APPLAUSE AND CHEERING
Gooooood evening!
Good evening, good evening. Welcome to QI.
This week, we'll be recycling some old rubbish
as we're going green!
Joining me tonight on our "solar" panel,
we have the sustainable Bill Bailey!
The recyclable Danny Baker!
The impossible Jeremy Clarkson!
And the 'ickle vegetable, Alan Davies.
And in the interests of reducing our carbon footprint,
- we've switched off the electric buzzers and given our panel... - ALAN CLAPS
Yes! ..a selection of fully renewable wind and calorie-powered woodland whistles
to attract my attention. Bill goes...
MELODIC TUNE
Excellent. Thank you.
Very good. Very good. Danny goes...
CUCKOO CALL
Thank you very much.
Jeremy?
SHRILL MONOTONE BLAST
- It's abandon ship! - You'll get a constable in no time!
- And Alan goes... - DUCK QUACK
- APPLAUSE - Of course! So...
Stand by to offset your emissions
as we venture into Question One. Tonight's easy starter. What colour
- was Frankenstein? - CUCKOO!
Green.
Oh!
Frankenstein was a baron in a novel, who was a scientist who made a monster.
Yes, and the monster's name?
- The monster's name. - The monster has a name in the book.
- Tell us! - Adam.
Adam. Of course he's called Adam. He's like the first man.
What colour, obviously, was Frankenstein's monster?
Green. No - purple!
- No, he wasn't. - I assumed a grey colour, but I only saw him in black and white!
- I don't know what colour he was. - She didn't write a black-and-white book.
Except the print was black and the paper white! She used coloured words
- and she did describe, Mary Shelley, who wrote the novel... - Puce. - ..in 1818... - Jaundiced yellow.
Yellow is the answer. "His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath.
"His hair was of a lustrous black, his teeth of a pearly whiteness."
- "Scarcely covered." There were gaps? - Yes, a dead body brought to life.
It was hanging.
Like the mummy. When the mummy in the movie gets...
- Bits come off. Imhotep! Imhotep! - Imhotep!
- Imhotep! - Imhotep!
Yellow skin, apparently.
Amazing, Mary Shelley's novel sold how many copies, do you think?
- 1,200. - No, just 500, it was not considered a success.
One thing made it a success a few years after it was published. Theatre.
People realised it would make exciting theatre.
TP Kruk played the monster, made him famous, he was the Boris Karloff of his day.
Over the next four years, 14 separate production in London, Bristol and other cities took place,
and then the book just took off and became so famous
that by the time cinema was invented it was one of the earliest subjects for cinema.
- And then when colour cinema came out, for some reason he got a bit green in the face. - Round the gills.
But when the Incredible Hulk was created, what colour was he?
- Green. - He was green when he was the Hulk, he was not originally.
- Wasn't he a purply colour? - No, he was grey, oddly enough.
Stan Lee created it and his monster wasn't green when he first appeared in '62,
he was grey cos he wanted him not to suggest any ethnicity,
but green doesn't suggest any ethnicity!
Is it Japanese or Korean or something,
the director of the movies, what's his name?
- The Hulk movie? - Yeah.
Ang Lee. He did all the movements, did you know that?
No, I didn't know that.
They CGI'd the Hulk in, so every time he goes, "Argh!"
- He put on one of these suits... - Oh, like at the circus, yeah.
And then they had him doing lots of Hulk stuff,
but he wasn't really very Hulk-like, he's about 5'4", quite narrow-hipped.
- Yeah. - So when the Hulk leapt out the building, he kind of went, "Heeey!"
LAUGHTER
When the Hulk comes out, if you go, "Ah-so!" It really, really works.
And he jumps, and he kind of goes, "Hee-ow!"
In the first three Superman comics he can't fly. How lame is that?!
- He ran to his destinations. - Did he? - Yeah!
- Superman did? - Superman couldn't fly in the initial comics.
He became flying after a while when they realised
him waiting for traffic lights to change is all a bit pedestrian.
- Then he began flying after that. - Goodness.
- Along with Beppo the superdog and the superhorse... - Yes.
And Supertramp.
- And Supertramp! - It couldn't have been a cost thing in the comic, could it? - No!
Cos in Star Trek they had to invent beamings. They couldn't afford
- to land the shuttle on the planet every week. - Oh, is that why? - Yeah.
Cos otherwise they'd have to have their model going wobbling down on cotton...
Sorry, Jeremy, you're saying it's a model? What do you mean?
LAUGHTER
- Oh, dear. Energised, isn't it? - You know who made Star Trek? Lucille Ball. I Love Lucy.
