it is to do with sound,
certainly.
Maybe this will help you.
Have a listen to this.
TUBA PLAYS A MELODY
That's a tuba. It is a tuba.
It is Tubby the Tuba.
As long as a telephone pole -
that's how far you can make air
travel through an ordinary tuba.
So, if you press on the valves
in trumpets and tubas,
it effectively makes
the instrument longer.
If you press down on the valves,
then your breath travels a distance
of just over 30 feet,
which is an average telephone pole
or a London bus, or three-quarters
of the height of a brachiosaurus,
if that's how you measure things.
Can you tell us in guinea pigs?
Yeah.
The air will take even longer
if you are playing
the subcontrabass tuba.
This is an incredible thing.
It is a seven-foot-tall tuba.
It usually takes two,
sometimes three, people to play it.
There's only four that remain today.
The one that is playable
is at Harvard University.
Look at that thing. Wow.
Nobody's really sure, originally,
where it came from.
Maybe somebody was trying
to stand out by having
a seven-foot tuba. That would do it.
That would certainly do it.
LAUGHTER
There's been a spate of tuba thefts
in the US in the past 20 years.
Smuggled, we believe,
over the Mexican border.
Can you have a 20-year spate?
Oh, I think if you measure things
as brachiosauruses, then probably.
There's been a spate of Christianity
over the last 2,000 years.
Why are they worth so much
in Mexico?
There's a kind of music
called Banda.
It's a genre of Mexican music.
It dates from the mid-1800s
and it's fantastically popular.
I don't like watching people
blowing things because a lot of...
No, because a lot of people
aren't really, really fit. Right.
And you're just thinking,
"I think they're going to die."
OK. Do you want to see a clip
of somebody playing?
No, because I bet
they're going all red...
I tell you what - you shut your eyes
and I'll let you know
if they're going red. If they look
fit, like they run or something.
OK, here we go.
Let's have a quick look.
TUBA PLAYS
You'd worry if you were next door.
LAUGHTER
What's going on?
I mean, I think he was enjoying
that more than anyone else.
I think that's fair.
But if you...say you were playing
Wigmore Hall, and you had to go
on the Tube, you'd rather have a cow
with you, wouldn't you, than...?
Quick supplementary question.
Do you think the world's
longest tuba is taller
than the world's tallest tuber?
No.
Which do you think is taller?
The tuba or the tuber?
Tuber. The tuber
is absolutely right.
The tallest one was a cassava
harvested in Nigeria.
Did you know this? Yes.
No.
No. You did not know this.
I am deeply...
You'd have mentioned it before.
You would have said,
"What about that cassava?"
I know this guy.
How dare you?
The veg wins - 2.46 metres,
whilst the Harvard contrabass
is 2.13 metres tall. It's amazing.
And the other thing that was
originally a type of trombone
was the bazooka,
which is a kind of weapon.
There was a radio comedian called
Rob Burns in the United States.
He invented it in 1905 as a child.
A sort of... So, comedians
can do anything.
I know. Exactly right.
And there he is. And it was a brass
instrument with a lip reed
and a sliding tube, like a trombone.
So, when the Americans started
using portable rocket-launchers
in World War II, they called them
bazookas because it looked a bit
like Robbie Burns's original
home-made instrument.
And then who are these chicks?
The Bazooka Bitches?
They are the Bazooka Bitches.
The guy on the end with the hat
and the woman at the front,
there's been an...there's been
a situation here. Oh, has there? OK.
He's gone, you know,
"The safety catch is..." whatever,
and she's gone, "Don't tell me
how to use a..." Bazooka?
"What I could tell you.
"Just keep it... All right?"
Yeah.
"I know what you're doing."
And he doesn't like it
because he's been emasculated
in front of all those boys.
And he's very cross.
Again, Sara, I'd write that down
as a long story
you could possibly
turn into a novel.
I'm more interested in this woman
behind her.
I think... She's... Like a wedding.
Like, "I'm never going
to get married.
"Do you want to hold
the end of my bazooka?
"Just walk behind me."
So, now that you've boned up
on your brass instruments,
who slept on lion skins
and could play two trumpets at once?
Is it going to be Ancient Greek?
It IS ancient Greek!
Oh, I thought it might be. Yes.
Where might it be
in Ancient Greece?
Jazz Club.
The ancient Olympic Games featured
competitive trumpet-blowing,
and the undisputed champion
was a man called
Herodorus of Megara,
and he won ten titles
from 328 to 292 BC.
He could play two trumpets at once.
He slept only on lion skin.
And the lions weren't in them,
presumably. No, no, no.
No. They're shivering in the corner.
"Oh."
He was quite the guy.
He ate about eight loaves of bread
every day, nine kilos of meat
and six litres of wine.
Six litres of wine a day?
Six litres of wine.
And then he could play the trumpet
out of two...
Doesn't say he could play it well.
Doesn't say that.
Do you think the Ancient Greeks,
when they wrote things down,
they just wrote it down wrong?
Yeah. If anyone...
Because he clearly hasn't
had all that, has he? No.
It's bollocks.
I think what they found there
is his shopping list.
There's another marvellous trumpeter
from history called John Blanke.
He's the only identifiable
black British Tudor,
of whom we have a picture.
So this is on the Westminster
Tournament Roll 1511.
He trumpeted in Henry VII's
and Henry VIII's courts.
Probably, he came to England
as one of the African attendants
of Catherine of Aragon
when she first arrived in 1501,
in fact, to marry
Henry VIII's brother.
Now, what peaceful use
can you think of for a torpedo?
That's a massive torpedo
being loaded onto a ship in 1943
by the women's Royal Navy Service.
God, I thought that was me,
second from left.
LAUGHTER
That does look very like you.
I thought, "Have they done
one of those things?"
They do that on this show sometimes.
They Photoshop me in.
Usually...
..usually, it's a female
from the past.
And that's what they've done.
We're looking for a peaceful use.
Fill it with flowers. Fill it...
Where does "torpedo"
get its name from?
It's a town in Spain.
No, that's Toledo. I had...
My little godson, when he was six,
told me he was playing a video game,
one of those ones online,
with other children.
And he said, I have to name
my animal, and it's a shark.
And it goes really fast.
So, I called him shark-pedo.
And the game banned it,
and I wasn't allowed.
And I said, "I can sort of see why."
Yeah.
And he said, "I think it's cos
it's got a rude word in it.
" 'Pee'. " AUDIENCE: Aw!
"Torpedo torpedo" -
scientific name for something
that is not a bomb.
Oh. Torpedo torpedo? What...?
Torpedo torpedo.
So, this is an electric ray
found in the Mediterranean.
There it is.
There was a first-century Greek
physician called Dioscorides,
and he recommended applying
a live one of these electric rays
up the seat to cure haemorrhoids.
The thing is, if they haven't
gone away for ages,
you will try anything. Yeah.
Well, weird...
I've heard.
Are you sitting comfortably?
One of the few ancient remedies
that actually worked.
Was it? It did actually work.
Did it? Yes.
Electrotherapy is still used today
to treat, well,
less severe haemorrhoids.
Although, can I just say,
the electricity is no longer
administered by a fish?
That's not...
Less severe? You could use
a toaster.
Yeah, you could use a toaster. Yeah.
Hair-straighteners. Yeah.
GROANING
I think hair-straighteners
is better than a toaster.
Oh, you didn't like that one,
did you?
That's an image you can
take home with you.
"Are they hot enough yet?" "Yes!"
It's so fascinating to think
about the back story
to that discovery, and the person
who just happened
to be mucking around... Yeah.
..with a fish and go,
"Oh, my haemorrhoids
have cleared up."
Well... Dressing-gown fell open.
They would have known that the ray
had a painkilling effect.
So...so torpedo comes
from the Latin to numb, "torpor".
But the torpedo, as in the weapon,
gets its name
from the Napoleonic Wars,
was named after the fish,
which incapacitates its enemies
when it touches them.
There was a thing called a
coffin torpedo in the 19th century.
It was to stop body-snatching.
They made coffins that operate
like shotguns.
And if you lifted the lid,
it fired, shot into the air.
Unfortunately,
not all that successful.
So there was one review.
There was an Ohio grave torpedo,
and it was tested on a mule.
And they reported, "He lifted up one
foot when the explosion occurred,
"but never stopped munching fodder."
So, he was like, "Meh,"
and carried on.
Mm. They should shoot the body out
at the person.
That's much scarier. Yeah.
But if you're a body-snatcher,
you might just catch it, then.
If the body... Yeah,
but then you're a body-catcher.
It's a whole new career.
APPLAUSE
Now to those tubes below the torso.
What's so terrible about trousers?
They say they're a size 14.
They're definitely not.
They're never a size 14.
I have trousers that are a size 12,
14, 16, 18 and 20.
