(applause)
Well, hello and welcome to QI,
the quiz show where the answers are more interesting than the questions
but the questions are completely impossible.
As I don't really expect anyone to get any of them right,
I shall award points for being interesting along the way,
regardless of whether the panels' answers are correct or even relevant.
So let's just meet the panel who want to commit intellectual suicide tonight.
- And they are Danny Baker... - (applause)
John Sessions,
Hugh Laurie,
and Alan Davies.
Now, each of our employees... I can't really be doing with the word "guests".
Each of our employees here tonight has a buzzer, in the time-honoured tradition.
- Danny goes... - (klaxon)
- John goes... - (telephone ring)
- Hugh goes... - (buzzer)
- Alan goes... - (baa)
And I go to Belgium, for which I profusely apologise.
We've got a lot to do, so let's get on with it. Where better to start than at the beginning
with a round of questions on Adam and Eve.
Whether or not you believe in them, they are quite interesting, which is all we ask.
Like God. As Woody Allen said, "How can I believe in God
when just last week I got my tongue caught in the roller of an electric typewriter? "
Carrie Snow, the American comedian, said:
"If God was a woman, sperm would taste of chocolate."
(laughter)
Perhaps...
I don't understand it either. Perhaps we should...
- How do you know it doesn't? - (laughter)
- (Danny) Oh, he knows. - (Stephen) Damn.
Perhaps, you know, we should believe in Adam and Eve.
Geneticists have established every woman in the world shares a single female ancestor
who lived 150,000 years ago.
Scientists do actually call her Eve.
And every man shares a single male ancestor dubbed Adam.
It's also been established, however, that Adam was born 80,000 years after Eve.
So the world before him was one of heavy-to-industrial-strength lesbianism.
The first question goes to Alan. What is the connection
between the Archbishop of Canterbury's left ear
and Adam's bellybutton?
His ear and the bellybutton. As you said that, there was a painting came up...
We do this, I'm afraid. I'm not going to ask who did the painting. That would be an insult.
- (Alan) Adam's on the left. - (Stephen) Yes. Well done.
- That's his bellybutton there. - It would seem.
And the Archbishop of Canterbury's ear...
The only time I can ever think when you'd put your ear to someone's bellybutton
would be to hear if their tummy was rumbling.
You go, "Your tummy's rumbling. You're hungry, aren't you? "
- (Stephen) True. - Is that what it is?
I'm afraid not. I don't want to astonish you, but I'm afraid it isn't.
Adam wouldn't have had a bellybutton, being the first man,
and neither has the archbishop got a right ear.
- Is that right? - You're really good.
He is good, isn't he? I'll give him three points for that.
The fact is they're both purely decorative. Adam, of course, cannot have had a naval
because he was created. He wasn't born, so there wouldn't have been an umbilical cord.
You're saying the archbishop's left ear is decorative?
He describes it himself as purely decorative
because he was born deaf in the left ear, so it has no function.
If his left ear is purely decorative,
it's very unimaginative for him just to have an ear there.
Cos really he could've had anything he wanted there at all.
He could have a doughnut or another organ like a hand.
(Stephen) A badminton racket.
A badminton racket or a shuttlecock. A road sign.
- (Hugh) Gazebo. - A little chicklet.
- Or, surreally, a portrait of Van Gogh. - Yeah, he could've had Van Gogh. You see?
- That's the ear that was missing. - He'd have a little Van Gogh there
as if to say, "Do you see? "
Very good. Very good. Well, we've got something out of the wreckage. I'm inclined...
- Who painted that picture? - 1475 till 1564.
I hate myself for saying that but those are his dates.
He's quite correct. Michelangelo Buonarroti.
We have to give five points for knowing the birth and death dates of Michelangelo.
- That's so sad. - We also have to hate him, incidentally.
We are very impressed.
I've done this with John at parties. When was Bruckner born?
- 1824. Died 1896. - (Stephen) You see? Isn't it wonderful?
- Mahler? - 1860.
Born July 7 in Kaliste in Austria.
