QI (2003–…): Season 9, Episode 1 - I-Spy - full transcript
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Good evening, good evening, good
evening, good evening, good evening
and welcome to QI, where tonight,
once again, the Is have it.
I spy with my little eye
the illustrious Sandi Toksvig!
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
The indubitable Jimmy Carr!
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Thank you.
The incorrigible Lee Mack!
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Thank you.
And the 'ilarious Alan Davies.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
And I hear with my little ear
their buzzers. Sandi goes...
"Aye-aye."
LAUGHTER
- Jimmy goes... - "Oi-oi!"
LAUGHTER
- Lee goes...
- "Aye-aye-aye-aye-aye!"
LAUGHTER
And Alan goes...
"# I've got
a lovely bunch of coconuts"
LAUGHTER
Don't forget
your Nobody Knows Joker.
FANFARE
"Nobody knows!"
That's the one.
There is a question to which
the answer is, "Nobody knows"
and if you can predict which that
question is and wave your banner,
you'll get points.
And so to question I,
I mean question one.
No, I was right the first time.
What's the difference
between an ai and an aye-aye?
Have you heard of an ai?
It's a very useful word in Scrabble.
- A-I. - Yes. Oh, yes! It's a sloth.
- A sloth! Exactly. But what about
an aye-aye?
- Two sloths.
LAUGHTER
All right, so we've got the ai.
Where does the ai live?
- Where does it live? - In a tree.
- Yeah. In which part of the world
would you expect to find it?
- South America. - Yes.
They're wonderful things.
They look like humans
dressed in a sloth costume.
But to be fair, you could say that
about any animal. A giraffe looks
like a human in a giraffe costume.
- You look at a picture of an ai and
I think you'll see what I mean.
- Oh!
- That does look like a person in a
costume. - He's climbing a tree which
looks like a man dressed as a tree.
LAUGHTER
Yes.
He also looks like he's made of
that stuff they used to make
dish mops out of.
- Their heads are very
disproportionate. - They are.
They live up to their name.
They're very lazy.
They only come down to defecate.
- They come down from a tree
to defecate? - Yes. - The benefit
of living in a tree is you can...
- Poo on whomever you like? - Maybe
they've got a downstairs toilet.
- Yes.
- Hadn't thought of that, had you?
- Once you've had it put in,
you want to use it. Absolutely.
Very unusually for mammals,
they need to bask in the sun
to warm up their metabolism.
So that's the ai. We've got the ai.
But tell me about the aye-aye.
- Is it spelt the same as the ai?
- No. - Obviously there's more letters.
- It's AYE-hyphen-AYE.
- Aye-aye, sir. - And I happen
to have been and seen one.
Very few people have, cos it's
one of the most endangered species.
- Is it a Geordie version of that?
- Aye-aye? No, that's the why-aye.
- Oh. - Are we in the same part
of the world?
- We're not in the same part
of the world. - Is it a sloth? - No.
It's more closely related to us.
It's a primate.
- Primate? - But it's not an ape
or a monkey. What other kinds...
- Is it the aye-aye orang-utan?
- Lemur? - Lemur. It's a lemur.
- Therefore, it must come from only
one place on earth.
- Oh! - Bradford.
LAUGHTER
It looks like someone's
put some water on a gremlin.
LAUGHTER
Yes.
That's exactly right.
Which you know you mustn't do.
- I would think that the animal
on the left has an easier job
getting a well-fitting hat. - Yes.
LAUGHTER
- And a girlfriend. - Yes.
- That may be why the aye-aye is so
endangered. - It's Madagascar. - That's
the only place you get lemurs.
You can't see there, but they have
the most extraordinary middle finger
which is fully extended
and looks like a dried twig.
Really unusual. They tap with
their finger on the barks of trees
and bring out little worms
and grubs which they catch
and eat off their finger,
- like a piece of cutlery. - So nature
has designed them to eat Hula Hoops?
- Basically. - That's extraordinary.
Zoologists would say they fill
the niche that woodpeckers filled
in other environments.
There are superstitions about
them, that if you... Pardon me.
If I did this to you, or this,
- if one of those did that to you,
that'd be... - That's right.
It's called the Fady, which is the
taboo system of the local people,
and because
they're nocturnal creatures
and because they look so weird,
they regard them as a curse and they
have a habit of killing them.
- It does look like a really bad
hair transplant.
- It does.
Well, I'm not surprised
people kill them.
Never mind superstition, if you walk
across a street doing that,
you're going to get a guy going,
- "I can take him on." - And also, I'm
not surprised they're endangered,
cos they're clearly not mating,
are they? They're looking at each
other and going, "I'd rather not".
- It is dark, remember. - All the ugly
ones come out in the dark.
LAUGHTER
- That's how Jimmy mates. - Oh!
"I'm happy to do it, love, but it'll
have to be with the lights off."
JIMMY LAUGHS
LAUGHTER
I can't believe
your wife told you that story.
LAUGHTER
Oh!
APPLAUSE
- It's like...
- I even did that in a northern accent.
It's like watching two 1970s
northern comics having a row.
"Funny, cos your wife said..." "Your
wife doesn't exist." "You what?"
LAUGHTER
- They do that on the streets
of New York with "your mama".
- They do what with my mama?
LAUGHTER
- Why don't you say "one's mama"?
- One's mama. - Yeah.
- I'd love you to do that
on the streets of New York.
- One's mama. - "Oh, one's mama to you!"
Yes. That'll jolly well show them!
Anyway, you didn't get that right,
so let's try it again.
What's the difference
between an "aye" and an "aye-aye"?
- It's the same question.
- Yes, but with different answers.
BUZZER
- Is it different answers?
- Yes. - Oh. I don't know, then.
LAUGHTER
- Maybe this time, aye-aye, sir.
Is it "Aye-aye, sir" and "Aye, sir"
are two different things? - Yes.
That's the difference.
In the navy... There's
Kenneth Williams. A shining example!
Do you know how they separate
the men from the boys in the navy?
With a crowbar.
LAUGHTER
- Oh, dear. - Aww!
As you know, they say, "Aye" in the
navy, but they also say, "Aye-aye".
And there is a difference
and I want you to tell me
what that difference is.
Does "Aye" mean yes,
as in "What do you want?"
So you go, "You!" "Aye?"
"Go and mop the floor." "Aye-aye."
Basically, yes. "Aye"
is an agreement or an assent.
So the captain might say,
"Nice morning, isn't it?" and
the sailor would say, "Aye, sir."
But he might say,
"Order hands to bathe"
and then he'd go, "Aye-aye, sir"
- meaning, "I heard your order,
I'll carry it out". - Wash my hands.
- No. - What does it mean?
All hands overboard. Sounds like,
"Jump in the water".
- Hands are what you call
the ship's company.
- All sailors have a bath together.
Yes, in the sea. "Hands to bathe"
means, when they're in nice waters,
they let the men swim in the sea.
But don't take your hats off.
LAUGHTER
- Whatever you do! - Don't take
your hats off, the seagulls
might need somewhere to land.
Are they singing a song
while that's going on?
- If synchronised swimmers
dressed like that, you'd think more
of the sport. - You would!
- It'd get on TV more. - Also, you
could combine it with Total Wipeout.
You could run across the top as
they're doing synchronised swimming.
More Is now. Why won't this woman
stop staring at you?
BUZZER
She's only human.
LAUGHTER
She's got her needs, like any woman.
LAUGHTER
- Are we being suggested to say
cos her eyes are following you
around the room? - Yeah, they do.
They don't literally
follow you around the room,
but that experience is, wherever you
are in relation to that painting,
- she is looking at you.
- What if you're behind her?
Behind the painting?
That only works on paintings of owls.
LAUGHTER
What's the most famous painting
in the Wallace Collection in London?
You know you're looking at
the wrong person, don't you?
LAUGHTER
- It's only... - Lee, I wasn't looking
at you. - Sometimes your eyes
follow me round the room, Stephen.
- Sandi... - I honestly thought
someone was stood behind me.
- It is the Cavalier?
- It is the Laughing Cavalier.
- The Laughing Cavalier? - Very good.
That has the same quality, as well.
It's true of a lot of portraits.
Surely any painting where the person
is looking at the artist.
It's not unique to that painting.
- No, it isn't. - Any painting where
the subject is looking towards the
camera, for want of a better word.
But if you have a painting
where someone's looking down, even
if you get down to the eye level,
- it will never look at you.
- You would look mad in an art gallery
doing that.
LAUGHTER
- He's looking at me! - Look at me!
- But it DOESN'T look at you.
- They only look at you when they're
looking straight out. - It's not
like that in Scooby-Doo, though.
- There's somebody behind the painting
and they really are following
you around. - In horror films.
- Exactly. - If you were to look at me
now, and I walked over there
and you fixed your gaze forward, you
wouldn't be looking at me. So you'd
think it'd be true of the painting.
But you're not looking at
the eyes of the painting,
you're looking through
the eyes of the artist.
So wherever you stand, you look
through the eyes of the artist,
not your own eyes. Good night.
- Rather beautifully put.
- Stephen is three-dimensional
and the painting is two-dimensional
- so that doesn't work. - But I'm
looking at you through my eyes.
So if I walk over there,
I'm still looking at you
through my eyes so it doesn't work.
But I'm not looking at HIS eyes,
the subject's eyes -
I'm looking through the artist's eyes
and they stay fixed at all times.
So it's like bending light. It's like
having a telescope that bends round,
- you're looking through the artist's
eyes. - In a nice way, I'm going to say
I don't think you fully understood.
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
If you change the word "nice"
to "patronising", that works.
LAUGHTER
- Well... - And you're kind with
the word "fully" cos I don't think
I understood any of it.
LAUGHTER
Anyway, we've got a little example
of an optical illusion here.
If you photograph it in the right
way, as you're about to see,
the eye plays
extraordinary tricks on you.
So there it is. This is Einstein.
There he is in profile.
And there's the inverted bit,
but hello, your eye tells you that's
poking outwards, and yet it isn't.
