(Applause)
Good evening, good evening, good evening, good evening,
and welcome to Ql, the show which plucks the low-hanging fruit
from the groaning tree of knowledge.
Plucking my plums tonight will be
- Phill Jupitus. - (Applause)
- Dara O'Briain. - (Applause)
- Bill Bailey. - (Applause)
And Alan Davies.
(Applause)
And now let's see what you actually will be plucking tonight.
- So if you would, Phil goes... - (Banjo)
- Dara goes... - (Harp)
- Bill goes... - (Steel guitar)
And Alan goes...
(Chicken clucking)
Good.
- Can Alan and mine be played together? - (Stephen) Try it.
(Banjo and chicken)
And you can see the visual accompaniment on the website.
Now, as to bonuses, we have a special wrinkle tonight.
One of the pieces of information l will give you will be false
and you have a Ql doubt card in front of you.
lf you think that what l've said is untrue, you may show your card.
- Just one thing will be untrue? - (Stephen) Yeah.
Oh Mr Fry, you spoil us with your bonus points.
Well, l like to look after my little guests.
Now, what l want you to do first is tell me
all about the 12 Frenchmen and the 12 mosquitoes.
(Harp)
Dara O'Briain.
Once upon a time,
there were 12 Frenchmen called...
(French accent) Appy, Sleepy,
Arrogant, Furious,
Quelle qu chose, Comme ca, Boff and Zute Allors!
That's six.
Fenetre, Boulangerie and...
(Alan) Le Table.
Le Table, of course, and Jambon et Fromage. The twins.
And they used to travel with mosquitoes solving adventures.
And what were the mosquitoes called?
(Bill) Buzzy, Stingy.
lt was a very, very low read 1950's French detective season,
that involved, at some point, the extraction of a tiny amount of blood
from one of the suspects.
Do you know what else a mosquito can be, other than a?
lt was a World War ll plane made out of wood.
Made out of wood, exactly, made out of balsa wood and plywood.
- What was their great raid? - Tuck shop.
- Was it made into a film? - (Stephen) lt was.
There were twelve members of?
The resistance. The Maquis.
And they were due to be shot by the Gestapo.
And the allies would send in these 12 Mosquitoes
to bomb the chateau in Amiens so that all the prisoners would escape.
l can't believe that they'd just blow the bloody doors off...
- Basically that was it. ...and the whole place, with 12 bombers.
You're right, they had to go down an avenue of poplars, which was so narrow...
"Down the avenue of poplars, Perpendicular to the ground."
"That's what you'll have to do."
There were 700 prisoners in the prison, 102 were killed by the raid to start with.
74 were wounded.
Then 258 escaped,
of which 179 were rounded up
within the next few days by the Germans again.
My girlfriend's grandfather flew one of those
and he actually goes now and visits in Germany
with a Luftwaffe pilot, whose plane he shot down during the war,
and they go and they sit around and, you know, go, "Ha, great days."
But neither of them speak the other language,
he doesn't speak German and the Luftwaffe doesn't speak English...
Do they sit about going...
(Dara) lf you're standing behind...
(Applause)
(Alan) Do a whole re-enactment.
And for over 50 years
that German man has been peeing in your granddad's tea.
We had an Airfix model of one of those.
l gave it to my dad for his birthday
and he made it before breakfast.
- (Phill) Did he put the transfers on? - Yeah, painted it and everything.
That was a pain, cos you had to put them in hot water and wait for them to slip off.
And then of course, with chubby six year-old fingers,
you just end up covered in swastikas.
You go to school and they think you're in the BNP
and it's, "No, l've been trying to make a Heinkel, Sir."
The raid was a partial success.
But now let's look at a complete catastrophe.
When the Titanic sank, what was the first thing that happened to the crew?
(Banjo)
Terrible luck for them, but they actually had their six month review and...
(Applause)
- (Steel guitar) - (Alan) They drowned.
- (Alarm bells) - Did you say they drowned?
(Alan) l said they drowned, yes. (Stephen) Oh dear, no.
- No, l was going to say they were fired. - Every single member of the crew
had their wages stopped at the moment of the sinking.
They stopped paying them.
The moment a ship sinks, it is no longer a ship, therefore you can't work on it,
therefore the White Star Line paid them up to the minute of the sinking, not beyond.
l would imagine that in a sinking situation, you'd hope to be getting time and a half.
