Well! Ha ha!
Good evening!
Good evening, good evening, good evening, good evening, good evening, and welcome.
Welcome to QI for another wild leap into the dark.
And teetering on the precipice tonight are the daring Sean Lock...
Thank you.
...the devil-may-care Jimmy Carr...
the dauntless Jo Brand...
and he-doesn't-even-know-the-meaning-of-the-word-"dastardly", Alan D-d-d-d-davies!
It's "D, D, D" all the way, and tonight it's "D" for "danger".
Danger in the face, with alarm calls to match.
So, Sean, let's hear your alarm call.
And Jimmy goes...
And Jo...
"Vehicle reversing!"
Very nice, too. And Alan:
- You don't get more dangerous than a mozzy. - Mosquito, yeah. - Yeah.
Anyway, in the next twenty-four hours...
talking of danger... there is a one-in-48-million
risk of being burned to death while you sleep. There is a one-in-30-million risk... - But that would wake you up, wouldn't it? - It would.
How heavy a sleeper would you have to be... to be burned alive?
You could be quite pissed, couldn't you?
- I knew someone... - I actually burned my flat down when I was pissed.
You didn't put that on the insurance form, did you?
"I was pissed; that's how it happened."
You know what it's like, you just go, "Oh, fuck it; sort it out in the morning."
Are you exaggerating? Was it cystitis?
- Hey, you've got rather ladies' area quite early on in the show. - Thank you very much.
Dear me! Right, one in 30 million people risk dying by being murdered.
The risk of choking to death is one-in-120-million,
and the risk of dying by tea cosy is one-in-20-billion.
There is, however, a one-in-257,000 chance of you dying today,
during this programme.
What have you got planned for round two?
- It's... - Is there a tiger involved, is there?
If there happened to be 257,000 people playing QI at the moment, one of them would die.
But it may be us; we don't know. - Not because of the game though.
- No, I'm just saying you have a one-in-257,000 chance. - Is it electrocution by the buzzer?
What are the chances of you dying
in your sleep, from a fire, with a tea cosy over your head?
You're fifty times more likely to die now than you are to win the lottery.
I think we have a nurse standing by, frankly. Well, we have.
- I'm not a proper nurse. - How not proper?
- Psychiatric. - She's a stripper!
Do you think strippers go home at the end of the day and go, "Oh, more work"?
Well, I think it's time for our first question.
What is three times more dangerous than war?
- Jimmy Carr. - Three wars.
"Vehicle reversing!" Is it doing a U-ey on the A40?
This is according to the United Nations.
Is it... It's probably something really inane, like cycling. Trampolining.
It's work. You're more likely to die at work than you are at war.
Does that include soldiers?
What if you work in a shoe shop near a war?
You always guarantee you will find some cunning way to make me not know anything.
And I don't know what the statistics are
for people who work in shoe shops near wars. It's...
How many times have they actually had a war in a shopping centre?
It's very rare that First World countries get in—invaded, but if they did, you could have
a shoot-out in a multiplex, couldn't you?
- Be a wonderful sight. - Wagamamas. - If you lived in South London, you'd...
you'd find a lot of wars in shopping centres.
I've been arrested in a shopping centre.
- Have you? Tell us why. - For an act of war?
I knocked a security guard's hat off.
- Recently? - Ooh, a very Bertie Wooster thing to do.
Yeah. I didn't even do it on purpose; I was taking my jumper off.
I was absolutely arseholed as well.
And you're very much hearing my side of the story.
I called it, actually, rather than a story, a "defence".
- Right. - I read a thing once that said a third of all accidents at work go unreported.
How do they know?
Lumberjacks have the most dangerous job in America, it appears.
A hundred and twenty two deaths per hundred thousand employees.
So that song's entirely wrong, is it?
Yes! Exactly.
How could you die doing that? Just... Trees falling on you; would that... would that be it?
You're saying "trees falling on you" like that's a bit of a pansy way to go. That's a...
That's a legitimate way to die.
It's just the only real sort of peril, isn't it?
- Yeah. - There's a lot of chain saws.
But also, you're not very well protected in panties and a bra, are you?
And also, if you're a lumberjack, you're supposed to be good at it.
- Yeah. - You're not supposed to chop down trees and go, "Oh, it's the other side, isn't it?"
- "Oh, no!" - The single most
dangerous specific job is said to be an Alaskan crab fisherman.
Is this the most dangerous jobs in America?
'Cause how many presidents have they had? They've had a lot of those go.
But only three have been assassinated.
Three have been assassinated and one had a blowjob in the office, so it...
it can go either way, can't it?
- Yes, it's swings and roundabouts. - Not a job you turn down straight away.
Oh, dear. Well, now. Yes, according to the United Nations,
more than two million people die from work-related accidents,
as opposed to 650,000 people a year who die in wars.
Now, what was the most dangerous military stratagem ever devised?
Was it Hannibal's first crack at the Alps with chihuahuas?
The purpose of this one was to terrify the enemy.
Imagine you're in the front line of an arm, and you're amassing against the front line of another army, and
the front line of the opposing army does something so extraordinary that you think,
"Oh, my God, we're never gonna to beat them."
Is it from a Carry On film? Is it when they lifted their...
when they lifted their kilts and they didn't wear pants? It was amazing.
Carry On Braveheart. No, it's neither of those.
They flagellate themselves. They insert something within their persons.
- They chop their own heads off. - They chop their own heads off? - Their own heads off?
The front line of the army chops their heads off. How... how you do that...
Grab your hair and just slice with a very sharp sword.
Who was that, then? The Scots Guards?
This was... This was in 496 BC.
It would be the Swiss army, because they'd have something on one of those little knives, wouldn't they?
Self-decapitation!
It's a country you know well, and you're wearing its flag at the moment.
This is the flag of Vietnam.
Well, that's right. We're talking 496 BC, the army of King Goujian of Yueh.
And he had convicted criminals in the front line and told them they had to cut their own heads off.
- You may say, "Well, why would they do that?" - What's the worst that could happen?
The worst that could happen is if they didn't, then all their families and all their children would be massacred as well. - Yeah, fuck it!
They didn't seem to worry; they knew they were going to die anyway. They were condemned to death.
What do we know about decapitation? Does it kill you straight away?
I know if you cut a duck's legs off, it can still swim.
It can float, but it can't swim.
- Float! A floating duck! - I leave a little bit of stumpage.
It wouldn't be able to swim.
It would have to catch the currents; it would evolve into a whole different animal. It would probably get a...
a wing up as a sail, or something like that.
Didn't they discover, like, for example, at the French revolution with the guillotine, that,
like, heads could kind of, like, chat a bit afterwards, so... - Carry on chatting.
Well, no, you're right. There was a story during the Terror of the French Revolution that, er, two members of the...
the National Assembly were guillotined and their heads put in the same bag straight away,
and one bit the other so hard they couldn't be separated.
Just the heads. - That's holding a grudge, isn't it? - It is!
I mean, for intents and purposes, you're dead; let it go!
Yeah, you didn't get on! Whatever! - They were French.
Anyway, from "decapitation" to another kind of danger.
What is the most dangerous sport in, in fact, the most dangerous country in the world?
Contemporary dance in Scotland.
Hopscotch in Afghanistan? I don't know.
You're... You're very close.
- Well, it's going to be Afghanistan or Iraq, isn't it? Aren't they quite... - Well, oddly enough, in between those two.
- "Kabizakistan." - No, no, a much better known one.
- "Subizakistan"? - It's another "-stan", but a very... The best known "-stan." - Iraq. - Uzbekistan.
- Pakistan. - They play a lot of cricket there.
They do play cricket there, but they also have this very dangerous sport, so dangerous it's been banned for all but fifteen days of the year.
It's a child's pastime that has become aggressive and extreme.
- Conkers? - No.
It's mentioned, and indeed sung about, in Mary Poppins. - Marbles? - Buckaroo?
- Mary Poppins. - Flying a kite.
- The idea of extreme kite flying... - It's dangerous.
- You have to sever your... - Head? - ...competitor's...
You have to sever your competitor's kite from its string, and so the string's actually made of metal with glass;
sharp, abrading glass. And motorcyclists get garroted, 'cause hundreds of people do it all over the country.
Who told you this, Stephen? This is nonsense.
This doesn't happen. - I'm afraid it does.
No, I saw it. Channel 5: "When Kiters Go Bad".
They shout "Bo Kata!" "Kite Down!"
- What about when they garrote someone... What do they shout then? - I don... - "Oops."
Yes, probably. It's the spring festival of [?], is when it happens.
And there's a... The people against it, the Kite Flying Affectees Committee,
people who are affected by kite flying have tried to ban it completely.
Do all the kites have to have the face of Des Lynam on them?
- He is a god in Pakistan. - Yeah.
- How big can the kite be? What's the heaviest kite they can have? - Huge. They could weight anything up to four tons.
Well, the largest kite ever made is... weighs nearly a ton.
- It's a hundred metres long. - It's forty-eight foot by thirty-six foot.
- That's right. - And how many people does it take to fly that, then? - Fifty.
- Fifty people. - Fifty people, yeah. - Fifty "men", it says here.
Fifty men, or twenty-five fat birds.
It has two hundred strings.
And the smallest is one-point-two-five inches across.
You can get them in the market and stuff. You see those blokes doing those tiny kites...
- Have you seen them? - No. - Miniature kites. - That's right.
- On, bridges and things they sell them. - Oh, do they?
You start it using an electric fan, one of those little hand-held electric fans, and it just flies up.
- Invisible string, which makes it very pleasing, because it's so fine. - And then you go home and cry. "What am I doing?
What the hell am I doing with my life?
I wanted to be a doctor!"
- Oh, Lord. - "Look, everybody!" "Oh, what's the point?"
So, name the world's most dangerous manager.
- It's not Dave the Decapitator, who's head of Psychos-R-Us in Catford, then? - No. No.
Not Chernobyl Health and Safety or something, is it?
- No, that would count. - Is it someone like Evil Knievel's manager?
Very like Evil Knievel's manager, only go back in time to the Niagara Falls.
- Blondin's manager. - Absolutely right! I think you should get ten points for that.
- Thank you. - Blondin's manager.
And for the boys and girls, tell us who Blondin was.
- He was a famous tightrope walker. - He was the most famous tightrope walker of his day.
But he also carried his manager across, which was a disaster,
because his manager was a lot heavier than him, and Blondin liked slippery tights.
And, they had to stop six times because he was so heavy.
It was on the 17th of August, 1859, and it took forty-two minutes.
Is that his manager, then, or just some bloke that wanted to get to the other side?
He's take eggs and a frying pan and a trivet and matches, and he'd stop halfway across and...
and make an omelette and then eat it. Or he'd take a... a lion in a wheelbarrow across with him.
- Is that real? - A lion? - Yeah.
What was his manager giving him?
Did he eventually die by falling off one?
- No, he died... Actually, he died in... - A tea cosy.
I thought it said... I thought it said there he died in a "bed of diabetes". No, he died in bed, of diabetes.
Not in a bed surrounded by... Restaurant menus: "nestling in a bed of diabetes".
No. He died in bed aged seventy-three.
But actually, though, they have terrible trouble, don't they, stopping people
trying to go over the Niagara Falls. - Yeah.
Because people are always trying to get in a barrel, and
I've no idea why, but they have to have special security men,
because, apparently, there's endless, kind of, trucks reversing up with, sort of, concealed barrels.
And people just going, "Right, push me, Dave; I'm fucking going."
Apparently, there's enough people that want to do that for them to have to really, you know...
They have... They do stop it. There have been sixteen known barrel drops and six of those have ended in mortality. The first to do it was a woman.
- Hey! - Yes. Annie... Annie Taylor her name was. - She didn't want to.
- That's a honeymoon that's gone horrible wrong. - Yeah.
No, Annie Taylor was the first to do it,
and she was something of a heroine for doing it; she was... There she is. Look.
An old battleaxe she looks; I mean, God! But, there's her barrel... - You say that, I think she's all right.
...with her name on it. "Annie Edson Taylor,
heroine of Niagara Falls," it says. And Bobby Leach was the second man to do it. The third man to do it was a Briton, Charles Stephens,
and he did it with his legs tied to an anvil, to...
By this time, people were really bored with the feat by two people having done it.
- I think it's really nice they went to all the effort of writing their names on the barrels. - Isn't it?
Well, he couldn't, because he tied it to an anvil, in that rather sort of road-runner-y way, you know...
kind of thing. And all they found of him was a severed arm inside the barrel...
...with a tattoo on it saying, "forget me not, Annie".
People were obsessed with the Niagara Falls. They had this pirate ship
and they filled it with animals--bears and geese and all kinds of things--and sailed it off the top of Niagara. Only two geese survived.
Two bears crawled out and they were shot.
For cowardice, probably.
So, now, what's the most dangerous sporting activity for women?
Foxy boxing.
- "Foxy boxing"? - Foxy boxing.
Cheerleading somewhere like Iraq would be tough, wouldn't it; you know,
a very Muslim country. - I'm going to give you... - Cheerleading would be quite... - I'm going to give you the money.
- Money? - The points! "The money..."?
No, I want the money!
- If we start playing for money, I... - What am I suggesting? - Actually, Stephen, I really want the car! I know it's behind there!
You get the points, because the answer is, simply, "cheerleading".
- Really? - Cheerleading is the most dangerous. - What? - More injuries and deaths are sustained
by women engaged in cheerleading than any other sporting activity. - How bizarre!
The best known cheerleader in America is..?
- Nancy Reagan. - George Bush. - "George Bush" is the right answer.
- How did... Did you actually know that? - Yes, well, he did it... Thanks. - Yes.
- Yeah, it... it was the only sporting activity... It's what he did. He didn't... he didn't play sports. - Absolutely right.
He had special t-shirts made with "go Nads", which was the name of his team. "Gonads."
- You see? - I've never seen cheerleaders that aren't in a shower. - Yeah.
I thought that's what they did. I thought they were just obsessed by lather.
Other dangerous sport? Bungee jumping: do you know anything about that?
You can get a detached breast tissue.
What, at the gift shop afterwards, or..?
Because if you go in... in the nude, they let you do it for free.
- And... - Where, everywhere, or at a particular site you know of?
And... And you can, if you don't have proper support,
your breasts, 'cause of the gravitational pull,
can fly clean off!
And you can also get a detached retina.
And if you shout at a breast that's just been decapitated, as it were, does it still respond for the next thirty seconds?
It will... It will still lactate for half an hour.
- Still express itself, quite literally. - After it's been separated.
- Can I go and have a lie down? Highly unpleasant. - I like to think of bungee jumping as suicide for indecisive people.
It's like a tester, isn't it? - It is.
"Whoa! No, I'll be all right with this, yeah."
I heard a brilliant story about... You know the Darwin Awards? Obviously, every year, they have these Darwin Awards for people
taking themselves out of the gene pool. And there was a brilliant story of a guy that...
He was, you know, drunk one night, and he decided, "Right, what I'm going to do is bungee jump."
His mates went, "You won't be able to do it." "I will." He just got a tow rope
and jumped off a bridge. Obviously...
Obviously, the foot just... snapped off, and he landed in a freezing river.
With no feet. He couldn't swim.
- So take me back, because it's a good letter "D", for Darwin... I don't know the Darwin Awards. - The Darwin Awards... - When you say "take yourself out of the gene pool"...
- Well, it's stories from 'round the world of people that have killed themselves in such stupid ways... - Oh, actually killed themselves. Right.
There's another brilliant one of a guy that was sitting in his back garden, and he had... got a couple of balloons and filled them up with...
with helium or whatever, so that he would float. He thought, "It would be brilliant if I could float
and drink beer. Wouldn't that be lovely? It would be... be so comfy in a garden chair."
He went about a mile up and froze to death.
What an arse! How lovely!
But I see what you mean, taking out of the gene pool... In other words, our...
the human gene pool does not need those kind of people to pass on their genes to the next generation.
Indeed, indeed. And it's the reason why they should allow people to walk down to railway tracks, if they so wish. Because you know what? We don't need 'em.
If they can't work out a train's coming...
Right.
Let's face it, the gene pool needs a little chlorine.
- It does. - You know who you are.
Who invented bungee jumping, and when?
That was the New ZeAlanders, wasn't it?
- It was actually a British invention in 1979. - The bungee strap is a British invention.
- Yeah. - Hurrah. - "Ah, good old..." - They never, ever, ever break.
- No. - That must be... That must be a real comfort to the families of the people that the rope was too long.
"You can have the rope if you want; it's still perfect."
"Oh, thanks for that." - He can have another go with the coffin.
Oh, into the grave, out of the grave, into the grave...
Oh, it must happen. I want that to happen. Well...
- I'm redrafting my will tomorrow! - Yeah, exactly!
You've sorted out all our funeral requirements. Oh, excellent.
Another dangerous sport is Russian Roulette, of course.
- That's dangerous. - Yes.
In the early days if you had a musket, you'd only... only have the one.
- That was a man's game! - To get... Exactly. - Oh, it's six to one, ooh. - Sissys do six to one.
What we do know is that in 2005, more than two hundred thousand cheerleaders had to attend medical
facilities with cheerleading-related injuries.
It's time, ladies and gentlemen--how could it not be?--
for us to dare to dip into the deep end of the pool of half-dissolved truths and sheer undiluted myth-ery that we call
General Ignorance. So, fingers on buzzers, please.
What causes deep vein thrombosis on airplanes?
- Oh, you're in first. - Sitting still for ages and getting a blood clot.
"Sitting down for too long."
Oh, hello.
Is it the five pasties you had before you set off?
Well, it turns out, according to a Lancet article, that if you put people in exactly the same conditions
as on a cramped aeroplane, but on dry land in an ordinary room, they don't get the increased chances of DVT...
...and that it's actually the poor air quality.
And you know the air quality on planes is worse
now that they've stopped you smoking. - I know, exactly right.
It's very bad air indeed up there, and they've saved a lot of money on it being bad air.
And it also seems to be a contributory factor to DVT.
Although these compression socks... There was an article in the newspaper very recently about them actually working.
They're hugely sexually attractive, those.
Well, they've stopped called them "surgical stockings", because that sounds so, kind of, Les-Dawson-old-lady,
and... and they now call them "compression socks",
which sounds slightly butch. - I think they're quite... I like those socks, 'cause if you put them on... - Yeah. - You would do, because you're sort of quite pervy, aren't you?
Well, here's the thing I like about them: It's a really tight sock, and when you take it off, it's lovely and itchy.
It's very satisfying somehow.
- Do you have bald shins? - Do I have bald shins? - You're old enough now to have bald shins. The lower shin?
- I don't know what you've been up to, Stephen, to be honest. - Well, you know... - I can't even conceive of how you've got that.
- As men age, the... the hair stops growing on the lower part of the shin. - Does it?
- You must have noticed that. - Oh no, I've got virtual quiffs down there. - Have you?
- You're still pretty hairy down there. - Look at that.
Yeah. Brushed by the tip of your penis as well, I can see there.
Most impressive. - I've got to get that re-attached.
With women it's the other way around. My bikini line's wound 'round me ankles at the moment.
So, fingers again on buzzers. How much sleep should you have every night?
- Jo Brand. - Four hours.
- Good answer. - Four hours?
Four to seven hours... You'll live a lot longer than if you have eight hours every night.
People who have eight hours or more live shorter lives.
Yeah, but if you only sleep four hours a night, it can lead to dismantling the welfare state.
Margaret Thatcher is a famous example, and very well put, of someone who didn't get that much sleep.
Yeah, no wonder really, what she did to the miners!
Yeah, right!
The average Briton gets six or seven hours of sleep a night, as opposed to their
grandparents, or great grandparents, in 1900, when nine hours a night was the average.
- Blimey. - Certainly people lived less long, but for all kinds of reasons.
What scale do seismologists use to... to measure earthquakes?
- Sean. - The, Richter Scale.
No. No, they don't.
Seismologists don't. Journalists often do, still, these days, but not for...
not for thirty years, nearly. They use something else. It's called the MMS, the Moment Magnitude Scale.
- Are you sure? Absolutely sure? - Yes. - Pretty sure. I got that wrong.
You did, but you kindly went into our... There's an example of what happens after an earthquake.
The angles... It's rather like Renaissance Mannerist art; the... the diagonals are very... The composition is excellent.
- I hate Renaissance Mannerist art, don't you? - Do you? - Yeah, it's crap.
- Michelangelo, for example? No? - Michelangelo? - Don't like him? - Bollocks!
Oh. He was particularly good at bollocks, it must be said.
- One thing he absolutely thrived... - Has he been spotted in heat magazine?
"Michelangelo spotted buying pants in Primark."
- Primark? - Primark. "Primark"!
Do you get yours made specially by the Queen's tailor?
I thought you'd had yours done on a loom by exquisite boys.
- This must stop... - "We're making Stephen's pants!"
"I can't wear these; he's got a mole on his face."
I... oh, God, help.
Where and when was the largest earthquake in the United States of America?
There... there, on the left.
The big long one, where everyone lives.
The long bit. - You mean San Francisco, 1906. - Yeah.
Oh, thank you so much. Indeed, he's...
You're a true gentleman. It was not the largest. It was certainly, perhaps, the most catastrophic; it killed...
- Three thousand. - Now, you say it killed three thousand people;
a rather disturbing fact about it is it killed three thousand white people. They didn't count the Chinese dead.
Isn't that horrible? A quarter of a million made homeless.
But the major cause of death and destruction was not the actual...
- Fires. - It was the fires afterwards. - Raging fires. - Why did a lot of fires come about, do you think?
A flame...
- Thank you very much. - Was it because they were all really fed up... - Leaping from building to building.
...so they all got pissed and fell asleep with a fag, or..? - No.
- Gas. Electricity. - Because they weren't insured against earthquake, but they were insured against fire,
so a lot of people started setting fire to their houses when they saw that they were cracked.
- They all started... - What, and the insurance company would go, "Oh, what are the chances: it burnt down the same day, did it?"
- "Imagine my surprise." - Ah. Some... Some genuine fires were caused
by the fact that there was a gas main and that would go up,
you know. It was at a time when there was gas lighting and heating all over the city.
- I think I might know where the largest earthquake was. - Yes, say.
I think it might be Yellowstone National Park, 'cause there's a super volcano underneath it.
Well, you see you're probably right. I would have to add the rider to the question: "since European settlement".
There may well have been a huge one in Yellowstone.
- Yeah. - It's a bit late for that, Stephen. - Little bit late for that.
- Oh, you wouldn't have said "1906" if I hadn't said "since European settlement"? - No.
Just on the subject of San Francisco fire, this... this is an example of how nasty it was...
"When the fire caught the Windsor Hotel at Fifth and Market Streets, there were three men on the roof,
and it was impossible to get them down. Rather than see the crazed men fall in
with the roof and be roasted alive, the military officer decided,
to direct his men to shoot them, which they did in the presence of five thousand people."
- And there was another man who started burning... - The entertainment back then was rubbish!
Yeah! Another man screamed and begged to be killed as his feet began to burn, and he was up on a roof then.
And, the policeman took his name and address and then shot him through the head.
Took his name and address. - "Name?" "This is my house, you fool!"
No, actually the... the greatest earthquake, certainly, since European settlement, was
that in New Madrid, Missouri, in the Mississippi Valley,
during 1811 and 1812. Or you may prefer the one in Prince William Sound,
in Alaska in 1964. Either way, the more famous San Francisco
earthquake was just simply not in the same class.
I think that brings us, really, handily, to the end of the quiz on this particular occasion.
And looking at the scores, there's astounding, astounding things going on,
because way out in first place with seven:
Jo Brand, ladies and gentlemen.
In second place, with a very handy four points, Sean Lock.
Thank you. Thank you.
Neither up nor down, but in third position with [French accent] "zero points", it is Jimmy.
- What was the point of that? - Yeah, but well done.
Which means our runaway fourth place goes to the minus n-n-n-n-nineteen of Alan D-d-d-d-davies!
And my thanks to Jimmy, Sean, Jo, and Alan.
I'll leave you with the observation of former Prime Minister David Lloyd George.
[vaguely Irish accent] "The most dangerous thing in the world,"
he said, only in a Welsh accent,
"Is to, to try to leap a chasm in two jumps."
So from all of us at QI, good night.
Transcript by: Sarah Falk Subtitles by: kapodilista
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