THEME MUSIC
APPLAUSE
Hello, hello, and welcome to QI -
the show which gives thoughts wings,
flies in the face of convention
and goes "coo" in the chimney of knowledge.
Roosting alongside me this evening are Rich Hall,
Phil Kay,
Jo Brand and Alan Davies.
APPLAUSE
Now, before we sort the owls from the orioles,
let me introduce the QI Spot The Nostril competition.
Your task tonight is to draw a picture of a kiwi, right?
A bird so odd that some think it's a missing link
between mammals and birds.
Paying particular attention to the position of its nostrils.
I will reward the best effort with a nest egg.
You're staring at me with a kind of glassy look.
- You do know what a kiwi is? - Yeah.
I've seen one in New Zealand. They're nocturnal.
You had to go in a little kiwi zoo thing
and they have them in virtually every town.
There'll be someone's living room
and you go in and there'll be a dark room and a little glass thing.
Aw.
- National bird. - It is the national bird.
Never see it, can't fly. Rubbish.
But your task, whether you choose to accept it or not, Jim,
- is to draw one. - Alan.- Alan, sorry.
- What's the national bird of England? - (TUTS)
I'll tell you what it is for women - thrush.
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
You know what it is for men?
- Uh... - Cock.
- Sorted. - (WHEEZES)
- Cock and thrush. - Yes.
- Good name for a pub, wouldn't it? - Good name for a pub.
There are pubs called the Cock Inn, aren't there?
It's one of the odd jokes in Carry On which is usually just saucy,
where Charles Hawtrey is playing a detective
and he's following Sid James in Carry On Loving, I think it is,
and he's sort of saying, "Went for lunch,
went to pub The Cock Inn...
had drinks with two other women, left Cock Inn."
And that implies you've got a left cock and a right cock.
# Left cock in Your right cock out... #
LAUGHTER
So cock, thrush, kiwi.
I've got to draw all three?
- No, forget the cock and the thrush. - (GIGGLES)
Draw me a kiwi, paying particular attention
to the nostrils and where they are on the bird.
Imagine if your nostrils were just above your anus.
(CHUCKLES) It would be unpleasant.
Good. Before we go any further,
do you want to know how you sound? Jo, sing to me.
PEACOCK CALLS
Rich.
CROW CAWS
- Phil. - (IMITATES COCKEREL)
(CHUCKLES) No.
COCKEREL CROWS
That's extraordinary!
APPLAUSE
I promise you, Phil did not know that was his sound.
Let's just check that again
to make sure we weren't all having a hallucination.
COCKEREL CROWS
- Rise and shine, good morning. - It is extraordinary.
And Alan goes.
# Fruity, fruity fruit
# Fruity, fruity, fruity
# Fruity! #
There you are. Didn't guess that one, did you?
No, I didn't!
A little voice in my ear just told me
the national bird of England is the European robin apparently.
So let's head south for the winter.
So, Alan, what's the difference between an ostrich and a lion?
LAUGHTER
Why the stars? What's going on with the stars?
Is that a clue?
Kind of a clue.
An ostrich is a flightless bird with a very long neck,
runs about 40 miles an hour,
- lays big eggs... - Correct.
And is edible. Quite a delicacy.
- Farmed. - Yes.
A lion - king of the jungle - big cat.
Kill you with a single blow.
There are many differences.
Is there any particular difference you're thinking of, sir?
One of the most famous African explorers
- was the Scotsman... - David Livingstone.
David Livingstone, thank you, Phil.
And he wrote that "I can distinguish between them with certainty..."
this is by sound "..only by knowing that the ostrich roars by day
and the lion roars by night."
He described the idea that lions have an impressive roar
as mere majestic twaddle
and said that they sounded identical to ostriches.
So let's demonstrate that. Right.
This is the sound of a lion.
- LION GROWLS - Gee.
And this is the sound of an ostrich.
OSTRICH TWITTERS
LAUGHTER
COCKEREL CROWS
- Yes, Phil. - David Livingstone was a hard-working Scot.
He was working in the mines.
His ears were damaged. He couldn't be blamed for this.
Don't you feel that actually Stanley was lucky
when he said, "Doctor Livingstone, I presume?"
he wasn't shot because he was mistaken for a leopard or something.
If Siegfried and Roy had worked with ostriches instead of big cats,
they'd probably still be working today.
That's a very good thought.
Although, Johnny Cash was attached by an ostrich.
- Did you know that? - I didn't.
- Yes, very ferociously, yeah. - Really?
- Never quite recovered. - They can kick you.
I saw one kick someone in the googlies on telly the other day.
- Yes. - Did you see that?- I did.
- It really caught him. - It did!
(BOTH LAUGH)
So we get points just for being interesting?
- That's it. - Yeah.
You know, in some countries, linoleum is a form of currency.
LAUGHTER
Now, that's interesting. Is it true, however?
You said it was interesting, right?
LAUGHTER
We have a question for you now, young Rich,
explain how to French kiss a woodpecker.
You would have to seduce it.
Get it interested in you. Put a toothpick in your mouth.
(LAUGHS) Woodpecker.
Say nice things to it.
Oh, that's nice plumage.
You give it a date rape drug.
LAUGHTER
- Should all else fail. - Yes!
Does French kissing mean kissing with tongues or-
Aah-la-la-la-la. Yes.
Sorry!
Are you seeing anyone at the moment?
I'm sorry. Yes, with tongues.
I thought that was very attractive.
Um, why would anyone want to?
They are very extraordinary things, woodpecker tongues.
Let's have a look at a woodpecker tongue. You'd be astonished. There.
- Oh! - One of the strangest things in nature.
It's an amazing organ, extend to two-thirds of its body length.
It's covered with sticky saliva, vicious barbs
and has an ear at the end of it.
With which it can listen to its prey.
So it uses the beak for pecking at bark...
It has an ear at the end of its tongue?
- Well, a thing that detects sound. - Sorry, can you say that again?
- Absolutely. - Pardon?
How does it fit into its mouth, you may wonder,
well, it has to wrap it round its brain and back of its eye sockets.
Funnily enough, woodpeckers are very popular on Creationist websites
because they argue this is such an extraordinary creature design,
so fit for its purpose and so on,
that only a designer could have made it. It couldn't have evolved.
When it moves sometimes up to 15 or 16 times a second,
it beats the wood to make a hole which is incredibly fast,
and generates immense forces.
250 times more forces an astronaut is subjected to.
It's 1,000Gs.
It has these extraordinary muscles and cartilages around its brain
to stop it from shattering.
If the pecker's got wood, why go for tongue, you may argue!
Sorry.
But it is...
It is a pretty astonishing animal.
(LAUGHS)
Can we maybe have an off-shoot of this program
called Quite Unnecessary?
LAUGHTER
Can I be on that?
Absolutely! (LAUGHS)
I just can't quite see how different it would be.
Anyway. So, Phil, time for you.
Does your bird like chocolate?
- My bird? - Yeah, does she like chocolates?
My bird likes chocolate, yes. It's very popular with...
- Have you got a bird, then? - I don't know.
- Say you had a parrot, they'd like chocolate. - Yes.
- Would they? - Their beak's great for getting right to the toffee.
If you had a pelican,
they don't like chocolate, they like toffee better.
And if you had an owl, they quite like chocolate behind them
cos then they can rotate, you know. Just to show off.
If you gie a crow a Malteser, it's like, "No, way."
So my bird, no.
You can't give animals chocolate because it's got something in it
- that makes them depressed. - Do you know that's right?
You can't give chocolate to a dog because it's not right.
That's why you have to buy special chocolate for the dogs.
If you want to save money, give it to the kids, tell them it's old.
You know, February chocolate.
Christmas chocolate's gone white and dusty.
- Oh, I've eaten dog chocolate. - Have you?- Yes, I have.
It's like a phrase, "Oh, I've eaten dog chocolate."
It's part of folklore. My bird don't like chocolate.
No, a bird doesn't like chocolate, you're quite right.
- How many points does he get for that? - He's correct.
He'll get some points perhaps from our scorers if they're in the mood.
Um, how good is their sense of taste, birds, do you imagine?
Absolutely minimal.
They've no need. "It's a seed, I don't care. Get it in."
Yeah, they only have about 20 or 30 taste buds on their tongue.
They'd never distinguish chocolate.
- I thought it was less than that, actually. - Did you?
- Yeah! - (CHUCKLES)
- Thought it was 15 or 18. - (LAUGHS)
And humans have how many, would you say?
25,000.
It's about nine or 10,000, something like that.
Pretty close.
But new ones grow every five days.
- Five days? - They last about five days, taste buds.
Of course, wouldn't be able to tell what chocolate is
- but it would be toxic, it would kill them. - Kill them?
Yeah, it's actually poisonous to us but lethal dose is quite high.
If you had a whole tin of Quality Street, would that kill you?
About 22 pounds is the lethal dose for a human.
- That's nothing. - Nothing!
(LAUGHS)
APPLAUSE
A little Smartie would kill a small songbird, for example.
(LAUGHS)
LAUGHTER
You sick-
A friend of mine had a hamster and it wasn't very well,
so her dad gave it a bit of brandy.
- Lord. - Guess what happened next?
Severe alcohol poisoning.
Alcohol poisoning?
- Oh, absolutely! - Oh, dear.
"Is he better?"
"Uh...go to bed. You'll see in the morning.
Shops, get down to the shops!"
When I was a teenager,
someone I know gave their dog LSD.
Oh, my God.
It went to Glastonbury.
- (LAUGHS) - (LAUGHS)
I went into a friend's house
and at the top of the landing, they had this football
and in a merry mood,
there was an open window and I kicked it through the window.
Very pleased. Converted it.
And I'd never heard of these things
that people who have hamsters have these little balls
- where the hamster goes... - (ALL LAUGH)
Right out the window and bounced and had gone all over the place.
- I felt absolutely awful. - Did it die?
No, it survived! Seemed perfectly cheerful.
LAUGHTER
Woo! Woo!
I bet it thought, "God, that new ball I got for Christmas
is bloody brilliant!"
It's a pity Bill Bailey's not here, actually.
They had a dog, Bill's girlfriend used to take it to work
in an old people's home and it used to eat entire boxes of Daz
and it would eat pants as well.
- And sort of clean them. - A washing machine inside!
- And poo out some white pants. - The pants would come out of its bum.
- All pearly white. - Well, ish, you know.
You wouldn't pop them straight on, put it that way.
(LAUGHS) Probably. That's probably true.
We had a cat that could open the fridge.
It would lie on its back
with its paws under the fridge and yank it open.
- Really? - Oh, yeah! Then he was in.
And he got the turkey out the fridge
and had it halfway to the cat flap before we found him.
That's like Tom and Jerry, isn't it?
He was eating it really fast, while we were running towards him.
(LAUGHS)
Went to grab him and he just jumped straight out the cat flap.
Hissing. HSS!
So, now.
What weighs six pounds, covers 18 square feet
and has to be changed once a month?
Someone's gotta do it.
One of my sanitary towels.
Ey! GROANING
- Sorry. Look, I just- - Jo Brand!
Did you think everyone else was about to leap in and say that?
Yeah!
- I thought Alan might. - Oh.
Is that one of your sanitary towels? That there?
- Do you have it like wallpaper? - Yes, I have embroidered ones.
I get them especially made by a lady in waiting of the Queen.
Um...outdoors or indoors? A flag.
Something belonging to each and every one of us.
- Skin. - Very good!
Skin is the answer. The largest organ in the body.
Maybe in your body.
I've got a huge cock.
I think we'll forfeit you for that.
ALARM BUZZER
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
That's how predictable that was.
You almost fell exactly into our trap.
That counts as putting one foot into it, I reckon, so minus five to you.
Yes, the skin. Extraordinary chap, the skin.
In a single square inch of skin, there are 20 feet of blood vessels.
Just a single square inch of skin. Isn't that amazing?
1,300 nerve cells and 100 sweat glands.
And cells of the human body are constantly being replaced.
We lose about 50,000 cells a...
- Second. - Yes.
People get through around 900 skins in a lifetime.
- (LAUGHS) - Now, here's a question.
Does putting perfumed sachets in your drawers
help conception?
- It will help conception, yes. - How so?
It'll give a meadow-like feel to the bedroom
and everyone will be relaxed and ha-ha-ha ooh!
It will. It will certainly in that sense.
But there's an even more direct sense.
- Which is rather astonishing. - Lavender?
- Is it to do with lavender? - It's not actually lavender.
It's a very particular flower, the Lily-of-the-Valley.
It helps your sperm count.
Uh, it's even weirder than that.
Ah, sperm can smell.
Sperm can smell whether you've got clean underwear on or not
and if you have, it will come out to play.
Well, they can certainly smell the smell of Lily of the Valley.
Can they? Someone's sitting in a lab somewhere,
with sperm, going, "Now, here's something!"
There'll be people alive because of that research in a few years' time.
You have a great faith in science.
The thing is, right, is that
the only people that wear, that smell of Lily of the Valley
are, like, old ladies, aren't they?
Yes, it's a yardly fragrance, isn't it?
It is yardly. So if you're an old lady, wheh-hey!
I'm quite looking forward to it now.
You'd have sperm chasing you down the bookies and... Fantastic.
It has long been a mystery as to how sperm
can all go in the same direction so fast do the same thing,
and whether or not the ovum puts out a scent trail.
The closest we've got to discovering -
I say "we", or German scientists at Ruhr University -
have got to replicating it, is this particular scent,
called "bourgeonal", which is one that's used...
Have they tried other smells?
They've tried thousands of others.
And this one makes them absolutely align and race towards them.
Uh, there're going to be using it in fertility clinics.
Now, here's a thing, you have to work out what I'm talking about here.
Two brothers, all right?
They have a variety stage act.
One brother punches a member of the audience on stage,
and the other brother is arrested. Why would that be?
- Two brothers? - Yeah.
Are doing a variety act.
Ah! They're Siamese twins!
You're absolutely right. Give the man full, maximum points.
APPLAUSE
Chang and Eng Bunker was the name they eventually gave themselves,
and they are why conjoined twins are called Siamese twins
because they came form Siam and got on a boat to America,
where they made some money as a sort of entertainment act.
I mean, they lived till the age of 63.
They each married one of a pair of sisters,
and had 21 children between them.
I know, it's hard to imagine!
It does... The mind instantly tries to conjure a scene of how it works.
- How many cocks did they have? - All right.
- They were just joined at the tummy, they had one each. - (LAUGHS)
They were not joined at the cock, which would be most unfortunate.
They got on incredibly well.
Although they did, actually, on that boat journey from Siam,
they had a fight about...
One wanted a cold bath and the other didn't,
- and the crew and the captain had to, sort of... - Separate them?
LAUGHTER
(LAUGHS) Had to placate them.
Throw a bucket of cold water over them, I suppose.
One on the left looks really serious.
He was the straight man.
LAUGHTER
Well, actually, one of them took to drink and the other didn't.
But their systems were pretty independent.
Imagine that. Your twin pissed up.
"Come on, I'm getting you home." "I love you!"
Chang, perhaps, not unnaturally as a drinker, died first,
and Eng woke up one morning to discover that his brother had died
and gave a great howl of despair.
And they ran to fetch a doctor
to try and separate him from his dead twin,
and they came back, and he'd coiled himself around his twin,
and died within an hour of this.
And the post-mortem revealed that it was really just, in its day,
it would be called kind of a broken heart,
but it was a sort of nervous shock. No reason to die.
A lot of comedy teams have broken up, and they've done very well solo.
Yes, thank you for that tender remark!
LAUGHTER
Feeling much better about deformity now we've talked it through.
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.
They had a genuine dignity about them. There we are.
What happened was, of course,
that Chang, who was the brother who landed the punch,
the one who, of course, later became an alcoholic,
was guilty of common assault,
but the judge decided it would amount to false imprisonment
to jail the other one, so he set them both free.
Some advantage there in being conjoined twins.
License to whack people.
So onto our own version of this barbaric ritual that we call QI,
and that's the General Ignorance round.
Fingers on buzzers for this, please.
What is the loudest thing in the ocean?
The blue whale!
The blue whale? Oh, dear. Oh, dear. Oh, dear.
No, no. It's not the blue whale. It's nothing like as loud...
You can hear it for 10,000 miles!
Another whale can hear it
but it's not actually, in amplitude, the loudest thing, in fact.
COCKEREL CROWS
- Yes? - Must it not be the sea itself?
Aah... No.
- Oh. - LAUGHTER
- Crabs clapping. - Go smaller.
Crayfish!
Is it some sort of vibrating thing?
You're doing exactly... What Alan is doing is exactly right.
I'm doing it exactly right.
Imagine a trillion things with snapping claws doing this.
- Crayfish. - Lobsters.
- Smaller. - ALAN AND JO: Shrimps.
- They're the loudest thing in the ocean? - Yeah.
Well, it's quiet down there.
That's right. It's called the shrimp layer.
And there are trillions of them and they do this at the same time.
It's not actually the claws banging together makes the noise
it's the bubble of air popping that is created by this very fast...
it comes out at 30 feet per second, this thing.
Then it pops. And it can keep people awake.
If they come inland, quite near the coast,
it can keep whole communities awake at night.
Trillions of them, though, I mean, really vast.
They can white out a submarine's sonar
and deafen the operators, through their headphones.
Subs below the layer can hear absolutely nothing above it
and subs above it can hear nothing below it.
- And they're floating in the water? The shrimps? - Yeah!
You can only hear by raising a mast through them.
So now, next question.
What's more likely, being killed by lightning or by an asteroid?
(BLOWS RASPBERRY)
# Fruity, fruity, fruity! #
Lightning.
Oh, dear.
No-one's ever been killed by an asteroid. That's rubbish.
Prove it.
LAUGHTER
No, oddly enough, it's rather unfair but because you answered it,
in the UK, you are more likely to be struck by an asteroid.
but in America, it's more likely to be struck by lightning.
Research into NEOs, Near Earth Objects, as they are called,
estimates that a large one strikes us once every million years.
The resulting death toll is likely to be in excess of a billion.
- So the chances of you dying- - Oh, please.
That's never happened.
- -are one in six million in any year. - It has never happened!
- But it's going to happen pretty soon. - No, it won't!
Well, more than two kilometres wide is all the asteroid needs to be,
and we've seen craters which show there have been ones much wider.
- It's due any moment. - Where would you like it to land?
I'd like it to land in...
Wherever it lands, it's like hundreds and hundreds of atom bombs,
it's going to destroy everybody.
- Yorkshire. - Yorkshire!
- LAUGHTER - They wouldn't mind.
- They'd just be delighted it didn't land in Lancashire. - (LAUGHS)
(YORKSHIRE ACCENT) Aye, it come to Yorkshire.
Most people are struck by lightning on golf courses, right?
I believe that's true, yes.
My aunt got struck by lightning on a golf course.
You have an ant? Oh, your aunt. I'm sorry! I'm so sorry.
Yeah.
I do apologise.
(CHUCKLES) I was...
That too. She had a pet ant.
- My aunt... - (LAUGHS)
She got struck between the first and second holes.
Oh, very good!
Something in her stance.
(LAUGHS) LAUGHTER
Now, where do camels come from?
That's my next question. COCKEREL CROWS
- Phil. - Over there.
LAUGHTER
Usually out of the shimmering, miragey horizon.
True. True. You may be pointing in the right direction, actually.
I can't quite tell whether to give you the points or not.
- Where do they originate from? - Oh, Africa.
- Africa? - Yeah.
- No. No. - Europe.
- Europe, did you say? - Yes.
Not Europe, no. But that wasn't a forfeit one for some reason.
- Asia? - Asia, did you say?
You're desperate for those points, aren't you? Yeah?
Is it Australia?
No, it's not Australia, even.
- America. - Yay! Well done!
- You got some points back. - Really?
Yup. They did. They did.
The cigarettes, maybe.
Like horses and dogs. LAUGHTER
No, the fact is, like horses and dogs,
camels grew up in the grasslands of America 20 million years ago.
Rubbish.
Fair enough, fair enough.
But the land masses would've been a-join-ed.
Well, Bering Strait was land then, exactly.
In those days, they were more like giraffes, or gazelles, in fact.
The camel is the only other mammal apart from humans that smokes.
- It'll actually smoke a cigarette and enjoy it. - Oh!
- They give them... - What about beagles?
The camel handlers give them a puff and they... Beagles hate it.
- And they inhale and exhale smoke. - Really?
I totally made that up. It's rubbish.
But it was quite a good one and it got you going.
It did get me going.
Well, they became extinct in North America during the last ice age,
and unlike horses and dogs, haven't made it back there, except in zoos.
So, next question. Why are flamingos pink?
- It's what they eat. - Which is?
- Shrimps. - Oh, God.
LAUGHTER
You really didn't know that, did you?
- You really were shocked by that one. - What's the chances of that?
- They do eat it. - They do. It's food.
But it's so not shrimps.
It's actually, oddly enough, blue-green algae.
They stand on one leg, because if they stood on...
If they lifted the other one, they'd fall down.
And their legs would rot, so they have to change them.
- Otherwise their leg would rot. - Oh, is that right?
No, I made that up as well, but I'm doing quite well.
Twice I've made you go, "Is that right?" like that.
Despite the name, blue-green algae,
as well as containing green chlorophyll,
is rich in blue and red pigments.
So its blooms are often red, violet, brown, yellow, even orange.
So from one silly bill to another.
Artists, we need to see your kiwis and judge accordingly.
So go ahead and start at this end.
Yeah. What I have is a sequential drawing of the nostril itself.
There in situ, and here, shedding, sneezing.
So as a flip of early movie footage, it's achew!
I've drawn assembly instructions for a kiwi.
Like you find at Ikea.
And, uh, this is where you screw on the beak, in C.
With a Phillips head screw.
And that's the completed project.
Right. OK, good. Jo.
I just sort of did colouring in.
Oh, that's so beautiful, though.
Have you got the nostrils at the end of this crest?
I have.
We did discover, in an earlier round, that birds have no taste.
- Em... - This bird?
LAUGHTER No!
It's very charming. APPLAUSE
Excellent, so Alan, let's have a look at yours.
- Oh, yes. - I've done him.
Now, that's him with his shades on.
- Yep. - Even though it's night.
- Well, it wouldn't matter. - No.
And his nostrils are on the end of his beak for sniffing.
Well, that's extraordinary.
Whether through some random act or whether through brilliance,
you've got that absolutely spot-on.
That is where the nostrils are.
APPLAUSE How about that?
(LAUGHS)
Officially, you measure a bird's bill
from the tip to the nostril.
- Why would you want to do that? - Well, they're measuring.
So officially, the kiwi has the shortest bill of all birds.
Anyway, it frequently gets clogged up,
its little nostrils, but they're very good sneezers.
Yeah. So, let's count our chickens.
And the final scores are.
In first place, with a proud three points, it's Rich!
APPLAUSE
And in second place...
In second place with one point, it's Phil!
APPLAUSE
In third place, with minus eight, it's Jo.
APPLAUSE
What did I get minus for?
But a proud and flourishing last, with minus 40, it's Alan.
APPLAUSE AND CHEERING
Let me leave you with one very extraordinary bird tale.
Tibbles, the lighthouse keeper's cat,
arrived on tiny Stephens Island in New Zealand
at the beginning of the last century
and soon, piles of small bird corpses
began piling up by the back door.
And the puzzled lighthouse-keeper sent off some samples
and was delighted to learn
that Tibbles had discovered a new species,
the only flightless perching bird in the world ever recorded.
But it was unfortunately too late.
By the time that news arrived,
Tibbles had tracked down and killed every last example
of what is now known as the Stephens Island wren.
It's the only case of a single individual
wiping out every member of a whole species.
On that note, from Jo, Rich, Phil, Alan, and myself - good night.
APPLAUSE AND CHEERING
Closed Captions by CSI
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