QI (2003–…): Season 8, Episode 6 - Happiness - full transcript

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Hello, hello, hello, hello, hello,
hello, hello, hello, and welcome.

It's happy hour at QI,
because tonight we're all about
H for happiness.

Get them in quickly while you can,
ladies and gentlemen,

because you've got four guests
for the price of two.

The happy-go-lucky Andy Hamilton...

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

..the irresistibly chirpy
Rich Hall...

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

..that cheerful charlie
Phill Jupitus...

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE



..And someone who doesn't even know
the meaning of the word lugubrious,

Alan Davies!

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

So, your instruments of pleasure,
if you please. Andy goes...

MANIC LAUGH

And Rich goes...

- CRAZY FEMALE LAUGH
- Phill goes...

- COMICALLY MENACING LAUGH
- And Alan goes...

SNORTING LAUGH

Oh, dear.

Right. Well, before we start,

I want to test your own contribution
to the sum of human happiness,

the QI Audience Pleasure Gauge.

Every time the pointer enters
the red happy zone



as a result of something
the audience likes,

I will award one or more of you
a bonus, all right? For example...

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

So, now to questions. What would
make Britain a happier place?

No more penalty shoot-outs.

Hope.

- The Pope? - Hope.

- Not the Pope! - Not the Pope, no.

I was going to say, that seemed odd.

I thought you said a grope.

- A grope or the Pope...
- I'll work on my diction!

I think moving Britain slightly
south to improve the climate
slightly would make us happier.

- Could you do that just by putting
an outboard motor on Aberdeen? - Yeah.

Probably more than one. I reckon
you'd need a few, but if you had
enough you'd get it going.

Britain never wakes up
in the same latitude.

Yeah, you'd never know where you
are. You're just cruising the globe.

Right, yeah.

- Like Somali pirates, but...
- Can we concentrate....?

LAUGHTER

- Yeah. If we went back to pillaging
and looting and raping. - Right.

I'm not sure what pillaging is,
but looting and raping...

- Fine... - All right, looting, no rape.

- Yeah. - Pillage.

A minor pillage.

- Minor pillaging. - Yeah.
- What is pillaging?

It's kind of sacking, ransacking,
stealing from,

pilfering and taking things.

Burgling, taking,
I think, pillaging.

- So it's the same as looting? - Yeah.
- Kind of is, really, isn't it?

Give everyone a mental age of six,
that would make Britain happier.

- We'd be very easily pleased.
Sweets... - Well, the media
are working on that, aren't they?

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Oh, yeah!

I think you've hit...

I think you've hit
the Happiness Gauge there.

- That was very good, well done.
- The last dumbing-down. - Yeah.

But of course, six-year-olds
probably cry 70 or 80 times a day,

- which you... Do you?
- Cos they can't go up and down stairs
without falling.

Which I can.

70 or 80 times...?

Where is this six-year-old?

- Well, I'm just saying...
- What does Uncle Stephen do?

LAUGHTER

I try and teach them Latin.

They just don't seem
to be able to like it!

"Not the British Museum again!"

Oh, don't!

"I don't like foie gras,
Uncle Stephen!"

LAUGHING AND APPLAUSE

Oh, boo and boo.

"This is prosecco,
and this is real champagne..."

"I'm not telling you again!"

Otters.

- Otters. - I'd vote, yeah. - Otters lying
on their backs, playing with stones.

Sea otters.

It makes me happy.

Yeah, if you see an otter,
you just feel happy.

I think if every home had an otter...

"An otter in every house.
I promise!"

If one's empirical about this,
and said "Which do we think might
be the happiest country on earth?"

Do you think there's ever been
any agreement?

The Ottoman Empire?

LAUGHTER AND CHEERING

Up it goes.

Very good.

That was good.

One of the things that appears
to be a great index of happiness

is not wealth itself,
but a lack of huge disparity
between rich and poor.

In countries where really
there isn't much of a gap
of that sort of nature...

That's a famous sketch,
you may remember, from TW3

with John Cleese and Ronnie Barker
and Ronnie Corbett.

But where there isn't
that kind of differential,

it seems people are happier.

Even in the last 13 or 14 years
in Britain,

the gap has widened considerably,
10% since '97 when John Major's
government ended.

The gap between rich and poor
has widened.

It's very difficult.
How do you measure happiness?

Do you ask people if they're happy?

And are they reliable guides
of their own happiness?