All of them fit me.
And I don't understand why
the designers can't get together
and just make a plan
and then decide on that.
Because I've had enough.
And the women in this audience
have had enough.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
I ordered a Christmas dress,
and it came and it was that wide.
And I said, "Oh, I'm sorry.
"I ordered a medium
and it's that big."
And they said,
"Well, that's what size it is."
And I said,
"Yeah, but it's too big."
And they said,
"Well, it will fit someone."
But you can argue with that.
That is true.
And I said, "Yes,
but it doesn't work like that.
"Clothes have sizes.
"You can't just make it one size."
And they said, "Well, we do.
"And then we send them out.
And just give it to someone
"if you don't want it."
No. And that's how they operated.
That is going to ruin Christmas
when someone opens it, and you go,
"Yeah, yeah, I was far too thin
for that. Please..."
LAUGHTER
"Please enjoy."
But what's so terrible
about trousers, historically?
Well, we couldn't wear them
for a long time.
You could be arrested
for wearing trousers.
It was illegal for women
to wear trousers in about 40 cities
in the United States.
People were arrested.
They were charged
with impersonating a man.
Right up until...
Why would you want to?
Right up until 1923,
when the Federal Government
overrode the laws
and made it allowable.
Before that, even when serving
in the army or mountain climbing,
for example, women had to wear
heavy woollen skirts.
Also in Europe,
Henriette d'Angeville,
she claimed to be the very first
woman to climb Mont Blanc in 1838,
and she did so dressed like that.
Is it cheating to use a ladder
to climb a mountain?
They've deliberately taken her
a tricky route, haven't they?
Yeah. "You go first, love.
We'll come..."
"This is the only way
we could do it."
"And why is there a...?"
"Could I not have the plank?"
"No, it has to be a ladder."
And it looks like she's going
to go along there,
over the next ladder... Yeah.
..and then just bring her
back round again.
"Isn't this the ladder
we went over before."
"No, no, you keep going.
"You're doing very well."
It's like a sort of Escher drawing,
isn't it?
Going round and round and round.
The first woman to controversially
climb Matterhorn in trousers, 1895,
was Annie Smith Peck.
And if you don't know her,
she is just incredible.
She once climbed a mountain
and hung a "Votes for Women" banner
at the top when she got there.
But there were no other women
up there...
LAUGHTER
..to appreciate her sign.
I don't think it was women
who needed the message, darling.
Same trouble with hats
that you've got with your trousers.
DEBORAH: It's true.
She's ordered that online. Yeah.
They said that was a large.
It's for a...
It's a three-year-old's hat.
No, no, it looks good.
It looks good. It'll fit someone.
But if you were a woman in Paris,
for example, 1800 to 2013,
you had to have a special permit,
"permission de travestissement",
to wear trousers. So, for example,
this is the permission
that was given to the great artist
Rosa Bonheur.
Rosa Bonheur is very famous
for painting farm animals and so on,
and in order to do so,
she wanted to wear trousers
for these agricultural scenes,
but she had to get
permission to do so.
Did you say till 2013?
February 2013, it was finally
overturned.
I can't say it was constantly
enforced.
I...I'm sure I went to Paris
in trousers before 2013...
No, it wasn't... ..but I didn't know
I was dicing with the law.
No. They did amend it slightly,
once in 1892 and once in 1909,
and women were allowed to wear
trousers without a permit
if they were holding the bicycle
handlebars or the reins of a horse.
There was a rule that forbade women
from wearing trousers on the floor
of the US Senate.
That wasn't revoked until 1993.
When I was a law student,
you were not allowed
to wear trousers as a woman
if you were in the Inns of Court.
And there was a wonderful story
about a woman who went to do one
of these compulsory dinners
in the Inns of Court.
She was wearing trousers,
and the clerk said to her,
"Madam, you can't come in here
wearing those."
So she took them off
and gave them to him. Oh.
But there's other times in history
it was not wearing trousers
that could get you into trouble.
So, in the Hebridean Island of Seil,
there's a pub called Tigh na Truish,
and it translates
as "the house of trousers".
Look at that. It looks fantastic.
See that bridge?
That's the bridge to the mainland.
It's called
the Bridge over the Atlantic.
And the British government
in the Jacobite rebellion, so 1745,
they banned the wearing
of tartan and the kilt.
And so, if you broke those laws,
you could face transportation
to Australia.
Can you imagine, darling?
I mean... I know.
It'd be horrendous.
If the locals were heading
over the bridge to the mainland,
where the authorities might see them
in a kilt, they'd pop to the pub
and change out of their kilts
and into trousers.
And there are still hooks
where you can make the change
if you want to in the pub.
Right, how comfortable would it be
to snuggle up
under a blanket octopus?
I'm going to say not very
comfortable if you're a female
blanket octopus, because the male
blanket octopus dies after mating
and won't cuddle.
When I was a nanny, I had to take
children to the London Zoo.
And I remember them saying this,
that after the octopuses mated...
Yeah. ..the man would die. Right.
And... Or claim he'd died.
LAUGHTER
I mean, they say they die. Maybe
they just change their number.
I don't know.
I've died!
The woman then starves herself
to death...
Right. Yeah. ..because she doesn't
want to leave them
to go and get food for herself.
I remember this because I remember
the children I nannied for saying,
"What's mating?"
I'm going to say yes, it would be
comfortable under a blanket octopus.
But the thing is,
she wouldn't even notice the male.
That's the truth of it.
They have extreme sexual dimorphism.
Oh. A massive difference
between the females and the males.
The female can grow
to about two metres.
Can you spot the male
in the picture?
Oh. Ooh.
What he's there?
Like the Tinder Swindler?
Is that him at the back? That dot?
Oh, the little dot, is he?
That little dot is the male.
What coming in behind?
Just a little dot.
So, I think if he died, you wouldn't
give a rat's arse, frankly.
Is he swimming along, thinking,
"Phwoar"?
That little tiny dot is the man?
"She's enormous!"
He's basically sort of a sperm sac,
frankly. Yeah.
So, if Alan and I matched our height
to a blanket octopus's proportions,
Alan would be roughly
the length of the thumbnail,
and...or I would be the height
of the Gherkin skyscraper in London.
And THAT is a novel.
APPLAUSE
Well played, we've found it.
We've got it.
I mean, they are...
Yeah, the women are... They're
badass, they're really badass.
They are immune to the stings
of the Portuguese man-of-war.
So, when one floats by,
they sometimes rip off its tentacles
to wield as defensive weapons.
Speaking of octopuses,
what's unusual
about the seven-armed octopus?
They can't get trousers to fit.
It's got seven arms.
KLAXON
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Game's getting harder, if anything.
Isn't it?
Ten arms? No, not seven. Not ten.
There is one with ten, though,
isn't there?
Or there used to be one with ten.
They found it the other day.
It was a fossil.
Was it? I mean, it was something
like 300 million years old.
It's actually named after Joe Biden.
The ten-armed... Is it? Yes, it is.
It's nearly as old.
So, the seven-armed octopuses,
so-called because the male looks
as though it only has seven
tentacles, but in fact,
it does have eight.
So, the eighth one,
the one on the left there
is that it's coiled up
in a sort of sac
beneath its right eye
for most of the time.
And then it has a specialised arm
called a hectocotylus.
Technical word for...? Penis?
Yes, it's basically
a removable penis.
So, it uncoils and detaches
during mating to deliver the sperm,
and then it regenerates.
That's very civilised.
I think the new Doctor Who
should do that.
Every time they change actors,
that would be...
So, do octopuses have tentacles?
Is that correct?
The way you've said it
makes us think no.
Yeah. No, it has suckers
all the way up.
Tentacles are when you just
have the sucker
on the sort of pad-like end
of the thing.
So, Portuguese man-of-war
have tentacles.
You do find tentacles
on some carnivorous plants.
There's an amazing plant
called the pimpernel sundew,
and it has two types of tentacles.
So, insects walking near the plant
can trigger a touch-sensitive,
sort of lightning-fast
snap tentacle,
which catapults the prey
into glue tentacles
that then slowly draw it to death.
Can I say something about glue?
An...
..when an aphid has had her young...
Yeah? ..she turns herself
into a blob of glue... Right?
..in front of them,
so that when predators come,
they just stick to her.
Oh, my God. Can you imagine how
traumatising for the children?
But isn't nature amazing? Yeah,
that is an embarrassing parent.
Yeah.
I... "By the way, my mum's come
to pick me up.
"She's a big blob of glue."
I live in quite a high-crime area.
Oh, right. So, I was thinking
of doing that on my front step.
Do you remember that story about
Beefeaters
who live in the Tower of London,
couldn't get home insurance
because, strictly speaking,
they live in Tower Hamlets,
and they haven't got window locks?
But couldn't they say, "But we don't
need window locks because we've got
"men at the gates with spears?"
