(Applause)
(Cheering and whistling)
Good evening, good evening, good evening, good evening, good evening,
and welcome to Ql, for another thoughtful rummage
through the great laundry basket of life.
Who knows what mismatched
and shrunken oddities we will happen upon tonight?
Delving alongside me this evening are...
Alan Davies.
Rich Hall.
Sean Lock.
And Jeremy Clarkson.
Now, tonight's questions are completely barking,
so we have buzzers to match.
- Sean goes... - (Big dog barking)
- And Jeremy goes... - (Dog growling)
- Rich goes... - (Dog howling)
And Alan goes...
(Little dog yapping)
(Stephen) Ahh.
And we start tonight with Alan's favourite subject, which is the Ancient Greeks.
Now, the Greeks joined up the dots of the night sky
into vast imaginary figures, rather like this.
ln tonight's constellation competition, panel...
That is... At no point does it resemble the scales in any way.
So there we have a famous constellation, Libra,
one of the Zodiac constellations, as l'm sure you know.
Your challenge, team, is to make a constellation.
And you have to join them together
using your skill and judgement,
throughout the joyous half hour that lies before us,
like a desert stretching into infinity.
You have a silver pen.
My pen's run out.
My goodness me, the nation's going to be on tenterhooks.
Well, so, Jeremy,
how long would it take you to drive to outer space?
Outer space?
Yes, outer space, what is officially outer space.
That's, er, 23 minutes.
- l can believe that, actually. - ls outer space outer as in from earth,
- or is it from the sun? - No, from...
lt's just from us, and it's just above where l am.
- ls it? - lf you're tall, l'm nearly at the edge.
- And it's 600 miles... - (Stephen) lt's actually...
(Jeremy)... to the top of the ionosphere,
and that's widely considered to be the start of space,
but whether that's considered to be outer space, l don't know.
No, outer space begins, according to the Féderation lnternationale d'Espace,
- or something... - Who are French.
lt's actually only 62 miles to outer space.
- Straight up. - No, it isn't.
Oh, OK.
Wouldn't it depend on the traffic?
62 miles is what you're saying is outer space.
There was a man called Joe Kittinger
who once jumped out of a hot air balloon at that height, in 1961.
(Rich) Oh, dead Joe Kittinger?
- lf l can just flag up one small thing. - (Jeremy) Go on.
There isn't actually any sort of road system.
But l've often wondered, why could you not,
if it's only 62 miles to what people call space,
why can't you just build a ladder?
l mean, it can't be beyond the wit of man to build a ladder
that just goes straight, and then you could walk up it,
- save a lot of bother. - Yes, oxygen pack necessary, but, yes.
Yeah, well you've got an oxygen mask,
- maybe a lift. - Oh, a lift would be good.
But once you get up there, there's nothing really there.
- (Stephen) Not much. - lt's a bit like Norfolk.
Now, you just be careful.
Ooh.
l'll guarantee that if someone in Britain asks for directions to outer space,
it wouldn't be any different than asking directions to like the M1.
They'll only listen to the first thing you say. You know?
He would say, "How do l get to the M1?"
And you can say, "Go over that roundabout...
"and then a wizard will meet you..."
And the person will go, "Do l go over the roundabout or?"
There's a rule with asking directions, though,
which men tend not to do l think as much as women,
but if the person you ask says "um", drive on.
You might have parked on their foot.
- They wouldn't go "um". - "Ohh!"
(Rich) Or they...
Or they say, "Do you want the easy way to get there?"
No, l want to be tortured
and left for dead on the side of the road.
l was in Canada once, and l'm asking directions,
l was trying to find this friend's farm.
And l stopped this farmer and he says,
"You go down the road about three miles
"and then you'll see a big dead possum in the middle of the road.
"You go left there."
"How do you know the dead possum will be there?"
And he said, "Well, would you pick up a dead possum?"
l was getting directions once on the phone, and l was actually writing them down.
And l realised after about a minute l'd stopped listening and started drawing.
l had a great big elephant,
big bollocks on it and everything.
