APPLAUSE AND CHEERING
Good evening, good evening, good evening, good evening
and welcome to QI for another reckless poke of the screwdriver
into the fuse box of the unknown.
Joining me in the cupboard under the stairs tonight
are the slightly shocking Sean Lock... Thank you.
The very current Rich Hall.
The positively electro-magnetic Jo Brand!
And the wiry young shaver socket, Alan Davies.
Tonight, we cast an eclectic light on the subject of electricity.
Let's complete the circuit. Sean goes...
Jo goes...
Rich goes...
And Alan goes...
Good old Alan.
Now, don't forget, each edition in the E-series
encloses an elephant.
The first to spot it by waving your elephant card
will win our generous "Elephant in the room" bonus.
ELEPHANT CHARGING CALL Like so.
Otherwise, simply electrify me with interestingness.
Anyway, the atmosphere's already absolutely... Electric.
You'll have to do better than that!
Now, question one, I think.
I'm naked.
It's pouring with rain.
Can you give me a good reason why I should crouch down with my bottom in the air?
Jo? Steven, I wouldn't have thought you'd need a good reason.
Thank you for that. I don't think you need a reason cos nobody will ask what you're doing.
It's a clear signal you want some time alone.
I'm just picturing that image.
One of the most erotic I've ever...
It would make a great Athena poster!
Your buttocks in the rain. On bedroom walls up and down the country.
I think it's because your bottom is the least likely part to be struck by lightning.
You're sort of in the right... I'm going with the electric thing.
Right. It's to do with lightning. It's a good stance to adopt
if you're caught in a lightning storm. Can't you just moon?
Lightning, everyone!
What should you not do?
Climb to the top of a pylon, or something like that?
Hold a 40-foot metal pole.
"Come on!"
Don't put on a metal hat on the golf course. Don't stand under a tree.
What's the problem with being under a tree?
They're more likely to be struck by lightning. What happens?
A big flash, a lot of flame.
All the squirrels fall on your head.
You might get burned. The sap boils in an instantaneous way
and the tree explodes.
You're covered in splinters. The best thing is to get into a car.
Really? Yeah. Drive away from the rain.
Close the door and stay in the car. It acts as a "Faraday cage".
It bars electro-magnetic fields.
It's 30 million volts you can get in a bolt of lightning.
Why can't we harness that power, Stephen?
Are you more likely to be struck if you're a man or woman? Man.
Men are out and about a lot more, aren't they?
You're six times more likely to be struck if you're a man.
The man has to hold the umbrella,
cos if the woman holds it, it keeps jabbing the man in the eye.
That's why he's more likely to be struck.
Is it because women wear more rubber than men?
It conducts through them. A lot of women wear rubber pants. Do they?
Did you not know that? No. No.
Not really my area.
The...wire... Do you have wire in bras?
Does one? You do if you have massive knockers that are in danger of injuring people.
I do fall into that category. You're not doing badly.
Thank you. A fulsome pair of fun-bags there.
Do you know what? That was almost heterosexual.
Well. I may be on the turn.
It wasn't, though, was it?
I'd like to hear you whisper that when you're bent over naked in the rain!
"A fulsome pair of fun bags"!
People around you are getting struck by lightning. Never mind!
The wire won't attract the lightning but it will superheat when you're struck.
So your bosoms blow up.
How exciting! I'm gonna have a go!
There's an actor I worked with and he was walking along the street
and a manhole cover next to him got struck by lightning.
It flew up in the air and landed on his head.
Instead of being hit by a manhole
he should have been showing his man hole to the lightning.
The quite interesting thing is, how often does lightning strike the earth on an average day?
Four. Four?!
We've got four. I can say it's more than four.
If anybody would like to... Is it five?
It's 17 million times a day.
No way! No!
It's about 200 times a second.
Why can't we harness that power, Stephen?
Perhaps we should.
How many people in Britain are killed each year by lightning strikes?
12. 30. Two.
It's between three and six.
Not very many. Four or five?
Four or five would do it! In America?
Probably a lot more because there's more of us.
400 Americans a year die of it. About 1,000 are injured. One American, seven times he was struck.
A park ranger at the Shenandoah National Park.
I know that guy!
Well, he did die in 1983.
I knew him in 1982, the last time he got hit.
Do you know how he died? He was very testy.
Very irritable.
His name was Roy Sullivan.
That's not what they called him, though. They called him "Burnie".
He shot himself in 1983.
Jeez. He should have just crouched down with his man-hole in the air!
If you're caught in an electrical storm, don't shelter under a tree.
The best thing is get into your car.
Failing that, crouch down to a ball with your head down to your knees and hands clasped behind your head.
Now, I have a conundrum for you.