Darling, have you tried to fill
in a form with an insurance company?
So, the very best use for a tentacle
comes from the Octopus for a Preemie
community.
Look next to you,
and you will find... Oh!
..little tiny octopuses.
For little babies? Little octo-pals.
Oh. Mine's only got six legs.
I don't want to make a fuss,
but that's two short.
Why might you give this
to a premature baby?
Oh. A premature baby?
Yeah, the preemies, yeah.
The preemies.
Tiny hands? Is it to cover
their wires?
Well, sort of.
So, it's the sweetest thing.
Volunteers crochet and knit these...
LAUGHTER
I don't think that's
what the babies are doing.
They're not?
I don't think it's that.
Sandi, can I say something?
Yes, darling.
When my premature baby was born,
they did something weird
with her umbilical cord,
and I was like, "Oh, my God,
what are you doing?"
And the consultant said, "It's OK.
"You could swing a baby around
by its umbilical cord,
"and it would be fine."
And we're going to try that now.
So, babies hold on
to the umbilical cord for comfort.
Oh, do they? So when a baby is born,
the tentacles mimic the cord
for the baby, and they soothe them
in the neo-natal units.
And it also stops them tugging
on the tubes in the intensive care.
Oh, my... And can I say,
anybody can get involved.
You can knit these for the charity.
Branch out. I don't know. Yeah.
You could also do a jellyfish
or aliens or whatever.
The important things
are the tentacles.
And so, what we're going to do
is we're going to give
all your octopuses a jolly good wash
and donate them to charity
after today's episode.
Why might Victorian women
have actually had a lot of fun
on their period?
They used to free-bleed
on the Northern line?
Is it because,
before there was ibuprofen,
there was laudanum?
You're heading in the right
direction. Would it...?
It's drug-related.
They thought we were mad,
didn't they?
When you say "they thought",
what you mean is, "they noticed".
I think I know this
because I think I had an expert
on The Guilty Feminist podcast
tell me that they used to dip
their tampons in the same sort
of white powder
that sometimes stockbrokers use
to make themselves overly confident.
And that's why you get
the stereotype that women talk a lot
when they're on their period.
They invented the cocaine tampon.
Yes. Absolutely right. Did they?
Absolutely right.
APPLAUSE
Can I say, not always cocaine,
sometimes opium?
Don't want to muck about.
It wasn't just for women.
So, cocaine tampons were used
for both sexes.
For painful haemorrhoids.
Perfect. Yes.
Any haemorrhoids - they don't
have to be painful.
In the war, they used tampons
to plug wounds.
And then I think a woman
who was working in a hospital went,
"Do you know what else
that would be useful for?" Yeah.
Soaking tampons, or the equivalent,
in opium, that dates back
to Ancient Rome.
But Pond's Tampons,
which was a 19th-century product,
they were laced with opiates
and deadly nightshade.
You can still get a sort of
version of it.
There's something called a B&O -
so Belladonna and Opium suppository.
And they're sometimes prescribed
as muscle relaxants after surgery.
Sounds heaven. Mm.
People at my university
used to do it with vodka.
What? Soak it in...?
Tampons and put it up the bum.
OK, I'm just going to do a thing
with the audience.
I'm going to count to three,
and we're all going to say, "Why?"
So, here we go. One, two, three...
ALL: Why?
The theory was that
you absorb things,
things get into your bloodstream
quicker. Oh.
So, there was a film,
Kevin And Perry,
where they were doing vodka
in their eyes for that reason.
And I think the thinking was,
"Where else can you put it?"
Just, um...
Where's the most dangerous place
for a toilet?
Oh, just slightly further
than where you thought it was.
A bit more along.
So, we're talking
about one particular day.
Oh, a day? It's not
a dangerous place?
In 1900, there were very few
ladies' toilets,
and a lot of men thought
it was a very bad idea for women
to have a toilet at all.
Men's toilets were ubiquitous,
but ladies' toilets not so.
They did exist, but far fewer.
Now, this is a wonderful story.
George Bernard Shaw,
who was an incredible human being
as well as an amazing playwright,
he was working in local government
in north London at the time,
and he advocated for women's rights
and pushed for a ladies' loo
to be built in Camden,
in north London, beside the men's.
And there was lots of people who
said it would lower property values
and it would cause traffic problems.
So, they built a wooden...
This is absolutely true.
So, they built a wooden mock-up
of the toilet to see
if there was a traffic risk.
And in one day alone,
it was hit by vehicles 45 times.
And it was protesters
trying to make a point. Wow.
And Shaw accused the bus companies
of taking bribes, and so on.
And the company said, "No, no, no,
it was all accidents."
It took five years for the toilet
to finally be built.
And I have to say, there is still
a ladies' loo in exactly that spot
that George Bernard Shaw decided.
I actually live in Camden,
and can I tell you,
it has not lowered house prices? OK.
What were they thinking?
It was a key component
of the suffragette movement,
was to get loos for the...
But that's also why
they didn't want them,
is because it did restrict
women so much, socially.
Except if you were pregnant.
If you were pregnant, a woman,
you were allowed to wee anywhere.
And the policeman had
to give you his hat.
That was the theory.
But the hat-peeing law is a myth,
unfortunately. Oh, was it?
Yeah, the policeman thing. Well,
I mean, the one that I...
He didn't mind at all.
Yeah. That wasn't actually
a policeman, just got to say.
No-one tell the policemen
it's a myth.
The first person to sort of do
gender equality for toilets
was the 15th-century mayor
Dick Whittington.
He actually had a 128-seat latrine
for both men and women.
And it used the Thames
to flush away,
but you used to sit with everybody.
It wasn't like you had separate
cubicles or anything. So, you all
had to go at the same time.
You all had to do exactly the same...
Three, two, one.
And then you all went.
And now for the moment,
when the whole show goes
straight down the tubes -
it's time for general ignorance.
Fingers on buzzers, please.
Name the animal with the longest
neck for its torso.
Ooh! For its torso.
Ooh. Ooh.
Longest neck for its...
LAUGHTER
It's like a gas leak.
You've got to think about the neck,
but you've also got to think
about the torso. Torso. Yeah.
Seahorse. Oh, good choice. Yeah.
Good choice. Got a really long neck.
Hardly any torso.
Yeah, I should have said
I'm talking about an extinct animal.
It's probably one
that you haven't even heard of.
It's from the late Triassic period.
Oh, is it a kind of eel?
Cos you could actually argue
that that's all neck and no torso.
Yeah. Yeah.
Or a snake.
KLAXON
Oh! Oh, God!
APPLAUSE
I'm furious! Furious.
So, there's a thing
called a Tanystropheus.
It was a reptile
242 million years ago.
You know, roughly. Can't tell you it
was a Tuesday. It was a while ago.
This is the reconstruction.
When they first found the bones...
So, the palaeontologists thought
that all these small bones
were a bit like the wings
on a pterodactyl.
And it was actually, they realised,
lots of elongated neck bones,
three times as long as the torso,
made of about half of the length
of the entire animal.
So, you're talking about
six metres long,
maybe about the size
of a large crocodile.
The neck is six metres long?
The whole thing is about six metres
long, so...but half of it,
three metres is the neck.
Can it lift its head up? We don't...
The thing is, we just...
Little wheels under it.
..we just don't know.
But a giraffe has the same number
of neck vertebrae as a human,
which is seven.
This one had 13, OK? Ooh.
13 neck vertebrae.
So, the giraffe's neck is amazing
because it's really flexible.
It can sort of bend
and thwack with it.
These were relatively stiff.
Did it use it as a sort of
periscope?
Did it use it as a sort
of fishing rod? Did it reach up?
Do they think they found sort of
bits of two, and they've actually
made it a bit longer than it
really...? Yeah.
You know what we should do? Yeah.
Knit these for premature babies.
Yes. Because it's just like
an umbilical cord.
Yeah. With, like, a spooky end.
But if it ate something on Tuesday,
it wouldn't digest it
till Wednesday. Yeah.
The Tanystropheus had a lot
of damn neck. That's all I'm saying.
Which city has the most
French-speaking people in it?
Oh. Ooh. Very careful.
Ooh, oh. Not Paris.
I'm going to guess Quebec.
KLAXON
Non. Non. Non, non, non!
Is it somewhere in Africa? Yes.
A lot of French-speaking countries,
aren't there?
It's the capital
of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Kinshasa.
Kinshasa. Kinshasa. Kinshasa, yeah.
It officially overtook Paris
and Montreal a few years ago.
The country has the largest
francophone population in the world.
More French speakers than France.
Yes.
So, there are about as many
Spanish speakers
in the United States
as there are in Spain.
Spain is already the fourth-biggest
Spanish-speaking country.
So, the UK, does it have
the number-one city
for English speakers?