- Died 1911 in Kaliste in Austria. - (applause)
It's a sickness. It's a horrible sickness.
I met a man who said he was a navel doctor. I didn't know they specialised that much.
According to Rita Mae Brown, if Michelangelo had been heterosexual,
the Sistine Chapel would have been painted basic white and with a roller.
Danny, it's your question now. After the flood, God gave Noah the right to do what to sheep?
A right which he denied to Adam.
Well, what do we know about Adam? We know Adam was forbidden the forbidden fruit.
It wasn't the forbidden sheep. I know that much about Sunday School.
To keep them, to mate, to farm them, to...
- Well, it could be he could not eat them. - As simple as that.
(applause)
It doesn't make any sense, because Adam, there would have been a lot of sheep,
but Noah's down to the last two sheep
and God said, "It's all right. If you fancy a kebab, have one on me."
Noah said, "I'm not gonna eat the sheep, God. You're out of your mind."
Eat them is the right answer. According to the Bible,
Adam and Eve were vegetarians told by God to eat fruit and vegetables only.
Some theologians believe that the forbidden fruit,
not specifically named in the Bible, which was eaten by Adam and Eve was a banana.
It was only after the Great Flood when God made a new covenant with Noah
and said, "Every living thing that moves will be yours to eat."
And somehow we got from there to Bernard Matthews Golden Turkey Drummers.
Here's one that anyone can answer. Fingers on buzzers.
Of whom was it said, "Working with her
was like being hit over the head with a Valentine card? "
(telephone ring)
- Ann Widdecombe. - (Stephen) Not Ann Widdecombe.
No, it's not her. In fact it was Christopher Plummer on the subject of Julie Andrews.
And this brings us to a round about Andrews -
people called Andrew or Andrews.
John. The painter Caravaggio was once arrested for throwing artichokes at a waiter.
The art historian Andrew Graham-Dixon discovered something
about Caravaggio's outrageous behaviour on the tennis court. What was it?
Something interesting about Caravaggio, he died in 1610, but you're bored of that now.
I think it was 1610. And he committed murder,
but Andrew's programme... Not that we should be talking about other programmes.
The question is about Graham-Dixon, who made a programme about Caravaggio.
Sorting out why Caravaggio died prematurely
and was possibly murdered by those avenging him for the death of Tomassino,
I think was the artist who he had a fight with.
For those of you who didn't watch, stay with us.
I'll give you five points. Anybody else know the answer?
- What Caravaggio did on a tennis court? - He said, "Enough with the square balls."
- "Why don't we use a round one? " - (laughter)
- All good answers. - (Danny) Was he beaten by a British player?
That's why they're still talking about it 300 years later.
(applause)
For almost 400 years,
historians have believed that Caravaggio was exclusively homosexual
and they believed that he murdered a man called Ranuccio Tomassoni
in a squabble over a tennis match.
But it's now thought, thanks to the pioneering work of Graham-Dixon,
that Tomassoni's death was an accident
and Caravaggio was only trying to cut off his testicles, not to kill him.
- There you are. - Yes.
- (Alan) Over a gate... - Well, yes.
- New balls, please. - (alarm bells)
- (Danny) What does that mean? - I'm afraid it's minus ten points.
- Oh! I don't even know who he is. - (Stephen) Caravaggio.
- Oh, thank God you've said that. - (laughter)
See, to my mind, that's not interesting enough.
- (Danny) I was hanging in there. - Caravaggio's very interesting.
I know something about castration. I do know something about castration,
- and it's to do with this. - (baa)
When they castrate a sheep, they do it without breaking the skin of the scrotum.
- (Stephen) Yes. - (Hugh) Yes. Done it.
(Stephen) He's done it. He has.
And the testicles just fall into the ball sac and then they do the kind of grape-sultana thing.
- They become shrivelly. - (John) They wither.
- (Stephen) You use an elastic band. - A tiny elastic...
I've got one on at the moment.
(Alan) That's interesting.
(Danny) So, Prince Aaaaalbert.
- (John) Prince Albert, there's a story. - Oh, really?
He and Victoria, they had masses of sex. I mean, they had nine children
and they probably had sex maybe 100 times a night for years and years.
Till he died. It stopped after he died. But...
- Is that why the Albert Memorial is a tall...? - (John) Precisely.
I did a charity show in the heyday of the Spice Girls
and there was a line-up afterwards with the Prince of Wales.
- (Alan) I was there. - Were you?
They asked him whether or not Prince Albert actually did wear a Prince Albert.
- No! And he said? - "I have no idea what a Prince Albert is."
(laughter)
- I had to explain to him that... - (Danny) Did you tell him?
- I didn't say it was a cock ring. I said... - (laughter)
What words did you use, then?
It was a piece of jewellery worn in an intimate area.
Oh, I see. He said, "Oh, a cock ring!"
(laughter)
Let's tear ourselves back to Caravaggio and Tomassoni if we can.
The two were rivals for the favours of Fillide Melandroni,
a beautiful female prostitute for whom Tomassoni acted as pimp.
Caravaggio had been commissioned to paint her for an Italian nobleman.
For an extra five points, can you connect this -
I'll pass it round if you need to handle it or smell it...
- (Alan) Fennel. -..with Italian homosexuals?
Oh.
Are there any Italian homosexuals in the room?
My dressing room number is 315.
(bell)
- Is it fennel? - It is fennel. I will tell you that, yes.
Is the street slang for "homosexual" "fennel"?
- Correct. Ten points. - (Hugh) Wow.
- Look at that. - (Stephen) You get...
(applause)
What is it, though? There's a certain word...
Finocchio, which is "fennel" in Italian. Like Pinocchio but with an f.,
- (Alan) That's quite interesting. - It is.
Good. Good. Now Hugh. Still with Andrews.
According to Andrew Marshall's recent book about Burma,
a Burmese may well sidle up to you and murmur:
"Excuse me, sir, but I see that your department store is open even on weekends."
What does he mean by that? What's the game?
Well, it's either... I've been reading too many Len Deighton novels.
It means the microfilm is under the seat.
Or it's "your flies are open" or something...
Ten points. "Your flies are undone" is exactly what it means.
- Very good. - (applause)
Appropriately enough, this book on Burma is called The Triouseri People,
To give you a foretaste, it quotes the diary of Sir George Scott,
the man who introduced football to Burma in the 19th century.
"Stepped on something soft and wobbly. Struck a match."
- "Found it was a dead Chinaman." - (laughter)
Those very much were the days, weren't they?
We wonder why the British are hated around the globe.
"Be Upstairs Ready, My Angel", of course, was BURMA,
B-U-R-M-A, Alan Bennett's sketch.
NOTLOB as well. "Knickers Off Ready When I Come Home."
- That's NORWICH. - Norwich. That's right.
(laughter)
Oh, yes, NOTLOB's the other one, isn't it? Oh, it doesn't matter. That's Bolton. Yes, Norwich.
- This man is clinically insane. - (laughter)
While double-checking this information about etiquette and Burma on the internet,
we came up with the information
that it's considered polite to express joy by eating snow
and to send unwanted guests away by biting their leg,
and normal behaviour to wipe your mouth on the sofa.
This is true. The researcher was writing this down with great excitement about Burma
only to discover that Burma turned out to be the name of a poodle
- belonging to the author of the website. - (laughter, applause)
Very good. Now, this third round is about actors.
After weeks of being pointedly ignored on tour by Sir John Gielgud,
Clive Morton plucked up the courage to knock on his dressing-room door.
Gielgud opened it. "Thank God it's you," he said.
"For one dreadful moment I thought it was going to be that ghastly bore Clive Morton."
- Now, why, Hugh... - Yes?
Why does the actor Edward Woodward have four Ds in his name?
- (telephone ring) - No. What are you doing?
- I'm sorry. Finish. - What are you doing?
- I'm sorry. It was a spasm. Go. - He can't do that.
I'll put it out. Just carry on. Forget I'm here.
- Did you know...? This is quite interesting. - Yes, good. That's what we're here for.
Did you know, kiwi fruit uses more than its own weight in aviation fuel
- to get from New Zealand to Europe? - (laughter)
(applause)
- Very good. Five points. - (John) Wonderful.
Another five points. It sounds mad, but is, of course, true.
And regarding Edward Woodward, that's how you spell it.
(Stephen) Oh, no, let Hugh give an answer. Poor Hugh.
- No, really, that's fine. - (laughter)
I was gonna say exactly that, that it's got that many Ds in it because that's his name.
If you took the Ds out, it would be a different name. E-war Woo-wa.
- Exactly. It'd be E-war Woo-woo. - (Hugh) E-war Woo-woo.
It's a sort of structural device, like a joist,
which stops his name collapsing into the sort of spongy mass of E-war Woo-woo.
(laughter)
You're mentioning Edward Woodward and you mentioned John Gielgud.
Gielgud, when he first heard the name Edward Woodward, said:
"It's an interesting name. Sounds like a fart in the bath."
(Stephen) Edward Woodward. It does.
Very good. It's the right answer, but you get your points, Hugh, naturally.
Now, let's go back to our actors round.
Which actor said, "One of my chief regrets during my years in the theatre
is that I couldn't sit in the audience and watch me"?
- (Alan) Oh, God, any of 'em. - (bell)
Well, actually, now, hold on, cos I think actors do a bloody difficult job.
And, you know, it's quite easy to sit there and...
(Stephen) Fall asleep.
- (Alan) John Gielgud, I reckon. - No, it's not.
There is a very good story though about Peter O'Toole
who was once getting drunk in his Celtic hell-raiser days in a pub in London
and at throwing-out time at lunchtime he said, "Let's go and see a play."
And at one point O'Toole nudged his friend. He said, "This is brilliant."
"This is the bit where I come on. Oh, bollocks!"
(laughter)
But, in fact, it wasn't, is the answer. It wasn't any of those.
It was... Considered the great Hamlet of his age if you're an American,
- John Barrymore, it was. - Oh.
Barrymore famously said, "Love is the delightful interval
between meeting a beautiful girl and discovering that she looks like a haddock."
(laughter, applause)
Right. Bearing in mind we want to be in the bar before half past ten,
fingers on the buzzers and identify the following.
"They puff out their hair like a cat, raise one front foot
and then hop menacingly from side to side, roaring with all the fury of a clogged drain."
- (buzzer) - (Stephen) Yes?
- It's either cats... - (laughter)
..or clogged drains. One or the other.
- It's actually anteaters. - (Danny) Oh!
Anteaters. Part of the elaborate play sequences of young giant anteaters, in fact,
which is known as "bluff charging".
We're gonna have a few questions about anteaters.
We're going to start with Alan. What would you do with a pencil and a lesser anteater?
- Oh, hours of fun. - (laughter)
I'd probably try and make it pick it up with its nose.
And then if it really got a good grip on it, I'd encourage it to do a sketch or a note.
I'd say, "Anything that's on your mind, get it down now."
It could go for 35 miles, which is how long an average graphite pencil,
if you go like that until there's nothing left.
Isn't that extraordinary? Five points. He knows how many miles a graphite pencil writes.
A normal length 2HB pencil, 35 miles. However, with an anteater...
I mean, now I can't get out of my head
the notion of inserting the pencil somewhere in the anteater
and then there being a release of hundreds of ants.
(laughter)
It's not that. I'll tell you what it is. Anteaters have enormously long tongues,
but tiny mouths which are about the diameter of a pencil.
- Its tongue is around 16 inches long... - I nearly had my face off then, doing that.
No, this way. Yeah.
Not that way.
I knew a landlord of a pub once, used to say to any female customer he liked the look of:
"I've got a nine-inch tongue and I can breathe through my ears."
(laughter)
(Stephen) Wow.
What a charmer.
Now...
That's the longest sustained laugh I've ever heard in my life.
It never went very high, but it just went on and on,
a bit like the graphite pencil of laughs.
(Stephen) 35-mile laugh.
John, your question. Would you like to be hugged by a giant anteater?
- Probably not. I'd probably be eviscerated. - (Stephen) Quite right.
The anteaters have, in order to claw open a termite hill...
I'm getting dull. David Attenborough does it better.
But they have curly fingers, like that, and they pull it apart.
Once it is pulled apart, as it were, like a rather interesting pie,
then they can get their tongue in, that Alan's friend in the pub was talking about,
and I think I've answered the question.
Absolutely right, yes. A hug from a giant anteater is fatal to humans,
partly because of the fact that giant anteaters are also known as "ant bears"
for that reason, because their hug is so fatal.
- They can squash you. A squashing hug. - They squash you. They break your ribs.
Have they attacked humans? Exit, pursued by an anteater.
To hug a human they come up to you and go, "John!" and then go, "Oh, no!"
"What have I done? I didn't mean any harm."
"I didn't mean any harm!"
- "I don't know my own strength." - (laughter)
Hugh, how big is a dwarf anteater?
Roughly. You can use your hands.
Metric or imperial?
A dwarf anteater is exactly the same length as a dwarf-ant eater.
(Stephen) Ah.
Both of them, both species are 62 feet.
(laughter)
Actually, they're about the size of a squirrel.
Right. A 62-foot squirrel. They're about that sort of size.
They are, and they're similar to squirrels. because they spend a lot of time in trees
And in South America stewed anteater, of this variety, the dwarf anteater, is a popular dish.
Fried or grilled baby squirrels are popular in the United States.
But, as someone pointed out in a letter to The Telegraph,
the fried or grilled squirrel should contain a warning: "May contain nuts."
- Which I thought was lovely. - (applause)
There's just time for a quick last round, an assortment called General Ignorance.
Fingers on your buzzers, please, for this quick-fire round.
Ten points for a right answer, but minus ten for anything which I have written down here.
Right. All righty. So, which country has the world's highest suicide rate?
- (dog barks) - (Stephen) Yes?
- Woof? - (laughter)
- It's always Sweden. - (alarm bells)
(Stephen) You poor soul!
You always do Sweden. It's one of those urban-mythy things. It's not Sweden.
- (bell) - Another one that I read somewhere
is that a ship's captain cannot marry people.
- (Stephen) Yes, I've heard that. - Never been true. Invented by screenwriters.
And lemmings don't jump over cliffs.
They were herded together for that Disney film in 1964 called White Wilderiness,
Disney rounded up these lemmings and drove Land Rovers at them.
We've all seen that footage of them going over the cliffs, but they don't do that.
It's got to be five for being interesting about lemmings. He's a runaway interest.
The suicide answer, I think... I don't know, but did somebody say Indonesia to me once?
They didn't. Not currently, as far as we know, is it the correct answer either. It's actually...
- England. - (Stephen) Not England, no.
- Spain? - (Stephen) No.
This could be rather a long evening, couldn't it?
- It's actually Lithuania. - (Alan) Is it?
An astonishing 52 suicides per 100,000 head of population.
More than 13 times higher than the United States, which has 4.1 per 100,000.
6.5 times that of Britain, with eight. Nobody has any idea why this should be.
Is it because the capital is so difficult to spell, and to say?
It's one of those words that really...
- (Hugh) Must be that. - Which is Vilnius.
- (Stephen) It's not that hard to say. - It is a bit tricky.
- I've got an idea for a book. - V-I-L-N-U-I-S?
Could the audience say Vilnius? One, two, three.
- (audience) Vilnius. - That's easy, pretty easy.
I was just looking for an answer. I was desperate.
You knew the answer was Vilnius.
Do you think it would be interesting...
if you got all of the suicide notes
- and published them as a book? - (laughter)
(Hugh) Yes.
It might find out actually what the hell's going on in Vilnius.
It's the food.
They're all sick of the food here.
