Ladies and gentlemen,
hello and welcome to QI,
the quiz show where the answers are much more exciting than the questions,
but the questions are completely impossible.
As I don't really expect any of the panel to know the answers,
I shall be giving credit purely on the basis that I find their replies interesting,
regardless of whether or not they are correct or even relevant.
So let's meet our class of quite interesting contestants.
Alan Davies, Bill Bailey, Kit Hesketh-Harvey and Eddie Izzard.
Now, ladies and gentlemen, here is a round on names.
You may know that the Gibraltarian minister of tourism is called Joe Holliday,
and that the archbishop of Manila goes by the name of Cardinal Sin,
but few people with the relatively common name of Dick Brett
know that in German their name means "thick plank".
This is a buzzer round.
So if you'd like to get out your buzzers, contestants, please.
Each member of the team has a noise with which they can interrupt the action
if they feel they have something more interesting to say.
- Alan goes... - (honk)
- Bill goes... - (cheep )
- Kit goes... - (squeaking)
- And Eddie goes... - (whistle, two bells )
And I go to Belgium, for which I profusely apologise.
Ten points for the right answer, two for an answer which is wrong, but quite interesting.
- And minus ten points... - (Kit) Minus?
..for a wrong answer which is written down here.
- Does it say "pass" on there? - No.
First question. Who or what is Bobo Fing?
(cheep/whistle)
- (two bells ) - (Stephen ) Bill.
Pigeon!
# Stop the...
- (cheep ) - # ..pigeon
- # Nab him, grab him - (hums )
- Sorry, sorry, sorry. - Bobo Fing.
- The bass player in Boney M.
If that's on there, I'm leaving.
- Is it a Star Wars character? - Not a Star Wars character.
- Is it a hobbit? - Nor a hobbit.
It's a hobbit from South London. Bobo Fing.
- (Alan) Bobo Fing, innit? - (Stephen) Nice answer. Worth two points.
The answer is a language spoken in Mali, where 10,000 people are fluent in Bobo Fing.
Not to be confused with Burkina-Faso, where they speak just Bobo.
Or Tanzania where more than ten million people speak Gogo.
True. Now, next question.
King Arthur's famous sword was called Excalibur.
What was the name of his less well-known lance?
- (cheep/bell) - Yes, Eddie?
- Hole in one. - No.
- Elot. - No. Nice one. Very good.
Ten points. Ten points to the young K double H.
- I know. - Yes?
Excalibur isn't actually the original name of the sword.
I happen to know that in ye olde English, going back, like, before...
You're talking in pidgin English now.
...the name... the sword... in Arthur's time, he wouldn't have called it Excalibur.
He would have called it "Caliburn".
Certainly ten points to you for knowing the original name of Excalibur. In fact, 20 points.
- I'll tell you something else, too. - Please do, please do.
- When Paul Daniels... - No. Stop it now. No.
He recreated throwing...
Cos after Arthur died, the sword was thrown away,
his body was sent out on a raft.
- What? Paul Daniels? - No. King Arthur in the Arthurian legend.
His body was sent out on a raft and it was burning and then he's supposed to sink down,
and then legend has it that his chain-mail fist came up
holding Excalibur out of the water.
Well, Paul Daniels recreated this on his Saturday evening magic show.
People would come up and try and get the sword out of the stone, but they couldn't,
but he could, because he knew the bloke who was operating the vice.
And then he threw it in the lake and there was another bloke in a frogman outfit
who had... and I know this to be true cos I met Ali Bongo, who invented it.
He had a bit of string on his flipper like that, and when he felt his flipper go like that,
he had to go like that from under the water.
Paul Daniels just got away with all kinds of historical inaccuracies time and time again.
Otherwise... otherwise, we would love him.
- Sorry for rabbiting on. - (Stephen) Then the lance.
- You've done very well so far. - Oh, blimey.