- The things they do to each other
will tell you whether they're happy
or not. - That's a very good...

Happy people are less inclined
to glass people in pubs.

- Yeah. - There's no unit of happiness,
is there? That's the problem.

No international unit of...

No feliciton, no.

There are apparently ways
of measuring happiness, but none
of them is particularly reliable.

An interesting thing is that
if you take someone

who's got enormous reason,
apparently, to be very happy,

say they've just won the pools
or the lottery...

This was a test
that was done in 1978.

..and someone who'd had
a catastrophic car crash
that might have paralysed them.

Obviously, at the time,
one is extremely happy
and the other unbelievably unhappy,

but within a very short time
they both level out and return to
the same state they were in before.

- So people have a bedrock level of...
- They kind of do.

Yeah. Bhutan was the first country
to have a gross measure
of happiness, the GNH.

- Gross National Happiness.
- No television there, do they?

They didn't for a very long time,
or traffic lights.

The king declared happiness
of the people the guiding goal
of development,

and he banned unhappy TV shows,
amongst other things.

- Traffic lights never make you happy,
do they? - No, they don't.

- And they tried it in Slough.
- No traffic lights and no television?

No, they tried... It was called
Making Slough Happy,

including such things
as doing good turns, laughing daily
and watching less television,

which resulted in a 33% upswing
in their Life Satisfaction Index.

I think one of the important things
would be to get rid
of the name Slough.

I fear you're right.
It's not a very happy name, is it?

They should change it to Yippee!

The weird thing is,
that would probably work.

"Where are you from?" "Yippee!"

"Where do you live?" "Yippee!"
It would be fantastic.
What a brilliant idea.

- Yippee, Berks. - Yeah.

Brilliant. Staines is quite close.
Staines...

LAUGHTER

- It's not right.
- We call Staines Woo-hoo!

Yeah. Yippee and Woo-hoo!

- Hull. Bad... - Hull?

Yeah.

- Hot Diggedy would be a good name
for it. - Hot Diggedy for Hull.

Brilliant!
This is a superb movement.

This really could make a difference,
because we're human beings.

We respond emotionally to things.

It may seem trivial,
but wouldn't that be great
if you lived in Hot Diggedy?

Hot Diggedy,
right outside of Zippedy-Do-Dah.

LAUGHTER

The only trouble is
when there's an accident there,

- and the newsreader has to say...
- LAUGHTER

"The bus turned over in Hot Diggedy,
and..."

Oh, no, I remember this quite
vividly. When I was about ten,

there was a massive mining disaster
in India,

and hundreds of people were killed.

But it was at the Wankie Colliery.

And I just remember me and my mates
finding this hilarious.

400 dead miners
at the Wankie Colliery in 1972.

- It was just awful.
- It's like a headline I saw
in Ireland. "Cork man drowns."

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

Oh, happiness, happiness!

You know what?

You guys are bending the needle.

His name was Bob. Come on!

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

Well, well.

Wow. I think I've won this. I'm not
going to answer another question.

All the surveys indicate
that economic equality

is what promotes the greatest good
for the greatest number.

The other things that make us happy,
of course, are friends.

But how many real friends
do you have?

RICH: Just one. James Taylor.

LAUGHTER

One friend you have in him, yeah.

- ANDY: I've got to four. - Four friends.
You've counted, have you?

Actually, I'm not sure about him.

He once spiked my drinks
and stole my trousers when I was...

- Definitely cross him out.
- He's coming off the list.
- Which did he do first?

LAUGHTER

Drinks first, Phill.

I don't know, maybe he's agile.

We say that a friend will come over
to your house and help you move,

and a good friend
will help you move a body.

That's good.

I have two good friends.

LAUGHTER

Oh! Rich!

That's disturbing. There is this
thing called a Dunbar number.
Does that mean anything to you?

Yeah, it's about 100 and something.

You're right. There was a professor
of evolutionary anthropology
at Oxford University called Dunbar,

who calculated,
if calculation is the right word,

that we can't have more
than 150 friends.

- And obviously some of us have a very
high doctrine of friends... - 150?

- Yeah. He defines it this way.
- I don't even know 150 people.

It's a network.

- I thought he was going to say five.
- Well, I know what you mean.

He defines this friendly network

as "containing the people
you wouldn't feel embarrassed
to join at the bar

"in the transit lounge
of Hong Kong airport at 3am."

LAUGHTER

Ah, there are thousands of them(!)

