QI (2003–…): Season 4, Episode 5 - Death - full transcript

Good evening, good evening, good evening, good evening

and welcome to QI.

Coming to you tonight from...

the other side.

The hilly bourne from whence no traveller returns.

The darkling plain,

the place we go

when we are...

Dead!

But, before we descend into darkness,
it's time to meet the panel:

the bucket-kicking Clive Anderson...



the clog-popping Sean Lock...

the mortal-coil off-shuffling Andy Parsons...

- and our very own Alan pushing-up-the-Davies.
- Very good.

And tonight the buzzers are suitably dolorous.
Clive goes:

("Twilight Zone" theme)

Sean goes:

Andy goes:

(sound of the shower-stabbing scene from "Psycho")

And Alan goes:

("Always look on the bright side of life!" from Monty Python's "Life of Brian")

So, let's start with something terrifying.

This is a marmot,

a pot-bellied member of the squirrel family.

It's about the size of a cat
and squeaks loudly when anxious or alarmed.



- Ritz! They're eating Ritz biscuits.
- Yeah, they seem to be, don't they.

- Or they're Mini Cheddars.
- Given the right conditions, it's a dangerous,
a deadly merciless killer of humans.

How?

- Clive.
- Er, lead piping in the billiard room.

Colonel Marmot!

Are these the ones that live in the Gobi Desert?

- The Mongolian and Russian Steppes.
- Yes. I've seen loads of these then,

and I did a... a railway journey for the BBC,
oddly enough. And they scurry around.

None of them killed any humans in front of me
while they were doing that, but...

No, and yet they're more responsible for death

- than any other animal except the...
- Do they get caught up in machinery somehow?

No. The maxim or the marmot.

Is it to do with the Ritz crackers?

They sort of spit on the Ritz crackers,
put them all back into the packet.

Do you know, oddly, Andy, the spitting part is good.

When they spit and cough, billions die.

- Well, millions.
- Are they carriers of TB,

- like badgers are allegedly... ?
- Worse.
- The plague.

"Plague" is the right answer.

- They've got the plague!
- They are the actual original animal source of...

- Not the rats?
- No, they cough and spit onto the fleas,

which catch the disease, which then goes to the rats,

which then came to Europe and wiped out half the population
of Europe in the fourteenth century.

The problem with them coughing is obviously the fact
that they've got those dry crackers.

Just give them a drink of water next to it.

Have the biscuit, a little water, no coughing.

No coughing.

Do you know why it's called "bubonic"?
Do you know what that...

Those big round things come up under your...

- buboes are...
- The buboes, but the bubo itself
actually comes from the Greek "boubon",

- which is "groin".
- Groin.

One of the areas where you get a big swelling,
when you get the bubonic plague.

- How often...?
- ...do I get a swelling?
- Yes, sorry. No.

No. Not as often as I used to, I'm sorry to say.

Given that's all they've got to do
is just paint that red cross on,

they've not done a great job, have they?

- What's wrong with that?
- Well it's well to the left,
isn't it there? They're...

You know, you'd have thought
if all you've got to do all day
is go 'round doing a red cross,

you'd have more pride in your work than that.

You're not... You're not hanging around
doing it though, are you?
"There's plague in here. Let's...
Oh I'll just do a..."

A really long stick they do it with.

- You're just waiting for a marmot to come
flying out and bite you or spit at you.
- Knock on the door and say...

Anyway. Yes, almost a million Britons
fell victim to the Black Death.

what illness do British doctors now treat more than any other?

The widest disease in these sort of quizzes is normally dental caries,

but I suppose dentists treat that rather than doctors.

- This is doctors, specifically.
- Is it cancer?

Oh, dear, no, it's not cancer.

No-nee-no-nee-no.

- Flu.
- Nor is it flu.

Is it a little niggle that you're not quite sure what it is...

but you think it'll be enough to keep you
off work for the rest of the week?

Three million, one hundred thousand people
in Britain every year.

Pregnancy?

Pregnancy isn't a disease, Alan, surely.

It would be if Alan got it.

No, it would be a surprise; it wouldn't be...

I'll give you a clue, then: It begins with "D".

Death.

No. Doctors don't treat death, unfortunately. No.

- Deafness.
- Dermatitis.

Not deafness, not dermatitis.

Give us a second letter.

- It's got to be a vowel, isn't it?
- Do a "sounds like".
- Yes.

It sounds like "Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned..."

- Dinned!
- No, no, no. When do...

- Confession.
- Confession. It sounds like confession,

- begins with a "D"
- Depression!
- Depression!

Thank you very much indeed!

Well done.

Between 7 and 10 percent of women suffer from
depression and about 3 to 5 percent of men.

And this is what they call unipolar depression,
i.e., not manic depression.

If you're gonna to be depressed,
you're luckier if you get manic depression

than if you just get plain depression,
'cause you get the upside of mania.

"I can conquer the world!"

That kind of feeling, exactly.

But now you can't say manic depression, can you?
You've got to say bipolar disorder now, haven't you?
Isn't that right?

Actually, the best people on the subject,

- Kay Redfield Jamison, in America,
for example, has written...
- That's a brilliant book. An Unquiet Mind.

Yeah, Unquiet Mind is a fantastic.
She calls it "manic depression", or "madness"!

She's seriously manic depressive
and takes a lot of Lithium.

She's also a professor of psychiatry
at Johns Hopkins University.

Do depressed people mind what you call them?

Erm, generally speaking not, to be honest.

I mean one of the great advantages of, certainly,
manic depression is a sense of humour.

Kind of keeps you going, because of
the loony things you do when you're manic.

There was one person who took apart a car,

, bit by bit, on a huge area. He laid out a sheet,

took apart the engine, sort of did outlines around each part

and numbered them, named them... everything was fantastic.

Then, of course, he got the mood swing and
was depressed and he kicked it all over. "Fuck it!"

The whole thing to pieces, he was.
And so no car, basically. Bits everywhere.

But that's bipolar depression. What about
just generally feeling a bit miserable and
sad about life, does that count as depression?

It's arguably... Of course, a very,
very difficult condition to diagnose,

and people who are cynical about it and think,
"Oh, just walk it off,"

you know, there is, of course, some truth in that,

inasmuch as exercise is shown
to be credibly helpful for depression.

Is that the theory with the...
You know, you go into a chemist,

and you can only buy a certain amount of Paracetamol,

'cause they're worried
that you're going to take too much of it.

You could always walk down the street, obviously

and then go to the next chemist and buy another lot,
couldn't you?

But are they hoping that
that little walk will make you think,

"Oh, actually, life's not that bad"?

You pass an off licence and a strip club...

- Something to cheer you up, you see.
- You see someone fall in the canal...

Swimming with dolphins. That's apparently
a very good treatment for depression.

Not if they reject you.

Not if they go...

and off they go.

That takes you to another level.

The problem is often the other way round;
is severe bruising

because the dolphins get too interested in you

and because their penises are a foot long and S-shaped,

- you can be in serious trouble.
- And that's just the ladies!

Yeah. But, while on the subject of depression,
what is the saddest song you know?

Otis Redding. "Sad Song."

- That's . . . that's gotta be sad.
- I saw something... That song,

Labour used it, with D-Ream:
"Things Can Only Get Better"?

Because if you're in a situation
where things can only get better,

you are seriously screwed up, aren't you?

Well, there is a song which has caused suicide.

- Oh, I know this. Billie Holiday, isn't it? Erm...
- Say it! You know it.

- She sang it.
- I know, but I...I know, but it's

- She didn't write it, but... It sounds like a New Order.
- Say that again?

- "Strange Fruit".
- Not "Strange Fruit", but that is a great song,
"Strange Fruit".

- "Gloomy Sunday."
- She said it: "Gloomy Sunday."
Well done. Award yourself two points. Yeah.

Erm, "Gloomy Sunday".

If you promise not to hurl yourself off the edge of the set,

then I will allow you to hear a little of
"Gloomy Sunday" sung by Miss Billie Holiday.

Oh, Jesus!

You've always got the antidote!

Now you know what to do if you're feeling down.

- I have to say, I've just been looking at the scoreboard,
and at the moment the audience is winning.
- Yes.

Monday's supposed to be the most depressing day of the week.

Imagine you'd had a Sunday like that
and you had Monday to look forward to.

No, well, this is a song written by one Rezso Seress in 1933,

a Hungarian, inspired by the end of a relationship.

It became an instant hit, and so flushed with success,

he went to his girlfriend
and suggested they get back together.

A day later she poisoned herself,

leaving a two word suicide note: "Gloomy Sunday".

- Oh, really?
- Yeah.

Yeah. A hundred suicides, apparently,
have been linked to the song.

The New York Times had this great big headline:

"Hundreds of Hungarians kill themselves
under the influence of a song."

Soon Americans were joining them,

and the ghoulish reputation of the "Hungarian suicide song"

touched almost every country where it was played.

Victims included teenagers and octogenarians.

One man heard a beggar humming the song,

immediately gave him all his possessions,
jumped to his death off a bridge. Erm...

That's great busking, isn't it?

The composer himself ended it all
by throwing himself from his apartment
window in 1968 at the age of seventy.

Well, that was a horrible mess, wasn't it, that.
A seventy year-old hitting the pavement.

Why is that worse than anyone else hitting the pavement?

Well, you know, a young person has got a bit of fat in...
on them, something to cushion the splat.

But this would just be, just be... be bones and skin; just "crunch".

like a bag of crisps hitting the pavement. "Crunch!"

You don't do that at seventy; that's not right.

There was one bloke, wasn't there...
He was on the first floor,

split up with his missus; She left him,

went downstairs, walked out.
He jumped out of the window to commit suicide,

he lands on her, she dies, he lives,

but he thinks, "great", and he went on, didn't he.
That was, there was a famous case that I... I know all...

I think the word is "Result!"

- A lot of people kill themselves
by throwing themselves off Beachy Head.
- That is very popular indeed.

And there are dozens of other cliffs, but people,
they're like lemmings,

almost literally like lemmings.

They want to just go somewhere famous to do it, so they...

so it's either the Northern Line or Beachy Head.

I went to Beachy Head very early in the morning, right? Not...

- Just as the sun was rising?
- Not to commit suicide,

no, but I'd gone to a fishmongers which wasn't open

in Eastbourne.

Funnily enough, you'd think the fishmonger would open early,
doesn't open until ten!

What's going on?

Anyway listen round! And, er...

Yes, thank you!

All right, Alfred? Nice to see you're in.

- And so I thought I'd go up to Beachy Head,
just to see what it's like.
- Yes.

And there was these two guys, sort of sentinels.

One of them had a guitar and the other one had a flute,

and I was... I was wandering along,
and they sort of went,"Hi, hi!" like this,

and I went, "All right?" like that.

- Because I... I'm not cheerful.
- Grumpy sod, yeah.

And eventually they sort of go...They were going,
"Hi," and they sort of beckoned me over,

and they said, "Everything all right?"
I said, "Yeah, fine."

And they... they said, er,
"You're not thinking of, er...?"

Not... not exactly that,
but they were there to... to prevent people...

- Oh! Bless them.
- They didn't stop...
- Yeah, but get this. Listen to this.

I said, "Well, how... how often are you here?"
They said, "A week... Once a week." I said, "Oh, right.""

Even better... Even better, I said,
"How long are you here for?"
He said "About an hour."

This man Seress, anyway.
The BBC banned the song until the year 2002.

It's only just been allowed to be played.

That is how seriously people take this suicide song.

Anyway, that's probably enough gloom. Let's play a game.
Time for Killer Mushroom Roulette!

If you wondered what the, er, skull and
crossbones cards on your table were for,

I'm going to show you on screen four types of mushroom,

numbered one to four.
All you've got to do
is write down the number

of the one you may safely eat.

Is it one, Death Cap? Two, Peppery Milk Cap?

Three, Destroying Angel? Or four, Trumpet of Death?

One of them is safe to eat,
highly nutritious, and very pleasant.

The others--will kill you!

Can we try them all first?

- You get one each.
- Yeah.
- Somebody told me,

- there are very, very few killer mushrooms...
- There are very few.

- and we're so ludicrously scared of these.
- We are. There are three thousand,
five hundred species of mushrooms in the UK;

about a hundred are poisonous
and only fifteen of those are lethal.

One of them I'm sure I've seen in Carluccio's.

- That's very possible.
- So I've gone for that one.

- All right, so what have you written there?
- I've written number one.

So you think Death Cap, number one, you can eat?

- The reason being...am I allowed to give a reason?
- Yes, please do.

Is it... It looks a bit, I think, like a penis.

And you can safely eat a penis, can't you? You can.

Well, that wasn't going to be my logic, but yes.

- Clive, you've gone for?
- Well, I'm afraid...
I've gone for the same answer I'm afraid.
- Number one.

but I thought that Trumpet of Death
looked like a penis, but, er, there it is.

- That's a worry, Clive.
- Well, what can I say?

What have you got there, Sean?

- Number one.
- Number one as well.

I've gone for number four.

Well, the ten points go to Alan Davies!

Very good.

You all used the same kind of logic,
knowing that the one that would sound deadly,
is probably good

but unfortunately, you all went for the Death Cap,

and in fact it's the Trumpet of Death that is the one.

It's also called a Black Morae or a Horn of Plenty

- and is delicious and nutty.
- But that wouldn't be on a menu.

"Trumpet of Death omelette".

You're quite right, though; it's very, very rare.

The last recorded death by mushroom in Britain

is too long ago for anyone, basically, to be confident about.

They are pretty nasty:
they'll destroy your liver and kidney,

particularly the Death Cap and the Destroying Angel.

- Do you have to eat a lot of them?
- Quite a few actually, yeah.

But the thing is, there's no known antidote.

The Peppery Milk Cap is more likely to be gastric.

You'll have a really bad time,
but it can kill you if you have a lot of those.

Despite its black colour, the Trumpet of Death
is very tasty and goes particularly well with fish.

Italians call it the poor man's truffle.

Er, what did the Nazis use Trumpets of Jericho for?

Was it lift music?

No, it wasn't.

Did they come up with some foul weapon

that was to bring down the walls of, er,
cities and towns and things?

- Oh, dear. I'm afraid...
- Yes, I . . . I kind of thought
that was going to happen, but, er...

Joshua in the Bible, of course, brought down,
supposedly, the walls of the city of Jericho using Trumpet,

though, apparently, archeologists say
Jericho had no walls, but never mind

- Erm, so it was a pretty easy... easy job.
- Not after him anyway.

Erm. Who knows? No, er, this is the Ju87. Does that help?

- Junkers.
- Junkers, absolutely, known as a particular kind.

- Aircraft. 88.
- Stukas.

- Stuka, ah, yes.
- The Stuka, ja.
- That's a bird!
- It's the siren, the whistling siren when they dive in.

The whistling sound.
That's right, they had a...

Just took me all back, I was a kid doing war.

No, but then the Stukas start coming.

Yeah, do you want to hear them?

It's that noise.

That noise was a propeller driving a...

- a siren, just deliberately put on to scare the bejesus...
- Screaming, screaming siren.

That's right.
They called it the Trumpet of Jericho, yeah.

And it destroyed more shipping
and tanks than any other aircraft

in the whole of World War II,
including Kamikaze pilots.

It was extremely successful,
except when it was up against fighters

and it sent them over in the Battle of Britain
to try and bomb air strips,

but the old Hurricanes and Spits were far too nimble
and they got thirty down in one day, I believe.

- Well, the Americans did the same
by using Wagner in their helicopters.
- They still do.

- Do they still?
- They still play loud, extremely loud rock music

- to terrify the opposition.
- I've noticed that, in their bedrooms!

They played it to themselves in the tanks,
during the Iraq War.

I mean you just want to go and say,
"I tell you what, lovely army,

very nice vehicles and things...
Do you have any grown-ups anywhere?"

- "Who's in charge of you?"
- "Don't shout,

and don't think it's clever to wear
sunglasses if you're a General. Eurgh."
Pathetic!

Of all the objections to warfare,
it's the use of sunglasses!

They're trying to be like at Patton.
They think it's sexy and cool.

- Well, it's from films, isn't it?
- If you think you're sexy and cool, you're...

- you're just going to be a ghastly tactician.
- What about that General,

who said to the troops,
"You've got it all wrong

It's like he was trying to get in with the kids

- and he said, "When the order is given to attack,
it's hammer time."
- Yeah.

And they all looked at him. So he said it again,
more serious. "It's hammer time!"

What, he thought they'd put on, like,
big balloony trousers and go...

"Can't touch this!"

Right next to the ruins of Jericho,
as it happens,

there is more death and diving.
What lives in the Dead Sea?

- Not much.
- Isn't there a fish that lives in it?

- No fish, no.
- It's really stingy.
If you get it in your eyes, it really stings.

- Oh, it would sting.
- There must be a nematode worm,

- because nematode worms live everywhere.
- They seem to, don't they? No, it's not actually.

You've avoided saying "nothing",
which would have got a big raspberry.

Is it a rabbit?
It's rabbits always going like that."Ahh. Ahh."

"Ahh." It just escaped...

Er, no, in fact, there are small
little things called "extremophiles",

which are almost like bacteria,
but a much much older life form than bacteria.

They look quite tasty.

- They look like piles. So, erm...
- They do.

- So what else do we know about the Dead Sea?
- It's below sea level.

The lowest place on Earth.

The lowest place in England is in Norfolk.

But that's not the Dead Sea,
it's just dead boring.

- The Fens.
- The Fens aren't really in Norfolk.

- Cambridgeshire.
- Cambridgeshire more.

- Talking about lowest exposed areas,
I've just had a look at that picture.
- Yeah.

What's he doing with his hands there?

He's strangling a rabbit.

- That's an old... That's an old euphemism.
- More rabbits.

- I'm just going over there to strangle a rabbit.
- Strangle a rabbit. Ahh.

So can you actually do that in the Dead Sea,

- you can lie around without having to...
- Toss yourself off, yeah, it's fine, yeah.

They've got so many problems with the Palestinians.

They go, "Ah, have a wank. We don't mind."

- The sea is supposed to be salty, not the jokes!
- Oh, very good.

- They send people there on the National Health,
- They do, they do.

- if they've got psoriasis.
- Quite a lot of conditions it's supposed to help.

The other thing is... it's...
Despite the myth, people do drown in the Dead Sea.

If you face the wrong way,
people can't turn themselves 'round.

There's too much resistance from the water, apparently.

- It's called natural selection, isn't it?
- Yeah, I think you may be right.

Do you know that there are about two hundred and fifty
drownings of people in Britain each year,

of which roughly a third are intentional.

Bearing that in mind, can you tell me
what's interesting about this sad little rodent?

It doesn't matter whether he's
upside down or right way up.

He looks exactly the same.

- You certainly...
- No one cares.
- Is this...
- If he falls on his back, nobody turns him round.

- So is this a lemming?
- It's a lemming.
- And he looks like the devil's arsehole, his mouth.

You certainly wouldn't want a blow-job off him, would you?

It'd be a scrapey experience.

It is a lemming, it's a Norway lemming.

They don't actually jump off cliffs.

- They don't jump off cliffs.
- It was invented by Disney or somebody?

Oh, dear me. It was not invented by Disney, no.

There were two myths about it,
one that they commit mass suicide,

- the other that it was Disney who invented the myth.
- Ah, right.

In fact, they didn't. As early as 1908
in an Arthur Mee's Children's Encyclopedia,

he talks about them throwing themselves
off cliffs into the water.

They have done it.
It was when their migratory path hit a cliff.

They don't really migrate,
but they're fantastic breeders.

A mother can produce eighty in a year,

and when the population swells, they have
to move off to find places where they can eat.

So what are we saying, they do throw themselves off cliffs,
or they don't throw themselves off?

- They don't. They don't at all.
- They don't.

The Disney film though, you're quite right,
was completely faked.

I mean they made this film called "White Wilderness";

they had to bus in lemmings from thousands of...

And they... they tossed them off the cliff, did they?

They did, well they sort of dropped them in front of camera
in a close-up, in a rather pathetic attempt to do it.

They're not any more suicidal than any other animal.

He's actually trying to do his impression
of Einstein in that picture.

But his tongue is stuck on both of his teeth.

Yes, it's a rather sweet little tongue, don't you think?

It's a little pretty pink tongue, rather nice.

- Watch out for the teeth, Stephen.
- Yes.

Anyway, er, this delivers us, damp, but not down-hearted,
into the valley of General Ignorance.

So, fingers on trumpets please.

What was the curse of Tutankhamun?

You have to queue up for ages.

- The one that's going to lose me another ten points...
- Yes?

is that anybody interfering with
his tomb would be forever cursed.

So the mere fact, yeah, you see.
"Death to all who enter here," yes.

The fact is, there is no curse. There never was.

There's no inscription that even comes close
to being a curse of Tutankhamun,

or of any Egyptian tomb ever.

He looks like Tiger Woods eating a cornetto.

You're absolutely right!

- Erm, Lord Carnarvon, who, er...
- Ah, that's the one.

was one of the people with Howard Carter,
who first uncovered or excavated the tomb,

died very, very soon afterwards
from a shaving accident,

probably an infected mosquito bite that he cut.

And people though, "Ooh, it's cursed!"

There was one of the party that had excavated it
who died in about 1978, aged ninety-three

and the headline was,
"Curse of Tutankhamun

strikes again!"

Jane Loudon Webb wrote a novel called The Mummy in 1828,

about a mummy coming to life and chasing
those who had, er, desecrated its tomb.

But the fact is that thorough research
has shown that only six died

within the first decade of the opening

and Howard Carter, surely
the number one target as the chief of it, er,

lived for another seventeen years.

- None of these superstitions should
be worried about... touch wood
- Hey! Ha ha.

Now, the Great Fire of London destroyed thirteen thousand,
two hundred houses,

eighty seven churches, forty four livery halls,
and over four fifths of the City of London, with a capital "C."

How many people died in that five-day conflagration?

I think it's four people, some very low figure of...

- I'm going to give you the points,
'cause it's five people.
- Five people, oh well.

Yes, very good.

Very good.

Only five are recorded.
The maid of the baker who started the fire;

Paul Lowell, a Shoe Lane watchmaker;

an old man who rescued a blanket from St Paul's,
but succumbed to the smoke;

and two others who fell into their cellars

in an ill-fated attempt to recover
their goods and chattels.

The Mayor, actually, Thomas Bludworth,
went back to bed on the first night

saying, "a woman might piss it out."

The previous Great Fire, in 1212,
killed three thousand people.

- When does the nursery rhyme
Ring A Ring O' Roses date from?
-Ring A Ring O' Roses
- Whence?
- Oh, Sean?

1102.