- (Eddie) Percival. - No, it's not. It's actually Ron.
- Ron? - Ron.
- Black Ron? - No, just plain Ron.
Well, Ron was short for "Rhongomynad", but he called it Ron. His lance was known as Ron.
True fact. That is true. The helmet... His helmet was called Goosewhite. True.
- Come on, Goosewhite. - (Stephen) His armour...
Now, that's naughty.
You see, Graham Norton's being recorded next door. We don't do helmet humour here.
Why would he shout "Come on" at it, anyway?
I don't know what I even meant by that. It was a stupid thing to say.
These are definitive absolute facts from a myth.
(Stephen) Yes.
Arthur's armour was called Wygar.
- (Alan) His kneepads... - And his war cry was Clarence.
- He would shout "Clarence". - (Bill) Clarence!
- Again, true. - (Eddie) Hang on, hang on.
Are you sure it wasn't "Clearance"?
Clearance! Come through with Ron... Ron and Arthur,
and Geoff and Bernard and Harry.
"Grab those, we're coming! Clearance!"
I think it's a lot more logical. You've got to go for the logic, as opposed to...
And the enemy must be going, "There are loads of 'em." But it was actually only Arthur.
- Little Arthur. - He had a name for everything?
He seemed to have a name for everything, yes.
Including his wife. "That bitch."
- We come now to the next question. - (Bill) 0h.
Fingers on buzzers. What are butter hamlets?
- Butter hamlets. Two words. - (squeak)
Yes?
Hamlets where the too solid flesh has already melted.
That's awfully good, you see, because it's literary, isn't it?
It's a quotation from the play Hamlet, and... very good.
- It's not funny, but... - Ten for being literate.
Ten for having read a book and not masturbated. Yes, Bill?
Butter hamlets... Is this a sort of a term for towns that have spread?
- Frightfully witty. - Is that actually?
- Another ten. - A ten.
- Yes, my dear? - It is...
It's a hamlet, a little village where they haven't got any fridges
and all the milk's gone a bit off.
And turns... as milk doesn't, when it goes off, to butter.
- It doesn't, does it? - (Eddie) Maybe...
Villages that are going round and round very fast, perhaps.
A churning village of milk.
It's an EEC problem from back in the '70s
- when the butter mountains... - (Alan) They build them up into...
They melted and destroyed the butter hamlets.
What I can tell you is that a butter hamlet, ladies and gentlemen,
well, butter hamlets are small, brightly coloured tropical fish
which live in the Western Atlantic and come in ten - count them - ten different colours.
Now, ichthyologists, as it happens, are rather uncertain
whether there are in fact ten species of butter hamlets,
or whether there is just one species that comes in a range of ten colourways.
Butter hamlets are simultaneously male and female
and mate by intertwan... intertwining... intertwaning...
- Intertwaning. ...with another butter hamlet.
And there is a spookily similar species of fish called I Can't Believe It's Not Butter Hamlet.
No, I made that last bit up. The rest, of course, is true.
So our next question: What is the sixth most popular name for a baby boy in Germany?
(cheep)
- Klaus. - No.
- Adolf. - Oh, he said Adolf!
- D'oh! - Minus ten. That was the minus-ten card.
That's got a "ph" on it. That's not "Adolf". I didn't spell it like that.
The literacy of our research department is neither here nor there.
- How about eight points off? Come on. - All right. Eight points off, cos I'm kind.
- The answer is in fact Tim. - Him!
- No, Tim. - Tim?
Amazingly, though, it's down from fifth.
It was the fifth most popular name for baby boys in Germany in 1999 and 2000.
In 1992 the French government relaxed their ruling
on the formal list of what French children could be legally christened -
Jean-Pierre, Jean-Michel, Marie-Claire, Jean-Marie,
Tintin, Babar, Comte de Frou-Frou.
And the following year, after relaxing these laws,
the most popular name for a baby French boy was Kevin.
