Good evening, good evening, good evening. Good evening and welcome to the very special QI Children in Need special.
- Are you sitting comfortably? - Yes!
Excellent news. Then I shall begin. Joining me in my fairytale cottage tonight are: In the littlest chair,
lovely little Pudsey "Baby Bear" Bear...
And in the medium-sized chair, Ronni "Mummy Bear" Ancona...
And in the big chair, David "Daddy Bear" Mitchell...
And Alan "Who's Been Sleeping in my Porridge" Davies.
Now, our theme tonight, appropriately enough, is "families". Families. We all have them. We all love them,
- Come on, I must get on! - whether or...
- I've got plenty to do here; I've got a programme to do... - Oh, my Christ! What...?
If I could ask you to vacate the chair, please. I've left a... I've left a large gap in a big studio down the road.
- Terry Wogan. Well, well, well, well, well. - Oh, shucks!
Fabulous to have you, all the way from BBC One.
Oh, for goodness sake, no, I've come to this poor little place just to make my contribution to a humble little programme,
meanwhile you I want to continue to make your contributions. Keep that money rolling in...
Well, now, you all know the rules; you all have buzzers.
Ronni goes like this:
Thank you. Family theme, you see. David goes:
Terry goes:
That was lovely. And Alan goes:
Everyone started clapping along!
- You see... - People want knees ups.
They don't want information-based panel shows. They just want a knees up.
Well, it looks to me like they could do a Mexican wave in a minute.
Let's start with some family wisdom. I want some old wives' tales.
Do you know any old wives' tales? Tell me some dubious tales of your grandmothers.
Well, my granny... My granny always had a tale or two to tell.
I remember... I remember her saying, "Love flies out the window when poverty walks in the door."
And then the other one was, "It doesn't matter whether you're rich or whether you're poor, as long as you have money."
- "Cheese gives you bad dreams." - "Cheese gives you bad dreams" is one.
My granny had... She had so many they've kind of become a blur in my head.
They were all kind of things like,
"The higher cows build their nests up trees, the redder a shepherd's face will be if he likes butter,
unless the wind changes direction, in which case he'll turn blind,
and catch cold, unless he puts vinegar on it."
Yes, so many of them involve catching a cold and going blind, don't they.
Well, going blind, definitely. Yes.
Wanking makes you blind. But... But you know, I have contact lenses so I can see fine.
- Yeah. - So essentially, contact lenses are the wanker's charter.
Is there much to see?
No. To be honest, no.
- What about "a crow follows a busy squirrel"? - Eating your crusts.
- My granny says, "Eating your crusts puts hairs on your chest." - Yes.
That's what my granny used to tell me and my two brothers, but why would she tell me that...
As a woman? I think the fact she was called the Wolf Woman of Wick may have something to do with it!
Well now... Here's a burning contemporary issue and a constant niggle.
What have artists and composers ever done for children in need?
- Lots. - Lots. Like?
Tchaikovsky and Prokofiev did a sponsored skip across the Volga... Dressed as Tweedledee and Tweedledum.
Manet sat in a bath of snails for a week.
Rachmaninoff ate 48 pies in 68 hours while playing a second piano concerto. Need I go on?
Well, it's a damn good start! Do you know, in some ways the original Children in Need for London,
was the creation of an extraordinary institution in the 18th century. Do you know what I might be referring to?
- It was a foundling hospital. - There was a foundling hospital.
It was a man called Thomas Coram, who was one of the great benefactors of the age,
because we're talking about an age in which 75 percent of all children died before the age of five in London.
90 percent of all children who were born in workhouses died before they were five.
So this man Coram, who was a successful merchant, badgered people and...
And two of the most influential people, who allowed this place to be built were Hogarth, the great artist of the day,
and Handel, the composer, and they did extraordinary work for this hospital.
It was hugely successful. And there were so many at the foundling hospital
that they had to have a lottery. They literally had a lottery, and there was a ball taken out of a bag.
If it's... If it's a... A white ball, the child goes straight in; if it's a red one, they're on the waiting list; if it's a black one,
"Sorry, we can't take your child." And then in 1756, the government said,
"No, we'll guarantee that every child can go into this hospital, every child."
And that sort of worked pretty well.
But what's in a sense phenomenal is that we have lived...
And our parents have lived, probably, and for most of our grandparents even...
have lived in an age in which such a thing is inconceivable, but we are a minority of the human race.
Most of the human race has lived with unspeakable suffering, especially for children.
- There's still unspeakable suffering from children all over... - There is.
- All over this country, and that's why Children in Need comes in. - Exactly.
I mean we raised, what was it? Oh, 35 million last year.
We'd need to raise 150 million to make a real difference to the kind of suffering that goes on.
Here, here, thank you very much. Excellent.
So, yeah, the artist Hogarth and the composer Handel helped to establish the foundling hospital,
the 18th century's answer to Children in Need.
Now, which of these ladies is more likely to bite off a baby's head?
- David. - I think it's Ann Widdecombe, because she's a Catholic.
Terry! Defend your faith.
I'm not... I'm not actually saying that Catholics are more likely to bite off babies' heads,
but I imagine that might have been the sort of thing that was once said.
I think that, er... Originally, of course, Margaret Thatcher was known as the "milk snatcher"...
Taking the pinter out of the innocent babies' mouths, but I don't think it was her. I... I agree,
I think it was Ann Widdecombe, but I think she's misquoted, because one time somebody said to her,
"Ann, are you hungry?" And she's a... She's a good little trencher woman, and she said, "Hungry?" she said.
"I'd eat a baby's arse through a wickerwork chair."
And that... That is how... That... It grew up from arse to head, you know...
- But... So that's an easy enough mistake. - It's so easily done.
What... What's the ref... What's the... The wickerwork chair? That's an odd, sort of...
"Not only would I eat a baby's arse; I'd do it under awkward circumstances.
With... With chopsticks through a wickerwork chair. With one hand tied behind my back."
It shows how little you know of roughage, lad.
He's a stranger to the lavatory, I fear.
But no, the reason that we have these two... These two women...
- I think I know. - Yes. Yes, tell.
- I think it's something to do with jelly babies. - Oh, my dear, you're so completely right.
Because women who have had children will basically take a jelly baby
and will check it for nappy rash and cradle cap and attempt to get it into a good school before eating it.
And then women who haven't had children will obviously... Can enjoy the benefits of jelly babies
knowing that they can give them back at the end of the day when they've had enough.
Ronni. Ronni, Ronni, it is about jelly babies, but the odd thing about the research is that it's mothers...
who've had children who bite off the heads. And women who don't... Who don't.
So lots of points for knowing it was about jelly babies...
What sort of extraordinary mentality is it that you... You actually enquire into which part of the jelly baby...
- you'd bite off first? - It does seem strange.
Well, a lot of universities are short of funding. So they have to investigate stupid things.
- Come on, boys. - Ah, of course. I'll have a black one if I may?
There you are. There's more, and I get a whole bowl to myself.
Three million of these are eaten every week, you know. Now...
- What, what's the powdery substance? - Cocaine. Andean...
The powder, of course, is starch; it's so you get the jelly out of the mould. That's what the powder is for.
Now back to family relationships. Ronni, what do newborn babies like best?
- Oh, well, as a mother of a newborn I'd like to say "crying". - Crying.
The thing is about babies crying is, you just think, "What have you got to cry about?
You haven't got any financial problems; you've got no relationship problems;
you're not haunted by mistakes that you've made in the past. Do you know what I mean?
We should be crying on an hourly basis; you've got it easy."
You don't have to get out of bed to go for a poo. You just lie back...
No! Everything's provided for you. Lie back...
You're adored... Make the most of it. What is your problem? Make the most of it,
'cause you'll look back at this and it'll be the happiest days of your life.
Maybe they're stressed about all the stuff they've got ahead of them.
Maybe they can... They can pick up on the stress of all the adults, kind of going,
"Oh, my God, this is a nightmare. I mean, it's okay now but this is, this is gonna get worse before it gets better."
One day, if I'm not careful they're gonna say I'm not allowed to shit in my bed any more.
They'll dress it up as 'growing up' or something, but in fact, it's the first stage of a long surrender.
Never stop soiling yourself. Life will be much better for you!
If you've got an ounce of self respect... Keep soiling yourself!
Someone told me that 90 percent of the attention your garner in your life you receive under the age of three.
There's a thought, isn't it? Not for us who are on television, surely! Surely not us! No, I... well, that could be right.
Now, that's an interesting point, 'cause a lot of mothers have been led to believe that it's incredibly important
at the moment they give birth that there's a... A bonding process. But the interesting thing is
that babies don't bond with their mothers particularly, in the very first days;
That actually, they respond apparently as much to the cries of a Rhesus monkey as to the noise of their mother.
- What, all that hard work for bugger all? - Yeah, er, later...
- Get a Rhesus monkey in. - Later they get...
They get used to you. They get used to your smell after a few weeks and they do like you.
Now, that child's clearly not gonna bond with their parents.
You've crawled towards the age where you can again soil yourself with impunity, surely.
- See, it's full circle. - What do you mean? What do you mean "crawl" towards it?
- Oh, no. - I just...
That's un-comfy. I'm lucky I have the incontinence pads.
Yeah, I'm so pleased. Is there a Tena gentlemen? Is it only a Tena lady?
Why is it in those ads...
What is it about laughter that makes women wet themselves? I mean, you have the ads: They're... They're jollying about.
"Ha, ha, isn't it lovely?" And then...
- For God sake. - It is odd!
I like it when babies soil. My nephew, when he soiled himself, he put his hands on the highchair like that:
- They get great concentration on their face. - Yeah
While mothers may form an immediate bond with their baby, until they're three months old,
babies respond equally well to the call of Rhesus monkeys, as a matter of fact.
What am I describing here? You have to listen carefully.
Sustain, followed by ululation, followed by sustain but at a higher frequency,
followed by ululation, followed by sustain at the starting frequency.
The Arctic Monkeys.
- Very good. - It's not Handel's "Water Music", is it?
It's a... No, it's a sound, and it's associated with the jungle. It's associated with the jungle in...
- It's Morse code for "I'm stuck in the jungle. Please save me." - No.
Er, think films.
- Oh, I know what it is. - Yes.
- It's the noise Tarzan makes. - Yes, well, done, let's hear it. Let's hear the real one.
Oh, Johnny Weissmüller.
I could have just opened my mouth and you could have dubbed that on later.
Yeah, exactly. But the thing that's noticeable about that is that it's actually the same forwards and backwards.
We can hear the same backwards now.
So it's a kind of simian palindrome. And it was done by the MGM sound technician with...
Weissmüller always claimed it was his voice, anyway, but that... That was his yodel. That was his Tarzan yodel.
It's a lot... When you hear it now, as distinct from your memory of it...
It's a lot more savage and... And difficult isn't it? It's obviously no human voice... Rather, an ape man.
Yeah, exactly. One who had been raised by apes. What's the most famous line from a Tarzan film?
- That one. - Oh, "Me Tarzan, you Jane."
- Yes, except, of course, it never happened. - What?
Why do these films always forget to put their most famous lines in?
It is silly, isn't it? No... Yeah, exactly. No "Play it again Sam", no "You dirty rat"...
It's just one of those odd things.
Now, we all know about the good work done by Children in Need and, of course Terry's morning show,
but how has the Eurovision Song Contest made Europe a better place?
How has it made it a better place? Because it has, as you can see, the dove...
- Yeah. - It has brought together the nations of Europe...
Has it, arse. It's divided east from west!
I know, I mean...
It has brought together the nations of Europe on wings of song!
Whether they like it or not!
You only have to listen to my commentary to realise how much I believe that.
Oh, yeah. One of the few Eurovision Song Contests I remember incredibly well,
because the winners are one of the most famous pop groups in the world there's ever been...
There was ABBA, and that was in the year...?
- 1974, Brighton. - 1974, exactly. With the song...?
"Waterloo".
"Waterloo". A great song, but there happened to be a song that Portugal provided that year.
- They came second from bottom; they only got three points... - It was called "Paddington".
But it was one of the most important Eurovision songs ever written for an extraordinary political reason.
Are you saying that that was the signal for the Portuguese revolution?
Yes, I am! It was called "E Depois do Adeus"; "After the Goodbye", sang by Paolo de Carvalho.
I have to tell you that I think you've got the year wrong. It was the following year, when it was being held in Sweden,
after ABBA had won, that...
That was the Portuguese revolution, and they came out with guns with carnations in the barrels of the guns.
Yes, because it was called the "Carnation Revolution", wasn't it?
We yield to you; none knows better than you, but isn't it wonderful?
It was that song was used because a man called Salazar, or at least his party,
had run Portugal for years and years. He didn't technically style his regime a fascist one,
but he certainly gave three days of national mourning when Hitler died, for example, so I think you can call him right-wing.
- He wasn't quite Franco but he was pretty well there. - He was pretty close.
Bizarrely, though, because he had a stroke. And after his stroke, he was relived of his command,
and a man called Caetano became Prime Minister, but they never told Salazar.
He went to the grave thinking he was still running the country.
They just took his power away from him and he still thought he was running...
He was signing things, but it was of no importance whatsoever.
Well, I think that's... Isn't that... That's a... Isn't that nice? That's such a lovely way of doing it, isn't it?
That could be a fantastic scheme for so many dictators! They don't get out much.
All you need is the noise of some crowds playing on a tape outside, big office, lots of things to sign...
I hope when I go mad that someone pretends I'm in charge of a large country and gives me lots of things to sign,
rather than just sedates me and sticks me in front of a window.
So, how long do you have to have lived in a country to represent them by singing the song?
- Er, you don't. Because... - Quite right.
- Because Celine Dion represented, I think, Switzerland... - Switzerland, yeah, but she's obviously not Swiss.
- She's Canadian or something. - Canadian, yeah.
- It's a competition between songwriters, isn't it? - It's supposed to be.
Supposed to be anyone; it doesn't matter who sings it.
So there's an Australian called Johnny Logan who won twice for Ireland.
- That's right. - It's an anagram of "Anglo".
- His father was an Irish tenor. - Oh, was he?
Yeah, Patrick O'Hagan was Johnny Logan's father.
He used to sing in a very high voice like that all the time, while winking roguishly!
How totally distressing!
Well, the one thing we rule in, of course, is language, at least.
20 and a half, if you count some songs that are sort of bilingual,
of the 55 winners have been in English.
The French got furious this year that their singer chose to sing in English.
I know. I love when that happens.
Because they love, you know... It used to be the lingua franca, but it isn't anymore.
- No, it isn't. - The world is Anglophone.
But isn't it just disgusting they give us such a bad time and they use our language; they should be taxed!
- An English tax! I love it. - They should be taxed! In fact, it's...
It's a very good source of revenue for us, potentially, all these countries that are so nationalist.
- I mean, look at America, the U.S., Australia: they're all so... - On the Internet, they use English.
Glorious nationalism, so make up their own bloody language if they wanna borrow ours.
Now, the 1974 Portuguese entry "E Depois do Adeus", was used as a signal to start the military coup
that overthrew the 42-year-old dictatorship of Antonio Salazar in nineteen seventy-four. So, one of the, few...
Five!
One of the... Ignore him. So, from one of the few grim regimes without a general involved,
to an absolutely beastly experience with one, in the iron grip of General Ignorance, now.
So, can you name the family in Swiss Family Robinsons?
- Robinson. - No! No, indeed.
No, there is no family called Robinson in Swiss Family Robinson, no.
Swiss Family Robinson is a book by a man called Wyss, a Swiss man...
Is it a reference to Robinson Crusoe?
It's a reference to Robinson Crusoe; they're the Swiss Robinsons, That's what it is.
They don't actually have a surname; they're called Ma and Pa and Ernst and Franz and names like that,
but the weird thing is, there have been films in which they're called the Robinsons. It's just a misapprehension.
Are they even Swiss?
Well, they are Swiss. They are Swiss.
When it was translated by William Godwin, he called it The Family Robinson Crusoe, 'cause that's the idea.
It was a Robinson Crusoe family, as it were,
a family undergoing a Robinson Crusoe experience, which was a good title,
and that got mysteriously changed in 1818, four years later, to The Swiss Family Robinson.
A third of all the film and TV adaptations have them as being called "Robinson".
- I think it... They need a better title altogether, basically. - Yeah.
It's just like a sort of shortening of the pitch isn't it? Swiss-Family-like-Robinson-Crusoe.
- It's a Swiss family meets Robinson Crusoe... - Exactly.
The two most entertaining things we can think of: Robinson Crusoe and a Swiss family.
This is dynamite. As long as we can come up with a good title.
- Now, What do you call a boomerang that won't come back? - A kylie!
- Yes, a "kylie" is exactly what it's called. - A kylie!
- A kylie. - A stick!
- No. Yes, a "kylie" is exactly what it's called. - Yeah.
People say, "Well, hang on, surely. Which... Are they called kylies after Kylie Minogue, or whatever,
but Kylie was a fairly common girl's name in Australia before Kylie Minogue,
and it is named after that. The boomerang that doesn't come back.
I thought they used them to throw them at things but it turns out they throw them behind birds and they think
it's a hunting bird and it drives them towards them with the spears and things.
It drives them towards nets. You're absolutely right. For some reason, birds are spooked by this thing
sort of going near them, they think it's a hawk, think it's a hawk or a bird of prey...
Going behind them. And don't try to catch it when it comes back 'cause it will take your hand off.
Ooh, no, you don't.
A boomerang that won't come back is a kylie. Most Aboriginal tribes had both returning and non-returning throwing sticks.
While we're on the subject, who knows where the word "kangaroo" comes from?
I do. When Captain Cook first went to the Antipodes,
nobody had much of an idea what the natives were talking about, you see,
and one of the chaps who worked for Captain Cook... He said, "What is that animal called?"
and the Aborigine said to him, "Kangaroo."
And it was only several years later when they learnt a bit more of the Aboriginal language
that they found that Kangaroo means "I don't know".
No, it's not true. It's not true. Look behind you, there.
I'm so sorry to get you through that, because we knew that you thought that was the case.
It is a commonly-held fallacy. It is sadly not true.
The problem is, the story got twisted, and in fact, gangurru is the Guugu Ymithirr language,
and it means a large black or grey kangaroo.
1400 miles inland, when the... Captain Cook's party got... They asked whether there were any kangaroos of a tribe who,
as I say, 1400 miles away: There were 200 Aboriginal languages at this point,
and they had no idea what the other language gangurru meant at all.
So it got confused and this story arose that it actually was "I don't know", but I'm afraid it isn't true.
- Well, I prefer it. - I prefer your story.
We started with old wives' tales; let's end with that old feast of family fun, maths homework. What does this prove?
You may notice it's not written in usual... Mathematical language...
- Yes. - It's... It's not a message from Al Qaeda?
No, it's not! It's written in symbolic logic, if that's of any help to you....
Has it got something about the Portuguese coup starting in '75?
Not about that. Who was the great logician of the 20th century, the great British master of logic and mathematics?
Sorry? Derek Trotter!
He was also a great campaigner against nuclear weapons.
- It was Bertrand Russell. - Bertrand Russell, Lord Russell.
- There he is. Bertie Russell. Marvellous figure. - He wasn't... He wasn't a barrel of laughs, was he.
They say that his breath was not good. I mean, that's... In the biographies of Canes and his contemporaries
he had very bad breath, but he was a remarkable man.
He wrote Principia Mathematica, which was, a book determined to reinvent maths.
'Cause set theory produced all kinds of paradoxes which seemed to suggest that nothing could be proved
or complete or consistent in mathematics, which was a huge shock,
and so he had to set out to prove mathematics worked from the very first principles...
- Was he very, very good at sudoku? - He was...
Oddly enough, he was said not to be that good at mental arithmetic, but...
So, in order to prove mathematics from the very beginning,
you have to establish the first principle of arithmetic, and that piece of symbolic logic
was proving that one plus one equals two.
It's a bit late, the 20th century, to prove that.
- I'd say. - Bit late?
We've got quite a lot riding by the 20th century on one plus one being two, you know.
Lot of... Quite a lot of engineering happening, a lot... Quite a complex international economy...
If you find out that it doesn't equal two, what do we do?
Just burn everything, 'cause God knows, anything could fall on our heads; money, you might as well eat it; forget civilisation.
Well, there is a general thought that if the... What was considered to be the sound foundations
on which all mathematics rested
were proved to be rocky, that it may mean that some of the ultimate answers of the universe
will never be answered. But it's rather splendid to think you would give so much effort into proving one plus one...
- What an extraordinary achievement. - It is.
- I mean, you just have to bring up his halitosis! - I know that was silly of me but... I love that... He was a great...
I mean, you know... It comes to something when you think you've achieved that in life...
- Imagine meeting him at a party, though. - Old Stinky Russell...
"I met this bloke at a party; he stank, and when I asked him what he did, he said he'd proved that one plus one equals two."
But it's very important. It's a very important principle to understand is that you can be gossipy about someone's private hygiene
and think they are one of the greatest and most towering intellectual heroes that you could ever worship at.
The two don't rule each other out.
Similarly, you can say that someone has very nice breath who is an idiot.
Exactly right. Precisely the point. But Bertie was a great man and we should be proud of him.
- "Bertie" to you. - "Bertie". Bertie Russell. So, anyway, there we were.
We were looking at Bertrand Russell's proof that one plus one equals two, and let's see if our scorers know that,
'cause as our collective grandmothers almost certainly warned us, all good things must come to an end,
so it's now time to add up the final scores.
My word, my word, my word, my word. This week's big bag of jelly babies, as it happens, with plus five,
- goes to Ronni! Ronni Ancona is our winner. - Thank you very much. Thank you.
We offer a consolatory sherbet dab to David Mitchell, with plus three.
And with minus six points, in third place, a liquorice bootlace to Alan Davies.
Oh, dear. But I'm afraid, boys and girls, that on the QI naughty step tonight, with minus nine,
Sir Terry Wogan.
Is this because I pointed out the error in... 1975?
Oh-ho-ho! We wouldn't be so mean or so low.
So, children, that's it. Before we all climb the wooden hill to Bedfordshire,
it's "good night" from Terry, David, Ronni and Alan, and me,
and we leave you with a final piece of homespun wisdom from George Burns:
"Happiness is having a large, caring close-knit family in another city." Good night.