QI (2003–…): Season 4, Episode 8 - Descendants - full transcript
Good evening, good evening, good evening,
good evening, good evening, good evening,
good evening, good evening,
and welcome to the provisional wing
of Children In Need.
Er, we hope to raise lots
of extra money tonight
for disadvantaged children.
And we have four enormously
overgrown examples here tonight.
The irascible young Rich Hall ,
that cheeky chappy, Phill Jupitus,
naughty scamp Jonathan Ross
and everybody's favourite
fluffy stud-muffin, Pudsey!
Now, settle down, class.
Er, you know the rules.
Phill goes:
- And Jonathan:
- Thank you.
Stop it. And Jonathan goes:
And Rich goes:
And Pudsey goes:
- Hey! Hang on!
- Thank you, Pudsey. Oh, hello.
Hello? Hey, what are you doing?
Oh, don't give it all that,
you're not even a bear!
Come on. We don't want any trouble.
He gave me a look, then,
with the good eye!
Yeah. How's your distance vision?
Someone has been sitting in my seat!
Tonight's programme is all
about descendants.
In other words, offspring,
progeny... children.
Let's begin at the very beginning.
What do babies have
that adults do not?
Horns.
- Horns?
- Horns.
- Oddly, you're almost close.
- They have a cranial cap.
They have a divot there
that you can store things in.
I thought that was there so that if
you have sex during the final trimester
it doesn't hurt the baby,
it kind of gives.
- Oh, no, Jonathan!
- Nature provides!
But the bones in the head haven't
fused together yet, have they?
They haven't.
Not only in the head, that's the point.
They're completely spongy, babies;
you can bend them pretty... like plasticine;
you can just like make...
If it's an ugly baby,
you can just make it slightly better looking,
you know. Just... Give it horns if you want.
What's the protocol for when you see
a really ugly baby? Do you know... ?
I'll tell you, people show you their babies
on the phone now,
and it's like a cashew with
some hair coming out of it.
which their parents don't.
That's why they cry all the time.
They hold the little mirror up to them
on the mobile, "Ahhh, look at me.
I look like Churchill having a shit, it's like..."
They don't have kneecaps, do they? That's...
Aren't you mixing them up with merbabies?
No, their kneecaps are not made
of bone while they're babies,
- and there are all kinds of parts of them...
- What are they made of?
- that are not made of bone, but are made of cartilage, and
- Or Play-Doh.
- and they have ninety-four more bones than adults.
- No, they don't.
- Yeah, they do.
- You're making this up.
No, I'm not. A baby's body has about
300 what are called "soft bones",
that haven't actually formed bone material. They are
actually cartilage, a sort of soft, gooey thing.
And they eventually fuse to form the 206 bones
of the average human body.
Where are a quarter of those
bones housed in the body?
- Oh, yeah?
- In the body.
Yeah. Where, I should have said,
abouts in the body?
- In the...
- Foot.
- Feet. "The feet" is the right answer, yeah.
- Feet!
- A quarter of your bones, fifty-two.
- Yes!
Very good. Yeah! Very good.
How long do you have to wait
for your baby to harden?
It's... In the natural course of things
Do you put it somewhere... Like, with Airfix kits,
I used to put them in the airing cupboard. I mean...
- In a kiln.
- A kiln.
- Yeah.
- Bake it.
- You fire the baby!
So, talking of Churchill, in a sort of way,
who was very fond of pigs,
because he said,
"Dogs look up at you, cats look down on you,
but a pig looks you in the eye
and treats you as an equal."
Anyway, who grunts like a pig and
has children three times their own size?
And then it... What, do they shrink down?
The offspring start off three times bigger and then,
obviously, become the size of the parent,
so the... the offspring do shrink, eventually.
Presumably, though, they must be...
they must be, erm... they must grow
to full term outside of the body of the parent
- They do.
- or else the parent could not carry such a vast...
You're right, so they're not mammals.
- They're fish?
- Not fish, neither.
- Frogs?
- Yes!
It's a breed of frog called the "paradoxical frog",
for that very reason.
It is the only species on earth,
and that literally is to scale.
That's the parent,
that's a pen-to give us an idea of scale,
and that is the offspring.
So they squirt 'em out,
and then they grow big in the pond?
Yeah. They come from South America and
Trinidad as well, you'll find them.
What purpose does that serve in nature,
that animal would, er,
create an offspring that is
so much larger than itself
initially, and then shrink?
We just don't know.
What is it in Spanish?
"Paradoxical fr-og!"
Now, what I want you to do is stop me
when you know about whom I am talking.
Had she been eligible,
she might have been elected U.S. President.
She's a trained scientist.
She has larger breasts
than you might imagine.
Jonathan's alert. Er... Maiden name:
- Roberts.
- Thatcher.
Oh, dear.
Margaret Thatcher's maiden name was Roberts,
but this particular "nee Roberts"
has over a billion pairs of shoes,
and yet stands only 11 inches tall.
Thumbelina.
Not Thumbelina. This one exists.
- 11 inches tall?
- Yeah.
- Barbie.
- "Barbie" is the right answer.
She was named after one Barbara Millicent Roberts,
from Willows, Wisconsin.
If Barbie was a real person,
she wouldn't be able to stand.
- Yes.
- Anatomically.
- Yeah, exactly.
- Her feet are too small and her...
- If you sort of blew her up to five foot six,
her feet would be size three
and her breasts would be 39 inches,
and she would just go...
But you wouldn't let her stand up
anyway would you? You'd...
You'd only want her supine, anyway,
wouldn't you, if she does have...?
I-i-is that right. Erm. It's also...
It's also apparently true,
according to, er, researchers at University
Central Hospital in Helsinki, Finland,
that her body shape lacks
the 17- to 22-percent body fat
which would enable her to menstruate.
But what was it she managed finally
to get in the year 2000?
Pregnant.
- It was a piece of something that...
- A shroud of dreams.
- A bra!
Not a bra. Some part of her body.
- Nipples.
- Not nipples, thank you.
- A naval!
- "A naval" is the right answer!
She finally got a tummy button.
Very good. Absolutely right.
Barbie philosophy...
Barbie spoke in 1992 for the first time.
- Do you know the kind of thing she said?
- "Where's my naval?"
- She could have said that. "Will we..."