- Well, it was her studio, yeah. - But even so.
And Mission:Impossible, too.
Lucille Ball met her husband on the set of RKO. What a great story.
Five years later they bought the studio.
Chucked out the name RKO, called it Desilu, made Star Trek. Lucille Ball.
And therefore invented teleporting.
So Lucille Ball invented teleporting, as we've just discovered.
Frankenstein's monster was yellow, in the book, anyway.
Where is the best place to mine gold in the UK?
- Who got there first? - Underground. - Underground!
LAUGHTER
- You'd think, wouldn't you? - Can't be anywhere else! - You'd think underground.
But that's not the answer.
- Probably the dentist. - An interesting thought.
Jimmy Savile's toilet.
That's where he keeps it, stuffed up under the rim!
You get... From a tonne of...
From a tonne of...
"Eh, up, now then. Where's my rings?"
All his furniture's got drawers in it.
"Now, where did I put that thing?"
- That's only jealousy. - Sorry I said it.
For a tonne of mineable ore, you get five grams of gold.
Whereas a tonne of what I'm thinking of will yield 150 grams.
- Dead bodies? - No. - No.
Mobile phones.
Mobile phones, of which we throw away 1.5 million a year.
So much gold can be got from them that in Japan in particular
where there's not much natural resources of any kind,
they have cornered the market in eco-recycling.
Mobile phones is a big one. They get it from sewage plants as well.
Tiny specks of it from industrial effluent.
Used in so many processes and little bits of it can be recovered.
- Isn't that amazing? - It is.
From a tonne of mobile phones you may get 150 grams of gold,
but how much copper?
- 300. - 100 kilograms! - 100 kilograms of copper! I raise you!
- That's pretty good, isn't it? - Yeah. - And three kilograms of silver! - Is there anything in a mobile phone
that isn't a precious metal? Mine's mostly plastic!
It seems that way, but inside, look, there's a lot going on.
- Is there a bit of fondant, right in the middle? - There is.
- Fondant. - Just in the middle.
Isn't it that if you got all the gold in the world, it would form a cube the size of that screen?
A bit bigger than that. I believe it's 55 feet, side to side.
All the gold ever mined.
Yes. A cube of 55 by 55 by 55.
- And the coffee. Gold Blend. - Not counting Gold Blend there.
We'll break the bad news to you later.
In all of human history
the amount of gold that has been gotten out of the land
amounts to 3.3 billion ounces.
Which is a heck of a lot.
But in the oceans, they reckon there's 25 billion ounces.
- In the...? - In the sea water. - BILL GROANS
- It's like ten parts per trillion. - Disgusting.
- Isn't it? - That's something a Bond villain should be getting on to.
"I am stealing the oceans, Mr Bond.
"All of them, and there is nothing you can do about it."
- BILL: - "I have the biggest sieve in the world."
Of the 1.5 million phones that are thrown away each year in the UK,
most of them go to China, to a place called Guiyu -
the largest electronic waste site on Earth.
- There are an estimated 150,000 e-waste workers - - Wow!
there they are. Some of them -
earning an average of 1.50 a day. Which is like, what,
10.50 a week, if they work seven days a week?
More than 80% of local children suffer from lead poisoning.
So, it's nice to recycle, but that's clearly not the way to do it.
- But they are very useful, mobile phones, aren't they? That's what we mustn't forget. - They are.
This is obviously very bad, but there is an upside.
- You wouldn't know. You haven't got one. - No, I haven't. - But...
- He hasn't got a mobile telephone. - Really?
- No. I know, it's extraordinary. - Have you ever had one?
No. I can't think of anything worse than being contactable all the time.
The easiest way is to have a mobile phone and no friends. That's what I do.
APPLAUSE
I find that very easy to believe.
- It just shows the price we pay, though. - We do.
- It's pretty astonishing. - I've got no conscience about it. - Have you got a computer? - Have I...?
- No, have YOU got a computer? - Yes. - Well, look, there's computers there. - Not mine!
Not mine!
Now, cars... Something you know about. Catalytic converters. All new cars have them.
- What do they give the atmosphere? - Carbon dioxide in huge quantities.
Yes, they're not green in that sense. But also they give off so much of this element
that quite soon we may be able to harvest it from the roads.
- It's dust that comes out of the exhaust. - Platinum.
Platinum is right. UK roads are now 100 times richer in platinum
than they were before the catalytic converter.
People think it would be worth harvesting the platinum. How would they do that? It's weird.
- Hoover? - No, they use... - Mice!
- It is biological. - Yes.
- Not mice. Much, much smaller. - Insects.
