QI (2003–…): Season 8, Episode 16 - History - full transcript

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Welcome, welcome, and thrice welcome

to the home of highbrow know-how
that we call QI.

Tonight, we'll be groping down the
back of the great sofa of history,

to find those tasty morsels
that other historians have
so carelessly discarded there.

And to accompany me on my quest,
I have the postmodern Rob Brydon.

THUNDEROUS CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

The pre-classical David Mitchell.

MORE CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

The Pleistocene Sandi Toksvig.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE



And our very own bowl of
primordial soup, Alan Davies.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Each panellist is equipped with
a suitably historic buzzer.

Sandi goes...
MELLOW NAUTICAL MELODY

David goes...
GRANDIOSE FANFARE

Quite long.

Rob goes...
AMERICAN-STYLE MILITARY FANFARE

And Alan goes...
HORN SQUEAKS

Of course.

So, as we stroll off
into the mists of time,

let's start with something
nice and easy - name a henge.

Now, look, come on...

Seahenge. Aaah!

ALARM AND BELLS



There is a Seahenge,
but it's not a henge. Oh, right.

It's a word
with the word "henge" in it,

as "spigot" has got the word "pig"
in it, but it isn't a pig. You see?

So, the word "henge"
in it, that's wrong?

I think you're wary enough,
for good reasons.

Yeah, you didn't get me there.
A henge is a specific thing.

What is a henge?

You have two of them on the side of
a door, or on the top of a window.

WEST COUNTRY ACCENT:
I'll do you a nice henge, sir, yes.

A hedge bent on revenge,
that's what it is.

Good. It's a very old form of
economic investment - a henge fund.

Wahey! It's not that either. It's
one of those archaeological words.

There's a specific meaning,
an embanked area outside

with ditches on the inside, right?

And Stonehenge is the other way
round, so it's not a henge.

Even though the name henge
comes from Stonehenge.

A henge is a word for something
that's like Stonehenge,

but not including Stonehenge?

Basically, yes.

It was just Stonehenge. Was the word
"stone" named after Stonehenge?

Yes, you're safe with the stone.

Maybe Stonehenge was just a noise
they came up with for Stonehenge,

which luckily gave them a word
for two common sorts of things.

Probably the noise
when they put those top ones up.

GROANS AND SQUEALS

People right up until the 20th
century were quarrying it.
They would actually set fires

on the lintels, the top bits,
to crack the stone and take it
off and build things with them.

Nowadays it's cordoned off.
Yes, it is, rather, isn't it?

Except the Druids.
They can do what they want.

How long have
Druids been celebrating
religious services there? 1970.

Since the beginning of
the 20th century. There's no

evidence that Druids had anything
to do with Stonehenge.

So why did they get all these
concessions of access to Stonehenge?

In 1905, when they started doing
it, Stonehenge was private property.

It didn't belong to anybody
except the owner of it,

and then Chubb in 1915,
who went to a lunatic asylum nearby,
bought it in 1915...

For his wife. You're quite right.

Yes, he bought it for his wife at
auction. Yeah, and three years
later she gifted it to the nation.

Re-gifted?

Yes, re-gifted. Well, it must have
been hell to clean. Those top bits.

So, the Druids have access to
it, so presumably, I mean, they
can't all have parked miles away.

They must have little
stickers in their windows
with a little Druid sign on it,

which also gets them into
Klu Klux Klan meetings.

Yes, they've just got to straighten
up their headdresses.

They can park near the burning cross.

There was a mention you made there
of Seahenge. What is Seahenge?

So that's not a proper henge either?
No. Seahenge, isn't it some bits
of old and knackered wood

that occasionally become visible
when the tide is out.

That's it, 55 bit of old oak in
Holme-Next-The-Sea in Norfolk coast

which was only discovered
quite recently.

Carhenge,
does that mean anything to you?

Yes, I do know what that is. Yes?
Well, I'll guess.

It's that...
AUDIENCE TITTERS

You started really confident,

then it just slid away
from you there.

It's probably not right, I'll give
it a go. I think I know what it is.

It was featured on the inner liner
notes of Bruce Springsteen's album

The River, in particular
reference to the song Cadillac Ranch,

it's all these Cadillacs
that have been... It's not, is it?

Yes, it is. It is, it is!

All these cars have been
stuck in the ground.

And sprayed with grey paint.

Yes, it's in Nebraska.
It's interesting, though.

That obviously looks
quite a lot like Stonehenge,

considering it's made of cars,
but you can't help feeling

he could have made it
look more like Stonehenge

if he'd used something else
to make it with.

It was a memorial to his father.
Was he killed in a car accident?

Does the name Alfred Watkins
mean anything to you?

He wrote a book called
the Old Straight Track

in the 1920s, and he posited
something that he called leys.

They're spiritual lines...