- "'No' means 'no'!"
"Stop looking down there;
I don't have bits!"
"Will we ever have enough clothes?"
was one of the first she...
"It's a paradoxical frog, Ken."
- Yeah! "I love shopping."
- Do you? But what did Barbie say, Stephen?
"Math is tough."
As we know, Barbie, whose full name
was Barbara Millicent Roberts,
was born in 1959,
and she's done everything, including
running for president three times.
But how have Superman, Spiderman
and Wonder Woman helped
the fight against crime?
Each one of them has an intimate connection
with a genuinely groundbreaking,
crime-solving, or crime...
X-ray vision.
- Mm. I... When I say genuine, obviously...
- Invisible planes!
Yeah, something that exists.
Superman led the police
to develop bulletproof vests.
It isn't that, but you're
on exactly the right lines.
I know, because I know coppers have got, like,
a net they shoot at you, like Spiderman.
- That would be Spiderman's thing, wouldn't it? Yeah.
- Yes, but that's an old Roman Retiarius trick.
Erm, who was...
Who was Spiderman's arch-enemy, mostly?
Mostly it was the Green Goblin.
There was another one called King Pin?
King Pin... Well he's not... Well, he was Spidey's,
but recently he's become Daredevil's main foe.
- Has he?
- He lives in Hell's Kitchen,
and it's over more like 49th Street;
Daredevil fights him a lot more.
- But recently...
- And what did he do in 1979,
in order to keep tabs on Spiderman?
So that he always knew where Spidey was.
- ASBO. (antisocial behaviour order)
- Not an ASBO! But you're exactly...
You're exactly on the right lines.
It's more technical.
- What, he put something on him that you can trace?
- Yes.
- Some sort of...
- An electronic tagging bracelet.
- An electronic tagging device.
- I didn't realise that came from there.
- In 1979.
And a judge, rather splendidly named
Judge Jack Love of Albuquerque, New Mexico,
- "Judge Love."
- "Judge Love," exactly.
- "I stand before you, Judge Love."
- "You are in the court of Love!"
Yeah, anyway,
- he did exist.
- "Thanks Judge Love.
I've got a present for you, Judge Love."
And Judge Love had, like many a judge...
had an incredibly full series of cells.
And he reasoned, having seen this cartoon,
why not develop a real thing like this?
So instead of prisoners going into prison,
they can be electronically tagged.
And he was the inventor of the electronic tag.
But it was directly from a Spiderman comic.
You can say, "I'm really cool,"
as I believe young people say,
"because, erm ...
because I have a really 'wicked', erm..."
- He's so good.
- "bracelet, innit, guy." So, there you are.
The Stealth Bomber, the invisible plane.
Wonder Woman had an invisible plane.
Can I tell you about Wonder Woman?
Wonder Woman's creator was
William Moulton Marston...
- Absolutely.
- who wrote... who wrote under
the pen name of Charles Moulton,
who was in a polygamous and indeed
polyamous relationship, with a woman
who co-created Wonder Woman,
and another lezzer on the side.
Absolutely right! Yep.
No, you're right, he married his wife
Elizabeth at twenty-two years of age,
and then carried on this affair with Olive.
- And I think they moved in together,
didn't they?
- They all moved in together;
he had two children by each,
and then when he died, Olive and Elizabeth
stayed together right up until
the death of Olive in the '80s.
- I think that's a rather beautiful story.
- It is a lovely story.
I'll tell you something interesting about Spiderman.
Originally, he was called "Spidermann"
and, er, and he was Jewish.
He couldn't fight crime on the Sabbath.
Look, I'm so impressed with Jonathan knowing
the full name of William Moulton Marston,
but he came to the attention of DC Comics,
to the great Max Gains,
whom you will know of,
- the publisher of DC Comics.
- Actually, Max Gains, I believe,
published EC Comics, didn't he?
And then when he died in a boating accident,
his son William C Gains took over,
moving from "True Tales from the Bible
and Stories to Amuse Children"
into the EC line of horror comics
that then came to the attention of the U.S. Senate
when comics were investigated,
after a certain Dr Frederick Wertham
Wertham brought out a book called
Seduction of the Innocent in 1954,
calling for the introduction of a self-regulating
body known as the Comic Code Authority
that had such ridiculous rules as you
could not use the word "FLICK" in a comic
for fear that the "L" and the "I" would run together
and Spiderman was saying,
"LOOK, HE'S GOT A FUCK KNIFE!"
(flick knife)
- This is all true.
- Fabulous.
- This is true.
- I love that. That is brilliant.
And to think that almost everyone I know thinks
you're a course, vain, loud-mouthed...
- But we still haven't come to the root of... of...
- Bulletproof wristbands she had.
Marston... No, he invented something else.
A psychology professor.
He was very interested
in people's response under stress.
- Under stress?
- And he discovered that blood pressure
increased when people were under pressure.
- The lie detector.
- Was it the lie detector?
- The lie detector!
So, there you are. We have the lie detector
and we have the electronic tagging system,
so that only leaves us with Superman himself.
What was the most popular effusion
of Superman, if you like, in the 40s?
- It wasn't the comic book; it was...?
- It was the... the Su...
- The radio?
- The radio. Absolutely.
- "Up up and away."
And there was a man called
Stetson Kennedy, who in the 1940s,
decided that the most loathsome
organisation in the United States
of America was the Ku Klux Klan.
And he infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan
and he learned their secret language,
their hierarchies, their codes
and their gossip, in his
particular part of the world.
- Oh, man, of all the pictures
you would have to show!
- I know. It's not good.
That's my uncle in there.
Anyway, he decided that the most popular
thing around was Superman on the radio,
so he wrote to the producers and said,
"Here's a plot line for you.
Why don't you have Superman
fight the Ku Klux Klan?"
Because he fought Mussolini; he's fought Hitler.
And within two weeks of the four week episode
in which Superman fights the Ku Klux Klan,
the recruitment went to zero.
So he was a crime fighter, Superman.
- In real life as well as in fiction.
- In real life. Yeah.
How wonderful. I did not know any of that.
I go home a better person.
Now, children have invented some
pretty useful stuff themselves.
Earmuffs were invented by children.
The calculator; the trampoline;
the state flag of Alaska itself.
The great child author, Roald Dahl:
What was his greatest invention?