A wild stab in the dark,
and not correct, I'm sorry to say.

The plague. The bubonic plague.

Oh dear me, no, I'm afraid not.

Well, it's nothing to do with the plague
or the Black Death at all, er...

It's a complete misconception.

Apart from anything else, this ring...
A posy is supposed to be a ring of lesions;

it doesn't happen.
People don't sneeze when they have the plague.

Obviously!

They do, it's the... it's the marmots
that sneeze on you, you told us that!

Is that not the reason why people
say "bless you" when you sneeze?

No, that's... that's 'cause of the devil
getting into you when you sneeze.

- I thought it was because you had the plague.
- No, no, it's the devil.

People get quite testy sometimes,
if they sneeze and you don't say bless you.

- If you don't say bless you, yes.
- "You didn't say bless you." "Oh, fuck off."

That was one hell of a garden party
at Buckingham Palace, wasn't it?

It really was.

You made quite a name for yourself.

It's a very late eighteenth century American song;

first recorded in 1881, but apparently written earlier;

has nothing to do with the plague whatsoever.

So, what did the man who invented lateral thinking suggest

as a solution to solve the Middle East conflict?

- Is that Edward de Bono in the middle,
is he... is he lateral thinking?
- Edward de Bono is the man. Yes.

He invented lateral thinking.

Have a game of football; sort it out that way.

They could play in the old Gaza Strip, couldn't they?

Yeah, I'll give you fifty points if you get this,

- 'cause it's so peculiar.
- Thinking laterally.

Well laterally.
I mean so lateral, it's off the scale.

- They play Monopoly.
- It's weirder than that.

They all go to the Dead Sea, right,

they flip over the wrong way,

and whoever can turn over quickest wins.

But this man, this premier thinker of our time,
Edward de Bono,

suggested sending Marmite to the Middle East.

He reasoned thus, and I use the word "reasoned" quite loosely, erm

He reasoned that on both sides of the conflict
there was a lot of unleavened bread being eaten,

and unleavened bread has a shortage of zinc.

And a lack of zinc causes aggression.

So he planned, as the easiest way as he saw it,

to restore the zinc levels to both sides

was to send them lots of Marmite, which is rich in the stuff.

But the whole point about Marmite.
They advertise it on the basis that some people
love it and some people hate it.

So he'd have solved the problem, then they'd have wars

between the... the pro-Marmiters and the anti-Marmiters!
They'd be back to warfare again!

He didn't think it through, did he?

- Where do you stand on Bovril, do you like it?
- I never stand on Bovril.

It's a stupid thing to do.
But I quite like the taste of it, I have to say.

And did he put that forward as a serious suggestion,
or was it one of those days

- where he just... when he was taking the day off?
- Five to five on a Friday.

All right, here's one."

This was a... a Foreign Office committee he was talking to,

it wasn't just something he said in the pub.
He was on a think-tank and

he was reporting to the Foreign Office and
they were listening to him. "Marmite."

They should have done it in Ulster.

- Yes.
- Should have made that the homeland for the Jews.

Just for fun!

Like a sort of problem theme park, all in one place.

Well, I think we've come to the end.
That leaves the divertissement of the score.

We're going to start with tonight's
"I'm afraid didn't do quite as well as anybody else-er",

- and it's Clive Anderson with minus-twenty-four points.
- Oh, least! I got many more than that.

And in a very creditable third place, Alan Davies with minus-fifteen.

- Then comes Sean with minus-eight.
- Thank you.

With a staggering zero, it's Andy Parsons.

But that means tonight's shock winner,

with two points, is the audience!

Bravo. Never happened before.

Well, on that bombshell, the time has come
to leave the shadow of the valley of death behind us.

Thank you to Clive, Andy, Sean, and Alan, and I leave you

with this thought, courtesy of the great Johnny Carson.

"For three days after death, hair and fingernails
continue to grow, but phone calls taper off."

Do be careful out there. Good night.