This is it.
- (Applause) - Frankly double bubble.
Just a little something at the back end.
As soon as you're in the water, you've got to be looking for work.
Get on your pedallo and look for work.
But apparently, at the time, White Star were considered
one of the more generous employers.
l think it was £5 a month, not very much.
You know about the Duff Gordon family on the Titanic?
And their terrible gin?
Very good. No, they offered the crew of lifeboat number one
£5 to save their lives.
Nobody's quite sure whether this was just greed saying,
"l'll give you £5 if you save my life"
or whether it was a thank you because their lives were saved,
but, whatever the result, the crew were in terrible trouble for accepting a bribe.
And one poor lad, Albert Horswell,
survived, he was one of the lifeboat crew,
got home, went to see his mother,
who slammed the door in his face and never spoke to him again,
because she was ashamed that he had taken a bribe.
She was also bonkers though. That Mrs Horswell!
ls it true someone dressed as a lady?
Supposedly someone did, because it was women and children first.
l thought you said somebody dressed as a baby.
"Yes, goo goo, indeed, l have a lollipop
"and l have no control over my bowels or urine
"and l am indeed an infant.
"And l know you think l'm Lord Albermarle,
"the fact is l'm a little baby with a beard.
"And madam, might l tell you, l've been a very naughty baby."
Following that path, the ones who were paid £5 were only the Able Seamen.
How can you tell Able from Ordinary Seamen?
Well, erm...
(Applause)
When you applied for a job as seaman on...
you naturally, you either registered as an Able Seaman
or an Ordinary Seaman and they accepted your word.
But, you kept a log of your work,
which was the real proof of it, and it was called
a Certificate of Continuous Discharge.
Well, staying with the subject of catastrophes,
how would you sink a ship using pistachios?
Cargo of pistachio nuts goes a bit manky or something.
Ah now Alan, you are so close on the tail of this.
- Oh, ho, ho, you can almost feel it pulsing. - lt's something when they're whole and...
lt is to do with the very quality of pistachios, en-masse?
They become highly volatile, almost explosive.
Yes, absolutely right.
- (Applause) - They do.
- Absolutely. l think you share many marks... - Rubbish, that's complete rubbish.
Do you not believe it? Are you playing your doubt card?
- No, never. - (Stephen) All right.
Very wise, very wise, young Alan.
They are classified under Class 4.2
of the lnternational Maritime Dangerous Goods code as flammable solids,
brackets, "Substances liable to spontaneous combustion". They will explode.
A lot of nuts are very much like that.
The ice cream is green, isn't it? They're very rarely that green, pistachios.
Why are they so green, the ice creams? l don't know.
(Alan) They only use the green bit.
Vanilla's black, and yet vanilla milk shake is white.
Ugh!?
As l believe stand-up comedians do.
Ugh, what's that about, ugh?
(Applause)
My next question is, name another dangerous nut.
(Steel guitar)
Er... walnut.
- Yes. - ls it?!
Yes, extraordinary!
(Applause)
Like pistachios, they also can spontaneously combust.
They explode on contact with fondant.
So walnut whips are time bombs waiting to go off.
That's an amazing guess if it were a guess.
Fantastic, walnuts, yeah.
Coconuts are dangerous if they fall on your head, obviously, but they're not nuts.
They kill about 150 people a year though.
Ten times more than sharks do.
l can't imagine the Discovery Channel
doing a series of documentaries on the deadly, deadly coconut.
Killer coconuts.
And also people going, "The walnut's had a bad press. Save the walnut."
Do adventure holidays where you sit under a palm tree
full of coconuts in a cage.
Filming them.
l actually won a coconut the other day, l went to the fair, with a child now, and just...
- You threw a child? - Not, you know...
Yes, it's obviously a little bit easier then. Whoa!
l thought l'd get a bit more incentive to win the coconut
and l chucked it as hard as l can and pinged it off
and the bloke picked up the coconut and he just glared at me like...
Because he looks like a coconut,
he can somehow have a mystery power over them.
(Applause)
- A 70's coconut. - Yes.
ls a coconut a nut?
- No. You just said it wasn't. - That's right, l couldn't remember.
Peanuts, almonds, pistachios, brazils, cashews, coconuts,
horse chestnuts, pine nuts are not nuts.
Tiny shoes.
You weird man.
No, they're just kind of seeds or fruits...
- Well, a brazil nut is a kind of seed. - Yes.
Peanuts are actually peas, they really are dried peas.
Peas split in two, the same way that peanuts do.
(Stephen) That's right, they do.
l might get a point for that, you never know your luck.
True nuts are walnuts, butternuts, hickory, pecan, wing nut chestnut, not conkers.
Beech, oak, stone-oak, tanoak, hazel, filbert, hornbeam...
(Alan) Acorns you mean? (Stephen) Yes, acorns.
(Bill) What about beetle?
A beetle... l don't know, actually, a beetle nut, it could be.
lmagine if the acorn tasted as good as it looked in its own little cup,
little green fella.
Sadly they taste like shit.
Beetle nuts are not nuts it says in my special screen.
The little Ql elves are hacking away
at the emerald mine of knowledge as we speak.
Now, why would Rolls Royce have any use for a chicken farm?
They'd probably use the feathers to fill the seats with.
- lnteresting thought. - (Steel guitar)
l just, this is just off the... l'm going on,
l'm on a roll with the walnut.
ls it something to do with Rolls Royce engines
and they test them by throwing chickens...
Give the man a peanut, he's absolutely right.
- ls that right? - Yep.
(Applause)
We have to make clear we're talking about Rolls Royce plc,
which is an aero-engine company, as opposed to Rolls Royce Motor Cars Ltd,
which is owned by BMW.
To see the everyday occurrence of a chicken being caught in your radiator
as you're driving down the road. lt's just bird strike that they do it for.
lt's bird strike. That sounds so butch when you put it like that.
You'd have to be relatively butch to do the job,
just to get over the emotional difficulty of throwing a live chicken into an aircraft.
lf would take a fair amount of detachment anyway, at the very least.
Yeah, there are chicken cannons, they use cannons.
You see, because it is an absolutely vital...
Very good.
l mean the fact is, you probably wouldn't want to go in an aeroplane
where they hadn't tested for what happened when a bird got sucked into the engine.
And the only way they can test it is to do it. So when they have a new engine,
they hurl birds at 180 miles per hour out of a cannon.
Dead. They died, we hope, of natural causes.
lt's very, very easy to get someone
to take the job though if you say you're going to be sucked in a Rolls Royce.
Oh, very good.
Presumably, before they developed the chicken cannon,
the only other way to do it would be to send the plane up
and then have it scout around for birds.
They hang a little net bag of peanuts over the engine.
With a sign saying, "By the way, these are not nuts. They are peas."
They have their own chicken farm so they can control the weight and size.
- They also use duck and turkey. - Turkey?
Not the most adventurous of birds, altitude wise.
Chickens don't get very high either, though, really, do they?
They do if they're fired from a cannon. They go, "Wa-hey!"
Whatever happened to firing a bloke with a helmet out of a cannon?
That was all the rage when l was a kid.
l thnk that he would not do that another time, once he'd been in the engine once.
lt was invented by a man called ldelbrando Zacchini,
the real inventor of the human cannonball.
The Zacchini family did it for generations.
(Dara) lt shortens your back. (Stephen) You're right,
lt compresses your spine, which is like a...
Even worse was when two Zacchini girls were fired simultaneously,
in a kind of display, they hit each other.
Have you had an accident at work?
(Applause)
Obviously they're now on the advert, "Mr Zacchini..."
"Well l've been shot out of a cannon for the last 20 years."
Chickens get fired out of cannons at about 186 miles per hour, which is pretty fast,
but only one three hundred and sixty thousandth the speed of light,
or C as it is called,
because it is the universal constant and not relative to anything else.
My C question is, who invented the theory of relativity?
This is one of your...
Oh, so little trust in the world.
lt was Albert Eggmont.
l'm not going to say.
lt was a very great physicist, do you know?
- Theory of relativity. - Which one?
The theory of relativity. Not the special one, not the general one, very good question.
The first theory of relativity, that put to rest Aristotle's theory of absolute rest, in fact.
Because you're a bit of an old science bod.
Yeah, but you know, not in a way that l like to be quizzed on television about.
l bet it turns out to be Einstein and an elaborate bluff.
How much do you want to risk the?
l have the cloak of doubt.
He's a big big hitter, the biggest really.
- Newton. - Second biggest then.
- Einstein. - Oh, did you say Einstein?