Yeah, go on. Oh, hello.
Oh! Oh, my goodness!
Fixed it!
- I do know this...
- Yes, go on. Tell.
because I've been many times to the
Roald Dahl Museum on school trips.
- In Great Missenden.
- Yes, it's a beautiful place;
it's a wonderful day out.
Er, I've often thought though,
for the bored father,
maybe they could have a Roald Dahl-
themed brothel next door,
with a kind of Charlie and
the Chocolate Factory theme; you know:
Willy Wonka, bring your own. But...
Or for the grown-ups, "chocolate
and the Charlie factory",
where they could have lots of free
Charlies, erm... But, anyway...
And you find out about Roald Dahl's life
when you're there, and, er, he had...
One of his children,
I think it was his son, was very ill;
- I think he caught an illness
or he had an accident of some sort.
- Well, actually, he had an accident in New York.
- He was hit by a car.
- And Roald Dahl was involved, I believe,
not alone, but with other people, in inventing
some kind of a valve or some sort of a device
- that the injured person needed in his body.
- I'm going to have to give the man
lots and lots of points.
Yep. It's called the Wade-Dahl-Till valve.
His son Theo was in a car accident in New York,
and he hurt his head to the extent
that he got hydrocephalus.
- That's water on the brain, isn't it?
- Water on the brain, exactly.
And the cure was to put a valve in,
but it was a very clunkily-designed valve,
that often got jammed and stuck,
which meant big surgical intervention.
And Dahl thought,
"This isn't good enough,"
so he went to his friends,
and they devised this, er, valve.
3000 children at least have
probably had their lives saved
and certainly their outcomes massively improved.
Well, I'll ask you another question.
The Oompa Loompas: What colour are they?
Their faces are orange; their hair is yellow;
we don't know about their nether regions.
Did you say "orange"?
No, I'm talking about the original
Oompa Loompa's; the Oompa Loompa's
of Roald Dahl's...
In the book itself?
Aren't they from Africa?
Yes, you see; you've reclaimed
yourself. His publishers, Knopf,
made them orange,
because they felt black pygmies
slaving away in a factory was
a slightly kind of unfortunate...
So now they're all orange like Girls Aloud.
Now they're... Exactly, exactly.
Green hair, orange, white eyebrows.
- I saw a Sherlock Holmes film once.
- Yeah.
and people kept getting
murdered quite near a circus.
- Seen any other films?
- And people were getting murdered,
and they'd be in a room, and there'd
only be a tiny little window or something,
and about an hour in, er,
Holmes turns to Watson and says,
"I've got one word to say
to you Watson: pygmies."
- That is deathless!
- And there were some...
there were some pygmies at the circus,
and they were being sent out to do
the bidding of an evil circus owner.
I love the idea that we can
go back to a happier time,
when pygmies are the prime
suspect for most crimes.
So much easier to pick out
in an identity parade. That one.
It's political correctness...
It's political correctness gone mad, isn't it.
I once saw a very fine, er, Saturday night
French television show,
which didn't involve a midget as such,
but it involved a small, tiny dwarf
elephant that came out and danced and
performed and capered around
like nobody's business;
you wouldn't believe it.
And I was sitting watching this...
I was in a hotel room and I was saying,
"This is the best thing
I've ever seen in my life."
Where (A) Where did they find such a tiny elephant?
(B) How do you teach a tiny elephant
to perform like that, you know?
Turned out at the end of the act...
He unzipped it; there was a dog inside.
One of... one of the best acts
I've seen in my entire life.
And yet now, it's such an obvious idea.
Yeah! Anyway, there we are.
Now, from Oompa Loompa's,
politically incorrect little people, to
badly behaved little pink extraterrestials.
Alan, could you press your buzzer
and tell me what it's saying?
It's a Clanger. Definitely a Clanger.
It is. It's a famous episode;
it was in episode three of series one,
which was called "Chicken".
See if you can work out what is being said.
Erm, we've got a little clip.
They've got a little...
Because the performers generally
have words in their head.
There it is. And what he's saying is,
"Oh, sod it, the bloody thing's stuck again."
And you can hear it again.
Let's hear it again.
There it is. It is. Yeah.
So, the creator of...
Yeah?
- Oliver Postgate.
- The great...
- Oh, the great Oliver.
- I think you cannot say Oliver Postgate
without saying "the great".
- Noggin the Nog!
- Noggin the Nog. Pogles Wood.
- Did he do Bagpuss?
And the greatest of the great, Bagpuss.
But he and Peter Firmin, who was his partner,
they used to produce these things in a barn
and they'd take a month to do each episode
- Oh, they're brilliant though, aren't they?
- They are absolutely wondrous, aren't they?
Well, here's an interesting bit
of Clanger trivia for you.
I think the Clangers appeared
on an episode of Doctor Who.
The man is right. The man is absolutely right.
It was, in fact, their largest ever audience in 1972.
They got ten million viewers by appearing
in an episode called "The Sea Devils".
But anyway, there's only one language
even more suggestive than the Clangers.
What language did Bill and Ben,
the Flowerpot Men, speak?
- "Flobbadob."
- Flobbadob? No.
No. You see, the awful thing is,
you probably thought it was Flobbadob,
because that's what we said
a couple of years ago.
We've saluted one great genius
for children's television,
the great Oliver Postgate
There is another, the great
voice genius Peter Hawkins.
We, unfortunately,
said that the Flobbadob language
was called "Flobbadob",
and that it came from the sound of
creator Hilda Brabban's younger brothers
farting in the bath.
And saying, "Oh, flobbadob," like that;
it sounded like "flobbadob".
And we got a very, if I may say so,
terse, tart letter from Silas Hawkins,
the son of Peter Hawkins,
himself a voice actor.
"The fart in the bath story
was trotted out last year
in an episode of Stephen Fry's
otherwise admirable quiz show, QI.
It (the story) first appeared some
20 years ago in a newspaper article,
to which my father immediately
wrote a rebuttal,
and which was obviously ferreted out
by some BBC researcher for QI.
It may be 'Quite Interesting' but,
in this case, it just isn't true."
So we apologise, Mr Silas Hawkins.
Their language is called "Oddle Poddle".
"Flobadob" actually means
"flowerpot" in Oddle Poddle.
I cannot believe I just said that!