And someone said to me, we were driving along, he said "Where is it?"
l said, "Well, you go down the left, whoooa!"
lf you ask a lady for directions, she'll ask you a question back.
So if you say "Do you know where the post office is?"
She'll say, "Do you want to buy a stamp?"
Sweet.
And you find you're having a nice chat and everyone's friends,
but you've no idea where the post office is.
So there you are. lf you could drive straight upwards -
and it would take under an hour
if you were going at about 60-odd miles an hour -
outer space is defined as anywhere outside a planet's atmosphere
according to the Féderation Aéronautique lnternationale,
this is 62 miles above the surface of the earth.
To illustrate just how thin the atmosphere is, have a look at this.
On the left, what you see is all the water on earth squeezed into a ball.
And on the right the slightly larger ball has all the atmosphere squeezed in.
- lt shows how thin it all is. - (Jeremy) l quite like that.
Yeah, there's something very pleasing about it.
lt was done by a man called Adam Niemann,
who won the Concept section of the 2003 Visions of Space competition.
ls that the water squashed up?
- it's all the seas and all the lakes? - (Stephen) Yeah, yeah, that's right.
1.41 billion cubic kilometres.
Anyway, there you are. Alan, one of the constellations in the sky
of which l'm sure you've heard is Canis Major,
- Latin for the bigger dog. - The biggest can.
- (Stephen) The biggest dog. The dog. - Dog.
What is, on the other hand, the smallest dog in the world?
Oh, there's one... there's one that's been lost
near where l live.
lt says on the lampposts
it was lost at Tescos.
lt said, it's quite small, Yorkshire terrier
and it looks like a puppy but it's old
and its tongue is always sticking out.
Well, you get two points because probably Yorkshire terrier is the right answer.
We'd hoped you might say Chihuahua.
Certainly the smallest dog ever recorded
was a Yorkshire terrier. Tiny little dog, tiny thing.
Look at that, that's how small they are.
This one was a Yorkshire terrier which died in 1945
and it was two and a half inches high
and three and three quarter inches long,
weighed four ounces and would fit in this box.
(Alan yaps as box is opened)
(Jeremy) Or between two pieces of bread.
Did you just say "Or between two pieces of bread?"
(Jeremy) Yeah.
Now, from Chihuahuas, which we didn't mention really,
because you avoided that trap, to cheese.
Cheese can be made from the milk of cows,
sheep, goats, horses, reindeer,
llamas, yaks, water buffalo, camels, zebras.
But, Sean, would you eat Chihuahua cheese?
Yeah.
And l'd follow it up with some, you know, spaniel paté, lovely.
- Yeah, yeah, l would, yeah. - Quite right, yes.
lt is a very popular Mexican cheese,
from the province of Chihuahua,
- but not made from the Chihuahua dog. - ls it a state or a province?
lt's a state, it's a state.
- The thing's a state, there it is. - (Rich) l should get a point for that.
You should get a point, definitely.
- How could you make a mistake like that? - Oh, l'm ashamed of myself,
bitterly, bitterly ashamed.
- You'll be beating yourself tonight. - l will, any excuse, yeah.
lt's, er...
"Mellors, winch me up!"
"l'm doing the full 24."
"Level six."
- l wouldn't feel bad about that province... - No, l don't, l don't, l really don't,
couldn't give a toss as a matter of fact.
But no, Chihuahua is an interesting place, it's where the Apaches used to live.
Geronimo used to do raiding parties into the United States from there.
l believe you do a Mexican accent, Alan?
- Si. - Yep.
Good, isn't it?
Yes, it's very nice cheese actually, it's from Mexico,
it's made from the lactic secretions of the Bos taurus.
(Alan) Queso.
Queso, queso asadero is what it's actually called.
- Si. - Roasting cheese.
So, the old shark's tooth is very sharp,
but l also have here some flint, which is even sharper.
What - this is your question - what is flint made of?
- (Jeremy) Sharks' teeth. - No.
Fluff and lint.
Compressed.
Do you know, in a weird kind of way, it isn't that far off.
- Animal matter? - Ultimately it is.
lt's made of quartz,
but quartz itself comes from the silicate
that was laid down millions of years ago by... which animals?
They are animals, though they used to be thought of as plants.
Coral.
- Crabs. - (Alan) Anemones.
Something you might find in your bathroom.
- Crabs. - (Jeremy) Herpes.
- A sponge. - Sponge is what we're looking for.
Millions and millions of sponges. 20 per cent of the earth's crust is quartz
and it's made from sponges. l have a sponge,
in case you wanted to see what one looked like.
- (Alan) Hello! - lt's not a living sponge.
Have you been offered a drink or anything?
Sponges really are quite interesting.
lf you sieve a sponge and you separate it,
even its cells like that,
and it goes out and it's all disintegrated,
it will reintegrate itself. But even more extraordinary...
- Like Terminator 2? - You take five... Yeah.
You take five different sponges, different species of sponge,
put them all in the same liquidiser,
blitz them all up,
pour the resulting smoothie that you get into salt water
and in time they will separate themselves out into their original species
and you will get the sponges back again.
They're miraculous things. lsn't that clever?
lt doesn't work with Chihuahua's. l tried.
Very unfortunate.
Right, so, yes, flint, one of a range of rocks
which are collectively known as chert,
the others being agate, jasper and chalcedony.
Now, let's have another question.
Who was the only survivor of the Crimean War?
- When did it officially end, then? - That's what you have to find out.
Sebastopol and Balaclava and the Charge of the Light Brigade,
- it's that war, yes. - And we got their cannons
and made the VC out of them.
lt was around the time that the cannon was being invented,
it was around the 1850s, 1854.
But, in those days, when Britain went to war,
because of a very peculiar law,
there was one part of Britain that was exempt
from being called either England or Scotland.
- Berwick. - Berwick-upon-Tweed.
You're absolutely right, Berwick-upon-Tweed
was given a special status as being of the United Kingdom,
but not in it.
So when the British went to war with Russia,
it was Victoria, Queen of Britain, lreland,
Berwick-upon-Tweed and the British dominions beyond the sea
was in the phraseology of the declaration of war.
But, in 1856, they didn't mention Berwick-upon-Tweed
in the peace treaty, so it was still technically at war
until 1966, when the mayor of Berwick-on-Tweed actually
signed a treaty with Russia, saying
"Now at last you can tell
"the Russian people that they may sleep easily in their beds."
(Jeremy) l thought Berwick still was separate, isn't it?
They're in England, but they play in the Scottish league.
- ls that right? Excellent. - Mm.
So there we have it, there's a war that went from 1854 to 1966.
A creature that had been on a ship at Sebastopol in the war
was still alive when the war ended.
- lt was the only thing... - (Alan) A tortoise.
A tortoise is absolutely right.
lt was a naval tortoise called Timothy the Tortoise, yes.
(Jeremy) lsn't he the one that just died?
No, there he is, he's fine.
He carried on living until 2004, survivor of the Crimean War.
He was ship's mascot of the HMS Queen
during the first bombardment of Sebastopol.
- (Sean) Did he actually fight in the war? - No.
lt had survived the war, but was it in it,
involved in it in naval engagements.
(Alan) But he'd crawl back to your line.
And then you'd chuck him again.
The glorious fighting tortoises of the British Army.
(Rich) l hope they didn't use him to send messages.
- That's why it took so long to win. - "The enemy is coming."
"Has he delivered the peace treaty yet?" lt's on its way.
My nephew's got one and it attacks you,
it actually runs and throws itself at your feet.
Are you sure that's not a rabbit in a helmet?
Little ears down.
Gentlemen, stand by to repel boredom,
because it's General lgnorance time.
Alan, l believe you've got something inside your desk.
- Have l? - Yeah, have you not looked?
Like a schoolboy. There.
So, what is that?
- lt's a loofah. - Where do loofahs come from?
- The bathroom. - And originally?
From the... in the sea.
- (Alarm) - Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.
- No. You knew that, did you, Sean? - Yeah.
- Where are they from? - You grow them, they're little seeds.
(Stephen) That's right.
l got the worst Christmas present ever,
ever in my life, my sister gave me a grow your own loofah kit.
(Stephen) God bless her!
lt was a clay pot, a bag of earth and five seeds.
And l think the clay pot hit her hardest.
lt is surprising, most people, including myself this morning,
until l saw this question, l have to say, believed that loofahs came from the sea.
Did you think loofahs came from the sea?
l would have said not my vegetable garden.
Yeah, well, they grow in Asia and Africa and they are quite prized.
They can be sliced and diced and popped into curries and soups
- and things like that. - (Jeremy) No way.
Not when they've been rubbing Nana's back, though.
- Well, they're a kind of gourd. - (Sean) Yeah.
There they are, look, hanging.
- (Jeremy) What do you do with it? - You hit your twin on the head
in the Wacky Races.
- Ow. - (Sean) lf you're a nun...
Oh, no, don't go there.
- l didn't say anything. - Oh, please.
There's obviously a reason that in Victorian bathrooms
they had articles like that.
lt's a huge excuse for sexual jollities, isn't it?
"Well, no, l use it for my back."
lt would feel like, you know like sometimes if you sit on your hand
and it feels like someone else is doing it?
lt would feel like someone with a stump was playing with it.
Mummy, make the nasty man go away.
Very odd.
(Stephen) No!
- (Sean) Yeah. lt works, doesn't it? - Give me that loofah.
- Now you want it? - Yes.
That's going into the art cupboard
and you're going into the naughty corner if you're...
(Rich) lt's going into your penis tin, isn't it?
You are very bad children indeed.
(Stephen) Right.
Let's come up for air now.
What colour was the Model T Ford?
(Sheep bleats)
Don't say, don't say, don't say...
- Black? - Oh!
(Alarm)
Bless him, like a little puppy runs into the wall.
"You can have any colour as long as it's black."
- Oh, he said that even, even that phrase! - (Alarm)
History is bunk. Have you got that as well?
Yeah, he did, he did actually say that l think.
- Or he said, history is more or less bunk. - Oh.
- (Jeremy) He was a Nazi. - (Stephen) He was a horrific anti-Semite.
He was a grotesque man, there is nothing nice whatever to say about Henry Ford.
Hitler only read two books, didn't he, when he was in prison.
One of them was Henry Ford's. Yeah, no, horrible, horrible man.
Anyway, it wasn't black.
No, the first year of Model T Fords, you couldn't get a black one.
You could get them in grey, red, or Brewster green.
Unless they were made in Manchester,
- in which case they were all blue. - ls that right?
- Yes. - l like that, it's good, that's why we're here.
l'm sorry. Yeah, the Manchester ones l'm fairly certain were blue ones.
- When did they start making them there? - 1910, l think.
(Stephen) Oh, really? That's good. Between 1908 and 1927
they made 15,485,000 Model T Fords,
and during that time, the price fell from $825 dollars to $260.
- Have you ever driven one? - Never have.
lt's the hardest thing in the world.
- lt's all pedals, isn't it? - lt's this business.
lt's just so hard.
- You have to put your foot on the clutch... - Pass the loofah.
lt has two speeds - quite fast or really very fast indeed,
and there's nothing you can do to slow it down,
other than hit a tree. And there were no roads,
there were only like 190 miles of road when that thing came out.
(Stephen) There we are, that's the Model T Ford.
ln fact, in the first year of production,
black wasn't even an option. After 1913 they were all black,
but there's no evidence that Ford actually ever said
"Any colour you like so long as it's black."
Now, listen, have you ever been on board a plane full of SOBs?
- lt is actually an acronym. - lt's all acronyms in air travel.
- Do you know what SOB is? - l would say Seats On Board, except that...
- Very close... - But that would be wrong,
because why would you say seats on board?
- Where else would the seats be? - Well, quite, exactly.
(Jeremy) Thought you said Sikhs. (Rich) Sikhs on Board.
Not seats.
ln naval parlance,
it's the phrase used to describe all people on board a ship
is the number of what's on board?
- Sailors. - (Jeremy) Souls.
Souls on board is what it stands for.
Did you know a veal has to have more space
to be transported to the abattoir
than a human being in the back of an aeroplane.
Yeah, but to be fair, we have a holiday, they get killed.
You could be coming back.
Have we got a vegetablist?
- (Alan) What, him? - Yeah.
- No, l'm a vegetablist. - (Jeremy) You're a vegetablist.
l wouldn't eat a veal, l'd free it.
l had a puffin last week, that's not delicious,
but the point of eating it was cos l'd never had one before.
- l had the same with guinea pig. - (Sean) Have you tried one of my turds?
- No. - Did you just say what l thought you said?
Get out! Out now!
No, there was a man came, l had some whale...
You don't want to listen to this.
But l had some whale, and he said
would you like me to grate some puffin on that?
How do you say no? You can't say...
"No, really..." No, l said "Yes, go for it.
"Grate some puffin on that."
l was in Australia once
and a very common bird in Australia is the galah,
and it's a pink kind of parrot-looking thing.
This bloke says "Do you want to know how to cook a galah?" l said "Go on, then."
He said...
"Start a fire,
"chuck a couple of rocks in it, chuck a galah in.
"When the rocks go soft, you can eat the galah."
Do you know what l had for my starter when l had the whale?
- (Stephen) With grated puffin. - With grated puffin, was a seal flipper.
And it looked exactly like a Marigold glove
filled with wallpaper paste.
And it sat and you thought "Ooh."
And it tasted exactly like
licking a hot Turkish urinal.
- Oh, where is this restaurant? - l'm concerned that he used "exactly".
lf you said it was "imagine licking a hot Turkish..." He said exactly.
- Exactly. - Even those strange purple cubes
they have in those...
ls it nice, whale? Just out of interest. Because l've heard it's very nice.
lt's exactly like steak, but with a slightly irony texture to it.
Have you ever been on Ready Steady Cook?
No.
You could have a really good carrier bag, couldn't you?
Well...
(Alan) "There you are."
- lt's a seal... - "That's a seal's hand."
And some grasshoppers.
And speaking of SOBs, why was the Gatso camera invented?
- Any thoughts? - Does it see souls?
- No. - Souls floating
like people who've been run over on the road, going, "He was going too fast."
To provide the government with hundreds of millions of pounds.
- (Alarm) - Did l do that?
Yeah. No, that wasn't why it was invented. lt may be how it's used now,
- but do you know why it was invented? - (Jeremy) Gatsonides,
- Dutchman, rally driver. - He was, and why did he invent it?
- lt was something to do with rallying. - lt was. The actual purpose of it was -
Maurice, his name was - was to find a way
of getting cars to go faster around corners,
so he needed to monitor the speeds he was going in order to work it out.
lronic, isn't it?
There's a marvellous new club in Holland called the Tuff Tuff Club
- that goes around destroying them. - Really?
And you get sort of awards and points, internet points and prizes if you can think
of the most imaginative way. And my favourite one was,
there's a little tiny hole in the back of them,
and if you put some of that builder's foam in,
- that insulating foam... - Oh, yeah.
And it just goes... and it just bursts
and then sets in a rather ugly Dr Who special effect, which is quite good.
You know what happened in France with clamps?
They lasted about two weeks.
The French just went around putting superglue in the locks.
Everyone. People that it wasn't their car, just every Frenchman just decided
- as one man to say "non" to the clamp. - (Alan) That's a good idea.
lf you could glue one person's mouth up, who would it be?
l would do it to a ventriloquist.
He'd really have to work, wouldn't he? We'd know how good they really were.
Do it to his dummy and then he just goes... (Mumbles)
Let's have another question. What did Samuel Pepys bury in his garden
to save it from the Great Fire of London?