Even smaller.
Bacteria.
Bacteria is the right answer, yes. E. coli.
- E. coli?! On the roadside? - It's not the dangerous E. coli. It refines the dust.
Anyway,
a tonne of mobile phones contains more gold than a tonne of ore from a gold mine.
Talking of valuable commodities, this particular lady
was in the same business as her mother and grandfather before her.
You have to stop me
when you know what it is they sold as a business.
I'll give you some clues.
We all want more of it.
Some of us keep it better than others.
- It's invisible. - CUCKOO!
- Time. - Yes, it's the right answer.
- They invented time?! - They sold it!
- I remember what William Hartnell looked like. - No, they sold it.
- They sold it? - How would you sell time? Make a living? - What period?
They started in the 19th century and went up to 1940.
- Four generations. - Time shares. You get a flat in Malta for two weeks.
- No. - Is it something to do with Bristol being 11 minutes behind London?
It's not exactly, but it's to do with the fact that in the 19th century
it became more important to keep time.
There was only one clock,
the Greenwich clock that keeps the official GMT, Greenwich Mean Time,
and this woman would go with her very fine pocket watch
and go, once a week, and put the time right. Then wander round London
and people would pay to look at her watch!
She made money giving people the time. Businessmen had a subscription to her business.
It sounds very much like a scam! Some sort of euphemism!
"What is going on here?" "He's just looking at my watch, Officer."
- "In this dark alley?" - You'd think, wouldn't you?
- People would stop her to look at her watch? - Ruth Belville. - "Her watch."
A John Arnold pocket chronometer. Number 485786.
- They cornered the market from 1836 to 1940. - Only three of them did it?
- One person at a time. You'd be lucky to find them! - That's the thing.
You could buy an annual subscription. They'd go and visit them
- just as a sandwich company goes round to a firm. - Like an alarm clock?
They'd go round with the clock and say it's now exactly this.
- The firm would set all their watches by it. - Why did they decide on an hour?
What was that?
Why an hour? Why not just half an hour and make that an hour?
- Because 24 is divisible in so many different ways. - It's very factorisable.
- Divisible by two, three, four, six, eight. - So is ten.
No, ten is only divisible by one, two, five and itself.
Only on one dimension!
If you go into another dimension, you can have anything you want!
- Unfortunately we weren't in another dimension. - Oh!
- Sorry! - Oh! - Sorry, but why was it important to divide 24 by eight?
Yeah.
- No, to have as divisible a system as possible. - Why wasn't it 100?
Have 100. Make it all up to ten.
If you want, you can have a plan to decimalise time.
I'm going to make my own.
I'm going to cross two of these off!
- Let's do it. - I'm with you on that one. - Let's have a vote.
I'm going to get rid of three... Three and eight.
ALL TALK AT ONCE
You can't do one to ten, cos then we'll never have elevenses ever again!
- We'll leave that in. - We can do nineses. - Nineses?!
- What is your system? How many hours are in your day? - 20. - 20 hours.
To make it nice and simple, we'll call it a "horare" or something.
- Or a "hoor". - A whore?
- SCOTTISH ACCENT: - A whore! A whore! - Splendid.
Time is a whore, I think.
20 strumpets!
- Aye! - There are a number of objections. I'm not the one to make them.
- Originally it was 12 hours because the Babylonians... - What do they know?
They had a base-12 counting system.
- The French did try decimal time after their revolution. - Did they?
- Yeah. - You see! - It didn't work. - Why did it not work? - I don't know.
Maybe because the rest of the world just didn't like the idea.
Is it not like Betamax and VHS? They all went with 24, but the French should have gone with 20.
- When were the French ever worried about what the rest of the world thought? - Absolutely.
We have ten fingers and ten toes.
You could count off the bits, the sections of time, using one of your digits.
What a way to tell the time. "What time is it?"
One, two... Three-and-a-half.
- Two minutes past four. What would that be, then? About six? - About six, yeah.
Good luck. There could be a good line in merchandisable metric clocks.
- Yes. - The Bill Bailey QI metric clock.
- Metric clock. Fine, that'll do me. - Anyway,
we've just done an hour on that topic!
By whose system?
I think you'll find it's an hour and a bit.
There's only one thing. Time to move on!
The Belvilles gave people a good time by selling them a look at their watch.
The Belvilles never went to this place, but what time is it at the South Pole?
- It's no time at all, isn't it? - It's every time.
- It's every time? It's no time? - It's the penguin Public Enemy tribute band!
Yes, because all the time zones,
obviously, which are like that way, meet at the South Pole, don't they?