I was going to say, I've never
been embarrassed to join anyone
at a bar in my life.

It's a peculiar definition.
It's an odd one.

- Is there something about
this particular transit lounge?
- I don't know!

But 150 does turn out to be quite
a special number amongst
peoples and groups.

It's the average size of traditional
hunter-gatherer communities,

religious groups such as the Amish,
and English villages at the time
of the Domesday Book.

It also occurs
all over the modern world.

It's the number of Christmas cards
the average person sends,
apparently, 150.

The size of a company in all
modern armies is 150, as opposed
to a battalion or platoon.

And it's also close to the average
number of friends people have
on Facebook, which is 130-odd.

So it is a strangely...
It seems to be the number
beyond which it's too many,

and any less than that
is a closer friend.

- When we say friend we mean someone,
as you say... - We like.

- Who'll bury a body for you. - Yes.

Someone who'll inspect
a genital wart.

LAUGHTER

Maybe? No?

How do you mean, inspect it?

What, give it a certificate
or something?

- Just check that it's normal
or not normal.
- There's a magnifying glass involved.

I tell you what,
that is a very complicated game
of Subbuteo up there.

LAUGHTER

It is, isn't it?

Yeah. This is where it went wrong
for Sven-Goran Eriksson.

LAUGHTER

- 150 people. - 150, it seems
to be a magical number.

- Are you all on Facebook? No?
- I don't really go on the computer.

I read a prediction the other day
that said at the current rate,

in ten years' time, one in three
marriages in America
will be people who met online.

It's already one in eight.

- That's amazing, isn't it? - Oh, God.
- Is that bad?

You just fill out a lot of forms,
don't you?

- "Here's everything I like."
- No, they don't necessarily meet on
dating sites. Some will be, I agree.

- ANDY: How do you meet if you're not
on a dating site? - Join a group.

You join a group?

- You join a Facebook group with
like-minded people. - Oh, right.

They send you witty remarks.

Eventually, you send them
a photograph of your genitals.

Yes!

You know!

Whoa!

LAUGHING AND CHEERING

Well, Alan, that's the most popular
so far, the genitals.

Photograph of the genitals.

- So it's just like a normal courtship,
then? But done digitally? - Yeah.

Yeah. Exactly.

I feel quite bad for the Amish
in this situation,

because they're not going to meet
people on Facebook, are they?

Unless we create an Amish Facebook
where you write everything
about yourself on a sheet of paper,

and put it in a barrel
in the middle of the village.

Which people can just dip
in and out of, you know.

"Ah, raised a barn today. LOL."

LAUGHTER

"Drank some cider. ROFL."

And they have AMG -

Ach, mein Gott!

LAUGHTER

Yes, nobody can handle
more than 150 real friends
according to Robin Dunbar,

professor of evolutionary
anthropology at Oxford.

This is the maximum number
of intimate relationships
the human brain can process.

Now, how can you tell if a friend
is really pleased to see you?

Oh, well...

LAUGHTER

They will be engorged.

- Oh!
- LAUGHTER

No! What kind of...

If they're REALLY pleased
they will be!

You know 150 people who would become
engorged at the sight of you?

Oh, I know thousands!

I know Alan well enough
for a light twitch.

LAUGHTER

- Right. - You're not in my 150,
by the way.

151, Stephen.

I would guess from the picture
that your teeth expand.

LAUGHTER

So are we looking for sincerity?
How do you detect sincerity?

But we all work in showbiz,
that's not going to be easy.

Air kissing? No.

Pupils dilating,
something like that?

Or they let off a pheromone?
Something happens?

Well, it's interpretation
of the smile.

Oh. So if you're going...you're not?

Yeah. And it's become sort of
almost a cliche for us to say that
they don't smile with their eyes,

but this wasn't known about
until the 19th century.

There was a Frenchman who
had nothing better to do than
to electrocute people's faces

in order to make their lips turn
upwards without their eyes moving.

There we are.

LAUGHTER

That's what he liked to do.

- It's a job! - He's only ten years old,
that boy.

"As you can't have real sideburns,
have these electric ones."

His name was Guillaume Duchenne, and
he defined a true smile as having
to involve the face and the eyes.

And what he discovered was that
you can't control your eyes,

you can't make your eyes smile.

It's involuntary, whereas
you can make your lips smile.

These are some rather horrifying
attempts to try
and make people smile!

These are all the QI researchers,

- bending over backwards for the show.
- It's disturbing.