Yes, people, apparently wrongly,
call them ley lines.

They're wrong to do that.
Whereas people who allege they
exist aren't wrong to do that.

But we can show you some ley lines
which may make you think again.

Each one of those letters
represents something.

Yeah, it's certainly
challenging my scepticism.

If each one of these letters
represented a stone circle
or a henge of some kind,

it would be quite a coincidence,
because you would need to get

above the ground to get
them that shape, but actually,

this map was drawn
by someone who was deliberately
poking fun at ley lines,

because this is nothing less
than a representation
of Woolworths stores in Britain.

As he says, you can't rule out
the possibility that Woolworths

used aliens to get so exact
and perfect a geometrical shape.

It does look like if you folded it
one more time you'd get a frog. Yes!

It looks quite origami.
Surely there are more, or were.

There are 800.

So he's been very selective
in his choice of Woolworths stores.

Whereas, people who
believe in ley lines aren't?

According to archaeologists,
Stonehenge isn't really
a henge at all.

So, I have a thing
that I want to show you.

This might help in decision-making.

Have a look at one there.

Pass one along.

There you go. It's a bowl.

It's a replica of an original
ancient British bronze bowl that
was discovered in Northern Ireland.

It's very like a bronze bowl.
It's very like a bronze bowl.

It has got a hole in it.
Has yours got a hole in the bottom?

Yes.
They've all got holes in the bottom.

That's a very ancient British use,
it must be said.

You know what I'd use this for?
Tell me.

If I were enjoying some
salted pistachios at home,

while watching
the Emmerdale omnibus...

..I would use this to deposit...

To kill yourself. To kill yourself!

I'm joking, of course. I would

use it to deposit the shells.

And would the salt run
out of the bottom hole?

Yes, it would, and I would use
that to encourage slugs.

I would make a trail of the salt
to encourage them to their death.

Do you think that's what ancient
Britons used to use it for?

I think I'm close.

Except it would have been Crossroads
rather than Emmerdale Farm?

Yes. Would you like me to demonstrate
how would you use it? Yes!
I have one here.

It's a slightly bigger one. I have a
large vase... Where's the fish gone?

And if I put it in here,
what's going to happen?

Yeah, great. It's going to sink.

But the point is, it takes
a set amount of time to fall

to the bottom, and you could call
that time a minute, or something.

You could give it a name
and make it a time unit.

Suddenly, you've got a way
of repeating a consistent
length of time.

Almost all civilisations
have developed different ways

of measuring
a unit of time they can predict.

Not necessarily
to tell the time of day,

which you could say when it's noon,

but, "I will see you in two..."
let's call it a bowlington.

When it hits the bottom - bang.

Go! Yeah, go, exactly.

So, if you're playing
hide and seek, you'd say,

"I'll give you a bowlington," OK?
And then you just drop it like that.

It's called a water clock,
or a water thief, it is called a...

Ah, that's slightly different.
Is it?

Yes, that's a Greek thing, that's
a clepsydra, which is a water thief.

They used it the other way round.
They had a bowl with a hole in it,

but they perched it above and they
measured out the amount of water

that dropped out through the hole.

What other early clocks
do you know about?

Candles, marked off.

Yes, do you know who was said
to be the inventor of the candle?

It's a legend.

Alfred the Great, they say.
Though not very reliable,

to be honest. No, he burnt
those cakes. Yes, exactly, you see?

Very difficult to strap
to your wrist, as well.

Do you know about explosive
sundials, you might call them?

The sundial alarm clock?

It uses a lens,

so that when the sun hits the lens,
it points a beam at a fuse,

which tracks all the way to a cannon
and fires a gun at exactly noon.

Can you get one of those, Stephen?

That's a fantastic way
to wake the children.

In a hail of bullets.

"You're going to school!"
Pp-pp-pp-pp-pp!

Dance!

Yeah, that would do it. We've got

time telling by looking, by seeing
something, the sun's shadow,

for example, on a dial,
and by listening

to a drum or a gun going off,
but the Chinese, God bless them,

they managed to use another sense.

Is it something that goes
off in a certain amount of time

when starts to stink.

Sort of, they just had gradated
incense sticks, joss sticks,

so that it would burn for an hour,
and it would

smell of sandalwood, and then

it would go through another band
which smelt of rose or something

so you could tell what time it was.

"Oh, it's the rose-smelling time,
it's that hour."

That's rather sweet.

"Oh, it's cinnamon, I must collect
the children." Yes, exactly.

You talked about the clepsydra,
the Greek one that was like a bowl.

But there was a much more subtle
Greek machine. Have you ever heard

of a really remarkable
Greek computer? The watch.

Sort of. It was much
more than a watch, though.

It was discovered in 1901 by sponge
divers. It's known as... SpongeBob?

SpongeBob Square Pants.

An antikythera.

