(Applause)
Well, hello, hello, hello, hello, and welcome to Ql,
where once again we lurch off the information superhighway
to ramble the bumpy byroads of bovinity.
ln the back of the bus tonight we have Bill Bailey.
(Applause)
- Rich Hall. - (Applause)
- Rob Brydon. - (Applause)
And Alan Davies.
(Applause)
Well, if we're all aboard, let's go and try our buzzers.
Bill goes...
(Bus bell)
And Rob goes...
(# Tuneless rendition of Bread Of Heaven)
And Rich goes...
(Wolf howl)
(Laughter)
How is that a bus?
- lt's a dog being hit by a bus. - Oh, fine.
A Greyhound, presumably.
- (Audience groan) - Thank you.
And Alan goes...
(Children) # The wheels on the bus go round and round
# All day long #
(Bus bell)
(Stephen) Very good. (Applause)
Well done.
And we start this evening with cartography.
What's quite interesting
about the most detailed map of Britain?
That isn't the most detailed map of Britain.
No, that is an example of map...
l've seen maps, certainly, that have my road on, for example.
So, is it the Ordnance Survey?
That's very good, it is indeed the Ordnance Survey map.
So what you'd need, then, would be a kind of real life-size map?
(Bill) No.
Where would you unfold that? You'd probably have to do it in Canada.
ls it a secret map, a secret map which shows that
Cornwall and Devon's actually a little bit further away?
lt's a conspiracy with the tourist industry,
to make it seem it's a bit nearer but it's actually not.
All the portals and warm hole... wormholes in space.
- And the warm holes as well. - The warm holes.
(Stephen) You like a warm hole, do you, Rob?
You know... there is a map, there is a map
which l think that Ml5 have, which shows...
which shows not just Hadrian's Wall,
but you see Hadrian's conservatory
and Hadrian's water feature, which is very nice.
lt sort of cascades down over pebbles.
Yes. Carlisle is in a sense,
Hadrian's sliding patio door, isn't it?
Now this is an OS map, an Ordnance Survey map,
Published in 2002.
What's really quite interesting about it, l think we might focus on the price of it.
How much would you pay for a copy of...
- £4.99. - £4.99 is amazingly close.
lt comes out on CD, actually, because it's very detailed.
lt shows pillar boxes.
ls this the sort of thing you get in satellite navigation, in cars?
Cos l had that when l was on tour and it's useless.
You get to Milton Keynes and it just goes, "Turn left, turn left, turn left, turn left."
Well it's not good if you're insecure because she says,
"You have missed your destination".
And that can get you right there, you know?
l had a gun sight, you know, a telescopic gun sight.
What message does that send? A gun sight when you get to destination.
"So you have reached your destination,
"now slaughter the family."
(Laughter)
Kill them, kill them all!
Well, it's very detailed, it's on CD-ROM,
and what's perhaps surprising about it, is its cost.
lt costs £4,990,000.
(Stephen) So when you said 4.99 you were oddly right.
You don't pay it in one go, Stephen. Don't they do over easy payments,
as you get each section of the map, "lt builds to this wonderful collection."
(Laughter)
Well, each town is £30,000,
- and... - Port Talbot?
They're not going to charge £30,000 for Port Talbot, Stephen.
They're not going to get that, come on, no, no, no.
- ls it on the South Wales coast? - Yes. Yes.
You'd be lucky to get 15 quid for that, in all honesty.
lt's the home town of such great actors
as Rob Brydon and Antony Hopkins and...
- Richard Burton... - Richard Burton and Michael Sheen.
- Burton... Burton... - (Stephen) B-Burton.
- Sorry, thank you. - Burton!
Will you stop saying Burton at me, please?
- (Laughter) - lt's beginning to frighten me.
Yes, well Port Talbot, may be less than £30,000.
lt's like that old joke about the atomic bomb going off in Cardiff
and causing seven pounds worth of damage.
l would like something you put on your computer
and it shows you where everybody is,
and all the animals, all the little foxes.
(Bill) l want a focused, yeah...
Did you know all rats in England all face the same direction at any given time?
- Oh, come on. - (Bill) Yeah that's right
- cos they're magnetic, aren't they, rats? - Yeah.
