QI (2003–…): Season 5, Episode 9 - Entertainment - full transcript
Good evening, good evening,
good evening, good evening, good evening,
and, erm, if you've joined us from BBC1 to avoid the news,
you're very welcome here at QI towers,
where dreary reality seldom intrudes.
Help yourself to drinks and nibbles,
and put your feet up and your hands together for
Jo Brand... Bill Bailey... Jeremy Clarkson... and Pudsey Bear!
Yes, Pudsey is joining us once again for this "Children in Need"
QI special, which is all about "E" for "Entertainment".
Now, Pudsey is the only one that hasn't played in this series,
and I have to tell you about our "Elephant in the Room" bonus.
If you spot an elephant, you buzz your buzzer
and you wave your elephant and you get extra points.
Because there is an elephant in one answer
hidden somewhere in one of the questions.
Right, well, let's see how entertaining you can be. Jeremy goes:
[Robbie Williams's Let Me Entertain You]
- Very good.
- Very Robbie.
And Bill goes:
[Scott Joplin's The Entertainer]
And Jo goes:
[David Rose's The Stripper]
Oh, I wish!
Oh, all right!
Wey hey! And Pudsey goes:
[jingle with the phone number for donations to Children in Need]
Er, yes, which is of course the number
that you have to call to donate to Children in Need.
Brilliant and subtle as a brick. So let's go straight...
Yes, Pudsey...
No, no, you...
The point about the Elephant and the bonus is you wave
the elephant when there is an elephant in one of the...
Oh, you've seen it up... There is an elephant in the room,
ladies and gentlemen! How bizarre! Welcome him.
Well, good bye, Pudsey.
Er, good evening, elephant.
- Ha hah!
- Wow!
- I was the elephant in the room.
- Ah!
- You were. That's brilliant!
- It was brilliant.
- Superb!
And so to our first question, ladies and gentlemen,
and a bit of detective work.
What can you tell me about the owner of these shoes?
Which I shall show you.
Did he have a couple of really fat kids
that used to sit on his shoes to watch telly?
- Obese children sitting on his shoes.
- Could he not afford ski rental?
- It is a bit like... They are a bit like skis.
- Standing too close to the steam rally or something? Er...
- He must wanna lean forward.
- Yes! He did lean forward.
- Lean over something.
He leant forward to the greatest effect of anyone of his generation,
really. He was one of the truly great entertainers of his age.
- Lean-o!
- No. If I say...
This is what Jacques Tati said of him:
that his performance was a foundation
for everything that has been realised in comedy on the screen.
- Oh, I know!
- Michael Barrymore.
- Not Michael Barrymore.
- Sir Bernard Ingham.
- Not Sir Bernard Ingham.
- Rolf Harris, Bill Oddie.
No, we're going back to one of the great comedians
of the 19th century musicals.
- Dan Leno.
- No. That would be appropriate, though...
- It would.
- You said Lean-o. No.
If I tell you he was born Harry Relph, it won't mean much.
He was the sixteenth child of a 77-year-old pub landlord.
In fact, the Blacksmith's Arms, from whom we get these
original shoes. He actually wore these. He was very short.
Little Tommy Twat.
He was so short that his stage name is
now used to describe short people.
- Very Little Tommy Twat.
- Richard Hammond.
- Er... Midgey.
- Lofty. Everyone at school was called Lofty.
- Midget... er...
- Little Tich!
- Who I've never heard of!
- Little Tich, of whom... of whom you should have heard.
I'm going back in here.
He was born with webbed hands,
and he stopped growing at the age of ten,
so he was very short.
And he had twelve fingers and twelve toes.
- And stupid shoes.
- And stupid shoes. But...
No, to be fair, I know you're probably gonna mock him,
but I have to say he will be remembered long after we are forgotten.
In 200 years' time, when the names Jeremy Clarkson
and Stephen Fry mean nothing to anybody, Little Tich...
- Oh, come, Stephen, Jeremy will be remembered.
- "We are now... We are now landing at Stephen Fry Airport."
- You'll find that... that'll be Lord Fry Airport.
- Lord Fry.
I'll show his film.
This was a film made by a man called Cl?ment Maurice in 1900.
Oh, yeah.
Jesus, it's Rowan Atkinson.
The audience are crapping themselves.
- Brilliant.
- Has everyone else gone into a coma?
No, I'm sorry, he's funnier than I've ever been
and he's funnier than any of you, I guess.
- Stephen, he's not funny.
- He is.
- He isn't funny. He isn't.
- No, he's great. He's truly great.
- He just had some stupid shoes!
Oh! As I say, he was an influence on Chaplin,
on Buster Keaton, on...
Actually, yeah. Because actually, on the tape, he was
doing some brilliant stand-up while he was doing all that stuff.
Yeah, stuff about...
He was... Obviously, it was silent, it was 1900.
No, I... I'm, er... He was a great man.
If nothing else, he gave his name to short people,
which is a rather extraordinary achievement.
So popular was he. Well, I shall move Little Tich's shoes
in great sorrow that you weren't impressed by him.
- Oh!
Little Tich was the very first tich,
and rightly famous for his big boots dance.
What did Roland the Farter do for a living, however?
- Yes, Bill?
- Er... he was a sniper. He was rubbish at it.
"Er... I've got him on my sight." Prrt. "Oh, no."
"I've been rumbled, I've been rumbled again. Abort, abort!"
- It's not funny, is it, farting.
- Well, I happen to agree with you there, Jeremy,
but apparently, Henry II thought it was so funny
that he granted Roland the Farter thirty acres,
and his payment was that on Christmas Day,
he had to jump about and fart.
I really don't like the smell of farting,
the noise of it...
- Well, I don't know, the smell can be quite funny.
- It isn't funny!
My dog used to fart; it was hilarious.
Yeah, erm, and he was a jester, licensed jester.
He was called Roland the Farter,
and he got a lot of money for his farting,
a lot of land, er, because it amused Henry II.
A friend of mine was in a very small shop recently and he...
the guy went to the back of the shop to get something from him
and he did a very big fart, and he was extremely embarrassed,
and he thought, "What can I say?" when he comes back in.
So he went "Ooh, someone's having their breakfast!"
And this guy went ? [sniffs] "You're right, that's lovely!"
Well, there's... there's that guy, isn't there?
There's an act, isn't there: Mr Methane,
and he just makes his living from, you know, farting various...
- Farts on demand.
- Yeah, tunes and stuff.
- Farts tunes.
- And who was the original that, do you know?
- Le P?tomane.
- Le P?tomane, yes, who was a French...
- Wasn't that silent? A silent farter's no fun.
- No, he wasn't silent, Le P?tomane.
- Or was he post-noise...