Couldn't he get
a different volunteer?

LAUGHTER

Poor Barry! Day 60 - "Aaargh!"

Day 61 - "Gaarh!"

The second one from the bottom,
it looks like the bloke's
come at him from a different side.

He's been surprised as well.

Yeah, there is actually, Andy,
a third probe you can't see.

LAUGHTER

Mr Duchenne actually gave them
numbers. So 58 is,

"I forgot my mother's birthday."

"61, left the gas on."

That's not left the gas on,

that's "I've just trodden on a cat
and it's died."

LAUGHTER

The real smile is called
the Duchenne smile,

and with only the mouth smiling
it's known in the trade
of happiness studies, gelotology,

- it's know as... - A Gordon Brown.

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

No, a false smile is known
in the trade as a Pan Am smile.

- ..As a Des O'Connor.
- Yep, or a Pan Am smile,

because that was the airline,
since defunct, of course,

where it was considered they had
the stewardesses who had the most
plasticky false smiles,

- where the eyes are not smiling. - Oh.

The Gordon Brown smile, the weird
thing about it was you'd see the
moment where he'd decide to smile,

and that is the...
That kills any smile.

You actually see... You hear a
"clunk," and then there's a smile.

- You know it's not natural.
- Yes, I agree.

- Meanwhile, the girl on the left.
- Yeah.

Is she wearing anything
under her coat?

- That used to be called a maxi,
didn't it? - Do you think
their faces hurt?

If you have to...

If 300 people are getting off a plane
and you have to force a smile
to every one of them,

- by the end they must be in agony.
- Absolutely.

So, if somebody's really pleased
to see you, you can see it
in their eyes.

It's hard to take the involuntary
movements of muscles

that cause wrinkling around the eyes
anything other than seriously,

because you can't control them.

So, what would you do to a waiter
who drew a smiley face on your bill?

- I'm not a fan of the smiley face.
- No?

- I don't mind them
introducing themselves. - Right.

The weird thing is, a waiter goes,
"Hi, I'm Stephen, I'm your waiter."

If you call them Stephen for
the rest of the night, "Stephen,"

and they come up, they get
quite annoyed about halfway
through the main course.

"Stephen, this meal is really good."

You tell them lots of things
and use their name all the time,

then you get a sad face
on your bill.

- LAUGHTER
- It's like personalised numberplates.

If you ever see a car go by and
it's got REG on it and he gets out,

and you go, "All right, Reg?",
they don't like it.

They're idiots, then, aren't they?

I have a friend who's a producer
on Broadway, and when he's in
Joe Allen's, an actors' restaurant,

and he wants attention at the table,
he goes, "Oh, actor,"

which is very mean.

- How rude. - Very rude, isn't it?

The stewardesses don't like that
on planes when you go, "Nurse!"

LAUGHTER

Hate it.

I shouldn't have even said
stewardess. What are they now?

Is it cabin crew? Something?

ANDY: Attendants.
RICH: Attendant.

- AUDIENCE MEMBER: - Cabin crew!
- Cabin crew? - Cabin crew!

You work out of Stansted,
don't you? I'd recognise
that accent anywhere.

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

Oh, we're pushing the needle!

We can't see the needle!

It's going up.

You've obviously commanded them
to applaud in this way.

This must be what it was like
in Soviet Russia.

Every time they went to anything,
"Aaah! Yes! Clap! Laugh!

"I can see the guns!"

You weren't allowed to be the first
one to stop clapping, were you?

That would get you sent
to the gulag,

so they would just for hours
and hours and hours!

A nation of people
with bloody stumps!

Oi! Oi!

Does the smiley face mean
the waiter's pleased
with what you've done,

the way you've conducted yourself?

It's a way of getting a bigger tip.

- And weirdly, it works. - It works?

- Yeah. - ANDY: They should draw little
otters, that would be better.

- On their backs, playing with stones.
- Yeah.

Does that really work? Are you saying
that gets a bigger tip?

Yep. Drawing a smiley face,
introducing your name,
telling a joke, apparently.

How about decent service?

I don't think they've ever thought
of that. Might work.

Is that a suitable tip? If it is,
I'm going to change everything.
That's fantastic. ?1.30.

- Which is the nation of biggest
tippers? - America, is it?

America, yeah.

- What's considered the... - 20%.

20%?

But if it's bad service you take
the tip and you put it in a glass
of water and turn it upside down,

and leave it on the table.