The antikythera is
an extraordinary device. Look at it.

That's Ancient Greek.

Do you know what it can tell you?

It can determine the course of the
sun, the moon and the known planets.

When you enter the date
it calculated the positions.

An achievement made all
the more remarkable by the fact

that they believed
the solar system was geocentric
rather than solar-centric.

Stephen, you've been watching
QVC again. It does look like it.

It does look like something
you would get on there.

It subdivided the year
into 365 days,

including a leap year
every fourth year,

it was able to predict eclipses
of the moon and the sun,

as well as the appearance of
the zodiac signs in the sky.

And this is from the Greeks?
The Ancient Greeks, around 180 BC.

It kept track of the Olympic Games,
which year was an Olympic year.
Discovered by sponge divers?

Don't you find it odd that there's
just as much water where sponges
grow as there is anywhere else?

That is odd.

You weren't a guest on that
particular show, it was an early QI.

Do you know a peculiar property
of sponges? No. It is amazing.

You put a sponge in a liquidiser,
it will obviously turn into a

hideous coloured mess
and then settle down, it will

reassemble itself into a sponge.

But, more amazingly,
put two sponges in,

and it will settle itself into
its two original sponge shapes.

So they're essentially like
Terminators?

Exactly, exactly,

but Terminator 2.

It's evil, isn't it? Definitely evil.

We should definitely, I think,
destroy all sponges, shouldn't we?

That's only natural sponge, not
the one you get at Halfords? No, no.

So it's proper real sponge,
like the Body Shop sort of sponge.

Yes, that kind.

I'm going to do that
as soon as I get home.

I think they have to be alive.
The dried-out ones won't count.

So where would I go to get a sponge?

The Adriatic for the Aegean
Sea would be a good place.
Well, what time is it now?

There's your problem.
They'd probably pay you to go
to Greece, given their economy.

So had the sponges stolen that clock?

What where they are doing with it?

Well, I think it had been dropped
off a ship, it was undersea.

If they've got these powers,
we don't need them to have
access to our technology as well.

You said the divers found that.
Sorry, I genuinely thought you

said they were kind of creating
that from the sponges... No!

I've been sitting here going,
"How the hell did they do that?"

What, you thought in Ancient Greece,
the greatest timekeeping technology
was possessed by the sponge divers?

Well, that's how it
appeared to me over here.

But moving on to more modern
timekeeping pieces, there was

a recent discovery, or invention, I
suppose you would call it, of the
most accurate clock yet devised.

Is it the atomic...
It's a new optical clock, accurate

to one second in 3.7 billion years,
but what is the point of having
an incredibly accurate clock?

You'd have to know when SpongeBob
Square Pants is going to start.

There are some ready meals that
you need to time exactly. Yeah.

Well, how does GPS work?

I don't know.
Satellite, various satellites.

You send a signal from your GPS
device, there have got to be at the

least three, usually four or five
satellites that receive your signal,

and the difference in time it
takes to get from one satellite
to the other and the other,

which is milliseconds,
allows them to calculate your
position to within ten metres.

So they built this clock
so your TomTom will work.

No, this one you'd be
within a metre, if not less.

You would be able to have aeroplanes
landing without humans, traffic on

motorways without humans driving,
because it's so accurate.

Any transaction over the internet
uses what's called packet switching,
which means that the information

is broken up into packets
and they're reassembled

at the other side, but each side
has to be exactly synchronised,
otherwise the message is nonsense.

So the caesium atomic clocks are not
just for, "Gosh, look how accurate,"

but it's in order to make
all this technology work.
That's rather pleasing, isn't it?

I preferred it when
it was more relaxed.

Who was the king that had
Sandringham time, was it Edward VII?

All the clocks were set
half an hour earlier, so that
everybody got up for hunting.

I read this once and I thought,
"What a marvellous idea."

On New Year's Eve, for years, I used
to reset the clocks during the day.

At nine o'clock,
it look like it was midnight,
and I'd say to the children,

"You've stayed up,
isn't it marvellous? Well done."

And put them to bed.
It was fantastic.

Yes. There's accurate time and
there's Bergsonian internal time,

which is the time in which things
can seem to take a lifetime in your
own head, and things can go fast.

Don't they say that the amount of
time that something seems to take

is in terms of a percentage
of how long you've been alive?

Time speeds up, the older you get.

I had an aunt in her 90s and she'd
say, "It CAN'T be breakfast again."

She was astonished by the idea.

The Queen Mother, everything after
1964 was just a sort of blur.

She must have thought, "My horses
are definitely getting quicker."

It was an ancient British clock,
one of the ways we told the time

when being accurate
to a billionth of a second
didn't seem so important.

Talking of time,
it's time for a picture round.

Here's a very famous image,
so you can bank a few points.

How was it made, what is it?

It's not a tapestry. You've learnt.
Firstly, it wasn't made in Bayeux.

