Good evening. Good evening, good evening, good evening, good evening, good evening, good evening
and welcome to QI, the home... the home from home of the discerning couch potato.
Plumping my cushions tonight are Phill Jupitus,
Jo Brand,
Jessica Stevenson
and TV's mop-top, Alan Davies.
Now, tonight's edition is all about domesticity:
dry-cleaning, dishwashers, dust-busters, dirt-devils, detergent,
door hinges and the like, and we have familiar domestic noises to match.
Jo goes:
Phill goes:
Jessica goes:
- Oh, I know that. That's a Pifco Trismatic 17. - Yep.
- And Alan goes: - Oh, good.
So all genders are comfortably assigned their tasks.
Tell me something interesting now about dry cleaning.
They put your clothes on a radiator and then they fold them.
Well, now, that's interesting,
because you're saying dry cleaning is therefore well named?
- Yeah. Well, there's steam. Is there steam involved? - Not steam, no.
But it's a wet clean. It's just not water.
- Some sort of chemicals. - It's a chemical solvent.
A perchloroephylene, known as "perc".
Dry cleaning's actually something spies do, isn't it?
The sort of procedures they go through to try and find out whether they're being followed or not.
Oh, give the young lady-girl some points! Absolutely right, yes.
They do sudden u-turns when they're driving and they dip into shops and go out the back exits and so on.
Check whether an umbrella's just about to go up their arse.
That kind of thing. Exactly. And they call it "dry cleaning" for some reason.
So while we're on the subject of dry cleaning materials,
er, what use did Ray Davis have for one hundred thousand gallons
of dry cleaning fluid in 1964?
Had The Kinks ran out of crack?
Not that, I don't think. I don't think crack had been invented in 1964, but there is Ray.
- You're no relation, are you? - No relation that I know of. - No.
Did he have a dry cleaning shop?
We put up a picture of Ray Davies because you mentioned The Kinks,
but this particular Ray Davis was a physicist,
and he wanted to find out how many neutrinos were being beamed out of the sun,
and so he had this huge pit dug in Leadville.
There he is.
- Oh! Ray Davis! - Yeah! You see? - Ohh, right. Whoof.
He's rather daringly known as Ray Davis Junior, actually, but...
And he had all this done, fifty-thousand feet, nearly, underground,
because neutrinos are weird things that go through everything.
There are millions literally going through your body now, all the time.
They have no mass. They'll go through light-years' thickness of lead
just like that, without leaving a trace.
So this Mr Davis here, as we have a panel of ladies tonight for a change, Stephen,
erm: Hot or not?
- What do you reckon? Would you? - I think he is hot.
- Waiting under the sun to catch neutrinos. - Er, yeah, and after a few pints of dry cleaning fluid I'd go with him.
- Would you have a crack at him? Would you? - I'd wave my crack at him. - Wave your crack at him.
Can you do that with cracks? I don't think you can, can you?
You can if you've got a specially designed trolley.
Well, the reason he had this dry cleaning fluid is there's lots of chlorine in perchloroethylene,
and one neutrino will change it to one atom of argon
and so you can know how many neutrinos have hit it,
and then you know how much neutrino activity is coming from the sun.
Is this... Every time you talk like this, can a physicist do a shot?
Is this some kind of bizarre physics drinking game?
Well, it is.. No, it's at the very basis of all our understanding of the universe
- is to try and understand the neutrino - So what happens to the... When the... When the... So is... It...
I know!
- Just run it by me again, just... I'm really... - You've got neutrinos, - Yeah.
- streaming, solar neutrinos streaming from the sun - Right, solar neutrinos .
- Billions and billions and billions a second. - But if neutrinos are everywhere, how do you distinguish
between solar neutrinos and any other neutrinos? I'm sorry, I just...
You know, you're so right.
- They are essentially invented to make the mathematics of modern physics work. - Right.
Some people believe they really are the secrets of the entire universe.
I am finding this absolutely fascinating, but if we could have the picture of Ray up again,
I think the most extraordinary thing: a bloke in Marigolds.
I think that...
He's only got yellow because probably Mrs Davis got them.
"I got your new work gloves, Ray!
Are the neutrinos going through me now?"
"Yes, dear."
"I can never feel 'em!"
What did he do with all the dry cleaning fluid afterwards? Did he...
- Did he then open a dry cleaning shop? - It's a very good point because it's...
- it's hazardous waste. - Chuck it in a river.
Probably!
- Yeah! Just get rid of it! - It's... it's deep down in the ground. It's probably still there in Leadville.
Leadville, South Dakota rather than Leadville, Colorado, I believe.
- Oh, he's American, is he? - Ah, yeah, you see.
- He doesn't look American. - I know what you mean.
- He looks sort of like Stanley Unwin. - He looks like he's in a shed in Gloucestershire.
He's not a "Howdy!", is he "Howard"?
He's a "Hello! I'm Ray!"
But he has one thing that he is... in the Guinness Book of Records...
- The biggest penis in physics! - Oh, dear.
No. He was the oldest ever
winner of the Nobel Prize.
- 88 years old, he won the Nobel Prize. - Really?
I think he is related to me, actually.
- Aha, you see, you cherry. - Yeah, the Nobel Prize winner, I've heard of him at Christmas.
"Your cousin Ray won a Nobel Prize.
Are you busy?
Of course you're not."
A little more domestic science now, I think.
What was the propulsion system used for the very first vaccuum cleaner?
- Oh! My dear Phill. - Mr Kingdom Brunel, I believe, er,
fashioned a ninety-five tonne steam-powered hoover...
that sucked his entire house into it, erm...
which is why, when you see those photos of him by the big chains, he looks so grumpy.
'Cause he has to get the bag every night to go to bed.
Well... Where do you think... I'll turn to the girls because you'll know far more about vaccuum cleaners.
Aah! I'm joking, of course, it's post-ironic something or other.
- Which country do you think first saw it? - I think it was in England.
- It was! Correct. - and I... I think it was, erm, like a couple of really energetic hamsters
sort of running round on a wheel.
- Well... - Someone thrashed them.
They were horse drawn. The horses weren't actually powering the vacuum.
- Horse drawn hoover?! - The first one was a horse drawn hoover.
- Why would that be, would you imagine? - Is it farming related?
Not farming related. It was simply that they were so vast.
They wouldn't sell an individual one to a house.
It was a cleaning service done from the street.
Obviously, the hoses went in through the window,
and the clever thing was he had transparent tubes,
so everybody would gather around and watch the dust being sucked in and go "ooh" and "aah" and "hoorah!"
- Do you do hoovering? - Do you hoover?
- Do you hoover, do you hoover? - No.
- Brenda vacuums in my house. - Brenda.
- She... She's your... - Whilst listening to the soundtrack of "Mamma Mia" on an iPod.
- Wearing nothing but frilly panties? - She's fifty-nine!
- I have a quotation for you here, specifically for you Jo. - Oh! Just for...
How do you know when it's time to wash the dishes and clean your house?
Oh, because bubonic plague has broken out?
This is a quotation from a dictionary of comic quotations
and the author of the quotation is one Jo Brand.
Oh, that one! She's crap!
The answer is, "Look inside your pants. If you find a penis in there, it's not time." There you are!
I think that's my grandmother, Mrs Jo Brand.
She's always saying things like that.
Anyway, there's your vacuuming. Hubert Cecil Booth.
1903, he invented it. He was from Gloucestershire.
But from housework, I think, to homework.
Complete the following sentence using the appropriate adverb.
- That's the word that usually ends in "l-y". - Oh, right.
"So, er, the first practical dishwasher was invented to wash dishes more..."
- Quickly! - Quickly? Oh dear, no!
Thoroughly.
Nor thoroughly.
- Cleanly! - Oh, dearie me!
You're piling them up now!
- You're doing well on the adverbs - Yes, I've used several adverbs.
but it's neither quickly or cleanly.
More... often than women can be arsed to.
- Daily! - Not...
See what I did there?
- Not more daily, no. - More steamily!
- Soundly. - Slowly.
- Not more slowly, but... - Fastly!
- Safely! - Safely is the right answer!
- Well done! - Well done, Jessica.
Excellent.
Yeah. The inventer was an American woman,
and she was very rich, so she didn't need to wash her dishes herself,
- so it wasn't done as a labour... - Mrs Hotpoint?
Not Mrs... Her name was Cochrane, erm ...
- Whoa, mama! - Jo...
- Ah, you thought Raymond Davis was foxy! - Yeah!
She was from a quite grand family.
Her great great grandfather John "Crazy" Fitch invented the steamboat.
'Cause he said "I'm gonna get this boat. It's gonna have steam driving the wheels, and
"You cra-zay, John!
You cra-zay!"
- It just sort of stuck. - "Just watch me!"
Yeah. But she had seventeenth-century porcelain, of which she was very fond,
and her servants were forever chipping it as they washed up,
and one night she actually dismissed them for the evening,
and said, "I'm gonna wash up and show you how it can be done without chipping,"
and she found she was chipping things.
So she said, "I need to invent a machine
that will wash without chipping",
so the idea of the racks to put them all in separately so they never knock against each other
and it was a huge success and when her husband died in 1883,
leaving her virtually penniless, she actually needed it.
She built a small one and a big one, and a big one could do two-hundred dishes in two minutes.
And dry them.
It cost $250, which was a huge amount then.
We're talking about the 1880s.
It was really hotels and big institutions that bought them,
but it won first prize at the World's Fair in Chicago in 1893.
Is that her there?
That's the wonderful World's Fair of Chicago, which was a great event in its own.
They had the world's first Ferris Wheel, designed by George...?
Clooney.
... and Mildred!
- George Ferris! - Well done, you see,
you've made up for a little bit of embarrassment early on. But there we are.
In the words of Erma Bombeck, "Housework can be fatal,
if you do it right".
In Britain, the odds of being killed in an accident in your home
are the same as those of being killed in a car crash.
- In 2003, a woman in Scotland was killed in a freak dishwasher accident. - What happened?
- She slipped on the floor and fell onto a knife sticking out of the cutlery basket. - That's right.
- Surely you put the knife in... - I've cut my palm doing that. -...point down, don't you?
Well, sometimes you get a better clean on the blade if it's... if it's blade up.
I clean my knives in a crossbow!
Some people say it's foolish.
I put them in the hoover and set it on "blow"
and then just shoot water at them around the kitchen
as I sit with a plug, bare-wired, at my feet,
peeing on it!
To give it a better clean!
What was the second commonest cause of death for women up to the year 1800?
- Yes. - Er, kestrels.
- Bit of a wild stab in the dark. - Childbirth.
- Childbirth was number one. - Ooh, right.
- Very good that you... - Was there...
Was kestrels number two?
- No! It was number two was the one I was asking for and I took that to be your answer the first time round. - Oh, sorry.
Was it dehydration from having to lick the carpet clean 'cause hoovers hadn't been invented?
Was... Was... Were these... Were these deaths at night?
'Cause I could go with owls.
- Let me say it's no kind of bird of prey. - Not even a swan?
Not even... No.
Swans flying at women really hard, with stiff necks,
'til they went through their bodies like a javelin!
- No. It's a nice image... - Women lying all over the British countryside with swans...
I know... no. No.
- Was it horse-riding accidents? - No, that's, if I may say so a great deal more intelligent,
- and I don't mean that in a patronising way! - Beaten to a pulp by their husbands.
Oh, hello! No, domestic violence is not it.
- It was domestic, though. - Beaten to a pulp by their sons!
- That would still be domestic violence. - Falling down the stairs?
- Was it being ducked as a witch and drowning? - No. It was in trying to do something.
- It was engaged in a domestic activity. - Cooking. - Cooking is the right answer, yes!
- Death by cooking? - Yeah, largely because their dresses would catch fire.
Don't know why that's funny, but it is.
- Ah! The second most common cause of death?! - After childbirth, amongst ...
"What happened to yours?" "Oh, set light to herself in the kitchen."
I bet a lot of their husbands came in and went "Blimey, that's a big roasty you've prepared today!"
Well, a quick scoot 'round now some handy household hints that I want you to help me with.
Jo, what's a good way to create the impression that you've cleaned the house when you haven't?
Just lock the door and kill everyone.
This is to create that awful word: "freshness".
- Open the window? - It... Well, you'd think, frankly...
Drink some lavender water and have a piss?
Every time you get a minicab home, nick the little tree off of its mirror.
I'm no fan of this tip and it only works in the autumn and winter months.
You spray or apply furniture polish to a radiator
and it fills the room with the smell of furniture polish.
These hints are either from a book called Trade Secrets by Katherine Lapworth and Alexandra Fraser,
- or from Superhints by the Lady... - I know those two. - Do you know...
They're slags, the pair of them.
What do you know... There's a book called Superhints by the Lady Wardington.
- Yeah, I know her. - Do you know the Lady Wardington?
- She's a bitch. - Is she?
- So, you know, let's get on to more practical publications. - All right. Okay,
Jessica, we'll try this one. How would you treat silk
- like spaghetti and vice-versa? - What...
- Store it in a jar, or... - It's...
- cook it with bolognese? - There's something you can do to each of them.
Throw it against the wall; see if it sticks.
- Ah! But what sort of wall? - Kitchen.
A kitchen wall.
I take it round the house to find a wall.
"Can I come in?"
"Mind if I come in?"
"Your dinner's ready!"
And where would we get silk? Why would you throw silk against a wall?
- Well, in passion, you know, the... - Having a passionate fit, yes!
You'd throw silk against a brick wall.
- It would stick if it were... - If it was silk.
- If it were silk, exactly. - It's a test to see if it's not polyester or crimpling or something.
It's ruined then, once you peel it off again.
Well it doesn't stick like spaghetti. It just catches, and you just pull it off.
Took the paint off my kitchen wall with spaghetti.
Yes, but the silk wouldn't take anything off your brick wall, that's all vice-versa.
Well, nonetheless, Brenda wouldn't chance it now.
If she saw any silk stuck on the wall, she'd leave it.
- So, Phill. What would you clean with A) a stick of rhubarb, and ... - A dog's arse. Next.
- A dog's arse, right. - Quite right. Get it right in there.
- One use per stick of rhubarb? - I wouldn't be putting it in the crumble,
if that's what you're asking!
- Oh, no! Brown sauce is the next one. - Brown sauce? - Yes.
- I'm bracing myself for the sirens but coins. - Yeah!
- Windows. - They would... They would clean... Windows, no. I don't think so. No windows. No.
No, really, I mean coins was a good answer. I mean Copper.
Copper and brass, yeah.
But I don't want you to get all excited and think "My God, I've got two points for that",
because actually, the rhubarb... sticking it up a dog's arse is not right.
Some people say aluminium saucepans come up lovely with rhubarb and certainly silver.
- Silver does very well. - You clean silver with rhubarb?
- Absolutely! - How do you do that? With a sort of stick?
Yeah, you just rub it in like that and then you buff it off.
Because if I walked into a room and saw a man rubbing rhubarb on my silver,
I would beat him to within an inch of his life,
and call the police!
And then you walk in there and he's doing what you've recommended: "Morning!"
The dog's in the other corner looking a bit nervous.
Well anyway, it seems to be true. These are good, ecologically sound things.
We may have to return to the days when we used lemon and vinegar and brown sauce, and...
I'd never get me coppers out me pocket and think, "They look a bit dull!"
I... You're the ones who suggested coins! I was saying a kettle for example
- or any other... - No one has a kettle like that!
Where do you plug in that... Look at it!
We don't all live in a fluffy-duffy Dickensian world of charm like you!
"Oh, there goes the kettle, and on the Aga!"
It's a perfectly sensible way of cooking food and preparing meals!
It keeps the kitchen warm!
- No wonder the fucking Twinings had you, pal! It was... - I feel... I feel a mad .
"...of proper kettles, and proper porcelain tea!
China! Oh, England! Cricket!"
Can you do an advert where you're cleaning a kettle with some brown sauce?
- I jolly well will now! - Go on! - Stephen Fry for HP! "Baaah!"
Oh, you're ineffably silly, but totally on fire, and that's wonderful.
You should have points somewhere along the line, but not for the rhubarb up the dog's arse.
Alan, Alan, Alan, your chance to shine but not, in this case, kettles.
What is the cheapest way to remove blood stains from clothes?
Let's imagine you cut yourself shaving and you get a spot there.
- The cheapest way? - Yeah. - You have to go down to the river and beat it on a rock.
Quicker than that. You can keep the shirt on, almost.
- Hot water? Spit? - Ooh, you're right. Your own saliva.
Yeah. Suck it out.
Can I just say I'm so impressed you've got a picture of my husband
in our fantasy sex costumes?
- What do you wear in this scene? - Oh, erm, I sort of, kind of, chop one of my limbs off,
and kind of make myself white, and just lie there like this:
- And he comes in... - Looms in.
gives me an injection, cleans me arse with a bit of rhubarb,
and then we watch Neighbours. It's great!
You see? There's no need to go out on the town beating people up
and drinking Bacardi Breezers. You can have an innocent time...
I know about hoodies and pikeys and chavs!
Now ladies, put up your feet a moment because this one "is for father and younger son only!"
Phill and Alan,
tell us something interesting about door hinges.
Door hinges used to be made out of wood
- Yes. - erm, but they weren't very effective... and, so...
then they started making them out of metal, and it's... it's got a lot better since then.
You can clean 'em with brown sauce.
That's true! That is true.
Have you ever hung a door on its hinges? Have you ever fitted hinges to a door?
- Yeah, we have. - We have. - You have?
All right, so how do you space the hinges out?
Let's say the top hinge is six inches from the lintel.
- Yes? - Where would the bottom hinge be? Six inches from the floor?
- Er, no. It would be lower. - Lower? - I like the fact that he's actually taking seriously
- that we really have hung doors. - I have hung a door!
- Oh, she has really hung a door!
- I've hung a bloke. - I bet I hung it wrong.
The point is this. Let's say this is the jamb.
So this one is six inches from the top,
but that's nine inches up,
in order to create the effect of them being equally spaced.
Because you're always looking down at the bottom one, and there's foreshortening.
If you actually equally space them, it looks wrong;
it looks as if the lower one is too low.
So you have to do it to that... But in America, it's five and ten.
And in some Western states of America, it's seven and eleven like a clock
- No! - Yes! It is! - My God!
Seven inches down, eleven up! I know, it's a shocker! You heard it here first, Jo.
- I'm frightened now! - I bet you are.
- Is there a doctor here? - I want to imagine
you measuring your door hinges when you get home and saying, "Stephen was right!
- Six, nine!" - I'm going to send you a picture
- of me measuring my door hinges naked! - Yes, please! I want it.
But the middle one... the middle one goes exactly in between the two,
so there's the six, the nine and then the one in the middle.
- And there's the interesting thing about doors. - Doors are seventy-eight inches long.
- All doors? - Domestic doors, generally.
- You might have to take a bit off. - That's six foot six.
- How do you know that? - Bought a door recently.
You see? And who hung it? Who hung it on its hinges?
- My friend Keith, who's a carpenter. - Well, he'll know about that.
He's also a stand-up comedian, so it's a right laugh having him round.
Oh, my God.
The door handle kept turning like that and turning and turning and turning,
and I couldn't get into the loo.
And I really needed to go,
so I kicked the door in!
- And it was the only time I've ever kicked a door in. - It's rather good! - Brilliant!
- Great feeling! - It was a really cheap flimsy door.
- Was Brenda in there? - And it smashed like that,
and it exploded, and the door bit fell down, there was wood everywhere,
and I burst in... and had a crap!
Lovely! Very nice!
When, er, when I left university, me and my friend Hugh Laurie shared a house,
and we had a bit of work to do, and our plasterers... do you know who they were?
- Cannon and Ball! - Charlie Higson.
Charlie Higson and Paul Whitehouse. were our plasterers, yes.
- And you were their inspiration! - Yes.
- For so many characters! - Yes, exactly.
"Stephen, the fellows in the hall are awfully funny!"
That's Hugh, is it? Right. I'm telling. Baah.
"What do you say we, er, listen in on them and nick a few jokes?" "Baaah! Baaah!"
I think the boot was on the other foot!
I think the boot was very much on the other foot. They overheard us being amusing in the kitchen.
Now, finally, we plunge into the cupboard under the stairs to entangle ourselves
in the kite strings of General Ignorance, so fingers on buzzers,
and first one: Name a drink made from beans.
- Jo got in first. - Oh, it's got to be coffee.
Oh! No.
No, coffee is made from seeds of the coffee plant. It has no beans.
It has cherries and berries, and it has, er, seeds, but no... although we call them beans...
- Coffee beans, but no beans? - It isn't a bean in the botanical sense. A bean.
Like Mr. Bean or bean beans, beans, haricot beans, mung beans, runner beans, French beans...
- I know different types of beans! - Oh, good. Phew.
Kidney beans. It's not, in that sense, a bean.
Bean bean bean bean bean. So that's it, you could've said that...
- Baked bean juice! - Yep, yes, or pea soup.
- You call it that? - You could've said pea soup. - I call it baked bean juice.
- What, the juice from a baked bean can? - Yeah.
- The tomato sauce? - Yeah.
- It's sugar. It's sugar and water and tomato sauce... - So, Brainiac, what can we clean with that? - Aha!
There's researchers out the back now sticking flowers in it, pouring it over dogs...
Do you know, I was at university, and there was a young man who was called Heinz.
I knew it wasn't his real name because he was actually an Etonian,
rather sort of blonde, effete guy. He was really nice. "Oh, hi, actually!"
Really super guy, very funny. Everything was "hilarious".
"God, that's really funny, actually. That was seriously funny."
Er, really nice. And... And I asked a... a friend who had been at school with him...
I said, you know, "His name's William or Piers or Hamish," or whatever, you know.
I said, "Why does everyone call him Heinz?"
They said, "It was when he was at school. Somebody burst into his room without knocking
and he had a mound of baked beans all over his knob and he was wanking in it!"
And... So this poor guy is called... And everyone's called him Heinz! He went "Hi, yeah, absolutely."
I used to put boiling hot cheese on top of my beans, I hope he didn't ...
Oh, on top of your beans! Thank God for that!
- Is beans a euphemism in this case? - And when you go in and he's there, what do you say in that situation?
- "Sorry!" - "Black pepper sir?"
What kind of culinary accident do you have to have...
to discover the pleasure of the beans...
- on the old fella? - He split it in his lap!
- He just sat down to watch the telly. - "Ahhh!" - "Oh, no. Ooh... "
"Mind you... !"
So, yes, pea soup, you could have said, of course, is something you drink that's made from beans.
Er, coffee is really a fruit and made from seeds, not beans.
Now, have you ever slid down a banister?
Yes.
Well... I have to say...
Yes, I have!
Please don't destroy Alan's childhood!
There is, bless him! Yes, the point is this,
that the little yellow thin up-and-downies are balusters,
sometimes wrongly called "banisters" and the bit on the top is called a "balustrade",
so you should be sliding down a balustrade, not a banister.
- When I was at college, I slid down a barrister. - Did you?
Did you hit yourself on the knob at the end?
- Very good indeed! - "Ooh!"
Anyway. And now, for two hundred points, what did Wordsworth smell?
- Well, daffodils, obviously! - Oh, dear, that's minus... minus...
- Clouds. He smelt clouds! - He smelt clouds? No, he didn't,
when he wandered lonely as one, he didn't, no.
The answer, I'm afraid, is "nothing". He was anosmic.
He had no sense of smell at all.
He could not smell anything.
It was Robert Southey and various others that reported on this, he had no sense of smell.
- That why he's looking kind of worried? - He is looking very worried there.
- That's, er... - He's going, "Oh, what does it smell like?!"
He only makes two references to smells in all his poems.
You can be congenitally anosmic, or you can get it from a bang on the head
or occasionally from a vitamin A deficiency.
So, it's time, ladies and gentlemen, one and all to look at the scores.
Do you know,
for the first time on the show and she's the outright winner with minus three, it's Jessica Stevenson!
Phill comes in second for the men with minus four!
And Jo.
- Third place with minus eighteen! Ohh! - Minus-18. Bloody hell.
Which means the man that'll be cleaning the studio
and waxing the floor is none other than Alan Davies on minus sixty-four!
That's all from Jo, Jessica, Phill, Alan, and from me,
and I leave you with one last good housekeeping hint, courtesy of Viz magazine's Top Tips.
"Press Rice Krispies into the treads of your car tyres
for that expensive gravel drive look."
Happy hoovering, good bye. Thank you very much.
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