That's the inside bit.
And your eye refuses to believe it
until you get to that.
- Oh, you're twisting my melon, man.
- Isn't that extraordinary?
- Why does it do that?
- Because your brain is programmed
to recognise human faces.
One of the first things babies do
is look at faces,
and you expect to see a face
- and even though you know
it isn't a real face...
- Ahh.
- ..your brain fills in the gaps.
- I did it again.
- It's an astonishing illusion.
- Does it only work with Einstein?
- No!
LAUGHTER
- Would it work with another man?
- It would work with any human being.
- Ahh! - It's very creepy.
- It's amazing, isn't it? - But I can't
believe it did the same trick twice.
- I know.
- Listen, we're not going to fall
for it this time. - And yet...
LAUGHTER
Not three times.
Outside, outside, outside,
outside, outside.
- This is going to be inside, Lee.
This one's inside. - Inside. - Inside.
- Ahh! - Oh!
How does he do it? How does he do it?
- It's so clever. - He's so clever. - We
literally filmed this. You can see,
- that's all it is.
- This is a great trick. I might cut my
head in half and scoop out my brain.
LAUGHTER
What a wonderful thing. It would
make the most wonderful blancmange.
LAUGHTER
Are we going to bother with
the rest of the show?
Cos I could happily just...
LAUGHTER
I mean, it's lovely chatting
and everything,
- and I love what we do,
but let's just... - You're hypnotised.
- Have you got any others apart from
Einstein? - No. But we can make the
Queen happy or sad with a ￡5 note.
You can do this with your own
￡5 notes. We'll give you a
demonstration. You do a little fold.
Aww. Ahh!
Aww. Ahh!
LAUGHTER
APPLAUSE
- That's brilliant. - Do you remember
when they ran the Derby,
her horse, Carlton House?
"It's winning, it's winning,
it's going to win the Derby!
Oh, bollocks."
LAUGHTER
It came third and a Frenchman won.
- Does it only work on a fiver?
Does it work on bigger money?
- It'll work on most denominations.
- And will it work on the Queen
if you tilt HER? - It will also work
on the sovereign herself.
Is that why she looks so sad
when she's bowing?
Not that the Queen bows much.
- She's probably never bowed
in her life. - No, I've met her.
- Does she bow? - She does, yes.
LAUGHTER
Another thing is to find out
where and how we look.
There is a whole science
called gaze detection.
- No, I do not...
LAUGHTER
- Don't even look at me.
It's a science, is it, Stephen?
LAUGHTER
- It's actually a "dar" I believe.
- No, not the gaydar.
Gaze detection. G-A-Z-E.
And there are tests done
between men and women and the
different way they look at bodies.
When women look at a human being,
they look at their faces.
- When men look at a human being...
- I know this.
Yes. Yes, they...
- It's the... - I'm afraid they look at
their faces and their groins.
- Their personality. - Yeah.
And their groins.
And the American Kennel Association,
even more disturbingly,
found that when looking at animals,
women look at the dog's face,
men look at the dog's face
and genitals.
There are some things
you can't hide.
And gaze detection is most important
commercially, though, for what?
For the new idea that I've just had
of writing advertising slogans
on ladies' groins.
- No! - We're going to be rich, Stephen!
- No! - It's not just ladies' groins.
- Men look at men's groins, as well.
- I'm afraid they do.
You wouldn't get much of a slogan
on a Chihuahua, would you?
LAUGHTER
- You wouldn't get much of a slogan
on me, never mind the Chihuahua.
- Oh, now!
- Why, though? Why do boys look at
dogs' genitals?
- This is news to us.
LAUGHTER
This is news to all of us.
There's not one man in the room
thinking this is observational
comedy, going, "That's me".
LAUGHTER
- We're all going, "What?
We look at dogs' genitals?" - You may
not know you do it, but you do it.
This is what the experiments show.
It's most useful in merchandising
in supermarkets,
to see that there are certain areas
in any store
where people are automatically drawn
and therefore
they are the most valuable,
so the items that go there
are the ones that are being pushed.
So if you really wanted
to sell something to men,
have a beautiful woman walk past,
and you'd look at the things right
by her eye and she'd have a dog
with her with large genitals.
LAUGHTER
Yes. You're conflating
the various things I've said.
I'm still horrified by men
looking at dogs' genitals!
LAUGHTER
- Do we do the same with horses?
- It is news to men.
Horses don't do anything
for our self-esteem.
LAUGHTER
I went to a wedding in a beautiful
country church and it was
in the middle of fields and so on,
and the couple were having
their picture taken,
and not one of us had noticed
there was a horse in the field
just behind the happy couple
who had the biggest area
of expertise I've ever seen.
LAUGHTER
That's all you can see
in the photographs.
LAUGHTER
They couldn't crop it out,
it was so large.
Well, we must move on, charming as
this is. The way to get the eyes
to follow you around the room
is to paint them
looking straight ahead.
Next, a question about infancy.
Which best-selling children's author
has something to say on rabid dogs,
suicide victims, slaughtering cattle
and how to tie your shoelaces?
BUZZER
- Yes, Lee? - Katie Price.
LAUGHTER
- It's a wild stab in the dark...
- That was the title of her second
book. How To Slaughter Cattle?
- Yeah. - Yeah? This has probably sold
150 million copies
since its first publication.
- In a children's book?
- A book written for children.
Look at the boys looking round
at the dog's genitals.
LAUGHTER
He is! That's Dick on the left.
Dick, Anne and Julian.
And Dick is looking at Timmy's bits.
Girls, eyes forward.
Boys going, "Hello!"
- You see, even Enid Blyton knew.
- It's an old English book?
- Published in the Edwardian era.
- Are we looking for the name
of the book or the author?
The name of the author was Robert,
later Lord, Baden-Powell.
- Oh, Scouting For Boys? - Scouting
For Boys is the right answer.
Scouting For Boys
has got something on suicide?
- It has. It has an amazing entry.
Maybe you'd like to hear it.
- I would love to hear it.
"When a man attempts suicide..."
They don't count women, "..a scout
should know what to do with him."
LAUGHTER
"In a case where the would-be
suicide has taken poison,
"give milk and make him vomit
by tickling the inside of the
throat with a finger or a feather.
"In the case of hanging,
cut down the body at once,
"taking care to support it
with one arm while cutting the cord.
- "A tenderfoot,"
which is scouting for novice...
- They make that sound very simple.
"..is sometimes inclined to be timid
about handling an insensible
or a dead man, or even seeing blood.
"Well, he won't be much use
till he gets over such nonsense."
LAUGHTER
There you are. Advice to young boys
on how to slaughter cattle.
"If you're a beginner
in slaughtering with a knife,
"it's sometimes useful to first
drop the animal insensible
by a heavy blow with a big hammer
"or the back of a felling axe
on top of the head."
LAUGHTER
- Kindest thing to do, really.
- Stopping a runaway horse?
- Does he give advice on that? - He does.
- Lie down. - That would stop the horse?
- Oh, no, they don't tread on you.
- Oh, I know, play dead.
- How would that stop the horse?
- I'm thinking of a ferocious
grizzly bear again, aren't I?
What you don't do is stand
in front of it waving your arms.
That's the mistake to make.
- You go to the side and ease it
towards the side of a wall or house.
- When it's running?
You ease a running horse
to the side of a wall, yeah?
"Don't worry, lads,
I'll just ease this running horse
to the side of a wall."
It can see out of the corner of
its eye, and it will slow it down,
according to Baden-Powell.
"Give us a hand!"
"I can't, Uncle Pete's hung himself."
- What about saving someone
who's fallen in front of a train?
- Oh, I know this,
you ease the train up against a wall.
LAUGHTER
"If the train is very close,
lie flat between the rails,
"make the man do the same
till the train passes over,
"while everyone else will be
running about screaming,
excited and doing nothing."
- You jump on the track with him
and push his head down?
- Yes. - Sure, I'd do that(!)
- Is there such a big gap between
the wheels? - There is in the movies
but I wouldn't be the one to try it.
It'd be great if you hung yourself
and a scout cut you down, and you
went, "OK, I'll jump under a train."
"He's here again!"
LAUGHTER
"Hello, mate!"
I was once given a book that was
given to women in the 17th century,
and it was advice for young ladies,
and the advice for the marriage bed,
it says, "Of the marriage bed, we
can't speak of a husband's appetite,
"so we will describe it
in terms of food."
And what it said is that you must
feed your husband
whenever he's hungry,
feed him a variety of meals,
or you will soon find
he's eating next door.
LAUGHTER
I like this book, was it called The
Good Old Days?
Goodness gracious me! With that in
mind, here's an initiative test.
What should you do if you were
to meet a friendly jackal?
Well, I know where my eyes are going!
LAUGHTER
Do they use their friendliness
to lure you into a terrible trap?
Well, they sort of do.
- But how can it be friendly?
I don't understand the concept.
- That's the point.
They're only friendly under one
circumstance, because they're wild
animals, they're not tameable.
- It's if they have rabies. - Oh!
One of the symptoms of rabies
in wild animals
is that they become very docile
and they will approach humans
and look rather submissive.
A great mistake
would be to pet them.
Is the hint not that they
are frothing at the mouth, usually?
They don't always froth at the
mouth, so you can't always tell.
I did a trip for the BBC in which
I canoed the Zambezi,
which I don't recommend.
You get a condition I can only
describe as trench bottom.
I was told all the way down to avoid
all dogs because of rabies.
I was very surprised to see that
most of the local people
had a dog with them,
and I thought, "That's nice.
"They've all got a pet." But it
turns out that's not the case.
They've got the dog in case
they're attacked by a crocodile.
So what they do is throw the dog.
They throw the dog at the crocodile
as a sort of a tapas.
- My God! - I'm sorry, did your boat
have a dog? - No. - They had you?
"We've got a small lady from the BBC
we're using. Don't tell anyone."
If you meet a friendly jackal,
you should probably give it a good
kicking to be on the safe side.