But with that descendent gibberish,
I would like to take us now
outside the headmaster's study,
where we get a damn good weekly
thrashing of General Ignorance.
So, fingers on buzzers, please.
Who can hum the most listened-
to tune in the world?
- You've been doing so well.
- The shame, the shame.
is the right answer!
Do you know who wrote it?
- Someone in Finland.
- No, it's Spanish; A Spanish composer,
a genuine Spanish composer called...
- It's Robbie Williams!
- It is! It's Robbie Williams.
It's Robbie Williams with one of those
comedy glasses and beard things.
- His name was Francisco Tarrega.
- Tarrega.
and it's his "Gran Vals".
Would you like to hear it?
- Yes.
- Here it is, the original.
It doesn't end with the final note.
It just goes...
- You see, they've hung up.
- And does a bloke in Spanish shout,"HOLA!"
- It is a...
- "HOLA!"
- "ESTOY EN TREN!"
Very good. Excellent.
Well, that's... that is the man.
He died in 1909, but the billionth
phone was made not long ago.
I think it's something like six-and-a-half phones
a second are produced by the Nokia company.
And a remarkable achievement,
'cause it isn't actually that annoying,
even though you've heard it so many times.
If we want to hear it on a phone it sounds like this:
It's that "ee" on the end. And the original
again, from Tarrega, which is like this:
He probably thought,
"If I put another note on there,
they'll use this on a fucking phone."
Anyway, Fern Cotton and Terry Wogan are, of course,
the great heroes behind this evening of all evenings.
So, does anyone know anything interesting about ferns?
Fern's what?
If you know anything interesting
about Fern's anything, do tell me.
"They make a canny noise like."
- I beg your pardon?
- "Ferns make a canny noise!"
"I'm speaking on the fern."
Oh, I see! Sorry. But "cunny" means...
means the female pudenda, it means the...
- It does!
- You know what?
- They make a noise like a female pudenda!
- Never, ever, ever go to Newcastle, you!
- It's an English word! Meaning...
- You'll go up there and they'll be, "Whoaa!!"
There's that great joke about the little
soldier who's with General Custer
and they can hear the...
And... and he says to the little Geordie
soldier, "Listen, they've got war drums."
And the Geordie soldier goes,
"The thieving bastards?"
No, I do confess myself defeated there.
Is it like a naval wardroom?
Is that what they're saying? "Wardrooms"?
Well, it's where the naval officers gather
for their pink gins; it's called the "wardroom".
Oh, Pudsey, make him stop.
"They've got wardrooms, the thieving bastards."
What..."They've got"?
- In Newcastle they say... they say...
- Instead of saying "our", they say "war".
Well, they must go to school;
it's just ridiculous.
I'm sorry. Not good enough. Anyway.
Ferns! Tell me about ferns.
Fern's what?
Tell me about "fern".
- They're poisonous.
- You're absolutely right. They are.
- Some ferns are carcinogenic.
- You're absolutely right again.
Aren't ferns also, apart from moss,
I believe, the oldest plant on the planet?
Yeah, you're right.
They're three times older than dinosaurs.
Older than any land animal.
- And they seed by...
- That's right, they cast out.
- They go "boom!", like that.
- Boom-shaka-boom, shake the room!
- No, they: "Wah! Wah!"
They fling their seed across the room.
You know what, I was doing that when
I was about fourteen, and...
And so to the other hero of the evening,
of course, I'd like to know:
Where does Terry Wogan come from?
They're pygmies aren't they,
the Wogan family?
- Isn't there a... Is there not a link?
- Which country?
- Ireland.
- Oh, thank you for saying that.
No, they're the Welsh.
They're the Gwgan's originally.
- The land of my fathers?
- That's right,
he comes from the land of the valleys,
where the Davies's come from, yes.
Yes. Oh, yes.
Oh, I see. He doesn't sound like it.
No, he doesn't, because
he himself grew up in Ireland,
and his family came from Wales originally,
and there was a Sir John Wogan,
who left in 1295 for Ireland,
and all Wogans in Ireland are said
to descend from this Welsh Ireland.
But there's one thing he's done,
this... this Wogan,
- which is a unique sporting achievement.
- What, our Wogan? Oh, I know what this is.
- Yeah, go on.
- Er, he hit the longest recorded
putt on television.
Absolutely right,
longer than any professional golfer.
Thirty-three yard putt at Gleneagles.
I've seen it. It's amazing.
- Er, Rich?
- Ever since the Clangers, I've been lost.
- Oh! It's... I think...
The last picture I recognised was
the KKK, and that's pretty sad.
Anyway, erm, finally,
what percentage of money donated
to Children In Need
actually goes to cover administration costs?
What percentage...
- Yes?
- Ninety percent.
It would be disappointing if that were true.
It is... I'm happy to say-less than that.
- None! None at all!
- You're right. Nada. Not one percent goes.
There's no administration at all.
It's a shamble!
Oh, my goodness me!
The first Children In Need telethon.
What year would you guess it was?
- 1979 ?.?
- Oh, you're only one year out!
- 1978 ?.?
- Oh, wrong way!
It's 1980.
- And how much did it raise?
- Twenty pounds.
It was about one million.
- Last year's appeal: 17,235,256 pounds.
- Well that's not very good in terms
of the rate of inflation, is it?
Are you urging the public to do better?
They've probably got other things
to spend their money on.
That's not how it works!
All cynicism aside,
it is a splendid thing...
that Children In Need exists and
does so well and has made so much money,
and it's all thanks to people like you.
Thank them all very much. Speaking of which,
I have some marking to do, and my goodness me.
As I'm in a charitable mood,
I shall give the scores in millions.
And we have a clear winner:
with three million points,
our first-timer Jonathan Ross,
ladies and gentlemen.
Thank you.
I feel it was a team effort.
Because in second place,
ladies and gentlemen,
with two million points, Rich Hall.
- With one million points,
in third place, Phill Jupitus.
- Again?
And I'm afraid in bottom place...
"Bottom place."
with an extraordinary minus twenty-nine million,
- it's Alan Davies.
- Thank you very much.
My thanks, of course, to Rich, Jonathan,
Phill, and Alan. And I leave you with
the wise advice about your little ones,
and it comes from Robert Orben.
"Never raise your hand to your children.