- Clearly, again and again, the references. - (laughter)
Your favourite painter coming up now, Alan, in this question.
What was Caravaggio's real name?
It sounds like Italian for "Carphone Warehouse".
- (Stephen) It's a buzzer round. - (buzzer)
Fabio.
You'd think that because he travelled because of killing people,
it would be Caro-viaggio, like a lover of travel.
(Stephen) Oh, very good. Yes. Dear travel, yes.
- (John) No, but it's not. - No. His real name is Michelangelo.
- Oh, that is something. - Did Derek Jarman make a film about him?
- He did, called simply Cariavaggio, - Is that interesting enough for a point?
- (Stephen) No. - (audience) Yes!
Oh.
We're losing it! We're losing it!
(Stephen) All right.
Caravaggio took the name Caravaggio because his father, Fermo Merisi,
was the steward and chief architect of the Marquis of Caravaggio.
So, who invented the steam engine? Fingers on buzzers.
- (telephone ring) - Yes?
It wasn't, as a lot of people think, George Stephenson.
- Right. I said who did? - (John) Exactly.
That person would be a Mr Trevithick.
- Very good, very good. - (applause)
(Hugh) That's very impressive.
And do you know that Richard Trevithick went into a pub one night
and - this is true - they built a steam engine and they got it up to pressure
and they went into a pub, the whole gang of them, and got absolutely slaughtered.
They forgot about the steam engine and it blew up and it took about ten houses down.
Richard and Andrew Trevithick are credited with the modern invention
but the real answer is neither of those. It was Hero, or Heron, of Alexandria, in 100 AD.
It was called the aeolipile, or wind ball, using the same principle as jet propulsion.
A metal sphere spun round, steam-generated, at 1500 rpm,
making it the fastest rotating object in the world.
The Ancient Greeks found it an amusing novelty, nothing more,
but none of them thought to put it together with the railway,
which, amazingly, had been invented 700 years earlier by Periander of Corinth.
- (Hugh) No! - Who had a railway. Yes.
But not steam powered. Powered by human force.
- Moving on. - (Alan) I know something interesting.
Stephenson's Rocket went at 30 miles an hour
and they were sure that if you went at 30 miles an hour or over,
you would suffer irreparable brain damage, so they put fences alongside the track
so that passers-by wouldn't have to witness them just losing it.
I suspect that the person who came up with that notion wasn't a medical doctor
or anything like that. I suspect it was a fence maker.
(laughter)
It's astonishing what people think. The Romans thought buggery caused earthquakes.
(Stephen) Really?
- If it's done right. If it's done right. - (laughter)
Lastly, what is the name of the 23rd-tallest tree in the world?
(laughter)
Like a Christian name, or a type of...?
It's probably Dave or something like that.
- Giant redwood. - Well, that is the species of tree.
It's certainly the sequoia, the giant redwood. But it has a name.
- The lesser giant redwood. - (laughter)
The 23rd lesser giant redwood.
The answer is... Oh, you'll kick yourselves.
- Again? - Well, because it's themed.
- The answer is Adam. - (all) Oh!
- First round. Remember that far back? - (Danny) No.
It's one of the 30 named giant sequoias in the Giant Forest in California,
and it's named after the first man.
So we come full circle just in time for the final score.
- Alan. - I've been really interesting at times.
You have been so interesting and you've made many new friends here tonight.
- You've only made minus five new points. - (Alan) Brilliant!
(Stephen) In third place, with ten, it's John,
and in second place with 11 is Hugh.
But our runaway winner with 18 QI points is Danny Baker.
- Thank you very much indeed. - (applause)
That about wraps it up for QI, It only remains for me to thank Danny, Alan, Hugh and John,
and to leave you with something quite interesting,
and it's this local titbit from The Independent,
An army bomb unit was called to investigate a suspicious-looking package
outside the Territorial Army unit in Bristol.
They blew up, with a controlled explosion, the package,
only to discover that it was a parcel of leaflets
explaining how to deal with suspicious packages.
- Good night. - (applause)