(Laughter)
They've spent so long in lead-lined sewage pipes,
that they move with the curvature of the earth.
That's right, hence the phrase, there's rat and true rat.
(Laughter)
And absolute rat.
lt's very hard for rat couples
who have that kind of reverse polarity going on.
You know when you can't put two magnets together?
And there are rats who fall in love
and they are destined to be together and they can't kiss.
They get about that close,
and zoom, they've turned the other way.
(Rob) And they're staring at their arse...
- (Bill) They've iron filings up their whiskers. - Yeah.
For £5,000,000, l would want a map that showed me,
looking at the map l'd just bought.
(Laughter)
Me standing there, looking at the...
(Bill and Stephen) You are here.
lt does seem pricey, l grant you.
The word map comes from the Latin for?
(Alan and Rob) Map. (Laughter)
lt comes from the Latin word "mappa",
as in "mappa mundi", but it actually meant a napkin.
They would draw maps on cloth, on a napkin,
so it became known as a mappa
and then it just extended to a map.
Rob, what's the difference between a Carlisle Surprise,
a Reverse Canterbury Pleasure
and sheep tied to a lamp post in Cardiff?
Now this is another example of the institutionalised racism...
...which is accepted when it's directed towards the Welsh.
As it has been tonight.
ls this a reference to the joke about the...
about what is a sheep tied to a lamp post in Cardiff?
lt's a leisure centre. Now, because...
- lt's awfully good... - No, no, no, no, no. No. No.
- And you, no. You, no. - No.
And you, no.
What is the difference?
The only thing l have knowledge of is the sheep...
No, l mean... sorry, l have knowledge of Cardiff.
l don't...
Well, l'm not really aware of what a Carlisle Surprise is,
other than the shock of finding yourself at Carlisle.
Which is surely more of a delight.
- (Stephen) Yes. A total delight. - A Reverse Canterbury...
The full name is a Reverse Canterbury Pleasure Place Double.
lt's an ancient English pastime.
ls it Morris dancing? ls it a type of Morris dancing?
Not Morris dancing, no. lt has musical...
- (Rich) Break dancing. ...nature.
lt's not a dance. lt's as big a musical instrument as you could find.
A whale.
With a whale, you just put your hand over the blow hole.
(Whistles, sings) The whale joins in.
He's making jokes about Wales.
- (Stephen) No... - Cheeky.
The name for this pastime comes from the Latin for countryside
but a particular part of the Latin countryside called Campania and so it's called...
- Oh, bells. - Campanology.
(Stephen) Absolutely right. Bell ringing.
- Bell ringing. - Bell ringing.
lt's bells are... Well, and their tunes,
or rather "methods", as bell ringers call them,
and they're uniquely English. And if you have six bells,
there are how many different permutations of six bells?
Well, six, times five, times four, times three, times two.
- Lots and lots and lots... - (Stephen) lt's 720.
lf you play through each permutation,
that's called a peel of bells
and it's also called - an English phrase we use quite a lot -
"ringing the changes" cos those sequences are called changes.
That's where the phrase to ring the changes comes from.
(Alan) Quite interesting.
With 12 bells, there are 479,001,600 variations,
so that would take 38 years to ring a peel of twelve bells.
Wow.
When l was growing up, if my dad hit his thumb with a hammer -
he didn't often, but occasionally, just for something a bit different, he'd do it -
he would say, "hells bells and buckets of blood."
lt's a good phrase. Sounds good, doesn't it?
lt's a good way of getting it out of your system.
l say (Beep) and things like that.
- (Stephen) Erm... anyway... - (Applause)
The first time l heard my mother say (Beep),
l could not believe it, because my brother and l thought we'd made the word up.
(Laughter)
l remember the first time l said (Beep). My dad heard me.
He walked by my door. l said, "Dad, shut the door,
"l'm trying to (Beep) in here."
(Laughter)
(Stephen) Well, no, peeling bells was considered in the 17th Century
something of a vice.
John Bunyan denounced it, along with dancing,
playing tipcat and reading the history
of Sir Bevis of Southampton.
- (Bill) What was that? - Tipcat.
- Oh, tipcat.
- Where you just... - (Alan) Tip the cat.
lt was denounced.
Goes onto its side like that. Tip it back up again.