Blimey, something flammable, it must have been.
Something paper... Not his diaries?
- (Alarm) - Oh!
- Oh dear, oh dear. - l knew that was going to happen.
No, it brings us sort of almost circularly around.
What's our letter of the series?
- C. - So it's got to begin with C.
- Cardboard. - (Jeremy) His... cock.
His cock.
- He cut his cock off and buried it. - (Sean) His cockerel.
(Stephen) Nor his cockerel. (Alan) Cheese.
Cheese is the right answer! Well done, take several points.
Very good. He did.
lt was more dairy than diary you might say.
- (Audience groaning) - lt was a piece of... Thank you, thank you.
- They've got standards, these people. - They have, haven't they?
lt was a piece of Parmesan, as a matter of fact.
(Rich) Why?
Well, it was very valuable, very expensive.
Come all the way from ltaly in those days.
(Sean) So he didn't go and help anyone.
He didn't muck in, he went "Shit, the cheese!"
(Sean) Wasn't he supposed to be a great man?
He was a great diarist.
He never claimed to be a more morally superior man than anyone else.
He watched the fire, from across the river.
- He was the other side. - "Mr Pepys, Mr Pepys! Help!"
(Stephen) There was nothing they could do.
- Huge parmesan. - "Don't run back into that burning building!
"My grater's in there!"
"Save the pesto!"
Oh, poor Peepy.
This brings us l think to our judge the constellation time.
So, Rich, what have you got for us?
l have George Foreman delivering
a powerful right hand to a parakeet.
And the actual constellation was...
- Taurus the Bull. - (Alan) Taurus the Bull.
Let's see what Sean's gone for.
- lt's a train. - That's very good.
That is connecting all the dots, is it?
Well, there's a couple of dots there at the front.
And then all the other dots are the smoke.
- Suggests movement through space. - (Stephen) l like it.
Let's see what the ancients indeed
did call that particular constellation.
Oh, there we are, it's some sort of goat.
lt's a goat waiting to be ¨¨¨¨ed.
lt's the Provocative Goat.
Quite clearly a Greek goat. The Greeks, as we know...
- That is a goat looking under the sofa. - (Stephen) Ahh.
- For the remote control. - Very good.
- So that would be... - (Sean) Capricorn.
- Capricorn, l guess. - Yes!
ln fact it was Aries. So...
(Sean) Shit!
Jeremy.
- lf you turn it like that... - (Stephen) Oh, my God.
...it becomes like an old woman, look.
- l think it's Toyah Wilcox actually. - That's the Old Woman.
(Stephen) And the ancients called it?
lt's Sagittarius.
(Alan) They put on the head and the front legs, just added in.
You can see the bow and arrow, yeah.
So, Alan, what have you done?
Little smiley face.
We like that, Alan, don't we, it's very nice.
And the Greeks themselves came up with this for that particular one.
There we are.
Could l just ask one question, is maybe in the Greek times
they did actually look like that,
and over the years pollution and everything, right,
they've disappeared, and it did actually used to look
like a big crab in the sky, but now it's just a couple of little dots.
You're a loss to the Royal Observatory of Greenwich, Sean.
That kind of bracing independent thinking
is just what we need to drive us further into the 21st century.
OK, time to look at the final scores,
and it's all pretty close actually, in a kind of way.
Our proud winner is Jeremy with five points!
- ls that a winner? - Yeah.
l'm so thrilled.
That's a very good Ql score.
ln second place, with three points, Sean Lock.
Thank you. Thank you.
ln third place, with two points, Rich Hall.
Alan, Alanny, Alanny, Alanny,
l'm afraid in fourth place, but triumphant, with minus 18!
Beautifully done.
Well, that is it from Ql for another week.
My thanks to Rich, Sean, Jeremy and Alan.
l'll leave you with the final words of the Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa,
who was gunned down in 1923.
"Don't let it end like this,"
he said as he died. "Tell them l said something."
l know just how he felt. Good night.