But you still leave it. If you
leave an American restaurant without
tipping, the waiter will chase you.

- Oh, sure. - They'll run down
the street after you and say, "Sir,
you didn't tip." They really will.

They take your money and say, "Will
there be any change with that?"

Yes, I think you'll find
that's a 100 bill
and I've just had a cup of tea.

LAUGHTER

But what do we think in Britain
is right?

- ANDY: 10%. - 10%.

But the average left in British
restaurants is apparently 8.5%.

What's the matter with you people?

Out of the Welsh and the English in
Britain who are the bigger tippers?

- I'll go Welsh. - Yes, they are.

- The English are the worst tippers in
the UK. - I'm not surprised by that!

- No, I'm not either. - The English
resent tipping. - They do, don't they?

I don't think it's
that they resent tipping.

I think they can't be bothered
to do the maths.

- LAUGHTER
- Probably right!

That's what they resent...

"10% of 80p, that's what?

"Er, 5p..."

Here's the thing that counts against
national happiness,

- the process of splitting the bill
with the bastard at the end. - Yes.

"Oh, I only had a beer and a salad,"

with the drunk at the other end
who's had nine white Russians.

LAUGHTER

- DRUNKENLY: - "Let's just split it,
yeah?"

LAUGHTER

It's true! It's so true.

One day, you'll be the one
who's had the nine white Russians.
It all comes around.

Are there countries
where there's no tipping?

I bet there's no tipping in China.

They certainly don't in Singapore.

- In Singapore it's actively
wrong to tip. - Is it an insult?
- And Japan it's not.

Well, it's Lee Kuan Yew.

There used to be signs
in the little rickshaws saying
"No tipping" in Singapore.

Sounds like something drunk students
would do, rickshaw tipping.

LAUGHTER

"Hey-hey!"

STEPHEN MAKES UNINTELLIGIBLE NOISES

LAUGHTER

- That came out out loud, Stephen.
- I'm sorry.

We were all thinking it,
but you said it.

If a waiter draws a smiley face
on your bill, you might well
leave a bigger tip.

From eating out to freaking out.

Why was everybody in the world
expected to die laughing in 1910?

Was Michael McIntyre going on tour?

LAUGHTER

That is Arthur Smith
on the far right, that is.

- Do we know anything about 1910?
- 1910? - 1910?

- Everyone was expected to die.
- They discovered laughing gas?

There was a hysteria
about an upcoming event.

I bet it was a big volcano
like Krakatoa or something.

It was certainly a phenomenon...

It was going to create
a lot of pressure,

and when it went, it was going
to sound like a big fart.

A giant whoopee cushion
kind of caldera.

- That would make everybody laugh.
- Yeah.

And they'd be frozen
in lava laughing.

- It's possible.
An even more cosmically grand event.
- An actual event?

- ANDY: A comet. - A comet.
The famous comet. - Halley's comet.

Halley's comet, yes, exactly.

Well, there it is.

And because this is the first time
it had come round

since the science of astronomy
had really got itself together,

there was kind of a little knowledge
being a dangerous thing,

there was a chemical view,
and there was a theory that
the nitrogen in the atmosphere,

as the tail passed
so close to the Earth,

would turn the atmosphere of the
Earth into nitrous oxide, which is?

- Laughing gas. - Laughing gas.

And the whole population would
start giggling and then die.

We'd all laugh ourselves to death.

- Oh, that would've been good.
- It would have been!

So much for laughter
making you live longer!

LAUGHTER

Some people put rags in their doors
and windows to try and block
the air getting in.

People were very convinced something
dreadful was going to happen.

Can you imagine what the Daily Mail
would make of that?

LAUGHTER

"Comet - we'll all laugh ourselves
to death. Who's to blame?"

Has anybody ever laughed themselves
to death that you know of?

- The bloke watching the Goodies.
- You knew about that! Yes.

What was he watching?

Was it the Kitten Kong episode?

It wasn't that.
That's the one we remember.

It was a Scotsman fending off
an attack from a black pudding
with a set of bagpipes.

You see! Don't! Oh, no!

LAUGHTER

- Have we killed anyone on this show?
- I...

- Must try harder.
- LAUGHTER

Yeah. He laughed for 25 minutes, had
a heart attack, died on the sofa.

And the audience finds that
very funny.

LAUGHTER

My god-daughter laughed
for 25 minutes

when I showed her people falling
down escalators on YouTube.