Bayeux is in France, this was
probably in Kent. Do we know who by?

The Normans commissioned it, but sort
of Saxon embroiderer ladies did it.

Yes, absolutely right.

It's one example of why women's
history has completely disappeared,

because women tended to make things
like this phenomenal piece of work,

but they didn't sign it.
So we don't know the names.

We know the name of the man who
commissioned it, but we don't know
the names of the women who made it.

The lack of signature
is one of the reasons why
women's history has disappeared.

It's remarkable. You're right
to say it's an embroidery,
It's absolutely not a tapestry.

A tapestry is all one material
with the different colours
woven in at the weaving stage.

This is a woven piece of cloth
that is then embroidered.

It's so typical. The women do all
this embroidery and the man goes,
"Nice tapestry." I know.

It's very absurd. "Couldn't make
us a cup of tea, could you?"

"My hands are raw."

Is the word "tapestry" named after
the Bayeux tapestry but they decided
to make it mean something...

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

Can you tell the British from
the French in that picture?

Are the British the four-legged
ones at the top?

I should say English
rather than British.

The English would be
the ones not on horses.

That's pretty much true.
The other giveaway is moustaches.

Some English fighters were
on horses. But the British...

The English - I'm allowed
to say English, I'm unused

to saying English -
had the moustaches.

Harold's housecarls,

plus they tended to have battle-axes
rather than the lances and things.

Great comedy hats.
They're rather extraordinary.

They're like party hats, they've
got a bit of elastic under the chin.

It was done by the same person
that did Mr Benn. It's a very
similar style, isn't it? Yes.

"Suddenly the shopkeeper appeared."
I wonder if they are specific blokes

that the women doing
the embroidery knew.

"Who you doing?" "I'm doing Reg."

"Look at the way he held his axe.
He was lovely before
they cut him to bits."

Their mail, their suits
of reinforced defensive clothing,

Harald Hardrada had a long one
which apparently

couldn't be penetrated by a spear
and was known as Emma.

Was that based on
a particularly aloof woman
who couldn't be penetrated?

APPLAUSE

One's bound to wonder.

I didn't know until someone
told me this recently

that quite a lot of
the names that we use,

or Christian names, we call them,

came from the Normans
and that invasion.
They completely changed the country.

Yes, including William,
and the first few kings.

John, Richard. Robert, lots of them.

Is it not when we start to change
the language completely, is it not
when we get beef instead of cow?

Because we had two words each time,
exactly. We could use the English

word for the animal, cow, and the
French word, boeuf, for the food.

The British word sheep, and mouton,
mutton, can become what you eat.

You eat the mouton, you eat
the beef, but the animal is the cow.

But why? The Saxons herded them
and knew them as animals,

and the Normans just feasted
and ate them because they

were the upper class,
so would use their word for it.

The only time they saw a cow was
when it was on a plate
in front of them.

Quite a lot of what we know
about the Bayeux Tapestry,

we don't know, because it's not
from Bayeux and it isn't a tapestry.

But how can you tell which one
Harold is in the Bayeux tapestry

that's not a tapestry
or from Bayeux?

Isn't there a bit of a dispute
about whether he's the one with the
arrow in his eye, or someone else?

Is it like on Facebook, when you run
the cursor over it, you get tagged.

And it says,
"You are also in this photo,"

and it'll have the other people.

It's not dissimilar.

There are three tags,
all meaning him.

"Harold Rex interfectus est," which
means Harold the King is killed.

They tell the story narratively
from left to right.

They could all be Harold,
or only one of them could be Harold.

It's impossible to tell. We don't
know that he'd an arrow in his eye.

It's a much later story.

So is it like a cartoon? Like one
of those books you used to flick.

Exactly. Although not successful
in embroidery, I think. No...

It's a cross between that
and Where's Wally?

Yes, there's a hint...
A hint of Where's Wally?

So the one with the blue shield,
he's got an arrow in his eye...

He has. People have always
ASSUMED that was Harold.

So if it's a journey, it's,
"Got an arrow in my eye, I'll just
get on this horse for a rest..."

Continuity! "Where's my shield?"
..and then the horse
has disappeared! "I'm dying."

And they've cut his head off
on the right... Yeah.

I can't see the arrow in the eye.

It's not come out very well.
I blame bad embroidery.

You can see him
holding the end of it...

He can't have been that
ill though, because he seems to have
had time to change his socks.

It probably is...
"I'm dying, get the death socks!"

LAUGHTER

Stephen, can I point out...
Can I give the seal of approval to
his wonderfully LONG socks?

LAUGHTER

Rob Long-Socks(!)

APPLAUSE
Oh, dear... They are long.

Yes - it's probable that it's
NOT the same person repeated.

