QI (2003–…): Season 20, Episode 9 - Theatrical! - full transcript

Hello and welcome to QI.

Prepare yourself for
tiffs, travesties and tear-jerkers,

because tonight
we've gone all theatrical.

Turn off your telephones
for our dramatis personae.

The tragic hero, Ed Byrne.

Best tortured artist, Jack Dee.

Tonight's leading lady,
Cally Beaton.

And understudying the part
of Alan Davies, it's Alan Davies!

Now, if they want my attention,
they'll need their show-stoppers,

so Ed goes...

Fee-fi-fo-fum!



Jack goes...

Cinderella,
you shall go to the ball!

Cally goes...

Turn again, Whittington,
Lord Mayor of London.

And Alan goes...

To be, or not to be,
that is the question.

Oh, no, it isn't!

So much for the prologue.
Now it's time for Act I.

What's the most interesting thing
to ever happen in a theatre?

Is it when Godot actually turned up?
Yes.

I mean, Lincoln was assassinated
in a theatre,

that was pretty interesting. Not
interesting to him, though, was it?

No. It is that thing, the actors
said afterwards, "Apart from that,

"Mrs Lincoln, did you enjoy
the play?" "Did you enjoy the play?"



There's been a few...

Didn't Moliere die in a performance
of one of his plays?

He died in The Hypochondriac. Yes.

And he had said he wasn't
feeling well. There you go.

I was at the theatre
with a boyfriend

who was quite distinctive-looking,
it was Les Mis,

I whizzed out to the loo,
whizzed back into my aisle seat,

held his inner thigh lovingly.

It wasn't him.

And it took him till I Dreamed
A Dream for him to tell me.

Ooh, that's a long way in, isn't it?

I meant the show. OK...

OK, possibly one of the most
interesting things

to ever happen in the theatre
is the founding of Belgium.

So there is an opera by a French
composer called Daniel Auber

called La Muette De Portici.

It's about a group
of fishermen in Naples

and they rebel against their
Spanish rulers in the 17th century,

it climaxes with
the eruption of Mount Vesuvius

and the heroine throws herself
from the balcony into the lava.

Real lava?

I mean, it would only be one
performance, I think... Yeah.

Anyway, the opera was performed
in 1830 in Brussels.

So, at the time, Belgium
belonged to the Netherlands

and revolution was in the air.

And there is
a particularly stirring aria

called Sacred Love Of The Homeland

and, apparently, after it was sung,
the crowd poured out of the theatre,

they joined all the nationalist
protests outside and, weeks later,

the rebel provisional government
declared independence

and Belgians claimed that this opera
was responsible for the creation

of their country.
See, it would be really interesting

if it was another country
other than Belgium. Right. You know?

So, yeah,
before that night at the opera,

posters had been hung up all
over the city - and I like this -

it said,
"Monday the 23rd - fireworks.

"Tuesday 24th - illuminations.

"Wednesday 25th - revolution."

Ah! This was French Belgium, then,
was it done in a...?

Cos you know I speak Dutch -
incredibly useful life skill...

Yeah. ..they have a funny Flemish
saying and it goes...

If something tastes delicious
they say,

alsof er een engeltje
over je tong piest.

"As if a little angel
is pissing on my tongue."

So...thank goodness that...

That's if it tastes delicious
they say that?

What if something
doesn't taste nice?

Well, we don't want to go there,
I think.

They do have the same word
for sex and poo.

They say, "Wil graag mit je poepen,"

"I want to have sex with you."
Same word as poo. So...

Let's not go there now. Right.
I just thought I'd say that.

A country that has the same word
for sex and poo

is a country
I don't want to visit.

You'd have to be really sure
of the context

of that sentence, wouldn't you?
"What did he just say?

"What is... What's happening here?
Is it sex or poo?"

That's how my first child
was conceived, so... Yeah.

We've had our own
kind of rioting in theatres.

So, in 1808,
Covent Garden Theatre burnt down,

and a year later they rebuilt it.

And in order to offset the huge cost
of the rebuilding,

they decided that
they would put up ticket prices.

They'd increased all the prices,

they'd reduced the areas
where poor people could sit

and they'd increased the number
of very expensive boxes

for the very wealthy.
And this led to the Old Price Riots.