Can horses catch eels?
Rather attractive horse, isn't it?
Not a bad looking eel, either! You prefer the eel? I like the eel.
You can do more with the eel, but the horse...
It's very hard to get a horse down your pants.
It genuinely is a very attractive horse.
Mmm. Nice hair.
I bet he's a wanker, that horse.
Bet he runs round going, "Look at me!"
Anyway, can horses catch eels? That's the question.
I think they can. How would they go about it?
With a net.
There was this German who observed in South America
the way humans used horses to catch eels.
A particular kind of eel. Was it an electric eel?
It was, because that's our theme of the day.
An electric eel. How would you use a horse to catch...
Why can't you catch an electric eel... Do they hold a fork with bread on it
and try and get the eels to toast it with their electricity?
You have to be on a horse or you'll get electrocuted.
Or something. The problem with electric eels is you get a very nasty shock. 650 volts.
Put you right off it. The horses were sent into the water.
The eels would go crazy and discharge all their electricity
until their batteries were flat and they could be harvested.
The poor horses had heart attacks and died of fright
and drowned and got very upset. So it was rather mean. Got very upset?
Yes. "Distressed" is the word we use of animals.
"Don't like it in the water. There's eels!"
Oww!
They wouldn't do it to that nice pretty one, I hope.
You like the tousled hair look.
There are boys all over England doing themselves in your style now.
They'll send you horsey photos.
CLEARS THROAT
Half of an electric eel's whole physiology is devoted to creating electricity.
They have a powerful kick, but once it's used up, they're easy to catch.
They're not actually eels. They're a knife fish.
69 species there are of electric fish,
including the torpedo fish.
That comes from the Latin "torpore" meaning "to numb".
It was used as an anaesthetic by the Romans
and from that the underwater missile was named.
Here's a big question.
In 1903, Thomas Alva Edison released a movie
whose title consisted of three words two of which begin with "E".
What was it, and who starred in it?
I know, we've nearly forgotten them, but here it is.
ELEPHANT TRUMPETING
You're absolutely right.
It was called "Electrocuting An Elephant".
He made a film in which an elephant was electrocuted. ..Hooray!
You win those points. How many points? Ten points.
APPLAUSE
Now why would Edison want to electrocute an elephant?
He wanted to electrocute the biggest thing he could, to show he was good at it.
Actually, it was the reverse, you see.
He believed his direct current was safe and wouldn't hurt people and didn't electrocute.
He wanted to destroy the reputation of alternating current
which was owned by Westinghouse, so he used the word "Westinghoused" to mean electrocuted.
This elephant Topsy was sentenced to death on Coney Island
because Topsy had killed three human beings.
Was he going to be hanged, poisoned? What would happen to Topsy?
Hanged?! It's quite a picture, isn't it?
Oh, poor elephant!
So Edison won the right to electrocute him in public to show how dangerous it was.
"This thing in your homes will kill an elephant."
He filmed it as a PR film. Like a snuff film!
A snuff film, exactly.
He gave it 460g of cyanide and potassium, in carrots,
he had wooden sandals lined with copper put on her feet -
it was a she elephant -
and then a current of 6,600 volts sent through her body.
She died without a trumpet or a groan. He filmed the event.
He wanted electrocution to be known as "Westinghoused".
He trampled... He just went nuts and trampled people?
No, he hid in their rooms when they came home. He jumped out, strangled them...
He got away with it for months.
Nobody would have caught him but... A cunning disguise! ..he left tell-tale signs around the flat!
A big elephant-shaped hole in the wall!
The first murder on Topsy's hands was killing a trainer
who, frankly, deserved to die
because the trainer gave her a lit cigarette to eat.
And it killed him? Yeah!
"Don't do that again!"
I like the sound of Topsy. She's a little bit...
Some elephants are evolving that don't have tusks. Did you know?
Because the ones with tusks get poached. Get shot.
So the ones with smaller tusks don't get shot.
So the small tusk gene lives on more frequently
and there's elephants that don't grow tusks.
I like that. I like it.
There's some tigers now that are being made of Axminster.
Now stop it!
Nice animals. Not as sexy as certain horses, but...
Raaarghh! Anyway,
let's raise the stakes now with something more technical.
How fast do the electrons move along an electric wire?
They don't.
KLAXON SOUNDS
The very words we thought you might use.
Really?
I would have said something... It's really very, very fast.
KLAXON
I would have said that. I didn't say that.
I would have said about 30 or 40 miles an hour. Deceptively slow.
I would have said it's a bit of a crap question, really. Why so?
Well, because modern physicists see electrons
as something you would call probability density functions.
That is an absolutely precise description
of what quantum physics does call an electron.
I'm immensely impressed. I have to give you five points, if not ten!
Astounding!
It was exactly that.
They do call them that. They are dimensionalist entities
that are quite hard to understand.
They do travel along electrical wires, and you're right to say slow.
They're actually 0.03 miles per hour.
Snail's pace along the wire.
But electricity itself is incredibly quick.
Think of waves. If you had a tube full of marbles,
and you pushed a marble in one end, another marble would come out the other end,
almost instantly, but the marbles inside are travelling slowly.
It's the wave front that moves very fast.
That's how the electrons travel along,
literally at a snail's pace,
the speed of a snail. Does that work if you get ten snails together? If you push the end snail?
We'll try that later.
It's a lovely experiment. It must be done.
Now we come on to our experimental round.
What is the most interesting thing you can do
with the objects on the trays beneath your desks?
Oh!
Tell them what you have in front of you.
I have lasagne... Lasagne.
A gherkin, which I'm liable to eat cos I'm ravenous.
I've got a bit of cable.
You can heat it up. Heat the gherkin. Heat the lasagne.
MAKES CLICKING NOISES
Plug the thing into the thing. I think this is how Alan Sugar started Amstrad.
LAUGHTER
APPLAUSE
It's one of is first computers. "There you go, 30 quid."
You're absolutely right. You've done the right thing.
It's some kind of... Gherkins because they're pickled.
And then... I don't know anything.
That's honest, if nothing else.
Jesus!
Yes?
This is part of Kate Moss's new range at Top Shop.
Size zero!
It's... Nothing's happening!
No, but the gherkin will behave as a light bulb.
If you put a charge through a gherkin, it will glow.
The lasagne can provide the power. Because it's salty, and salt is an electrolyte,
the two types of metal in the lid and in the pan,
as long as they don't touch each other and short out...
One of our elves experimented over the weekend
demonstrating how a gherkin light bulb works.
You can see a lit gherkin. This is one of our elves.
Wow! Isn't that great?
It's like kids' TV in the '70s, isn't it? Yeah!
Where's the lasagne? ..Then we unplug.
Well, unfortunately, you would need a lasagne
perhaps appropriately, the size of the floor plan of the Gherkin Building.
I'm having one of those when I get home tonight!
About five football pitches-worth.
If I'm cycling home tonight, I shouldn't put a lasagne on the crossbar.
"No, I have got lights, Officer!"
"Careful, it's hot!"
These will be in the shops soon.
The lasagne pod!
As far as trying this at home goes,
wiring a gherkin to the electric lights,
don't, obviously. Be sensible and don't do anything because I tell you to or tell you not to.
Live your own lives!
Be sensible. Try and do that.
Shag horses! Yeah! Come on!
Now, in an abrupt "volte-face",
we turn face-to-face with the ghastly spectre
of general ignorance. Fingers on electrical devices.
What is the difference between a ship and a boat?
Yes, Jo?
Has a ship got curtains?
That's just about the oddest answer I've ever heard to any question.
No? It may have curtains, but so may a boat.
Ships are bigger. KLAXON
They are bigger. Ships have lifeboats. Boats don't have any because they're already a boat.
We're talking navy here. In the navy,
a ship is any vessel which is...
..Named.
No. Surface.
Ships, frigates, destroyers, anything like that
except little dinghies and life-boats, which are boats.
A boat is a submarine? A boat is a submarine
and some are bigger than three frigates put together.
So what's the difference? A boat is a submarine.
A submarine goes underwater.
LAUGHTER
Sorry, Stephen. What about like a...
But what about...
What about like a rowing boat? Is that a ship, then?
They don't have them in the navy! Yes, you do!
They don't have rowing boats in the navy, do they? They might have oars on a lifeboat.
But it's not a vessel of the line. Is it a rowing ship, then?
If it's the navy, yes, it's a rowing ship.
So the only boats in the navy are submarines.
Yes. That's complete bollocks!
It's true. The only vessels of the line that are called a boat
are submarines in the navy.
I... I fail to agree.
I'll tell you something else.
There's not two moons.
In German there's das Schiff and das Boot. Das "boht".
Spelt with two o's, but pronounced "boat". No, it isn't. It is.
It's pronounced "boht". Not unless you're from Newcastle!
I was in Germany for the World Cup
and two lads came up and said, "Do you know where t' jump house is?"
Jump house. Jump house?
Jump house is the slang term for a brothel, turns out.
Modern German. Soon as they said it, I knew. "Up there".
GERMAN ACCENT There's something so camp about modern German.
Know what they call a mobile phone? It's so camp! Handy.
Mein Handy.
SPEAKS GERMAN
Mein handy!
Oh, where is my handy?
Are you hosting the Baftas this year?
No. No?
It's a shame. You could do it in that voice.
GERMAN ACCENT Hello and welcome to the Baftas.
Stop it! No.
APPLAUSE
Anyway, it's a purely naval tradition.
In true English you could call it a ship or a boat, and who could say nay.
But that was the nature of our question, foolish as it was.
As well as inventing the battery, Alessandro Volta,
after whom the volt is named, also discovered methane.
Which animal contributes most methane to the atmosphere?
Yes? The cow.
KLAXON
Ants.
No, termites.
Is the right answer!
Well done!
I only...
I only know that because I had a swanky business lunch with the producer and he let it slip!
STEPHEN GASPS
What do I do? For the honesty, I'm inclined to let you keep your points.
What sort of showbiz lunch do you talk about termite farts?
Where's your career going?
This IS my career, mate.
You're in it!
Can I say, I was there and I completely ignored it.
Methane is a much worse greenhouse gas than CO2.
In fact, it's about 23 times worse!
They are staggeringly populous.
Why don't we feed them on something like a clear soup?
A nice broth that hasn't got pungent vegetable matter in it. Like that.
You could never make that many termite bowls.
How do cows produce methane? What do cows do?
Farting. They don't fart it. They burp it, oddly enough.
Oh. So if you went round with a lighter
and they went... (BURPS)
Presumably, yes! Maybe that's where the dragon myth came from. Very good!
It burped a bit of methane, set light to it, "Oh! The dragon!"
How did you two end up having dinner with the producer?
Uh-oh! You weren't invited? Enjoying lunch. You weren't invited?
No. I wasn't either. Want to see what I got?
That.
LAUGHTER
Why did they get it?
Back to termites.
They have suicide bombers. Termites have suicide bombers
who guard the hill.
When predators approach, they explode and produce a sticky mess
which glues the place up and prevents ants attacking.
All righty. Now.
Why do thousands of Americans call the emergency services on Christmas Day?
Cos they haven't got any friends?
They're lonely and drunk.
They get a touch-tone phone and go...
TO TUNE OF JINGLE BELLS "9-1-1 9-1-1 64324".
APPLAUSE
Very good. Is it cos they eat so much
that their fingers chub up... KLAXON
That's not the reason.
What happens on Christmas Day in particular?
Presents in the morning? Presents. Do they phone the fire brigade to thank them for the presents?
Do they get things that they hurt themselves with? Or make calls with!
Suppose somebody gave you a mobile phone. Is it a handy?
Ein Handy... Ein handy. ..fur Weihnacht.
It's your first mobile and you're excited.
And you slip and it goes up your arse.
So you phone the emergency service just to see if it's worked?
You can't call anybody else cos you haven't got a network.
All phones in America, whether they have a sim card or not
have to, by law, be able to call 911, the emergency services.
Doesn't that annoy them? Must drive them frantic.
Lastly, we've come to the end of our quizlet.
We have one more question on electricity, our favourite subject.
Why wouldn't a Russian family call their son Power Station or Industrialisation?
Cos they're not names. Don't be stupid. They're not names?
No. They are.
BUZZER They are names.
Why wouldn't they call them... They're girls' names.
They're girls' names is the right answer! Well done!
Power station is "Electrostanzia".
It's a girl's name.
"Industrializazia" is also a girl's name.
But if you had a boy, you could call him "Kombine", combine harvester,
or you could call him...
SPEAKS RUSSIAN
..which is 23rd February.
But this is actually a tradition in the rustic area. In Ukraine,
there are names like...
SPEAKS RUSSIAN
.."Don't kill me, Father"
Would you believe?
Is it like the... It's a Red Indian thing
where you come out the wigwam and the first thing you see... Do they see a power station?
Do you know what my husband's Native American name is?
"Sits in front of telly farting".
If you say it quickly, it sounds quite nice.
Especially if you say it in a Russian accent.
SAYS IT WITH RUSSIAN ACCENT
I like your camp German accent the best.
I'd like you to... Can you just do Handy again for me?
Where's mein Handy?
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
Very bad.
Before we close, Stephen, the horse is actually here!
Now, then, I don't know about you. But I have, I think, reached...
Neigh!
I have reached the end of my fuse and it's time to look at the scores.
With her name in lights,
with ten points it's Jo Brand!
In second place with one point, Rich Hall!
In third place with minus 12 points, it's Sean Lock!
Thank you!
And finally...
with minus 21 points, it's Alan Davies!
So with our duties electrically discharged,
it's goodbye from Rich, Sean, Jo, Alan and me.
Good night!
Subtitles by Moira Diamond Red Bee Media - 2007
www.tvsubtitles.net