QI (2003–…): Season 9, Episode 12 - Illumination - full transcript
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Goooood...evening!
Good evening, good evening,
good evening, good evening!
And welcome to QI, the quiz show
that glows in the dark.
Tonight,
we're peering through the gloom
at subjects of illumination
and invisibility.
Joining me under the covers
with a torch, a packet of crisps
and the latest edition
of The Gentleman's Magazine,
we have the enlightened Jack Dee!
APPLAUSE
The illuminating Chris Addison!
APPLAUSE
The incandescent Rich Hall!
APPLAUSE
And that bright spark, Alan Davies!
CHEERING
Now, should any of you wish to draw
attention to your brilliance,
you can light up my life
in this manner...
Jack goes...
LIGHTSABER WHIRRS
Chris goes...
FIREWORKS EXPLODE
Rich goes...
LIGHTNING
And Alan goes...
SWITCH CLICKS
'Oh...'
BOOM!
Good. Now, each of you
should have a set of cards.
During the course of the game, I
want you to see if you can find out
what these international symbols
stand for.
You can decide for yourself.
You can write underneath each...
On top, beside.
They are all recognised
international symbols
for some very real...
That's Lady Gaga!
You've already made your mind up.
You've also got a question-marked
joker card.
One of the questions I ask tonight
has the answer "nobody knows".
If you can guess...
FANFARE
- 'Nobody knows!' - There you are.
LAUGHTER
- That caught you by surprise. - Yes.
If you guess which question it is
to which there's an answer
nobody knows,
you'll get extra points.
Now, in 1879,
the Blackpool Illuminations began.
They were visited by up to
100,000 people from all over Britain
and were so bright that they were
described as "artificial sunshine".
My question simply is,
how many lamps did they use?
I love that the people of Blackpool
consider this to be like sunshine.
- Are you saying we don't know?
We do know. - Ahh!
- We know precisely
how many they used. - Damn!
- Hang on. 1879? - Yes.
So, this is before the invention
of the bulb?
Well done! Certainly before
the invention of the filament bulb
by Thomas Alva Edison, yes.
He didn't have the idea for the
bulb, he had an idea for something
else. He went, "Bing! Oh!"
- "Hey!" - That's very good!
- "I'll do that instead!" - Yes!
- But it, isn't it? - It wasn't
light bulbs as we know them.
They were carbon arc lamps.
They were still used by the
film industry up until the 1980s.
100,000 people visited.
How many lamps did they use
to draw that many people?
- 12. - 12 lamps! You're damn close.
It's eight.
- Is it?! - Yes!
That's what's so extraordinary!
Eight, at a distance
of 370 yards apart,
it was still astonishing enough,
no-one had ever seen anything
like it, to draw crowds.
Back then, there wasn't much to do,
was there?
Everything else was gaslight, which
this was a different sort of light,
and this was a white, bright
daylight sort of light.
What did moths do before then?
I don't know what moths... Moths...
I mean, how...?
Why don't moths come out
during the day if they're so fond
of the bloody light?
- I mean, really!
- They could just sit still and go,
"Wow! This is amazing!"
It's very peculiar!
You know,
Edison electrocuted an elephant.
- He did.
- My favourite fact of all time.
Do you know why?
It was a death sentence,
it was an execution.
- I think you might know this
cos you saw it on QI! - Yes! - Really?
The problem with joining you people
so late is you've covered basically
all human knowledge!
While you were saying it, I thought,
"This rings a bell."
- Maybe that's how I know it.
- "I heard this before."
You are absolutely right.
There is film of it, which you can
see. It's a very tragic sight.
- Elephant snuff movies?!
- Yeah, I'm afraid it's true. - Wow!
- It's very sad.
But Blackpool were keen
to attract people and it worked,
as you probably know
as a lad from the northwest.
In fact, from all over Britain
people, every September,
go just as the season is ending,
the Illuminations go up
and they attract millions of people.
Of course, fabulous celebrities
come to turn on...
Can you name some of the...?
- I think Jayne Mansfield did it.
- Very good, Chris!
- Way, way back. - There she is.
Jayne Mansfield came. - Whoo-hoo!
Then the lads from Top Gear,
so they've maintained the quality(!)
The bloke on the left
can't believe it!
- That's the mayor, I think.
- "This is terrific!"
- Even the mayoress is delighted!
- She is rather!
But other people have opened.
Red Rum.
They made a special pedal
so that when he trod on it,
it turned on. That was in 1977.
And then they electrocuted him.
Michael Ball in 1997
and in 2006, Dale Winton.
They should've electrocuted him!
I think they've peaked!
Where can they go from there?
- Dale's definitely peaked.
- They've reached the top.
- It cost them ?50,000 worth of
electricity... - To get Dale Winton?
No! Of electricity
to run the Illuminations.
Not any more.
They use low-energy light bulbs.
There's no point going for the first
15 minutes of the Illuminations.
You have to wait for it to warm up.
"Three, two, one...!" "Oh."
"Come back in 15 minutes.
They'll be lovely."
Costs over ?2.4 million to stage,
but apparently brings 275 million
to the economy.
Because so many people
come to watch.
- But it's free, innit? - I know, but
they buy fish and chips, they...
?275 million-worth
of fish and chips?!
It brings 3.5 million people
and they don't have to
spend more than ?7
for that to be the amount
of money that they brought in.
The original Blackpool Illuminations
consisted of eight bulbs.
Today, they're six miles long
and use 200 miles of wire
and a million bulbs.
Now, if you can dispel the shadows
on this one for me,
I'd be very grateful.
Why did Mexican revolutionary
Pancho Villa
have to wait for the light?
There he is, Pancho Villa.
He had to wait till the banks were
open before he could rob them.
- Well, Pancho Villa was part of a war
in Mexico. - He was. He was a great...
Quite a tremendous stature
but now reduced to a...
chain of tawdry Mexican restaurants,
where suburban bimbos go
and drink margaritas
for 2 a pitcher and...
- That's it.
- ..weep into their guacamole.
This is why you didn't get
that gig in advertising.
Yeah.
There was a three-part war,
the government of Mexico
against two revolutionaries -
Pancho Villa and...
- Is it Zapata? - Zapata, yes.
"Shoe," I think,
in Mexican, isn't it?
- Yes. - Yeah, in Spanish.
- Whereas Pancho Villa means...
- "House of Pancho." - Yes, I suppose.
He wasn't called Pancho Villa,
was he?
He took his name from his grandad,
the best name I've ever heard.
- Which is... - Aston. - "Aston Villa"?
Perfect!
It was Jesus.
Jesus Villa, which just sounds
like the Pope's holiday home.
"We go to..."
- "Jesus Villa." - Jesus Villa, yeah.
It so happened that
the American public were rather
fascinated by this Mexican war,
and different American film
companies paid
the different sides for the rights
to film their battles.
And Pancho Villa got 20% of the box
office of the Mutual Film Company,
who were on his side, as it were,
but he had to wait till the cameras
were set up and the light was right
before he could begin the battle.
AND they made him dress up
in a general's uniform.
Usually, he went casual.
But they made him dress up in a
general's uniform to look like that.
- So just before they charged, did they
get make-up and everything? - Yeah!
Well, it wasn't quite that bad,
but it was an extraordinary, bizarre
war, run for American studios.
And the strange thing is that,
actually,
the reality wasn't that exciting.
And they would re-enact it
back in America
to make it look more bloody
and dramatic.
But they would use the footage
of him, pointing in his uniform.
He... He...
Lots of the Mexican revolutionaries
sort of operated as bandits,
as well, didn't they?
They were sort of
political armies AND...
But they were bandits
to raise money for their armies,
and he held up a train.
And he took 122 silver ingots
AND a bank employee -
a Wells Fargo bank employee -
hostage, and then
forced Wells Fargo to help him
sell the ingots with the hostage.
- It's fantastically clever.
- Very good.
Can't cope with two intelligent,
interesting people on this show.
- It's good, isn't it?
- Yeah, it's very hard.
He didn't just say 120, it was 122.
I like that.
- Well, it sticks with you.
- Scholarly of you. Very impressive.
We said on QI... We told you what
Pancho Villa's last words were.
I don't know if you remember.
Alan, you were definitely there.
"Turn the lights out"?
"Ouch"?
No. "Don't let it end like this.
Let me at least say something."
- It was apparently...
- "Hang on, I've got it."
We've since discovered
that this may be a myth
as his car was hit by 40 bullets and
he himself by nine dum-dum bullets
so he was probably killed instantly
and said nothing.
But I like the idea of someone being
disappointed that they didn't
have any last words to say.
- Maybe it was "Reverse."
- "Don't park here!"
- "Tell them I said something,"
was his supposed last words. - "Cut!"
Yeah.
Can you tell me the war where the
first film footage was ever used?
If you run past the Bayeux Tapestry
really fast...
- It kind of looks... - It's not
one of our better-known wars.