What - ladies and gentlemen, fingers on buzzers again -
is Richard Gere's middle name?
- Gerbil. - Oh! You've done it again!
Oh! Oh, dear, dear, dear, dear.
Oh, how the obvious are fallen.
- Oh, you are humiliated, Alan. - Even as I said it, I knew, I just knew.
"Gerbil" was out of your mouth before you knew what you were doing.
It was out of my mouth, you know what I mean?
It was a Family Fortunes...
- Richard of Gere? - Richard of Gere?
"I am Richard of Gere."
Richard Gottla. Gottla Gere.
D... Daniel.
I just did a funny one. Please, I'd like a reaction.
Richard Gottla.
Gottla Gere!
- Right, no. The answer is Tiffany. - Really?
- Fact. Richard Tiffany Gere. - Fantastic.
Listen, that's enough names now. You've done awfully well. We'll leave names.
I just want want to quit with this thought,
that the name of the director of planning and strategic development
at Aberdeen City Council is Mr Peter Cockhead.
Let's now have, if we may, the scores.
In fourth place, Bill with 15.
In third place, Alan with 25. In second place, Eddie with 31.
But way out in front, with 35 points, Mr Kit Hesketh-Harvey.
That's fantastic.
Well, we come to history now.
Popular new television subject, as we focus on the clammy underbelly of Victorian Britain.
Britain was a pretty grisly place in the 19th century, even at the top.
When Queen Victoria came to the throne in 1837,
there were no bathrooms in Buckingham Palace.
George IV had a magnificent marble bath in the Brighton Pavilion,
but Queen Victoria had it sawn up and made into mantelpieces.
Instead, she had a portable tub in her bedroom,
to which, as was commonplace in those days, she added whisky.
Aren't I a mine of information? All right. Kit, let's start with you.
The first man ever to die in a train crash,
as you may well know, was the MP William Huskisson,
who foolishly walked across the track in front of Stevenson's Rocket.
But some years earlier, he had narrowly survived death from a different cause.
What was it?
Holding onto the wrong end of Stevenson's sparklers?
No.
A pig falling on his head.
- My God! - Was it? It was a Graham Greene story.
20 points. There is a Graham Greene story about a pig falling on a man's head.
- That's the most absurd death possible. - That's right. You're very very close.
A horse fell on his head during his honeymoon.
Congratulations, Kit. Brilliant.
(Alan) And he survived?
Was he honeymooning with the horse? Maybe that's what happened.
In which case it served him jolly well right. You shouldn't mess with an oestrus mare.
- Exactly. - Exactly right.
But did you know that Stevenson's Rocket,
they reckoned would go at 27 to 30 miles an hour,
and it was almost certain
that if you were in a passenger carriage going over 30 miles an hour,
you'd suffer irreparable brain damage.
And so in order to protect people from this sight,
they had to erect fences alongside the track, all the way along.
They thought they didn't want anyone who was wandering by watch all these people go...
in all the carriages.
- 15 points to that man. Very good. - (Kit) Quite interesting.
- Quite interesting. - Quite interesting. That's all we're after.
- Now... - Stevenson's Rocket was made out of soot.
Moulded in... Oh, fuck it.
Alan. Alan, we'll turn to you now.
What use did Victorian gentlemen have for badgers' willies?
I... Now, I know something about badgers, which is that they come out at night.
And also that they use the badgers' hair for shaving brushes.
Yes, true. Or used to. I don't think they do any more. I think it's frowned on now.
- Is it? - Yes. Although they're vicious little animals...
What did they use? When they shaved the badger, to get the hair off,
to make the shaving brush, how did they get the foam on the badger?
- Did they get another one and foam it up? - Like putting the chicken before the cart...
And how do they get the first lot of badger hair? Individual plucking? Like...
Sneaking up on the badger at night. "Got another one. Nearly got a whole brush now."
But the badger's willy, I would think would be about that big.