It leaves your mid section unprotected."
Good night.
good evening, good evening, good evening,
good evening, good evening,
and welcome to the provisional wing
of Children In Need.
Er, we hope to raise lots
of extra money tonight
for disadvantaged children.
And we have four enormously
overgrown examples here tonight.
The irascible young Rich Hall ,
that cheeky chappy, Phill Jupitus,
naughty scamp Jonathan Ross
and everybody's favourite
fluffy stud-muffin, Pudsey!
Now, settle down, class.
Er, you know the rules.
Phill goes:
- And Jonathan:
- Thank you.
Stop it. And Jonathan goes:
And Rich goes:
And Pudsey goes:
- Hey! Hang on!
- Thank you, Pudsey. Oh, hello.
Hello? Hey, what are you doing?
Oh, don't give it all that,
you're not even a bear!
Come on. We don't want any trouble.
He gave me a look, then,
with the good eye!
Yeah. How's your distance vision?
Someone has been sitting in my seat!
Tonight's programme is all
about descendants.
In other words, offspring,
progeny... children.
Let's begin at the very beginning.
What do babies have
that adults do not?
Horns.
- Horns?
- Horns.
- Oddly, you're almost close.
- They have a cranial cap.
They have a divot there
that you can store things in.
I thought that was there so that if
you have sex during the final trimester
it doesn't hurt the baby,
it kind of gives.
- Oh, no, Jonathan!
- Nature provides!
But the bones in the head haven't
fused together yet, have they?
They haven't.
Not only in the head, that's the point.
They're completely spongy, babies;
you can bend them pretty... like plasticine;
you can just like make...
If it's an ugly baby,
you can just make it slightly better looking,
you know. Just... Give it horns if you want.
What's the protocol for when you see
a really ugly baby? Do you know... ?
I'll tell you, people show you their babies
on the phone now,
and it's like a cashew with
some hair coming out of it.
which their parents don't.
That's why they cry all the time.
They hold the little mirror up to them
on the mobile, "Ahhh, look at me.
I look like Churchill having a shit, it's like..."
They don't have kneecaps, do they? That's...
Aren't you mixing them up with merbabies?
No, their kneecaps are not made
of bone while they're babies,
- and there are all kinds of parts of them...
- What are they made of?
- that are not made of bone, but are made of cartilage, and
- Or Play-Doh.
- and they have ninety-four more bones than adults.
- No, they don't.
- Yeah, they do.
- You're making this up.
No, I'm not. A baby's body has about
300 what are called "soft bones",
that haven't actually formed bone material. They are
actually cartilage, a sort of soft, gooey thing.
And they eventually fuse to form the 206 bones
of the average human body.
Where are a quarter of those
bones housed in the body?
- Oh, yeah?
- In the body.
Yeah. Where, I should have said,
abouts in the body?
- In the...
- Foot.
- Feet. "The feet" is the right answer, yeah.
- Feet!
- A quarter of your bones, fifty-two.
- Yes!
Very good. Yeah! Very good.
How long do you have to wait
for your baby to harden?
It's... In the natural course of things
Do you put it somewhere... Like, with Airfix kits,
I used to put them in the airing cupboard. I mean...
- In a kiln.
- A kiln.
- Yeah.
- Bake it.
- You fire the baby!
So, talking of Churchill, in a sort of way,
who was very fond of pigs,
because he said,
"Dogs look up at you, cats look down on you,
but a pig looks you in the eye
and treats you as an equal."
Anyway, who grunts like a pig and
has children three times their own size?
And then it... What, do they shrink down?
The offspring start off three times bigger and then,
obviously, become the size of the parent,
so the... the offspring do shrink, eventually.
Presumably, though, they must be...
they must be, erm... they must grow
to full term outside of the body of the parent
- They do.
- or else the parent could not carry such a vast...
You're right, so they're not mammals.
- They're fish?
- Not fish, neither.
- Frogs?
- Yes!
It's a breed of frog called the "paradoxical frog",
for that very reason.
It is the only species on earth,
and that literally is to scale.
That's the parent,
that's a pen-to give us an idea of scale,
and that is the offspring.
So they squirt 'em out,
and then they grow big in the pond?
Yeah. They come from South America and
Trinidad as well, you'll find them.
What purpose does that serve in nature,
that animal would, er,
create an offspring that is
so much larger than itself
initially, and then shrink?
We just don't know.
What is it in Spanish?
"Paradoxical fr-og!"
Now, what I want you to do is stop me
when you know about whom I am talking.
Had she been eligible,
she might have been elected U.S. President.
She's a trained scientist.
She has larger breasts
than you might imagine.
Jonathan's alert. Er... Maiden name:
- Roberts.
- Thatcher.
Oh, dear.
Margaret Thatcher's maiden name was Roberts,
but this particular "nee Roberts"
has over a billion pairs of shoes,
and yet stands only 11 inches tall.
Thumbelina.
Not Thumbelina. This one exists.
- 11 inches tall?
- Yeah.
- Barbie.
- "Barbie" is the right answer.
She was named after one Barbara Millicent Roberts,
from Willows, Wisconsin.
If Barbie was a real person,
she wouldn't be able to stand.
- Yes.
- Anatomically.
- Yeah, exactly.
- Her feet are too small and her...
- If you sort of blew her up to five foot six,
her feet would be size three
and her breasts would be 39 inches,
and she would just go...
But you wouldn't let her stand up
anyway would you? You'd...
You'd only want her supine, anyway,
wouldn't you, if she does have...?
I-i-is that right. Erm. It's also...
It's also apparently true,
according to, er, researchers at University
Central Hospital in Helsinki, Finland,
that her body shape lacks
the 17- to 22-percent body fat
which would enable her to menstruate.
But what was it she managed finally
to get in the year 2000?
Pregnant.
- It was a piece of something that...
- A shroud of dreams.
- A bra!
Not a bra. Some part of her body.
- Nipples.
- Not nipples, thank you.
- A naval!
- "A naval" is the right answer!
She finally got a tummy button.
Very good. Absolutely right.
Barbie philosophy...
Barbie spoke in 1992 for the first time.
- Do you know the kind of thing she said?
- "Where's my naval?"
- She could have said that. "Will we..."
- "'No' means 'no'!"
"Stop looking down there;
I don't have bits!"