She's never seen anything
so funny in her life.

There's people on the escalator,
standing on the standing bit of it.

And then on the walking down bit
of it, someone just falls down

at an incredible speed.

She watched that eight times.
Crying with laughter.

I've seen a funny accident
on an escalator.

A few people might have gone
to hospital, I'm not sure.

LAUGHTER

When I was about 18,

it was quite crowded, and somebody
down the front, a tourist I think,

got to the bottom and just stopped.

So you've got this fantastic
"dum-dum-dum-dum."

Oh, concertina.

It was pure Marx brothers. Fantastic.

Funniest thing I ever saw was
John McCririck fall out of a boat.

Really?

Pretended it didn't happen,
and I was interviewing him,

and so none of the crew could laugh
until two hours later.

LAUGHTER

And everyone laughed
at the same time and didn't stop
for half an hour.

They kept it in for two hours.
It is possible.

That's fantastic.

Because he was so sort of
pompously refusing?

He's a big, blustery guy,
and he had a cigar,
and he fell right on top of me,

and then fell out of the boat,
and then got back in and said,

"Right, where were we?"

You just fell out of the boat.
You're dripping wet.

Cigar just hanging out of his mouth.

Guy pretended it never happened.

So we all pretended it didn't happen
until two hours later.

LAUGHTER

We were driving back,

and the guy driving
was almost wrecked,

- he was laughing so hard. - Wouldn't
it have been awful if the cameramen
had kept the footage running,

and we could now persuade him
to put it online somewhere
so it could be seen.

I have the footage.

- And you haven't posted it?
- No, I wouldn't.

You moral...

BOOING

Oh, it's going the other way!

I'll post it.
Give it to me, I'll post it.

I will post it. I will.

Yeah.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Anyway. So, in 1910, people worried,

and they worried desperately
that Halley's comet would turn
the air into nitrous oxide

and we'd all die laughing.

What did the original Mr Happiness
want to do to cheer up
his front garden?

ANDY: Is that his garden?

I don't think that is his house, no.

Gnomes.

SIREN BLARES

Yeah!

APPLAUSE

When we say "Mr Happiness,"
it's a pretty tricky one.

We're talking about a person who...
An intellectual.

- Oh. - Oh.

I thought it was Ken Dodd.

- Do we know of a philosopher
who was interested in happiness?
- Yeah, the Diddymen.

- They were interested... - Possibly
even greater than the Diddymen.

ANDY: They're all interested
in happiness.

They are. This one had a calculus
of felicity.

He calculated how to make people
happy, and he had a phrase
I've used already,

"the greatest good
for the greatest number."

- Oh, that's Bentham.
- Bentham, that's the chap.

Tell me what you know about him.

He was a utilitarian, wasn't he?

Utilitarian is the name
of his philosophy.
This is very impressive. Well done.

See, Mr Gostick,
I was paying attention!

- So what did he do in his garden?
He... Ooh, I don't know.
- Jeremy Bentham.

Yeah, he had a belief about how
we should decorate our gardens.

For the benefit of other people,
presumably?

For the benefit of ourselves
in a very strange way.

He felt that maybe our taboos
about death were a bit...

Corpses?

Corpses.

Nan in the tree?

Yeah. Yeah.

The cat pawing away at her?

- Yeah. - He put corpses in his garden?

Yeah. He called them auto-icons,
and he thought they should be
all around us.

But he also had a view
of his own death.

Do you know what happened
to Jeremy Bentham when he died?

- Someone planted him in the garden,
I expect. - I bet they know
in the audience.

- AUDIENCE MEMBERS: - He was stuffed. - He
was stuffed, that's exactly right.

You can go and inspect him.
He's in a big cabinet, stuffed,

in University College London.

- But bits of him will have been
chopped off by medical students for
parties. - That did happen to his head.

That's his body. He was dressed.

He had a group of friends around.

- 150, perhaps?
- Actually, I think it was only 28!

LAUGHTER

It's a good call,
it should have been that number.

He decided that his skin should be
stripped off, his bones and things
should have stuffing around them,

and there it is.

He perhaps invented underpants.
He...

LAUGHTER

Well, it's very hard to say,

but he was one of the first people
of his time who insisted on wearing
what we would call boxer shorts.

Most men just had the front
of their shirt sort of
curved upwards under their bits.

Oh, Christ!

Important man nonetheless,
great intellectual.

That'd be a great test of friendship.

"You mind coming round and stuffing
me when I die, yeah?"

Anyway, Jeremy Bentham,
founder of utilitarianism,

or the idea that happiness
equates to the greatest good
for the greatest number,

once wrote to London County Council
asking for permission

to replace the shrubs
along his driveway with a line
of varnished corpses.

But which small furry animal
would you make happier
by taking it to see Bambi?

LAUGHTER

- RICH: Does it have to be furry?
- Yeah.

It's a particular species.

What happens to Bambi when...?

- His mum gets shot.
- And then what does Bambi do?

Then Bambi hangs out with the other
animals and learns to skate.

But before that he cries.

Now, this is weird.
This is an animal
that gets off on deer's tears.

LAUGHTER

Shut up!

When I say get off,
I don't mean it has, you know...

LAUGHTER

- Does it drink the tears?
- It drinks the tears.

PHILL LAUGHS

No!

- So it's got to be something small.
A vole? - Even smaller.

- Smaller than a mouse? - Furry.
- Bumblebee?

Yes. There's a species of bee
that rather than going for nectar,

goes for the salt in the tears
of horses and deer.

And I thought that the Gale's tasted
a bit funny that year.

A bit salty!

"I'm definitely getting deer tear.
I'm getting... Mmm,

"I'm getting... I'm getting misery."

LAUGHTER

They've also been observed
drinking tears from human eyes

There are three species of stingless
bee, you'll be happy to know.

There they are. They're tiny.
Actually, they're not that furry.

Oh, you meant bluebottles.

LAUGHTER

There we were kind of dealing
with the image of a lovely bee

- all stripey...
- Tiny-whiney, aren't they? - God!

Lisotrigona cachii, Lisotrigona
ferva and Lisotrigona pariatriginum.

And that's what they do.
It's strange.

So they suck on your misery.

LAUGHTER

It sounded rather poetic when
it came into my head, but...

That is your cue to make your first
heavy metal album

and you have to call it
Suck On My Misery.

I will. But from one veil
of tears to another.

Where did Florence Nightingale
do her most important work?

- Hospital. - Where?

- In a hospital. - In a hostel
or a hospital? - A hospital.

- Hospital. - I think this was in her
bed. - Yes, you're right!

You know a bit about it clearly.

- Well, she... I think...
- Didn't she stay in bed for about
50 years or something?

I think Florence Nightingale came
back from the Crimea

where she'd done a lot of good stuff,
and then she took to her bed

in a rather sort of
attention-seeking way,

and was a bit of a pain the arse
I suspect, but she made

the great and the good
come to her bedside.

She was such an icon and she founded,

I mean British nursing
was sort of founded by...

The odd thing is you said in the
Crimea, having done a lot of good,

the strange thing is she felt
she didn't do any good.

She's right, she didn't.

You were three times more likely to
die in Scutari, the hospital she ran

than you were in a rough field
hospital, because there was so
much infection.

It was a disastrous place and
there were reports that showed

that the outcome of all the patients
under her care was terrible.

She thought this report would expose
her and she was ashamed in fact,

and she kind of had a decline.
It wasn't anything other than just

she thought her life, her career
and her reputation was over.

Went home, went to bed and stayed in
bed, but she lived, as you say,
over 50 years in bed.

She would awaken and start work
at five, writing letters

and campaigning and doing all
the good that she then did

in laying down standards
of cleanliness.

But it was really to expiate the
failure of her work in the Crimea,

- which is quite surprising I think.
- Yeah.

But if ignorance is bliss, then
prepare for a torrent of pleasure.

It's time for General Ignorance.
Fingers on buzzers.

What is Africa's
dominant animal predator?

By dominant, do we mean the one
that kills the most things?

Kills the most other animals?

Yeah.

- I guess, as a predator. - Hyena.

Is the right answer!

APPLAUSE

You're on fire!

No, because I watched something

where David Attenborough said,
"The hyena is the biggest killer..."

Most people might think it was
the lion as the most dominant.

Obviously mosquitoes
kill more humans.

But lions are lazy buggers.

They are. It's much more likely that
a lion will scavenge the kill of a
hyena than the hyena that of a lion.

We think of hyenas
as sloping away like jackals,

but they're very intelligent.

There they are - spotty.

You wouldn't want one
round the house, necessarily.

- You wouldn't want to be chased
by a pack of them. - No, you wouldn't.

What's with the laughter -
they laugh. What's that about?
What does the laugh mean?

They're communicating.

It's a particular thing
they're communicating.

They're watching Mr Bean.
It's popular in every country in the
world - why wouldn't they like it?

I think they're laughing
cos they're remembering something
that happened earlier.

Oh, yes. It's actually clan
submissiveness, supposedly.
Would you like to hear it?

Like to hear a hyena laugh?

Are you going to bring one in?

HYENA LAUGHS

That is the noise my goddaughter
makes when she watches people
falling down escalators.

Shall we hear it again?
It's a good sound.

- HYENA LAUGHS
- That's it.

Do you know as an acting trick -
if you are asked to laugh, some
people find it very difficult.

And it's terrible
if it sounds false. Ha-ha!

But a simple physical technique -

anyone can then sound convincing...

Ice cube in the anus.

LAUGHTER

Right. Yeah. That might do
something, I don't know.

Might make others laugh. No, it's
something you can do in public...

It'll make you laugh -
try it later.

Holding your breath.

- No. - No, it's the opposite. What you
have to do is empty your lungs.

- What most people do is go...
- HE INHALES

..then ha-ha! and it sounds false.
But if you empty your lungs...

HE LAUGHS BREATHLESSLY

When people are seriously laughing,
their breath...

You put an ice cube up your bum,
you'll empty your lungs.

Also be that, I grant you.

Ha-ha-ha! Ha-ha-ha! Ha-ha-ha!

Woo! Ha-ha-ha!

That's a good hyena -
that's a very good hyena.

That was a very cheap
drama school you went to.

It was all done
in a room over a pub.

We got a certificate.

In many areas, hyena kills
are a lion's main source of food.

So what is the ?5 note made from?

Paper.

Let's just get that one out the way.

Er, it's made out of money.

- No, cotton and linen. - Oh.

- Not made from wood at all.
- Money isn't made of paper?

No tree had any part
in the making of your ?5 note.

Which is surprising.
But it's not very funny.

But I thought you'd like to know.

I just find it extraordinary.

- Do you? Thank you. - It sounds like
paper when you tear it up and laugh
in the waiter's face.

That's for the smiley face.

Steven.

- Apparently called Steven, but you
were saying it with a V, I could
tell. - Yeah, totally.

Well done, that's right. Nothing
more to say. Bank notes are made

from cotton or linen, because
wood-based paper is far too fragile.

But what happens to your
general mood as you get older?

LAUGHTER

- You become more...sedated.
- Oh, there's Phill again, look.

- Um, I think...
- You don't get grumpier.

No, I think you get happier.

There was a thing in the paper
a while back,

surprisingly showing people around
the age of 81 were really happy.

Presumably, that's just smugness.
You think, "I've made it to 81."

So, I don't know.

Nothing. No change.

Well, essentially,
you just stay much as you were.

Your general disposition
seems to be more or less fixed.

- Except you wear a newspaper
on your head. - Yes, the actual
behaviour can be a little strange.

But the idea that men become grumpy
or women become grumpy is nonsense.

I've read that,
so I'll put that there.

Is this what that philosopher's
front garden would look like?

Bentham's front lawn.

There's been the Baltimore
Longitudinal Study of Ageing,
which has been running since '58...

- It's one of my favourite studies of
ageing. - It's one of the best. And
it's shattered a number of myths

about the ageing process,
including the belief that people
become more depressed and cranky

or withdrawn or rigid or
bad-tempered as they age.

In fact, adults change little
after 30 in those terms.

The grumpy old git probably
used to be a grumpy young git.

Now it's time to separate
the cheer from the gloom

as we consider the scores.
Oh, good gracious me.

In the lead, with a magnificent
four points, it's Phill Jupitus!

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Very happy score. And...

In second place with a
very positive one point, Rich Hall!

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

And despite his brilliance, in third
place with minus 15 - Andy Hamilton.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

- I know. - Unhappily, at minus 35 -
Alan Davies. - Thank you.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

It only remains for me to thank
Rich, Phill, Andy and Alan.

And to leave you with this,
at a dinner for Sir Harold and Lady
MacMillan, hosted by the de Gaulles

at the Elysee Palace, Lady Dorothy
asked Madame de Gaulle if after

all her husband's many achievements,
there was anything she still wanted.

"Yes," said the First Lady
of France. "A penis."

At which, the General leaned over
and whispered discreetly,

"No, my dear, in English,
it is pronounced happiness."

Goodnight.

APPLAUSE

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