That's music coming out of his arse if you see behind you.
Sarah Bernhardt, who was the most famous
actress of the late 19th century in France,
was paid 8,000 francs a week.
He was paid 20,000 francs a week.
Blimey!
- He was the biggest star of his day!
He would have an enema every morning
so as to be pleasant to his audience.
He actually breathed in through his arse.
He could smoke a cigarette with his arse.
- Oh, we all do.
- And he would do imitations.
He would do a ripped sheet, a nun, a bricklayer,
all these things and various...
- A nun?!
Yes, he'd do a nun farting.
Yeah, how a nun would fart. So, we move away from farting,
then, because it doesn't please Jeremy.
- Excellent.
- Jesters were expected to be warriors, and in fact,
there were two very important jesters
at the Battle of Hastings,
probably our most famous battle.
And their names were Turold and Taillefer.
They're named on the Bayeux Tapestry,
so they must have been very important in their day.
And they're usually dwarves, as you can see.
And Taillefer rode out in front of the discouraged Norman army
and he tossed his sword high and sported with it.
He basically juggled with his sword,
and one of the English emerged to laugh at him,
and he immediately cut his head off.
And this encouraged the Norman army, and then,
they went on to win the battle in the style that we know they did.
- Ah.
- So they were celebrated on the Bayeux Tapestry.
- Tough crowd, that, isn't it? Yeah.
- Yeah, very. Very tough room.
There's this further part of the panel that says
"William comforteth his troops",
and it shows William the Conqueror sticking a spear up the arse of
one of his men. Cause "comforteth" didn't mean what it means now.
- It meant "bugger".
- It didn't mean "bugger", either.
Not really. It meant just kind of "exhort".
- Er, "encourage".
- "Encourage", yes. Good.
- Yeah. "Go on!"
- Strengthen to come forward. Exactly. Yeah, good.
Roland the Farter was given an entire parish
in exchange for farting once a year for the King.
This was before property prizes exploded, of course.
Erm, God knows what he'd need to do now for that amount of land.
Who is the only athlete in the history of the Olympic Games
to get a personal mention in the closing ceremony?
- Achilles?
- No, we're talking about the Modern Olympiads.
- Oh, oh. Er...
- Paula Radcliffe.
- Olympus.
- Eddie the Eagle.
- Not Paula Radcliffe.
- Jesse Owens.
- Sorry?
- Eddie the Eagle.
- Eddie the Eagle is the right answer!
- What year was it?
- '92? '88?
'88 is right. '88 is absolutely right.
And what was his discipline?
- Ski jumper.
- He embodied the spirit, didn't he?
- He kind of just fell off the end of it.
- Didn't he embody the spirit?
- Yeah.
- There he is!
- Yes, there was nothing wrong with it. Look at this!
- Course not.
- Could you do that?
- I couldn't do that.
And they all laughed at him. Look, why?
Well, you didn't laugh at Little Tich, who did much the same.
- No, because...
- Yeah, but if could put his own hat on, that would be different.
Juan Antonio Samaranch, the... the leader of the IOC,
he said, er, "At this Olympic Games ? "
[Spanish accent] " ? some competitorsh ? "...
he probably said, but I'm not gonna go any further.
- A boot.
- "...have won gold, and some have broken records,
and one has even flown like an eagle."
- [Mexican accent] "Flown like an eagle!"
- [imitating Alan] "Like an eagle! ?guila."
But sadly, they then legislated so that people like Eddie
would not be able to participate anymore.
They said that in order to participate in the Olympics,
you had to be in the top 30 percent in your international competition
or one of the top 50 in the world, whichever...
And so it closed the gates on inspired amateurs like Eddie,
which is surely against the spirit of the Olympics.
I mean, bless him, he had to wear glasses which frosted up;
he was in a country which has no ski jumps, in England.
He was just practising without having any ski jumps to practise on!
- This was, just coming off the roof of his house.
- Well, basically, I think he probably was.
Why was he picked for the team, though?
- Cause there wasn't anyone else.
- Yeah, cause he was the only one who volunteered.
Which I think is absolutely wonderful.
- "I'll have a go!"
- But we've done skiing...
Now, who else was there who was a Double E?
Not just Eddie the Eagle;
there was another one a few years later. Do you remember?
- Oh, there was a swimmer.
- Eric the Eel.
- Eric the Eel, from Equatorial Guinea.
People had to hang around,
they were putting the lights out.
Well, bless him! When he arrived...
I'm not wishing to sound patronizing
but I just said "bless him", so there's no way out.
But he said he... he...
he'd only learnt to swim
eight months before the Olympic Games,
and he'd never seen an Olympic pool
before he stood on the edge of one.
Got to see it and went,
"Bloody hell! It's miles!"
Exactly. Oh, well, there you are, it's right. It's Eddie the Eagle,
who despite his acknowledged entertainment value
resulted in a rule, called the "Eddie the Eagle" rule,
that excluded colourful amateurs from the Olympics.
Hard to imagine anything less in
keeping with the original ethos of the Games.
Now, what's wrong with these ballet dancers?
- It's all a bit sinister, really.
- It is quite sinister.
- Very sinister, like a sort of circus ringmaster.
- Well, the ballet is called "The Circus Polka", funnily enough.
- Right.
- And you have to decide what's wrong with it.
I'm gonna give you a hint ?
- Oh, good.
...because I've been very cruel about this particular thing
for the last few weeks. Erm, the wrong kind of species is dancing.
- Bears, it should be bears.
- Not bears.
- Elephants, tigers, swans.
- Hello!
- Elephants. Elephants!
- You see? Oh, really!
- There, I got it.
I had to lead you by the trunk, and I think Jeremy gets points.
I'm not sure if Alan didn't really just come in on your coattails here.
- They should be elephants?
- They should be elephants.
It was written for an elephant ballet.
John Ringling North of the Ringling Brothers Circus
had commissioned Balanchine,
who was the great ballet choreographer of his era,
and Igor Stravinsky to write the music, for an elephant ballet,
which was performed in 1942 in Madison Square Garden
with elephants in tutus and little beaded wear...
I wish they'd run amok then.
That would have been hilarious.
- You wish they'd?
- Run amok.
- It would have been funny.
- That's what elephants do, they run amok.
There, there is the poor elephant.
Well, they kind of did, actually, because the music...
I don't know if you know Stravinsky particularly well, but it's not...
It's not exactly melodic and soft and sweeping and gentle.
And they were used to doing waltzes and things,
and when they heard the music, they did frankly...
- Kicked off?
- They'd go mental.
They exhibited their pain, shall we say.
Their ears flapped wildly and they weren't happy.
- Nonetheless...
- And they shat everywhere, I bet.
- Yeah, exactly, they shat everywhere.
Like on Blue Peter. But it was... It went...
Ran for 425 performances at Madison Square Garden.
Anyway, what's wrong with those ballet dancers?
The answer is, "It's that they aren't elephants." Now where's the...
- The English National Ballet are.
- Elephants? Are they?
Have you ever seen them? I went to watch them at Oxford
the other day, and as they all landed...
If you go to the Royal Ballet...
It sounds like I go to the ballet all the time!
- Yeah, you do.
- Yes, the case for the prosecution is building.
- I mean I do... It is building... I do go a bit, but then when...
every time they land,
you couldn't hear the music anymore cause they were so...
- It thumps, yeah, that...
- Crashing noise.
Now, you put your finger on why ballet is disappointing
because no matter how great the leaps,
they have to come down to ground with a great puff of rosin
and creak of stageboard, and it... it's just so disappointing.
And they do have to have the theater at
four and a half thousand degrees centigrade,
melting point of titanium,
in order that they don't all freeze up.
- Yeah, the muscles.
- So it's an incredibly miserable experience, the ballet.
It's just a lot of people jumping up and down,
making a lot of noise when they land, and you're boiling.
And they are treated like shit. The cours de ballet, the...
I mean, if they're not the stars, it's unbelievable.
Yeah, they keep them in pits, don't they, on the ground.
"Get back right down there, arrrh!"
- And they have to work so bloody hard.
- They do work very hard,
because they do a great many ballets and they don't know what
part that they're going to play when they turn up in the evening.
They have to be across every part.
- I hear they have got no toe nails.
No toe... oh, worse than that, the girls who go through ballet school,
they don't menstruate until they're 19 or 20, very oftenly.
Completely screws their bodies up, their whole physiologies.
- That's quite a pervy thing to say.
It's true! It's just perfectly true;
that's just a physiological fact. It's really unpleasant.
They get bone structure problems from a very early age.
I mean, it is a miserable thing.
Bark! They feed them bark!
They have to gnaw on bark.
So... What was wrong with those ballet dancers
is that they weren't elephants.
And so to e-commerce.
Now, children, each of you has a website,
and I want you to convince me
to buy something from your website.
Let me know what your website provides.
We start with Jo. This is your website.
It is a real website, and tell me what it offers.
What could you offer me? That is the name of the website.
- Is that "whore pre-sents", or "whore pre-sents"?
- Well, you tell me. Could be pre-sents or pre-sents.
- Well it's "whore pre-sents", then.
- So, what... what... what is it?
- It's a very handy course of antibiotics.
This round is, in fact, all about people
who'd seem to be rather word-blind when it comes to websites.
If I'm having a charity dinner and I want Jeremy Clarkson
to come and speak to it, I need to find out who his agent is,
and I go the "www dot who ? "
- So we're probably all on there.
- And they'll find out I haven't got an agent.
- Never find out, apparently.
And there you are, oh!
That's apparently Jo being an agent.
Rather extraordinary.
- I look quite thin and attractive there.
- You always look attractive, Jo.
- But not thin, Stephen.
- Hey! Ohh!
So Bill, let's have a look at your website.
Tell me what you think this website can furnish me with.
- Don't even notice it's happened to you.
- It's just, yeah...
- "While you wait..."
- Take your pants off: "Hang on a minute!"
"I just popped in for a coffee and I came out as a lady!"
So, er... That sort of thing.
But you're absolutely right, of course.
This is not "expert-sex-change"; it is "experts-exchange",
where experts get together to exchange,
you know, in a networking sort of way, specialists...
That's him there at the back, Bill Bailey,
barely running the experts exchange.
"Hello, this is Middle Earth 1-2."
Jeremy, you have a website.
What does your website offer?
- They really didn't think that through at all, did they?
- Very handy, indeed.
"Darn, I've lost my rapist! Where's... ?"
"There's been a rape in the town, Sarge."
"Well, hey, it doesn't matter. Let's go find..."
- It's right.
- It's better than the other way around, though, isn't it?
- Oh, that would be horrible: "Therapist finder"!
- Therapists. Can't be doing with therapists.
- Yeah.
- Have them all put to the rapist finder.
The rapist finder, you'll be pleased to know,
is in California, in fact.
Er, and it is for finding therapists, presumably,
and, well, it is, let's be honest. And that's...
- There you are, you see! Captured on the couch.
- Yeah.
Now, Alan, your site.
- Yes?
- What does it offer, please?
Can you donate penises?
You know, you can donate your organs.
- Well, you can... your inner...
- That's correct, your kidneys, your liver.
The thing about Penis Land, right,
is it's a lot smaller than it looks on the map.
- Er, so, yes. "Penis Land" is, of course...
- Pen? Is it Pen? Pen Island?
- Pen Island.
- Pen Island is of a place where all kinds of ?
- Pens live.
? ...ink-fuelled writing tools...
You look like a little desk midget!
"We got your pen, now, Mister Giant."
"Why, thank you!"
And a quite well known one is Powergen of Italy, "power-genitalia".
So, there are people on the web who don't quite
have a sense of how language works.
Which brings us to the part of the show where our guests
fall into the lens grinding machine of General Ignorance,
and make spectacles of themselves.
Thank you, one person in the audience. Now...
- An optician.
- Yeah, an optician, exactly.
Supposed you shaved a lion and a tiger till they were
both as bald as an egg. How would you tell which was which?
Fingers on buzzers for this, gentlemen.
- Yes.
- Er, the tiger would be exactly the same size, er,
but the lion would be very... would be the size of a squirrel,
because it's mainly... mainly hair.
"Mane-ly" hair! It's a good thought.
There is a more obvious way of telling.
If you stripped them until they were just skeletons,
it would actually incredibly hard to tell.
Only a real expert would know which was a
lion skeleton and a tiger; they're almost identical.
But if you were just to shave them until they're completely bald,
you would know, and it's a rather odd thing.
- Stripey skin?
- Yes, the tiger would have stripes.
It has stripey skin as well as stripey fur.
And that's true of leopards and jaguars.
So the lion would just be bald and white
and the tiger would have the stripes.
I took my nephews to London Zoo, because a friend of ours
is a zookeeper there, and she can "get you in", sort of, the back.
And we wanted to see a lion, and they said,
"There's some mesh. There's a small mesh and big mesh.
You must stand on the side where the...
where the big mesh is. Don't go near the small mesh.
Stay where the big mesh is. Do you understand?"
And the kids went ? [nods quickly].
And we just went in, and my nephew turned to me
and said, "What's mesh?"
I was in Brazil... I was... I went into a...
an enclosure with a jaguar, and there...
This... This handler, he said...
He was Brazillian, and he said to me,
"It is very important," he says, "always approach from the front!"
Erm, like that. And I went, "Right, okay."
And I just was sort of, like, getting closer
to the front of it, and then he said,
"Oh no, sorry, never!
Sorry... Sorry... Sorry, erm..."
- "We've lost the last few... "
- "Erm, my... my English... "
- "Never and always."
- "Never and always. Erm, we lose a lot like that."
Anyway, that's true: tigers are stripey even under their fur.
Now, what do you call the biggest squid in the world?
- Brian.
- Squidey!
- Squid...
- Squidstar. The Squidmaister.
- Isn't it the Kraken?
The Kraken, very good.
The Kraken is actually the giant squid.
But there is even bigger.
The Kraken was some sort of legendary big sea monster.
- Enormous squid. Enormo-squid.
- Yeah, keep going.
- Mega. Grand squid.
- Keep going, you're gonna get there.
- Ginormous squid. Enormous squid.
- You're gonna get there.
- Massive.
[to the audience] Who said that?
Colossus?!
It's the Colossal Squid, is the right answer.
Well done, audience.
The Colossal Squid, also known as
the Antarctic or Giant Cranch Squid, apparently,
is believed to be the largest squid species,
and indeed the largest invertebrate. It is truly vast.
Its eyes, as are the Giant Squid, which is only slightly smaller,
are about a foot in diameter, the eyes.
They are reckoned to be up to forty six feet long,
and if they were calamari, the rings would be the size of tractor tyres.
- Oh, delicious!
- And would taste of ammonia, unfortunately.
- Not good.
- Not so good. They live around the Southern Oceans.
They're preyed upon by sperm whales, apparently, many of which
carry scars caused by the hooks of these Giant Colossal Squids.
One was caught recently and taken to New Zealand frozen
in a block of ice. Had to be thawed in a microwave.
How did they get a Giant Squid
forty six feet long into a microwave?
- Well, that is a good point. I would...
- The door shut! Get the door shut! There's a tentacle!
There's a big microwave, possibly. It was because otherwise,
if they heated it, the outer bits would have rotted be ?
...while the center bits would still be frozen because it was so vast,
they had to use microwaves, that's the point.
So a large thing, the Colossal Squid.
Well, now, a final question, then,
therefore, surely, would be appropriate.
You come down to breakfast, you look in the goldfish bowl,
and you find your goldfish floating on its side
on the surface of the water. What's the matter with it?
You got it from a fairground.
It's dead.
[Forfeit: Klaxons sound.]
Oh! No.
- It's not dead?!
- No.
- So when I flushed it... ?
- Yeah, probably. A lot of people throw away perfectly living ones.
- It's asleep?
- The, erm... They... They're sort of stunned or they're ill.
- They've got their balance... Their balance is all wrong.
- Yes! And where do they get the balance from? Their...
- It's what is called their swim bladder.
- Chest.
- Swim bladder, yes, yes.
It's swim bladder disorder. What happens is, if they're overfed,
they get constipation, and it affects their swim bladder.
- Yeah.
And they can't move and they just lie on their side completely still,
and a lot of people think they're dead and throw them away
as you might have done.
But actually, with three days of no food...
- Twice!
They usually get all better. But the fact is, of course,
as you probably know, it's very easy to overfeed a goldfish.
Their stomachs are the same size as their eyes.
Tiny little stomachs.
Well, this happened to our fish. We came about one morning
and then, they were on their side, like this ?
? sort of, "Eeer!" like they're drunk or something. And...
And then we thought that, sort of, the cat had...
or the heron, perhaps it'd had a go at them.
- You had a pet heron?
- Had you...
We had... Well, not a pet heron, no, no,
that would be... that would be foolish, really.
- Yes.
- Er, no, they...
So, had you given them, like a burger,
the night before or something? Thrown them...
- Thrown them a carrion over the bench.
- Might you have overfed them?
I think we probably had overfed them slightly, yes.
Some children had been 'round, and...
- Oh, children love feeding the fish.
- And they love... "Feed the fish, ooh!
You wanna feed them? Ooh." Like that.
- The whole packet of it.
- The fish were just stuffed.
And of course, they're fine now that because
we've worked out the fantastic heron deterrent.
We had a problem, terrible with the heron; the heron kept
going and eating the fish, so we were told to put a mesh over...
Well, of course your nephew would have no idea what that was...
And, er, put the mesh: Nothing, no,
it was no good, he got through the mesh.
So eventually, we tried to put a fake heron,
and the fake heron... thinking that would be the solution,
but that had the opposite effect;
it attracted three or four herons,
who were circling around going, "Whoa! She gorgeous!"
You know. Standing there...
"Oh, she's so still, the way she
stands there, always so still."
And, er, so we got rid of the fake heron and then
we got a fake crocodile for 7.99. Works a treat!
The herons are terrified of this crocodile,
absolutely, they go ?
- Brilliant!
- It's brilliant! It works an absolute treat.
Just below the... Just below the surface,
and the herons think, "Oh no."
- And the goldfish don't mind?
- No, they're absolutely fine.
Well, they're terrifying. When my father had some fish
that he loved, he used to sit and watch them.
They were about that long and gold,
so I suppose they were goldfish, really, weren't they?
And they swam around in his pond,
and there were lilies, and he used to watch them.
And I thought it would be nice one... one birthday for...
to buy him some more fish to go in his pond, perhaps a bit different.
So I went and found this things called "ghost koi".
- Oh, yeah, we've got ghost koi!
You've got ghost koi? Now, in the...
in the sort of washing up bowl they sell them in, they're there,
they're plainly visible; you see them swimming around;
they got quite nice markings like a tiger shark.
"I'll have half a dozen of those, or a dozen of those,"
whatever. Took them home, put them in the pond,
where they completely disappeared; you can't see them.
But what ghost koi do is kill all other fish.
So my father was then left with...
with a puddle full of invisible fish, and all his fish were dead.
It was the least successful birthday present I ever bought him.
And that brings us to the scores!
- Tonight's entertainer extraordinaire,
- Oh no!
with a massive four points, is Jeremy Clarkson!
- Oh, whoa, four! Four!
Only just behind, with two points, Jo Brand!
And we have two end-tertainers because,
tying in last place, Bill Bailey and Alan Davies on minus six!
But of course, the really big winners tonight are all
the children that you will be helping with your donations.
Don't forget to call 08457 33 22 33
and tell them QI sent you.
So that's all from Bill, Jo, Jeremy, Alan, Pudsey, and me,
and I leave you with this thought
about one form of entertainment
we haven't covered tonight, from Noel Coward.
[as Coward] "People are wrong when they say that opera
is not what it used to be. It is exactly what it used to be.
That is what is wrong with it." Good night.
good evening, good evening, good evening,
and, erm, if you've joined us from BBC1 to avoid the news,
you're very welcome here at QI towers,
where dreary reality seldom intrudes.
Help yourself to drinks and nibbles,
and put your feet up and your hands together for
Jo Brand... Bill Bailey... Jeremy Clarkson... and Pudsey Bear!
Yes, Pudsey is joining us once again for this "Children in Need"
QI special, which is all about "E" for "Entertainment".
Now, Pudsey is the only one that hasn't played in this series,
and I have to tell you about our "Elephant in the Room" bonus.
If you spot an elephant, you buzz your buzzer
and you wave your elephant and you get extra points.
Because there is an elephant in one answer
hidden somewhere in one of the questions.
Right, well, let's see how entertaining you can be. Jeremy goes:
[Robbie Williams's Let Me Entertain You]
- Very good.
- Very Robbie.
And Bill goes:
[Scott Joplin's The Entertainer]
And Jo goes:
[David Rose's The Stripper]
Oh, I wish!
Oh, all right!
Wey hey! And Pudsey goes:
[jingle with the phone number for donations to Children in Need]
Er, yes, which is of course the number
that you have to call to donate to Children in Need.
Brilliant and subtle as a brick. So let's go straight...
Yes, Pudsey...
No, no, you...
The point about the Elephant and the bonus is you wave
the elephant when there is an elephant in one of the...
Oh, you've seen it up... There is an elephant in the room,
ladies and gentlemen! How bizarre! Welcome him.
Well, good bye, Pudsey.
Er, good evening, elephant.
- Ha hah!
- Wow!
- I was the elephant in the room.
- Ah!
- You were. That's brilliant!
- It was brilliant.
- Superb!
And so to our first question, ladies and gentlemen,
and a bit of detective work.
What can you tell me about the owner of these shoes?
Which I shall show you.
Did he have a couple of really fat kids
that used to sit on his shoes to watch telly?
- Obese children sitting on his shoes.
- Could he not afford ski rental?
- It is a bit like... They are a bit like skis.
- Standing too close to the steam rally or something? Er...
- He must wanna lean forward.
- Yes! He did lean forward.
- Lean over something.
He leant forward to the greatest effect of anyone of his generation,
really. He was one of the truly great entertainers of his age.
- Lean-o!
- No. If I say...
This is what Jacques Tati said of him:
that his performance was a foundation
for everything that has been realised in comedy on the screen.
- Oh, I know!
- Michael Barrymore.
- Not Michael Barrymore.
- Sir Bernard Ingham.
- Not Sir Bernard Ingham.
- Rolf Harris, Bill Oddie.
No, we're going back to one of the great comedians
of the 19th century musicals.
- Dan Leno.
- No. That would be appropriate, though...
- It would.
- You said Lean-o. No.
If I tell you he was born Harry Relph, it won't mean much.
He was the sixteenth child of a 77-year-old pub landlord.
In fact, the Blacksmith's Arms, from whom we get these
original shoes. He actually wore these. He was very short.
Little Tommy Twat.
He was so short that his stage name is
now used to describe short people.
- Very Little Tommy Twat.
- Richard Hammond.
- Er... Midgey.
- Lofty. Everyone at school was called Lofty.
- Midget... er...
- Little Tich!
- Who I've never heard of!
- Little Tich, of whom... of whom you should have heard.
I'm going back in here.
He was born with webbed hands,
and he stopped growing at the age of ten,
so he was very short.
And he had twelve fingers and twelve toes.
- And stupid shoes.
- And stupid shoes. But...
No, to be fair, I know you're probably gonna mock him,
but I have to say he will be remembered long after we are forgotten.
In 200 years' time, when the names Jeremy Clarkson
and Stephen Fry mean nothing to anybody, Little Tich...
- Oh, come, Stephen, Jeremy will be remembered.
- "We are now... We are now landing at Stephen Fry Airport."
- You'll find that... that'll be Lord Fry Airport.
- Lord Fry.
I'll show his film.
This was a film made by a man called Cl?ment Maurice in 1900.
Oh, yeah.
Jesus, it's Rowan Atkinson.
The audience are crapping themselves.
- Brilliant.
- Has everyone else gone into a coma?
No, I'm sorry, he's funnier than I've ever been
and he's funnier than any of you, I guess.
- Stephen, he's not funny.
- He is.
- He isn't funny. He isn't.
- No, he's great. He's truly great.
- He just had some stupid shoes!
Oh! As I say, he was an influence on Chaplin,
on Buster Keaton, on...
Actually, yeah. Because actually, on the tape, he was
doing some brilliant stand-up while he was doing all that stuff.
Yeah, stuff about...
He was... Obviously, it was silent, it was 1900.
No, I... I'm, er... He was a great man.
If nothing else, he gave his name to short people,
which is a rather extraordinary achievement.
So popular was he. Well, I shall move Little Tich's shoes
in great sorrow that you weren't impressed by him.
- Oh!
Little Tich was the very first tich,
and rightly famous for his big boots dance.
What did Roland the Farter do for a living, however?
- Yes, Bill?
- Er... he was a sniper. He was rubbish at it.
"Er... I've got him on my sight." Prrt. "Oh, no."
"I've been rumbled, I've been rumbled again. Abort, abort!"
- It's not funny, is it, farting.
- Well, I happen to agree with you there, Jeremy,
but apparently, Henry II thought it was so funny
that he granted Roland the Farter thirty acres,
and his payment was that on Christmas Day,
he had to jump about and fart.
I really don't like the smell of farting,
the noise of it...
- Well, I don't know, the smell can be quite funny.
- It isn't funny!
My dog used to fart; it was hilarious.
Yeah, erm, and he was a jester, licensed jester.
He was called Roland the Farter,
and he got a lot of money for his farting,
a lot of land, er, because it amused Henry II.
A friend of mine was in a very small shop recently and he...
the guy went to the back of the shop to get something from him
and he did a very big fart, and he was extremely embarrassed,
and he thought, "What can I say?" when he comes back in.
So he went "Ooh, someone's having their breakfast!"
And this guy went ? [sniffs] "You're right, that's lovely!"
Well, there's... there's that guy, isn't there?
There's an act, isn't there: Mr Methane,
and he just makes his living from, you know, farting various...
- Farts on demand.
- Yeah, tunes and stuff.
- Farts tunes.
- And who was the original that, do you know?
- Le P?tomane.
- Le P?tomane, yes, who was a French...
- Wasn't that silent? A silent farter's no fun.
- No, he wasn't silent, Le P?tomane.
- Or was he post-noise...
That's music coming out of his arse if you see behind you.
Sarah Bernhardt, who was the most famous
actress of the late 19th century in France,
was paid 8,000 francs a week.
He was paid 20,000 francs a week.
Blimey!
- He was the biggest star of his day!
He would have an enema every morning
so as to be pleasant to his audience.
He actually breathed in through his arse.
He could smoke a cigarette with his arse.
- Oh, we all do.
- And he would do imitations.
He would do a ripped sheet, a nun, a bricklayer,
all these things and various...
- A nun?!
Yes, he'd do a nun farting.
Yeah, how a nun would fart. So, we move away from farting,
then, because it doesn't please Jeremy.
- Excellent.
- Jesters were expected to be warriors, and in fact,
there were two very important jesters
at the Battle of Hastings,
probably our most famous battle.
And their names were Turold and Taillefer.
They're named on the Bayeux Tapestry,
so they must have been very important in their day.
And they're usually dwarves, as you can see.
And Taillefer rode out in front of the discouraged Norman army
and he tossed his sword high and sported with it.
He basically juggled with his sword,
and one of the English emerged to laugh at him,
and he immediately cut his head off.
And this encouraged the Norman army, and then,
they went on to win the battle in the style that we know they did.
- Ah.
- So they were celebrated on the Bayeux Tapestry.
- Tough crowd, that, isn't it? Yeah.
- Yeah, very. Very tough room.
There's this further part of the panel that says
"William comforteth his troops",
and it shows William the Conqueror sticking a spear up the arse of
one of his men. Cause "comforteth" didn't mean what it means now.
- It meant "bugger".
- It didn't mean "bugger", either.
Not really. It meant just kind of "exhort".
- Er, "encourage".
- "Encourage", yes. Good.
- Yeah. "Go on!"
- Strengthen to come forward. Exactly. Yeah, good.
Roland the Farter was given an entire parish
in exchange for farting once a year for the King.
This was before property prizes exploded, of course.
Erm, God knows what he'd need to do now for that amount of land.
Who is the only athlete in the history of the Olympic Games
to get a personal mention in the closing ceremony?
- Achilles?
- No, we're talking about the Modern Olympiads.
- Oh, oh. Er...
- Paula Radcliffe.
- Olympus.
- Eddie the Eagle.
- Not Paula Radcliffe.
- Jesse Owens.
- Sorry?
- Eddie the Eagle.
- Eddie the Eagle is the right answer!
- What year was it?
- '92? '88?
'88 is right. '88 is absolutely right.
And what was his discipline?
- Ski jumper.
- He embodied the spirit, didn't he?
- He kind of just fell off the end of it.
- Didn't he embody the spirit?
- Yeah.
- There he is!
- Yes, there was nothing wrong with it. Look at this!
- Course not.
- Could you do that?
- I couldn't do that.
And they all laughed at him. Look, why?
Well, you didn't laugh at Little Tich, who did much the same.
- No, because...
- Yeah, but if could put his own hat on, that would be different.
Juan Antonio Samaranch, the... the leader of the IOC,
he said, er, "At this Olympic Games ? "
[Spanish accent] " ? some competitorsh ? "...
he probably said, but I'm not gonna go any further.
- A boot.
- "...have won gold, and some have broken records,
and one has even flown like an eagle."
- [Mexican accent] "Flown like an eagle!"
- [imitating Alan] "Like an eagle! ?guila."
But sadly, they then legislated so that people like Eddie
would not be able to participate anymore.
They said that in order to participate in the Olympics,
you had to be in the top 30 percent in your international competition
or one of the top 50 in the world, whichever...
And so it closed the gates on inspired amateurs like Eddie,
which is surely against the spirit of the Olympics.
I mean, bless him, he had to wear glasses which frosted up;
he was in a country which has no ski jumps, in England.
He was just practising without having any ski jumps to practise on!
- This was, just coming off the roof of his house.
- Well, basically, I think he probably was.
Why was he picked for the team, though?
- Cause there wasn't anyone else.
- Yeah, cause he was the only one who volunteered.
Which I think is absolutely wonderful.
- "I'll have a go!"
- But we've done skiing...
Now, who else was there who was a Double E?
Not just Eddie the Eagle;
there was another one a few years later. Do you remember?
- Oh, there was a swimmer.
- Eric the Eel.
- Eric the Eel, from Equatorial Guinea.
People had to hang around,
they were putting the lights out.
Well, bless him! When he arrived...
I'm not wishing to sound patronizing
but I just said "bless him", so there's no way out.
But he said he... he...
he'd only learnt to swim
eight months before the Olympic Games,
and he'd never seen an Olympic pool
before he stood on the edge of one.
Got to see it and went,
"Bloody hell! It's miles!"
Exactly. Oh, well, there you are, it's right. It's Eddie the Eagle,
who despite his acknowledged entertainment value
resulted in a rule, called the "Eddie the Eagle" rule,
that excluded colourful amateurs from the Olympics.
Hard to imagine anything less in
keeping with the original ethos of the Games.
Now, what's wrong with these ballet dancers?
- It's all a bit sinister, really.
- It is quite sinister.
- Very sinister, like a sort of circus ringmaster.
- Well, the ballet is called "The Circus Polka", funnily enough.
- Right.
- And you have to decide what's wrong with it.
I'm gonna give you a hint ?
- Oh, good.
...because I've been very cruel about this particular thing
for the last few weeks. Erm, the wrong kind of species is dancing.
- Bears, it should be bears.
- Not bears.
- Elephants, tigers, swans.
- Hello!
- Elephants. Elephants!
- You see? Oh, really!
- There, I got it.
I had to lead you by the trunk, and I think Jeremy gets points.
I'm not sure if Alan didn't really just come in on your coattails here.
- They should be elephants?
- They should be elephants.
It was written for an elephant ballet.
John Ringling North of the Ringling Brothers Circus
had commissioned Balanchine,
who was the great ballet choreographer of his era,
and Igor Stravinsky to write the music, for an elephant ballet,
which was performed in 1942 in Madison Square Garden
with elephants in tutus and little beaded wear...
I wish they'd run amok then.
That would have been hilarious.
- You wish they'd?
- Run amok.
- It would have been funny.
- That's what elephants do, they run amok.
There, there is the poor elephant.
Well, they kind of did, actually, because the music...
I don't know if you know Stravinsky particularly well, but it's not...
It's not exactly melodic and soft and sweeping and gentle.
And they were used to doing waltzes and things,
and when they heard the music, they did frankly...
- Kicked off?
- They'd go mental.
They exhibited their pain, shall we say.
Their ears flapped wildly and they weren't happy.
- Nonetheless...
- And they shat everywhere, I bet.
- Yeah, exactly, they shat everywhere.
Like on Blue Peter. But it was... It went...
Ran for 425 performances at Madison Square Garden.
Anyway, what's wrong with those ballet dancers?
The answer is, "It's that they aren't elephants." Now where's the...
- The English National Ballet are.
- Elephants? Are they?
Have you ever seen them? I went to watch them at Oxford
the other day, and as they all landed...
If you go to the Royal Ballet...
It sounds like I go to the ballet all the time!
- Yeah, you do.
- Yes, the case for the prosecution is building.
- I mean I do... It is building... I do go a bit, but then when...
every time they land,
you couldn't hear the music anymore cause they were so...
- It thumps, yeah, that...
- Crashing noise.
Now, you put your finger on why ballet is disappointing
because no matter how great the leaps,
they have to come down to ground with a great puff of rosin
and creak of stageboard, and it... it's just so disappointing.
And they do have to have the theater at
four and a half thousand degrees centigrade,
melting point of titanium,
in order that they don't all freeze up.
- Yeah, the muscles.
- So it's an incredibly miserable experience, the ballet.
It's just a lot of people jumping up and down,
making a lot of noise when they land, and you're boiling.
And they are treated like shit. The cours de ballet, the...
I mean, if they're not the stars, it's unbelievable.
Yeah, they keep them in pits, don't they, on the ground.
"Get back right down there, arrrh!"
- And they have to work so bloody hard.
- They do work very hard,
because they do a great many ballets and they don't know what
part that they're going to play when they turn up in the evening.
They have to be across every part.
- I hear they have got no toe nails.
No toe... oh, worse than that, the girls who go through ballet school,
they don't menstruate until they're 19 or 20, very oftenly.
Completely screws their bodies up, their whole physiologies.
- That's quite a pervy thing to say.
It's true! It's just perfectly true;
that's just a physiological fact. It's really unpleasant.
They get bone structure problems from a very early age.
I mean, it is a miserable thing.
Bark! They feed them bark!
They have to gnaw on bark.
So... What was wrong with those ballet dancers
is that they weren't elephants.
And so to e-commerce.
Now, children, each of you has a website,
and I want you to convince me
to buy something from your website.
Let me know what your website provides.
We start with Jo. This is your website.
It is a real website, and tell me what it offers.
What could you offer me? That is the name of the website.
- Is that "whore pre-sents", or "whore pre-sents"?
- Well, you tell me. Could be pre-sents or pre-sents.
- Well it's "whore pre-sents", then.
- So, what... what... what is it?
- It's a very handy course of antibiotics.
This round is, in fact, all about people
who'd seem to be rather word-blind when it comes to websites.
If I'm having a charity dinner and I want Jeremy Clarkson
to come and speak to it, I need to find out who his agent is,
and I go the "www dot who ? "
- So we're probably all on there.
- And they'll find out I haven't got an agent.
- Never find out, apparently.
And there you are, oh!
That's apparently Jo being an agent.
Rather extraordinary.
- I look quite thin and attractive there.
- You always look attractive, Jo.
- But not thin, Stephen.
- Hey! Ohh!
So Bill, let's have a look at your website.
Tell me what you think this website can furnish me with.
- Don't even notice it's happened to you.
- It's just, yeah...
- "While you wait..."
- Take your pants off: "Hang on a minute!"
"I just popped in for a coffee and I came out as a lady!"
So, er... That sort of thing.
But you're absolutely right, of course.
This is not "expert-sex-change"; it is "experts-exchange",
where experts get together to exchange,
you know, in a networking sort of way, specialists...
That's him there at the back, Bill Bailey,
barely running the experts exchange.
"Hello, this is Middle Earth 1-2."
Jeremy, you have a website.
What does your website offer?
- They really didn't think that through at all, did they?
- Very handy, indeed.
"Darn, I've lost my rapist! Where's... ?"
"There's been a rape in the town, Sarge."
"Well, hey, it doesn't matter. Let's go find..."
- It's right.
- It's better than the other way around, though, isn't it?
- Oh, that would be horrible: "Therapist finder"!
- Therapists. Can't be doing with therapists.
- Yeah.
- Have them all put to the rapist finder.
The rapist finder, you'll be pleased to know,
is in California, in fact.
Er, and it is for finding therapists, presumably,
and, well, it is, let's be honest. And that's...
- There you are, you see! Captured on the couch.
- Yeah.
Now, Alan, your site.
- Yes?
- What does it offer, please?
Can you donate penises?
You know, you can donate your organs.
- Well, you can... your inner...
- That's correct, your kidneys, your liver.
The thing about Penis Land, right,
is it's a lot smaller than it looks on the map.
- Er, so, yes. "Penis Land" is, of course...
- Pen? Is it Pen? Pen Island?
- Pen Island.
- Pen Island is of a place where all kinds of ?
- Pens live.
? ...ink-fuelled writing tools...
You look like a little desk midget!
"We got your pen, now, Mister Giant."
"Why, thank you!"
And a quite well known one is Powergen of Italy, "power-genitalia".
So, there are people on the web who don't quite
have a sense of how language works.
Which brings us to the part of the show where our guests
fall into the lens grinding machine of General Ignorance,
and make spectacles of themselves.
Thank you, one person in the audience. Now...
- An optician.
- Yeah, an optician, exactly.
Supposed you shaved a lion and a tiger till they were
both as bald as an egg. How would you tell which was which?
Fingers on buzzers for this, gentlemen.
- Yes.
- Er, the tiger would be exactly the same size, er,
but the lion would be very... would be the size of a squirrel,
because it's mainly... mainly hair.
"Mane-ly" hair! It's a good thought.
There is a more obvious way of telling.
If you stripped them until they were just skeletons,
it would actually incredibly hard to tell.
Only a real expert would know which was a
lion skeleton and a tiger; they're almost identical.
But if you were just to shave them until they're completely bald,
you would know, and it's a rather odd thing.
- Stripey skin?
- Yes, the tiger would have stripes.
It has stripey skin as well as stripey fur.
And that's true of leopards and jaguars.
So the lion would just be bald and white
and the tiger would have the stripes.
I took my nephews to London Zoo, because a friend of ours
is a zookeeper there, and she can "get you in", sort of, the back.
And we wanted to see a lion, and they said,
"There's some mesh. There's a small mesh and big mesh.
You must stand on the side where the...
where the big mesh is. Don't go near the small mesh.
Stay where the big mesh is. Do you understand?"
And the kids went ? [nods quickly].
And we just went in, and my nephew turned to me
and said, "What's mesh?"
I was in Brazil... I was... I went into a...
an enclosure with a jaguar, and there...
This... This handler, he said...
He was Brazillian, and he said to me,
"It is very important," he says, "always approach from the front!"
Erm, like that. And I went, "Right, okay."
And I just was sort of, like, getting closer
to the front of it, and then he said,
"Oh no, sorry, never!
Sorry... Sorry... Sorry, erm..."
- "We've lost the last few... "
- "Erm, my... my English... "
- "Never and always."
- "Never and always. Erm, we lose a lot like that."
Anyway, that's true: tigers are stripey even under their fur.
Now, what do you call the biggest squid in the world?
- Brian.
- Squidey!
- Squid...
- Squidstar. The Squidmaister.
- Isn't it the Kraken?
The Kraken, very good.
The Kraken is actually the giant squid.
But there is even bigger.
The Kraken was some sort of legendary big sea monster.
- Enormous squid. Enormo-squid.
- Yeah, keep going.
- Mega. Grand squid.
- Keep going, you're gonna get there.
- Ginormous squid. Enormous squid.
- You're gonna get there.
- Massive.
[to the audience] Who said that?
Colossus?!
It's the Colossal Squid, is the right answer.
Well done, audience.
The Colossal Squid, also known as
the Antarctic or Giant Cranch Squid, apparently,
is believed to be the largest squid species,
and indeed the largest invertebrate. It is truly vast.
Its eyes, as are the Giant Squid, which is only slightly smaller,
are about a foot in diameter, the eyes.
They are reckoned to be up to forty six feet long,
and if they were calamari, the rings would be the size of tractor tyres.
- Oh, delicious!
- And would taste of ammonia, unfortunately.
- Not good.
- Not so good. They live around the Southern Oceans.
They're preyed upon by sperm whales, apparently, many of which
carry scars caused by the hooks of these Giant Colossal Squids.
One was caught recently and taken to New Zealand frozen
in a block of ice. Had to be thawed in a microwave.
How did they get a Giant Squid
forty six feet long into a microwave?
- Well, that is a good point. I would...
- The door shut! Get the door shut! There's a tentacle!
There's a big microwave, possibly. It was because otherwise,
if they heated it, the outer bits would have rotted be ?
...while the center bits would still be frozen because it was so vast,
they had to use microwaves, that's the point.
So a large thing, the Colossal Squid.
Well, now, a final question, then,
therefore, surely, would be appropriate.
You come down to breakfast, you look in the goldfish bowl,
and you find your goldfish floating on its side
on the surface of the water. What's the matter with it?
You got it from a fairground.
It's dead.
[Forfeit: Klaxons sound.]
Oh! No.
- It's not dead?!
- No.
- So when I flushed it... ?
- Yeah, probably. A lot of people throw away perfectly living ones.
- It's asleep?
- The, erm... They... They're sort of stunned or they're ill.
- They've got their balance... Their balance is all wrong.
- Yes! And where do they get the balance from? Their...
- It's what is called their swim bladder.
- Chest.
- Swim bladder, yes, yes.
It's swim bladder disorder. What happens is, if they're overfed,
they get constipation, and it affects their swim bladder.
- Yeah.
And they can't move and they just lie on their side completely still,
and a lot of people think they're dead and throw them away
as you might have done.
But actually, with three days of no food...
- Twice!
They usually get all better. But the fact is, of course,
as you probably know, it's very easy to overfeed a goldfish.
Their stomachs are the same size as their eyes.
Tiny little stomachs.
Well, this happened to our fish. We came about one morning
and then, they were on their side, like this ?
? sort of, "Eeer!" like they're drunk or something. And...
And then we thought that, sort of, the cat had...
or the heron, perhaps it'd had a go at them.
- You had a pet heron?
- Had you...
We had... Well, not a pet heron, no, no,
that would be... that would be foolish, really.
- Yes.
- Er, no, they...
So, had you given them, like a burger,
the night before or something? Thrown them...
- Thrown them a carrion over the bench.
- Might you have overfed them?
I think we probably had overfed them slightly, yes.
Some children had been 'round, and...
- Oh, children love feeding the fish.
- And they love... "Feed the fish, ooh!
You wanna feed them? Ooh." Like that.
- The whole packet of it.
- The fish were just stuffed.
And of course, they're fine now that because
we've worked out the fantastic heron deterrent.
We had a problem, terrible with the heron; the heron kept
going and eating the fish, so we were told to put a mesh over...
Well, of course your nephew would have no idea what that was...
And, er, put the mesh: Nothing, no,
it was no good, he got through the mesh.
So eventually, we tried to put a fake heron,
and the fake heron... thinking that would be the solution,
but that had the opposite effect;
it attracted three or four herons,
who were circling around going, "Whoa! She gorgeous!"
You know. Standing there...
"Oh, she's so still, the way she
stands there, always so still."
And, er, so we got rid of the fake heron and then
we got a fake crocodile for 7.99. Works a treat!
The herons are terrified of this crocodile,
absolutely, they go ?
- Brilliant!
- It's brilliant! It works an absolute treat.
Just below the... Just below the surface,
and the herons think, "Oh no."
- And the goldfish don't mind?
- No, they're absolutely fine.
Well, they're terrifying. When my father had some fish
that he loved, he used to sit and watch them.
They were about that long and gold,
so I suppose they were goldfish, really, weren't they?
And they swam around in his pond,
and there were lilies, and he used to watch them.
And I thought it would be nice one... one birthday for...
to buy him some more fish to go in his pond, perhaps a bit different.
So I went and found this things called "ghost koi".
- Oh, yeah, we've got ghost koi!
You've got ghost koi? Now, in the...
in the sort of washing up bowl they sell them in, they're there,
they're plainly visible; you see them swimming around;
they got quite nice markings like a tiger shark.
"I'll have half a dozen of those, or a dozen of those,"
whatever. Took them home, put them in the pond,
where they completely disappeared; you can't see them.
But what ghost koi do is kill all other fish.
So my father was then left with...
with a puddle full of invisible fish, and all his fish were dead.
It was the least successful birthday present I ever bought him.
And that brings us to the scores!
- Tonight's entertainer extraordinaire,
- Oh no!
with a massive four points, is Jeremy Clarkson!
- Oh, whoa, four! Four!
Only just behind, with two points, Jo Brand!
And we have two end-tertainers because,
tying in last place, Bill Bailey and Alan Davies on minus six!
But of course, the really big winners tonight are all
the children that you will be helping with your donations.
Don't forget to call 08457 33 22 33
and tell them QI sent you.
So that's all from Bill, Jo, Jeremy, Alan, Pudsey, and me,
and I leave you with this thought
about one form of entertainment
we haven't covered tonight, from Noel Coward.
[as Coward] "People are wrong when they say that opera
is not what it used to be. It is exactly what it used to be.
That is what is wrong with it." Good night.