"Will we ever have enough clothes?"
was one of the first she...
"It's a paradoxical frog, Ken."
- Yeah! "I love shopping."
- Do you? But what did Barbie say, Stephen?
"Math is tough."
As we know, Barbie, whose full name
was Barbara Millicent Roberts,
was born in 1959,
and she's done everything, including
running for president three times.
But how have Superman, Spiderman
and Wonder Woman helped
the fight against crime?
Each one of them has an intimate connection
with a genuinely groundbreaking,
crime-solving, or crime...
X-ray vision.
- Mm. I... When I say genuine, obviously...
- Invisible planes!
Yeah, something that exists.
Superman led the police
to develop bulletproof vests.
It isn't that, but you're
on exactly the right lines.
I know, because I know coppers have got, like,
a net they shoot at you, like Spiderman.
- That would be Spiderman's thing, wouldn't it? Yeah.
- Yes, but that's an old Roman Retiarius trick.
Erm, who was...
Who was Spiderman's arch-enemy, mostly?
Mostly it was the Green Goblin.
There was another one called King Pin?
King Pin... Well he's not... Well, he was Spidey's,
but recently he's become Daredevil's main foe.
- Has he?
- He lives in Hell's Kitchen,
and it's over more like 49th Street;
Daredevil fights him a lot more.
- But recently...
- And what did he do in 1979,
in order to keep tabs on Spiderman?
So that he always knew where Spidey was.
- ASBO. (antisocial behaviour order)
- Not an ASBO! But you're exactly...
You're exactly on the right lines.
It's more technical.
- What, he put something on him that you can trace?
- Yes.
- Some sort of...
- An electronic tagging bracelet.
- An electronic tagging device.
- I didn't realise that came from there.
- In 1979.
And a judge, rather splendidly named
Judge Jack Love of Albuquerque, New Mexico,
- "Judge Love."
- "Judge Love," exactly.
- "I stand before you, Judge Love."
- "You are in the court of Love!"
Yeah, anyway,
- he did exist.
- "Thanks Judge Love.
I've got a present for you, Judge Love."
And Judge Love had, like many a judge...
had an incredibly full series of cells.
And he reasoned, having seen this cartoon,
why not develop a real thing like this?
So instead of prisoners going into prison,
they can be electronically tagged.
And he was the inventor of the electronic tag.
But it was directly from a Spiderman comic.
You can say, "I'm really cool,"
as I believe young people say,
"because, erm ...
because I have a really 'wicked', erm..."
- He's so good.
- "bracelet, innit, guy." So, there you are.
The Stealth Bomber, the invisible plane.
Wonder Woman had an invisible plane.
Can I tell you about Wonder Woman?
Wonder Woman's creator was
William Moulton Marston...
- Absolutely.
- who wrote... who wrote under
the pen name of Charles Moulton,
who was in a polygamous and indeed
polyamous relationship, with a woman
who co-created Wonder Woman,
and another lezzer on the side.
Absolutely right! Yep.
No, you're right, he married his wife
Elizabeth at twenty-two years of age,
and then carried on this affair with Olive.
- And I think they moved in together,
didn't they?
- They all moved in together;
he had two children by each,
and then when he died, Olive and Elizabeth
stayed together right up until
the death of Olive in the '80s.
- I think that's a rather beautiful story.
- It is a lovely story.
I'll tell you something interesting about Spiderman.
Originally, he was called "Spidermann"
and, er, and he was Jewish.
He couldn't fight crime on the Sabbath.
Look, I'm so impressed with Jonathan knowing
the full name of William Moulton Marston,
but he came to the attention of DC Comics,
to the great Max Gains,
whom you will know of,
- the publisher of DC Comics.
- Actually, Max Gains, I believe,
published EC Comics, didn't he?
And then when he died in a boating accident,
his son William C Gains took over,
moving from "True Tales from the Bible
and Stories to Amuse Children"
into the EC line of horror comics
that then came to the attention of the U.S. Senate
when comics were investigated,
after a certain Dr Frederick Wertham
Wertham brought out a book called
Seduction of the Innocent in 1954,
calling for the introduction of a self-regulating
body known as the Comic Code Authority
that had such ridiculous rules as you
could not use the word "FLICK" in a comic
for fear that the "L" and the "I" would run together
and Spiderman was saying,
"LOOK, HE'S GOT A FUCK KNIFE!"
(flick knife)
- This is all true.
- Fabulous.
- This is true.
- I love that. That is brilliant.
And to think that almost everyone I know thinks
you're a course, vain, loud-mouthed...
- But we still haven't come to the root of... of...
- Bulletproof wristbands she had.
Marston... No, he invented something else.
A psychology professor.
He was very interested
in people's response under stress.
- Under stress?
- And he discovered that blood pressure
increased when people were under pressure.
- The lie detector.
- Was it the lie detector?
- The lie detector!
So, there you are. We have the lie detector
and we have the electronic tagging system,
so that only leaves us with Superman himself.
What was the most popular effusion
of Superman, if you like, in the 40s?
- It wasn't the comic book; it was...?
- It was the... the Su...
- The radio?
- The radio. Absolutely.
- "Up up and away."
And there was a man called
Stetson Kennedy, who in the 1940s,
decided that the most loathsome
organisation in the United States
of America was the Ku Klux Klan.
And he infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan
and he learned their secret language,
their hierarchies, their codes
and their gossip, in his
particular part of the world.
- Oh, man, of all the pictures
you would have to show!
- I know. It's not good.
That's my uncle in there.
Anyway, he decided that the most popular
thing around was Superman on the radio,
so he wrote to the producers and said,
"Here's a plot line for you.
Why don't you have Superman
fight the Ku Klux Klan?"
Because he fought Mussolini; he's fought Hitler.
And within two weeks of the four week episode
in which Superman fights the Ku Klux Klan,
the recruitment went to zero.
So he was a crime fighter, Superman.
- In real life as well as in fiction.
- In real life. Yeah.
How wonderful. I did not know any of that.
I go home a better person.
Now, children have invented some
pretty useful stuff themselves.
Earmuffs were invented by children.
The calculator; the trampoline;
the state flag of Alaska itself.
The great child author, Roald Dahl:
What was his greatest invention?
Yeah, go on. Oh, hello.
