God aften, bonsoir, kalispera, jó napot, labvakar, god kveld, goedenavond, dobryj dyen', buenas tardes, guten Abend, good evening. Wilkommen, welcome, et bienvenue à [French pronunciation] QI.
Tonight, I'm happy to say E.C. regulations have permitted us to register
as a Euro quiz.
Accordingly, tonight's committee is 95.62% European.
From England, David Mitchell.
From Ireland, Dara O'Briain.
And all the way from Lithuania, Phill Jupitus.
And from the little bit of Wales
that is always North London,
Alan Davies.
I, myself, have a little Hungarian in me,
but, er, never mind about that now.
So, Englander Schweinehunden, er,
David goes:
[plays "La Marsellaise"]
And Phill goes:
[plays "Ode To Joy"]
Dara goes:
[plays "It's A Long Way To Tipperary"]
That was the Red Army Choir, singing there
and Alan goes:
[a football crowd chanting "Here we go, here we go, here we go...England!"]
Stylish.
So, let's not forget our elephant dans le chambre bonus,
There it is. Spot the elephant for an extra Zahlung Gratifikation or,
as they say in French, "un bonus".
So, that'll be ten points in anybody's language; there are your elephants.
I have a flag issue.
Oh, yeah? What's the problem?
David claims not to be English.
I'm...I'm far from it.
And furthermore.. .
...I'm not Welsh.
What?!
Well, give him your...your wyvern, or your griffin, or whatever it is.
So we can come to a proper arrangement.
When I did a programme about my family tree,
it turned out we're nothing to do with the Welsh.
Good.
Alors, driving à gauche, obrigado, vamos in der Eurostar,
and off to question one.
We've raised the bar for this one a little in recognition of the presence amongst us
of the noted historian David Mitchell of Peterhouse, Cambridge.
So, David, we'd like you to name the 5,732 provisions
affecting the enclave of Baarle-Hertog in the treaty of Maastricht.
Er....
Your time starts now.
Well...this...this is an easy one.
the enclave actually only, er, exists theoretically
because it was...it's a... it's a sort of sandbank, er, which was once farmed,
but was flooded in the 14th century,
and it exists between Denmark and, er, Germany in the Heligoland Bite.
and the...but it's sort of been an anomaly in diplomatic, er,
law ever since then, because...because there were arguments about who owned it
theoretically even though no one could go there,
and so, the 5,732 provisions are, actually... It's a provision
for each of the former states, er, of the holy Roman Empire
before it was dissolved by Napoleon.
That is absolutely wrong!
Not one thing that you said was true! But...Not one thing, yeah.
But brilliantly convincing! It convinced the audience
they were all ready to applaud you. Yeah.
I think #706 is
"no fat chicks".
Well, firstly, do we know what the Treaty of Maastricht was?
It's to do with the European Union, I think.
Ah, you see, we've cheated a bit.
Is it another one? -You're talking about the second...
...Treaty of Maastricht. There was a first treaty of Maastricht--
Was it about sandbanks? At all?
Not exactly.
It was about settling which parts were
Dutch-Belgian and which parts were Frenchy-Belgian-Belgian,
and it's so complicated in this particular place, Baarle-Hertog,
that there are the 5,732 parcels of land, all done up;
you can walk into a house and one room is in.. is Dutch, one room's Belgian,
and...and it goes on.
There are front doors split in two, as it were:
one side is Belgian, one side is Dutch.
And because the laws are different,
the closing time in the Netherlands is earlier than Belgium,
so in the same restaurant they close half the tables
because it's Dutch
and they have to...you have to move to the Belgian bit.
And the Dutch--of course, they're taking the piss a little
have a huge sex shop right next to the Belgian town,
but it's just in the Dutch part--
[Dutch accent] Those crazy Dutch guys! --because they're not allowed, you see, in Belgium.
[Dutch accent] "Hey, Belgian guys! Look at our cock rings and inflatable ladies!"
It is true that Belgium, as we know it, is an entirely artificial country, anyway.
Yeah, they were named after the Belgi, which was a tribe...
Actually, a lot of those were in Winchester, Belgi.
I daresay someone just threw his pipe at the television.
[mock upper-class accent] "Fry just called me Belgian!
Where's my gun?"
But as for enclaves, or en-claves, in this way, that is a sort of country within a country.
One of the most remarkable ones was Suite #212 at Claridge's.
Was that Norway during the Second World War, or something?
Well, it was...Yeah, it was Yugoslavia for a few days, because--
So there were rows in that room, then!
Ethnic cleansing in the bathroom!.. .
Yeah, the Queen was pregnant, and she wanted to give birth to the heir to the throne of Yugoslavia
on Yugoslavian soil,
so the British government said, "We will allow, for a few days,
Suite #212 to be Yugoslav soil,"
and actually people got some Yugoslav soil,
which they had handy, and put it under the bed...apparently.
Now, when is it cool for a brother to bring a chick into a monastery?
Do they sort of have, you know, it's like, on Christmas Day when, in the days of servants,the masters used to serve the servants?
On Christmas Day in a monastery, all the rules are off
and it's, you know, time to shag everyone.
Any idea where that might be, that monastery?
Do you know in the audience? - Greece!
Greece. They know, you see, Greece. Good audience.
It's Mount Athos.
Mount Athos, which is described by many as the holiest place on Earth.
It contains 24 large monasteries, and hundreds of small monasteries.
It's only about 350 square kilometres.
It's like Travelodge have opened one in Narnia, isn't it? It's just like.. .
"Comfortable living, fantasy prices."
It does look a little forbidding, I grant you.
No females of any species are allowed on Mount Athos.
I mean, obviously they can't stop wild birds and stray cats,
but no female animals, no female humans, are allowed,
apparently because the Virgin Mary discovered the place
and said, "No woman shall set foot here after me".
Prince Phillip visited it, with the Queen;
the Queen had to stay in a boat 500 yards from the shore.
I dare say she was gutted to not be with that jug-eared idiot again.
"Oh, God, he's gonna call 'em... Oh, what's he gonna do now? Oh, no..."
Well, for a thousand years, it's been like that,
I mean it's pretty astonishing, isn't it?
But...they do let in hens. Why would they let in hens?
Eggs. -'Cause they love an omelette.
They prefer eggs to the jizz of the male hen.
You don't know monks very well, do you?
They much prefer cock, I think.
No, the, er...It's not actually to eat the eggs.
To...mock them.
Draw little faces on them.
No, it's to use the yolk for mixing paints for icon painting.
So all their icons smell of egg!
Well, a lot of tempera, a lot of egg's a good thing for binding paint together;
they've used egg yolk for a long, long time, apparently.
So, er, that's why they make an exception to the rule of no females.
If you get trapped in a monastery
and you can't find the fridge...
yummy, yummy icons. Mm.
Yes, absolutely!
Is it like that wallpaper in Willy Wonka,
where different colours taste of different things?
[mimes licking wallpaper] "Ooh, the snozzberries taste of snozzberries!"
And all the Jesuses taste of breakfast!
The monastic police, the Serdaris, enforce the rules:
not allowing women in, for example.
Have they had a meeting about it?
You know, about how it's a mental rule?
I don't think they have, because some of them are very extreme.
Some of them starve themselves.
In fact, people who make that equipment
for detecting dying people in the rubble after an earthquake or something,
they actually went to Mount Athos
and took samples of the breath of fasting monks
so they could get a sort of, er, an idea for their machines of
of the particular smell of a starving human,
which is very important for the purposes of this rubble thing, so...
they have their uses, these mad monks.
So, no women, no food, eggy paintings.
Yeah. Sounds like a hoot!
Yeah! Well, anyway. Which would you rather have:
the German disease, the French disease, the Polish disease,
the Portuguese disease, or the English disease?
Yes?
I'm guessing that kinda they're the same thing, as everyone describes it;
it's like "sado-masochism" or "a love of being tied up and spanked".
It's just fetishes...
Certainly the English vice is flagellation-- -- The English vice.
--to the French, isn't it, but the English disease...?
I think it's all clap, isn't it?
Pox, certainly. Syphilis. Yes, absolutely right.
Syphilis, according to which nation you are... You usually call it your enemy's disease.
So the French call it the English disease, the English call it the French disease,
the Dutch call it the Portuguese disease...
The Portuguese disease? The Dutch call it the Portuguese disease? -Yes.
What have the Dutch got against the P—... and where do they meet?
Well, they had navigational wars in the seventeenth century--
They were at war for years over spices.
Oh, spices, of course...That explains it all!
Nutmeg. They fought battles over nutmeg. - Yeah. Yeah.
There's the Dutch king in front of his cupboard: "Where's my cardamom?
You syphilis-riddled bastards!!"
The very idea that a pox-ridden Portuguese bloke
is thinking, "I need some cumin."
They valued the spices so much
that they swapped Manhattan for the Spice Islands in Indonesia.
That's how we got Manhattan..
True. It was New Amsterdam.
And they used to use the nutmeg to preserve meat;
that's why it was so valuable,
'cause you could sail for halfway round the world as long as you had nutmeg.
I think Alan should have points for all this. Points!
This is good work!
Top work.
One of the, er, odd things about syphilis, though,
is it appears to have erupted around the time America was being discovered,
so many people thought it came from America,
but it was first amongst German troops when they
were besieging Naples,
so it was called, variously, the German disease, the Neapolitan disease
'cause that was a kingdom then.
What did they use for curing it, right up until, really, the turn of the 19th-20th century?
Petrol.
It's almost as weird. A poison;
they used mercury. Mercury.
At Oscar Wilde's trial, it was... actually came up against him,
that when he laughed, he put his hand up against his mouth,
which was considered a sign of effeminacy,
but it's probably because he had syphilis
and he'd taken mercury, which makes the teeth green and transparent,
and most unpleasant, so he was covering his bad teeth,
but it was, er, counted against him.
They used to say "From Venus to Mercury".
Didn't Edward VII take a lot of mercury?
I think he might have done, yes.
I thought that was for constipation.
Yeah, they did it for all kinds of things.
It's a very, sort of, literal way of treating constipation,
Drink an incredibly heavy liquid
and force the poo down.
An alternative would be stand on your hands
and have a load of helium.
That is a much better image!
Yes. Just need some footmen with nets
to catch the turds. "Don't let it get on the tapestries!"
What a sick mind you have, David Mitchell.
Then someone comes in the room, and they go, "What's the matter with you?" [in a very high voice]
"I've got constipation!"
"Look!"
Do you know what a later cure was?
It actually won its devisor a Nobel Prize in 1927, for medicine.
It was a weird cure; it was to give them another disease.
Yeah. The other disease was malaria.
How bizarre. You'd give them malaria; it would cure them of syphilis.
The bacteria can't survive, literally, the heat of the body
when it's got malarial fever.
Strange. Anyway, there you are.
At this point in our Euro quiz, regulations require us
to have a "Call My Euro Bluff" round.
So, let's play "Call My Euro Bluff"!
[as Robert Robinson] Ah...Good evening and welcome. No, hush, tish and pibble!
Erm, so, it's, er...With whom shall we start?
We'll start with David. David, give us some Euro regulation.
"It's illegal to sell bananas if they're too curvy."
What do we think? Anyone got a theory about that?
I think that's true. - It's quite a well-known Euro regulation. Straight bananas.
I...It's utter arse, of the highest order.
So you're saying a bluff, are you? Well, what do you feel?
I seem to recall this is one of those things that the Daily Mail would suddenly go,
"How dare they say our bananas can't be bendy!
Why, it's bendy bananas made this country what it is...!"
- Yeah. - Balls.
Yeah, you...So you think it's balls.
Would you like to reveal, then?
- Balls. - It's a bløff!
It's just, you just have to say how big they are,
which is fair enough, 'cause, you know, otherwise people would be selling tiny, pea-size bananas.
The clincher is, the current E.U. standards
are identical to the pre-existing British ones,
and the United Nations ones, and the OECD ones.
I mean, it is...Nothing has changed.
Nothing is new except, as you say, the ability of the press to make things up and scare us
that our bananas are going to be straightened.
So...It's become rather political and rather exciting!
Erm...er, Dara, what is yours?
Okay, well, this actually is true.
"Trawler men will soon be required to wear hairnets whilst fishing."
Is this 'cause they're handling food? And that's, uh--
It's exactly...The point is to keep them clean right from the very start, so they're, that's why--
Convincing stuff. Well, what do we feel?
Well, it makes practical sense as well, of course,
because the hairnet could also, maybe, catch any smaller fish,
like, you know, whitebait or scampi that might get in the hair of the fisherman,
and then you just...At the end of the day, "Oh, there's another; that's...that's dinner".
You're used to handling nets; what's your thoughts?
Well, they wear hard hats now at Smithfield Market, and they never had to;
they're always making people put things on their heads.
Good point.
No, I like that. Good. What do you feel, Phill?
Yes.
You think it's true as well, so most people seem to think this is true.
Demonstrate...[as Robert Robinson] Tell us; put us out of our misery.
Bløff.
It's a bløff as well! It's not true. In fact, I quote Richard Littlejohn;
he goes, "Oh, what a circus! The safety Nazis have forced fishermen
to wear hairnets. You couldn't make it up!"
Well, actually, oddly enough, Richard,
you could and you did.
Actually, it isn't as if it was... Littlejohn didn't make that up.
No, he didn't, in fact.
It was made up by British journalists in a bar in Brussels- - You're absolutely right.
--who...who...who tried to run it to see "will people fall for this?"
And the British press fell for it, completely.
It's 'cause they know that people love their little five minutes
of snorting anger over the breakfast...
"Bloody people - what - oh, God - that's so...!"
"It's ridiculous! You don't take an active interest in how your country's run
for just 45 years,
and look what happens!"
Very good indeed. Absolutely right.
So, we've had two bløffs. Phill.
I should do that, shouldn't I?
[as Robert Robinson] Aha!
[as Robert Robinson] Would that it were, Stephen, would that it were.
"From January 1st, 2008, circus tightrope-walkers
will be required to wear hard hats."
It's 'cause of an E.C. regulation about safety in the workplace.
Anybody, if their feet are more than four feet off the ground, have to wear a hard hat.
I would believe that during the performance, not, but during training,
yes, er, bizarrely.
Yeah, that sounds convincing. What do you think over there?
I don't think...
Well, if you fell off a tightrope, that'd fall off your head; that'd be hopeless.
Without a chin strap, it's actually an added hazard, isn't it?
It probably is. - It's going to fall... - Could fall on top of someone. Fall on someone and hurt them.
So, what are you saying? Bluff? True?
- Bløff! - Bløff! - Er, I'm saying it's a bluff.
Reveal yourself, would you?
Oh, it's also a bløff!
The fact is, it is only true in the building and construction industry that you have to wear a hard hat at work.
Presumably, for things where things come down on you
rather than you going down on something else.
Exactly right, yes. As it were.
"Whoa, there! Put a hat on when you're going down there!"
It was reported in the Times, the Daily Telegraph and, surprisingly, the Daily Mail,
which is usually much more wise and thoughtful,
that circus tightrope walkers are going to have to wear hard hats during their act.
Mr. Archer, the Circus General Manager, added,
"This is just another loony law from Brussels,
and we're the only country stupid enough to pay any attention!"
No, Mr. Archer, we're the only country stupid enough
to believe it.
Isn't that right? It's bizarre.
Alan, have you got one?
Yes, I have. I have got one.
These, you may think are sausages.
I do. Bangers.
But they're not to be sausages soon; they're going to be called
"emulsified high-fat offal tubes".
That's what you have to have on the labels. - Because that's what they contain.
And there is a sausage firm in Wales called Dragon Sausages,
and they actually have to put on the label
"No dragon included".
[as Robert Robinson] What do we feel, team?
I think that if you want a high-fat tube,
I recommend the District Line between Bromley-by-Bow and Upminster.
But I ... er, no. No.- No.
No, I mean they may be technically known,
but of course there'd be different names, and even different brands of sausages
would have different names. No, of course it isn't.
It's a scare.
Yeah, I think I've heard... This story's been around for a long time,
and yet sausages are still called sausages.
Exactly, but is it true or is it false?
It is a bløff! -It's also a bløff. Very good.
And it's actually a line from "Yes, Minister".
There you are, it's ... Anthony Jay and Jonathan Lynn wrote it.
Well, that's it, ladies and gentlemen, from Euro Bluff.
Though this is not to say, of course, that everything that comes out of Brussels makes sense.
This, Mannekin Pis, is the symbol of Brussels, of course.
Sometimes they dress her up, or him up, I should say, as Elvis,
and sometimes it pees beer.
What's it all about?
I've seen it; it's the most unimpressive thing,
apart from that mermaid in Copenhagen, which is also shite.
Er, it's like, it's all these signs, and it's just a tin— ... It's like, yea big - and it's just--
Yep. Here we are, I've got a model of it.
And it's actually not that scaled down, that model.
In theory, this is a working one, I believe.
That's pretty good, isn't it? 379.1
Look at that. We like.
Very nice indeed.
Urrrrgh! You're drinking piss!
If it's good enough for Sarah Myles, it's good enough for me. There is a theory--
Is there anything to do with elephants?
Oh! Interesting.
No.
But, it's good that you're thinking!
One of the theories is that Brussels was under siege,
and the enemy were laying explosives around the city walls,
and a little boy saw this and peed on the fuses,
thus saving the city, and so is memorialised.
I did that once, and blew the electricity in the house.
There is another theory that it was the two-year-old Duke Godfried,
and his troops put him up in a tree, where they were having a battle,
in a basket, and from there he urinated on the enemies, and they lost the battle.
That was, er, that was in 1142, that was.
They stuck the Crown Prince, or whatever, in a tree that was... just... that the enemies were just underneath the tree?
So it seems.
You could throw a rock at the tree, right, and...
How long has that statue been there, do you know?
Er, 200 years.
120 years.
90 years.
That's the point; it's a lot older than you might think. It's 14th century.
1388, there's been a pissing boy in Brussels. - That's pretty good, isn't it, for a ...
Still works. - Yeah. - Yeah!
They get up there with a pipe cleaner every Sunday.
It's been stolen seven times. - Seven times?
Seven times. In 1817, one of the thieves who stole it got 20 years hard labour.
In 1978, they got let off with a warning.
No one ever gets 20 years easy work, do they?
All the labour's hard labour. - Yes.
Don't say "hard labour"...
it's just rubbing it in. We know it's labour. You know. - Yeah. It's never ... Exactly.
Not saying, "Twenty years temping".
Twenty years working in a call centre.
So, nobody knows for sure why Brussels
chooses to identify with an incontinent five-year-old.
Bonne chance to them, however.
Now, er, this brings us to the worst Euro nightmare of all,
the single devalued currency,
that we call General Ignorance,
so fingers sur les buzzers, s'il vous plait.
What is the highest mountain in Europe?
- Yeah. - Mont Blanc.
Oh! Sorry you said that; no, it isn't. It isn't. - Yes, it is!
No. It does begin with an "E", if that's any help.
Enormoblanc. - Very good.
Mount Bianco... - Eiger?
Not the Eiger, no.
Etna?
Oh! Hello! And did you say "Etna"? - I said... yeah. - Etna, eh? Ooh, no. No, indeed.
It's ... it's some island. It's, er, from the bottom of the sea, if you measured... No?
That's certainly Etna, isn't it, or strongly believed, but no, it's not. It's actually right on the borders of Europe, but it does count as Europe. It's definitely Europe.
Is it somewhere in the Caucusus, or... ? - It is in the Caucusus.
Oh, I don't know ... Which of the mountain names of the Caucusus?
"Mount Elbrus" is the answer. Mount Elbrus.
It's where Prometheus was supposedly chained for
daring to steal fire from heaven,
and he had his liver pecked out every day by vultures as punishment.
Ooh! - Yes, that's gotta hurt. Erm ..
You'd want to get it over with at the beginning of the day. Yeah.
Yes, you would. 100 people attempt to climb the summit
every day in the summer season when it's not too cold,
and about thirty-odd die every year.
Do you know that one in eight of people
who've tried to climb Everest die?
Really? That's a high attrition rate, isn't it?
It's not good, is it? -Not good. Not good at all.
You get acute mountain sickness 'cause you can't breathe,
so your stomach won't accept food, so you start throwing up.
Apparently, there are signs all the way up saying,
"If you are throwing up and you have a headache, go back",
but people don't.
So, when you're putting your party together to go up Everest,
just... If there's seven of you, just get one really... someone you don't like.
Preferably with asthma.
"Lead on, Wheezy!"
In 1997, there was a Land Rover Defender that, drove to the very top of Mount Everest.
Which is a high mountain: it's 18,510ft.
It's also a very busy mountain for people climbing it,
all of whom must have been thrilled to see someone drive past them.
But it's, er, nearly 3,000ft higher than Mont Blanc.
Now, audience, audience, audience, what are the first words of the German national anthem?
- Deutschland, Deutschland über alles.
No, ladies and gentlemen, you are wrong! And as there's so many of you ...
You idiots!
Minus 100, I fear.
Welcome to our pain!
They thought it was "Deutschland, Deutschland über alles".
I didn't!
No. You know what it is, don't you?
Nope!
I thought it was that.
It hasn't been for a very long time.
"Deutschland, Deutschland über alles" was the first verse
that, for twelve years, was used as the German national anthem under the Nazis;
now, after the Nazis, they decided to choose only the third verse,
which is the least controversial verse.
"Einigkeit und Recht und Freiheit / Für das deutsche Vaterland!
Danach lasst uns alle streben / Brüderlich mit Herz und Hand!"
I have an erection.
It is hard not to be moved by that, isn't it?
Er, so there we are. "Unity and justice and freedom for the German fatherland",
not "Deutschland, Deutschland über alles".
So, there we are. That's almost it. There is one last question.
What is right under your noses and sounds like a bell?
A smell. - No, it's a...
It's been under your noses all evening.
A buzzer? The elephant? The flags?
The joke is "dung!"
Your notebooks are made of elephant dung.
You see?
Recycled elephant dung.
You cunningly put a thing--
It's like the end of The Usual Suspects, or something.
It's been here all along!
Which brings us to the scores.
Soaring like a German eagle in the lead,
with minus five, is...
Phill Jupitus!
On his heels, like a pair of Russian wolves
with minus seven, it's David Mitchell.
Well, now, this is... this is very, very tight;
with minus twenty-six, in third place, Alan Davies!
Tottering along in last place like an Albanian nanny goat,
with only one fewer than Alan, on minus twenty-seven, Dara Ó Briain!
But you'll be pleased to know,
in very last place with minus one hundred, it's the audience!
Well done. We've come to the end of our European adventure,
so from Alan, it's: - Good night.
And from David, it's: - Nos da.
And from Dara it's: - Oíche mhaith.
And from Phill it's: - Labanaktis.
And finally, from me, it's "jó éjszakát".
And I leave you with this thought from Jackie Mason:
"80% of married men cheat in America.
The rest cheat in Europe." Do svidaniya!