The other theory is that
he's only one of those

and maybe he's the LAST one -
under the horse, almost,

cos that's where
"interfectus est" - "is killed"...
The point is, we just don't know.

That's good. So we know how we spot
the Englishmen, by their moustaches,

the Bayeux Tapestry isn't a
tapestry - isn't from Bayeux -

and you shouldn't believe anyone who
tells you they know HOW Harold died.

However, you CAN spot the
Englishmen by their moustaches.

On the subject of
English gentlemen with moustaches,

could you give us your impression of
the average World War II British...

LAUGHTER

Oh, dear. ..the average
British World War II fighter pilot?

You look hilarious on the end!

LAUGHTER

That is a character...

Someone has got to write a sitcom
around David Mitchell's character.

You look like you're posing
with a very successful team of
kind of...novelty Air Force -

you've just agreed to have
your photograph taken with them,
for your birthday.

I know you're not, but if they'd
invented gaydar instead of radar...

LAUGHTER

..I'm sorry to say
that would mark high.

LAUGHTER

"I'm ordering these helmets
for my wife's birthday..."

I think in this war film,
I think I die about two-thirds
of the way through.

It breaks the heart of the
audience - and inspires the hero.

Everyone goes and kills a load of
Germans as revenge for my death.

And I'm the old First World War
hero with a gammy leg who runs and
watches them come back, and cries...

I don't think Alan dies. I think
you make it through. I think I die.

You THINK I'm going to live, and
then right near the end, I die.

Like Von Ryan's Express - as
I'm running towards the train,
I get shot at the end.

I'm the plucky woman who was just
supposed to do the radio, who's been
forced to fly one of the planes.

You look as if you could,
with your sergeant stripes.

I look rather fine. But how did
the pilot talk? That's the thing.

Erm... ROB: Er...

HE HOLDS HIS NOSE
AND MAKES DISTORTED WORDS

..we've got a lovely team today
who will be furnishing
you with the easyKiosk...

LAUGHTER

Scratchcards... Minstrels...

"Clean up in aisle three." Yes.

LAUGHTER

But what sort of people? Well...

What sort of PEOPLE? Yes.
Quite posh...

KLAXON

I think you'll find you're wrong.
LAUGHTER

That's the odd thing -
they so weren't.

Only 30% of all
British fighter pilots in the Battle
of Britain went to public school.

And of that 30%, they were
mostly MINOR public schools,

and of the Eton, Harrow, Winchester
or the top 13, there was only 8%.

Just the actors that played them
were posh, then? That's the point!

In the war films
during and after the war -

your Kenneth Mores
and your David Nivens and so on -
they spoke like that.

Did the Germans know we were
sending up the lower classes(?)

LAUGHTER

SHE MIMICS A GERMAN
"Here comes someone who has
got no manners vatsoever!"

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

But there's your Richard Todd
on the left, who's playing...

"Your actual" Richard Todd.
..Guy Gibson I think,

and there's David Niven
from A Matter Of Life
And Death, by the look of it.

And that's how people thought
of them, with the moustache and...

I mean, 30% of them having gone
to public school

is more than the percentage
of the population.

Yes, you're absolutely right...
So they're a bit posher than...

But "posh" IS the first word
that comes to mind -

when 70% were state educated,
not privately educated.

But they didn't speak like
Jordan or something, did they?

LAUGHTER
No, nobody did then. No.

ROB MIMICS JORDAN
"There's no way
we're gonna drop the bombs

"over that lot!"
LAUGHTER

"It's a real bloody mess dahn there!"

LAUGHTER
"Right, let 'em go...

"Look at that!"

LAUGHTER

APPLAUSE
Oh, dear...

20% of all the pilots were in fact
not even British...

Polish? Quite a few were Polish
and Czechoslovakian, but also from

the Dominions,
the Empire and the Commonwealth.

Canada and New Zealand
and Australia particularly of
course. And South Africa also.

There's one sitting on the
plane at the end there,
he's obviously hoping for a ride.

LAUGHTER

"Is this right...?

"Is this where you go?" "I'M ready!"

"I find you get a
better view from here..."

What about modern pilots?
Is it any advantage for THEM
to posh up their accents?

Yes - isn't it something that it's
more reassuring for people? Yeah...

The classic
British Airways pilot is...

CLIPPED, POSH VOICE:
"Welcome aboard..."

Nowadays, you've got
your Virgin, Buzz and Go,

and those guys sound like
they're on Radio Top Shop... They do!

LAUGHTER

DJ VOICE:
"Good morning to you, ladies,

"gonna get this little
baby airborne soon as I can...

"First of all, check out Lily Allen."
LAUGHTER

And they tell you
the Christian names of the other...

Why?! You don't need to know that.

I was on a British Airways flight
about six weeks after 9/11,

and everybody was a little bit tense
about flying out of New York -

and tragically, the plane directly
in front of us took off and crashed.