Oh! Oh, my goodness!
Fixed it!
- I do know this...
- Yes, go on. Tell.
because I've been many times to the
Roald Dahl Museum on school trips.
- In Great Missenden.
- Yes, it's a beautiful place;
it's a wonderful day out.
Er, I've often thought though,
for the bored father,
maybe they could have a Roald Dahl-
themed brothel next door,
with a kind of Charlie and
the Chocolate Factory theme; you know:
Willy Wonka, bring your own. But...
Or for the grown-ups, "chocolate
and the Charlie factory",
where they could have lots of free
Charlies, erm... But, anyway...
And you find out about Roald Dahl's life
when you're there, and, er, he had...
One of his children,
I think it was his son, was very ill;
- I think he caught an illness
or he had an accident of some sort.
- Well, actually, he had an accident in New York.
- He was hit by a car.
- And Roald Dahl was involved, I believe,
not alone, but with other people, in inventing
some kind of a valve or some sort of a device
- that the injured person needed in his body.
- I'm going to have to give the man
lots and lots of points.
Yep. It's called the Wade-Dahl-Till valve.
His son Theo was in a car accident in New York,
and he hurt his head to the extent
that he got hydrocephalus.
- That's water on the brain, isn't it?
- Water on the brain, exactly.
And the cure was to put a valve in,
but it was a very clunkily-designed valve,
that often got jammed and stuck,
which meant big surgical intervention.
And Dahl thought,
"This isn't good enough,"
so he went to his friends,
and they devised this, er, valve.
3000 children at least have
probably had their lives saved
and certainly their outcomes massively improved.
Well, I'll ask you another question.
The Oompa Loompas: What colour are they?
Their faces are orange; their hair is yellow;
we don't know about their nether regions.
Did you say "orange"?
No, I'm talking about the original
Oompa Loompa's; the Oompa Loompa's
of Roald Dahl's...
In the book itself?
Aren't they from Africa?
Yes, you see; you've reclaimed
yourself. His publishers, Knopf,
made them orange,
because they felt black pygmies
slaving away in a factory was
a slightly kind of unfortunate...
So now they're all orange like Girls Aloud.
Now they're... Exactly, exactly.
Green hair, orange, white eyebrows.
- I saw a Sherlock Holmes film once.
- Yeah.
and people kept getting
murdered quite near a circus.
- Seen any other films?
- And people were getting murdered,
and they'd be in a room, and there'd
only be a tiny little window or something,
and about an hour in, er,
Holmes turns to Watson and says,
"I've got one word to say
to you Watson: pygmies."
- That is deathless!
- And there were some...
there were some pygmies at the circus,
and they were being sent out to do
the bidding of an evil circus owner.
I love the idea that we can
go back to a happier time,
when pygmies are the prime
suspect for most crimes.
So much easier to pick out
in an identity parade. That one.
It's political correctness...
It's political correctness gone mad, isn't it.
I once saw a very fine, er, Saturday night
French television show,
which didn't involve a midget as such,
but it involved a small, tiny dwarf
elephant that came out and danced and
performed and capered around
like nobody's business;
you wouldn't believe it.
And I was sitting watching this...
I was in a hotel room and I was saying,
"This is the best thing
I've ever seen in my life."
Where (A) Where did they find such a tiny elephant?
(B) How do you teach a tiny elephant
to perform like that, you know?
Turned out at the end of the act...
He unzipped it; there was a dog inside.
One of... one of the best acts
I've seen in my entire life.
And yet now, it's such an obvious idea.
Yeah! Anyway, there we are.
Now, from Oompa Loompa's,
politically incorrect little people, to
badly behaved little pink extraterrestials.
Alan, could you press your buzzer
and tell me what it's saying?
It's a Clanger. Definitely a Clanger.
It is. It's a famous episode;
it was in episode three of series one,
which was called "Chicken".
See if you can work out what is being said.
Erm, we've got a little clip.
They've got a little...
Because the performers generally
have words in their head.
There it is. And what he's saying is,
"Oh, sod it, the bloody thing's stuck again."
And you can hear it again.
Let's hear it again.
There it is. It is. Yeah.
So, the creator of...
Yeah?
- Oliver Postgate.
- The great...
- Oh, the great Oliver.
- I think you cannot say Oliver Postgate
without saying "the great".
- Noggin the Nog!
- Noggin the Nog. Pogles Wood.
- Did he do Bagpuss?
And the greatest of the great, Bagpuss.
But he and Peter Firmin, who was his partner,
they used to produce these things in a barn
and they'd take a month to do each episode
- Oh, they're brilliant though, aren't they?
- They are absolutely wondrous, aren't they?
Well, here's an interesting bit
of Clanger trivia for you.
I think the Clangers appeared
on an episode of Doctor Who.
The man is right. The man is absolutely right.
It was, in fact, their largest ever audience in 1972.
They got ten million viewers by appearing
in an episode called "The Sea Devils".
But anyway, there's only one language
even more suggestive than the Clangers.
What language did Bill and Ben,
the Flowerpot Men, speak?
- "Flobbadob."
- Flobbadob? No.
No. You see, the awful thing is,
you probably thought it was Flobbadob,
because that's what we said
a couple of years ago.
We've saluted one great genius
for children's television,
the great Oliver Postgate
There is another, the great
voice genius Peter Hawkins.
We, unfortunately,
said that the Flobbadob language
was called "Flobbadob",
and that it came from the sound of
creator Hilda Brabban's younger brothers
farting in the bath.
And saying, "Oh, flobbadob," like that;
it sounded like "flobbadob".
And we got a very, if I may say so,
terse, tart letter from Silas Hawkins,
the son of Peter Hawkins,
himself a voice actor.
"The fart in the bath story
was trotted out last year
in an episode of Stephen Fry's
otherwise admirable quiz show, QI.
It (the story) first appeared some
20 years ago in a newspaper article,
to which my father immediately
wrote a rebuttal,
and which was obviously ferreted out
by some BBC researcher for QI.
It may be 'Quite Interesting' but,
in this case, it just isn't true."
So we apologise, Mr Silas Hawkins.
Their language is called "Oddle Poddle".
"Flobadob" actually means
"flowerpot" in Oddle Poddle.
I cannot believe I just said that!
