(applause)
Well, hello, and welcome to QI, the world's most impossible quiz
and the nearest modern equivalent to lions versus Christians.
- Let's meet my lunch. Alan Davies. - (applause)
Rob Brydon.
Rich Hall.
And Gyles Brandreth.
The rules are simple. As I don't really expect anyone to get any of the answers right,
I award points for being interesting and penalties, usually, if history is any guide,
to Alan, for being obvious, in which event, I also humiliate him like this.
(alarm bells)
- How rude. - And take away ten points.
Each member of the team is able to draw attention to themselves by making a noise.
- Rich goes... - (foghorn)
- Gyles goes... - (party blower)
- Rob goes... - (patriotic music)
- And Alan goes... - (alarm bells)
Minus ten to Alan already, before we've even begun our first round.
And our first round is all about advertising.
"The superior man", says Confucius, "understands what is right."
"The inferior man understands what will sell."
If so, it must be said that there are very few inferior men in advertising,
because almost no one in the industry has the faintest idea what will sell.
For example, team...
What was the disastrous mistake made by Gerber Foods
when they started advertising baby food in Africa?
"You're never alone with a Strand."
Yes. That's a reference to a very famous disastrous campaign, isn't it?
- Would you like to elucidate? - Strand cigarettes.
And this guy was alone at night, smoking a cigarette.
And he looked a bit kind of cool and sophisticated and Third Mannish.
They thought that was an image people would aspire to.
It said, "You're never alone with a Strand."
But it made it look like it was for really lonely old bastards.
- (Rich) Hitler smoked. - Hitler smoked? He hated smoking.
- Oh, so he didn't smoke? - No, he didn't.
- (Gyles) And he was a vegetarian. - Vegetarian?
Queen Victoria smoked.
Did she? Well, you've got to have two points for that. That's interesting.
There is indeed a photograph of Queen Victoria smoking.
She always smoked when she was up in the Highlands
to keep the midges away during picnics.
- Oh, well, that's awfully good. - There is a positive aspect to smoking.
- It keeps midges away. - (Alan) It keeps the midges away.
And keeps Hitler away.
You can't really do better than a cigarette when you come down to it, can you?
Midges are more irritating, but in the long-term,
I'd rather keep the Nazis out of the Highlands.
- (Stephen) Absolutely. - (patriotic music)
- I think you may have a question, Rob. - No, I just like the tune.
Yeah, my answer to the original question about the advertising...
- Gerber Foods, yeah. - Gerber Foods.
Is it that they had a very poor, shoddy translator,
and the advert gave the impression you were buying baby food?
- Oddly enough... - (Alan) Made from babies.
No, you're sort of halfway to being right. It's simply...
I'll tell you the answer. It's quite intriguing and bizarre.
It's that they used the same packaging as they used in the United States and in Europe,
which has a cute photo, like the one behind me, of a tiny baby on the jar.
Unfortunately, in Africa most people are unable to read,
and therefore packaging always represents what's inside the jar.
The pictures always represent what's inside, so they assumed that the jars were of babies.
- So I'm right. - (party blower)
So you're right, but for the wrong reasons, for which you get three points, Rob.
- Can I make a little supplementary point? - I'd love you to do that.
Because I happen to know quite a bit about the Jerber, or Gerber, family,
for reasons I can go into.
- Is it Jerber or Gerber? - It is Jerber.
What's interesting about the tins, the cans,
is one of the reasons they didn't go down at all well in Africa
is that a lot of people in Africa are black.
- And on the... - No!
- I know, I'm just breaking you in gently. - That is quite interesting.
(Stephen) Good.
Picture these cans. We're selling baby food to people in Africa.
First thing is that people think what's inside is going to be children.
And secondly, those that think it is for children think:
"Well, this does not look very like any of the children I know,"
because it is a perfectly charming white child from Texas.
And I can tell you, for a further point, who the white child was.