I think we speak it best.
Just putting that out there.
Which city do we think in the world
has got the most English speakers?
It's Mumbai. Oh. It is Mumbai.
Yeah.
In fact, in terms of population
of English speakers,
the UK only comes sixth worldwide.
And that is colonialism for you.
How many holes can you see
in this cheese?
Oh, my God. I can't... Right.
Oh, don't look.
You don't like holes, do you?
Every time.
Every time,
we have holes on this show.
Every time, it's holes.
I'm so sorry.
Don't look,
but also you won't get any points
for this one.
It's OK cos they're not
right next to each other. Oh.
Or exactly the same size.
OK, good.
So, how do you use a sieve?
I...
C... Can we not talk about sieves?
Literally, every time I'm on
the show, they show me holes!
I'm sorry! The world has got a lot
of holes in it.
Could you play golf
if you never actually looked?
No, it's not...
That's just one hole.
There has to be lots of holes
together of the same size.
Connect 4.
So a cheese-grater would be bad?
Connect 4.
SHE LAUGHS
Sorry. Why don't you keep
listing things
that have got loads of holes
in them? Sorry.
Can you...could you...?
Drop it, will you, you psycho?
No, no, no.
Bridget, I feel I've known you
a long time.
I feel like we're quite close.
It's never come up.
Only cos you've got no holes
in you, Deborah.
If I asked you to play a game
of tennis, could you do that?
Cos a tennis racket...
They're squares.
There's holes in the net.
Do they have to be round?
Got to be round, Deborah.
I'm so sorry.
I've not been filled in. No.
I'm not insane.
How many holes in this cheese?
Two. Is correct.
So...
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
Sorry, why does he...?
Why is he getting a clap?
Because...? Because I never
get anything right.
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
He's right. There's only two holes.
But you can see there's only
two holes? Everyone knows
there's only two holes.
Nobody else said it.
It's like going,
"How many fingers have I got up?"
"Five" Give him 100 points.
I only have to get one thing
right, and ta-da! Yeah.
I think they're patronising Alan.
"Let's give Alan one.
He can answer that kind of thing."
And then we'll do a bit
of colouring in, and it's home time.
LAUGHTER
DEBORAH: Aw!
Can I have a story?
We're talking about topology.
There are only two holes.
But the other things you can see are
dents and deformations and so on.
The only way there could
be another hole in the cheese
is if there was a hole inside
that was fully enclosed
that we couldn't see. So, there's
a branch of mathematics
called topology, and it deals with
shapes and spaces
and holes, and so on. So,
a topologist, and indeed Alan,
would only see two holes
in this picture.
Let's try an easier one.
How many holes does this have?
Two. Two. It's got one
to blow it up,
and one in the middle.
You're sort of right,
but your reasoning is not right.
It's impeccable. What are you
saying? We're not...
We can't count the one
with the valve in it
because it's closed in this picture,
so that's not a hole.
OK? Mmm... So, you've got the one
that the person's body goes through,
and then another one
that makes up the hollow tube
going around the outside.
But that only counts
as a second hole if it's hollow.
So, for example, a ring doughnut
is different to a rubber ring
because it's filled in with dough,
and it's not hollow.
So a doughnut only has one hole.
Mmm.
But the rubber ring has two holes
because the hole of
the hollow space counts as a hole.
Oh. But... I happen
to have a doughnut.
So... I've got a doughnut, as well.
..there are doughnuts for everybody.
And that's the truth of it.
So, the doughnut, at no point
is it hollow in this part.
It's only got one hole.
I'll just check that, Sandi.
Yeah, just see...how that is.
All right. Sure. Ooh!
That's bloody lovely!
Yours is vegan, darling. Is it?
And on that cheesy note,
it's time for the tallying
and the totting-up.
At the tail of the pack,
in last place with minus 12,
It's Sara!
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
But I've got a doughnut, though.
In third place, with minus 2,
it's Alan! Thank you very much.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
In second place, with six
whole points is Bridget!
Yay!
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Topping the charts, in first place
with seven points,
it's Deborah!
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
So, it's thanks to Bridget,
Sara, Deborah and Alan.
And I leave you with this food
for thought from a user on Reddit.
When two people kiss,
they make one long tube
with an arsehole at both ends.
LAUGHTER
Goodnight.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Hello and welcome to QI,
where tonight
we've gone totally tubular.
Let's see who's around.
Firing on all cylinders,
it's Sara Pascoe.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Channelling her inner tube,
it's Bridget Christie.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
The light at the end of my tunnel,
it's Deborah Frances-White.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
And in the conservatory
with the lead piping,
it's Alan Davies.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Please mind the gap between the
train and the platform.
This service will be stopping
at the following stations.
Sara goes...
# Winding your way down on
Baker Street... #
Bridget goes...
# When I get to Warwick Avenue... #
Deborah goes...
# Waterloo, I was defeated
You won the war... #
And Alan goes...
# Ealing Broadway, Fulham Broadway,
Tooting Broadway, Arsenal
# Stockwell, Chigwell, Seven Sisters
# Blackhorse Road, Blackfriars,
Temple
# East Acton, Oval, Bow Road... #
RECORDING SPEEDS UP RAPIDLY
MIMICS TAPE BEING CHEWED UP
EXPLOSION
Right, question one - what can you
do on the London Underground
in summer that a cow can't?
Find the Central line,
cos they can't see red.
Oh! So, inadvertently, you're
heading in the right direction.
Central line is the clue.
Central line is the clue?
Central line is the hottest
of the lines.
Yes, that is correct.
What people do on a really hot
Tube in the summer
is say, "They wouldn't even
treat livestock like this."
You couldn't say that if you're a
cow, cos you are livestock.
LAUGHTER
That is actually, weirdly,
the correct answer.
So...
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
The Central line is the hottest line
on the Tube.
It regularly reaches
temperatures in the summer
that exceed the legal limit
for transporting cattle. Oh!
In 2019, a journalist recorded
a temperature of 36.6 Centigrade,
100 degrees Fahrenheit,
in old money,
on a Central line carriage when
leaving Mile End.
So one of the problems is, it's one
of the early lines.
And those early engineers,
they didn't leave any space
around the trains for ventilation
or air conditioning and so on.
So it's snugly wrapped
in the surrounding clay,
a bit like a blanket.
But here's a really good thing.
What do you think they do now
with the abandoned stations,
of which there are several?
Do they put big air conditioners in?
Well, that'd be pointless. It's
abandoned. I don't know quite how...
Listen, I don't know a lot about air
conditioning, as is apparent. Yeah.
But I wondered if they could use
it at the next station
and somehow puff it down the line.
You're right. You don't know very
much...
I'm going to give you a point
for not knowing very much.
In fact, they use them as
heat reservoirs,
which warm homes in the winter.
So City Road,
in the Old Street area,
currently heats 1,000
homes in Islington.
So it's almost what I said, only
the opposite of what I said.
I live in Islington.
How do I know if it's my house?
I would ring up and ask.
My house does smell like the Tube,
though.
That may be just you need to throw
some of those nappies away.
Some of them have beds in,
don't they?
Yeah, Down Street has got baths
and showers. Nice!
You wouldn't mind living in an
underground station. It'd be nice.
I wouldn't like it. Oh, why?
I need a window.
You can probably have a window
but there's nothing to see.
That's the only thing. Yeah, just a
window propped up on the side.
That's Bridget's window.
Before the Tube, first tunnel in
London, any thoughts?
Under the Thames? Yes, under the
Thames. Greenwich Foot Tunnel?
No, the Thames Tunnel.
The Thames Tunnel? Yes.
Where's that one?
So, it was started in 1825 and it
still has trains going through it.
That is a picture of it, entitled
A Correct View of the Thames Tunnel.
It was the first time engineers
had tunnelled under a major river.
Sir Marc Brunel, Isambard's father.
He said he worked out how to do it
by watching shipworms pooing.
Yeah. So, when a shipworm,
technically called a Teredo,
burrows into wood, its head is
protected
by a sort of tough, helmet-like
shell,
and it digests the wood
and then it excretes it out behind
itself as a sort of hard residue
that lines the tunnel and
strengthens it - it's really clever.
So clever. Isn't it brilliant,
right?
And he imitated this
with a tunnelling shield.
So it was an iron grid, right?
And it pressed against the face
of the tunnel when the workers
were digging out the earth
between the grid squares.
And as they did that,
others followed behind
and reinforced the tunnel
that they were creating.
It took about 16 years to complete.
They progressed about four inches
every day.
Who hasn't been there?
LAUGHTER
And it was never really suitable
for horse-drawn vehicles.
In the end, it was just filled
by souvenir sellers.
And that Correct View,
passive-aggressive labelling
of that picture. Yeah?
Was that one illustrator having...
..throwing some shade
at another illustrator?