But with that descendent gibberish,
I would like to take us now
outside the headmaster's study,
where we get a damn good weekly
thrashing of General Ignorance.
So, fingers on buzzers, please.
Who can hum the most listened-
to tune in the world?
- You've been doing so well.
- The shame, the shame.
is the right answer!
Do you know who wrote it?
- Someone in Finland.
- No, it's Spanish; A Spanish composer,
a genuine Spanish composer called...
- It's Robbie Williams!
- It is! It's Robbie Williams.
It's Robbie Williams with one of those
comedy glasses and beard things.
- His name was Francisco Tarrega.
- Tarrega.
and it's his "Gran Vals".
Would you like to hear it?
- Yes.
- Here it is, the original.
It doesn't end with the final note.
It just goes...
- You see, they've hung up.
- And does a bloke in Spanish shout,"HOLA!"
- It is a...
- "HOLA!"
- "ESTOY EN TREN!"
Very good. Excellent.
Well, that's... that is the man.
He died in 1909, but the billionth
phone was made not long ago.
I think it's something like six-and-a-half phones
a second are produced by the Nokia company.
And a remarkable achievement,
'cause it isn't actually that annoying,
even though you've heard it so many times.
If we want to hear it on a phone it sounds like this:
It's that "ee" on the end. And the original
again, from Tarrega, which is like this:
He probably thought,
"If I put another note on there,
they'll use this on a fucking phone."
Anyway, Fern Cotton and Terry Wogan are, of course,
the great heroes behind this evening of all evenings.
So, does anyone know anything interesting about ferns?
Fern's what?
If you know anything interesting
about Fern's anything, do tell me.
"They make a canny noise like."
- I beg your pardon?
- "Ferns make a canny noise!"
"I'm speaking on the fern."
Oh, I see! Sorry. But "cunny" means...
means the female pudenda, it means the...
- It does!
- You know what?
- They make a noise like a female pudenda!
- Never, ever, ever go to Newcastle, you!
- It's an English word! Meaning...
- You'll go up there and they'll be, "Whoaa!!"
There's that great joke about the little
soldier who's with General Custer
and they can hear the...
And... and he says to the little Geordie
soldier, "Listen, they've got war drums."
And the Geordie soldier goes,
"The thieving bastards?"
No, I do confess myself defeated there.
Is it like a naval wardroom?
Is that what they're saying? "Wardrooms"?
Well, it's where the naval officers gather
for their pink gins; it's called the "wardroom".
Oh, Pudsey, make him stop.
"They've got wardrooms, the thieving bastards."
What..."They've got"?
- In Newcastle they say... they say...
- Instead of saying "our", they say "war".
Well, they must go to school;
it's just ridiculous.
I'm sorry. Not good enough. Anyway.
Ferns! Tell me about ferns.
Fern's what?
Tell me about "fern".
- They're poisonous.
- You're absolutely right. They are.
- Some ferns are carcinogenic.
- You're absolutely right again.
Aren't ferns also, apart from moss,
I believe, the oldest plant on the planet?
Yeah, you're right.
They're three times older than dinosaurs.
Older than any land animal.
- And they seed by...
- That's right, they cast out.
- They go "boom!", like that.
- Boom-shaka-boom, shake the room!
- No, they: "Wah! Wah!"
They fling their seed across the room.
You know what, I was doing that when
I was about fourteen, and...
And so to the other hero of the evening,
of course, I'd like to know:
Where does Terry Wogan come from?
They're pygmies aren't they,
the Wogan family?
- Isn't there a... Is there not a link?
- Which country?
- Ireland.
- Oh, thank you for saying that.
No, they're the Welsh.
They're the Gwgan's originally.
- The land of my fathers?
- That's right,
he comes from the land of the valleys,
where the Davies's come from, yes.
Yes. Oh, yes.
Oh, I see. He doesn't sound like it.
No, he doesn't, because
he himself grew up in Ireland,
and his family came from Wales originally,
and there was a Sir John Wogan,
who left in 1295 for Ireland,
and all Wogans in Ireland are said
to descend from this Welsh Ireland.
But there's one thing he's done,
this... this Wogan,
- which is a unique sporting achievement.
- What, our Wogan? Oh, I know what this is.
- Yeah, go on.
- Er, he hit the longest recorded
putt on television.
Absolutely right,
longer than any professional golfer.
Thirty-three yard putt at Gleneagles.
I've seen it. It's amazing.
- Er, Rich?
- Ever since the Clangers, I've been lost.
- Oh! It's... I think...
The last picture I recognised was
the KKK, and that's pretty sad.
Anyway, erm, finally,
what percentage of money donated
to Children In Need
actually goes to cover administration costs?
What percentage...
- Yes?
- Ninety percent.
It would be disappointing if that were true.
It is... I'm happy to say-less than that.
- None! None at all!
- You're right. Nada. Not one percent goes.
There's no administration at all.
It's a shamble!
Oh, my goodness me!
The first Children In Need telethon.
What year would you guess it was?
- 1979 ?.?
- Oh, you're only one year out!
- 1978 ?.?
- Oh, wrong way!
It's 1980.
- And how much did it raise?
- Twenty pounds.
It was about one million.
- Last year's appeal: 17,235,256 pounds.
- Well that's not very good in terms
of the rate of inflation, is it?
Are you urging the public to do better?
They've probably got other things
to spend their money on.
That's not how it works!
All cynicism aside,
it is a splendid thing...
that Children In Need exists and
does so well and has made so much money,
and it's all thanks to people like you.
Thank them all very much. Speaking of which,
I have some marking to do, and my goodness me.
As I'm in a charitable mood,
I shall give the scores in millions.
And we have a clear winner:
with three million points,
our first-timer Jonathan Ross,
ladies and gentlemen.
Thank you.
I feel it was a team effort.
Because in second place,
ladies and gentlemen,
with two million points, Rich Hall.
- With one million points,
in third place, Phill Jupitus.
- Again?
And I'm afraid in bottom place...
"Bottom place."
with an extraordinary minus twenty-nine million,
- it's Alan Davies.
- Thank you very much.
My thanks, of course, to Rich, Jonathan,
Phill, and Alan. And I leave you with
the wise advice about your little ones,
and it comes from Robert Orben.
"Never raise your hand to your children.
It leaves your mid section unprotected."
Good night.