Why didn't they just do
what they do now... What?

..and just introduce an
"administration fee"

on top of the ticket price?

Look at the touring comedians
nodding sagely! Yeah. Too right!

This went on for three months.

The police were called, the Riot Act
was read from the stage

and then there was some doubt -
could you arrest people

who'd bought a ticket to come in cos
they'd bought a ticket to be there?

The people who rioted,
they brought frying pans.

They were really dedicated,
banging the frying pans...

Oh, banging the frying pan? Yeah.

I thought they were...
Whacking them, no.

They just didn't bring them along
in case it was another fire. Yeah.

That's a very good idea.

But one of the main complaints, and
it was all classes that complained,

but there were places that were
known as pigeonholes, where you sat,

it was the cheapest seats, you could
only see the legs of the actors.

It's perfect if you go
and see Riverdance. Yeah. Yeah.

But they won. They won. The rioters
won, and the prices were reduced

again back to the old prices.
So the Old Price Riots.

Three months of it, that's
spectacular. And this picture here

is of a rather radical barrister
called Henry Clifford.

He's got written on his spectacles,
"No private boxes."

Was that a thing, too, then? Yeah.

So what the people
who owned the theatre wanted

was to have private boxes,
lavishly decorated,

where the wealthy would sit.

This is very much
like Premier League football, Sandi.

Pricing out the poor people. Yes.
Bringing in the corporates. Yeah.

Exactly.

Now, criminologist
Professor John Pitts once said,

"You cannot riot on your own.
A one-man riot is a tantrum."

So, tell me, how do you tackle
a toddler's tantrum?

Any thoughts?
One useful way that I discovered

is you carry a hessian sack
around with you,

and I just put it over the toddler.
Yeah. It can't be plastic

cos obviously that's bad
for the environment. Yeah.

You know, hessian...
A hessian sack is enough.

And also, you can also whisper
through it... Yeah. ..saying,

"I'm going to throw you
in the Thames in a minute."

I don't want to keep banging on
about Holland, but they have

Saint Nicholas, Sinterklaas,
celebrations and they do...

They threaten to take the children
away in a hessian sack.

Is that a thing?
It's an actual thing.

Yeah, there was everyone
thinking I was weird. Yeah.

My tour manager once...
His daughter threw a tantrum

and he just started filming her
on his phone

and then played it back to her as
she was having the tantrum. Right.

And that's how TikTok started.

And then she started laughing,

watching the video
of her own tantrum.

Well, that's not a bad idea,
you see, cos one of the things

that happens in a tantrum,
you get anger and sadness

at exactly the same moment. And
it's really hard to differentiate

between the two.
It's like the menopause. It is.

It's also rather like before -
Premier League football.

And the best thing to do
is if you can move your toddler

from their sort of anger into
sadness, because then, of course,

a sad child thinks,
"Oh, I just need to be comforted,"

and it just seems to be better.

The problem is that
the prefrontal cortex in a toddler,

the bit of the region of the brain

that influences
our sense of fairness

and our impulse controls and so on
has yet to fully develop.

And that's why, in general, children
throw tantrums and adults don't.

And also it's ridiculous as well.
So it's hard not to laugh

in their face when they're there,
and that makes it even worse.

One of our daughters
started with a dispute

about what she was going
to wear when she went out.

And Jane, my wife, said,

"You know, look, you need to change
the T-shirt cos it's filthy,

"it's got baked beans on it
and we're going out,

"so we want you to change it."
And it got worse and worse

to the point where she just blew up
and just screamed at Jane,

"Anyway, you think you're
the fancy lady of all London town!"

One of the most cutting things
my kid ever said to me,

when my youngest was very young,
he was three or four years old,

and he's always had this thing
about wanting to be older

and wanting to be a grown-up

and he was just really frustrated
one day and he says,

he just goes,
"I wish I was the grown-up."

And I said to him, I said, "Well,
you know, when you're a grown-up,

"you'll have to go to work."

And he just paused -
a perfect sitcom beat -

and then went,

"I wish I was a comedian."

What's the worst bit of
parenting advice you can think of?