- Yes, they do. - And it's not true about the compass.
If you're at the magnetic North Pole - nobody knows quite where it is -
but I wanted the compass to do that thing where it can't find South
- or anywhere, but it doesn't. - How boring!
- It is boring, yeah. - Is there a red-and-white striped barber's pole there?
There's nothing. Nor a shaft of light. Nothing.
- Maybe it works at the South Pole. - It's a lot chillier. It's always noon or always midnight.
- Why do we have to have north, south, east, west? - Oh, hello! Hello!
He's drunk with power!
EVIL CACKLE
All the time zones converge at the poles, but the default time in Antarctica is GMT.
That's what they use. But now,
time to eat up your greens now.
According to the Vegetarian Society, why are people who don't eat meat called vegetarians?
So we can identify them as fools and mad men! I don't know.
- Where does the word come from? - Presumably the word "vegetable".
That's not why they're called vegetarians.
What, when people who only eat vegetables...
- That's not why they're called it. - Is it a star sign?
Very good!
- No, it's... - Saggyhairyass!
Say that again.
- Saggyhairyass. - Thank you. - It's my favourite star sign.
- Are they named after dinosaurs? No, they're not. - No.
Herbivores.
An "-arian" is an enthusiast or a practiser of "vege-".
- I know why. - Yes?
Because if you said you had a herbivore coming to dinner,
the children would be frightened.
So they've called themselves vegetarians to make themselves seem normal and not pallid.
I know what you mean. But the surprising point to most people
is that the original word from which "vegetarian" comes
according to the Vegetarian Society, is not the word "vegetable".
- It's nothing to do with vegetable. - We're talking about the root word.
Oddly enough! It's really bizarre,
I grant you. It's the word vegetus, which is nothing to do with vegetation.
It's a Latin word meaning "whole, sound, fresh or lively".
I don't call them vegetables. I have a different system of naming them.
Yes!
The official UK Vegetarian Society, VSUK, the oldest vegetarian society in the world,
they say that's the origin of it, vegetus, not vegetable.
Name some famous vegetarians for me.
- JEREMY: - Hitler. - Oh, dear!
- He wasn't a vegetarian? - I don't think so. - He is in my mind!
Napoleon. Robert Mugabe.
I don't think so.
- My tortoise died the other day... - Oh! - ..and I honestly considered having its leg on some toast.
I thought, "I wonder what it tastes like?" Some people don't think like that.
I know. We had a tortoise once, and it had bad arthritis in its leg.
They said, "We can operate and replace it with a wheel."
- Fabulous. - They do that. They do that, don't they? - Castors.
- They can go in all directions. - Did you do that?
- We thought about taking all its legs off and putting wheels on all of them. - No!
And a little engine on the shell.
You could send it down the shops!
- JEREMY: - With an aerial on a spring!
What a great idea!
But you couldn't. I bet someone would object if you motorised a tortoise.
Really?!
The RSPCA!
- You could have lorries, like trailers... - Political correctness gone mad(!)
- You can't even mutilate a tortoise any more! - I'm not suggesting you mutilate it.
You had a tortoise?
It could keep its legs. It could keep its legs.
I'm thinking of like a bigfoot truck in America.
Big wheels that could be detached so it could be a tortoise and eat weeds
- and then... - The legs go up.
..when you wanted, you could send it to the shops.
- A transformer tortoise. - Yes!
- Nothing wrong with that. - The big ones in the Galapagos Islands. - They're terrific.
They could bring substantial pieces of furniture back.
- You could put wings on them. They could take off. - Yeah.
The tortoise's tum.
Brum! Brum! Brum!
Anyway, that's good. Good talk. Mad, but good.
The Vegetarian Society claims "vegetarian" comes from the word vegetus.
Everyone else thinks it's because they eat vegetables. But why are vegans called vegans?
- From the planet Vegus? - That seems to be the suggestion there.
- BILL: - From the root "vague".
"What do you eat?" "I don't know."
They're probably the least vague eaters there are.
Hardcore.
- Vegans are allowed what? - Vegans are different from vegetarians. - How?
- Vegans don't eat eggs or cheese. - BILL: - It's dairy, isn't it?
Anything dairy. Anything from an animal, yeah.
- Look at Peter Tatchell at the end. There's the advert! - These are vegans. Can you recognise them?
- DANNY: - Thom Yorke. - Bob Marley.
That's not Bob Marley! What are you talking about?!
No, it's Benjamin Zephaniah, the poet. And on the left, the pneumatic lady?
- Pamela Anderson. - Is she a vegan? - She's a vegan, yes. And Peter Tatchell, yeah.
- Are they all vegans? - Yeah. - They're not a healthy-looking bunch.
Her breasts are made of plant matter.
Otherwise you can't feed your children, I mean...
They're stuffed with pulses and beans.
- BILL: - How do you know that? Pulses?
Well, they must be if she's a vegan.
They can't be made out of leather, can they?
I don't think they actually remove their own flesh from their body and replace it with plant material.
They're allowed to have their own flesh.
You can have a couple of cows' udders strapped on...
But anyway, how did the word arise? What's it from? What's its origin?
Is it an anagram? Is it a mnemonic of some sort?
Not a mnemonic, no. It's actually the first three letters of "vegetarian"
and the last two of "vegetarian". Cos the beginning and end of "vegetarian" is "vegan".
If vegans knew that, they'd stop calling each other vegan.
- Marc Bolan did that, of course, with Bob Dylan's name. - Yes.
Marc Bolan, Bob Dylan - he just cut it up.
- And he was a vegetarian. - Was he?
Yes, he was. He took cocaine, but he was a vegetarian.
- Which comes from a vegetable. - It's a plant. - Yes. - It comes from a leaf. - And he's normal, so there!
That was the worst ever time that a hero's death was broken to me.
My dad told me. I was a huge T. Rex fan, a massive fan,
and the night he died, tragically, over in Barnes,
I went to bed early and I was woken up the next morning by my dad,
who didn't have a lot of time for your pop stars,
but equally, he was a fairly straightforward fellow.
I don't think he knew how much he hurt me when he came in with my cup of tea the next morning.
"Here's your tea. Oh..."
I'm like, "What? What?" "Who's that bloke you like?"
"Who?" "The one with the stars on his face."
"Marc Bolan." "Yeah, gone, dead."
That was how I heard of the passing of Marc Bolan.
- BILL: - It's like how my neighbour broke the news of our cat dying to me.
It was so insensitive. He was trying to be friendly and he said,
"Is your cat the one with the coloured collar?" I went, "Yeah."
He goes, "Oh, I think it's dead. I think it got hit by a car."
I went, "Oh, why do you think that?" He goes, "Well, it's completely flat."
All right, good, well done.
So, it was woodwork teacher Donald Watson
who coined the word "vegan" in 1944. It's the beginning and end of "vegetarian".
Now, all four of you are obviously babe magnets. But what's a cow magnet?
A bull with a big horn? Sorry!
- Very good. - A hedge.
- A hedge? - A hedge. Cows gravitate towards hedges.
- Do they? - I've got a mate who's afraid of cows.
- A lot of people are, quite rightly. - He's really afraid of them. He says they can rear up.
I said, "They can't rear up!" I said, "You're being ridiculous!"
He goes rambling. I said there's no attacks of cows on people.
- I've seen a bull rear up on a cow. - One day I saw him,
he said, "I've got something to show you!" He'd got a clipping out of the Metro, a free paper,
and a man had been knocked over and assaulted by cows.
- They do! - He was an off-duty policeman and he'd phoned the police helicopter to rescue him!
They sent it straight out. It landed in the field and scared them off.
He was lying there with broken bones and he was in terrible pain.
They gang up on you. This happened to me in a field in Norfolk.
- Were you being herded by cows? - They tried to mount my Land Rover.
I've got a black Land Rover and there were 50 or 60 around,
- all over it. I thought the top might come in. Terrifying! - BILL: - You're thinking of lions!
No, no. I'm thinking of cows.
I'm thinking cows, Bill. These cows surrounded the car.
I tried everything. When I say everything, I put on show tunes and opened the sun roof!
- Show tunes? - A Londoner tries to clear some cows.
The farmer's chewing straw going, "He'll put some music on in a minute!"
I'll tell you what it was.
- It was Defying Gravity by Wicked. - "Let's try some heavy metal."
- It was Defying Gravity by Wicked. - No, they respond to Galvanize by The Chemical Brothers.
- Yeah? - That's what you should have played. - Whatever, I couldn't do it.
My wife said, "Get out of the car." I said, "The cows won't let me!"
- BILL: - I know the answer. Danny Baker is the cow magnet.
Very good! I can't deny it.
SPEECH DROWNED BY APPLAUSE
But here is the real cow magnet.
Pass it on to Jeremy. Everyone can have a look.
How would that work? It is a cow magnet.
Made in Denmark.
It's just a magnet, Stephen.
It basically is a magnet but this is a cow magnet.
- Is it cows with bells round their necks? - Is it to do with the fact it's made in Denmark?
- Not particularly, no. - Is it a cow as we know it or...