No, it was throwing shade
at the fact that it should
have been just nice ladies
and gentlemen walking up and down.
And in fact, it was full of vagrants
and acrobats and ne'er-do-wells.
Acrobats? Yeah.
People used to go down
and entertain... Street entertainers.
They love a tunnel.
LAUGHTER
The past is a very odd place,
isn't it? Yeah.
I don't know if you remember
the 580-tonne
Channel Tunnel boring machine.
Do you remember that?
Yeah, I do. I do remember it.
I pitched a novel, which was
about some people who wanted
to save the remaining
endangered species. Mm?
So, what they did was
they wiped out humanity
by using that boring machine to...
So, anyway, it didn't get
commissioned.
LAUGHTER
"No, thank you."
For a while, the machine,
once they'd finished
the Channel Tunnel, it was for sale.
It was sold in 2004 for just under
£40,000 to a bidder on eBay.
No. Yeah.
Price did not include delivery.
No returns.
That's the thing.
Would you have bought such a thing?
I'd like to have just had it,
put it in the garden.
It'd be quite interesting.
I think... How big is your garden?
Quite a lot bigger, if you had that.
Yeah, that's so true.
LAUGHTER
If your normal amount of...
You know, you have money,
you have a debit card, occasionally
you do go on eBay.
You're drunk.
You think, "I don't have
any roller-skates."
You buy them, you forget about it.
Next Wednesday, the postman comes,
"Oh, my gosh, who got me these?"
Um...
LAUGHTER
But it would be good
if you bought that, right?
And there was never any use for it,
ever. Yeah.
And then, like,
some natural disaster happened
or something. Yeah. So, you go,
"I've got..." And you go,
"I've got the thing for the job."
Yeah.
"And everyone laughed at me
when I bought it." Mm.
"And now who's laughing?" Yeah.
LAUGHTER
"Cos you can't use it..." No.
"..unless you give me
loads of money."
Oh. A similar thing happened to me
at an auction... OK.
..which is that I bought a painting
of a cat that was dressed
in human clothes, and it was £50.
And at the auction, I expected
everyone to go,
"Oh," you know, and for it to go
up to hundreds of pounds.
But it was... I think it
was...started at 50 or something.
And I went like that,
and the auctioneer went,
"Thank God that's gone.
It gives me the creeps."
SANDI GASPS
Oh. Oh, unkind.
And then everyone else laughed
at me. But who's laughing now?
Yeah. Cos it's in my living room.
LAUGHTER
And there will be a natural disaster
involving cats, and I'll have...
Yeah. You'll have the very thing.
..the thing.
You're laughing now, but, you know,
something's going to happen.
I know what it's going to be. Yeah?
Yeah?
I think it's going to be, like,
the cat revolution... Yeah?
..when they finally make
human beings subservient to them.
That's exactly... And you'll be
the only one they forgive
cos they'll go,
"She was respectful."
They'll come into my house
to arrest me. Right.
And... The cats? Yeah, the cats.
And they'll be wearing
human clothes by then.
They'll be standing up, going...
Do you want to make some notes
for your novel, darling.
Sara will come in
in a tunnelling machine.
I'm really worried about this,
because all I've got
is a bumper sticker that says,
"So many cats, so few recipes."
And I just think...
LAUGHTER
You are not long for this world.
After the glorious revolution...
Meow!
It's a terrible thing, though,
buying at auction.
I was at Epsom Racecourse once,
and I was asked if I would
auction off a racehorse.
And they used to do it in guineas,
apparently.
So, I said, "Go on, who'll start me
off at 1,000 guineas?"
And nobody moved. And I said, "I'll
start us off at 1,000 guineas."
I was the last person that bid.
Oh, no!
And I've come in the sports car.
I have no idea how
I'm going to get it home.
Did you actually have
to take the racehorse?
No, very nicely, the man
who sold it to me bought it back.
Sorry, guinea...? Not guinea pigs?
Guineas.
LAUGHTER
APPLAUSE
I actually think 1,000 guinea pigs
is a really good...
It's a good buy, isn't it?
It's a good buy. That's a good...
For one horse?! Yeah. I feel...
That's a lot of guinea pigs.
I think that's too many guinea pigs
for one horse. For one horse?
I think you should get two horses.
Two horses for 1,000....
I can't believe we're having
this conversation.
But when there's a guinea pig
revolution... Guinea pig revolution.
Bridget? Yes. Enough now.
What's as long as a telephone pole,
and comes out of a person?
Oh, I know this guy.
It's not true. No.
It's just what he puts in his bio.
I think it's got to be something
communicated, hasn't it?
OK, it is to do with sound,
certainly.
Maybe this will help you.
Have a listen to this.
TUBA PLAYS A MELODY
That's a tuba. It is a tuba.
It is Tubby the Tuba.
As long as a telephone pole -
that's how far you can make air
travel through an ordinary tuba.
So, if you press on the valves
in trumpets and tubas,
it effectively makes
the instrument longer.
If you press down on the valves,
then your breath travels a distance
of just over 30 feet,
which is an average telephone pole
or a London bus, or three-quarters
of the height of a brachiosaurus,
if that's how you measure things.
Can you tell us in guinea pigs?
Yeah.
The air will take even longer
if you are playing
the subcontrabass tuba.
This is an incredible thing.
It is a seven-foot-tall tuba.
It usually takes two,
sometimes three, people to play it.
There's only four that remain today.
The one that is playable
is at Harvard University.
Look at that thing. Wow.
Nobody's really sure, originally,
where it came from.
Maybe somebody was trying
to stand out by having
a seven-foot tuba. That would do it.
That would certainly do it.
LAUGHTER
There's been a spate of tuba thefts
in the US in the past 20 years.
Smuggled, we believe,
over the Mexican border.
Can you have a 20-year spate?
Oh, I think if you measure things
as brachiosauruses, then probably.
There's been a spate of Christianity
over the last 2,000 years.
Why are they worth so much
in Mexico?
There's a kind of music
called Banda.
It's a genre of Mexican music.
It dates from the mid-1800s
and it's fantastically popular.
I don't like watching people
blowing things because a lot of...
No, because a lot of people
aren't really, really fit. Right.
And you're just thinking,
"I think they're going to die."
OK. Do you want to see a clip
of somebody playing?
No, because I bet
they're going all red...
I tell you what - you shut your eyes
and I'll let you know
if they're going red. If they look
fit, like they run or something.
OK, here we go.
Let's have a quick look.
TUBA PLAYS
You'd worry if you were next door.
LAUGHTER
What's going on?
I mean, I think he was enjoying
that more than anyone else.
I think that's fair.
But if you...say you were playing
Wigmore Hall, and you had to go
on the Tube, you'd rather have a cow
with you, wouldn't you, than...?
Quick supplementary question.
Do you think the world's
longest tuba is taller
than the world's tallest tuber?
No.
Which do you think is taller?
The tuba or the tuber?
Tuber. The tuber
is absolutely right.
The tallest one was a cassava
harvested in Nigeria.
Did you know this? Yes.
No.
No. You did not know this.
I am deeply...
You'd have mentioned it before.
You would have said,
"What about that cassava?"
I know this guy.
How dare you?
The veg wins - 2.46 metres,
whilst the Harvard contrabass
is 2.13 metres tall. It's amazing.
And the other thing that was
originally a type of trombone
was the bazooka,
which is a kind of weapon.
There was a radio comedian called
Rob Burns in the United States.
He invented it in 1905 as a child.
A sort of... So, comedians
can do anything.
I know. Exactly right.
And there he is. And it was a brass
instrument with a lip reed
and a sliding tube, like a trombone.
So, when the Americans started
using portable rocket-launchers
in World War II, they called them
bazookas because it looked a bit
like Robbie Burns's original
home-made instrument.
And then who are these chicks?
The Bazooka Bitches?
They are the Bazooka Bitches.
The guy on the end with the hat
and the woman at the front,
there's been an...there's been
a situation here. Oh, has there? OK.
He's gone, you know,
"The safety catch is..." whatever,
and she's gone, "Don't tell me
how to use a..." Bazooka?
"What I could tell you.
"Just keep it... All right?"
Yeah.
"I know what you're doing."
And he doesn't like it
because he's been emasculated
in front of all those boys.
And he's very cross.
Again, Sara, I'd write that down
as a long story
you could possibly
turn into a novel.
I'm more interested in this woman
behind her.
I think... She's... Like a wedding.
Like, "I'm never going
to get married.
"Do you want to hold
the end of my bazooka?
"Just walk behind me."
So, now that you've boned up
on your brass instruments,
who slept on lion skins
and could play two trumpets at once?
Is it going to be Ancient Greek?
It IS ancient Greek!
Oh, I thought it might be. Yes.
Where might it be
in Ancient Greece?
Jazz Club.
