APPLAUSE
Gu-u-u-u...ten Abend!
Guten Abend, guten Abend, guten Abend and willkommen to QI.
Tonight we're dallying in Deutschland,
and joining me on the panel we have the Germanic Rob Brydon.
APPLAUSE AND CHEERING
Joined by the Teutonic Sean Lock.
APPLAUSE AND CHEERING
The Wagnerian Jo Brand.
APPLAUSE AND CHEERING
And the Gerry-built Alan Davies.
APPLAUSE AND CHEERING
And tonight, to attract my attention with an achtung, the panel have
the very latest in precision-engineered buzzers. Rob goes...
THE GERMAN NATIONAL ANTHEM PLAYS
Sean goes...
OOMPAH BAND MUSIC
Jo goes...
MUSIC: "The Ride of the Valkyries" by Wagner
And Alan goes...
SONG: # Don't let's be beastly to the Germans... #
And I should warn you that I will be cracking down very hard,
panellistas, on any mention of the war.
Don't mention the war.
You have been war-ned.
So, since we're talking about Germany, let's define our terms.
There are some words that we don't have in English, and we sometimes borrow them from Germany.
I want you to give me a sentence using, correctly, the word schadenfreude.
A whole sentence? If you can manage!
That, er, that statue's all covered in schadenfreude.
It's a sentence but...
It must have been a cold night.
Look at the size of my schadenfreude.
Any other thoughts? Familiar with the phrase?
MUSIC: "The Ride of the Valkyries" by Wagner
Whoah! Ooh! Yes.
I enjoyed the schadenfreude I experienced when my husband was killed by a local gangster.
Is the correct use of the word schadenfreude.
APPLAUSE
Correct but deeply in need of therapy.
Yes. So schadenfreude means...
Pleasure in the misfortune of others.
Yes, and there is no English phrase for it so we had to borrow
it from the Germans. Does the word gemuetlichkeit mean anything to you?
How dare you! That sounds kind of Jewish.
That's like a Jackie Mason,
AS JACKIE MASON: The geudehuntitheit, gemutlichkeit, I don't know what he's talking about.
Why should it be? How ironic that it's actually German.
Well, it's not ironic because Yiddish is German that Jews use. Yes.
I knew that. Is gesundheit Yiddish?
Gesundheit is German. It just means literally "soundness" or "health". Yes.
But gemuetlichkeit mean anything to you? No idea.
No? It's a word that, particularly in Austria and Bavaria, but all round Germany, it sort of signifies
a kind of cosiness, a charm, an ease, a relaxed, pleasant feeling.
Swingers' party?
Well, gemuetlich people are also good community people. They're very kind to their neighbours.
Is it the German brand name for Rohypnol?
You are such cynics! It was considered so important for things like Austrian holidays.
There was a reasonably famous case in the early '70s of a man who sued a travel company
because there was no gemuetlichkeit on his holiday and he won.
He won for lack of gemuetlichkeit.
What was that? Like lack of a good, a nice feeling? A nice, warm feeling.
It was called Jarvis versus Swan Tours Limited in 1973.
It was precedent in English contract law, apparently.
OK, well, zugzwang mean anything to you? It's used in chess.
Checkmate, stalemate?
No, it's slightly like stalemate. It isn't though.
It's for one player where his disadvantage is that he has to move.
And in chess you have to move, obviously. If your opponent has moved, it's your move.
You can't just say, I pass, you can now move.
And by moving, you weaken your position, sometimes fatally, and that's called being in zugzwang.
Right. Yeah. But anyway, so, I'll try one more.
Zeitgeist. You'll know that one. Zeitgeist. Yes, I've heard of that.
There's sort of something in the air that everyone feels and it leads to similar ideas happening.
Spirit of the age. Spirit of the age.
It literally means, "time ghost" or "time spirit". Yeah, exactly.
Well, you did pretty well on your German.
Turns out that German words are not in the zeitgeist. It seems not.
It seems that they aren't. They're not in your...
See what I did there? Did a German word joke. I didn't even know I had one.
German words are not in your weltanschauung. Indeed. Yes.
Well, good, we use a loan word when we're overwhelmed with that
weltschmerz and angst because we don't have one of our own.
One of the many ways that our German friends have
contributed to the gestalt of the English language.
How upset are the Germans about the 1966 World Cup?
Well, very, I would say.
BUZZER Ooh!
You see.
Well, they would be, surely, I would have thought, a proud nation like the Germans.
They were upset at the time but I said, how upset ARE they?