No, no, it's a real cow.
- Bill... - That was weird!
We'll have to call you Buffalo Bill!
- Bovine Buffalo Bill. - HE MOOS
No, this goes inside the cow.
- Ah! - That goes in the cow?
- Not the way you're thinking. - Only one way, surely!
Is it when you want the cow to come to the milking shed,
if you turn on the magnet in the milking shed and that's in it,
the cows would come.
- What about the abattoir? - Not the abattoir. It is simply that
a cow in the course of its daily grazings will often pick up metal in fields.
Bits of wire in tyres that are used to weigh down tarpaulins on silage pits.
- Barbed wire and things. - Gold.
They can cause inflammation in the stomach. Gold, yes!
So a magnet is put into their stomach and it attracts all the metal they eat
and eventually the gastric juices cause the metal to dissolve.
- Funnily enough, Bill mentioned something about them being attracted towards hedges. - Yes.
But someone thought, "I wonder if cows have a sense of magnetism themselves.
"How can we tell if cows face one particular way or if they're aware of it?"
They used that old standby Google Earth. This was an academic from a German university
and he studied 8,510 cows.
He found they tended to face north or south, a fact that's eluded mankind for thousands of years.
Only Google Earth would allow you to see that. "They're all looking that way."
- Only when the satellite was flying over. - True, but over a large patch of Earth.
- What do you think they're looking at? - Who knows? - The satellite. - They must be looking at something.
- They were looking north or south, not east or west. - Or "narth" or "thwest".
Ah, new ones!
Let's press on. We should.
Cow magnets sit inside cows' stomachs to attract bits of metal.
All right, let's be brutally honest, what do you think the Green Revolution has achieved?
Um... THEY SIGH
- Many, many things. - It's done wonders for the expensive light bulb business.
It depends what you mean by the "Green Revolution".
You're probably thinking of the general fact that people are trying to be eco-friendly,
- but there was something that was called the Green Revolution. - Is it in Africa or Asia?
All over the world, actually. There's a man
who you probably haven't heard of. His name didn't trip off my tongue - Norman Borlaug.
It's probably cos he's never been on Britain's Got Talent,
but he won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 and in the citation
it was said, "Dr Borlaug has saved more lives than any other person who has ever lived."
- Oh! Has he done something about the tsetse fly? - A billion people.
- So more than Fleming? - A billion people, they think. - He saved a billion?
- A billion people are alive because of him. - Clean water or something? - No, a new type of wheat.
It simply tripled India's supply of wheat. India, suddenly, in a short time -
ten, 15, 20 years - became capable of sustaining itself.
When I was young, there was enormous starvation in India and Bangladesh.
- That's why you weren't allowed to not finish your tea. - Yeah, absolutely.
I was forever posting my mashed potato I hadn't eaten off to Biafra.
Your parents would always say, "Biafrans could eat that,"
and I'd think, "They're right. I don't want it," and I was only little, so I'd post it off.
- Yeah. - So he invented wheat which has saved a million lives...
- A billion. - ..or means that a billion people are alive now that wouldn't otherwise...?
A billion people are alive who would otherwise not be and would have died of starvation.
It's hardier and higher-yielding, basically. This was christened the Green Revolution.
Of course, there are downsides. It's a monoculture, this wheat. It's spread everywhere.
Although enormous numbers of lives have been saved, it has been a big threat
to biodiversity, obviously, and the reliance on pesticides and things is not all good,
but it is pretty astonishing, isn't it?
How do you get wheat to mate?
Pollination?
Well, how does that happen?
- BILL: - Well, you turn down the lights...
Ask the barley to leave the room.
SPEECH DROWNED BY LAUGHTER
Anyway, Dr Norman Borlaug is the father of the Green Revolution
and may have saved as many as a billion lives,
but has never been on Celebrity Big Brother, so we've no idea who he is.
But from little green shoots, to little green men, gentlemen.
Imagine you've just received a signal from outer space. What's the first thing to do?
Phone Sky News immediately so they can get a camera crew round.
No, that's not the first thing to do.
Don't tell anyone, keep it to yourself?
- There is SETI. Have you heard of SETI? - The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.
- Very good! Points for Bill. - How do you think we found him?
- APPLAUSE - Indeed.
- SETI... - GERMAN ACCENT: Here's our finest example!
We never will get a message from outer space. Is that the answer?
- No... - Why shouldn't you phone Sky News? - Because there's a declaration of principles concerning activities
following the detection of extraterrestrial intelligence that SETI have put out.
- One, check it's real. Important. - OK. - Two,
tell all the signatories to the declaration and your national authorities.