The ancient Olympic Games featured
competitive trumpet-blowing,
and the undisputed champion
was a man called
Herodorus of Megara,
and he won ten titles
from 328 to 292 BC.
He could play two trumpets at once.
He slept only on lion skin.
And the lions weren't in them,
presumably. No, no, no.
No. They're shivering in the corner.
"Oh."
He was quite the guy.
He ate about eight loaves of bread
every day, nine kilos of meat
and six litres of wine.
Six litres of wine a day?
Six litres of wine.
And then he could play the trumpet
out of two...
Doesn't say he could play it well.
Doesn't say that.
Do you think the Ancient Greeks,
when they wrote things down,
they just wrote it down wrong?
Yeah. If anyone...
Because he clearly hasn't
had all that, has he? No.
It's bollocks.
I think what they found there
is his shopping list.
There's another marvellous trumpeter
from history called John Blanke.
He's the only identifiable
black British Tudor,
of whom we have a picture.
So this is on the Westminster
Tournament Roll 1511.
He trumpeted in Henry VII's
and Henry VIII's courts.
Probably, he came to England
as one of the African attendants
of Catherine of Aragon
when she first arrived in 1501,
in fact, to marry
Henry VIII's brother.
Now, what peaceful use
can you think of for a torpedo?
That's a massive torpedo
being loaded onto a ship in 1943
by the women's Royal Navy Service.
God, I thought that was me,
second from left.
LAUGHTER
That does look very like you.
I thought, "Have they done
one of those things?"
They do that on this show sometimes.
They Photoshop me in.
Usually...
..usually, it's a female
from the past.
And that's what they've done.
We're looking for a peaceful use.
Fill it with flowers. Fill it...
Where does "torpedo"
get its name from?
It's a town in Spain.
No, that's Toledo. I had...
My little godson, when he was six,
told me he was playing a video game,
one of those ones online,
with other children.
And he said, I have to name
my animal, and it's a shark.
And it goes really fast.
So, I called him shark-pedo.
And the game banned it,
and I wasn't allowed.
And I said, "I can sort of see why."
Yeah.
And he said, "I think it's cos
it's got a rude word in it.
" 'Pee'. " AUDIENCE: Aw!
"Torpedo torpedo" -
scientific name for something
that is not a bomb.
Oh. Torpedo torpedo? What...?
Torpedo torpedo.
So, this is an electric ray
found in the Mediterranean.
There it is.
There was a first-century Greek
physician called Dioscorides,
and he recommended applying
a live one of these electric rays
up the seat to cure haemorrhoids.
The thing is, if they haven't
gone away for ages,
you will try anything. Yeah.
Well, weird...
I've heard.
Are you sitting comfortably?
One of the few ancient remedies
that actually worked.
Was it? It did actually work.
Did it? Yes.
Electrotherapy is still used today
to treat, well,
less severe haemorrhoids.
Although, can I just say,
the electricity is no longer
administered by a fish?
That's not...
Less severe? You could use
a toaster.
Yeah, you could use a toaster. Yeah.
Hair-straighteners. Yeah.
GROANING
I think hair-straighteners
is better than a toaster.
Oh, you didn't like that one,
did you?
That's an image you can
take home with you.
"Are they hot enough yet?" "Yes!"
It's so fascinating to think
about the back story
to that discovery, and the person
who just happened
to be mucking around... Yeah.
..with a fish and go,
"Oh, my haemorrhoids
have cleared up."
Well... Dressing-gown fell open.
They would have known that the ray
had a painkilling effect.
So...so torpedo comes
from the Latin to numb, "torpor".
But the torpedo, as in the weapon,
gets its name
from the Napoleonic Wars,
was named after the fish,
which incapacitates its enemies
when it touches them.
There was a thing called a
coffin torpedo in the 19th century.
It was to stop body-snatching.
They made coffins that operate
like shotguns.
And if you lifted the lid,
it fired, shot into the air.
Unfortunately,
not all that successful.
So there was one review.
There was an Ohio grave torpedo,
and it was tested on a mule.
And they reported, "He lifted up one
foot when the explosion occurred,
"but never stopped munching fodder."
So, he was like, "Meh,"
and carried on.
Mm. They should shoot the body out
at the person.
That's much scarier. Yeah.
But if you're a body-snatcher,
you might just catch it, then.
If the body... Yeah,
but then you're a body-catcher.
It's a whole new career.
APPLAUSE
Now to those tubes below the torso.
What's so terrible about trousers?
They say they're a size 14.
They're definitely not.
They're never a size 14.
I have trousers that are a size 12,
14, 16, 18 and 20.
All of them fit me.
And I don't understand why
the designers can't get together
and just make a plan
and then decide on that.
Because I've had enough.
And the women in this audience
have had enough.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
I ordered a Christmas dress,
and it came and it was that wide.
And I said, "Oh, I'm sorry.
"I ordered a medium
and it's that big."
And they said,
"Well, that's what size it is."
And I said,
"Yeah, but it's too big."
And they said,
"Well, it will fit someone."
But you can argue with that.
That is true.
And I said, "Yes,
but it doesn't work like that.
"Clothes have sizes.
"You can't just make it one size."
And they said, "Well, we do.
"And then we send them out.
And just give it to someone
"if you don't want it."
No. And that's how they operated.
That is going to ruin Christmas
when someone opens it, and you go,
"Yeah, yeah, I was far too thin
for that. Please..."
LAUGHTER
"Please enjoy."
But what's so terrible
about trousers, historically?
Well, we couldn't wear them
for a long time.
You could be arrested
for wearing trousers.
It was illegal for women
to wear trousers in about 40 cities
in the United States.
People were arrested.
They were charged
with impersonating a man.
Right up until...
Why would you want to?
Right up until 1923,
when the Federal Government
overrode the laws
and made it allowable.
Before that, even when serving
in the army or mountain climbing,
for example, women had to wear
heavy woollen skirts.
Also in Europe,
Henriette d'Angeville,
she claimed to be the very first
woman to climb Mont Blanc in 1838,
and she did so dressed like that.
Is it cheating to use a ladder
to climb a mountain?
They've deliberately taken her
a tricky route, haven't they?
Yeah. "You go first, love.
We'll come..."
"This is the only way
we could do it."
"And why is there a...?"
"Could I not have the plank?"
"No, it has to be a ladder."
And it looks like she's going
to go along there,
over the next ladder... Yeah.
..and then just bring her
back round again.
"Isn't this the ladder
we went over before."
"No, no, you keep going.
"You're doing very well."
It's like a sort of Escher drawing,
isn't it?
Going round and round and round.
The first woman to controversially
climb Matterhorn in trousers, 1895,
was Annie Smith Peck.
And if you don't know her,
she is just incredible.
She once climbed a mountain
and hung a "Votes for Women" banner
at the top when she got there.
But there were no other women
up there...
LAUGHTER
..to appreciate her sign.
I don't think it was women
who needed the message, darling.
Same trouble with hats
that you've got with your trousers.
DEBORAH: It's true.
She's ordered that online. Yeah.
They said that was a large.
It's for a...
It's a three-year-old's hat.
No, no, it looks good.
It looks good. It'll fit someone.
But if you were a woman in Paris,
for example, 1800 to 2013,
you had to have a special permit,
"permission de travestissement",
to wear trousers. So, for example,
this is the permission
that was given to the great artist
Rosa Bonheur.
Rosa Bonheur is very famous
for painting farm animals and so on,
and in order to do so,
she wanted to wear trousers
for these agricultural scenes,
but she had to get
permission to do so.
Did you say till 2013?
February 2013, it was finally
overturned.
I can't say it was constantly
enforced.
I...I'm sure I went to Paris
in trousers before 2013...
No, it wasn't... ..but I didn't know
I was dicing with the law.
No. They did amend it slightly,
once in 1892 and once in 1909,
and women were allowed to wear
trousers without a permit
if they were holding the bicycle
handlebars or the reins of a horse.
There was a rule that forbade women
from wearing trousers on the floor
of the US Senate.
That wasn't revoked until 1993.
When I was a law student,
you were not allowed
to wear trousers as a woman
if you were in the Inns of Court.
And there was a wonderful story
about a woman who went to do one
of these compulsory dinners
in the Inns of Court.
She was wearing trousers,
and the clerk said to her,
"Madam, you can't come in here
wearing those."
So she took them off
and gave them to him. Oh.
But there's other times in history
it was not wearing trousers
that could get you into trouble.
So, in the Hebridean Island of Seil,
there's a pub called Tigh na Truish,
and it translates
as "the house of trousers".
Look at that. It looks fantastic.
See that bridge?
That's the bridge to the mainland.
It's called
the Bridge over the Atlantic.
And the British government
in the Jacobite rebellion, so 1745,
they banned the wearing
of tartan and the kilt.