Oh, right.
Well it was the Chinese who gave us bells.
1200 BC...
The Chinese claim to have invented absolutely everything.
(Stephen)They did, yeah.
And all l say to the Chinese is,
"Why didn't you invent the camera
"1200 years ago, so we could prove it?"
Which brings us back to Alan and maps.
- What, what have l done? - A question for you.
A hundred points in this if you get it.
- A hundred Nectar points? - No.
100 points if you can tell me which was the last place in Britain
to convert to Christianity?
God, l know this.
(Laughter)
Oh, it's got...
(Bill) Er...
- Any... Any... - No, no...
(Alan) E... (Sighs)
(Laughter)
(Bus bell)
- (Stephen) Go on. - ls it the summit of Ben Nevis?
(Laughter)
Two guys - "Aye, what's this Christianity?
- "ls that a new thing?" - Any thoughts on this side?
ls it a place called, uh...
Satan ls My Master-on-Wye?
lt's pronounced "Simster".
Simster, that's very good.
ls it on the British mainland or is it somewhere like the Falklands?
- (Bill) The Lake District! - No. lt is not on the British mainland.
(Alan) Essex. (Rich) Not on the mainland.
l repeat, it is not on the British mainland.
Essex is not culturally on the British mainland, but...
- The lsle of Man. - (Stephen) Oh!
- lsle of Wight? - (Stephen) Yes! lt's the lsle of Wight.
- Well done. - (Applause)
What are you clapping for? That was a total guess.
Brilliant! No, it's surprising, because you would imagine, of course,
that the lsle of Wight was the first place the Christians would come to.
# The wheels on the bus go round and round #
- The Needles. - Yes, darling,
- those are called The Needles. - (Laughter)
Very good, one point to you for knowing about the Needles.
Top work.
What do you know about the lsle of Wight?
All the clocks stopped in 1952.
And all the shops are the same as they were then.
- (Laughter) - lt does seem a little like that, doesn't it?
Yes, there's one species of animal that's still...
- Dog, cat, rat, mouse... ...hasn't made it to the lsle of Wight.
- Horses. - There are horses on the lsle of White.
Most people are pleased this animal hasn't made it. Not a fox.
(Bill) Flea. (Rich) Snake.
(Rob) The rat, because of the magnet.
- (Stephen) lt's often called... - Pigeons.
lt's often called a kind of rat.
(Bill) Mouse. (Rob) Squirrel!
- The grey squirrel. - Squirrel! Squirrel!
- All right, all right. - Stephen!
- (Stephen) l was going... - Shut up, Bill. Stephen!
- You've made your point. - The squirrel.
- The grey... - The grey squirrel.
- The North American grey squirrel. - # The wheels on the bus... #
- (Rob) Don't say squirrel. - The North American grey squirrel.
Well done, Alan, very good. You're the first person to get that.
Now, we're... Oh, Rob, l wouldn't do that to you.
- (Alan) lt's an editing masterclass. - Oh, look at his little face.
Editing masterclass you say, all right.
- The North American grey squirrel? - (Alan) Red squirrel.
The red squirrel can't live with the grey squirrel.
Ebony and ivory are together on my piano keyboard,
so why can't they be?
(Bill) Yeah.
(Laughter) (Stephen) Something like that.
What, do you mean a kind of squirrel fur keyboard?
- (Laughter) - That would be nice.
That's barbaric, are you saying you want pianos
clad in the pelt of a squirrel?
Because if that's what you're saying, Fry, you should be stopped.
The lsle of Wight was the last place in Britain to be invaded
- by the French, by a foreign... - How did they miss that then?
- Sorry? - How did they miss it?
Did they go onto the mainland and then straight up?
- Oh, Christianity? - Yeah.
lt's odd, isn't it?
When they came back, they went, "Hang on, what's all this?"
(Stephen) You've left this bit out. ...worshipping Satan.
lt was in 686 AD,
almost a century after the rest of the country.
lt was subjugated by Caedwalla, who was King of the West Saxons
and who had to kill most of the pagan population
to Christianise it. (Chuckles)
Good old Christianity, eh?
Talking of Christianity, Rich, could Jesus walk on custard?
What?
Maybe at one point when he was a children's entertainer...
- (Laughter) - Sounds like a sarcastic question
you would ask Jesus. "Water? Yeah, great.
"What about custard?"
(Laughter)
- lt's not so much a question of could he... - You're saying he did?
He did, he did, l mean it was very hard to stop him actually.
This, this was one, this has come out in research recently,
this was one of the Lord's favourite pastimes.
Out with the bread, out with the fish,
"Look what l've got for dessert, somebody hold my shoes."
And he'd be, you know, and he'd be doing it.
He could turn everything... lt was just water, wasn't it,
it was a lake, and he'd just go "bing", and make it anything.
- Jelly, custard, lnstant Whip, anything. - Yeah, yeah.
Did he walk on a lake of custard
or did he have lots of bowls of custard
and step between them like that?
Well, the fact is, not only could Jesus walk on custard,
you can walk on custard, l can walk on custard.
All of us can walk on custard, as this experiment
by the Sky One programme Brainiac clearly shows.
There you are, that is not a fraud, that is absolutely real.
lt's a non-Newtonian dilatant fluid.
And it's, it's honestly true, this,
it means that the more pressure you put on it,
the more weight you put on it, the harder and firmer it becomes.
- You could slowly put your finger though it. - Oh, boy. Here we go.
This is raising images!
Your finger slips in smoothly...
No please, help me out here, but if you slap it hard...
- (Alan) Help me out? - No.
Oh, dear.
A normal bowl of custard, we know, would support a fly
and we know it wouldn't support a man,
so somewhere, you know,
somewhere in between those two examples,
would it support, for example, a vole or a mouse?
Probably.
Children everywhere all over the country
- will now be putting their hamsters... - (Stephen) They'll be walking on custard.
...in bowls of custard.
Children, whatever you do, please,
please try and walk on as much custard as you can.
We turn now to the darker side of entertainment.
Name the teams at the Coliseum of ancient Rome.
The Christians and the lions.
- (Alarm bells) - No?
Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear, oh.
The fact is no, there is no evidence whatsoever...
- (Alan) No team sports. ...that lions were put against Christians.
There weren't any team sports, it was every man for himself.
- l've seen it in that film. - ln which film would that be?
- The one about the gladiator. - Called Gladiator?
- Yes. - Oh, that one, yes.
And the floor opens like that and tigers come out.
- Spring out, didn't they? - (Alan) Yeah.
And do you remember the name of the Emperor,
played by Joaquin Phoenix in that film?
- What was his name? - Oh, goodness knows.
(Rob) Oliver Reed. (Bill) Augustus?
No.
Am l in the right area?
(Stephen) Not really dear, no. Commodus.
Commodus, Commodus, Commodus.
Who's good on Roman Emperors, are you?
- No. - l don't know anything about them.
l know me champagne names but l don't know me Roman Emperors.
- Piper Heidsieck? - No.
- That's one, isn't it? - You mean the bottle names.
Jeroboams and things.
- Salmanazar. - Oh, a magnum.
- All that, they're all... - Rehoboam.
They were all ancient biblical kings,
except Magnum, who was an '80s detective.
There's absolutely no evidence whatsoever
that Christians were ever thrown to the lions at the Coliseum.
- This is attested by learned research. - (Alan) Why say that?
But the Christians caused an awful lot of trouble for the Romans.
l bet they were tempted to chuck them in and have them eaten by lions.
Well, they did certain things to them.
Nero had them making human torches lining the Appian Way
for dozens and dozens of miles,
so they were pretty nasty to the Christians.
But then the Christians won, they took over the Roman empire.
Anyway, back to cartography,
our favourite subject, and an easy one for you.
ln the Middle Ages,
what shape did people think the world was?
- (Alan) Flat. - (Alarm bells)
Oh, Alan tumbles into our trap.
l know we all think they did,
but there's absolutely no evidence whatsoever.
They all thought it was round, they all wrote about it as round,
the Greeks knew that it was round.
- Round and flat. - No, they thought it was a sphere.
Terry Jones, the Python, who is something of a medievalist,
as you may know, he blames Washington lrving, the American writer,
as one of those people who started this lie, as he puts it.
The Greeks knew it was round, Chaucer knew it was round,
Roger Bacon wrote about the curvature in the earth in the 13th century.
So apparently...
l should think the majority of people didn't really care.
No. But they started...
As indeed we don't now, actually care that it's round.
lf it was square, it wouldn't bother me.
l'd rush to the edge.
ln fact, l'd want to go right to the corner.
(Stephen) You'd sit on the corner, wouldn't you?
- How do we know it's round? - Yeah, huh, huh?
- (Bill) Round the world tickets. - One, it's photographed.
Photographing it was a very big help.
They took a photograph and we saw that it was round.
But then you could say that about anything,
about people going to the moon and we know they didn't.
lf it weren't round, all the flights of aeroplanes...
lf it weren't round, just nothing that we're...
How do we know they just don't fly and just circle round for a bit
and let you think that you're going miles and miles and miles,
and just come down, like, a couple of hours away,
and they've set Russia up a lot nearer than it is.
lt's a really, really, really, really long oblong shape.
On a track, like an electric bike and they just move it.
The plane goes up, the plane doesn't move,
they move the countries and bring the plane down.
Are all the stars round?
l can't answer that. l think probably most of...
But yet you know what people thought 500 years ago.
Can l read books? Yes.
Have l visited every star in the universe? No.
ls that something that you find difficult to understand?
You've set me off, you've set sir off again! l don't know.
Don't you think this series has reached the point,
with a dedicated following who trust us,
that this could be the point where you could say
just one thing in a show, you'd say, just like this,
"The world isn't round, it's been proven."
Most people will now believe it, who watch this show.
Well, l can say with some confidence, ladies and gentlemen,
the world is not round, it is an oblate spheroid.
- (Rich) No, that's not what l meant. - What's that?
(Stephen) No, l'm sorry. l was being literalist.
Pine cone, if you'd said the world is shaped like a pine cone...
Let's just see how many letters we get.
Yeah, it would be interesting to see, wouldn't it? We'd get some, at last, anyway.
Apart from the... Well, you know who you are, don't you?
And l tried it and it was a disaster.
Yes, we know, since the fourth century BC,
almost no one in the history of the world
has believed that the earth is flat.
lt's a common misconception and indeed the song lyric,
"They all laughed at Christopher Columbus
"when he said the world was round."
But he didn't think that the world was round,
he thought it was actually pear-shaped, funnily enough.
Which brings us, ladies and gentlemen,
drifting safely home into the harbour of half-grasped truths
that we call General lgnorance.
So, fingers on your buses, please.
What is a taffy pull?
ls this another dig at my forefathers?
You've got four fathers? The Welsh are weird.
A taffy pull is when you try and pull a woman in Wales,
- it's a Welsh chat-up line. - (Alarm)
- Oh, no! - He fell for it! Word for word.
l suspect that young Rich might know, cos you know what a taffy is.
- Yeah. - Which is?
lt's long strands of chewy candy
and at like county fairs and stuff they pull it.
Absolutely, we don't have it here, but it's toffee really.
Toffee becomes "taffy" in America.
But it is taffy.
lt's different to English toffee because it's chewy
and soft and resistant all the way through.
And one of the reasons for this is that they pull on metal hooks
and they kind of aerate it, they do this business, don't they?
And it was a social event l believe,
it was a way of people meeting each other at a taffy pull.
"Your mom and l met at a taffy pull."
But it was often called salt water taffy, isn't it?
- Yeah. - (Stephen) Do you know why?
That's cos it's made from salt water.
lt isn't, it doesn't have any salt water anywhere near it, unfortunately.
No, apparently in Atlanta in the 18-somethings,
there was a shop that sold taffy and there was a flood,
you know, the tide came in too far
and it covered all his stock and someone came in and said,
"You should sell it as salt water taffy, maybe people will buy it."
And so he did, in fact, it wasn't salt tainted, and the name just seemed to stick.
Some people believe that story, some people don't.
Fingers still on your buses please.
How many sheep were there on Noah's Ark?
- Oh, no. - Surely.
- (Rich) l smell a set-up. - (Stephen) Somebody...
- (Bus bell) - OK, it's a trick, none,
they were floating on a raft behind the Ark.
No, there were sheep on Noah's Ark.
None, because they were walking on the custard
which was being poured over the side.
(Alan) Noah never built an Ark, it didn't actually happen.
Well, according to the Bible, how many?
- Two. - Yes, there was...
- (Alarm bells) - Oh dear, oh dear.
(Alan) Just get it over with, shall we?
No, it's a common mistake,
people haven't read the Bible much these days,
but l can read to you from Genesis chapter 7.
"And the Lord said unto Noah,
"'Come thou and all thy house into the Ark,
"'for thee have l seen righteous before me in this generation..."'
Why did he talk like that?
Well, he spoke Hebrew, didn't he, dear?
This is a translation into English, you see.
But they spoke like that when they really could speak English, Alan.
l think in 500 years' time, when they hear the things we've said,
and perhaps even things you've said, they might...
Don't pick on me! You're quoting from a mythical being.
No, l'm just reading, but...
There were two of everyone, they went in two by two...
- (Stephen) How would you know... - Even my nephew knows that.
How does he know?
The only source of information we have for Noah's Ark is the Bible.
- Rubbish. - And this is what it says.
- Listen, just listen. - l...
Will you listen first and then comment? Will you agree to do that?
l read it in Jane's Fighting Ships.
"'Of every... of every clean beast
"'thou shall take to thee by sevens, the male and his female,
"'and of beasts that are not clean by two, the male and his female.
"'Of fowls of the air by sevens, the male and the female,
"'to keep seed alive upon the face of all the earth."'
- (Alan) Yes. - And sheep are accounted clean beasts.
- Oh. - So there would have been seven.
He's obviously never lived with one.
No, it's all according to sort of Kosher law,
so pigs there would not have been,
camels would have been in twos,
but the clean beasts came in sevens.
Maybe they could breed more and so on.
Anyway, l agree with you, it's a surprise,
everybody thinks in the Bible that it says...
# The animals went in two by two, hurrah, hurrah
# Except for the camels because they were filthy, hurrah, hurrah
# And then the sheep and not the thing
# And then came the amoeba, one, no, two, no, four,
# no, eight, no, 16... #
(Applause)
(Stephen) Fantastic.
lndeed.
A lot of the ferries and ships nowadays,
of course, you're not allowed to take animals on them, which is the ultimate irony.
That's a good point.
You wonder what Noah would make of that.
Exactly.
Why would they they say seven animals?
Because that means three pair and one animal...
One to watch.
Enough, enough.
Now we come full circle, back to the beginning,
what was the name of the archbishop
murdered by Henry ll?
Thomas... No, not him.
- Yeah, that's... - Have a go.
l'm not going to fall into that trap.
lt wasn't Henry ll who killed Thomas à Becket.
- Thomas? - A Becket.
- (Alarm bells) - Oh dear.
No, his name was not Thomas à anything.
The à is a complete error.
John Strype, in The Memorials Of Thomas Cranmer, writes,
"lt is a small error, but being so oft repeated,
"deserveth to be observed and corrected.
"The name of that archbishop was Thomas Becket,
"not can it otherwise be found to have been written in any authentic history,
record, calendar or other book.
"lf the vulgar did formerly, as it doth now,
"call him Thomas à Becket..." Vulgar.
"...their mistake is not to be followed by learned men."
Was it just a pause? Was it Thomas... er... Becket?
ls the same true of Simon Le Bon?
ls he just Simon Bon? l don't think he'd have the respect he has.
- Linsey de Paul. - (Rob) Yeah.
(Bill) Whisky A Go Go. (Stephen) Yes.
Legs akimbo.
lt's time now for the sorry-arse business of the scores.
And a clear leader, winner and victor tonight
in Rich Hall, with eight points, ladies and gentlemen.
(Applause)
ln second place, with minus five points,
- Bill Bailey. - (Applause)
ln third place with minus 16 is Rob Brydon.
(Applause)
But our runaway loser with minus 25, Alan Davies.
(Applause)
Well that's it from Ql for another week.
My thanks to Rich, Rob, Bill and Alan. l leave you with this cautionary thought.
Captain Cook may have observed the transit of Venus in 1769,
but he never lived to see the Venus de Milo,
which wasn't discovered until 1820.
Will Rogers saw it, though, and observed to his niece,
"See what'll happen if you don't stop biting your fingernails."
(Applause)
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