Ahoy, ahoy, ahoy, ahoy, ahoy
and ho-ho-ho, me hearties.
Welcome aboard the good ship QI,
where tonight, we're scouring the oceans of interestingness
in search of flotsam in a programme that's more or less
a rag-bag of bits and pieces beginning with F.
And helping me separate the facts from fiction and the flim from flam
are the effortless Charlie Higson...
The effervescent Andy Hamilton...
The ineffable Rob Brydon...
And the sweet F in sweet FA, Alan Davies.
But before we slip anchor and catch the tide matelots,
let me inspect your bell buttons. So Charlie goes...
Andy goes...
Rob goes...
'Oh, I do like to be beside the seaside.'
And Alan goes...
- 'What is it, lad? - He followed in the water!'
So, and now for your convenience tonight, if you have anything nautical or nice
to tell me, you can catch my eye
as well as using your buzzer by waving your international maritime flag,
which you should have somewhere under your desks.
There you go. Charlie, yours is R.
R - Romeo in the MCC colours there.
- That means... - It looks like...
I think it's a kind of nautical bumper sticker.
It's like, "My other ship is a destroyer."
Oh! Very good. It actually means "You can feel your way past me."
- That's its meaning there. - That's not a proper nautical term, surely!
It is.
It's, "The way is off my ship, you may feel your way past me."
Andy, yours is a Z. Z - Zulu.
It actually means, "I require a tug".
So come and see me in my cabin!
I'll see what I can do.
No, I think I won't be needing that.
And, yours, Rob, there.
It's actually J - Juliet. And it means, "I'm on fire."
- How strangely apt! - So you can come to my cabin as well.
It has a second meaning, which is, "I'm leaking."
So, Alan, yours is...
Coming up behind?
No. It's D - Delta.
It actually means, "Keep clear of me, I'm manoeuvring with difficulty".
Well, mine is U - Uniform. It means, "You're running into danger."
- Yeah? - That's a good one, isn't it?
There's another sign language which is akin to this, which is semaphore.
And I just wonder... You get very good points if you can tell me, do you know any semaphore symbol?
That, um... Can you tell me what it means?
There's one incredibly familiar one that I didn't know
- until today was actually semaphore. - Er, this one...
This one is, "Welcome back to the arrivals lounge." You see that at airports all the time.
- Yeah, what's that? - That's, "I'm drunk and I'm havin' a piss."
- Very good. - This is... This is... This is "stand and deliver".
Oh yes, Adam Ant, very good.
If I were to tell you that two arms down like that is "N",
- and up here, is "D"... - Yeah.
"ND", standing for "nuclear disarmament", in a circle...
- Oh, CND. - Is the "Ban the Bomb" symbol.
We did News Quiz, the radio show, with a signer quite a few times. And it always intrigued me,
'cause you were mentioning topical characters, and it's amazing how quickly they come up with...
- Like, Prince Charles is that. - Yes.
And we were doing material about Bill Clinton, and I waited to see what the signer would do.
And, er, he just did his zip!
- Wonderful! - It was brilliant.
In America, the American Sign Language is slightly different. An "R" is, er, just to crook your finger like an "R",
and so "Ronald Reagan" was like that. Two "R"s; Ronald Reagan. Very neat.
That makes sense, 'cause a lot of girls that I've... That I've been out with...
My name is Rob, of course... They've made that sign to me.
I'm sure they haven't. I can't believe it.
Now, can you guess what these flags mean, and what the letters stand for?
A? B? C? D? E?
That's "O", actually, and it means "Overboard".
Oh, right.
It's not just to generally express interest in something another ship has said... It... It... "Oh?"
- "Oh?" - They... They say something and go...
- Also, if... If someone's fallen overboard... - Yes...
Is there really time to put a flag up and...? There's a bit of a lack of urgency. "No, never mind..."
Going through the flag box...
"Oh, I can never find the one I want! He's drowned by now! Overboard!"
And the next one is...
I think that's actually "N", which means "No". I don't know...
So, that... That, after the one before is, "Oh, no!"
Absolutely!
"I've... I've spilt something on these trousers." "Oh, no!"
We've got a third one...
That's a pyramid reflected in a lake.
No, it's a rather sweet one. It's "F", actually, and it means, "I'm disabled; communicate with me."
That's a rather patronizing view of the disabled, isn't it, that they have to have a flag to... To be communicated with.
I... I was going to speak to him, but the little fellow didn't have a flag, so I didn't bother.
They only wave the flag if they want you to talk to 'em, yeah.
Oh, Lord.
- Is... Is there a flag we can use to say, "Does he take sugar?" - Yeah.
Oh, heavens. Well, there you are. You've found a whole new use.
I think it's a magnificent... The science of flag communication.
It's more or less fallen into disuse these days, obviously, but they used it most famously when?
What's the kind of famous signal that was sent in 18...
