(Applause)
Well, hello, hello, hello, hello, hello, hello, hello, hello,
and welcome to another edition of Ql, where tonight,
as l hope you can sense, we are in party mood.
And joining me in the big top for carnival capers are,
- Phill Jupitus. - (Applause)
- Clive Anderson. - (Applause)
- Jo Brand. - (Applause)
- and Alan Davies - (Applause)
Well, my little comic troupe,
let's hear your amusing, crazy, clowny noises.
(# Entrance Of The Gladiators)
- And Clive goes... - (Drum roll, cymbal, splash, fanfare)
(Stephen) Excellent!
- Jo goes... - (Party blowers)
(Stephen) And Alan... (Laughing Policeman)
Each of the panel also has, l believe, a swazzle,
a small device used by professors of Punch and Judy
and what do they say with it?
(Clive blowing swazzle) (Stephen) Oh, very good.
(Blows swazzle)
(Alan) Which way does it go?
(Choking)
(Laughing sounds)
Now you've also each got a joker and you will find it has a squirrel on it,
so, when you think the right answer
to any question this evening is "squirrel" or anything to do with squirrels,
you press your buzzer, you play the card,
and you shout "squirrels", all right?
(Phill) With our swazzles Stephen?
Without swazzles, without...
No, no, don't shout squirrel with a swazzle, you'll swallow it.
(Clive) That's impossible.
(Stephen) Now... lf you want to do that it will take time...
(Phill and Alan blow swazzles)
lf you don't take your swazzles out very soon, l will kill you.
- (Laughter) - Thank you.
(Contrite sound) (Stephen) Yes.
At least you haven't swallowed it,
you have to swallow one twice in order to be called
a professor of Punch and Judy.
- ls that the qualification? - Apparently.
Do they have to be there when you defecate?
(Phill) Yes, there it is!
Congratulations, professor.
Does it go... (Extended parp)
(Laughter)
(Applause)
Are you clear about the squirrels?
lf the answer to a question is squirrel,
- show the joker and shout squirrels. - Squirrels!
And, if you're right, you will get a bonus of fifty points.
On the other hand, if you are wrong,
you will get a forfeit of ten points.
Stephen Fry sings Simply Red is not available in the shops.
Baaa.
(Stephen bleats)
Anyway, in the words of Jack Handey,
"To me clowns aren't funny, in fact they're kind of scary.
"l've wondered where this started
"l think it goes back to when l went to the circus,
"and a clown killed my father."
The fear of clowns is called coulrophobia,
and the fear of squirrels, incidentally, is called sciurophobia.
What are you frightened of?
- (Party blowers) - Squirrels!
(Audience) Oh, no it isn't!
(Alan) Oh... lt was a joke
lt was a reasonably expensive one.
Jo?
Yes, what am l frightened of?
Psychopaths with axes coming into my bedroom at night and killing me.
You're weird.
(# Entrance Of The Gladiators)
- Fear itself. - Ahh.
And spiders.
(Stephen) Which is called?
- Arachnophobia. - (Stephen) Yes.
A phobia is very different from a fear.
lt is a very specific thing, it has to be irrational.
There is no one of those words ending in phobia, a Greek word,
or a lions or sharks because that's a rational fear.
Your fear of psychopaths wouldn't be a phobia because it's perfectly rational,
To be afraid of moths, for example, is a phobia,
because they can't threaten you.
Have you seen my jumpers?
No.
What about fear of flying, which is partly rational, partly irrational, isn't it?
Fear of crashing, now that makes sense,
but flying's a good idea.
When l was a psychiatric nurse,
we did treat someone who had sperm phobia, right,
and the way that they treated it
was making them get in a bath full of sperm.
(Laughter)
And the way they got the sperm
was to get loads of medical students
masturbating furiously over a long weekend.
God, how we laughed!
(Laughter)
ls this absolutely true?
That is absolutely true.
Yes, l've seen it on the internet.
Oh, shit...
(Laughter)
(Stephen) Thank you, yes,
we had the picture in our head and we wanted it to stay there.
(Clive) And did it work?
lt worked very well for me, thank you.
(Laughter)
So, l have to get in a bath full of spiders?
You can do it two ways, you can do graded desensitisation,
where you're gradually exposed to spiders,
or you can do flooding, where you get chucked in with them...
This is cognitive therapy?
lt's more sort of behavioural therapy really, cos it's cheap, yeah.
l think l'll settle with just screaming like a girl
and running around the house, if that's all right with you.
The fear of birds, of course, is called ornithophobia
and anyone who has it should look away now.
Does anyone here have a cuckoo in their pants?
(Party blowers)
Can l apologise in advance for this?
No, but l had a big cock in my pants last...
(Alarm)
(Stephen) No is the answer.
Does that mean that we have got cuckoos in our pants?
We all have a cuckoo in our pants now, unless we're not wearing pants.
But the Greek for cuckoo is...
- Bum hole. - (Stephen) "Kok..."
(Laughter)
There's a kind of fierce, relentless logic
behind what you say.
l just hope that the Greek Ambassador isn't watching.
Enjoying an ouzo, sitting back for a bit of Stephen and the chaps.
"Bum hole".
No, the Greek for cuckoo is "kokkux".
- Kokkux, and... - (Alan and Clive) Coccyx.
- Coccyx is exactly right. - (Alan) l was first, points to me.
Very well, have a point or two. And it was Galen, the Roman physician -
"Father of Medicine", many call him - who observed that the coccyx
is much the shape of a cuckoo's beak.
- ls there a famous cartoon cuckoo? - No.
- You're thinking of Woody Woodpecker. - No, l'm not.
He's a member of the cuckoo family.
Road Runner.
Meep, meep. Exactly, Road Runner is a cuckoo.
- He's a cuckoo? - (Stephen) Yeah.
Coccodynia, does that... would that suggest anything to you?
(Alan) Eating your coccyx. (Phill) You eat them?
No, coccodynia, it's a pain in the arse, literally,
lt's when you get a slightly wobbly coccyx and you sit down and it's very painful.
- (Alan) Wobbly? - lt can... Yeah...
People think they're fused, but they're actually in three or four bits.
- You can get a fused coccyx. - (Stephen) You can get it fused.
You can get people together and kind of, like with dogs,
breed up people so they actually get tails again?
lt would be an ambitious project.
lt would be great if we had tails again.
But how could we reverse evolution, Stephen?
You should know.
Evolution is all about mutations in the gene pool,
So, actually, you'd need someone with a tail to start it off.
Might l suggest the ring-tailed lemur? Lovely tail.
That long, stripy... lmagine a six-foot stripy tail
- just "hello" - (Alan) Yeah.
Answer me this though, what goes around in a Greek frock?
- (Party blowers) - Demis Roussos.
(Alarm)
(Applause)
l'm afraid... We were there before you, l'm afraid.
Oh, dear.
- l bet it's not a dress. - (Stephen) lt's not.
The Greek word for frock.
(Stephen) You have to know that.
(Clive) There you are, then. (Jo) ls it...
- Squirrels, are you going to say? - Yeah.
(Audience) Oh no it isn't!
The answer is actually an animal,
- or could be an animal. - Ah, see.
lt could also be something that isn't either animal or vegetable
- that is alive. - Some sort of virus, or, um...
No. Not in the animal kingdom, not in the plant kingdom.
- (Stephen) Fungi. - lt'll be some mushroom
with a sort of Greek skirt on it, that looks a bit like...
No, it's actually... The Greek for skirt is Chitin
and all kinds of animals are covered in chitin.
Mushrooms, cockroaches, squid, fungi, ladybirds, ants, crabs, spiders, lobsters.
lt's like a kind of polymer that covers things.
The Greek army do wear kilts.
(Alan) Oh, dear, they look terrible.
- They're like Girls Aloud. - This is not...
- (Laughter) - Their kilts have 400 pleats in,
l'll give five points if you can tell me why.
Why four hundred? lt's very specific.
Are there 400 Greek lslands?
No, that's intelligent at least. l don't mean to sound...
- (Alan) 400 Greek gods. - Not 400 Greek gods,
lt's 400 years of Greek subjugation by the Turks.
So the first year of Turkish occupation, plain A-line.
(Stephen) Exactly!
The Highland Regiment in the First World War got...
- What are those insects that bite? - (Alan) Lice... in their pleats.
ln the pleats of the kilts, so they had to be always running,
- chasing them down... - (Stephen) Very good.
But five points away for thinking a louse is an insect, it's an arachnid, but...
(Laughter)
Quite right, but l have arachnid phobia, so l didn't want to...
There you are, five points back for being amusing.
Now, stop me when you know what l'm talking about.
They can't swim, or even float in water,
but they grow to the size of a small dog, can shin up trees,
have claws powerful enough to open tin cans
and can carry a load
greater than the maximum luggage allowance on an international flight.
(# Entrance Of The Gladiators)
Land crab?
lt's a type of crab, it's a coconut crab,
l've got to give you some points for getting crab, it is indeed a crab.
(Applause)
(Phill) l know that because l had a friend who was in the army,
he was stationed somewhere, and they had these things
and they would just put kit bags on them and they would get up...
They really do, they carry an enormous weight.
The extraordinary thing about coconut crabs is they're distributed all over the Pacific
but they cannot swim.
They go to the beach to drink, they need salt water,
but they cannot swim, they drown very quickly.
So, what they do is they float on coconuts.
Coconuts can go up to 3,000 miles, they float,
and they cling onto the coconut.
What's coconut milk?
- (Phill) Tasty! - Where does it come from? What is it?
Coconut cows!
(Laughter)
l'd have thought it would've come from a coconut.
- lt's the flesh. - (Clive) Mushed-up flesh.
(Stephen) Yeah, exactly.
And the stuff in... the liquidy, that, you know...
is coconut water.
l went to Rio once and the guy just had whole...
you know the big, you know, with the green husk still on,
he got a machete and went wallop, wallop,
tipped some rum in it and a straw,
it was one of the loveliest things l've drunk in my life.
- Fantastic... - And there was a lady over there
with great big breasts and a penis, it was quite a trip.
(Laughter)
And l thought it was the drink.
So, um, the answer was coconut crabs.
They sound like something you get off radiators,
or indeed a particularly unpleasant sort of children's dish, but...
(Laughter)
lf l were throwing a tree party,
how would you go about serving a cheese log?
(Fanfare) (Stephen) Clive?
lt's a slow method this, but you make an arctic roll,
which l think is out of sort of milky ice creamy stuff,
- Yeah. - And then just leave it for a long while,
and it turns into cheese and is a cheese log.
(Clive) Disgusting, but...
lt would satisfy the conditions of making a cheese log, it's true.
lt's an animal we're after.
Any thoughts?
- We're so tempted. - (Jo) Cheese log's an animal, is it?
(Stephen) Mm.
How would you go about serving it?
Well, how about like this?
There is a recipe for these animals, yeah.
Oh it's squirrel, it's got to be squirrel.
(Audience) Oh no it isn't!
- (Stephen) Thank you for getting that... - l wanted to put it up.
There is a recipe for squirrel these days and it's fantastically good news
for those of us interested in the animal life of our country,
is that it turns out that the interloping grey squirrels
you can eat, and we can tuck into them,
but red squirrels, which we're trying to sort of look after,
they're... you can't eat them, cos they taste nasty.
No, the red ones taste of strawberries, mm.
(Laughter)
Do you know where the red ones are left in England?
The lsle of Wight, they have some red squirrels there,
and there are a few left in Scotland and a few little...
- You're on a British conservancy... - Woodland Trust.
- l'm the president... - You're the president!
Ladies and gentlemen, the president of the Woodland Trust!
- Thank you, it's my proudest. - (Cheering, applause)
Thank you.
- How do you become the president? - Um...
Did the squirrels vote for you?
President of the Woodland Trust.
"Yes, l, er, would love to eat grey squirrels."
Perhaps on the website there could be a photo of you
with a tail hanging out of your mouth.
Our animal is grey as well, the animal that we want you to eat,
it's a lot smaller than a grey squirrel, however.
- A dormouse. - And it lives in a tree
- or often under tree bark. - (Jo) A woodlouse.
- A woodlouse is the right answer! - (Applause)
(Stephen) Well done!
- Not bad. - (Jo) Thank you.
You were asked how you would serve it, the answer is, in the marvellous book,
which l can recommend by Mr Vincent M Holt,
Why Not Eat lnsects, it's called.
He considers woodlouse superior to shrimp,
and you will see they are not unlike shrimps,
in fact they are more closely related to shrimps
than they are to millipedes or centipedes, for example.
Shrimps are just insects of the sea, after all, and we eat them with great...
- literally with relish... - l've eaten several insects, not woodlouse,
but wasps and locusts and things.
(Phill) That's how you got the Woodland Trust gig.
- l've had locust in chocolate. - What's it like?
- lt was quite nice. Crunchy. - They're like prawn.
(Stephen) They are, exactly that,
He recommends a quantity of the finest woodlouse,
"They swarm under the bark of a very rotten tree.
"Drop them into boiling water.
"lt will kill them instantly, but not turn them red.
"Put into a saucepan a quarter of a pound of fresh butter,
"a teaspoon of flour, a small glass of water,
"a little milk, some pepper and salt. Place it on the stove,
"When the sauce is thick take it off, put in the woodlice.
"An excellent sauce for fish." That's how you would serve it.
There was definitely a sort of fudge with wasps in,
- l remember that one. - Wasp fudge? Leave it out for an hour
- all fudge has wasps in it. - Exactly.
- (Laughter)
Sort of worms as well, which is straying slightly off of insects,
There's all this stuff wandering around with all the protein in and we arbitrarily say,
"l don't want to eat that, l will eat that," like picky children.
Well, yes. Do you know any other names for a woodlouse?
Chiggy pigs. Rather nice, isn't it? Chiggy pig.
- Trying to sell it as a foodstuff. - (Stephen) They are.
Coffin cutters, which is less likely.
- Monkey peas. - (Phill) Monkey peas?
Yeah, yeah. Bibble bugs.
- And in Holland they're called pissebed. - (Laughter)
Because they expel waste as ammonia vapour
rather than liquid urine, through the porous shell.
- Tuck in, Steve. - (Stephen) Yeah!
- (Laughter) - Anyway, now,
what was the emperor Charlemagne's party trick
with a tablecloth?
(# Entrance Of The Gladiators)
- Apparently, wearing it. - (Stephen) Fair point.
He comes from a long while ago, 8th century, 9th century, isn't he?
l don't believe they had knives and forks in those days,
let alone tablecloths.
He did have a tablecloth.
His tablecloth was made of something unusual.
- Some plant thing. - (Stephen) No, a mineral.
A mineral that can be made fibrous.
Ah, so asbestos.
- Asbestos is the right answer, - ls it?!
And his party trick was to take his tablecloth
in front of guests, other emperors and kings
and throw it onto the fire, and then they would be amazed -
there's a fire, in case you didn't know what one looked like.
Easy, Clive, it's not a real forest!
- Yes it is! - A load of grey squirrels going like that...
That is extraordinary. They had asbestos all those years ago?
They had asbestos, the Greeks named it, "inextinguishable", is what it means.
The ancients wove handkerchiefs out of it.
(Phill) Oh, dear Lord! (Stephen) Yes.
l remember being given asbestos to play with
on a trip to Commonwealth lnstitute,
they must have been mining it or finding it in an African country,
- we were given it to hold and play with... - Asbestos, the wonder material!
- (Clive) Yes, exactly. - The next time you see it being handled,
it's a bloke in nine different kinds of suit
handling it with twelve-foot-long rods.
Do you know the name of the town where the biggest asbestos mine is?
Asbestos, the town is called Asbestos.
Fancy being the mayor of Asbestos, bizarre.
Which brings us inevitably to General lgnorance.
Now, who goes gathering nuts in May?
- Three, two, one... - (Stephen) Squirrels, you're going to say?
(Audience) Oh no it isn't!
- Oh, Jo, you could've joined in. - l was gonna say "we",
here we go gathering nuts in May.
No, we don't grow nuts in May, nuts grow in the autumn.
- They gather them at the end of the year. - (Clive) So it's knots.
Quite right, knots of May. What does May mean?
- lt'll be the blossom of a may... - Which is?
- Hawthorn. - Exactly.
l think you'll find the Woodland Trust has an extensive knowledge on...
Yes, 220,000 miles of hawthorn hedge were planted in the 17th and 18th Centuries.
There are two types of hawthorn that are native to the British lsles.
Midland hawthorn and common hawthorn.
And now a delightful eight feet remain.
Why was so much planted then? Was that enclosing fields?
(Stephen) Exactly right.
Until then we could wander anywhere and then somebody said,
we rich people own this now and we're going to fence it off.
Who made the most from that? Lawyers l think probably, Clive, didn't they?
Whatever you accuse me of, you can't accuse me of making money
- from being an 18th century lawyer. - No, not you... No.
There's more superstition adhering to hawthorn than any other plant around.
You're not supposed to take mayflowers indoors.
Ne'er cast a clout till May be out.
- (Stephen) Yes. - That may refer to the month of May
or to the blossom coming out. Who knows?
lt's generally thought it probably means the may blossom.
- lt smells of death, the mayflower. - (Jo) ln what sense?
lts chemical, triethylamine, gives off...
lt's the same... it was called the Great Plague smell.
l thought you meant the new perfume Joan Collins has just brought out.
- She's brought out a perfume called Death? - No.
- That is a good name for a perfume. - lt is, isn't it?
Do you think the Woodland Trust would market it, Clive?
(Clive) You have my blessing.
Now, we all know what to do with a custard pie, but, Alan,
what's a custard pile?
Er, it's a sort of yellow haemorrhoid.
Shot in the dark, buildings in a geologically unsafe...
some sort of liquid foundation?
Oh, that's a wonderful thought, absolutely nothing like the answer,
- but a very good thought. - Squirrel.
- ls it squirrel? - No, it's not squirrel!
(Audience) Oh, no it isn't!
- lt is an animal. - Custard pile?
lt's a recognised colour from a breeder's association...
(Clive) Cat. (Stephen) Not a cat.
- A dog... Ferret. - Not even a mammal.
A goldfish.
No. Not a fish neither.
(Clive) A lizard? (Phill) Gecko.
- We're running out of major animal groups. - lt's a bird.
- (Clive) Canary. - No.
- (Alan) Parrot. - A fighting bird.
- A cock. (Stephen) lt's a cock!
lt's a fighting cock, a game cock.
"What have you got? l've got Killer Lundgens, and you?
"l've got Custard Pile."
- You can have cocks in muff... - (Laughter)
You can have tassel, spangle, carp-legs, milk-and-water legs.
Do you know anything about cocking at all?
Well, l don't like to blow my own trumpet, but...
For 2,000 years it was Britain's national sport.
Every village would have at least one cock pit.
Can you think of any phrases from cock fighting we use today?
- Cockpit. - Cockpit is one, yep. Well done.
Show a clean pair of heels, well-heeled.
To pit someone against.
T describe someone as "game", as in being up for it.
That's from cock fighting, yes.
lt says here a good cocker
"would think nothing of cleaning his cock's wounded head
"by sticking it in his mouth and sucking it clean."
Yes.
(Laughter)
You're watching Ql, for the straight guy.
(Laughter)
(Applause)
Now, what kind of animal caused the tragic death
of the Greek playwright Aeschylus?
(# Entrance Of The Gladiators)
(Stephen) Oh dear! (Audience) Oh no it isn't!
- (Fanfare) - Yes?
l get these ancient Greeks mixed up, there's Aeschylus
and there's the Duke of Edinburgh, but...
one of them got killed by some sort of tortoise
falling out of the sky...
ls the right answer.
- (Applause) - Yeah... Oh, right
- How would a tortoise fall from the sky? - (Phill) Dropped by eagle.
ls the right answer.
- (Alan) What a shot. - Yeah!
Thrown by rival philosopher.
(Stephen) Poor fellow.
Yes!
There's a good story about Cresus, actually,
who wanted to see which was the best oracle,
so he decided to go round and give them all a test, and say to them,
what am l gonna be doing a month from today?
And what he was actually doing in a month,
was he was boiling a tortoise in a copper pot.
And would you believe it, one of the oracles got it right.
The oracle at Delphi and then he trusted them and said,
"How am l gonna get on in the war?"
And they said something like, a great nation will fall.
He thought, "Brilliant, we'll stuff 'em", but unfortunately, it was his side!
That's a great story, thank you very much, Jo.
Now, what's quite interesting about Robin Hood's tights?
(Party blowers)
Did he lend them to Friar Tuck,
and then when he put them back on he looked like Nora Batty?
(Laughter)
Well, for example, what sort of colour were they?
(Fanfare)
His tights weren't green cos l know how this programme works
and if anyone said green... They were probably hempen-coloured, or beige.
Well, they were almost certainly scarlet. Lincoln graine, g-r-a-i-n-e.
Lincoln was the dyeing centre of England.
Surely that was Will Scarlet's tights?
They probably all were.
They were obsessed with the colour of their clothes, and in the Gest of Robyn Hode...
This is the New Zealand version you're...
Which is our first source of Robin Hood,
which is the 14th Century,
they go on and on about their clothes.
There's a current theory the Robin Hood ballads
were written to tell to the newly formed Livery Guilds,
whose uniform was a hood, to make a hero,
and to show how they, as merchant venturers,
had overcome the difficulty of being Saxons
and beaten the corrupt aristocracy of Normans.
lt's not the triumph of the peasant classes, it's the triumph of the middle classes.
lt goes on about hoods, mantles, kirtles, coats, breeches, shirts -
six different colours of cloth are mentioned.
(Jo) So they were early hoodies, were they?
- They were. - Weren't allowed in shopping centres,
- they had to live in the woods only. - Yes.
Which in those days were much more extensive and a better place for it, l think.
But he was in red, so l don't know how difficult he was to find.
Bright red hooded top in a forest.
That's a very, very big robin over there.
The people who wrote the Robin Hood programme ATV made
were booted out of Hollywood under the sort of anti-communist...
They were, weren't they, blacklisted left-wing writers.
Anyway, what were Cinderella's slippers made of?
(Fanfare) (Stephen) Yes?
(Clive) l know this, it's a mistranslation of the French for fur, "vair",
"verre" like glass, but it's the French for fur, They were like those slippers...
Absolutely right, but what a missed chance, it was squirrel fur.
- Oh no! - Oh, there you are.
(Applause)
ln that story, why does the slipper not go back
to whatever it was before the Fairy Godmother cast her spell?
At midnight the dress goes back to rags, the pumpkin reasserts itself,
the mice come again.
Why does that shoe remain still in its made-up state?
That's the weakness in the plot there! lt would never've got past me.
You're right, the word vair, is still an English word, actually,
you'll find it in the OED, meaning squirrel fur, vair,
and verre is a glass in French, as you know, so that's right.
- Do you know who was responsible for... - Was it the ugly sisters?
Perrault, his name was Charles Perrault.
The Chinese in the 9th century
had a Cinderella story, almost identical with gold slippers,
German version, they're silk and gold.
There's a Scottish version called Rashie Coat,
- and they're made of rushes. - (Clive) No squirrels.
- No trees in Scotland. - Loads of trees.
- Are there? - Scots pines cover the place.
- Caledonian Forest, all chopped down. - l've recently been made president
of the "Shut Up About The Woodland Trust Trust".
(Laughter)
(Applause)
(Stephen) Ah, very good.
So anyway, yes, Disney's film version of Cinderella
and indeed its version of Sleeping Beauty were based on Perrault's tales,
He added the Fairy Godmother and the pumpkin
and the mice and so on.
But the original stories were pretty gruesome.
When the ugly sisters tried to slip into the slipper,
they cut off their toes and their bunions
to try and squeeze in and the slippers filled with blood.
They probably got that idea from Trinny and Susannah.
The wicked stepmother and ugly sisters
were punished by the King.
They had to dance themselves to death wearing red-hot iron boots.
Now, we come to the matter of the scores.
ln first place, with zero points,
- it's Clive Anderson. - Zero! Wahey!
- (Applause) - Nil.
And second equal, l don't think it's happened before,
on minus twenty-three, it's Jo and Phill.
(Applause)
But, ladies and gentlemen,
the saddest, saddest clown is Alan with minus 26.
(All) Aaahhh.
(Applause)
Well that leaves me to thank Phill, Clive, Jo, Alan
and Jack Handey, who brings down the final curtain with this sad clown closer.
"You know what would make a really good story?
"Something about a clown who makes people happy,
"but inside he's real sad.
"And also he has severe diarrhoea."
- Good night. - (Applause)
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