I don't know if you remember,
it was a flight going to the
Dominican Republic.

Anyway, we all deplaned...and after
about 12 hours we were allowed back

on to the flight. Anyway,
the pilot came on and he said,

"Good evening, ladies and gentlemen,
this is the delayed flight
to London.

"I know many of you are
seasoned travellers and

"probably don't watch the safety
briefing, but perhaps today..."

LAUGHTER

Usually Australians get it right -

I was on an Ansett flight
from Perth to Adelaide,
and he started off by saying

"We're on our way to Adelaide.
If Adelaide is not your

"final destination, now would
be an ideal time to deplane."

He started talking about the
safety, then "But that's
enough yakety-yak from me.

"It's time to push some service
down the aisles and some
scenery past the window."

LAUGHTER

I thought that was very good.
Australians are good at
that kind of thing.

Now, accents...
You're absolutely right, people

do like what they consider
to be an authoritative and
reassuring voice from a pilot.

72% of people interviewed felt at
ease if a pilot had a WHAT accent?

People like Scottish accents...
Right. Edinburgh in particular.

HE TALKS LIKE BILLY CONNOLLY
"I don't think THAT
would be very good..."

But a nice, respectable Edinburgh
would make you feel...

Miss Jean Brodie.
That's right. That would be fine.

You could sit down on the plane,
hear "Ding-dong..."

HE MIMICS RONNIE CORBETT
"Ha-ha... This is not the
one about the aeroplane..."

LAUGHTER

"that crashes in the river,
it's not that one..."

What about a Geordie accent?

65% of people said a Geordie
accent would make them feel
more or less comfortable?

He can serve the drinks.

"He can serve the drinks"?! Ooh...

I don't want him flying the plane.
Well, funnily enough...

Very friendly... But they're likely
to be chatting too much and then
they'll just crash into earth.

..65% said they don't mind a
Geordie, they'd like a Geordie.

Very popular for a call centre.

What about Brummie? 76% said they
would or wouldn't... ROB: Oh, no.

I'm afraid to say
that they would NOT like...

It's easy to sort of think,
"Sounds like a victim..." You know.

"Doesn't sound incompetent -
sounds unfortunate."

LAUGHTER

And I think... I don't want a skilled
pilot, I want a lucky pilot(!)

Exactly!
The posh voice... Could be an idiot,
but he's lucked his way through life.

LAUGHTER

Then he screws all the stewardesses,
and his wife never finds out...

Yeah, I want HIM flying.
LAUGHTER

And 83% of men and women polled
said they'd be more likely to
trust a male or a female pilot?

Oh, male. Must be. Male.

I'm afraid so. Yeah.
I'm sorry to say.

There we are. So that's your
flying done for the moment.

Despite the stereotype of the
Battle of Britain pilots being posh
young chaps fresh from the better

public schools and varsities,
the great majority were in fact
state educated.

Now we're engaged in
mortal combat...

perhaps you can tell me
which side Yorkshire was on

in the Wars of the Roses? Well,
it's the white rose, is Yorkshire.

It's not the counties though, is it,
it's just the er...the royal houses.

That's the point exactly.
Yorkshire had no more to do with the
House of York than Kent or Norfolk.

It's the Duke of York
versus the Duke of Lancaster.

Yes, exactly. The point is that
most people who lived in Yorkshire
where Lancastrians, in fact.

They favoured the Lancastrian cause.

But now of course, people in
Yorkshire very much associate with
the white rose and the Yorkists.

Well - because it's become a symbol
of the county, and the cricket match

between the two counties is
known as the Roses Match and so on.

There are other things
called "Yorkshire"

that aren't particularly Yorkshire,
can you think of one? Pudding?

Yorkshire pudding is not a thing
that was invented in Yorkshire -
although people in Yorkshire...

Hello?
Oh, yes - this was really annoying.

They're trying to say that -
like you can't make...

you know, champagne outside
the Champagne region or
Stilton outside a certain region -

that you wouldn't be allowed
to make something and call it
a Yorkshire pudding

outside Yorkshire...

Which is basically entirely an idea
cooked up by people who

manufacture those horrible
frozen Yorkshire puddings.

You're right to be angry.

Yes, it's called a protective
designation of origin - a PDO -

and champagne as you say has it, and
Parma ham... You can't call it Parma
ham unless it comes from Parma.

But making Yorkshire pudding one
of those would be like making
a SANDWICH one of them.

Yes, you had to come
from Sandwich in Kent...

You had to go to Marks & Spencer's in
Sandwich, for the authentic sandwich.

Give me some other British
PDO-protected foods. There's one
I think... I think Stilton is one.

Where must it come from? It CAN'T
come, for example, from Stilton.

No, that's quite right.
The town of Stilton -
the cheese is named after it

because that's where the cheese was
sold, not where it was manufactured.