They barely remember it. If you asked average German who won the World Cup in 1966...
Yes, they're pretending. No. Because the fact is...
"The World Cup? No, I don't remember." No, because we care about it, they don't.
They care about their scores against Holland. That's their big thing.
They really honestly, if you asked the average German, they just... '66?
They really don't know. "Oh, did you? Well done." International... For us it was like everything.
Wow! We won. But they, in 1974, beat the Dutch, and that to them was the one they really, really care about.
But they surely, the Dutch have never provided a great deal of opposition to them.
Generally in history, they've just walked into Holland whenever they fancied it. Oh, in that sense.
Any time they want, they just go into Holland, like, spin the windmills...
BUZZER I haven't mentioned it yet!
I didn't say it! Come on!
APPLAUSE
I was talking about...
I was talking about the great, er, geschmerzschliff, er...
in 1762 where they just walked into Holland.
But they can just enter, oh, I'll mention the war...
You have to!
Surely they're denying their true rivalry, which would be with us.
Why? That they are in denial.
We may think that, but it's up to them to decide.
I mean, you can't force a German... Well, they're wrong. ..to care about whether they beat us or not.
Well, they bloody well should! Yes!
I'm sure you're very upset by it, but I mean, they just don't care that much.
And there are other things, like the sun-lounge hogging with the towel. Yes.
Is that something you've actually experienced? Yes.
There's some pictures.
These are some of Alan's holiday photos that he's brought with him.
It turns out that a German lawyer called Ralf Hoecker actually did a study,
and he confirms that we think it but Germans are blissfully unaware of their reputation in this case.
No. But a study... They don't care, is the right description of it.
They don't know that's what we think of them. But, Halifax travel insurance...
They think it's common sense to go down before breakfast,
basically at dawn, and take all the beds around the pool.
It turns out Halifax Travel Insurance in 2009 confirmed with a study
that Germans are the most likely to reserve sun loungers with towels.
And which nation do you think is the second most likely to?
The Dutch? The British. The British! LAUGHTER
Very close. Who turn up ten minutes later going, "Oh, God!" Exactly!
While the French and Italians and Portuguese are having breakfast and not really caring.
Well, and also, they're in their own countries. OK, well, that's true.
Enjoying the lovely food and the weather.
APPLAUSE
That is highly true. Highly true.
I had a run-in with some Germans on holiday once.
I'm sad to say, because I like Germans on the whole.
And I had to walk through the hotel past a group of Germans who didn't realise I understood German,
and as I went past, one of them said, "Ha, there goes the sad, fat English..."
er, something rude. And so I railed at them in my pidgin German, which made them laugh even more.
And then the next morning I had to walk past them on my way round
the pool, because obviously they'd sat down in all the nice chairs.
And I went past with my head held high like that,
sat down on a deckchair, went through it.
Oh, no! Jo!
LAUGHTER
And they pointed and laughed. They had sabotaged it.
It's like they left the one chair.
They'd already weakened it, perforated it in some way.
Ja. Ze English fat...
Oh, ho ho! No, no, that's very good.
I remember that. The other stereotype we have with Germans, of course,
is they're efficient and they think that of themselves as well.
But they anticipate that we think of them as lederhosen-wearing beer drinkers,
but what do they think of us?
What are the six major thoughts that Germans have about the British?
That we're probably a bit smelly? Beery?
Untidy, they would say. Untidy? Scruffy? They think of us as untidy.
Violent? Well, that we come in mobs, certainly. ROB: Yes.
That we're obsessed with royalty, apparently.
They think we're all obsessed with royalty. That we drink tea all the time,
that we're rather reserved and we can't cook.
So they've been over then. Yes, they've visited.
A pretty accurate summation, I fear.
If not, they've certainly read our newspapers.
There you are. The fact is, we may think of the Germans
as our great rivals on the football field, but they're more interested in caning the Dutch.
But why did the Germans confiscate the Dutchmen's trousers?
What? The Dutch?
Is there some special Dutch trouser? Am I missing some Dutch trouser thing?
When was the World Cup held in Germany? '74 and 2006.
2006. Now, and in 2006, a group of Dutch fans, in fact hundreds of thousands of Dutch fans,
thought it would be rather charming to buy some orange lederhosen that were provided for them,
which had two big pockets they could put beer in, and they had a lion's tail.
They were called "leeuwenhosen" in Dutch, which means lion trouser, lion pants. There they are.
Big pockets for their beer. They look like they work for easyJet. They do, don't they?
They do. It's the same colour.
The colour of Holland, they're orange. House of Nassau.
But these were confiscated en masse to such an extent that all the Dutch fans
that came to the first Dutch game, against the Cote d'Ivoire - the Ivory Coast -
had them taken away, so they had to watch in their underpants.
Why?
So, that's my question. Why?
Why, Alan? They could be used as a catapult.
No, I'm afraid it's a more... They probably thought, it's not going to be a very good match.
We want shots of loads of people in their pants during the game.
But they manufactured... Did they have some kind of logo on them?
Well, they do, you can see. What does it say? Oh, it's because of the sponsorship.
I fear it's true, that the official FIFA beer was not Bavaria and therefore it wasn't allowed.
And this happens a lot, I'm afraid.
At Wimbledon it's happened.
Some woman had her yoghurt taken away from her because it wasn't the official yoghurt of Wimbledon!
That's outrageous! Just horrible. Pathetic. It's Britishly pathetic.
And it's outrageous as well.
I'll take your yoghurt...
The Bavaria beer company, that scam was a complete waste of trousers.
It was a waste of trousers. "We've got a brilliant idea. Oh...
No, exactly.
They should have got them to tattoo, "Bavarian beer",
on their foreheads and then they'd have had to laser them before they go into the game.
I think they'll... Bzzt. Bzzt.
And these people with just burnt foreheads watching the game.
That would have been good. I'd have liked that.
You know when Premiership footballers get booked
if they take their shirts off when they score a goal.
It's because that's the time you see the sponsor, isn't it?
When they've scored a goal, you see the sponsor on the shirt.
That's why FIFA made it a bookable offence to take off your shirt when you've scored a goal.
That's when you get all the coverage. Oh, right.
You know, The Beano, you know.
The Beano are going, "Christ, we've paid hundreds of millions to sponsor Man United
"and Ronaldo takes his shirt off".
All you're seeing is some nipples. Yes. So what does lederhosen mean?
Leather trousers? Leather pants, leather trousers, absolutely.
It's one of those rather typical things where the upper classes decided to ape the peasantry
in the 18th century and had these incredibly expensive wedding and country feasts
in which they pretended to be... rather like, you know Marie Antoinette
with her silver milk churns pretending to be a milkmaid.
Now, the socks that that man in the middle is wearing are very long socks and, just out of interest for you,
that's something that I've turned to recently.
I now favour the longer sock.
Do you? Could you take me through your reasoning?
Yes, I can. Well, I'll show you. The gentleman's sock. The half-hose. It's called the half-hose.
Now, Jo, you as a lady, you're going to think this sock
is going to stop a lot sooner than it does.
So, watch this. Look at that.
Surely, surely we've reached the peak? Oh, my goodness me!
Surely we've peaked? No, surely?
Oh, my word!
Surely! He's wearing tights.
Ah!
APPLAUSE
Can I say, not so much for Jo, but Stephen, Alan and Sean.
I urge you to give it a go.
Because it gives you a feeling of security.
LAUGHTER
They do make you look like a knobhead. LAUGHTER
Sorry.
Rob... One of the problems men have... They do.
There's a problem men have, Jo... Stephen, Stephen...
We wear away the hair on our shins by tight, short socks, don't we?
Is that one of the things you're... No, sorry, can I just say.
By just carrying on the conversation,
you imply that you agree with what Jo has said.
What was going through my mind is, how difficult it would ever be
for a man to say that to a woman. I thought, no, I won't go there.
That we allow women to be rude to us and that's fine if they want to.
Could you come down on one side or the other? JO: Or on yours, yes.
It's true, but it's just as true that women make themselves look ridiculous occasionally, too.
It doesn't make you look cool, put it that way.
Nobody's going to go, "I'm going to get a pair of those".
Well, at the risk of turning this into Ready Steady Cook, why don't we let the audience decide?
LAUGHTER
All those who think Rob is really onto something
with the gentlemen's half hose, as I believe they are technically called,
the long sock, the Brydon long sock, could you please shout out, "Long sock!"
AUDIENCE: LONG SOCK!
Oh, it's not good! It's not good. I fear without having to ask...
There's no need to carry on. No, OK.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
There's a class of ethnic immigrant now long-established in America
known as Pennsylvania Dutch. Where do you think they originally came from?
Germany.
Yes, the Rhineland and Switzerland. I double bluffed you.
Exactly, very good. But why would they be called Dutch?
Because the Americans couldn't be bothered?
No, because they rightly recognised the word Dutch and Deutsch are the same word. Deutsch is Dutch.
It was partly because what we now call the Dutch Dutch,
the Hollanders, were at war with Britain many times and,
indeed, of course, invaded... You mentioned the war.
"At war with," not, "The war." You did!
LAUGHTER
It's a minefield! Oh, my lord!
APPLAUSE
Could I just say, Jo, bit of a knobhead.
LAUGHTER
What would you use this for?
I have a picture of them here.
To frighten the children.
It's a German invention... Put a torch behind it,
and then you creep up into their bedroom at night when they're asleep,
just move it very slowly across the room.
It's a thing that is used in the lavatory, in the WC. Air freshener?
No. It's a habit, it's for men to do something when they go to the lavatory, it's to encourage them...
Anything to do with the seat? It is to do with the seat. Dive off it into the toilet?
No. Noble guess, but doomed, no.
Is it so they don't have to touch the seat?
It's if they lift the seat,
which men do tend to do before having a pee, this... I have one here.
"Hello, this is your toilet speaking. Wouldn't you rather like to sit down?
"Oh, you'd prefer to stand? Well, then you may leave now."
Poor German men don't actually get to go to the toilet then, do they?
No wonder they're wearing that lederhosen and slapping themselves all the time.
The point is in Germany they think it's somehow unhygienic because of splashing and things.
They want the men to sit, so that's how it's attached.
So when you lift up the seat, it starts speaking at you, loud enough,
in a public lavatory, for others to hear.
So the men sit and have a pee.
That's the idea. Splashing is a problem.
We've got builders in at the moment, and they all using the lower loo.
It is like the Center Parcs log flume in there.
LAUGHTER
I tell you. Is that why you've got the long socks?
Yes.
APPLAUSE
What I say to you and to every person here is, don't knock it till you try... Yeah, I was the same as you.
I thought they were ridiculous.
Then I put them on and I'm loving it.
How good can it be, though?
Just a long sock? Exactly, exactly. But have you tried it, Sean? No.
Exactly. Try it, then come back to me.
I'm just going to wonder what's going to happen to you
when you go, like, skydiving. "Wow, this is incredible!
"Forget the socks, this is amazing!"
LAUGHTER
I have been skydiving.
Have you tried jelly? That's nice.
LAUGHTER
"Oh, my God!
"The socks were good, this is incredible!"
They laughed at Edison, you know?
They laughed at a lot of weirdos as well, though, Rob.
LAUGHTER
No, they did, I'm just...
Anyway, these are called a Spuk, which is German for spook,
but it's also an acronym, S-P-U-K, that stands for StehPinkler Unter Kontrolle.
Stehpinkeln is to stand urinating, as opposed to Sitzpinkeln, which is to sit urinating.
You're going to think I'm making this up, but when I sit down, if I'm wearing a heavy cord,
a jumbo cord, for example, one of the things that annoys me more than anything else is when I...
Is when I put my trousers on and
I sit down, sometimes it captures the long sock and takes it down to the ankle. No!
LAUGHTER
And I sometimes will pull the sock up while I'm sitting there,
just to have a nice feeling of control of the sock reaching the knee.
Just a minute, Rob.
You're not a knobhead, you wear long socks and jumbo cords?
LAUGHTER
I said, "if" I'm wearing.
Sometimes I'll wear jumbo cord.
You know what my dilemma is in that situation? What I often do is if I'm sitting on the toilet,
I often take my glasses off, right, because I don't like wearing them...
For distance? I don't need them! I'm sat there for a while, I don't need my glasses.
So I often take my glasses off, and the pants act like a little hammock for the glasses.
LAUGHTER
It gets worse. I put them in there, and then I might be sat there for some time because
my diet isn't the healthiest, I eat far more meat than I should,
so I might sit there for ten or 15 minutes.
When I'm finished, I stand up to pull my trousers up, I forget about my glasses. Oh, no!
And I go, "Oh, my glasses!"
And I've rammed my glasses deep into my under regions.
Woah.
I cleaned this pair, I think.
LAUGHTER
Well, I hope no one else...
Thanks for sharing! Yes, quite.
Well, anyway, the Spuk is a hi-tech weapon in the German battle against men weeing on the floor.
What do naked German students do for a living?
LAUGHTER
The Nacktputzservice, if that means anything to you?
You can hire a naked person...
Not just for life modelling are anything like that?
Not for life modelling, for doing housework.
Germans like to have naked students doing their hoovering and their housework.
How bizarre!
Because nudism is a very German thing, Germans sort of...
I won't say invented nudism, that's ridiculous,
but as the kind of movement, we know it, it did spring from Germany. FKK. FKK, very good!
Frei Korpus Kultur? Frei Korpus Kultur?
Frei Koerper Kultur, ja, exactly, free body culture.
How do you know about FKK?
I just know about it, it's famous.
In the '30s, wasn't it? There were a lot of nudists. Until Hitler.
I know some stuff. Yes, I know you do, I was just interested.
No, Goering in particular, of all the higher echelon Nazis, loathed nudism and spoke out against it
and said the police must be trained to stop anybody going naked.
But after that period which must not be mentioned,
it sprang up again, and now in Switzerland and places where there's an open border,
in Poland, for example, hordes of naked German hikers are crossing the border and going hiking.
The Poles don't like it, the Swiss hate it, they all find it disgusting.
They love it in Germany, don't they? Not only, of course, in beaches, but in the centre of Munich,
the English garden, the Englischer Garten, has a nudist area,
and the biggest park in Berlin, the Tiergarten, has a nudist area, too.
I can't really imagine Hyde Park having a nude area, can you?
Cos if you're a naturist in this country, I mean, it's just...you're on a hiding to nothing, aren't you?
It's not really the country for it. It's not, it's not designed.
You're asking for punishment, aren't you? Germany does have decent summers, doesn't it? Yeah, it does.
If it doesn't, it just expands to somewhere where the summers are better.
LAUGHTER
No!
If I was a nudist, what I do, I'd go nude, but just for a laugh, just before I left the caravan,
I'd just get a little bit of tissue paper and stick it...
Oh, no! See how long before someone mentioned it.
You're playing volleyball...!
"Who wants to come for a smoothie? Come on! I'm buying!"
Someone goes, "Sean, you've got..." "What?!"
Anyway, Nacktputzservice is the popular German practice
of hiring students to clean your house in the nude.
It's all in the finest tradition of the home of modern nudism.
What's the most repeated TV show of all time?
Top Gear.
It is, isn't it? It is.
There's not a time of day when it is not possible to watch Top Gear.
It's true, it is on con...
And it's always a different one. Ah. But this one is one programme.
Oh, one show that... One show that's the most repeated show.
It's a German show. It's a British comedian, two British comedians...
The Duchess. Sorry? It's called the Duchess, or something like that?
I think you know what I'm referring to here.
The Waiter, or Lady Somebody?
It's a British comic being a waiter to a posh...
It's called Dinner For One... That's right.
And it's shown on every channel in Germany on December 31st,
every year, and has been since 1972.
Ooh, and I know who's in it as well. Yes? Freddie Frinton.
Freddie Frinton, you're right, plays a butler who has to serve a Christmas dinner for his mistress,
played by May Ward, who's rather mad and old,
and pretend that there are other people there, and he pours drinks for them and get drunk himself.
You can see a bit of it, here you are.
All right, it's broad humour, but it was...
It's all very well in its own way, but what's going on with it every single channel, every single year?
It's become a cult. It's unavoidable in Germany. They've parties for it. It's just a tradition.
It was a sketch done in 1920.
They used to do it in the halls,
and all round the other places like that.
A German TV presenter saw it in 1963 and thought it was amusing
and said, "Come and do it on German television."
They did it on German television once, and they did it again to record it. In 1972, they showed it.
They've showed it ever since. It's became so popular.
I think, to give Germans credit, they laugh as much ironically at it as we would if we saw it.
It's just one of those things that happens to have become an extraordinary tradition.
I saw it in Denmark. And it spread to Denmark, and Austria, and all round.
Is there any dialogue at all?
Yes, this line, "The same procedure as last year, Miss Sophie?"
And she says, "The same procedure as last year, James."
At the very end, when she's going up to bed and she says,
"The same procedure as last year,"
he says, "I'll do my best." That's the sort of punch line, you know?
I'm quite glad we have got The Great Escape over here.
That's our tradition.
Not on every channel. Not on every channel, I agree.
It's pretty extreme.
It's almost impossible to avoid Dinner For One with Freddy Frinton.
What did Uncle Wiggly Wings ever do for Germany?
It sounds like a children's character, Uncle Wiggly Wings?
He was someone who helped children.
What we're looking at here,
we're looking from a high point, down on children.
Abandoned orphans calling a helicopter to "Please airlift me out of here"?
Airlift is a good word, stick with the word airlift.
What does airlift in Germany bring to mind? Berlin.
The Berlin airlift. The war?
No, it doesn't! It's not the war!
No, it's during the Cold War...
The Cold War you can mention.
When they blockaded West Berlin.
Yes, the Russians completely closed off the city of Berlin,
which was in their sector, the eastern sector, in 1948.
For over a year, Berlin was completely cut off from the rest of the world.
So, they dropped food, millions of tons of food, the American and British and so on.
There was an American pilot who had two sticks of gum.
He gave it to some kids and said,
"If you share it amongst each other, I'll come back tomorrow and I'll give you more candy."
When he flew over, he wiggled his wings over them and dropped some chocolate. He'd do this each day.
More and more children came.
It became a huge propaganda coup for over a year.
It was called Operation Little Vittles.
Children in America provided their own candy.
Of course, the candy corporations caught on. Huge tonnage of sweets.
It sounds lovely. But you imagine a Terry's Chocolate Orange...
LAUGHTER
..heading down at you at great speed? See what that boy's holding up there?
The little hanky-style parachutes. That's no match for the Terry's Chocolate Orange.
The chocolate orange could have landed like the bouncing bomb...
did in the war.
Oh, now, now!
If a chocolate orange were to land like a bouncing bomb, that would be a good thing.
If you hit, it would go bump... Ah!
It would be lovely, wouldn't it? It would just open up nicely.
Oh, it'd be gorgeous.
2,223,000 tons of supplies were dropped.
Not in the one go? No...
Because that would have just buried them.
Over a year. That's the airlift itself.
During the Berlin airlift, American pilot Gail Halvorsen
used handkerchief parachutes to drop sweets to the children in Berlin.
He was known as Uncle Wiggly Wings.
What's bound to happen eventually when you get into an argument on the internet?
You'd go away at some point and have a word with yourself, and go,
"Why am I wasting my life?"
Yes. There's plenty of people I could have an argument with outside.
It's one of the most dispiriting views of the world, an internet message board.
When you see what some people will write, and how worked up they'll get about it.
"Well you ngh-ing ngh-huh, it just shows that you're a ngh-ing ngh,
"and all the other nghs have been ngh-ing with their own ngh,
"for the last ngh. Why don't you ngh ngh ngh ngh ngh?"
Sounds like they've got a problem with their keyboard.
LAUGHTER
There's a thing called Godwin's rule.
Do you know this? It's called Godwin's rule of Nazi analogies.
It's basically says that as an online discussion grows longer,
the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.
It actually happened.
Eventually, someone will say,
"That's what Hitler did", or "That's what the Nazis did", or "That argument..." See what I mean?
There's a sort of unwritten rule that the moment that happens, that thread is over, that ends it,
and that the person who uses that pathetic analogy is deemed to have lost the argument.
Imagine if you're having an internet discussion about the founding of the Nazi party?
Well, that obviously would be an exception.
You start it off and they go, "Right, that's it, it's over."
I'm just trying to get a nice discussion going.
I think that would be allowed. And who's this Godwin?
He's general councillor for the Wikimedia Foundation,
but it's a very, very apt and intelligent observation.
Any argument deteriorates to that point, you might as well end it.
It's nearly always inappropriate.
People will say, "Hitler liked that, therefore it's bad."
"Hitler didn't like that, therefore it's good."
Hitler, for example, was massively opposed to fox-hunting.
He thought it was cruel and terrible, so he banned it.
"Therefore, it must be right..." but that's just a mad argument.
Oh, my God, look at his socks!
Hey!
Whoa!
APPLAUSE
I've lost the argument.
But, you see, he's brought in Hitler. Hitler's socks are bad.
I have a feeling that, in the broader picture,
I've come off the worst out of this.
Reductio Ad Hitlerum, it's called. Are you saying he looks like a knob-head?
So you're saying Hitler looks like knob-head now, are you?
He looks like he's turning round to someone saying,
"Look, I'm ready, are you?"
You've been hours getting dressed. Let's just go out.
Say what you like about him, great socks.
Fine, fine socks.
Godwin's law states that as an online discussion grows longer,
the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.
How would you use a monopoly set to escape from a prison?
I could see how you might use a Buckaroo.
LAUGHTER
Just fly over the fence.
You'd probably just keep ending up on barbed-wire.
Try it with the bucket.
Is it the old covering up the hole with it, like in Shawshank?
No. There was a man whose nickname was Clutty, Clutty Hutton.
Who, in Britain, bought a box of Monopoly boards,
and turned them into escape kits that he then set up through MI9, with these pretend charities.
So you get a get out of jail free card?
LAUGHTER
That's a very good idea. It was.
Hidden IN the Monopoly board were incredibly useful things.
Like a small dog, a tiny hat,
and a little ship.
There would be real money interspersed with the Monopoly money. There would be maps on silk.
They tried it on paper, it's too bulky and rustly.
On parachute silk, you get an enormous amount of detail on tiny...
That's an example of his earlier work, putting a compass in a military tunic button.
The Germans got wise to this. They'd unscrew the buttons and they'd see it.
Then they reversed the thread so when the Germans unscrewed it, they in fact tightened the button.
Then they got wise to that, so then they used razor blades, which were magnetised at one end,
so when they were attached to something metal they'd spin round,
the G of Gillette would point north, which was very good. They were well-disguised.
They said, "Now, look, we've put the normal thread on, old Kraut, he's unscrewing it.
"What we've done is, we've put it the other way, so when he's unscrewing it, he's actually tightening it.
"Now we've gone a step further. We've done one here, you can't get the top off."
"Isn't there a flaw in that, Sir?"
"No, don't complicate it! Don't complicate it, Perkins!
"No one is going to see this bloody compass, that's for sure.
"Give it a try, you won't get it off. In many ways, it's become what I call, a button."
LAUGHTER
If I was a German camp commandant, I'd have made them all wear duffle coats.
If it was me, if I was in charge, I'd have started shipping out giant Jengas.
Would you? Then you just build them up. You know the Jengas you get in pub gardens?
Massive one, just hop over the fence.
Brilliant. If only you'd been in charge then.
Or snakes and ladders, but with actual ladders.
LAUGHTER
And real snakes! Yeah.
Scare the Germans. Scare the Germans.
Good, British snakes who didn't like the look of the German soldiers
and would go up to them and go, "Sss!"
What about if they gave them toy tanks, but really big ones
and then they could just drive straight out and turn around. And go, "Take this, Gerry!"
Boom! Boom!
What if they were to send the prisoners of war a very long socks
and concealed inside the socks, are big files to file down the bars.
They sent them blankets, which when wettened, gave the outline
of a great coat which they could cut out,
it was like a tailor's template to make a greatcoat with.
And pens with hidden sacks of dye in, to make them different colours.
And playing cards that when you threw them in water, they peeled aside to have money in them.
Some really clever stuff.
I can't believe the Germans gave them their post after a while.
Well, they had to hide the fact that they got all that.
Monopoly boards were amongst the ordinary items which were sent to help escaping prisoners.
But now it's time to navigate our way through the hostile territory of General Von Ignorance.
So, fingers on buzzers, if you please.
Who wrote Brideshead Revisited?
It was Evelyn Waugh.
LAUGHTER
Sorry. Yes. Of course he did, Evelyn Waugh wrote Brideshead.
Of course he did.
I was checking whether or not you'd remembered not to mention wars.
It's not pronounced like that, is it. It's Evelyn Woff.
If only it were. Firstly, what breed of dog is this in fact?
A German shepherd.
Is the right answer. You avoided saying Alsatian.
They used to be called Alsatians until...
They became German Shepherds.
Until 1977. It was a First World War thing,
this whole business of not liking anything with the word German in it.
Is that why it was stopped? Really?
It was that reason. Anything with the name German in it was taboo for a long time.
They were called Alsatian wolfhounds.
And then the wolfhound was dropped and they were called Alsatians.
We used to have one. Did you? Nice? Friendly?
Yeah, it was lovely. But it did kill next door's dog. Ah!
Whoops! Oops!
When it happened did you say, "Well, he's never done that before."
You had to go to court, didn't you, over all that? Yeah.
And then you had to go to prison, didn't you?
And then I sent you some Monopoly, and...
Happy days.
The term Alsatian was coined in 1918.
But the Schaeferhund officially reverted to being a German shepherd in 1977.
A trip to the Munich Oktoberfest might be nice. When would be the best time to go?
September. Yes.
It's not October. It occasionally leaks into October, depending on the way the months are.
You'd definitely leak if you drank all of that beer. You certainly would.
It is possibly the world's largest regular festival or fair.
Over six million people cram into it.
I didn't like it, actually. I spent one night there.
Two nights there. Everyone was so drunk, it was idiotic.
Just these huge, long tents full of pissed up Australians. Who I love!
I went to the World Cup in '98, in France.
And in Bordeaux, they had built, in a similar size to that,
in the middle of the town square they put temporary bars up.
And then Scotland played Norway and the Scots arrived.
And they drank more beer in the weekend than they normally drink in Bordeaux in a year.
Every single one of these bars served only lager.
There were no food stalls at all and no toilets.
Oh! It was unbelievable. But it was one of the best nights of my life.
Then one of them went to me, "Alan!" Shouted right across the bar, "Alan!
"Alan... Alan...
"Partridge! Partridge!"
Then he started going, "Aha!"
"Aha!"
Every time I saw him for the rest of the night, "Aha!"
It was very funny.
Yeah, it's a huge, huge event. They drink 6,940,600 litres of beer.
Horrifying, isn't it? Most of the Oktoberfest takes place in September.
It knocks into a cocked hat the idea that Germans don't know have had a good time.
Now, a musical question. What's wrong with this?
# Cream-coloured ponies and crisp apple strudels
# Doorbells and sleigh bells and schnitzel with noodles. #
Schnitzel with noodles? Yes, schnitzel with noodles.
Schnitzel is almost never served with noodles.
It might be occasionally now, simply because of the song.
But it basically rhymes with strudels, let's be honest.
That's why. Could have had it with a poodle, then. Yes.
You've ruined the film for a lot of people.
I hope not. I mustn't tell my kids that.
No, please don't. It's a wonderful song. Who wrote the lyrics?
It was Rodgers and... Hammerstein?
The lyrics were therefore Oscar Hammerstein the Second, yes.
How does the film end?
There it is. They sing Farewell. They get over the border into...
Where did they get to?
Supposedly into Switzerland.
Actually, they wind up in Bavaria, quite near Hitler's private house.
Hitler's sitting down to have supper and this family singing about goat herds arrives.
It's all very odd. But there's the border. There's Salzburg, there's Bavaria.
In fact, what the family did do, you're right,
they walked the 100 kilometres all the way down to where Innsbruck is,
towards the Italian border. That's the way they did it.
The Italian border was conveniently open.
They very luckily got there the day before the Italian border was closed. It was very fortunate.
It's a little bit of artistic licence. But it's worth it,
of course, for one of the great masterpieces of modern "culture".
Good. Lastly, what happens in Germany at 11:11 on 11th of November every year?
IN GERMAN ACCENT: Everything carries on as normal.
LAUGHTER
No, there is something special happens. The 11th of September?
11th of November. 11:11 on the 11th of the 11th.
The phone rings and the British Prime Minister says, "Ha, ha, ha, ha.
"We won."
Which war, though? Which war?
Well, we celebrate on the 11th of the 11th, the Armistice of the First World War.
They don't celebrate the Armistice, perhaps not surprisingly.
They have a much older celebration that takes place there, oddly enough.
It's their carnival and it runs all the way from 11th of November, right through to Ash Wednesday. It's huge.
As I say, it starts quite slowly in November, then there is December, Christmas,
through January, then it reaches fever pitch at the time of Mardi Gras.
Carnival, what does carnival mean?
The word carnival? Eating Valerie.
Carne is meat.
There's an incorrect belief that it means "Goodbye to meat", vale, as in valediction.
But it actually means carne levare, to leave the meat, to remove meat from your diet.
Carnival season in Germany officially begins at 11:11
on the 11th day of the 11th month every year.
Resistance has proved futile. For us, the game is over.
All that remains is for the scores to be meted out.
And, yes, in first place, our fluent German speaker.
Ah, und ein magnificent, ein ausgezeichnet minus sechs... Jo Brand!
CHEERING
Auf Platz zwei, mit minus sieben, Rob Brydon.
CHEERING
that good or bad? I don't know. Minus seven. Minus seven.
Aber auf Platz drei, mit minus sechsunddreissig, Alan Davies!
Thank you.
CHEERING
Minus 36?
Auf dem letzten Platz, Gott in Himmel... LAUGHTER
MIMICS MACHINE GUN
Minus sechsundsiebzig, Sean Lock.
Thank you.
CHEERING
As I am sure you know, that is minus 76. Possibly a record.
So, it's auf Wiedersehen und gute Nacht von dieser QI Ausgabe, und von Rob, Sean, Jo, Alan und mir.
I leave you a story about the Bloomsbury Group writer Lytton Strachey,
who was... How shall I put it? A confirmed bachelor.
And also a conscientious objector and a pacifist.
And he appeared before the conscientious objection board
and they were obviously going to quiz him on whether or not
he truly was or just a coward trying to get out of serving.
They said, "Mr Strachey, are you married?"
"No", he said. They said, "Well, do you have a sister?"
He said, "Yes, I do have a sister."
They said, "Well, suppose a German soldier came and tried to rape her. What would you do?"
He said, "In that case, I would endeavour to place myself between them." Good night.
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
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