(Applause)
(Cheering)
Hello, hello, hello, hello, hello, and welcome to another edition of Ql,
the televisual equivalent of an afternoon at the zoo.
Let's meet tonight's performing seals.
Bill Bailey.
Andy Hamilton.
Helen Atkinson Wood.
And Alan Davies.
All right, you party animals, let's hear it.
Bill goes...
(Donkey heehawing)
Andy goes...
(Gorilla grunting)
l'm terribly sorry.
Helen goes...
(Chicken clucking)
And Alan goes...
(Mosquito buzzing)
- l do actually do that. - Yes, you do, yes.
Now we have a rather special edition this evening, ladies and gentlemen,
because we have two hidden prizes tonight.
One of the questions is so impossible
that l shall award a gigantic 200 points
if anyone gets the answer right.
Secondly, we will also have
a spot the cuttlefish competition,
- which we've never had... - There it is!
Because concealed somewhere in the programme later on,
there will be a cuttlefish, or part...
- of a cuttlefish. - l bet it's the penis.
You're so blasé already about penises, aren't you?
And yet there's so many more series to go.
We're only at the letter C so far.
- (Alan) Cock. - As in... As in cockerel or as in...
Stop right there.
And we start with chromosomes,
so fingers on your animals, please.
Which of the four buzzer animals
has the most chromosomes?
(Mosquito buzzing)
- ls that an answer? - Yeah.
My one, the mosquito does. lt has... seven.
That's an interestingly precise number.
l think l'm right in saying that in all animals chromosomes are paired,
so l think we're looking for an even number.
- That's why it's quite interesting. - (Bill) Yeah.
(Gorilla noise)
l'm going to say my gorilla.
(Alarm)
Oh, already. lt seems rather unfair, but no.
No, you'd think, wouldn't you, because we're very closely related to them,
and they're intelligent, you would imagine the chromosome
- is something to boast about. - (Chicken clucking)
Well, l think it might be something to do with mine,
because of all the eggs it lays.
Do you think a chicken lays more eggs than a mosquito?
Y... no.
- (Donkey heehawing) - ln that case, it must be,
it must be the donkey,
because they lay more eggs than all the others.
No, it's not that. lt is actually Helen's chicken,
which has 78 chromosomes.
lt's one of the most mysterious puzzles of all science,
that the apparent complexity of living creatures
bears no relation to their genetic make-up,
or to their genome, as it's called.
lt's sometimes called the C-value paradox, apparently.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, a mosquito has six chromosomes,
so you weren't far off, were you?
l mean, a pig has a respectable 38 chromosomes.
A mere mouse has 40, though, two more.
(Alan) How many have l got?
Ah, you see now, we'll come to that.
The supposedly dunderheaded sheep first,
how many would you imagine that has?
(Andy) What sort of sheep is it?
What sort of sheep? One that goes baaa.
Well, there's, to quote Monty Python,
there is that most dangerous of animal,
- the intelligent sheep. - (Stephen) That's true.
That can climb trees, so.
(Bill) l saw a goat up a tree in Morocco.
They go right up the... l thought it was someone
in the pub having me on. And they don't do much.
And you're sure it was a tree, not a goat-hanger?
- (Groaning) - l'm sorry, no, you're right actually.
Surely there must be some forfeit for that.
l'm deeply ashamed.
Well, a cow has 60 chromosomes.
Goldfish amazingly have 94.
But they're dwarfed by shrimps that have 254.
The world record is 1320.
(Alan) ls that you?
- lt's nothing... No, no it's... - lt's something very basic.
- lt's something... - (Stephen) lt's very, very basic.
Swarfega.
- (Alan) Grass, cheese. - lt's a plant.
- (Alan) Daffodil. - The oldest kind of plant.
(Andy) Fern.
Fern, well done, l'll give you a couple of points there,
it's the adder's tongue fern, southern adder's tongue fern.
And human beings have 46 chromosomes
arranged as 23 pairs.
And that's your entire genetic make-up?
Well, yeah, all your DNA is coiled into a tight package
in a cell and the little bundle it's in is called a chromosome.
But both sexes have two fewer than our close relatives,
the great apes, which have 48, the same number as a potato.
What it seems to be is to do with the age of a species.
The more genetic mutations you go through,
you're just left with more chromosomes, even though they may not do anything,
- and the fern is... - So what was the potato, then,
before it was a potato? What did it evolve from?
- No, the point, well... - The chick pea?
So let's have a look at some apes,
or maybe they are potatoes.
(Bill) Whoo-hoo!
Now my question to you is, what does a pair of pygmy chimpanzees do
when they see a box?
- (Chicken clucking) - Yes, Helen?
Wear children's clothes and have a tea party.
That's usually ordinary chimpanzees.
The pygmy chimpanzee is also known as a bonobo.
- Oh, they're highly sexed. - Ah, you know this, very good.
l just happen to know this cos, you know,
l've got kids and they watch a lot of nature documentaries,
but they find the bonobo extremely funny,
because it's the ape that indulges in huge amounts of recreational sex.
- (Stephen) Yeah, absolutely. - Often with itself.
And they are the happiest ape.
They are the only ape that doesn't go around
- trying to brain other apes. - You're absolutely right,
you must have a whole hatful of points.
l'm just not seeing where the box comes into this.
Just a sort of alien object,
slightly surprising to see in the jungle.
Normal chimpanzees will want to fight each other over it,
males in particular, they'll just simply have a big go at each other
as to who gets the rights to explore this odd object.
But when anything surprises, interests, alerts, fascinates a bonobo,
they shag each other. Whatever their gender.
l had a wonderful explanation given to me once
about the difference between the great apes,
because if you give them a camera,
a chimp will probably take the camera and smash it,
because that's a chimp's idea of fun.
But if you gave a camera to a gorilla,
it will probably unscrew all the bits from the camera
and take the camera apart, very delicately, it won't smash it.
But if an orang-utan got the camera,
it will dismantle it
and then put it back together again.
So l'm not sure that's true, because you'd see them employed
- in camera repair shops. - Yes, you would.
Yeah, if it was a bonobo though,
you'd get loads of pictures back of chimps shagging.
"l never took these."
Male bonobos practise so-called penis fencing.
- Oh, yeah. - Where they...
they hang face to face from a branch
while rubbing their erect penises together.
You see them in Ann Summers buying toys.
- l think that's where the box comes in. - That's what the box is for.
And the amount of sex you have
doesn't necessarily reflect the number of babies you have,
because cod fish only shag each other once
and they have three and a half million little babies.
Think of the pressure the male cod fish is under.
Or, cod fish got a bit drunk, was going "No, nothing to do with me, love.
Erm, the other interesting thing about bonobos
is that they use the missionary position for sex.
Do you think it was taught to them by the missionaries who went out there,
and actually said, "Actually, the way you're doing it
"is a bit ape-like, you want to do it
"in this more civilised Victorian way that we do."
lt's often said that human beings are 98 per cent,
or thereabouts, chimpanzee.
Figures vary, recently been revised downwards actually,
but it's also true to say that human beings are about 35 per cent daffodil.
One of the big differences between chimpanzees and people
is that chimps are terrible swimmers, right?
Now since we are so closely related, no one understands quite why this is,
but, Andy, what is similar to swimming through treacle?
Nothing is like swimming through treacle.
Once you've done it, you know, you don't want to go back to water.
lt's fantastic.
What do you imagine swimming through treacle would be like?
Difficult. And l say that as a non-swimmer,
but if l was going to learn to swim,
treacle is not what l'd choose to start in.
Especially if you were a chimp and you were all hairy
and you got all clogged up in it.
And although Andy is reasonably hairy, he's not as hairy as a chimp,
- and he's smooth-skinned. - l thought you were going to say me.
You looked at me and went "Not as hairy as, er... a chimp."
Well, what l want you to think of
is it is actually very like swimming in water, in terms of speed.
You're pulling, when you say do that, or that.
And that's hard work.
But, when you kick,
it's against something and you get a real spring from it.
So the result is, it ends up as being about the same as water.
And they tried it, of course they did,
A man called Edward Cussler of the University of Minnesota
actually filled a 25-metre swimming pool with...
well, not with treacle but a gloopy syrup made from guar,
which is a thickening agent used in ice cream and all kinds of other things.
Whichever strokes they used,
the swimmer's times differed by no more than four per cent,
but with neither water nor syrup producing a faster result.
And l bet the bonobos made no progress at all.
- They just saw this tub full of treacle. - (Bill) Wahey!
When he goes under, does the treacle...
go into those holes where his eyes should be?
- ls there a cuttlefish in that pool? - There is not. Glad you're on the lookout.
So from physics to chemistry, Alan.
- What is this, boy? - Stick of chalk.
- (Alarm) - Stick of chalk. Stick of chalk.
- (Alan) lt's chalk. lsn't that chalk? - No, it isn't.
lt's what schoolmasters use to write on blackboards.
(Bill) Well done.
(Stephen) Very impressive.
You did that with upside-down writing.
(Stephen) lt's not chalk.
- (Bill) What is it? - What's it actually made of?
- (Alan) Chalk. - No, it's not made of chalk.
lt's a very, very old worm.
Chalk is calcium carbonate, isn't it?
- That's not calcium carbonate. - What is it, then?
lt's some sort of powdery white substance.
- May we take a closer look at it? - l've got another one for you, if you want.
(Andy) ls it something like gypsum or one of those?
Say that louder, please, Andy.
ls it something like gypsum, sir?
lt is gypsum, Hamilton. Congratulations.
Gypsum.
lt is a chalk, it's the word we use for a thing for writing on a board,
it's called the chalk, but it's not made of chalk.
Chalk is calcium carbonate. Here's a very good drawing of a...
Cuttlefish!
Yes, it is in fact hydrated calcium sulphate,
- which is gypsum. - lt's a very unpopular mineral,
people are always moving it on and saying
"We don't want any gypsum round here," you know.
75 per cent of all gypsum is used in building.
ln fact, apparently, a typical new American home
contains more than seven metric tonnes of gypsum.
- lt's in concrete, cement... - (Bill) Plaster?
Plaster, yes, plastering. Plaster of Paris is gypsum.
Why is it called plaster of Paris?
Marketing. Poncier name.
They tried plaster of Brentford and it didn't really take off.
Lots of gypsum in the ground around Paris.
Yes, chalk is calcium carbonate,
as is limestone, marble, coral, the skeleton of humans and fish.
The lenses of eyes are made of calcium carbonate, which is real chalk.
And indigestion pills, Rennies, Settlers, Tums.
- The lenses of eyes? - Yes, are made of calcium...
- Are made of chalk? - Yeah.
l know it sounds weird.
Sorry to pick you up on that, but l think you made that up.
You see, the interesting thing is that things can look very similar
but be made of different elements.
But things can be made of absolutely identical elements
and be utterly different, for example,
if you take carbon, hydrogen and oxygen,
combined in different proportions you get testosterone, vanilla,
aspirin, glucose, vinegar, alcohol,
- and... - (Drum roll)
Now this is the big one.
- 200 pointeroonies at stake. - (Bill) Er, potato.
For those 200 points, what is that?
That's a cuttlefish.
l know what that is, that's a text message
from someone who's very pissed.
lt's a process, it's a happening, it's a, as it were, a chemical episode.
- ls it some sort of an explosion? - (Stephen) That's brilliant.
She's right!
ls there some sort of food stuff involved in it?
(Stephen) This is brilliant, my God!
- (Applause) - No, no, no, because...
- Did you do this at school? - Yeah, l did domestic science at school
and l know an explosion when l see one, and l think,
and l'm only going on a hunch here,
l think it's an explosion in a... custard,
a sort of a custard explosion.
How the hell did you know that?
l have to give her 200.
There's an old phrase, an explosion in a custard factory.
That is what happens when custard explodes.
There was an explosion in Norwich in fact,
my old manor, on the 21st of July last year.
lt's the oxidisation of glucose is what happens
and it can be pretty nasty.
What custard facts can l offer you?
There was a food survey conducted in the year 2000
and it was discovered that 99 per cent
of all British people recognised the brand, Bird's custard.
Bird invented it, Sir Alfred Bird,
an eggless custard powder, because his wife was allergic to eggs.
lt was a kindness to his wife.
He also gave the world baking powder,
in order to keep our boys in the Crimea in good bread.
A remarkable man. What do the French call custard?
"Coutard".
Good guess, but no, no. They don't really have a word for custard,
they don't believe it exists.
l mean, that's to say, they just don't...
Take some over and pour it on them.
What we call custard they call crème anglaise, but they don't recognise...
But what we call confectioner's custard they just call crème.
l was in a restaurant the other day and it said "apple pie with crème anglaise".
- (Stephen) Yes, that's custard. Pathetic. - And l thought...
What would they say if you go "l want custard on it"?
(French accent) "l'm afraid, sir, it does not exist."
(Stephen) Ca n'existe point.
"You have placed me into an existential quandary."
"l'm afraid l'll have to leave the restaurant.
"You, sir, you are barred for life.
- "l'll stab you with this chalk." - Why would they do that in London?
Ponciness. Sheer pretension.
- They don't want custard on the menu. - Exactly, they think it's in for a dig.
l bet they make proper real custard instead of nice custard out of a packet.
That's right. l must say, l prefer the real thing.
Do you know what l love about custard? Viscosity, l love the viscosity,
because when you put the spoon through,
you have exactly the amount of push with the spoon...
You use the same amount of energy as if you were pouring water onto your pie.
Except in France, where you just do that over an invisible bowl.
Did you know that if you have muesli, you can have it with water,
tastes the same as it does with milk.
- (Bill) Exactly. - Except less milky and eurgh.
lt's a lot better with Lambrusco, l have to say.
Anyway, from a very difficult and remarkably well answered custard question,
to canines. Apart from the obvious, what's unusual
about the New Guinea singing dog?
Did you say "apart from the obvious"?
Well, the obvious being that it's a singing dog, yes.
lt's the only singing dog never to have been
on Esther Rantzen.
lt's a tiny little dog in a huge bath of potpourri.
lt sings so high that no one can hear.
You can actually hear him sing if you want to, l think we've got him singing.
(Dog howling descending notes)
(Andy) That's like Gracie Fields falling off a cliff, isn't it?
Rather pretty little dog. lt's a mixture supposedly between a fox and a dingo.
But it has no feet.
lt actually never moves, it's stuck in the ground.
Ah, now that's where you're wrong, young Davies.
- lt's the only dog that climbs trees. - Yes, is the right answer!
- (Bill) Well done. - Absolutely brilliant.
Well done.
Absolutely spot on.
Like tigers, the New Guinea singing dog is also extremely rare in the wild,
and is best known from the 150 examples living in the US.
There are more of those in the US than in its natural habit.
Again, dogs, like chickens have an amazing?
How many chromosomes have you got as a chicken,
- do you remember? - (Alan) 78.
(Stephen) 78, well done.
God, you really are absolutely on fire, young Davies.
Now, what is this and what is it pretending to be?
Cuttlefish!
- (Alarm) - Oh, no!
(Stephen) No, no.
lt's an octopus pretending to be something else. l've seen them scuba diving.
You're right, it is an octopus pretending to be something else.
Do you know what it's pretending to be,
according to the latest theories by cephalopod people?
lt looks a bit like a crab. lt's even more weird actually.
(Andy) Coconuts. (Alan) Carrier bags.
- Didn't you say coconuts? - l did.
You're right, that's what they're trying to be - coconuts, apparently.
The octopus, you wouldn't see one if you didn't dive very often.
l dive on holiday once a year,
but the dive leader sort of went over to this wall of rocks,
and he went a bit like that... (Breathing noises)
- "Use the force." - And he went like...
He went to the dark side. And he kind of prodded this rock
and it suddenly went...
- What's the plural of octopus? - Octopi.
- Oh, no, it isn't, no. - Octopuses.
Octopuses is really accepted almost everywhere.
lf it were to be anything, it would be octopodes, if it was Greek.
An octopus the size of a volleyball can fit into a soft-drink can.
Er, bluff.
(Stephen) Octopuses, of course, have eight arms.
Now, after a lifetime working with radioactivity,
what did Marie Curie have two of?
(Alan) Lesbians.
She had two lesbians?
She left them in her will to someone, did she?
"And l leave my collection of Sèvres porcelain to my son Arnold
"and my two lesbians to my..."
Annabelle and Michelle.
She was the first person on earth to have two of these.
Abortions.
First person on earth to have two abortions? When she was in?
Sorry, it's the first thing that comes into my head whenever l hear Marie Curie.
Why?
Oh, no, l'm thinking of Marie Stopes.
So, shall we first sort out for Alan who Marie Curie was?
- Who was Marie Curie? - (Alan) She's a scientist.
She was a scientist, she invented, or discovered rather?
(Andy) Radium.
With her husband Pierre, radium and polonium. She won?
- Nobel Prize. - The Nobel Prize.
She won one Nobel Prize? She won two Nobel Prizes.
(Alan) One in chemistry and the other one was in something else.
One was physics, one was chemistry.
She shared one with her husband Pierre.
Oh, l bet that caused a lot of rows.
But the really sad thing, what do we know about radium?
- lt's not good for you. - Yes, but she didn't know that.
She discovered it, but she carried lumps of it around with her.
The notebooks that she had, which are in a French scientific museum,
- are still radioactive. - Do they glow like that bit of stuff
- that falls out of Homer's pocket? - Yeah, absolutely.
Radium was exactly that, it's luminous.
lt was used for making luminous watches.
Radium Dial Company was a huge scandal in the 20th century.
The five workers who worked at the Radium Dial Company,
they used paintbrushes, and they used to...
do that to bring them to a point to paint luminous radium onto the dial.
And they used to paint their teeth
to amuse their boyfriends to make them go like that.
They all died from lesions and bone degeneration,
general ill health. There was a rage for radium.
There was radium toothpaste, radium hair tonic,
- radium sweets, radium condoms. - Just because it glowed?
Because it glowed and because it was a magical new property
that it gave off this energy.
And people thought, "Wow, it must be good for arthritis,
"it must be good for sexual energy."
They made a Radioendocrinator,
which was worn in a jockstrap under the scrotum.
There were radioactive suppositories, bath salts, cigarette holders, bread.
Eben Byers was the other case,
he was a millionaire steel tycoon.
His doctor suggested he'd get more pep if he had it,
so he had 1400 bottles of it in two years.
The Wall Street Journal had a marvellous headline -
"The Radium Water Worked Fine Until His Jaw Came Off."
So dangerous bloody stuff.
And Marie Curie herself died of leukaemia,
her daughter, who was the second woman ever to win a Nobel Prize,
died of leukaemia.
Husband Pierre was killed by a runaway horse.
Before l go to General lgnorance, l should say that the time has passed
for you to point out part of a cuttlefish.
You've missed it, you have missed it.
(Andy) lt was in Marie Curie's hair.
Well, you're right. What a shame it was too late.
- You're joking. - ln Marie Curie...
What is the ltalian for a cuttlefish? Do you know, by any chance?
(Alan) Cuttlefishio. (Bill) Pesce... culla.
(Stephen) Sepia.
She's got a radioactive glow round her head.
lt's sepia, that's it, the ink of a cuttlefish is sepia
and is used in tinting photographs such as this one of Marie Curie.
Anyway, from Marie Curie,
we leap into the pond of General lgnorance and, Helen, l'm going to start with you.
Mrs Miggins, a character you made glorious,
she had, as l have good cause to remember, a pie shop.
And so this should be a question for you.
Who invented the pie chart?
Mrs Beeton.
- No, no, it wasn't Mrs Beeton. - Pythagoras.
No, no, it was a lady female.
The Queen invented the pie chart.
She's the top lady, it must have been her.
lt was a very brilliant woman,
who was the first woman ever to bear the name.
Her sister was called Parthenope, if that's any help.
Parthenope, which is the Greek for Naples.
So she might have been called Rome or...