- Oh, please do. A Gerber? - No, she was not.
She was called Ann Turner Cook, the photograph was taken in 1931,
and up until the end of the Second World War, was the most prolific romantic novelist
- working in the United States of America. - I'm sorry, that's ten points.
That's fantastic.
My great-great-grandfather, who was a man called Dr Benjamin Brandreth,
was a friend of the original Dr Gerber.
They were pioneers of advertising in the United States of America.
And so, unfortunately, I do know a lot about this.
The firm originally was not in food at all.
They were in the business of tanning.
And unfortunately, tanning just fell from favour.
(Stephen) Now, Rich.
- Go on, I'm sorry. - (Gyles quacks)
Apparently, during the recent war in the Gulf,
the Iraqi Republican Guard were told
that in order to become a US Marine, you had to eat a baby.
Wow! That's shocking!
I may institute a new rule, Alan,
that anybody who starts off any piece of information
with the words "apparently, comma" may well lose ten points.
Well, I only say apparently because I heard it on Fox News.
(Stephen) Yeah, that's not good enough for us.
- I wasn't at a Republican Guard briefing. - Having grown up as a childhood friend
of the family that founded the United States Army, for example,
like Gyles grew up with the Gerber family...
My great-grandfather was in the original Republican Guard.
Could I just say something about the Ferris wheel?
This is an interesting fact. I know a few things.
The Ferris wheel was originally designed as a mode of transportation.
(Alan) From A to A.
In its maiden voyage from St Louis to Kansas City at the World Exhibition in 1898,
it went off track and crushed a lot of people.
And that's when the guy Ferris, John Compton Ferris,
decided that it would be better if it didn't move.
And the lesson there is if you have an idea that goes nowhere,
maybe it's not supposed to.
That's very true. That's very wise. Do you want to pitch your story?
I'll come back to that during the course of the next couple of hours.
But if I could just throw in something about the Ferris wheel,
that is in fact a picture of the London Eye. And what is intriguing about the London Eye,
is that the principal architect
is a man who shares the same birthday as Gustave Eiffel, who created the Eiffel Tower.
Oh, I say, I'm tempted to give you two points for that, because it's true.
It's true and it's quite interesting in terms of, you know...
This one is known as the Millennium Eye, also. It was sponsored by British Airways.
- It was supposed to open on Millennium Eve. - And you find this on the South Bank,
in London, on the banks of the Thames, which is the river that flows through London.
You can go up as far as Oxford. You can go right out the other way to sea.
And it's down near the old GLC and from it you can see Parliament.
I am going to call an official end to question one.
Now, what is it that the French find hilarious
about advertisements for the Toyota MR2?
- Anybody have an idea about that? - (party blower)
Yes, Gyles.
Do we get a penalty if we give you the obvious answer? We do, don't we?
- I don't know what that might be. - The obvious answer is that MR2,
if you say it in French, is "em er deux', which means that the car is shit.
You're quite, quite right. It's the obvious answer and it's the true answer in this case.
- Merde. - (Stephen) Merde. You're quite right.
Isn't it interesting that the Eiffel Tower has now appeared, and you know Gustave Eiffel
happens to share a birthday with the man...
It's also remarkable how you can cheer a child up
once you get all the spaghetti out of its hair.
Absolutely. Yeah, it does.
It's "em er deux' which sounds exactly like the French word merde.
If you don't want to look a total prat in your car abroad,
it's also not a good idea to drive a Ford Pinto in Brazil,
where "pinto" is the slang for tiny male genitals.
I was going to guess that. It's a brilliant slang for a tiny penis.
- Pinto. - Pinto in the shower.
What was the unforgettable slogan that the Irish playwright Brendan Behan devised
- to advertise Guinness? - "It's good for you."
- (alarm bells) - (Stephen) Oh, dear! Oh, dear!
Oh, obvious and wrong. I'm sorry about that. Minus ten to Alan.