And so, if you broke those laws,
you could face transportation
to Australia.
Can you imagine, darling?
I mean... I know.
It'd be horrendous.
If the locals were heading
over the bridge to the mainland,
where the authorities might see them
in a kilt, they'd pop to the pub
and change out of their kilts
and into trousers.
And there are still hooks
where you can make the change
if you want to in the pub.
Right, how comfortable would it be
to snuggle up
under a blanket octopus?
I'm going to say not very
comfortable if you're a female
blanket octopus, because the male
blanket octopus dies after mating
and won't cuddle.
When I was a nanny, I had to take
children to the London Zoo.
And I remember them saying this,
that after the octopuses mated...
Yeah. ..the man would die. Right.
And... Or claim he'd died.
LAUGHTER
I mean, they say they die. Maybe
they just change their number.
I don't know.
I've died!
The woman then starves herself
to death...
Right. Yeah. ..because she doesn't
want to leave them
to go and get food for herself.
I remember this because I remember
the children I nannied for saying,
"What's mating?"
I'm going to say yes, it would be
comfortable under a blanket octopus.
But the thing is,
she wouldn't even notice the male.
That's the truth of it.
They have extreme sexual dimorphism.
Oh. A massive difference
between the females and the males.
The female can grow
to about two metres.
Can you spot the male
in the picture?
Oh. Ooh.
What he's there?
Like the Tinder Swindler?
Is that him at the back? That dot?
Oh, the little dot, is he?
That little dot is the male.
What coming in behind?
Just a little dot.
So, I think if he died, you wouldn't
give a rat's arse, frankly.
Is he swimming along, thinking,
"Phwoar"?
That little tiny dot is the man?
"She's enormous!"
He's basically sort of a sperm sac,
frankly. Yeah.
So, if Alan and I matched our height
to a blanket octopus's proportions,
Alan would be roughly
the length of the thumbnail,
and...or I would be the height
of the Gherkin skyscraper in London.
And THAT is a novel.
APPLAUSE
Well played, we've found it.
We've got it.
I mean, they are...
Yeah, the women are... They're
badass, they're really badass.
They are immune to the stings
of the Portuguese man-of-war.
So, when one floats by,
they sometimes rip off its tentacles
to wield as defensive weapons.
Speaking of octopuses,
what's unusual
about the seven-armed octopus?
They can't get trousers to fit.
It's got seven arms.
KLAXON
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Game's getting harder, if anything.
Isn't it?
Ten arms? No, not seven. Not ten.
There is one with ten, though,
isn't there?
Or there used to be one with ten.
They found it the other day.
It was a fossil.
Was it? I mean, it was something
like 300 million years old.
It's actually named after Joe Biden.
The ten-armed... Is it? Yes, it is.
It's nearly as old.
So, the seven-armed octopuses,
so-called because the male looks
as though it only has seven
tentacles, but in fact,
it does have eight.
So, the eighth one,
the one on the left there
is that it's coiled up
in a sort of sac
beneath its right eye
for most of the time.
And then it has a specialised arm
called a hectocotylus.
Technical word for...? Penis?
Yes, it's basically
a removable penis.
So, it uncoils and detaches
during mating to deliver the sperm,
and then it regenerates.
That's very civilised.
I think the new Doctor Who
should do that.
Every time they change actors,
that would be...
So, do octopuses have tentacles?
Is that correct?
The way you've said it
makes us think no.
Yeah. No, it has suckers
all the way up.
Tentacles are when you just
have the sucker
on the sort of pad-like end
of the thing.
So, Portuguese man-of-war
have tentacles.
You do find tentacles
on some carnivorous plants.
There's an amazing plant
called the pimpernel sundew,
and it has two types of tentacles.
So, insects walking near the plant
can trigger a touch-sensitive,
sort of lightning-fast
snap tentacle,
which catapults the prey
into glue tentacles
that then slowly draw it to death.
Can I say something about glue?
An...
..when an aphid has had her young...
Yeah? ..she turns herself
into a blob of glue... Right?
..in front of them,
so that when predators come,
they just stick to her.
Oh, my God. Can you imagine how
traumatising for the children?
But isn't nature amazing? Yeah,
that is an embarrassing parent.
Yeah.
I... "By the way, my mum's come
to pick me up.
"She's a big blob of glue."
I live in quite a high-crime area.
Oh, right. So, I was thinking
of doing that on my front step.
Do you remember that story about
Beefeaters
who live in the Tower of London,
couldn't get home insurance
because, strictly speaking,
they live in Tower Hamlets,
and they haven't got window locks?
But couldn't they say, "But we don't
need window locks because we've got
"men at the gates with spears?"
Darling, have you tried to fill
in a form with an insurance company?
So, the very best use for a tentacle
comes from the Octopus for a Preemie
community.
Look next to you,
and you will find... Oh!
..little tiny octopuses.
For little babies? Little octo-pals.
Oh. Mine's only got six legs.
I don't want to make a fuss,
but that's two short.
Why might you give this
to a premature baby?
Oh. A premature baby?
Yeah, the preemies, yeah.
The preemies.
Tiny hands? Is it to cover
their wires?
Well, sort of.
So, it's the sweetest thing.
Volunteers crochet and knit these...
LAUGHTER
I don't think that's
what the babies are doing.
They're not?
I don't think it's that.
Sandi, can I say something?
Yes, darling.
When my premature baby was born,
they did something weird
with her umbilical cord,
and I was like, "Oh, my God,
what are you doing?"
And the consultant said, "It's OK.
"You could swing a baby around
by its umbilical cord,
"and it would be fine."
And we're going to try that now.
So, babies hold on
to the umbilical cord for comfort.
Oh, do they? So when a baby is born,
the tentacles mimic the cord
for the baby, and they soothe them
in the neo-natal units.
And it also stops them tugging
on the tubes in the intensive care.
Oh, my... And can I say,
anybody can get involved.
You can knit these for the charity.
Branch out. I don't know. Yeah.
You could also do a jellyfish
or aliens or whatever.
The important things
are the tentacles.
And so, what we're going to do
is we're going to give
all your octopuses a jolly good wash
and donate them to charity
after today's episode.
Why might Victorian women
have actually had a lot of fun
on their period?
They used to free-bleed
on the Northern line?
Is it because,
before there was ibuprofen,
there was laudanum?
You're heading in the right
direction. Would it...?
It's drug-related.
They thought we were mad,
didn't they?
When you say "they thought",
what you mean is, "they noticed".
I think I know this
because I think I had an expert
on The Guilty Feminist podcast
tell me that they used to dip
their tampons in the same sort
of white powder
that sometimes stockbrokers use
to make themselves overly confident.
And that's why you get
the stereotype that women talk a lot
when they're on their period.
They invented the cocaine tampon.
Yes. Absolutely right. Did they?
Absolutely right.
APPLAUSE
Can I say, not always cocaine,
sometimes opium?
Don't want to muck about.
It wasn't just for women.
So, cocaine tampons were used
for both sexes.
For painful haemorrhoids.
Perfect. Yes.
Any haemorrhoids - they don't
have to be painful.
In the war, they used tampons
to plug wounds.
And then I think a woman
who was working in a hospital went,
"Do you know what else
that would be useful for?" Yeah.
Soaking tampons, or the equivalent,
in opium, that dates back
to Ancient Rome.
But Pond's Tampons,
which was a 19th-century product,
they were laced with opiates
and deadly nightshade.
You can still get a sort of
version of it.
There's something called a B&O -
so Belladonna and Opium suppository.
And they're sometimes prescribed
as muscle relaxants after surgery.
Sounds heaven. Mm.
People at my university
used to do it with vodka.
What? Soak it in...?
Tampons and put it up the bum.
OK, I'm just going to do a thing
with the audience.
I'm going to count to three,
and we're all going to say, "Why?"
So, here we go. One, two, three...
ALL: Why?
The theory was that
you absorb things,
things get into your bloodstream
quicker. Oh.
So, there was a film,
Kevin And Perry,
where they were doing vodka
in their eyes for that reason.
And I think the thinking was,
"Where else can you put it?"
Just, um...
Where's the most dangerous place
for a toilet?
Oh, just slightly further
than where you thought it was.
A bit more along.
So, we're talking
about one particular day.
Oh, a day? It's not
a dangerous place?
In 1900, there were very few
ladies' toilets,
and a lot of men thought
it was a very bad idea for women
to have a toilet at all.
Men's toilets were ubiquitous,
but ladies' toilets not so.
They did exist, but far fewer.
Now, this is a wonderful story.
George Bernard Shaw,
who was an incredible human being
as well as an amazing playwright,
he was working in local government
in north London at the time,
and he advocated for women's rights
and pushed for a ladies' loo
to be built in Camden,
in north London, beside the men's.