- Florence. - Florence Nightingale.
(Andy) But she was busy dealing with...
- Cuttlefish! - Yes, you've spotted it.
- (Fanfare) - Cuttlefish.
(Alan cheers)
Well done.
You do deserve it.
No, Florence Nightingale was a very, very brilliant woman,
she was brought up by rather eccentric parents, rather hothoused,
but she was a brilliant mathematician.
She was a founder member of the Royal Statistical Society,
and when she was trying to persuade the politicians
and generals of the Crimean
about various statistics to do with the health of the soldiers in the Crimea,
she used this way of demonstrating it, by getting a circle
and showing percentages.
And it's a brilliant, brilliant model.
Anyway, there we are, Florence Nightingale, inventor of the pie chart.
And here's one for everyone. Where do most tigers live?
(Alan) Asia.
(Alarm)
l think you got in there first, didn't you?
- No, not true. - (Alan) Not true?
- (Alan and Andy) Zoos. - (Alarm)
We said it at the same time, so he can have a couple points off.
(Stephen) No, not zoos neither. (Helen) Las Vegas.
Well, America, certainly in America, private hands.
- Most big cats are in private hands. - l had to do a photo shoot once
with a tiger, and these two blokes turned up with a big, enormous chain
and a tiger on the end of it,
and they said, "Shouldn't really handle them after the age of ten months."
So l said, "How old's that one?" He said, "Eleven months."
There was a wonderful animal handler woman, you know,
very gruff sort of woman, we were doing a scene once,
and this dog was just shagging everything, you know.
And this woman, a very odd mixture of severe and unbelievably twee,
she said, "Any more of that behaviour," she said to the dog,
"you'll have a short, sharp visit from the smack fairy."
- That's a dealer. - lt sounds like a drug dealer, exactly.
(Stephen) But, no... (Andy) l think...
- Extraordinary. - Smack fairy.
The answer to our tiger question is the United States, especially Texas.
According to the National Geographic, there are more tigers kept as pets in the USA
than there are remaining in their wild habitats in Asia.
As many as 500 lions, tigers and other big cats
in the Houston area alone.
Now, lastly, will you identify the following -
Silly, Billy, Chilly, Pussy,
Pissy, Corny, Punchy, Misery, Messy and Prat.
- Shall we throw it open to the audience? - (Stephen) Anyone in the audience know?
- (Man) Dwarfs? - Dwarfs? Dwarfs?
- (Alarm) - Oh dear, 25 points away.
(Applause)
Oh dear, oh dear. Audience light.
That's never happened, we've never had an audience forfeit.
He might come last now.
(Stephen) He might, if you're lucky. They are in fact French place names,
they're all places in France.
They should be called... (French accent) "See-yee" and "Bee-yee" and "Pyu-see",
but that's how they're spelt.
There are in fact, ooh, six places called Silly,
13 called Billy and one called Prat.
There are also six places called Chilly,
two called Pissy and one each of Corny, Punchy, Misery, et cetera.
Other French names include Ham,
Clam, Condom, Bus, Eccles and Nancy.
l once spent some time,
l actually did this, l went to a town in France called "Bitch!"
Spelt B-l-T-C-H-E.
- "Bitche." - (Stephen) "You bitche."
"We are leaving Bitche."
Well, my bitches, it is time to look at the score.
ln last place, l'm sorry to say, with minus 20, is Bill Bailey.
However...
in third place, 15 points, Alan Davies.
ln second place with 22 points, Andy Hamilton.
And...
slightly in the lead with 200 points,
Helen Atkinson Wood. Wow.
My goodness me. That's just about it from Ql this week.
My thanks go to Helen, Andy, Bill and Alan,
and one of the little understood differences between men and women of course
is that women live longer.
The world's oldest recorded human being was Jeanne Calment
of Arles in France, who died recently aged 125 years old.
On her 121st birthday, she was asked
what the secret of her longevity was.
She attributed it to olive oil. She ate it nearly every meal,
as well as rubbing it into her skin.
"l only have one wrinkle," she said,
"and l'm sitting on it."
Good night.
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