It's the Greco-Turkey War of 1897.
And there was a British film
cameraman called Villiers who
took the footage and then got home
and was really annoyed to find
that someone else had re-enacted
the battles in England and
they were playing in the newsreels.
Re-enactment?
Yes, the whole things
was that newsreel was so new
that people were incredibly excited
and they didn't really know how
reality looked far away in battles.
And if you lived in London or
Bradford or wherever it might be
and went to a newsreel place,
you believed what you saw.
And so in the naval battles
of the Spanish-American war,
there was a guy who cut out
battleships and pasted them
on bits of wood and put them in a
tank of water just an inch thick
and had little bits of gunpowder
that he lit
- and had an office boy
blow cigar smoke. - Michael Benting!
And it played to packed houses.
People thought they were watching
a real naval battle.
- They just re-enacted them
back home? - Yes.
They just took it on faith
in those days, early on.
And to be fair, to some extent,
even today,
most journalists who work in war
zones will tell you they kind of
sex up their video footage.
They do a lot of "whhooooaaa"
with the camera just simply
to catch our interest.
I often wonder whether people
who report at flower shows,
whether they are just slightly
cowardly war correspondents,
working their way up,
but they're just working
with the gentle stuff first.
- Yes, start with the azaleas.
- Something not too scary.
They say that the number one rule
of battle photographers
is you always run toward the gunshot
when everyone else is running away
from it.
Which I think, you know,
weeds out a lot of people right away.
"I'm going to shoot weddings."
The earliest we can date back
this idea of faking war photography
to make it more interesting,
to give it human interest,
is in the 1857-58 Indian uprising,
where a massacre was photographed
and the photographer bestrewed it
with human bones.
Those were added
by the photographer.
- Did he carry them in a bag? - Satchel?
- I don't know where he got them.
I suspect he dug them up.
But you can see, literally,
skulls and femurs and ribcages.
I mean, it certainly tells the story
of some death going on,
but it was a fake.
That guy did my wedding photography.
I wasn't pleased with that either.
He was old, too, wasn't he?
Let's be honest. Very, very old.
What is this man about to do?
LAUGHTER
It's to do with our theme,
one of our "I" words.
- Invisible. - Yes.
I mean, if I said,
"They're going to turn invisible"
you'd imagine they're going
to disappear completely.
Nonetheless, it is technology
that is on the way to invisibility.
It certainly creates
a transparent coat, as you will see.
- Oh! - That's not a post effect.
That is happening in real time
and is being filmed.
And that's the coat
and that's it being filmed.
- There are two cameras, aren't there?
- Yes. What's happening?
- Superimposing the front camera onto
the picture on the back camera.
- That's the technique.
It has interesting applications
that are beginning to be developed,
allowing pilots to see through the
floors of their planes, for example.
Why, to scare the shit out of them?!
"Ugh! Got to keep my mind on my job!
Holy shit! Keep looking up!"
That could be the reason!
It's quite a good effect, isn't it?
He's called Professor Susumu Tachi
and the cloak is made of a material
called retro-reflectum.
As Jack rightly spotted,
it projects an image onto itself
of what is behind the wearer.
The computer generates the image
projected, so the viewer,
effectively, sees through.
- That would really screw them up
at airports. - Wouldn't that be odd?!
- Going through security!
It'd be great for talking to
boring people. You could look
at what's going on behind them.
Cloaking technology, as we know,
is at its... It's at an early stage.
- The Romulans have it, I believe.
- Harry Potter.
Ron Weasley's car can go invisible,
his dad's Ford Anglia.
- Yes. - It can go invisible.
- That's true.
- But that does wear the battery out.
- Yes! Exactly.
- And Harry has an invisibility cloak.
- Invisibility cloak!
There are interesting technologies
that make things invisible,
which have limitations.
One is, it's only infrared.
Or one is on objects
which are so small,
they are already invisible
to the naked eye!
"You see that thing you can't see?
Ta-da! I just made it invisible!"
That doesn't work, does it?
Interesting, of course, in nature,
they've got round this problem,
not exactly of invisibility but...
Well, there is camouflage.
- Chameleons can change...
- I saw an octopus
- and it appears to change
the colour of its skin
and just looks like a rock. - Yes!
It's amazing to watch.
Other cephalopods,
notably the Hawaiian bobtail squid,
like your octopus,
can camouflage itself.
But the one thing that might give
you away if you camouflage yourself
is your shadow.
This clever chap can even
make his shadow invisible.
- He's got iridescence that he can use
to light behind him. - Yes!
You're very quick-minded!
He ingests bioluminescent food
that goes into his stomach
and his stomach controls,
by the use of oxygen,
how much the bioluminescent food
in his stomach shines,
and it shines out and casts a light
over his shadow, thus dispelling it.
It's a lot of bother to go to,
isn't it?
It's a magnificent piece
of evolution, really.
- Jim Lovell, who was a...
- The astronaut. - Apollo 13.
All his instruments died -
he was a naval pilot.
He was at sea in complete blackness,
I think there was no moon
that particular night.
How could he find
his aircraft carrier?
And he could just see
this very faint phosphorus wake
of the aircraft carrier,
which was over the horizon.
So he followed it and, eventually,
he got to the aircraft carrier
and landed on it.
There is a lot of luminescent life
at sea. It's quite beautiful.
It was a very rare occurrence.
That luminescence happened
every so often.
When it happened to Lovell,
it was a coincidence.
It wouldn't always have happened.
- So a doubly lucky man. - Very lucky.
- Surviving 13, as well.
- So, you knew the story already?
- I did. The moon is my thing.
I'd forgotten that!
You're very much a moon chap.
Extra points all the way
to Chris Addison.
- We're beginning to get
a little bit humiliated by him!
- Yeah, I might as well...
Chris, do you know what these mean?
I think I've got a guess!
During the Indonesian Confrontation,
as it was called, in the early '60s,
the British Army were very
puzzled as to how the Indonesians
could travel in the darkest forest
and they'd all stay together
in single file.
They would tuck a rotting leaf
into the back of their hats
and it gave off
just enough phosphorescence
for them to see the person ahead
and they could stay
in absolute line.
- Is that any rotting... - I don't
think it's any rotting thing.
I think they knew
which leaves to pick.
What do these people
do for a living?
This thing's going to go off,
isn't it? Ninja.
ALARM WAILS
- Are they not ninjas?
- No, they're not ninjas.
The darkest clothes ninjas
have ever worn have been blue,
possibly at night.
But ninjas never wear black.
The reason -
Why? It's so slimming!
I always thought ninjas might be fat
and that's why they...
- Yes, they want to look better.
- "Is that better for me?"
- It's a sort of odd thing.
There is a tradition
in Kabuki Theatre
that if anything is black,
you can't see it.
So people can move furniture around,
because they're wearing black,
they are stagehands.
And then, as a rather wonderful
surprise in Kabuki,
they might have a stagehand
suddenly kill someone!
They'd be a ninja, because ninjas
were the secret assassins!
And so this pop association appeared
that ninjas wore black,
but they never did.
They didn't fight, though, did they,
ninjas. They would run away a lot.
- Yes, well... - It was all
distraction techniques,
was how they used to overcome
their foes.
They would throw talcum powder,
or whatever, and whilst you're
distracted with the lovely skin,
they'd run away going, "Moisturise!"
Or they would throw cards and then
run. They didn't want to engage.
Yes, they were the exact opposite
of the samurai.
Samurai were all about honourable
man-on-man sword fighting
and ninjas were about, as you said,
scouting, spying, deceiving.
All kinds of different little tricks
of one kind or another.
Those things you mentioned were part
of their repertoire. But what they
never did was wear black.
Staying with Japan for a moment.
Tell me something quite interesting
about the original geishas.
- They were all men. - Yes!
Oh, God.
LAUGHTER
Absolutely right!
APPLAUSE
Bravo!
Until 1751, all geishas were men.
Originally, geishas were almost like
court jesters.
They were not courtesans,
as they're considered to be now.
It took about 100 years
before it was an even number,
and then female geishas overtook
and now they're all female.
How about an ingenious interlude?
Have a look at this glass tank
behind me
and tell me how many balls
there are in there.
One...
- Two, three. - Well done, Alan.
- Four. - So far, so good.
Yep, five. Yep.
Five.
This is the worst episode
of the National Lottery ever!
So, how many are in there,
would you say?
- Five? - Five.
- It looked like five, didn't it?
ALARM WAILS
But you might be rather surprised
to know
- that there are actually
over 1,000 in there. - Fail. Fail.
We can show you a better view
of how many there are.
- ALL: Ahh! - They're all invisible.
In fact, we have an example
of precisely these kinds of...
- There they are.
- They're gooey. - They're weird.
They're called hydrogel beads.
- I can see them. - We've deliberately
allowed them to be visible.
- But in large glass tanks,
they wouldn't be visible. - If I push
it underwater, it goes invisible.
- They have the same refractive index
as water. - Light can pass through
at the same angle.
So they appear to be invisible
in water.
I can't see it!
LAUGHTER
- Quick, a hairdryer!
- It's gone down the set.
You're going to start floating away!
- Is there a use for them?
- I've got a glass there...
- Are they worth ?500 each?
- Are they edible?
- I wouldn't want to take
responsibility, but I don't think
they'll do you any harm. - Try one.
What are they used for?
- They have a commercial use -
- I broke it!
- Oh, no. Is it burst? - It burst.
- It's sort of gone into pieces.
- It's rather strange material.
- Can you guess their commercial use?
- Packing things.
- No. Flower arranging is one.
Is it for packing goldfish?
LAUGHTER
Why aren't they making battleships
out of it?
- All kinds of new uses may be found.
- Make a submarine!
- This feels gorgeous.
- It's quite good, isn't it?
It's quite addictive.
There's something
quite gorgeous about that.
- I might have a play around
with that later. - Yep! You might!
Another use is the manufacture of...
LAUGHTER
- Behave! - You're disgusting.
Another use...
LAUGHTER
Jack's going to put his willy in it.
- Oh, dear!
- I've already put it in that one.
It's weird because when he
put it in, you couldn't see it!
- Ohh! - That's the refractive index -
Give me time to think of a comeback!
The other use,
apart from flower arranging,
is the manufacture
of contact lenses.
You'd really freak people out
if you put them in your eyes!
- Yes. Not necessarily in the round...
- Marty Feldman's contact lenses!
- Any of these coming up
in any of this? - Not yet, no!
Nearly all the light in the world,
of course, comes from our sun.
In which month is the sun
closest to the Earth?
It must be July.
ALARM WAILS
- No. - Isn't it the same distance
from the Earth all the time?
No,
because it's an elliptical orbit.
January, February, March,
April, May, June.
Yes, you were right first time -
January.
Yes, people make the mistake
that summer is somehow the time
- when the Earth is closest to the
sun. - (AUSTRALIAN ACCENT)
That is summer, mate.
It's not when the Earth
is closest to the sun.
It happens to be in January
in the southern hemisphere,
their summer,
but in the northern hemisphere,
the sun is closer to us in January
than it is in July.
The tilt of the axis, when the
maximum amount of sunlight is on
and you have the longer days,
that's what makes the seasons,
not the closeness of the sun
to the Earth.
What is interesting are the Tropics.
The first person to reason
the Tropics were not hotter
because they're nearer the sun
but because a smaller area is lit by
an equal amount of light compared to
other latitudes was George Best.
It was! Absolutely true, it was
George Best who worked that out.
You've lost it now. You've lost it,
you'll have to hand this over
to someone else.
It was George Best, who was killed
two years later in a dual in 1584.
- He was an Elizabethan scientist.
- Another George Best.
Just for a second, didn't you think
the Northern Irish hero
might have...
You come up with interesting stuff
when you drink that much!
You do! He might have come up
with that. Nice thought.
IRISH ACCENT:
"Do you know what I reckon?"
My next question is this -
why can't blindfolded people
walk in a straight line?
They can't see where they're going.
Next question.
- Because...
- I'm afraid the chance has passed.
The fact is, nobody knows!
THEY GROAN
There you go. Although
it is a recognised phenomenon
and people have theories,
nobody's really quite sure
why it should be
that one's ability to walk
in an absolutely straight line
is completely compromised.
Even in short distances,
people don't just go off straight,
they actually curve.
It was discovered by a fella
who saw it in amoebas and thought,
"I wonder if it's true of humans?"
Who's blindfolded amoebas?
- How do you do it? They're so small!
- How do you do such a thing?
"Come here, you bastard!
It's gone again."
He was called Asa Schaeffer.
He asked a friend of his,
who he blindfolded,
he instructed him to walk
in a straight line across a field
and he plotted his track,
which was a clockwise spiral
until the man happened to stumble
into a tree.
But it was a complete spiral.
This is what people do.
We've covered this before,
but more research has been done
and we have a little film.
Someone made a cartoon.
We didn't. We don't have the budget.
This is what he told him to do,
walk in a straight line.
- Is that how he walks? - Apparently.
- He was practicing to be a zombie.
- This is exactly it.
He was convinced he was going
straight. Spiral, spiral, spiral,
till he hit the stump.
And that is how we will all do it.
We will swear, "I'm going straight!"
We hold our hands up,
as if that helps,
and for some reason, we need a
visual cue, a mountain or the sun,
but nobody knows why that should be.
- Could it be,
and I'm being quite serious... - Yes.
Well, as you'll see,
it's not funny what I'm about to say.
Could it be a preservation thing, er,
so that we have an inbuilt device
that makes us go in a huge circle,
and we can't see where we're going,
so you always get back
to where you know where you are?
- I think I've cracked it.
- That's a very good point!
I like it!
APPLAUSE
- I mean, it's...
- Can we make a bonfire, please?
It's as convincing
as anybody else's theorem.
Further proof that the world
is flat!
- Maybe that's what it is.
- Preservation device to stop you
walking off the edge. - Now...
let's try an experiment.
I would like you all -
and when I say all, I mean
everyone - to close their eyes.
Audience included. Close your eyes,
and all you have to do, with your
eyes closed, is point north east.
- What? - Just point north east. - North
east? - Yes, in a north east direction.
Everyone do it. OK.
KLAXON BLARES
I hadn't moved! I'm not pointing!
- You were pointing down for some
reason! - I was scratching my leg!
It's almost directly behind me.
Closest was definitely Chris there.
< Don't tell me Chris
gets points for that!
Unless you happen to belong
to a very rare,
unfortunately diminishing,
Aboriginal tribe in Australia,
we do not have an instinctive
and automatic understanding
of north and south wherever we are,
at whatever time.
And it's linguistic. This particular
tribe, in their language,
they have no word for left
and right.
From the earliest age,
their children will be told, "The
salt's at your south-east elbow."
Everything is in absolute relation
to north and south...
They don't eat with salt cellars!
Well, whatever!
LAUGHTER
The point is they always know,
wherever they are, whether inside
outside, instantly, north south,
whether it's dark or light.
And they use it
in all senses of directions,
including their own bodies.
If you flew these people
to the other hemisphere,
- would they think
it was the other way? Like water
going down a plug. - I don't know.
They're called the Pormpuraaw People
and their language is called
Kuuk Thaayorre.
Unfortunately, it's a dying
language, as so many of these
Aboriginal languages are.
Around the world, over 100 languages
a year become extinct.
Our prepositions that we tend to use
in terms of space,
we also tend to use
in terms of time.
We have this idea
that the future is forward.
But the Imara Indians in
South America think that the past
is ahead and the future is behind.
That must make bill paying
a lot easier.
It's just a different way
of looking at things.
They're thinking the future
is behind, is the unknown.
We don't know what the future is,
it's behind us.
These things are stuck
in our language so much,
we assume they're natural and right,
so when we come across another
culture that thinks in another way,
it gives us great pause,
cos these aren't necessarily
natural and right.
- I still think they are right. - Do you?
- Yes. I won't be swayed. - Fair enough.
- When they say, "Back in the day,"
they mean something that hasn't
happened yet. - Yes!
How can you look forward
to stuff if it's all behind you?
They would find you just as weird.
Now you're being rude.
It's time to admit
I had a sip of water
and I did swallow
one of those balls.
You won't see it when it comes out.
Now, what happened
when Colonel William Rankin
got stuck for 30 minutes
in one of these?
Ohh!
Oh, it was a puzzle
and he had to try and solve it.
You haven't got one of those.
But that is an example.
You've got international symbols.
- Is it a diving bell? - It's not.
- It is an international...
- It's an expired parking meter.
- Any other thoughts? - Kaiser's helmet?
- An igloo with a loft conversion?
These are all good answers.
When I say
it's the tallest structure
that we know on the planet...
- Manmade? - No.
- Is it beneath the ocean? - No.
It's in the other direction.
- It's in the sky? - Yes.
- A cloud. - Yes!
It's a particular kind of cloud.
That kind of a cloud,
- if that was its symbol.
- A fluffy cloud.
It's a Cumulonimbus.
It's an anvil-shaped.
- He was stuck in there
for half an hour? - He was, yes.
He was a US pilot and he ejected.
- He'd opened his chute, then?
- Yes, but it was half an hour inside
this thing, being buffeted about.
So, how tall was the pole
this sign was on?
LAUGHTER
You may've missed the point, Jack!
They get up to about 23,000 metres
high, which is fantastically high.
He was buffeted about in it.
He did survive.
His eyes and ears were bleeding.
He was pelted with hail.
He was in a terrible state!
But he's the only person
to have fallen through one of
these structures and survived.
Anyway, listen,
while we're with clouds,
what use to a pilot
is a morning glory?
- Ah, now...
- If your joystick fails...!
LAUGHTER
Oh, dear! He's smiling, isn't he?
I think it was
the co-pilot's joystick!
That's why they always sound
so relaxed. "Good morning,
ladies and gentlemen.
"Welcome on board."
- Aside from the possibility...
- It'll be something to do with the
sunlight coming over the horizon.
It's an annual event that takes
place in Northern Queensland,
Australia, called the Morning Glory.
It's a remarkable cloud system.
It's really amazing.
We've got a picture of it.
It can be up to 600 miles long -
as long as the United Kingdom.
Look at that. It's over Burketown,
which has a population of 178.
But lots of people come. The reason
is, if you're a gliding pilot,
you get the ride of your life.
It can go at 35 miles an hour,
and inside, it's the most
exciting thing you can experience.
Then you bump into a bloke
with a parachute. "Get off!"
- His eyes are bleeding! "Help me!"
- < "Didn't you see the sign?"
APPLAUSE
- Oh, dear! - And that's the only place
where a cloud like that forms?
Yes. It's the mother of them all.
Apparently, soaring along it
is the greatest experience.
Indian Granny Clouds...
- What can you tell me about them?
- Did it win...?
LAUGHTER
Did Indian Granny Cloud
win the 2:30 at Kempton Park?
The, er...
Is it a fart in a restaurant?
LAUGHTER
- I'm so disappointed in you!
- When an old lady does a pump
in a curry house!
Do they go up in the sky and can't
remember what they went up for?
Now...
LAUGHTER
Think of cloud in the 21st century.
What other use has "cloud"
been put to as a word?
- It's a computer thing. - The internet.
This is a scheme
whereby grannies in England,
using Skype or similar technology,
teach and educate and inform
and enlighten children in India
all the way from England.
- It was started by Professor
Sugata Mitra. - "How To Make Jam".
"How To Make Jam", possibly!
- They tutor Indian classes where
they're short of teachers. It's an
enormous success. - Why grannies?
They've got time on
their hands and because they care!
"Drop one, purl one."
Imagine the exports
of Werther's Originals to India!
They're all listening
to Michael Ball records!
What we're looking at,
with your symbols,
are part of what is known as
the International Cloud Atlas.
- And can you tell me what they are?
- Do they represent countries?
- No, they represent... - On an atlas.
- No, no!
- God!
- I don't really listen enough, do I?
They represent types...
I bet you're a teacher!
"He reminds me of all my kids!"
They represent a type of cloud.
- It looks like simpleton snap.
- It does! I know.
- What did you think they were?
- I had this one.
- Had you written anything on them?
I thought they were things
to help traumatise children.
"Tell me what you think."
- I have "Elderly Use Handbrake".
- Yes! "Elderly Use Handbrake".
- That's my handbrake! - Very good.
"You call that pregnant?
THIS is pregnant!"
Very good!
That's actually ET being quite rude.
LAUGHTER
- You don't know what it means,
but it's rude! - Absolutely!
Well, there you are,
the International Cloud Atlas.
- There were three forms,
the cumulus... - The stratocumulus.
- The stratus. - Nimbus.
- And the cirrus, the fluffy one.
And then there are all the mixtures
of those in between -
the altocumulus, the stratocumulus,
and so on.
It's that time when we grope
our way towards general ignorance
at the end of the tunnel.
Fingers on buzzers, please.
Name the largest black body
in the solar system.
Oprah Winfrey. >
Whoa! Ohh! Ohh, Rich!
Ohh! Ohh!
LAUGHTER
- Within the solar system. - Black hole?
ALARM WAILS
If there was a black hole
in the solar system,
we'd be in real trouble.
We would. I don't know any other
black things in the solar system.
- The strange thing is, it's the sun.
- I see.
A black body, in cosmology,
is something that doesn't reflect,
and the sun only radiates,
so it is the blackest body
in the solar system.
- That's cheating. - It seems to be
a little bit of a cheat question,
but had you known the answer,
it wouldn't have been.
If you were to shine a light on
the sun, which would be pointless,
I accept that...
It wouldn't reflect off it.
In the solar system, there is
no other body so unreflective.
- The moon is nothing but reflective.
It gives off nothing, but reflects
all the light. - The same as us.
But the sun reflects nothing.
How long does light from the centre
of the sun take to reach the Earth?
EXPLOSIONS
Yes?
Now, I know this.
LAUGHTER
Right!
It might not be the centre, it
sounds like a trick, but the light
from the sun takes eight minutes.
Mm...
ALARM WAILS
Ahh! Oh, dear.
The thing is,
it actually takes 100,000 years
to get from the centre of the sun
to the surface...
to the surface of the sun.
Eight minutes!
But he was absolutely right.
From the surface of the sun...
to the Earth takes eight minutes.
- I added that qualifier!
- You did. You were right.
It's 8 minutes 26 seconds, roughly.
The photons have an enormous amount
of work to do right in the middle
of this gigantic system.
How many Earths could you fit in
the sun, were you able to do so?
Four.
- Easily! - Easily, yes, you could.
That's quite true!
I can't deny that.
400,000.
- The maximum number is 1.3 million.
- 3 million Earths!
It's responsible for 99.8%
- of the mass of the solar system.
- Really?
- That's extraordinary!
- It is. There's a lot of it.
What happens to alcohol
when you bring it to the boil?
- Ah, you boil it off, don't you,
Chef? - Yes, you do. You waste it.
ALARM WAILS
- Whoa! - That's his.
It's nothing to do with me.
I didn't touch it!
There's this idea
that it all evaporates and so on.
In fact, it takes a very long time,
three hours, at least,
before you get rid of it.
Flambeing only gets rid of...
If you like a crepe suzette,
if you light the brandy,
that only gets rid of a quarter
of the alcohol.
So the idea that
you're burning it off...
It's not particularly important,
unless you're drinking carefully
so that you're under the limit,
then you have a crepe suzette
and drive and are surprised
that you're over the limit.
We've all been there!
The same goes to a Christmas pud
when you put the brandy on,
- give it to the kids and say,
"There won't be alcohol." - Exactly!
- That's right. - And a 20p piece
that might choke them to death!
- Could you get done for eat-driving?
- Yes, if you had enough of it!
Eat-driving!
It's a heck of a thought!
Interestingly,
if you add alcohol to a recipe
and you don't heat it at all,
just leave it uncovered overnight,
it will get rid of more alcohol
than by flambeing it.
30% of it will go
just by natural evaporation.
If you leave a glass of wine out at
night, the alcohol will evaporate?
- Some of it. - Or someone will
come down and drink it.
LAUGHTER DROWNS OUT SPEECH
"..it's gone."
How much alcohol are they allowed
to drink on US navy ships?
- A tot of rum. - A tot of rum per man?
No. All US navy ships have been dry
since 1914. No alcohol at all.
- The French riot police are...having
a riot over not being able to drink
at lunchtime. - Are they?!
Yeah, they have been told. They've
always been allowed to have...
FRENCH ACCENT: ..just ze beer
or some wine at lunchtime, it's not
really drinking. Does not count.
And they've always been allowed
to do it and they still do it
and now the government's said, "We
don't think it's such a good idea
"that you should sit in your van
drinking beer."
There was a photograph taken
of all these riot police...
"Where is ze riot?"
There you go. How many eyes does a
no-eyed, big-eyed wolf spider have?
EXPLOSIONS >
Yeah?
Eight.
ALARM WAILS
- None. - Yes! After all...
- A no-eyed, big-eyed wolf spider!
All big-eyed wolf spiders
do have eight eyes,
except the no-eyed, big-eyed...
I feel genuinely really stupid
because you gave me the answer
in the question.
- It's the worst one to have...
- It's a member of the same order
of eight-eyed spiders
but it's evolved to live
in a cave with no light
and so it's lost all its eyes.
There it is.
A rather grim-looking creature.
- These are in Kauai in Hawaii. - Kauai.
- And they're getting very, very rare.
The little things
have no eyes at all.
Bet they can walk in a straight line,
though.
And so from the caliginous shadows
of general ignorance,
we emerge into the unforgiving light
of the scores.
My goodness me,
aren't they interesting?
Well,
tonight's indisputable illuminatus,
with three whole points,
is Rich Hall!
APPLAUSE
Burning brightly in second place
with minus one, Jack Dee!
APPLAUSE
Despite his stunning knowledge
in so many areas,
he did fall into a few
of our little Heffalump traps,
so in third place, guttering and
spluttering a little on minus nine,
Chris Addison!
APPLAUSE
But cast forever
into outer darkness,
with minus 45, Alan Davies!
CHEERING
That's all for this
frankly brilliant edition of QI.
It's lights out and good night
from Chris, Rich, Jack, Alan and me.
I leave you with this
from Steven Wright:
"Light travels faster than sound
"and isn't that why some people
appear bright
until you hear them speak?"
Good night.
APPLAUSE
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd
Goooood...evening!
Good evening, good evening,
good evening, good evening!
And welcome to QI, the quiz show
that glows in the dark.
Tonight,
we're peering through the gloom
at subjects of illumination
and invisibility.
Joining me under the covers
with a torch, a packet of crisps
and the latest edition
of The Gentleman's Magazine,
we have the enlightened Jack Dee!
APPLAUSE
The illuminating Chris Addison!
APPLAUSE
The incandescent Rich Hall!
APPLAUSE
And that bright spark, Alan Davies!
CHEERING
Now, should any of you wish to draw
attention to your brilliance,
you can light up my life
in this manner...
Jack goes...
LIGHTSABER WHIRRS
Chris goes...
FIREWORKS EXPLODE
Rich goes...
LIGHTNING
And Alan goes...
SWITCH CLICKS
'Oh...'
BOOM!
Good. Now, each of you
should have a set of cards.
During the course of the game, I
want you to see if you can find out
what these international symbols
stand for.
You can decide for yourself.
You can write underneath each...
On top, beside.
They are all recognised
international symbols
for some very real...
That's Lady Gaga!
You've already made your mind up.
You've also got a question-marked
joker card.
One of the questions I ask tonight
has the answer "nobody knows".
If you can guess...
FANFARE
- 'Nobody knows!' - There you are.
LAUGHTER
- That caught you by surprise. - Yes.
If you guess which question it is
to which there's an answer
nobody knows,
you'll get extra points.
Now, in 1879,
the Blackpool Illuminations began.
They were visited by up to
100,000 people from all over Britain
and were so bright that they were
described as "artificial sunshine".
My question simply is,
how many lamps did they use?
I love that the people of Blackpool
consider this to be like sunshine.
- Are you saying we don't know?
We do know. - Ahh!
- We know precisely
how many they used. - Damn!
- Hang on. 1879? - Yes.
So, this is before the invention
of the bulb?
Well done! Certainly before
the invention of the filament bulb
by Thomas Alva Edison, yes.
He didn't have the idea for the
bulb, he had an idea for something
else. He went, "Bing! Oh!"
- "Hey!" - That's very good!
- "I'll do that instead!" - Yes!
- But it, isn't it? - It wasn't
light bulbs as we know them.
They were carbon arc lamps.
They were still used by the
film industry up until the 1980s.
100,000 people visited.
How many lamps did they use
to draw that many people?
- 12. - 12 lamps! You're damn close.
It's eight.
- Is it?! - Yes!
That's what's so extraordinary!
Eight, at a distance
of 370 yards apart,
it was still astonishing enough,
no-one had ever seen anything
like it, to draw crowds.
Back then, there wasn't much to do,
was there?
Everything else was gaslight, which
this was a different sort of light,
and this was a white, bright
daylight sort of light.
What did moths do before then?
I don't know what moths... Moths...
I mean, how...?
Why don't moths come out
during the day if they're so fond
of the bloody light?
- I mean, really!
- They could just sit still and go,
"Wow! This is amazing!"
It's very peculiar!
You know,
Edison electrocuted an elephant.
- He did.
- My favourite fact of all time.
Do you know why?
It was a death sentence,
it was an execution.
- I think you might know this
cos you saw it on QI! - Yes! - Really?
The problem with joining you people
so late is you've covered basically
all human knowledge!
While you were saying it, I thought,
"This rings a bell."
- Maybe that's how I know it.
- "I heard this before."
You are absolutely right.
There is film of it, which you can
see. It's a very tragic sight.
- Elephant snuff movies?!
- Yeah, I'm afraid it's true. - Wow!
- It's very sad.
But Blackpool were keen
to attract people and it worked,
as you probably know
as a lad from the northwest.
In fact, from all over Britain
people, every September,
go just as the season is ending,
the Illuminations go up
and they attract millions of people.
Of course, fabulous celebrities
come to turn on...
Can you name some of the...?
- I think Jayne Mansfield did it.
- Very good, Chris!
- Way, way back. - There she is.
Jayne Mansfield came. - Whoo-hoo!
Then the lads from Top Gear,
so they've maintained the quality(!)
The bloke on the left
can't believe it!
- That's the mayor, I think.
- "This is terrific!"
- Even the mayoress is delighted!
- She is rather!
But other people have opened.
Red Rum.
They made a special pedal
so that when he trod on it,
it turned on. That was in 1977.
And then they electrocuted him.
Michael Ball in 1997
and in 2006, Dale Winton.
They should've electrocuted him!
I think they've peaked!
Where can they go from there?
- Dale's definitely peaked.
- They've reached the top.
- It cost them ?50,000 worth of
electricity... - To get Dale Winton?
No! Of electricity
to run the Illuminations.
Not any more.
They use low-energy light bulbs.
There's no point going for the first
15 minutes of the Illuminations.
You have to wait for it to warm up.
"Three, two, one...!" "Oh."
"Come back in 15 minutes.
They'll be lovely."
Costs over ?2.4 million to stage,
but apparently brings 275 million
to the economy.
Because so many people
come to watch.
- But it's free, innit? - I know, but
they buy fish and chips, they...
?275 million-worth
of fish and chips?!
It brings 3.5 million people
and they don't have to
spend more than ?7
for that to be the amount
of money that they brought in.
The original Blackpool Illuminations
consisted of eight bulbs.
Today, they're six miles long
and use 200 miles of wire
and a million bulbs.
Now, if you can dispel the shadows
on this one for me,
I'd be very grateful.
Why did Mexican revolutionary
Pancho Villa
have to wait for the light?
There he is, Pancho Villa.
He had to wait till the banks were
open before he could rob them.
- Well, Pancho Villa was part of a war
in Mexico. - He was. He was a great...
Quite a tremendous stature
but now reduced to a...
chain of tawdry Mexican restaurants,
where suburban bimbos go
and drink margaritas
for 2 a pitcher and...
- That's it.
- ..weep into their guacamole.
This is why you didn't get
that gig in advertising.
Yeah.
There was a three-part war,
the government of Mexico
against two revolutionaries -
Pancho Villa and...
- Is it Zapata? - Zapata, yes.
"Shoe," I think,
in Mexican, isn't it?
- Yes. - Yeah, in Spanish.
- Whereas Pancho Villa means...
- "House of Pancho." - Yes, I suppose.
He wasn't called Pancho Villa,
was he?
He took his name from his grandad,
the best name I've ever heard.
- Which is... - Aston. - "Aston Villa"?
Perfect!
It was Jesus.
Jesus Villa, which just sounds
like the Pope's holiday home.
"We go to..."
- "Jesus Villa." - Jesus Villa, yeah.
It so happened that
the American public were rather
fascinated by this Mexican war,
and different American film
companies paid
the different sides for the rights
to film their battles.
And Pancho Villa got 20% of the box
office of the Mutual Film Company,
who were on his side, as it were,
but he had to wait till the cameras
were set up and the light was right
before he could begin the battle.
AND they made him dress up
in a general's uniform.
Usually, he went casual.
But they made him dress up in a
general's uniform to look like that.
- So just before they charged, did they
get make-up and everything? - Yeah!
Well, it wasn't quite that bad,
but it was an extraordinary, bizarre
war, run for American studios.
And the strange thing is that,
actually,
the reality wasn't that exciting.
And they would re-enact it
back in America
to make it look more bloody
and dramatic.
But they would use the footage
of him, pointing in his uniform.
He... He...
Lots of the Mexican revolutionaries
sort of operated as bandits,
as well, didn't they?
They were sort of
political armies AND...
But they were bandits
to raise money for their armies,
and he held up a train.
And he took 122 silver ingots
AND a bank employee -
a Wells Fargo bank employee -
hostage, and then
forced Wells Fargo to help him
sell the ingots with the hostage.
- It's fantastically clever.
- Very good.
Can't cope with two intelligent,
interesting people on this show.
- It's good, isn't it?
- Yeah, it's very hard.
He didn't just say 120, it was 122.
I like that.
- Well, it sticks with you.
- Scholarly of you. Very impressive.
We said on QI... We told you what
Pancho Villa's last words were.
I don't know if you remember.
Alan, you were definitely there.
"Turn the lights out"?
"Ouch"?
No. "Don't let it end like this.
Let me at least say something."
- It was apparently...
- "Hang on, I've got it."
We've since discovered
that this may be a myth
as his car was hit by 40 bullets and
he himself by nine dum-dum bullets
so he was probably killed instantly
and said nothing.
But I like the idea of someone being
disappointed that they didn't
have any last words to say.
- Maybe it was "Reverse."
- "Don't park here!"
- "Tell them I said something,"
was his supposed last words. - "Cut!"
Yeah.
Can you tell me the war where the
first film footage was ever used?
If you run past the Bayeux Tapestry
really fast...
- It kind of looks... - It's not
one of our better-known wars.
It's the Greco-Turkey War of 1897.
And there was a British film
cameraman called Villiers who
took the footage and then got home
and was really annoyed to find
that someone else had re-enacted
the battles in England and
they were playing in the newsreels.
Re-enactment?
Yes, the whole things
was that newsreel was so new
that people were incredibly excited
and they didn't really know how
reality looked far away in battles.
And if you lived in London or
Bradford or wherever it might be
and went to a newsreel place,
you believed what you saw.
And so in the naval battles
of the Spanish-American war,
there was a guy who cut out
battleships and pasted them
on bits of wood and put them in a
tank of water just an inch thick
and had little bits of gunpowder
that he lit
- and had an office boy
blow cigar smoke. - Michael Benting!
And it played to packed houses.
People thought they were watching
a real naval battle.
- They just re-enacted them
back home? - Yes.
They just took it on faith
in those days, early on.
And to be fair, to some extent,
even today,
most journalists who work in war
zones will tell you they kind of
sex up their video footage.
They do a lot of "whhooooaaa"
with the camera just simply
to catch our interest.
I often wonder whether people
who report at flower shows,
whether they are just slightly
cowardly war correspondents,
working their way up,
but they're just working
with the gentle stuff first.
- Yes, start with the azaleas.
- Something not too scary.
They say that the number one rule
of battle photographers
is you always run toward the gunshot
when everyone else is running away
from it.
Which I think, you know,
weeds out a lot of people right away.
"I'm going to shoot weddings."
The earliest we can date back
this idea of faking war photography
to make it more interesting,
to give it human interest,
is in the 1857-58 Indian uprising,
where a massacre was photographed
and the photographer bestrewed it
with human bones.
Those were added
by the photographer.
- Did he carry them in a bag? - Satchel?
- I don't know where he got them.
I suspect he dug them up.
But you can see, literally,
skulls and femurs and ribcages.
I mean, it certainly tells the story
of some death going on,
but it was a fake.
That guy did my wedding photography.
I wasn't pleased with that either.
He was old, too, wasn't he?
Let's be honest. Very, very old.
What is this man about to do?
LAUGHTER
It's to do with our theme,
one of our "I" words.
- Invisible. - Yes.
I mean, if I said,
"They're going to turn invisible"
you'd imagine they're going
to disappear completely.
Nonetheless, it is technology
that is on the way to invisibility.
It certainly creates
a transparent coat, as you will see.
- Oh! - That's not a post effect.
That is happening in real time
and is being filmed.
And that's the coat
and that's it being filmed.
- There are two cameras, aren't there?
- Yes. What's happening?
- Superimposing the front camera onto
the picture on the back camera.
- That's the technique.
It has interesting applications
that are beginning to be developed,
allowing pilots to see through the
floors of their planes, for example.
Why, to scare the shit out of them?!
"Ugh! Got to keep my mind on my job!
Holy shit! Keep looking up!"
That could be the reason!
It's quite a good effect, isn't it?
He's called Professor Susumu Tachi
and the cloak is made of a material
called retro-reflectum.
As Jack rightly spotted,
it projects an image onto itself
of what is behind the wearer.
The computer generates the image
projected, so the viewer,
effectively, sees through.
- That would really screw them up
at airports. - Wouldn't that be odd?!
- Going through security!
It'd be great for talking to
boring people. You could look
at what's going on behind them.
Cloaking technology, as we know,
is at its... It's at an early stage.
- The Romulans have it, I believe.
- Harry Potter.
Ron Weasley's car can go invisible,
his dad's Ford Anglia.
- Yes. - It can go invisible.
- That's true.
- But that does wear the battery out.
- Yes! Exactly.
- And Harry has an invisibility cloak.
- Invisibility cloak!
There are interesting technologies
that make things invisible,
which have limitations.
One is, it's only infrared.
Or one is on objects
which are so small,
they are already invisible
to the naked eye!
"You see that thing you can't see?
Ta-da! I just made it invisible!"
That doesn't work, does it?
Interesting, of course, in nature,
they've got round this problem,
not exactly of invisibility but...
Well, there is camouflage.
- Chameleons can change...
- I saw an octopus
- and it appears to change
the colour of its skin
and just looks like a rock. - Yes!
It's amazing to watch.
Other cephalopods,
notably the Hawaiian bobtail squid,
like your octopus,
can camouflage itself.
But the one thing that might give
you away if you camouflage yourself
is your shadow.
This clever chap can even
make his shadow invisible.
- He's got iridescence that he can use
to light behind him. - Yes!
You're very quick-minded!
He ingests bioluminescent food
that goes into his stomach
and his stomach controls,
by the use of oxygen,
how much the bioluminescent food
in his stomach shines,
and it shines out and casts a light
over his shadow, thus dispelling it.
It's a lot of bother to go to,
isn't it?
It's a magnificent piece
of evolution, really.
- Jim Lovell, who was a...
- The astronaut. - Apollo 13.
All his instruments died -
he was a naval pilot.
He was at sea in complete blackness,
I think there was no moon
that particular night.
How could he find
his aircraft carrier?
And he could just see
this very faint phosphorus wake
of the aircraft carrier,
which was over the horizon.
So he followed it and, eventually,
he got to the aircraft carrier
and landed on it.
There is a lot of luminescent life
at sea. It's quite beautiful.
It was a very rare occurrence.
That luminescence happened
every so often.
When it happened to Lovell,
it was a coincidence.
It wouldn't always have happened.
- So a doubly lucky man. - Very lucky.
- Surviving 13, as well.
- So, you knew the story already?
- I did. The moon is my thing.
I'd forgotten that!
You're very much a moon chap.
Extra points all the way
to Chris Addison.
- We're beginning to get
a little bit humiliated by him!
- Yeah, I might as well...
Chris, do you know what these mean?
I think I've got a guess!
During the Indonesian Confrontation,
as it was called, in the early '60s,
the British Army were very
puzzled as to how the Indonesians
could travel in the darkest forest
and they'd all stay together
in single file.
They would tuck a rotting leaf
into the back of their hats
and it gave off
just enough phosphorescence
for them to see the person ahead
and they could stay
in absolute line.
- Is that any rotting... - I don't
think it's any rotting thing.
I think they knew
which leaves to pick.
What do these people
do for a living?
This thing's going to go off,
isn't it? Ninja.
ALARM WAILS
- Are they not ninjas?
- No, they're not ninjas.
The darkest clothes ninjas
have ever worn have been blue,
possibly at night.
But ninjas never wear black.
The reason -
Why? It's so slimming!
I always thought ninjas might be fat
and that's why they...
- Yes, they want to look better.
- "Is that better for me?"
- It's a sort of odd thing.
There is a tradition
in Kabuki Theatre
that if anything is black,
you can't see it.
So people can move furniture around,
because they're wearing black,
they are stagehands.
And then, as a rather wonderful
surprise in Kabuki,
they might have a stagehand
suddenly kill someone!
They'd be a ninja, because ninjas
were the secret assassins!
And so this pop association appeared
that ninjas wore black,
but they never did.
They didn't fight, though, did they,
ninjas. They would run away a lot.
- Yes, well... - It was all
distraction techniques,
was how they used to overcome
their foes.
They would throw talcum powder,
or whatever, and whilst you're
distracted with the lovely skin,
they'd run away going, "Moisturise!"
Or they would throw cards and then
run. They didn't want to engage.
Yes, they were the exact opposite
of the samurai.
Samurai were all about honourable
man-on-man sword fighting
and ninjas were about, as you said,
scouting, spying, deceiving.
All kinds of different little tricks
of one kind or another.
Those things you mentioned were part
of their repertoire. But what they
never did was wear black.
Staying with Japan for a moment.
Tell me something quite interesting
about the original geishas.
- They were all men. - Yes!
Oh, God.
LAUGHTER
Absolutely right!
APPLAUSE
Bravo!
Until 1751, all geishas were men.
Originally, geishas were almost like
court jesters.
They were not courtesans,
as they're considered to be now.
It took about 100 years
before it was an even number,
and then female geishas overtook
and now they're all female.
How about an ingenious interlude?
Have a look at this glass tank
behind me
and tell me how many balls
there are in there.
One...
- Two, three. - Well done, Alan.
- Four. - So far, so good.
Yep, five. Yep.
Five.
This is the worst episode
of the National Lottery ever!
So, how many are in there,
would you say?
- Five? - Five.
- It looked like five, didn't it?
ALARM WAILS
But you might be rather surprised
to know
- that there are actually
over 1,000 in there. - Fail. Fail.
We can show you a better view
of how many there are.
- ALL: Ahh! - They're all invisible.
In fact, we have an example
of precisely these kinds of...
- There they are.
- They're gooey. - They're weird.
They're called hydrogel beads.
- I can see them. - We've deliberately
allowed them to be visible.
- But in large glass tanks,
they wouldn't be visible. - If I push
it underwater, it goes invisible.