I'm going to get a couple of cats called 0bvious and Wrong.
There's a story of Brendan Behan in Canada, do you know this?
He was on Canadian television, and drunk, as he always was, and they said:
"So what brings you to Canada, Mr Behan?"
And he said, "Well now, I was in a bar in Dublin,
and they had one of those coasters and it said on it 'Drink Canada Dry',
so I thought I'd give it a shot."
- Which is rather pleasing. - (Gyles) Did he die in New York?
No, Dublin. He died at the age of 41, I know that,
of severe cirrhosis of the liver.
- Really? Only 41? - Yes. Alcoholic from the age of eight.
- Spirits? - (Gyles) They were an alcoholic family.
From the age of eight. His brother is still alive.
- Dominic? Dominic has died. - Oh, he died, did he? I met him.
Indeed. Did he do the same trick when you met him as when I met him?
We were walking along a corridor with this lovely William Morris wallpaper,
and I learnt something about actually how to handle somebody
if they're not being very interesting, because I was...
Oh, do tell me, do tell me.
I'm laying myself open to this.
Because I was trying to tell him about William Morris
and I made the mistake of saying, "This is lovely William Morris wallpaper."
At which point he undid his trousers,
and urinated from that end to that end of the William Morris wallpaper.
Oh, the charm of the Irish drunk. It's lovely, isn't it?
No, Brendan Behan was asked by Guinness, as Ireland's most famous living playwright,
as he was, really, to come up with a slogan for Guinness.
And he said, "You'll have to send a couple of crates round."
And they sent round two crates of bottled Guinness and they went round the next day
and all the bottles had been drunk and there were screwed-up bits of paper everywhere.
He said, "I've got it", and he handed them a piece of paper
and it said, "Guinness makes you drunk." There you are.
It's sort of the ultimate, the perfect advertising slogan, in many ways.
- (foghorn) Yes, Rich? - Venus is made entirely out of felt.
I would like three points, please.
Do you know who predicted James Dean's death in his car?
- No idea. - Ah, yes. Nostradamus.
- Yeah. - Mystic Meg.
- It was Alec Guinness. - (Stephen) Alec Guinness?
Yes, Alec Guinness was going to go into a restaurant
and James Dean came running out and said, "Hey, you can come and sit with me."
And Alec Guinness said, "That's very kind of you."
And he said, "But would you come..." That was Alec Guinness.
He said, "Come along first of all and take a look at my new car."
- (Alan) James Dean. - James Dean.
No, Stuart Little was there.
"Mom, Dad, I'm going in!"
And he went and had a look at the car,
and Alec Guinness felt a strange thing and he said:
"If you go inside that car, you will not be alive..."
Please, don't spoil it with laughter, because you'll get a chill at the end of this.
That's not a general rule, but just for this moment.
He said, "If you step inside that car, in two weeks' time you will not be alive."
And sure enough, he said, "Two weeks later, I turned on the television
and James Dean had been killed in that very car."
- That's a true story. - Radish is a meat.
What do I get for that? It's true!
Anyway, the slogan "Guinness is good for you" was in fact written
by queen of crime, Dorothy L Sayers, who was of course not Irish, but English.
We'll be right back after these messages.
Now, this round is set in ancient Athens.
The Greeks invented tragedy, comedy, geometry, philosophy, biology, democracy,
history, prize-giving, persuasion, proof, punctuation, politics,
boxing gloves, tightrope-walking and the steam engine.
According to these geniuses, how do otters kill crocodiles?
(patriotic music) Yes?
Softly with their songs.
- That's a very beautiful answer indeed. - It had a sort of lyrical quality to it. I felt it.
I think it must be more than one otter at work.
It could be an otter distraction.
- Lure them onto dry land, pull the plug out. - That's an otter thing altogether.
Or choke them. "Get in, you hold his jaws open, I'll choke him."
- That's not far off. - That's closer.
Is it something to do with them waiting till they're asleep and actually climbing into them,
just walking straight into them?
Well, do you know, you're not far off there, young Gyles. I'll tell you what it is.
They actually believed that otters scampered into the open mouths of crocodiles
and ate their entrails and then dashed out again when the crocodile had died.
The crocodile went, "Agh!"
The Greeks had a lot of very good ideas, but this wasn't one of them, cos it's not true.
Another of their ideas, very popular in its day, but which hasn't lasted, was raphanizein.
It's the penalty for adultery,
and it involved inserting a radish into the adulterer's bottom.
Radishes were a lot longer, wider and pointier in those days
and were hammered home with a mallet.
Raphanizein is therefore a verb, meaning to insert a radish into the fundament.
You know, radish is a meat. I don't know whether I mentioned that or not, but...
To insert meat into the fundament, there is another word for that.
You don't need a special word for that.
It's an absurd punishment. I'd have thought smacking them on the thumb with a mallet
would be much worse, wouldn't it?
They were, after all, Greek, you see.
They didn't really mind homosexuality, though, did they?
They very much relished it. They certainly knew a thing or two about...
about man-on-man action.
However, what was the job of Aristocles, Aristocles,
better known to his friends as "Wide Boy"?
It also means flat, oddly enough, it means wide and flat.
- Flat, flatulence. - Flatulence.
- What's a flat-billed sort of animal called? - (Gyles) Duck-billed platypus.
- Pla... - Plato.
- Plato is the answer. - Plato is the answer?
Yes, his real name was Aristocles and he was known as the "Wide 0ne".
- Plato's real name was Aristocles? - Aristocles, he was nicknamed "Plato".
My word, he went to a terrible sculptor.
It must be so upsetting when they put the mirror behind you
and they pull it out like that.
"May I ask who sculpted you last, sir? Oh, dear."
Yeah, well, Plato was indeed the schoolboy nickname of Aristocles, from the Greek "wide",
and it was given to him because of his broad shoulders.
His real name was Aristocles, and Aristocles taught Aristotle.
And what did Aristotle teach us, the world, about buzzards?
- This will be something absurd. - He did say something absurd about them.
It'll be ridiculous, it'll be something like they can read our minds or something like that.
No, he... I'll tell you what it is, actually.
He felt that they were birds who didn't realise they were buzzards
and it was building up inside that they were latent buzzards.
Latent buzzards!
Wey hey!
You get five for something there. I don't quite know what it is, Rob, but you get five.
I'll tell you the answer, actually. He thought they had three testicles.
You see, this is the sort of thing he came out with all the time.
He's very overrated, even though he knew a good sculptor.
He looks all right there.
But look at the robe on him.
There's a really interesting thing I can tell you about buzzards, on the other hand.
The Latin for buzzard, you know, its taxonomical name, is "Buteo buteo", right?
Now, there's a sort of, as it were, a subspecies of buzzard called a "hobby".
- And it is "subbuteo". - 0h, God!
Subbuteo.
And the man who invented a game wanted to call it "the hobby",
and when he tried to patent it, they wouldn't let him use the word "the hobby",
so he called it after the Latin name for "the hobby", which is "subbuteo".
And that's why one is kicking a little testicle around the board.
- If you like. It all comes back. - (Gyles) How amazing.
- That's where the name Subbuteo is from. - (Rich) It must be great to be a philosopher.
None of us could sit there and count the testicles on a buzzard
and really explain it or justify it. "What are you doing?"
"I'm counting the balls on a buzzard."
"Don't you have better things to do?" "I'm a philosopher." "0h well, go ahead."
Did you know that the Pope, when the Pope is elected,
still has to have this ceremony in the Vatican.
After the Pope is elected, the Pope is carried over a group of the cardinals,
and now, of course, the Pope actually doesn't display himself,
but in days gone by, he would display himself.
And the cardinals, this still happens to this day, when the Pope is crowned,
the cardinals, the Pope is carried on a chair over the cardinals.
And they look up and they say, "Testiculos habet et bene pendentes."
No! "He has balls and he's well hung?!" "Bene pendentes?"
It means, "They are well hung, they are hanging well".
And it goes back to the time of Pope Joan, when a girl masqueraded as a young Pope.
That's when the ceremony was introduced. And so the tradition continues to this day.
Fabulous, five points, brilliant, I love it. Well done.
Now, what did the Ancient Greeks use blackberries for?
Tarts, pies and occasionally a nice salad.
Is it to do with health or beauty?
It is to do with health, not really beauty, I think would be pushing it, but health.
- They used to push them up their backsides. - Yes.
Comfort from the radish. When the radish came in,
the blackberries would cushion the blow.
It's sort of almost true, because they used it as a specific against piles.
I dare say having a few radishes hammered up you would probably induce piles.
Now, one in ten ancient Athenians did it regularly,
until the Macedonians put a stop to it in 322BC. What am I talking about?
They're not doing it there, incidentally, in that picture behind.
They pay their utilities bills by direct debit.
Would you recommend the direct debit route?
- It takes the hassle out of it, Stephen. - Does it?
- It takes the hassle out of it. - You can't put a price on peace of mind!
- So what do Greeks, what did they do? - Is it something specifically Greek...
- Something we do. ...or something a Macedonian objects to?
- We do it? - Something we do.
- Elections. - They voted.
They voted for all their chieftains, all their leaders, all their wise men,
they voted for their justice at the Areopagitica, and democracy was born.
It was snatched crudely away from them by the Macedonians.
Invented, though, in Ancient Greece.
- Speaking of crudely... - It lasted only 180 years.
Pinto.
The Greeks regarded small testicles as rather artistic.
I'm a man out of his time.
You get five points for being British.
0nly 10% of the population ever had the vote.
Greek women had to wait another 2,274 years until they finally got theirs in 1952.
I don't know why all this talk of politics and radishes does it,
but it's put me in mind, for some reason, of Michael Portillo.
When Michael Portillo was a young and unknown Tory hopeful,
he was noted for his amazingly energetic canvassing.
On one whistle-stop tour, apparently, he arrived at the front door of a house,
having literally run up the garden path, and he rang the doorbell.
But something was amiss,
and he looked behind him to see that the path he had just run up
was covered in newly laid wet concrete, covered in Portillo footprints.
At that moment the door opened and a burly constituent said, "Yes?!"
"Good morning, sir," said Portillo, with his cheesiest grin,
"I'm your Labour Party candidate." And he ran off back down the path.
(applause)
Well, now to our final traditional round. Fingers on the buzzers, please, gentlemen,
for this pyrotechnic display of General Ignorance.
How many legs does a centipede have?
(foghorn)
Uh, none.
Oh, sadly not.
A centipede, because they don't really have legs, they have little...
- Limbs. - Limbs.
- They're claws, they have little claws. - Not claws, no. No, they're called legs.
- (quacking) Yes? - Is it actually not 100?
- (Gyles) It's not 100. - Not 100, no. No, you clever swine.
- Do you see what I've done there? - You clever swine.
You've avoided a forfeit with brilliant manoeuvring.
- (foghorn) Not claws? - It's not claws neither.
(foghorn)
It varies, but it is always an equal and even number.
- Ah, that's interesting. - (foghorn)
What Gyles says is literally... Let me do this for a while
and then tell you the answer, which is this.
Centipedes have been extensively studied for over 100 years,
but not one has ever been found that has 100 legs.
Some have more, some less.
The one with the number of legs closest to 100 was discovered in 1999, that recently.
It has 96 legs and is unique among centipedes,
in that it is the only known species with an even number of pairs of legs.
48 pairs.
All other centipedes have odd numbered pairs of legs, ranging from 15 to 191 pairs. So there.