Well.. There's a book now
that's come out called

There's No Such Thing As Naughty.
Oh, right.

And that sounds like a shit book,
doesn't it?

That's a book you should steal
rather than buying.

But they used to have all those...
They had, like... Was it Dr Spock?

Dr Spock, yeah. It used to say,
like, put your baby outside.

And then there was an earlier one,
I think a 19th century book,

about giving your children...

Basically it was morphine,
it was a soothing syrup.

I mean, who wouldn't want
a little bit of laced Calpol?

Victorian children were calmed
by all sorts of medicines like that.

There was a thing called Stickney
& Poor's Pure Paregoric Syrup

and it worked fantastically.
It was very soothing for children

because it was 50% alcohol

and contained 1 and 3/16 grains
of opium per ounce.

Yeah. Oh, let's get a shot glass,
Sandi!

I mean, you could either
give that to the child,

or you could take it and not care
that the child's not sleeping.

Or just have one each,
and cheers at bedtime.

"Goodnight, darling."
Come on, which of us is not sneaked

a tiny bit of Calpol in our day?

But there are all sorts of domestic
manuals that used to give advice.

Some of it, I think,
is a bit suspect.

There's an amazing woman
called Lydia Maria Child.

She was an abolitionist,
she was a women's rights activist,

a Native American activist,
and so on.

But she also wrote several books
about bringing up children.

I don't know why -
she had no children.

And in 1831, she wrote
a thing called The Mother's Book,

and she advised women
"to speak with a look of regret"

as they tied infants to armchairs.

She did, to be fair, frown on
locking them in the closet. Really?

Is that her look of regret?
Because I'm not feeling it.

That's a face that says,

"I'm going to tie you
to something in a minute."

They didn't have gaffer tape
in her day. No.

In the early 20th century,
there were doctors who recommended

dunking a screaming infant's head
under the cold tap

until they shut up. Yeah.

And yet there was an intake of
breath when I talked about my sack.

You should just... Just say that
again. Don't talk about your sack.

Talk about low-hanging fruit.

While we're on the subject
of tantrums,

what looks like a tomato
and screams when stressed?

Aw. Is it me
on holiday with my kids?

That... Literally, that was meant
for me, no-one else...

Is it an animal kingdom one? No.

Are we going to discover
that plants scream

when they're distressed? Is that...
Is it to do with that? We are.

So what might...
Is it an actual tomato plant?

It's an actual tomato.
Two points. Absolutely right.

So they did some research, 2019,
Tel Aviv University,

and they found that
tomatoes emit ultrasonic screams

when they are damaged
or dehydrated.

Is that when
they see the frying pan?

When they hear someone say,

"I'm quite peckish,
I fancy some breakfast."

"Aaaargh!"

I think it's actual damage.

They're called stress vocalisations
and they are detected

at 65 decibels. So that's
the same volume as human laughter.

But we can't hear it
because it's a frequency

well above our hearing range.
The really weird thing is

that things like fruit bats and mice
can detect tomato shrieks

from as far away as five metres -
and eat them anyway.

Aw. They're just not that bothered.
No pity.

But we don't really know
how they make the sound.

So probably what it is,
the xylem fibres -

that's the tubes that transport
water and nutrients

and so on from the soil -

it's probably bursting air bubbles
in the xylem fibres.

They have tiny charged particles
called ions

that send electrical signals around
the plant and alert it to danger -

insect attacks, that kind of thing.

And it is the thing
that seems to make them scream.

We just can't hear it.
Tomatoes are really interesting.

They were feared in Europe
for about 200 years.

They were known as poison apples,
sort of fair enough,

cos there's about 18,000 varieties
and they all belong

to the nightshade family,
those vegetables and things

in that family -
belladonna, aubergines, tomatoes -

they all have been long
considered aphrodisiacs.

And so tomatoes were seen
as a dangerous source

of sexual temptation.

Tomatoes are known as a dangerous
source of sexual temptation? See,

I could never eat a tomato again
cos it would be like cannibalism.

Yeah.

They were called love apples
or wolf apples. They were...

We're back to Jack's sack again,
aren't we?

I literally don't know what happened
that I agreed with you. I just...

It is... It is the gift
that keeps giving.

