Hello, hello, hello, hello, hello.
Hello and indeed goodbye from QI, where tonight, the end is nigh.
For an exciting photo finish, I'm joined by the Four Jockeys of the Apocalypse
and they are: Mr Jimmy Carr,
Mr Dara O Briain,
Miss Doon Mackichan
and Master Alan Davies.
Now, before... Before we plunge up into our elbows in the Seven Bowls of Wrath,
let me remind you about our regular Elephant in the Room bonus.
There are extra points for spotting any pachyderms on my person this evening,
but now, let's hear how you all intend to end it all.
And Dara goes:
And Jimmy goes:
Doon goes:
And Alan goes:
Lovely.
Excellent!
Great.
Thank you, Alan!
Superb. I think I detected the hand of the late, great Dudley Moore in your buzzer, there.
Now, that brings us to our final question.
What were the last words of General Sedgwick
in the wilderness of Spotsylvania?
- He hasn't got a mouth. - Yes.
So... there weren't any words at all!
Unless he wrote them down.
In a convenient bubble that he carried around with him.
Maybe he had a little notebook with bubble shaped things and he just...
I'll tell you that the year is 1864. What war was going on then?
- Franco-Prussian War. - That was a tiny bit later.
The Hundred-Years, Thirty Years, Twenty-Five Years...
The Civil... American Civil War.
- The American Civil War. We're talking about the gen... - The American Civil War. - Yeah, well done!
NO, NO! DON'T!
No! You bastard!
- Ah! Thank you for cutting that off. - The American Civil War.
It is the American Civil War. That was not, however, the question.
Spotsylvania is in, er, near to Pennsylvania.
It's Virginia, in fact. It's in the state of Virginia.
He was actually with a hundred-thousand of his own men.
He was, er, part of the Union, i.e, the Yankee army,
facing fifty-two thousand Confederate troops.
And they were just getting ready for the battle
- and there were snipers - Was he saying "Ea-sy"? 'Cause he had...
Almost that equivalent. It was hubris.
- It was one of the most extraordinary last words ever spoken. - "It'll be... This'll be over in five minutes."
"We'll be back in time for Deal Or No Deal?"
Let me tell you now that you could have played your elephant cards.
- Oh. Well, I will then. - Ahh! - Too late.
He actually said "Why are you dodging like this?
They couldn't hit an elephant at this dist..."
And he was shot under the left eye, and fell down dead
without finishing the word "distance".
- Ooh! You'd be annoyed, wouldn't you? - You would.
- You'd be livid! You'd be li... Shiny eye? That's annoying to start with and you look a fool! - Exactly!
Cheered up the troops, though, I'd imagine. I'd imagine they found that...
they probably found that irony quite funny as that.
- Troops will. They have that sort of sense of humour. - They do, don't they? - The lower... The lower orders, er, like that!
He was known as "Uncle John"; he was very popular.
Ulysses S. Grant mourned his death;
said it was worse than a loss of a division.
He was the highest ranking Union officer of any kind to die in the war.
Do you think famous last words are accurate,
'cause I think they lie a lot of the time. It's always something incredibly witty,
like, you know: "Dying? That's the last thing I shall do!"
Whereas in fact, I imagine they said that about four days before they died, and the last thing they said was "Nurse!"
"Nurse! It's happening again, I'm scared!"
You're probably right.
- No one got either their Elephant point. It may not be the only elephant bonus this... this game... - Let's hope not!
I'd hate to think you'd... you'd spent your elephant bonus at the very start, erm...
Well, that's true. There are extra points if you can tell me... I mentioned Ulysses S. Grant,
the great general of the Union army.
- What did the "S" stand for? - Sausage.
- I'd so like to tell you that that was the answer! - Simon. Stevens. Stephanie.
- Simone. - Steamboat. - Spanky!
Spanky Grant!
- Sugar... Sugartits. - "Sugartits!"
You can see... I mean the "S" works. "Sugartits" didn't work at all, er...
"Follow me men!" "All right, Sugartits!"
- Erm, no, actually, the "S" in Ulysses S. Grant stood for nothing at all. - Nothing at all.
"S" was his... just his middle name.
Now, what use can you think of for a cat in a box
at the end of a parachute?
- Jimmy. - It could serve as an example to other naughty cats.
That would be... That would be my first thought on that!
- It's very good. - It would be a hell of a way to finish off a children's party, wouldn't it?
"What's that? What's that? Oh! Oh no, it hasn't opened!" Er, and...
The last one: miaow. Er...
So you pull your cord, nothing happens:
You pull your safety cord: nothing happens
you're allowed to take the cat out for your last few minutes,
as a stress relieving boon to your dying minutes.
- It's a sweet idea! - Oh, there it goes! - Bless!
Is there a part of the world that is in dire need of cats?
There was between 1959 and 1961, and it was the combined British and World Health Organisation.
Oh, some sort of mouse epidemic?
You're exactly on the right lines. In fact it wasn't mice but rats.
Rats carry all kinds of diseases and as vermin need to be controlled,
- and the best way of controlling them in some circumstances... - is to parachute in... - The best way is to parachute cats in a box?!
- It is, in... - How do they get out of the box?
Why don't you... Why don't you just drive up to the border with them and just fire them out of a cannon?
'Cause then their natural landing instinct would kick in!
Putting little goggles on them to keep their hair back...
Mad as this seems, there is a kind of awful logic behind why they had to be parachuted.
Why in the country would there be a sudden shortage of cats?
There's lots of dogs.
That would be one reason.
Had someone put catnip on the border? And they're all...
We're in Borneo. Sarawak.
Old women had swallowed flies... er, and
- I'm with Dara on this one. - The clue I'll give you:
Dichloro-Diphenyl-Trichloroethane. Now, what?
- Cat flu. - DDT?
DDT, well done. Now you're getting there.
- Stuff to stop you having mozzy-bites? - Yes.
It destroys mosquitos and it was sprayed in huge quantities over jungles in Sarawak and Borneo.
- And it killed all the mosquitos very successfully... - Killed... everything. - but it also killed a lot of cockroaches.
The cockroaches ate the DDT and were eaten by cats,
which killed the cats.
But a lot of the cats were dead in places that you can spray from the air with DDT, in other words,
places that you can't get a cat to in a little catmobile, for example
so they dropped them in in boxes that had special springs
so that when they landed, the spring would open; the cat would bound out and help itself to any passing rat.
- It would eat it? - They would bound out? How showbiz is that?!
- They would go "Fwoing!" - "Hello!"
And all the rats are gathered and go, "What's this? What's this? What's this? What's this? Oh, shit, it's a cat!"
But the cat has been terrified. The cat has surely shat in the box
- on its way down. I mean, come on... - You would think... You'd think it is a bit traumatising.
- If you've tried to take a cat in a basket to the vet, it's bad enough. - Exactly.
- Is this... is this... - Oh, they love going in the basket. - Whoof.
I had to take mine once to the vet and they... two of them, and they got out in the car,
and I knew one had got out 'cause I could see it on the... on the back shelf, urinating.
And the other one got on the dashboard in front of me and just went:
"Get back in the box!"
- "I'll parachute you into Borneo if you're not careful!" - On your arm...!
- "You wanna go to Borneo? No! Get in your box!" - Oh, Lord.
- So, no, I can't imagine they'd take to it. - No.
So, there you have it. In 1959, the World Health Organisation parachuted cats in crates into Borneo
to tackle a plague of rats accidentally
caused by their campaign against malaria.
What finally finished off the elderly in Great Yarmouth in 1960?
Please tell me...
- ...this is the time for... - What a world it would be.
Oh, it'd be great. Like, once a year, just release an elephant into the streets of Great Yarmouth
and... and... and sellotape peanuts to the old, er...
They would die of shock, wouldn't they?
I... They'd... They'd die of compression, a lot of them. Er...
- They did die of shock. - Oh, okay. - Or at least one... one person died of shock, firstly.
It was two rather... sporty, shall we say, fellow members of the Haslemere Home For The Elderly
- in Great Yarmouth. - They saw a cat coming down at them by parachute.
No. No, it was two who were responsible for the deaths.
One was an 81-year-old woman,
who did a striptease,
presumably in the lounge. And one of the... one of the old people had a heart attack.
And five others had to have medical attention for shock.
- As a matter of interest, did any of them have a stroke? - Wey hey! Now... Now...
Well, this Ms Gladys Elton, which was her name, Gladys...
- She was responsible for the death of one of her fellow... he wouldn't be alive now! - Obviously.
- This was 1960. - Gladys is her real name.
Her stripper name would be like Aurora, or something.
Possibly! Another inmate whose name was Harry Meadows, and he was 87
dressed up as Death, complete with scythe,
and appeared at the window, and tapped on it, and beckoned!
"Hello!"
- "Come in!" - He did what?!
Yep. And three further residents died as a result of seeing that!
Are you sure he isn't Death and they just caught him?
Maybe Death is a man called Harry Meadows! But, er...
And they never had a fancy dress party again!
The following year... And we are indebted to Brewer's Book of Rogues, Villains And Eccentrics for this extraordinary information.
The following year they closed the Haslemere Home For The Elderly down.
What did they do to Gladys Elton?
I would hope that they played "The Stripper" at her funeral, anyway, er, if nothing else.
So, God bless her.
That was, er, Gladys Elton, er, and Harry Meadows.
Now, what is pink, has pendulous breasts,
gets sailors all excited, and tastes of prime beef?
Was Princess Margaret buried at sea?
- Aww! Very good, excellent. - What?!
Any other thoughts?
- I thought it might be Gladys Elton, but... - Oh, Doon!
We were there before you. Ohh.
- A walrus. - Well, you're in the right area.
- A manatee? - Oh, manatee is closer.
- Steller's Sea Cow, which is the, er... - Steller?
the name of this particular species of Sirenia... of dugong manatee-like thing.
- Oh. Oh, look at that. - Oh, isn't it beautiful.
You... You can see why sailors in days of yore thought they were mermaids.
How long would have to be at sea, before you spotted that
and went, "Oh, yeah, I'd do it, yeah.
Another one!"
That's actually a model, because it's one of those sad stories...
Oh, they have models as well? That's a particularly good-looking one?
- Yeah, she is a looker, Stephen! - That's a size-zero dugong!
- Well, why would we not have a photograph of it? Why would we only have this model? - Because they're extinct?
- Very camera-shy. - I'm afraid what happened was this man Steller
described it as being pink, having pendulous breasts...
and tasting delicious. 7,000 pounds' worth of meat you get off one of those.
So people came from far and wide to Bering Island where he'd discovered them and, er...
- Ate the lot. - And the last one was twenty-six years after he discovered it,
so he has the distinction of being the first and last scientist to describe the animal, so it was very...
- If he hadn't described it as "tasty"... - That was his big mistake.
He should've said it was disgusting, shouldn't he?
Now, what's the story, lady and gentleman, of the Emperor's New Thrones?
- So many! - When you're on the spot, you go - Yeah, I know!
you go right out of your mind! I just keep... All I can think of is a penguin!
I've got the penguin on the chair and I know it's not right!
- Ming. The Merciless. - Ming. The Merciless.
- Who I'm pretty sure was an emperor. - He was.
Was Jabba The Hutt an emperor?
Let's stay on Earth, can we? Just, please! Er, all right, so it was
- Was he, though? - It's not... It's not Europe.
- It's not Europe. - Not Europe. Africa, Asia...
- Yes, Africa. - Africa.
- Ethiopia? - Ethiopia is the right answer. - Ethiopia?
- Haile Selassie. - Haile Selassie.
Now, before Haile Selassie, there was an Emperor...?
Lowle Selassie.
- Oh, very good. No, Emperor Menelik. - Oh, okay.
- Possibly "Men-lick".
- Is that him? - Yes, that's Menelik.
Fine looking gentleman. He lived from 1844 to 1913,
but 'round about the 1890s, he was showing some people around Addis Ababa
the capital of Ethiopia/Abyssinia as it was known, and, er...
- What, he was emperor and tour guide? - Yes, he seems to have been.
These are rather august visitors.
And they noticed men dead, hanging from trees.
And they said, "Look, come on, have you not heard of this wonderful new invention,
the electric chair?
It's humane, it's quick." And he said, "I shall order two of them."
There was one tiny drawback.
- There's no electricity. - There was no electricity supply at all. In the entire country.
So they had to pedal really fast.
Did they execute people using only static?
- Rub a comb against their pullover! - It's for quite... for quite petty thefts: "Ooh! Aah!" - Yeah, yeah!
Is it me getting older that I can't get out of a car or go to a lift
or touch a tap in a hotel room without getting an electric shock?
- No, it means you're very passionate. - It'd be great if it was, as you get older,
- you become more metallic. Er, you just... - I don't know...
Your bones turn to mercury or something and you just like an X-Men thing,
you finally get your superpower, er, just before you die.
"Maybe I'm turning into Ian McKellen which I've long wanted to do!" Er, but er... it's... it's...
But some people say it's because of passion, like when you meet, you know, your... the man, the woman of your dreams,
- you have an electric shock. - Like Van de Graaff generators.
Sometimes if I meet an attractive woman, I will Taser her.
Well, there we are, you see, so... But you still haven't quite answered the question yet.
- There was... - He used them as thrones. - He used... He used, one of them anyway, as a throne.
Did he stop being emperor when electricity finally came to Addis Ababa?
And when they eventually brought it, did they go... they go,
"Big news! Hope you're sitting down. No, wrong thing to say... er..."
1896 they got electric power in... in Ethiopia.
Now, in 1916, the fourth British Antarctic Expedition was stranded on this island for over four months.
What's it called?
- Yes? - Guernsey.
- There'd been a terrible mix-up... - Yeah. - ...and that is Guernsey.
Which is quite a long way south, isn't it, Guernsey?
But is it as far south as this island?
- You saying that's wrong, then? - It's not Guernsey, no, but a lovely effort. Yup.
Is this the famous one where they got stranded for ages
and one of them had to go walking for about eight months and go back again?
- Shackleton went all the way, yes. - Shackleton, that's it.
Oh, is it the Island Of Reluctant But Inevitable Homosexuality?
I think it's that one; I think I recognise it!
From a school trip that went horribly wrong!
Lord of the Undone Flies! Erm... It's, erm...
- Oh! Hullo! - Is it... Is it called Elephant Island? - Yes, it is!
Marvellous, Alan! Very good!
- Well done! - There's an elephant in the room!
There is! You said it: there is an elephant in the room, quite right.
Partly because of its shape: That's sort of, supposedly, I think, a trunk, isn't it?
You can see an elephant there if you were to draw the top left as its ear, down there...
- No, you can't. - Well, vaguely... - Nope. Nope. Nope. - No, you can't.
It was Shackleton's lot who got stuck there
and Shackleton went off all the way to South Georgia
to a whaling station and he came all the way back.
- It was an extraordinarily adventurous business. - That lot.
and there they're all waving. That's them.
They're an extraordinary bunch: very brave, very hardy,
very foolish in many ways, these people.
- Very much like us. - Yes. I'd like to think that. Erm...
Elephant Island, named partly for its shape, as I was saying, and partly for the fact that there were a lot of elephant seals on it.
There you are. Er, the men called it "'Ell Of An Island".
- Eh? You see what they did there? - You can't blame them
for descending to humour in that situation.
Quite a few less elephant seals after they'd been there.
- I'd imagine there were, er, many fewer elephant seals. Yes, so, erm... - Thank you.
"Oh, please. Stephen, really!" Erm, Elephant Island: our second Elephant in the Room this week.
What quite interesting object is at the very end of the Earth?
- Telford Town Centre. - Hey! Very good.
Although I would argue about the "interesting" bit.
- Is it the bottom of Patagonia? - It's right down there, yes.
It's the southern pole of inaccessibility.
Oh! Is it the "off" switch?
- To stop it spinning? - Plughole. - Yeah.
Well, I'll tell you what it is. It's... It's... It's most unusual.
- It's a bust. - There's a bust? - There's a bust.
- Oh. Worth going then. - Yeah...
In the sense, not of a pair of breasts,
but in the sense of a sort of head and shoulders and front bit of a human being.
No, no, we didn't really think there's a big pair of tits.
He's a... He's a living twentieth century person. Now dead.
- A man. - Yeah.
- Stalin. - Oh, the one before.
- Lenin. - Vladamir Ilyich Lenin is there, right in the middle. - My word.
It's just bizarre.
This southern pole of inaccessibility is more remote and hard to reach,
than the geographical South Pole,
and in this very year, the destination was reached by a team of four Britons called Team N2i:
Rory Sweet, Rupert Longsdon, Henry Cookson and Paul Landry.
And we have one of this expedition in the audience!
Is it Lenin?
No! Mr Rupert Longsdon is here. There he is, ladies and gentlemen!
Isn't that bizarre? Phenomenal.
Rupert, how far did you actually have to travel? 'Cause this was all... No... No mechanical power, was it?
Er, no mechanical power. We travelled, er, eleven-hundred miles in total.
Some of it was cross-country skiing and then kite skiing.
Was it cold?
Er... When that picture was taken, I think it was minus sixty degrees celsius.
- Oh! What did you eat? - Er, food...
- Oh, food. - Oh, right. Yeah.
- ...was fairly... fairly repetitive. It was chocolate, cheese, salami, pasta, lots of it.
and one day towards the end when we'd been eating the same thing for about forty days,
we played Laxative Roulette.
And one person who had laxatives in their food; we didn't know who, and...
I bet you did!
Not straight away. The consequences were quite obvious after a while.
Does it freeze as it comes out?
A shard of shit!
- When did the Russians put that there? - 1958.
Good lord. Rupert Longsdon, congratulations on doing an extraordinary first
and being very, very foolhardy and very brave and very brilliant.
Well, clearly not an extraordinary first: there was a statue there when they arrived!
They went under their own power. No one had ever done that before.
Congratulations. Thank you very much, Rupert. Thank you. That's amazing.
I like the idea of that, though. The idea of going... going and doing that... with no mechanical device whatsoever.
- His moon mission's going to be amazing. - It will be impressive.
It'll be a man up a ladder,
going: "Ooh, this is... This is madness!"
So, ladies and gentlemen, on that splendid note, the pale rider now herds us reluctantly
towards the slough of despond that is General Ignorance,
so fingers on your buzzers. What does your appendix do?
- Oh. Doon. - Like the Great British builder,
- it grumbles but it does absolutely nothing! - Oh, Doon, Doon, Doon, Doon, Doon!
Does it contain details about me that aren't needed in the main body?
Brilliant! Very good!
Well, one of the uses it has is for rebuilding organs around the body in surgery,
but it has quite recently been discovered to have a role in the immune system,
building things: antibodies and, er, lymphoids and so on.
So it is, apparently, I am rather worried now that I've discovered this.
It seems to have plenty of uses and I'm thinking of asking for mine back. It's got...
There it is. There it is. The little thing there.
- Is it big? Is it... I can't see the scale of it. - I think it's only small.
No, it's a wee little wormy thing, yeah.
Well, maybe yours is. ...
Showing off about the size of my appendix!
That I don't even have anymore, ladies.
Well, the largest one ever found belonged to a Pakistani gentleman
and was actually 9.2 inches, which is very big.
- Not impressed? - Nah, I'm not impressed.
What's the best thing to do, though, when you get the four minute warning?
Pop a Love Egg up; you're guaranteed to come before the end does.
Very good.
- And you've always got one on your person? - Always. At all times.
And... What I would do if... Four minute warning, I would... get... Stand next to a wall,
and then strike a pose. Do some... I would do something like that
so that when I get blown into my own shadow and obliterated by the blast...
- It would be a funny and a... Stylish. - Yeah, when they do Time Team in four thousand years - You'd go like that:
And... and the new... Well no, I want the new Tony Robinson to uncover me and go "I think Ancient Egyptians lived here."
Oh, no, better than that, you should get a really long pole and put it between your legs!
- Great! - And they'd go "My God, look at this one!" Make sure you got your name somewhere on the...
Write your name on the wall.
You could... You could sort of, just flick out your posterior there, you could just sort of bend your bum out,
and sort of... try and make it look as if you'd farted and everything had gone.
Oh, please! Oh!
What is the four minute warning? What... What am I referring to?
- It's a nuclear attack. - There never was a four minute warning, was there?
Ah. There wasn't really such a thing as a four minute warning.
What happened was the... the Americans got permission from the British to build
an early warning system at Fylingdales in North Yorkshire
and there was quite a lot of fuss, saying, "Well, the Americans are ruining our lovely nation park
just so they can get this 15 minute warning, and what good do we get out of it in Britain?"
And the Defence ministry said, "Oh, well it's also useful for us,
because we get a warning that in four minutes, we'll go."
So... Which everybody rightly ridiculed: "What the hell use is a four minute warning?"
I mean, you've got barely time to do anything. Except your love egg going off, obviously. Erm...
Finally, the last, end question:
How many poles are there at the ends of the Earth?
- Oh, now, obviously, now, this is clearly... - Well, that's... that's a dangerous...
I think there... Maybe there are four. There's a... There's the top of the Earth and then there's the magnetic one.
- Is that... Is that what you're getting at? - Yes it is, I'm getting at how many North Poles and South Poles are there in...
- Two of each. - So you're saying four? Oh, Alan!
- I really, really tried hard! - You did try hard!
You've got to use that, but take it further.
Eight.
- Have another go! - Oh no, I've blown all my Elephant points now! - You have!
- Sixteen! - It's eleven. I know it sounds bizarre,
but I'll try and take you through them.
There are the two geographic poles as they're known: North and South geographic poles.
That's where the Earth's axis of rotation meets the surface as it were...
So that's, you know, pretty obvious. You'd think. There are...
- There's the Earth, and that's spinning round, you know. - Come on!
- I'm just saying... I'm not sure that's the best mime you could've done! - All right! Don't...
"Where the... the... the geographical pole where this happens!"
I was trying to be like it's going 'round the...
Is that... is that what happens when you get there, sir, is it?
- Oh, well, Lord. Okay. With... There are the two geographic poles. - Yes.
- There's the geomagnetic poles... - What's the mime for that?
where the Earth's magnetic dipole meets the surface.
- Obviously! - Yeah.
There are magnetic poles where the geomagnetic field lines
point vertically into the ground in that way that... electrical fields... magnetic fields do.
- Yes? - I want to go home now.
All right! We'll carry... we're gonna get through these. Girls never like the physics, it's odd!
Please, I feel sick, sir!
- Even Polar Guy, about... who's kind of into this as a topic, - Yeah, yep.
has dozed off at this stage!
There we are. There are eleven poles: two geographic north and south poles, two magnetic poles,
two geomagnetic poles, two poles of inaccessibility,
two celestial poles and one ceremonial south pole.
- Ah! And now we have come... we have come... - We've come! We've come! - Yes!
Your pole of inaccessibility has finally been plundered!
Yes! Oh, dear! We've come, not to the beginning of the end
nor indeed the end of the beginning nor even the beginning of the middle part of that bit before the end
but to the actual end of the Endings show itself,
and we have a tie for first place between Dara and Jimmy at five points!
Hands across the nation, now. Well done.
And extraordinarily, tied at last place
at minus seventeen each: Doon and Alan!
So as the killer locusts of Abadon swarm around us and the end of the show draws nigh,
it's good night from Jimmy, Dara, Doon, Alan, and me,
and I'll follow the advice of the King Of Hearts, which he gave to the white rabbit:
"Begin at the beginning," the King said gravely,
"and go on 'til you come to the end and then stop." Good night.
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