- Not the press. - Oh, right.
You then tell astronomers, online or via a central bureau or something or other,
and then the discoverer has the privilege of making the first public announcement.
- That's the fourth step. - By the time I'm about to make the announcement
the authorities that I've previously contacted
have put me in a dark basement somewhere under the MI6 building for life!
- Probing or whatever they do. - This gentleman's from America.
US ACCENT: What exactly did you hear, sir?
There are reply protocols as well. That's to say,
if you get the message, how do you reply?
No-one should reply without checking with everyone else first.
- "Fine, thanks." - How do they do that?
The United Nations should finally decide if we reply.
We should reply on behalf of all humanity, not one country or corporation or company.
The message should be published before transmission. Plans should be put in place
to create an institution to manage the conversation as replies might be a long time in coming - centuries.
And somebody recommends the alien contact Max Clifford.
- It's such a very, very long way to the nearest place that it's... - That's the point.
You could spend as long as you liked planning all this. There's no need to rush.
- Who's made these rules? - SETI - the search for an extraterrestrial.
They've got plenty of time on their hands. Let's be honest.
What we know from cinema is that there's a kind of beardy, techy guy doing this
in the place where there's the computer screens and the stuff and he's like that,
and he's usually got a takeaway coffee and suddenly something goes...
- HE BLEEPS - ..and he goes like that.
"Oh, my God, oh, my God! I gotta..." Like that. Then the film starts.
- Then he gets up and treads on his own indoor golf set. - Exactly.
Blows the dust off his telephone and calls the authorities.
- What's wrong with being a bit beardy? You know... - Nothing wrong.
- Take it up with Hollywood casting. - Would the Americans call the Bangladeshis
if they heard it there? Cos that says
if Alan hears it when he's going shopping one day,
he's got to call SETI in New Mexico
- but I'll bet you... - No, it says check it's real and tell the signatories to the declaration.
Let's just assume for a moment Bangladesh is one of the signatories.
I bet you the Americans wouldn't call up the Bangladeshis and say, "We've heard from outer space."
- They'd deal with it all by themselves. - Well...
SETI say that if you hear from ET
you should check that he's for real, then tell the authorities, astronomers,
and then tell Joe Public.
But why was Lord Hardwicke's Marriage Act so good for the Scottish tourist industry?
- Something to do with kilts? - Something to do with Gretna Green.
Green is our word. Gretna Green. Yes.
- Where's Gretna Green? - Just inside Scotland.
- It's where you elope to to get married. - It's just over the border.
Up until 1753, in Britain, you didn't need your parents' permission to marry.
There were only three conditions to be satisfied.
You couldn't already be married.
The girl had to be 12 or over.
The boy had to be 14 or over. They mustn't be brother and sister.
- And that was it. You didn't even need witnesses. - No?
You'd just get married. But after 1753 because of inheritance and various legal wrangles,
because it was so hard to prove people were married,
the Hardwicke Act came in. But it didn't apply in Scotland.
So couples would elope. The nearest place on the main road to Edinburgh was Gretna Green.
In Gretna Green, as in England before this, you didn't have to be a priest or a mayor.
And these blacksmiths, they were called anvil weddings,
blacksmiths would perform thousands.
5,000 weddings a year are performed in Gretna Green still.
- People think it romantic to go. - Knock up a couple of rings while they're doing it.
- So, continuing our green theme now... - Why are you wasting electricity? - Sorry?
Why do you have two screens on? Why not turn that one off?
Then Bill can come and sit next to me on my knee.
Which is what I've been hoping for all along.
You on for that? Go on! Move!
APPLAUSE AND CHEERING
Come on, Bill.
- I'd better come by you, then. - Oh, it's you now!
There you go.
I'm still far away from him!
Like when you go to a restaurant and you want to sit next to someone
and end up at the other end of the table!
You can gaze at him across...
I love you - pass it on.
I love pooh. Pass it on.
You do kung fu. Pass it on.
- Paid three and fourpence for going to a dance. - Very good.
Excellent work. This is rather good.
- We're saving... - Saving power. - That whole screen now is off. Good thought.
- People say you're an enemy of environmentalism. - Rubbish!
- You have no idea! - We could take this further.
You at home - turn off your sets!
Steady on here! OK.
Let's have a musical clue for this next question.
MUSIC: Colonel Bogey's March
- Colonel Bogey's March. - Yes. Colonel Bogey's March.
Why, the question is, did Colonel Bogey go one over par in 1925?
- A bogey is one over par, in golf. - The extraordinary thing was, in Britain,
the way you set your par was to imagine the perfect player you were playing against
who got an exactly perfect score without dropping any shots.
And he was called Mr Bogey. So that meant par, not one over par. It meant par, bizarrely.
In the United Services Golf Club, they didn't want a Mr Bogey, so they called him Colonel Bogey.
So you imagined you were playing Colonel Bogey. So Colonel Bogey gets four on this hole.
And I got five. So you're one over.
But if you got four too, that was Bogey - par.
But America, who had newer courses because they'd only taken to the game more lately,
they used the word par and when they played on British ones they found ours were easier,
- so if they made a British one, one over was Bogey. - Easier here? - Complicated.
I literally have no idea what you're talking about.
- I know it sounds complicated. - In America they played on large courses, 18 holes.
- Here, you had to get it past the windmill... - APPLAUSE DROWNS SPEECH
But essentially bogey meant par until we joined in with the Americans in 1925
and we agreed to use Bogey to mean one over.
All of which brings us rolling off the green and into the bunker of general ignorance.
- Have you got your instruments still? - Yes.
You're on a tropical beach. You've got a screwdriver in one hand, a rusty nail in the other.
A crowd of huge male mosquitoes descends on you. What are they after?
- Yes, Bill? - Drinks, I was going to say. - Ah, sugar.
- Ah. - Sugar.
- They're not after anything. Only females bite you. - That is true.
That is a fact. That's correct. They're not after your blood.
- They're after the... - Orange juice. - Orange juice. - In the screwdriver. - Yes. - Points!
- JEREMY: - Why is there...?
Orange juice. The males sip juice. They don't use blood at all.
The blood is for the female when they're in egg. It helps the eggs develop.
Female mosquitoes are attracted by moisture,
lactic acid, carbon dioxide, body heat and movement.
- For the cocktails. What's a Manhattan? - Red Bull and egg nog.
Oh, dear!
- JEREMY: - I want that. - No, it's whiskey, vermouth and bitters.
- Cuba libre? - Cuba libre. - Cuba Libre. - Oh, that's rum and Coke.
- That will make you pregnant. - Daiquiri?
- Daiquiri. - It's the bar where it was invented. - Where? What?
- Floridita in Havana. - Very good.
I can't remember what's in it but I can tell you it's fantastic.
I could play the piano, I thought, afterwards!
Very good. Rum, lime juice and sugar.
It wasn't even a piano, it was a table!
- Margarita. - Margarita. - Salt. - Salt round the edge. - Gin.
It's very unfair to taunt us with these drinks when we're here without so much as water!
Do any of us drink cocktails? Does anyone outside of...
ALAN: Only at half past ten, or half two in your time!
A banana Daiquiri for breakfast is one of the greatest luxuries a man can have.
Sex on the Beach?
A banana Daiquiri?
Anyone know what's in Sex on the Beach?
- Vodka, peach schnapps, orange and cranberry juice. - I like peach schnapps.
And a little bit of crab sweat.
- Anyway... - Get things going.
It's the lady mosquitoes who bite. The men sip fruit juice and nectar.
- What harm can a wind turbine do? - Kill birds. - Yeah. - Kill birds?
The Royal Society for the Prevention of Birds recently announced
that they can't kill birds.
Oh, you spotted that? Good.
- But they do harm another flying creature. - Bats?
- Superman? - Superman? No. Bats. - JEREMY: - And goats.
The goats that hang on to them?
A man in Taiwan reported recently
that he lost 400 goats cos they could no longer sleep.
- Have you ever heard one? They make an unbelievable racket. - Is that why they attract bats? - No.
They don't get hit by the blades. It's the drop in pressure that is caused.
They have, as mammals, like humans, soft lungs
unlike birds who have harder lungs.
The capillaries burst in their lungs and they die,
just by the pressure change near the turbines. Nasty.
Which brings us to the scores. Oh, my heavens!
- Really? - Yes, now look at this. Oh, dear me, Lord!
In first place, with minus five,
is Bill Bailey!
So close. So close.
Doing really well with minus seven is Alan Davies!
The man who usually soars into the lead on our show
and gets enormous numbers of points, is in third place with minus 13, Danny Baker!
I'm sorry to say, way off the pace with minus 27, Jeremy Clarkson!
That's all from this edition of eco QI,
our special one-screen edition for your pleasure and entertainment.
Good night from Danny, Jeremy, Bill, Alan and me.
This thought from American comedian A. Whitney Brown -
"I'm not a vegetarian because I love animals.
"I'm a vegetarian because I hate plants."
Good night!
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd
E-mail subtitling@bbc.co.uk