Right, your phone's dead. Your TV's
on the blink. The Wi-Fi is down.

How can you tell if a thunderstorm
is on the way?

I live in the countryside,
so if my Wi-Fi is down,

I'm assuming the thunderstorm
has just been.

I live in the country. If the Wi-Fi
is down, I'm not surprised.

Do you have bees? Cos if bees
all go back in the hive,

that means there's a storm coming.

We are in the animal world
and it was a specific thing invented

to tap into this innate ability
of some animals.

And it's a thing called
a tempest prognosticator,

also known as the leech barometer,

invented in 1850
by Dr George Merryweather.

And it was used to predict
oncoming storms.

So it's 12 glass bottles,
pint bottles.

Each one has a leech in it.
This is a 1951 replica.

It's in Whitby, in the museum there.

Merryweather
was once the curator there.

This is the way it works.
So it's 12 glass bottles, right?

And each has a thin piece
of whalebone in the neck.

And what happens is when there's an
impending storm, it prompts changes

in atmospheric pressure and it
prompts them to climb up the sides

of the bottle
and dislodge the whalebone

and causing the hammer
to strike a bell.

And if the bell rang repeatedly,
then a thunderstorm was approaching.

A slightly overengineered solution.

Do you think? I mean,
if you had that in your house,

"What's that?" "Well, that's
just in case the Wi-Fi goes down."

Imagine there's a satellite going
round the Earth full of leeches.

Just as a backup.

Sounds like something Elon Musk
would come up with.

Merryweather was so pleased with
this, he wanted to make big ones

the size of Indian temples
and then very simple ones

and he wanted to roll it out
across the country.

I'm amazed that didn't happen.
I know. It's such a handy gadget,

that, to have one of those,
you know. Then there's another guy.

In 1906,
Professor Joseph Novak of Vienna,

he promoted a tropical vine,
which is called rosary pea,

and he said this was
a tempest predicting plant,

that it's got sort of feathery
leaves and if they pointed up,

that meant it was going to be fine,

if they pointed down, there was
going to be a thunderstorm.

And he claimed that it could predict
the weather in a 3,000 mile radius

a week in advance.

Earthquakes... I know.

Earthquakes - a month in advance.

Unfortunately...

Unfortunately, he was never able
to prove that it worked. No!

You don't say.

Anybody ever seen a great big flash
of lightning? Anybody ever seen it?

I was knocked flat by lightning
once. Were you? Yeah, I was.

What happened?
I was knocked flat by lightning.

What more did you want
from the story?

"Tell us something interesting,
Daddy."

No, I was watching a cricket match

and I was only about ten
or something.

And just suddenly I remember
this massive clap of lightning

hit the cricket pitch.

And quite a lot of the players were
knocked over but I was flat by it.

Wow. Yeah, I felt really terrible
the rest of the day.

It could have been worse.

You could have been forced
to watch the whole cricket match.

I could have, yeah.

Yeah, that probably won't ever
happen again, will it?

But in 2020, the single longest
lightning bolt ever was recorded.

It was 477 miles long. If you look
at the bottom of the map there,

that is where it went -
Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas,

right across like that,
same distance as London to Hamburg.

I'm going to ask the question
everyone's wondering -

how do you measure the length
of a lightning bolt?

Carefully, cos it's hot.
And very quickly, I'd imagine.

Quick. Quickly. It was filmed on
satellite, so they're able to see

how long it was. Isn't that right?
That's correct.

You get an extra point.
Do I? My God.

Anyway, moving on.

How can you turn your town
into a tourist trap?

So traps, not just
a tourist attraction?

Is there anything relevant
about it being a trap?

No, it's just something
that's done on purpose.

So you have a big attraction,
like a Ferris wheel,

but all around it you have
really massive sticky pads

and when they walk on it,
then they're stuck.

Or pits with spikes
covered with grass.

We are talking about the 1870s.

We're talking about a place
in Nevada called Palisade.

And it had a reputation
as one of the most violent places

in the United States. It was known
as the toughest town west of Chicago

and train passengers who were
en route, Chicago to San Francisco,

for example,
on the Central Pacific Railroad,

they would stop
and stretch their legs

and then they would see gunfights

and they would see brawls
and robberies,

and there would be
Native American massacres

and hangings all taking place
in broad daylight,

because that is what people thought
the Wild West was like.

In fact, it was one of the quietest,
most law-abiding places

in the whole of the United States.

It was described
by a local newspaper reporter

as "unusually dull".

That's like my last Edinburgh show.

It didn't even have a sheriff.
It was a complete hoax.

It was deliberately... So they hear
the train coming and everyone goes,

"Oh, God, get your gear on.
Come on, come on."

"Start shooting and pretending..."
Bang-bang... Yeah.

And the local Shoshone,
the local Native Americans,

enthusiastically joined in.
They did mock scalpings.

They agreed to be bound hand
and foot and laid on the platform

and so on. They used blood
from the local slaughterhouse

to enhance all the theatrics.

The first staged confrontation,
they wrote down what was said.

Frank West and Alvin Kittleby
exchanged words,

with the former calling out...

THICK COWBOY ACCENT: .."There you
are, you low-down polecat.

"I been waiting for you.

"I'm going to kill you
cos of what you did to my sister."

Sorry, what did you say? Sorry.

It's like Westworld, isn't it?

The actual period of the Wild West
is only about 20 years

in the United States. You get the
period where people start going west

and then somebody
invented barbed wire.

And once you could enclose
all those big, vast, open spaces,

it completely changed.

But there were more than 1,000
performances in this town,

and no lives were ever lost.

Was it one of those things
where, after a while,

people knew it was just a show
and then it became a show, I wonder,

if it was, like... It was before
TripAdvisor, though. Yeah.

That's like Disney World before
Disney World, wasn't it? Yeah.

So they deserved all they got
for such creative tourist trapping.

But you're exactly right.

It's, in some instances,
consider the first theme park.

It sounds like a theme park.
Yeah, absolutely.

And fake tourist attractions
are still very big businesses.

Anybody seen
Juliet's balcony in Verona?

The actual balcony? The actual
balcony, it's a historic balcony.

So the house is 13th-century.
That's fair enough.

The balcony was added in 1936.

And also Shakespeare
did not base Juliet on a real person

and he never went to Italy.

So there we are.
There's a whole lot of things.

But people go and take photographs

and there's a statue of Juliet
in the courtyard.

There's a tradition of rubbing
her right breast for luck.

No, that's to see
if a thunderstorm's coming.

What do you think might be a reason

to visit the Bude tunnel
in Cornwall,

which in 2021
won the Travellers Choice Award?

The Bude Tunnel.
You want to get out of Bude?

What kind of tunnel is it?
Do we know?

A tiny tunnel? It is quite a tiny
tunnel. It's a little tiny tunnel.

It has its own merchandise shop.

It sells postcards. It has
over 900 five-star reviews online.

Is it four foot long? OK.

Have a look. This is what it is.

It is a Perspex...

This is so British.

It is a Perspex rain tunnel

that connects a supermarket
to its car park.

That is thoughtful, though.

In 2018, they decided to
light it up, the supermarket,

with 100,000 light bulbs...

..and everybody went mad. It was
originally decided it was a joke,

it was a joke. "We're just
going to light the thing up."

Anyway, they eventually...

TripAdvisor had to ban people
from adding reviews.

So I thought,
"Well, this is marvellous.

"I've never been to Bude."

So I read a website called Top ten
Things To Do In Bude, Cornwall.

Number five was "visit Devon".

Right. How might the gentleman
in the middle here

make your children behave?

It looks like
an early panel show, doesn't it?

Six white men, no women
and a shit host. So...

The guy at the end there's thinking,

"I can't believe I've been
sat next to the robot again."

It's an early example of
a smart home device,

an early example of an Alexa
or a Siri or whatever it's called -

Herbert Televox, and he could talk,
he could switch the oven on,

he could flick the lights off...
No, he couldn't!

No, he couldn't! He really could.
I'm sorry, you've been told this,

but... That's him with his inventor,
Roy Wensley,

from the Westinghouse Company,
invented in 1927.

And he could be programmed
to spy on your children

by reporting on
the sound levels in the house,

so you could ascertain whether
the children had had a party.

You could ascertain
whether they'd gone to bed.