The next question requires
a bit of intelligence.
Who finished off Russia's
greatest love machine?
BUZZER
Boney M.
LAUGHTER
No, he can't say that!
How has he got away with that?
- We're talking about Rasputin? - We
are. - Let's go through the lyrics.
This is all I know about Rasputin.
- Ra, Ra Rasputin,
Russia's greatest love machine.
- Lover of the Russian Queen.
Yes. This is how I learned history.
- If it doesn't rhyme, it can't be
true. - Do you mean who killed him?
- Yes. - We don't really know.
- Is it that moment?
Everybody tried, didn't say?
There was a prostitute who tried.
I like the way Sandi led us
into that. "Nobody knows,
but I do, you fools!"
There's a man who's
given credit for it,
who claimed to be responsible,
who was Prince Felix Yusupov.
It seems that he wasn't
personally responsible for it.
He claimed to have poisoned him
and the poison didn't work,
then they shot him.
There's Grigor Rasputin. He was
just plain shot in the forehead.
They tried to poison him and then he
was shot and then he was drowned,
and then they got him out of the
river and they decided to burn him,
and my favourite bit,
which I'm sure is not true,
is that he then sat up in the fire.
- He sat up? - It was all part of
demonising this extraordinary man.
What was his importance to Russia?
Why was he worth killing?
- Do you know anything about him?
- He had the ear of the Tsarina.
- He had the ear of the Tsarina,
exactly. - He had more than her ear!
There were rumours.
He certainly shagged a lot of women,
because he had a peculiar
theological belief that the more
you sinned the more holy you were,
which is rather handy.
He basically had the freedom
of the palace,
and this was when Russia was about
to join the First World War,
and he tried to persuade
the Tsar and Tsarina not
to go to war with Germany.
So one of the countries that had
a great interest in the death
of Rasputin was Britain.
Because we were at war with Germany,
and we wanted at least
half the German Army
to be occupied on the Eastern Front
fighting the Russians.
- He doesn't look like a love machine.
- It so happens the last bullet
that went into the brain
of Rasputin was from a gun
that came from an MI6 operative.
We don't know
if it was a British plot.
But certainly it benefited Britain
that Rasputin was killed,
because it kept Russia
in the war for longer.
He must have had
a good chat-up line,
cos if you saw him at a party
you wouldn't think,
"I bet he pulls by the end."
Anyway, the point was,
Prince Yusupov arranged a party,
and he claimed in his autobiography
that he gave cakes and drinks
to Rasputin which were
filled with cyanide
and he didn't seem to move at all,
and then they stabbed him
and then they shot him,
and he got up again,
so then they threw him in the river,
and they found when his body
was exhumed that he has drowned.
An autopsy showed
it just wasn't true.
If I was at a party and they were
giving out cakes full of cyanide
and then they stabbed me,
I would leave then.
I would make my excuses,
no matter how rude it appeared,
before they got their gun out.
I think I'd go, "Do you know what,
I've got an early morning."
What about the durable Mike Malloy?
Have you heard of him?
Now, he is a man who really
wouldn't die.
This is a very extraordinary story.
The durable Mike Malloy.
We're in the age of prohibition,
and we're in New York City.
We've got a gang of criminals,
because anyone who runs a speakeasy
is a criminal in prohibition,
and they hit on a scam.
They thought,
"We'll get some drunks,
"we'll get them to sign life
insurance forms to our benefit,
"and then we'll feed them
so much alcohol that they'll die.
"And we'll get all the money."
What can go wrong?
Had they never met
Irish people before?
They were bankrupt!
They ran out of booze!
Owner Anthony Marino hatched
this plan, got this Irishman,
he was Irish, they befriended him,
they plied him with free drinks,
and they got him to sign
three different life insurance
policies amounting to nearly 2,000,
a lot of money in those days.
After several weeks of free booze,
they started to get a bit impatient,
because he wasn't dying.
He kept singing the same songs!
God, he's doing that one again!
# Oh, Danny boy... #
"He seems tipsy."
They started adding antifreeze,
he collapsed a bit,
but he kept coming back
for more drink.
So they then gave him drinks
that were filled with turpentine,
horse liniment, rat poison,
rotten oysters in wood alcohol
and sardines
mixed with carpet tacks.
- None of this had any effect.
- "Thanks very much... I suppose
if it's on the house!"
So next, they got him drunk,
they stripped him naked -
this is midwinter New York -
and they poured five gallons of
cold water on him before
dumping him on a snow bank.
If you've ever been in New York,
midwinter, it is seriously cold,
gets to minus 20 degrees.
Why didn't they just shoot him?
- I think a bullet hole
might have been...
- A giveaway.
I think naked on a mound of snow's
quite a giveaway, isn't it?
He was drunk, having sex
with a snowman(?)
LAUGHTER
But, the police found him -
he turned up the next day saying
"You'll never guess what happened,
they found me in Central Park,
on the snow, naked!
"They took me to a hostel
and got me these nice new clothes."
And so he carried on drinking.
They paid a cab driver 150 bucks
to knock him over.
After two attempts, they left him
sprawled in the road...
Awaiting news of his death,
several weeks later
he came fresh out of hospital,
turning up looking for a drink.
LAUGHTER
So finally they challenged him
to a rigged drinking contest -
they got him really pissed, and then
pushed a gas hose in his throat
and gassed him to death.
- Awww... - So they cheated.
But a few months later -
don't worry - they started
squabbling amongst themselves,
and they all went down the river
to Sing Sing
and got fried in the electric chair,
the whole gang of them.
When you said they put a gas hose
in his mouth, and cheated...
the audience went "Awww!"
But before that, when they were
trying to kill the man...
LAUGHTER
you were going, "Well, that just
sounds like bloody good fun!"
LAUGHTER
"The gas hose -
That's not playing straight."
- Not cricket! - It's an interesting
morality you're working with.
LAUGHTER
Take a good,
hard look at yourselves.
Well, that's the story of
"Durable" Mike Molloy.
A hero of his time, in some ways.
- Did HE tell you that story? - No...
LAUGHTER
And he's here tonight(!)
LAUGHTER
Comes in, naked, full of gas...
IRISH ACCENT:
"Oh, they didn't get me at all!"
He's up there...
LAUGHTER
Now, how many things beginning
with I are there in this picture...?
Oh, now...are we looking at insects?
We are, Alan, you're spot on.
- So...we don't know. - No, I think
there's going to be like,
a square metre of sky
and there's going to be...
a hundred thousand insects.
- There's billions. Millions and
millions...
- We couldn't count it.
They take a square kilometre,
and they use little entomological
radars to see how many there are.
And high up in the air at all times,
there are billions of insects...
So did they find this on the first
Space Shuttle when they didn't have
windscreen wipers...
LAUGHTER
Well, actually in the early days of
flight, Lindbergh and various others
started to do tests, and they put
sticky things on...
Because they were thinking,
"Why are there insects so high up?"
as we got to go higher and higher.
And the record was
they found a termite at 19,000 feet.
- It was on an aeroplane. - No...!
LAUGHTER
30 million large insects,
which is larger than a ladybird,
were discovered by this radar.
But take into account smaller
insects, aphids or parasitic wasps,
which outnumber the large ones
by a factor of hundreds or so,
you're talking about a serious
quantity, it's like an insect belt
around the world.
So, how many insects
do you eat a year?
Oh, not on purpose, you mean?
Not on purpose.
- Are you inhaling them all the time?
- Yes.
- And then they get stopped
by your systems. - There are
a few myths on the internet -
most people might eat
eight spiders a year.
The myth is,
that when you're sleeping,
spiders crawl into your mouth.
- Please, please, tell me that's
not true. - It is not true.
LEE: No, it's hedgehogs.
SANDI: That wouldn't be so bad,
you'd know it was coming.
There's an internet thing
about it being a pound a year,
which is overdoing it,
but to give an example,
in the USA there are laws
about how much insect matter
can be sold in food. Right? So...
the average jar of peanut butter
is legally permitted
to contain 30 insect fragments
per 100 grams.
Well, that's what makes it crunchy.
And...
Get the smooth stuff,
there's nothing in it.
And one rodent hair.
SANDI: No!
That's an allowable limit.
There's a weird thing on food safety
where's there an amount
of faeces allowed as well.
- That's right.
- Which is really distressing.
Yes. Tomato juice is allowed
to contain ten fly eggs,
or two maggots,
from the drosophila fly
per 500ml.
Ginger is allowed
3mg of mammalian excreta per 100g.
Um, fig paste is allowed to contain
13 or more insect heads per 100g.
Ground marjoram,
the kind you find in a spice jar,
can contain 1,175
insect fragments per 10g.
Pot Noodle, do what you like.
The point is,
there are allowable levels of tiny
bits of insects in most food.
It wouldn't be pounds a year,
but we have bits of insect inside us
whether we like it or not.
You know when you get
the ingredients on the side,
people are obsessed by calories,
and what are the ingredients, does
it have E numbers in? Is it fresh?
That whole thing. But they never
write "tiny bit of shit in this."
I mean, not much!
But your recommended
daily allowance...
- of shit in this tomato juice.
- "May contain crap."
- Yeah, "may contain a bit of crap."
- Now, eyes front,
I spy general ignorance up ahead.
What can you tell me about
the lifespan of this lobster?
BUZZER
I don't know but look at the size
of the fish he's just caught.
LAUGHTER
APPLAUSE
I don't think the fish was that big,
he's just giving it all that.
- In theory, a lobster
can live forever. In theory.
- It's not one of these, is it?
Yes, it is. The point is,
you can't tell the age of a lobster.
FANFARE AND APPLAUSE
- So you say you can't tell
the age of a lobster? - No.
- They shed their actual...
The whole skin comes off. - Did you
say lobsters can live forever?
In theory. The trouble is,
we don't know, because they live
so far down on the ocean's floor,
there may be giant submarine-sized
lobsters for all we know,
but we've never seen them.