- (Eddie) Are they? - Yeah. If memory serves.
The only thing...
The only thing I could think you could use something like that for
would be as a cap for a Bic Biro.
I like that. Would that be the Bic Cristal Grip?
With a hole in like that?
Yeah, we'll certainly give you five for being quite interesting. Any other thoughts?
I just wanna ask, you know the badger and the shaving thing,
did they work through animals until they hit on badger?
Yeah, they went to hedgehogs first.
Yeah, the hedgehog was a disaster. Absolutely right.
If they had, like... Sorry. If they...
You know foxes, I think, have a kind of a little notch on the end of their willy,
so once they're in, they can't come out.
- A barb. - A barb thing, that's what I meant.
- Bifurcated. - Are they?
- That's the correct term. - That's how they feel, anyway.
Rhinos...
"Are you all right?" "I've been bifurcated. I think he's still in here."
- And most... - Like this.
Oh, you mean it goes in and then kind of goes, ooh, like that?
Like this, and hangs on like this, so you can't actually pull out.
Like one of those plastic clips on your little rucksack?
- Well... - That's in.
And then you can't...
- I didn't think a willy was that convoluted. - The men in Borneo use it as a sexual aid.
They push a sort of stick through the end of the glans penis
and it's supposed to actually kind of increase sexual pleasure.
They do that on purpose on their willies?
- Yes, they do. - 20 points to Bill.
- That's interesting. - It's quite interesting.
Lf, in fact, this little willy has got a bifurcating thingy on it...
Which it hasn't, I'm here to tell you.
...they might have used it for getting the lids off jam jars.
- Oh, bless, bless. - (Bill) I know.
Is it for keeping the fingers warm?
Ten little badgers' willies.
- (Stephen) Ten reverse mittens. - Some little, bald, willyless badger going:
"You look nice, you've shaved, your fingers are warm. What about my life?"
- Pigs' willies are spiral, aren't they? - Yes, curly ones.
It must be fascinating to see a pig have sex. It must go... (makes whooshing noise)
Fingers waiting...
Well, I'll tell you what it is, and it is quite interesting, you see.
Victorian gentlemen wore them as tiepins,
because, now, all male primates, except man, and nearly all mammals,
have a bone in their penis, called the baculum, that's the baculum.
And in badgers, these are attached by either end by means of a sort of ligament,
which goes through a little hole in the bone.
And they're the perfect length, as you can see, to span a gentleman's neckwear.
- (Alan) No! - (Bill) Oh, no.
- Is that a badger's willy there? - No, no. It's a chicken, I'm afraid.
It's a chicken bone, but it's sort of... to give you an idea.
I think they were smaller and thinner, and so on. But there you are, the baculum - a bone...
I just don't understand how they...
What were they doing with a badger that they cut its willy off, got the bone out and went:
"God, do you know what?"
"Isn't it extraordinary? Why don't you get yourself one of these? These are marvellous."
Well, you see, in the countryside you come across the decaying skeleton of many animals.
- Oh, yeah, they found it. - They would find the little bone...
It was like a roadkill. If it's roadkill you can just have its willy off and clip your tie on.
Carry on hunting. Who'd go hunting in ties, you're telling me now, in the woods?
Again, a similar point as before, but did they work through the bones of the badger going:
"Well, that doesn't really work. Skull on there. There we go. There's the back leg."
"And this willy works. It's quite good."
"Yes, very good."
British Empire and everything.
No wonder we lost the Empire.
Spending all that time hunting for badgers' willies.
"Let's have a bottle of wine. Oh, I haven't got a corkscrew. Get me that pig's willy, will you?"
Our animal friends are so helpful. Now, Bill, your question.
- What was rectal inflation? - (laughter)
In Victorian England.
- (Kit) Is this about badgers? - Well... Yes.
This is where they decided
that a trout was the best way of curing constipation.