(Alarm bells)
All that care!
- You took so much care not to say Einstein. - You know, fish bite hooks?
No, Galileo. Galileo. l'm thinking of Galileo.
He just did telescopes.
Put him right about Galileo.
Just the founder of more modern physics.
Could he make a good pasta sauce?
Anyway, there we are.
Einstein was responsible for the special and the general theories of relativity,
- in 1905 and 1915 or 16... - (Dara) 15.
15. l think you're right, yes, respectively.
But the original idea of relativity was Galileo's.
This is my question to you, what happened to three quarters of the people
accused of witchcraft in England?
Drowned, burned, killed?
(Alarm bells)
They were much gentler than you might think, they were acquitted.
- Really? - Yeah.
ls that sending the wrong message to witches?
They were apparently rather resistant to the idea
of destroying witches in England.
Unlike views espoused in so-called books,
and l use the word book very loosely,
like The Da Vinci Code.
lt is complete loose stool-water. it is arse-gravy of the worst kind.
(Applause)
(Bill) That's a bit harsh.
He's a blues singer.
"Please would you welcome Lou Stool Water."
(Steel guitar)
(Applause)
Very good. Excellent.
Well that particular pan full of that material did claim that about 5 million women
were burned or hanged around Europe for being witches.
There's absolutely no evidence that it's anything like as much as that.
Probably about 500, probably less in England.
And they weren't burned, they were hanged.
The lawyer would have said, "Maybe not go to court dressed like that."
There were two possibly burned, that's the only evidence, that two were burned,
the rest were hanged, probably about four or five hundred at the most.
There were lots of Hammer films, The Devil Rides Out, those kind of things,
usually Peter Cushing and sometimes, if you were very lucky,
they would have Charles Gray in a huge white smock.
Peter Cushing lived in Whitstable when l lived in Whitstable
and a local band had a song about him which went,
# Peter Cushing lives in Whitstable
# l have seen him on his bicycle
# l have seen him buying vegetables
# Peter Cushing lives in Whitstable #
What a great song!
And then it just goes up... # Peter Cushing lives in Whitstable... #
This is the first rule of pop music, write about what you know,
what you see out of the window.
l worked with him, he was extraordinary.
He was one of the few people who, when he was introduced to a woman,
could kiss their hand. lt was just from another era.
Whereas Christopher Lee would bite their finger off.
l was about to do a film with Christopher Lee, who was rather scary,
and he said, "Oh Chris isn't scary at all, he's lovely.
"l tell you what, l'll call him up." And l said, "No, no, no, no."
So we were in the dressing room and he picked up the phone and said,
"Chris darling, it's Peter."
Oh it's great, it's Van Helsing and Dracula on the phone together.
He said, "l've got a young actor here who's going to work with you in a film
"and he's rather scared of you. So talk to him."
"Hello, who are you?" "My name's Stephen,
"l'm really looking forward to working with you in a film."
"Yes, well, l'll see you, l expect, on the set,
"could you pass me back to Mr Cushing, please."
(Mimics Christopher Lee) "Peter, l have seen you buying vegetables."
Was there a moment when he said, "Oh l know, Peter. l'll call him up",
do you expect him to go... (Mimics Dracula chanting)
"You sought me!?"
Another man l was very proud to have met.
The Hammer film of The Witchfinder General,
starred "Vincent Price,"
you just wanted him to say things like
"Could you pass the mustard please."
"l would greatly appreciate a napkin."
l got him to say the line that l loved,
it was from one of those films
where he's strangely bound up in some weird bandagesm
"Pray speak quietly,
"every sound you make is exquisite agony to me."
And so now to our own little backwater of superstition, heresy and horror,
the infernal nether regions of General lgnorance.
So fingers on buzzers, please, if you would.
Name a softwood.
- (Chicken) - Alan?
Balsa wood.
- (Alarm bells) - Oh, damn!
- Although it is... - (Chicken)
Plywood.
- Oh, bless! - (Chicken)
Pine.
Ah, you get some points back for pine, which is a softwood.
Balsa wood, although it is the softest, almost the softest of woods,
is actually a hardwood technically.
lt comes from a broad leafed deciduous tree.
Balsa is a soft wood, not a softwood.
lt's moth proof as well.
Unlike my trousers!
Oh look, there.
Why do they go in that area?
(Bill) l don't know.
Only flesh and blood l suppose as it were.
While you're down there, my dear...
You will have a light bulb in your underpants there.
(Applause)
Good heavens above!
Now, so there you are, yes, balsa wood is moth proof.
What happens though if you cut an earthworm in half?
- (Alan) - You get two earthworms?
(Alarm bells)
No, you get one dead worm in two pieces.
They do have death throes that last a long time, but they are dead,
you don't get two worms l'm afraid.
There is a flatworm called the planaria,
and a man called TH Morgan found that a piece of planaria,
which was one two hundred and seventy ninth of its original size,
could regenerate into a whole originally sized planaria.
As l say, if you cut an earthworm in half,
you get two halves of a dead worm usually.
Sometimes the head end will survive,
but you can't get two worms from one.
Now, moving on, oh l'm holding a pen,
that brings me cleverly
to the Fisher pressurised space pen,
of which you may have heard tell.
lt was developed after a lot of expensive research
to enable astronauts to write in zero gravity.
What alternative writing implement
could they have used instead?
(Banjo)
Here comes the big noise, a pencil.
- (Alarm bells) - No!
There is a kind of urban myth that the Americans spent millions
on building a pressurised gravity-free biro,
while the clever Russians just used a pencil,
but in fact they started off, both of them, using pencils and the tip broke.
And when the tip breaks it floats around
and it gets into and short-circuits things,
gets into people's eyes and bodies,
is very dangerous indeed.
But what a laugh that must be
to have a pencil sharpener on the space shuttle, just go...
One of the things to do in zero gravity.
So it's sadly not true that story.
An ordinary biro would have worked,
it didn't need a special pressurised one.
lf you need to write upside down,
it needs to be pressurised when there's gravity.
But when there's no gravity, an ordinary one will work.
Here's something quite interesting
not many people know, Neil Armstrong, when he first set foot on the moon,
he was heard to say, "Good luck, Mr Gorsky!"
When someone said, "What do you mean by 'Good luck Mr Gorsky'?"
He said, "When l was a boy, l used to play baseball with my brother
"and our neighbours were called the Gorsky's
"and l once hit a baseball into their garden
"and l went to retrieve it and they were in the bedroom
"and l heard Mrs Gorsky say,
"'l'll have oral sex with you the day that kid next door walks on the moon!"'
Bollocks!
lt is bollocks, indeed it's bollocks,
but it is surprising how many people believe it to be true.
Neil Armstrong himself is constantly being asked about it.
Saying, "ls it true about this Gorsky, or whatever the name?"
He says. "Oh for God's sake, no it is not true."
Which brings us to the scores.
Now actually, Dara, you did rather well last time.
You astounded us with your knowledge
on the triple point of water, do you remember?
What was it again?
The triple point of water is the first temperature
at which water can exist in all three states.
- (Stephen) And what is it? - lt's zero.
(Alarm bells)
Ah, now you see, you see, we never forget.
That's what you said last time and we gave you points for it...
But we're now going to take those points away...
From a previous series.
Plus a forfeit of course,
because some of our eagle-eyed viewers
wrote in to point out that the triple point of water
is actually by definition
nought point nought one degree centigrade,
- that's twelve points off. - But l was rounding off!
When you were at school, the definition
of the triple point was nought degrees centigrade.
The new international temperature scale
has adopted in 1990,
the new definition, which is nought point nought one.
How many people sat at home watching that and said,
"lt's just a comedy show, but l'm not letting that fecker get away with that?!"
You'd be surprised...
He got points for that?!
But now l can give you scores.
ln first place, with plus three,
it's Bill Bailey, ladies and gentlemen.
- For the first time l've won. - (Applause)
ln second place,
and he would have been a resounding winner,
with minus eight, it's Dara O'Briain,
ladies and gentlemen.
- Pipped at the post. - (Applause)
Third place with minus eighteen,
Phill Jupitus. (Applause)
And our super soaraways lack of success,
Alan Davies, minus 47 in fourth place.
(Applause)
So it's good night from Phil, Dara, Bill and Alan.
And l leave you with this sobering thought from astronaut John Glenn,
the first man to orbit the earth.
When asked to describe his last thoughts before taking off into space,
"l looked around me and suddenly realised," he said,
"that l was sitting on a million tons of fuel
"in a rocket that had been built by the lowest bidder."
Good night.
(Applause)
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