Yes, and they have a special
protease-type DNA enzyme
called telomerase
which basically replaces lost DNA
during cell division,
so that their cells remain young
and pristine each time they divide.
Unlike with us, where they just get
flabbier and flabbier.
The largest on record was caught
off Nova Scotia in 1977. It was
3.5 foot long from tail to claw.
- 3.5 foot? That's a lot smaller
than a submarine. - Yes, it's a lot
smaller than this studio.
It's a lot smaller than many things,
but the largest lobster ever caught.
LAUGHTER
- Yeah, Lee! - Sandi did say
they could be as big as a submarine.
- Sorry, I missed that bit.
- That's all right.
Just so you know, I didn't randomly
say, "3.5 foot, I've got an
interesting fact about 3.5 foot,
"a lot smaller than a submarine.
Back to you, Stephen. Beat that
with your interesting facts!"
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
It was relevant to what she said.
That would be a bonkers way to...
I've got slightly too used to you
saying rather stupid things.
LAUGHTER
- I apologise on bended knees.
- You mean stupid things like
lobsters can live forever
and grow to the size of submarines?
- What doesn't make sense in the
picture is it shouldn't be red.
- Why not?
Because it's in the water, it should
be black. Are they not only red...
SIREN BLARES
You thought it was dead.
No. The vast majority of lobsters
are a sort of darkish colour,
with little bits of
iridescent colours on them,
but you can get red ones.
- Have you ever seen a blue lobster?
- I'm not falling for this again,
Stephen. Have you?
- Er, I don't think I have seen one.
- Would you like to see
a blue lobster? Oh, here we go.
- Go on. Is it going to hurt?
- There, have a look behind you
and you'll see a nice blue lobster.
Look at that. Every now and again
you get a really blue lobster.
I just think BP have got
a lot to answer for.
LAUGHTER
- It looks like it's been sprayed
by a vandal.
- It does look like it.
But Sandi was right about it
detaching itself from its old shell.
It does that 25 times in
the first five years of its life.
And each time it does, it grows
by 50 percent. But it's a really
odd business and quite dangerous.
It has to detach itself
from its old shell.
It has teeth inside its stomach
and they're part of the exoskeleton
so the lobster has to pull out
the lining of its throat,
stomach and anus
- every time it gets rid of its shell.
- I've had hangovers
where I've felt like that.
LAUGHTER
Ohh!
They also, rather like the people
of Doncaster, communicate with
each other by urinating.
LAUGHTER
- Hang on, why Doncaster? - I was there
with a TV crew on Friday night
and there was a lot of weeing.
- You should have been at Wembley
at a cup final. - It was horrible
on the terrace when it used to...
- It used to rush down the terraces.
- You know how they get
the Champagne glasses and do that?
- Yes. Exactly.
- That's where they got the idea from.
All bubbling at the bottom.
In America, you can buy
a Stadium Pal. A Stadium Pal.
- This is a little thing you can
pee in. - It's a thing you attach
to yourself and it goes in a bottle.
And they've developed one for women,
but it looks a bit more like
a gravy boat. I'm not sure.
- Now with wings! - That would be good
for long journeys in the car, too.
- There is a thing you can pee into
in the car. - You pee in a bag. - Yeah.
You can pee in a bag anyway,
no-one's stopping you.
If you're not allowed to use a mobile
phone in a car, you're not allowed to
urinate in a bag.
- You pull over. - If you pull over,
why don't you go in a tree?
- Go in a tree? - In a tree.
Not in a tree, against a tree.
I don't mean carry a woodpecker
with you at all times.
"Tap a hole in there for us!"
LAUGHTER
"Fill it in and on your way!"
I really need to pee now.
Oh...not long. You always...
Why do you always need a pee?
I drink loads of coffee,
pints of coffee. I run on caffeine.
- OK, let's get on.
Anyone have to pee?
- Want that?
Don't do that to him, that's cruel.
APPLAUSE
Which side is it?
- He can't tell! - Which side?
Get it the right way round,
for God's sake.
It'll be like Wembley again.
- Don't you dare! - You know, I never
thought I'd see...
- Shh, shh!
- You're making it come back.
- Never thought I'd see Einstein
in that position.
Not so clever now, are you? Yeah.
Suddenly it's...P = MC squared!
CHEERING
So, the fact is,
it's impossible to age a lobster.
What would they have called
this shop in the olden days?
Well, I'm guessing not an old pork
pie shop? That's a bit too easy.
- How do you pronounce it, you mean?
- How do you pronounce it?
BUZZER
- Lee? - "Yee Old Pork Pie Shopp-ee."
SIREN BLARES
Oh, no!
- It's... That's not pronounced "Yee."
- OK.
- It's pronounced...
BUZZER
- Yeah? - "Yey!" - No.
- Old porkie pie shop. - No, you said
it. - It's "the". - Why is it "the"?
- It's the way they wrote it down,
isn't it? - It's because it's
not a Y. It looks like a Y,
and they used Ys when printing
came in. It's an Old English letter
from Anglo-Saxon called the thorn,
which is the letter for a "th",
like a Greek theta.
When printing came in,
a lot of them didn't bother
making a separate thorn,
they used the Y
cos it was so similar,
so when they were writing "the",
they would put a Y in.
But they knew to pronounce it "the",
and that, much as we do
in texts and tweets these days,
it's been very common for human
beings to abbreviate, and they
abbreviated "that", to "yt", th't.
Whenever you see in old churches
"ye this" or "ye that" or you see
"ye olde" it's actually "the".
- What about "Old-ee"? - You don't
pronounce the silent "e" on it.
- "Shopp-ee"?
- Or "Shoppe".
- I haven't got one word right.
Here we go, I've got one. Pie? Yes!
- Spot on! - Get in! Now, how do you say
that tricky one in the middle?
How northern is that? If someone's
just flicked onto this show,
and said, "Oh, Lee Mack's on."
And you go, "Pie!"
and there's a round of applause.
LAUGHTER
In which war did both sides fight
under the Union Jack?
BUZZER
Ye Second World War.
Both sides fought under the Union...
What, the Germans?
I wanted to get a gag in about "ye",
I can't think of any other wars,
I just... I panicked.
I panicked after the "ye".
Cos what's happened, I've said
"ye", it hasn't got a laugh,
I have to back it up with a fact,
I've gone in, worst possible war.
Everything about it -
the joke was wrong,
the story is inaccurate,
everything about that
was totally terrible.
The explanation was brilliant,
I have to say.
- Which war is most likely to involve
both sides?
- English Civil War.
SIREN WAILS
- American Civil War. - No.
It hadn't come into existence
as a flag by then.
- Is it... - The American War Of
Independence is the right answer.
Because the British
flew the Union Jack,
Union Flag as it was then known.
And George Washington designed
the Stars And Stripes
and, in fact, the canton -
the important quarter of the flag -
was the Union Jack.
So you can see an example of
an early American Union Flag
with the Union Jack in its corner.
- The stripes... The stars -
Betsy Ross hadn't made that yet.
- That's right.
There is one state in America
that has a Union Jack
still in its state flag.
- Do you know which state that is?
- I would say...Alaska.
Who are you going to ask? Sandi?
CHEERING
Hey-hey! Erm...
I don't know,
but I would guess Virginia.
- No, it's not. It's actually Hawaii.
- Oh, is it?
- Hawaii has a Union Jack
in the state flag.
- Ooh!
What went up by 57%
during the Blitz?
BUZZER
Yeah?
House prices?
LAUGHTER
- They might, but no.
- Was it Mother Brown's knees?
- By 57 %?
- They were always up listening to the
Cockneys during the Blitz. Always up.
- The birth rate? - No.
- Grave robbing? - Crime.
- Oh! - Crime went up a huge amount
during the Blitz. - Sorry, do you
count crime as dropping bombs?
Because if that is listed as a crime,
there was a lot of that going on.
It's not a crime, in acts of war,
to do that, unfortunately. But I'm
talking about Londoners' crime.
Mad Frankie Fraser actually said,
"It was a tragedy
when Hitler surrendered,
"because wartime London
was a criminal's paradise."
That's the way he put it.
All you had to do was get
an ARP Warden, you know,
like Hodges in Dad's Army,
"Napoleon!", all that. You put one
of those on and people just obey
you, and a tin hat with a "W" on it.
And people would actually help them
load their cars
with stuff they'd stolen.
"Here, come here! Help me load
this car!" They'd go, "Ooh, yes,"
because you were a warden.
- Are you suggesting that's what
the Queen Mother was doing
in the East End? - No!
- My granddad was one of those, an ARP
warden. - Was he? - Well, he says that.
- Oh, I'm sure he was.
- So was it mainly looting? - There was
looting, there was also scams.
There was one fellow called Handy
who made a claim for his house being
bombed - for which you got ￡500 -
19 times...
before they caught onto him.
And ordinary people
were also committing crimes
through ration books.
People who didn't think of
themselves as criminals
were black-marketeering,
or involving themselves in the black
market. Generally speaking, it was
a very good time to be a criminal,
because the police and everybody
were concerned with bombs falling
on houses and incendiary bombs.
Is there truth in... I read a thing
about... A house would be bombed
and the people would be dead,
- people would come
and steal watches... - Oh, yes.
- It's really grizzly. - I'm afraid
it is. We think of it as our
finest hour and of the Blitz spirit.
Unfortunately, there's another side
to it. There was a huge amount
of bravery and camaraderie
and communal spirit and so on,
but there was also, sadly,
the darker side.
Now, I spy with my little eye,
the scores,
and how interesting they are.
In first place,
by really quite a long way,
is Sandi Toksvig with 12 points!
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
And in second place,
with minus four, Jimmy Carr!
APPLAUSE
Oh! Very happy with that.
Only just in third place,
with minus five, Lee Mack!
APPLAUSE
I'll take that - third.
Best I've done.
And a proud fourth place with
double-I, minus 11, is Alan Davies!
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
So, it's thanks to
Sandi, Jimmy, Lee and Alan.
And as Yogi Berra said,
"You can observe a lot by watching."
Goodnight.
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd
Good evening, good evening, good
evening, good evening, good evening
and welcome to QI, where tonight,
once again, the Is have it.
I spy with my little eye
the illustrious Sandi Toksvig!
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
The indubitable Jimmy Carr!
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Thank you.
The incorrigible Lee Mack!
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Thank you.
And the 'ilarious Alan Davies.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
And I hear with my little ear
their buzzers. Sandi goes...
"Aye-aye."
LAUGHTER
- Jimmy goes... - "Oi-oi!"
LAUGHTER
- Lee goes...
- "Aye-aye-aye-aye-aye!"
LAUGHTER
And Alan goes...
"# I've got
a lovely bunch of coconuts"
LAUGHTER
Don't forget
your Nobody Knows Joker.
FANFARE
"Nobody knows!"
That's the one.
There is a question to which
the answer is, "Nobody knows"
and if you can predict which that
question is and wave your banner,
you'll get points.
And so to question I,
I mean question one.
No, I was right the first time.
What's the difference
between an ai and an aye-aye?
Have you heard of an ai?
It's a very useful word in Scrabble.
- A-I. - Yes. Oh, yes! It's a sloth.
- A sloth! Exactly. But what about
an aye-aye?
- Two sloths.
LAUGHTER
All right, so we've got the ai.
Where does the ai live?
- Where does it live? - In a tree.
- Yeah. In which part of the world
would you expect to find it?
- South America. - Yes.
They're wonderful things.
They look like humans
dressed in a sloth costume.
But to be fair, you could say that
about any animal. A giraffe looks
like a human in a giraffe costume.
- You look at a picture of an ai and
I think you'll see what I mean.
- Oh!
- That does look like a person in a
costume. - He's climbing a tree which
looks like a man dressed as a tree.
LAUGHTER
Yes.
He also looks like he's made of
that stuff they used to make
dish mops out of.
- Their heads are very
disproportionate. - They are.
They live up to their name.
They're very lazy.
They only come down to defecate.
- They come down from a tree
to defecate? - Yes. - The benefit
of living in a tree is you can...
- Poo on whomever you like? - Maybe
they've got a downstairs toilet.
- Yes.
- Hadn't thought of that, had you?
- Once you've had it put in,
you want to use it. Absolutely.
Very unusually for mammals,
they need to bask in the sun
to warm up their metabolism.
So that's the ai. We've got the ai.
But tell me about the aye-aye.
- Is it spelt the same as the ai?
- No. - Obviously there's more letters.
- It's AYE-hyphen-AYE.
- Aye-aye, sir. - And I happen
to have been and seen one.
Very few people have, cos it's
one of the most endangered species.
- Is it a Geordie version of that?
- Aye-aye? No, that's the why-aye.
- Oh. - Are we in the same part
of the world?
- We're not in the same part
of the world. - Is it a sloth? - No.
It's more closely related to us.
It's a primate.
- Primate? - But it's not an ape
or a monkey. What other kinds...
- Is it the aye-aye orang-utan?
- Lemur? - Lemur. It's a lemur.
- Therefore, it must come from only
one place on earth.
- Oh! - Bradford.
LAUGHTER
It looks like someone's
put some water on a gremlin.
LAUGHTER
Yes.
That's exactly right.
Which you know you mustn't do.
- I would think that the animal
on the left has an easier job
getting a well-fitting hat. - Yes.
LAUGHTER
- And a girlfriend. - Yes.
- That may be why the aye-aye is so
endangered. - It's Madagascar. - That's
the only place you get lemurs.
You can't see there, but they have
the most extraordinary middle finger
which is fully extended
and looks like a dried twig.
Really unusual. They tap with
their finger on the barks of trees
and bring out little worms
and grubs which they catch
and eat off their finger,
- like a piece of cutlery. - So nature
has designed them to eat Hula Hoops?
- Basically. - That's extraordinary.
Zoologists would say they fill
the niche that woodpeckers filled
in other environments.
There are superstitions about
them, that if you... Pardon me.
If I did this to you, or this,
- if one of those did that to you,
that'd be... - That's right.
It's called the Fady, which is the
taboo system of the local people,
and because
they're nocturnal creatures
and because they look so weird,
they regard them as a curse and they
have a habit of killing them.
- It does look like a really bad
hair transplant.
- It does.
Well, I'm not surprised
people kill them.
Never mind superstition, if you walk
across a street doing that,
you're going to get a guy going,
- "I can take him on." - And also, I'm
not surprised they're endangered,
cos they're clearly not mating,
are they? They're looking at each
other and going, "I'd rather not".
- It is dark, remember. - All the ugly
ones come out in the dark.
LAUGHTER
- That's how Jimmy mates. - Oh!
"I'm happy to do it, love, but it'll
have to be with the lights off."
JIMMY LAUGHS
LAUGHTER
I can't believe
your wife told you that story.
LAUGHTER
Oh!
APPLAUSE
- It's like...
- I even did that in a northern accent.
It's like watching two 1970s
northern comics having a row.
"Funny, cos your wife said..." "Your
wife doesn't exist." "You what?"
LAUGHTER
- They do that on the streets
of New York with "your mama".
- They do what with my mama?
LAUGHTER
- Why don't you say "one's mama"?
- One's mama. - Yeah.
- I'd love you to do that
on the streets of New York.
- One's mama. - "Oh, one's mama to you!"
Yes. That'll jolly well show them!
Anyway, you didn't get that right,
so let's try it again.
What's the difference
between an "aye" and an "aye-aye"?
- It's the same question.
- Yes, but with different answers.
BUZZER
- Is it different answers?
- Yes. - Oh. I don't know, then.
LAUGHTER
- Maybe this time, aye-aye, sir.
Is it "Aye-aye, sir" and "Aye, sir"
are two different things? - Yes.
That's the difference.
In the navy... There's
Kenneth Williams. A shining example!
Do you know how they separate
the men from the boys in the navy?
With a crowbar.
LAUGHTER
- Oh, dear. - Aww!
As you know, they say, "Aye" in the
navy, but they also say, "Aye-aye".
And there is a difference
and I want you to tell me
what that difference is.
Does "Aye" mean yes,
as in "What do you want?"
So you go, "You!" "Aye?"
"Go and mop the floor." "Aye-aye."
Basically, yes. "Aye"
is an agreement or an assent.
So the captain might say,
"Nice morning, isn't it?" and
the sailor would say, "Aye, sir."
But he might say,
"Order hands to bathe"
and then he'd go, "Aye-aye, sir"
- meaning, "I heard your order,
I'll carry it out". - Wash my hands.
- No. - What does it mean?
All hands overboard. Sounds like,
"Jump in the water".
- Hands are what you call
the ship's company.
- All sailors have a bath together.
Yes, in the sea. "Hands to bathe"
means, when they're in nice waters,
they let the men swim in the sea.
But don't take your hats off.
LAUGHTER
- Whatever you do! - Don't take
your hats off, the seagulls
might need somewhere to land.
Are they singing a song
while that's going on?
- If synchronised swimmers
dressed like that, you'd think more
of the sport. - You would!
- It'd get on TV more. - Also, you
could combine it with Total Wipeout.
You could run across the top as
they're doing synchronised swimming.
More Is now. Why won't this woman
stop staring at you?
BUZZER
She's only human.
LAUGHTER
She's got her needs, like any woman.
LAUGHTER
- Are we being suggested to say
cos her eyes are following you
around the room? - Yeah, they do.
They don't literally
follow you around the room,
but that experience is, wherever you
are in relation to that painting,
- she is looking at you.
- What if you're behind her?
Behind the painting?
That only works on paintings of owls.
LAUGHTER
What's the most famous painting
in the Wallace Collection in London?
You know you're looking at
the wrong person, don't you?
LAUGHTER
- It's only... - Lee, I wasn't looking
at you. - Sometimes your eyes
follow me round the room, Stephen.
- Sandi... - I honestly thought
someone was stood behind me.
- It is the Cavalier?
- It is the Laughing Cavalier.
- The Laughing Cavalier? - Very good.
That has the same quality, as well.
It's true of a lot of portraits.
Surely any painting where the person
is looking at the artist.
It's not unique to that painting.
- No, it isn't. - Any painting where
the subject is looking towards the
camera, for want of a better word.
But if you have a painting
where someone's looking down, even
if you get down to the eye level,
- it will never look at you.
- You would look mad in an art gallery
doing that.
LAUGHTER
- He's looking at me! - Look at me!
- But it DOESN'T look at you.
- They only look at you when they're
looking straight out. - It's not
like that in Scooby-Doo, though.
- There's somebody behind the painting
and they really are following
you around. - In horror films.
- Exactly. - If you were to look at me
now, and I walked over there
and you fixed your gaze forward, you
wouldn't be looking at me. So you'd
think it'd be true of the painting.
But you're not looking at
the eyes of the painting,
you're looking through
the eyes of the artist.
So wherever you stand, you look
through the eyes of the artist,
not your own eyes. Good night.
- Rather beautifully put.
- Stephen is three-dimensional
and the painting is two-dimensional
- so that doesn't work. - But I'm
looking at you through my eyes.
So if I walk over there,
I'm still looking at you
through my eyes so it doesn't work.
But I'm not looking at HIS eyes,
the subject's eyes -
I'm looking through the artist's eyes
and they stay fixed at all times.
So it's like bending light. It's like
having a telescope that bends round,
- you're looking through the artist's
eyes. - In a nice way, I'm going to say
I don't think you fully understood.
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
If you change the word "nice"
to "patronising", that works.
LAUGHTER
- Well... - And you're kind with
the word "fully" cos I don't think
I understood any of it.
LAUGHTER
Anyway, we've got a little example
of an optical illusion here.
If you photograph it in the right
way, as you're about to see,
the eye plays
extraordinary tricks on you.
So there it is. This is Einstein.
There he is in profile.
And there's the inverted bit,
but hello, your eye tells you that's
poking outwards, and yet it isn't.
That's the inside bit.
And your eye refuses to believe it
until you get to that.
- Oh, you're twisting my melon, man.
- Isn't that extraordinary?
- Why does it do that?
- Because your brain is programmed
to recognise human faces.
One of the first things babies do
is look at faces,
and you expect to see a face
- and even though you know
it isn't a real face...
- Ahh.
- ..your brain fills in the gaps.
- I did it again.
- It's an astonishing illusion.
- Does it only work with Einstein?
- No!
LAUGHTER
- Would it work with another man?
- It would work with any human being.
- Ahh! - It's very creepy.
- It's amazing, isn't it? - But I can't
believe it did the same trick twice.
- I know.
- Listen, we're not going to fall
for it this time. - And yet...
LAUGHTER
Not three times.
Outside, outside, outside,
outside, outside.
- This is going to be inside, Lee.
This one's inside. - Inside. - Inside.
- Ahh! - Oh!
How does he do it? How does he do it?
- It's so clever. - He's so clever. - We
literally filmed this. You can see,
- that's all it is.
- This is a great trick. I might cut my
head in half and scoop out my brain.
LAUGHTER
What a wonderful thing. It would
make the most wonderful blancmange.
LAUGHTER
Are we going to bother with
the rest of the show?
Cos I could happily just...
LAUGHTER
I mean, it's lovely chatting
and everything,
- and I love what we do,
but let's just... - You're hypnotised.
- Have you got any others apart from
Einstein? - No. But we can make the
Queen happy or sad with a ￡5 note.
You can do this with your own
￡5 notes. We'll give you a
demonstration. You do a little fold.
Aww. Ahh!
Aww. Ahh!
LAUGHTER
APPLAUSE
- That's brilliant. - Do you remember
when they ran the Derby,
her horse, Carlton House?
"It's winning, it's winning,
it's going to win the Derby!
Oh, bollocks."
LAUGHTER
It came third and a Frenchman won.
- Does it only work on a fiver?
Does it work on bigger money?
- It'll work on most denominations.
- And will it work on the Queen
if you tilt HER? - It will also work
on the sovereign herself.
Is that why she looks so sad
when she's bowing?
Not that the Queen bows much.
- She's probably never bowed
in her life. - No, I've met her.
- Does she bow? - She does, yes.
LAUGHTER
Another thing is to find out
where and how we look.
There is a whole science
called gaze detection.
- No, I do not...
LAUGHTER
- Don't even look at me.
It's a science, is it, Stephen?
LAUGHTER
- It's actually a "dar" I believe.
- No, not the gaydar.
Gaze detection. G-A-Z-E.
And there are tests done
between men and women and the
different way they look at bodies.
When women look at a human being,
they look at their faces.
- When men look at a human being...
- I know this.
Yes. Yes, they...
- It's the... - I'm afraid they look at
their faces and their groins.
- Their personality. - Yeah.
And their groins.
And the American Kennel Association,
even more disturbingly,
found that when looking at animals,
women look at the dog's face,
men look at the dog's face
and genitals.
There are some things
you can't hide.
And gaze detection is most important
commercially, though, for what?
For the new idea that I've just had
of writing advertising slogans
on ladies' groins.
- No! - We're going to be rich, Stephen!
- No! - It's not just ladies' groins.
- Men look at men's groins, as well.
- I'm afraid they do.
You wouldn't get much of a slogan
on a Chihuahua, would you?
LAUGHTER
- You wouldn't get much of a slogan
on me, never mind the Chihuahua.
- Oh, now!
- Why, though? Why do boys look at
dogs' genitals?
- This is news to us.
LAUGHTER
This is news to all of us.
There's not one man in the room
thinking this is observational
comedy, going, "That's me".
LAUGHTER
- We're all going, "What?
We look at dogs' genitals?" - You may
not know you do it, but you do it.
This is what the experiments show.
It's most useful in merchandising
in supermarkets,
to see that there are certain areas
in any store
where people are automatically drawn
and therefore
they are the most valuable,
so the items that go there
are the ones that are being pushed.
So if you really wanted
to sell something to men,
have a beautiful woman walk past,
and you'd look at the things right
by her eye and she'd have a dog
with her with large genitals.
LAUGHTER
Yes. You're conflating
the various things I've said.
I'm still horrified by men
looking at dogs' genitals!
LAUGHTER
- Do we do the same with horses?
- It is news to men.
Horses don't do anything
for our self-esteem.
LAUGHTER
I went to a wedding in a beautiful
country church and it was
in the middle of fields and so on,
and the couple were having
their picture taken,
and not one of us had noticed
there was a horse in the field
just behind the happy couple
who had the biggest area
of expertise I've ever seen.
LAUGHTER
That's all you can see
in the photographs.
LAUGHTER
They couldn't crop it out,
it was so large.
Well, we must move on, charming as
this is. The way to get the eyes
to follow you around the room
is to paint them
looking straight ahead.
Next, a question about infancy.
Which best-selling children's author
has something to say on rabid dogs,
suicide victims, slaughtering cattle
and how to tie your shoelaces?
BUZZER
- Yes, Lee? - Katie Price.
LAUGHTER
- It's a wild stab in the dark...
- That was the title of her second
book. How To Slaughter Cattle?
- Yeah. - Yeah? This has probably sold
150 million copies
since its first publication.
- In a children's book?
- A book written for children.
Look at the boys looking round
at the dog's genitals.
LAUGHTER
He is! That's Dick on the left.
Dick, Anne and Julian.
And Dick is looking at Timmy's bits.
Girls, eyes forward.
Boys going, "Hello!"
- You see, even Enid Blyton knew.
- It's an old English book?
- Published in the Edwardian era.
- Are we looking for the name
of the book or the author?
The name of the author was Robert,
later Lord, Baden-Powell.
- Oh, Scouting For Boys? - Scouting
For Boys is the right answer.
Scouting For Boys
has got something on suicide?
- It has. It has an amazing entry.
Maybe you'd like to hear it.
- I would love to hear it.
"When a man attempts suicide..."
They don't count women, "..a scout
should know what to do with him."
LAUGHTER
"In a case where the would-be
suicide has taken poison,
"give milk and make him vomit
by tickling the inside of the
throat with a finger or a feather.
"In the case of hanging,
cut down the body at once,
"taking care to support it
with one arm while cutting the cord.
- "A tenderfoot,"
which is scouting for novice...
- They make that sound very simple.
"..is sometimes inclined to be timid
about handling an insensible
or a dead man, or even seeing blood.
"Well, he won't be much use
till he gets over such nonsense."
LAUGHTER
There you are. Advice to young boys
on how to slaughter cattle.
"If you're a beginner
in slaughtering with a knife,
"it's sometimes useful to first
drop the animal insensible
by a heavy blow with a big hammer
"or the back of a felling axe
on top of the head."
LAUGHTER
- Kindest thing to do, really.
- Stopping a runaway horse?
- Does he give advice on that? - He does.
- Lie down. - That would stop the horse?
- Oh, no, they don't tread on you.
- Oh, I know, play dead.
- How would that stop the horse?
- I'm thinking of a ferocious
grizzly bear again, aren't I?
What you don't do is stand
in front of it waving your arms.
That's the mistake to make.
- You go to the side and ease it
towards the side of a wall or house.
- When it's running?
You ease a running horse
to the side of a wall, yeah?
"Don't worry, lads,
I'll just ease this running horse
to the side of a wall."
It can see out of the corner of
its eye, and it will slow it down,
according to Baden-Powell.
"Give us a hand!"
"I can't, Uncle Pete's hung himself."
- What about saving someone
who's fallen in front of a train?
- Oh, I know this,
you ease the train up against a wall.
LAUGHTER
"If the train is very close,
lie flat between the rails,
"make the man do the same
till the train passes over,
"while everyone else will be
running about screaming,
excited and doing nothing."
- You jump on the track with him
and push his head down?
- Yes. - Sure, I'd do that(!)
- Is there such a big gap between
the wheels? - There is in the movies
but I wouldn't be the one to try it.
It'd be great if you hung yourself
and a scout cut you down, and you
went, "OK, I'll jump under a train."
"He's here again!"
LAUGHTER
"Hello, mate!"
I was once given a book that was
given to women in the 17th century,
and it was advice for young ladies,
and the advice for the marriage bed,
it says, "Of the marriage bed, we
can't speak of a husband's appetite,
"so we will describe it
in terms of food."
And what it said is that you must
feed your husband
whenever he's hungry,
feed him a variety of meals,
or you will soon find
he's eating next door.
LAUGHTER
I like this book, was it called The
Good Old Days?
Goodness gracious me! With that in
mind, here's an initiative test.
What should you do if you were
to meet a friendly jackal?
Well, I know where my eyes are going!
LAUGHTER
Do they use their friendliness
to lure you into a terrible trap?
Well, they sort of do.
- But how can it be friendly?
I don't understand the concept.
- That's the point.
They're only friendly under one
circumstance, because they're wild
animals, they're not tameable.
- It's if they have rabies. - Oh!
One of the symptoms of rabies
in wild animals
is that they become very docile
and they will approach humans
and look rather submissive.
A great mistake
would be to pet them.
Is the hint not that they
are frothing at the mouth, usually?
They don't always froth at the
mouth, so you can't always tell.
I did a trip for the BBC in which
I canoed the Zambezi,
which I don't recommend.
You get a condition I can only
describe as trench bottom.
I was told all the way down to avoid
all dogs because of rabies.
I was very surprised to see that
most of the local people
had a dog with them,
and I thought, "That's nice.
"They've all got a pet." But it
turns out that's not the case.
They've got the dog in case
they're attacked by a crocodile.
So what they do is throw the dog.
They throw the dog at the crocodile
as a sort of a tapas.
- My God! - I'm sorry, did your boat
have a dog? - No. - They had you?
"We've got a small lady from the BBC
we're using. Don't tell anyone."
If you meet a friendly jackal,
you should probably give it a good
kicking to be on the safe side.
The next question requires
a bit of intelligence.
Who finished off Russia's
greatest love machine?
BUZZER
Boney M.
LAUGHTER
No, he can't say that!
How has he got away with that?
- We're talking about Rasputin? - We
are. - Let's go through the lyrics.
This is all I know about Rasputin.
- Ra, Ra Rasputin,
Russia's greatest love machine.
- Lover of the Russian Queen.
Yes. This is how I learned history.
- If it doesn't rhyme, it can't be
true. - Do you mean who killed him?
- Yes. - We don't really know.
- Is it that moment?
Everybody tried, didn't say?
There was a prostitute who tried.
I like the way Sandi led us
into that. "Nobody knows,
but I do, you fools!"
There's a man who's
given credit for it,
who claimed to be responsible,
who was Prince Felix Yusupov.
It seems that he wasn't
personally responsible for it.
He claimed to have poisoned him
and the poison didn't work,
then they shot him.
There's Grigor Rasputin. He was
just plain shot in the forehead.
They tried to poison him and then he
was shot and then he was drowned,
and then they got him out of the
river and they decided to burn him,
and my favourite bit,
which I'm sure is not true,
is that he then sat up in the fire.
- He sat up? - It was all part of
demonising this extraordinary man.
What was his importance to Russia?
Why was he worth killing?
- Do you know anything about him?
- He had the ear of the Tsarina.
- He had the ear of the Tsarina,
exactly. - He had more than her ear!
There were rumours.
He certainly shagged a lot of women,
because he had a peculiar
theological belief that the more
you sinned the more holy you were,
which is rather handy.
He basically had the freedom
of the palace,
and this was when Russia was about
to join the First World War,
and he tried to persuade
the Tsar and Tsarina not
to go to war with Germany.
So one of the countries that had
a great interest in the death
of Rasputin was Britain.
Because we were at war with Germany,
and we wanted at least
half the German Army
to be occupied on the Eastern Front
fighting the Russians.
- He doesn't look like a love machine.
- It so happens the last bullet
that went into the brain
of Rasputin was from a gun
that came from an MI6 operative.
We don't know
if it was a British plot.
But certainly it benefited Britain
that Rasputin was killed,
because it kept Russia
in the war for longer.
He must have had
a good chat-up line,
cos if you saw him at a party
you wouldn't think,
"I bet he pulls by the end."
Anyway, the point was,
Prince Yusupov arranged a party,
and he claimed in his autobiography
that he gave cakes and drinks
to Rasputin which were
filled with cyanide
and he didn't seem to move at all,
and then they stabbed him
and then they shot him,
and he got up again,
so then they threw him in the river,
and they found when his body
was exhumed that he has drowned.
An autopsy showed
it just wasn't true.
If I was at a party and they were
giving out cakes full of cyanide
and then they stabbed me,
I would leave then.
I would make my excuses,
no matter how rude it appeared,
before they got their gun out.
I think I'd go, "Do you know what,
I've got an early morning."
What about the durable Mike Malloy?
Have you heard of him?
Now, he is a man who really
wouldn't die.
This is a very extraordinary story.
The durable Mike Malloy.
We're in the age of prohibition,
and we're in New York City.
We've got a gang of criminals,
because anyone who runs a speakeasy
is a criminal in prohibition,
and they hit on a scam.
They thought,
"We'll get some drunks,
"we'll get them to sign life
insurance forms to our benefit,
"and then we'll feed them
so much alcohol that they'll die.
"And we'll get all the money."
What can go wrong?
Had they never met
Irish people before?
They were bankrupt!
They ran out of booze!
Owner Anthony Marino hatched
this plan, got this Irishman,
he was Irish, they befriended him,
they plied him with free drinks,
and they got him to sign
three different life insurance
policies amounting to nearly 2,000,
a lot of money in those days.
After several weeks of free booze,
they started to get a bit impatient,
because he wasn't dying.
He kept singing the same songs!
God, he's doing that one again!
# Oh, Danny boy... #
"He seems tipsy."
They started adding antifreeze,
he collapsed a bit,
but he kept coming back
for more drink.
So they then gave him drinks
that were filled with turpentine,
horse liniment, rat poison,
rotten oysters in wood alcohol
and sardines
mixed with carpet tacks.
- None of this had any effect.
- "Thanks very much... I suppose
if it's on the house!"
So next, they got him drunk,
they stripped him naked -
this is midwinter New York -
and they poured five gallons of
cold water on him before
dumping him on a snow bank.
If you've ever been in New York,
midwinter, it is seriously cold,
gets to minus 20 degrees.
Why didn't they just shoot him?
- I think a bullet hole
might have been...
- A giveaway.
I think naked on a mound of snow's
quite a giveaway, isn't it?
He was drunk, having sex
with a snowman(?)
LAUGHTER
But, the police found him -
he turned up the next day saying
"You'll never guess what happened,
they found me in Central Park,
on the snow, naked!
"They took me to a hostel
and got me these nice new clothes."
And so he carried on drinking.
They paid a cab driver 150 bucks
to knock him over.
After two attempts, they left him
sprawled in the road...
Awaiting news of his death,
several weeks later
he came fresh out of hospital,
turning up looking for a drink.
LAUGHTER
So finally they challenged him
to a rigged drinking contest -
they got him really pissed, and then
pushed a gas hose in his throat
and gassed him to death.
- Awww... - So they cheated.
But a few months later -
don't worry - they started
squabbling amongst themselves,
and they all went down the river
to Sing Sing
and got fried in the electric chair,
the whole gang of them.
When you said they put a gas hose
in his mouth, and cheated...
the audience went "Awww!"
But before that, when they were
trying to kill the man...
LAUGHTER
you were going, "Well, that just
sounds like bloody good fun!"
LAUGHTER
"The gas hose -
That's not playing straight."
- Not cricket! - It's an interesting
morality you're working with.
LAUGHTER
Take a good,
hard look at yourselves.
Well, that's the story of
"Durable" Mike Molloy.
A hero of his time, in some ways.
- Did HE tell you that story? - No...
LAUGHTER
And he's here tonight(!)
LAUGHTER
Comes in, naked, full of gas...
IRISH ACCENT:
"Oh, they didn't get me at all!"
He's up there...
LAUGHTER
Now, how many things beginning
with I are there in this picture...?
Oh, now...are we looking at insects?
We are, Alan, you're spot on.
- So...we don't know. - No, I think
there's going to be like,
a square metre of sky
and there's going to be...
a hundred thousand insects.
- There's billions. Millions and
millions...
- We couldn't count it.
They take a square kilometre,
and they use little entomological
radars to see how many there are.
And high up in the air at all times,
there are billions of insects...
So did they find this on the first
Space Shuttle when they didn't have
windscreen wipers...
LAUGHTER
Well, actually in the early days of
flight, Lindbergh and various others
started to do tests, and they put
sticky things on...
Because they were thinking,
"Why are there insects so high up?"
as we got to go higher and higher.
And the record was
they found a termite at 19,000 feet.
- It was on an aeroplane. - No...!
LAUGHTER
30 million large insects,
which is larger than a ladybird,
were discovered by this radar.
But take into account smaller
insects, aphids or parasitic wasps,
which outnumber the large ones
by a factor of hundreds or so,
you're talking about a serious
quantity, it's like an insect belt
around the world.
So, how many insects
do you eat a year?
Oh, not on purpose, you mean?
Not on purpose.
- Are you inhaling them all the time?
- Yes.
- And then they get stopped
by your systems. - There are
a few myths on the internet -
most people might eat
eight spiders a year.
The myth is,
that when you're sleeping,
spiders crawl into your mouth.
- Please, please, tell me that's
not true. - It is not true.
LEE: No, it's hedgehogs.
SANDI: That wouldn't be so bad,
you'd know it was coming.
There's an internet thing
about it being a pound a year,
which is overdoing it,
but to give an example,
in the USA there are laws
about how much insect matter
can be sold in food. Right? So...
the average jar of peanut butter
is legally permitted
to contain 30 insect fragments
per 100 grams.
Well, that's what makes it crunchy.
And...
Get the smooth stuff,
there's nothing in it.
And one rodent hair.
SANDI: No!
That's an allowable limit.
There's a weird thing on food safety
where's there an amount
of faeces allowed as well.
- That's right.
- Which is really distressing.
Yes. Tomato juice is allowed
to contain ten fly eggs,
or two maggots,
from the drosophila fly
per 500ml.
Ginger is allowed
3mg of mammalian excreta per 100g.
Um, fig paste is allowed to contain
13 or more insect heads per 100g.
Ground marjoram,
the kind you find in a spice jar,
can contain 1,175
insect fragments per 10g.
Pot Noodle, do what you like.
The point is,
there are allowable levels of tiny
bits of insects in most food.
It wouldn't be pounds a year,
but we have bits of insect inside us
whether we like it or not.
You know when you get
the ingredients on the side,
people are obsessed by calories,
and what are the ingredients, does
it have E numbers in? Is it fresh?
That whole thing. But they never
write "tiny bit of shit in this."
I mean, not much!
But your recommended
daily allowance...
- of shit in this tomato juice.
- "May contain crap."
- Yeah, "may contain a bit of crap."
- Now, eyes front,
I spy general ignorance up ahead.
What can you tell me about
the lifespan of this lobster?
BUZZER
I don't know but look at the size
of the fish he's just caught.
LAUGHTER
APPLAUSE
I don't think the fish was that big,
he's just giving it all that.
- In theory, a lobster
can live forever. In theory.
- It's not one of these, is it?
Yes, it is. The point is,
you can't tell the age of a lobster.
FANFARE AND APPLAUSE
- So you say you can't tell
the age of a lobster? - No.
- They shed their actual...
The whole skin comes off. - Did you
say lobsters can live forever?
In theory. The trouble is,
we don't know, because they live
so far down on the ocean's floor,
there may be giant submarine-sized
lobsters for all we know,
but we've never seen them.
Yes, and they have a special
protease-type DNA enzyme
called telomerase
which basically replaces lost DNA
during cell division,
so that their cells remain young
and pristine each time they divide.
Unlike with us, where they just get
flabbier and flabbier.
The largest on record was caught
off Nova Scotia in 1977. It was
3.5 foot long from tail to claw.
- 3.5 foot? That's a lot smaller
than a submarine. - Yes, it's a lot
smaller than this studio.
It's a lot smaller than many things,
but the largest lobster ever caught.
LAUGHTER
- Yeah, Lee! - Sandi did say
they could be as big as a submarine.
- Sorry, I missed that bit.
- That's all right.
Just so you know, I didn't randomly
say, "3.5 foot, I've got an
interesting fact about 3.5 foot,
"a lot smaller than a submarine.
Back to you, Stephen. Beat that
with your interesting facts!"
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
It was relevant to what she said.
That would be a bonkers way to...
I've got slightly too used to you
saying rather stupid things.
LAUGHTER
- I apologise on bended knees.
- You mean stupid things like
lobsters can live forever
and grow to the size of submarines?
- What doesn't make sense in the
picture is it shouldn't be red.
- Why not?
Because it's in the water, it should
be black. Are they not only red...
SIREN BLARES
You thought it was dead.
No. The vast majority of lobsters
are a sort of darkish colour,
with little bits of
iridescent colours on them,
but you can get red ones.
- Have you ever seen a blue lobster?
- I'm not falling for this again,
Stephen. Have you?
- Er, I don't think I have seen one.
- Would you like to see
a blue lobster? Oh, here we go.
- Go on. Is it going to hurt?
- There, have a look behind you
and you'll see a nice blue lobster.
Look at that. Every now and again
you get a really blue lobster.
I just think BP have got
a lot to answer for.
LAUGHTER
- It looks like it's been sprayed
by a vandal.
- It does look like it.
But Sandi was right about it
detaching itself from its old shell.
It does that 25 times in
the first five years of its life.
And each time it does, it grows
by 50 percent. But it's a really
odd business and quite dangerous.
It has to detach itself
from its old shell.
It has teeth inside its stomach
and they're part of the exoskeleton
so the lobster has to pull out
the lining of its throat,
stomach and anus
- every time it gets rid of its shell.
- I've had hangovers
where I've felt like that.
LAUGHTER
Ohh!
They also, rather like the people
of Doncaster, communicate with
each other by urinating.
LAUGHTER
- Hang on, why Doncaster? - I was there
with a TV crew on Friday night
and there was a lot of weeing.
- You should have been at Wembley
at a cup final. - It was horrible
on the terrace when it used to...
- It used to rush down the terraces.
- You know how they get
the Champagne glasses and do that?
- Yes. Exactly.
- That's where they got the idea from.
All bubbling at the bottom.
In America, you can buy
a Stadium Pal. A Stadium Pal.
- This is a little thing you can
pee in. - It's a thing you attach
to yourself and it goes in a bottle.
And they've developed one for women,
but it looks a bit more like
a gravy boat. I'm not sure.
- Now with wings! - That would be good
for long journeys in the car, too.
- There is a thing you can pee into
in the car. - You pee in a bag. - Yeah.
You can pee in a bag anyway,
no-one's stopping you.
If you're not allowed to use a mobile
phone in a car, you're not allowed to
urinate in a bag.
- You pull over. - If you pull over,
why don't you go in a tree?
- Go in a tree? - In a tree.
Not in a tree, against a tree.
I don't mean carry a woodpecker
with you at all times.
"Tap a hole in there for us!"
LAUGHTER
"Fill it in and on your way!"
I really need to pee now.
Oh...not long. You always...
Why do you always need a pee?
I drink loads of coffee,
pints of coffee. I run on caffeine.
- OK, let's get on.
Anyone have to pee?
- Want that?
Don't do that to him, that's cruel.
APPLAUSE
Which side is it?
- He can't tell! - Which side?
Get it the right way round,
for God's sake.
It'll be like Wembley again.
- Don't you dare! - You know, I never
thought I'd see...
- Shh, shh!
- You're making it come back.
- Never thought I'd see Einstein
in that position.
Not so clever now, are you? Yeah.
Suddenly it's...P = MC squared!
CHEERING
So, the fact is,
it's impossible to age a lobster.
What would they have called
this shop in the olden days?
Well, I'm guessing not an old pork
pie shop? That's a bit too easy.
- How do you pronounce it, you mean?
- How do you pronounce it?
BUZZER
- Lee? - "Yee Old Pork Pie Shopp-ee."
SIREN BLARES
Oh, no!
- It's... That's not pronounced "Yee."
- OK.
- It's pronounced...
BUZZER
- Yeah? - "Yey!" - No.
- Old porkie pie shop. - No, you said
it. - It's "the". - Why is it "the"?
- It's the way they wrote it down,
isn't it? - It's because it's
not a Y. It looks like a Y,
and they used Ys when printing
came in. It's an Old English letter
from Anglo-Saxon called the thorn,
which is the letter for a "th",
like a Greek theta.
When printing came in,
a lot of them didn't bother
making a separate thorn,
they used the Y
cos it was so similar,
so when they were writing "the",
they would put a Y in.
But they knew to pronounce it "the",
and that, much as we do
in texts and tweets these days,
it's been very common for human
beings to abbreviate, and they
abbreviated "that", to "yt", th't.
Whenever you see in old churches
"ye this" or "ye that" or you see
"ye olde" it's actually "the".
- What about "Old-ee"? - You don't
pronounce the silent "e" on it.
- "Shopp-ee"?
- Or "Shoppe".
- I haven't got one word right.
Here we go, I've got one. Pie? Yes!
- Spot on! - Get in! Now, how do you say
that tricky one in the middle?
How northern is that? If someone's
just flicked onto this show,
and said, "Oh, Lee Mack's on."
And you go, "Pie!"
and there's a round of applause.
LAUGHTER
In which war did both sides fight
under the Union Jack?
BUZZER
Ye Second World War.
Both sides fought under the Union...
What, the Germans?
I wanted to get a gag in about "ye",
I can't think of any other wars,
I just... I panicked.
I panicked after the "ye".
Cos what's happened, I've said
"ye", it hasn't got a laugh,
I have to back it up with a fact,
I've gone in, worst possible war.
Everything about it -
the joke was wrong,
the story is inaccurate,
everything about that
was totally terrible.
The explanation was brilliant,
I have to say.
- Which war is most likely to involve
both sides?
- English Civil War.
SIREN WAILS
- American Civil War. - No.
It hadn't come into existence
as a flag by then.
- Is it... - The American War Of
Independence is the right answer.
Because the British
flew the Union Jack,
Union Flag as it was then known.
And George Washington designed
the Stars And Stripes
and, in fact, the canton -
the important quarter of the flag -
was the Union Jack.
So you can see an example of
an early American Union Flag
with the Union Jack in its corner.
- The stripes... The stars -
Betsy Ross hadn't made that yet.
- That's right.
There is one state in America
that has a Union Jack
still in its state flag.
- Do you know which state that is?
- I would say...Alaska.
Who are you going to ask? Sandi?
CHEERING
Hey-hey! Erm...
I don't know,
but I would guess Virginia.
- No, it's not. It's actually Hawaii.
- Oh, is it?
- Hawaii has a Union Jack
in the state flag.
- Ooh!
What went up by 57%
during the Blitz?
BUZZER
Yeah?
House prices?
LAUGHTER
- They might, but no.
- Was it Mother Brown's knees?
- By 57 %?
- They were always up listening to the
Cockneys during the Blitz. Always up.
- The birth rate? - No.
- Grave robbing? - Crime.
- Oh! - Crime went up a huge amount
during the Blitz. - Sorry, do you
count crime as dropping bombs?
Because if that is listed as a crime,
there was a lot of that going on.
It's not a crime, in acts of war,
to do that, unfortunately. But I'm
talking about Londoners' crime.
Mad Frankie Fraser actually said,
"It was a tragedy
when Hitler surrendered,
"because wartime London
was a criminal's paradise."
That's the way he put it.
All you had to do was get
an ARP Warden, you know,
like Hodges in Dad's Army,
"Napoleon!", all that. You put one
of those on and people just obey
you, and a tin hat with a "W" on it.
And people would actually help them
load their cars
with stuff they'd stolen.
"Here, come here! Help me load
this car!" They'd go, "Ooh, yes,"
because you were a warden.
- Are you suggesting that's what
the Queen Mother was doing
in the East End? - No!
- My granddad was one of those, an ARP
warden. - Was he? - Well, he says that.
- Oh, I'm sure he was.
- So was it mainly looting? - There was
looting, there was also scams.
There was one fellow called Handy
who made a claim for his house being
bombed - for which you got ￡500 -
19 times...
before they caught onto him.
And ordinary people
were also committing crimes
through ration books.
People who didn't think of
themselves as criminals
were black-marketeering,
or involving themselves in the black
market. Generally speaking, it was
a very good time to be a criminal,
because the police and everybody
were concerned with bombs falling
on houses and incendiary bombs.
Is there truth in... I read a thing
about... A house would be bombed
and the people would be dead,
- people would come
and steal watches... - Oh, yes.
- It's really grizzly. - I'm afraid
it is. We think of it as our
finest hour and of the Blitz spirit.
Unfortunately, there's another side
to it. There was a huge amount
of bravery and camaraderie
and communal spirit and so on,
but there was also, sadly,
the darker side.
Now, I spy with my little eye,
the scores,
and how interesting they are.
In first place,
by really quite a long way,
is Sandi Toksvig with 12 points!
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
And in second place,
with minus four, Jimmy Carr!
APPLAUSE
Oh! Very happy with that.
Only just in third place,
with minus five, Lee Mack!
APPLAUSE
I'll take that - third.
Best I've done.
And a proud fourth place with
double-I, minus 11, is Alan Davies!
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
So, it's thanks to
Sandi, Jimmy, Lee and Alan.
And as Yogi Berra said,
"You can observe a lot by watching."
Goodnight.
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd