Good evening, good evening, good evening, good evening, good evening,
and welcome to games night at QI. Let's meet the players.
And game for a laugh, it's Phill Jupitus.
And...
- At the top of his game, Sean Lock. - Thank you. Thank you.
A game girl, Liza Tarbuck.
And...
Thinking about going on the game, Alan Davies.
And tonight, the bells are all well-hung and fairly gamey. Phill goes:
"Gladiators, ready!"
Sean goes:
Liza goes:
"Goooooooal!"
Alan goes:
"Good game, good game."
Aww, good game. Good game. Excellent. Well, let the games then begin.
Picture this, Alan; it's a little complicated but I think we'll get there. Phill and yourself...
Right.
...and Sean are in love, and why shouldn't you be, with Liza.
You've noticed.
Yes. Now, you're going to have a truel, which is a three-way duel.
Now, the problem is, Sean's a really good shot, he hits 90% of the time, he hits the target.
- It's amazing looking at me eyes. - Yeah, exactly...
Phill hits the target 60% of the time.
You, unfortunately, are not a very good shot, and you, only 10% of the time.
Right.
You get first shot... You've only got one... You can shoot one of them.
They will then each have a shot afterwards.
The question is, what would your best strategy be?
Shoot myself.
Tell me this... What I was going to do; shoot Liza.
Something tells me they're all up there, though.
Oh, then you'd have a gay three way. I wanna watch.
I'd say, "There's something... Sean, can you look, there's something..."
"Phill's got something on his back of his shirt," and then I shoot through Phill into Sean.
Yeah, like we're gonna fall for that.
And, like a bullet is going to make its way through my body at...
Anything other than like a quarter of an hour;
Sean will be on the other side of me going, "Any minute now it'll come. Any..."
All right, we'll do it the other way around, we'll do it the other way around.
Also, why... I appear to have been eating cocoa out of the jar by just rubbing my face in it. What's, erm...
Yes, well, no expense has been spared. You've had a...
I have done two series of QI without the beard and yet they still persist on the photo of me
where I look like the fat Carlos the Jackal.
You're worried about that; look at my hair!
That is... That is more of a dog turd, than a hairdo, isn't it?
Sorry to say.
Well, surely the only... My best option is to try and shoot the one who's a better shot than the other one.
- You've got a 90% chance of not hitting them. - Yeah.
Even if you went for Sean, even if you actually did kill him, then obviously Phill would then aim at you.
So that's a bad option. Even worse if you shoot Phill because then you've got a 90% chance if you hit him. But...
Supposing you just miss? You deliberately miss?
And what, then run away?
No, you stay where you are. What's in their interests?
Oh, yeah, yeah, shoot the one that's better.
If Phill... If Phill shot you... You're no threat to him, he could shoot you, but then he would have no bullet,
you would have no bullet, and Sean would have a bullet...
- That's brilliant. Get... Bring the guns out. - Yeah, there you go.
There you are, pass them on...
- Oh, my Lord. There you are... - How do you load these?
Leave it! Just leave it, it's not worth it!
- There you are... Have you got yours? - Oh, I don't have one...
Presumably my gun going off early is one reason that Liza's probably quite liking this.
Lose the duel.
What we're dealing with here, while you're refolding your ammunition,
is something called "game theory". Does that ring a bell with you at all?
- Game theory, have you heard of that at all? - No, we didn't do that one...
- Game theory? - Yeah.
- No. - No.
It was invented by a couple of people, particularly Von Neumann and Morgenstern in America,
but most famously, by a man called Nash. Does that mean anything to you?
He won a Nobel Prize and then suffered terribly from the awful effects of being played by Russell Crowe in a film...?
- Gladiator. - Not Gladiator, no.
- Oh, the mathematician, A Beautiful Mind. - Yes, A Beautiful Mind, that's right.
He won a Nobel Prize for his work on game theory,
which is this kind of thinking which has been applied to economics, to business...
For example, a very good example is advertising. Now, if you have two companies, if they both advertise,
they're both spending an enormous amount of money and, as it were, cancelling each other out.
If neither of them advertised, they keep the money and the market would remain the same.
So, what it resulted in is the bizarre situation when they banned tobacco advertising,
it was to the benefit of the tobacco firms
because they were suddenly saved money that they were sort of wasting anyway.
Another example was an episode of Big Brother, do you remember?
There were two finalists, they would get fifty thousand, was the prize money. Right?
They were going to be asked separately. If they both say they'll share it,
then they'll share it, they'll get 25K each.
If one of them says, "I'll take the lot", right,
and the other one says, "I'll share it,"
the one who says, "I'll take the lot" wins the lot.
If they both say, "I'll take the lot",
- neither of them gets anything. Have you got that? - Yeah.
Yeah. But if one says, "I'll share it", and the other one says, "I'll take the lot",
- he gets it. - So what do you do?
You're in separate rooms and they say, "Make your decision now."
- "I came in with nothing, Stephen." - If you say... Yeah...
"I've had a lovely day, everyone's been so nice..."
But your best strategy, I mean, the point is to say. "I'll share it."
- Is it? - Yeah.
And they both did say, "I'll share it", and they both probably regretted it;
they both went, "I should've said, 'I'll take the lot,'
because he said, 'I'll share it', so I shouldn't have done".
Or they probably should have studied at school.
- Possibly. - Got on with their lives.
Not gone into some last chance saloon, hoping to get washed up on the shores of fame.
Many people... Many people believe that altruism amongst human beings is a genetic development
that is playing out precisely this theorem.
That, in a sense, the fact that it's good for us to do things for other people, for our own benefit,
rather than being entirely selfish, is one of the principles of game theory.
It's the best thing you can do for yourself, is to be altruistic.
Well, that's... But that... Then again, I'll say it anyway, that was why I was offered first aid lessons.
And I thought, "How's that gonna help me?".
- What about the bloke... - You're a sweetheart, aren't you?
What about the bloke; they had to cut his arm off 'cause it was stuck in the rock?
He only knew how to get it off 'cause he'd done some fundamental first aid.
- Yeah! - It was stuck in what?
He was rock climbing, and he had a fall, and his arm got wedged between two rocks
and he couldn't get it out.
And then, the more he pulled it, the more it swelled up, got worse.
Knew no one was gonna come, he only had a certain amount of food,
"I'm gonna have to cut my arm off!"
- Wow. - So what you have to do first,
in case this ever happens to you...
Is that you have to BREAK the arm, because you can't...
- Oh! - There's NO way you can cut through the bone
with a small knife, that he had. Not in the time he had.
So, he knew that, so he had to break his arm and then he had to cut through the flesh
and through the gap where he'd broken it.
And, presumably, remain completely compos mentis, otherwise, he couldn't do it.
- Yeah. - Does this hit at a particular age,
for example, do kids have this game's mentality of sharing, or does it, say, hit later on in life?
There was a program on about sharing... About anger, the other day...
- Yeah? - And it said that...
They got some children, whom I think where two.
And they said they need to be taught to share, showing how to share, supervised.
And, in doing so, their brains would actually grow differently...
- Yes. The brain can make new connections and bridges... - As the brain develops.
And that's... So that your actual personality will change...
Well, that's a good question of Lizas, then, isn't it, is to what age this happens.
I don't know. Interesting.
I keep staring at the image behind your head, and I was just drawn to...
There, you can see. 'Cause you're not looking where you're shooting. Are you?
Alan's probably looking at a mirror by the right of his, there.
"Hey! Fatsy!" is what he goes now.
I'm on the job. I'm focused.
You are, aren't you?
I'm taking Liza home with me!
Yeah, but you've got grade one Action Man hands that don't even grip a gun!
And, I've just shat myself!
- Enough! - I'm not going home with you!
Now which popular game traditionally ends
with all the players being thrown into a lake of fiery sulphur?
Well, I hope it's show jumping.
I hate show jumping. Oh, God...
I'd have one of those after every jump.
- Before and after every jump. - Yeah!
It's not show jumping, though it would certainly liven it up, I reckon.
- It sounds, er, Biblical to me. - Well...
I don't think it's the humans, though, is it... It's pieces... Wouldn't it be pieces?
Well, I tell you that it's a game that went dramatically out of fashion in 1972.
Early '72, it was more popular than Monopoly.
But, by the end of '72 it had almost completely gone out of fashion because of a film.
Mousetrap.
- Mousetrap. - No. There is no film about that...
Because of a film... Is it draughts?
Remember that film, "Draughts."?
The film showed...
- "The truth about draughts." - No.
"Draughts makes you go bald. Don't play draughts."
The film is not a game; there's a game in it. This game is played in it and it's scary.
- Oh, is it a seance? - Yeah...
Ouija board.
- It is a seance using a Ouija board. - Okay.
- And what film was there a Ouija board? - Oh, erm...
- The Exorcist. - The Exorcist is the right answer.
One of the truly great films of the twentieth century.
Is a Ouija board really a game? I don't remember ever seeing
Ouija board scenes in the film and at the end go, "Right! Who won?"
"Vera! Not dead!"
Well, the odd thing about Ouija it was a board. It still belongs to Parker Brothers...
Get out!
Yeah, Ouija, it's a proprietary name, so it's trademarked...
Is it "oui-jaa"?
Interesting point, that is... Some people's theory the name of it is, yes, two words for yes,
"oui" the French and "ja" the German, but no one's quite sure about
where the name came from except that it was a game that was invented.
The board was invented and it was sold and people played it.
I mean, it's weird to say that. But, they enjoyed the fact that it nearly always works in as much as,
you know, people spell out words and they don't know how they're doing it.
It's clearly not dead people and in fact it was not originally supposed to be dead people that where...
It was supposed to be you contacted yourselves, a part of yourselves that automatically wrote.
It was not about seances...
Dead people just joined in.
"Of all games, this is good. This is the one for us."
Even when recently asked, only a third of the people who still use Ouija boards
say they do it to contact dead people.
And in the First World War it was used to contact your troops abroad, supposedly.
So... So, hold on, are some dead people trying to communicate with living through Monopoly?
Yeah. There was a court case in the nineties, I'm sorry to say, in Britain,
a murder case, quite an important one, and the jury had to be dismissed because
in the hotel overnight they used a Ouija board to try and contact the murdered person...
And apparently the murdered person said, "The guy in the dock is guilty; convict him."
And the judge heard about it and dismissed the jury,
quite rightly, you may say, but the awful thing was, if they'd done it in the jury room,
the judge couldn't have dismissed them,
'cause the judge has no right in law to know what goes on in the jury room.
The deliberations must be private.
Unless he's dead.
Ah!
Yeah, that's really complicated...
Was the guy guilty?
Unfortunately, he was re-tried and found guilty which, sort of, is really irritating.
- So maybe the ghost of the murdered person did tell... - It works.
Where's the competitive element?
- I suppose you just have a go. - Yeah
"Who you trying to contact? Right, it's your turn..."
Yeah. Exactly.
Or you contact two dead people and then they box.
And then they tell you how it went.
Ghost boxing!
"As nice boards do!"
"Buy Ghost Boxing from Aunty Vera's Parlour!"
- Some people in sheets... - Yeah.
Headless man, he's already down.
It's like that, trying to punch him...
Do you know there's an Elvis...
There you go... Go on, hit me! Hit me!
There's an Elvis seance website...
Of course there is. I bet there's more than one of those.
Erm, yeah, where you contact Elvis...
- Online? - Yeah, but it cautions...
It cautions: "If you wish to repeat this experiment, please be considerate."
"Many people may wish to contact Elvis and we're sure he's quite busy."
- "Please treat this information..." - For an eternity.
Yes. "Please treat this information the same as you would if he were alive
and you had his email address, with respect."
It's a terrifying thought, isn't it?
A sort of posthumous Twitter and things like that.
That would be hell, I have to say.
- Yeah, you just thought of that? - Yeah.
- You're in it up to your neck. - Oh, God.
Horrifying.
But the reference in the Bible to the fiery lake, or whatever, is from Revelations
where it does say those who practice the magic arts will be cast into burning sulphur. So...
How about balloon animals?
Ooh, the punishment for people who do balloon animals is not specified in Revelations.
Giraffe.
I think it's loneliness, the punishment for them.
It think it's... Long nights... Sitting alone...
Actually, if you had a Ouija board,
we would probably contact me a few gigs I did in the middle of the...
You've never died on stage!
Royal Albert Hall. Oh, my God!
- Really? - When Roger Daltrey's carrying you off, going,
"Don't worry, son. Don't worry." You KNOW you've died at a gig.
Well, you weren't there the whole evening, where you? Just as a guest?
No, no. Just... I was just... They put The Who on. The Who did, eh...
- Some songs. - Just... But just like, massive hits.
And they've just did "Won't get fooled again", which finishes...
And then, someone: "Ladies and gentlemen, Phill Jupitus!"
- So, I really didn't think it through - No. Perhaps not.
The first... The first squeak of those balloons, 'cause you just...
"I've lost them!"
- I hope... - "These apush sticks weren't build for this sound!"
It goes, puppy, giraffe. Then funny hat, and then, that's the closer.
They all make hats for all the people in the audience.
There you are. It is interesting, of course, that although a lot of people have gone to Ouijas
and these things, they say words are spelled out, of course, it isn't dead people.
'Cause dead people are dead, so they can't do that.
And if they did, if they want to anything, they wouldn't want to help spelling out words.
But if you blindfold people, they still move around and do things,
but when you turn round without them noticing, they'll just spell out gobbelty gooks, surprisingly.
Which I think that kind of proofs the point, doesn't it?
So, yeah, in my youth, games which conjured up the spirits of the dead were a popular gift for children.
It's a weird thought.
If they didn't like it they could go to hell, essentially.
So during the Second World War, who were the "Scallywags"?
Does that ring a bell? The Scallywags?
Not them, that's just a little suggestion box...
Little urchin types?
I'm fairly sure it wasn't the S.S.
Well, that's the odd thing!
- It's the S.S.? - No.
You mean, they were the Scallywags Scallywags?
- All I'm saying is... - The cheekiest men in the war!
Despite the cheeky name, we're talking about something really dark and violent.
- That's where I'm going... - Assassins?
Snipers?
Well no. What was the cutest, cuddliest, sweetest part of the British forces, probably, if you think of...
- Vera Lynn. - Yes, or...?
- ENSA. ? Dad's Army, for example. Or the Home Guard, right?
But there were plans afoot, that if and probably when...
Right, that's a man dressed as a woman, doing a practice...
If and when the Germans invaded, there will be a guerrilla section of people who were not mainstream military...
I almost wish they had invaded now that the cat is out of the bag!
There were... There were people in reserved occupations like...
- "Heads up, Fritz." - Yeah.
Thing about that picture, the baby's the best shot.