And there was lots of people who
said it would lower property values
and it would cause traffic problems.
So, they built a wooden...
This is absolutely true.
So, they built a wooden mock-up
of the toilet to see
if there was a traffic risk.
And in one day alone,
it was hit by vehicles 45 times.
And it was protesters
trying to make a point. Wow.
And Shaw accused the bus companies
of taking bribes, and so on.
And the company said, "No, no, no,
it was all accidents."
It took five years for the toilet
to finally be built.
And I have to say, there is still
a ladies' loo in exactly that spot
that George Bernard Shaw decided.
I actually live in Camden,
and can I tell you,
it has not lowered house prices? OK.
What were they thinking?
It was a key component
of the suffragette movement,
was to get loos for the...
But that's also why
they didn't want them,
is because it did restrict
women so much, socially.
Except if you were pregnant.
If you were pregnant, a woman,
you were allowed to wee anywhere.
And the policeman had
to give you his hat.
That was the theory.
But the hat-peeing law is a myth,
unfortunately. Oh, was it?
Yeah, the policeman thing. Well,
I mean, the one that I...
He didn't mind at all.
Yeah. That wasn't actually
a policeman, just got to say.
No-one tell the policemen
it's a myth.
The first person to sort of do
gender equality for toilets
was the 15th-century mayor
Dick Whittington.
He actually had a 128-seat latrine
for both men and women.
And it used the Thames
to flush away,
but you used to sit with everybody.
It wasn't like you had separate
cubicles or anything. So, you all
had to go at the same time.
You all had to do exactly the same...
Three, two, one.
And then you all went.
And now for the moment,
when the whole show goes
straight down the tubes -
it's time for general ignorance.
Fingers on buzzers, please.
Name the animal with the longest
neck for its torso.
Ooh! For its torso.
Ooh. Ooh.
Longest neck for its...
LAUGHTER
It's like a gas leak.
You've got to think about the neck,
but you've also got to think
about the torso. Torso. Yeah.
Seahorse. Oh, good choice. Yeah.
Good choice. Got a really long neck.
Hardly any torso.
Yeah, I should have said
I'm talking about an extinct animal.
It's probably one
that you haven't even heard of.
It's from the late Triassic period.
Oh, is it a kind of eel?
Cos you could actually argue
that that's all neck and no torso.
Yeah. Yeah.
Or a snake.
KLAXON
Oh! Oh, God!
APPLAUSE
I'm furious! Furious.
So, there's a thing
called a Tanystropheus.
It was a reptile
242 million years ago.
You know, roughly. Can't tell you it
was a Tuesday. It was a while ago.
This is the reconstruction.
When they first found the bones...
So, the palaeontologists thought
that all these small bones
were a bit like the wings
on a pterodactyl.
And it was actually, they realised,
lots of elongated neck bones,
three times as long as the torso,
made of about half of the length
of the entire animal.
So, you're talking about
six metres long,
maybe about the size
of a large crocodile.
The neck is six metres long?
The whole thing is about six metres
long, so...but half of it,
three metres is the neck.
Can it lift its head up? We don't...
The thing is, we just...
Little wheels under it.
..we just don't know.
But a giraffe has the same number
of neck vertebrae as a human,
which is seven.
This one had 13, OK? Ooh.
13 neck vertebrae.
So, the giraffe's neck is amazing
because it's really flexible.
It can sort of bend
and thwack with it.
These were relatively stiff.
Did it use it as a sort of
periscope?
Did it use it as a sort
of fishing rod? Did it reach up?
Do they think they found sort of
bits of two, and they've actually
made it a bit longer than it
really...? Yeah.
You know what we should do? Yeah.
Knit these for premature babies.
Yes. Because it's just like
an umbilical cord.
Yeah. With, like, a spooky end.
But if it ate something on Tuesday,
it wouldn't digest it
till Wednesday. Yeah.
The Tanystropheus had a lot
of damn neck. That's all I'm saying.
Which city has the most
French-speaking people in it?
Oh. Ooh. Very careful.
Ooh, oh. Not Paris.
I'm going to guess Quebec.
KLAXON
Non. Non. Non, non, non!
Is it somewhere in Africa? Yes.
A lot of French-speaking countries,
aren't there?
It's the capital
of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Kinshasa.
Kinshasa. Kinshasa. Kinshasa, yeah.
It officially overtook Paris
and Montreal a few years ago.
The country has the largest
francophone population in the world.
More French speakers than France.
Yes.
So, there are about as many
Spanish speakers
in the United States
as there are in Spain.
Spain is already the fourth-biggest
Spanish-speaking country.
So, the UK, does it have
the number-one city
for English speakers?
I think we speak it best.
Just putting that out there.
Which city do we think in the world
has got the most English speakers?
It's Mumbai. Oh. It is Mumbai.
Yeah.
In fact, in terms of population
of English speakers,
the UK only comes sixth worldwide.
And that is colonialism for you.
How many holes can you see
in this cheese?
Oh, my God. I can't... Right.
Oh, don't look.
You don't like holes, do you?
Every time.
Every time,
we have holes on this show.
Every time, it's holes.
I'm so sorry.
Don't look,
but also you won't get any points
for this one.
It's OK cos they're not
right next to each other. Oh.
Or exactly the same size.
OK, good.
So, how do you use a sieve?
I...
C... Can we not talk about sieves?
Literally, every time I'm on
the show, they show me holes!
I'm sorry! The world has got a lot
of holes in it.
Could you play golf
if you never actually looked?
No, it's not...
That's just one hole.
There has to be lots of holes
together of the same size.
Connect 4.
So a cheese-grater would be bad?
Connect 4.
SHE LAUGHS
Sorry. Why don't you keep
listing things
that have got loads of holes
in them? Sorry.
Can you...could you...?
Drop it, will you, you psycho?
No, no, no.
Bridget, I feel I've known you
a long time.
I feel like we're quite close.
It's never come up.
Only cos you've got no holes
in you, Deborah.
If I asked you to play a game
of tennis, could you do that?
Cos a tennis racket...
They're squares.
There's holes in the net.
Do they have to be round?
Got to be round, Deborah.
I'm so sorry.
I've not been filled in. No.
I'm not insane.
How many holes in this cheese?
Two. Is correct.
So...
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
Sorry, why does he...?
Why is he getting a clap?
Because...? Because I never
get anything right.
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
He's right. There's only two holes.
But you can see there's only
two holes? Everyone knows
there's only two holes.
Nobody else said it.
It's like going,
"How many fingers have I got up?"
"Five" Give him 100 points.
I only have to get one thing
right, and ta-da! Yeah.
I think they're patronising Alan.
"Let's give Alan one.
He can answer that kind of thing."
And then we'll do a bit
of colouring in, and it's home time.
LAUGHTER
DEBORAH: Aw!
Can I have a story?
We're talking about topology.
There are only two holes.
But the other things you can see are
dents and deformations and so on.
The only way there could
be another hole in the cheese
is if there was a hole inside
that was fully enclosed
that we couldn't see. So, there's
a branch of mathematics
called topology, and it deals with
shapes and spaces
and holes, and so on. So,
a topologist, and indeed Alan,
would only see two holes
in this picture.
Let's try an easier one.
How many holes does this have?
Two. Two. It's got one
to blow it up,
and one in the middle.
You're sort of right,
but your reasoning is not right.
It's impeccable. What are you
saying? We're not...
We can't count the one
with the valve in it
because it's closed in this picture,
so that's not a hole.
OK? Mmm... So, you've got the one
that the person's body goes through,
and then another one
that makes up the hollow tube
going around the outside.
But that only counts
as a second hole if it's hollow.
So, for example, a ring doughnut
is different to a rubber ring
because it's filled in with dough,
and it's not hollow.
So a doughnut only has one hole.
Mmm.
But the rubber ring has two holes
because the hole of
the hollow space counts as a hole.
Oh. But... I happen
to have a doughnut.
So... I've got a doughnut, as well.
..there are doughnuts for everybody.
And that's the truth of it.
So, the doughnut, at no point
is it hollow in this part.
It's only got one hole.
I'll just check that, Sandi.
Yeah, just see...how that is.
All right. Sure. Ooh!
That's bloody lovely!
Yours is vegan, darling. Is it?
And on that cheesy note,
it's time for the tallying
and the totting-up.
At the tail of the pack,
in last place with minus 12,
It's Sara!
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
But I've got a doughnut, though.
In third place, with minus 2,
it's Alan! Thank you very much.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
In second place, with six
whole points is Bridget!
Yay!
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Topping the charts, in first place
with seven points,
it's Deborah!
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
So, it's thanks to Bridget,
Sara, Deborah and Alan.
And I leave you with this food
for thought from a user on Reddit.
When two people kiss,
they make one long tube
with an arsehole at both ends.
LAUGHTER
Goodnight.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE