(applause)
Hello. Hello and welcome to QI,
the programme that was originally entitled Fry's Turkish Delight
because it's pink and squashy and comes immediately before a cigarette.
Let's meet the panel now, who are not merely interesting,
but a world-class medical curiosity.
- Alan Davies. - (applause)
Jo Brand.
Jackie Clune.
- And Jimmy Carr. - (applause continues)
There are only two rules. Interesting answers get points and obvious answers get penalties.
Anyone can butt in at any time.
- Jo goes... - (woman) Ñashier number one, please.
...Jimmy goes... - (woman) Ñashier number two, please.
...Jackie goes... - (woman) Ñashier number three, please.
...Alan goes... - (PA chimes)
(man) I am very sorry for the severe delay to the 8.17 service.
Fingers on the buzzers, please, for the first question, which is:
"Who discovered Australia?"
- (laughter) - (bell chimes)
- James Cook. - Oh, Jo, I'm so sorry.
No, apart from the Aborigines, it was the Chinese, who reached it as early as 1432.
When Cook arrived - James Cook - in 1770,
not only was he not first, he wasn't a captain either. He was Lieutenant Cook.
Nor was he the first European. The Dutch had got there 150 years before that.
Nor was he even the first Englishman, who was William Dampier in 1688.
(Alan) What's wrong with the Chinese and the Dutch?
The Dutch discovered almost everything first, but they're just thought of as people...
homosexuals who smoke joints.
Actually there's a lot more to them than that. A lot more.
But what is it with the Chinese that they went round early on, then never went anywhere,
just stayed home and bred ferociously?
We're wandering around the globe, and this is a good thing, but I'll return us to Australia.
It has, of course, been inhabited by Aborigines for at least 40,000 years,
possibly as many as 60,000, so if anyone gets the credit, it should be them.
But what nationality were the original aborigines?
(dog barks)
(Stephen) Yes?
They came... they came across a land bridge
which was later separated by shifting of tectonic plates.
(Jo) Oooh!
So they will have come from Southeast Asia, probably.
So I would say they were... Chinese.
(laughter)
I know what you're thinking. It's certainly true that Australia was connected.
It separated, which is why they have marsupials.
And why they have all their own brands of lager.
(Stephen) Exactly.
I want you to think not Australian. The first aboriginals were nothing to do with Australia.
Where was the term aborigine first used for peoples?
Was it in the Isle of Wight?
A wild stab. It could so easily have been right. No, it wasn't.
- It's the word for the indigenous population. - (Stephen) The Latin for the origin.
The original aborigines lived in the part of Italy where Rome now stands.
And they were called aborigines and so...
It, for some reason, has stuck most with the Aboriginal Australasians,
but there are aboriginal Canadians, you could call the American Indians,
or Native Americans, you could call them aboriginals if you wanted.
- But it's more fun to call them redskins. - Yes.
I wouldn't try it, though, in America. You'd have your balls turned into a small purse.
- We're doing very well. Now, what does... - A very big purse, I think you'll find.
- What am I thinking of? - I'd have my balls turned into a rucksack.
(Stephen) Oh, dear!
Good. Now...
It is actually possible for the ball sac to be stretched quite beyond recognition.
By a woman scorned.
The scrotum is quite an interesting thing because the... the... the...
I'm gonna write that down.
The temperature ambit within which human sperm can survive is quite narrow.
- Do sperms feel pain? - (laughter)
- I think... - Are they like fish? We're not sure.
Do they have a nervous system? Do they feel pain?
Because I have it on good authority that the sperm outside the ball sac -
ejaculatum - will survive for 18 hours. Now is that a lingering...
- Flopping and thrashing around. - Well, it depends whether they're...
Eventually, like, billions of them dying out, one last sperm...
I think they prefer the quick death of banging their head on the ceiling and just dying.
But it depends whether they're male or female sperm.
Boy sperm swim faster, but don't live as long.
- Are there male and female sperm? - Yes.
The girl sperm do the bloody hoovering and the washing-up.
I always thought testicles were the perfect environment to test anti-ageing cream.
So, what does the word kangaroo mean
in the Baagandji Aboriginal language of New South Wales?
(buzzer)
- Yes? - Skippy.
- (Stephen) How sweet. - I think I know.
Unless it's apocryphal. It might be one of the obvious answers. I'm nervous about saying it.
- Say it. Say it. - Does it mean "I don't know"?
- Oh! Oh, dear. Oh! Oh! - (alarm bells)
I've walked into it like a fool.
It is an apocryphal story that... that... Tell it.
Well, the story is that when the first white settlers went over there,
they sort of saw these enormous jumping things with little... They saw kangaroos,
and they went, "What's that?" And the bloke went, "I don't know."
And in Baagandji, "I don't know" was (funny accent) "kangaroo". Yes.
- That is a story that is put about, but... - Is that the proper accent?
Or is that your random accent?
- It's my generic... I'm afraid, my generic... - How did he pronounce it? Do that again.
- (funny accent) Kangaroo. - It sounds authentic.
You sound like a minicab driver from Stoke Newington.
No, I'll tell you the story. In a strange way, it's sort of less interesting,
but, being the truth, it's quite interesting. In Baagandji what it means is "horse",
because in 18th-century Australia there were 700 Aboriginal tribes
speaking 250 separate languages between them.
Kangaroo comes from the Guugu Yimithirr language,
spoken around Botany Bay and first heard by Europeans on Cook's expedition in 1770.
Now, when the first English settlers arrived 18 years later,
having learned the word kangaroo from these peoples,
they arrived in a completely different part of Australia. "Kangaroo." I beg your pardon.
So wherever they went, they proudly used the word kangaroo to the locals,
who of course had never heard the word because they spoke a different language.
So the locals, including the Baagandji, thought it must mean an animal we've never heard of.
So when they first saw a horse, they thought that must be what this word "kangaroo" is.
So, let me whisk you now across the Indian Ocean to Africa,
the cradle of humanity, for this important buzzer question.
What did human beings evolve from? Yes, Jo?
- Apes. - Oh, Jo!
- (alarm bells) - Jo, Jo, Jo, Jo, Jo!
Homo sapiens and apes both evolved from a common ancestor,
which unfortunately we haven't yet discovered.
- (Jo) The missing link? - The missing link. Exactly.
Before that we are descended from squirrel-like tree shrews,
who were, in turn, evolved from hedgehogs, and, before that, starfish.
Now, another...
Do you know why there aren't any aspirins in the jungle?
- The parrots ate 'em all. - (Stephen) Yes.
- All right, I'll go home now. - Are we telling bad jungle-related jokes?
- No, you're not, I am. - Why did the lion get lost?
- (Stephen and Jackie) I don't know. - Cos jungle is massive.
(applause)
How do monkeys make toast? They put it under a griller.
I'm sorry.
Another African anthropology question now.
How did the Hehe tribe of Tanzania get their name?
- Yes? - They sent off a little coupon in the paper.
I think you've pronounced that wrong. I think it's the "Heyhey".
And they were an early boy band
and they used to sing, "Hey, hey, we're the Monkees".
(laughter and applause)
Perhaps they're the missing link. You never know.
- (Stephen) Yeah. - I'm sure that Zaire isn't Zaire any more.
Well, it's confusing. It's the Democratic Republic of the Congo there, isn't it?
- Isn't that what that is now? Kinshasa? - It's not that democratic, is it?
(Stephen) No, it's highly not democratic. It calls itself that.
I think anything with "democratic" in the name tends not to be at all.
- (Stephen) Absolutely. - As a rule.
But if they were gonna call it "The Fascist Junta of..."
- You'd respect them. Truth-telling. - You would. I'd let them in the UN.
The biggest mountain in Africa is in Tanzania.
It's Mount Kilimanjaro. It has a permanent snowy peak.
Could I just pop in a quite interesting thing here?
A friend of mine was playing Trivial Pursuit once and the question she got was:
"Which two countries can you see from the top of Mount Kilimanjaro?"
- And she said India and Spain. - (laughter)
- (Stephen) Can we have her on next week? - You can.
(Stephen) Fantastic.
Well, just let me do one more of hers, cos it was fantastic.
She got a question, "What's the other name for the northern lights?" She said, "Blackpool".
- (Stephen) Splendid. - (applause)
There's a really good website you can go on which is true answers from Family Fortunes.
- (Jackie) Oh, brilliant. - Fantastic. And there was one...
A person was asked, "Name a bird with a long neck."
And they said, "Naomi Campbell".
I was very keen on the, "Name a dangerous race."
- (Alan) Oh, the Arabs? - Yeah.
- (Stephen) No. Really? - Yeah.
- I watched that Anne Robinson one once... - (Jo) The Weakest Link?
Weakest Link. And she said, "Which member of the royal family
- appeared on A Question of Sport in 1979?" - (Alan) Princess Anne.
Yes. The answer that the person gave was Ricky Tomlinson.
Which I thought was rather appealing, but there you are.
- Isn't that good? I like that. - (Jimmy) Marvellous.
Good old Britain. Here we are. Now... So how did the Hehe tribe of Tanzania get its name?
Answer, it was its war cry. It had a feared battle cry.
The Hehe people were the dominant military force in the region in the late 19th century,
and the most successful at resisting colonisation by the Germans.
Not as amusing as they sound. In Swaziland, not far away, there is only one museum,
and it is bad manners to shield one's eyes from the sun with one hand,
and forbidden to point at the king's hut.
National service in Swaziland
consists of weeding the king's millet fields for two weeks a year.
The penalty for not showing up is a fine of one cow. Now...
It's a very difficult rule to enforce, the not pointing at the king's hut.
- (Stephen) Yes, isn't it? - How do you explain to people...
- (Stephen) Where it is. - "Don't point at the king's hut."
And they go, "Which one's the king's hut?" And they go, "That one. Oh!"
- (Stephen) Very good. - "I can't believe it."
Now, explain to me, why did the Speaker of the Swazi parliament
lose his job in June 2000?
He shielded his eyes and went, "That's the king's hut, that is."
The economy of Swaziland is run on one thing and one thing alone, and that is the cow.
- (bell chimes) - Did he steal the king's hut?
Indeed he didn't.
I'll tell you what he did. He stole a cowpat belonging to His Majesty King Mswati III.
Mr Dlamini took the item from the royal kraal to help him perform a magic spell
to benefit the whole country and His Majesty in person, or so he alleged in his defence.
The king of Swaziland is an absolute monarch who rules jointly with his mother,
known as the Great She-Elephant.
Whenever he rises from his seat,
he must be greeted with cheers and gasps of astounded admiration.
- I know an interesting fact about his mum. - (Stephen) The Great She-Elephant?
- Yeah. She's got a really good memory. - (laughter)
Jo, you're having a wonderful time with yourself.
Now, anthropology is the study of mankind in all its diversity,
so tell me, which hand did King Henry VIII of England wipe his bottom with?
- (bell rings) - Anne Boleyn's.
Lovely image! Yes, Jo?
Can I suggest, in the hope I get a "waaah", that he used someone else's - a servant?
No, you get your full... I'll give you five points for that, because it's absolutely right. Yes.
I bet that it's one of those jobs that's so unpleasant and awful,
it's actually given really high status in the royal household.
You are absolutely right!
- To make it bearable, you get privileges. - Aristocrats would fight over this job.
Were you the keeper of the king's chocolate starfish or something?
Well, no, you were called the groom of the stool.
A palace assistant. Despite its disgusting-sounding nature,
it was a hugely important position, as Alan intimated and gets two points for doing so.
The Autocue says it was a "big job", but I'm not going to read that bit.
Incidentally, there is, ladies and gentlemen, the groom of the stool, Sir Anthony Denny,
who was the longest-running groom of the stool.
Did he... Do you think he bent over and put his bottom out?
Or did he roll on his back and put his knees right up?
Do you know, I'd rather not think about it.
Did they have a kind of royal changing mat for the king to lie down on?
- (Stephen) I'm sure they... They had the... - You get a bucket of water and go sploosh!
Well, it was a much-prized job because of the amount of access,
the amount of time one got to spend with the king.
Another sought-after and rather cushier task in the king's chamber
was warming his shirt before he put it on in the morning.
Now, to something completely other.
In 1879, Dr James Murray began work on the first Oxford English Dictionary
as a four-volume, 6,400-page work,
that he estimated would take about ten years to write.
However, five years later, he and his tiny staff had only got as far as "ant".
In the end, the dictionary took 45 years,
38 of them under Murray, and was only completed 13 years after his death.
The second volume, Ant to Batten, appeared in 1885,
and it contained the word "arthropod".
Does anyone have the faintest clue what an arthropod might be?
- (bell rings) - Is he a character in EastEnders?
No. No, he's not, arthropod.
Did you know the latest edition of the Oxford English Dictionary
does not contain the word gullible?
Is that really true?
Oh! Oh!
- I really, really fell for that. - (Alan) He really fell for it.
- I am so... That is brilliant. - It's such an enormous brain,
but it's a bit like when you're reversing a car - there's a blind spot.
- (Stephen) There is. - (laughter)
I'll give you a... I'll give you five points if you can tell me the word
that takes up the most pages to define in the OED.
- The. - No. There's only one real meaning of "the".
It won't take that long to define.
Sorry, I didn't mean to humiliate you,
but, I mean, it's obviously a word that has to have lots of different meanings
that take up quite a lot of explanation, and "the" really...
You know, it's not also a name for a type of watering can or a nose flute.
It can't be a verb. This word can be a verb, it can be a noun, it can be an adjective.
- (Alan) Bee. - Not bee. As in double e?
Again, there are not many meanings, but it's a three-letter word.
- I'll tell you. If you look it up in the OED... - (Alan) Tub.
- (Jo) Tub? - It's set. It goes on for pages and pages.
Murray personally supervised the word set in a little shed he had in his garden.
Isn't arthropod some kind of a creature with legs?
You're absolutely right. The "pod" tells us that.
The reason it's important and we should know it is that 85% of all creatures, maybe 84%,
but 84% at least of all creatures on earth are arthropods.
Arthro-, as in arthritis, means it's jointed, joint, so it's a jointed leg thing.
And let me tell you, there are more than a million species of arthropod -
butterflies, lobsters, woodlice, cicadas, bees, cockroaches, spiders, scorpions,
prawns, praying mantises, crabs,
beetles, centipedes, millipedes, crayfish, mayflies, mites,
ticks, fleas, earwigs and ants.
Did you say a million? You're not gonna do the whole list, are you?
No, no. What is rather distinguished about a male European earwig?
- (buzzer) - Yes?
(Jimmy) The moustache.
It is a part of the body, but it's not the moustache.
- Yes? - Is he greying at the temples?
- No. - Does he wear a monocle?
- No, it's neither of those things. - They're very, very well-endowed.
- (Stephen) Immensely well-endowed, but... - Best of all the arthropods.
- Lots of arthropods are well-endowed. - So well-endowed
that it goes all the way up their body and then along their sleeve.
Almost true. It's actually longer than its body, its penis, which seems rather odd.
- The penis is longer? - But more astoundingly,
not only does it have this very long member which is over a centimetre long...
- Well, its own body is a centimetre and its... - (Jimmy) Over a centimetre?
(laughter)
That is a bit showy-offy.
- In relation to... - Is that on the slack, Stephen?
In relation to its size, I mean. Yes.
No, but the really extraordinary thing is it has a spare one.
- (Alan) A spare? - (Stephen) It has a spare penis.
- (Jackie) For special occasions. - (Alan) In case it catches it in its flies.
This was discovered recently and it is quite interesting. It was discovered in Tokyo.
In case one snaps off. What happened was - this does say something about scientists -
these Japanese scientists were watching two European earwigs copulating.
They were watching them copulate, yes, and they thought:
"What would happen if we just pinched the back of the male on top?"
Which is a rather cruel and odd thing to want to do.
They did and, shocked and startled, the male earwig backed off and was distressed,
or the onlookers were distressed, to see that it had left its penis behind in Mrs Earwig.
But the really startling thing was another penis instantly replaced it
from inside its body and shot out. It has...
No one knows if that would happen with humans.
No. Let's not try it.
- Cos, as far as I know, no one's penis... - (Jo) I tried that.
- Have you snapped off a willy? - I snapped off my husband's last night.
Another one didn't appear, I'm afraid, but a sandwich did, so that was all right.
It's not a sentence I thought I'd say when I woke up,
but I wouldn't mind seeing a little bit of earwig porn then.
Normally it's one guy with two girls and it's all over the place, but that would even it out.
- (Stephen) Exactly. - I've seen one of those on the interweb.
- (Stephen) Have you? - A man with two knobs.
- (Stephen) Really? - The girl had one in each hand, like that.
- (Stephen) Well... - Sure she wasn't sitting on a space hopper?
(applause)
(Stephen) Very good. Very good.
If you search space hopper on Google, you never know what might come up.
- Heavens above. Now... - I have a girlfriend who has two vaginas.
She went to have a smear test and the doctor said:
"I've got some good news and some bad news. You've got some precancerous cells,
but they're only in one of your vaginas."
And she said, "Oh, I'm saving the other one for that special man."
Is it fully equipped inside? Does she have two clitorises?
- No, no. Clitoris is on the outside, Stephen. - Oh, is it? I see. This is where I... Sorry.
- This is where I really do plead ignorance. - (Alan) There's that blind spot again.
- You're not really in the vagina business. - I'm not. Thank you for that.
I do feel you're expressing rather an unnatural interest.
- Which is not like you, really. - Well, I'm curious.
- I'll press my nose into anything. So... - (laughter)
(Stephen) What... I do apologise.
- What do you call an insect that sucks? - (bell rings)
- Ulrika Jonsson. - (laughter)
- Heavens! Heavens! - (applause)
Meow. Any other thoughts?
- (buzzer) - Yes, Jimmy?
A rubbish insect?
Oh, it sucks. Very good. It sucks.
What? You mean it sucks up? I know that the stingray sucks food up from the seabed.
(Stephen) Yes. It's more of a fish than an insect, but yes.
It can suck... It can locate and suck up food from a foot below the surface of the seabed.
It's what we in the gay community call a bottom feeder. Yes?
- Can I be in the gay community? - Oh, very well.
Can I be an arthropod and in the gay community?
It's a very specialist area, but I'm sure there are many websites devoted to it.
- The gay arthropods. - (Stephen) The gay arthropods.
- (Jimmy) It sucks? - (Stephen) Yes, it sucks.
You'll be very surprised by the answer here. The answer is a bug.
But unlike other insects, all bugs have piercing and sucking mouth parts.
The word is not just a general name for a creepy-crawly,
it has a strict biological scientific sense, a bug. There. You didn't know that, did you?
So, fingers on the buzzers, please, for one last question on arthropods.
- How many legs does a millipede have? - (bells ring)
- Yes, Jo? - 1,000.
I don't believe it, Jo. I don't believe it. I do not believe it!
- Oh, dear, oh, dear, oh, dear. - (applause)
I'm so sorry. No known millipede has ever been discovered with as many as 1,000 legs.
The one with the most is the South African millipede and has 710.
Fingers on the buzzers for another mind- boggling demonstration of general ignorance.
- What colour is water? - (dog barks)
- It has no colour. It's clear. - Oh, my dear fellow, I'm so sorry.
Oh, dear. Colourless. No.
- No. Water, you'll be surprised... - (Alan) Blue.
It is blue. I'm afraid you lose your marks for that,
but I'll give you five back for knowing it is blue. It's blue.
You have to have a lot of it to see that it's blue, and a lot of water, of course, looks blue
because the sky is reflected in it, but actually water is, in fact, blue. Slightly blue. There.
Now, have more people been killed by atomic bombs or by ducks? Yes.
Is this in the world ever? Or Nagasaki 1945?
- Cos I think I know if it's Nagasaki 1945. - No, it isn't. No, it's...
(Alan) It must be ducks or you wouldn't ask.
(Stephen) Exactly. It is ducks. It is ducks. It is ducks.
- (Jimmy) I could tell you why. - Yes?
Well, recently it's going into jet engines, isn't it? They've taken a couple of planes out.
A duck may have taken planes out. It wouldn't quite account for the hundreds of thousands
who died in Nagasaki and Hiroshima though, would it?
- Was it that many? - (Stephen) Oh, yes, it was a lot of people.
- Sorry about that. - No, it wasn't us, it was the Americans.
No, you see, ducks were actually responsible for the outbreak of Spanish flu
that killed 25 million people in 1918 and 1919,
more than died from military causes in World War I and 100 times more than those...
- How exactly were they responsible? - Well, they passed the disease on to man.
They were the Typhoid Mary, if you like, of Spanish influenza.
- Do ducks sneeze? - (imitates a duck sneezing)
Yes, probably. Something like that, it would be. No, I think they... I did my best, Alan.
It was brilliant. It was brilliant because it was unexpected.
(Stephen) Yes, quite.
What buries its head in the sand? Jo?
I have to finish my triumph off tonight and say the ostrich.
- (Stephen) Hey! - (alarm bells)
Well, my goodness me. How wrong you are. No.
Ostriches have never been known to bury their head in the sand.
- They would suffocate. - (Jo) Thank you.
Invented by a friend of this programme, Pliny the Elder.
How do these myths get started?
They do have a way of scanning the horizon by lowering their necks
and lowering their heads to the ground level and looking around for enemies.
And also their legs are back to front.
If you see an ostrich running backwards, it looks like a person.
- They run over 40 miles an hour. - (Jimmy) It looks like a person?
- The legs look like a person. - (laughter)
(Jimmy) You've been going out with some dodgy birds, haven't you?
Let's just move on. Who invented rubber boots?
- (bell rings) - Yes?
- The Duke of Wellington. - (Stephen) Oh! Well done!
Oh, well done. Oh, hey.
No, I'll tell you the answer. It was Amazonian Indians, in fact.
The boots designed and named after the Duke of Wellington, Jo, were made of leather.
Rubber was a disastrous failure for clothing when it was first tried
because it either melted all over you in hot weather, or set as hard as granite in winter,
until Charles Goodyear - not Dunlop, it was Charles Goodyear -
invented vulcanisation by accident in the 1840s. He licensed the making of...
- Tell us how your father pronounces Volvic. - (Stephen laughs)
Volvic he pronounces Vulvic, so it's Vulvic water, but that's enough.
- Tell us how he pronounces Volvo. - Vulvas. He calls them Vulvas, yes.
So if he says, "I've scratched my Vulva..."
Yes, that's right. And it's recently gone in for a cervix, yes.
(laughter and applause)
Yes, so vulcan... It just means fierce heat, like volcano, so it's called...
- It was called vulcanisation not actually... - (Alan) Vulcanised rubber comes from that.
And he invented it, Charles Goodyear. He was a terribly sad man, actually. It was tragic.
He lived all his life in appalling poverty.
His one aim was to find a way of making rubber the useful material it now is,
and he succeeded by accident, supposedly, the story goes,
spilling this mixture of rubber he was playing with on his wife's hot stove,
and noticing suddenly when it had been heated that it had these amazing properties.
And he licensed it, but he was ripped off. Vulcanisation was used by someone else,
and the... All right, yes.
A little tableau vivant of Charles Goodyear discovering vulcanisation.
But even the name... Even the Goodyear tyre company,
was just named after him because the founders of it admired him.
He didn't get a cent for it.
But we remember him here and honour him. Charles Goodyear, ladies and gentlemen.
- Yes, thank you. Charles Goodyear. - (applause)
Amazonian Indians, since time immemorial,
have made instant gumboots by standing knee-deep in liquid latex until it dries.
So, on that last anthropological note,
it's time for the embarrassing business of the final scores.
I'm going to do it in reverse order.
Tonight's winner, ladies and gentlemen, is Jackie Clune with five points.
(applause)
- And second, Alan Davies with zero. - (applause)
In third place with minus one, it's Jimmy Carr, ladies and gentlemen.
But in fourth place with a staggering minus 38, it's Jo Brand.
(applause)
So... that's it from QI for this week.
It only remains for me to thank Jackie, Alan, Jo and Jimmy,
and to add something quite interesting to end on,
in this case, a letter from the Daily Mirror, also concerning anthropology in a way.
"There were four of us", it goes, "in the doctor's waiting room,
when in walked a Pakistani gentleman. He was about to go straight into the surgery
when a woman jumped up and grabbed his arm, saying in very deliberate English:
'We are before you.'
'You take your turn.'
'Understand?"'
"The Pakistani, in equally deliberate English, replied:
'No, you are after me.'
'Me doctor. Understand?"'
- Good night. - (applause)
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