You could ascertain if
your children had unplugged him.

It never became mainstream.

No?! No, no.

That's weird, because I want one.
I love it.

There were three Televoxes
employed as reservoir watchmen

in Washington DC, so they reported
on the levels of the water

in the reservoir and could turn
the flow of water on and off.

What I like, he had a sister who was
known as Katrina van Televox

and she... This is so awful.
She was dressed as a maid, OK?

And the press release of
the time said,

"She has all the characteristics
of the modern woman,

"except she doesn't talk back."

Right? And then Televox
also had a grandson called Elektro

who could smoke cigarettes

and appeared in a movie called
Sex Kittens Go To College.

Just like a real sex kitten,

except they don't ruin the carpet.

Wow. That sounds like experience.

What sort of pet shop
do you live near?

"This is a sex kitten."

He lives in the countryside.
They make their own fun. Don't you?

And so our play is nearly ended

and it's time for
the shocking denouement

that is General Ignorance.

Fingers on buzzers, please.

What colour was
George Washington's wig?

Is it not a wig?

Is the right answer. No!

It looks like a wig.

You're absolutely right.
When he became president, so 1789,

wigs had been fashionable
for a very long time,

but he didn't like to wear one.

So what he did was he did his hair
as if he were wearing...

As if he was wearing a wig?

Imagine if he'd become a High Court
judge. That would have taken ages.

Yeah. He just pulled it back
into what's called a queue, so,

you know, a little ponytail there.

And then he would fluff out
the sides to look sort of wig-shaped

and white powder, basically.

But it was a lot of work,
the powdering of wigs and so on.

People wore a cape in order to keep
the powder off their clothes.

They sometimes had a paper cone
to cover their nose and eyes

and the person responsible for the
fact that men had to wear these wigs

for years and years and years
was just one bald guy,

and that is Louis XIII.

He had premature balding
and he didn't like it,

so he started wearing a wig

and then everybody who was
upper class and elite thought,

"Oh, well, I'll start wearing
a wig as well."

And it became a thing.

But by Washington's time, it was
slightly falling out of fashion.

Washington's hair looked like a wig,
but it wasn't.

Complete this Shakespearean phrase -

"I am sworn brother
to a leash of drawers

"and can call them all by their
Christian names as Tom, Dick and..."

Cinderella!

Is Cinderella right?

I'll give you two points for timing.

Yeah, thank you.
So who is it? It's Tom, Dick...

We know what it's not, then.
What is it?

I'm not going to say what it's not
because you'll give me the klaxon!

Yeah. That's not fair.

Go on! This show is so cruel.

Yeah. Ed said Harry.

Fo-fum!
Harry!

I knew it!

Does anybody know the answer?

So this is Prince Hal,
speaking in Henry IV Part 1.

Steve. Dave.

It's Francis. The answer is Francis.

This is a very curious
combination of people.

Tom Allen, Dick Van Dyke
and Pope Francis.

I like it very much.

Someone's dream dinner party.

It could be worse.

"Tom, Dick and Harry" doesn't come
out until about 134 years later.

There's a song in 1734

called Farewell Tom, Dick And Harry,
Farewell Moll, Nell And Sue,

There's an equivalent in French.

"Monsieur, Madame Tout-le-Monde"
is the same. Mr and Mrs Everybody?

Is there a Dutch version of that?

It's just a "poepen plus".

I won't translate it.
"Shit where you like." Yeah.

Cry God for Francis,
England and St George

and that's the last question.

And so, after a truly heart-warming
performance from our cast,

we come to the final curtain call,
and with it the scores.

Booed off the stage in last place,

-26. It's Ed.

Waiting out a storm of bad reviews,
with -7, it's Cally.

Watching tentatively from the wings
with -6 is Jack.

And receiving a standing ovation,

with a full 3 points, it's Alan. Me!

And that's all for this week's
episode of QI.

My thanks
to Cally, Ed, Jack and Alan.

And as a final theatrical flourish,

I leave you with this from
that fine actor, Glenda Jackson.

"The most important thing in acting
is to be able to laugh and cry.

"If I have to cry,
I think of my sex life.

"If I have to laugh,

"I think of my sex life."

Goodnight.