(foghorn)
- So you're saying there's no centi-claws? - Wey hey!
My dear fellow!
- I had a long wait for that one! - You certainly did, and you're rewarded...
- It took forever! - You're rewarded with one point.
Now, what did 35,000 Americans insure themselves against in 1994?
(party blower) Yes, Gyles?
They do it every year - being abducted by aliens.
Did you say being abducted by aliens? Did you?
- I did. - You're absolutely right. Well done.
Yeah, what more can I add? Being kidnapped and eaten by aliens.
Believe it or not, 2,760,000 Californians, 8% of the States' population,
claim to have been abducted by aliens.
To be perfectly honest, quite a high proportion of these insurance policies
are actually bought by other people for friends, as a joke birthday present.
Now, most of these people are pulled over by the police for drink driving.
- And they use that as an excuse. - "Hey, I lost all control."
"I was in this force field, I had no control over the vehicle."
"Blue lights descended on me and I was yanked from my car
and thrown into a room and probed."
- With a radish. - With a radish, yeah.
Now, next question. What rhymes with purple?
Ah, it's like orange, nothing does.
- (alarm bells) - Oh, dear, oh, dear, oh, dear!
Oh, dear, oh, dear, oh, dear, oh, dear, oh, dear. 0h, dear.
No, no, there are two words in the English language that rhyme with purple.
- Two. - Burple.
I won't say everyday words, but there are two words. I'm afraid you have to lose ten points.
- I'll tell you the answer. - Lurple.
You won't get there, if you go through all the sounds known to man.
- Qurple, yurple, zurple. - (Rich) Maple syrple.
- Maple syrple doesn't count. - Circle? Curple.
Durple, furple, gurple, hurple.
Jurple, kurple, lurple, murple, nurple.
Do you know what you're doing on national television?
Mrs Davies's little boy has grown up to go, "Nurple, purple, wurple."
- Rurple, surple. - They're not common words, but...
If you had a swimming pool and you covered it in fur, it would be a fur-pool.
- Furple. - It would, it would, it would.
I'll tell you the answer. It's hirple is one word.
- I think I said hirple. - You did.
Five points, damn you, five points.
But five points taken away if you also mentioned any other sound.
To hirple is to hobble along with one leg dragging behind the other,
halfway between a walk and a crawl.
The other word, of course, you could have had, was curple.
I think you'll find I said that!
Didn't I say I'd take ten points away if there was a second one that you'd already said?
- Yes. - Yes. But I take that back, I'm not going to.
Curple is the leather strap passing under a horse's tail.
Tail, under the tail of a horse.
It's buckled to the saaaaddle, to stop it slipping forwards.
It's better known as a crupper.
It's also - curple - it's the rump or hind quarters of a horse.
(Alan) Horse.
Now known as an "I'm an idiot".
That, or now known as the croup.
The word appears in a rhyme in the works of Scotland's national poet. I shall give it to you.
"I'd be mair vauntie o, my hap,
Douce hingin owre my curple,
Than onie ermine ever lap
Or proud imperial purple."
It's time, I think, for the final scores.
Oh, my wordly Worthington! Here we go.
In last place, I'm afraid, is Alan, with 15 points. I'm sorry about that.
- (all) Aw. - Because you played an absolute blinder.
In third place, with 17, it's Rob.
But look at this, in second place with a massive 35 points, it's Rich.
But in the lead, with 54, it's Gyles Brandreth, ladies and gentlemen.
(applause)
Well, that's about it for QI this week.
It only remains for me to thank our splendid panel of Alan, Rob, Rich and Gyles,
and to end on this quite interesting snippet of information on adultery,
taken from our court report in the Daily Express.
Mrs Hancox of Middlecote, Coventry, said she became Mellors' mistress in 1967.
He was a gentle lover and they "had a very good relationship".
When asked by the prosecution, "Can you remember how long it continued?"
She replied, "About half an hour." Good night. Thank you.