So the designated area
that you make it in was bits of
Leicestershire, I don't know...

Anyway, Stilton's not in it. Mostly
round the Melton Mowbray area.

What about pork pies?
Melton Mowbray pork pies.

I guess you can't call it
a "Melton Mowbray" pork pie.
I don't know if it's a PDO.

Did you know the chairman of the
Pork Pie Association is vegetarian?

LAUGHTER

I didn't know that.
Yes, I interviewed him.

He brought pork pies for us to try,
and I said,

"Go on then, tuck in."
And he said, "No, thanks very much,
I'm vegetarian.

LAUGHTER
That's very peculiar.
Yeah, it's weird.

What... What?!

LAUGHTER

He's angry now!

No, I am absolutely... Surely...
What's this man DONE with his life?!

LAUGHTER

You can't on the one hand say
it's wrong to eat animals, and then

dedicate your professional life
to the marketing of ground-up pig.

LAUGHTER

You've got a point!
It's just a sort of pacifist...
nuclear weapons manufacturer!

Not all vegetarians are vegetarians
because they don't agree with
the slaughtering of animals -

some just don't like the taste.

Maybe he thought it was a job of
being chairman of pork pie hats...

Yes. Or of lying...

Or of lying. Yes, telling porkies.
He thought he was being a spy.

"I'm going to tell porkies!
Tell pork pies."

"I'm going to destroy the pork
pie business from the inside."

LAUGHTER

Well, there you are. The fact is
more Yorkshire folk supported the
Lancastrians than the Yorkists.

Scotch whisky! Thank you.

LAUGHTER

The question will no doubt...

DAVID: Any minute now. Yeah.

On the subject of making a bit of
noise, what might you use these for?

Oh, those are fantastic.
Aren't they great?

If they're mobile,
they look like giant tubas...

Tubas is a word that was used,
they were called war tubas...
Sirens? Air raid warnings? No.

Is it an over-large hearing aid?

Yes. What?! Yes.

LAUGHTER

APPLAUSE

Was it for hearing enemy aircraft?
It's like an ear trumpet.

You can hear enemy aircraft
coming towards you.
And by setting the angles,

they could determine not
just the distance but the direction.

Wheel it down to Dover, you
can hear 'em in France. That's
the idea - like sound mirrors.

They had sound mirrors as well,
which were largely made of metal
but usually of concrete.

These are Japanese, as it happens.
The Japanese used them to
detect aircraft coming in.

We had nothing
quite as enormous as that,

but there have been yokes you put on
your shoulders... Look at that.

And it's extraordinary how much they
did give you a slight advantage.

Well, it looks silly,
but I find myself more and
more, as I enter my 30s now...

LAUGHTER

..doing that. Yes.

And it makes a hell of a difference.
..Take them away, David.

Now - hello, Da... Not yet!
LAUGHTER

Hello, David, it's lovely
to see you. Now try them.

Sorry, what...?
LAUGHTER

Put them there. OK, yeah...

Hello, David... Ouch!

LAUGHTER

You see? Practical proof.
He's misunderstanding for comic
effect, but it's...it's true.

LAUGHTER

Hello, David, lovely to see you...
It does quite genuinely work.

ALAN: It makes it sound different.

ROB: It sounds much better. If you do
it... Now, that's very disorienting.

That's quite nice.
And when you talk to yourself
with them, you almost fall over.

So don't talk to yourself like this.
Also, you look like an idiot. Yeah...

I feel like I'm in front of myself.
ROB: Yes...

I think what's nice is it also has
a nice warming effect on the ears.

LAUGHTER

It's really a
win-win-win-win-win, isn't it?

Yes, I find it very comforting.

And also it means you can't
hear all the horrible things
people behind me are saying.

You'd have to reverse it,
like that...

Shut up, shut up, shut up!
LAUGHTER

Oh, you bitch!

LAUGHTER

Miaow! Get back
in the knife drawer, Mrs Sharp!

Perhaps the really clever
thing is the fact that you can

get the range and elevation from
the slight difference in time, like
what we were saying about clocks.

Our own ears receive the same sound,

but at slightly different times,
cos one is nearer than the other.

I mean, it's minuscule. It's
enough for the brain to process it

and know that the sound is
coming from there, not there.

And some animals, like the
barn owl, have this to
an extraordinary degree.

Their ears are actually inside a
kind of sound dish - that's what the
round shape is in the owl's face -

and they've got one high, looking
down, and one low, looking up,

and they're able therefore
to tell with extraordinary precision

from something they hear,
exactly where it is.

So nature, as always,
gets there first.

So - yes, Japanese war tubas
were mobile acoustic locators

that helped to find enemy
aircraft in the days before radar.

And so time's winged chariot glides
us gracefully towards the crack of
doom that is General Ignorance,

or in this case Generals Ignorant -
because let's see what we really

know about some of the greatest
military leaders from history.
Fingers on buzzers.