- They have the same refractive index
as water. - Light can pass through
at the same angle.
So they appear to be invisible
in water.
I can't see it!
LAUGHTER
- Quick, a hairdryer!
- It's gone down the set.
You're going to start floating away!
- Is there a use for them?
- I've got a glass there...
- Are they worth ?500 each?
- Are they edible?
- I wouldn't want to take
responsibility, but I don't think
they'll do you any harm. - Try one.
What are they used for?
- They have a commercial use -
- I broke it!
- Oh, no. Is it burst? - It burst.
- It's sort of gone into pieces.
- It's rather strange material.
- Can you guess their commercial use?
- Packing things.
- No. Flower arranging is one.
Is it for packing goldfish?
LAUGHTER
Why aren't they making battleships
out of it?
- All kinds of new uses may be found.
- Make a submarine!
- This feels gorgeous.
- It's quite good, isn't it?
It's quite addictive.
There's something
quite gorgeous about that.
- I might have a play around
with that later. - Yep! You might!
Another use is the manufacture of...
LAUGHTER
- Behave! - You're disgusting.
Another use...
LAUGHTER
Jack's going to put his willy in it.
- Oh, dear!
- I've already put it in that one.
It's weird because when he
put it in, you couldn't see it!
- Ohh! - That's the refractive index -
Give me time to think of a comeback!
The other use,
apart from flower arranging,
is the manufacture
of contact lenses.
You'd really freak people out
if you put them in your eyes!
- Yes. Not necessarily in the round...
- Marty Feldman's contact lenses!
- Any of these coming up
in any of this? - Not yet, no!
Nearly all the light in the world,
of course, comes from our sun.
In which month is the sun
closest to the Earth?
It must be July.
ALARM WAILS
- No. - Isn't it the same distance
from the Earth all the time?
No,
because it's an elliptical orbit.
January, February, March,
April, May, June.
Yes, you were right first time -
January.
Yes, people make the mistake
that summer is somehow the time
- when the Earth is closest to the
sun. - (AUSTRALIAN ACCENT)
That is summer, mate.
It's not when the Earth
is closest to the sun.
It happens to be in January
in the southern hemisphere,
their summer,
but in the northern hemisphere,
the sun is closer to us in January
than it is in July.
The tilt of the axis, when the
maximum amount of sunlight is on
and you have the longer days,
that's what makes the seasons,
not the closeness of the sun
to the Earth.
What is interesting are the Tropics.
The first person to reason
the Tropics were not hotter
because they're nearer the sun
but because a smaller area is lit by
an equal amount of light compared to
other latitudes was George Best.
It was! Absolutely true, it was
George Best who worked that out.
You've lost it now. You've lost it,
you'll have to hand this over
to someone else.
It was George Best, who was killed
two years later in a dual in 1584.
- He was an Elizabethan scientist.
- Another George Best.
Just for a second, didn't you think
the Northern Irish hero
might have...
You come up with interesting stuff
when you drink that much!
You do! He might have come up
with that. Nice thought.
IRISH ACCENT:
"Do you know what I reckon?"
My next question is this -
why can't blindfolded people
walk in a straight line?
They can't see where they're going.
Next question.
- Because...
- I'm afraid the chance has passed.
The fact is, nobody knows!
THEY GROAN
There you go. Although
it is a recognised phenomenon
and people have theories,
nobody's really quite sure
why it should be
that one's ability to walk
in an absolutely straight line
is completely compromised.
Even in short distances,
people don't just go off straight,
they actually curve.
It was discovered by a fella
who saw it in amoebas and thought,
"I wonder if it's true of humans?"
Who's blindfolded amoebas?
- How do you do it? They're so small!
- How do you do such a thing?
"Come here, you bastard!
It's gone again."
He was called Asa Schaeffer.
He asked a friend of his,
who he blindfolded,
he instructed him to walk
in a straight line across a field
and he plotted his track,
which was a clockwise spiral
until the man happened to stumble
into a tree.
But it was a complete spiral.
This is what people do.
We've covered this before,
but more research has been done
and we have a little film.
Someone made a cartoon.
We didn't. We don't have the budget.
This is what he told him to do,
walk in a straight line.
- Is that how he walks? - Apparently.
- He was practicing to be a zombie.
- This is exactly it.
He was convinced he was going
straight. Spiral, spiral, spiral,
till he hit the stump.
And that is how we will all do it.
We will swear, "I'm going straight!"
We hold our hands up,
as if that helps,
and for some reason, we need a
visual cue, a mountain or the sun,
but nobody knows why that should be.
- Could it be,
and I'm being quite serious... - Yes.
Well, as you'll see,
it's not funny what I'm about to say.
Could it be a preservation thing, er,
so that we have an inbuilt device
that makes us go in a huge circle,
and we can't see where we're going,
so you always get back
to where you know where you are?
- I think I've cracked it.
- That's a very good point!
I like it!
APPLAUSE
- I mean, it's...
- Can we make a bonfire, please?
It's as convincing
as anybody else's theorem.
Further proof that the world
is flat!
- Maybe that's what it is.
- Preservation device to stop you
walking off the edge. - Now...
let's try an experiment.
I would like you all -
and when I say all, I mean
everyone - to close their eyes.
Audience included. Close your eyes,
and all you have to do, with your
eyes closed, is point north east.
- What? - Just point north east. - North
east? - Yes, in a north east direction.
Everyone do it. OK.
KLAXON BLARES
I hadn't moved! I'm not pointing!
- You were pointing down for some
reason! - I was scratching my leg!
It's almost directly behind me.
Closest was definitely Chris there.
< Don't tell me Chris
gets points for that!
Unless you happen to belong
to a very rare,
unfortunately diminishing,
Aboriginal tribe in Australia,
we do not have an instinctive
and automatic understanding
of north and south wherever we are,
at whatever time.
And it's linguistic. This particular
tribe, in their language,
they have no word for left
and right.
From the earliest age,
their children will be told, "The
salt's at your south-east elbow."
Everything is in absolute relation
to north and south...
They don't eat with salt cellars!
Well, whatever!
LAUGHTER
The point is they always know,
wherever they are, whether inside
outside, instantly, north south,
whether it's dark or light.
And they use it
in all senses of directions,
including their own bodies.
If you flew these people
to the other hemisphere,
- would they think
it was the other way? Like water
going down a plug. - I don't know.
They're called the Pormpuraaw People
and their language is called
Kuuk Thaayorre.
Unfortunately, it's a dying
language, as so many of these
Aboriginal languages are.
Around the world, over 100 languages
a year become extinct.
Our prepositions that we tend to use
in terms of space,
we also tend to use
in terms of time.
We have this idea
that the future is forward.
But the Imara Indians in
South America think that the past
is ahead and the future is behind.
That must make bill paying
a lot easier.
It's just a different way
of looking at things.
They're thinking the future
is behind, is the unknown.
We don't know what the future is,
it's behind us.
These things are stuck
in our language so much,
we assume they're natural and right,
so when we come across another
culture that thinks in another way,
it gives us great pause,
cos these aren't necessarily
natural and right.
- I still think they are right. - Do you?
- Yes. I won't be swayed. - Fair enough.
- When they say, "Back in the day,"
they mean something that hasn't
happened yet. - Yes!
How can you look forward
to stuff if it's all behind you?
They would find you just as weird.
Now you're being rude.
It's time to admit
I had a sip of water
and I did swallow
one of those balls.
You won't see it when it comes out.
Now, what happened
when Colonel William Rankin
got stuck for 30 minutes
in one of these?
Ohh!
Oh, it was a puzzle
and he had to try and solve it.
You haven't got one of those.
But that is an example.
You've got international symbols.
- Is it a diving bell? - It's not.
- It is an international...
- It's an expired parking meter.
- Any other thoughts? - Kaiser's helmet?
- An igloo with a loft conversion?
These are all good answers.
When I say
it's the tallest structure
that we know on the planet...
- Manmade? - No.
- Is it beneath the ocean? - No.
It's in the other direction.
- It's in the sky? - Yes.
- A cloud. - Yes!
It's a particular kind of cloud.
That kind of a cloud,
- if that was its symbol.
- A fluffy cloud.
It's a Cumulonimbus.
It's an anvil-shaped.
- He was stuck in there
for half an hour? - He was, yes.
He was a US pilot and he ejected.
- He'd opened his chute, then?
- Yes, but it was half an hour inside
this thing, being buffeted about.
So, how tall was the pole
this sign was on?
LAUGHTER
You may've missed the point, Jack!
They get up to about 23,000 metres
high, which is fantastically high.
He was buffeted about in it.
He did survive.
His eyes and ears were bleeding.
He was pelted with hail.
He was in a terrible state!
But he's the only person
to have fallen through one of
these structures and survived.
Anyway, listen,
while we're with clouds,
what use to a pilot
is a morning glory?
- Ah, now...
- If your joystick fails...!
LAUGHTER
Oh, dear! He's smiling, isn't he?
I think it was
the co-pilot's joystick!
That's why they always sound
so relaxed. "Good morning,
ladies and gentlemen.
"Welcome on board."
- Aside from the possibility...
- It'll be something to do with the
sunlight coming over the horizon.
It's an annual event that takes
place in Northern Queensland,
Australia, called the Morning Glory.
It's a remarkable cloud system.
It's really amazing.
We've got a picture of it.
It can be up to 600 miles long -
as long as the United Kingdom.
Look at that. It's over Burketown,
which has a population of 178.
But lots of people come. The reason
is, if you're a gliding pilot,
you get the ride of your life.
It can go at 35 miles an hour,
and inside, it's the most
exciting thing you can experience.
Then you bump into a bloke
with a parachute. "Get off!"
- His eyes are bleeding! "Help me!"
- < "Didn't you see the sign?"
APPLAUSE
- Oh, dear! - And that's the only place
where a cloud like that forms?
Yes. It's the mother of them all.
Apparently, soaring along it
is the greatest experience.
Indian Granny Clouds...
- What can you tell me about them?
- Did it win...?
LAUGHTER
Did Indian Granny Cloud
win the 2:30 at Kempton Park?
The, er...
Is it a fart in a restaurant?
LAUGHTER
- I'm so disappointed in you!
- When an old lady does a pump
in a curry house!
Do they go up in the sky and can't
remember what they went up for?
Now...
LAUGHTER
Think of cloud in the 21st century.
What other use has "cloud"
been put to as a word?
- It's a computer thing. - The internet.
This is a scheme
whereby grannies in England,
using Skype or similar technology,
teach and educate and inform
and enlighten children in India
all the way from England.
- It was started by Professor
Sugata Mitra. - "How To Make Jam".
"How To Make Jam", possibly!
- They tutor Indian classes where
they're short of teachers. It's an
enormous success. - Why grannies?
They've got time on
their hands and because they care!
"Drop one, purl one."
Imagine the exports
of Werther's Originals to India!
They're all listening
to Michael Ball records!
What we're looking at,
with your symbols,
are part of what is known as
the International Cloud Atlas.
- And can you tell me what they are?
- Do they represent countries?
- No, they represent... - On an atlas.
- No, no!
- God!
- I don't really listen enough, do I?
They represent types...
I bet you're a teacher!
"He reminds me of all my kids!"
They represent a type of cloud.
- It looks like simpleton snap.
- It does! I know.
- What did you think they were?
- I had this one.
- Had you written anything on them?
I thought they were things
to help traumatise children.
"Tell me what you think."
- I have "Elderly Use Handbrake".
- Yes! "Elderly Use Handbrake".
- That's my handbrake! - Very good.
"You call that pregnant?
THIS is pregnant!"
Very good!
That's actually ET being quite rude.
LAUGHTER
- You don't know what it means,
but it's rude! - Absolutely!
Well, there you are,
the International Cloud Atlas.
- There were three forms,
the cumulus... - The stratocumulus.
- The stratus. - Nimbus.
- And the cirrus, the fluffy one.
And then there are all the mixtures
of those in between -
the altocumulus, the stratocumulus,
and so on.
It's that time when we grope
our way towards general ignorance
at the end of the tunnel.
Fingers on buzzers, please.
Name the largest black body
in the solar system.
Oprah Winfrey. >
Whoa! Ohh! Ohh, Rich!
Ohh! Ohh!
LAUGHTER
- Within the solar system. - Black hole?
ALARM WAILS
If there was a black hole
in the solar system,
we'd be in real trouble.
We would. I don't know any other
black things in the solar system.
- The strange thing is, it's the sun.
- I see.
A black body, in cosmology,
is something that doesn't reflect,
and the sun only radiates,
so it is the blackest body
in the solar system.
- That's cheating. - It seems to be
a little bit of a cheat question,
but had you known the answer,
it wouldn't have been.
If you were to shine a light on
the sun, which would be pointless,
I accept that...
It wouldn't reflect off it.
In the solar system, there is
no other body so unreflective.
- The moon is nothing but reflective.
It gives off nothing, but reflects
all the light. - The same as us.
But the sun reflects nothing.
How long does light from the centre
of the sun take to reach the Earth?
EXPLOSIONS
Yes?
Now, I know this.
LAUGHTER
Right!
It might not be the centre, it
sounds like a trick, but the light
from the sun takes eight minutes.
Mm...
ALARM WAILS
Ahh! Oh, dear.
The thing is,
it actually takes 100,000 years
to get from the centre of the sun
to the surface...
to the surface of the sun.
Eight minutes!
But he was absolutely right.
From the surface of the sun...
to the Earth takes eight minutes.
- I added that qualifier!
- You did. You were right.
It's 8 minutes 26 seconds, roughly.
The photons have an enormous amount
of work to do right in the middle
of this gigantic system.
How many Earths could you fit in
the sun, were you able to do so?
Four.
- Easily! - Easily, yes, you could.
That's quite true!
I can't deny that.
400,000.
- The maximum number is 1.3 million.
- 3 million Earths!
It's responsible for 99.8%
- of the mass of the solar system.
- Really?
- That's extraordinary!
- It is. There's a lot of it.
What happens to alcohol
when you bring it to the boil?
- Ah, you boil it off, don't you,
Chef? - Yes, you do. You waste it.
ALARM WAILS
- Whoa! - That's his.
It's nothing to do with me.
I didn't touch it!
There's this idea
that it all evaporates and so on.
In fact, it takes a very long time,
three hours, at least,
before you get rid of it.
Flambeing only gets rid of...
If you like a crepe suzette,
if you light the brandy,
that only gets rid of a quarter
of the alcohol.
So the idea that
you're burning it off...
It's not particularly important,
unless you're drinking carefully
so that you're under the limit,
then you have a crepe suzette
and drive and are surprised
that you're over the limit.
We've all been there!
The same goes to a Christmas pud
when you put the brandy on,
- give it to the kids and say,
"There won't be alcohol." - Exactly!
- That's right. - And a 20p piece
that might choke them to death!
- Could you get done for eat-driving?
- Yes, if you had enough of it!
Eat-driving!
It's a heck of a thought!
Interestingly,
if you add alcohol to a recipe
and you don't heat it at all,
just leave it uncovered overnight,
it will get rid of more alcohol
than by flambeing it.
30% of it will go
just by natural evaporation.
If you leave a glass of wine out at
night, the alcohol will evaporate?
- Some of it. - Or someone will
come down and drink it.
LAUGHTER DROWNS OUT SPEECH
"..it's gone."
How much alcohol are they allowed
to drink on US navy ships?
- A tot of rum. - A tot of rum per man?
No. All US navy ships have been dry
since 1914. No alcohol at all.
- The French riot police are...having
a riot over not being able to drink
at lunchtime. - Are they?!
Yeah, they have been told. They've
always been allowed to have...
FRENCH ACCENT: ..just ze beer
or some wine at lunchtime, it's not
really drinking. Does not count.
And they've always been allowed
to do it and they still do it
and now the government's said, "We
don't think it's such a good idea
"that you should sit in your van
drinking beer."
There was a photograph taken
of all these riot police...
"Where is ze riot?"
There you go. How many eyes does a
no-eyed, big-eyed wolf spider have?
EXPLOSIONS >
Yeah?
Eight.
ALARM WAILS
- None. - Yes! After all...
- A no-eyed, big-eyed wolf spider!
All big-eyed wolf spiders
do have eight eyes,
except the no-eyed, big-eyed...
I feel genuinely really stupid
because you gave me the answer
in the question.
- It's the worst one to have...
- It's a member of the same order
of eight-eyed spiders
but it's evolved to live
in a cave with no light
and so it's lost all its eyes.
There it is.
A rather grim-looking creature.
- These are in Kauai in Hawaii. - Kauai.
- And they're getting very, very rare.
The little things
have no eyes at all.
Bet they can walk in a straight line,
though.
And so from the caliginous shadows
of general ignorance,
we emerge into the unforgiving light
of the scores.
My goodness me,
aren't they interesting?
Well,
tonight's indisputable illuminatus,
with three whole points,
is Rich Hall!
APPLAUSE
Burning brightly in second place
with minus one, Jack Dee!
APPLAUSE
Despite his stunning knowledge
in so many areas,
he did fall into a few
of our little Heffalump traps,
so in third place, guttering and
spluttering a little on minus nine,
Chris Addison!
APPLAUSE
But cast forever
into outer darkness,
with minus 45, Alan Davies!
CHEERING
That's all for this
frankly brilliant edition of QI.
It's lights out and good night
from Chris, Rich, Jack, Alan and me.
I leave you with this
from Steven Wright:
"Light travels faster than sound
"and isn't that why some people
appear bright
until you hear them speak?"
Good night.
APPLAUSE
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd