APPLAUSE
CHEERING
Jambo! Jambo! Jambo! Jambo!
And welcome aboard the SS QI
as we slip our moorings and go exploring.
- Joining me at the captain's table tonight are the utterly intrepid Sean Lock! - Hello.
The completely indomitable Rich Hall.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
The entirely indispensable Bill Bailey!
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
And the quite frankly indescribable Alan Davies!
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Now, before we strike out into the unknown,
don't forget our special E series, Elephant in the Room bonus.
- LOUD TRUMPETING - That's the one.
Could win one of you pioneers ten glass beads.
Is this what people use when they're meeting an elephant in an airport?
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
- Anyway, hats off! It's time to warm to our theme. - What are these for?
- These are for keeping away flies. It's a fly whisk. - It's like Phil Spector.
LAUGHTER
I've got Kate Moss over here.
LAUGHTER
Very good.
IN HIGH VOICE: Oh, Pete, I'm so bored!
Come over here! I'll shoot ya!
How do we sound? Sean goes...
THEME MUSIC: "Star Trek"
Rich goes...
THEME MUSIC: "Indiana Jones"
Very appropriate.
Yes, thank you. And Bill goes...
FAST-TEMPO THEME MUSIC
And Alan goes...
THEME MUSIC: "Steptoe And Son"
LAUGHTER
So, if everyone has their map and their compasses and a keen pair of mosquito net pants,
let's plunge into the unfamiliar country that is question one.
One of the biggest problems faced by explorers is that of language.
Alan and Bill, I would like you two to imagine that you are two of the Pilgrim Fathers
- who arrived on The Mayflower on the coast of America. - Right.
And I would like Rich and Sean to imagine that you are native Americans who meet them.
- How would you communicate? - I would immediately read from the Book of Common Prayer.
- Hail, savage. - LAUGHTER
Hi. How are you?
LAUGHTER
- What's that? A Toby jug? - Yes. - "Where's the pub?" - Foaming pint of beer.
Who-pati, hapa-temity, etivity...
Never Mind The Buzzcocks.
Bloody hell!
Jonathan Creek!
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
Hapa-day-pata, I can't believe my eyes!
Not just Never Mind The Buzzcocks, other things as well.
I do stand-up. Blah-blah-blah! Ha-ha-ha-ha! And piano!
Playing in hotels.
You think you're the first explorers here, don't you?
Where do you think these eyeglasses came from?
The extraordinary thing is, between them, Rich and Bill are absolutely right.
The first thing said by a native American who met the Plymouth Brethren was -
"Could I have some beer?" He asked for beer in English.
- The Indian did? - Yes. He spoke fluent English. He'd crossed the Atlantic six times.
In 1620, the Pilgrim Fathers were not the first people to land in America.
- It's a trick question. - Yes. His name was Squanto.
But this particular one was called Samoset.
IN WEST COUNTRY ACCENT: Somerset?
What did he say then? "Get off my land!"
Have you got some cider?
You bloody Pilgrim Fathers! Get off my land!
- He learned his English from fishermen and Squanto. - And The Archers? - Probably.
- "Are you Buzzcocks?" - But instead of getting beer, he got cheese and a bit of duck.
They helped them survive their first year because they had nothing to eat.
- All there was was Maine lobster which they thought was hideous. - But they were about to starve
- and then they said, "Here's some turkey." - Yes. And some cranberries.
- Then they killed them all with guns. - Unfortunately, yes.
There was 50 years of peace, though. In fact, Squanto brokered a peace that lasted for 50 years.
He was kidnapped by a British captain around 1605, which was 15 years before The Mayflower sailed.
He lived in England for nine years. Then he returned home. Then another British captain kidnapped him
and tried to sell him into slavery in Spain. He escaped back to London, took a ship to Newfoundland
and as it was too far to walk home, he sailed back to England.
And he went on an expedition to New England and crossed the ocean again and was now fluent in English.
Now, buzz when you see something quite interesting here.
First one to buzz.
- Oh. Something... - Going off the edge of the map.
I'm not interested yet.
- Time's up! There is an elephant in the room! - An elephant? Oh, no! - Can you not see the elephant?
I just... I couldn't because of Alan's head.
That is an elephant on a map disguised as a contour. It's a British army map made in the 1920s.
And the soldiers responsible for surveying that part of the Gold Coast, now Ghana, just got bored
and traced an elephant. They thought it was a very remote part that no-one would ever visit.
So they just made an elephant with a contour mark on its back.
And it was years before anybody noticed.
- Those cartographers are right characters. - Aren't they just!
Let's go somewhere less unnerving - Paris. What's the best way to get from the Eiffel Tower to the Louvre
- without seeing any French people? - Underwater - go along the river.
Or at lunchtime, because they're all stuffing their faces with pate, aren't they?
- They always break for lunch, apart from the tourists. - Do it with your eyes shut. Ha-ha! - Ha-ha!
Wear a blindfold. Say, "Where's the Louvre?" People might say, "There's no point, it's all art."
"But I want to experience the ambience without seeing any of you Frenchies."
A big, long line that you would fly down from the Eiffel Tower - zoom!
You were very close, Alan. We were trying to get you to talk about the remarkable sewage system of Paris.
Their sewers echo their streets exactly. Under the Champs-Elysees, there's a sewer as wide as it.
They even have street signs in the sewers for the streets.
If you knew Paris above ground, you'd never get lost. You could walk along these wonderful sewers.
There they are. And they used to have excursions.
- Up until 1975 you could get a boat every last Thursday and Saturday of the month. - But it's full of shit.
You'd have to really hate French people.
IN FRENCH ACCENT: "Here are some turds from the deuxieme quartier."
How do you think they clean them?
- What? The people? - No! The sewers. - Everyone has to flush their toilet at once with no poo in it.
- LAUGHTER - I love the way your mind works, Alan Davies.
- It'd probably do it, though. - I use the word "works" quite wrongly. Could you press your buzzer, Rich?
THEME MUSIC: "Indiana Jones"
- They roll a giant cleaning ball down it. - Yes, well done! A good cultural reference there.
They could train elephants and put bristles over their back and lead them...
No, it's a big ball that scrapes the side. They send it down with a whoosh of water and it works well.
- Where would you put your ladder if you wanted to get into space? - On top of the spaceship on the rack.
A red flag hanging off it so other spaceships don't follow too closely.
It's a conceptual question. How about this? Up against the wall of silence.
LAUGHTER
You should have railings built round you and people could worship you as some kind of modern Buddha.
- You've got the look, I have to say! It's a good look, the Buddha look. - Rural Buddhas. - Yes.
Wisdom and cheap cider.
You'd assume the answer is you put the ladder on the highest point like Everest.
- Yes. That wouldn't... - You couldn't get a good foothold on it.
It's called a space elevator. It's a genuine idea.
Many people believed a way to save the space programme a lot of money
was to build a HUGE elevator that goes from Earth and is counterweighted at the other end
and spin round incredibly fast. And you would have elevators on it that would go up and down.
With a phone that didn't work in it. "I'm stuck on the 14th...
"Kind of about 87,000 miles."
"There's some kind of a door in the roof, maybe we can...?"
Arthur C Clarke believed in it. But NASA spent a lot of money on it.
But you'd have to do it on the Equator where the Earth goes at its fastest.
Like the end of a record, it goes faster in the middle.
What about trampolines? You have a huge trampoline. Then higher up, there's another one half a mile up.
Then another one. So it's like a staircase going up into space. Then there's a bouncy castle at the top
and a bloke charging you a quid.
I tell you the best way to get into space, I've just realised it and it's brilliant. I'll be so rich.
- Bubble. - A bubble? - A bubble. Get in a bubble. Just float up there.
- One day. - I mean a big bubble. I'm not talking about those bubbles you see. "That's not a bubble."
- Stupid little ones. - "You call that a bubble, mate? You should see my bubble." You get in a big bubble
- and off you go. - Fabulous. - Yeah.
Who wants in?
IN HIGH VOICE: Me! Me! Me! Me! Me!
This is like the Dragons' Den for cranky ideas.
How about this? You could just imagine.
Oh, Bill. That's so beautiful.
'Tis the wisdom of the rural Buddha.
- The Dalai Farmer. - Wahey!
- CHEERING AND APPLAUSE - Very good.
- Excellent. - I've been struggling with that for five minutes! "There has to be something in this!"
Your synapses are firing beautifully. We'd use them to fire people into space.
What do you do if you're in space and one of your crew goes mad?
LAUGHTER
For example...
He doesn't look mad, though, does he? He looks well fed.
It's like a mixture between smug and orgasm.
- A "smorgasm"? - Is there like a strict code? - Well, yes, there is.
It hasn't happened. But NASA came up with some rules.
Don't let them drive the ship for God's sake!
- Keep them away from the teleport room. - They can't do any cooking or be in charge of the airlock.
- In fact, sedate them. - That's important, yes.
"The astronaut's crew mates should bind his wrists and ankles with duct tape, tie him down with a cord
- "and inject him with tranquillisers." - Whoa! - Just another night in Abu Ghraib.
"There will be no guns on the space station or the shuttle," it says.
- "A gun is out of the question." - No right to bear arms? - No! - Outrageous!
- So how will you fight off the Vargons? - Send the mad bloke up.
Scare them away.
In Star Trek, they just get confined to sick bay.
- Yes. They get the little... - MAKES WHIRRING SOUND
- They put a little seatbelt over them and go... - I can do that.
- HE WHISTLES - How am I?
- You've slightly reduced cholesterol. - That'll be the oily fish. - It will be.
Now, to explore beyond our solar system would require astronauts to travel for generations,
so there'd have to be sex on board. What problems do you foresee?
- Eugh! - Right. - LAUGHTER
We have...
- We have three ways. - That's a NASA training manual - "How To Reproduce".
Roger.
It'd be very hard to dock, I would've thought.
Connecting and staying connected would be difficult. And the male member would be smaller in space
because blood pressure is lower. So it may be difficult to...
In space, no-one can hear you apologise.
- LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE - Oh, Rich!
I do love you. And there is the business of fluids.
- It's bad enough in the tub, isn't it? - Yes, it is! - Oh, Jeez!
And it could get into some important parts of the machinery and short-circuit things
- in droplets suspended everywhere. - You're trying to get them pregnant, not make a porn film.
- "Houston, we have a problem. We have spunk in the bay." - I like the idea of space porn.
"I'm here to fix the turbo thrusters."
- Like that. - Well, you... - Whoa-oa-oa!
"You better come through to the sleeping bay then."
A porn actress is waving him around by his knob.
Throwing him across to another woman who catches...
LAUGHTER
GARGLING SOUND
Mmm!
So, it's grease me up, Scotty, as we get ready for another round - General Ignorance, please.
What were the first words spoken from the surface of the moon?
- THEME MUSIC: "Star Trek" - How appropriate, Sean.
"Uh... Hello? Can you hear me?"
It was, "Ooh-ooh, ooh, ooh!"
- It was the Clangers, was it? - Yes.
But it wasn't, "One small step for man," cos he hadn't got on yet.
- Very true. So what else was it? - It was like, "Come on down, Neil. It's fine.
- "Don't worry about it." - "Get the golf clubs." - "Great to be here in Philadelph... I mean, the moon."
- Well, who said the first human words uttered on the surface of the moon? - Neil Armstrong.
- No. - Buzz Aldrin. - Yes, it was Buzz. He was in charge of the steering of the module as it landed.
- At 102 hours, 45 minutes and 25 seconds in... - They were twins. - ..he was saying, "Four forward,
"drifting to the right a little. That's good." Something garbled and then, "Contact light."
And the contact light that showed they'd landed was on. Not, "The eagle has landed," and not...
Not, "This is the moon. This is the end of the line. Please make sure you have all your bags
- "and personal possessions." - What else do you know about Buzz Aldrin? - His dad had a sense of humour.
- Why is that? - Well, he called him "Buzz". - Ah. But he didn't. He called him Edward Eugene Aldrin Junior.
I think I'm right, actually!
His sister couldn't say "brother". She'd say "buzzer". And he became Buzz and he made it his legal name.
He had the hand of a monkey.
LAUGHTER
APPLAUSE
- Very good. What was his mother's maiden name? Surely you know that? - Smith? Brown? Jones? - Moon?
- Moon is the right answer! - Did you know that?
LAUGHTER
Ah! Yes, the Dalai Farmer.
Fingers on buzzers again. Who invented the moonwalk?
- Oh! Sean's in quickly. - Michael Jackson. - Oh!
- HOOTER - Dear me, no.
He popularised it, if that's the word.
Winston Churchill.
Michael Jackson got his inspiration from Jeffrey Daniel, a member of Shalamar. Does that mean anything?
# Gonna make this a night to remember...
- Oh, why did I say that? - # Tonight
# We're gonna make this a night to remember...
# Ah-ah!
# Da-da-da-da, da-da-da-da
# Da-da-da-doo-doo-doo-da-da... #
Right. Lovely. Very good. Very good.
Ha-ha-ha-ha! Lovely.
Come on! Now, now, now then!
- CHEERING AND APPLAUSE - Thank you.
This man Jeffrey Daniel was not the inventor. Um...Bill Bailey.
LAUGHTER
- Wow! - That picture's actually been taken in space.
But the inventor of the moonwalk was Bill Bailey. And we can see the real Bill Bailey now, I hope.
- Oh! - Look at him. And he's just about to do it. There we go! - Look at that. - Isn't he great?
- He's rubbish. - Do you know of any other famous people who've had your name?
- Axl Rose. - Is his name Bill Bailey? - Axl Rose, lead singer of Guns N' Roses, his real name is Bill Bailey.
- That's very good. - They thought Guns N' Baileys was rubbish.
- I've a dormitory at the University of Colorado named after me. - Really? Rich Hall? - Same name.
- Doh! - No, it's true! It's true.
- The last man to be hanged in America was a Bill Bailey. - Good Lord. What was his crime?
- I'm afraid I know no more about it. - Terrible dancing and silly hats.
Moonwalking in a built-up area.
You do know that there's an animal that can moonwalk?
- It's a wonderful bird called a mannikin bird. Do you want to see a mannikin bird moonwalking? - Yes.
LAUGHTER
It gets funnier.
# Make this a night to remember Get ready... #
Isn't it great? There is the loveliest bird
in very '70s yellow trousers.
Oh, that's fantastic.
And that's all it does.
- It's a delight. - You could have a programme of animals doing like '80s dances!
Here are some worms doing bodypopping, you know.
- What's he doing? - Attracting a female.
- Colour and movements! - Here's the best one. Hey! - That's the one they like.
- It gets funnier every time. - Let's hear it for the assured comedy stylings of the mannikin bird!
- CHEERING - There you go.
APPLAUSE
Well done. Well done, mannikin bird. Bloody marvellous.
- They make extraordinary sounds with their wings. - I thought you'd say they make extraordinary sandwiches.
And they taste bloody good as well! And when you've had enough, you just...
And they're the only bird that sings with their wings. They do that and it's extraordinary.
- Sometimes you can be a bit too talented, can't you? - Exactly. One is enough.
The female's just sitting there going, "Blah-blah."
And finally, who first put two feet on the top of Mount Everest?
- Sherpa Tenzing. - No!
- HOOTER - Oh, dear.
Edmund Hillary.
So you're saying they hopped up there then?
- Cliff Richard. - We didn't guess you might say that.
- Did someone put an extra rock on it to make it two feet higher? - They did that in an extraordinary way.
- How high is...? - They raised it from the bottom.
That would be laborious. How high is Mount Everest?
- 29,028 feet. - You're absolutely right down to the last foot.
APPLAUSE
- Since 1955 that has been the accepted height of Mount Everest. - It used to be 29,002 feet. - Exactly.
- But... This is very good. - It's how they applaud on What's My Line? - Yeah!
- Very good! - You're getting warmer! I think it's a man.
- AS DAVID FROST: - Let's see whose house it is.
So it's Radhanath Sikdar, a mathematician from Bengal, who was the first to identify Everest,
which used to be known as Peak 15, as the world's highest mountain in 1852.
He used a theodolite from 150 miles away.
And he measured it to be EXACTLY 29,000 feet. EXACTLY 29,000.
And he thought no-one would believe him. They'd think he just rounded it up.
And he was so annoyed that it was exactly 29,000 feet, he added two feet, so it looked more precise.
So he was quite literally the first man to put two feet on...
- GROANS - Silly question, I grant you.
But it elicited the fact that you knew the two heights of Everest.
Those facts will get you work anywhere in the world. Just say, "I know two things about Everest."
- And George Everest, who was he? Why was the mountain named after him? - He kept changing his height.
He was the Surveyor General of India at the time it happened.
- But it's still wrong to call it Mount Everest. Why? - Because it's not a mountain, it's a hill.
No. If anything's a mountain, I think we can say it is.
No, we shouldn't call it Mount Everest as he pronounced it "Eve-rest".
- George Eve-rest. - George Eve-rest.
I think that Churchill's nanny was called Everest.
- Nanny Everest? - Yes. - The tallest nanny in the world!
- IN HIGH VOICE: - Nanny!
With that it's back to base camp for a spot of brandy, leaving nothing behind but footprints
and invidious colonial regimes.
Let's see how many points we've looted along the way. Goodness me!
In first place is Rich Hall with eight points!
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
And with three points is Bill Bailey!
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
And with minus eight points and a very creditable knowledge of mountains, it's Alan Davies!
- CHEERING AND APPLAUSE - That's not bad.
Which sadly means that in the pot simmering, ready to be nibbled, is Sean Lock with minus 16!
Thank you very much.
APPLAUSE
So with nowhere else left to explore, it's a tearful valediction from Rich, Sean, Bill, Alan and me.
And a quatrain from TS Eliot - "We shall not cease from exploration
"and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started
"and know the place for the first time." Goodnight.
APPLAUSE
Subtitles by Subtext for Red Bee Media Ltd 2007
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