What's up? What's up? What's up? What's up?
What's up? What's up? It's the office Christmas party at QI.
And we're ready to get down with a G for groovy show.
So, let's hang loose.
Boogie-woogie and put a donk on some awesome anecdotes
and funky facts with tonight's guests. The well wicked Lee Mack!
The well safe Bill Bailey!
The well cool David Tennant!
And the well I never, it's Alan Davies.
We were slightly afraid that you may not have heard enough
Christmas songs in the shops this week. So, Lee goes...
# It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas. # Ah.
Bill goes... # So here it is merry Christmas.#
David goes...
# Last Christmas I gave you my heart. #
And Alan goes...
JEWISH TRADITIONAL MUSIC
Excellent. Later on we're going to put the photocopying machine
to some really imaginative use, but first a bit of bad news.
As it's panto season, we had hoped to bring you Buttercup, the QI cow.
But I'm afraid she's gone missing.
If you see her, you will let me know.
Won't you, boys and girls?
AUDIENCE: She's behind you!
Is she?
AUDIENCE: No, the other side!
Ah! Oh, boys and girls, I wish you'd warned me earlier.
Hello, Buttercup. Great to see you.
What I'd like you to do
is to do a demonstration for the boys and girls.
Would you go round the front?
Now, what Buttercup is going to do.
AUDIENCE LAUGH
Buttercup does impressions, all right?
And Buttercup is going to do an impression.
And you have to try and guess, what of? Off you go, Buttercup, darling.
# It's beginning to look a lot like... #
Is it two out of work actors?
Oh! Oh...
Oh, they're stamping their tiny heels.
There we go and... Is it the way of walking?
Ah, brilliant! Alan, yes.
Is it the legs not being in opposition or something?
Yes, cos cows don't walk like that. So, she's doing an impression of...
A freak.
A cow with an inner ear problem. Yeah.
Or of an animal that does walk in that way. Left right, left right.
Oh. A weasel.
Lovely idea, but not a weasel. There are a couple actually. Rhino?
A tapir? The other one in... You're in Africa. You're on safari.
Dormouse. Giraffe. Dormouse(!) Giraffe is the right idea.
Buttercup... Yes, Buttercup's very proud of herself.
That was a very fine...
It was a very fine imitation of a giraffe.
Because giraffes and camels in fact, do that left-right walk.
But cows, like horses...
Would you like to do how you normally walk, Buttercup?
You see. DAVID: Seems slightly drunk.
Is that a cow creeping up on someone?
Now, ladies and gentlemen, a big thank you to Buttercup!
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
CRASH!
BUTTERCUP MOOS
Never ever in the history of show business
has "don't milk it love", been more appropriate.
But you're right. You've got to have points, Alan.
The question was about the gait of four-legged animals.
Do you know when it was decided, for example...
There's how a giraffe actually walks, that's how...
But who was it... Do you know?
Christmas bonuses available, if you can tell me who the man was
who was responsible for basically demonstrating to the world,
how horses, for example, ran, progressed?
Is it to do with cinema, moving images? Yes.
A French cinematographer?
He was not French. No. His name was Eadweard Muybridge.
Oh(!) Hey. No! He's very well known. I bet people in the audience...
You knew didn't you? AUDIENCE: Yes.
Yes. And these are some of his, some of his pictures. Lying toads.
His book was Animal Locomotion. And he demonstrates the difference
between walking, galloping and trotting in horses.
He not only did horses, he's best known for how horses galloped,
he also did humans. And he was no stranger to controversy.
He murdered his love rival in cold blood. What? Yup.
Did he take photos of that, as well? He might have done
because he was the first person in American legal forensic history,
as a murderer, to claim what excuse?
Insanity. Yes!
Points for David Tennant. Absolutely. Come on! Well done.
Anyway, the point is our lovely Buttercup, the QI cow,
was giving us her giraffe impression.
And speaking of giraffes, what use is a giraffe bicycle?
# It's beginning to look... # Lee.
Sorry, I was thinking of the hedgehog skateboard.
Different, different thing that, isn't it? Any thoughts?
I'd like to point out that on the day I went giraffe riding,
we didn't actually put pram wheels on the giraffes. No. Fair point.
That has been added in. You don't want letters. Yeah.
A giraffe that's been fashioned into a bicycle,
as opposed to a bicycle for a giraffe? A bicycle with a long neck.
We've been seasonally silly. Alan is right.
It is, in fact, a big bicycle. It was called a giraffe bicycle.
It had a little badge on it saying The Giraffe Bicycle.
And it had a specific function.
But you may know that all bicycles at the beginning were very big.
There is The Giraffe Bicycle.
That looks lethal. What happens when you get to the lights?
Oh, there weren't traffic lights then.
Delivering papers to giant mailboxes.
You're thinking and that's good. OK, thank you. For lighting lamps.
Yes, David Tennant. One point. Thank you.
It's all the time travel he does. He knows something about every era.
Yeah.
(He's acting.) So...
What? What do you mean? Don't listen to him. I'm sorry.
Don't tell me... Don't listen to the bad man.
It's all real, isn't it? It's a documentary. Exactly.
LAUGHTER
Cybermen are real. Saw one in the corridor upstairs looking for you.
Mr Tennant! Like that. Can I just ask a question about that? Yeah.
If they are for lighting lamps, you'd have to do it on the move.
You must go, whoa! Otherwise you'll fall over.
You get to the lamp. You lean against the lamp. You've got a torch
and you raise your lit torch to... these are gas lamps. And you hold...
Yup. And then when you get home or back to the depot,
your assistant dismounts you.
< What if you're leaning on... Now, don't...
AUDIENCE LAUGHS
We've got a very Christmassy audience.
If you were leaning on the lamp
and a buck-toothed man with a ukulele arrived, would there be anything...?
Just lean down and set light to him.
# Oh, Mr Woo... # Ow!
Burning, ah!
But you could use the post to swing around
and you could do like a figure of eight between them all.
That would be brilliant, you've got a TV show. Giraffe biking on ice.
Celebrity... Celebrity giraffe biking on ice.
So, the thing is, early bicycles were all very tall.
What was the first...you know, the classic sort?
Penny Farthing. Penny Farthing, known as an ordinary bicycle.
This looks lethal. It does, doesn't it?
Amazingly the first bicycle which is the kind we would know,
i.e. with a chain that drove the back wheel from pedals,
was known as a Dwarf Safety.
And that was considered a really tiny bike.
It just shows that most bicycles, for a long time, were like this.
How do they get on those things? I guess a leany thing and a...
Like horses. I know they used to... Get out of a first floor window...
get down on to it.
There were novelty big bicycles and the Clark Brothers
built flood bikes to go above flood waters.
So you could get around... That's what I thought that other one was.
That would have been a good guess. Higher than the Penny Farthing?
I guess it was, yes. How flooded did it used to get?
Then of course there was the cross-channel bike.
Which was over a mile up into the sky.
But there are people on tall bikes to this day.
Who re-enact, sort of, tourneys, like jousting. With lances on bikes.
That really does look dangerous. Yeah, highly. We used do at school.
We used to do Quad Hockey, like a polo only on bikes.
You use a hockey stick and a ball.
And then you just go round on a... On quad bikes?
No, not on quad bikes.
In a quadrangle. In a quadrangle. Yeah.
You played hockey in a quadrangle? Yeah.
You had a very different sort of schooling, I can tell right away.
Why? How is that different?
Well, at my school we use to set fire to cars.
In an octangle.
We just played Quidditch. Well, there you are.
It was all right, I suppose...flying.
Giraffe bicycles were a boon to the weary lamp lighter.
How do you react, team, to queue bargers?
Oh, very unfavourably.
Very unfavourably. Oh, yah.
Yes, it goes against the very bedrock of Western society.
Also, the late mergers. You know, in lanes entering the motorway.
And there's a coned off lane.
And you think, "I'd better conscientiously merge now."
And some people go right the way down the end of the thing.
You! You do that!
Curse you, later merger Davies.
To be fair though, Alan was a part-time ambulance driver.
Do you know in America,
in some states they have when two lanes have to merge like that,
they go, "Like a zip!".
Cos that's one, one, one, one.
It's rather brilliant that, isn't it? Yes.
I hate the late mergers in the bar queue.
Six deep at a bar, they get on the edges.
I hate when you're at the bar and someone taps the bloke next to you.
And says, "Get us a couple of pints will you, mate?"
Or when you're at the bar and someone leans forward
and they get served first just cos they're on television.
Yeah, I hate th...
Mr Fry! Go away, scum.
Make way, make way. Enough!
Lord Fry. Just come for a port.
Here, here. On his bicycle with his hockey stick. Make way.
Make way, I say. Over here, Mr Fry.
Clear the table. Get up, get out!
Can anyone here sing the Lord's Prayer in Latin? No?
Well, out, all of you!
Throw that man on the fire.
Pater noster, qui es in caelis, sanctificetur nomen tuum....
It happens I do know it. You see. I don't know why.
But queue jumping, queue jumping.
It is despicable and you would think most people react very badly.
If someone were to walk in and just barge in front of a queue.
But do you know the name...
You're probably familiar with the experiments done
by a behavioural psychologist in which members of the public
were given white coats and asked to inflict pain.
Stanley Milgram is the one best known for it.
They asked people to do things that were
against what they considered to be right.
And yet because they were told to do it...
And the person doing it had apparent authority.
But the less well known experiments were in queues
or lines as he would say.
129 times he tried in betting shops, railway stations, elsewhere.
Betting shops, you'd think where people would not
be afraid to show their opinion.
And what the experimenters had to do was enter the queue
between the third and fourth person in line.
Say in a neutral tone, "Excuse me I'd like to get in here."
Step into the queue, face forward, and only leave when admonished
or after one minute, whichever was sooner.
And on only 10% of occasions,
was the queue jumper forced to leave the line,
because they were admonished. And in only 50% did anyone so much as tut.
It's extraordinary. Where was this?
This was in America. In America. Not in Tunbridge. No.
Not in Peckham. No.
Very, very high tut ratio.
I'll tell you what annoyed me. If it's five items or fewer,
then it's five items or fewer.
Don't come in with six and stand in front.
LEE: But that's confusing... Do you look in their basket?
You bet I do. And then say absolutely nothing about it.
Yes. But what if it's three for two?
I'll give you one of those items off.
< So, you'll give me two?
I'll give you two of those three. >
But if there's not a special offer on... And I'm checking.
You're Scottish, I know you're checking for those offers. Oh.
That was low. Go on, take him. That was low.
Get your sonic thing out.
In the First World War...
Is that it? A biro from WH Smith?! It's not working. >
It's not working? Help!
In the First World War, they toured a tank... Boom! ..around Britain.
Boom! LEE: You've knocked all his hair off, look!
< Don't wave it around!
< Easy with that! Whoa!
In the First World War, they toured a tank around Britain.
And it went to all the major city centres in the country.
And people were encouraged, to raise money for the war,
to chuck any spare change they had into the tank.
Where did they get most money? Glasgow! Ah, bless.
Yeah, because they thought it was a big fruit machine.
Oh!
He's bad.
IN A SCOTTISH ACCENT: "Look, I've won a soldier, Mummy! I've won a soldier!
"Oh, he's gone again." One armed bandit, yeah.
"I cannae do this. I cannae..." "You'll win a prize." "I can do it!"
There's a wee chain around it. Oh, dear, oh, dear.
Do you like my Scottish accent? There we are.
That was a SCOTTISH accent?! < Yes, it was.
I see.
So, we're more tolerant of queue jumpers than they deserve.
Now, until 2008 it was legal
to smoke what I'm talking about in Dutch coffee shops.
But now they've changed the law. What is it? Yes.
Tobacco. He's clever. He's right.
We thought you might say cannabis, but you're too smart for us.
No, they don't mind you smoking that.
They encourage it.
I went to Amsterdam when I was 19 years old.
And I don't do drugs. And I'd never done drugs.
And I sat in this cafe and everyone was smoking.
And, genuinely, I said, "No, I'm not going to touch that.
"I'll just have a piece of cake."
Aw! Someone said, "You know what was in that, don't you?"
It's a hash brownie.
But I thought that was the same way as you have brandy and trifle.
It's not going to get you drunk, it's just a little jokey thing.
So, I had one. I said, "It's had no effect. I'll have another one."
So, I ate another one. And then, two o'clock in the morning,
I accused the taxi driver of trying to kill me.
The point is it leads to rather bizarre situations.
If you mixed your cannabis with tobacco in a coffee shop,
you would be fined.
So, you can only have pure. It's only mixed or...
Not, not since July 2008. No.
Now you have to smoke pure cannabis. In grass or hashish form, I suppose.
So, you can't get passive smoking from pure...
It's fantastically carcinogenic, more carcinogenic than tobacco.
Is it? Yeah. Oh, dear. It's seven times more or something. Really?
# So here it is Merry... # Three joints, that's 20 fags.
Oh, my goodness! But in the street if you were to smoke,
you could smoke tobacco in the street.
But if you were to mix it with cannabis, you'd be breaking the law.
You don't know whether to go indoors or out.
DAVID: Magic mushrooms. Ah, magic mushrooms.
Or a version of magic mushrooms, as you're talking about drugs.
The fly agaric... Oh, yes. ..which is that sort of...
Like the mushroom you get in a fairy tale.
Like a big cheese toasty. It's red with white spots on it.
The fly agaric in Siberia was eaten by the reindeer.
And so the reindeer would eat this fly agaric and they'd bounce around.
Off their face. That is where the legend of flying reindeer came from.
Oh! For your Christmas edition. That's a Christmassy story.
Thank you, David. Ah, the drug addled reindeer.
Old Siberia. And then, because it's highly toxic to humans...
They would collect the urine, drink it and get a secondary... Buzz.
And then you could drink the wee of the man that drunk it.
Just a mild sort of...
Lovely buzz.
Just sort of nice feeling.
Eventually it would come down to a little cube, wouldn't it?
Pop it in your drink.
And it would be like a little sort of Pro Plus.
Fabulous. We're actually going to move on to various narcotics
in a moment. But I'm just going to finish off this smoking business.
Are we? Hooray!
Tell me when smoking bans were first introduced into Europe.
# It's beginning to look... #
Yes. Three years ago? Four years ago?
No, it's earlier. Five years?
Earlier. You're thinking... I'm not an idiot! 10 years ago.
What the hell, 15 years ago!
Try 79 years ago, almost. 76, I think. I've got an idea.
79 years ago. Ha!
Almost 79 years ago, yeah. You're the one that said it!
"Try 79 years ago." "79 years ago?" "No, almost 79 years ago."
It's my first time, cut me some slack.
But you'll find I corrected myself.
And said, no make it 76 years ago, but that's all right.
JEWISH TRADITIONAL MUSIC If only I could rewind.
76 years ago. Well done, Alan. Very good.
I hate this game. He's experienced.
It was the Nazis. It was the Nazis. The Nazis banned smoking?!
Yeah, they had very strong anti...
The more I hear about them, the less I like.
Well, that's the final straw. Up until this point I'd be prepared...
Oh, I can rationalise everything else. But that!
Bans on smoking in public places, smoking advertising,
restrictions on tobacco rations for women
and linking tobacco use with lung cancer.
Hitler called tobacco, the wrath of the Red Indian man
against the white man for having been given hard liquor.
He suggested that Nazism might never have worked
if he hadn't given up. It's true,
cos if you do that and you've got a fag in your hand,
it's got less impact, hasn't it?
Put your fag in your mouth...
Maybe that's how that started. He didn't like smoke.
The first smoking ban we could find is 1640.
Tsar Michael of Russia declared smoking a deadly sin.
Smokers were flogged, had their lips slit.
GROANING
That's strong, whoa! Your lips slit. Like when you lick an envelope
and you get a paper cut...
Eurgh, that's horrible.
Oh, what about in Jackass when they did paper cuts between the toes. Oh!
I was kneeling on my seat in the cinema facing the other way
going, "Tell me when it's stopped!"
I couldn't look at it.
Did you go to see Jackass at the cinema? Yeah.
I don't mind watching it late at night
when I've come from the pub.
But I wouldn't go to... There was a movie.
Jackass the movie is the funniest film ever made.
I preferred Jackass the novel. Jackass the ballet, indeed.
Oh, very amusing, yah!
Bam's going to do that in a trolley, I believe. Oh...
But it was James I of England and VI of Scotland
who was the first real anti-smoking tyrant.
He wrote a pamphlet called the Counterblaste To Tobacco.
In which he damned it and damned it and double damned it. Really? Why?
For being injurious to the lungs and everything.
He spotted it wasn't a good thing.
I don't want to pick you up, but you can't damn it and damn it and double
damn it, can you? You can damn it and damn it and triple damn it.
Yeah, that was his mistake, obviously.
Chairman of the Pedantic Society. I'm vice chairman, actually.
Yes...
Very good.
God bless you, you knew that.
The smoking ban in the Netherlands means you can smoke cannabis,
but not tobacco in a coffee shop.
And tobacco but not cannabis on the streets.
So, you can't smoke tobacco in Dutch coffee shops
or libraries come to that matter.
But do you get a kick out of book sniffing? Book sniffing?
Yeah. Why would you sniff a book? Is it a form of glue sniffing,
to get the adhesive? It's not the adhesive.
When a book ages enough, what would form around it? Mildew.
Mildew and mould and general fungal matter.
< Are mushrooms growing on books? Yeah, well, fungus.
And one of the fungi that grows is an hallucinogenic fungus.
And it seems it maybe has been responsible for affecting
quite a lot of scholars and antiquarians.
One of the leading mycologists of Europe actually said,
"The source of inspiration for many great literary figures may have been
"nothing more than a sniff of the bouquet of mouldy books."
< Who's buying books that look like that?
Well, they'd be in libraries. All books are rotting.
They rot faster and faster. There's a problem, because
the paper breaks down into an acid which makes them rot even faster.
So, we'd have to get quite close to it?
And you have to do it for quite a long time. Yeah.
It's a rather unusual way of reading...
It seems extraordinary. LEE: I can't help doing that...
If I go to the dentist and there's a magazine from three years ago,
and I'm having a look through
and they've got those aftershave things... Those scratch and sniff.
I always have a little.
And if it smells after three years, it must be a good one.
I always have a problem that aftershave stops smelling
after three hours. If it's survived three years, I'll buy it.
Yeah. You can't buy class, can you?
Well, the fact is it would take a long time
to get truly high on one of them.
But it is a real fungus and is truly hallucinogenic.
What is the proper name for 'shrooms,
the magic mushrooms, the hallucinogenic ones?
You've mentioned fly agaric, which is like that one really.
But the magic mushroom... psilocybin. Silent P...psilocybin.
Interesting experiments have been done.
Encouraging some to believe that religious experiences, all told,
are based on some sort of hallucinogenic experience.
It's an interesting thought.
Isn't there some sort of theory
in America that there's a religiosity...
There's a kind of a God spot in the brain. Yes, some have come up...
There's some part of the brain which induces some sort of spiritual...
Which may be accessed by magic mushrooms.
Do you know who rediscovered the magic mushroom?
Albert Hoffman, his name was. Albert Hoffman, yes.
And he was the first person... To formalise acid?
Acid... LSD. LSD, yes. LSD. That was his even more famous thing.
And do you know where he got LSD from, as it were?
It was a by-product of something, wasn't it? It was...
Marmite. Yeah, yeah.
Oddly... Oddly not that far off. Vegemite. Well, no.
I mean a little further than that.
But a kind of bread. Bread would have a mould which would cause...
The yeast... the yeast of a bap. It was called ergot.
Ergot, yes. You've heard of that? Yes, it grows on wheat. Yeah,
and rye. Rye in particular. And ergot has lysergic acid in it.
It was while looking at this,
that Hoffman absorbed some though his skin without knowing it
and had these extraordinary hallucinations. So...
three days later he took what he thought was a tiny dose
having basically synthesised the lysergic acid, diethylamide.
And it proved to be 1,000 times more potent.
And he had a terrible trip. And he wrote, "A demon had invaded me.
"It had taken possession of my body, mind and soul.
"I screamed trying to free myself from him.
"Sank down again, helpless on the sofa.
"The substance I'd wanted to experiment upon had vanquished me.
"I was seized by the dreadful fear of going insane."
Wasn't it the fact that he actually...
he was funded by the CIA. Because the CIA got wind of it.
And they thought it was some sort of drug
that could enhance performance... Truth drug, I think. Or truth drug.
It was known as Project MK Ultra. That's it, yeah.
And basically they were responsible for the psychedelic movement.
So, the CIA basically eventually led to Jimi Hendrix.
Yes, essentially. Yeah. Thank God for the CIA. Indeed.
Without them we wouldn't have had Purple Haze.
Anyway, old books give off a mixture of inert gases
and hallucinogenic fungus spores.
A combination much beloved of book sniffers.
Now, who is the coolest, grooviest hippest cat on the show tonight?
David Tennant, I'd have thought. Yeah. DAVID: I'm going for Bill.
Could be. What do we know about these words?
They're jazz words. Ah, many of them are jazz words.
And how old are they?
Since the '20s, '30s, '40s?
Early... no, no. Earlier, Stone Age.
Let's take the word cool.
When did it first mean like fashionable, do you think?
'60s Beatnik poet era.
Hitler. Hitler. Oddly enough it was the year Hitler came to power, 1933.
But I don't think that's quite relevant.
MOCK GERMAN ACCENT: These new uniforms are cool. 1933.
# So, this is Christmas. #
I joined the Nazi party. They're cool, daddy-oh.
Bizarrely it was 1933. And besides, I have no choice.
I burned down the Reichstag. Cool.
Jazz Nazis.
HUMS A JAZZY PHRASE
It was the West Coast School...
< But jazz Nazis would use both arms.
It was the West Coast School Of Relaxed Jazz led by Miles Davis.
And his album, The Birth Of The Cool, is 1957.
Which was the year I was born.
How extraordinary. So, maybe I am cool.
Groovy. I'd love if you said all that that as a chat-up line.
"Do you know who the coolest person in the room is tonight?
"Let me explain.
"In 1933..." Cut to two hours later.
"And that, madam, is why I am cool."
Where's she gone? "Can I get you another vermouth?"
Don't go.
What about groovy? When did groovy first arrive?
Groovy? Ploughing.
Ploughing in the 17th Century.
It's got to be from records, hasn't it?
You're right. Black jazzers in the 1930s.
In the groove, because the needle was in the groove of the record.
Exactly, there we are. What about hip or hep? When did that come?
A hip cat, a hep cat? Hip or hep? Both words are used.
< I've never heard hep. Have you not heard hep?
As in hep hop? You see, I've read On The Road.
My mother's just had a hep operation.
Or a hop operation.
Where you just cut your left...
It first came in, in black American slang in 1904 - hip.
Was it a bit more sexual? > They so often are, I'm afraid.
There is a theory that in the groove is also a sexual reference
to the little shape of the lady piece. Oh, hello.
And I want you to do that in your chat-up line, as well.
Come back, I have something else to tell you, madam.
What about cat, meaning fellow or chap?
Well, that's got to come from Top Cat...
< He was the coolest cat in town. He WAS the coolest cat. He was.
He always got one over on Officer Dibble.
It's from the musical Cats.
< That's not cool!
Give me the year when cat, meaning fellow, was first spotted. 1920.
Exactly right! To the year. Brilliant. That was a guess!
All right.
Good.
More points. Get ready with the year to shout.
Chick for meaning a girl?
Chick? Yeah? Spanish, chica.
Chiquita. Chiquita!
A cigarette? A cigarette.
Oh, that's it. That's it. Shakespeare.
He said, "All my little chicks." In one fell swoop. You're right.
In Mac as you... don't say Beth.
What about dude?
Dude meaning a person. The Amish.
When?
When, not who. 1702.
Why, let us build a barn, dude.
Any other thoughts? LEE: Neanderthal.
1883. 1883? Dude? Foxy?
Pardon? I beg your pardon?
Foxy.
1895. Wicked meaning good, meaning splendid.
2001. The Salem Witch Trails.
Your favourite year, 1920.
1920? F Scott Fitzgerald uses it. What, meaning...?
I know, these are surprises.
You don't mean in the "burn her, she's a witch sense"?
Course not. That's much older. They weren't doing that in the 1920s?!
No, wicked in the sense of good, cool wicked.
Be awful if you said that in the 14th century, "I'm wicked."
And they set fire to you. Yeah, kill you.
Much of the youth slang we associate with the '60s and '70s
is jazz speak from the '30s
or even earlier. Now, polygamy. Polygamy would be fairly groovy.
If you were Mormons, how many wives would you have?
# So here it is merry... #
Up to nine. Up to nine? Yes.
ALARM BLARES
That counts as "many" I'm afraid, Bill. I'm sorry. What? Up to nine?
Nine counts as many!
It's several after nine, yeah.
If a policeman stops you and says, "Have you been drinking?"
You can't go, "I've only had up to nine."
"You've had many, haven't you?"
"Not many. I had between one and nine, officer."
"What do you mean I can't drive a tractor
"through the shopping centre? I haven't had many."
"I was just after some shoes."
But as you probably know...
obviously Mormons are associated with plural marriages.
Joseph Smith, the founder, had a divine revelation, apparently.
Telling him that he could have as many wives as he liked.
But they were stopped. The American government said,
"You can believe what you like, but you can't do what you like.
"You can believe you can have many wives,
"but you can't have it in practice. You can have it as a belief."
Does this mean it happens but there's just no legal...?
No, it means it doesn't happen cos they go to prison.
But people live together in groups of up to nine without actually...
Yeah, they do. This is the weird thing about polygamy.
We treat it as if it's incest. But actually, the weird thing is,
if you deceive someone by having a mistress and a whole family... Yes.
..it's not against the law. But if you said to two women,
"I love you both. How would it be if I married both of you?"
And they said, "OK," that would be breaking the law. Yes.
It's kind of odd.
Or if a woman said that to two men.
It's a tricky time to bring it up at Christmas though, isn't it?
Well, I just don't see why it should be quite so illegal.
If people willingly enter it.
If it's a deception it should be wrong.
Should it be capped at a certain number? Up to nine.
Up to nine.
Ten. Ten? I'm not a slag. No.
You can't actually do it, then? They don't condone polygamy at all?
No, it's against the law. The head of the Mormon Church,
just as it was being announced as illegal,
had a convenient divine revelation
telling him that the practice should stop.
So God just came in at the last minute. That's good.
Isn't that handy? That is handy.
There are of course the lovely Osmonds. Aren't they lovely?
Were they all married to each other?
No, they're Mormons. Oh, right. They're members
of The Church Of Latter-day Saints, I think they're from. What teeth!
They were rubbish, weren't they? Were they?
Apart from Jimmy - he was The Long Haired Lover From Liverpool.
Yeah. Of course, there was big Graham Osmond.
The one they kept in the attic.
Who had terrible teeth.
He had one massive... Yellow teeth. ..and a claw.
He wrote all the songs...
..by groaning them. He groaned them into a tin can
that was connected by a piece of string.
HOWLS: Crazy. Horses.
MUMBLES AND GROANS: Wild horses.
HOWLS: Crazy. Horses.
ALAN MOANS
You're very bad and you know it.
BILL GROANS What was that?
What was that, Graham?
LEE: Bring me another wife!
Now, calm yourselves down.
LEE: I'm allowed up to nine, Bill Bailey said! I've only got eight!
< I'm allowed to have many!
Now, behave. Pull yourselves together at once.
The Church Of Jesus Christ Of Latter-day Saints...
< What a great idea!
That's a great idea for Doctor Who isn't it? He goes into the attic.
And finds the elderly, secret brother of The Osmonds.
Aaaah! And that's how they kill off David Tennant. Imagine that!
Raaawrr!
Played by Bill Bailey.
You're sick puppies. I'm very ashamed of you.
The Church Of Jesus Christ Of Latter-day Saints,
the Mormons to you and me, has forbidden polygamy for 120 years.
Which brings us to what we call General Ignorance.
So, if my Fab Four are ready, put your fingers on your buzzers.
What are these gentlemen spelling out in semaphore?
# Last Christmas... #
Help. Oh, you'd think, wouldn't you?
ALARM BLARES
Paul McCartney died and there's a replacement?
You're not quite there, but... I am a walrus. No.
# It's beginning to look... #
"We" is George, John is "all", Paul is "live"
and Ringo is "yellow submarine".
But not in one? Not in, no. No. Right, OK.
That's the elderly brother of The Beatles that's not allowed
to be seen. Oh, don't start.
MOANS: I'm in a yellow submarine!
DAVID: Daydream Believer. That was the Monkees.
MOANS: Help! I'm in a submarine.
BILL MUMBLES
Oh, I'll write that down.
Ah, that's very good.
As it happened, the photographer who was commissioned to do the cover
of Help did ask them to do it. But for some reason nobody
liked the outcome graphically.
Instead they positioned their arms
in a pleasing arrangement. Which ended up spelling N, U, J, V.
Like so. Which... It probably meant something to them.
Ah, well no. It gave rise to the first, as David intimated,
the first of the great Beatles conspiracy theories.
This was New Unknown John Vocalist, people said.
For crying out loud. Isn't it tragic?
Claiming that John had died. Why do fans ruin the bands?
He'd died and been replaced. So, John had died.
And they said, "We need a way of telling the thing."
So, let's get John back out. Stuff him.
Yes, I know. Surely a conspiracy theory...
John's in it, he's not dead.
But actually help would have looked like...
which seems acceptable to me.
There you are. And so it wasn't Help. It was N, U, J, V.
So, what are the other famous, if they are, or infamous Beatles...?
Barefoot on the Abbey Road cover.
Barefoot on the Abbey Road cover is the classic.
And what did that indicate? Dead.
Well, supposedly John is said to be dressed as a preacher.
Ringo as an undertaker, George as a grave digger...
Why a grave digger in denim?
..and Paul with a suit, but no shoes is a corpse.
You might also notice that he's carrying a cigarette.
But if you were to buy a modern copy of it,
you would find that had disappeared.
LEE: Where's it gone?
There. Look, it's gone. Wow. Disappeared.
Was there, it's gone. Anyway, Robert Freeman
wanted to arrange The Beatles to spell out Help.
Didn't like the way it looked. So, they went with N, U, J, V.
What does Puff The Magic Dragon
have in common with Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds?
# It suddenly looks a lot... #
Lee? Are they both about drugs?
ALARM BLARES
No, they're not.
A lot of people think they are but neither is.
Do you know Puff The Magic Dragon? Do you know the song?
# Puff The Magic Dragon lived by the sea
# And he frolicked in the...
# ..in the land of... MUMBLES SONG
# Puff the Magic Dragon... #
THEY AIMLESSLY MUMBLE SONG
Very good. That's excellent. Is that right? Yup. That's the song. Yeah.
It's based on an Ogden Nash rhyme
called The Really-O Truly-O Dragon.
A Cornell student, Leonard Lipton, gave it to his friend,
Peter Yarrow who wrote the song. And Peter Yarrow tells us, specifically,
"Even if I'd had the intention of writing a song about drugs,
"which I may have had at a later time, I was 20 years old in 1959.
"I was so square, as was everyone else, drugs had not emerged.
"Puff was a good dragon, would never have had drugs around him.
"And now you've heard that from the mouth of the dragon's daddy.
"It is not about drugs."
He thinks he's a dragon's daddy?! Yeah.
He's not. Well, there is that.
It was going well until the very end.
Do you know the official story of Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds?
Yeah. Didn't Julian come home from playgroup with a picture?
They said, "What's this? " He said, "Lucy in the sky with diamonds."
Brilliant. Absolutely right. < He'd written the whole song(?)
Bloke upstairs going, it's my song!
You've stolen my painting. Get me a pen.
Oh, Christ. No, he'd done...
He'd done a...
Little Julian...
I've got Lucy up here. Oh, God! Little Julian
had painted a girl surrounded by stars.
and it was his friend Lucy in playgroup.
And John said, "What's that then?" And he said,
"Lucy in the sky with diamonds." The older brother spoke like that.
And, um... Julian, what's that?
According to an interview with Lennon, and the other Beatles,
they didn't notice that the initials spelled out... LSD.
..until after the record was released. Good.
Now, finally, something seasonal at last. A man goes to the doctor,
right? "Doctor, Doctor, I can't stop singing Auld Lang Syne."
So, the Doctor says, "I'll have to send you to the BURNS unit."
Ah. Now, what's wrong with that joke?
< Is it absolutely terrible?
ALARM BLARES
You see.
Any other thoughts?
Well, of course it's not
because Burns' Night is not on New Year's Eve.
It's on... What is it? 25th January.
25th, yes. Yes. So, of course you wouldn't be singing
Auld Lang Syne on Burns' Night. You'd sing it on New Year's Eve.
That's true. You'd be waiting three weeks.
But most people think that Auld Lang Syne was written by Rabbie Burns.
Auld Lang wasn't even written by Burns.
Yay! That's right.
Although a lot of members of the Burns' Society believe he wrote it.
And say that it's nonsense he didn't. He himself said he didn't.
He said it was a traditional song that he wrote down. Really? Yeah.
Auld Lang Syne first comes up in 1724 we see it.
And that was 35 years before Burns was born.
It's a very popular song though in all kinds of places.
Especially in the Far East.
In Japan... Yes, yes.
..it's played daily
to mark closing time in most large department stores.
So how did Burns sign himself? What was his name?
What did he call himself? Rabbie.
Not Rabbie funnily enough. Robin. Robin he did, yes. Robin
and Rab and Robert. But never Robbie or Rabbie oddly enough.
Even though everyone calls him Rabbie
or Robbie Burns. There you go.
What does it mean, auld lang syne?
Old, old...remembrance?
Yeah. Kind of old long since.
It means in the old days, long time ago.
And how do the words go? Anyone who can give me the lyrics gets points?
# Should auld acquaintance be forgot
ALL: # And never brought to mind
# Should auld acquaintance be forgot
# For the sake of auld lang syne
# For auld lang syne
# Auld lang syne
DAVID ALONE: # We'll tak' a cup o' kindness yet
# For the sake of auld lang syne. # Oh, yes. Full points. Well done.
There we go.
But all that sex, drugs and rock'n'roll brings us
to the end of the QI office party.
Before we tell the boss what we really think of him,
let's see if everyone has scored. And what they have scored.
Well, bless my blimey.
With -29 points,
I'm afraid our last place loser tonight is Lee Mack!
CHEERING AND WHOOPING (Is that good?)
In third place with -6 it's Bill Bailey.
CHEERING AND WHOOPING
Oh, this is getting tense.
First appearance, second place, -4, David Tennant.
CHEERING AND WHOOPING
Which can only mean
it's not only Christmas, it's a blue moon!
With +5, Alan Davies is the winner.
+5? Thank you.
CHEERING
So, we are bidding a cool yule and a gear New Year to you all
From David, Bill, Lee, Alan and me.
And tonight for some reason I thought I'd leave you
with a joke about doctors and time travel.
"Doctor, Doctor, I keep seeing into the future."
"And when did this start?"
"Next Tuesday afternoon."
Good night and happy Christmas.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd.
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