I've no idea. Arsing around for...
I think it's when arseholes went right up in price...
and spiralling out of control,
and then the price was brought down by a change in interest rates.
Did the bottom fall out of the market?
Well...
Maybe it's not to do with economics. Maybe it's to do with inflating...
- (Bill) Inflating rectums. - It isn't that far off, you know.
Was this a medical procedure to relieve some kind of pressure?
More than pressure. It was considered a life-saving intervention.
- So... you... Constipation? - No.
(Eddie) Colonic irrigation with one end bunged up?
Not quite. I'll put you out of your misery.
Because you've kind of got its medical aspect, Bill, I will give you ten.
In fact, the answer is blowing tobacco smoke up people's bottoms
as a means of resuscitating the drowned.
It was believed that this would help them,
that somehow the smoke would get up into their lungs from that direction and...
"Skin up, I think he's drowned."
It may have been invented by desperate schoolmasters, I don't know.
It does sound like something that ends with the words, "my lord".
"Your Honour..."
"And that completes the somewhat flimsy case for the defence."
"What were you doing down there, boy?" "I was saving him from drowning."
Our Victorian friends. Eddie.
How did Victorians who couldn't afford chimney sweeps
clear the soot from their chimneys?
Well, they would close off the top chimney, effect a seal,
and close up the bottom of the flue,
make a vacuum inside the chimney...
These would be too cheap or too poor to afford chimney sweeps.
So making a vacuum would be a rather expensive procedure.
Some of these poor people were very advanced scientists.
- And they'd done physics O-level. - Ah, of course.
I don't know... Didn't they?
- Isn't it children? - Well, that's...
Children were used as chimney sweeps for the rich. They'd pay the chimney sweep...
- Oh, the rich. - But we're talking about the poor.
The poor had kids who were chimney sweeps and they... as a hobby.
- I'm afraid it's even worse... - As a hobby...
They would place a badger in the grate of the chimney and then say:
"Do you know, I really think I could do with a tiepin."
And the badger would shoot up the chimney...
- (Stephen) Very good. ...fire out the top.
- Nice one, Bill. 15... 15 points to Bill. - Two eyes, like that.
"You can't use my hair now. I'm filthy."
It's very funny, what Bill said, but...
I think the poor people with the posh accent is a bit weird.
- (Bill) "Cor blimey, guv'nor!" - That's better.
"Do you know what? I could do with a bleedin' tiepin."
"Give us your knob to pin it on with. Ooh, blimey!"
Maybe it's true. Maybe they were just once rich, but down on their luck at that point.
"Well, we've got no... nothing. Tiepins are still part of the whole look."
Don't they still do it in rural? They did in the 1930s.
They tied a goose by the legs and dragged it up and the goose would go...
This is the right answer once again.
- I wasn't a million miles away. - It's very close to badgers.
- 25 points to Kit. Superbly correct answer. - Drag it up or drag it down?
They would tie string to its legs and either drop it down the chimney
and it would dive down, fall down and...
- So, actually, I'm not a million miles away. - You weren't a million miles away.
Hang on. These are poor people,
but the price of the goose, we know from Oliver Twist, that's incredibly expensive.
- The only book you've read. - How could they afford a goose?
- Really? Not A -hristmas -arol? - They'd send a child up.
- Yeah, I've got that one as well. - Yes, yes.
- I've only read one. They're all Oliver Twist. - Fair enough.
Different bloody story.
I'm not picking on you, Eddie. It just occurred to me. "Never was there such a goose..."
- If you give me points, I don't mind. - Exactly.
Five points for not knowing the difference between Oliver Twist and A -hristmas -arol.
We'll move on to something more salubrious directly, but not yet.
Until the public health act of 1875, sewage was poured untreated into rivers.
Queen Victoria was standing on a bridge over the River Cam early in her reign
and was moved to ask the master of Trinity College:
"What are all those pieces of paper in the water?" The quick-thinking master replied:
"Those, Your Majesty, are notices saying that bathing is forbidden."
At the end of that round, let's have a look at the scores.
In fourth place, Alan on 45.
- Next, Eddie on 46. - What?
Next, Bill on 68, but way out in the lead on 80 points, Kit. Kit.
Ladies and gentlemen, the next round is called Lingo,
where we explore and are explored by the wily and exotic tongues of Johnny Foreigner.
- (laughter) - Thank you.
Armed with the helpful information that the Finnish word for "bad news" is "jobinposti".
True.
Here is a selection of contemporary Dutch.
I'm sure that you already know that "nijlpaard" means "hippopotamus".
Did you know that "koksmuts" is the Dutch for a chef's hat?
Now, let's see what you make of this lot here.
"Pronk."
- I'm gonna write these down on my paper. - So am I.
- "Sloot", which is spelt s-l-o-o-t. - Could you go a bit slower?
"Sloot", s-l-o-o-t.
- "Kloof', k-l-o-o-f. - (Kit) Kloof.
"Lonk", as it sounds, l-o-n-k.
And "oog", which is actually spelt o-o-g. "Oog" or "hoog".
And finally, "wanklank".
W-a-n-k-l-a-n-k.
(all) Wanklank.
I feel like you've just insulted me and don't even know.
(Stephen) Could be. Any thoughts?
"Wanklank" is repetitive strain injury.
"Sloot" is a second-hand magazine for sludge.
Very good.
- Oog. - (Stephen) Oog.
- "Oog", a state of rapture. - Ah!
Oog!
Now you've called my bluff now.
- A "pronk" is not a complete pronker. - No.
Well, isn't a house... a "honk" Dutch for "house"? A "honk".
- "Honk" is "home". Absolutely. - "Honk" is "home"?
So then... could not, then, a "pronk" be, like, "shed" or something,
or, you know, something similar to a home?
Anything that ends "onk" means more or less something homely?
Something homely. Yes? An apartment, maybe. I don't know. Pied-a-terre.
I think "kloof" is a cloth.
Well, it would be to you, wouldn't it? I mean that in a caring way.
If there were an underground station in Amsterdam,
- they would shout, Let op... - (Kit) There is.
There is, in fact, of course. There is a metro.
They would shout, not that I've heard them do it, "Let op. Kloof."
- Kloof? Oh, "Stand clear. Doors closing." - Mind the...
- Mind the gap! Mind the gap. - The kloof is a gap. Exactly. First there, Bill.
"Lonk", by the same token, is, "It's a lonk way from Schiphol to Amsterdam."
Very nice.
"Lonk" actually means "to ogle".
Interesting, the word "ogle" might give you a clue as to what "oog" or "och" means.
- Eyes? - Eyes!
- The eyes have it. - There he goes again. Ten points. Good.
- "Sloot." - Dyke.
It's close. Ditch. Ditch. Ditch, dyke, same thing. "Wanklank" means...
- It sounds onomatopoeic. - It's actually right.
Is it? So it's like the sound of something making a "wanklank"...
- Yes! - A "vinklink".
- It is. It's a discordant noise. - Was it?
- Yes! 0h, yes, yes. 15 points. - Oh.
Fantastic. Very good indeed. Very good. Very good.
Tijdens de tweede wereldoorlog moesten veel Nederlanders tulpenbollen eten.
Tell me what that means.
That means, "Today my cheese got stuck in the wall."
No, it means, again, a true fact:
"During the Second World War, many Dutch people had to eat tulip bulbs." Now...
Stephen, do you mind, I feel I'm lagging behind.
Can I bring in an interesting fact that I remembered before I came on?
I want you to. I want you to.
Do you know that if dogs eat toothpaste, they hallucinate?
Ooh.
- Ooh. Really? - Yeah.
- How do you know that? - Well, a bloke down the pub.
Not a dog? "A dog told me, a dog that was flying in the air."
There's a certain breed of dog called something like a "wastabein" or something,
when it chases deer,
it catches them by running behind them and biting off their genitalia from the rear.
- Oh, how mean. - What? This is the deer do that?
No, the dog does it. This is after two tubes of Macleans, then?
As you will hear them say on Dutch radio... (Dutch accent) "Dat vas the news",
which is the Dutch for, "That was the news."
And now to Greek, the only language in the world
where the words for "bread" and "lavatory seat" are the same:
"Koloura", if you must know.
Now, finally, then. The word "thespian", what does that mean to a Greek?
- (Eddie) Taxi driver. - Actor. Actor, isn't it?
Of course it means actor now, my darling. We know that, don't we, my lovely?
But what did it mean? What's its real meaning?
- Does it mean waiter? - (Bill) Unemployed.
No. Waiter. Very good.
20 points to that... that Izzard man there for "waiter".
The first actor was... The oldest actor, older even than Thora Hird.
- (Alan) You've read so many books. - It's a good thought. No, it's not that.
It's not that. I'll tell you what it is. Very pleasingly, "thespian" is the Greek for "awful".
I'm being a little unfair. It's "awful" in the sense of "awe-inspiring", hence also "divine".
There's a lovely John Wayne story, when he was playing the centurion in the Bible,
and the director said to him, when he said, "This was the son of God",
and he said, "Could you say it with more awe?" And he said, "Aw, this was the son..."
Fantastic. Very good.
Very nice. Five points... because I've heard it many times.
Finally, and utterly irrelevantly, in this round on languages,
you may be interested to know that since the Danish word for king is kong,
in Denmark, King Kong is known as Kong King. There you are.
Now, let's have the scores at the end of that round. Thank you.
Bringing up the rear at the moment, but gosh, how these things change and how fast,
it's Alan with 77.
Next, our former leader Kit on 95.
Then Eddie in second place on 96.
But way out in the lead at the moment, it's Bill on 107 points.
Can I just ask, though, in the film King Kong, going back to King Kong,
to keep King Kong out, they built a huge door.
Now, why don't they just build a little door?
You know. It's a huge door that he can eventually break down.
- But if they built a little door... - A tiny door, he can only get his finger out.
(Alan) "Oh, if I could get out that door, I'd get you all."
I think that's really rather funny and I'd like to give some points from Kit... for Alan.
So, ladies and gentlemen, perhaps the greatest thinker in human history
was Plato's teacher and friend, Socrates,
of whom the oracle of Delphi said, in an almost uniquely unambiguous pronouncement,
that Socrates was the wisest of all Athenians,
on the grounds that he alone knew that he knew nothing.
But you, my dear panel, have surpassed the great philosopher.
Not only do you know that you know that you know nothing,
but you have also managed to prove it.
To rub salt in the wound and drip lemon on the paper cut,
we conclude with the round entitled "General Ignorance".
This is a buzzer round, ladies and gentlemen.
Can I just give you an interesting fact about the Delphic oracle,
which relates to an earlier thing?
She made her pronouncements on a tripod with smoke issuing from her vagina.
So whether there was a Victorian gentleman blowing from the other end, I don't know.
- Very good. 15 points. - Yeah.
- Burning bush. - Burning bush. Five points.
(applause)
We have to hurry. We've got so little tape left.
We put it on short play, which was foolish. We should have put it on long play.
A voice in my ear tells me we have little tape, so what is the highest mountain in the world?
Everest.
- Minus ten to all of you. It is not Everest. - K2?
- Not K2. - The one at the bottom of the Pacific 0cean.
The Marianas Trench. Upside down. If you're Australian.
You can have your ten back for being vaguely right.
Everest is the third-highest mountain in the world, depending on how you calculate it.
The highest mountain, and the world's largest volcano,
is the one I think you were struggling towards, Alan, which is in Hawaii,
and it's called - oddly enough for the highest mountain in the world - Mount Loa.
It's 4,170 metres above sea level, 5,000 metres below sea level, it continues,
and a further 8,000 under the seabed, which is where the mountain starts,
making it almost 55,000 of your Earth-feet tall.
Do you see? Compared to Everest's puny 29,000ft.
But even Mount Kilimanjaro, in Africa, is higher than Everest,
on two counts - not just one, but two.
- It rises straight out of the African plain... - This is a quick-fire round?
Kilimanjaro rises straight out of the African plain
whereas Everest is merely one of the many pointy bits on the base of the Himalayas,
and, secondly, being on the equator,
which, the Earth being an oblate spheroid, bulges outwards at the equator,
Kilimanjaro is further from the Earth's centre.
Do you work for Arthur Andersen?
- I have recalculated the statistics. - Why do we go on about Everest, then?
Why?
That's it. This is what this programme is trying to expose, ruthlessly -
the fraudulent, systematic deceptions played on the world's population.
We must hurry because the tape is running fast, fast, fast.
- What colour, team, are black boxes? - Orange!
Correct. 20 points. Very good.
They were black until 1965 when someone pointed out
that they never seemed to be able to find them in the wreckage.
So, next question. What is eaten in the city of Genoa
that is generally not eaten almost anywhere else in the world?
It's a delicacy in Genoa and nowhere else is it eaten.
(Kit) Pasta Genovese.
Orchiete Genovese.
- (Stephen) Oh, it sounds good. - I've just made it up.
It's a sad answer. People go "Aaah" when they know the truth.
- Carpets? - (honk)
- Little... little chicks. Little fluffy chicks. - No. We eat those, I'm afraid.
- Puppies? Dogs? - Dear little baby seals?
- Close. Close. It's a mammal. - (Eddie) Baby dolphins!
Dolphins is the right answer. I'm afraid the Genoese do.
The answer is in Genoa, where Columbus, pesto, and genes themselves come from...
Genoa Aquarium is the most technologically advanced in the world
and contains four million litres of water.
The dolphins, which are of the Tursiops species,
are well known for their friendliness and docile character
and are delicious.
Dolphins have been respected, rather than made into pies, since Ancient Greece.
Genoese don't go along with this. They enjoy chewing on strips of dried dolphin flesh.
Next question. Last of all. It's an easy one.
What is illegal to do in the sea around Greece, which is not illegal in almost any other?
(Kit) 0livia Newton-John.
- Have sex? - No, the answer is scuba dive.
Greek authorities - there are very few, rare, heavily supervised, licence exceptions -
do not allow diving because they're paranoid about people stealing their antiquities -
many of which are underwater,
as those of us who watched For Your Eyes Only last night will remember.
A word of warning. If you're swimming in Greece, for heaven's sake,
don't yell "life belt" in Greek. It's "koloura" again.
You'll be either stunned by a flying lavatory seat,
or spend all day fruitlessly trying to blow up a loaf of wet bread.
They do say the Greeks have a word for it.
What they don't say is it's always the same word.
So, ladies and gentlemen, let's hear the final scores.
In fourth place, Alan with 118.
In third place with 125, it's Kit.
In second place with 131, it's Eddie.
But by one point, this week's winner is Bill, with 132.
(applause)
Quiet, please. I knew, I knew.
That just about wraps it up for QI. It only remains for me to thank all our panellists,
and to say goodbye with this quite interesting news cutting
from a newspaper, the Eastern Evening News.
When two men stole six sheep from a farm at Mundford in Norfolk,
they found they could only get five into the back of their van,
so the other one had to sit in the cab between the two men.
But the men had to pass through the village of Watton on their way home.
Fearing that the sheep sitting in the cab might be conspicuous,
they disguised it
by putting a trilby hat on its head.
I come from Norfolk, too. Goodbye.