It's a truel. The clergymen and doctors were secretly trained,
given money and supply dumps and ammunition and explosives and a gallon of rum in each one,
and their job would be: When the Germans came... Not only...
Not only to shoot Germans but...
There was a general view that Churchill would be killed or removed and someone like Lord Halifax would go in...
And Michael Foot was one of these "Scallywags", as they were called.
They were secret auxiliary part of Dad's Army, and he and George Orwell and J.B. Priestley and others...
All were trained to assassinate anyone who collaborated with the Nazis.
And there would be an underground resistance and Michael Foot said, "I would have killed Lord Halifax."
"I was quite prepared to and I... I would have killed him."
So they were pretty violent, it was not an easy, cosy thing. Quite...
- It's a good story, isn't it? - It's a clev...
It's a terribly clever thing though, isn't it, because if somebody did come over and collaborate,
anybody who might have otherwise caused trouble or ructions of a different kind...
Would be automatically on the side of good.
- Yes, that's the way... - If you know what I mean.
You're exactly right; a group of radicals and left-wingers had an uneasy alliance
- with the military who trained them... - Absolutely.
...against the possibility of anybody who collaborated with Nazis.
- That is a double mind Jedi... - It is.
I think they're commonly known.
What I'm interested in is how Michael Foot's changed his image over the years.
He has a little.
If he'd have worn that beautiful outfit on Armistice Day, there wouldn't have been all that fuss.
It's Spike Milligan.
Well, yeah. Also they were trained on night duty, on stealth,
but they only had two weeks' worth of rations with them because,
essentially, the belief was that they wouldn't survive any longer than that.
They were, basically, suicide squads; they were a terrorist suicide squad
as we'd now call them, essentially; that's what they were trained in.
It was a cellular structure, like terrorists; they didn't know who the others were,
they only knew their own band and they were tasked to do specific...
Can we expect that such an organisation exists today?
- I wonder. - Mmm.
- I wouldn't... - Yes.
I'm not allowed to tell you.
Have you... Who've you been trained to kill?
Their unofficial motto was "Terror by Night".
Even in the ordinary, if you can call it that,
Home Guard there were some pretty tough things being taught.
Boy Scouts aged 12 to 14 were given demonstrations at Osterley Park,
where the training camp was for the Home Guard,
of how to decapitate motorcyclists by stretching wire across the road.
- That's 12 to 14 years old. - That's the kind of scouting I wanted to do...
Not following twigs around Epping Forest!
And Harry Lee, who was the British roller skating champion,
demonstrated how to use roller skates to knee someone in the groin, as you see.
If you're going to slip over, though, how are you going to get the other foot anchored?
Yeah, I think he may not have thought it through, you may be right.
Who were the toughest of all vegetarians? In history?
That's a sort of a bit of a, what's it called, an oxymoron. Isn't it?
You'd think, well... Is it?
There are whole swathes of Asia where there are a lot of vegetarians...
- There are. - I'm sure their armies would be quite fearsome.
Some sort of Shaolin monk? Ninjas, Kung-fu... Wi-Orient, hairy Oriental...
Well, yeah, I mean, you may be right, but who were the tough...
- Well, not the toughest... - Bulls.
Bull? Yes well of course that's true, the strongest animals on Earth
- are all vegetarian... - They're tough as anything and they're not carnivores.
- But, no, I'm thinking of in history. - Hitler was quite tough, I suppose.
Ah, yes, but Hitler was not a vegetarian.
- Wasn't he? - No, oddly enough.
For some reason people want to think of him as a vegetarian.
I mean, it's certainly true that he didn't smoke or drink much; he occasionally had glasses of wine, but...
I'm not saying he was wonderful, but then...
By saying he's vegetarian, I'm not saying he's ghastly either.
- Think of a film in the last fifteen years... - Cowboys? No...
Cowboys? It was a very successful film, Australian actor starred as a...?
- Gladiators. - Gladiators is the answer, yeah.
- They were vegetarians, were they? - They were. They were not only...
They were vegans in fact, or "vay-gans", however you like to say it.
Relatively recent discoveries in Ephesus, where there is a mass grave of gladiators,
showed that they gave all indications that they didn't eat meat and in fact they were known as "barley men",
Hordearii, meaning "eaters of barley". It was thought that they basically ate barley and beans
and a bit of dry ash, which is supposed to be good for the muscles, but it was important that they were quite fat.
And they're always shown as stocky in art.
How can they find out that they're vegetarian from an archaeological dig?
Well, a number of things. Teeth...
- Shopping lists. - Oh, okay!
Teeth...
You know, their Waitrose.
Carved with flint on slate. Beans.
No. Just loads of toilet paper.
Do you know what... I thought, beyond teeth, how would they know?
- Did they found a... - Well, actually, chemicals in the bone and so on,
and levels of zinc and things like that that indicate very strongly...
Low levels of zinc indicates they didn't eat meat.
See, I have a problem with all this prehistoric science;
it's the fact that... What they do, they get the bones and they go "bzzzz bzzzzz"...
I assume that's what... Something like that...
And they've got to find something. Hadn't they? They go,
"Oh, these chemicals suggest they only ate vegetables."
They can't go, "Hasn't been of any use to use whatsoever."
Well, oddly enough...
"I just wasted the last three bloody years of my life!"
That is so precisely what scientists DO do. Yes, they say constantly, all the time,
"It's not indicative of anything, we don't know", "We don't know".
If there's any group of people who says "we don't know" a lot, it's scientists.
Unlike religionists. And isn't it weird that scientists are the ones that are accused of being arrogant?
It's so ridiculous. But "we don't know" is the default position on science.
- Until you absolutely know something... - "Actually, we just don't know."
- "We just don't know." - "We just..."
"Minute to minute, we just don't know."
Anyway, the fact is, it seems at the moment, that Roman gladiators were strict vegans.
Now, what kind of contest might end in either a checkmate or, a knock-out?
Well, by the look of it, "Choxing".
I'm gonna give you the points!
- Is it called "choxing"? - It's not called "choxing".
- "Bess"? - It's called "chess boxing".
- "Ch-boxing"? - There is a sport called "chess boxing".
Yeah. I know. It's weird.
You play and fight with one other at the same time?
- Where you have a move and get up and... - "Tonight... Tonight at the Empire Pool Wembley;
Henry Cooper meets Garry Kasparov!"
No, you have to be good at both, it's like a pentathamus, I'll tell you...
- You box around, then you do some chess? - Yeah, basically.
You've got twelve minutes on the chess clock, and you've got four minutes of chess,
then three minutes of boxing, then back again.
And, between rounds, players have one minute to remove or don their gloves,
'cause, obviously, boxing gloves and chess doesn't work very well.
You win by either checkmate or knock-out.
Or failing those by retirement or exceeding the time limit on the board.
Do you know who the Ukrainian WBC heavyweight champion is?
- Wladimir Klitschko. - Yes!
- And his brother is...? - Klitschko.
- His brother is Wladimir... - Erm... Dennis.
No. Vitali is the WBC, and Wladimir is IBF.
They're brothers, and Vitali is a PhD, and plays chess very well.
And his brother is also a chess player. So they could probably play.
And Lennox Lewis is a very keen chess player.
In fact, when Lennox Lewis played Klitschko, he beat him, in fact, didn't he?
They would be the ideal, but it does exist and took place in...
Firstly in the Netherlands in 2003.
You can do that with other sports, couldn't you, though?
- Yeah! Go on! - I don't know...
- Chugby! - "Chugby"?
- With chess and rugby! - Chess and rugby. Chugby. I like it!
Darts and swimming.
- Ooh! - "Swarts".
- Or "dimming". - Or "dimming". Yeah.
- Underwater darts, would that work? - Oh, yes. I like the sound of that.
Or, darts AT swimmers.
I went to the Olympics in Athens, I went to the swimming, "I'll go..."
"There's swimming, that will be fantastic! It'll be very exciting..." It's rubbish!
You have no idea what's going on, just sat, looking at a pool...
People where just going up and down, you have...
You have NO idea of who's in the lead, who's won...
- Television... - Which one is which...
Yeah.
200?.
Whoa! Did you get them back?
Don't bother. When we have in 2012, I'll be at everything BUT the swimming.
- What about "fooker"? - Same to you!
A variety of football and snooker.
What about "ping swingball"?
- Say again? - Ping swingball.
- Ping swingball? Very good. - Ping pong at one end, swingball with the other.
Superb.
Trivial Winks.
Trivial Winks!
Trivial Winks. "Do you fancy a game?"
Trivial Winks.
There's a thing called "Calcio fiorentino", which is a form of football and martial arts, together.
Played in Florence, which the rules permit head butting, punching, elbowing and choking.
- This year, there was a new rule that banned... - They should have that game at Wimbledon.
This year, there was a new rule that banned people with criminal records.
And one team lost twenty of its players under this rule...
- That's a bit unfortunate. - Suspicious.
There's Slamball, which is an American game. Which is a sort of basketball,
where they have trampolines on the court. So you can use them to block and to bounce,
- have you seen that? - Yeah! No, I've seen that.
There's a channel that shows nothing but that.
- Really? - Is it good?
These games are really for people who couldn't get in to a football team, aren't they?
Where they go, "Well, you didn't make the team squad, but you can play chefflington", or whatever.
- I was thinking about... - I didn't really try there, did I?
Well, anyway. Chess boxing is a quite interesting, hybrid sport.
What was the first price in the annual Mayan, right, ball game tournament?
- Yes? - I haven't hade one, so I thought...
An avocado?
- It comes from there, doesn't it? - Yeah!
It comes from that area.
- Trousers. - Some trousers?
- A pair of trainers. - "A pair of trainers".
Looks good though, doesn't it?
Why does the spectators have their clothes on?
Fat people in clothes.
What else do we know about Mayans?
- Sacrifice. Blood sacrifice. - Yes.
- Your life? Was the price your life? - Basically, yeah.
Your life was taken. If you where the captain of the winning team,
you where killed, and your heart was taken out and burned.
- Which... - God!
- Seems an aw... - What's that gonna do with the post match interview?
"Well, gotta say..."
"WAIT! WHOAH! OH MY GOD!!! MY HEART!!! MY HEART!!!"
"Thank you, Dave!"
Excellent!
What was the incentive, though? Why would you want to win?
Well, this is the logical problem, isn't it?
They played the game for 3000 years, from 1400 B.C. It wasn't until 700 A.D.,
when a king known as "Eighteen Rabbit" decided that it made better sense to sacrifice
- the captain of the losing team. - Yeah.
'Cause as you say, it would incentive each side to play better.
A long time to work it out, wasn't it?
"No wonder the games been rubbish for all these years."
- "And none of those goaled... Yet!" - "Oh! I get it!"
"96 own goals???"
- Who knows why? But, maybe... - But that's kind of interesting, then...
'Cause, I was thinking, if they went along to that slaughter willingly...
I think that's... That's it.
- It was an honour to die. - Then, they would have their minds set. Yeah.
- I don't agree, I... - But then the fact, that the guy changed it,
that's clearly... That doesn't make sense at all, does it?
- No. Maybe... - If you can say it's safer now,
even with all the problems with the BBC, and what's politically correct,
I think, you could safely say: the Mayans where stupid!
They're really ... stupid!
If I'd known this, about those terrible, terrible Mayans,
I wouldn't have enjoyed my Aztec bars back in the seventies...
- With such bandon. - They where... They where for the Aztecs.
- Yes. Aztecs... - Are they completely different?
Aztecs is Mexico, Mayans; Belgium.
Mayans is Peru, isn't it?
- Well, no. That was the Incas, really. - Awww...
The Mayans...
The Mayans did share the same land as the Aztecs.
I mean, it was Central America, really, sort of Honduras
- all the way through up to Mexico. - Oh, I see, right.
- I say, do you wanna take all that back now? - Yeah!
And you where sitting going...
Oh! Now, now, children...
No, no! That's... That's a complimentary. That's a...
That's how you take it back.
- That's it. Respect. - Very good. Lovely. Well done.
Well done. Yeah. There you are.
Yeah, the winners of the Mayan championships,
in the beginning, where sacrificed to the sun god, until, um...
One year, the king known as "Eighteen Rabbit"
decided to change the rules an sacrifice the losers instead.
Now, where might you see a boat like this, here?
Las Vegas.
Oh, she's good... Stopped you from...
Stopped you from saying...
- That water is too clean... - Yeah!
Much too clean...
- For the place that will set the bells off. - That whole wall isn't rotten and sinking.
Those people in that gondola, clearly still have some money left.
Because, let me tell you, if you go in the gondolas in Venice...
Kiss goodbye to the rest of the holiday!
- Well, he's just paid 50?... - They will be cuing at the tell at social services.
He just paid 50? for that handjob.
They... Oh, hello!
Looks to me, looks more like the Italian guy's leaning over her, and asking her for her room number.
Very likely...
Now, but there's another reason why that could not possibly be Venice.
That's the gondola itself, what's wrong with it?
Just too bling.
Well it is too bling, actually, yeah, but that's because...
Have you been to Venice? Have you noticed gondolas?
- Yeah. Very expensive. - They're very expensive, yes.
- They're black. - They're all black.
It's an ordinance from 1633 onwards; they have to be black,
a sumptuary law that says they will be black.
They're allowed little bits of ornament and bling, as you can see,
and they're allowed a little curly prow and a few other such things,
but they must be black. Since we're in Las Vegas, let's go to the casino.
We've talked about them a bit but, erm, how can you win money from a casino?
Magnets.
- Counting cards. - Prostitution.
Card counting, that's right.
And they can spot that you're doing it. They have people that watch,
- and know that you're doing it. - They do.
And it was a chap who wrote a book, Ben... Something, no...
Nevis.
- Awfully good... - No, I don't think he could do it. He's...
He's a maths teacher at college and he gets some students...
- M.I.T. students, wasn't it? - Yeah, yeah,
and they went as an experiment, kind of, and he's been banned from casinos.
It's not against the law and you're not cheating; actually,
what you're doing is playing the game extremely well.
Now what happens is that they have this amazing
face recognition technology that all the casinos in the world buy into.
If you went into a casino in Phoenix, say, er, and did some card counting and they said,
"Excuse me, sir, can you leave?", they can't really take your winnings away from you;
they just make you leave. Unless they're criminals, they'll try and beat you up if they really dislike you...
And you were to go to one in Macau, flew over the next day,
they'd spot you as you came in; their computers would pick you up
with face recognition and say "he's a card counter", 'cause they would have...
As if they haven't got enough advantages.
I know, that's the thing; they're just there to make money.
And how do they spot that you're card counting?
Unless you sit there and go, "A seven! Five! A jack! Bust!"
And if you did do that, I'd imagine they'll go,
"Excuse me sir, could you leave?"
"I've got a picture one! I've got a picture one!"
That's maybe the way you'd disguise it.
Yes. Though, of course, what they do is, they do it in teams and they have very clever ways...
You're doing that and the guy at the other end's counting the cards. It's the perfect... Yeah...
Well, you're right, that was the system that Ben Campbell, the guy you interviewed...
- Ben Campbell... Remember him? - Yes!
That was his system, but oddly enough they tried to do it with roulette. How would you do it with roulette?
- Count the spins. - Mmm, yeah...
- You stop it. - Count the ball.
Stop it, stop time... And then you only can move, everyone else is frozen in time,
and then you get the ball and put it exactly where you want.
And then go... "Everyone back in the room."
Why not just help yourself to all the money in the place while you've stopped time?
Because... Because... Because, when you...
Eventually you'd have to start time and bring them back in and they'd know; they'd go,
"Something's missing..." If you'd won, they'd go, "Wow! You've done it again!"
I know how you win...
And I'd feel my pants wrong... Felt a bit strange.
Oh, oh, no...
Well you would, wouldn't you? You'd take all the money and you'd fiddle with people.
- Sean Lock!!! - You would!!!
What you've got to watch out for... You've just gotta watch...
You don't play one of the tables where the croupier, once he spins it, goes like this with his hand...
Yes, that's it.
They just go, "Place your bets", and then he goes...
Only a few years ago, a group of people won 1.3 million at the Ritz casino, here in London,
using a laser scanner inside a mobile phone linked to a computer that measured the speed
of the roulette ball, as the croupier released it.
And it would predict approximately where on the wheel the ball would land.
And the Police where called. Decided that they hadn't broken the law,
because they hadn't interfered with the spin, at all.
- They used it for betting the last seconds? - Yep.
- At the last second, they go... - Last possible, yeah!
And that, obviously alerted the suspicion.
- "They've must have been psychs..." - Jolly clever!
- God, that must be fun, mustn't it? Yay! - Yeah!
- Trying to keep cool. - Mind you, every time they use a scanner, it went...
"Not now, I'm gambling..."
It seems that the only honest way to win money from a casino
is by playing blackjack extremely well and counting, but if you do that they'll probably kick you out.
Now, I tell you all this but maybe I'm bluffing and how would you know if I was bluffing?
While we're still with gambling games, how do you know when someone...?
We know your tell.
Ah, that's the word, isn't it? A "tell" is what they're called...
Yeah, it's this.
When you get the cards, you go, "Come on!"
"Come on!"
That, or just blinking a lot.
Blinking a lot is said to be the one...
"Speed boats! Fast cars! It's all gonna be mine!"
Yes. Now if you were quite good at poker you might then reverse that, mind you,
and if you got a really bad hand, do that.
"Aww... Go on, I'll go in anyway, but what's the point..."
- Yeah. - That's what I would do...
Apparently, poker legend Amarillo Slim, once said to somebody,
"If you could tell my poker hand from looking at me, I'll let you shit in this hat!"
Which seems...
Take it off his neighbour.
"But why, that's a... Oooh! Hooray! Now I can shit in a hat. I've always wanted to do that..."
Well, apparently, that's...
- It's not what you'd call a price, is it? - No!
- No, but it was his way... - I bet it sounded better in an Texan draw...
It's his way of saying what poker's about...
- Is that what that Meatloaf song's about? - It's not really about reading faces.
Mind reading! If you could read people's minds, that would be good, wouldn't it?
If you had a mind reading hat. That will come, eventually.
- Would make poker pointless, wouldn't it? - Yeah.
"This is... This game is stupid!"
"Let's wrestle."
- They can't ruin that! - Yeah!
Well, great. I'm...
But now we enter the end game, gentlemen, lady...
With your chance to take a wild gamble on a few hands of General Ignorance.
So, fingers on buzzers, what colour is this hound?
- Yeah? - Blue.
Oh, you're good! How did you know that?
I'm mad for dogs.
- Oh, you like dogs, don't you? - I'm absolutely mad for dogs.
What's the name of the breed?
It is a... Miniature...
It's a greyhound.
- Is it really? Just a greyhound? - It's a greyhound,
but greyhounds are not grey.
The word "grey" is actually from grig; it was a grighund and grig means "bitch"...
- Oh, early English, yeah. - Yeah, early English. "Bitch".
So it's a bitch hound, basically.
And, as you say, they're called blue, that colour is called blue. There you are.
What do we know about greyhound racing;
is it flourishing at the moment or is it down in the doldrums?
Dying out.
Greyhound Racing U.K. tell us that it's the second most popular spectator sport
in the country after football, two point five billion wagered every year...
I think a lot of the greyhounds, though, they've gone off it;
they're more interested in football.
And how fast does the hare go around the little...?
Forty miles an hour.
- Up to a hundred! - Really?
Yeah. How about that?
Max speed's seventy, actually, with greyhounds, isn't it, between forty and seventy miles per hour.
- The dogs themselves? - Yeah.
Who would win out of a race between a cheetah and a greyhound?
I would.
Who would win?
- Cheetah. - Cheetah.
Well, the cheetah would just have lunch, wouldn't worry about it.
Brilliant!
Well, someone did try, actually, a man called Kenneth Gandar-Dower.
And the trouble is that the cheetah just wasn't interested.
It just sat down; it wouldn't race.
Especially with his little monkey jockey.
They're not used to rabbits, are they? They have to have something that the cheetah would like.
They're not gonna think that a little bit of rag, racing around an electric system...
- Funny you should say that! - Yeah?
Because, I did this documentary about a place in Namibia, and it's a big cat reservation,
and they had a baby cheetah that had been found by the roadside and brought to them.
So, within an effort to try and return it to the wild, they set up a motor
with a long bit of cord and pulleys, zig-zagged around this field,
and attached a rag to it, and then, this thing would fly around, and this...
- This cheetah... - Well, that's brilliant!
...would chase it. And they would try and get it to...
Keep it, or, you know, its hunting instinct.
Well, maybe then, they would go round
- a greyhound track? - And they eventually feed them horse meat,
and they where driving in a pick-up, doing about 30 miles an hour, and they're just...
- Jogging along, next to you at 30. - Extraordinary, isn't it?
- Really amazing animals. - Beautiful.
And they only eat fresh meat. Leopards will eat rotten meat, maggot strewn stuff,
they'd take it up a tree and leave it for days...
- They do, that's exactly... - Cheetahs, has to be...
- Dead-ish. - Or steamed fish...
- Quite fussy, yeah. - Or steamed fish...
They peel all their apples...
And in one, if you haven't got a big curly bit, they won't eat the apple.
And then, actually, they chuck it over the shelves.
That's the bit they're interested in. That bouncy, curly bit, they go,
"I'll eat the apple, but I want that."
- They are, pretty much that fussy. - They are fussy animals. Indeed.
Anyway, greyhounds are not grey and even the ones that are, are in fact blue.
Now what should you do with mussels that don't open when you cook them?
- Ooh, leave 'em well alone, really. - Yeah.
- What should you do with them? - Don't eat them.
Well...
- Yeah, that's good advice. - No, it isn't.
- No, it's terrible advice. - Clearly it's bad advice.
At least you didn't say "throw them away", though, then you would have been forfeit.
Er, no, it's odd, this is... A woman called Jane Grigson,
and she wrote a very fine book on seafood, in which she said,
"If they don't open then they're bad; throw them away."
And... This was in the early seventies; by the nineties, 90% of all books said it.
In fact, the Australian Seafood Commission say if anything, the reverse is true. That actually...
One that doesn't open... It may be better for you, and certainly one that's open before you start cooking
- you should throw away because that'll be dead. - Yeah.
I love seafood. When I was in Barcelona, and I had some clams...
And, my wife said, "Oh, they don't smell right..."
I went, "They'll be fine.", ate it. And I know...
It's not, really, a good story, I was gonna tell you that I was really ill.
I was so ill, I was so sick, sickest I've ever been. I couldn't bend over a toilet,
I had to stand in the shower, and go like that...
It was horrendous!
- Wow! - And... I've never been ill with them before,
so in about two weeks later, I thought, "You know, get back on the horse!"
I had some razor clams...
And they're like, the delay was about an hour, and I was back up in the chair going...
Wow!
Now, I'm really frightened that I'll have an allergy for life.
- Oh, that would be a shame. - Yeah!
It is the most horrendous thing, food poisoning.
But, the fact that your body just does this mass eject...
- Yeah. - I think it's great!
I don't wanna see it, thanks!
But I think it's great.
Well, it's fine to eat closed mussels; in fact, they're probably fresher than the open ones.
What did gladiators say, incidentally, at the beginning of a tournament?
"We who are about to die, salute you."
Oh!
Oh, dear.
- Come on, that's what it's there for. - Yeah, you're right.
"Not the face."
"Not the face." Very good. No, they didn't say that...
- "Are there any more lentils?" - "Are there any burgers?"
- "I'd like a bean salad." - "I want a steak."
There was a thought that is was "morituri te salutant mos" or whatever it would be in the Latin,
and they said it to the Emperor Claudius, but they weren't actually gladiators;
they were just prisoners who were going to be killed.
No gladiator was ever recorded as saying it, that's the point,
so there's no reason to believe it was ever said by a gladiator.
I bet they say... I bet they say something like, "Come on, let's just all try and have a laugh."
- "Go on". Absolutely. - Yeah!
And so, once again, we find ourselves at the end of the game and it's fascinating, actually.
Our winner, a clear winner with five points,
is Liza Tarbuck!
In second place, with two points,
Phill Jupitus!
In third place, Sean with minus seven.
But yes... Minus seventeen,
- Alan Davies! - Thank you!
Well!
That's it. Thanks to Phill, Sean, Liza, Alan, and me,
and we'll leave you with this self-evident truth from James Hetfield out of off of Metallica, who said,
"It's all fun and games until someone loses an eye."
"Then it's fun and games but you can't see any more."
Thank you, and good night.