- The Battle of Trafalgar. - 1805, exactly. And what was that, do you remember?
Well, it's commonly quoted as, "England expects every man shall do his duty," but...
They reckon that was a slight mistranslation. It said something slightly different.
Well, actually, Nelson instructed his, signal master to say, "Nelson confides that every man shall do his duty."
"Confide" meant in those days "has faith in the fact that", as it were.
And neither "Nelson" nor "confide" were flags; there was no flag for...
But there was one for "England" and one for "expects",
so it became, "England expects that every man shall do his duty", yeah.
Why couldn't they do "Nelson"? If there's a flag for "N", and a flag for "E", and a flag...
You could have done it letter-by-letter; obviously you can do that, yeah.
They'd have been shot by the French before they finished it. But it's lucky they had flags for "do their duty".
Yes.
- You know, if they could only use the flags they had. - Yeah.
Say, "Sorry Nelson, we've only got, 'Go home now.'"
It's the... It's Nanny's flag for "have a poo". "Make sure you've done your duty!"
Oh... There we... Sorry...
It's awful when you make a, sort of, observational comic remark, you realize you're the only person
in a room of a thousand people to whom that means anything.
- No, no, all the audience were nodding... - "My nanny likes to say that, too." Yeah, anyway, fair enough.
Er, one more question on the subject. Who burns the most American flags?
- Yea? - Americans.
You're absolutely right. We were hoping you'd say Iranians or something like that.
It's absolutely right. But, more than that, it's a particular group of Americans, oddly enough.
The... The worst American flag company, because they...
They get 'em... They realize they put the stars down the wrong col... "Oh bl..." God... God dammit,"
- they'd say, of course. - They would, wouldn't they?
- I was gonna say "bloody hell", but they would say... - No, you're right.
- "Aarrgh. Jack shit." And they would do it... - It's not the Klan, is it?
No, no it would be...
- It's not the KKK. Do they burn the flag? - No.
No, no they don't.
Would it be launderers? People who iron flags for a living? Would they?
Oddly enough, it's the Boy Scouts of America... And the American Legion, because Americans, as you know,
- have an almost religious view of their flags... - Oh, yeah.
And, if they get dirty and tatted, you have to dispose of them.
And it's advised, the best way to dispose of it with dignity is to burn it.
I was a Boy Scout, and we went to an international jamboree in Sweden,
and we were given the place next to the American Boy Scouts,
who were squeaky clean, and got up at like half-seven in the morning for this almost, like you say,
religious running up of the flag, you know.
And we found this quite irritating, every morning, you know. We're having breakfast, trying to drink our lager and stuff.
And they would... And we had a kid with us, called John Pennington, who was fantastically fast.
He was like Billy Whizz. And John went... Across, and stole it, and ran off into the woods. And...
And it caused a sort of minor international incident. We had this delegation of the organizers, came to see us, and said, er,
"The Americans are saying if you don't return their flag, they're going home."
We thought, "Result! That's great!" So, in the end, grudgingly, we returned their flag,
but it was a very good early insight into American foreign policy.
Well... Because we have a royal family, we don't have to invest our sense of patriotism and statehood and everything,
into something as odd as a... As a flag, whereas Americans don't have that.
They have to sort of use the flag. And they...
They really are very sensitive. Nobody cares about the Union Jack, particularly.
I mean it's sometimes flown upside-down...
- As we're being very dull and pedantic... - Yeah...
- Which is what one does on this show... - Yeah. Thank you.
- Are we not supposed to call it the Union Flag? - Yeah, it's a very good point. It's only the Union Jack...
- I mean that was boring; there's nothing funny about it. - It is the Union Jack, though, when...?
- When what? - When flying from a...?
Flying...
- From a boat. - From a boat?
- Yes. - It's a what?
- It's a Union Jack then. - It's a J... It's only a Jack when it's on a boat?
Yeah. There is one state flag in the United States of America that has our Union Flag...
What we would wrongly call the Union Jack, as part of it, quarter of it. Do you know which state it is in the Union?
- Tennessee. - No.
- Ohio. - Alabama. Carolina.
- No, it's Hawaii. - Hawaii.
- I was just about to say that.
Erm, anyway. Yes. The Boy Scouts of America... Er, burning an old, worn-out flag is considered
the most dignified way of disposing of it.
Right! While we're all at sea, what's the difference between flotsam and jetsam?
- One floats and one sinks. - No.
One is spelt with a "J"; one is spelt with an "F".
Not it. There... There are four kinds of wreckage.
Flotsam is something that's fallen off a ship... Because it's got wrecked or something,
and jetsam has actually been thrown off by someone.
Yes, correct. Jetsam has been jettisoned. Very good. Very good.
- How do we know that? - Well, it's...
- Did you really work that out? - Yeah.
- Well, it's, you know... - From jeter, the French for "throw".
- He's pretty good. - Some of us paid attention at school, Alan.
Not that one again. That seems to be the root of all my problems.
Just wasn't interested.
I can also tell you that lagan... Is what's on the bottom of the sea.
You're absolutely right! And there's only one mo...
- But you said there's a fourth one. - There is a fourth one.
Flotsam, jetsam, lagan...
Er, lagan is cargo that is lying at the bottom of the ocean, sometimes marked by a buoy, which can be reclaimed.
- But there's another one which... - Flotsam, jetsam...
Lies at the bottom of the ocean, which no one has any hope of reclaiming...
Rocks.
- And that's derelict. - Derelict.
So, they're the four classes of wreckage, according to the 1995 act which covers these things.
But the odd thing is, if you find such a piece of wreckage from a ship, and you decide to keep it, you can be fined £2,500.
Er, you have to pay twice the value of it to the owner of the original ship...
- You have to have salvage rights. - Yeah, it's very, very strict.
But does that date back to the days when all the West Country earned its keep off luring people onto rocks?
Wreckers, yes.
- That's like if you run over a pheasant... - Yeah.
- And pick it up... - Yeah.
Then that's a crime. But if you're following someone, and they've run over the pheasant, and you just find it...
I found this out because we did some filming once for Jonathan Creek, and we were filming on a big estate,
- and there were pheasants everywhere... - Yeah.
And all the crew had to drive into this house every morning.
And the pheasants, it's... Stupidly, the way they fed the pheasants was from a truck.
Oh, no.
So anytime a vehicle came past, pheasants would come from... And run towards the road.
And on about the fourth morning, Billy, the best boy,
- had just had enough of slowing down for every pheasant... - Yeah.
And did about six of them. And then the people behind picked 'em up.
Why do you think it is, then, when you're in Australia,
you see so many dead kangaroos at the side of the road when in the Outback,
there is lots of other space? Why would they be at the roadside?
- Because... - Yeah.
Water gathers on the road surface, and they come to drink that.
Eeh, that's interesting. There's certainly a lot... No, that's good. I like that.
- I've seen it. - Did you want there not to be an answer?
No, I knew the answer, and I was hoping you were going to say "I don't know",
and I was gonna say the answer. Thanks for that.
Now, er, from "flotsam" to "fan clubs". You remember that famous double act, Batman and Robin?
What did the Boy Wonder use to sign his autograph?
- Rob? - Well that... That Boy Wonder...
- Yeah. - From the television series...
- Yes. - Was played by Burt... Ward?
And, ironically, he was Bruce Wayne's young...
- Ward, yes, yes. - Ward, Dick, wasn't he, Dick Grayson.
And he went on to a career in pornography. So I'm wondering, therefore...
If this is a novelty question, and if he signed it with his... He used to see a young lady and say, "Quick! To the Batpole!"
He wrote an autobiography called something like 'A Life in Tights', and it was basically just sex.
- You're very good, Charlie Higson. - Sex on every page.
He wrote an autobiography called 'Boy Wonder: My Life in Tights'. And he revealed in that,
that he did send autographs to thousands of women, using what he called "Batsperm", er, to sign his name.
Was it actually bat sperm?
Which makes it... Which is another degree of awfulness, isn't it?
A fiendish plan. Hundreds of bats... "Come on!"
He called it "the ultimate autograph", and apparently, Batman watched.
I... According to his book.
He watched... Which part of the procedure did he watch? "Can I watch, Burt?" "Sure, Adam!"
How many times would you want to watch something like that, though?
I mean, I can see a certain kind of morbid fascination...
- Can you? - Well, yeah...
I'm just getting a message: I rather misunderstood, erm, about Burt and his... Batsperm. Erm, apparently...
It turns out he didn't actually write his name in the sperm; it was his euphemism for shagging them.
He gave them "the ultimate autograph" by shagging them, so...
I prefer the original explanation.
So, imagine if someone comes up to him in the street and says, "Could I have your autograph?" And before you know it...
"Whoa, hang on!"
Yes. "Would you mind if Alan Davies watched?" Er...
So that's what Adam West was watching, not...
- He was watching them having sex? Good Lord. - Yeah.
That goes on a lot in show business. I think, to the average man in the street,
the idea of watching another person having sex
is a bit odd. But with... I think within the world of show business, present company excluded...
- I would say. - You do hear stories of that sort of thing going on, don't you?
- Do you? - Dad's Army were famous for it, yeah.
Dad's Army? Stop it! Stop it! How dare you!
"We're doomed!"
- They don't like it up 'em. - Oh! Dear, dear me.
- "Can my sister Dolly..." - "Can my sister Dolly watch?"
Er, in 1968, they cancelled Batman, and he found it hard to get work again, sadly, so his life...
I think how that should read is, "And he then found work getting hard."
You're a very bad man.
I'd just like to say, I've got his autograph.
Hey! My word, you should be very, very proud.
Erm, anyway, yes, according to his autobiography, that's what he did.
Anyway, where would you find the world's biggest flasher?
Is it gonna be about a lighthouse?
Well, oddly enough, one of the answers is about something that is called a lighthouse, but isn't a lighthouse.
The other one is the biggest flasher in nature.
Right, is it the Statue of Liberty? Is... Is that a lighthouse?
- No! - I think...
- There's not a light at the top of the Statue of Liberty? - Well I think, like a lot of tall structures...
It has to have a flashing light on top, for aircraft rather than...
- Don't look so contemptuous, Rob. - Yeah.
Well, hang on. "Big Ben: is that a lighthouse?"
She's got a torch, doesn't she?
There's a... There's a light up there. Yeah, but I mean, I've got a light on my top floor, but I'm not a lighthouse.
Is it Big Ben, then?
You're leading the poor boy astray. No. Well, there's an organic one. There's an animal that is probably the...
- Electric eel? - But you're in the right ballpark, as it where.
Is it one of those fish like they have in Finding Nemo? They have a l... Where it dangles a light in front of its mouth.
Well, it's certainly fish that uses what is known as, erm...
- The anglerfish. - Phosphorescence.
- It's phosphor... They call it "bioluminescence", yes. - Oh, right.
- Glow worms, and... - Fireflies.
But under the water, ninety percent of marine creatures give off light.
Is it a squid?
It is a squid. It's a seven-foot squid. It's called the Dana Squid.
- It's an amazing creature. There it is. - "The Day Nurse squid"?
No, not "Day Nurse". Dana Octopus Squid.
Which you can... You can take him without being drowsy, is it?
It's a non-drowsy formulation of the North Pacific Dana Octopus Squid.
And it's really bright. It dazzles and disorients its prey with its light.
Does it need to do that if it's seven foot long?
Well, it's just an added weapon in its arsenal. It's pretty impressive, isn't it?
It's in its... Where is it?
Really, you're all to behave...
Bios, meaning living, and lumen is Latin for light, of course, so it's bioluminescent.
There are all kinds of, er, jellyfish and things that wander around...
Like there, there you see, that give off light. Very beautiful. You're a diver; you've probably seen some.
- At night... - Yeah.
- All the ugly fish come out. - Oh, of course.
- And it's really interesting. - You don't need to be pretty, out there.
You go... That's right... You go to the Red Sea, and in the day, the fish are beautiful, colourful fish.
And then at night... They're all bug-eyed...
- They limp around, most of them are poisonous... - They have strange whiskers coming out.
And they've got spines on, and you're not allowed to touch them. They'll come and look at you like...
"I'm a night fish!" Then you shine a light on them and they go, "No! No! Don't look at me! Don't look at me!"
Well, now, that's the answer to the greatest flasher amongst the animals, is that North Pacific Dana Octopus fish,
but in nature, er, also... There's an extraordinary effect that takes place in Venezuela. For ten hours a night,
up to 280 times an hour, for 180 days of the year, at the mouth of the Catatumbo River in Venezuela.
What's so extraordinary about this phenomenon is that it is the greatest source of ozone, we think, on Earth,
and it actually helps mend the ozone layer. It gives off an enormous amount of ozone,
- all this electrical storm activity is causing... - Is it a tourist attraction?
People do go to see it, yes, it's really...
It's the kind of thing where, you book for two weeks; there'll be nothing.
- Oh, that would be difficult, wouldn't it? - I guess we should've been here last week. Ooh!
Ah. 'Cause 180 days a year is almost exactly half of the year, isn't it, so the chances are good.
- I think I might go, then. - Yeah! It's w... It looks well worth it, isn't it?
- I'll report back. - Yeah!
I'll go now.
Light... Lightning goes up as well as down.
- Yes, I believe it does. - And people don't realize.
- No, that's right, yeah. - Which is why they...
They sometimes find these dead... Dead parties of tourists and they... They find their cameras,
and they work out how they died, 'cause all their last pictures are of each other, all standing like...
There like this, with their hair standing on end...
As they're just about to be discharged with a massive jolt of electricity from the top.
Yeah. I mean, it is phenomenal, the power and the s... You smell it, of course.
I mean, there's a big electrical storm like that, you can smell it in the air.
Have you ever seen the aurora borealis, or the... The northern lights?
- Seen it in Canada. - In Canada, yeah.
But only, er, faintly, not like that.
No, that's a very impressive one. How far south do you think they've been recorded?
Basildon.
- A very specific place. Er, actually, further south: Rome. - Rome? Hm.
Rome, yeah. In the 1850s they had a huge amount of this... Do you know what causes them?
Radiation from solar winds, from the sun.
Yeah, it's magnetized particles on the solar winds hitting the atmosphere and lighting up in that way.
And then, when you have particularly heavy activity, the... Almost the whole Earth, because the...
The southern lights, the aurora..
Auroraris...
The aurora australis, yeah.
- That is almost what I said, funnily enough. - It is, oddly. I know...
- Completely by chance. - How spooky, wasn't it?
The aurora australis almost meets the aurora borealis.
Almost the whole world is... Is...
- Gets the effect. - I was in Edmonton, in Canada, and then...
And it's right in the middle of the prairies, and...
And a thunderstorm was coming towards Edmonton. And the Edmontonians I was with sat out in the gar... and watched it.
And they said we've got about half an hour. 'Cause you could see that far, flat.
Gosh. Yeah.
And so you can watch the lightning and the whole thing, coming nearer and nearer and nearer, and then they say,
"Well, we better go in now..." And you go in.
It's torrential downpour, crashing lightning, and then it passes, you'll come out.
- Extraordinary, isn't it? - It's fantastic. It's really entertaining.
Yeah. I do... I do like a good thunderstorm.
I went to Ayres Rock, Uluru, in Australia, and there was an electrical storm while I was in a helicopter...
- Flying around Uluru. - Lord.
And I remember the pilot... You know, Australians are always "laid back".
It started getting a bit noisy. You couldn't see anything out the glass bubble 'cause of the rain on it.
- Yeah. - And then he just went, "Think we better land."
Oh. Oh, God...
I was in... I was in a light aircraft in... In Sydney, when... When the big... Big storm came in,
and they took us up the river, er, to... And they take you, and they leave you for a day with...
With, er, you know, a picnic and everything, and they come and pick you up.
And this storm was coming in and we couldn't make it, we didn't make it all the way back.
And I remember now, you... you saying that has sparked this memory.
Has it? Oh, I'm so pleased it did.
No, it's... great. No, no, that's... lovely.
Erm, let's all sit on the sofa and look at your slides, as well.
I... I take it from that, you don't want me to get them out.
No, I... I think we can move on. It's been lovely hearing about your holidays...
So it's fine when he's in a helicopter, but me in a light aircraft, suddenly...
When he told it, it was fascinating!
You've just had the bad luck to be one that was the straw that broke the camel's back.
It was already creaking when we were getting toward the end of his story.
- It's my... It's my fault, I'm sorry. - Yeah.
- Well, all... All I'll say is this: - Yeah.
We had to land, and get a bus back to Sydney,
and we were three-quarters of an hour late for a Rod Stewart concert, okay?
To think we might have missed that!
Oh. I hope you were in time to... To have him kick the footballs into the audience.
Yes, we were there for that, Stephen.
Oh, good... Good. That's obviously the climax of an exciting evening.
So, Taningia danae species of squid, is the largest creature to use bioluminescence.
However, an even bigger flasher, of course, is the lightning show in Venezuela, at the mouth of the Catatumbo River.
Moving on now to a question of fragrance. Why did the East German secret police steal people's underwear?
Yes, Rob?
So that they could say to them, "You may now go. You are no longer under a vest."
Oh, I say! That's very good.
- It's not bad, is it? - It's very impressive.
- It's a sort of play on words... - It... It almost is.
You... You get an accent in there. There's something for everyone, really.
Excellent.
Did they want to see how frightened people were of them?
That... That would certainly reveal that. What... Do you remember what they were called?
- Stasi. - The Stasi, yeah.
Was it to see if people were in contact with the West?
Well it was a way of trying to keep track on their dissidents, almost literally, really.
What they wanted was a sort of database of the smell of all their dissidents, so that their dogs would recognize them.
- Dogs would... Oh, my God. - Really?
So, everyone they thought was a danger, might escape, might be... Need tracking down...
They started off by swabbing them with yellow, sort of, rags, and ask...
Well, ask them to swab their underarms and their groins,
- and put them in a jar... - Yeah.
And then they invented a chair, which sort of...
There, there you see some... Some of the collected ones there.
And then they invented a sort of chair that would collect the sweaty bits, and the...
The... The only people in... In the Stazi, surely, that...
That would want that job would be the major pervs, wouldn't they? I mean...
Seriously, yeah.
When they go for the interview, say, "Oh, what do you think you could bring to the Stazi?"
"I'd like very much to be the guy that goes out and swabs all the dissidents under their arms."
"I'm thinking I would enjoy this ever so much."
And they did it for years, you're abso... I mean, it is, er, most peculiar.
It does... It does sound like a new perfume range, though, doesn't it?
"Dissidence from Calvin Klein"!
It does! "Dissidence." Brilliant.
And we know where a huge store of dissidents' smells lives, and the...
In fact, the very day the wall came down, the, sort of...
The jolly revelers burst into the East, and broke into the Stasi headquarters.
And they found these jars and jars and jars and boxes and boxes and boxes.
And it became underwear afterwards because, tiring of doing this,
they actually would raid dissidents' houses and, amongst other things, would take away their underwear
for their smell collection. But the odd thing is, there's something very German about this because,
only last year, the unified German government started doing the same thing with suspects...
With people they thought would be violent, anti-G8, anti-globalism protesters...
They started collecting their smells.
- But, you see... - I mean, we lock them up for 42 days; they take the smell.
Let's press on now, to feasts.
How did the Borgia Pope, Alexander VI, celebrate the Feast of the Chestnuts?
- There is Alexandre VI. - He had someone stuffed with chestnuts?
Oh...
Oh, that's horrible, isn't it? That's a punishment. No, he was pretty...
This is a pope we're talking about. His Holiness the Pope actually...
No, he had prostitutes, naked prostitutes. He would throw the chestnuts on the floor,
and they would grovel after them, picking them up, er, with their teeth...
- Oh, of course, that's because he was a pope. - 'Cause, sort of... Exactly. Yeah.
He wouldn't... He wouldn't stuff people with chestnuts; he was a pope! He...
I thought it was gonna be something salacious, but that's not...
Why can't we have popes like that again now? We have these popes who go around...
- They may be like that. We just don't... Know. - Yeah, yeah, maybe they are. We don't know.
There was one, Formosus, who made such an enemy of his successor, that when...
His successor was Stephen VI, as pope...
Had him dug up and put on trial. His body was put on trial. And he spent most of the trial yelling at the corpse,
and someone behind it had to move it. I'm not kidding!
"What have you got to say to that? As I thought, nothing."
When they could get a word in, someone standing behind it would say, you know...
Like a ventriloquist would say that he denied the charges.
- Anyway, he was then condemned, erm... - To death!
His three fingers he used to do papal blessings with, were cut off his skeleton. His ves...
Did the man behind go, "Ow! Ow!"?
"No! Not my fingers! Ah! Ah!"
And he was condemned to be reburied in a common grave. But then...
- "No! Not a common grave! Nooo!" - Yes.
- "Get back in the box!" - But then Stephen... Then Stephen...
"Get back in the box!" "No, get me out of the box!" "Get back in the box." "No, get me out of the box."
But Stephen, who had done this to him, he was deposed, imprisoned, and then strangled.
And then another pope called John IX, he brought Formosus back.
His body had been rescued from the common grave. He was reburied as a pope again, so it was all well in the end.
- Was he found innocent? Was he... Was the body... - He was found innocent, exactly.
- That's a TV series, probably, isn't it? Pope Trial. - That's a long-running...
- Certainly a long-running West End show. - Pope Idol.
Even as I say that, there's a Channel 4 executive out there going, "Do you know what?"
- I could see Ray Winstone as a corrupt pope, couldn't you? - Brilliant.
"Oy! You! Slag! Chestnuts on the floor! Forage!"
Oh, shaming.
Anyway, the Borgia Pope celebrated the Feast of the Chestnuts with an evening of prostitute-racing in the Vatican.
Now, er... Lastly, once again, to "F" for "forfeit". It's General Ignorance, so fingers on those buzzers, if you please.
Name the inventor of rugby football.
Yes?
Er, it was invented at Rugby School when a boy picked the ball up and ran with it.
Yeah.
Mmmm, yeah, except it wasn't, oddly enough. I thought you might know his name.
- William Webb Ellis. - William... Oh, thank you.
That was like a Captain Oates job. I just threw myself...
You did. You sacrificed yourself. You threw yourself on the grenade.
- The... The Rugby World Cup's named after him. - The Webb Ellis Cup, yes.
The odd thing is that they have this little memorial saying that,
"with a fine disregard for the rules of the game as played, he first picked up the ball and ran",
as if they'd all been playing football. But football wasn't codified till after they're claiming this rugby game happened.
Rugby is an older game, and there were lots of ball-handling games like that, so no one really believes it.
The story was first told three years after Webb Ellis died.
And in the original football association rules, you were allowed to catch the ball, weren't you?
- That... That was... - Yeah, I believe you were, until it was..
Can we see the picture again that was up before it? The one of...
I... You look at that and you think, "My god, prison life gets easier and easier..."
- I love those old Victorian team photos. - I do, because the chil...
They're lounging about casually. Quite often, there'll be someone lying down.
But when did those team photos start... When did people start...
When was it, something to do with the war, when they got...
Suddenly, it's all in lines, rigid lines, hands on knee. But all the Victorian-era ones are great with...
- They are, they're absolutely lounging. - And sometimes they're just draped over one another.
Yeah, why are they... When did it change? 'Cause you'd think, if anything, they'd be more rigid in that...
You know, they'd have been more likely to be nicely in rows and all together, and less so as the years have gone on.
If you absolutely had to, which one would you?
Wh... What...
Oh, I'm not going to give that away.
- Which one would you first? - Oh, stop!
- You're so bad. - Your stamina is... Is... All right, let's move on.
Yeah, thank you... Yes, William Webb Ellis died unaware of his apocryphal role in sporting history,
although the modern game certainly does have its roots in the 19th-century public school system.
From Rugby to Eton: What was James Bond's job?
He was a secret agent.
Is that what you want me to say?
Yeah. No, in the British Secret Service, an agent is an informant to what Bond was,
which was an intelligence officer.
You know how he got the job, Sean Connery? He went for the audition and then,
he walked away and the producers watched him out of the window...
- And Fleming. Fleming was present. - And Ian Fleming, I was about to say that;
Ian Fleming was present. And he walked away, and they said he walked like a panther...
Yeah.
Which, when you think about it, would be on all fours. And would make him look like a ruddy lunatic.
Not the sort of man you want botching up the schedule on an expensive film.
"Oh, look at him, he's doin' it again. Sean, please, get up!"
"There are no chestnuts down there, Sean, baby!" Erm, but...
No, he does have a fabulously lithe walk, didn't he?
What's the difference between your walk and your gait? Is... Is it the same thing?
Not exactly, is it? The gait is the sort of...
Picture, the angle. It's the signature of your walk. You can recognize someone by their gait...
- Can you... Can your have gait even when you're stood still? - From miles away. They can be still, yeah.
I recognize her by her gait.
You bad boy!
You know who's got the funniest walk? I think... I always... Is Liam Gallagher.
- Oh, yes. - Does he?
He's got that walk that you do... You know when you're 17, and you're out with your mates, and you do that...?
Down... Well, you... Maybe you don't, but I had that sort of slightly...
But he still does it, and he's what, about 47 now, isn't he?
You know, well, Mick Jagger still does his...
- Struts his... Kind of cockerel stuff. - Whatever you want to call it. It works.
I imagine that he grew up in a house with very narrow doorways.
Noel Gallagher's house was all French windows.
They had it all knocked through.
But Mick had a lot of little... Those funny little half-opening doors.
Excellent. Well, there you are. That's it. You see, the security services...
Still enjoying it. I'll do one more.
No, it's good... He is virtually arseless, isn't he, Mick Jagger? He has no bottom. It's really odd.
Apparently, someone else who's arseless is, er, Ian McShane.
Is he arseless?
Told on quite good authority by a costume person.
It came up in conversation. Someone was saying, "Oh, Deadwood's very good. Have you seen Deadwood?"
And then someone says, "But no bum."
He must have... Mechanically, he must have something.
He folds himself...
He's got an anus. I'm sure he's got an anus.
- Oh, all right, yeah. - They have to, er...
- No buttocks. It's fascinating. Flat. - That's the point.
It's a nightmare for a dresser, 'cause it'd keep falling... They have to staple his trousers to him.
You'd have to have a little dresser girl behind him in all the scenes, just holding them up.
I'd put a little... A little pelmet across there, and hang them from there.
You could. An arse pelmet. So. The, erm, security services actually call their staff "officers".
Agents are informants who are not members of staff.
Why is Bedfordshire quite like Uzbekistan and Liechtenstein?
Bedford's not got some claim to it being independent or something. It's not...
No. Think about it on a map.
- Same size? No, Uzbekistan's vast, isn't it? - No, no, no.
- Got no coastline? - There... Not only is there no coastline, but...
- There's no rivers. - They're what is known as doubly landlocked.
No rivers that connect to the sea.
- No, no. It's... - Ah, you've gotta go through someone else.
Yeah. You have to go through two countries to get to the coast, not one. And that's very rare.
Hang on, if you're in Bedfordshire, what are the two countries you go through to get to the ocean?
In the case of Bedfordshire, it's counties, of course.
- Oh, counties. So it doesn't really work, does it? - Well that... That's a typing error, that's not a...
- You can be a landlocked county, a landlocked country... - Right.
Or in the case of... Nebraska and Kansas are landlocked states, for example.
We might even have a look at, er, Uzbekistan as well, on the map...
and, as you see, you have to get through two countries, in this case Turkmenistan and Iran, to get to the sea.
So, very... Doubly landlocked, that's the point, which makes it very difficult for a country to get, obviously.
- No ports... - Are we going to see Bedfordshire, Stephen?
We... Oh, would you like to see Bedfordshire? You shall see Bedfordshire.
- Ah, look at that. - There we are.
- Okay now, we know for sure. - Northamptonshire would be doubly landlocked,
if it didn't have a tiny, 19-yard boundary with Lincolnshire.
Amazing, isn't it? Otherwise, it would... Yeah, well, not that amazing, all right! Okay.
But the... The West Midland county, if you can call it a county... I never really accepted it as a county, is the...
The metropolitan county of the West Midlands is also doubly landlocked, you could argue, I think.
You don't accept the West Midlands?
Well, I don't think of it as a shire, you know, as a county.
He's in denial. It's really sad. They're all...
It's, I mean, lovely a place but, why not, you know, Warwickshire and things. So much easier if they're all shires.
Now here's an easy one for you. What's the maximum amount of times, er, you can fold a piece of paper in half?
Seven
Seven, no. Yeah? And you had an answer, too?
- Eight. - Oh!
- Would there be a maximum? - Yes.
- Yeah, have you never tried it? - Strangely not.
- I'll try to do it now. - Try. Here's... No, here's some.
- Ah, paper. - Yeah.
"Pass one along to the boy next to you".
"Come along, come on." Start folding.
Two... Is it a race? Three...
- Twenty-four... - Five..
- I'm struggling on six, Stephen. - Yeah, you would be.
They've got some very exciting ideas for TV programmes these days.
Paper folding, live!
I cannot make it...
- I can't do seven; I'm out at six. - I'm... Six.
Yeah, that's that particular piece of paper, the A4 size. But an extraordinary thing, an American schoolchild...
Developed a formula for determining the folding of paper, and we have that formula for you. You can examine it.
There it is. She was very impressive. Her name was Britney Gallivan,
and what it shows is, if you feed the various variables into it,
"W" is width, "t" is thickness of paper, "L" is length of paper, that what you need
is length and thickness in order to get the right number.
Rob!
- That's them! That's them! - That's the audience.
- That's them. - Yeah. "You're running into danger!"
- That's just gonna be snipped out... - Yeah.
And straight on YouTube.
It's gonna be a ringtone. It'll be everything.
- "What you need is length and thickness." "Hello?" - Are you flirting with me?
Damn you all. You want...
And that'll be for text messages.
- "Damn you all." "I've got a text." - You want "t" to be a low number,
so thickness is, if I'm finished... Thickness low, length long. Right?
And she... She demonstrated this by using a long sheet of lavatory paper, in fact, which was very thin,
and she managed to fold it twelve times.
And finally, what does it mean when the Union Flag is flying over Buckingham Palace?
Yes, young Andrew?
- I'm gonna regret this. - Oh, be careful.
Er, it means that...
The Queen's home, coming out to have a cup of tea. That's what it means. The Queen's in.
Ah, no, it does not mean the Queen is in.
It means...
Yeah?
It means the Queen is about to get home, put the electric blanket on.
- They... - Don't they fly the Royal Standard when the Queen's home?
When the Queen is home, they fly the Royal Standard.
Since 1997, when the Queen is not home, they fly the... The Union Flag.
Yes?
- It was... Princess Diana died. - Princess Diana died.
The Queen was in Balmoral, being played by Helen Mirren at the time, if you remember, and...
And what happened was, there was no flag to fly at half-mast. You couldn't fly the Royal Standard at half-mast,
because it was against all protocol. It was such a mess, the whole thing, that they then decided, all right, in future,
just in case the... The sovereign is not at home, instead of there being, as you say; a bare flagpole,
we will have the Union Flag, so that then, when someone dies that the nation decides it's very fond of,
they can go half-mast with that.
That was a great movie, but there was one moment in that, that I just did not believe at all, which was:
She was out in Sandringham I think, or somewhere, Balmoral... Out in the Moors, you know, with a Land Rover, and a stag...
That was a great scene, though.
Well, it was a great scene, but she says, "Oh, shoo, you beauty," or whatever.
She's a member of the royal family; she'd have blown it to bits!
They should've dubbed on Philip going, "Keep it there!"
"It's talking to Betty! Come!"
He called her "Cabbage" in the film, didn't he, rather oddly?
-'Cause she smells like a cabbage. - The, um...
Shame on you!
Imagine... Imagine if you looked around and I just wasn't here now.
Good Lord.
When David Walliams met the Queen after swimming the Channel, and...
He took his mum with him. And the Queen came along and then Prince Philip, and the Queen said,
"Now you... You swam the Channel, didn't you?" And he said, "Yes, ma'am."
And he goes, "And that's not all you do, is it?" And he said, "No, I'm in a comedy show."
"Oh, very good." And then, off she went. And then, Prince Philip came, and he said to David's mum,
"Are there any more nutters in your family?"
Good. Anyway, the Queen's Flag Sergeant hoists the Union Flag
when the Queen is not in residence at Buckingham Palace.
It's the Royal Standard that flies when the Queen is at home. And so, we've circumnavigated the QI world and come
all the way back to flags. But let's see who's been flying high with the wind in their sails, and who's been flagging behind.
Oh my word, my goodnessy wordington. Tonight, our jolly roger, with eight points,
is Charlie Higson!
And, er, well, pretty ship-shape, with minus eight,
- it's Rob Brydon! - Yay!
But, er, sailing rather close to the wind, with minus fifteen points, Andy Hamilton!
And finally, walking the plank, with a report card that's all "F"s,
Alan with minus nineteen!
So, all that remains for me is to thank Andy, Rob, Charlie, and Alan,
and as we lower the QI flag, we raise a glass to curiosity,
for as Dorothy Parker once said, "The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity."
And as Steve Wright added, "Curiosity killed the cat. But for a while, I was a suspect."
Good night.