What animals did the Carthaginian
general Hannibal use to defeat King
Eumenes of Pergamon in 184BC...

MELLOW NAUTICAL MELODY
Elephants. Oh...

KLAXON

"..did he use to defeat WHO?"
King Eumenes of Pergamon.

Right... Him! Him, there he is.

Is he defeated(?) Horses?

Tigers, lions, leopards, mice...

Bacteria. Birds, eagles...
LAUGHTER

Snakes!

Snakes... I don't think of that
as an animal, really.

He put them in earthenware
pots, threw them at the
enemy and onto their ships.

Really? What a great idea.
Snakes On A Plane, almost the
first example of it.

How did Snakes On A Plane come
about...? Do you know?

ROB: Snakes On A Plane?
Yes, the film.

People had more money than sense,
and er...

LAUGHTER
Maybe...

Supposedly a group of scriptwriters
were trying to think up the
stupidest names - like a pub game -

and someone said, "Snakes On
A Plane!" and they said, "Do you
know, that's so crap, it's good."

It would be scary to be on a plane
with lots of snakes, though.

I liked the film...
Is it good? Quite scary.

The key would be whether
the plot that leads to the snakes

being on the plane
is believable or not.

Well, they get out of
a thing in the hold.

Oh, well, that sounds
all right to me. Yes!

And they're snakes, so they
can get through tiny cracks.
They come up the loo! Oh...!

Ooh... Anyway. Yes...
LAUGHTER

Hannibal defeated the Pergamese
by bombing them with
pots full of snakes.

Now, who succeeded Harold
as King of England in 1066?

Is there a trick to it?
No - it's just you need to name the
person who succeeded Harold

as King in 1066....
DAVID: Don't trust him!

The trick is to know the answer.
I don't trust you. At all.

Is it the bastard, then?

Who's the bastard? Oh, dear...

KLAXON
See? You see?!

It wasn't a trick.
Did England cease to exist in some
way, or was it changed in name?

There was another Saxon claimant
who was nominally king for
45 seconds, or something...

Well - for a few months, yes. Yes.

Edgar Atheling. ROB: Ah.

And er, he was 15 years old.
But Saxon kings were...

How did you become a king
if you were a Saxon?
Did you have to be nominated?

You had to be from one of the
five or six families...
and then you'd be elected.

By what, by votes?
They would vote for you? Yes.

Edgar the Aetheling. 15 years old.
But of course
William had won the battle,

and so he came after him
and he tried to fight - he couldn't
raise an army, he went abroad...

He didn't lead a very successful
life. He was 15, so he wouldn't
have been able to do anything.

Edgar the Aetheling
WAS proclaimed king
after the death of Harold,

and reigned for two months
before William was crowned.

Why did Julius Caesar
wear a laurel wreath?

GRANDIOSE FANFARE
Was it because he was bald?

Yes, is the right answer,
absolutely right. He was very vain.

According to Suetonius,
his baldness was a disfigurement of
which he was deeply ashamed,

and so he chose the laurel wreath
as one of the things he had a right
to wear, and wore it all the time.

"The laurel wreath is going to do
wonders for you, Julius...

"What it's going to do is take
attention away from your baldness.

"Now, they come in a
variety of colours and styles -

"we're going to start your off with
a very simple, traditional one."

He was also supposed to have
invented the comb-over,
cos Suetonius...

He invented the comb-over?!
LAUGHTER

I shall quote you Suetonius in
translation. "He used to comb
forward the scanty locks

"from the crown of his head,
and of all the honours voted for him

"by the Senate and people,
none did he receive more gladly

"than the privilege of wearing a
laurel wreath at all times."

He must have
looked like a '60s footballer
who'd come through a hedge!

LAUGHTER

It would be like leaving your
Christmas cracker hat on all year.

LAUGHTER

So, with that display of general
incompetence, we reach the
end of recorded history.

All that remains to see is
who has learnt its lessons,

and who is condemned to repeat
its mistakes endlessly...on Dave.

LAUGHTER

And taking their place
in history tonight

with a magnificent plus 2 points

is Rob Brydon!
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Happily dancing to the music of time
in second place with minus 4,

it's David Mitchell!
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

But hanging grimly on
to past glories with minus 27

is Sandi Toksvig!
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

And finally, sadly no more than
a forgotten obscure footnote...

with minus 29, Alan Davies!
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Well! That's all
from this historic edition of QI,

so it's goodnight
from Sandi, Rob, David, Alan and me.

I leave you with Winston
Churchill's remark to Stanley
Baldwin in the House of Commons.

"History will say that the right
honourable gentleman was wrong,"

he remarked. "I know it will -
because I shall WRITE the history."

Goodnight.

APPLAUSE AND WHISTLING

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd